property" appears to consist in the fact that it
is cheaper to acquire it than not.[*] That magic has been worked for
Ireland by the British Legislature and by British credit. As in Prussia,
compulsory powers (limited by certain conditions and to certain
districts) stand behind the schemes of the Government; but the
compulsion is exercised not against the Irishman in favour of the
English settler, but against the (usually) English landlord in favour of
the Irish tenant. The State is now pledged to about 130,000,000 pounds
for the furtherance of this scheme, the instalments and sinking fund to
the amount of about 5,000,000 pounds a year being paid with exemplary
regularity by the farmers who have taken advantage of it.

[Footnote *: Professor M. Bonn, of Munich University. "Modern Ireland
and her Agrarian Problem," pp. 151, 162, translated from "Die irische
Agrarfrage." _Archiv fuer Sozialwissenschaft_; Mohr, Tuebingen.]

The Congested Districts Board

In the poorer and more backward regions of the West it has been felt
that the above measures are not enough, and a special agency has been
constituted with very wide powers to help the Western farmer, and not
only the farmer, but the fisherman, the weaver, or anyone pursuing a
productive occupation there, to make the most of his resources and to
develop his industry in the best possible way. This Board commands a
statutory endowment of 231,000 pounds a year. A system of light railways
which now covers these remote districts has given new and valuable
facilities for the marketing of fish and every kind of produce.

The various Boards and other agencies by which these measures are
carried into execution are manned almost exclusively by Irishmen.

The Agricultural Labourer

There is a world of difference between the present lot of the Irish
agricultural labourer and his condition in 1883, when reform in this
department was first taken in hand. Cottages can now be provided by the
Rural District Councils and let at nominal rents. Nearly nine millions
sterling have been voted for this purpose at low interest, with sinking
fund, and up to the present date 47,000 cottages have been built, each
with its plot of land, while several thousand more are sanctioned.

Of the results of the Labourers' Act a recent observer writes:

"The Irish agricultural labourer can now obtain a cottage with three
rooms, a piggery, and garden allotment of an acre or half an acre,