the financial arrangements necessary for the operation of the Act; and whatever the administrative or legislative burden of fitting the machinery of the measure to the effective performance of its task, the policy of the Wyndham Act, and the paramount importance of the measure in the history of the agrarian revolution in Ireland remain, and will always remain, unaffected. For although the main objects of the Act of 1903 are the same as those of the Ashbourne Acts of 1885 and 1888, and of Mr. Balfour's Act of 1891, the means displayed in the former are so superior to those devised by Mr. Wyndham's predecessors that the difference between the earlier and the later legislation is really rather a difference of kind than of degree. Delays may, indeed, retard the final consummation of the policy deliberately adopted by the Unionist Cabinet in 1903, and the original estimates of the pace at which the purchase and sale of the tenanted land of Ireland can be conveniently conducted may be found to have been over-sanguine. Yet, we repeat, the significance of the Act in relation to the whole social system of Ireland will always remain the same. For the true importance of the measure lay in this, that it embodied, and for the first time gave shape to, the ideal of a universal peasant proprietary in place of the ideal of fixity of tenure at fair rents, which had been the leading principle of the legislation inaugurated by Mr. Gladstone. Both the Bright Clauses of the Gladstonian Land Acts and the early Purchase Acts of the Cabinet of Lord Salisbury had indeed been designed to foster the development of that ideal which has all along commended itself to Unionist statesmen as the true goal of legislation. But, earnest as were their efforts, the difference between the Ashbourne Acts and the Act passed by Mr. Balfour in 1891 as compared with Mr. Wyndham's lay in the fact that down to 1903, notwithstanding increased facilities for purchase, the rent-fixing provisions of the Land Code were those to which the great majority of both landlords and tenants in Ireland attached the chief importance; whereas, since the passing of the late Act, the purchase and sale of holdings and estates have absorbed the attention of both parties to the long-standing agrarian conflict to the almost total exclusion of all other considerations.

It is not strange that this should be so. For the truth is that, under the provisions of the Act, bargains can now, for the first time, be struck which upon the whole may be said to be to the advantage of both parties. We have no intention of going into the nicely calculated question of the less or more of purchase prices, or of trying to ascertain on which side the balance of advantage may be said to lie. The fact that within little more than a year and a half from the commencement of the Act

advances to the amount of upwards of twenty-two millions, or more than one-sixth of the estimated purchase price of all the tenanted land of Ireland, had been applied for, after a mutual agreement between the parties as to the price, is sufficient evidence on the point. It proves conclusively that, in the judgement of both the parties to the great transaction which it was the object of Parliament to forward, the Act of 1903, as it was expounded by its author and understood by the public, was an efficient instrument for the purpose for which it was designed. And it proves that under its provisions both parties could reach an agreement mutually satisfactory, having regard to the conditions and prospects of Irish agriculture, and to the unsatisfactoriness of the perpetual disquiet occasioned by the rent-fixing system, from the recurring uncertainty and expense of which the Act provides an effectual and final mode of escape. We are aware that exception would probably be taken to this statement by the more extreme members of both parties. For example, the columns of the most influential Nationalist newspaper in Ireland has for months printed, and still continues to print, in a conspicuous place in its pages, the solemn warning to tenants, against giving excessive prices for their holdings, which is known as the Limerick Resolution. The gist of this resolution, which was designed to check the tendency of tenants to come to terms with their landlords at prices which the latter were able and willing to accept, and to establish something like a maximum rate of purchase, is that the number of years' purchase under the new Act should in no case be greater than that paid under the Ashbourne Acts. We do not know that the landlords, or anyone in their behalf, have asserted any countervailing theory of a minimum standard of price. But it is unquestionable that many among them continue to protest their inability to part with their properties on the terms obtainable under the Acts. As, however, neither the Limerick Resolution, even when backed by the moral support of the majority of the Irish Parliamentary party and its organs in the press, nor the protests of isolated landowners in different parts of the country, have prevented the signing of agreements by landlords and tenants to the extent already indicated, we feel fully justified in asserting that in the Act as originally designed, and as it was expounded in the House of Commons, the Legislature had at length devised a system under which its cardinal object, the creation of a universal peasant proprietary in Ireland, might be carried out with reasonable expedition and a tolerable approxi mation to justice and fair play. The great majority of the landlords, through the association known as the Irish Landowners'

Convention, are no longer concerned with protesting against legislation, but rather are seeking to have the machinery of the Wyndham Act improved. There appears to be little reason to doubt that, supposing Mr. Wyndham's expectations, as to the provision of money by the Treasury to meet the advances applied for, to have been realised, the progress of the negotiations between landlords and tenants would, to say the least of it, have fully kept pace with the ability of the Treasury to provide the necessary funds.

That being so, it is obvious that, alike from the point of view of the vast interests of the landlords and tenants of Ireland, and from that of the people of Great Britain, whose practical concern in the settlement of Irish difficulties is scarcely inferior to that of Ireland herself, the hindrances which have latterly impeded the progress of agreements under the Wyndham Act constitute a public misfortune which is to be seriously deplored and for which a remedy is urgently needed. It will be convenient here to state briefly the nature of those hindrances; and to indicate the extent to which they threaten to mar the operation of the Act, and to retard if not defeat the consummation of the policy to which Parliament has so deliberately and so definitely committed itself.

