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mission of a bonâ-fide investigator to control on an altogether higher footing than obtains, e.g., in the case of the Factory Acts. A single expert, bent on his special idea, cannot be exactly in the position of the impartial scientific mind of his time; and the conditions of his decision in serious cases are sufficiently doubtful to make it rather a test of his realising them that he should shrink from single responsibility. But to relieve him by shifting the single responsibility to a Secretary of State is certainly not to improve matters: the chance of undue precipitation is merely replaced by the certainty of timid and uncomprehending restraint. Whatever the difficulties of detail, the one expedient seems to be a responsible board, consisting chiefly, of course, of experts, but with some amount of representation of educated opinion outside professional ranks, even though this might entail the presence of one or two of those purblind persons who, according to Virchow's scornful distinction, "take more interest in domestic animals than in the discovery of Truth;" holding, perhaps, that the central principle we have adopted, the discovery of which at any rate required many centuries of experiments, may perhaps contain some truth of its own worth thinking about. Authoritative testimony was given in 1875 that some such board, with complete knowledge of what had and what had not been done in various departments of physiological research, would be of positive value in organizing and concentrating it; and the minor annoyance of occasionally waiting for deliberation and sanction may surely be submitted to, seeing that we have eternity before us, and that the complete moral stability of England's position in the matter is in question. That such a board would command public confidence is more than probable, while it would relieve physiologists from the burdens under which they are groaning, not only in particulars, by its more judicious use of licensing power, but by the general fact of being a reasoned and helpful, instead of a merely watchful and hostile, control. Freed thus from both the appearance and the reality of unfair restriction, English physiology, instead of appealing to foreigners to pity it, and casting regretful glances back to the pre-humanitarian days, or across the Channel to the schools whose unfettered licence the greatest of physiologists deplored, would take up with spirit its obvious rôle of proving that the best humanity is the best science. EDMUND GURNEY.

some other sciences. Take, for instances, two prime portions of the animal economythe blood and the brain. Before the discovery of the circulation, it might have been safely predicted that benefit would result, in ways not realisable till the discovery was made, from exact knowledge of what the blood really did. Now-I ask for information-Can the same be said of every case of exact localisation of brain centres? Could that exact local knowledge have relevance to any except local treatment? And will surgeons ever get used to removing portions of the skull for such a purpose? I am not indiscriminately attacking these brain experiments, many of which can doubtless be rendered painless; only suggesting with what caution in their case pain should be considered.

HOME AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

THE month of November has not been devoid of considerable events in the political world both at home and abroad. If no great crime has startled mankind, and no great domestic convulsion or foreign war has distracted the attention which busy men are wont to concentrate on their own affairs, the incidents of this month's history will nevertheless deserve a prominent place in the attention of the student of the social and political evolution of modern Europe. For November has witnessed the beginning of the new agrarian experiment in Ireland by the opening of a tribunal reducing the rents of the Irish landlords; the close of the German general election, which has brought Prince Bismarck into direct collision with the majority of the representatives of the empire which he created; and the longexpected but long-deferred accession to power in France of the only man who, when the two nations were in the death grips ten years ago, proved himself a capable antagonist of the German Chancellor.

1

The first decision of what constitutes a fair rent under the Land Act was made on the 1st of November at Castle Blayney, in the county of Monaghan. A tenant named M'Atavey, whose wife farmed ten acres of land at Coolartna, at an annual rental of £8 16s., brought his landlord before the North-West Sub-Commissioners, claiming to have his rent reduced by one-half. The Poor Law valuation was £6. Both landlord and tenant were absentees. The former, Mr. Bond by name, resides at Hampstead, the latter is a railway porter in Manchester. The Sub-Commissioners made a careful examination of M'Atavey's holding, going over it field by field, digging up the sub-soil, and, in short, making a thoroughly practical examination of the farm. After these investigations had been concluded they declared that a fair rent would be £6 6s., or 50s. less than was being paid by the tenant. Each party was ordered to pay his own costs, but the landlord was ordered to pay half the county cess. The sensation occasioned by this reduction of 28 per cent. was widespread, but it was not till four days later, when the North-East Sub-Commissioners pronounced judgment at Belfast in the case of the tenants on the Crawford estate, that the landlords and their friends began to be seriously alarmed. The Crawford estate was let in 1841, on leases of twenty-one years, at an aggregate rental of £430. In 1866, when the leases expired, the landlord's agent-for Archdeacon Crawford had taken up his residence at the Antipodes twenty-seven years ago-compelled the tenants, under threat of eviction, to accept yearly tenancies at an increase of 33 per cent., which brought the aggregate rental to £640 17s. 4d. It was

