Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/461

 1865.] Palmer storis Last Administration. 447 The other and more important event, to which reference has been made, was the passing of an Act to amend the law relating to the tenure and improvement of land in Ireland. This Act, introduced by Cardwell on the 29th of March, went through both Houses with very little discussion. That the English Radicals did not perceive the mischievous effects of the proposal, and that even the Irish members did not oppose it more strenuously, was a proof of the force of the central doctrine of Radicalism, that no legislation can be safe or satis- factory in which the people directly interested have not a real and efficient representation. There is no doubt that the measure was honestly intended by its introducers to benefit all classes of the Irish people ; but the small tenant farmers of that country were unrepresented, and English politicians, acting on English ideas, entirely misunderstood the case with which they were dealing. Proposing to secure the consolidation of the law, it really " contained a clause calculated to destroy the tenant's right to compensation, either as to the present or the past." * The Act fortunately had little direct effect, but it destroyed the faith of the Irish tenantry in English legislation ; led immediately to an immense emigration ; and laid the foundation of the Fenian outbreak and of the agrarian agita- tion, which, in their turn, have forced the English Parliament to deal with Irish land on principles consonant with the customs and traditions of Ireland, and therefore with the essential justice of the case. The session of 1861 was opened on the 5th of February by a speech made interesting by a reference to the outbreak of the American civil war, but which was almost silent with regard to domestic affairs. As to the American crisis, there was at the commencement a very general feeling in favour of preserving a strict neutrality, and, so far as Parliamentary ex- pression went, there was little difference of opinion. By degrees, however, there was developed not a party, but a set of tendencies in which sympathy with what was supposed to pp. 114 and 115, and notes.
 * The Parliamentary History of the Irish Land Question, by O'Brien, 1880,