and in those of other large tenants, seem to have been made at the instance of the tenants themselves, and afforded security against any advance in the rental during a time of high agricultural prices.  And it would appear that for the last quarter of a century there has been no important advance in the rental.  In 1887 the rental was only L300 higher than in 1862, though during the interval the landlord had laid out L20,000 on improvements in the shape of drainage, roads, labourers’ cottages, and other permanent works.  Moreover, in fifteen years only one tenant has been evicted for non-payment of rent.

“Was there any ill-feeling towards the Marquis among the tenants?” I asked of Mr. Hind.

“Certainly not, and no reason for any.  They were a good set of men, and they would never have gone into this fight, only for a few who were in trouble, and I’m sure that to-day most of them would be thankful if they could settle and get back.  The best of them had money enough, and didn’t like the fight at all.”

All the trouble here seems to have originated with the adoption of the Plan of Campaign.

Lord Lansdowne, besides this estate in Queen’s County, owns property in a wild, mountainous part of the county of Kerry.  On this property the tenants occupy, for the most part, small holdings, the average rental being about L10, and many of the rentals much lower.  They are not capitalist farmers at all, and few of them are able to average the profits of their industry, setting the gains of a good, against the losses of a bad, season.  In October 1886, while Mr. Dillon was organising his Plan of Campaign, Lord Lansdowne visited his Kerry property to look into the condition of the people.  The local Bank had just failed, and the shopkeepers and money-lenders were refusing credit and calling in loans.  The pressure they put upon these small farmers, together with the fall in the price of dairy produce and of young stock at that time, caused real distress, and Lord Lansdowne, after looking into the situation, offered, of his own motion, abatements varying from 25 to 35 per cent, to all of them whose rents had not been judicially fixed under the Act of 1881, for a term of fifteen years.

As to these, Lord Lansdowne wrote a letter on the 21st of October 1886 (four days after the promulgation of the Plan of Campaign at Portumna on the Clanricarde property), to his agent, Mr. Townsend Trench.  This letter was published.  I have a copy of it given to me in Dublin, and it states the case as between the landlords and the tenants under judicial rents most clearly and temperately.

“It might, I think,” says the Marquis, “be very fairly argued, that the State having imposed the terms of a contract on landlord and tenant, that contract should not be interfered with except by the State.

“The punctual payment of the ‘judicial rent’ was the one advantage to which the landlords were desired to look when, in 1881, they were deprived of many of the most valuable attributes of ownership.