[147] See p. 244.

[148] Except perhaps in the case of Canada.

[149] The Author is indebted, here and elsewhere, to papers by Messrs. C.R.  Buxton, P. MacDermot, and R.C.  Phillimore, in “Home Rule Problems.”

[150] By Clause 5 the following sums were allocated to the Irish Council for five years:  (1) L3,750,000 for the maintenance of eight Government Departments; (2) L300,000 for public works; (3) L114,000 supplemental.

[151] See p. 299.  Under the Act of 1867, No. 2 was earmarked for this purpose.

CHAPTER XIV

LAND PURCHASE FINANCE[152]

I. LAND PURCHASE LOANS.

The data of the land problem are as follows: 

The superficial area of Ireland is 20,350,725 acres, and in 1909 it was utilized as follows:[153]

Acres.  Percentage.

Area under tillage, hay and fruit 4,582,697 22.5
Area under pasture 9,997,445
          
                                             61.6
Grazed mountain land 2,548,569
Woods, etc. 301,444 1.5

Bog, barren mountain, water,
  roads, townlands, etc. 2,925,570 14.4

Total 20,350,725 100.0

The agricultural area, calculated by the exclusion of the last item in the above column, works out at 17,425,155 acres, but since bog forms part of a large number of farms, we may, for the purposes of Land Purchase, place the agricultural area of Ireland at 18,739,644 acres, the figure given in the Census of 1901, and its annual value for rating purposes, as given in the same census, at L10,061,667.

This area is divided into 603,827 agricultural holdings, which are in the hands of 554,060 occupiers, and vary in size from vast pasture ranches to the tiny plots of miserable rock-sown soil, which abound in the congested districts of the west.

But small holdings largely predominate.  More than two-thirds do not exceed 30 acres; 153,565 are between 5 and 15 acres, and 147,580 are below 5 acres.

Size, however, is by itself an imperfect index to value.  The effects of the ancient confiscations and of the extraordinarily unequal distribution of land which they and the bad Irish agrarian system produced may be gauged by the valuation figures of the Census of 1901, which showed that 335,491, or 68.5 per cent, of the total number of holdings had an annual value (for rating purposes) not exceeding L15, while they covered only a little more than a third of the total agricultural area; 134,182 of these holdings were rated below L4, and covered only 1,360,000 acres.

All farms rated below L4, and a large number of those below L15, may be regarded as “uneconomic”—­that is, incapable by themselves of supplying a decent living to the farmer and his family.