fewer than forty opposed, at least one hundred would be required to carry it. Non-contentious business relating to Law and Commerce might be delegated to two Grand Committees. The Tories objected to closure by a bare majority, and they fortunately found a Liberal--Mr. Marriott, Q.C.--to move an amendment to this part of Mr. Gladstone’s plan, and the debate began on the 20th of February. In the meantime the Irish Home Rulers, who had not scrupled to impede the working of the Land Act, found unexpected allies in the Conservative Peers. They attacked the Act as a failure, and carried a motion appointing a hostile Committee to inquire into its working. It has always been the practice of the Peers, when they dared not cut down the plant of Reform, to insist on pulling it up to see if its roots were growing, and in this case their strategy was ingeniously adapted to suit the policy of obstruction in the Commons. It was necessary to neutralise the hostile vote of the Peers by a Resolution in the Commons condemning the proposed inquiry as mischievous; and, though this was carried, it gave the Tory and Parnellite opponents of the Government an excellent chance of wasting time by re-opening and discussing the whole Irish Land Question. The Procedure debates were thus suspended for about a month, Mr. Marriott’s amendment being rejected on the 30th of March. Negotiations for a compromise between Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Gladstone were interrupted by a catastrophe which revolutionised the Irish policy of the Government, namely, the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Thomas Burke in the Phœnix Park, Dublin.