"Patrick Ring caused a replevin to be entered with the sheriff--that is, he gave security that he would pay the rent, if rent was due, as soon as a trial at quarter-sessions or assizes could be had--that he might in the mean time get the use of the property upon which the distraint lay. He accordingly proved by his lease that he owed nothing--that no rent was due until May. But before that was done, May had come, and the rent was due. He paid it punctually, and proceeded against the landlord for damages, or rather for the costs to which he had been exposed. This being opposed, occupied much time; and before it was settled, the landlord once more distrained for rent alleged to be due on the 29th of September. Again Patrick Ring replevined, and proved his rent-days to be in November and May, and not in September and March. The case of costs and trespass came to trial in respect of both seizures, and was decided in Ring's favour. Thus a jury and a judge certified by their decision that the tenant was right, and the landlord wrong. The damages awarded were very moderate, only L12 and costs; but the tenant looked on the verdict as most important, in respect of its setting, as he thought, the validity of his lease and the period of his rent-days at rest. But that the damages were too moderate as regarded the landlord was manifest from the fact, that he again distrained in March for rent not due until May. "He now, it being again seed-time, took a more effectual way of crippling the tenant than before. He seized on the farm implements and stock, of which the dunghill was in his eyes the most important. He had it, without a legal sale, carried away to his own farm-yard, even to the very rakings and sweepings of the road and the yard near which it lay. This he did that Ring might have no manure for his potato ground, knowing that crops so planted would not easily afford the rent; and that, when no rent was forthcoming, an ejectment would soon follow. Other things--a plough, and a horse, and some furniture--were sold, and Ring was once more involved in litigation. These things were bought in with his own money, save the dung-heap, which the landlord would not give him a chance of buying in; and thus Ring was obliged to pay his rent before it was due, with all the expenses of a distraint and sale--the most expensively conducted of any distraints and sales under the British crown. He thought to recover damages for all this loss; but he was not able to pay his rent in addition to all this, when it became due; and thus, by some hocus-pocus of the law, the two cases became so mingled together as to be inextricable."