Under the Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1881, there were two ways by which a judicial rent might be fixed for an agricultural holding in Ireland to which the act applied. One way was by the landlord, or tenant, or both jointly, applying to the land commission court or to the civil bills court of the county; the court then, after considering all the circumstances of the case, fixed a ‘fair’ rent. The other way was by landlord and tenant making a written agreement out of court as to what was the ‘fair’ rent of the holding, and lodging the agreement in court; the agreement, after three months, was filed by the court as the judicial rent of the holding, without any enquiry being made by the court. In both cases the rent was fixed for a period of fifteen years, at the end of which period the landlord or tenant was at liberty to apply to the court to have the rent fixed for a second term of fifteen years or to lodge a fresh agreement in court for such purpose; a tenant whose rent had been fixed in court for the first term might, if he wished, lodge an agreement for the second term, and conversely a tenant whose rent had been fixed by agreement for the first term might have it fixed in court for the second term. Much has been written about the fixing of judicial rents in court; little comment has been made on the fixing of rents by agreement out of court, and this is not surprising, since it was essentially a silent process, involving no public proceedings. Yet this latter process was a very important part of the whole operation of the rent-fixing acts in Ireland.

The restoration settlement has long been the subject of controversy Petty in his Political anatomy calculated that by 1672 catholics had recovered a little less than a third of the ‘good land‘ of Ireland. Several alternative estimates were made at the time, such as that of Richard Lawrence, whose Interest of Ireland, published in 1682, put the catholic share at a little more than a fifth of the whole. But Petty remained the generally accepted authority until he was challenged by Butler, who estimated that ‘ at the accession of James II only at the outside one-seventh or one-eighth of the total area of the island remained in the possession of catholics ’

The letter that follows was written by Edward Blake, a member of the committee of the Irish parliamentary party, to Thomas A. Dickson, formerly a nationalist member of parliament, and since 1892 the principal organiser of the liberal home-rule vote in Ulster The importance of the document lies in the fact that it formed the basis of one of the most serious charges ever levelled against the Irish party in the course of its history. At the general election of 1895 the deep differences of opinion that had been dividing the anti-Parnellites almost since the time of the split came suddenly to a head. The majority section, headed by the chairman of the party, Justin McCarthy, and by John Dillon, insisted upon the right of the committee of the party to direct the nationalist effort in the election campaign. This claim was denied by the minority, led by T M. Healy, which asserted that the committee was unrepresentative and that it allowed too little freedom to the constituencies in the selection of candidates. As the election date drew near, there were frequent clashes between the supporters of the two wings of the party at the various conventions that were held in all parts of the country.