are omitted from the scope of the statute, and its operation
is limited to the case of 2,000 tenants, whose claims must be disposed
of within four years. The power vested in the Estates Commissioners
compulsorily to acquire untenanted land, not necessarily their former
holdings, for the reinstatement of the evicted tenants, is of no
practical value in the case of the Clanricarde estate, since all the
land on it is occupied, and the fact that on that plague-spot--the
nucleus of the whole disturbance--no settlement will be possible under
the Act, shows to what an extent was justified Mr. Birrell's declaration
that the final form of the statute was a triumph for Lord Clanricarde,
and affords a curious commentary on the repeated declarations of the
Unionist leaders, that nothing was further from their desire than to
effect the wrecking of the Bill.[10]

Rejection of similar measures of relief--notably the Tenants'
Compensation Bill of 1880--has led in the past to a recrudescence of
strife in Ireland, and Mr. Balfour's unworthy retort to Mr. Redmond's
deduction from every precedent in the history of the struggle for the
land, that it was an incitement to lawlessness, was a mere partisan
retort to an avowal of a danger which every unbiassed observer must see
arises from the betrayal by the House of Lords of a confidence in a
final settlement which was formerly encouraged by a Conservative Govern
merit.

One of the weapons used by the Orangemen in their attack on this Bill
was to be found in their repeated insinuations as to the unfitness of
the Estates Commissioners to exercise dispassionately the functions
which would be demanded of them. In this the Unionists were hoist with
their own petard, for the necessity recognised by the Government for
placing the Estates Commissioners in a position other than that of mere
Executive officers, by giving them a judicial tenure independent of
ministerial pressure or party influences, was strongly shown by the
incident of the Moore-Bailey correspondence of last session, which
should provide food for reflection on the part of those who imagine that
intimidation is to be found in Ireland in use only on the National side.
Mr. Moore, the most active of the Orangemen, asked in a supplementary
question whether it was not a fact that the delay in the Estates
Commissioners' Office was due to Mr. Commissioner Bailey's continued
presence in London. These visits, it should be noted, were paid to