since then that have gone beyond it. I remember one case that struck me very forcibly because of the great amount the man got--20 years' purchase. Since then I have known, 29, 35, 36, 34 years' purchase to be given.' I turn now to two estates in the south of Ireland: 'Charles Bolster, 112 acres; rent L79 5_s._; sold for L570 in 1889. Daniel Buckley, 9 acres, at rent of L3 3_s._; sold in 1889 for L45. Christopher Crofts, 131 acres; old rent, L86; judicial rent fixed in 1893, L80; sold in 1889 for L120. Timothy Reefe, 5 acres; rent, 29_s._; sold in 1891 for L47.' I pass on to the second estate: 'Next case, 65 acres; old rent, L60; judicial rent, L56 14_s._, fixed in 1883 by agreement; sold in 1883 for L330. Next, 76 statute acres; old rent, L115; judicial rent fixed in 1885 at L108; sold in December, 1885, for L1600.'[142] This great fall in the value of the fee simple in the Irish land, and this great rise in the value of the tenant right, coinciding with the general fixing of 'fair rents,' distinctly point to a plain conclusion: the interest of the Irish landlord has been enormously reduced, a result never contemplated by the author of the Act of 1881. In truth, there has been little or no decline in the market price of land in Ireland; but property that ought to belong to the landlord has been improperly taken from him, and has been transferred to the tenant who had no right to it. Excuses, however, have been made for this wholesale abolition of rent; they are worthless, but may be briefly noticed. Ireland, it is said, is suffering, like England, from the agricultural depression of late years; and rents in Ireland have not been cut down more by the act of the State than they have been reduced in England by the voluntary acts of landlords. But agricultural depression in Ireland, a land of small holdings, and of pasturage, to a considerable extent, is not, by many degrees, as severe as in England, a land of large farms and largely of cereal culture; a signal proof of this is that, while in England, tenants have, in hundreds of instances, thrown up their farms, there has hardly been a case of the kind in Ireland, as appears from the Report of the Fry Commission. Besides, if agricultural prices have fallen in Ireland, compared to what they were, say, twenty-five years ago, they are higher than they were in the years, say, 1850-55, not to take into account the progress made by Ireland, in the last half-century, in crops, farm machinery, and the breeds of farming animals. As to the reduction of rents in England and Ireland, the supposed analogy completely fails. The rental of England rose greatly from 1850 to 1880; there was no corresponding increase in Ireland; there was thus a margin for reduction, in the greater island, which in the lesser did not exist. Again, no comparison can be made between State-settled Irish rents and English rents lowered by the voluntary acts of landlords. 'Fair rents'