Mr. Bright condemned all "the violent and impossible schemes where
tenants, apparently, are to fix their own rents, the landlords to be got rid of and banished in a body, and the Government was to undertake some gigantic transaction, raising two or three hundreds of millions of money to buy them out of their estates, and convey the estates over to the farmers." But, speaking for himself, and not for the Government, he did think that it would be desirable to secure the tenant-farmers against arbitrary raisings of rent, as well as arbitrary evictions ; to facilitate very much the fair purchase of the estates of landlords by tenants, whenever the landlords are willing to sell ; and to buy something like 1,000,000 acres of waste land, of which the crowded peasantry, who are now starving on the poor land in the West, might be made the owners or occupiers, on easy terms. Mr. Bright also warned the country that the Land Bill, whatever it might be, would require a very great effort to get it passed by the House of Lords. The House of Lords would need " a great deal of encouragement " to pass a good Bill, and that encouragement Mr. Bright hoped it might receive. Mr. Bright thought the proposed remedy of coercion for the present state of Ireland was no remedy at all. " Force," be said "is not a remedy." No ; but the remedy,—when it comes,—should not only be a force in itself, but be accompanied by a display of determination to put an end to all this trifling with plain moral obligatiopy. There may be some excuse for the lawlessness now. There would be no excuse for weakness in putting it down, when once a sincere effort has been made to grapple with the injustice in which the only excuse for lawlessness lies.
