said, he wished the indulgence of the House to make a personal explanation with respect to what took place on Thursday. Actuated by the interest which he felt in the Profession to which he had had the honour of belonging and to which he was bound by many ties of friendship and of kindred, he put last week a Notice on the Paper concerning the Royal Warrant. Late on Wednesday afternoon he received a pressing appeal from a most distinguished officer, who considered that his case came within the scope of the inquiry, asking him not to put the Question. He was unable to resist that appeal, and he wrote to the Secretary of State for War by that night's post, and took the earliest opportunity also of giving Notice to the Speaker that he should not press the matter. He was not in his place when the right hon. Gentleman rose to make his observations; but he found by the reports that the Secretary of State said that the Question had already been postponed. That was a mistake. He gave a long Notice of the Question, because he felt sure that when the matter was brought to the notice of the Government they would do as they had done—namely, refer the matter to their Legal Advisers, so as to find out the legal meaning of the Royal Warrant. His right hon. Friend had also omitted to mention to the House that he (Captain O'Shea) had written to him. After the Questions were over on Thursday, his right hon. Friend sought him out and gave him the fullest explanation of the accident by which he had not been able to communicate with him before rising to make his remarks. That interview was most satisfactory to him, and also, he hoped, to his right hon. Friend. He thought his Question had been amply justified by the reference of the matter to the Law Advisers of the Crown, and he hoped this explanation would show that he had acted throughout with courtesy and propriety.

said, the remarks of his hon. and gallant Friend were quite accurate except on one point. He had not intended to say that the Question had been postponed. If he said so, it was an error. What he meant to say, was that it had been altered. As far as he was concerned what happened was this. The Notice had been some days on the Paper, and as it had been so long before the country he thought, though he deprecated the Notice having having been given, that the Question should be answered. On the day fixed he received from his hon. and gallant Friend—on Thursday at noon—a note, written from the country, telling him that it would save trouble not to put the Question. It was impossible to send a letter or telegram in answer in time; and when he (Mr. Childers) came to the House he sought his hon. and gallant Friend, not only himself but through a friend, and, unluckily, was unable to find him. If he had found him, he should have said he hoped he would put the Question for the reasons already stated. However, the explanation was perfectly satisfactory, and he thanked his hon. and gallant Friend for it.

said, that the night previous, the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister had consented to his (Lord George Hamilton's) request that they might report Progress. His object in so doing was that they might have an opportunity of discussing the Preamble. He had hoped, that in the interval which had elapsed between the previous night and the time they met that day, some Member of Her Majesty's Government, either the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister or the Chief Secretary for Ireland, would have risen and made some statement as to the course the Government intended to pursue with reference to the Bill. He should be sorry, unnecessarily, to protract the discussion on the Bill; but he must be permitted to point out one fact to the right hon. Gentleman whose Party had a majority in that House of 50 over all other sections combined. During the past two nights only two independent Liberal Members had spoken on behalf of the Bill. The whole discussion had almost exclusively been confined to the Opposition side of the House. He thought he might say that no answer had been made to many of the arguments brought forward in that discussion. He considered that he could not better point out the difficulties in which the Government were involved than by calling attention to the Preamble of the Bill. That Preamble was to the following effect:—

"Whereas,….it is expedient to make temporary provision with respect to compensation of tenants, &c."

Therefore, the Bill was temporary. Since the Bill had been under discussion the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law) had put down an Amendment to the Bill, and if he (Lord George Hamilton) understood that Amendment, as interpreted by the Government, it was to the effect that those parts of Ireland outside Ulster in the Schedule were to have the Ulster Custom applied to them. He wanted to know, assuming that to be the intention of the Government, was that custom they proposed to set up to be temporary or permanent; because, if only to be temporary in its operation, that clause would run out or terminate on the 31st December, 1881. Consequently, according to the Preamble of the Bill and the clauses relating to the subject, that system of compensation, or tenant right—call it what you would—would be set up for 18 months, in order to enable incoming tenants to purchase the free-will or good-will of the outgoing tenants. Therefore, it was quite clear that the Preamble of the Bill was not consistent with the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland, unless it was his intention to make that custom merely temporary for 18 months, in which case it would be an absolute absurdity. ["Oh, oh!"] He hoped the Committee would allow him a few minutes to state to them, having listened with great attention to the discussion which had taken place, what seemed to him the difficulties which surrounded the Government. On the previous night, the Chief Secretary for Ireland had repudiated, in somewhat warm terms, any co-operation between himself and the hon. Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell) as regarded the settlement of that question; because, he said, he wished to settle it without interfering with the payment of rent, whereas the hon. Member for Cork did wish to interfere with it. He (Lord George Hamilton) should wish to point out that, notwithstanding that repudiation, there was in the Bill a direct interference with the payment of rent. When, earlier in the Session, a Bill was brought in for the purpose of the cessation of ejectments for two years, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland stated that he could not consent to the proposal, because such control over the power of ejectment would have the effect of being an equivalent to permission that the rent might cease. Consequently, it followed that any interference with the power of ejectment would affect the payment of rent, and the Bill did interfere with that power, and, therefore, did also interfere with the payment of rent. [Mr. W. E. FORSTER: No!] The right hon. Genleman said "No;" but he (Lord George Hamilton) had proved it logically from the statement of the right hon. Gentleman. He had never before taken part in the discussion on that matter, and he would admit that he had always been in favour of most ample compensation being given to the tenant for bonâ fide improvements. But what struck him as a peculiarity in the proposal of the Government was the interference with the rights of certain landlords. In times past, Parliament had interfered with legal rights of employers; but never, in one single instance, unless the legislation had been preceded by investigation. It was upon the facts which had been elicited in that investigation that legislation was to be made. A remarkable feature in the Bill was that the Government were unable to adduce one single fact. Twice he had asked Questions in the hope of eliciting facts, in order to enable him to form an opinion as to the merits of the measure; and the only fact he had been able to get out of the Government was that the accounts of savings banks in distressed counties were higher than they had been in preceding years—higher, at any rate, than in any year since 1871. And the consequence was that a certain Member of the Government had, unconsciously, no doubt, been compelled to take refuge in what he (Lord George Hamilton) might call one of the most objectionable forms of argument—namely, imputations against the landlords of Ireland; and had also argued that the object of the Bill was to prevent landlords from clearing their estates by consolidating their farms. He ventured to say that if there were in Ireland landlords who wished to clear their estates by consolidating their farms, there never was a Bill that would enable them to do so more than that one. He could show that clearly. During that year nothing would be done in the matter, and next year certain restrictions would be put upon the powers of landlords, with the effect of preventing an enforcement of the payment of rents. One of two things must then occur; either the landlords, having tenants they did not wish to continue on their estates, would give a series of wholesale evic- tions—in which case the number of process-servers would have to be multiplied and the police greatly increased. He would undertake to say that if that were the case, the number of police in the West Riding of Galway, which the Prime Minister estimated at 300, would be very much increased by that time next year. On the other hand, supposing the landlords fell in with the views of the Government, and postponed the payment of rent for the present year and next year, what would occur? According to the doctrine of chances, the probability was that in the present and next years there would be good harvests—for good times and bad ones came in cycles—landlords would be prevented from realizing rents during the two good harvests, and, in 1882, those unhappy tenants who had paid nothing for two years, would have to furnish four years' rent. Supposing, what was more than likely, that in 1882 there was an inclement season, did the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland suppose that he would not find himself in a much greater difficulty than at the present moment, when he would have to give protection to the process-servers who served poor tenants with notices for the non-payment of four years' rent at once? Therefore, he (Lord George Hamilton) said that if there be landlords who wished to clear their estates by consolidating their farms, they could not do better than postpone the collection of rents for two years. He would undertake to say they would succeed in their object, on account of the great difficulty small tenants would have in paying the four years' rent due. One fact struck him forcibly on the previous night in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. W. E. Forster). He indignantly denied any alteration in that Bill having been made. He (Lord George Hamilton) was bound to say that, although the right hon. Gentleman was well acquainted with Ireland, he should prefer the opinion of Irish Members as regarded the matter. The right hon. Gentleman had attempted to persuade the House that no alteration had taken place in the Bill, which was intended to make a temporary provision to assist the tenants; but he (Lord George Hamilton) begged to say that the clause, which he had already stated set up in some shape the Ulster Custom, was a radical and vital alteration. He would just point out to the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister what seemed to him to be the difficulty in which the Government was involved. He did not know, but he would assume, that that Ulster Custom was thoroughly understood by hon. Members, and he was bound to say that he entirely coincided with the opinion expressed by the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) on the previous day. He did not often agree with the hon. Member, and he quite disapproved of the methods by which he would settle the Land Question; but he could prove that he was right in the description which he gave as to the probable effect of the new clause proposed by the Government. What was the Ulster Custom? It meant the power of the out-going tenant to sell, subject to certain conditions, his interest in the farm—it was a custom which, practically, worked well, but which, regarded economically, was wrong. The hon. Member for the City of Cork was right in saying that if you attempted on a sudden to set up that custom, certain incidents attached to the custom which already existed in Ulster would spring up which must be most detrimental to the tenant. It should always be borne in mind what the custom meant. It meant that every in-coming tenant paid something, in addition, to the tenant for the occupation of his holding; therefore, it followed that the custom mainly depended upon the rent imposed. The effect would most certainly be that, unless the rent was limited, every in-coming tenant would be paying a rack-rent. That being so, let them regard the condition of things in the West of Ireland. He understood that it was the intention of the Government to protect a number of tenants who were unable to pay their rents. But the landlords, being hard men, had imposed, let them assume, rents almost equivalent to rack-rents. Under those circumstances tenants could not resist, but must pay or be turned out. What was the result, then, of the proposal of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland? The practical effect would be that the tenant, having nothing worth selling, which was highly probable, as those who had visited the West Coast of Ireland were aware, the in-coming tenant would have to pay an extra sum, for the privilege of paying the rent which the out-going tenant was unable to pay. The effect, shortly, would be that the incoming tenant would have to pay more than he did before. Therefore, he agreed with the hon. Member for the City of Cork, that the Bill did not facilitate the object that the Government had in view. Moreover, the Government were in this difficulty, that if they attempted in any way to raise that question of the Ulster Tenant-right, it would bring up the whole question of land tenure in Ireland. That could not be avoided. Although he lived in that part of the country where the relations were somewhat better between landlord and tenant, yet he had sufficient experience of the working of the Ulster Tenant-right to be assured that it would be a mistake to extend it over the remainder of Ireland unless it was accompanied by certain customs and usages. It seemed to him, therefore, that if the Government kept the Amendment upon the Notice Paper, they would be involved in a discussion as to the whole system of land tenure; and he believed that such a discussion, at the present moment, would be unadvisable, and that the Government would admit that they were not in possession of sufficient information to enable them to discuss that matter. Under these circumstances, he would say what he thought the Government had better do. He ventured respectfully to suggest to the Government that the best thing to do was to withdraw the Bill. He would make that suggestion, inasmuch as hon. Gentlemen on his side, as well as the Supporters of the Government and the Members from Ireland, did not like it. Therefore, as he believed it would not attain the objects the Government had in view when they brought it in, the best method, in order to save time, would be to withdraw the measure. He was much obliged to the Committee for allowing him to make these observations; he only wished, then, to say one word as regarded the class of arguments used on behalf of the Bill. The Government had been obliged to have recourse to all kinds of arguments in support of it, and his great objection to the method of those arguments was this. They had before them a provision which was temporary; but they had been compelled to employ arguments which, if adhered to, would ultimately make that provision permanent in its action. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, the other day, with his usual eloquence, dwelt upon the fact that the sufferings of those poor tenants was a visitation of Providence which had fallen upon them. Now, that appeared to him (Lord George Hamilton) to be a hard subject to introduce into such a measure, because it raised, in an objectionable form, the whole doctrine of Predestination. [ Cries of "Oh!"] Undoubtedly it did. Many persons in that House, then, believed that everything a man did was predestined; and he thought it was a dangerous rule to lay down to introduce such a subject into the discussion of measures, because it placed the persons who were at the time suffering from the visitation of Providence in another category from that in which other people were placed. Well, that seemed to him to be the only conclusion they could draw from the special argument of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister. But there was another question, to him a more dangerous one. They were told that to attempt to render assistance out of the Consolidated Fund was, practically, no use. It appeared to him that that was a dangerous argument, and that the facts were just the reverse, inasmuch as the money being paid out of the Exchequer would have the effect of throwing the burden upon the shoulders of the entire community, who were best able to bear it. If they discussed the whole question of the land tenure, it seemed to him that they must especially take into consideration the economic position of the population of the West Coast of Ireland. If they did that, they must necessarily occupy a considerable amount of time; for it must be evident to everybody who had travelled in the West of Ireland that the condition of the tenants in that part of the world was such that they could not successfully pursue their avocations unless the Government were prepared to re-enact the system of protection. Every year the produce of those small farms diminished in value, and every year the price of the articles which must be taken in exchange for the produce was increasing. Consequently, it was absolutely impossible to attempt to prop up that system of small tenant farming in a most inclement climate and barren soil, unless they were prepared to render permanent assistance out of the Consolidated Fund or the rates. Therefore, he sincerely hoped that the Government would take into its consideration the fact that they must not only discuss the whole Land Question, but, in addition, consider the difficulties which surrounded those small farmers, and, consequently, find it best to accede to his proposal and withdraw the Bill. Might he venture to correct one statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister? The right hon. Gentleman, the other night, censured somewhat severely the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill) for his historical inaccuracies, and then proceeded to give an historical account of the land tenure in Ireland during the last 10 or 12 years. He took a number of outrages previous to the passing of the Land Act of 1870, and took the average number of outrages which had occurred since, which showed a great diminution, and implied that that was due to the magnificent effect of the Land Bill of 1870 solely. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would pardon him (Lord George Hamilton), if he reminded him that the diminution was not the result of the passing of that measure. He had not the slightest wish to misinterpret the Prime Minister, and a reference to the Papers would show if he had misrepresented him. If he remembered rightly, the number of outrages was not diminished when the Irish Land Bill was introduced; but the Government refused to move in the matter until that Bill had been brought forward. He would put on one side the fact that it was one of the most stringent and coercive Bills ever applied to that country; the Government, in fact, employed exceptional powers in remedial legislation, in order to maintain peace and order in Ireland. Although that coercive measure became law in due course, what was the result? Why, the outrages and disturbances still continued; so that, in the following year, the noble Lord the present Secretary of State for India (the Marquess of Hartington) came down to the House and asked for the appointment of a Secret Committee, for the purpose of inquiring into the condition of Ireland, the effect of which was that measures more stringent and coercive were applied to that country. He thought that the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister ought to have mentioned those facts, and that the diminution was not due to the Land Act, but to the two coercive measures passed by the Government. He could not help thinking that they were rapidly getting to the same state of things, as that Bill now before them would not allay the threatened disturbance at all. On the previous night, a Question was put to the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, whether it was true that the Marquess of Lansdowne had resigned, and he replied that he had. He (Lord George Hamilton) ventured to say that the Marquess of Lansdowne had more practical knowledge of the distress in the West of Ireland, and the system of land tenure, than all the rest of the Government put together. During the whole of last winter he had resided there, and had borrowed largely in order to keep the people alive, and, in fact, had dealt with his tenants in such a way that they had not much to fear from the passing of that Bill. He (Lord George Hamilton) accepted as true what was stated in the papers as to the pernicious effect of the Bill; he, therefore, hoped and believed that the Government would see that they had made a great mistake. He was convinced that there was no satisfactory way out of the difficulty, and if the Government went on with the Bill time would be consumed, and it was certain not to give satisfaction after all; the fact being, that it was prepared and brought in too hastily. If it were passed, it was quite possible that it might be followed by scenes which were not desirable, to say the least of it; and it, therefore seemed to him the best thing by which the Government could soothe the public mind in Ireland to withdraw the Bill, and state that they had been thoroughly misunderstood from first to last, and that it had pleased nobody, and that during the Recess attention should be given to the whole question of the land system in Ireland.

said, the noble Lord opposite (Lord George Hamilton) had made what he supposed he considered to be a practical suggestion—namely, to withdraw the Bill at the present stage of the proceedings. He (Mr. W. E. Forster) would only say, in reply, that the Government saw no reason for following that suggestion. The main grounds on which the noble Lord had based it seemed to be because the Bill had not succeeded in pleasing either him and his Friends or the hon. Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell) and his Friends. That was not the object with which the Bill was brought forward. It was not to please anybody in particular; but to pass a measure which the Government considered necessary for the better government of Ireland. If Bills with regard to any great subject, and especially such a difficult subject as the government of Ireland, were brought forward to meet the views of any particular sections in that House, they would meet the fate which they deserved. He merely rose to refer to the period at which that discussion had been brought on. He thought it must be evident to hon. Members who had any experience of affairs in that House, that to discuss the principle of a measure on a Motion for the postponement of the Preamble was, to say the least of it, very inconvenient. Four days had already been devoted to the discussion of the general principles of the Bill, and they had now arrived at the Committee stage. It must be obvious to the noble Lord that the speech he had made should have been made previously, because it was generally understood that when they got into Committee they were to deal with clauses. Especially, upon the postponement of the Preamble, they ought not to debate the principle of the Bill, because the meaning of the postponement of the Preamble was that it should remain to be settted until after the clauses, which might be materially modified, had been discussed. Therefore, he thought it was most unwise for the noble Lord to have discussed the principle of the Bill, especially as he had introduced nothing new or fresh, except an explanation which he (Mr. W. E. Forster) did not quite understand; but had merely stated, with the ability that was to be expected of him, the arguments with which they were already acquainted.

said, that he had referred to the system of land tenure as being intimately connected with the subject of the Bill.

said, then he thought the noble Lord might have waited until the pleasure of the House was made known as to that subject. He could not help thinking, in view of the conduct of the noble Lord, remembering what his experience of the House was, that the noble Lord was not averse to time being wasted. When the Amendment of the clause in question came up for discussion, he (Mr. W. E. Forster) would be prepared, in conjunction with his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law), to justify the clause, and to show that it was consonant with the Bill as originally brought in, that it was really contained in the speech of his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and that it was not open to the objection stated by the noble Lord. At the same time, he must really decline making that explanation at a time that was inconvenient; and he thought the Committee would agree with him in thinking that they had better discuss the question when it was actually put from the Chair.

