ance of the advantages accruing to the landlords from a
multiplication of holdings on their estates, the miserable poverty
resulting from the famine, the anxiety of the proprietors to escape the
burdens of the remodeled Poor Law, and the demand by the new class of
land speculators for large grazing or tillage farms, to form which the
consolidation of existing holdings was demanded, were the factors which
resulted in the clearances of 1849 and the subsequent years. "Notices to
quit," in a historic phrase, "fell like snowflakes," at a time when it
was truly said that an eviction was equal to a sentence of death. In a
few months whole counties, such as those of Meath and Tipperary, were
converted into prairies; cabins were thrown down, fences removed, and
peasants swept off, and in ten years nearly 300,000 families were
evicted from their homes, and a million and a half of the population
fled across the Atlantic. "I do not think," said Sir Robert Peel--and
his verdict has been endorsed by the judgment of history--"I do not
think that any country, civilised or uncivilised, can offer similar
scenes of horror."

The Devon Commission, the Report of which was issued in 1845,
recommended that in future compensation should be given to Irish tenants
for permanent improvements effected by them. Bills to carry out the
recommendation of the Commission were introduced in 1845 by Lord
Stanley, in 1846 by Lord Lincoln, and in 1852 by Mr. Napier, the
Attorney-General for Ireland. But it was not until the Act of 1870 was
passed--a quarter of a century after the Report of the Commissioners had
been issued--that its recommendations were embodied in an Act of
Parliament. So far was this from being the case with the next statute
dealing with Irish land--Deasy's Act, passed in 1860--that it aimed at
the substitution of the commercial principles of contract for the
equitable principles of custom in the relations between landlord and
tenant, in this respect that it refused to allow compensation to the
tenant for improvements other than those made with the landlord's
consent. The object of this Act--the last word of the Manchester School
on the Irish Land Question--was, therefore, to destroy any claim by a
tenant in respect of future improvements, unless under the terms of
some contract, express or implied. In point of fact, the Act proved
almost a dead letter, and the one result which ensued from its passing
into law was to make the position of