It is evident that Mr. Williara Redmond's remarkable speech in
the debate of last Wednesday week (August 1st) produced a great effect in preventing compromise on the part of the Government, and rendering even the Unionists too hopeless of success to offer formally the voluntary arrangement which they have again and again declared that they should be willing to accept. Mr. William Redmond, after declaring his horror of outrage (which appears to be a common form of recital in the speeches of those Irish orators who predict outrage), went on to plead for the amendment in favour of including those evicted tenants who had been super- seded by new tenants, in these words —"By this Bill the Government give the sanction to landgrabbing which was regarded in Ireland as pure robbery If this amend- ment were not passed, he should advise the boycotting of these landgrabbers, and the people would take the matter into their own hands if the Legislature did not interfere. In spite of the policy of the Government, public opinion would compel the landgrabbers to give up these farms Unless they dealt with this question of landgrabbing, the people would deal with it themselves. This winter, he feared, there would be bad work in Ireland, and then there would be a Bill dealing with landgrabbing introduced into this House. By defeating the amendment, the Government would open the flood-gates of agitation in Ireland, for there was no Nationalist Member of the House in any section who could go down and argue in favour of the attitude of the Govern- ment towards landgrabbing."
