In the discussion on the Tenants' Improvements (Ireland) Bill, on
Wednesday, the new Secretary for Ireland, Mr. Lowther, availed himself of the opportunity the Bill gave him for deliver- ing a blow at the Irish Land Act of 1870. He declared that he was not responsible for that Act, and was not going to develope its policy, though he was not going to propose its repeal. If a surgeon were called in to see a patient whose leg another surgeon had needlessly amputated, that other surgeon could not, of course, put the leg on again, but he could dissent from the treatment, and decline to pursue further any treatment that implied the wisdom of the amputation. Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen hereupon remarked very justly that this speech would be taken in Ireland as ominous of a new policy of a kind opposed to that of the Irish Land Act, and that nothing would give a greater stimulus to agitation for further development of the policy so condemned. And Mr. Knatchbudl-Hugessen is right. Mr. Gladstone once denied that the Irish are a one-legged race, which is perhaps the reason why Mr. Lowther is so eager to prove that they are 'one-legged, and that it is Mr. Gladstone's policy which made them so. But now that Ireland knows what the Irish Secretary regards as the cause of her crippled condition, Ireland will want to send the other leg after the first, and to be,—in Mr. Lowther's :sense,—without legs altogether. The next popular cry in Ireland will probably be, " Amputate, amputate, amputate !"
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