Under the first Act, that of 1885, the landlord received the purchase money in cash, under the other two, in guaranteed 3 per cent, or 2| per cent, stock, an arrangement which suited him very well as long as Government stocks maintained the high level which they reached in the period preceding the South African War.  With the heavy fall in stocks during and after the war, purchase came to a standstill.  The net result of the operations under the Acts of 1885 to 1896 was that close upon twenty-four million pounds were advanced to 72,000 tenants, occupying about two and a half million acres, out of the total of 18,739,644 acres which constitute the agricultural area of Ireland.

3.  Once begun, purchase had to be continued, if for no other reason than that a purchasing tenant paid in annuity a substantially lower sum than the non-purchasing judicial tenant paid in rent, with the additional, if distant, prospect of an absolute fee-simple in the future.

Mr. Wyndham, acting on the recommendation of a friendly Conference between landlords and tenants, took the bull by the horns in 1903, and carried the great Land Act of that year.  Under the Wyndham Act the system of cash payment to the landlord, dropped since 1891, was resumed, on a basis calculated to give a selling landlord a sum which, invested in gilt-edged 3 or 31/4 per cent. stocks, would yield him as much as the second term judicial rents on the holdings sold, less 10 per cent., representing his former cost of collection; while the annuity payable by the tenant in lieu of rent was reduced from 4 to 31/4 per cent., of which 21/2 per cent, was interest on the purchase money advanced, and 1/2 per cent, was sinking-fund.  This reduction involved an extension of the period of redemption from forty-nine to sixty-eight and a half years.  The annuity was calculated to represent an average reduction of from 15 to 25 per cent, on second-term judicial rents.  Since the gross income of the landlord was to be reduced only by 10 per cent. on a basis of 3 per cent. investments, while the annual payment by the tenant was to be reduced by an average of 20 per cent., clearly there was a gap to be filled up, and this gap was filled by a State bonus to the selling landlord of 12 per cent, on the purchase money, a bonus which went wholly to him personally, clear of all reversionary rights under settlements.  A sum of twelve millions altogether was to be expended on the bonus.

In addition to direct sales between landlord and tenant through the Estates Commissioners, large powers were also given both to the Land Commission and the Congested Districts Board for the purchase and resale of certain classes of estates—­land in congested districts, untenanted land, etc.