2. The Ashbourne Act of 1885 was the first successful measure of the kind. Five millions were advanced under it, and five millions more under an extending Act of 1887. Next came the Act of 1891, empowering the loan of thirty-three millions, followed by the amending and simplifying Act of 1896. These Acts form a body of legislation by themselves, of which I need refer only to a few salient characteristics. They were all alike in settling the tenant's annuity (in lieu of rent) at 4 per cent, on the purchase money, though the proportions allocated to interest and sinking-fund varied. Under the first two Acts the period for final redemption of his loan by the tenant was forty-nine years, under the third forty-two years, though this period was extended to seventy years if the tenant availed himself of decadal reductions in the annuity, proportionate to the capital paid off by the sinking-fund. The average price of the holdings sold under these Acts represented seventeen and a half years' purchase, and the tenant's great inducement to buy was that, by the aid of cheap State credit, the annuity he paid, even over so short a period as forty-nine years, represented a reduction of more than 20 per cent, on his existing judicial rent. Under the first Act, that of 1885, the landlord received the purchase money in cash, under the other two, in guaranteed 3 per cent, or 2| per cent, stock, an arrangement which suited him very well as long as Government stocks maintained the high level which they reached in the period preceding the South African War. With the heavy fall in stocks during and after the war, purchase came to a standstill. The net result of the operations under the Acts of 1885 to 1896 was that close upon twenty-four million pounds were advanced to 72,000 tenants, occupying about two and a half million acres, out of the total of 18,739,644 acres which constitute the agricultural area of Ireland. 3. Once begun, purchase had to be continued, if for no other reason than that a purchasing tenant paid in annuity a substantially lower sum than the non-purchasing judicial tenant paid in rent, with the additional, if distant, prospect of an absolute fee-simple in the future.