To make their coercive policy palatable to their present supporters, the ministry announce the immediate introduction of a bill to regulate the arrangements between landlord and tenant, and to secure the latter adequate compensation for any improvements he may have effected. It is always better for governments to leave the adjustment of private rights to the parties concerned in them. But if they are to be guided in their legislation by _the evidence_ given before the land-commissioners, _and not by the report which it pleased those gentlemen to adopt_, there never was a case in which such interference was less called for. We do not find in the whole mass a solitary well substantiated instance in which an improving and rent-paying tenant was dispossessed by the landlord for the purpose of availing himself of the additional value which had been given to his land. And Mr Stewart, an extensive agent and land-valuator, declared in his examination, "that he considered improving tenants had, at the expiration of their tenures, a just claim upon the consideration of their landlords--_a claim_," he continues, "_which, in a great number of instances coming under my own observation, I never yet knew to be disregarded._" Can the government believe that contingent and trifling rewards for levelling old ditches, and for building ill-constructed houses, will be sufficient to satisfy men who, according to Mr Maher's sworn testimony, "_desire no such improvements, even when they are paid promptly for their execution_;" or that drainage will be effected, in the hope of their being allowed a paltry consideration in case they are dispossessed, "_by persons who threaten with death those who are willing to give them at once the full value of their labour_?" Not a bit of it. Any attempt to legislate on the subject will only increase the present difficulties. If you give the tenant a right to execute such improvements as he pleases, and guarantee him remuneration, who is to be the umpire between the occupier and the landlord?--"a commissioner." Well, where are you to get respectable men to act in such a capacity, with the certainty that if they decided honestly, they would become unpopular, and secure the reward of death? And if you take those commissioners from the class of small farmers, and pay them by the business they transact, why, then, there will be no limit to jobbing and dishonesty--each of them will bid for popularity and increase of income, by deciding in favour of the tenant, and against the landlord, in all instances--and litigation and confusion without end will be the consequence. As to Mr O'Connell's other remedies--extension of municipal reform, and increase of representation--grant them, and what could the change effect? No extension of municipal reform can possibly make the corporations more revolutionary than they are--with one solitary exception (Belfast), his influence and his principles prevail in all.