114 THE IRISH AGRARIAN PROBLEM. 



parties rarely kept any proper accounts. In 

 general it may be said that high and low rents 

 were treated pretty much alike, so that a just 

 landlord who had compensated his tenants for 

 their improvements by low rents was much 

 harder hit than the proverbial Irish landlord. 

 The Land Commissioners have not been a suc- 

 cess as administrators of a practical Socialism. 

 They had at their disposal for purposes of com- 

 parison all the data of an economic system 

 resting on free competition — data which they 

 could gain by observation of neighbouring pro- 

 perties not subject to their operations, and by 

 looking up the history of the rental of each farm 

 they dealt with. These were the basis of their 

 decisions. What they would have done without 

 these data to go on is a question which baffles 

 conjecture.^ 



Yet the land legislation has contributed not a 

 little to the attainment of a kind of social peace. 



^ Many of the imperfections of the Land Commission are 

 explained by defective organization, and this in part was con- 

 ditioned by the irregular rush of the tenants to have their cases 

 settled. Thus in 1882-3 there were 68,538 cases to dispose 

 of; in 1886-7 there were 7,020; in 1888-9 they rose again to 

 28,767; in 1895-6 they sank to 4,077 (Land Com. Report, 

 p. 69). Many details might have been altered by better 

 organization. One must, however, agree with the judgment 

 of the Fry Commission, that no improvement could leave the 

 existing system " other than a complicated one, or free the 

 fixing of fair rents and true value from the uncertainty which 

 must attach to all figures arrived at by the estimate of an 

 individual, and not by a scientific method of computation " 

 (Fry Cora,, p. 40). 



