Mr. Gladstone's position was difficult when he introduced his new Irish Land Bill; his speech in the House of Commons, lucid as regards details, was apologetic, ambiguous, often beside the subject. He went out of his way to praise Irish landlords, 'acquitted,' he declared, by the late Commission; he deeply regretted a new experiment on the Irish land. He retained his admiration for the Act of 1870, but insinuated that it had been injured in the House of Lords; had this not been the case, it would have settled the Irish land question. He passed over his solemn pledges, on the faith of which millions had been lent on Irish estates, that the legislation of eleven years before was final; here he took refuge in appeals to 'Divine Justice,' in the 'light of which' a statesman must walk, as if Divine Justice was an excuse for a gross breach of faith. He then unfolded his plan of reform; he endeavoured, with an ingenuity all his own, to distinguish it from the schemes he had emphatically condemned in 1870; but in this respect mystification was at fault; the measure was a clumsy imitation of the 'Three F's,' and where it differed, it differed greatly for the worse. Anticipating objections certain to be made, the orator dismissed 'political economy to Saturn' with a confident gesture; for some untold reason the philosophy of Adam Smith could not possibly apply to the order of things in Ireland. But by many degrees the most important part of the speech, in view of events which have since happened, was that in which Mr. Gladstone announced that should the measure really injure the Irish landlord, the State was bound to provide an indemnity. He denied, indeed, that the Bill could have any such effect; it would be a boon, he gravely said, to the Irish landed gentry; but should the contrary be the case, 'compensation' would be clearly their right. 'I do not hesitate to say'--these were his very words spoken after the Bill had made much progress--'that if it can be shown, on clear and definite experience, at the present time, that there is a probability, or if after experience shall prove that, in fact, ruin and heavy loss has been brought on any class in Ireland by the direct effect of this legislation, that is a question which we ought to look very directly in the face.' The same meaning was even more clearly expressed: 'I should certainly be very slow to deny that where confiscation could be proved, compensation ought to follow,' and several of Mr. Gladstone's lieutenants spoke in the same sense.[74]