in 1879. That catastrophe in rural life precipitated
Mr. Gladstone's Land Law Act (Ireland), 1881. Being precluded by his
political tenets from protecting Irish agriculture against foreign
competition, or assisting it with the resources of the State, Mr.
Gladstone aimed at alleviating the distress due to the decadence of a
national industry by defining with meticulous nicety the respective
shares which the two parties engaged in agriculture--landlord and
tenant--were to derive from its dwindling returns. He believed that the
proportion of diminishing profits due to the landlord, because of the
inherent capabilities of his property, and to the tenant, because of his
own and his predecessors' exertions, could be roughly determined by a
few leading cases in the Land Court; and, further, that landlords and
tenants throughout Ireland would conform to such guidance as these
decisions might afford. In this anticipation he ignored the vital
function of agriculture in Irish life, and the effect which the growing
stringency of agricultural conditions would have on a population that
loved the land and rejoiced in litigation. He created dual-ownership
throughout Ireland, and this led, as Lord Dufferin and other far-seeing
statesmen had foretold, to the land being starved of both capital and
industry. Irish agriculture was brought to the brink of ruin. The misery
of those involved in that pass was exploited to engineer an attack on
the fabric of social order, and the lawlessness so engendered was
adduced as an argument for dissolving the Union under which such
tragedies could occur.

The leaders of the Conservative Party, when confronted with this
situation, determined that their duty, in accordance with the spirit of
the Act of Union, demanded some use of the resources of a joint
exchequer for ministration to the peculiar needs of Ireland. They
decided that the credit of the State should be employed to effect the
abolition of dual-ownership by converting the occupiers of Irish farms
into owners of the soil. Let it be granted that this policy had been
advocated by John Bright and enshrined in the Land Law Acts of 1870 and
1881. It must be added that these pious intentions remained a "dead
letter" until adequate machinery for giving them effect was provided by
the Land Purchase Acts, commonly called the Ashbourne Acts, of 1885 and
1889. The method pursued was as follows. Any individual landlord could
agree with any individual tenant