The salient features in this procedure were that the landlord received cash and that the tenant paid interest at the then existing rate on Consols, viz. 3 per cent. Both these features are important. A payment in cash, or its equivalent, is preferable for such transactions to a payment in stock, with a fluctuating value, because, if the stock appreciates the landlord gets more than he bargained for, and this, by arousing the suspicions of other would-be tenant-purchasers, produces a disinclination on their part to buy. Again, if the stock depreciates, the landlord cannot carry out contemplated redemptions of mortgages on his property, and this produces a disinclination on the part of other landlords to sell. In the second place it is difficult to persuade Irish tenants that the State is assisting them if they, the poor, are asked to pay higher interest for the State's credit than the State pays for the credit of the rich. The chief defect in this procedure lay in its restriction to separate bargains in respect of single holdings. It made a patchwork, whereas the untoward results of the historic and economic causes on which I have touched demanded the wholesale treatment of convenient areas. Under these Acts, in the course of six years, more than 27,000 tenants became owners by virtue of advances which amounted to over L10,000,000. The largest number of applications for purchase in any one year was 6,195 for L2,271,569 in 1887, and the average price for all the holdings bought under these Acts was L396.