several years, of facilitating the transfer of the fee simple, in his holding, to the Irish tenant; this policy had been carried out, to some extent, by the Act disestablishing the Anglican Church in Ireland. The Bill of 1870 extended the principle; it provided that the State might advance moneys to Irish tenants, to enable them to become owners of their farms; but--and this should especially be kept in mind--the tenant was to supply a third part of the purchase money at least; and the transaction was to be effected by free contract, that is, by the voluntary act of the landlord disposing of his land. It remains to add, that the administration of the measure, was, for the most part--subject to an appeal to the Superior Courts--entrusted to the County Courts of Ireland, that is, to long-established tribunals of repute. The Bill passed through both Houses with little change; it has long been known as the Irish Land Act of 1870. It was, in the main, I repeat, a great reforming measure; it effected a far-reaching improvement in the tenure of land in Ireland, and that without any marked infringement of the just rights of property. No impartial mind can fairly object to the protection given to the tenant right of the north and the south, or to the compensation secured for tenants' improvements; if 'Compensation for Disturbance' was a bold experiment, still this Parliamentary tenant right, as it may be called, was in harmony with fact in nearly all instances. Nevertheless, the Act had three marked defects; these largely detracted from its practical value. It bristled with such exceptions and limitations that it was difficult even for the learned to understand; it seemed to the unlettered peasant a dangerous puzzle, involving him, perhaps, in lawsuits and costs; it did not strike his imagination as a substantial boon. Though, too, it annexed a real tenant right to nearly all farms, and thus secured to the Irish tenant, in almost all cases, any joint-ownership he may have acquired in the land, still this was intelligible only to educated men; 'Compensation for Disturbance' was to be given only when an occupier was about to leave his holding; but this was exactly what he could not bear to do; he was, therefore, ready to accept almost any terms, rather than face consequences he dreaded to think of. Mr. Gladstone, again, had, in this measure, shown that he wished to assimilate Irish to English land tenure in the long run; he sought to vindicate the just claims of the Irish tenant; but he desired ultimately to give him the status of his fellow in England, a long-standing, false conception of British statesmen. The Land Act, therefore, provided that most of the rights it conferred on the tenant might be commuted by the grant of a lease for thirty-one years or upwards; and it further enacted that tenants of the larger kind might 'contract themselves out' of the privileges it gave, by voluntary agreements made with their landlords. The object of