majority of Irish tenancies, in an exaggerated, crude, and dangerous form. This legislation, revolutionary and socialistic alike, has been given more ample scope in the last twenty years; it probably affects four-fifths of the rented lands in Ireland; it has fashioned the type of land tenure over nearly all the country. The successors of Mr. Gladstone, who, indeed, had boasted that it set the doctrines of Adam Smith at nought, were not blind to the evils it soon developed; but it is questionable if their attempts to mitigate these, and to place the Irish land system on a better basis, have not been at least as open to censure. With the ignorance of Irish land tenure common in British statesmen, they proclaimed, what assuredly was not the fact, that Mr. Gladstone had 'created a dual ownership' in the Irish land, and that, in order to get rid of this intolerable thing, it was necessary, in accord with English ideas, to bring Ireland, as far as possible, under 'single ownership,' and to make the occupiers of the Irish soil, to a large extent, its owners. The system of 'Land Purchase' in Ireland, begun in 1870, was freed from the limitations which made it safe and just, and widely enlarged under new conditions; Irish tenants were encouraged to acquire the fee in their holdings, by a process never contemplated before; instead of having to pay any part of the price, the State advanced them the whole purchase moneys, repayable by an annual charge much less than any true rent. About a tenth part of the tenant class of Ireland have become owners of their farms by these means; the transaction has been in no sense a 'purchase;' though given the name, it is really the exact opposite.