The Sub-Commissions dealt with the subject of the exemption of tenants' improvements from rent, on the whole, as fairly, I think, as could be expected; and on the different questions of law that arose, appeals ran from them to the Land Commission, which usually investigated these cases at length. But this part of the law, really an excrescence on the Act of 1881, was unfair to the landlords, in the circumstances in which they were placed; they were confronted by innumerable and often obsolete and worthless claims, which they had only seldom the means of refuting; and if the demoralisation and false swearing under the Act of 1870 was bad, they were infinitely worse under the Act of 1881. A witty Irishman, indeed, once said that he could wish no severer punishment for Mr. Gladstone than to see him in a Sub-Commission Court listening to those wrongful statements; the mischief has, of course, been aggravated since the Act of 1896 has made the basis for the exemption larger and more ill-defined. The Sub-Commissions, I have said, were gravely in error, almost, as a rule, with respect to the deterioration of land, as an element to be considered in fixing rent; in this respect gross injustice has been done to landlords. There is scarcely any proof that, even in a single instance, the Sub-Commissioners valued land 'for fair rent,' as in its normal state; and yet, assuredly, this was what ought to have been done, if a premium was not to be put on misconduct, and because farms had been injured and exhausted in hundreds, throughout Ireland. The deterioration was usually of two kinds--wilful waste committed in order to work down rent, and passive waste caused by negligence and bad farming. Out of many instances, under the first head, I shall refer to one; the Sub-Commissioners usually gave little or no attention to wrongs of this kind; in this instance they enabled the tenant to make money by his own misdeeds; they reduced the rent nearly 30 per cent.: 'The dykes were full of stuff and choked, and the sluice-gate, which we had repaired at our own expense, was all choked up, and the water had been left on the land as long as it could stay on it. I complained and remonstrated with the tenant. I sent for Madden, and in Mr. Lyle's presence I stated this to him. His answer to me was that he was not such a damned fool as to have his land looking well when the Commissioners came to look at it. 'SIR E. FRY: Did that case come before the Sub-commissioner Court?--It did. 'Did you give evidence of what the tenant said?--Yes, sir.... 'MR. CAMPBELL: I will tell you, sir, what they did. 'How much did they reduce the first judicial rent?--They reduced the first judicial rent; they cut it down from L70 10_s._ to L51.'[103]