2| per
cent, stock, an arrangement which suited him very well as long as
Government stocks maintained the high level which they reached in the
period preceding the South African War. With the heavy fall in stocks
during and after the war, purchase came to a standstill. The net result
of the operations under the Acts of 1885 to 1896 was that close upon
twenty-four million pounds were advanced to 72,000 tenants, occupying
about two and a half million acres, out of the total of 18,739,644
acres which constitute the agricultural area of Ireland.

3. Once begun, purchase had to be continued, if for no other reason than
that a purchasing tenant paid in annuity a substantially lower sum than
the non-purchasing judicial tenant paid in rent, with the additional, if
distant, prospect of an absolute fee-simple in the future.

Mr. Wyndham, acting on the recommendation of a friendly Conference
between landlords and tenants, took the bull by the horns in 1903, and
carried the great Land Act of that year. Under the Wyndham Act the
system of cash payment to the landlord, dropped since 1891, was resumed,
on a basis calculated to give a selling landlord a sum which, invested
in gilt-edged 3 or 31/4 per cent. stocks, would yield him as much as the
second term judicial rents on the holdings sold, less 10 per cent.,
representing his former cost of collection; while the annuity payable by
the tenant in lieu of rent was reduced from 4 to 31/4 per cent., of which
21/2 per cent, was interest on the purchase money advanced, and 1/2 per
cent, was sinking-fund. This reduction involved an extension of the
period of redemption from forty-nine to sixty-eight and a half years.
The annuity was calculated to represent an average reduction of from 15
to 25 per cent, on second-term judicial rents. Since the gross income of
the landlord was to be reduced only by 10 per cent. on a basis of 3 per
cent. investments, while the annual payment by the tenant was to be
reduced by an average of 20 per cent., clearly there was a gap to be
filled up, and this gap was filled by a State bonus to the selling
landlord of 12 per cent, on the purchase money, a bonus which went
wholly to him personally, clear of all reversionary rights under
settlements. A sum of twelve millions altogether was to be expended on
the bonus.

In addition to direct sales between landlord and tenant through the
Estates Commissioners, large powers were also given both to the Land
Commission a