In 1870 Mr. Gladstone laid the ax at the root of another tree whose fruit had cursed the Irish peasantry. This was the system of land tenure which prevailed in the southern and western counties. In the province of Ulster, in the north of Ireland, the tenantry were of another sort, and there were other means of livelihood than agriculture. Out of this condition had sprung the so-called "Ulster tenant-right," the vital principle of which was that a tenant could not be evicted so long as he paid his rent, and "could sell the good will of his farm for what it would fetch in the market." This tenant-right was what Palmerston dismissed with the scornful remark that it was another name for "landlord's wrong." It did not exist elsewhere in Ireland, where a landlord might raise the rent and throw a tenant into the street at will. The Land Act, which Gladstone carried in 1870, gave legal force to the old Ulster custom and applied it to the whole island. Provision was made by which the tenant whose improvements had increased the value of his holding might receive compensation. The Irish landlords and the same class in England made a clamorous protest against such "state interference with freedom of contract," but without avail. Of what the Land Act of 1870 accomplished, Mr. Justin McCarthy is a competent judge. He says: "It was a first and an experimental measure, and no first and experimental measure ever does quite succeed in its object. It has had to be amended and expanded over and over again.....But it introduced a new principle, which no one since has ever attempted to abolish. That new principle was that the Irish tenant was entitled to some share and property in the improvements which he himself had made in his farm. It was, therefore, in the best sense of the word, a revolutionary measure. It created a new principle, and that principle has since been settled. It did not go nearly far enough in the right direction, but it showed the direction in which legislation ought to go, and it was on that account the opening of a new era for Ireland." The same wave of reforming zeal which brought these blessings to Ireland gave the English nation its first system of free schools (1870), abolished the purchase of commissions in the army (1871), agreed to the principle of arbitrations in international disputes (the Geneva award on the "Alabama Claims" 1872), and introduced the vote by ballot (1872). The effort to establish university education in Ireland upon a basis broad enough to afford equal opportunities for Roman Catholic and Protestant youth was defeated (1873). A few months later, when the national election had pronounced against the liberal policy, Mr. Gladstone yielded his place to his rival, Disraeli.