This project was brought before the House of Commons on
Monday night,—in discussing the proposal to go into Committee of Supply,—and denounced with his usual violence by Mr. Biggar and his colleagues in the Land League, who fastened on a very in- judicious sentence in Mr. Kavanagh's letter quoting the opinion of a Resident Magistrate that such a Corporation as this would do more to prevent outrages than all the efforts of the police,—a matter with which a Resident Magistrate, in that capacity, han certainly nothing on earth to do, and with which it is in the highest degree injudicious for him to meddle. This Mr. Trevelyan at once admitted, but declared that with regard to such private combinations as these,—whether on the side of the landlords or on the side of the tenants,—so long as they kept within the law, the Irish Government had nothing in the world to do, and would remain strictly impartial. Violent as Mr. Sexton and others of the extreme Irish party were, they made out no good case against Mr. Kavanagh's scheme, their whole rhetoric. being founded on imputations of motive which it is impossible to discover in Mr. Kavanagh's letter, and which are quite incon- sistent with his well-known views on the Land question. This Irish party, though they themselves live in houses which once were of glass, are extremely fond of throwing volleys of stones,. but no doubt they are well aware that nothing can riddle their own well-riddled shelter more effectually than it has been riddled long ago; and therefore they do not deny themselves the pleasure of trying to reduce the habitations of others to a ruin more like their own.
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