after purchase were from 15 per cent. to 25 per cent. less than such rents so revised.  They invited the Government to give effect to that agreement.  The Government accepted and, in the Act of 1903, tendered the costly but, under the circumstances, not extravagant imprimatur of the Treasury on a political treaty thenceforward to be binding on all three contracting parties:  landlords, tenants, and the State.  The Nationalist members, as spokesmen for the tenants, and the representatives of the landlords, subscribed to the provisions offered, and the reports of the Estates Commissioners prove that these have been fulfilled so exactly that, in the case of second term rents, landlords and tenants have obtained average incomes and reductions that differ only by a decimal from the mean advocated at the Conference.

The objects of the Irish Land Act were, in conformity with the conclusions of the Conference, to abolish dual ownership rapidly and, at the same time, to deal systematically with “agricultural slums.”  Its salient features fall under four heads.

A. State assistance to voluntary bargaining. For this purpose it was provided that (1) cash payments should be resumed to the landlords; (2) that the tenants’ instalments should be L3 5_s._ for each L100 advanced, divided into L2 15_s._ (2-3/4 per cent.) for interest and 10_s._ for sinking fund.  This was not, as the able and well-informed special correspondent of the Times suggests (February 9, 1912) a sudden departure from an instalment of L4.  “Decadal reductions” under the Act of 1896 had, as I have said, diminished the instalments of purchasers under the Act of 1891 to L3 8_s. 7d._ after ten years with further prospective diminutions, and subjected the instalments of purchasers under earlier Acts to a similar process.  A wholesale expansion of purchase was impossible unless would-be purchasers were offered terms comparable to those accorded to their predecessors.  For this reason the tenantry of Ireland were offered repayment at L3 5_s._ per L100 for a period of about 62 years, in lieu, under the Act of 1896, of repayment at L3 8_s. 9d._, with further reductions, for about 72-1/2 years, and their representatives accepted the offer.  They would certainly have refused, and rightly, the offer substituted by Mr. Birrell in the Act of 1909, viz. an instalment of L3 10_s._ with the same sinking fund—­10_s._—­and interest increased to L3.  The third feature to be noted under this head is, that the terms agreed to by representatives of landlords and tenants at the conference could not be ratified unless the State added some help by way of cash to the assistance of its credit.  It was agreed by all parties that L12,000,000 should be available to bridge the gap, at the rate of 12 per cent. on the amount advanced, with the right to revise that rate after five years, but only for the purpose of extending the bonus—­as it was called—­to all future transactions.  It was an integral part of a solemn covenant that the bonus should not be diverted to any object other than the abolition of dual ownership and the remedy of “congestion.”