In 1891 another change was effected in Irish landed relations, as usual in the interest of the tenant, and against his landlord. Middleman tenures had well-nigh been extinguished; but some hundreds, probably, were still to be found; and as a middleman, through the legislation of 1887, was enabled to repudiate his contract, in certain cases, and to escape the payment of rent to his superior landlord, he was now to obtain an advantage in other instances. The large majority of this class of intermediate owners, originally created in the eighteenth century, held, at least, in present times, by perpetual leases, which had long ago, as a rule, been converted into estates in fee farm, that is, estates in fee, subject to a perpetual rent; Parliament passed an Act in 1891, enlarged and amended five years afterwards, declaring that, in cases in which tenants of this kind were 'in _bonâ fide_ occupation' of lands, under rents which, in the judgment of the Land Commission, should be 'a full agricultural rent,' they might either agree with their landlords to redeem the rent at a price to be determined by that tribunal, or, should the landlords refuse their consent, might have 'fair rents' fixed as in the instance of common farming tenants.[83] The application of this law could not extend far, for tenants of this description were very few; but it asserted a strange, and, I think, a most vicious principle. The Act practically forced a superior landlord, often a poor man, either to accept a price assessed by a Court over which he had no control, in lieu of a rent, in all probability reasonably well secured, or, as an alternative, to submit to have a 'fair rent' fixed on the land, the rent to be discharged from improvements made by the tenant. If, therefore, a tenant of this kind had built, say, a valuable house, on his holding, which would thus largely add to the security for the rent, this--at least, so it is generally believed--was not to be taken into account in fixing 'the fair rent;' and this principle, it may confidently be predicted, will be extended further. Should a tenant, at a 'fair rent,' in this predicament, be evicted for the failure to pay the rent, a law, in all human probability, will be made, to obtain for him compensation, under the Act of 1870, from the benefits of which he would be, as affairs stand, excluded. The result might be that if, as would often happen, the improvements he had made were of great value--his interest, in the land, being a perpetual interest--the sum the landlord would be adjudged to pay, might swallow up the whole value of the rent, and practically confiscate his whole property.[84]