District Councils, and their parsimony is to be appeased by the fact
that the funds, which are largely derived from economics in the Irish
Executive are advanced at a rate of interest, not as heretofore of 4-7/8
per cent., but, as in the case of land purchase advances, of 3-1/4 per
cent., repayable in a period of 68-1/2 years. The urgency of the problem
is obvious. The bearing of this state of affairs in rural housing on the
fact that in 1904 two out of every thirteen deaths were due to
tuberculosis shows that it is impossible to overestimate its importance,
and I think that this condition of things, put side by side with the
other economic facts with which I have dealt, are a sufficient reply to
those who declare that conditions in Ireland would appear _couleur de
rose_ were they not seen through the jaundiced eyes of a discontented
people.

If the catalogue of Acts of Parliament which have been found necessary
to effect the transformation of the system of tenure in Ireland from the
state in which it was forty years ago to that in which it is to-day is
evidence of the pressing grievance under which the country has suffered;
it is also proof that there cannot be legislation other than by shreds
and patches on the part of a legislature which lacks sympathy for and
knowledge of the country for which it is making laws.

The need for exceptional and separate legislation in Ireland has been
admitted, and the system which existed in fact, obtained legal sanction
only in 1881, to be in its turn swept away by further legislation which
will have a deeper economic bearing on the future of the country than
any other change since the relaxation of the Penal Laws. For the rest I
cannot do better than quote, in this connection, the opinion of the most
dispassionate critic of Ireland of recent years--Herr Moritz Bonn.
Speaking of the landlord who has sold his estate he says--"He has no