'Land purchase,' therefore--the name is a mere untruth--has been a failure as regards 'dual ownership;' and it is establishing against the Irish landlord a false measure of rent, analogous to a base coinage, a strange achievement of a Conservative Government. Let us next consider what has been the working of this economic nostrum, with respect to the class, for the benefit of which it was first prescribed, and which has reaped the advantages it gives. The tenants, who have been made owners of their farms, have, as a rule, discharged their obligations to the State very well, though I could point to not a few exceptions; and there have been strikes against the payment of the terminable annuities in some instances. This may be sufficient for official bureaucrats; it is not sufficient for those who know Ireland, and can impartially watch the course of events. It was fondly expected that 'land purchase,' that is, bribing tenants in Ireland to become owners of their farms, would create a powerful body of freeholders loyal to the State; but this has already been seen to be a mere delusion. As Parnell predicted would be the case, these 'purchasers' are 'patriotic' in the highest degree; they fill the ranks of the United Irish League, that is, of a conspiracy against our rule in Ireland, and are numbered among its most efficient agents; human nature being what it actually is, this is precisely what was to be expected. It was confidently foretold, again, that these 'purchasers' would form a thriving class of model farmers; and that their lands would be patterns of admirable and improved peasant husbandry, but this forecast is being, in a great degree, falsified. These men, 'rocked and dandled into their possessions,' in the words of Burke, without a single guarantee for common prudence, and especially without an effort of their own, have, in hundreds of instances, turned out sorry failures; and it has been the almost universal practice of the whole class to cut down every tree that grows on their lands, an act of ruinous waste in a rain-drenched climate. Besides, as freehold ownership is not an Irish idea--indeed, is opposed to Irish ideas--these 'purchasers' have, in many cases, following the example of tenants 'at fair rents,' subdivided, sublet, or mortgaged their holdings; instead of remaining owners in a true sense, they are becoming middlemen lording it over rack-rented serfs. The agriculture, too, of hundreds of these farms is slovenly in the extreme, for bribery does not promote industry; what is 'easy got, easy goes' is a true proverb; and, in addition, a number of these men were really insolvent when they were made 'purchasers.' That Ireland will blossom like a rose, under these conditions, is seen even now to be a chimera; and there is much reason to believe that many of these 'purchasers' have become the prey of the race of local usurers, a consummation that might have been predicted. 'I shall sell my estate,' a witty Irishman once remarked, 'but I will keep two loan offices and four public-houses; and in two generations my "purchasing" tenants will be too happy to resell their lands to my grandsons.'