to about seventy years. This secured to the buyer an abatement each ten years, calculated upon the reduction in the capital sum made by the annual instalments in liquidation of the debt.

22

In 1897 a Commission presided over by Sir Edward Fry was appointed for the purpose of carrying out a thorough investigation into the past and present proceedings of the Land Commission and its Sub-Commissioners, who, on the arrival in 1896 of the period for the renewal of the first statutory leases of fifteen years under the Act of 1881, had made prodigious reductions of rent upon no clearly defined principles whatever. The original reductions effected by the Land Commission in the case of the first statutory leases in 1881 were on the average rather more than 20 per cent. on the old rental, but the reductions on the second statutory leases in 1896 were per cent. more; that is to say, the policy of fixing "fair" rents had reduced them more than 42 per cent. Amid various omissions on the part of the Land Commissioners, the Fry Commission pointed out that the obvious duty of the former was to render advisory assistance to the Sub-Commissioners in the fixing of "fair" rents, but this they had not done, or so imperfectly that they had caused more harm than complete neglect. The Commission also strongly animadverted on the appeal system of the Land Commission which was merely a policy of undiluted echo.1

Ireland, however, at the commencement of 1898 was enjoying a period of unusual peace. The Land Question was for the moment in a state of suspended animation. The number of absentees was still very large, but of the old middleman tenures there were scarcely any left, and precarious tenancies, unjust evictions, confiscations of tenants' rights, and excessive rents had been swept away, thus freeing tenants from the old dependency upon their landlords. In fact, Ireland was quieter than at any period since the Fenian outbreak. The storms which had darkened the Irish skies from 1879 to 1887 had broken up; the disorders caused by the "New Departure" policy, by Parnell's visit to America, and the suppression of the Land League had subsided, and the class feuds engendered by the Land and National Leagues had been laid temporarily to rest. The Home Rule cry was still heard, but was weak; agrarian crime was almost extinct; rentals and other liabilities, in spite of continued agricultural depression, were regularly paid, and the conspiracy that had so long brooded across the Atlantic was all but dead. The burden, however, which had been removed from the shoulders of the actual occupiers of the soil had now been placed in reserve for those of any future occupiers. The indiscriminate reduction of rents had, by unduly increasing the value of the tenant's interest in his holding, subjected the successors of an outgoing tenant to huge payments to the latter in consideration of it. In fact, the value of the fee-simple, through the negligence of the Land Commission and its appendices, had been lowered fully one-third, whilst that of tenant-right had been enhanced in the same proportion. Moreover, the lands of Ireland had been placed under what have been termed leases for ever, renewable every fifteen years, through litigation, by a tribunal of the State, which was also empowered to fix the rents they were to yield. Therefore the ordinary tenant, in accordance with those laws of nature which are more potent as a rule than the prickings of a' sluggish conscience, was tempted to purposely exhaust the productiveness of his farm in order to be able to claim a reduction of rent when the time for renewing his lease arrived. A bribe was thus held out to the progressive deterioration of the soil. The abatement of rentals had also naturally led to subdivision and subletting of holdings-a palingenesis of the old system, with its unlovely concomitant, the almost extinct middleman; whilst the practice of transferring landlords' property to occupiers at the charge only

1 See Report of H. M. Commissioners of Enquiry into the Procedure and Practice and the Methods of Valuation, etc., 1898.

to the latter of a terminable annuity much inferior to any rent, was also leading to the cry for "Compulsory Purchase" on the part of those tenants who had been unable to complete a similar transaction.