could by no means agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, that the Committee ought to be precluded from discussing the principle of the measure on the Motion that the Preamble be postponed. He knew that the discussion on that Motion was a departure from the usual course of proceeding; but, at the same time, in view of the very unusual conduct of the Government it became an absolute necessity, with the view of proceeding decently and in order with the consideration of the Amendment to the clause in Committee, that they should have some opportunity, at any rate, of discussing the principle of a measure which had been, entirely altered by the Government during the last two or three days. Furthermore, he would point out to the Chief Secretary for Ireland that the Irish Members, although very much interested in this question, and who really were more interested in it than hon. Members of either English or Scotch constituencies, had during the debate on the second reading, when they supposed that the Bill as it was printed and introduced by the Government was the Bill which they had under discussion, and which the Government desired to pass, then refrained from taking any part in the debate, simply because it was obvious that, when there was a majority in favour of a measure, that the passage of that measure was better facilitated while refraining as far as possible from the debate than by joining in it. Impressed with these considerations, the Irish Members remained silent during the debate on the second reading, and listened to the most odious and unfounded imputations proceeding from both sides of the House as to the conduct of hon. Members from Ireland, and as to the conduct of the proceedings of the land agitation. He claimed the greatest credit for himself for the forbearance with which he had remained silent under those utterly unfounded imputations, and he should certainly now take the opportunity of showing how utterly unfounded many of those representations were. There was, however, a further reason why the Government would not, as he thought, facilitate this measure by maintaining the policy of refusing to debate it. On the previous night, the Amendment under discussion was the Amendment of the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr. Pell). It did not appear to interest the House very much, and he, therefore, endeavoured to bring the attention of the House to what was really a matter of importance—namely, the change of front on the part of the Government. The Prime Minister, however, refused to give his reasons for the change of front, and refused to debate the question. [Mr. GLADSTONE: I denied it.] The right hon. Gentleman refused to have any discussion with reference to that change of front, and assigned as his reason that the introduction of that question was not in Order, and that the House ought to confine itself to the Motion of the hon. Member for South Leicestershire. Hon. Members on his side adopted that suggestion, and the debate did not proceed on that suggestion. Finally, at 12 o'clock, the Amendment was negatived without a division. Therefore, the only opportunity that could have been afforded to him and his hon. Friends of expressing their opinion with reference to the loss of the Bill, and the change of front of the Government, would have been to have applied for an adjournment of the debate. That course presented itself to his mind, and to the minds of a great many other hon. Members for consideration; but they dismissed it after reflection, because they saw that it would not be convenient to the House to ask that the debate on the Motion that the Speaker do leave the Chair should be adjourned. For that division, ardent Whips had been sent out by both the political Parties. Hon. Members had come from all parts of the country, at great expense and inconvenience, for the purpose of taking part in the division; and he (Mr. Parnell) and his Friends felt that it would not have been valiant, under the circumstances, to ask that the debate should be adjourned, but that it would be rather the better course to allow the division to be taken, and then to ask the Government for their reasons for this most extraordinary and unusual change, on the Motion that the Preamble be postponed. He ventured to point out, on the previous night, that though the Government announced their desire to protect tenants, that the Bill would have an entirely opposite effect, and that under its provisions, they would be unable, when ejected by their rack-renting landlords for non-payment of rent, to obtain any buyer of their interest. The Chief Secretary for Ireland said that was the only argument vouchsafed to the House in reference to that matter. It certainly was a very important consideration, that, at the last moment, the Government should announce that the principle of their Bill was that involved in the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland, although that matter had escaped the knowledge of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dublin University (Mr. Gibson). When this was thus discovered at the last moment, it was right that the Committee should have the opportunity of debating what now appeared to be the real principle of the measure. He (Mr. Parnell) did not see how they could possibly allow the Government to escape in that way from the predicament in which they had involved themselves. If they wished to bring in a Bill containing the vital principle involved in the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland, they should have made it clear in the Bill, so that the House should not have been misled, and have spent several days and nights on the discussion which now, after all, appeared to be utterly irrelevant. Therefore, he claimed the right of speaking on the principle of the measure on the Motion that the Preamble be postponed, and he would ask to move, very seriously, to re-consider the action they had taken in endeavouring to stifle discussion on this matter. After all, the principle of the Bill was not now one of compensation for disturbance; but it was contained in the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland, and that was a question which the Committee was called upon to discuss. Unless the Government could satisfactorily, even at that last hour, define the principle of that Amendment, and, consequently, the principle of the Bill, they would proceed to their deliberations in Committee on the Bill under the most disadvantageous circumstances. He demurred entirely to the statement of the noble Lord who spoke just now (Lord George Hamilton), that the Amendment in question was an attempt to establish the Ulster Custom to the whole of Ireland. He did not make use of any such expression as was attributed to him last night; but he said, whilst admitting that the establishment of the Ulster Custom in Ireland would be an important step, and a matter of considerable advantage to many classes of the Irish peasantry, yet he pointed out that the Amendment in question did not establish the Ulster Custom, but something entirely different. The principle of the Ulster Custom was that the tenant should have the right to the free sale of his holding; the principle of the Bill now before them was that the landlord should have the right of bringing an ejectment against his tenant, and of forcing him to sell at a most disadvantageous time. So far from the principle of free sale being involved, then, the principle of forced sale was that which was involved in the Bill. For his part, he might have agreed to a measure for extending the Ulster Custom throughout Ireland; but even that, as he had said last night, would only solve a portion of the Irish Land Question, and he also pointed out that it would be necessary, when making that extension, to debate at the same time the provisions of the Bill brought forward by the hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. Litton) at an earlier period of the Session, a Bill on which the Government moved the Previous Question, on the grounds that they had not had time to consider the question. This, then, was what they had now obtained from the Government. They had got an attempt not to introduce the Ulster Custom, but an attempt, partially, to amend the 13th section of the Irish Land Act. When, at the beginning of the Session, the Irish Members were considering this question of the amendment of the Irish Land Act, he might mention, in order to show how little importance they attached to such amendment, that they came to the conclusion that they would not include this Amendment of the 13th section of the Bill of the hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power), because they looked upon that as a matter of very little practical importance; while, at the same time, it would raise so many collateral issues, that it was better, as they thought, to leave it on one side altogether; until the Government had had an opportunity of considering the Land Question as a whole, and of bringing in some Bill in reference to the matter. From the very commencement of the Session, he and his Friends had been desirous of giving the Government time. They did not desire to worry them in the consideration or solution of the whole question; and it was only because the conduct of the Government in the present case forced them to peremptorily bring on matters entirely outside the question of the distressed districts, that he so strongly condemned the conduct of the Government on the present occasion. He wished on that occasion to take the opportunity of vindicating the Representatives of the Land League from the charges of collusion with the Government which had been brought against them by some hon. Members of the Conservative side. It had been said that this Compensation for Disturbance Bill was part of the programme of the National Land League. That was not so, for they had adopted a programme of an entirely different character. The principle which they desired to carry out was the abolition of the position of landlord and tenant in Ireland. They believed it was impossible to reconcile the respective interests of the landlord and tenant in the soil, and that the idea of partnership, which was put forward in the Bill of the hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. Litton), and in the well-known Bill introduced by the late Mr. Butt, was impossible of practical attainment, and that, owing to the nature of the case, it would always be found impossible by legislation to reconcile the respective interests of landlord and tenant in the soil. The Land League, therefore, recommended that the Irish landlords should be compensated for their interests, and that a system of peasant proprietors should be established, such as existed in Belgium and Prussia and other countries, where the old feudal system had been tried and found wanting. That was the programme of the National Land League. He did also further recommend certain interim measures, for the purpose of removing the trouble which existed in the West of Ireland, and also for the purpose of giving the Government time to consider this whole question. They recommended, therefore, that a Bill should be introduced suspending ejectments for two years in the case of tenants holding either £10 or £20—he was not sure which—and also that the recovery of a higher rent than the Government valuation should be rendered impossible for the space of two years in the case of tenants whose holdings were valued at more than £20. Those were the proposals placed before the country by the Irish National Land League. When the Irish Members came to consider those proposals, they saw that they would have a better chance of obtaining a day for a Bill by dividing those two recommendations into two branches, and the Bill for the suspension of ejectments for two years was, therefore, introduced by his hon. Friend the Member for Mayo. His right hon. Friend the Lord Mayor of Dublin (Mr. Gray) failed in obtaining a day for the second reading of his Bill, and progress as to that measure was, therefore, rendered impossible. While one measure was thus brought in by his hon. Friend the Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power), it was found that they would more easily secure the passage for the second Bill by the alteration of the 9th section of the Land Act. In coming to that conclusion, it was decided not to adhere to the restriction as to the valuation of the holding; but all holdings, of whatever valuation, should have the benefit proposed by the Bill. The Bill of his hon. Friend was not introduced to suspend ejectments for two years; but, by limiting the rack-renting of tenants in such a way as to render it possible for comfortable tenants to pay their rents, it would have had the effect of not so much protecting a smaller class of tenants as of preventing hardships upon the larger classes, and thus, in an indirect way, of preventing rack-renting, which was so fast destroying tenants' interest in the land. Now, however, owing to the departure taken by the Government, they had an entirely different object carried out. The Government were giving with the left hand, and taking away with the right. The tenant, where he was ejected by the landlord, was to have an opportunity of selling his interest; but, mark the absurdity of the Government proposal. The Government did not propose to give the right of sale to the tenant before he was ejected, but they proposed to give the right of sale to him after he was ejected. He could find no similarity in such proceedings as that to the Ulster Custom. The Amendment of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland was also open to this further disadvantage, that the small tenants, whom they desired especially to protect by a suspension of ejectments for two years, would have no protection whatever, inasmuch as they had no saleable interest in their farms. That was an opinion derived from an intimate acquaintance of the small holdings in the West of Ireland. It would be absolutely impossible for these small tenants, of whom there were over 250,000 in Ireland valued under £8, to obtain any market value for their holdings if the landlords proceeded to eject them. In reference to this matter, he wished to refer the Committee to the very remarkable testimony given by Mr. Chichester Fortescue, when the Land Act of 1870 was passing through the House. He was arguing at the time against extension of the Ulster system to the whole of Ireland, pointing out that it would not be adequate for the parties for which it was intended; but his arguments also applied to the contention he (Mr. Parnell) was now making against this Amendment, because they justified the belief that he entertained that the crippled right of sale which the Government had proposed to give would be utterly ineffectual in the smaller class of tenants. He said—

"Still I am asked—Why not simply extend the Ulster custom? Let me point out two or three difficulties in the way of that course. First of all, in Ulster landlords and tenants are perfectly aware of the custom under which they hold and have virtually contracted. In the next place, they have arranged their rent in accordance with the custom; a most important consideration, because there is no more dangerous and gross—I was going to say no more insidious—violation of the custom than to raise the rent to such a point as seriously to impair the value of the tenant-right."

Then he goes on to say—

"Again, are hon. Members certain that it would be a boon to tenants in other parts of Ireland to tell them that they shall have what they can get for the saleable value of their holdings, and nothing more? That they shall have no compensation for improvements, and no compensation for dispossession, but merely whatever they can get from some other tenant for the saleable value of their holding—always remembering that, in the case of a small Irish tenant, the man in occupation will consent to pay a higher rent than any new comer would do? Would that be a boon to small tenants in the South and West of Ireland? I greatly doubt it. In the rest of Ireland, beyond what may be called the customary districts, rents are sometimes very high in proportion to the capabilities of the tenant to pay, and sometimes they are very low. Are we to confer upon the tenant who lives under a good landlord, at an easy rent, the high value which he might obtain from the sale of his interest, and, at the same time, when a tenant farms at a rack-rent, and probably upon very bad land, in a large part of the South and West of Ireland, are we to give him nothing but the sale of the interest which he may have in the holding of that land, the value of which interest may be little or nothing? I cannot see my way to such a system as being a solution of the problem in the other Provinces of Ireland. The difficulty is this—In Ulster we have a system which is for the most part sound; not that even in Ulster there are not many inequalities; and we have recently been furnished with evidence that there are in the Bill provisions which are in favour of other parts of Ireland, for resolutions have been recently passed in the Northern Province declaring that Ulster is badly treated in comparison—but, at all events, in Ulster we have a system which, as I have said, is for the most part sound and fair, and which admits of being sanctioned and legalized; but elsewhere, in other parts of Ireland, if we attempt to introduce by the process of statute a mere literal and slavish copy of the Ulster custom the result would be one of the most doubtful character. We should give too much to one man, too little to another. We should press too hardly upon the good landlord, and far too lightly on the bad."—[3 Hansard , cxcix. 1440–1–2.]

Those words were worthy of very grave consideration by the Government. They had been told recently that the Government believed that their Bill, all along, contained the principle of the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland. He (Mr. Parnell) was himself told last night, by the Prime Minister, that some persons had the capacity of seeing more than anyone else. It certainly did require that capacity to find in the Bill, as printed, the principle of the Amendment. For his part, he (Mr. Parnell) believed it was utterly impossible to proceed to the consideration of the clauses of the Bill without very gravely considering the change of front which the Government had initiated. He did not see how it was possible for them to proceed with the Committee, unless the Government defined their position at the present time. They had now merely said that the Rules of the House did not allow them to do it at present, and that they must wait until the Amendment was reached. That would be all very well if the Government had not told them that the Bill already contained this principle. If that were so, the Bill, as it stood, would afford no protection to the tenants of the South and West of Ireland, and would prevent a rack-renting landlord from evicting his tenant, and by that eviction, to render it impossible for the tenant to obtain any benefit from the legislation of the Government, while it would not introduce to the rest of Ireland the Ulster Custom in any valuable or permanent form. He did trust that the Government would see the urgency and force of these considerations, and that they would pay a little more attention than they had done, up to the present, to the very grave complaints that he and his Party had to make as to their conduct.

Whatever else the Government may see, there is one thing that they do not see, and that is, the propriety, or the convenience, of discussing, on the Question that the Preamble of the Bill be postponed, as vital to the Bill, clauses and provisions that are not in the Bill, but which will, at a future time, come regularly under our consideration. With regard to the discussion of the Bill on the Preamble, I do not deny the title of the hon. Member (Mr. Parnell) or of any other hon. Member, to avail himself of the Forms of the House for the purpose of pursuing that course. I will, however, merely say that it is a course which is extremely unusual, which is highly inconvenient, and which can advance in no possible degree the present purpose that we have in view, unless, indeed, that purpose be what is commonly known as an obstruction, which I do not, in the least degree, impute. I believe I may say, that although the example of doing that has been set from the Front Opposition Bench this day, that there is not a single case for some years past of that course having been taken. ["Oh, oh!"] I certainly do think so. Unless I am mistaken, there is no single case of that course having been taken for some years past. Therefore, that course is simply unusual and inconvenient. But the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cork City has gone beyond that course, because he has not only discussed the principle of the Bill; but he discussed it subject to a definition of his own, which shows that he claims the liberty of depriving the laws of language and logic of their force in such a degree as completely to emancipate himself from all restraints of debate. He said the principle of the Bill was in a clause that was not in the Bill, although Notice has been given of our intention to introduce it.

What I said was, that the right hon. Gentleman had told us so.

I beg pardon. The hon. Gentleman is quoting one thing he said in his speech, I am quoting another, and he said that other also. ["Hear, hear!"] I would like to ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Dublin University (Mr. Gibson) to say whether he heard that speech, because the right hon. and learned Gentleman is cheering as if he heard it, and I do not think he heard it. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Cork City said he was discussing the principle of the Bill, and that the principle lay in the clause of my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland.

Probably the right hon. Gentleman is alluding to what I said last night.

The hon. Member for Cork City denied that this principle was in the Bill; but there is no other Bill but the original Bill which the Government have brought in.

:What I said was, that I denied that it was in the Bill until we were told it was by the Government.

The hon. Gentleman asserted it was in the Bill, and he said I must indeed have eyes to see a great deal more than anybody else if I could see it in the Bill. Therefore, upon his own showing, it is not in the Bill, and having, according to him, such a character as that the Bill would be essentially altered if it were put in, he proceeded to discuss the clause at great length. In doing that, he acted upon a principle which would be really fatal to all Order, and the continuance of any Business of this House if it were generally adopted, because if, on the Preamble of the Bill, we may discuss any one Amendment which is down for discussion, but which has not been moved, it follows that any other Member may discuss any other Amendment; and, consequently, all the Amendments which are down upon the Paper for separate discussion in Committee, according to the well-understood Rules of the House, may be discussed by hon. Gentlemen altogether.

Whereupon, Black Rod being come with a Message for the House to attend the Lords Commissioners, the Chairman left the Chair.

Mr. Speaker resumed the Chair.

Message to attend the Lords Commissioners:—

The House went;—and being returned;—

Mr. Speaker reported the Royal Assent to several Bills.

Sir, at the time when the Forms of the House required me to cease in the observations I was making, I was impressing upon the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cork City in particular, and upon the Committee in general, the great inconvenience of departing from the Rules of the House and assuming the liberty of discussing the Amendments on the Paper in the mass instead of considering them seriatim . Of course, I cannot control the hon. Gentleman and his Friends, for every Member of the House must exercise his discretion. I cannot enforce the observance of the Rules; but one thing I can do, and must do, and that is to inform the hon. Gentleman that we, the Government, will not discuss the clause now. We are determined not to do that. When we come to the clause we will fully explain how, as we have stated, the substance of that clause is already in the Bill, and sustain its merits and the extent of its application so far as we can define it; when, if the hon. Member is dissatisfied with the clause, and thinks that it should not be inserted in the Bill by the Committee, I need not remind him that he will have more than one opportunity, according to the Rules of the House, of discussing it. But, at present, while the clause is only prospective, and not in the Bill, while we do not admit that it alters, or does more than explain the purport of the Bill, we shall not, at any rate, enter upon the discussion of its merits, or take a course which would lead to no practical result whatever. I hope the Committee, under present circumstances, will proceed to deal with the various proposals, some of them deserving of very great attention, which are on the Paper. The prospects of the House with respect to the probable duration of the present Session are, I am sorry to say, so far as I can judge, extremely grave; and I cannot but express my regret that so much waste of time should be added to the necessary labour of the House. But no amount of waste of time would justify the Government in abandoning measures which they think necessary for the welfare of the country; and, therefore, I hope, for its own convenience, not less than upon public principle, the Committee will proceed to deal in the regular and ordinary manner with Amendments on the Paper.

