LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
EVICTED TENANTS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:] your article in the Spectator of August 4th you say Mr. Courtney "must have known perfectly well that the evil -result of compelling landlords to restore tenants evicted for -deliberately breaking their contracts would do far more rais- -chief," &c. We Liberals in Scotland are under the impression that they did not "break their contracts." The fact is, Mr. Parnell, on their behalf, to the indignation of Mr. Gladstone, told the House of Commons that to the valued rents the Irish tenant refused to be bound. Mr. Balfour broke those valued rents and reduced them by the Act of 1887. The tenants may have done many evil things, but they did not "break their con. tracts." It is desirable that in the discussion we should be agreed on the facts. These can be easily verified, and it -amazes me to see the Spectator write as if the Irish farmers 'broke contracts, when the fact is that from the very first 'they refused to be bound by them.—I am, Sir, &c., [The Liberals in Scotland appear to be very reluctant to inform themselves aright. What did the whole "Plan of Campaign" show, except that a large number of tenants who had engaged to pay given rents who had the means to pay them, and who boasted that they had the means, deliberately broke their engagements in order to compel their landlords to reduce the rents of other tenants who had not, or who said they had not, the means of paying theirs P That is not our account of the "Plan of Campaign" tenants, many of whom .seek to return under Mr. Morley's Bill, but the Campaigners' own account of the matter.—En. Spectator.]
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