On Saturday, a representative meeting of evicted tenants was held
at Cork to consider their position in view of the action of the Lords in rejecting the Bill intended to relieve them. A resolution was passed asking that, before Parliament rose, a voluntary measure should be passed reviving Clause 13 -of the Land Act of 1891 for six months, and appointing arbitrators" to fix the purchase-price in eases where landlords who are willing to sell and tenants who are willing to buy ,cannot agree, with power to apply money from the Irish Church funds where cases are settled for the mutual benefit of landlord and tenant." This, said Mr. James O'Connor, a man of influence among the evicted tenants, would be as good as the Evicted Tenants' Restoration Bill, and perhaps better, if the powers of arbitration were added. If the 13th Clause were revived, with powers of arbitration, and £250,000 were allocated from the Church funds, there were very few evicted tenants in Ireland who would not be reinstated. Clause 13 became inoperative for several reasons. " First of all, Nationalist Members of Parliament threw cold water on it, but, strange to say, some of these men recently begged the Government to pass a measure which would not be as good as Clause 13, if the latter was made workable." If this is true, why did not the evicted tenants say so before p They might easily have bad a re-enactment of Clause .13.
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