On Wednesday, the discussion in Committee involved a number of
sharp duels between Lord Elcho and Sir William Harcourt, Lord Eleho suggesting that possibly the tenants would put guns into their labourers' hands, which would be used in the Irish fashion, for something else besides game; and Sir William Harcourt entreating the House not to interrupt Lord.
Elcho's discursiveness, as he had long ago found out that the best way with Lord Elcho was to let him "ran down." Lord Elcho, inquiring whether the Home Secretary were now speaking to the amendment, Sir W. Harcourt replied that that was indeed a. case of Catiline accusing others of sedition. Mr. Bright, having suggested that landowners would find it better to deal generously with their tenants than in the suspicious spirit many of their amendments implied, Lord John Manners rebuked him ; but Lord Eleho, dissatisfied with the rebuke, rose to suggest that the Home Secretary and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lan- caster should be given " concurrent rights," such as the tenant and the landowner were to have by the Bill, to interfere with and stop each other, and then indulged himself in forlorn anti- cipations L the results of this "vicious legislation." Through- out the del.. eta, Lord Elcho posed as though he had thrown himself dramatically into the post assigned to him by the very amusing " ballade " published the other day in the Pall Mall Gazette :-
" In a vision, an Elcho forlorn -
I beheld on an isle of the West, And his purple and linen were torn ; And he wailed as he beat on his breast :— My_people are men dispossessed ; They are vanished, and nobody cares, They have passed to the Land of the Blest,
They are gone with the rabbits and hares."
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