Now, the Irish leases--at least those that I have seen, and I am assured that until the last few years all were drawn up in the same form--contain a clause that absolutely destroys this principle. It is always stipulated that the tenant should have the right to withdraw at any time by giving six months’ notice in advance, without any reciprocal power being reserved for the landlord. I do not therefore see why the latter should tie his hands for thirty-one years; and if it is true that many landowners have refused to grant leases to their tenants, it appears to me that their refusal was clearly justified by this extraordinary clause. But in any case the Colonel’s patrimonial estate had always been managed in this way, and consequently, while those of his neighbours who had refused to be bound by leases profited by the years of plenty that followed the famine by raising their rents 25, 50, and often 100 per cent., the rents on his property remained stationary, or at least were only raised in a very irregular manner, since the increased rents could only be charged when the leases had to be renewed. When bad seasons returned the Government took the initiative by a law known as the Land Bill, which instituted committees charged with the regulation of the rents, but these committees ignored all previous contracts. They commenced by reducing all rents on an average 15 to 20 per cent. Then the Land League intervened, and by methods which, if illegal, were not the less efficacious, it obtained fresh reductions, which generally doubled the first. On some estates, those which are referred to when it is desirable to quote an instance, things were restored to nearly their original condition. When this happened the landlords protested a little, but merely as a matter of form; for even had the committee not imposed a reduction, they would have been glad enough to receive their rents at the same rate as before the rise took place. But the numerous class of those who had not raised their rents naturally considered that it was supremely unjust that reductions should be forced upon them when they had not profited by the good years. And really they had some ground for complaint. Let us take the case of two landlords who own estates of the same quality contiguous to one another. In 1855, for instance, both of them let the land at 4_l._ per acre; in 1870 the first of them raised the rent to 8_l._ The second, restrained by a lease or simply by moral considerations, had not altered the price. The Government and the Land League only reduced the former to his original sum of 4_l._, whilst the latter saw his rent fall to 2_l._, and found himself impoverished by one half simply because he had not ground down his tenant like his neighbour had done.