All Irish landlords are certainly not good. It appears, from
the report of a trial decided in Dublin on Wednesday, that Mr. Joyce, agent to Lord Clanricarde, advised his employer to make a reduction in his rents. Lord Clanricarde refused, and, more- over, in a letter to the Ti711438, stated that Mr. Joyce had told him there was a " No-Rent " conspiracy on the estate. As this letter made the agent a marked man, Mr. Joyce, who had not made that statement, threw up his employ and brought an action for libel, which ended in a verdict for 22,500 damages. The amount, under the circumstances, was not excessive. The Lord Chief Baron charged most strongly for the plaintiff—justly, we think, as far as Lord Clanricarde's conduct towards his agent was concerned, bat unjustly in a smaller matter, which we mention because it illustrates existing feeling in Ireland. The Judge makes it a charge against Lord Clanricarde that when asked by the tenants to sell, he demanded twenty-five years' purchase. Suppose he had demanded five hundred years' ? Lord Clanricarde was not bound, either by law or morality, to sell his property ; and one of the commonest of all methods of refusing to sell, is to put on a prohibitory price. We are for buying the landlords out; but until the statute is passed, they ought to be as free to sell or retain their land as painters or horsebreeders are.
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