Mr. Ian Malcolm in a letter to Monday's Times describes
the passive method of boycotting—none the less harassing for its abstinence from open demonstration—now prevalent in the South of Ireland, and gives particulars of half-a- dozen cases in the North, where more active measures are enforced. In one case the victim was a man who, after purchasing the tenant-right of a farm from which a previous tenant had been evicted twenty-five years before for non-payment of six and a half years' rent, was rigorously boycotted on attempting to sell another farm. In another case it took seven weeks to effect service of a writ of ejectment on a tenant whose judicial rent was five years in arrear, and the owner has been placed under police protection. In a third case a force of a hundred police were employed to capture the house and out-offices occupied by a tenant whose tenancy had expired, but who refused to give up possession, fortified his premises, and defied the service of a writ. In view of these and of other cases of boycotting and intimida- tion, Mr. Ian Malcolm strongly demurs to Mr. Bryce's recent optimistic declaration as to the "peaceful and tranquil" condition of Ireland, or the ability of the law, as administered in Ireland, to "protect every private person in all his private rights and the right of property in land."
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