-else all would have gone by the board ages
ago--the good done by Lord Ashbourne's Act will be a living force in
the national history when the evil wrought by the Plan of Campaign is
dead and done with.

By Lord Ashbourne's Act the Irish tenant can buy his farm at (an
average of) seventeen years' purchase. He borrows the purchase money
from the Government, paying it back on easy terms, so that in
forty-nine years he becomes the absolute owner of the property--paying
meantime in interest and gradual diminution of the principal, less
than the present rent. The landlord has about L68 for every L100 he
used to have in rent. This Act is quietly revolutionizing Ireland,
redeeming it from agrarian anarchy, and saving the farmer from himself
and his friends. Thousands and thousands of acres are being constantly
sold in all parts of the country, and good prices are freely given for
farms whereof the turbulent and discontented tenants professed
themselves unable to pay the most moderate rents. Large holdings and
small alike are bought as gladly as they are sold. Those who buy know
the capabilities of the land when worked with a will; those who sell
prefer a reduced certainty to the greater nominal value, which might
vanish altogether under the fiat of the Campaigners and the visits of
Captain Moonlight.

The Irish loyal papers, which no English Home Ruler ever sees--facts
being so inimical to sentiment--these Irish papers are full of details
respecting these sales. On one estate thirty-seven farmers buy their
holdings at prices varying from L18 to L520, the average being L80. On
another, six farms bring L5,603, one fetching L2,250. In the west,
small farmers are buying where they can. In Sligo the MacDermott,
Q.C., has sold farms to forty-two of his tenants for L3,096, the
prices varying from L32 to L70 and L130; and the O'Connor Don has sold
farms in the same county to fifteen tenants for L1,934. The number of
acres purchased under this Act for the three years ending August,
1888, are a trifle over 293,556.

The Government valuation is L171,774,000. The net rent is L190,181
12s. 9d. The purchase-money is L3,350,933. The average number of
years' purchase is 17.6.

Perhaps the most important of all these sales are those on the Egmont
estate in the very heart of one of the gravely-disturbed districts.
The rent-roll of this estate was L16,000 a year; and it was estimated
that successive landlords had laid out about L250,000 in