Sir, I hope the Committee will proceed with the discussion upon the Bill. At the same time, with reference to the observations which fell from the Prime Minister as to the irregularity of raising such discussions as this, and the inconvenience or unusual character of such proceedings; and with reference to the remark which he made that the discussion had originated with the noble Lord who sits on this Bench (Lord George Hamilton), I wish to say, in justification of my noble Friend, who, I think, made a very reasonable speech on the subject before the Committee, that he is by no means to be considered as setting a precedent in this matter. Possibly, we may have picked up some bad habits which have been left here by our Predecessors. I can certainly recall several occasions during the last Parliament on which we found ourselves confronted on the first stage of Bills in Committee with Motions, some of them even proceeding from noble Lords and right hon. Gentlemen who now occupy distinguished positions on the opposite Bench. I remember, in 1874, upon the question of the Endowed Schools Act, the right hon. Gentleman the Postmaster General (Mr. Fawcett). raised, on the question that the Preamble be postponed, a discussion on several important points in the Bill. But I will point to another case, which made a stronger impression upon my mind at the time—that is to say, in the year 1875, in relation to the Regimental Exchanges Bill. On that occasion, we had a very strong and warm debate on several nights; there were great debates and divisions on the second reading; there was another debate and division on the question "that the Speaker do leave the Chair;" and when these debates had been completed, the noble Lord who was then the Leader of the Opposition and is now the Secretary of State for India (the Marquess of Hartington), upon the question that the Preamble be postponed, got up and raised a discussion again, which lasted for a considerable time, and occupied the attention of the Committee for several hours. On that occasion, the noble Lord said he had no intention of saying anything which would tend to re-open the discussion on the main principle of the Bill; but he thought it necessary to get some further information as to the mode in which the Bill was to be carried out, and as to the views of the Government. Now, that is precisely what I understand the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex wants. He says it is not so much the merits or demerits of the clause to be proposed by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law) that he wishes information upon, but the effect which such clause may have on the character of the Bill. My noble Friend says he wishes to know whether, when we are discussing this Bill, we are discussing it on the understanding that it is purely a temporary Bill, or upon the understanding that it is something more than a temporary Bill. And I understand my noble Friend to say, with great practical knowledge of the Ulster custom, that if any principle analogous to that custom is to be introduced, it can hardly be introduced in a Bill of a temporary character. For instance, how can it be supposed that any tenant or occupier could get a purchaser for the goodwill of his estate, if the purchaser is not to be at liberty hereafter to re-sell his purchase? My noble Friend wished to point out to the Committee that it would be more convenient that we should discuss the matter with a complete knowledge of the full intention of the Bill, so that we may approach each separate Amendment with better knowledge of the mode in which the Government wish the Bill to be carried out. The Prime Minister has said that we are discussing a clause which is not in the Bill; and to a certain extent, and technically, that is true. But if we are to accept the explanation given by the Government, it is in the Bill; for they say it only expresses what was already implied. There have been cases which are mentioned in the book that records our proceedings in which discussion was taken on the Preamble, and the Preamble was settled before the clauses. I think it is far better that we should discuss the clauses of this Bill; but I think, also, it is desirable before we discuss them that we should have no doubt as to what is the meaning of the Bill and the way in which the Government intend to carry it into effect. I do not wish the discussion to be continued, and have only risen to justify my noble Friend with reference to the imputations which have been cast upon him.

I did not understand the noble Lord (Lord George Hamilton) to ask for any information from the Government. The noble Lord wound up his speech with a request that the Bill should be withdrawn. If any hon. Gentleman has any question to put to the Government in regard to the meaning of any portion of the Bill, of course it is our duty, with due regard to the Rules of the House, to answer it.

said, he should not have risen to address the Committee at that moment if it were not clear that it was the intention of hon. Members on the opposite Benches not to allow discussion on the clauses to go on. But he wished to point out to his hon. Colleagues that the Bill was intended to prevent or mitigate the evils of the evictions which were at that moment in progress in Ireland. ["No, no!"] That was the intention of the Bill, notwithstanding the assertion to the contrary by the hon. Member for Ennis (Mr.Finigan), who was in the habit of interrupting the speeches of hon. Members, probably because he thought that by that kind of interference he would be better able to confuse arguments which he did not wish to be advanced. He (Mr. Mitchell Henry) repeated that the intention of the Bill was to prevent or mitigate the evils of the evictions going on in Ireland, and it had been approved by the hon. Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell) on that very ground. The intention might be well carried out, or it might have been marred by something which had occurred subsequently to the introduction of the Bill; but what he (Mr. Mitchell Henry) had said still remained correct. While, then, hon. Members opposite were preventing progress being made with this Bill in the House of Commons, evictions in Ireland were going on. Numbers of families were being turned out upon the roads, and great suffering was being brought upon persons whom hon. Members ought to take under their protection. If the hon. Member for Cork City was of opinion that the clause proposed to be introduced by the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland was injurious to the character of the Bill, let him debate it when it was reached in Committee. The hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power), whose authority he (Mr. Mitchell Henry) looked upon as quite equal to that of the hon. Member for Cork City, had introduced an Amendment to the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland, which was designed, to a very great extent, to restore the Bill to its original condition, with the difference that it put an obligation on the tenant to endeavour to fulfil his moral and legal obligations. The tenant was to endeavour to sell his holding, if he was unable to pay his rent; and then, if he could prove that he honestly made those endeavours, and had been unsuccessful, he was to receive the protection which the Bill originally intended to give him. That proposal was one which ought to be fairly and openly discussed in the House of Commons. But a strange alliance had been formed between hon. Members who had taken to sitting on the opposite side of the House and hon. Gentlemen whose objects were totally distinct from theirs, which did but make him think how true it was that evil communications corrupt good manners. When some hon. Members determined to sit on the other side of the House, and were joined by others who had never sat in the House at all—

said, he did not understand the hon. Member (Mr. Mitchell Henry) to raise that question; but to refer to certain opposition coming from a particular part of the House.

said, he would have the Committee notice what freedom of discussion meant in the mind of the hon. Member for Cork City, and in the minds of hon. Members who interrupted him. When that determination on the part of some hon. Members to which he had alluded was come to, he had felt that one of two things would happen—either that his hon. Colleagues on the opposite side of the House would adopt Tory tactics, or that the Tory Members, being very impressionable, would be taken into the councils of his hon. Friends and adopt their tactics. The course, consequently, which was now being pursued was one that, in his opinion, was calculated to damage the position of the poor tenants in Ireland. Let the Committee remember that the opposition to this Bill on the part of the Tory Home Rule Alliance was based on totally opposite principles. The hon. Member for Cork City had supported the measure when the Conservatives opposed it; but now he had joined them in their opposition, in which, they persisted, not because they approved anything whatever in the Bill, but because they totally disapproved it. The hon. Member for Cork City and his Friends were not even willing to allow the Committee to discuss the clauses of a Bill which was to give protection to the tenants. That, he maintained, was an example of the result of evil communications. But he (Mr. Mitchell Henry) wished to thank the hon. Member for Cork City for having said something about the Land League; and the hon. Member had told them, what were the principles which the Land League would prefer to be applied to the present state of things in Ireland. The hon. Member, however, had only told them a very small part of those principles, and only as much as was necessary to vindicate the Land League from the accusation which no one but himself had even brought against that body—that was to say, of an alliance with the Executive Government. The principles of the Land League were as totally opposed to any principles which had been advocated in that House on behalf of the tenant as light was from darkness. Again, he wished to remind his hon. Friend that he had not even given the correct title of the Land League. The League was agitating in America, and forming a powerful confederation that was to do something by means of a mysterious agency. No doubt, the hon. Member for Ennis (Mr. Finigan) knew all about it.

said, he wished to remind hon. Members that evictions in Ireland were going on, whilst the time of the Committee was being wasted.

said, the hon. Member for Cork City had introduced the subject of the Land League, and brought its principles into comparison with the provisions of the Bill before the Committee. He thought the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) was rather travelling beyond the Question by speaking of the Land League as an association existing in America, and, if so, it could not have direct reference to this Bill.

said, he would point out that the true title of the League was the "Land and Labour League," and that it was intended to regulate not only the occupation of land, but the principles of labour. His hon. Friend said it was proposed to abolish landlordism. But if that was to be abolished, what, he asked, was to become of the landlords? The object of the League was to abolish landlords by putting obstacles in the way of the pay- ment of rent by making the tenant the judge of what was fair, by combinations which would encourage those who were unfairly inclined not to pay their rents, and to discourage those who were anxious to fulfil their moral obligations, as were a vast number of the Irish tenants, and, by this unhallowed combination, so to depress the value of land in the market, that on a valuation made, not for the purpose of rental, but for something totally different—he (Mr. Mitchell Henry) referred to Griffiths' valuation—estates might be purchased, and the present landlords got rid of, and the land being handed over, not under a new system of peasant proprietorship, but so as to form a new class of landlords. Would the Committee believe the folly of this proposal? It was not to help the poor tenants in the West of Ireland; but to hand over to the present occupants of farms throughout Ireland, who were paying from£300 to£500 a-year rent, their farms purchased by the money of the State.

said, the hon. Member for Galway was travelling beyond the Question before the Committee, which was that the Preamble be postponed.

said, he had been led into those observations with reference to the Land and Labour League by the remarks of the hon. Member for Cork City, who had contrasted the legislation which he thought would be right, and which was down in the programme of the Land League, with this Bill, and especially with its Preamble. He (Mr. Mitchell Henry) wished to separate himself entirely from those tactics, which he believed were resulting in the introduction of untold misery amongst the Irish people. The Committee would have noticed that those who had quite as good right as hon. Members opposite to speak for the people of Ireland, and to champion popular rights, had felt it their duty to support the Government on the previous night. He, for one, felt it his duty to support the Government when he thought them in the right, and could never join in tactics the whole effect of which was to waste the time of the Committee and to increase the sufferings of the Irish people.

said, he thought the debate was getting very wide of the mark; but the remarks of his hon. Friend who had just sat down (Mr. Mitchell Henry), although they were not exactly within the scope of the Bill, were, to a great extent, called for by the observations of the hon. Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell). He (Mr. W. E. Forster) wished, however, to put it to the Committee, whatever might be the opinions of some hon. Members, whether they should not show their sense of the importance and value of time in their debates, by taking the usual course of proceeding to discuss the clauses of the Bill, a course which had not only been recommended by the Prime Minister and Leader of the House, but which had received the support of the Leader of the Opposition.

said, he hoped he was as much averse to mere obstruction as any man in the House, and he believed hon. Members would acquit him of any intention of obstruction. He could not but think that the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton) was fully justified in the course he had taken, because it appeared that the principle of the Bill had been altered now that the Prime Minister had denied emphatically that he said that the principle of the Ulster tenant right was included in the Bill; but he maintained that the Amendment of which the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law) had given Notice assumed that the Ulster tenant right existed in the distressed districts. With the permission of the House he would read the words—

"Provided always, If it should appear to the Court that the landlord has given permission to the tenant to dispose of his interest in the holding on such terms as the Court may deem reasonable, and that the tenant has refused to avail himself of such permission, then in every such case the claims of the tenant to compensation for disturbance shall be disallowed."

The clause assumed that which the Leader of the House had denied, that he said was included in the Bill. The terms of the Amendment assumed the existence of a tenant right which he had heard described as the Ulster tenant right. The Committee should come to a full understanding that, in passing this Bill, it was or was not sanctioning the assumption contained in the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland. They needed no explanation that the principle of establishing a tenant right pervaded the Bill from the first, for the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland had stated that he introduced this Amendment to explain it. If, then, the Committee was thus, for a temporary purpose, to be persuaded to sanction the assumption that in the scheduled districts the tenant right existed, it would be utterly impossible, on the termination of the period assigned by the Bill, to go back from what had been done. It would be assumed for two years, a period amply sufficient to establish by the custom, that a tenant right existed in the distressed districts. He thought that the opposition to the principle of this Bill was at last understood, and was fully justified by the fact that the promoters of the Bill wanted the Committee to acknowledge the existence of a tenant right in those scheduled districts, such as existed in the North of Ireland, and such as did not exist in the districts in question.

said, he was one of those Irish Members who, under ordinary circumstances, would have at once complied with the wish of the respected Premier. But he thought it was necessary to justify the course which he and his hon. Friends were taking in not complying on that occasion with the wishes of the right hon. Gentleman. When this Bill was first introduced, he had read it with a great deal of care, and accepted it as a most welcome piece of legislation, adapted to the circumstances and to the period over which it was to prevail. He had looked on the Bill as consisting of two parts: the first, a deterrent against all evictions of the small and poorer classes of tenants. He saw that it continued the principle enunciated by the Land Act of 1870, and that just in proportion as the tenants were small the penalties for disturbance were high. As a proof of his having accepted the Bill, and of the adhesion given to it by the Party with whom he acted, he need only refer to their silence before the division upon the second reading. But after the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had said there was no change in the principle of the Bill, he had carefully read it again, and found the Amendment introduced, by no hon. Member outside the Government, but by the right hon. and learned Gentleman who held the high position of Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law)—who, doubtless, had been consulted when the Bill was being promoted—which entirely altered the value of the measure. The Bill, as it originally stood, was subjected to certain restrictions, and its application finally left to the judgment of the County Court Judge. That was a small measure of justice, undoubtedly; but still it was, in the spirit in which it had been framed, an equitable measure. He had had some experience of County Courts in Ireland, and the effect of the Bill would be to postpone the payment of rent by small tenants for the period contemplated. He had known the payment of debts of men in the receipt of wages to be extended by the County Court Judge over 25 instalments. What would be the effect of the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland? It proposed to give the small tenants the right of sale. Why, the right hon. and learned Gentleman might as well have made a present of a pair of knee-buckles to a Highlander of the olden time. So far from the Bill in its altered form being a deterrent against evictions, it would give additional facility for them. There was very little doubt that the only replication to the unfortunate tenant would be the landlord or his agent walking into Court, and producing written proof that he had given liberty to sell, when, if the tenant pleaded against this his inability to sell, it would be held to be no bar, and the tenant would have to go out. Therefore, by reason of the extraordinary change effected in the spirit of the Bill by the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, he must say that, in his opinion, hon. Members were quite justified in taking a discussion on the Preamble.

said, that, as far as the discussion had gone, nothing had been gained except the information given by the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) that the object of the Bill, and that of the Land League were, to a great extent, identical. It was almost impossible for the Government to sever the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland from the Bill; because, in the first place, one of the promoters of the measure was the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself; and, therefore, any Amendment of his must be taken as part of the Bill. For that reason, it was only right that the question of the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton) should be answered by the Prime Minister. That right hon. Gentleman had refused to discuss the clause; but, before going into the Bill in Committee, it was necessary that hon. Members should understand what its effect would be. The Chief Secretary for Ireland had said last night that there would be no difficulty in finding purchasers for the small plots of land in question. Under the Ulster tenant right a man bought with the knowledge that he would have the right to sell when he became too poor to pay his rent. But the proposed Amendment was to operate only for a year and a-half. Now, he (Captain Aylmer) wanted to know who would buy land with a year and a-half's title? The Ulster custom acknowledged the right to sell at a future day; but under this extraordinary Bill the farmer had power to buy, but had not the power to sell. He ventured to submit that such an extraordinary proposal had never before been presented to the House of Commons. Unless, therefore, some assurance was given that the clause was to be withdrawn, he could not see how the Bill could possibly work. Perhaps the Government would say where they could find men who would buy the right of the tenant in land with the knowledge that after a year and a-half they would have no right to sell.

said, he should have been willing to surrender his judgment upon the question before the Committee to the direction of the Prime Minister, but for reasons which he would proceed to state. Had the measure remained as originally introduced by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, he should not have troubled the Committee at all, except to express his satisfaction and thanks to the right hon. Gentleman who had introduced it. But the debate had, in consequence of the proposed Amendment, assumed a character which made it incumbent on him to disassociate himself altogether from the outrageous principles which had been ascribed to himself and the Party with whom he had the honour of acting. He made that statement then, because if he were to do so when the clauses were being discussed, the Prime Minister would probably call him to Order, and ask him to be relevant in his remarks to the clause under discussion. They had been accused of being Communistic and revolutionary in their views. He admitted, at least, that his own views were that the state of Ireland and the state of land tenure in Ireland were such as to require radical and sweeping reform. He repudiated the intention of doing injury to any Irish landlord in working out that reform; and he should be the most forgetful of beings if he ceased to remember with gratitude the acts of some landlords in Ireland, whose example, had it been followed by the rest, would have prevented the question being raised which was now before the Committee. He believed that a system of land tenure under which landlords could act in a kind and generous spirit would have forestalled this distress by making a wise concession in time to the tenants when they needed it. Now, their proposition was that the State should buy up the land at a fair price, and that it should then be let out in small lots to the tenants. And here he wished to refer to a speech of the Prime Minister delivered last November.

said, the hon. Gentleman was travelling beyond the limits of the Question, which was that the Preamble be postponed.

said, that charges had been made against Irish Members of advocating revolutionary principles. There was not the least justification for such charges. All they said was, that it was perfectly possible for the Government, if they thought fit, to buy large estates and sell them, to the tenants. That was a course which the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister had stated was a course which might be adopted.

said, all he stated was that such a thing would be allowable in principle.

said, therefore it was in principle that he adopted such a course. He thought that hon. Gentlemen who came to discuss this question should first make themselves acquainted with the science of political economy, and with the law bearing upon the subject. He would tell hon. Members upon the opposite Benches, as they did not seem to be aware of the fact, that no absolute property in land was allowed by law. That was a legal proposition of the highest importance and of a most incontrovertible nature.

said, he must point out to the hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Dawson) that he was opening the whole question of land tenure in Ireland. As this Bill had a limited scope, he would ask the hon. Member to limit himself to the Question now before the Committee.

