RACK-RENTS IN IRELAND.
go THE EDITOIL or THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sur,—It is so often alleged that Irish landlords as a class habitually exacted rack.rente, Lord Denbigh even, in his epee,* in the House of Lords last week, endorsing the charge, that I think it desirable to give as much publicity as possible to the conclusion at which Lord Bessborough'e Commission arrived on that important subject.
On p. 3, Clause 9, the Report states :—" Lastly, though the amount of rent was always at the discretion of the landlord, and the tenant had in reality no voice in regulating what he had to pay, nevertheless it was unusual to exact what in England would have been considered as a full or fair commercial rent. Such a rent, over many of the larger estates, the owners of which were resident, and took an interest in the welfare of their tenants, it has never been the custom to demand. The example has been largely followed, and is to the present clay [1881] rather the rule than the exception in Ireland."
In the face of this expression of opinion of Mr. Gladstone's Special Commission, the country is flooded with reiterations of charges against Irish landlords of general rack-renting.—I am, Sir, dm,
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