applied for as rapidly as the first, and before 1891 it was plain that it would again become necessary to apply to Parliament. What we needed at the time was a little more money, coupled with a little more simplification of procedure in order to avail ourselves of the money. What we got in 1891 was an offer of a large sum of money coupled with a complication of procedure which made it very difficult to avail ourselves of the money at all.

Sales at once began to languish. Instead of utilising, as under the Ashbourne Act, more than one million and a quarter sterling per annum, the Land Commission advanced under the Act of 1891 less than half a million in the same period.

The reader must take on faith the assertion that the failure of the Act of 1891 was due to the complexity of its procedure, and he will do so the more readily when he knows that his only other alternative is to wade through a disquisition on the 'Purchaser's Insurance Money,' County per-centage,' 'Annual value,' &c., terms which have now fortunately been relegated to the limbo of history, and the explanation of which would be to the average English reader about as interesting as a dissertation on the law of hypothec or on the incidents of multiple-poinding.

An Irish tenant invited to buy his farm by the payment of annual instalments naturally asked what those instalments would amount to. The information which he regarded as vital before committing himself to signing the agreement to purchase was just what neither the landlord's solicitor nor his own advisers could supply him with. Under the Ashbourne Act he could see at once that if he agreed to purchase his holding for 1,000l. he would have to pay 40l. a year, neither more nor less, for forty-nine years. In a similar case, under the Act of 1891, before signing his agreement, he could learn only that for five years he would have to pay certainly not less than 40l. a year, but that possibly he might for these years have to pay substantially more. He could not be certain of his liability until he had first signed his agreement and then applied to the Land Commission. Even the decision of the Commissioner was not final, it was subject to appeal. Why the complications which caused the falling off in sales should have been introduced into the Bill, it is not now easy to say. It was currently reported at the time that they were due to the fears of some supporters of the Government, especially in the North of Ireland, who had succeeded in persuading themselves and others that if land purchase were allowed to go forward on the lines of Lord Ashbourne's Act there would soon be such a rush of tenants to purchase their holdings as to cause serious trouble and danger to those landlords who wished not to sell but to continue as landlords. Elaborate checks were provided to ward off the danger of this anticipated rush.

Looking back now at what had taken place under the Ashbourne Act, and at what took place under the Act of 1891, it is difficult to

T

believe that the supposed danger had any real existence. The Ashbourne Act had worked steadily, but certainly not with excessive rapidity. A million and a quarter per annum throughout the whole of Ireland was not an alarming sum for the Land Commission to have advanced, and there was no reason to suppose that tenants who had not made a rush to buy before between 1885 and 1890 would make a dangerous rush between 1891 and 1896.

The returns of the Land Commission show that the largest amount advanced for purchase in any one year was a little over a million and a half, and that was in the year 1887. In 1888 the amount advanced was less than that in 1887, and in each of the years 1889 and 1890 it was less than the amount advanced in 1888. Therefore, the tendency apparently was not towards increased rapidity, but rather towards increased slowness.

If the complicated checks introduced by the Act of 1891 had been omitted, it is more than probable that the sales of land in Ireland would not in any year have reached the amount of 2,000,000l. sterling, and it will scarcely be contended that sales at this rate could cause a danger to any class in Ireland or to the Treasury.

If the solution of the Irish Land Question is to be looked for in the creation of a peasant proprietary in substantial numbers, it must be conceded that the Act of 1891, by reducing the annual output of State money from a million and a quarter to less than half a million per annum, was a serious misfortune to all persons interested in Irish land.

By Mr. Gerald Balfour's Land Act of this session an effort has been made to cause an expansion in the land market, which the Act of 1891 contracted, and the means adopted to bring about the change are simple.

The Act of 1896 enables the tenant to know what is the maximum instalment he must pay on his purchase money in any one year. For the first ten years after the purchase he must pay instalments at the rate of 4l. per cent. per annum. Of this, 21. 158. represents interest and 1l. 5s. represents the sinking fund. At the end of the first decade these instalments will be reduced by reason of the sinking fund having in the meantime paid off portion of the principal. During the next decade the tenant will have to pay 4 per cent. upon the amount of the principal not paid off at the end of the first decade, and, similarly, at the end of thirty years from the date of the purchase, the instalment will again be reduced owing to a further part of the principal having been meanwhile paid off by the sinking fund and its accumulations. But now a remarkable difference will be seen between the relative positions of the tenant purchaser and the Treasury under the Act of 1896, as compared with all previous Purchase Acts. Under the Bright clauses of 1870, and under the Act of 1881, the tenant repaid the purchase money by an unvarying

instalment of 51. per cent. for thirty-five years. By the Ashbourne Act he repaid it by an unvarying instalment of 4l. per cent. for fortynine years. By the Act of 1891 he repaid it by a varying instalment payable during forty-nine years. In other words, there was in all these Acts a contract by the Treasury with the tenant purchaser that, if he would pay certain sums, they would, out of such sums, credit him with the reinvestment of the sinking fund at a definite rate of interest, which rate was, I think, the same as the rate of interest charged to the tenant. Under the Act of 1896 there is no such contract. No time is mentioned for the cessation of the instalments. The tenant is only promised that if he pays instalments of 1l. 58. per cent. per annum as a sinking fund, the Treasury will, at the end of ten years, tell him at what rate they have been able to employ the money so paid by him. His sinking fund will of course produce more or less according to the rate at which the money may have been so employed.

A tenant who under the Act of 1896 pays his instalments of 4 per cent. for ten years will probably find that he has not redeemed as much of the principal as he would have redeemed by similar payments for a similar period under any of the previous Acts, because it is not likely that the Treasury will reinvest the tenant's money at so high a rate of interest as 21. 158. per cent.

