The Life Of Charles Stewart Parnell - Ii

14 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL [1883
Newcastle. I remember very well Parnell sending someone to me, I think it was Mr. Morley, on an occasion when he had been bitterly attacked in the House of Commons about crime, to let him know what I said in my Newcastle speech. I wrote out what I had said for him on a large sheet of foolscap paper.
' I went to the House of Commons the night that he was to defend himself. He was interrupted as he went along, and in the middle of this interruption he put his hand in his pocket and, greatly to my surprise, pulled out the sheet of paper on which I had written the extract from my speech for him, and then he read it right out to the House, just as I had written it. I think Parnell disliked crime, but he never publicly condemned it.'
About a month after Forster's attack Parnell introduced a Bill to amend the Land Act of 1881. Most of the provisions of this measure have since become law, but they were all scornfully rejected then.1
Some weeks later another measure of Irish significance was run through the House of Commons at a
1 Whigs and Tories united in voting against the Bill, which was defeated by 250 to 63" votes. The provisions have been summarised by the Annual Register thus :
1 The Bill provided for the inclusion of certain classes which were left out of the Act of 1881, such as the leaseholders and occupiers of town parks. It further proposed to extend the operation of the purchase clauses. The chief provisions of the measure were :
'1. The dating of the judicial rent from the gale day succeeding the application to fix the fair rent.
* 2. Power to the court to suspend proceedings for ejectment and recovery of rent pending the fixing of a fair rent on the payment by the tenant of a rent equal to the Poor Law valuation of his holding.
'3. A definition of the term "improvement'' as any work or agricultural operation executed on the holding which adds to the value of the holding, or any expenditure of capital and labour on the holding which adds to its letting value.
14. Direction to the court that, in fixing fair rent, the increase in the letting value of the holding arising from improvements effected by the tenant or his predecessor in title shall belong to the tenant, and the