The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-24 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PRESS-THIS MORNING,
THE IRISH LAND BILE, IN THE LORDS.

The Times says the ultimate success of the Irish Land
Bill may be reasonably inferred. It is true the Go-
vernment was more than once outvoted yesterday,
but the proposal to forbid conacre without a land-
lord's consent was a return to the first draught of
the bill ; and the adverse majority on the most im-
portant issue—the revision of the scale of penalties
—was small and uncertain, and will not withstand
the resolution of the House of Commons to carry the bill.
The alteration the Peers made was One of those mistakes
which will do injury only to themselves, but in their
iiV.,erest it is to be regretted. The essence of the bill is the
third clause. The representatives of Irish tenants in the
ouce of Commons complained in some instances that
th rates of the scale were too low to prove repressive;
and Mr. M'Carty Downing, returned by the tenant
farmers of Cork at the last election, went the
length, upon a modification of the scale, to
repudiate all further concern in a measure he pro-
nounced too mutilated to be effective. The Lords, how-
ever, led by the Duke of Richmond, yesterday further
re.luced the penalties of the scale which had been
thus condemned elsewhere as insufficient. The maxi-
na,:cm penalty of seven years' valuation was made ap-
plicable to tenants rated at £4 and under, instead of
to tenants rated at £lO and under, tenants between
£-1 and £lO being cut down to six years' ; while similar
alterations were made.in other branches of the scale. We
cannot but lament the perverseness of such a policy.
The change effected would be pitiful even if it could be
enduring: It will necessarily be ineffectual, and it can
only serve to mar the grace that would have characterised
a cheerful acceptance of the bill.
The debate in the House of Lords upon the scale of com-
pensation under the third clause of the Irish Land Bill
was, says the Standard principally remarkable for the
as ;ertion of a new constitutional doctrine by that veteran
constitution doctor, Earl Russell. The noble lord, in the
debate upon the second reading, had declared that he
would not agree to any amendment of the bill, what-
ever arguments might be offered in its favour, and it
was, therefore, quite needless for him to have taken the
trouble of appearing in the House last night. However,
there he was, and there he propounded this wonderful
dogma that, because the House of Lords is a house a
good many members of which are landlords, it ought
to accept without alteration the scale of compensation
adopted by the House of Commons. An altera-
tion would, so said Lord Russell, give rise to
unpleasant observations. Ergo the House of Lords
—if the argument is to be carried to its proper
conclusion—ought not to reject or alter this bill in the
slightest degree. It is incompetent because its members
are landowners, and anything they may do may be under-
stood as resulting from interested motives. The Marquis
of Salisbury did justice to this wonderful discovery, which
threw the front Treasury bench into ecstacies, in a few
caustic words, and the House did justice to it in the
division, by which it adopted the firms of the Duke of
Richmond's amendments on the scale.