Here is an illustration which came under my own observation.

A tenant named Richard Sweeney, whose rent was L48 a year, owed three years’ rent.  He paid one year, the Government provided another, and the landlord had to forgive the third.

To obtain this result, Sweeney swore that the selling value of his farm was nil, and he received a receipt in full.

A few weeks later he served me—­as agent for the landlord—­with notice that he had sold his interest in the property for L630.

That is not the end of my story.

The purchaser was a man named Murphy, and a very few years afterwards, upon the ground that the rent was too dear, he took the farm for which he had paid L630 to Sweeney into the Land Courts and got the rent reduced to L36.

The absurdity of this system was well brought out before the Fry Commission, when one high-commissioner and a sub-commissioner both said that in valuing the land they took into consideration the tenant’s occupation interest.

The reader will see the way this works out, if he will accept the very simple hypothetical case of two tenants holding land to the worth of L40 each, and one of them only paying L20 a year rent.  When they both took their cases into the Land Court, the man paying the lower rent of L20 would obtain the larger reduction, because he had the greater occupation.

These facts will show that a Purchase Bill was an absolute necessity.  Lord Dufferin truly remarked that landlord and tenant were both in the same bed, and Mr. Gladstone thought to settle their disputes by giving the tenant a larger share than he had ever had before.  But the tenant considered that as he had obtained that concession by fraud and violence, if he could only give one effective kick more, he would put the landlord on the floor for the rest of the term of their national life.

When introducing the Land Act of 1870, Mr. Gladstone proved himself if not an Irish statesman, an admirable prophet, for he denounced in anticipation exactly what the effect of the Land Act of 1881 would be.

In 1870, he prospectively criticised such an institution as the Land Court, which in 1881 he proposed, with its power to give a ’judicial rent.’

’But it is suggested we should establish, permanently and positively, a power in the hands of the State to reduce excessive rents.  Now I should like to hear a careful argument in support of that plan.  I wish at all events to retain at all times a judicial habit of not condemning a thing utterly until I have heard what is to be said for it; but I own I have not heard, I do not know, and I cannot conceive, what is to be said for the prospective power to reduce excessive rents.  If I could conceive a plan more calculated than everything else, first of all, for throwing into confusion the whole economical arrangements of the country; secondly, for driving out of the field all solvent and honest men who might be bidders for farms; thirdly, for carrying widespread demoralisation throughout the whole mass of the Irish people, I must say it is this plan.’