A well-informed writer in the Times states that the working
of the Ashbourne Act continues to be entirely satisfactory. Up to December 31st last, the number of applications for loans was 24,223, involving money to the amount of 29,504,000, and of this number only 2,430 were rejected permanently Many, indeed, even of these will at last be granted, the Commissioners only insisting on reductions in the amount of the loans. The great majority of the advances are to redeem small holdings, valued at less than 21,000, and half of them for holdings under 2200. The greatest proportion of applications comes from Ulster, but Munster follows suit closely, Connaught, as was to be expected from its poverty, being last of the four provinces. The instalments are paid with wonderful regu- larity. The total amount due up to November 1st, 1890, was 2518,792, of which only £12,946 was still in course of collection on January 16th, and this in spite of the partial failure of the potato crop. The tenants, in fact, consider, as Sir C. G. Duffy prophesied they would, that to fail in paying the instal- ments is to break their own bank while they have money deposited in it, They are all a great deal too keen for that, and a large proportion much too honest, they drawing a moral distinction between a payment in rent and a payment in purchase-money which no Englishman can see.
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