Mr. Maguire, who opened the debate on Tuesday, and sup-
ported the second reading, though insisting much on the need of amendments in Committee, gave many very telling instances of the effect of insecurity even under good landlords. In one case a tenant-farmer being asked why he slept in the same room with his cattle, and that too with so good a landlord, replied that he could never tell how long his good landlord would be left him, and that if a hard landlord succeeded, any improvement would be an excuse for raising the rent or evicting the tenant. Some landlords served notices to quit on their tenants, and besides got them to sign stamped agreements to surrender the land on the following 1st November, and giving power to distrain a month or two earlier for rant not yet fully due ; this system the peasants called a double- barrelled gun aimed at them, under the hope that if one barrel did not bring them down, the other would. The Attorney-General (Sir It. Collier) replied to the objection that Ireland is being degraded by a treatment which is, legally speaking, too barbarous for England, and showed conclusively that it was the aim of the Bill to produce in Ireland the same results which the English law has already produced in England.
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