ON AGRICULTURE TO IRELAND 27 



next great step forward was the Land Act of 1891. The tenant, 

 as under the 1885 Act, was to get the whole purchase money 

 from the State, and he was to pay 4 per cent, for 49 years in 

 redemption of the advance : £33,000,000 was set aside for purchas- 

 ing purposes. Apart from the large sum available for purchasing 

 land, the terms to the tenant were not better than those contained 

 in the 1885 Act; but the 1885 Act contained so good terms that 

 it had created in the minds of the Irish farmer the desire for 

 purchasing, and that was what was wanted. The need still was 

 to find inducement sufficient to make the landlord sell, and this 

 Act contained the first of these inducements, which before long 

 was turned into an impediment. The landlord was to be paid 

 in land stock. He received £100, while the actual price ran 

 from £107 to £114. In this way, the landlord received a bonus, 

 ranging from 7 to 14 per cent. Consols fell to 85, and then land- 

 purchase came to a standstill, but 42,437 tenants purchased under 

 the Act and the Government advanced £12,336,685. Possibly, 

 the Act, will be best remembered because it created the Congested 

 Districts Board, which is tackling a problem in Ireland of the 

 utmost difficulty. We have considered the work of the Board in 

 another chapter. The next Act of importance was the Land Act 

 of 1896. The tenant paid as in the preceding Act, but the annuity 

 terminated in 42 instead of 49 years. The Act is best known 

 because it introduced " decadal reduction." Every ten years, for 

 three decades if the tenant did not stipulate otherwise, the amount 

 paid was deducted from the purchase price. This reduced the 

 instalments of principal and interest every ten years for 30 years, 

 but it extended the period during wliich the instalments had to 

 be paid. It was a precaution taken in anticipation of the lean 

 years when deductions might be demanded. It has, however, 

 found no place in more recent legislation. 



The Wyndham Act of 1903 



In the opening years of this century it became evident to 

 everybody that the Irish tenants as a whole had to be transformed 

 into occupying owners, and that the movement towards this con- 

 summation would have to be more rapid in the future than it liad 

 been in the past. The Irish tenant was still most favourable 

 because he paid less as owner than he did as tenant. The land- 

 lords had had the experience of the original reductions of rent 

 under the 1881 Act, and the second revision had been proceeding 

 since 1896. A diminishing rent-roll — it had gone down over 40 

 per cent, in 20 years — was not encouraging to the landlord. He 

 was now more willing to sell, but he was still unwilling to sell at 

 a loss. In 1902, a meeting was held in Dublin composed of repre- 

 sentatives of landlords and tenants for the purpose of considering 

 what could be done to meet the objections of the landlord and to 

 bring about a more wholesale system of land purchase in Ireland. 

 The landlords were represented by Lord Dunraven, Lord Mayo, 

 Colonel W. Hutcheson Poe, and Colonel NuQ;ent T. Everard. 



