Mr. Forster's Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill has now pulled
through all its various stages, except the third reading. On Thursday night Mr. Forster fixed the limit to the Bill at holdings of which the valuation was not above £30 annually, equivalent to a £42 or even perhaps a £45 rent. The third reading, on which there will be another field-night, takes place on Monday. It will pass that reading, no doubt, by a good majority, and then the House of Lords will have to choose whether to reject, or mutilate, or acquiesce in it ; and if they adopt the second alternative, to decide on whether or not they will insist on their amendments, if the House of Commons decline to agree to them. Mr. Parnell, by his pertinacious resistance on Monday night, provoked the Prime Minister to say that though Mr. Parnell had the great advantage over him that he was young, while he himself was old, he might chance to find that the result of the struggle would not be the victory on which Mr. Paruell appeared to count. If the House of Lords throws out such a measure brought in upon the responsibility of the Government, and supported as it has been supported, in the teeth of such virulent opposition as Mr. Parnell has offered it, they will play the rather strange part, for a Conservative Assembly, of co-operating with the man- oeuvres of the Land League, whatever they may think of their ends.
