on their holdings.  Most of the nation were restricted to agriculture under conditions that spelt failure, and imposed exile as the penalty for failure, since other avenues to competence were closed.  The climax of misfortune was reached a generation after the triumph of Free Trade.  Ireland, being almost wholly an agricultural country, suffered as a whole, whereas England, an industrial country, suffered only in districts, from the collapse of agricultural prices in 1879.  That catastrophe in rural life precipitated Mr. Gladstone’s Land Law Act (Ireland), 1881.  Being precluded by his political tenets from protecting Irish agriculture against foreign competition, or assisting it with the resources of the State, Mr. Gladstone aimed at alleviating the distress due to the decadence of a national industry by defining with meticulous nicety the respective shares which the two parties engaged in agriculture—­landlord and tenant—­were to derive from its dwindling returns.  He believed that the proportion of diminishing profits due to the landlord, because of the inherent capabilities of his property, and to the tenant, because of his own and his predecessors’ exertions, could be roughly determined by a few leading cases in the Land Court; and, further, that landlords and tenants throughout Ireland would conform to such guidance as these decisions might afford.  In this anticipation he ignored the vital function of agriculture in Irish life, and the effect which the growing stringency of agricultural conditions would have on a population that loved the land and rejoiced in litigation.  He created dual-ownership throughout Ireland, and this led, as Lord Dufferin and other far-seeing statesmen had foretold, to the land being starved of both capital and industry.  Irish agriculture was brought to the brink of ruin.  The misery of those involved in that pass was exploited to engineer an attack on the fabric of social order, and the lawlessness so engendered was adduced as an argument for dissolving the Union under which such tragedies could occur.

The leaders of the Conservative Party, when confronted with this situation, determined that their duty, in accordance with the spirit of the Act of Union, demanded some use of the resources of a joint exchequer for ministration to the peculiar needs of Ireland.  They decided that the credit of the State should be employed to effect the abolition of dual-ownership by converting the occupiers of Irish farms into owners of the soil.  Let it be granted that this policy had been advocated by John Bright and enshrined in the Land Law Acts of 1870 and 1881.  It must be added that these pious intentions remained a “dead letter” until adequate machinery for giving them effect was provided by the Land Purchase Acts, commonly called the Ashbourne Acts, of 1885 and 1889.  The method pursued was as follows.  Any individual landlord could agree with any individual tenant on the price which he would accept for the extinction