The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-27 00:00:00

THE b UN, LONDON, MONDAY MORNING „JU:‘ E 27, 1870.

pier will be paid a maximum of only four years' rent.
This proviso in itself spoils the measure; but the
Peers persevered in the good work on Friday even-
ing. It will be remembered that the bill prohibits
sub-letting of a holding—that is, it debars from com-
pensation any tenant who sublets his farm without his
landlord's consent. An exception to this rule against
sub-letting was made in favour of agricultural
labourers; and it was provided that a tenant might
sublet half an acre to a' bona fide labourer employed
in the cultivation of the farm. The, Peers have
struck out this exception ; and thus, with a prohibi-
tion of conacre which they agreed to on the previous
evening, the only stipulations in favour of the paid
servant vanish from the bill. The original measun
provided that by granting a thirty-one years' lease, a
landlord might withdraw his property from the
clauses touching compensation. The object of
the measure is to give security to the
tenant. If the owner arbitrarily evicts, he
must pay; but if he will forego his power of evic-
tion, by granting a lease, it is just that he should be
relieved from payment. Hence the lease proviso.
The Peers, however, have decided to reduce the
extent of the lease required to absolve the landlord
from the bill to twenty-one years. The value of the
measure as one for ensuring the tenant security is thus
impaired, for twenty-one years' safe possession
is scarcely enough to obviate those evils which are
now the effect of year to year tenures. If the com-
pensation clause be a great burden, as some
landlords profess to think it, a thirty-one,
years' lease is surely no very hard condition of
escape. It is useless to provide compensation for
the tenant, and allow the owner to evade it by con-
ceding a lease of no great value. Not content, how-
ever, with this side attack upon the compensa-
tion clause, the House passed an amendment
making £5O the highest value of a holding
for which disturbance compensation can be claimed—
instead of £lOO as in the measure. This amendment
was proposed in the House of Commons, and was met
by the obvious reply that if a landlord had to pay
nothing for holdings over £5O a year, he would be
straightway tempted to consolidate his land into
farms above the maximum and thus escape
from the bill altogether. But this consideration
weighed nothing with the Peers. The Duke of
RICHMOND voted with the Government; but. the
bulk of the Conservatives followed the Marquis of
SALISBURY, and the amendment was carried.
These changes are to be regretted on many con-
siderations. They bode no good to the relations be-
tween the two houses. They form, too, another
example of the detestable practice so common in the
English Parliament of professing to agree with the
principle of a bill, and afterwards whittling away its
details until that principle is rendered comparatively
inoperative. This is the task the Peers are actively
engaged in. The bill is one for thb protection of Irish
tenants. The House of Lords is making amendment
after amendment in the interests of Irish landlords.
An alteration here and there might not matter, but
the collective effect of all the changes will be
precisely the effect which the Upper House is so
fond of producing. The Peers delight in keeping the
word of promise to the ear of the nation, and breaking
it to the hope. Happily there is a Lower House, which
at present displays a better disposition. 'To the
Lower House the amendments must come. If it be
fair for Mr. HARDY to suggest what the Peers might
do, it is still more reasonable for the public to express
their wish respecting the course of their own repre-
sentatives. It is needful—even the Lords agree—to
pass a Land Bill this year ; and it is equally needful
that the measure should be no mere delusion, but a
reality, and calculated, as far as possible, to achieve
the object sought. If the nation has set its heart
upon justice to Ireland, it is not for a
few landowners to frustrate the desire.
There is another consideration of some importance
suggested by the progress, of this committee on the
Land Bill. Who is the leader of the Opposition ?
The election of the Duke of RICHMOND with many
professions of attachment was an admirable cere-
mony; but that the Duke is no more than a figure-
head leader seems well-nigh established by the fact
that on the first important occasion under his
guidance Lis party broke away from him and fol-
lowed the Marquis of SALISBURY. Of course the
party retains the right to choose its own leader, but
as it openly professes to retain a veto on the legis-
lation of the people, it is just as well that an
anxious public should know who the leading person-
age is.

