Colonel Saunderson put the case for the landlords with his
usual humour and keenness, if without much statesmanship. He drew attention to the high prices paid for tenant-right, sometimes from twenty to thirty years' purchase. He joined issue with the Leader of the House, the Chief Secretary, and the Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell), in think- ing that the solution of the Irish problem lay in the abolition of dual ownership. If the present landlords were abolished, landlordism would reappear. It was doing so even now in the cases of purchasing tenants, who sublet the land they had bought at a rent which paid all the instalments. The tenants preferred a landlord who could give time and abatements, and could in the last resort be shot at, to the British Government. Mr. Redmond, for his part, denied that any one thought the Bill a fraud. It was not the sort of Bill the Nationalists would themselves have brought in, nor would it solve the question, but no respectable Irishman wanted it wrecked. Mr. Dillon even agreed substantially with this view. The result was a successful appeal from Mr. Balfour to allow the Bill to be read a second time, on the understanding that the Committee stage should be taken on Friday.
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