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.

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