Was the Land Act of 1870 a Significant Breakthrough in Irish Land Reform?

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The land act of 1870 brought many changes to the life’s of farm tenants for the better and for the worst. The land act had some significant breakthroughs; the main one of these is that courts had to make sure Landlords didn’t exorbitant rents. This meant that the landlords weren’t aloud to punish their tenants with high and harsh rent prices, the high prices for the Irish residents was a long lasting problem for them with many dyeing due to starvation, with many Irishmen still feeling the impact of the potato famine. With the courts making landlords accept that they held respectable rent prices, this improved the lives of the Irish people to some extent. However the act was almost a total failure on this part because the courts made a huge mistake in how it did not define how high an exorbitant rent was, so landlords raised rents to very high levels, and then evicted them for non-payment of rent. The act had made no significant breakthrough on this part, to help out the Irish. The act failed to create a tribunal system for this situation for the regulation of rent and failed to prevent the possibility of unfair rent increases. Another aspect of the land act was that Landlords had to compensate tenants who were evicted if they had made improvements they had made to their holding. Even if they had been evicted for non-payment of rent landlords had to pay the tenants for the improvements they had made, this gave them extra funds which they needed. This was a significant breakthrough as before Landlords could just evict tenants for the slightest excuse, and if the tenants had made improvements to the land at their cost, they didn’t get anything for it. In contrast the landlord was able to sell the piece of land for an extra cost with the tag ‘improved land’. This aspect of the act was beneficial because it made the life’s of the Irish people much better, even if the

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