than 500 acres, received voting papers, and of these
1,706 replied, 1,128 in favour and 578 against a conference, while the
small landlords were almost unanimously in its favour. A second appeal
was then made to the Landowners' Convention through its president, Lord
Abercorn, but an answer in the negative was received, for it went on to
say--"It would be merely to give long-discredited politicians a
certificate of good sense and of just views, we might almost say of
legislative capacity to sit in an Irish Parliament in Dublin, were we to
accept Captain Shaw Taylor's invitation to join them."

The criticism of an unbiassed foreign observer on this attitude of rigid
cast-iron _non possumus_ is instructive. "Rappelons nous," writes M.
Bechaux, "que le parti irlandais au Parlement, si grossierement insulte
represente 4/5 du peuple irlandais, nous avons un specimen de l'esprit
reactionnaire et irreconciliable du landlordisme irlandais." In spite of
this the Conference met at the end of the year. The landlords'
representatives were:--Lord Dunraven, Lord Mayo, Col. Hutcheson Poee, and
Col. Nugent Everard; and those of the tenants were:--Mr. John Redmond,
Mr. W. O'Brien, Mr. T.W. Russell, and Mr. T.C. Harrington. On the 3rd
January, 1903, a joint report to serve as the basis of the new Bill was
issued.

The Report was in favour of purchase as the only possible policy to be
carried out on such terms that the yearly payments of the tenants
should be 15 to 25 per cent. lower than second term rents, while the sum
received by the landlords was to be such as at 3 or 3-1/4 per cent.
interest would yield them the same income as second term rents, less 10
per cent. deduction, as an equivalent for the cost of collection under
the old system. The difference between these two sums was to be bridged
by a bonus from the Treasury to the landlords in the interests of
agrarian peace. The Report was further in favour of enlarging small
holdings by dividing up grazing lands, and under it evicted tenants who,
as such, were not entitled to have judicial rents fixed were to be given
the option to purchase.

Second term rents are those fixed for the second judicial period of
fifteen years under the Act of 1881, and they were on an average 37 per
cent. less than those before the passing of that Act.

Under the Act which Mr. Wyndham introduced on March 25th, 1903, the
Treasury may advance a sum up to one hundred millions at 2-3/4 per cent.
interes