Mr. T. W. Russell, M.P., writes to Wednesday's Times on
the rent question in Ulster. He states that the flax crop this. year has been a disastrous failure ; that cattle in Ireland are unsaleable almost at any price ; and that at the meeting at Anghnacloy on Friday week, at which it was said that he had uttered "dark threats," he never spoke at all till ten or twelve of his own constituents had spoken, and that they all of them spoke with the greatest sobriety and moderation. The remark which he supposed to have been referred to when it was said that he uttered " dark threats" was simply this : that if, in the present state of the country, the landlords insisted on their strict legal rights, he should be obliged to do as he did in 1887, and support a statutory reduction of the judicial rents. Mr. Russell regards a judicial rent in Ireland simply as the equiva- lent of a fair rent in England, and thinks that the authorities, who fix the judicial rent in Ireland should be compelled to- act just as a good landlord would act in a. bad year in England. As things now are in both countries, where both landlords and tenants have suffered so much from the unfortunate fall of all agricultural prices, this is, we suppose, fair enough. But surely, in ordinary times, rent should be so fixed as to afford a margin in all tolerable years, out of which to provide for the exceptional failure of unusually Dad years.
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