said, that they were discussing upon that Bill the question of land tenure in Ireland, because they were going to make several great changes in the principles that regulated that tenure; and he thought it was perfectly regular for him to show what were the general principles of land tenure, and why he did not agree with the propositions of the Bill. He should not trespass upon the Committee longer than was necessary. He would premise by stating that there was no absolute property in land, and that the principle of absolute property in land was contrary to the doctrines of political economy. So much for what had been said with regard to the revolutionary principles which they were charged with holding. He wished entirely to disassociate himself with any connection with revolutionary principles, and he thought he had greater reason to do so than any man in his Party. When it was proposed to force landlords to sell their property at a sacrifice, he stood up and said that the proposition was unjustifiable. What was the Amendment which the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law) now proposed to introduce into the Bill? It was one which was to force the tenants to dispose of their property, or be evicted. The landlords were a few thousands in Ireland, while the tenants were some millions. He thought it very hard that, while they were so scrupulous with the rights of the landlords, they should tell the tenants that they must sell their property at the worst time, when it was absolutely certain that they could get nothing for it. It seemed to him that the proposal was one of the most unjustifiable and the most untenable character. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, in one of those pithy speeches for which he had obtained such celebrity, had told them that every law to be of any use must be carried out with firmness and determination, and he had said that he would support the law with all the force of this great country. But, before supporting the law by force, the right hon. Gentleman had further told them that he wanted justice to be secured to the tenants. He (Mr. Dawson) contended that, inasmuch as the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland forced compulsory sale upon the tenants, there would be no justice in the measure, and the force of this great country would be brought to bear upon Irish tenants when justice was not on their side. The Bill, when originally introduced by the Government, provided that all tenants who were unable to pay rent should be protected from eviction. The tenant was to remain in the occupation of his holding on just and reasonable terms; but the effect of the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland was to prevent the tenant continuing in that occupation. The landlord might say to the tenant— "You must get a purchaser for your holding, or I will evict you." How was it possible for the tenant to get a purchaser under present circumstances? No one would buy his holding, and he would be turned out. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland said that he wanted to insure peace for Ireland. It had been argued with great reason, on the part of the landlords, that the Bill would cause the loss of income to them. But the landlords should remember that there was something worse even than the loss of income. They should reflect upon the difference between their loss of income and the tenant's loss of capital. The landlord, as the Bill was originally drawn, might have had his income suspended for two years; but, under the Amendment, the tenant would lose his capital. The Bill provided that rent should be postponed, not taken away; and when a time of prosperity and good harvests returned the claim of the landlord would not be wiped out, but would be revived. But it was now proposed that the tenant should lose, not only his income, but the capital he had put into the land in the shape of improvements. They had heard of the necessity of redress of grievances in Turkey, and of the necessity of a European Conference to consider them. He thought, however, that the attention of Europe ought to be drawn to the relations between England and Ireland, and that a European Conference should be appointed to consider them. A European Conference should be assembled at Berlin to insure that the relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland were carried out as they ought to be in the Face of all the nations of Europe. There were two parties to be considered in this matter. On the one side, there were the landlords, against whom he did not wish to say one word, for he should do no good to his own case by vituperation. He did not think that they had any reason to feel aggrieved in this matter, because they had had immense grants of money for two years—almost for nothing—at 1 per cent. He did think that at that crisis the law put the landlord in a much more favourable position than the tenant. £1,500,000, at 1 per cent, had been advanced to the landlords from the Irish Church Fund belonging to the Irish Catholic people. ["No, no!"] Did hon. Gentlemen doubt that the Irish Church Fund originally belonged to the Catholic Church of Ireland? What did the tenants get by the Bill? They did not get an advance of money at 1 per cent for two years; but they were to be compelled to leave their homes. The homes of Ireland were the happiest in Europe. The character of the Irish people would compare favourably with that of the most favoured nations upon earth. What treatment did the right hon. Gentleman extend by the Bill to those people? The Bill originally allowed them two years' occupation of their holdings; then came the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland to undo all that an English statesman had done. It was very hard that when a distinguished English statesman, like the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, should propose a measure for the relief of the distressed people of Ireland, one of their own countrymen, a Law Officer of the Crown, should come forward and propose to undo all that was proposed to be done. If they wanted to be governed by Englishmen, then let them be governed by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, or by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, for they were men of large hearts and minds; but they should not let one of their own countrymen come forward to do acts which an English Minister would not do. He thought he had said sufficient to show the Committee that what was now proposed would do the greatest injustice to the Irish tenants. He did not think that, after all, a proposition which had been advocated by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, to the effect that the Government could buy up the estates of large proprietors in Ireland, was one which could be described as revolutionary; nor did he think he could be charged with advocating Socialistic doctrines when he showed that the principle of English law was that there was no absolute property in land. He had never said one word calculated to cast a single reflection upon the English people, who had fought their way to their present position by agitation and by force; who had dethroned Kings, and who had insisted upon changes in the line of the dynasty; but he thought it was hard to characterize the efforts of the Irish to gain justice for themselves as revolutionary and Socialistic. He had never said one word against the English people. He only wished there was the same backbone in his own countrymen. The hon. Member for Liskeard (Mr. Courtney) had brought forward arguments against what they were contending for, which, if true, were utterly unworthy of him; but they were not true, and were extremely exaggerated. He would appeal even to the hon. Member for Liskeard to withdraw from the Irish people the calumny which he had uttered against them. He would appeal to the supporters of order in every part of the United Kingdom to keep the happy homes of Ireland and not destroy them. It was their great boast that Ireland was orderly. They had been told that Ireland was surrounded by the melancholy ocean, and that the people were somewhat tinged with melancholy. There was one political fact which could not be overlooked, that Ireland had been so oppressed for centuries, and so troubled, that that oppression had left upon the character of Irishmen a very great spirit of irritation. Would they not now allow them to leave the troubled waters of strife and to go into the safe haven of rest? The only safe anchors in these troubled waters were the happy homes which were yet possessed by the Irish. If the Amendment proposed were to be adopted in the Bill, those happy homes would be entirely destroyed.

said, he desired to call the attention of the Committee to the fact that their object was to discuss the clauses of the Bill, and not to make speeches which were appropriate only to the second reading. He wished the Committee to recollect that the chief object was to discuss the nature of the clauses of the Bill.

said, he did not know what the Amendment of his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law) might be supposed to do; but what it certainly had done had been to open the door to torrents of eloquence. He must request the Committee to understand that this was the proper time to debate the clauses of the Bill. In saying so, he did not at all imply that the Government, in the slightest degree, admitted the description, which had been applied to the Amendment of his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland. When it came before the Committee would be the proper time to discuss it. There would not be a chance of getting any measure passed if they did not follow the usual order of debate, and in Committee discuss the nature of the clauses seriatim .

said, that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland did not seem to make any allowance for the unusual position in which the Committee found themselves placed. His (Mr. Justin M'Carthy's) opinion was, that the discussion they had heard was the result of endeavouring to force the Committee into a decision for which it was not prepared. He had hoped that in the observations which had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman they would have had some answer to the conclusive arguments which had been urged against the Bill in its present shape. Their difficulty was that they found themselves compelled to deal with an entirely new measure. He did not agree with the technical point raised by the right hon. Gentleman that they ought only to discuss this matter when they came to one particular clause. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law) had made a distinct announcement of the clause which he intended to propose; and, so far as they understood it, that clause altogether changed the scope and purpose of this measure. Not only did that clause change the purpose of the measure, but it absolutely reversed it. That was the last occasion when they could discuss the clause in its bearings on the measure as a whole. The Government had changed the Bill altogether, and were offering something totally different from what they had offered before. That changed measure they were not now in a position to discuss. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, whether the scope of the measure would not be wholly changed by the new clause? And instead of being a measure for relieving Irish distress, a measure to give some security to the tenant for his holding, in the emergency in which he was placed, a measure to save him from eviction under the present exceptional circumstances, the Bill, with the threatened alteration, would do nothing of the sort. If that were not the first intention of the measure, at all events, he and all his Friends were led to believe that that was its intention. But what did the measure, as now altered, propose to do? They must take into their consideration that this new clause, of which the Government had given Notice, instead of keeping the people on the soil, would tend to do exactly the reverse. As the measure originally stood, something like a penalty was imposed upon the landlord for unjust eviction. The landlord, evicting his tenant who was unable to pay his rent, was, by the Bill, compelled to pay the tenant compensation for the disturbance, having regard to the rent of the holding. By this clause, they called upon the tenant, at a moment the most inopportune and the most inconvenient, to offer his property for sale. If he could not sell it he was to be evicted; and for that eviction he could obtain no compensation whatever. Thus they would give a new and great advantage to the landlords, and would do a new and great injustice to the tenants. Many tenants had been holding under a rent of too high an amount, having regard to the average farm rents. When they went into the market to sell they would be unable to do so; and yet the Bill, under those circumstances, endeavoured to force the sale. What man would buy land at too high a rent which, moreover, was held on disadvantageous conditions? The tenants would be offering for sale land which was held at too high a rent, and with security for little more than 12 months' possession. How would it be possible for a tenant unable to sell to obtain compensation? He would call upon Her Majesty's Government to state how they reconciled that change with the spirit of the Bill, as originally advocated by them. Was the Bill, as it now stood, all that they were going to offer? When Irish Members supported the Bill, in the first instance, it was very different from that which they were now called upon to accept. If the Government were determined to proceed with the measure in its present shape, it would only be a waste of time for any Irish Member to occupy five minutes in discussing such a worthless Bill. The hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) had spoken of the tactics pursued by Irish Members of this House. He (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) knew of no tactics pursued by them. They simply considered the proposals brought forward, and if they thought they were worthy of it they gave them their support. If, on the other hand, they considered them of a detrimental character, they opposed them. He was not aware that any other tactics had been used, and there had been no alliance of the Irish Members with any others, except that natural and inevitable alliance, which existed for the moment, between two sets of men alike unable to support a measure, although coming to their conclusion from different points of view. The Irish Members with whom he acted found, after full deliberation, that the measure was one from which, in its present shape, they had no hope; and, while unwilling to oppose, yet they found themselves utterly unable to support it.

MR. W. E. FORSTER said, that the clause with regard to which such objections had been taken was not, by any means, a new clause. His right hon. Friend the Prime Minister had stated, from the beginning, that he considered this clause was one involved in the Bill. He had stated that an important question had been raised by the Notice given of the Motion to be made before Mr. Speaker do leave the Chair, the substance of which was that the Bill was not to apply to any case where a landlord was willing to allow the tenant to sell his goodwill. He (Mr. W. E. Forster) had said, moreover, that that was, doubtless, a very important proposition, with which it would be necessary to deal, because no Judge could possibly give a tenant compensation in any case where the landlord had granted permission to the tenant to sell his goodwill. Nothing could have been more clear than the words used by his right hon. Friend. The clause which it was proposed by his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland to insert in the Bill only dealt with that question. If it were thought that there was anything unjust in that Amendment to the small tenants in Ireland, when they came to that part of the Bill they could discuss the matter, and move any proposition with regard to it. If they would wait until the clause in question came on, then hon. Members could bring forward any Amendment that they wished. His right hon. Friend, he was sure, would be quite ready to consider any propositions which were brought forward, and he hoped that they would now be allowed to proceed with the subject under discussion.

said, that if they passed the clauses of the Bill at present it would be impossible to go back afterwards and restore them to what they ought to be.

said, that the Bill had already been a long time before the House. After three days' debate the second reading had been passed. They were then considering a clause which was not before them, but which would properly come before them if the discussion were only allowed to proceed. The only practical course to be taken was that of allowing them to go on with the Bill.

said, he objected strongly to the Bill in the form to which it was reduced by the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland. Speaking for himself and for other Irish Members, he must say that they considered that the Amendment entirely altered the character and scope of the Bill. He understood the right hon. Gentlemen the Prime Minister, in the debate on the second reading, to say that he accepted the principle on which the Bill was origi- nally drawn; but now they were told by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland that the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister had all along contemplated a provision such as that proposed by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland. Unless the clause were abolished, it was idle for them to discuss the Bill. They could not accept the proposed new clause. He took his stand upon the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland; and he had no doubt that most of his Colleagues would agree with him that if the right hon. and learned Gentleman would withdraw the clause they would accept the Bill in its present shape. He regretted exceedingly that the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) should stand up in his place to lecture hon. Gentlemen who possessed as much intelligence, if not as much experience, as he himself. He thought it too bad that the time of the Committee should be occupied by observations of that character. They had given Her Majesty's Government their approval to the fullest extent—they believed them to be actuated by the highest and purest motives; and hon. Members on the other side must admit that Irish Members on his side of the House were actuated by precisely the same motives. They came to the House to do their duty, and they would do it. Good legislation ought to do the greatest good to the greatest number. The Bill was applied only to the scheduled counties. It would not affect the half of Ireland. It did not even touch the whole of the tenants in the scheduled counties; and he did not believe that the number of tenants really within the scope of the Bill would be at all large. The tenant would have to go before the County Court Judge, and give evidence which must satisfy him as to his inability to pay, before he could obtain any compensation. He was of opinion that the Bill, as it stood, would not affect 500 tenants and very few landlords in the 17 counties in Ireland. He was not one of those who wished to confiscate the property of the landlords and give it to the tenants; he only wanted to give the tenant every shilling that was his due, and he wished to give the landlord every shilling that was his. One man's right could not be another man's wrong. He would be sorry to believe that the landlords, as a class, were as bad as some persons wished them to believe. No doubt there were some bad landlords; but a great deal that had been done in the name of the landlords had been done without their knowledge. The arrogant, overbearing, and unjust policy pursued by some of the land agents in Ireland had been carried to an overbearing degree. Within his knowledge a fee farm rent was paid to agents in Dublin, one of the first firms in Ireland, and on the receipt given the fee farm rent was called rent, when it was not rent, and across the paper was printed in large characters in red ink—

"You are warned against letting, or sub-dividing, or conacreing; and you must not bequeath your holding to more than one person."

He wanted to know what right the landlord had to dictate to anyone, no matter how humble his position might be? It was a gross abuse of their position to dictate to persons the manner in which they were to lease their property, or to whom. If this were the measure of justice which was to be given to tenants in Ireland, he should recommend them to follow the example of the English mechanics, and establish Trades Unions for their own protection. In the course of the discussions that had taken place on the Bill, many hon. Members had expressed opinions upon what they knew nothing about. If hon. Members would reside for a little time in Ireland, they would be much more likely to know the wants of Irishmen than they knew at present. He should suggest to the Government that, in order to acquire a knowledge of the wants of Ireland, some of their high officers should live in Ireland. A blast of bad air might injure, but would not kill—a breath of pure air might improve, but would not cure a patient. The best and most skilful authority had declared that to cure the patient must be surrounded by and breathe all pure air to benefit thereby; and, therefore, if the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland were to reside in that country, he would be doing a great deal more good than sitting in that House, watching the passing of Bills which could be done by an inferior officer. He deliberately charged the Government with having wasted the present Session, and straining the law in the discussion on, and admission of, a person to that House who never should have entered it. The times were exceedingly bad in Ireland, and there was no doubt that the landlords were suffering as well as the tenants. How could it be otherwise, when there was nothing in Ireland but chaos? It was a bad time for land in Ireland as well as England; but there was a great difference between Irish and English landlords. The English landlord found the land, buildings, and outbuildings, and everything but the capital of the tenant. The tenant went into the land simply with the object of making a profit. He had no sentiment in the matter. He farmed only for the purpose of making money; and if he did not do so, he gave notice and went somewhere else where he could make money. But with regard to Ireland, the case was different. There the tenant made improvements, and was entitled to security in his holding, in order to realize them. Irishmen were charged with being sentimentally fond of Ireland and the poverty therein; but if the "poetic savage" loved his native shore, why should not Irishmen love their native land, and be allowed to live in it? And the Irish Members were endeavouring to obtain a Bill which would do justice to the tenant as well as to the landlord.

said, he did not wish to hinder the progress of the debate. He wished to say a few words in protest against the waste of time that had taken place. He was one of those who voted against the principle of the Bill, and he wished to disassociate himself from those who were now opposing it, and to protest against the manner in which they were now carrying on the debate. The manner in which the debate had been carried on was so factious that he must protest, in order that he might not be identified with the present opposition.

said, he should address himself to the point directly in issue. He must agree with hon. Members on the other side of the House that the Committee was in something like a muddle. As he understood the position it was this—the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government had given them fair warning that he should propose this Amendment, for that had been directly proved by the reference to his speech made by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) must admit that, though he listened to that speech with some attention, he did not remember the passage referred to; but he must now acquit the Government of taking him and his Friends unawares, still that did not lessen the anomaly of their position. They supported the second reading of the Bill, believing it to be one thing, and they contended that the Amendment which was now introduced made it mean entirely another. It was perfectly clear that hon. Members had a right to support a Bill on the second reading, taking its meaning to be one thing, and that having done so did not interfere with their right to afterwards oppose it, when it was shown that the Bill in principle meant something quite different. He and his Friends, when the Bill was originally brought forward, believed it to be a measure for the prevention of eviction; but with the addition of the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland it would be a Bill for the facilitation of eviction. Therefore, if they were to be held to their original position, they would be forced to support the progress of a Bill for doing the very thing which they wanted to prevent. The Government had now taken up the position that they would not enter into any discussion upon the clause of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland; but surely, after all, this was a proper stage for explanation, and to show that that Amendment would not have the effect on the Bill which he and his Friends believed it would. Under present circumstances, he confessed he did not see any way by which, consistently with their principles, he and his Friends could help to advance a Bill, which, in their opinion, would be fraught with untold evil to the Irish people.

said, he should not apologize to the Committee for rising to address them, because he had not yet spoken, either on the second reading or on the Motion to go into Committee; and as he represented a large agricultural county in Ireland, he thought he was justified now in offering some opinions on behalf of his constituents. Any Bill which was brought before that House under the auspices of a Government containing the right hon. Gentleman the Premier and the Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster, he would be very sorry and unwilling to criticize adversely. He knew very well the difficulties under which those right hon. Gentlemen laboured, and that they would not think of introducing and proposing a measure which was not likely to be a bonâ fide and substantial good to the people of Ireland, if they were not hampered, as he believed they were, by their Colleagues in the Ministry, and by hon. Members who sat on their own side of the House, but whose wishes were opposed to what were the true interests of the Irish people. When the Bill was originally introduced, he thought it was not likely to prove a very substantial benefit to the Irish people; but, at the same time, he thought it would confer some advantage upon those who were unable to pay their rent and were threatened with eviction by their landlords. He did not mean at all to impute that all landlords were tyrannical, for he knew that a very large portion of them were not disposed to ask more than a reasonable and fair rent for their land. The Bill in question, of course, would not affect tenants under that decription of landlords, and it was said that the Bill had been criticized adversely, because it would prevent landlords from obtaining their rents. It was nothing at all of the sort, because if tenants had any moveable poperty on which landlords could levy, they would, of course, distrain. It was also said by the opponents of the Bill and the advocates of landlordism that the measure took away the right of the landlords to recover their rents, while shopkeepers and other creditors still had power to obtain their debts. There could be no greater fallacy, because if a shopkeeper executed a decree and any rent happened to be due, the rent would get precedence of every other sort of debt. He quite approved, therefore, of the act of the Government in introducing a Bill which would have some effect in restraining tyrannical landlords from dispossessing their unfortunate tenants, and reducing them to absolute beggary; because, although the Preamble said the Bill was intended to meet the cases of tenants who suffered distress, it was really calculated to affect a very different class—namely, those tenants who lived in holdings for which the landlords exacted too heavy a rent. In point of fact, it was only a certain proportion of landlords who insisted upon having their pound of flesh, and the full amount of their claim; and he (Mr. Biggar) did not see why those landlords, when the land was worth nothing, should he entitled uniformly to obtain their rent. But then, unfortunately, the Government had introduced this Amendment. It was argued by the Prime Minister that the principle of the Amendment was contained in the Bill. He (Mr. Biggar) would not argue whether that was so or not; but the effect of it would be that not the slightest advantage would be gained by any tenant in Ireland. The reason for that was that the only persons affected by the Amendment would be those who had either exceedingly poor holdings, or who were charged an unreasonably high rent, and who would, therefore, get very little for what they had to sell. If the Government, therefore, were to make the Bill of any practical value, they must withdraw the Amendment, and allow the Bill to stand as it was originally introduced. Even then it was not very friendly to the tenant, because the onus of proof lay on him, and it was a very difficult thing to prove. The people expected something from the Bill; and when they came before the County Court Judges, and found that they could get little from them, they would become still more embittered against the Government and the laws of the land. Then he heard talk about physical force. He did not blame men for saying that; because, although when a man could get redress from the Government and the judicial tribunals he need not appeal to physical force, yet if the Legislature and the tribunals refused him redress he did think those unfortunate farmers in the West of Ireland would be thoroughly justified in using such an amount of physical force as would get, at any rate, attention to their demands. In the case of such landlords as the late Lord Leitrim and others, who were still living in Ireland, he did not think the tenant farmer was unjustified in using physical force to the extent that was used against Lord Leitrim.

