The Tenant League held a monster meeting at Navan, the
capital of Meath county, on Thursday. Some fifteen thousand are said to have been present, chiefly "tenant-farmers." Mr. Columbus Drake, J.P., presided ; Mr. Sharman Crawford, M.P., was the most notable speaker. Mr. Crawford claimed the League's principle of adjusting the relations of landlord and tenant by valuation, as his own; founding its justice on the fact that in Ireland "the relation of landlord and tenant is such as to render necessary a protection against extortionable bargains about the land, which is not necessary in bargains about other matters." The landlord and tenant should be viewed as partners. "One advances only the land ; the other advances his capital and his labour ; and ajust distribution of the net prate between them is the true foundation on which rents should be determined." "My experience tells me that the most mo- derate measures have received little or no support in the Legislature. I have been proposing moderate measures on your behalf year after year. For fif- teen years I have been endeavouring to remove the objections raised to them ; but my labours were useless, and I now see no reason that you should not ask the full measure ofjustice." Contemning, at his time of life, the charge of popularity-hunting, he pledged himself to do everything he could, in Par- liament or out of it, to obtain for the tenants their rights. A letter from Mr. Henry Grattan, M.P., eschewed a "pledge to any particular body of men, or any set of principles they may adopt" ; and one from Mr. Corbally, M.P., expressed a belief that "the proceedings of the Tenant-Right Conference have materially injured a good and just cause."
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