under which creditors had a claim on the land which could only be
disturbed by paying off that claim.

In the event the rush of creditors to this Court--created to afford
relief from the delays of Chancery in effecting alienation--was so great
that, as a result of the consequent fall in prices, land became a drug
in the market, and properties in many instances did not realise enough
to meet the mortgages. To the landlords ruined in this manner succeeded
a new class, who bought up bankrupt estates, often with borrowed money,
as a commercial speculation, and caring nothing for the tenant or his
welfare, looking only on the business side of the transaction, raised
rents arbitrarily to such a pitch that the tenantry were unable to meet
their liabilities. Wholesale evictions ensued, and in this wise arose
the condition of things in which the _Times_--never an unfriendly critic
of the landed interest--was constrained to admit in 1852 that "the name
of an Irish landlord stinks in the nostrils of Christendom."

By an Act of 1858 the Encumbered Estates Court was replaced by the
Landed Estates Court, which had power to carry out the sale of, and give
an indefeasible title to, any interests in land, whether hypothecated or
not, and after the passing of the Judicature Act of 1877 the name of the
Court became the Land Judges' Court.

The disfranchising clauses of the Emancipation Act, and the consequent
disappearance of the advantages accruing to the landlords from a
multiplication of holdings on their estates, the miserable poverty
resulting from the famine, the anxiety of the proprietors to escape the
burdens of the remodeled Poor Law, and the demand by the new class of
land speculators for large grazing or tillage farms, to form which the
consolidation of existing holdings was demanded, were the factors which