sidy suggested at
p. 284 in order to meet the initial deficit in the national Irish
balance-sheet, will cease to contribute anything towards the running
costs, landlord's bonus, and flotation losses of a Purchase operation
for the necessity of which Great Britain, in the past, was in reality
responsible. Great Britain is under a moral obligation to continue to
support Land Purchase with her national credit, which is indispensable.
She is also entitled to demand whatever reasonable conditions she thinks
fit, for example, a share in the nomination of Land and Estates
Commissioners; while any new legislation will, in the ordinary course,
need her assent. The security, as I said above, will be impregnable. The
purchasing tenant would become the tenant of the Irish State. The Irish
Government, as a whole, instead of the individual annuitants, would, of
course, be responsible to the Imperial Government, would collect the
annuities itself, and bear any contingent loss by their non-payment. To
repudiate a public obligation of that sort would be as ruinous to
Ireland as the repudiation of a public debt is to any State in the
world.

In point of fact, the Irish Government would find it good policy to
popularize Irish Land Stock in Ireland. At present prices the 3 per
cent, stock is among the cheapest and safest in the world, and would
return to the farmer thrice as much interest as the average bank deposit
which he now favours.

Mercifully, there is no exact historical precedent for such a case as
Ireland, though, on a small scale, Prince Edward Island is an
instructive parallel.[163] But if precedents, in the shape of guaranteed
loans to self-governing Colonies, are needed, they exist. The most
relevant and recent is the Imperial guaranteed loan of 35 millions made
to the Transvaal by Mr. Balfour's Government in 1903 after the great
war. Why it should be a heresy to do for Ireland what we did for the
Transvaal, I am at a loss to conceive. The loan became, of course, an
obligation of the Colony when it received Home Rule, and in 1907 a
further guaranteed loan of 5 millions was authorized, of which 4
millions has been issued. Like Irish Land Stock, these loans are secured
on the Consolidated Fund; but I do not think a fear is now suggested
that the Consolidated Fund is in danger on that account. Prophecies of
that sort were common enough in the mouths of those who opposed
Transvaal Home Rule, but they did not long survive its en