Many of the amendments designed by the House of Lords were proposed by two of the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, who sit in that House primarily as judges, and who are supposed to keep free from political entanglements.  They aimed at an enhancement of the prices at which compulsory purchase should take effect, with a view, it was admitted by their organs in the Press, to afford a precedent for further schemes of land purchase at large.  Of this nature was the compensation which they demanded—­fortunately without success—­in accordance with the provisions of the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act, which, if accepted by Government, would have given to the landlords on sale a douceur of 10 per cent. in addition to the 12 per cent. bonus which they already enjoy over and above the market value of the land, and the fixation of such a price would have prevented any reinstatement, for this reason, that the instalments of the tenants in those circumstances would have been too high to have been within the means of the tenants whom it was proposed to reinstate.

There was a curious irony in the spectacle of the House of Lords standing out for the principle of fixity of tenure, and defending tooth and nail the tenant-right of a few hundred planters, when little more than thirty years ago this same body offered the most relentless opposition to any recognition of the right of compensation for disturbance on the part of four millions of Irish tenants.  In this matter the Lords gained their point, and compulsory powers are not to be applied under the Act to the holdings on which the landlords have placed planters, who are held to be bona fide farmers.  An amendment to this effect was thrown out by the House of Commons, by a majority of more than four to one, on a division in which only 66 voted for the amendment, but although the Bill in its original form offered sitting tenants the fullest compensation ever offered to such persons, and although most of the planters would be only too glad to accept such terms, the Upper House insisted on over-riding the will of the great majority in the Commons.

Lord Lansdowne, on the second reading, gave three reasons why the Bill should not be incontinently rejected by the Peers.  In the first place, it came to them, he said, supported by an enormous majority in the other House, “and their Lordships always desired to treat attentively and respectfully Bills which came to them with such a recommendation.”  Secondly, the late Government, as well as the present, had pledged themselves to a measure of reinstatement of some kind, and if they threw out the Bill on a second reading “it would be said that they had receded from a kind of understanding arrived at in 1903,” and lastly, “the summary rejection of the Bill might greatly increase the difficulties of the Executive Government in Ireland.”  One would have thought that the fact that the Bill was given a second reading did little to exonerate the Upper House from similar consequences as a result of their mutilation of the Bill in Committee.