The chief business of the session was the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, which Mr. Forster brought in for the sake of saving from immediate eviction tenants whom a succession of bad seasons had rendered utterly unable to pay their rents.  This Bill was pressed through the House of Commons with the utmost difficulty, and at an expenditure of time which damaged the other work of the session, though the House continued to sit into September.  The Executive Government declared it to be necessary, in order not only to relieve the misery of the people, but to secure the tranquillity of the country.  Nevertheless, the whole Tory party, and a considerable section of the Liberal party, opposed it in the interests of the Irish landlords, and of economic principles in general, principles which (as commonly understood in England) it certainly trenched on.  When it reached the House of Lords it was contemptuously rejected, and the unhappy Irish Secretary left to face as he best might the cries of a wretched peasantry and the rising tide of outrage.  What was even more remarkable, was the coolness with which the Liberal party took the defeat of a Bill their leaders had pronounced absolutely needed.  Had it been an English Bill of the same consequence to England as it was to Ireland, the country would have been up in arms against the House of Lords, demanding the reform or the abolition of a Chamber which dared to disregard the will of the people.  But nothing of the kind happened.  It was only an Irish measure.  We relieved ourselves by a few strong words, and the matter dropped.

It was in this session that the Liberal party first learnt what sort of a spirit was burning in the hearts of Irish members.  There had been obstruction in the last years of the previous Parliament, but, as the Tories were in power, they had to bear the brunt of it.  Now that a Liberal Ministry reigned, it fell on the Liberals.  At first it incensed us.  Full of our own good intentions towards Ireland, we thought it contrary to nature that Irish members should worry us, their friends, as they had worried Tories, their hereditary enemies.  Presently we came to understand how matters stood.  The Irish members made little difference between the two great English parties.  Both represented to them a hostile domination.  Both were ignorant of the condition of their country.  Both cared so little about Irish questions that nothing less than deeds of violence out of doors or obstruction within doors could secure their attention.  Concessions had to be extorted from both by the same devices; Coercion might be feared at the hands of both.  Hence the Irish party was resolved to treat both parties alike, and play off the one against the other in the interests of Ireland alone, using the questions which divide Englishmen and Scotchmen merely as levers whereby to effect their own purposes, because themselves quite indifferent to the substantial merits of those questions.  To us new members this was an alarming revelation.