But what was very strange to him was this—that the Duke of Devonshire having given this abatement of 20 per cent, and thereby admitted the urgent pressure of the Irish Agricultural Crisis, should have accepted association with the landlords who were refusing abatements, and had placed himself at the head of the extermination association, and given countenance to the deputations which waited on the Marquess of Salisbury to urge either that the Irish tenants should be compelled this winter to pay unreduced rents while parting with every shilling they had for food, or for dealing with their land this year, or else that they should be turned out of their holdings, and the landlords enabled to break the tenancy.