ion is empowered to purchase and re-sell to the tenants, even at
a loss, so long as the total loss on the purchase and improvements of
these holdings does not exceed 10 per cent. of the cost of the total
sales effected in the course of the same year. The amendments of the
House of Lords, however, made the part of the Act dealing with this
question a dead letter, and the Land Commissioners have given up the
attempt to put it in force. The landlords, having a choice between sale
direct to their tenants and to the Land Commission, have refused to give
their consent to the declaration of their estate as a congested estate,
which is necessary for the application of this section, unless they
receive a guarantee that the holdings shall not be sold to the tenants
at a lower price than they themselves could have obtained. The result is
that if the Commissioners were to pay these maximum prices there would
be nothing left for them out of which to make the necessary
improvements, and, in consequence, this provision of the Act has been a
failure.

As regards the evicted tenants, the first condition in the settlement
arrived at by the Land Conference, and embodied in the Wyndham Act, was
that they--the wounded soldiers in the land war, as they have been
called--to whose sacrifices in the common cause is due the ameliorative
legislation enacted by Parliament, should be restored to their holdings.
In actual practice, by means of restrictive instructions issued by the
late Government to the Commissioners, two of whom protested against this
action in their report for 1906, the provisions of the Act which
promised this reinstatement were made a dead letter--the Executive once
again, in a historic phrase, driving a coach and four through the
statute.

With the advent to power of the Liberal Government these instructions
were withdrawn, but a further serious obstacle was to be found in the
refusal of some landlords--and those, too, the worst--to allow their
estates to be inspected with a view to find holdings for evicted
tenants. This was the condition of affairs to which Mr. Bryce--at that
time Chief Secretary--referred, when he said--"If the remedy for this
state of things is compulsion, then to compulsion for that remedy we
must go."

It is to be observed that the three Estates Commissioners were unanimous
in thinking compulsion necessary, and that which was demanded was that
the occupants, or planters, who in some cases have been _b