When that Land Bill went into Committee we perceived how much harm the Coercion Bill had done in intensifying the bitterness of Irish members.  Although the Ministry was fighting for their interests against the Tory party and the so-called Whiggish section of its own supporters, who were seeking to cut down the benefits which the measure offered to Irish tenants, the Nationalist members regarded it, and in particular Mr. Forster, as their foe.  They resented what they deemed the insult put upon their country.  They saw those who had been fighting, often, no doubt, by unlawful methods, for the national cause, thrown into prison and kept there without trial.  They anticipated (not without reason) the same fortune for themselves.  Hence the friendliness which the Liberal party sought to show them met with no response, and Mr. Forster was worried with undiminished vehemence.  In the discussions on the Bill we found the Ministry generally resisting all amendments which came from Irish members.  When these amendments seemed to us right, we voted for them, but they were almost always defeated by the union of the Tories with the steady Ministerialists.  Subsequent events have proved that many were right, but, whether they were right or wrong, the fact which impressed us was that in matters which concerned Ireland only, and lay within the exclusive knowledge of Irishmen, Irish members were constantly outvoted by English and Scotch members, who knew nothing at all of the merits of the case, but simply obeyed the party whip.  This happened even when the Irish members who sat on the Liberal side (such as Mr. Dickson and his Liberal colleagues from Ulster) joined the Nationalist section in demanding some extension of the Bill which the Ministry refused.  And we perceived that nothing incensed the Irish members more than the feeling that their arguments were addressed to deaf ears; that they were overborne, not by reason, but by sheer weight of numbers.  Even if they convinced the Ministry, they could seldom hope to obtain its assent, because the Ministry had to consider the House of Lords, sure to reject amendments which favoured the tenant, while to detach a number of Ministerialists sufficient to carry an amendment against the Treasury Bench, the Moderate Liberals, and the Tories, was evidently hopeless.

At the end of the session the House of Lords came again upon the scene.  It seriously damaged the Bill by its amendments, and would have destroyed it but for the skill with which the head of the Government handled these amendments, accepting the least pernicious, so as to enable the Upper House without loss of dignity to recede from those which were wholly inadmissible.  Several times it seemed as if the conflict would have to pass from Westminster to the country, and, in contemplating the chances of a popular agitation or a dissolution, we were regretfully obliged to own that the English people cared too little and knew too little about Irish questions to give us much hope of defeating the House of Lords and the Tories upon these issues.