I must appeal to you, Mr. Playfair, whether that remark ought to be allowed to pass. Lord Leitrim was assassinated, and I understand the hon. Member (Mr. Biggar) to say that if there are other landlords in Ireland like Lord Leitrim, physical force, such as was applied to him, ought to be applied to them. If the hon. Member will get up and say he did not mean to convey any impression of that kind, either to anyone here or to anyone outside this House, that the use of such physical force as was applied to Lord Leitrim was justifiable, I shall be most glad to hear his explanation; but if not, I appeal to you whether such words ought to be passed by without some remark. I must call upon him either to withdraw them or to stand by them.

I must appeal to the Committee to say whether the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland is entitled to distort an expression of my hon. Friend. ["Order, order!"]

I was listening with great attention to the hon. Gentleman, and I was just upon the point of rising when the right hon. Gentleman rose. The hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) made various allusions to the justification of using physical force on account of the laws being, as he thought, oppressive to the tenant, and such as he did not approve, and he instanced the case of Lord Leitrim, who was assassinated. Under those circumstances, I was on the point of rising when the right hon. Gentleman interfered. I think the hon. Gentleman, if not technically out of Order, was broaching opinions which were incompatible with orderly debate in a Legislative Assembly.

Sir, I do not dispute your ruling—["Order, order!"]—I do not intend to dispute your ruling for a moment. I merely wish for a moment to point out that you made that ruling without listening to me and the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar). You have decided the case without hearing the prisoner.

I was appealed to by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and upon that appeal I gave my opinion. I believed before the right hon. Gentleman spoke that the hon. Gentleman advocated views which were incompatible with orderly debate, and I was on the point of rising to say so.

At the same time, Sir, I wish to say—["Order, order!"]—that my observation was literally ac- curate, and conveyed the exact expression of what occurred.

Mr. Biggar.

With regard to the observation I am alleged to have used, I do not exactly remember what I said, nor I suppose does any hon. Member know what I did say. But what I say is, that in morals there is no doubt of this, that the subject of a country is not justified in taking the law into his own hands, if he can get proper and reasonable, or any, redress from the ordinary tribunals of his country; but if they refuse to listen to his grievance, and the ordinary tribunals of his country refuse or neglect to allow him to get anything in the nature of fair play, as really was the case in regard to Lord Leitrim—

Order, order. If the hon. Member desires to proceed with the remainder of his speech not referring to this subject, which I have ruled to be incompatible with orderly debate, the hon. Member has the Chair.

[ Cries of "Withdraw, withdraw!"] Mr. Playfair, you are Chairman of this Committee, I think, and I am disposed to listen to your ruling; but there are hon. Gentlemen who think they know better than you do, and I do not give so much deference to their notions. With regard to the Bill now before the House—["Withdraw, withdraw!"]

I wish to ask you, Sir, after your ruling, whether it would not be right that you should distinctly call upon the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) to withdraw the expression he used?

Perhaps, Sir, you will allow me to address you on the point of Order which has been raised I apprehend your ruling was that the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) was out of Order; but that if he did not proceed further to refer to the case of Lord Leitrim you would permit him to continue his speech. The hon. Gentleman distinctly honoured your ruling dropped all reference to the case of Lord Leitrim, and was proceeding to finish his speech, when he was interrupted by a number of amateur Chairmen on the opposite side of the House with cries of "Order and Withdraw." You, Mr. Playfair, did not direct the hon. Member for Cavan to withdraw anything. You told him he was out of Order, and that you could not permit further reference to the subject. He obeyed that direction.

Order, order! The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland did not move that the words of the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) should be taken down, so that it was simply my duty to call the hon. Member's attention to the necessity of conforming his remarks within the scope of orderly debate, and to leave the matter generally to the judgment of the Committee. As the hon. Member has conformed to my advice, and refrained from continuing the objectionable subject, he is in possession of the Chair while he speaks upon other points in reference to this Bill.

said, with regard to the Bill, it really was a most invidious position in which Irish Members were placed. They were forced to appear to throw obstacles in the way of what was called Business; but, unfortunately, they were in a minority, and, therefore, although they were advocating views which they knew to be thoroughly and strictly accurate, they could not seriously affect the result. But the Government appeared to think that, if one hon. Member on that side of the Committee stated the case of 30 or 40 other hon. Members that should be a sufficient statement of the views of the Irish Party. Unfortunately, these matters were decided not in accordance with the arguments which were advanced, but mainly in accordance with the exigencies of political Parties; and for that reason he felt that the Irish Party was bound as a matter of duty to press their arguments as fully as possible on the attention of the Committee until the real effect of the measure was thoroughly known. This was all the more the case when it was considered that the Members who spoke were thoroughly acquainted with the requirements of their country; and their opinions were, therefore, entitled to very great weight. Therefore, he hoped the Government would not blame Irish Members for occupying time, and would pay great attention to the arguments that they used. By that means they would facilitate Public Business and do great benefit to his countrymen.

said, he had abstained from obtruding himself on the attention of the Committee that day so long as there was any hope that progress might be made in Committee on the Bill. But as all hope of that kind had now vanished, he was desirous to say a word or two upon a discussion which everybody must recognize to be premature—namely, the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland. He (Mr. Charles Russell) hoped at least one useful purpose would have been served by the discussion that day—that hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House, who had expressed their views on that Amendment, would not find it hereafter necessary to repeat them when the Committee came to the clause. It certainly was a little hard on his right hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Law) that the clause should be discussed before he had had an opportunity of explaining his meaning. He made that observation, because he, for one, did think that the clause, as he understood it, seriously altered the Bill. He was very far from setting up his own opinion against that of others, and bad merely expressed his own opinion when he confessed that he recognized a great deal of force in the objections urged by the noble Lord opposite (Lord George Hamilton). At some time or other, that speech would require an answer from those who justified that portion of the Bill; and he would, with the permission of the Committee, shortly point out why he had come to that opinion. This Bill was originally introduced, and was intended to be, a Relief of Distress Bill, temporary in its application and limited in its operation to a particular area. It sought to carry out the object of preventing ejectment for non-payment of rent, not by restraining ejectment, but by saying that, under certain strict conditions, the tenant might be entitled to have his case treated as a case of disturbance, and that the case should be heard by the County Court Judge. One of the conditions was that the tenant should be willing to continue on just and reasonable terms in occupation of his farm. It was obvious that the Bill as it originally stood contemplated that case, because one main ground on which the right to compensation was to be based was that the tenant was willing to pay a just and reasonable rent, and that the landlord sought to exact an unjust and an unrea- sonable rent. But now, what did the Amendment propose? It proposed that in any case, whether the rent was reasonable or unreasonable, just or unjust, came up to the mark of excessive, or was up to the standard of 1870 of "exorbitant," that, in all those cases, the clause of his right hon. and learned Friend was to have equal operation, and upon the landlord in all those cases expressing his readiness to allow the tenant to sell his interest, then the tenant was to have no right to compensation. What did that mean translated into plain English? It said to a tenant—"Admitted you have your holding upon unreasonable and unjust terms, on a rent that is excessive, it may be exorbitant; but I graciously concede to you the right to sell." To sell what? To sell that in which upon the hypothesis upon which the original claim was based he had no saleable interest at all. The operation of the clause was even worse than that, because it did not even leave it to the choice or option of the tenant to say within a limited time whether he would sell; but it left to the landlord the right of determining the point at which the tenant should sell, irrespective of whether there were purchasers to be had, or whether the terms offered were good or bad. Lastly, the effect was that, so far from operating to lessen ejectments, it would be resorted to by hard landlords; and it would have the effect that it would afford the least compensation and the least protection where the landlord was a hard one, and the most compensation and the most protection where the landlord was a good one. Why was that? Because if the rent was a fair rent, and the terms were reasonable terms, the tenant would have something to dispose of. In that case, between a fair landlord and a tenant, the tenant might trust to the equitable views of his landlord; but when it was a case of a hard landlord, seeking to exact an unreasonable or excessive rent, this clause gave the tenant no protection; and if it did not give the tenant in that case some protection, then it made the Bill an utter sham. This he felt sure the Government did not intend. The conviction was forced upon him that the Bill with this Amendment offered the shadow or appearance of protection with one hand and took it away with the other.

said, that all those who were truly Liberal would not wish to see any substantial injustice done to the Irish tenant; and, if he was not mistaken, a very large number of the Liberal Party who were in favour of tenant right, as distinguished from tenant wrong, would stand up for the Irish Members in their legitimate demands upon that occasion. The hon. and learned Member who had just addressed the Committee (Mr. Charles Russell) had asked whether that could be considered a just and proper mode of compensation, when a rack-renting landlord could give an illusory permission to his tenant to sell the goodwill of his interest in the land? The hon. and learned Member had apprehended the situation from exactly the same point of view as he (Mr. O'Donnell) himself had. The claim put forward by the Irish Members was, substantially, a claim for fuller explanation. They were only asking for information upon which to proceed. But what was that clause which had been proposed by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law)? It was said to be an explanation of something which the Government asserted was previously contained in the Bill. If that was so, why did not they feel themselves bound to come forward, and give a fair explanation of the difficulties of the position as regarded the tenant, as well as those of the landlord? The gist of all that was good in the Bill lay, he thought, in the word "reasonable." Everything else was left to the discretion of the landlord. He certainly agreed with some hon. Members who had spoken on that side that there was no necessity whatever for this new clause being introduced. After all, the onus of proof lay upon the tenant in an extreme degree to show that he was unable to pay; and although the Judges of the Courts were, no doubt, just men, yet they had not been remarkable hitherto for their decisions on the side of the tenantry. The operation of the Bill was limited to the discretion of the Land Court, which alone could decide what was reasonable; whether the terms with which the tenant was willing to continue his occupation were just and reasonable or not, and whether those terms were reasonably refused or not. He was willing, as he believed all the Irish Members were, to give the Government credit for good intentions; but he found in the clause proposed by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland the word "reasonable" also. It said—

"Provided always, that if it appeared to be of advantage, the landlord may give permission to dispose of the interest in the holding to the tenant on such terms as he may deem reasonable."

Well, it was possible that behind that the Government meant to make an illusory offer which had not been unjustly stigmatized by the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell), when he showed how its effect could be shut out by the Land Court. In the face of the uncertainties to be avoided, and the grave interests involved—for the honour of the Liberal Party was involved in the matter—they were bound to have some clear, full, and fair information. He was inclined to the belief that the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government, and the right hon. Gentleman responsible for the Government of Ireland, meant by that provision for giving permission to landlords to allow tenants to sell the goodwill, to exclude every farm, because, by means of an illusory or deceptive promise, every tenant might be shut out. But he would say that if that was the intention of the Government, as he believed it was, they should have the full courage of their opinions, and make known, so as to leave no doubt in the mind of the Committee, the purview or scope of that provision.

said, that after what had fallen from the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell), and the hon. Member who had just sat down, he thought it right, while leaving to his right hon. and learned Friend near him the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law) to give his view of the legal meaning of the terms used in the clause, to furnish an answer to what he conceived to be a question for further information as to the general intention of the Government. He had gathered from the remarks of the two last speakers that some further light upon that matter was desired. In answer to the last speaker, he would say that nothing could have been further from the intention of the Government; in fact, it would be a base intention, after the professions they had made on the second reading—than to enable landlords, under cover of that clause, to make offers to the tenant which were in themselves illusory. It was intended to refer to substantial and significant offers, and by no means to give shelter to any indirect proceedings whatever. Perhaps he might be allowed to say, with great respect to his hon. and learned Friend, that it appeared to him. that the question which was supposed to be latent in the clause of his right hon. and learned Friend, and to constitute the main purpose of the Government, was really a question, in a great degree, novel to that discussion. He did not at all say that it was not a question right and proper to be considered when they came to the clause itself; but, if he might be permitted to say so, he found a new illustration in every step of the debate of the inconvenience of that discussion. When the clause came on in the regular way, his hon. and learned Friend must know that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland would have pointed out the form by which any misapprehension as to the purpose of the Government might be rectified. He should be in the recollection of the Committee when he said that there were two senses in which they might speak of unreasonable or reasonable rents. One sense was rent that was exorbitant according to the meaning of the Land Act; the other sense was rent, not in itself exorbitant, and yet becoming unreasonable with reference to the circumstances, when the tenant after such a series of harvests, especially after the last harvest, had fallen into a state of inability to pay. Now, the Committee would recollect that the opening speech of his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and the other speeches of Members of the Government on the second reading—nay, he would venture to say the speeches delivered almost on all sides of the House, had no reference at all, or, at any rate, scarcely any percptible reference, to the case of exorbitant rents properly so called. The present was a temporary Bill, intended to provide a temporary remedy for an evil which had been altogether temporary; and their object was to provide means, when there was no reproach to the landlord in the character of rent not properly to be called either exorbitant or excessive, and where the act of God, as it had been called, had reduced the tenant to a state of inability to pay, to take certain measures for the protection of the tenant. It was with reference to rent of that kind, undoubtedly, that they had spoken in the Bill, and to which, he believed, his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland had referred in his Amendment, in saying "reasonable rents." What he would suggest was, that with regard to the question of rents in themselves exorbitant, the proper time to consider them would be when they came to consider the words of the clause. It was a subject that had not been developed in the course of the discussion; he did not think, for example, that it had been mentioned in the speech of his right hon. and learned Friend opposite, the late Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Gibson), nor had he noticed it in any speech delivered from the Treasury Bench. It might be a matter most proper to consider; but it was not the matter which was in the view of the Government when they sanctioned the Amendment of his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland. They had in view, at that time, rents of the description to which his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland had referred, rents with respect to which, although not unreasonable in themselves, yet, under the circumstances of the case, it was necessary to make a particular and special arrangement. That was the intention of the Bill, and the clause, and there was no covert purpose in bringing the clause forward. Rents in themselves exorbitant, and intended to exhaust the interest and value of the goodwill of the tenant under the Land Act, he trusted they might consider hereafter. He hoped that his hon. and learned Friend would see that he was right in calling him to account, considering that he was discussing a matter which was collateral to, and was not itself, the general argument on the subject. He trusted that what he had said would have some effect in shortening the discussion; but, whether it did or not, was of little matter, so far as the present Sitting was concerned.

said, he was one of those who believed that that Amendment was not contained in the Bill. He was in a difficulty to know whether the Government meant to stand by that Amendment as set forth on the Paper, or whether the remarkable speech they had now heard indicated that there would be other words subsequently added. He might say that if some indication of meaning had been hinted at, at the commencement of the discussion, four or five hours might have been saved. It remained to his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell), who had spoken for seven and a-half minutes, to draw from the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister a statement of what might be a series of new meanings on that clause. Notwithstanding the professional training he (Mr. Gibson) had received, he was at a loss, having listened closely to the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman, to understand what the meaning of the clause was that the Prime Minister intended to convey to the Committee. For the life of him he could not understand whether the right hon. Gentleman desired to indicate to the Committee that the County Court Judge was to have power of measuring, assessing, and gauging the rent, before he said that the offer to sell was reasonable or not. He had left that vital point absolutely in the dark. Hon. Members below the Gangway, and moderate Whigs behind the Prime Minister, might put any construction they pleased upon it; but as for hon. Gentlemen who sat in the Opposition, they were left out in the cold. He had a question to put to his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland—namely, what was the meaning of the words in the Amendment—

"If it shall appear to the Court that the landlord has given permission to the tenant to dispose of his interest in his holding on such terms as the Court may deem reasonable, and that the tenant has refused or neglected to avail himself of such permission."

Was it intended that if the landlord, at a reasonable time, made an offer to the tenant that he might sell, that that circumstance would not exempt him unless the tenant had succeeded in selling? That was a plain question, and he was entitled to a plain answer. Or, was the meaning that, in case the landlord had done all that was reasonable, and had made a reasonable offer to the tenant as to time and place and circumstances, yet if the tenant, without fault of his own, had not succeeded in availing himself of the offer made by the landlord to sell, would the landlord still be mulcted in damages under that Bill? Those were plain and clear propositions, and he hoped that when the Bill came again before the Committee, fair, clear, and proper answers might be given. The hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell) had pointed out that by the construction of the clause it bore hardly on the easy-going landlords, and less so on the hard landlords. He had now pointed out a further difficulty in the clause. He would ask, if a good landlord had given reasonable permission to the tenant to sell, and the tenant had not succeeded in selling, would he really be liable to be mulcted and compelled to pay damages for disturbance? He did not see the slightest indication of an answer to that plain question from the Treasury Bench; therefore, he supposed that the matter stood over for further consideration. He had asked a plain question, and he should like a plain answer. In any event, he should like to know when that interesting discussion would be resumed?

said, he wished to state that, although he was dissatisfied with the terms of the Amendment which had been put on the Paper by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland, he had no intention of allowing himself to be made a Tories' cat's-paw. It seemed to him, that it would have been more regular to dispose of the question raised by the noble Lord (Lord George Hamilton) in reference to the Preamble of the Bill, and come in due order to consider the terms of the clause of the right hon. Gentleman. If the eloquent and energetic Gentleman on the Front Opposition Bench would give him an indication that he would support his Amendment of the right hon. and learned Attorney General's Amendment, he should begin to think that he was logically sincere; or if he would render his assistance to the hon. Member for Limerick (Mr. Synan) in his attempt to improve the same Amendment. He asked what interest had they, as Irish Members, in supporting the noble Lord in his obstructive tactics upon the plain and simple question whether the Pre- amble might be postponed or not? He (Mr. O'Connor Power) merely rose for the purpose of directing the attention of the Committee to that point; and if the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland, and the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, would indicate their readiness to explain their Amendments, he saw no reason then why they should divide upon the question of the Preamble. He was perfectly convinced, from the study he had been able to give to the matter, that they must accept his Amendment. He was willing to fight the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland upon clear and distinct grounds, and he believed he could show that the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman ought never to have been put upon the Paper. He should discuss that matter when the proper time arrived.

said, that the hon. Member for County Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power) had just charged his Colleagues with something like an attempt to assist the Tories. [Mr. O'CONNOR POWER: No; I deny that.] He would tell the hon. Member for Mayo that in times past Irish Members had done even worse things than helping the Tories—namely, they had helped the Whigs. And the Irish constituencies looked always with greater suspicion upon those hon. Members who helped the Whigs now-a-days than upon those who helped the Tories. Of course, with reference to the question of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the late Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Gibson), he could not expect to have his question answered. He was one of those hon. Members who had voted against the Government the previous night, and they knew perfectly well that none of those who refused to vote blindly on that occasion could expect an answer to their questions then.

