Page:The Irish land acts; a short sketch of their history and development.djvu/35

25 The total charge on the Fund to 31st March, 1916, was about 85½ million pounds in respect of advances made on the security of the Fund, and taking pending applications for advances into account, the approximate charges amounted at that date to about 116 millions.

The Act of 1891 was amended in various respects by Mr. Gerald Balfour's Act of 1896, which introduced, among other changes, a method of reducing every decade (up to thirty years after the advance was made), the annuity to be paid by the tenant purchaser. As under the "Ashbourne Act" of 1885, this annuity was calculated at £4 per cent. on the purchase money, two and three-quarters per cent. being for interest, and one and a quarter per cent. being sinking fund. Under Mr. Gerald Balfour's system, during the first decade after the purchase, the annuity is calculated on the original advance, and during the second and third decades on the portion of the advance which is ascertained to be unpaid at the end of the previous decade. At the end of the third decade the annuity is calculated on the amount of the advance then outstanding, and runs until the entire debt is paid off. The Act of 1896 also permitted the Land Commission to dispense with the whole or any part of the guarantee deposit required under the Act of 1885 if the security for the repayment of the advance was considered to be sufficient without it (section 29).

The number of loans issued under these Acts of 1891 and 1896 to tenant purchasers up to 31st March, 1916, was 46,834, amounting to £13,146,892, being 17&middot;7 years' purchase of the rents (Land Commission Report).  

It will be convenient to pause for a moment at the stage we have now reached and take a retrospective glance at the progress made in Land Purchase with a view to ascertaining how far actual experience confirms the theoretical advantages of peasant proprietorship, and what, if any, are the drawbacks attendant on the establishment of such a system in Ireland. The materials for this retrospect are to be found in the Report of an Inquiry instituted in November, 1902, into the condition of Tenant Purchasers who had acquired their holdings under the Land Acts. For the purposes of this Report, which was the first comprehensive survey of the working of the Land Commission, 65 Estates, selected indifferently from the four provinces