The most remarkable and the worst effect--with a revolutionary tendency in no doubtful sense--of this mischievous system has, however, to be still noticed. About one out of ten of the agricultural tenants of Ireland have 'purchased' their farms in the way described; the fund available for 'land purchase' cannot include more than one in five; and the process is and must be slow, owing to the law's delay. Legislation, therefore, with a singular want of insight, has drawn, and is drawing, an unjust distinction between 'purchasing' and rent-paying tenants; it is dividing them into a small favoured class, and a multitude harshly left out in the cold--fat sheep in one fold, lean goats in another; as the inevitable result, the rent-paying tenant resents the benefits obtained by 'the purchaser;' and the immense majority of the farmers of Ireland are made discontented with their lot, from their point of view not without reason. It is idle to say to this great body of men that they have already gained advantages from the State, on which they never reckoned thirty years ago, and that they have the 'Three F's,' and all that the phrase implies; those who have secured much are eager to secure more; the unfair distinction arbitrarily made against them is unintelligible and exasperating, man being what he is. The policy of 'voluntary purchase,' as it is called, has, accordingly, from the very nature of the case, provoked and called into being the cry for the 'compulsory purchase' of the Irish land, now being heard far and wide in Ireland--that is, for the forcible expropriation of all Irish landlords, and for placing all their tenants, in their stead, as owners of their estates. This demand has as yet been rejected by statesmen, and is, I believe, both hopeless and shameful; but it has, nevertheless, some logic on its side; it is a corollary from legislation essentially bad; and, backed as it is by a large force of Irish opinion, it cannot be ignored or treated with contempt. It is simply extraordinary that many Irish landlords have been encouraging, and still encourage, 'voluntary purchase,' on its existing lines, and will not perceive that it leads to 'compulsory purchase;' either from a desire to dispose of parts of their estates, or from motives not easy to understand, they are promoting a revolution, which, if accomplished, would assure their ruin, as I shall conclusively prove afterwards. But the well-informed and most thoughtful members of their class are not flies lured into a bottle by a bit of sugar; they are alive to all that is involved in what is called 'land purchase.' Many years ago, when Parliament was voting funds for 'voluntary purchase,' on the present system, I indicated what would be the results; I only claim credit for some share of common sense: 'Law will have been severing the occupiers of the soil by an arbitrary process into a pampered caste, marked off from a disfavoured multitude; and, as a necessary consequence, the mass of tenants, kept in an inferior position, will be filled with discontent--and from their point of view with perfect justice--when, as the advances from the State run short, their prospects of "land purchase" shall wane and diminish. An "ugly rush" will be made throughout the country to force landlords, as a class, to sell, in order to get a chance of buying; in Ulster the cry for "compulsory purchase," already heard, will swell high and fierce.'[144]