“I will tell you, Sir, a story I have heard lately, of a man in county Cork, who wanted to pay his landlord but dared not, on account of the other tenants on the estate. Coming across the landlord on a lone road (not improbably after many an unfruitful attempt for such a propitious opportunity) he stood before him in a threatening attitude. ‘Put your hand in my coat’s inside pocket!’ he said gruffly. The landlord did not understand at first what the man meant, and considering his look and address, was far from feeling reassured. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked uneasily. ‘I tell you, sir, put your hand in my coat’s inside pocket, and feel for what you find in it.’ At last the landlord did as he was bidden. He put his hand in the man’s pocket, and extracted from it a bundle of papers, carefully tied up, that looked like banknotes. At once the tenant took to his heels. ‘The devil a penny of rent you can ever say I paid you,’ said he, in the same strange threatening tone of voice, as he ran away. Still, the banknotes in the landlord’s hand were exactly to the amount of the rent due. As a rule, when the tenant is really able to pay his rent, he pays it.” Such has not been the general case, it seems, for the last three years. _In produce_, perhaps the Irish farmer might have paid his rent, as the crops have been, on the whole, fairly up to the average. In _money_, he cannot, because the fall of prices on hay, potatoes, beef, mutton, pork, and butter alike, in 1885, 1886, 1887, has been at least 20 per cent. on the former and average prices, which not only means no margin whatever of profit to the farmer, besides his necessary expenses, but in most cases the sheer impossibility of providing for the forthcoming outlay in seeds, manure, and labour. This may not be self-evident. Many a reader probably fails to see why a fall of 20 per cent. on the prices of agricultural produce must necessarily entail a total disability to pay the rent. “I can well understand the demand of a proportional reduction of rent in such cases,” he will say, “but not absolute non-payment.” To fully realise the situation, one must go into the details of a farmer’s life. Let us take the case of Denis O’Leary, a Kerry man, with fourteen acres of good land. He seems to be in easy circumstances; his house is clean and pretty; he owns three cows, two sows, ten sheep, and about a score hens. Denis O’Leary is a good man, industrious and thrifty, who does all the work on his farm, with the help of wife and three children. He likes his pipe of tobacco, and on Sundays, a glass of beer over the counter with a friend or two, but otherwise indulges in no expensive habits. On the whole he can be considered a pattern tenant, as well as one of the most fortunate of his class. His rent, which had been gradually raised by his landlord up to the sum of £11 6_s._, was in 1883 put down at £8 7_s._ by the Land Commissioners.