In order to find out the truth, and thoroughly to clear the ground, a Commission, I suggest, ought to be appointed, as important as the Devon Commission of nearly sixty years ago; it should investigate the Irish Land Question in all its branches. Its President should be a great English nobleman--the nation would have confidence in the Duke of Bedford, a princely and most liberal English landlord; but the judicial element should be strong in it; English and Irish judges should be among its members; it should include trained agricultural experts: it should have representatives of Irish landlords and tenants. It should examine the Irish land system as this existed before 1870; should review the whole series of Irish Land Acts, from 1870 to the present time, and inquire into their results and tendencies; should carefully consider the operation of the tribunals selected to carry out the new Irish land code, especially as regards the fixing of 'fair rents,' and that not with respect to their procedure only, an unjust limit imposed on the Fry Commission, but with respect to the principles that have been adopted and the methods pursued; it should deal exhaustively with the subject of so-called 'land purchase,' and see whether it has not directly led to the demand for compulsory purchase; it should take evidence as to 'peasant proprietary' and its creation; and it should make a complete and searching report, with a view to the legislation it might recommend. And if I am not altogether mistaken, such a Commission would state, in emphatic language, that the present Irish land code was ill designed, even if it cannot be now much changed; that its administration has been attended with grave errors; that cruel wrong has been done to Irish landlords, while Irish tenants have not obtained what was hoped for; that the economic and social results have been deplorable; that if 'land purchase' cannot be stopped, it is a bad expedient on its present lines, and that the cry for compulsory purchase has been its evident effect; and that extensive, still more universal peasant ownership, is an impossible and would be a pernicious policy. Finally, if I am not much mistaken again, such a Commission would report that a reform of the Irish land system, if very difficult, should be attempted; and that, in its main scope and operation at least, it should be carried out on the side of land tenure, that is, in the relations of landlord and tenant, as has been the opinion of every thinker from Burke onwards, who has not been swayed by the exigencies of agitation, or of party politics.