In 1901 George Wyndham, the Chief Secretary, found it necessary to put in force the provisions of the Coercion Act of 1887, and various districts in some seventeen counties were proclaimed. The following year he introduced on behalf of the Conservative Government another Land Bill for Ireland, known as the Land Purchase Acts Amendment Bill. With regard to the purchase and resale of estates the Bill of 1902 provided that the owner of an estate could request the Land Commission to state the price at which they were prepared to purchase the estate, and the latter were thereupon to furnish him with a preliminary estimate of the price which they might consider reasonable. If the owner should agree, and his tenants to the extent of not less than three-fourths in number and rateable value undertook to purchase from the Land Commission their holdings, or other designated parcels of land in lieu thereof, and if the Commission were of opinion that the resale of the estate could be effected without prospect of loss, the Commission might agree to the purchase. In the case of certain "congested estates" the condition as to resale without prospect of loss could be relaxed with the consent of the Lord-Lieutenant, if the purchase and resale of the estate in the opinion of the Commission were desirable in view of the wants and circumstances of the tenants.

The following were the limitations on the spending powers of the Land Commission under the Bill:-The Commission was not at any time to hold more than one million pounds' worth of land in respect of which no undertakings to purchase had been received by them; nor could they in any one year spend on congested estates sums exceeding in the aggregate by 10 per cent. the aggregate sums for which they estimated that they could be resold. This restriction, however, was relaxed in the cases where the expenses of improving such estates were to be deemed repayable out of the proceeds of resale. As to persons with whom the Land Commission might enter into agreement as owners, the Bill, in order to simplify the method of precedure, provided that, where any person satisfied the Land Commission that he had been for not less than six years in bona fide receipt of the rents or profits of the land, and was in like manner still in receipt of them as a tenant for life within the meaning of the Settled Lands Acts, 1882 to 1890, he could, if the Commission thought fit, be dealt with as the owner of the land for the purposes of sale without any further investigation of his title. As regards agreement for purchase and vesting order, the Land Commission could, where they agreed to purchase any land, make an order vesting in the Commission the fee-simple and inheritance of the land purchased, subject to any public rights affecting the land and any interests of the tenants on the land or of persons having claims upon those interests, but discharged from all other claims.

The following were the chief provisions with regard to general finance. The sums required by the Land Commission for advances to would-be tenant-purchasers were to be advanced to them by the National Debt Commissioners out of the Local Loans Fund. The Land Commission were to pay out of the Land Purchase Account to the National Debt Commissioners an amount equal to the aggregate of the current half-yearly instalments of the purchase annuities on all the advances, and the National Debt Commissioners were to accumulate the portions of the same which represented the payment of capital for the purpose of discharging the advances. The advance was to be repaid by an annuity of three pounds fifteen shillings for every hundred pounds of the advance, and so in proportion for any less sum, and to be paid until the whole advance was discharged. Every such annuity, or any portion of it, could be redeemed.

In regard to land law the Bill provided, that, where the landlord or the occupier made an application to fix the fair rent of a holding subject to a judicial rent, the party that did not make the application could ask the Land Commission to report on what terms the sale of the holding could be carried out. The Land Commission were thereupon, before hearing the application to fix a fair rent, to make a report accordingly and forward a copy of it to the applicant for a sale, and if he undertook to enter into an agreement in accordance with the report, the Land Commission were to forward a copy of the undertaking to the other party, and, if both parties agreed accordingly, the sale was to be carried into effect. If the applicant for a sale, however, should decline to give the said undertaking, the application to fix a fair rent was to be heard and determined. If, on the other hand, the applicant for a fair rent declined, the existing judicial rent was to continue to be payable for a further period of fifteen years. The declining party in each case was to pay, as might be thought fit by the Land Commission, the whole or part of the costs of the proceedings. Where a tenant of a holding, subject to a judicial rent, on an estate vested in the Land Commission applied to have the fair rent of his holding fixed, the Commission were to serve a notice on him stating the terms on which they were prepared to make an advance for the purchase money of the holding, and if he declined to enter into an agreement in accordance with the notice, the existing judicial rent was to remain payable for fifteen years. The Bill also provided that the fixing of fair rents might be entrusted to two Commissioners instead of to three, as was previously the case, and that appeals with respect to "fair" rents might be heard, not by the Land Commission sitting as a full Court, but by one Judicial Commissioner assisted by an expert assessor.

