Mr. Shaw-Lefevre writes to Thursday's Times to maintain that there
is nothing surprising at all in the vote of the leaders of Opposition for Mr. O'Kelly's Evicted Tenants Bill. He says he proposed last year "compulsory arbitration" on the subject of the restitution of the evicted tenants, if "the intervention of the Government should fail." Well, that was bad enough ; but even "compulsory arbitration" could hardly have been expected to restore the worst class of tenants, the tenants who had adopted the "Plan of Campaign" for instance under the most unjustifiable circumstances. Mr. O'Kelly's Bill of this year simply restored all such tenants, whether the most guilty or the most innocent, and turned out the actual cultivators, whether they were owners or tenants, without suggesting any sort of compensation. Mr. Lefevre now says that no one objects to compensation; but Mr. O'Kelly's Bill said nothing of compensation, and the Opposition leaders voted for Mr. O'Kelly's Bill without amending it. It was certainly a Bill to condone fraud and to mulct honest industry.
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