that it would organise pauperism and paralyse capital; yet for all that
he warned their lordships that its rejection might be the signal for an
insurrection, of which the whole responsibility would be thrown on the
House of Lords. But perhaps Lord Elcho expressed the feeling which
predominated in the Gilded Chamber when he expressed the opinion that
the Bill was the product of "Brummagem girondists." In the event, as we
have seen, Lord Lytton's warning bore fruit, and the Bill was passed.
"There is scarcely a less dignified entity," as Disraeli had said in
Coningsby thirty years before, "than a patrician in a panic."

Under the Act, let me repeat, for the first time was frankly recognised
the legal partnership between the tenant who provided the working gear
and the landlord who provided the bare soil. The latter could only evict
the tenant on default, the tenant was at liberty to sell his occupancy
interest at will without the leave of the landlord, and the rent payable
by the tenant to the landlord was to be fixed by a judicial
tribunal--the Land Commission--the establishment of which was but the
carrying out of a suggestion made three years before by Parnell. The
results of the agitation which had brought about the passing of the Act
were seen when the Court decreed an average reduction of Irish rents by
20 per cent., knocking off no less than £1,500,000 at one stroke from
the rack-rentals of the country.

The Act was not applicable to tenants whose rent was in arrear--those,
that is to say, who were in the poorest circumstances--and a Bill
introduced by Parnell in 1882 to wipe out these arrears by a grant of
public money, was thrown out, being denounced by Lord Salisbury as a
dangerous precedent of public plunder to mislead future generations.

As ballast to lighten the Act of 1881 the leaseholders were thrown