Mr. GILPIN'S complaint that too much labour at
untimely hours is inflicted on the House of Commons
was open to only one answer : Parliament must call
in assistance. It cannot have longer sittings, for if
it began sooner, it must leave off later; it will not
sit during the autumn months ; and the
business of the country is at present most
inadequately done. Here are sufficient reasons.
Notwithstanding the late hours of which Mr. GILPIN
complains, the Legislature never gets through one-
half the work which is cut out for it at the begin-
ning of the year. The obvious inference is that some
of the duties which are now attempted must be
transferred to another body, in order that Parliament
may be left free for the functions which properly
belong to it. The idea of Parliament delegating
its duties looks alarming ; but it is not
proposed that it should abandon any power
which the nation could reasonably desire it
to keep. In former times Parliament never
made laws, but merely sketched them out, leaving
it to the judges to arrange the details. Some process
of the kind is required now. If the House of
Commons left a great many matters of routine, and
especially the work of codification, which it at
present wastes its time over, to a body of competent
jurists, there would be better opportunity for
considering important reforms which are now kept
waiting, like a suit in Chancery. Moreover, it might
be hoped that our legislation would, under these
circumstances, become. more accurate. At present
law-making is in a disgraceful state. The Acts of
Parliament which yearly receive the Royal assent
are so full of blunders—mistakes and commissions
—that thousands of pounds are annually spent by
private persons in suits to determine the meaning
of doubtful points. Parliament in fact now delegates its
powers through its own4ncapacity. The judges make
well nigh as much 'law as the Legislature,
and the public at large bear the expense
of the precedents established in litigation. One
of our legal contemporaries has published a list of
some of the more notorious omissions in Acts of Par-
liament. We have not space to enumerate half
of them. One blunder alone—a bungling section
of the Companies Act passed in 1862—must
have cost the public tens of thousands. The
County Courts Equitable Jurisdiction Act of 1865
contained two stupendous errors, so that the Legisla-
ture itself had to interfere to amend it, and then the
amending provisions themselves proved erroneous. The
Workshops Acts, the County Court Act of 1868,
the Act for the Protection of Seabirds, the Judgment
Acts, and many others contain errors which render
some parts of them doubtful of application or easy
of evasion. Many of these mistakes creepin during the
process of amendment in committee. These might
at least be avoided. If Parliament cannot trust any
of its business to other hands, it might at any rate
consent to a process of revision after amendment.

On dit, that the author of " Lothair " realised
£9,000 before the fourth edition of his work appeared.

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

distinguished for their physical powers of endurance,
as well as for their courage on the field of battle.
The heroic and almost superhuman marches of the.
English Army during the Indian Mutiny are not
yet forgotten, for it was to those efforts that General
Havelock and Lord Clyde owed their successes—
successes that enabled them to preserve the lives of
thousands of their countrymen. The accounts given
by disinterested witnesses of the march of the 94th
Regiment are heartrending. On Monday they marched
from Woolwich to Kingston, a distance of twenty-
two miles, in the hottest part of the day. On Tuesday
the regiment made a further march of eighteen miles,
and on Wednesday nine miles more. The. thermometer
stood at from 80 to 84 degs. in the shade, and as if
the heavy clothing were not encumbrance enough
under a scorching sun, the men marched in their
shakos, enveloped in oil skin. A correspondent states
that he saw the regiment toiling along the Wands-
worth-road, and in ten minutes seven men actually
fell down, and there were many more lying
on the footway in a fainting condition.
So numerous were the cases of prostration
that it was impossible for the surgeons
to look after all. They could only attend to
the more serious ones. The accounts are unanimous in
describing the condition of the men as pitiable in
the extreme. That a searching examination ought to
take place into the whole affair no one can doubt ;
and it is to be hoped that the sufferings of the 94th
Regiment will be remembered in the punishment
that may be awarded to the inconsiderate discipli-
narian, who has subjected English soldiers to such
gross cruelty.