tions rose from 1503 in the
year ending March 31, 1896, to 6911 in the year ending March 31, 1900.
But, with the fall in the price of stock, land purchase showed signs of
coming to a standstill. By 1902 it was evident that new legislation was
needed, and in the next year the Irish Land Act of 1903 was carried.

The Irish Land Act of 1903 was not, as some suggest, a short cut to the
millennium, evolved on the spur of the moment, and translated into
fantastic finance. It had two bases, the one practical, the other moral.
In the first place, it was founded on the ripe experience garnered
during eighteen years from the operation of preceding purchase Acts. In
the second place, it was founded on the historic agreement spontaneously
arrived at in 1902 by accredited representatives of Irish landlords and
tenants. They resolved that dual ownership ought to be abolished
throughout Ireland, and that this primary policy should be accompanied
by effective remedies for the uneconomic conditions prevalent in the
West, but existing elsewhere, though sporadically, to a limited extent.
This agreement, in itself unprecedented, was rendered the more
remarkable by the fact that the signatories assumed the responsibility
of telling the Government how the first object could be achieved. They
advised that landlords could not be expected to sell, as a class, unless
the price paid to them in cash would yield from sound securities 90 per
cent. of their income in terms of a rent that had been twice revised
under the Land Law Act of 1881; and that tenants could not be expected
to buy, as a class, unless their instalments due to the Treasury after
purchase were from 15 per cent. to 25 per cent. less than such rents so
revised. They invited the Government to give effect to that agreement.
The Government accepted and, in the Act of 1903, tendered the costly
but, under the circumstances, not extravagant _imprimatur_ of the
Treasury on a political treaty thenceforward to be binding on all three
contracting parties: landlords, tenants, and the State. The Nationalist
members, as spokesmen for the tenants, and the representatives of the
landlords, subscribed to the provisions offered, and the reports of the
Estates Commissioners prove that these have been fulfilled so exactly
that, in the case of second term rents, landlords and tenants have
obtained average incomes and reductions that differ only by a decimal
from the mean advocated at the Conference.