experiment made by this Liberal Government, as by the last, was made in Ireland. The condition of that country was now more dangerous than at any time since the Rebellion of 1798. The wholesale and systematic depopulation of the country by rack-renting and evictions had demoralized and degraded those whom it had not driven out of the country or starved to death, and throughout the most congested districts no spirit was to be found {287} but hatred of the landlords and the English connection. Boycotting had now been invented, and boycotting was accompanied by agrarian outrages of the most brutal description. The Land League was supreme. Rents could not be collected. No man would work for a tenant who paid his rent, or for a man who took a farm from which a former tenant had been evicted. The whole country seemed to be in sympathy with the Moonlighters and maimers of cattle, informers were murdered or intimidated, and the perpetrators of some of the most atrocious crimes were never discovered. The Government applied itself at once to the suppression of disorder and to the redress of grievances. Drastic Coercion Acts armed the executive with new powers, and in 1881 Gladstone introduced and carried, practically single-handed, a new Land Act. This Act went farther than any previous Act of Parliament in interfering with freedom of contract. It strained the relations of the two sections of the Cabinet almost to breaking point, and the Duke of Argyll actually resigned. The Act of 1870 had provided that the tenant should be compensated for eviction except in case of non-payment of rent. The exception took nine-tenths of the virtue out of the Act. The country was crowded with poor people who wanted land and could not live without it. The tenant got no compensation so long as he kept his farm, and so long as he kept it he was rack-rented. If he was at last evicted, he was probably no better off for his compensation, because he had little chance of getting a second farm on any better conditions than the first. In these circumstances, bad landlords did very much as they pleased, and a Royal Commission reported that "Freedom of contract did not in fact exist."[330] The tenant was at the mercy of the landlord in every case. The Government therefore stepped in to protect him, on the principle that interference is justified "where the necessities of one of the parties to a bargain deprive his seeming freedom of choice of all substance."[331] Their Bill accepted the recommendations of the {288} Royal Commission, and established what were known as "the three F's," fair rent, fixity of tenure, and freedom of sale. The amount of the rent was to be fixed by an impartial Land Court. The tenant was to pay this rent for fifteen years, after which it might be revised. The right to remain in the holding at this rent was to be transferable to any purchaser. No tenant whose land was worth less than L200 a year could contract himself out of the benefits of the Act. This