r M. H.
Beach in the month of March, proclaimed in language even more fervid, that
it would be folly and madness to break these solemn contracts.(233)

For that matter, the bill even as it first stood was in direct
contravention to all such high doctrine as this, inasmuch as it clothed a
court with power to vary solemn contracts by fixing a composition for
outstanding debt, and spreading the payment of it over such a time as the
judge might think fit. That, however, was the least part of what finally
overtook the haughty language of the month of April. In May the government
accepted a proposal that the court should not only settle the sum due by
an applicant for relief for outstanding debt, but should fix a reasonable
rent for the rest of the term. This was the very power of variation that
ministers had, as it were only the day before, so roundly denounced. But
then the tenants in Ulster were beginning to growl. In June ministers
withdrew the power of variation, for now it was the landlords who were
growling. Then at last in July the prime minister called his party
together, and told them that if the bill were not altered, Ulster would be
lost to the unionist cause, and that after all he must put into the bill a
general revision of judicial rents for three years. So finally, as it was
put by a speaker of that time, (M134) you have the prime minister
rejecting in April the policy which in May he accepts; rejecting in June
the policy which he had accepted in May; and then in July accepting the
policy which he had rejected in June, and which had been within a few
weeks declared by himself and his colleagues to be inexpedient and
dishonest, to be madness and folly, and to be a laying of the axe to the
very root of the fabric of civilised society. The simplest recapitulation
made the bitterest satire.

The law that finally emerged from these singular operations dealt, it will
be observed in passing, with nothing less than the chief object of Irish
industry and the chief form of Irish property. No wonder that the
landlords lifted up angry voices. True, the minister the year before had
laid it down that if rectification of rents should be proved necessary,
the landlords ought to be compensated by the state. Of this consolatory
balm it is needless to say no more was ever heard; it was only a graceful
sentence in a speech, and proved to have little relation to purpose or
intention. At the Kildare Street club in Dublin members mo