Mr. Trevelyan's speech at Hawick on Wednesday was a very
fine one ; but though we heartily go with him in believing that the true guarantee not only for landed property, but for all property and all liberty in Ireland, is a firm central Govern- ment in the United Kingdom, we can hardly go with him so far as to say, what we understand him to suggest, that the Government would have just as much right to pass the Home-rule Bill without the Land-purchase Bill as with it. Mr. Trevelyan's view is that the landlords have no more right to special compensation than any other Loyalist class ; that the unpopular Judges have no more right to special guarantees than the unpopular jurymen or the boycotted tenant-farmers and labourers ; that all have this right equally, and none more than any other. He puts his case very powerfully for the Loyalist poor, but we do think that, quite apart from the special claims that the high-handed Land Act gave the landlords to their reduced judicial rent, there is something in Lord Spencer's contention that, if the agrarian question were left quite unsettled, it would be even more dangerous and dishonourable to hand over Ireland to the tender mercies of a Parnellite Legislature than it would be if some kind of settlement had been attained. Even the poor Loyalists might have more hope of an amnesty if the agrarian question were settled, than they would have if it still remained to raise to fever-heat the passions of the community. Mr. Trevelyan's constituents lean to Mr. Gladstone, but we do not think that they will unseat Mr. Trevel,yan.
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