Clause after clause was closely examined, and the defects exposed by Mr. Sexton in a series of articles, inspired if not actually written by him in the _Freeman_. He had done much service for Ireland in the past, but I doubt if his great abilities had ever been better applied than to the work of examination, elucidation, and amendment of the Land Bill of 1903. His criticisms culminated in the publication of a schedule of amendments which he claimed were necessary to the final settlement of the question. It is worth while now putting them on record, for they have a true historical value. It is now seen in the working of the act, that the acceptance of some of the amendments contained in the schedule materially improved the bill, while the omission of the others explains the necessity for still further legislation on the subject. The following is a summary of the amendments referred to:-- 1. The rights of tenants under the Fair Rent Laws should be maintained intact. 2. No non-judicial tenant should be excluded from purchase by reason merely of his tenure. Caretakers of holdings of which they had previously been tenants should have the rights of tenants for the purpose of purchasing such holdings. 3. As a condition precedent to purchase, non-judicial rents and first term rents fixed or agreed upon down to the end of 1896 should be reduced to the average level, substantially of second term rents, and purchase should not be transacted in the cases of non-judicial rents, or of such first term rents, except upon this basis. 4. The purchase system being voluntary, the compulsory limits of price in this bill should be struck out. 5. The aim of the system being to extinguish dual ownership and equal treatment being essential both as between past and future transactions, and also between the tenant who buys his holding and the landlord who buys back his land sold by him to the State, no rent charge should be reserved. Such a reservation would forever exclude the tenant from ownership, by erecting a new and perpetual system of landlordism in the place of the old. 6. The rate of interest on consols being now two and one-half per cent, the new guaranteed stock might be issued at two and one-half, instead of two and three-fourths as proposed, and by this means the decadal reductions, instead of being abolished as the bill provides, might be allowed at the rate of eight per cent; or, at the option of the purchaser, the period during which his annuity would be payable could be shortened by about ten years. If the annuity rate were three and one-half, the purchaser might be allowed to choose between decadal reductions at the rate of eleven per cent, and a term of redemption shorter by nearly twenty years than that prescribed in the bill.