Page:The Irish land acts; a short sketch of their history and development.djvu/32

22 adjusting the relation between landlord and tenant were to be solved by its abolition; and land ownership was to take the place of land tenure.  

Under the Irish Church Act of 1869 for the first time State funds were given to help tenants to purchase their holdings, but this was not a Land Purchase Act, and its benefits were confined to a limited class.

Under this Act the Church Temporalities Commissioners were empowered to sell to tenants of Church Lands their holdings at prices to be fixed by the Commissioners themselves. If the tenants refused to buy on the terms offered to them, the Commissioners could sell to the public. The sale of each holding was for cash, or if one-fourth was paid in cash, the balance of the purchase money might be secured on a mortgage of the holding, to be paid off in thirty-two years by sixty-four half-yearly instalments.

The Commissioners sold in all to 6,057 tenants, at an average price of twenty-two and two-thirds years' purchase of the rents, and the total amount of the money given on loan was £1,674,841. The Commissioners of Public Works were the lending authority.

The terms of repayment and the rate of interest charged on loans were afterwards altered and reduced under the Purchase of Land Act of 1885, section 23.

The creation of a peasant proprietary in Ireland by State aid was tentatively commenced by the "Bright Clauses" of the Act of 1870. It was helped on by the Act of 1881, but the first real attempt to settle the Land Question on such lines was the "Ashbourne Act" of 1885, which enabled the entire purchase money of a holding to be advanced by the State. Mr. Balfour's Act of 1891, however, placed land purchase by State aid on a new and ingenious basis. That, as extended by Mr. Wyndham's Act of 1903, laid the foundations for the complete abolition of landlordism in Ireland.

The following pages give a short account of the Land Purchase provisions of these and the various Amending Acts.

Landlord and tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870.

Under what are known as the "Bright Clauses" of this Act, the landlords and tenants of agricultural or pastoral holdings could arrange for a sale of their holdings with State aid to be carried out in the Landed Estates Court. Upwards of two-thirds of the price agreed upon could be advanced by the Board