There is yet another method at our disposal of testing the justice of these accusations.
By a recent Statute, it has been enacted that no eviction shall take place in Ireland without the intervention of the Sheriff, who is bound to register every operation of the kind. Unluckily this improvement in the law did not occur until March, 1865. Consequently, although we have Sheriff's lists of evictions for some years back, they are more or less imperfect until we come to the returns for the past year, which have been kept in accordance with the Act of Parliament in all the counties of Ireland except four. Of the evictions in these four counties we can arrive at a sufficiently correct estimate by an independent process.
By a previous Act of Parliament every landlord, before proceeding to evict a tenant, was compelled to give notice of his intentions to the relieving officer of the Union, who kept a return of all such notifications: these returns extend over the last six years, and have been presented to Parliament. Of course they do not give us the exact number of actual evictions, because it frequently happens, when the landlord has resorted to this procedure for the recovery of his rent, that the tenant pays up at the last moment, and no eviction takes place, though the notice to the Relieving Officer remains uncancelled. During the first three years of the series great neglect occurred in making up the lists,