And it being ten minutes before Seven of the clock, the Chairman reported Progress; Committee to sit again this day .

in answer to Mr. PARNELL, said, that the Bill would be proceeded with again that night at any hour after Supply had been taken, in order to dispose of the Motion as to the Preamble; but that the clauses would be taken on Tuesday at 2 o'clock.

The House suspended its Sitting at five minutes before Seven of the Clock.

The House resumed its Sitting at Nine of the clock.

Orders of the Day

Supply—Committee

Order for Committee read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."

Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members being found present,

"That this House, while fully recognizing the obligation to make provision for the due fulfilment of the requisitions of sections 5 and 6 of 'The Universities Tests Act, 1871' (relating to religious instructions and to morning and evening prayer in colleges), deems it inexpedient that, save in the case of the deanery of Christ-church, any clerical restriction shall remain or be attached to any headship or fellowship in any college of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge."

The hon. Member said, it was just 30 years since Lord John Russell issued the first Commission from which had followed those changes in the Universities the like of which had not been seen since the time of Archbishop Laud. That period of 30 years had been a time of agitation and controversy for the Universities, and it was with the object of putting an end to that agitation and controversy that he submitted his Resolution to the House. He was strongly of opinion that it was for the interest of the Universities that they should be allowed to carry out their own proper work without let or hindrance from Parliament. There could, however, be no peace for the Universities until this burning question of religious tests and disabilities had been dealt with. The Tests Act of 1871 affirmed the expediency of the removal of all religious tests and disabilities, under proper safeguards for the maintenance of religious instruction and worship, in the Colleges. It, in fact, affirmed the national character of the Universities; but, while abolishing all religious tests which closed

in seconding the Motion, said, he would not follow his hon. Friend into the details of the question, which he had so ably exhausted; but he would endeavour to take a more general and wider view of the subject. The Motion had a close bearing not only upon the welfare of the Universities, but upon the advancement of learning and science and national education in its widest sense. He did not believe that restrictions were favourable even to the science of theology itself. Like other sciences, theology, he was convinced, would most be benefited by the most open competition and by the widest and freest discussion. In Scotland, he believed, where dogma was not less cherished than in England, they did not scruple to grant degrees in theology to all who gained them, irrespective of their religious faith. The complexion of the Universities had been altered for the better by the removal of restrictions; and the reform now asked for would fittingly crown the work which was being promoted, not by outsiders, but by the men who were most intimately associated with the Universities themselves. It was a remarkable fact that the Colleges of highest repute as educational institutions were those that had being doing most for reform and for the removal of restrictions from the University; and if this Resolution should not be carried, he believed the three or four Colleges that lagged behind would not long be content to remain where they were; but, unable to secure the best men for their teaching staff, would find it necessary to come forward and ask the removal of these restrictions. He desired to urge on the House the importance of lending a hand to do away with those restrictions which were almost the last remaining rag of what really separated the Universities from the heart of the country. He wished to see the House support a great national system of secondary education; and he should have been glad to see the right hon. Gentleman who gave us our system of primary education, and whose great powers were now engaged in trying to reconcile the Irreconcilable, devoting those powers to the working out such a system. The country could not afford in these days to lose any portion of its intellectual force. The struggle between nations was not now a struggle, even in war itself, of war material and valour so much as of intelligence, of intellectual and moral force; and they ought to give to every one of the population endowed with exceptional faculties and powers the opportunity and means of climbing from the lowest to the highest places in education. So long as the Universities were bound up with the Church, so long as they were not independent of tests and clerical restrictions, they could not be called Universities of the nation, and, in the true sense of the word, national. Therefore, he called on the House to support this Resolution, and give to the Universities the strength to carry through those reforms which they themselves asked for. He thanked the House for the patience with which they had listened to his observations, which—that being the first time he had spoken in the House—he had uttered with some difficulty; but he hoped he had placed them with sufficient clearness before the House.

Amendment proposed,

To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "this House, while fully recognizing the obligation to make provision for the due fulfilment of the requisitions of sections 5 and 6 of 'The Universities Tests Act, 1871' (relating to religious instruction, and to morning and evening prayer in colleges), deems it inexpedient that, save in the case of the deanery of Christchurch, any clerical restriction shall remain or be attached to any headship or fellowship in any college of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge,"—( Mr. Charles Roundell, )

—instead thereof.

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

Sir, no two Members in the House could be more fully entitled, than the Mover and Seconder of this Amendment, to bring under notice the very important and interesting subject to which it relates. And I am bound to say that no one can question either the capacity they have shown or the high and generous views of the speeches they have delivered. No one who has listened to the speech of the Seconder could fail to sympathize with those large principles—I will not say of benevolence, but of justice, on the subject of education with regard to the masses of the people. No one who listened to the elaborate speech of the Mover could for a moment suppose that, while arguing strongly for the abolition of clerical restrictions, he was actuated by any indifference to the great subject of religion. With respect to the argument, it is not that matter on which I join issue with my hon. Friend. I do not think that the time has arrived when the Government can find itself in a condition to give opinions in detail upon the large number of points that arise for consideration in connection with the subject-matter of this Motion. I need not say they could form no part during the time we have held Office of our practical deliberations. We have had enough, a great deal too much, otherwise to do. But, speaking generally, I apprehend that these matters are, to a certain point, defined by the former proceedings of the Legislature in a way we cannot overlook. It is determined and laid down for us what the principle is that subsists between clerical restrictions and University endowments. That principle is qualified by the University Tests Acts, by the provision most properly stated with regard to religious worship and instruction. In that field, so marked out before us, there still remain for discussion questions of detail—the question how far the application of rules shall be uniform, the question now boldly raised whether, when the Legislature made provision in favour of religious instruction and worship, they meant it to be committed to clerical hands. On these and other matters I wish to reserve to myself entire freedom. There is the obligation of rules already laid down; but the question the Government cannot altogether overlook is, whether this is the time and the form in which it is desirable—I will venture to go a little further, and say whether it is becoming—for the House to express its views by a general Resolution? Perhaps, some may be startled by my giving utterance to such a scruple; but I am bound to say that there would be the gravest objection to a declaration purporting to carry the authority of a Resolution of this House on this subject at the present moment. What have we done in this matter? By the University Reform Act and the University Tests Act we laid down certain principles of action. We then, in the last Parliament, appointed a Commission and gave it certain powers and instructions. We have marked out a field of action for it within which the Commissioners are to exercise their judgment in the discharge of the very high and solemn functions intrusted to them. Most true it is that Parliament did not place the Parliaments which were to follow in the hands and at the mercy of the Commission. Parliament has provided that when the labours of the Commission have taken form in Ordinances, those Ordinances shall be laid upon the Table of both Houses; and then, if we are dissatisfied with the manner in which the Commissioners have discharged their duty, we shall have an opportunity of frustrating and annulling so much of their labours as we may think do not deserve to be established as part of our University system. But, now, what is the proposal of my hon. Friend? There being at work under our eyes a Body composed of persons of great dignity and authority, of high character, and personal capacity, who are engaged in fulfilling instructions committed to them by the Legislature, my hon. Friend asks us to declare, by a Resolution, certain opinions on certain portions of the subject-matter which the Commissioners are to consider. Now, it is natural to ask, "Why invite the House at this time to pass such a Resoulution?" My hon. Friend feels that a Resolution of this kind, in order to acquire full authority, must take form in an Act of Parliament, and he says, accordingly, that he is prepared at the beginning of next Session to introduce a Bill for this purpose. But, while he announces the Bill for the commencement of next Session, he invites us, amid the hurry and pressure of the present Session, to declare the sentiments and principles on which the Bill is to be founded. For what reason is it that this preliminary declaration is to be made by us so long before the introduction of the Bill which is to give it effect? The reason is obvious. This Resolution is intended to act upon the minds of Members of this Commission, and to induce them to proceed in a manner different in a greater or less degree from that in which they would act if the Resolution were not passed. This is most candidly confessed by my hon. Friend, and to the issue thus raised I must call the attention of the House, not as a House of Commons imbued with particular opinions on the particular subject-matter of the Resolution, but as a House bound to consider the principle which is adopted in the simple fact of passing a Resolution by the single authority of this House in order to influence the action of a Body engaged in giving effect to certain purposes and principles under the united authority of the Legislature. Is my hon. Friend prepared to take a course of this kind, or has he considered what it involves? What title has an inferior authority—and the authority of the House of Commons is necessarily inferior to that of the combined Bodies of the Legislature—to interfere with the collective authority of the Legislature? Has my hon. Friend considered the effect of establishing a precedent of this kind? Is he willing that the Representatives of future majorities should be able to point to the proceeding of tonight, and say—"Here is a grave precedent, showing that the House of Commons does not scruple to set up its own separate judgment against the judgment which the entire Legislature has pronounced." This is a Liberal Parliament, and I hope there will be many Liberal Parliaments. But we have had a Tory Parliament, and we may have a Tory Parliament again. I shall never sit in one; but some of the Gentlemen who sit near me may have that happiness or misfortune. Well, the last Parliament was a Tory Parliament, and the Parliament preceding had passed an Act and had appointed a Commission for the purpose of dealing with endowed schools in this country. Her Majesty's late Government introduced a Bill, of which we complained, for the purpose of altering the provisions of that Act. Now, what should we have said if that Tory Parliament had passed, not another Act, but a Resolution intended to influence the judgment of the Commis- sioners, and to induce them, in deference to this House, to depart from the instructions which they had received at the hands of the Legislature, or to fulfil these instructions in a manner different from that in which they would otherwise have fulfilled them? I think we should have said that that was a grossly unconstitutional course if deliberate and understood, and an unhappy accident if precipitately followed. I appeal to my hon. Friend and, ask him to consider whether it is not a dangerous principle to adopt, that this branch of the Legislature should take it into its own hands the direction of matters for which the entire Parliament has made particular provision? As my hon. Friend himself pointed out, we have our remedy if we do not agree with the proceedings of the Commissioners. We can interfere with their Ordinances, and we can frustrate them in the exercise of their powers. My hon. Friend says that it would be a strange and hard thing to do this, and that courtesy and respect for the Commissioners lead him to take the course which he has taken to-night. But I must say I am greatly in doubt whether this courtesy and respect will be fully appreciated by the Commissioners, and whether they will not say—as I should, were I in their position—that the best way to show them courtesy and respect would be to allow them to fulfil without interruption the duty imposed upon them by the Legislature. My hon. Friend wants to save Parliament from the trouble of interfering at the last moment, and the Commissioners from the trouble of doing their work a second time. I must, however, say that I think my hon. Friend, in the honest attempt he makes to avoid one danger, falls into another and a more serious one; for I ask him to place himself in the position of the Commissioners, who are men of character and ability, and who have received a certain trust, and to enter into their feelings when assailed by a Resolution of this House which is intended to alter the course in which they have been walking by indicating a direction distinct from that of the Act of Parliament under which they act. When I consider the great authority of the House of Commons, even when acting alone, I think the position of these Commissioners would be a very painful position supposing this Resolution were carried, and it would not surprise me if as men of character, they should deem the only refuge open to them to be that of declining to execute the trust granted to them by the Legislature. I speak partly as a Member of the Legislature and partly as a Member of the Executive Government. I must be faithful and loyal to the general relations which have been established. I may not forget authority when I am touching upon that which has been done by authority. I must not fail to regard those principles of action which bind together the life of the country in order to gain some important object. It is impossible for anyone who has been under the influence of Oxford not to appreciate the sincerity and enthusiasm of my hon. Friends in bringing this question before the House. But I am bound to say this—that if they bring in a Bill, they will receive every assistance from the Government in obtaining a full and fair field for dicussion. I am confident that this is the work of action which is recommended by sound constitutional principles; and I hope they will join with me in maintaining those principles, even when they have an object in view so desirable in itself. It is unnecessary for me to trouble the House, nor do I wish to do so, with details. I do not seek to raise the question whether the ideas of my hon. Friend may be adopted without reserve, or whether they require some reservation. My hon. Friend will have a legal opportunity for giving effect to his views, and I will assist in making that legal opportunity a convenient opportunity. If he desires to do so, it will certainly be my duty to give a careful consideration to the arguments which may be brought forward in order to justify us in accepting the principles which my hon. Friend has laid down. Those arguments will be considered by the Government if they are brought forward in a manner which is friendly and respectful to the Commissioners themselves. I trust that my hon. Friends will find no antagonism between themselves and the Government which will require this Motion to be carried to a division. These considerations are considerations in which I frankly own that I anticipate the concurrence of my hon. Friends. As far as we can, we will offer practical facilities for my hon. Friends to carry out their wishes. But what I have said does not impress upon me the duty of voting any negative to the proposition of my hon. friend. At present, the Motion before the House is a simple declaration of opinion on a question into which we do not think it expedient to enter formally at the present moment, nor until the proper period may arrive at which it may be expected that the Motion may obtain the support of the House.

said, he wished to add his voice to that of the right hon. Gentleman in deprecation of a formal declaration of the House upon the subject at the present time. He would remind hon. Members who were not in the House when the University Tests Bill was passed, that the very question was then discussed which had now been brought before the House by the hon. Member for Grantham (Mr. Roundell). The question had been submitted both before that House and the other House of Parliament. Both Houses had declined to entertain the question again, upon the ground that it was desirable to leave the Commission which was shortly to be appointed perfectly free action on the subject. He objected to the House now interfering with the matter without the knowledge, without the information, without the evidence which would be brought before the Commissioners, and also without being acquainted with the principles by which the Commissioners would have to be guided. The Cambridge Commissioners had been sitting nearly two years, and would have to address themselves to the very question upon which the House was being asked to express its opinion. Indeed, he believed that they had already addressed themselves to it. And, without divulging in the slightest degree what ought not to be divulged of what he knew of the proceedings of the University Commissioners, he believed he might say that they had come to the conclusion that Fellows, as such, ought not to be required to take Holy Orders except to the extent absolutely necessary for the actual working of the College. He might also say, he further believed, without breaking any confidence, that the great majority of the Colleges were in favour of that conclusion. In what way that was to be arranged was another question. But, bearing these facts in mind, he put it to the hon. Member for Grantham whether it was reasonable or right for the House to obstruct in any way the proceedings of the Commissioners without knowing the principles which would enable them to form a just judgment on the whole matter? He would forbear from giving any opinion on the larger question raised by the Resolution of the hon. Gentleman—for the time, he thought, had not arrived when that question could be discussed with advantage—and he should, therefore, vote for the Motion for going into Committee of Supply, with the object of postponing the consideration of the subject to a more fitting opportunity.

who had given Notice to add to the Amendment the following words:—

"Or to the Professorships of Hebrew and Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford and the Professorship of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge,"

said, it was not likely that any information would be laid before the House by the Commissioners which would place it in a better position to discuss the question than it was in that evening, and the best way to get out of the difficulty which had been pointed out by the Prime Minister was, he thought, that the Government should undertake to legislate on the subject itself. The Commissioners had some doubts as to how far the necessity of providing for religious instruction required the maintenance of clerical Fellowships, and they would probably be greatly influenced or enlightened by a Resolution of that House. The Resolution of his hon. Friend would be incomplete if its principle were not applied to the University as well as to Colleges, to Professorships as well as to Headships and Fellowships; and he had, therefore, given Notice of an Amendment which would so extend its application. As the Commissioners conceived that, under their Act, they had no power to deal with canonry Professorships, this Amendment was not open to the objection which the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gladstone) had pressed against the Resolution of his hon. Friend. There was no necessity, in his opinion, to argue the general question why Professors should be freed from all clerical restrictions, for that had been settled by the University Tests Act; but there certainly was no good reason which he could see why the teaching of the Hebrew language, or of a subject such as Ecclesiastical history, should be confined to a clergyman. Such a restriction unduly narrowed the field of choice, excluding all laymen and Nonconformists. If it were said that the teacher of a subject like Hebrew was not to be allowed to treat it on purely scientific grounds, and was only to teach that which was consistent with the doctrines of a particular Church, that would enfeeble the Professor and deprive him of influence over his class; it would force him to walk about in chains instead of leaving him unfettered. Ecclesiastical history was also a lay subject—a subject which clergymen were no better qualified than others to deal with, and on which, indeed, it might be more difficult for them to preserve perfect impartiality. The appointment to those Professorships of Hebrew and of Ecclesiastical History was made by the Crown under the advice of the Prime Minister, and it was not to be supposed that the Crown would make appointments to them which would shock the feelings of the country. The Prime Minister had been trusted to choose men who held far more important offices. He advised the Crown in the choice of Bishops. It would be easy to find a clergyman and dignitaries of the Church whose appointment would excite a far greater storm of discontent than would that of any Nonconformist or layman. He desired to base his case on the explicit provisions of the University Tests Act, which expressly said that no restriction nor test should attach to any Professorship in either University except a divinity Professorship. The Professorships of Hebrew and of Ecclesiastical History were not divinity Professorships; and but for the accident that they were endowed by canonries in cathedral churches, they would now be free and open. Ecclesiastical revenues had been taken and applied before now in a manner beneficial to the whole community, and especially for the purposes of education. Two canonries in Christ Church had already been suppressed and applied to the foundation of studentships which were lay, or which, under the Resolution of his hon. Friend, would become lay. Taking the salary and the house of a canon together, the canons of Christ Church had£1,600 or£1,700 a-year, a canon of Ely having about £800 besides his house. At Oxford University the Hebdomadal Council had represented to the Commissioners the desirability of having a lay Chair for Hebrew, and at Cambridge it was understood that the new Chair of Ecclesiastical History which it intended to forward, was to be open to lay men. The Resolution of his hon. Friend, coupled with the Amendment, might be taken as a request to the Government, on the part of the House, to enlarge the powers of the Commissioners to deal with the question of the canonry Professorships, and, in that way, to complete the work with which they were charged. It was, however, said, that they had no right to secularize Church funds; but if this principle was involved, it was not a new one, but had been already adopted, as, for instance, in the case of the living charged with the payment of a sum to the Head of Baliol College. There, and in other cases, there had not been any reluctance or superstitious feeling against applying Church endowments to Fellowships and Scholarships which were open to the whole community. But the best evidence that could be given of the absence of any real danger in abolishing all tests was the course taken by Trinity College, Cambridge. That College had always been a foundation not more remarkable for the great services it had rendered and the great men it had produced than for the liberality always found there; and it had now proposed that all its Fellowships, he believed, numbering 60, should be free from tests. Her Majesty's Cambridge Commissioners, guided by two Prelates, ornaments of the English Church for learning and liberality, had decided to accept that proposition, and to throw the Headship and all the Fellowships of Trinity College open to all Her Majesty's subjects. The right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government had carefully guarded himself from expressing any opinion on the Resolution, although it could hardly be doubted that he was in substantial sympathy with it. He (Mr. Bryce) ventured, with great deference, to submit that Her Majesty's Government should let the House know what they thought of the subject of his hon. Friend's Resolution, and whether they would take any steps with regard to it next Session.

