The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-04-30

gave like force to any usage in any part Of
Ireland which might consist in the landlord
compensating tenant on leaving or Gas the
amendment ran where there was any usage cor
responding with the Ulster custom. We leave
aside for the present consideration of the
consequences likely to follow from creating
legal right which is left to lawsuit TO reduce
TO definite terms But we cannot help re-
marking that the proceeding is an instance of
the apparent desire to escape from saying
plainly what the bill is intended to effect.
And the first result of this ambiguity was
that the Government thought they had given
the Ulster tenant everything he could desire,
till sfter some days of private meditation they
came to the conclusion that they had not,
and they must bestow on him an option of
taking advantage of the other clauses of the
bill. 1t is impossible that such confusion
could have arisen if, instead of legalizing an
unexplained custom, they had legalized a
specific demand. But the matter becomes
worse when we reach section 3. Here,
indirectly to obviate unjust evictions, the
course was adopted of allowing the evicted
tenant in every case to claim compensation
for his outlay in improvements or for his
''loss in quitting the holding" And to put
a sort of limit upon this claim, sliding
scale was invented, which might often be
inadequate and often extravagant-
in the case of the best class of tenants, ex-
travagant in the case of the worst, while in
every case various justice was again to be
meted out by the opinion of the local court.
But once again vital alteration, which, with
its successive notifications, has wasted seve-
raj evenings of precious time, has been intro
duced, in order to give prominence to the
principle that tenant is entitled to indef-
mite damages for losing his employment.
Yet again, however, this wide principle was
to have been qualified by section 16, which
was to enable landlord to substitute the
offer of thirty-one years lease, son such
terms as the court shall think reasonable, to
the tenant whom he has desired to evict, or
who, if in Ulster, has sought to transfer
his holding. Only this clause, irrational
in its conception, has been first abandoned,
and next promised as part of the equities
clause. But when the committee reach the
next sections, which refer to compensation
for improvements, they will find equally diff
ficult puzzles awaiting them in determining
what are to be the conditions which are to
bring them into operation, and what is to be
the effect of the operation on the different
classes affected. We do not attempt to push
analysis into this unexplored region. Our
object Just now is only to enforce the fact
which the consideration of the clauses has
forced upon us in common with so many
members of Mr.. Gladstones own following,
that the bill is complicated, obscure, and
ambiguous work, of which no man--not even
the Government-fully comprehends the
scope or foresees the effect. And we need
not add that it is made tenfold worse by the
method of thrusting the duty of explaining
as well as of enforcing it on half hundred
different courts, and of bidding every land
lord and tenant look not to the provisions
Parliament has enacted, but to the chance of
how much the court may award him, after a
consideration of every 'equity' which can be
raked up from the time to which memory of
man can trace back.