proved that the landlord had done nothing to justify such an increase. Whatever improvements had been made on the estate were the work of his rack-rented tenants. The Sub-Commissioners, after an exhaustive personal examination of the state of each holding, and of every field in each holding, decided that the tenants were entitled to reductions of about 23 per cent., fixing the judicial or fair rent at £472 11s. 6d., or about 10 per cent. in excess of the rental fixed in 1841. Archdeacon Crawford's income was thus summarily reduced by £168 5s. 10d. a year, and the rental of his estate fixed at 22s. per acre instead of 27s. Such a decision naturally excited the liveliest feelings of consternation and dismay among those who had confidently relied upon the repeated assurances of members of the Government that no material reductions of rent were to be expected from the operations of the Land Court. Lord Carlingford, for instance, had maintained that the Act would cause the landlords "no money loss whatever." He had, however, qualified his assertion by the proviso that "it would inflict upon them no loss of income except in those cases in which a certain number of them may have imposed upon their tenants excessive and inequitable rents." No doubt the Crawford estate belonged to the latter category; but the landlords took alarm, and waited to see whether similar reductions would be ordered elsewhere. They had not long to wait. On the same day

that the Crawford rent-roll was reduced by 23 per cent., four tenants on the estate of Mr. Tennant were reduced 28 per cent. Five days later, the Sub-Commissioners at Limerick reduced a small tenant's rent from £19 2s. 6d. to £9 11s. 3d., or exactly one-half; and one week after the Crawford decision, sixteen tenants, on four different estates, had their rents reduced by the Downpatrick Sub-Commissioners by about 20 per cent. And so it has gone on ever since. In some of these cases the landlords' agents candidly admitted that the rents exacted were from 20 to 40 per cent. above the fair value of the land. In none had the landlords made any improvements, nor had they contributed to the cost of the improvements of their tenants on the strength of which they had raised the rent. Buildings, drains, fencing, and the reclamation of waste and rocky land were all the work of the tenant, whose unwil lingness to acquiesce in the legalised confiscation of the work of their hands, enabled their landlords to extort almost any sum they cared to name. Occasionally, a tenant who had allowed his holding to deteriorate was denied any reduction, but these cases were exceptional. Only in one instance was the rent of any tenant increased. The Monaghan Sub-Commissioners, while reducing the rents on the estate of Sir Oriel Forster by from 10 to 30 per cent., made an exception in one case, and raised the rent of a tenant from £3 15s. to £3 17s. 6d. The fears of landlords at these continuous and

sweeping reductions of rent were hardly allayed by the assurance that the general feeling of the local landlords, who were well informed as to the circumstances, was one of satisfaction, inasmuch as the cases first adjudicated upon were extreme and exceptional, and could in no way be regarded as indicative of the operation of the Land Act in the majority of Irish holdings. Such assurances availed little against the alarm occasioned by the decision of the Sub-Commissioners on the 16th inst. Rents on that day were reduced from 10 to 15 per cent. at Clones, from 20 to 35 per cent. at Limerick, and at Ballina from 35 to 60 per cent. At Ballina, where rents of £19 10s. and £6 10s. were respectively reduced to £8 8s. and £3, the Sub-Commissioners were guided by the arrangement privately entered into by the landlord in relation to other tenants which had been sanctioned by the Court. Even when they were reduced they remained in excess of the Poor Law valuation. Mr. J. G. McCarthy accompanied his award by observations to the effect that a fair and moderate rental paid by contented and improving tenants were really more advantageous to the recipients than a rack rental of a much larger amount; but his suggestion fell upon deaf ears. These daily

