To encourage sales of estates, and to enable owners to get such a sum as would give them their net income out of the purchase money, when reinvested in suitable securities, the Act provided that a bonus of 12 per cent. on the purchase money should be paid to the owner on the completion of the sale. At the same time the tenant was enabled to borrow the purchase money of his holding on easier terms. As we have seen, under the former Purchase Acts, the annuity rate was fixed at 4 per cent., of which 2-¾ per cent. was for interest and 1-¼ per cent. for a sinking fund, the accumulation of which, with compound interest, would repay the sum advanced in about forty-three years. Under the Act of 1903 the annuity rate which the tenant had to repay was reduced to 3-¼ per cent., of which 2-¾ per cent. is for interest and a ½ per cent. for sinking fund. This reduction in the sinking fund lengthens the period over which the repayment will extend to sixty-eight and a half years, and, of course, renders it practically impossible to continue the system of giving decadal reductions in the annuities. The decadal reductions, which were abolished by the Act of 1903, worked out at about 15 per cent. reduction in the annuity every ten years. The Act of 1903 also enabled owners to sell their demesnes and untenanted lands to the Commissioners, and to repurchase them, or so much of them as the Commissioners approved, with the aid of advances made to them in the same manner and under the same conditions as to tenant purchasers. The Act also gave considerable powers to the Commissioners of dealing with poor and uneconomic holdings. It enabled (Section 2) parcels of untenanted lands on the sale of an estate to be sold to the following persons: (_a_) A person being the tenant of a holding on the estate; (_b_) A person being the son of a tenant of a holding on the estate; (_c_) A person being the tenant or proprietor of a holding not exceeding five pounds in rateable value, situate in the neighbourhood of the estate; and, (_d_) A person who within twenty-five years before the passing of this Act was the tenant of a holding to which the Land Law Acts apply, and who is not at the date of the purchase the tenant or proprietor of that holding: Provided that in the case of the death of a person to whom an advance under this paragraph might otherwise have been made, the advance may be made to a person nominated by the Land Commission as the personal representative of the deceased person. This last class (_d_) was intended to provide for the reinstatement of tenants evicted from their holdings within the prescribed time.