1 20 The Course, the Camp, the Chase 



disagrees about the rent, he can go to the Land Com- 

 missioners and have an arbitrary rent — always less than 

 it was before — fixed for fifteen years ; that so long as 

 this rent is paid, there is no power whatever of turning 

 him out, so that practically he has become the owner of 

 his holding. At the conclusion of the fifteen years, he 

 can again go to the Land Commissioners, and say he is 

 dissatisfied with the rent as last fixed. In every case 

 these said Commissioners have reduced the rents again — 

 in most cases 30 per cent, under what they themselves 

 fixed before, — although every description of marketable 

 produce has risen in value since the rent was first settled. 

 Thousands of landowners have been reduced to absolute 

 beggary by this confiscation of their property without 

 compensation — as well might they live under Turkish 

 or Moorish rule, where the Sultans make no scruple of 

 seizing property and no man dares to be accounted 

 passing rich, as live under the rule of the Land Com- 

 missioners. 



Ireland has long been the battle-ground of political 

 parties, but it is a country easily governed by just laws, 

 firmly administered. There is no nation, however, more 

 given to " trying it on," when they think that their 

 rulers are weak, and afraid to put the law into force. 

 Hence the continued agrarian murders, which will be ever 

 cropping up, if the perpetrators think that they will 

 escape from paying the penalties of their crime. A very 

 plucky feat was performed during the troublous times that 

 preceded the days of the Land League, when that grand 

 specimen of the Church militant. Dean Holmes, aided by 

 Mr. Eichard Bayley, agent of Mr. Stafford O'Brien, near 

 Nenagh, in County Limerick, captured by themselves a 



