In its final form the Act allows an appeal on questions of value from the inspector, to two Estates Commissioners, and from them to Mr. Justice Wylie, sitting as Judicial Commissioner with a valuer.  On questions of price there is no appeal from him.  Other appeals, on questions of law and fact, are, by Section 6, to be heard by a Judge of the King’s Bench, with whom rests the final decision whether a particular planter is or is not to be evicted.  Demesne lands and other lands, purchase of which would interfere with the value of adjoining property, 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 London by Mr. Bailey in the discharge of his official duties for the purpose of consultations with the Government in connection with the Evicted Tenants Bill.  On reading in the papers Mr. Moore’s question implying negligence to his duties on his part, Mr. Bailey wrote to Mr. Moore the following letter, marked private:—­