Government to legislate for the Irish people as they would have legislated for themselves. The sentimental grievance having been removed, the Liberals turned to the practical grievance. The Irish Land Act of 1870 provided that the tenant should receive compensation for his improvements, and unless the contrary were proved, it was to be presumed that all improvements were his, and not the landlord's. If a tenant were evicted, he was to be compensated for disturbance, unless the eviction were for non-payment of rent, and even then the court might hold that the exorbitant amount demanded, or other circumstances, entitled him to special compensation. No tenant who paid less than L50 a year could contract out of the Act. Two great principles were expressed in this measure. The first was that of the Church Act, the {251} Irish government of Ireland. The second was the new collectivism. The Act not only alleviated the great hardship of the Irish tenants, it was a direct interference by the State with the right of property and with freedom of contract. The absolute owner of land was no longer allowed to deal with it as he pleased without compensating those to whom he leased it, and a poor tenant was expressly prevented from agreeing to his own injury. Utilitarianism and _laissez faire_ had ceased to dominate the Liberal mind, and liberty was deliberately restricted in one direction that it might expand more readily in another. Where one party was rich and the other poor, where one held land in his absolute disposition and the other could not live without it, freedom of bargaining meant the lessening of liberty. This principle, suggested in the Factory Acts, and first openly applied to the problem of Irish land, is now the distinctive character of Liberal domestic policy.