said, he had hoped that, after the appeal made by the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government and by his right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Spencer Walpole), the House would have been spared the necessity of continuing this debate. As regarded the constitutional question, he thought the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Goverment had satisfactorily disposed of that. The Seconder of the Motion congratulated the House on the way in which the Commissioners had done their work. If their work had been done well, what was the necessity for interfering to-night? The right hon. Gentleman had pointed out that to attempt to control Commissioners appointed by Act of Parliament would be unconstitutional. His hon. Friend the Member for Grantham (Mr. Roundell) spoke of the great foundation of Wolsey becoming a theological seminary. Who was Wolsey, the founder of this great foundation? Wolsey was a great Churchman, and what was the great foundation which his hon. Friend spoke of in connection with the phrase, ''a theological seminary?" Why, it was the Cathedral of Christ Church, in Oxford. The course which the hon Member for Grantham proposed would be not only unprecedented and unconstitutional, but premature and unnecessary. His right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Cambridge had lifted up the veil, and told them what the Commissioners were doing there. He (Sir John R. Mowbray) had heard a good many rumours about what was being done by the Oxford University Commission; but he did not feel in a position, like the Mover of the Resolution, to say such and such things were proposed at Christ Church. He had heard that almost all the clerical Fellowships were likely to be abolished by those Commissioners. If work was so well done by the Commissioners, there would be no necessity for any action of the House in this matter. The Acts of 1854 and 1877 plainly recognized the main desire of the founders, who were for the most part Prelates of the Church, and who intended to establish places for religious education. The very names they bore showed that the Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge had a religious aspect. His hon. Friend the Member for Grantham said the Acts he had just referred to were anachronisms. When did they become so? In the columns of The Times of that day a gentleman who was a strong Liberal in the University of Oxford said that a religious element must be accepted as an integral part of the education. Colleges were regarded as domestic institutions, and attendance at chapel formed a part of the daily life of the inmates. Indeed, the hon. Member for Grantham himself admitted that the feelings of parents ought to be respected, and certainly parents would not send their sons to Colleges where a religious training was not provided. It was argued that there was no provision that the Head Masters of Schools should be in Holy Orders. But, in point of fact, they were in Holy Orders, and even the managers of new Schools, if they wanted to induce parents to send their sons there, appointed clergymen to the office of Head Master. It would be easy to show that clerical Fellowships had provided an educated clergy. A large proportion of our Bishops had been Fellows of Colleges. His hon. Friend the Member for Grantham surprised him very much by saying this was a question not of religious liberty, but of academic freedom. This was, in reality, one of the dishes served up at the breakfast of the Liberation Society, at which his hon. Friend the Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Bryce) was present. A Circular, emanating from the head-quarters of that Society, and signed by Mr. J. Carvell Williams, stated that the decided Liberal majority in the new House of Commons would enable the friends of religious liberty to procure the abolition of ecclesiastical tests and qualifications. His hon. Friend said, however, that was not a question of religious liberty. Though in the insidious disguise of a mere academic question, this was really the first instalment of the programme for the disestablishment of the English Church. The hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets admitted there would be great difficulty in finding endowments for the two Professorships if they were not held by persons in Holy Orders. When the Professorship of Ecclesiastical History was founded 40 years ago, one of the canonries of Christ Church was attached to it as an endowment. Thus, the whole endowment of that Professorship came by Act of Parliament from ecclesiastical sources. But the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets said that the canons of Christchurch were so rich that they could spare half their emoluments in order to found lay Professorships. There was no precedent for such a course, unless the suppression, some years ago, of two canonries for the endowment of studentships was a precedent. His hon. Friend would introduce an entirely new principle of legislation. It was true that canonries had often been suppressed; but their endowments had in every case been given in relief of spiritual destitution, and not for secular purposes. The proposal of his hon. Friend to take the money for the foundation of lay Professorships was nothing less than undisguised spoliation. For these reasons he should vote against the Resolution, which, as he had said, he regarded as unprecedented, unconstitutional, premature, and unnecessary.

said, he understood the question to be how far ought to be preserved by the Legislature of the country, privileges for clerics in the education of the country. He did not think that there was any inherent advantage in clerical education; nor, considering the character of that sycophant Wolsey, could he respect the memory of all the pious founders. The time had gone by for the protection of clerical interests in monastic institutions, and the human mind was fast emancipating itself from clerical influence. He questioned whether education could ever be made a function of Government. If the State undertook the task, there would always be interests at stake that would be unfavourable to honest inquiry. At one time the Presbyterians had distinguished sacred from secular education, and the result was sacred rhetoric. It was a failure. He pronounced sacred rhetoric, at that time, to be a sacred sham. There was no sacred mode of determining an angle in trigonometry, and he was aware of no sacred mode of analyzing a Hebrew verb, or of any heresy lurking in the middle voice of a Greek verb. He besought the House, so far as it could influence the education of the country, to leave it untrammeled—to leave it to walk alone without ligatures or swaddling clothes in the interest of cunning clerics, who cared but little for the elevation of the human mind if they could succeed in their purpose. In his country£800 a-year would produce Greek scholars ad libitum. In this Island were the sinews of war, the sinews of learning, and the sinews of great establishments; but unless science could act upon its own honest inquiries, unless psychology could be based upon the philosophical truths that regulated the phenomena of the human mind, unless Christianity could live by its own inherent power, Europe would struggle in vain to shore it up.

said, the position of his University was very peculiar, for there was no part of this country in which the feud between lay and clerical influence was so constant, so bitter, and so unremitting as at Oxford. That was a matter of profound regret to those who thought that lay and clerical influences might work together. They had a Dean and Chapter at Christ Church, and he supposed the presence of a Dean and Chapter in any place had a somewhat corrupting influence. ["Oh!"] Hon. Members said "Oh!" but he would appeal to the fact that it was from cities with Deans and Chapters that there was always the largest number of Election Petitions. The reason, probably, was that the morality of other people gave way when it found itself in the presence of impossible virtue. As far as Oxford was concerned, they would be very much better off without this disturbing element in their ranks. Sometimes he thought the present state of things was because the Universities had the great misfortune to be represented in Parliament. However, the most obvious way in which the difficulty could be met was by bringing about at no distant date the result at which his hon. Friend's Motion aimed. He hoped the Prime Minister would carry out his promise that they should have full opportunity of discussing the action of the authorities created by the Act of 1877, and that they should finally liberate the Universities of the country from those denominational tests which were the cause of so much rancour and injustice. Religion, learning, and the highest faculties of the human mind would flourish when they were left in the atmosphere of freedom. Protection did no more good to religion than it did to trade; and the best thing people could do for the Church of England in the Universities was to leave it free to carry out its own work in its own way, without resorting to prizes which degraded the giver and still more the recipient.

said, he would not detain the House for more than a minute or two while he made a very few observations on the question now under discussion. He spoke as an Oxford man, and he was not ashamed to say that he spoke in the interests of religious equality as well as of academic freedom. His object was to make one appeal to the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister. Without venturing to set his own very trifling experience in comparison with that of the right hon. Gentleman in reference to the constitutional point that he had made against this Resolution, because he would not have the presumption to set or pass an opinion on that subject, he would yet, in the interests of that union of the Liberal Party which he desired most heartily, hope that they should see their way not to divide on this question. But, on the other hand, he would ask the Premier to remember that this was a question on which the whole Liberal Party felt intensely as one unit. This was not a point on which they were divided. In the late Parliament it was raised substantially in the House of Lords by the then Leader of that House, and it was raised in the House of Commons by the right hon. Gentleman the present Member for Ripon, and it received the support of the whole Party. Nor was it a new question, for it was one to which the Liberal Party as a whole was intensely pledged; and, therefore, he would ask the right hon. Gentleman, who had simply refrained from expressing his views, to give this matter his most serious consideration in the interval between the present and the next Session. The right hon. Gentleman said that they would have an opportunity for giving a full and fair field to the discussion which must come on when the Ordinances of the Commissions were laid before the House. Of course, it would be necessary, if the rejection of those Ordinances was to be moved, that a suitable hour should be given for a discussion of them; and he hoped that the Government would undertake to support them, when they challenged any restrictions on religious equality. He was very glad that the right hon. Gentleman had not uttered any hasty word against the principle of the Resolution, because he (Mr. Lyulph Stanley) could not help saying that it seemed to him, in 1877, the right hon. Gentleman was not quite abreast with the rest of his Party. At that time, although he admitted the principle of the abolition of ecclesiastical tests in the nature of Holy Orders, he seemed to point to the substitution of another test through promotion to Fellowship by the theological school. If it had been earlier in the evening he should have liked to say a few words commending heartily to the attention of the Prime Minister that question of the theological school, and the illegality of having a new test introduced for Fellowships when they had repealed the old test of belonging to a particular Church, or, at any rate, the contravention of the spirit of the Universities Tests Act by any such mode of appointing to Fellowships. He would simply refer the right hon. Gentleman—1st, to the substance of the examination; 2nd, the character of the examiners; 3rd, the special Board by whom the examiners were appointed, and he would see that the school was one distinctly of denominational theology. He, and those with whom he acted very much in this matter, had been attacked from the other side for belonging to the Liberation Society, who were advocates of the most extreme religious equality. Let him say, in answer to hon. Gentlemen, that they would not accept any terms, whether the matter were settled that day, or next year, or ten years hence, short of absolute religious equality, and no protection for any denomination of whatever kind. He and his Friends declared that if there were one test preserved in the University, it would be just as offensive to their principles as the shilling duty on corn was to the Free-trader. He would remind the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury of those Phocæans who, when they were asked by the Persians simply to take down one battlement in sign of submission, preferred to sail away with their wives and families on an unknown sea rather than give up that one point. He was glad that the Resolution was to be withdrawn, because he knew the difficulties under which the Government was labouring—[ Cheers .]—and how fully entitled they were to the most generous consideration. [ Loud Opposition Cheers .] He did not mind those cheers, in the least, from the other side. He knew what they meant, although he would not allude to the "Unholy Alliance" that had been made for the purposes of faction in order to embarrass the Government. He said that the Government were entitled to the most generous consideration, not merely on that ground, but also because they were hampered with the immense amount of work left them by their Predecessors. Having regard to that, and because he had confidence that the Prime Minister would treat this question with a considerate and generous feeling for the views of his Supporters, he would appeal to his hon. Friend (Mr. Roundell) to withdraw his Motion.

said, after the great examples which the House had just heard from the other side of sacred rhetoric, he must apologize for offering a few quiet words of observation. He certainly would make one appeal to his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to be ready, if this Motion were carried, with one short clause, or with something of that kind, giving to the Universities' Commissions compensation for disturbance in their excellent work. His hon. Friend the Member for Grantham (Mr. Roundell) had given them a most interesting essay, thoroughly exhausting the question all round. He was followed by his other hon. Friend the Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Bryce), of European, before he sought Metropolitan fame. Then came the hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. Thorold Rogers), who got up with bated or unabated breath, as the case might be—every word he said making the task of the Commissioners more difficult; and then, at last, they came to the plain, naked confession which they had just heard, that this Resolution was a move in the campaign of the Liberation Society. His right hon. Friend the Member for the Sister University (Sir John Mowbray) had, indeed, pointed to the well-known and ubiquitous name of Carvell Williams, which stood at the bottom of the rallying Paper—that name, which always meant attacking the living or wrangling over the dead, or in any way doing something which might injure the Established Church. With the confession of the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Lyulph Stanley), the combination now stood confessed in its true light. He acquitted his hon. Friend the Member for Grantham, and his learned backers, of any complicity. They knew his transparent honesty, his philosophic mind; but he had fallen among Liberationists. He had been induced to take this question up by those whose clear intention was not, as he believed was the intention of the eminent author of The Holy Roman Empire , the promotion of liberal studies within the University. To those learned Gentlemen he gave credit for their intentions, though he might not think they had taken the wisest course to carry it out; but he could not, after the confession of the hon. Member for Oldham, accept their voice as the expression of the real feeling which had engendered this Motion. The hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. Thorold Rogers) had quoted many episodes in the illustrious history of Oxford; but he had forgotten one little incident in the recital. It was Cambridge that produced the Bishops; it was Oxford that burnt them. No doubt, the hon. Member was justly proud of the men and the things which clustered round the name of Oxford; but, as a member of that humble institution, which produced Cranmer, Spenser, Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Newton, Dryden, Bentley, Person, Pitt, and Macaulay, he (Mr. Beresford Hope) must claim for it some small position in the history of this country. He must next protest against the spirit which underlay many of the speeches of that night. As it was presented to them, this was not a question of the proportion of clerical and lay Fellows, or of what the arrangement for College chapels should be. Those Fellowships might be too few or too many; perhaps in some Colleges there were too many clerical Fellows, in others there were too few. The real question stood behind. The alliance between Divine science and human science, of which the Universities had hitherto been the symbol, might be swept away; but, if it were swept away, they would have Mr. Carvell Williams on the one side, and the common sense of the people of England on the other. The people of England, the parents of England, the cool minds of England, the valuable enlightened judgment of England, in spite of what hon. Members on the other side had said, and in spite of the sacred rhetoric of the hon. and rev. Member for the County of Mayo (Mr. Nelson), did accept that sacred science as presented in the Church of England, and he protested against the ridiculous accusations of monasticism which they had been listening to from the wilds of Mayo. The hon. and rev.Gentleman talked about monasticism and monks; he wondered he did not also talk about Buddhists and Parsees, of Bonzes and Pundits, and any other high-sounding names which might point the accusations which he had projected against the Universities that night. So far from religion, by which he (Mr. Beresford Hope) meant the dogmatic, specific, distinctive teaching of the Church of England, being a thing that was passing away from he Universities, he believed that in every respect the Cambridge of the present time contrasted most favourably with the Cambridge of his own undergraduate days. In his time there were but a few theological lectures sparsely attended; while within the last 18 months the one lecture room at Cambridge which was absolutely crowded was that of the Divinity Professor, Dr. Lightfoot, whose lectures at Cambridge had borne him since to the princely throne of Durham. In his (Mr. Beresford Hope's) time College services were gabbled over, and the singing was wretched, as the men with their crumpled surplices posted between King's, Trinity, and St. John's; while they had recently seen the beautiful restoration of Trinity chapel, and the noble chapel of St. John's rising from the ground. In his time there was that most irreverent institution, the Ceremonial Communion; now, Holy Communion was celebrated in the principal chapels on every Sunday, while the services were very largely attended by the undergraduates, as they were now marked by a magnificence of music and ritual which would not have disgraced the Cathedrals on the model of which they were planned. Those were simple facts and incidents in the life of the Cambridge of the present day; and, with those facts before them, he did not believe they would gratify any people worth gratifying by carrying any alterations such as were suggested by the Resolution. Even on the very lowest argument, even on that of stipends, he believed they would do no good thing by sweeping away religion, by starving out the worship of the Almighty, and by squeezing out the teaching of religion from the Universities. That was what this Resolution really meant, that was what all these fine words really came to, and that would be a great material mistake in the way of business alone, to say nothing more of its higher and nobler aspects.

It seems to me that the right hon. Gentleman the junior Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Beresford Hope) has the Liberation Society and Mr. Carvell Williams on the brain. He seems to see them everywhere. It is, at least, a striking tribute to the importance and influence of that Association—to which I am not ashamed to avow I have the honour to belong—that when any question connected, however remotely, with ecclesiastical matters comes up here for discussion, the Liberation Society is sure to be dragged in by the head and shoulders. The Liberation Society is to some hon. Gentlemen opposite what the Anti-Slavery Society was to the West India planters; what the Anti-Corn Law League was to the Tory landowners. But let them remember that those Bodies, in spite of the abuse with which they were assailed, did accomplish their object, and I have no doubt that the Liberation Society will ultimately accomplish its object, in effecting a separation of the Church from the State. But I rise now as a Nonconformist merely to state—and in doing so I believe I am representing the sentiments of all the Nonconformists not only in this House, but throughout the country—that we cordially approve of and support the Motion of the hon. Member for Grantham (Mr. Roundell). I hope my saying so will not prejudice the Motion in anybody's estimation, except that of the right hon. Gentleman the junior Member for the University of Cambridge. I wish the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, in appealing to my hon. Friend (Mr. Roundell) to withdraw his Motion, had been a little more explicit in his own declarations, and had expressed the substantial concurrence of the Government in the object of the Motion, and their determination, if the matter be not dealt with satisfactorily by the University Commissioners, to legislate on the subject. Still, after that appeal, and under all the circumstances of the case, I think it will be most expedient for the hon. Gentleman not to press his Motion to a division.

