Very soon after Ministers took office Mr. Parnell exacted his price, and they had to pay it. The Crimes Act was abandoned. It was announced that the Irish Labourers’ Act would be pressed on. Lord Ashbourne[215] promised to bring in a Land Purchase Bill. The Maamtrasna murders, and the cases of those condemned on account of them, were to be reconsidered--a somewhat momentous decision, for Lord Spencer’s refusal to revise the sentence in these cases had been upheld by both Parties as a crucial point in the policy of maintaining law and order in Ireland. When the Government threw over Lord Spencer, and not only refused to defend him from Mr. Parnell’s attacks, but through Lord Randolph Churchill disparaged his resolute Irish policy, it was clear that great Party changes were impending. Obviously no English Minister could again feel confident in governing Ireland with a firm and dauntless hand, after the Tories had flung Lord Spencer to the lions of Nationalism. Supported by Mr. Parnell and his followers, Ministers had no difficulty in hurrying through Supply. The Budget was revised in terms of the decision of the 9th of June, and Lord George Hamilton discovered a gross blunder in the accounts at the Admiralty, where Lord Northbrook had spent £900,000--part of the Vote of Credit--in excess of his estimates without having the faintest suspicion that he was doing anything of the sort.[216] Lord Ashbourne’s Land Bill stipulated that when all the money was advanced by the State to the purchasing tenants, one-fifth of it should be retained by the Land Commission till the instalments were repaid. The Scottish Sanitary Bill passed. So did a Bill brought in by Lord Salisbury to embody the non-contentious points of the recommendations of the Commission on Housing the Poor. A Bill was also passed to relieve electors from disqualification on the ground that they had obtained Poor Law medical relief, and the Session closed with the demoralisation of parties on the 14th of August.