On Wednesday, Mr. Parnell moved the second reading of his
Irish Land Act Amendment Bill, a Bill which, in principle at least, would transfer the whole land of Ireland, except the rent representing the value of the wild land, to the tenants ; and which would subject the rents of all the leaseholders, as well as all the tenants-at-will, to the judicial parings of the Land Commission. Further, it proposes to extend very greatly the purchase clauses, and to make the judicial rents date, not from the time of the Court's decision, but from the time of the notice given to ask the decision of the Court. Mr. Parnell went over the ordinary Irish reasons for this great reopening of the whole question, but especially signalised his speech by the remark that the new judicial rents are in effect rack-rents which it will be quite impossible for the Irish tenant-farmers to pay,—a declaration which is too likely to be taken in Ireland as the inauguration of a new agitation against the machinery of the Land Act itself.