reductions reported from every district in Ireland created an impression that all rents were to be cut down, and something like a panic ensued among the landlords, while the tenants rushed to the Court literally by the thousand. When the first case was heard, not more than 10,000 applications had been made to the Court. Ten days later the Commissioners were overwhelmed by no fewer than 47,000 notices of application for the fixing of a fair rent. Saturday, the 12th inst., was the last day for giving notice affecting the pending gale of rent. The Commissioners sat up till near midnight receiving notices, and on Monday they were obliged to reject notices by "the sackful" which had come in too late. To the fear -for which there never appears to have been the slightest vestige of foundation that the Land League would be able to keep the farmers out of the Land Court, succeeded a much more serious apprehension, that the Court would never be able to get through its business. Three additional Sub-Commissions were appointed, making seven in all, and there is talk of appointing two more. But the work to be done is so arduous, and the number of cases so enormous, that it is difficult to see how the Court will be able to dispose of the cases now before it. As yet it is but at the beginning of its labours. Leaseholders can apply till the 22nd of next February, and there are hundreds of thousands of tenants who may seek to have their rents fixed after the payment of the current gale. If all the Irish tenants insist on going into Court, the Land Court will break down far more hopelessly by excess of business than Mr. Parnell in his most sanguine moments could ever have hoped to

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break it down by preventing tenants from availing themselves of its protection. The only hope is that the mass of the tenant farmers will act on the most unjustly abused doctrine of test cases, and agree with their landlords on the principles sanctioned by the Court in reference to holdings similar to their own. Already private agreements are reported on all hands at reductions varying from 25 to 50 per cent., and by this means it is probable the readjustment of rents in Ireland may be got through in the course of the next year.

As yet, despite the publication in the papers of daily batches of rent reductions, it is impossible to say what proportion of the rent of Ireland is likely to be affected by the action of the Commissioners. The widespread belief is that the majority of the farms in Ireland are let at low rents which no tribunal is likely to reduce; and it is as loudly asserted, in spite of what seem to be some very significant decisions to the contrary, that the Commissioners will not interfere with rents which have remained unchanged for a generation, or that have been voluntarily reduced by the landlords during the last few years. Rents were raised on many estates in Ireland shortly after the passing of the Land Act of 1870, before the full effect of American competition had made itself felt and the country was in the heyday of agricultural prosperity. The reductions which are now being enforced are but the readjustment of the rent to the altered circumstances of the agricultural interest. In England and in Scotland, reductions as large-in many cases larger-have been made by private arrangement between landlord and tenant. The more intelligent and reasonable landlords in Ireland have in like manner largely anticipated the action of the Court. The Land Act is only an engine for compelling the bad rack-renting landlord to do that which his more public-spirited neighbour had already done of his own accord. So far all appears like fair sailing. It is a more difficult question whether the judicial rent, which is now fixed for fifteen. years, will be regularly paid. Irish tenants as a rule pay their rent more regularly than the farmers of the United Kingdom, but the prospects of farming in face of the revolution in agriculture menaced by American competition are such that very few English tenants would care at present to accept even a favourable lease for fifteen years. A widespread failure of crops, or or a further development of the cheap and rapid methods of transport which enable the settler in Iowa and Missouri to undersell the farmers of Ulster in the market of Belfast, might render "unfair" to-morrow the "fair rent" of to-day. The great experiment, however, is being made, and it will be watched with the keenest anxiety by all those who are interested in the peace and prosperity of Ireland.

The first impression produced on the English public by the news of the reductions of rents was undoubtedly one of satisfaction. The decisions of the Land Court served at once as a justification of

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