The chief event of this short session was a Tenant Relief Bill, introduced by Mr. Parnell, providing for the suspension of the ejectment of any defaulting tenant who should pay half his rent and half his arrears. Let us add, this session was memorable as the most trying one that had ever taken place, from the acrimony of its debates and the late hours of its sittings. However, Mr. Gladstone had got back Sir George Trevelyan and three or four small men besides. Meanwhile, the Government had to wince under the loss of several seats at by-elections. At Southampton, the Unionist majority of 342 had been turned into a Gladstonian one of 885; and the Ayr Burghs followed suit, by replacing a Unionist, whose majority had been at the General Election 1,175, by a Gladstonian whom they preferred to the extent of 53 votes to the Hon. Evelyn Ashley. It was not till Christmas Eve that Parliament adjourned. Government met Parliament the next year under great discouragement. Before the debate on the Queen’s Speech was begun, Sir William Harcourt raised the question of privilege, of which he maintained a breach had been committed against the House by Tories in the matter of the charges against the Irish members; and the diminished majority by which his motion was rejected—58—testified to the loss of prestige by the Government, as a consequence of their supposed connection with a case bolstered up by the forgeries of the Irish informer Pigott. On the second reading of the Local Taxation Bill, Mr. Caine moved an amendment refusing assent to any proposal to extinguish licenses by means of public money. Mr. Gladstone, in supporting it, defended himself from the charge of having violated pledges given to his Midlothian electors, declared that since those pledges had been given ‘the law had been cleared and settled in a manner not only unfavourable to the doctrine of vested interests, but likewise to the doctrine of permanent interest, on the part of a publican in an annual license.’ However, Mr. Gladstone spoke in vain.