4 66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



proprietor had the privilege of appointing the third for the hearing of 

 his case. In estimating the compensation to be paid proprietors, the 

 commissioners were required to consider : 



1. The price at which other proprietors had already sold their lands 

 to the Government. 



2. The number of acres under lease in the estates valued, the 

 length of such leases, the rents agreed for under these leases, the ar- 

 rears of rent, the years over which they extended, and the reasonable 

 probability of recovery. 



3. The number of acres of vacant or unleased land ; their quality 

 and value to the proprietor. 



4. The gross rent actually paid for the previous six years ; the ex- 

 penses of collecting such rent being deducted, to show the net amount 

 actually received by the proprietor. 



With Right Hon. Hugh E. Childers as chairman, the commission 

 went to work, and the voluminous evidence presented to it reveals how 

 thoroughly the tenants regarded their leases as unsound and illegal. 

 Whenever a lease was taken as a basis of valuation, the plea was set 

 up that the proprietor's title was faulty, and that he had leased prop- 

 erty to which his right was doubtful. In vain was it contended that 

 the whimsical conditions of the original grant had been impossible of 

 fulfillment. The retort was repeated that, therefore, proprietorship 

 should be forfeited, and it was held that landlord influences at West- 

 minster had, in the early days of agitation, successfully fought off 

 proposed concessions to tenants, which, if granted, would have spared 

 the island grievous evils. The landlords maintained in their defense 

 that their ownership had been repeatedly recognized by the Govern- 

 ment, more particularly in the Fifteen Years' Purchase Act of 1865. 

 They pleaded that, if they had not rigorously enforced claims against 

 their tenants, their forbearance arose from no uncertainty as to their 

 titles, but from humanity in cases where their tenants were needy, and 

 from social and political prejudices against legal collection where their 

 debtors were thriving. Leases, it was clear, were very far from being 

 leases in the British, Irish, or American sense ; they were not contracts 

 meaning what they said, but doubtful bargains open to discussion or 

 rebate, just as the landlords' title could be discredited, indulgence ob- 

 tained, or prosecution parried. Many tenants of rich land, abundantly 

 able to pay their rent, had paid none. Often a tenant who had de- 

 cried his leasehold as poor and unproductive, was proved to have dis- 

 posed of it for a handsome sum. Parallel with the accumulating of 

 arrears on landlords' ledgers had gone on the steady piling up by 

 tenants as a class of savings in the banks. A disregard for property 

 in rents extended itself to other kinds of property belonging to landed 

 proprietors. It was not uncommon for woodlands to lose their value 

 through being stripped of timber by thieves. When in an extreme 

 case a tenant was ejected from his holding, no successor to him was to 



