on and demesne.

4. Complete settlement of evicted tenants' question an indispensable
condition.

5. Special and drastic treatment for all congested districts in the
country (as defined by the Bill of 1902).

6. Sales to be between parties or through official commissioners as
parties would prefer.

7. Non-judicial and future tenants to be admitted.

8. (Query.) Sporting rights to be a matter of agreement.

I do not propose to go into any detailed account of what transpired at
the sittings (six in number) of the Land Conference. All this
information is available in Mr O'Brien's _An Olive Branch in
Ireland_. Suffice it to say that seven out of eight of the tenants'
requirements were conceded outright and the eighth was covered by a
compromise which would have enabled any tenant in the country, whether
non-judicial or future tenants, to become the proprietor of his own
holding on reasonable terms. On 4th January 1903 a unanimous report
was published. The country scarcely expected this, and its joy at this
ever-memorable achievement was correspondingly greater. It was
inconceivable that the landlords should have, in solemn treaty, signed
their own death warrant as territorialists, yet this was the amazing
deed to which they affixed their sign manual when their four
representatives signed the Land Conference Report.

Ever since the first Anglo-Norman set foot in Ireland and began to
despoil the ancient clans of their land there has been trouble in
connection with the Irish Land Question. The new race of landlords
regarded their Irish land purely as a speculation, not as a home; they
were in great part absentees, having no aim in Ireland beyond drawing
their rents. They had no duties to their tenants in the sense that
English landlords have. They had no natural ties with the country and
they regarded themselves as free from all the duties or obligations of
ownership. They never advanced capital for the improvement of the land
or the erection of buildings, and never put a farthing into the
cultivation of the soil. The tenant had to do everything out of his
own sweat and blood--build his home and out-offices, clean and drain
the land, make the fences, lay down the roads and, when he had done
all this and made the property more valuable, his rent was raised on
him, even beyond the value of the improvements he had effected. Woe to
the industrious man, for he was taxed upon his industry! And yet who
is not famili