EFFECTS ON IRELAND 849 
The authoritative fixing of rents was adopted by the Govern- 4, 17% 
ment as the only means of protecting the peasantry from the ’ 
evils of reckless competition. The system of natural liberty 
had been tried, and in one department of life after another 
it had been found necessary to introduce a corrective. Ad- 
ministrative organs had been instituted in England for 
protecting children from over-work, and for controlling the 
conditions of labour in factories and mines, as well as for 
seeing to sanitary welfare. In Ireland, however, the swing 
of the pendulum has gone much farther, inasmuch as it has 
led to judicial interference in the terms of the bargain 
between landlord and tenant. Still, startling as it appears, 
this case does not stand alone; the State had already under- 
taken to protect the public against monopolies in transport or nor in 
. . g . . developing 
lighting by fixing a maximum of railway rates and of gas a peasant 
dividends; the justification for the fixing of rents lay in the };0™* 
belief that in the conditions of life in Ireland, and in the 
presence of the land hunger they engendered, there was 
need to protect the peasantry against the owners of the 
soil. 
There is a curious monotony in the story of English 
influence on the agricultural interest in Ireland. Racial 
animosity, religious differences, and political contests were 
always at work in one form or another; the land never had 
such rest that a sense of security could grow up, or that the 
country could become an attractive field for the investment of 
capital by moneyed men, either as proprietors or tenants. It 
was still more unfortunate that, from its near neighbourhood, 
Ireland was destined to be affected by all that was done for 
the benefit of England; the Corn Bounty Act depressed her 
tillage, in the interest of English producers. While industrial 
protection was in vogue in England, little stimulus was given 
to real improvement of any kind in Ireland, but her whole 
system suffered a severe blow when protection was with- 
drawn, and the interests of the agricultural community were 
subordinated to the welfare of a manufacturing population. 
The régime of ill-assorted companionship has been almost as 
baneful as the period of jealous repression and Protestant 
ascendancy. 
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