THE AGRARIAN REFORM OF 1903. 153 



elements of weakness, for it is just these who most 

 need the rent-reduction in the shape of which land 

 purchase presents itself to them. One can assert 

 with confidence that the Wyndham Act will at 

 great expense create numerous peasant owners 

 who will afterwards have to vacate their farms as 

 independent proprietors. Yet no one in Ireland 

 will declare openly for a system of economic 

 differentiation in Irish life. A feeling for equality, 

 albeit a very superficial kind of equality, comes 

 into play in all agitation and is destined to 

 bring many other dangers for the new agrarian 

 order. The reductions of rent are different on 

 different estates. The peasants who bought 

 under the Ashbourne Acts are under different 

 conditions from those who bought under the 

 Wyndham Act. The obligations of the one will 

 cease before those of the others. Second-term 

 rents have been reduced by 21 per cent., first- 

 term by 26 per cent. On one estate the rents 

 are reduced by 2s. in the^i, on another by 8s. 

 Why these inequalities? Of course there are 

 reasons which experts will recognize as decisive ; 

 but they will not console those who are on the 

 unfavourable side of the difference. I do not 

 believe that the English Government will ever 

 have to meet anything like a great national 

 strike against rent — it has only to withhold the 

 grants in aid, and thus to starve out the local 

 bodies— but local difficulties will always be 

 occurring in Ireland so long as success and 

 failure remain factors in the agricultural situation. 



