THE AGRARIAN REFORM OF 1903. 121 



proprietors. Almost all the estates whose owners 

 were, under the existing conditions, inclined to 

 sell, had by this time changed hands. The 

 remaining landlords declined to sell, and thereby 

 condemned their tenants, who desired to buy, to 

 the payment of some 25 per cent, a year more 

 than their neighbours.^ Those who resented this 

 state of things most bitterly were the Protestant 

 farmers of Ulster, the very men whose qualities 

 were best calculated to ensure their success as 

 peasant owners. But, because they had never 

 taken part in the agrarian agitation against their 

 landlords, and because the latter were mostly in 

 solvent and easy circumstances, it was just in these 

 quarters that the outlook for further transactions 

 in land purchase seemed particularly slight. The 

 political leaders of the Ulster farmers, especially 

 T. W. Russell, therefore, caught up the cry for 

 compulsory expropriation with enthusiasm, a 

 proceeding which powerfully influenced public 

 opinion, for Ulster, Unionist in sentiment, had 

 always demanded agrarian reform for its own 

 sake and not with any object of stirring up the 

 slackening agitation for the national indepen- 

 dence of Ireland. 



^ [To put this quite accurately, it should be said that they 

 declined to sell at any prices which the existing Land Courts 

 would sanction, or which the existing purchase-system would 

 enable the tenant to pay off at any appreciable reduction on 

 his rent. The Courts demanded an extravagant margin of 

 security for advances. — Transi.'] 



