It had for long been evident that the small, impoverished holdings, which had supported a dense population before the famine, stood in need of fundamental remodelling if they were to support even a largely reduced population.  The efforts made by wealthy Irish landlords in this direction were arrested by the Land Law Act of 1870 and rendered impossible by the Land Law Act of 1881.  With the Purchase Acts of 1891 and 1896 a beginning was made.

Another feature must be noted.  In addition to the value of any one holding, as a security against individual failure, a further security was provided against the risk of a combined refusal to repay.  The Exchequer was empowered to retain grants due for various purposes in Ireland and to recoup itself in proportion to the defalcation in any county.  It should be added that individual failures have been rare to the point of insignificance, and that no combined refusal has been attempted, or advocated, even during periods of agricultural unrest.

Under the Acts of 1891 and 1896 in the course of just over twelve years more than 44,000 tenants became owners by virtue of advances which amounted to over L13,000,000.  Here we must note that the success of these Acts coincided with, and depended on, a rise in the price of gilt-edged securities.  The number of applications 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