Baroness Burdett-Coutts has again been paraded (not now for the
first time) on the Tory side of the political struggle. This time her authority is quoted for the insecurity of Irish property, under the present Government's proposed legislation, on which it is said she declines to advance money. It will be wise, however, to set against this rather ostentatious use of her name Lord Portsmouth's admirable letter in Thurs- day's Times in favour of Mr. Forster's Bill, in which Lord Portsmouth argues that the real object of the Bill is, by stopping capricious evictions now, to check agitation. " I think it is as wise to do this, as to prevent a person from taking a lighted candle or a lighted cigar into a room where there is an opened barrel of gunpowder." Lord Portsmouth is himself a large Irish proprietor, and a large Irish proprietor on whose estates iu the county of Wexford the Ulster Custom was introduced half a century ago, with the best results. He knows, therefore, how salutary it is to prevent the tenant from losing, in times of extreme distress, that sense of property in his holding which the Act of 1870 gave to all who could pay their rents, and gave even in districts where the Ulster Custom does not at present prevail.
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