on the price which he would accept for
the extinction of his interest in that tenant's holding. The State
facilitated the transaction by advancing that amount to the landlord in
_cash_ whenever the holding offered sufficient security, and accepting
from the tenant an undertaking to pay an instalment of L4 a year for
every L100 advanced over a period of forty-nine years. The instalment
comprised L3 for interest, 2_s._ 6_d._ for expenses, and 17_s._ 6_d._
for sinking fund. The loan from the exchequer was secured against
individual failures to pay by the realisable value of the holdings.

The salient features in this procedure were that the landlord received
cash and that the tenant paid interest at the then existing rate on
Consols, viz. 3 per cent. Both these features are important. A payment
in cash, or its equivalent, is preferable for such transactions to a
payment in stock, with a fluctuating value, because, if the stock
appreciates the landlord gets more than he bargained for, and this, by
arousing the suspicions of other would-be tenant-purchasers, produces a
disinclination on their part to buy. Again, if the stock depreciates,
the landlord cannot carry out contemplated redemptions of mortgages on
his property, and this produces a disinclination on the part of other
landlords to sell. In the second place it is difficult to persuade Irish
tenants that the State is assisting them if they, the poor, are asked to
pay higher interest for the State's credit than the State pays for the
credit of the rich. The chief defect in this procedure lay in its
restriction to separate bargains in respect of single holdings. It made
a patchwork, whereas the untoward results of the historic and economic
causes on which I have touched demanded the wholesale treatment of
convenient areas.

Under these Acts, in the course of six years, more than 27,000 tenants
became owners by virtue of advances which amounted to over L10,000,000.
The largest number of applications for purchase in any one year was
6,195 for L2,271,569 in 1887, and the average price for all the holdings
bought under these Acts was L396.

When the sums provided by the Ashbourne Acts were exhausted, Mr. Arthur
Balfour carried the Act of 1891, subsequently amended by the Act of
1896. Under these Acts the landlord was paid in stock instead of cash.
The tenant still paid an instalment of L4, which was, ultimately,
divided into L1 5_s._ for sinking fund and L2 15_s._ for inte