But when insolvent, it provided for them relief from rent and all other debts by a process of bankruptcy, allowing them, however, to retain their farms. Mr. Campbell-Bannerman attacked the bankruptcy clauses, and demanded a revision of all Irish rents in terms of the fall in prices. To a general revision of rents the Government would on no account assent. But the revolt of one of the Liberal Unionists, Mr. T. W. Russell, compelled them to reconsider the bankruptcy clauses. The Tories argued that it was unjust to ask the landlord to accept a composition for rent from the farmer, when the tradesmen to whom he owed money were not expected to abate their claims. Mr. Parnell and Mr. T. W. Russell contended that no analogy could be drawn between rent and trade debts. The latter had never been disputed by the debtor. The former had been disputed. The tenant who owed money to his grocer or seed-merchant never denied that he had got value for it. But he did deny that he had got value for the money his landlord claimed as rent, and he was able to prove this in court when the rent was cut down. To insist, as did Mr. Chamberlain, on relief from just and unjust claims being given with equal ease under a process of gentle bankruptcy, at which the State was asked to connive, was to make an attack on property and on credit from which even the leaders of the Paris Commune might have shrunk. It was tantamount to asserting that whenever a man was able to show that one creditor had overcharged him 30 per cent. he was entitled to refuse payment of his just debts to all creditors who had not overcharged him, unless they too took 30 per cent. off their bills. When this was made clear not even Mr. Chamberlain’s advocacy sufficed to save the bankruptcy clauses, which were accordingly dropped. But by way of conciliating the landlords the Government insisted on applying the vicious principle to arrears of rent. No relief from unjust arrears was to be given unless they were to be dealt with in bankruptcy alongside just and undisputed trade debts. The result was that when the Bill passed it had a fatal defect in it. It prohibited landlords from evicting for unjust rents, but by this clause it left them free to evict for the arrears which had accumulated under rents which the Courts decided to be unjust. On the 19th of August the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland “proclaimed” the National League as a dangerous association, thereby enabling Mr. A. J. Balfour to suppress any branch of it he thought fit under the Crimes Act. [Illustration: THE QUEEN’S VISIT TO EDINBURGH (1886): HER MAJESTY LEAVING HOLYROOD PALACE.]