NEWS OF THE WEEK.
TrIHE Conservative meeting at the Carlton Club on Tuesday
was a very important one. Lord Salisbury, in his address, explained that the Government is more or less dependent on a thorough understanding with the Unionist Party, and that without give or take, the alliance on which the re- sistance to Home-rule depends must come to an end. The Liberal lJnionists had agreed to press for alterations in the Irish Land Bill which are of considerable importance, and, indeed, are alterations without which Ulster would very probably be lost to the Unionist cease. These modifications are the inclusion of all the leaseholders except the perpetuity leaseholders in the right to have their rents revised; the abandonment of the bankruptcy clauses ; the restraint of all creditors, whether landlords or others, from the use of the action of fieri facial against the tenant-right and the agricul- tural produce; the extension of the equity clauses ; and the application by the Land Court of a redaction of judicial rents, calculated on a sliding-scale regulated by cost of produce, the reduction to vary with each district and each year, and to extend only for three years, till a Purchase Bill can be passed and acted on. Colonel Sanderson and Lord Kilmorey pro- tested vehemently against this latter concession, as a breach of faith with the landlords who had been given their judicial rents for fifteen years on the security of a Parliamentary title. But Sir John Mowbray, Sir John Kennaway, Mr. Goldsworthy, and Mr. Howorth all warmly supported the concession, and, indeed, the Conservative gathering was nearly unanimous in that sense. Certainly the last reproach that ought to be brought against the Conservative Party of the present day is that it is too Conservative.