With the data before us it is impossible to forecast with accuracy the period during which the tenant's instalments will run under this last Act, but it seems probable that the period of repayment will be extended from the forty-nine years to sixty-nine or seventy years.

It will be interesting to see how these changes in his liability will affect the tenant's mind. The fact that under no circumstances can he be called on to pay more than 4 per cent. per annum will undoubtedly attract him, but the indefinite extension of the period during which instalments must be paid will have a chilling effect. Often in arranging sales with a tenant I observed that when told he would have to pay his instalments for forty-nine years, his answer was, 'But where shall I be in forty-nine years?' but then he almost invariably added, 'Anyway, my son may see the end of the time.'

But seventy years will probably see two generations go to their graves. The tenant purchasing under the Act of 1896 will regard the purchase not as a purchase at all, but as a transaction by which a perpetual private landlord is exchanged for a practically perpetual State landlord.

My own impression is that for some short time to come there will not be any great extension of purchase in Ireland. The fifteen-year term for which the rents were fixed under the Act of 1881 has in a large number of instances expired or is about to expire. Rightly or wrongly, the tenants who got their rents fixed in the early years of the Act's working are persuaded that they were fixed on a higher

73

basis than those of the tenants who went into court later on, and, therefore, it seems probable that a substantial number of the early tenants will again go into court. As soon as they have got their rents fixed, they may then devote their attention to purchasing if they can induce the landlords to sell upon what they, the tenants, regard as reasonable terms. The Irish tenant, with the training and experience which he has now had, will not rush. He will deliberately weigh the arguments pro and con before deciding whether he will try to purchase or not. On the one hand, if he continues a tenant, he knows that he can go into court to get his rent fixed at the end of each judicial term, and if the times grow worse he may count on further reductions of his already reduced rent. On the other hand, if he agrees to purchase, he secures such an immediate reduction as is represented by 4 per cent. on his purchase money compared with the rent to which he is at present liable, and at the end of ten, twenty, and thirty years respectively, he will get such further reductions as are represented by a cessation of interest on the portion of his purchase money which shall have been paid off by his sinking fund.

As he now has security of tenure, it is hard to say whether the prospect of 'outsiders' being found willing to purchase the landlord's interest in the land will appreciably increase the tenant's anxiety to buy ; but it is worthy of remark that in one instance an 'outsider' has, during the present year, purchased a very large estate in Ireland occupied by tenants, an event unheard of for several years past, and in the Landed Estates Court some few outside bidders have lately appeared. The exceptionally low rate of money, with the consequent inflation of nearly all classes of securities, has a tendency to induce capitalists to turn their attention to land as an investment even with the liability of the rents which they purchase being further reduced.

The next question to be considered is, Are the landlords likely to sell? The low rate of money will from one point of view be a temptation to a landowner to sell, because it has driven to a very high premium the stock in which he will be paid if he does sell to his tenants. A landlord so selling is paid not in cash but in land stock, which now stands at a premium of about 10 per cent., so that if he agrees to a sale to his tenants for, say, 10,000l., he will in reality receive not ten but eleven thousand pounds. On the other hand, the lowness of money has driven all good stocks so high that he may find it difficult to invest his money in any reasonably safe security without submitting to a loss of income greater than he is prepared to face. All of which would go to show that a landlord who has moderate encumbrances on his property is more likely to sell part at least of his estate than will be the landlord who is wholly unencumbered, or who is so heavily encumbered that he is living on the narrow margin between tenants' existing rents and mortgagees' existing interest. In

so far as the purchase money of the land can be utilised to pay off mortgages, it can be more advantageously employed than if the landlord had to invest it in the purchase of stock securities at their present price, because the rate of interest which Irish mortgages bear is comparatively high. If the sum realised by a sale will not produce more than will pay what is due to the encumbrancers, the impoverished landlord of course will have no inducement to sell. But it may be that the interests of the mortgagees might be best served by selling the estates to the tenants, and now, even if the owner wishes to prevent the sale, he will be powerless to do so because the Act of 1896 declares that a mortgagee in possession with power of sale shall for all the purposes of the Land Purchase Acts be deemed to be a landlord.'

This provision tends to place the landlord at the mercy of his mortgagee, and a few years ago, if it had been passed, the landlord would have been powerless because it was absolutely impossible to get capitalists to take up Irish mortgages. For the last year or two a marked change in this branch of the money market has taken place. The public are again willing to lend money on Irish land. I do not mean to say that a heavily encumbered Irish landlord could, as in the 'good old times,' borrow on his estate more than he has already charged it with, but he can find people willing to step into the shoes of those in whom existing charges are vested, and in so far he is more independent of his encumbrancers than he has been any time from 1880 to 1894.

at

Everything considered, it seems likely that there will no more be a rush on the part of the landlords to sell than there will be on the part of tenants to purchase, but fair steady progress may be hoped for in the Land Purchase Department, and this progress will be materially assisted if the Land Commission will broadly interpret and courageously use the permission, which Mr. Gerald Balfour's Act gives them, to 'dispense with the whole or any part of the guarantee deposit being made or retained if they think the security for the repayment of the advance is sufficient without it.'

The guarantee deposit was not without its advantages. It soothed the nervous taxpayer to know that when public money was advanced to purchase a holding it was secured not alone by charging the holding itself, but also by impounding part of the purchase money. But the taxpayer is not so nervous as he was in relation to land purchase. The published reports of the Land Commission have reassured him. The public loss on their sales has been practically nil. Up to the 31st of March, 1896, the Land Commission had collected in principal and interest from tenant purchasers over two millions and a quarter sterling. The total arrear due on that date was 4,3891., and it was calculated that most of this would be collected within two or three months.

In the face of such figures as these the Land Commission need