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 

 recommended 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 mort^a^es. 



O o O 



Irish land legislation has advanced far from the tentative 

 proposals in the Bright clauses of the Land Act of 1870. This 

 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 35 

 years. The famous Land Act of 1881 incidentally made it 

 possible to advance state money to the amount 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 percent, 

 interest, over 49 years. Under this act purchases were made on 

 behalf of 13,700 Irish 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, annual payments 41 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 17J times the 

 rent." Mr. Balfour's Land Purchase 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 lepay- 

 ment of the loans a provision not unlike the process by which 



