flung itself back upon the land, with as fatal an impulse as when
a river whose current is suddenly impeded, rolls back and drowns the
valley it once fertilised."

In time the middleman tended to die out, but the evil results of the
system in preventing direct and friendly and helpful relations between
landlord and tenant remained. Here and there, even in Arthur Young's
time, enterprising and devoted landlords had established something like
the "English system" on their estates, but, as a rule, the landlord
remained a mere rent charger. The report of the Devon Commission says:--

"It is admitted on all hands that, according to the general
practice in Ireland, the landlord neither builds dwelling-houses
nor farm offices, nor puts fences, gates, etc., in good order
before he lets his land to a tenant. The cases where a landlord
does any of these things are the exception. In most cases, whatever
is done in the way of building or fencing is done by the tenant,
and in the ordinary language of the country, dwelling-houses, farm
buildings, and even the making of fences, are described by the
general word, 'improvements,' which is thus employed to denote the
necessary adjuncts of a farm without which in England or Scotland
no tenant would be found to rent it."

In a word, as one who owned land both in England and in Ireland put it,
"In England we let farms, in Ireland we let land." And by law an unjust
landlord had the power at any moment to expel a tenant or a group of
tenants, although no rent was owing, and without giving any compensation
for the "improvements" which were the sole work of the tenant. Most
landlords acted reasonably and equitably in such matters, but,
especially among the new class of purely mercantile purchasers who came
in under the Landed Estates Court after the great famine of 1846, there
were too many who insisted on their extreme legal rights, thus
disturbing the peace of the country and producing the Irish Land
Question in an acute form that called for State interference.

The systems of "compensation for improvements" (1870), and of rent
fixing by itinerant tribunals (1881), were tried in turn, but each was
found to raise more difficulties than it settled, until finally Mr.
Parnell and his Land League set the whole country in a flame, and
produced a series of strikes against the payment of any rent. For some
years it is hardly too much to say t