According to the last report of the Estates Commissioners nearly 90,000 holdings had been sold in the period of the application of the Act, from November 1st, 1903, to March 31st, 1906.  The total price of all the sales agreed upon was nearly forty millions, but the amount advanced by the Commission was less than ten millions.  There is little doubt that the number of agreements for sale would have been half as many again but for the lack of money and administrative powers.  One of the Estates Commissioners, in his evidence before the Arterial Drainage Commission, stated that under the Land Purchase Acts passed before that of 1903 in twenty-five years 75,000 tenants had purchased at a price of twenty-five millions, and if to these are added the ninety thousand purchasers under the Act of Mr. Wyndham the result is seen that nearly a third of the tenants have in the last quarter of a century become occupying owners.

The immense acceleration in the rate of sale which these figures indicate, leads one to ask how far the sales under the Wyndham Act have been as advantageous to the tenants as those concluded under former statutes.  In the first place, it must be noted that more than four-fifths of the direct sales which have occurred have taken place under the zones.  When the price proposed is above the zones the reason why inspection is demanded is obviously that the solvency of the purchaser, with which the State, as creditor, is concerned, is in question.  The minimum limit of the zones was said to be necessary to protect those with rights superior to those of the landlord, but, as was observed, the value of land does not depend on the mortgages with which it is charged.  In view of the modern methods by which, on purchase, there is a Treasury guarantee, inspection before sale tends to reduce the price, and the absence of inspection under the zones has tended to enhance prices.  It must be further noticed that the minimum price fixed by the zones is higher than the mean price of sales effected under Purchase Acts from 1885 to 1903, and by this method in the case of every sale brought about without the delay of inspection, the provisions of the Act have secured an artificial inflation of price for the benefit of the landlord, amounting to a minimum of one year’s rent.  The reduction of the annuity payable by the tenants from 4 per cent. to 3-1/4 per cent, of the capital has served to obscure the amount of purchase price paid by tenants who are apt to fail to appreciate the fact that the annuity is payable over a more extended period of years, and the provisions as to the sale and re-purchase of demesnes have at the same time secured for the landlords themselves facilities for obtaining advances of ready money on reasonable terms.  These are the factors in the Wyndham Act which have made M. Paul-Dubois declare of it that—­“Emanee d’un gouvernment, ami des landlords, elle cache mal, sous un apparence d’impartialite d’adroits efforts pour faire aux landlords de la part belle pour hausser en leur faveur le prix de la terre.”