agrarian side of the movement; for this illustrated the increased ingenuity of the League. Some of its leaders issued a mandate against the payment of rent, except upon reductions to an enormous extent; should the landlords refuse, the tenants, on every estate, were to lodge their rents into what was called the 'War chest,' a common fund to be held in trust; the object of this being to prevent the secret payment of rent, which had repeatedly, we have seen, taken place, and to put a stop to 'defection from the cause.' The 'Plan of Campaign' as was its name, was thus ushered on; it was a criminal plot of the very basest kind; but though it proved successful in some instances, and it caused much agrarian disorder and crime, it was, on the whole, a comparative failure. The peasantry, close-fisted and shrewd, distrusted the so-called 'trustees of the War chest;' they generally declined to put their money in it; the 'Plan' was only carried out on few estates, though it compelled many landlords to make reductions of rent; it is remarkable that Parnell did not approve of the swindle. Long, however, before the defeat of the League, there had been a thousand instances of agrarian crime: five thousand miserable beings had been 'boycotted,' in many cases with frightful results; a thousand had been placed under the protection of the police. As had happened during the _regime_ of the Land League, these victims were nearly all of the humble classes. In 1887 another change was made in the Irish land system, essentially a development of the Land Act of 1881. That measure, I have said, applied to tenants at will only, that is, liable to be dispossessed by a notice to quit; it did not apply to tenants under leasehold tenures. A sharp distinction, therefore, was drawn between the two classes; a farmer, with land on one side of a ditch, could secure the advantages of the 'Three F's;' his neighbour, on the other side, could not; the distinction was so palpably harsh, that many landlords in Ireland saw its injustice, and enabled leasehold tenants to obtain the benefits of the law. An Act, prepared by Lord Salisbury's Government, brought ordinary Irish leaseholders within the Land Act of 1881; these were given a right to have 'fair rents' fixed, and 'fixity of tenure' and 'free sale' under certain conditions. The Act of 1887, also, empowered the Courts to set aside perpetual leases unfairly obtained; and it relaxed the restrictions of the Act of 1881 with respect to subletting and subdivision, and the exclusion of 'town parks.' It improved, moreover, the law of ejectment, facilitating the vindication of the rights of the landlord; and--a strange provision--it enabled a middleman, in certain events, to creep out of his contract, and to free himself from the rent due to his superior landlord. In consequence of the fall of prices that had lately occurred, and the depression of agriculture that had been the result, the Act, too, reduced,