The Irish Land Act of 1903 was the product of the experience gained
during eighteen years of the operation of the preceding Purchase Acts.
It was founded upon an agreement made in 1902 between representatives of
Irish landlords and tenants. Cash payments were resumed to the
landlords, the tenants' instalments were reduced to 3-1/4 per cent., and
a bonus, as it was called, of twelve millions of money was made
available to bridge the gap between the landlords and the tenants at the
rate of 12 per cent, on the amount advanced. That Act possessed the
additional advantage of dealing with the estates as a whole instead of
with individual holdings, and it substituted the principle of speedy
purchase for that of dilatory litigation. This remarkable and generous
measure initiated a great and beneficent revolution, but every popular
and useful feature of the Act of 1903 was distorted or destroyed in the
Land Act which the present Government passed at the instigation of the
Irish Nationalist Party in 1909. In Mr. Wyndham's words "a solemn treaty
framed in the interest of Ireland was torn up to deck with its tatters
the triumph of Mr.
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