It will readily be inferred, even by those unacquainted with Ireland; that a process for healing ancient wounds has been turned into a process for exasperating future conflicts. A blister has been substituted for a poultice on the sores of centuries. Existing agreements are blocked. Future agreements--for this is their appropriate, if cynical--designation, are relegated to a future which few can foresee. Landlords who have contracted to sell are threatened with bankruptcy by the foreclosure of mortgages. Tenants who have contracted to buy see their hopes deferred with sick hearts. Whilst to owners and occupiers who have not completed their bargains "no hope comes at all." The newly won prosperity of Ireland is doomed because the Nationalist party and British Government have not kept faith; and with prosperity peace is departing. The environment that breeds agrarian disorder and crime has been restored, and agitators, in expectation of Home Rule, are already at "their dirty work again." A new plan of campaign menaces the peace of Ireland in those districts whose past records are most darkly stained. _Examination of the reasons alleged for tearing up the Treaty of 1903_.--The Government defended their reversal of the policy of 1903, and departure from their pledges to carry out that policy, by making two assertions. They asserted (1) that the size of the problem, which all parties undertook to solve, would exceed by far the speculative estimate put forward in 1903; (2) that the credit of the British Exchequer, which they have depressed, would prove unequal to the burden foreshadowed by the new dimensions, which they have assigned. (1) _Size of the problem_. The first assertion, that much nearer L200,000,000 than L100,000,000 must be borrowed in order to complete purchase, is based on two assumptions explicitly stated in the Return presented to Parliament (Cd. 4412 of 1908) as follows: "It will be observed that the purchase money of the agricultural land not yet brought before the Commissioners for sale under the Land Purchase Acts has been estimated _on the assumption that it will be all sold_ and that _it will be sold on an average at the price for which lands had been sold up to 30th April last, under the Irish Land Act_ (1903)." The assumptions on which the Government proceeded are not, therefore, in doubt, but the validity of those assumptions, on which the whole case of the Government depends, is refuted by the ascertained facts of Irish agriculture. The census shows that the number of agricultural holdings in Ireland is about 490,000, including nearly 19 million acres. The whole area of Ireland includes some 21 million acres, apportioned to 3-1/2 million acres under crops, 6 million acres of waste, and 11-1/2 million acres under grass. The Return to which I have referred (Cd. 4412 of 1908) cavils at the figures given in the census on the ground that the 490,000 "holdings" are more