ropose a remedy for an admitted
grievance, the Courts of law are able to dispose its application by
their interpretation in direct contravention of the intentions of the
legislature.

Section 8, sub-section 9, of the Act of 1881 provided:--"No rent shall
be allowed or made payable in any proceedings under this Act in respect
of improvements made by the tenant or his predecessors in title, and for
which, in the opinion of the Court, the tenant or his predecessors in
title shall not have been paid or otherwise compensated by the landlord
or his predecessors in title." In the case of Adams _v_. Dunseath, in
February, 1882, it was held by the Court of Appeal, in the teeth of the
obvious intention of Parliament, that the fact that a tenant had for a
longer or shorter period of time enjoyed the benefit of his improvements
might be taken into consideration by the judge as being an equivalent
for compensation and as serving to limit the reductions in rent effected
by the Commission on land which had been subjected to these
improvements. By this interpretation many thousands of pounds were put
into the landlords' pockets during the years which intervened before
1896, when it was superseded by a provision in the Act of that year
which re-affirmed and established the principle, the enactment of which
had been intended in 1881.

We must now turn to the introduction of land purchase. In 1847 Lord John
Russell, in a project which was subsequently dropped, advocated, as did
J.S. Mill in later years, the solution of the land question by the
establishment of a peasant proprietary. The nidus, however, out of which
this policy germinated was the right of pre-emption which John Bright
secured for the tenants of ecclesiastical land under the Church Act of
1869. A further step in the same direction was taken in the Land Act of
1870--not more than two-thirds of the purchase-money being advanced to
the tenant under its provisions. Under the Church Act 6,000, and under
the Act of 1870 1,000, tenants purchased their farms.

In 1878 Parnell urged the establishment of peasant proprietorship, and
under the Act of 1881 three-quarters of the purchase-money was to be
advanced on such terms as to be repayable by instalments of five per
cent, per annum for thirty-five years, but only 1,000 tenants took
advantage of the facilities thereby offered.

Four years later was passed the Ashbourne Act, so called from the Irish
Lord Chancellor responsible for