The average price per acre for the five years before 1903 was L8 9s.; since the Act it has been L13 4s., or taking into account the bonus L15.  The prices before the Wyndham Act rarely exceeded eighteen years’ purchase, and were, moreover, paid in Land Stock and without a bonus.  Under this Act the reasons which I have tried to outline have brought it to pass that twenty-five years of second term rents are being paid in cash, which, with the bonus, makes the total purchase price amount to twenty-eight years.  Hence it is that there is widespread anxiety in Ireland lest land is being sold under the zones at prices which the Land Commission, had it been entitled to inspect, would have been unable to sanction as offering a safe security, seeing that the purchaser must pay his annuity for sixty-eight years without hope of reduction—­a danger, in the event of bad seasons, which might have been diminished if the sinking fund had been fixed at a higher rate and the decadal reductions of earlier Acts retained, so as to reduce the incidence of the burden in its later stages.  This, be it noted, is one of the points in which the provisions of the Act differ from the recommendations of the Land Conference.

I have referred already to the block in sales under the Act owing to the scarcity of money which is forthcoming to meet sales already effected.  By the financial provisions of the statute, so as not to demoralise the market, a definite check was put upon the issue of the land stock, and just before the late Government resigned Mr. Long, as Chief Secretary, made a proposal, which was not received with enthusiasm by the parties concerned, that the landlords should in future be paid partly in stock at a nominal value and partly in cash.  Nothing has since been done, and the only step taken so far has been the appointment of a judge in addition to those formerly so engaged, to accelerate the judicial inquiries necessitated by the process of transfer.  The whole cost of the finance of the Act falls on the Irish taxpayer, and before the introduction of Mr. Wyndham’s proposal the idea was mooted—­only to be abandoned—­of reviving a proposal made by Sir Robert Giffen in the Economist twenty years ago, which would have made the annuities paid on purchase the basis of the funds from which the local bodies in Ireland would draw their revenue, while the Imperial Exchequer would be relieved to an equivalent amount by deductions from its grants to local services.

The cost of the flotation of the Land Stock is borne by the Irish Development Fund of L185,000 per annum, which is the share of Ireland, equivalent to the grant for the increased cost of education in England under the Act of 1902.  More than one-half of this fund has already been hypothecated for the costs of flotation of the twenty millions of Land Stock which have already been issued, and under the present system of finance, after a further issue of another twenty millions of stock, the whole loss will be thrown on the County Councils, and through them on the ratepayers, who have already been called upon to pay L70,000 to meet certain of the losses in this connection, which amount to twelve per cent. of the value of the stock floated.