478 AGRICULTURAL CREDIT.—DAVIDSON. 
farm, for manuring, feeding, cultivating, and holding over 
produce, just as circumstance may dictate, without stint and 
without limit, the effects of distress are very much mitigated ;’ 
and it was to afford such a mitigation to all, that the commission 
recomm ended a system of state loans. 
In English and in Scottish land legislation to a slight extent, 
and in Irish legislation to a very great extent, the principle of 
using the state credit to improve the position of the farmer has 
been adopted and carried out. The chief object is one which has 
little meaning under Canadian conditions, but the same principle 
is involved in using state credit to create a class of small land- 
owners as in using it to reduce the rate of interest on mortgages. 
Irish land legislation has advanced far from the tentative 
proposals in the Bright clauses of the Land Act of 1870; Eins 
first act proposed that the state advance two-thirds of the 
money required to convert the tenant into owner, to be repaid, 
capital and interest, in equal instalments of 5 per cent. in) Bo 
years. The famous Land Act of 1851 incidentally made it 
possible to advance state money to the amouut of three-quarters 
of the purchase price, repayable in 49 years. But the outstand- 
ing pieces of legislation are Conservative in origin. The Land 
Purchase Act of 1885 permitted the advance of the whole 
purchase money, repayable, capital and interest, with 4 per cent. 
interest, over 49 years. Under this act purchases were made on 
behalf of 13,700 Ivish tenants, at a cost of about 45 million 
dollars, and the Irish tenant could, and did, become the owner 
of his farm by making, for that period, annua] payments 44 per 
cent. less than his former rent had been. “ This great boon,’ 
says Mr. Shaw Lefevre (Agrarian Tenures,p.142,) “is due to the 
use of money borrowed from the state at 3 per cent. to purchase 
the landlord’s interest on the very low terms of 17} times the 
rent.” Mr. Balfour’s Land Purebase Act of 1891 went still 
further in the same direction. It involves the use of Imperial 
credit on a very large scale, and was distinguished by an effort 
to provide some security to the Imperial Government for repay- 
ment of the loans—a provision not unlike the process by which 
