13 AUGUST 1881, Page 1

Yesterday week, the House of Lords amply justified our re-

mark that the passionate hatred of the very principle of the Irish Land Bill by which they had shown themselves to be animated, would compel them "to go just as near improving it off the face of the earth as the improvers dared go." On that day, they abandoned all pretence of the moderation with which they began their work, and hewed away pretty much as Samuel hewed at Agag, and probably in the same spirit of sedulous obedience to an authority which they held to be higher than mere policy. They inserted in Clause 7 words providing that the rent of a holding should never be reduced "on account of money or money's-worth paid by the tenant or his predecessors in title on coming into the holding,"—an amendment which would forbid the Court to take any account whatever of the value of the tenant-right, even regarded as evidence to what extent the landlord had virtually admitted the tenant to be a joint-proprietor, and would therefore, of course, strike at the very principle of tenant-right. Even the Duke of Argyll protested against this amendment, but it was inserted, by 157 votes to 110.