A bitter little debate took place in the House of
Commons on Tuesday, on the subject of the working of the Irish Land Act, in relation to the avowed intention of the Government to super- sede the recent system of appointing land-valuers in aid of the various Sub-Commissions, by multiplying the number of Sub- Commissioners themselves. Mr. Gibson asked leave to move the adjournment of the House to discuss this matter, representing it as a concession to the agitation of the tenants, and as result- ing from the tendency of these land-valuers to do more justice to the landlords than the Sub-Commissioners themselves had been inclined to do. The Government warmly denied this, Mr. Trevelyan stating that, so far as the estimates of the land- valuers had gone, they had had his support, and had seemed to have been in perfect keeping with the previous decisions of the Sab-Commissioners,—allowing, of course, for the fact that the worst cases had been the first to be brought before the Court. The reason the system of appointing land-valuers was to be super- seded was simply and wholly because it had not expedited the business of the Land Courts at all as it had been expected to expedite that business, and that therefore some improvement of method. had become essential. Mr. Treveryan's speech was a model of statesmanlike coolness, considering that Lord Randolph Churchill had just charged the Irish Government with being worse than the men. who stabbed the Irish juror in the streets of ,Dablin, seeing that, in order "to buy-off political agitation,"
it had "corrupted and poisoned the pure source of justice, and had assassinated the very Courts themselves." Lord Randolph evidently does not know how very weak strong language is, when it is so strong as to be ludicrously inapplicable.
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