o the terrible ordeal that a boycotted person has to undergo,
which was by several witnesses graphically described during
the progress of our enquiry. The existence of a boycotted
person becomes a burden to him, as none in town or village are
allowed, under a similar penalty to themselves, to supply him
or his family with the necessaries of life. He is not allowed
to dispose of the produce of his farm. Instances have been
brought before us in which his attendance at divine service
was prohibited, in which his cattle have been, some killed,
some barbarously mutilated; in which all his servants and
labourers were ordered and obliged to leave him; in which the
most ordinary necessaries of life and even medical comforts,
had to be procured from long distances; in which no one
would attend the funeral, or dig a grave for, a member of a
boycotted person's family; and in which his children have been
forced to discontinue attendance at the National School of the
district."

This was the ordinary form of Government as conducted by the
Nationalists; and any attempt to interfere with it and to enforce the
milder laws of England, is now denounced as "coercion."

In 1881 Gladstone carried another and a more far-reaching Land Act. To
put it shortly, it may be said that all agricultural land (except that
held by leaseholders, who were brought in under the Act of 1887)
was handed over to the occupiers for ever (with free power of sale),
subject only to the payment of rent--the rent not being that which the
tenants had agreed to pay, but that which a Land Court decided to Be
a "fair rent." This was to last for fifteen years, at the end of which
time the tenant might again claim to have a fair rent fixed, and so
_ad infinitum_. The Land Court in most cases cut down the rent by
about 20 or 25 per cent.; and at the end of fifteen years did the
same again. As tithes (which had been secularized but not abolished),
mortgages and family charges remained unchanged, the result was that
a large proportion of landlords were absolutely ruined; in very many
cases those who appear as owners now have no beneficial interest in
their estates.

In examining the Act calmly, one must observe in the first place that
it was a wholesale confiscation of property. Not of course one
that involved the cruelty of confiscations of previous ages, but a
confiscation all the same. For if A. bought a f