“The pivot of the Act of 1881,” to use the language of Mr. Forster, was the “Land Court” established to stand between landlords and tenants, to fix fair or judicial rents. Previously, the landlord was master of the situation. The competition for land placed the tenant at his mercy, and he accordingly fixed the rent at his own pleasure. But henceforth rents were to be fixed by legal tribunals; and while the tenant paid the rent so fixed, he could not be disturbed in his holding for a period of fifteen years. Roughly speaking, the Act changed Irish tenancies from tenancies at will practically to leaseholds, renewable every fifteen years, subject to revision of rent by the Land Courts. It also recognised the tenant’s right to sell his holding, and provided facilities for the creation of a peasant proprietary. But the Land Act of 1881 did not settle the land question. The system of dual ownership which it set up was agreeable neither to landlord nor tenant, and both now combined to demand fresh legislation for the purpose of enabling the tenants to purchase their holdings. The Act had destroyed the prestige of the landlords; they were disgusted with the spectacle of seeing “briefless barristers,” (as the Judges of the Land Courts were called), “rambling about the country” and fixing rents independently of their wishes; their occupation as territorial magnates was gone and they were now willing to dispose of their estates, if only they could obtain good terms. The cry of the tenant always had been the “land for the people,” and they raised that cry now louder than ever. Extraordinary as it may seem the English Tory party took the lead in responding to it. In 1885 the first of a series of Tory Land Purchase Acts was passed. By this measure the state was empowered to advance the whole of the purchase money to tenants who had agreed with their landlords to purchase their holdings; forty-nine years were allowed for repayment of the purchase money, at the rate of 4 per cent. per annum. Between 1885 and 1912 six more Land Purchase Acts were placed on the Statute book. With a single exception, all these Acts were passed by Tories. Therefore the Tories take credit to themselves for the policy of land purchase. But rather the credit belongs to Charles Stewart Parnell and the Land League, who, by the revolution of 1881, not only made land purchase possible, but made it inevitable. I cannot here deal with these Acts in detail(155) but the following table gives a list of them and shows how they have worked. It also mentions other Acts which contain provisions for facilitating the creation of a peasant proprietary.