e out from
your papers whether you wholly dissent from this. I hoped you had
agreed in it. I have acquired a strong conviction upon it, of
which I have written out the grounds; but I shall not circulate
the paper till I understand your views more fully.

Lowe, at the other extremity, describes himself as more and more
"oppressed by a feeling of heavy responsibility and an apprehension of
serious danger," and feeling that he and the minority (Clarendon, Argyll,
and Cardwell--of whom he was much the best hand at an argument)--were being
driven to choose between their gravest convictions, and their allegiance
to party and cabinet. They agreed to the presumption of law as to the
making of improvements; to compensation for improvements, retrospective
and prospective; to the right of new tenants at will to compensation on
eviction. The straw that broke the camel's back was compensation for
eviction, where no custom could be proved in the case of an existing
tenancy. Mr. Gladstone wrote a long argumentative letter to Lord Granville
to be shown to Lowe, and it was effectual. Lowe thought the tone of it
very fair and the arguments of the right sort, but nevertheless he added,
in the words I have already quoted, "I fear he is steering straight upon
the rocks."

What might surprise us, if anything in Irish doings could surprise us, is
that though this was a measure for Irish tenants, it was deemed heinously
wrong to ascertain directly from their representatives what the Irish
tenants thought. Lord Bessborough was much rebuked in London for
encouraging Mr. Gladstone to communicate with Sir John Gray, the owner of
the great newspaper of the Irish tenant class. Yet Lord O'Hagan, the
chancellor, who had the rather relevant advantage of being of the same
stock and faith as three-fourths of the nation concerned, told them that
"the success or failure of the Land bill depends on the _Freeman's
Journal_; if it says, We accept this as a fixity of tenure, every priest
will say the same, and _vice versa_." It was, however, almost a point of
honour in those days for British cabinets to make Irish laws out of their
own heads.

(M89) Almost to the last the critical contest in the cabinet went on.
Fortescue fought as well as he could even against the prime minister
himself, as the following from Mr. Gladstone to him shows (Jan. 12):--

There can surely be no advantage in further argument between you
and me at this