[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—" An Irish Barrister" challenges me to produce one solitary instance of the sale of fee-simple land in the Irish Landed Estates Court at so low a price as ten years' purchase on the net rental. I beg lea-m, in reply, to assure your corre- spondent that the statements in my former letter were founded not upon any solitary instance of such a sale, but upon several such instances, which were mentioned to me by solicitors and landowners well acquainted with the proceedings in the Lauded Estates Court. I did not, however, preserve the particulars of these instances, and they are not now accessible to me. I must, therefore, admit that I am unable to meet your correspondent's challenge by producing names and dates.
Your correspondent also expresses some incredulity respecting sales of fee-simple land at fifteen years' purchase. As to this, I will only iay that upon the sale of the estate referred to in my former letter, two lots of fee-simple land, not subject to any head-rent, sold in the Court, one of them for just under four- teen years' purchase, and the other for just over fourteen and a half years' purchase, on the net rental.
Possibly the difference between your correspondent's experi- ence of prices in the Laud Court and mine may arise from the fact that mine goes back by nine or ten years the further of the two. If this be so, it would appear that the selling value of Irish land increased after the passing of the Land Act of 1870, which is so often described as a measure of spoliatiou.—I am,
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