of which 20,500 were unlet.

Under the Act, however, in the case of "Congested Estates," which are
defined as those in which one-half at least of the holdings are of
valuation of £5 or under, or which consist of mountain or bog, the Land
Commission is empowered to purchase and re-sell to the tenants, even at
a loss, so long as the total loss on the purchase and improvements of
these holdings does not exceed 10 per cent. of the cost of the total
sales effected in the course of the same year. The amendments of the
House of Lords, however, made the part of the Act dealing with this
question a dead letter, and the Land Commissioners have given up the
attempt to put it in force. The landlords, having a choice between sale
direct to their tenants and to the Land Commission, have refused to give
their consent to the declaration of their estate as a congested estate,
which is necessary for the application of this section, unless they
receive a guarantee that the holdings shall not be sold to the tenants
at a lower price than they themselves could have obtained. The result is
that if the Commissioners were to pay these maximum prices there would
be nothing left for them out of which to make the necessary
improvements, and, in consequence, this provision of the Act has been a
failure.

As regards the evicted tenants, the first condition in the settlement
arrived at by the Land Conference, and embodied in the Wyndham Act, was
that they--the wounded soldiers in the land war, as they have been
called--to whose sacrifices in the common cause is due the ameliorative
legislation enacted by Parliament, should be restored to their holdings.
In actual practice, by means of restrictive instructions issued by the
late Government to the Commissioners, two of whom protested against this
action in their report for 1906, the provisions of the Act which