Morning journal and courier., 1881-11-11
Price Fossr Cents

when the SUD comm1Ss1ons began work or | Monday of last week, there were already thousands of applications for judicial ad justment of rents. The first point to be
 noted is that these applications have not been | taken up in the order in which they were 1 filed, but in 8 wholly arbitrary way, to suit | apparently the convenience of the commis
 sioners or the purposes of the government. 1 Under these circumstances it is not sur. | prising that the first decisions should, on 1 their face, produce a favorable impression. 1 For instance, the rent payable by Patrick McAtavey, tenant on the estate of an ab- | sentee landlord in County Monaghan, was l reduced from e8 16s. to G6 6s The land
 lord, moreover, was ordered to pay half of | the county tax, the whole of which the ten ant paid before. so that the reduction really | amounted to @ 15s. This looks like a ! large reduction and if nothing more were 1 known about the case than the figures just l cited, 1t would naturally be regarded as a l promising precedent. But what are the | facts This case of Patrick McAtavey has for eighteen months been brought up all over the United Kingdom as typical instance of ex- | tortlon and hardship. It constituted one of l the examples cited by the Land League speak 1 CTS, to prove that even Grifith's valuation | was sometimes far too high. That they spoke the truth could not be gainsaid by the sub commissioners, who after hearing evil dence which was conflicting, went out to ! view the holding, and found it to consist of ten acres of wretched soil badly drained. I and really incapable of being turned to good | account. The appearance of the land justi- lied the statements of the plaintiffs witness ] es, some of whom had sworn that the right of occupancy was worth scarcely anything, and others that at the outside it was not worth above So. The annual sum now chargeable on the tenant, after sub- tracting half the county cess, will be eG 1s.,
 and he has also been forced to pay his own costs, which, 1t turns out, amount to e25 These costs on the preliminary proceeding
 will alone eat up all the profit derived from the reduction for at least eight years to come.
 What will be the condition of the tenant if the landlord appeals to the chief commission at Dublin, where, again, each party will be
 ordered to pay his own costs cannot yet be
 stated with precision, but it will of course
 pc greatly aggravated. Should the landlord see fit, however, to take advantage of the
 amendment introduced in the House of Lords
 tnd accepted by the government he can carry the case up to a Court of Appeal at
 Westminster, where, in all likelihood, he would obtain judgment by default, seeing that the tenant will by that time have been completely ruined.
 On the same day when the decision just
 mentioned was rendered, another sub cem- mission was sitting at Belfast. Among other
 ;ases which came up were those of the ten ants on the Crawford estate, which cola- DrlSeS some 43u acres. IhlS another of tue instances in which, according to Nr
 Parnell, Grifiths valuation was too high.
 50 much seems to have been admitted, even by the landlord, up to 1866, for before that date the aggregate rent was only G430 10s., although Griffith's valuation
 vas SAG los. But in 1866 the total rental abruptly raised to e64O IFS, and this.
 which had been widely and loudly proclaimed as case of peculiar injustice, was the first 70 attract the attention of the sub commis- sion. They reduced the aggregate rental to e472 14s.. and ordered the landlord to pay one-half of the county cess, which is equiva- lent to one shilling in the pound Practi-
 ally, therefore, the tenants are to pay e450, or about 920 more than they did prior to tS66. Here, again, each tenant who profits by this reduction has had to pay his own costs, the amount of which can be inferred from the heavy burden entailed on McAtavey in the case first cited. Even should the land lord omit to appeal which is extremely im- probable, in view of the vigorous action ta. ken by the protective association of landown- CTS, 1t is clear that the individual tenants on he Crawford estate will not gain penny by the reduction for at least six years to come Ind then will find themselves worse off than hey were fifteen years ago. Later on the same day the rents on the Tennent estate were cut down from an aggregate of e116 10 e91 Ills. This reduction, which at first sight seems creditable to the Commission, is open to precisely the same criticism suggest d by the proceedings in relation to the Crawford property.
 Now let us v1ew the practical outcome of these decisions, in the light ofssMr. Parnell's predictions and of the precautionary meas ures he proposed to take. He foretold that the government would place men of generous intentions and popular sympathies on the first sub-commissions 2, md would, moreover, direct them to take up cases which involved gross and &nexcusable extortion. From the reductions made in such instances the Land
 jourts would acquire so much prestige that men would forget to wait and see whetter the decisions of the sub-commi issioners were sustained on appeal, and would be almost certain to give the tribunals credit for impar- tiality, should they afterward refuse to cut down the great mass of rentals, representing the average degree of hardship and priva- tion. MT. Parnell also prophesied that the costs entailed on the tenant by his applica- ton to the Land Court would go far to neu- tralize all the benefits conferred by reduc- tion in cases even of palpable oppression. He proposed, accordingly, that the applica- ton should be made at the cost of the Land League and through its solicitors, so that whatever curtailment of the rental se- cured would at least be clear gain to the ten ant. He calculated that, with the subscrip- tions forwarded from America the Land League would be able to sustain the expendi- ture involved in the submission of some eight hundred test cases, including the large extra disbursements required in the contin- gency of & double appeal which, as he warn ed his countrymen, would certainly ex- haust the resources of the individual tenant.
 Take the cases of McAtavey and of the Crawford tenants, for example Had their applications been made through the Land League solicitors, it is plain that the reductions effected, if confirmed upon appeal would have repre- sented, not prospective benefit to be real ized some six or eight years hence, but material relief. As it is, McAtavey is out of pocket e25 already, and well nigh certain to be forced to spend a much larger sum, un- less he would see his present disbursements completely thrown away.
 While the net results of the decisions thus far made by the Land Commission do not turn out, upon close scrutiny, to be fraught with such blessings to the tenant as might at first sight be supposed, another proceeding which took place last week under the Land act was much more satisfactory. We refer to the meeting of the tenants on the Ancke- tell estate in County Monaghan, called to take advantage of the provisions for the creation of peasant proprietors- It will be remembered that the Land act au- thorized the loan of three -fourths of the pur chase money to tenants who desire to buy out the interest of their landlord In this case the landlord was anxious to sell, and the occupants were eager to buy, and it was agreed that the value of the owners interest should be computed on the basis of the ex- isting rent. Those peasants who had no sav- ings experienced no difficulty in borrowing the one fourth of the government loan. A contract between the parties having been duly executed, the necessary arrangements will soon be completed, and the Ancketell es- tate will pass into the hands of group of peasant proprietors. Now, it should not be forgotten that this portion of the Land act, whose application is thus begun, was heartily favored by MT. Parnell and his sup porters in Parliament, who implored the government to place larger sum of money at the disposal of the commissioners, in order that the process of transferring the soil from the landlord to the occupant might be carried out on large scale. In this de- mand curiously enough, they were seconded by the Duke of Argyll, who declared him self not unwilling, under the circumstances, to see the British nation charged with large loan contracted for the purpose of es- tablishing peasant proprietary in Ireland. On the other hand, the Duke seeded from the Gladstone Ministry because it insisted on sanctioning the Three Els, which he regarded