io8 THE IRISH AGRARIAN PROBLEM. 



their dwelling, their potatoes and their milk ; 

 and they earn it as migratory labourers, etc. 

 This price, their rent, stands in no close rela- 

 tion to the products of the holding, the market 

 prices of which have hardly any greater connexion 

 Avith it, and very little of them is ever sold. The 

 rentable capacity of these holdings, in fact, de- 

 pends only to a slight extent on their products ; 

 it is rather an affair of the rentable capacity of 

 migratory labour, of fishing and of spinning. 

 But inasmuch as these subsidiary industries 

 raise the rentable capacity of a deficit holding, 

 they indirectly produce a rise of rent for the 

 whole country. 



A ' fair rent,' therefore, upon a deficit holding 

 must be fixed upon other considerations than 

 those which obtain in the case of true agri- 

 cultural holdings. The deficit farms are to be 

 found upon the worst soil, and, so far as markets 

 are concerned, in the worst situation. Never- 

 theless when we take all the factors for an 

 estimate into consideration, we find that a fair 

 rent upon these farms must be exceptionally 

 high. The competition rents before 1881 were in 

 fact arrived at on these considerations. There- 

 fore according to a strictly logical definition of 

 a fair rent the Courts would have to give the 

 least reductions precisely in the places where 

 the situation of the tenants was most pitiable. 



The Courts, however, have neither set up an 

 exact definition nor have they adhered con- 

 sistently to one practice. Originally indeed in 



