farms in the same county to fifteen tenants for £1,934. The number of
acres purchased under this Act for the three years ending August,
1888, are a trifle over 293,556.

The Government valuation is £171,774,000. The net rent is £190,181
12s. 9d. The purchase-money is £3,350,933. The average number of
years' purchase is 17.6.

Perhaps the most important of all these sales are those on the Egmont
estate in the very heart of one of the gravely-disturbed districts.
The rent-roll of this estate was £16,000 a year; and it was estimated
that successive landlords had laid out about £250,000 in
improvements--which was just the sum expected to be realized by the
sales. All this land has passed into the hands of farmers who, from
agitators and No Renters have now become proprietors on their own
account, with a direct interest in maintaining law and order, and in
opposing violence and disorder all round. Other important sales have
been effected. A hundred and fifty tenants on the Drapers' estate in
county Derry have bought their farms from the London Company at a
total of £57,980. These, with others (197 in all), reached a sum total
of purchase-money of £63,305, as set forth in the _Dublin Gazette_, of
November 5th, 1889.

Lord Spencer, whose political _volte face_ is one of the wonders of
the hour, does not hesitate to say that this Act has not been a
success. Can he give counter figures to those quoted above? And Mr.
Michael Davitt does not approve of the sales in general and of those
on the Egmont estates in especial, "He hates the Ashbourne Act worse
than he hates the idea of an endowed Roman Catholic University, which
is saying a great deal. He hates it because it renders impossible his