I cannot say that I think many landlords will leave Ireland in consequence of the Wyndham Act.  The few who will go are those who are glad to be quit at any price, and to be free to pack out of the country.  But many a landlord will be far more comfortable on his own estate, when he has rid himself of all his tenants.

One feature of this curious Act is that the Geraldines have got rid of the last of their property, and escaped all the forfeitures.

As for the sporting rights, far too much fuss has been made over them.  Except where there are plantations or good fishing, they are of very little value one way or the other.  The Act will not affect the hunting.  Small Irish farmers like to see the hunt almost as much as the hunting set themselves like to participate in it.

Of course, too, the Act ought to be popular in Ireland, because it is taking so much money out of England.

A point I wish to emphasise is one about which there has been a great deal of misconception.

A considerable amount of capital has been made out of the depreciation of agricultural produce in Ireland as compared with England.  But Ireland is a stock-producing country and not an agricultural country in the strict sense, for the cultivation of wheat in Ireland has long since ceased to exist.  The true relation may be seen in the fact that in England the difficulty of getting store-cattle was a loss to farmers, whereas it has been a decided gain to farmers in Ireland—­though they are not best pleased when you impress the fact on them.

Mr. Finlay Dun in Landlords and Tenants in Ireland in 1881 cites some examples which may be apt to-day when we are considering Mr. Wyndham’s Act.

He writes on page 64:—­

’Kilcockan parish between Lismore and Youghal was in great part disposed of in the Landed Estates Court thirty years ago.  It was bought, some of it by occupiers, some of it by shopkeepers and attorneys.  Rents have been raised, and there is not much appearance of prosperity.  Newtown, for several generations the fee-simple property of a family of the name of Nason, after the famine of 1846, was cut up and sold; the family residence is in ruin.  At Lower Curryglass, a few miles east of Lismore, a good farm of five hundred acres, belonging to a family who have been obliged to leave it, bears sad evidence of neglect; the good old deserted manor-house, the farm buildings, and a dozen cottages in the village are falling to pieces.  Contrary to what might be anticipated, some of the smaller proprietors in this district have been strenuous supporters of the Land League, although it is to be hoped that they repudiate the destruction of the cattle on the land of Mr. Grant, which were stabbed, and some of them drowned in the river.  Mr. Grant had come under the ban of the League for evicting a dissipated bankrupt tenant, whose debts to the extent of two hundred pounds he had paid, and who would have been reinstated, if there had been the remotest prospect of reformed habits or of getting clear of his difficulties.  Such acts appear to justify the statement, “that Irishmen don’t know what they want, and won’t be satisfied until they get it."’