The Irish Land Purchase Acts Amendment Bill passed its first
reading on Tuesday. Mr. Wyndham, in introducing the Bill, began by justifying the need for fresh legislation. The rent-fixing Act of 1881 had not, he thought, had the effect anticipated by its authors. Out of 336,000 rents brought into Court, 240,708 bad been fixed, and against these rents there had been 73,756 appeals. Litigation was increasing ; there were 13,000 appeals outstanding, and the number of appeals became yearly greater than the number disposed of As to State-aided purchase, he showed that the number of applica- tions for advances under the Purchase Acts had fallen from 8,000 four years ago to 3,000 last year, and claimed that this meant that we were getting to the end of the landlords pre- pared to sell under the conditions of the existing law. The main idea of the Bill before the House, which must be regarded as an organic whole, was an attempt " to shift the weight off the rent-fixing leg and to put it on the purchasing leg."
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