IRISH AGRARIAN TENURE. 85 



rent ; that town tenants and leaseholders should 

 be included ; that arrears (as it afterwards 

 happened) should be wiped out. The working 

 classes ought to obtain better dwellings, and the 

 uneconomic holdings should be enlarged.^ 



The regular revolutionary party was alto- 

 gether against the Land Act, for they realized 

 the danger that the populace might be pacified. 

 Parnell had found himself compelled to advise 

 the tenantry to make only a slow and gradual 

 use of the Act. In this way it was possible for 

 him at the same time to bring some test cases 

 before the new courts and to keep the national 

 movement better in control and the revolu- 

 tionary party in good humour."' 



The Land Act of 1881 was only the beginning 

 of far-reaching reforms. The fall in prices of 

 the chief agricultural products continued ; it was 

 particularly strong in the year 1885 ; the potato 

 harvest failed in 1886. On this the Nationalist 

 Party demanded a revision of the already fixed 

 judicial rents, a resettlement of the arrears 

 question and the admission of leaseholders 

 to the Act. The Conservative Government — 

 Gladstone had fallen on the Home Rule 

 question — refused these demands. Immediately 

 the agitation flamed up anew, and again the 

 three factors were combined, the striving towards 

 social reform, the desire to keep the national 



^ Shaw-Lefevre, "Agrarian Tenures," p. 119. 

 - O'Brien, "Life of Parnell," I., p. 302. 