Finding in October 1902 that they could not float their measure, the Government announced their intention to drop it and introduce another one the following year. The United Irish League had meanwhile developed into a force which they could ill afford to disregard, and another Coercion Bill had to be passed for Ireland-the eighty-seventh on the list. In 1903 Wyndham introduced the promised Land Bill which was framed more or less on the report of the Dunraven Land Conference. At the end of 1902 Captain Shawe-Taylor, the son of a Galway landlord, invited the Duke of Abercorn, Lord Barrymore, and others in behalf of the landlords, to meet John Redmond, William O'Brien, T. W. Russell, and Lord Mayor Harrington, of Dublin, in behalf of the tenants. These landlords declined to act, whereupon Captain Shawe-Taylor invited Lord Dunraven, Lord Mayo, Colonel Hutchinson-Poe, and Colonel Everard to meet the representatives of the tenants. These parties met in the Mansion House, Dublin, in December 1902, with Lord Dunraven in the chair. On January 3, 1903, the proposals of the conference were published in the press, of which the following were the most important—

"4. An equitable price ought to be paid to the owners, which should be based upon income.

"Income, as it appears to us, is second-term rents, including all rents fixed subsequent to the passing of the Act of 1896, or their fair equivalent. 5. That the purchase price should be based upon income as indicated above, and should either be the assurance by the State of such income, or the payment of a capital sum producing such income at 3 per cent., or at 3 per cent. if guaranteed by the State, or if the existing powers of trustees be sufficiently enlarged.

"Costs of collection (of estate rentals) where such exist, not exceeding 10 per cent., are not included for the purpose of these paragraphs in the word

income.

"6. That such income or capital sum should be obtainable by the owners: (a) Without the requirement of capital outlay upon their part, such as would be involved by charges for proving title to sell; six years' possession

as proposed in the Bill of 1902 appears to us a satisfactory method of dealing with the matter; (6) Without the requirement of outlay to prove title to receive the purchase money; (c) Without unreasonable delay; (d) Without loss of income pending investment; and (e) Without leaving portion of the capital sum as a guarantee deposit.

"... That the owners should receive some recognition of the facts that selling may involve sacrifice of sentiment, that they have already suffered heavily by the operations of the Land Acts, and that they should receive some inducements to sell."

The landlords were to be enabled to sell their mansions and demesne lands to the State, to be bought back again by themselves, such repurchase not to be considered a security to the mortgagees. The system of dual ownership was to be abolished, the tenants were to be made occupying proprietors, and the evicted tenants were to be restored on an equitable basis. Separate and exceptional treatment was to be accorded to the congested districts, and the Labourers' Dwellings Acts were to be amended.

Wyndham's Bill of 1903, as passed into law, and which, as mentioned above, was framed on the lines of these proposals, enacted that a total sum of £112,000,000 (£12,000,000 of which was to go as bonus to the landlords) should be provided in State credit towards buying out the landlords. One hundred of the millions were to be loanable at £35s. for each £100; £2 155. for annual interest, and 10s. towards a sinking fund, instead of LI 55. under the old plan, which meant a longer term of years in which the annuity had to be paid. There were to be no decadal abatements. Certain legal expenses up till then charged against the purchase money, were to be paid in future out of the public funds, which would be equal, as a rule, to a gift of one year's purchase. The landlords were to be paid in cash instead of in stock.

1 The Commissioners reported in 1905

"So far as the Commissioners are aware from information before them, owners of demesnes have in every case either retained the demesne lands in their own hands or, where the lands have been sold to the Commissioners, have repurchased them under the provisions of Section 3 of the Act; from which it would appear that there is no intention on the part of the landowners to part with their houses and demesnes, and leave the country as soon as they have sold their estates."

INDEX