The House of Lords hardly ever acted worse on a
compara- tively trivial occasion than in rejecting the Irish Registration Bill, for no reason at all, except that the Irish Home-rule party liked it. The Bill does nothing except remedy two gross in- justices, by which in England we are not affected with regard to. the mode in which the list of electors is made up, and not a single Peer who opposed the Bill found anything to say against. its principle. It is, indeed, impossible to pretend that an elector ought to be disqualified simply because some one takes an arbitrary objection to his name, for which objection he can give no primci facie reason, just at a moment when, either through indisposition or more important professional engagements, the- voter whose name is objected to is quite unable to attend per- serially and refute the objection. Yet this is the law in Ireland, and to remedy this monstrous injustice was the chief object of the Irish Registration Bill, which the Lords rejected on Tuesday by 52 votes against 32, after most convincing speeches from Lord Carlingford and Lord Fitzgerald in its favour. What the hostile Peers, beaded by Lord Kilmorey, said, was that it would add to the influence of the Home-rule party in Ireland, which is possible enough. But if that be intrinsically objectionable, quite apart from the justice or injustice of the mode in which they are to obtain that influence, Lord Kilmorey and Lord
Salisbury should introduce a measure striking off arbitrarily a number of persons otherwise fully entitled to the franchise, in order that they may diminish the influence of the Home-rulers in Ireland, and not effect their purpose by this shabby, in- direct trick. The majority in the Lords do not, unfortunately, object to trickiness. Mr. Gladstone, in the House of Commons, -expressed very strongly his sense of the injustice which the Peers had refused to remedy, and promised another Bill of the same kind an early place in the business of next Session, if it -were not included in a general Reform Bill.
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