240 PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE 



principle has been definitely acknowledged 

 and accepted in cases of the acquisition of land 

 by municipalities, and further in the powers 

 conferred upon County Councils in the Small 

 Holdings Act of 1908 to acquire by purchase 

 such land as they require with a view to its 

 permanent retention by the public authority 

 as the inalienable property of the community. 

 The later phase of land legislation of Ireland, 

 though it employed the mechanism of State 

 purchase, had little in common with the ideal 

 of land nationalization, for the farms and 

 holdings which were secured were not retained 

 by the public authorities, but handed over to 

 individual occupiers through the gradual 

 repayment by easy stages of the purchase 

 money and its interest. 



Other arguments ordinarily advanced in 

 defence of the existing condition of land tenure 

 are as follows. The entire structure of rural 

 life would, it is alleged, be subverted by the 

 disappearance of the landlord. The happy 

 relations hitherto prevailing between the Hall, 

 the farm, the Rectory and the cottage would 

 necessarily disappear in a cataclysm which 

 robbed such feudal conditions of all real 

 meaning by converting the land into the 

 property of the community. It is constantly 

 maintained too that the farmer would be far 



