hypothecated for the costs of flotation of the twenty millions of Land
Stock which have already been issued, and under the present system of
finance, after a further issue of another twenty millions of stock, the
whole loss will be thrown on the County Councils, and through them on
the ratepayers, who have already been called upon to pay £70,000 to meet
certain of the losses in this connection, which amount to twelve per
cent. of the value of the stock floated.

The breaking up of the grazing lands, which in many instances the
landlords are keeping back from the market, has not met with much
success under the Act, and it is difficult to see how compulsion is to
be avoided if the country is to be saved from the economically
disastrous position of having established in it a number of occupying
owners on tenancies which are not large enough to secure to them a
living wage.

Under the Land Act of 1891 was created the Congested Districts Board,
with an annual income of £55,000, for the purpose of promoting the
permanent improvement of the backward districts of the West. The
districts which come under its control are those which answer the
following test, that more than twenty per cent. of the population of a
county live in electoral divisions, of which the total rateable value
gives a sum of less than 30s. per head of population. Such electoral
divisions occur in the nine counties of Kerry, Cork, Galway, Mayo,
Clare, Roscommon, Leitrim, Sligo, Donegal. In these counties there are
1,264 electoral divisions, of which 429 are congested. The setting up of
particular districts as "congested" is, of course, quite arbitrary.
There may be places outside the congested areas the condition of which
is much worse than that of some of the congested districts, but if the
population of these districts does not form one-fifth of that of the