In the House of Commons on Monday the Evicted Tenants
Bill was read a second time after a heated debate. Mr. Moore, the Unionist Member for North Armagh, pro- tested strongly against the compulsory powers in the Bill. All the bona farecases could be disposed of by voluntary methods. He believed that the figures given of the number of tenants to be dealt with were grossly exaggerated. Mr. Russell, the new Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture, who succeeded Sir Horace Plunkett, in defending the Bill, declared that compulsion was necessary. Compulsion must now be applied against the planters, those soldiers in the fight many of whom went into it to see what they could get out of it. That may be true, but Mr. Russell must not forget that his words will equally apply to many of the evicted tenants. Without question, in a very great number of cases they forced the landlords to evict them because they wanted to see what they could get out of it. Mr. Long declared that Mr. Russell had completely failed to justify such an extraordinary measure as that before the House. After Mr. Redmond had uttered the usual conventional warning as to what would happen if the Bill did not pass, Mr. Birrell wound up the debate in a speech in which he declared that to place evicted tenants in new holdings eighty thousand acres would be necessary. Some eight thousand claims had been sent in, and the Com- mission estimated that about two thousand of these deserved attention. The second reading of the Bill was carried by a majority of 217 (315-98).
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