The primary and essential merit of the Land Act of 1903, and the feature which won for it the acceptance of all parties in Ireland, lay in the assurance which it appeared to give to both parties to the transactions contemplated under it of immediate and substantial relief and benefit. The problem which it was designed to solve, and to the solution of which it was believed that its provisions were fully adequate, was the problem of simultaneously giving to the tenant-purchaser a substantial and immediate reduction in the amount of his annual burden, and of securing to the landlord a substantial improvement in his position by assuring him a settled income equal to the net value of his landed property, and free from the uncertainty and expense of rent-collecting and rent-fixing. By making the amount of each half-yearly instalment of the purchase money substantially less than the tenant's former half-yearly payment in rent, the former object was effectually attained. In this respect there has not been any disappointment, nor, indeed, is such disappointment possible. For no sooner has an agreement between the parties been approved by the Estates Commissioners than the reduced rate becomes payable by the purchasers, the relation of landlord and tenant is at an end, and the process by which the rent-paying tenant is to be transformed into the owner of his holding is begun.

To effect the second object, it was arranged that when the title had been cleared, and the provisions of the Act in all other respects had been complied with, the purchase-money should be paid to the vendors in cash. The depreciation of the guaranteed land stock, in which the vendors were paid under Mr. Balfour's Act of 1891, had been the primary cause of the failure of that otherwise admirably designed measure to effect the solution of the problem of land purchase. Accordingly, a cardinal principle of the Act of 1903 was the provision for payment of the purchase-money to the vendor in cash instead of in land stock; and Mr. Wyndham was able to make what appeared to be adequate arrangements for giving effect to his scheme. It was agreed by the Treasury that during the first three years of the operation of the Act a sum of five million sovereigns should be annually available, should so much be required, to meet the advances sanctioned by the Estates Commissioners. It was further understood that at the expiration of the three years, when fifteen millions should have been so advanced, such fresh arrangements would be made by the Treasury as would enable the whole hundred and twelve millions which, it was estimated, would suffice for the entire operations of the Act to be made available for the purposes required in the course of fifteen years.

Unfortunately, it was assumed, quite erroneously as the event has proved, that five million sovereigns per annum would be amy sufficient to meet the demands likely to be made upon the pae exchequer for the first three years. Upon this assump

Mr. Wyndham made his calculations and effected his arrangemens with the Treasury; and, what is even more important, ve this assumption it was that the Treasury concluded in the car the financial arrangements necessary for finding what e in the days of inflated expenditure must still be deemed the my onsiderable sums. But neither Mr. Wyndham nor

Radim Aor any of the parties to the great accommodation which is Act embodied, appears to have anticipated that there mud de ar serious inequality between the amount thus se de perviai and that which would be necessary to satisfy Dhe me entered into within the period contemplated. the wildest dreams of the most optimistic admirers of the BALY IN 7 imagined that the colossal sum of twenty-two mans word de ca ed for within less than two years of the 268 Ng of the Act.

fe is nasceration no one can well be blamed, or, at an we de baze a fairy divisible among all the parties AMERŲ Šas the Ashbourne Acts undoubtedly mun à xun à son n. 2ous had sufficed for the transactions of

seven years. And, although the stimulus given to the idea of purchase by the agreement arrived at between the long contending parties to the agrarian struggle at the Irish Land Conference naturally imported a probability of rapid bargaining between landlords and tenants, it scarcely seemed reasonable to suppose that, in the face of the adverse criticism to which the provisions of the Act were subjected from opposite quarters, agreements would be reached at a pace which has been out of all proportion to what previous experience gave reason for anticipating. Yet this is what has happened. For more than a year it has been evident that the money available through the Treasury is entirely inadequate to meet the advances sanctioned, and that in the absence of some satisfactory expedient for meeting the difficulty a delay of several years must occur before the engagements already entered into can be satisfied, to say nothing of future transactions. The result is, of course, to inflict a serious injustice on those owners who have already agreed with their tenants; and, what Parliament may perhaps regard as of more serious, or at least more urgent, importance, to discourage to the point almost of complete cessation the making of further bargains.

The gravity of the position created by the unanticipated rapidity of the agreements for sale, and the resulting inadequacy of the financial provision for meeting the liabilities in respect of these, first became apparent within a twelvemonth of the passing of the Act, and the difficulty has been growing in magnitude ever since. The last months of Mr. Wyndham's administration were occupied largely with the consideration of various devices for meeting this emergency; but, although he appears to have made sundry suggestions or proposals to the Treasury, nothing had been effected before that statesman's resignation of office in February last. Nor was his successor at all more fortunate in his earlier efforts to get rid of a difficulty which seriously hampered the progress of purchase. Down to the close of last Session all attempts to stimulate the Treasury to greater liberality and elasticity in its arrangements for providing cash to meet the advances sanctioned by the Estates Commissioners had entirely failed, and it was in Mr. Long's efforts to promote legislation based on an agreement between the political representatives of the two agrarian parties that the Ministerial crisis of July last originated.

Having set forth the circumstances in which the deficiency of money has originated, it is right that we should briefly explain the obstacles to a settlement by the Treasury of this most unfortunate miscalculation. Those obstacles have been stated