Page:Peasant proprietary in Ireland; a rejoinder.djvu/18

 The evidence as to Jersey and Alderney is of a similar character. Mr. Thornton, speaking of the Channel Islands says:—

The Church Act to a small extent encouraged the experiment of peasant ownership in Ireland, and the results of the trial are far from discouraging, although after the arrangement and basis of purchase were decided upon agricultural depression set in so heavily, and prices for all kinds of produce fell so considerably, that unless the land were very low-rented it would be difficult to make its cultivation pay. The tenants under the incentive of security purchased their homesteads at a fancy price, even as things were then, but the subsequent fall in values has made their terms simply extravagant. Yet they have borne up under the crushing weight of such a liability unrelieved by an Arrears Act or those customary annual concessions in rent which even the most exacting and hardfisted landlord was compelled to allow. In the West Mr. Pim tried a similar experiment on a small scale with equally satisfactory results. At Newport near Westport he allowed his tenants to purchase their holdings at about twenty years purchase of their rent. Depression came, yet the peasant owners bore manfully up against the pitiless storm, managing not only to live but to pay up with creditable, if surprising, regularity and