themselves, on fair terms,
of their estates in cases where, from apprehension of impending changes,
or for pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves
from the responsibilities of ownership. Further, it was felt by the
framers of the Bill that a moral obligation rested on the Imperial
Government to remove, if possible, "the fearful exasperations attending
the agrarian relations in Ireland," rather than leave a question so
fraught with danger, and so involved in difficulty, to be determined by
the Irish Government on its first entry on official existence. Such were
the governing motives for bringing in the Land Bill.

To understand an Irish Land Bill it is necessary to dismiss at once all
ideas of the ordinary relations between landlord and tenant in England,
and to grasp a true conception of the condition of an Irish tenanted
estate. In England the relation between the landlord and tenant of a
farm resembles, with a difference in the subject-matter, the relation
between the landlord and tenant of a furnished house. In the case of the
house, the landlord keeps it in a state fit for habitation, and the
tenant pays rent for the privilege of living in another man's house. In
the case of the farm, the landlord provides the farm with house,
farm-buildings, gates, and other permanent improvements required to fit
it for cultivation by the tenant, and the tenant pays rent for the
privilege of cultivating the farm, receiving the proceeds of that
cultivation. The characters of owner and tenant, however long the
connection between them may subsist, are quite distinct. The tenant does
no acts of ownership, and never regards the land as belonging to
himself, quitting it without hesitation if he can make more money by
taking another farm. In Ireland the whole situation is different:
instead of a farm of some one hundred or two hundred acres, the tenant
has a holding varying, say, from five to fifty acres, for which he pays
an annual rent-charge to the landlord. He, or his ancestors have, in the
opinion of the tenant, acquired a quasi-ownership in the land by making
all the improvements, and he is only removable on non-payment of the
fixed rent, or non-fulfilment of certain specified conditions. In short,
in Ireland the ownership is dual: the landlord is merely the lord of a
quasi-copyhold manor, consisting of numerous small tenements held by
quasi-copyholders who, so long as they pay what may be called the
manorial r