said, he was not in a position to speak for the Oxford University Commission, although he was a Member of that Body, nor did he intend to trespass for more than a minute or two on the attention of the House. He could not but help regretting the tone the debate had recently taken. He should have hoped that such a ticklish question as this might have been handled without any acerbity or bitterness of religious opinion on one side of the House or the other. He did not quite understand why the hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. Thorold Rogers) had introduced that tone into the debate; and, short as had been his (Sir Matthew White Ridley's) experience of Oxford, compared with that of the hon. Member, he must say that he was quite prepared to challenge his assertion that the active factions in Oxford hurled one against the other in mutual malignity. The hon. Member, it was true, had spoken of Deans and Chapters, and other matters which had not very much to do with the question; but with reference to what he had said about the whole of the clerical and laymen being mutually malignant, it was surely a strange thing that he was the only man in the House who had been himself a clerical Member of the Church of England and was now a layman. He (Sir Matthew White Ridley) was himself only able to speak on behalf of Oxford; but he did know something of that University, and he indignantly repudiated the assertion that there was such a state of things there as had been hinted at. Speaking for himself alone as a Member of the Oxford University Commission, he had nothing to complain of in the tone in which this Motion was introduced to the House, nor, indeed, in the manner in which either the hon. Member for Grantham (Mr. Roundell) or his Seconder (Mr. Story-Maskelyne) had spoken of the labours of the Commission. The Commission, he thought, had every reason to congratulate itself upon the kindly feeling which had almost generally prevailed during the debate in reference to the work which they had been doing. He had, however, this fault to find with the whole speech—that there seemed to run throughout the assumption that in what the Commission were doing they were increasing, and certainly were not diminishing, to any extent, the clerical restrictions. He distinctly complained of that assertion. If he were able to bring before the House many statutes which had been provisionally passed, he should be able to show that that was an incorrect statement; and it was certainly somewhat unfair of the hon. Gentleman to produce the case of one especial ecclesiastical foundation, and to speak of the number of clerical students still permitted to remain there; and to infer from that one case that other Colleges had been treated in a similar way. Those who knew him personally knew that he was not himself favourable to clerical restrictions; and he could, therefore, speak all the more plainly when he said that he was perfectly sure, when the statutes came to be laid on the Table of the House, that all the Commissioners would be content to stand by their work and to defend that which they had done. He did not propose to say anything upon the general question; but he thought the little he had been able to say would show that it was impossible for him to enter into a discussion on the various statutes which had been proposed. Certainly, as no one could know yet what really had been done, this discussion could be neither practical nor useful; for it merely showed what they all knew already, that there was a considerable majority in that House opposed to the maintenance of clerical restrictions. He was of that opinion himself; but when they came to this practical application it would be at once seen that it was highly inconvenient to be asked to pass a general and abstract Resolution of that kind without being in the least aware how many financial and other difficulties there were in the way of carrying it out to the letter. On behalf of the Oxford Commission, he was deeply grateful to the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister for the manner in which he had put forward their case. He had protected the dignity of the Commission in a manner which he should not have ventured himself to put before the House. Indeed, he would not have been so sensitive as to anything that was said in the House, or that was passed by Resolution, as the right hon. Gentleman thought, perhaps, he ought to have been, or the Commission ought to have been; but he would only say that he hoped that in future, when these statutes came up for discussion, that they would discuss them without that bitterness which he was afraid had crept into the debate that night; and if they did that, he was sure, when they were laid upon the Table, if there was, at the present time, any impression in the mind of any hon. Member that clerical restrictions had been unduly maintained, that impression would certainly be removed.

said, perhaps, before he answered the appeal of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, the House would allow him to correct two points in which he seemed to have been misapprehended. He begged to assure the hon. Baronet who had just sat down (Sir Matthew White Ridley) that he was wrong in supposing that he (Mr. Roundell) was not aware of the fact that the Oxford Commissioners had made very large reductions in the number of clerical Fellowships. The point of his speech was that, according to his judgment, nothing short of the total abolition, out and out, of these clerical Fellowships would satisfy the majority of those who, next Session, would have to deal with the question of these statutes. Then his right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Beresford Hope) had spoken of him (Mr. Roundell) in connection with the Liberation Society. He had nothing to do with the Liberation Society. Moreover, he would venture to say to those hon. Members who were not in the House when he first addressed it that he was careful to base his argument upon the fact that he did not put it forward as a question of religious liberty, but of academic freedom. With regard to the appeal which had been made to him by the Prime Minister, he felt the greatest respect and deference for any opinion coming from one who was not only his Leader, but with so large a Parliamentary experience as the right hon. Gentleman. He saw, also, the difficulty of his position on the Constitutional question; and feeling fully the force of those Constitutional difficulties, he was only too anxious not to set a precedent which at some future time might be used for an evil purpose. The principle of his contention had been conceded. If he had rightly apprehended what had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, and from the hon. Baronet who had last addressed the House (Sir Matthew White Ridley), he could see no reason why he should not be satisfied, and, therefore, be willing to yield to the appeal which, had been made to him to withdraw his Motion. For the Prime Minister had said that ample facilities should be given for the discussion of the statutes of the Commissioners, next Session; and also that, whilst he would approach the subject with respect for the Commissioners, he would approach it with still greater respect for the principles of previous legislation.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn .

Main Question, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair," put, and agreed to .

SUPPLY— considered in Committee; Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next.

said, he understood that it was not the intention of the Government to proceed further that night than the postponement of the Preamble. He was most anxious not to interfere with the progress of Business, and did not now rise to object to the principle of the measure, nor had he taken part in the discussion which had occupied many hours already that evening; but there were two points as to which he should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland for some information, which appeared to him (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) material with regard to future discussion upon the subject. As he understood it, the right hon. Gentleman grounded his reason for that measure either upon the fact that evictions for non-payment of rent were considerably on the increase in Ireland during the first five months of the present year, or upon the fear that the landlords would take advantage of a bad season in order to evict on a slight pretext. He thought that they ought to have some further facts upon that subject than were at present in the possession of the Committee. The right hon. Gentleman had presented Returns prepared from Reports made by the Inspectors of the Irish Constabulary as to the number of cases of evictions in the four quarters of the years 1877, 1878, and 1879, and the first quarter of 1880, up to the 20th March last. He (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) noticed that the Returns included cases in which the evicted tenant was re-admitted, and also cases of eviction for other causes than the non-payment of rent. He wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, whether he could not give them some further facts which would show how many evictions had really been carried out, up to the latest date that could be given, for that particular cause—the non-payment of rent? The second point was this. He had asked the right hon. Gentleman some days since, whether he could give them some statistics which would show in the several Unions of Ireland, as nearly as possible, to the present day the number of persons in receipt of in-door and out-door relief, and also the state of the poor rate in the current year as compared with previous years. The right hon. Gentleman had been kind enough to show him privately the Report of the Local Government Board, he believed for the year ending the 31st March last; but they wished for Returns of a later date in order that a comparison might be instituted. He desired Returns which would show for the whole of Ireland the facts which had been stated by the right hon. Gentleman in answer to questions put in that House with reference to certain Unions and the number of persons in receipt of in-door and out-door relief, and would enable them to arrive at a definite conclusion, as regarded the state of the distress in the several Unions scheduled in the Bill, so far as it could be gathered from the working of the Poor Law. That was a most material point; and it would be a great guide to the Committee, in considering the condition of each of those Unions, if the actual condition could be tested by the public Returns for which he had asked. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would undertake to lay them before the House at once, so that they might have some more definite facts as to the question of eviction for non-payment of rent, and also as regarded the amount of the distress in each of the scheduled districts.

said, in reply to the questions of the right hon. Baronet, he would say that first, with regard to evictions, the Return showed the number, according to the Report of the Inspectors of Constabulary. He had also been asked what number of those were for non-payment of rent. In reply, he should say about three-fourths were for that cause. With reference to the Return for the actual amount of out-door relief, and the exact position of the distress in each Union, he must say he should be glad to render it, if he could; but it must be borne in mind that the Local Government Board were engaged as much as possible in work which required the whole of their energy in order to meet the distress in some particular districts, and if the officials were taken off that work, it would probably very much endanger the chance of their being able to perform what was exceedingly necessary at the present moment. Of course, however, if the information were required for the Committee it must be called for. The reasons for the Bill had scarcely been accurately put by the right hon. Baronet. It was stated on the Bill that evictions had increased, were increasing as far as could be seen, and would probably continue to increase. The Government thought they ought to call upon the House to pass a Bill to prevent those evictions being the causes of injustice to the tenant. If the House did not agree with them as to that danger, no blame could attach to the Government on that account. The Government had taken an estimate of the circumstances of the case, and had come to the conclusion that there was great danger of those evictions continuing to increase.

said, he would venture, to recall the attention of the Committee to the question on the postponement of the Preamble, and to press the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister for a little more information with reference to the clause of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland. He thought the Committee would agree with him that the question was of sufficient importance that he might be allowed a few moments in regard to it. The hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell) had, at a late hour in the Morning Sitting, got up and criticized the clause of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland. Nothing in that discussion had produced a greater effect upon the Committee—so much so, that the Prime Minister subsequently rose and informed them that the interpretation placed upon the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman was entirely erroneous so far as the Government were concerned, and that an explanation would be made when the clause came on for discussion. He believed the words used by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister were to this effect—that his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland would suggest words which would correct the misapprehension that had occurred. Were they to understand from that that there was to be a modification in some sense or other? He could not help thinking that if the Government had that way of putting in one section a meaning totally different from another, so as to lead the Committee into mystification, it was a dangerous course; and he believed that many hon. Members shared that opinion with him. He begged to ask the Prime Minister for a little information, because that matter was one of much consideration, not only to hon. Members, but probably also to people out-of-doors. Were they, therefore, to understand that it was the intention of the Government to alter or modify, in any degree, the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland? He thought the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister would admit that he was not making an unreasonable request in pressing for information on that occasion.

said, far be it from him to say that he thought the remark of the noble Lord to be unreasonable. He had not said one word about any suggestion, or words to that effect. What he did say was that, with regard to the construction of the words of the clause, it would be distinctly and fully stated when they came to the consideration of the clause. Then he proceeded to state that the Bill had been drawn, not with reference to the occasional existence of what were called exorbitant rents, but with reference to the general state of rents in Ireland, and those which were not in the scheduled districts, but were exorbitant notwithstanding. The meaning of the clause would be fully explained when it came on for discussion.

said, he was afraid he must return for a moment to the points he had already raised. With regard to the question of evictions, was he to understand that the right hon. Gentleman would give further facts than those already before the Committee? It was a matter of argument, perhaps; but it appeared to him that the facts they possessed were not sufficient. With regard to the other matter, he thought that if the right hon. Gentleman would make inquiries, he would find that statistics such as he had asked for could well be furnished by the Local Government Board without any interference with the work of relief. The Returns of the Boards of Guardians to the Local Government Board were more regular than those in England. With the addition of one or two temporary clerks, that information could be laid before the House in a few days; and he thought it was essential that they should be provided with it. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would consider the matter.

said, that if the right hon. Baronet would leave the matter open until the following morning, he should be able to learn how soon it would be possible for that information to be obtained. He thought he was mistaken, however, in saying that those Returns would not interfere with the work of relief of the Local Government Board.

said, he should be quite satisfied if the right hon. Gentleman would look into the matter.

Question put, and agreed to .

Motion made, and Question, "That the Chairman do now report Progress, and ask leave to sit again," put, and agreed to .

Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Tuesday next, at Two of the clock.

said, he had no intention of prolonging the Sitting unnecessarily; but he thought it his duty to call the attention of the House to the extraordinary course which had been pursued by the Government in regard to that matter. The hon. Baronet the Member for Scarborough (Sir Harcourt Johnstone) had introduced a Bill to deal with the matter; but on appeal from the Government he had consented to postpone the second reading, on the understanding that a Select Committee of the same character as that which sat during the last two years should be appointed. That was on the 22nd May; but nothing of the sort was done. Much delay took place, and on the 18th June the hon. Member for Scarborough again addressed the House on the question. Having regard to the breadth of the question, and the amount of work which the Committee would have to transact, he (Mr. Cavendish Bentinck) thought that for them to meet at that late period would be altogether useless. When the Committee were appointed last year, their consideration of the question had been only fragmentary, and it had been of the same description also this year, on account of the early Dissolution which took place. Looking at the lateness of the present Session, he was quite certain no real work could be produced on the present occasion. He begged to ask the right hon. Gentleman who had made the Motion to the House for the reasons why the appointment of the Committee had been delayed so late. There had been no difficulty whatever as regarded the Members of the Committee, because 15 of the Members had sat during the last two Sessions, seven of those that belonged on the right hon. Gentleman's side were still in Parliament, and there was no difficulty whatever with regard to hon. Gentlemen sitting on the Opposition side. Therefore, it seemed to him that there was no substantial reason why the Committee was not appointed immediately after the 22nd of May, if the Government were seriously anxious that the inquiry should be held. He wished to call attention also to what he must call a change of ground on the part of the Government. In that case, as in some others, the Committee had been appointed during the last two Sessions—it was, no doubt, exceptional—partly by that House and partly by the Committee of Selection. A short time since the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War abandoned that plan, and adopted a new course by recommending that the Committee be appointed by the House. He (Mr. Cavendish Bentinck) took exception to that. He found also that the name of a Gentleman who was on the last Committee, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Massey), was wanting in the present one. That right hon. Gentleman sat on a Committee which had the investigation of the subject, and was appointed to the Chair by the unanimous consent of all the Committee. He had been the Chairman of that Committee for the last two years, and he (Mr. Cavendish Bentinck) believed that no satisfactory results would be obtained in his absence. There was another point to which he would call the special attention of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War. They had now arrived at the 9th of July, and that Committee would not be able to sit until the middle of the following week, when their Chairman would be chosen. He should like the right hon. Gentleman, who had great experience, to tell gentlemen how it was possible that that Committee could sit and do any business. It was simply impossible, he believed, that anything could be done this year. No Gentleman more than the right hon. Gentleman was aware of the truth of the remark that before they proceeded to discuss the names of the Committee placed upon the Paper it was desirable that the right hon. Gentleman should give a satisfactory explanation not only to hon. Gentlemen then present, but also to the public generally, as to the course taken by the Government.

said, the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Cavendish Bentinck) had omitted to state to the House that he himself represented the Government on the Committee in the last Parliament; and that, in the last Session, he, as representing the Government, consented to the proposal that the Committee should be re-appointed in the present Session. He himself (Mr. Childers) was not a Member of that Committee; and, therefore, under ordinary circumstances, he should not have moved for its re-appointment. But last Session, although the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Massey) had been Chairman of the Committee, it was considered best that the re-appointment should emanate from the Minister holding the Office that he (Mr. Childers) then had the honour to hold; and, in consequence of this, his right hon. and gallant Friend the late Secretary of State for War (Colonel Stanley) moved the re-appointment. As to the cause of the delay which had occurred in settling the names, he had only to say that the investigation was not a pleasant one, and it was not everyone who would consent or desire to be selected; but, after considerable difficulty, the names of the Gentlemen were placed upon the Paper. The right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Cavendish Bentinck) himself then objected to the constitution of the Committee as being one-sided from a Party point of view; and he (Mr. Childers) endeavoured to meet that objection by consenting that the Committee of Selection, who were to appoint five Members, should appoint one more from the opposite side of the House than from his own side. To this, however, the right hon. and learned Gentleman would not agree; and now he had taken exception to the omission of the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tiverton. That was a clerical omission. The name appeared upon the list as given in at the Table, and he (Mr. Childers) did not know how it had fallen through. However that might be, he would undertake, if the Committee were then appointed, that, on Monday next, he would substitute for one Member on his side of the House the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tiverton. The right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Cavendish Bentinck) said they had no time to do anything. He (Mr. Childers) assumed that they had six or seven weeks before them; and if the Committee sat five times, he believed they would be able to get through the first branch, of the question—namely, that relating to hygiene, as the greater part was taken in the short Session before the Dissolution. There would be ample time to do that.

said, that the objection he had to the re-appointment of the Committee was that it should take place at that late period. He believed, however, that the right hon. Gentleman had done his duty in proposing it; but there would be, no doubt, a difficulty in getting hon. Members to serve on such a Committee at the fag end of the Session. There was, he thought, a further objection to the proposed appointment at that time. There was nothing of less use than an inquiry of that kind, having nothing but fragmentary Reports. When he considered the trouble of getting witnesses and persons from a distance, in the space of time allotted, the work could not properly be done, but must be gone through in a hurried manner. He hoped that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War, having performed that part of his duty, in proposing the appointment of the Committee, would not consider it necessary to press it. He had a further remark to make. It had been agreed on all sides that a re-appointment should take place; but hon. Gentlemen were not aware, when the re-appointment was talked of, and recommended by the former Committee, that there would be a Dissolution, which would render the labours of the Committee, when appointed, almost useless, on account of the short time they would be able to sit; and this was especially so in view of the delay which had taken place since the assembling of the new Parliament.

said, he should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Childers) one question. Was he to understand that he proposed to insert the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Massey) in the list?

said, he had already stated that one Member from his side of the House would be discharged from serving, and that the name of the right hon. Gentleman would be substituted.

said, he only rose to suggest the name of an additional Member. The name was that of the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Aberdeenshire (Dr. Farquharson). No one was more competent to sit upon that Committee than his hon. Friend. He possessed the technical knowledge for service upon that Committee. He was one of the Fellows of the College of Physicians, and additional lecturer at St. Mary's Hospital, and held several other important posts; and he hoped, for those reasons, that his name would be agreed to by the House.

said, he would undertake that his name should be inserted.

The Question is, That Mr. Cavendish Bentinck be a Member of the said Committee.

said, he rose—

I would call the attention of the right hon. and learned Gentleman to the fact that he has already spoken in the debate.

Question put, and agreed to .

The Question is, that Mr. Stansfeld be a Member of the said Committee.

said, he only wished to reply to the remarks which had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War, as regarded the points he had raised. First, with regard to his own conduct, when the right hon. Gentleman intimated that he had blocked that Committee, that was perfectly true; but he only blocked the former proceedings, in order that the proper steps might be taken in the nomination of the Committee; therefore, it could hardly be said he was responsible for the delay. The right hon. Gentleman said the delay was occasioned by the difficulty of getting names for the Committee; but he wished to point out to him that the names of Members on that side of the House—

I must call the attention of the right hon. and learned Gentleman to the fact that the Question before the House is, that Mr. Stansfeld be a Member of the said Committee.

said, he would merely explain, by the indulgence of the House, that the Gentlemen on his side of the House had nearly all been returned, and he believed there would have been no difficulty in getting Members to serve. He wished to say, with reference to the observations which had fallen from the hon. and gallant Member for South Ayrshire (Colonel Alexander), that they should be perfectly satisfied if a name were omitted, and that of the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire were inserted.

Question put, and agreed to .

Other names agreed to .

Question proposed, "That Mr. William Fowler be a Member of the said Committee."

said, that he understood that the name of one hon. Gentleman from the other side of the House should be withdrawn. He should move that Mr. William Fowler's name be omitted.

said, that he thought he had made it clear that on Monday he should move that one name be left out, and that of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Massey) substituted. He would consider whether it would be feasible to insert the name suggested by the hon. and gallant Member for South Ayrshire (Colonel Alexander).

said, under those circumstances, he would withdraw his Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn .

Question put, and agreed to .

Select Committee on the Contagious Diseases Acts nominated :—Mr. CAVENDISH BENTINCK, Mr. STANSFELD, Colonel ALEXANDER, Sir HARCOURT JOHNSTONE, Viscount CRICHTON, Mr. BURT, Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY, Mr. OSBORNE MORGAN, Mr. BRASSEY, Mr. COBBOLD, General BURNABY, Sir HENRY WOLFF, Mr. ERNEST NOEL, Colonel DIGBY, and Mr. WILLIAM FOWLER:—Power to send for persons, papers, and records; Five to be the quorum.

House adjourned at a quarter after One o'clock till Monday next.