The Land Acts (officially Land Law (Ireland) Acts) were a series of measures to deal with the question of tenancy contracts and peasant proprietorship of land in Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Five such acts were introduced by the government of the United Kingdom between 1870 and 1909. Further acts were introduced by the governments of the Irish Free State after 1922 and more acts were passed for Northern Ireland. The success of the Land Acts in reducing the concentration of land ownership is indicated by the fact that in 1870, only 3% of Irish farmers owned their own land while 97% were tenants. By 1929, this ratio had been reversed with 97.4% of farmers holding their farms in freehold. However, as Michael Davitt and other Georgists had foreseen, peasant proprietorship did not cure everything that ailed the Irish countryside. Emigration and economic disadvantage continued apace, while the greatest beneficiaries of land reform were the middle class of medium farmers. Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act 1870 Background The British Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, had taken up the "Irish question" in an effort to win the general election of 1868 by uniting the Liberal Party behind this single issue. The shock of Fenian violence, especially in England, as well as the growing awareness of the potency of strong nationalist feelings in pan-European politics, was a second reason to tackle the Irish question. Gladstone desired to bring peace with fairness to Ireland, and by extension, the rest of the UK, which was then at the zenith of worldwide Imperial power. The Landlord & Tenant (Ireland) Act 1870 was partly the work of Chichester Fortescue, John Bright and Gladstone. The Irish situation was favourable, with agriculture improving and pressure on the land decreasing since the Great Irish Famine. The Encumbered Estates' Court (1849) and agitation by the Tenant Right League had led to the sale of estates by debt-ridden mainly absentee landlords. Gladstone's Liberal government had no explicit mandate for the Act, unlike the Irish Church Act 1869, and so could expect some opposition from the English landlord class in the House of Lords, fearful for the implications of property rights in England, many of whom were Whigs that Gladstone relied on for support in Parliament. Partly for this reason, Gladstone's approach was cautious, even conservative, for he was dedicated to maintaining the landlord class whose "social and moral influence",