NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE Lords sprang a mine on the Government on Friday week. Lord Dononghmore moved that a Committee should be ap- pointed to " inquire into the Irish Land Act, and its effect upon the condition of the country," and the motion was carried, by a -vote of 96 to 53. As the Act has only been four months in operation, such an inquiry is unprecedented, and most injurious to its success, but the sneeches in defence of the motion made its meaning much worse. All the Peers who spoke declared that the reasons for inquiry were that the Sub-Commissioners selected were partisans, that they acted on some general principle of reduction, that rents were unfairly reduced, that land- lords were virtually coerced by the decisions into agreements out- side the Courts, and that the Act had been obtained by an assur- ance to Parliament that general reductions should not be made. In other words, inquiry was demanded because the Act had been :obtained by fraud, because the Government had selected bad Judges, and because the Judges were unjust. As Lord Selborne argued, in a wonderfully powerful speech, a speech which showed that his illness had rather increased than diminished his mental force, the Act stood condemned before the inquiry ; it would be necessary, in simple justice, to summon the Sub-Commissioners to give evidence ; and the operation of the Act would therefore be paralysed. The majority of the Peers, however, feeling that this was precisely their intention, paid no heed.
