This anti-rent movement in Ireland may become very serious. The
tenants, though aware they must pay in the end, as the law cannot be resisted, except by insurrection, are inclined to use the threat of combined non-payment to enforce reduction. The landlords, embarrassed by rent-charges, dowers, and mort- gages, all fixed payments, see that reduction would all fall, not on the total rental, but on their share of it, thus often doubling their personal loss, and hesitate to yield. The struggle, therefore, becomes severe, and a lady has forwarded to the Times a letter from her son's agent, in which he apologises for delay in the payment of her jointure, because "the tenants not only have not paid, but refuse to pay any rent till what they consider a sufficient reduction is made in their rents. There have been meetings all over Ireland of the tenant-farmers, the result of which is they have resolved not to pay their rents (even those tenants who are well able to pay are afraid to pay), as tho reso- lution arrived at is to shoot the tenant who pays, as well as any person who takes a farm from which a tenant has been evicted for non-payment of rent. I fear much matters will end badly. This is the worst year I recollect since the famine." Lord Normanby'e tenants in Emly, Tipperary, have refused already to pay their rent, and demand " Griffiths's valuation," declining an offer of a 30-per-cent. reduction to the poorer tenants.
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