duced less startling effects in the end. It neither achieved those
great things hoped by its supporters, nor yet brought about the dire
disasters so freely threatened by its opponents. To the Roman Catholics
of Ireland the grievance of an alien State Church had, since the
settlement of the tithe question, lapsed into being little more than a
sentimental one, so that practically the measure affected them little.
As an institution, however, the position of the Irish State Church was
undoubtedly a difficult one to defend, the very same arguments which
tell most forcibly for the State Church of England telling most forcibly
against its numerically feeble Irish sister. Whatever the abstract
rights or wrongs of the case it is pretty clear now that the change must
have come sooner or later, and few therefore can seriously regret that
it came when it did. The struggle was protracted through the entire
session, but in the end passed both Houses of Parliament, and received
the royal assent on July 26, 1869.

It was followed early the following year by the Irish Land Act, which
was introduced into the House of Commons by Mr. Gladstone on February
15, 1870. This Act has been succinctly described as one obliging all
landlords to do what the best landlords did spontaneously, and this
perhaps may be accepted as a fairly accurate account of it. Owing to the
fact of land being practically the only commodity of value, there has
always been in Ireland a tendency to offer far more for it than could
reasonably be hoped to be got in the form of return, and this tendency
has led, especially in the poorest districts and with the smallest
holdings, to a rent being offered and accepted often quite out of
proportion to the actual value of the land, though in few instances do
the very highest rents attainable seem even in these cases to have been
exacted. The Act now proposed was to abolish one passed in 1860 which
had reduced all tenant and landlord transactions in Ireland to simple
matters of free contract, and to interpose the authority of the State
between the two. It legalized what were known as the "Ulster customs;"
awarded compensations for all improvements made by the tenant or his
predecessors, and in case of eviction for any cause except non-payment
of rent a further compensation was to be granted, which might amount to
a sum equal to seven years' rent; it also endeavoured to a partial
extent to establish peasant proprietorship. That it w