Courts, where he had been but rarely seen for years, he once more became a familiar figure. He took a prominent part in defending the Fenian prisoners, and thus rose to high popularity among the National party. This fact, together probably with his political experience in the past, led him to the thought of founding a new political party, and, having adopted Home Rule as a national platform, he devoted to it all his energies of pen and tongue and organization. The history of his action in that movement is too recent to be fully detailed, or perhaps impartially estimated. Suffice it to say that he was returned without opposition for the city of Limerick in September, 1871, and that for several sessions he was the undisputed leader of the Home Rule party. As time went on, younger and more ardent spirits proposed a policy more active than Mr. Butt was willing to sanction, and his last days were probably embittered by the sense of waning power. He died after a lingering illness in 1879. His death evoked a feeling of universal and deep sorrow, for the splendour of his talents, the genuineness of his nature, and above all, his simplicity and modesty, made him one of the most lovable of men.

Mr. Butt was a busy penman. He was among the founders and earliest contributors to the Dublin University Magazine. His stories in that journal were republished under the title Chapters of College Romance. The work is not equal to one's expectations. The stories are morbid, long-drawn out, and slovenly. His other most ambitious work is a History of Italy from the Abdication of Napoleon I. This book has many merits. It is impartial, clear in statement, unambitious in style; but on the other hand it is often bald, and wants compression and power of graphic description. He was more at home in the shorter works he from time to time produced on questions of the hour. A book of his on the land question is a marvel of analytic power. He was also a close student of metaphysics, and often spoke and wrote on the memory and theories of Bishop Berkeley, from whom he could boast collateral descent.]

ON LAND TENURE.

(FROM SPEECH IN HOUSE OF COMMONS, 1876.)

I have now brought down to 1866 the testimonies as to the state of feeling which exists between the landed proprietors and the occupants of the soil. However much we may

regret that feeling, and desire to remove it, the legislature must deal with circumstances and with feelings as they exist. No such feeling exists in England, and therefore English gentlemen have difficulty in forming a correct opinion upon it; but I do not hesitate to say that there is a general desire on the part of the landed proprietors of Ireland to keep their tenants in a state of subjection to themselves. Remember this desire is not confined to those landlords who may be described as being cruel and hard, it is shared in by the landlords who would treat their tenants kindly and even aid them in distress. How was the object of the landlords accomplished? Simply by the power of notice to quit. I am speaking, of course, before the time the Land Bill became law. In a trial in which I was engaged I examined a gentleman who was believed to have a large number of notices to quit, but he denied it. I then asked him— "Did you not serve some last year?" "Yes," he replied, "but I do that every year—it is part of the management of my estate. I never intend to act upon a notice, but I want to be able to take any field or holding in case I should wish to do so, and, therefore, I give notice to quit each year." Yet this was a landlord of a humane and kindly character, who would not treat a tenant harshly. It is his desire to keep his tenants under his own power that so easily reconciles to his conscience the practice I have just alluded to. The Irish landlords think they can do much better for the tenant than he can for himself. I believe that a country in which you allow the mass of the population to be reduced to a state of serfdom never can be prosperous, never can be contented, and never can be peaceful. Bad landlords will abuse the power which a good landlord will only use for a beneficial purpose. The landlords who could serve notices to quit have two powers in their hands. They have the power of capricious eviction, and the power of arbitrarily raising the rents. While there are landlords in Ireland who would scorn to do either of these things, there were others who did them with a reckless cruelty which had not a parallel in history. I do not wish to dwell on the fearful scenes enacted between 1847 and 1852, but in a book of high authority, Mr. Ray's Social Condition of Europe, I find it stated that in one year, 1849, no fewer than 500,000 civil bill ejectments were served in Ireland; and I may add that I myself have seen whole districts desolated. Sir Matthew Barrington relates that imme

diately parliament passed the Poor Law, the landlords of Ireland began to clear their estates by notices to quit and by tumbling down houses. On many occasions the military were brought in to throw down houses, and hundreds of people were, to use an expressive phrase, thrown on the road, simply because the landlord wished to get rid of the superabundant population. Many measures, passed by statesmen with a most honest intention of doing good to Ireland, have produced results directly the reverse. This was because they were framed by men who had not the knowledge which can only be acquired by residence among the people, and by a long and intimate acquaintance with the circumstances. The case of the Poor Law was an instance of this, for it ought to have been foreseen that the giving of relief to the poor would lead to the very evil which followed. I will give one instance of what occurred. The matter came into a court of justice because the landlord, fortunately for justice, made some slight mistake in his proceedings. It was the case of an estate in the county of Meath, and there were on it twenty-seven families. It was admitted that their labour made the property rich and profitable, and that they never had been in arrear one half-year's rent during the thirty years that the landlord had been in possession of the estate. The landlord got embarrassed, and he sold the estate to a gentleman, who purchased it on condition that all the tenants should be evicted. The landlord concealed this circumstance from the tenants, and when he served them with notice to quit told them he did not intend to act upon it. Well, a jury of landlords gave to one of the evicted tenants the full value of the fee-simple of the land. Such things, it should be remembered, could not be done in England, for Henry VIII. got his parliament to pass an act that every landlord who pulled down a house should build it up again in six months, and in the reign of Queen Elizabeth another act was passed that gave a legal right of relief to every one who was born on the soil. If there had been a law of settlement in Ireland, many of the landlords who were now living on their estates would be in the workhouse to which they consigned their tenants.

But there was a still more grievous wrongnamely, the power of the landlord to confiscate the improvements of his tenants in Ireland. All the improvements of the soil-certainly all the improvements made up to a very recent period-w -were effected by the tenants. Yet

there was nothing to prevent an unscrupulous landlord from confiscating these improvements, and, in point of fact, it was done over and over again. Lord Clarendon, I think it was, who spoke of it in the other house as a legalized robbery. It was to that state of things that the Land Act was applied. I believe that any friend to the Irish tenant would act very wrongly indeed if he spoke of the author of that act in other terms than those of profound respect, knowing, as I do, the difficulties he had to contend with and the prejudices he had to meet. I give him every credit for that act. At the same time, I regret to say, it has failed, from a reason which I foresaw,as you leave to the landlords the power of eviction. In the circumstances of Ireland no device that the legislature can make can prevent them from converting that tremendous power into an instrument to render themselves absolute despots over their tenants. Still the act established a principle. It first legalized the Ulster tenant right. Now, what is the meaning of that? As property which was only protected by custom, and to which the tenant had no legal claim whatever, except in justice and in honour, was converted into a legal property, that is a very great principle as applied to Irish land.

I will now detain the house a few minutes by referring to some incidents which, I confess, have had effect on my own mind in reference to the value of giving security to tenants. One of the incidents is an old one, as old as the days of Arthur Young, who certainly described in a striking way what was the benefit of giving security to tenants. He says that a man with a wife and six children met Sir William Osborne in the county of Tipperary. The man could get no land, and Sir William Osborne gave him twelve acres of heathy land, and £4 to stock it with. Twelve years afterwards, when Young revisited Ireland, he went to see the man, and found him with twelve acres under full cultivation. Three other persons he found settled in the same way, and he says their industry had no bounds, nor was the day long enough for their energy. He says if you give tenants security, and let them be certain of enjoying the rewards of their labour, and treat them as Sir William Osborne did, there would be no better or more industrious farmers in the world. I have often thought of that, and have said that if there had been men like Sir William Osborne to give employment to those who have