Lord Lansdowne on Monday moved for the appointment of a
Royal Commission to inquire into the best means of promoting the acquisition by the peasants of a proprietary interest in the soil of Ireland, a motion supported byLord Dunraven, in one of those inaccurate and irritating speeches, in which he is accustomed to. accuse the Government of all the faults and flaws which are reflec- tions of his own mind. The Government, he said, had done all in its power to discourage the loyal classes. They had, further, a fatal tendency to blunder in all their statements He could recall no statement of the present Government which had not turned out "absolutely false and wrong." The Government had been wholly mistaken in supposing that the Land-League agitation was directed against high rents at all; it was directed against the Union with England. The state of things was growing- worse, and the reductions of rent were growing larger. Lord Carlingford pointed out the blunders of Lord Dunraven. It was not in the least true that the reductions of rent were growing larger, as the Commission came to the great estates;. the redactions were steadily diminishing. Lord Carlingford thought this was not the time for appointing a new Commission such as had been proposed. The minds of the peasantry were at present fixed on the amount of their rents, and not on the best mode of turning their security of tenure into absolute property,. and it was best to deal with one subject at a time. So Lord Lansdowne, recognising that it was useless to press a Com- mission in the opportuneness of which the Government did not concur, withdrew his motion.
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