s, I believe, to get the tenants to go into
Court, and offers to give retrospective effect to the decisions,
though not bound by law to do so, but under the influence of the
agitators the tenants refuse to go into Court. In the latter
instance judicial rents have long since been fixed in the great
majority of cases.

"Yours faithfully,

"ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR."

Together with this easy mode of purchase by which the quiet and
industrious are profiting, rents are reduced all over the country,
though still the Home Rulers reiterate the old charge of
"rack-renting," as if such a thing were the rule. These unscrupulous
misstatements, indeed, make half the difficulties of the Irish
question; for lies stick fast, where disclaimers, proofs, facts, and
figures, pass by like dry leaves on the wind. But for all the fact of
past extortion the present reductions are not always a proof of
over-renting. What Mr. Buxton says has common sense on the face of
it:--

"Very serious reductions of rents are being made all through Ireland
by the Land Sub-Commissioners, who are supposed to be in some extent
guided by the appearance of the farms. Now it should be remembered
that at the interview that took place in London on July 3rd, between
Mr. Smith-Barry and some of his tenants, in reference to that
gentleman's support of the evictions on the Ponsonby estate, one of
the arguments for forgiveness of arrears was that when eviction was
threatened 'the tenants gave up their industry,' and 'how could they
get the rents out of the land when they were absolutely idle?' To
admit such a plea for granting a reduction of rent is most dangerous.
Tenants have but to neglect their land, get into arrears of rent, and
claim large reductions because their farms do not pay. An ignorant, or
slovenly, or idle farmer, under such circumstances, is likely to have
a lower rent fixed by the Sub-Commissioners than his more industrious
neighbour, and thus a great injustice may be done to both the good
farmer and the landlord, the--perhaps cunningly--idle farmer receiving
a premium for neglecting his farm. A comparison of the judicial rents
with the former rents and the Poor Law valuation is truly startling,
and must lead one to imagine that the system by which so much valuable
property is dealt with is most unjust."

Thus, the famous reductions in County Clare, where the abatements
granted averaged over 30 per cent., and in some