said, he rose for the purpose of moving "That the Chairman do now report Progress, and ask leave to sit again." He quite admitted that the Motion was an unusual one at that stage; but he thought that he should be able to show the Committee that, if the Motion was unusual, the proceedings of the Government had not been merely unusual, but absolutely unexampled, and that, therefore, the Motion was not only justified by the proceedings of the Government, but was absolutely necessitated by them. It would be necessary for him to call the attention of the Committee to what took place on the previous Friday afternoon. The Prime Minister, in reply to a speech by the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell) intimated that it was the intention of the Government to propose a new clause, or, at any rate, a new Amendment, which should, in some way, meet the objections urged by that hon. and learned Gentleman. [Mr. GLADSTONE: I beg your pardon.] That was the distinct understanding on that side of the Committee, not merely amongst a number of hon. Members belonging to the Conservative Party, but also many hon. Gentlemen of the Irish Party, who had also put that construction upon the speech of the right hon. Gentleman. [Mr. A. M. SULLIVAN: No, no!] His hon. and learned Friend was an exception; but he (Lord Randolph Churchill) could say that he had consulted a great many Irish Gentlemen who had come to that conclusion; and he could appeal to the right hon. and learned Member for Dublin University (Mr. Gibson), who was not given to place unjust or improper constructions upon speeches. What did that right hon. and learned Gentleman say? He got up immediately after the Prime Minister sat down, and declared that he was in extreme difficulty and doubt to know what the Government meant by the remarkable speech that they had just heard, and whether it indicated that there was to be another clause. That sentence was followed in the report by the word "Cheers," which showed that the sentiments of the right-hon. and learned Gentleman were thoroughly in accordance with what hon. Members round him understood. The right hon. and learned Gentleman then proceeded to ask the Prime Minister whether it was the intention of the Government to propose to the Committee any modification or alteration of the clause of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland, and to that question he received no reply. The Government preferred to leave him in the dark. He would not assert the fact; but he would leave the contradiction to the Government if they thought proper; but he had heard that, between 7 and 9 that night, the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, whom he was sorry not to see in his place, accompanied by the Vice President of the Council, had an interview with certain Members of the Irish Party. At any rate, when the Bill came on for discussion in the evening, he (Lord Randolph Churchill), who had not had an interview with the President of the Board of Trade, assisted by the Vice President of the Council, endeavoured to put an end to the uncertainty in which many on that side of the Committee were, and pointed out to the Prime Minister the extreme inconvenience which would result to all parties if they were allowed to remain in that state of uncertainty; and he urged upon him the advantage of stating, definitely and frankly, whether it was the intention of the Government to propose any alteration or modification of the clause, and, if so, to state what it was. If that had been done, they would have had the opportunity of being able to fully consider the question in the intervening Saturday and Sunday. The Prime Minister replied to him that there was not the slightest intention on the part of the Government to effect any modification or alteration of the clause. [Mr. GLADSTONE shook his head.] Well, the Prime Minister would be quite able to correct him afterwards; but, at any rate, he and his hon. Friends understood so, and his suggestion was founded upon a complete misunderstanding of the Prime Minister's words. But, first, he would quote the words as he found them in the report in The Times —

"He asked the Prime Minister whether there would be any alteration or modification of the Amendment. Mr. Gladstone explained that the noble Lord did not hear him correctly. He had not made any such suggestion as that attributed to him. What he had said was, that the construction to be placed upon the words would be fully stated by his right hon. Friend when they came to the clause in Committee."

From those words he and his Friends all understood that that clause was to remain exactly as it was. [ Cries of ''Divide !" and "Agreed !"] He must apologize to hon. Members opposite for going into all these matters; but they must recollect that he and his hon. Friends on that side did not belong to the intelligent Party; and, therefore, it might very well happen that, owing to the extremely elaborate reply of the Prime Minister, his words were not clearly understood. But what they did understand was, that the Bill on the Paper was to be the Bill of the Government, and that that was to be the Bill discussed this evening. It was not necessary for the Prime Minister to have replied to his question at all; for he might have declined to allow himself to be asked questions on that point. It would be remembered that there was some little difficulty in getting the Preamble postponed; but the reply of the Government was perfectly satisfactory at the moment and by that reply, the Prime Minister obtained the distinct advantage of persuading the Committee to agree to the postponement of the Preamble. What was his (Lord Randolph Churchill's) astonishment then to find, yesterday, that the Prime Minister got up in his place, about 7 o'clock, in an extremely empty House, and gave Notice, not only of the absolute withdrawal of the clause of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland, but also of a new Amendment of his own, the meaning of which he (Lord Randolph Churchill), for one, was unable to understand. He was not going to discuss it; but if it meant anything, it meant that the criticisms of the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk, and the displeasure of the Irish Party, as expressed on Friday afternoon, had had their effect, and the requisite alteration in the Bill, as it originally stood, had been made, though the Prime Minister had declared, on Friday, that he had no intention whatever of making any change. Under those circumstances, he did think he was justified in saying that these misleading and mysterious tactics on the part of the Government were really unworthy of them, and would not conduce to the passage of the Bill. He must press upon the Committee the extreme importance of extracting from the Government, before they went any further, an explanation of the Amendment of which the Prime Minister had given Notice, and would venture to point out to him and hon. Members opposite that it was no answer whatever to tell the Opposition that they would have plenty of time to consider the Amendment by-and-bye. The Amendment of the Prime Minister really governed the Bill; and it was absolutely idle to suppose that the Committee could, with any advantage, discuss the Bill, under the impression that the Bill was of one character, and when they came to the Amendment they might find it was of a totally different character. The fact of the matter was, that the sting of the Bill lay in its tail, and they must be informed, and they had a right to ask from the Government, whether this sting, which in any case was of a moderately venomous kind, was of such an extremely dangerous character that the Opposition should consider whether they could handle the remaining parts of the body with any safety to themselves. As the measure first stood, it offered no alternative to the landlord beyond the payment of compensation if he desired to enforce his rights. Then the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland, in order, as he supposed, to prevent the entire dislocation of the Liberal Party, proposed an Amendment which gave the landlord an alternative by which he could avoid the payment of compensation. This Amendment was denounced by the Irish Party, and the Government saw perfectly well on Friday afternoon that it would be useless for them with it in to attempt to pass the Bill. Then they had this further alteration of its meaning, which no one at present could understand, and which the Committee had a perfect right to have an explanation of before it made further progress with the measure. It was perfectly evident that the Government were trying to sit upon two stools. They were trying to conciliate the Irish Party, and, at the same time, not to alienate the support of the moderate section of their own Members, and to effect this object they had had recourse to all kinds of tricks and artifices which were perfectly unfair to the House and perfectly unworthy of the Ministry. The Government must choose between these two Parties on which they meant to rely, and they must say that openly in the House, because it was impossible otherwise for the House to understand what was the real character of the Bill. If it was a measure satisfactory to the Irish Party, it would then, probably, be a Bill not satisfactory to certain Members of their own Party. Yet it was clearly the duty of the Ministry, though they wished to leave the Committee entirely in the dark, to state positively, boldly, and fairly what they really proposed. It was evident that the Amendment of the Prime Minister was a most important one, or else why should he propose it? If it was an unimportant or ordinary alteration, it might have been left to the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland; while, if it was a very trifling change, it could have been safely intrusted to the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland. Evidently, the real nature and character of the Amendment could be guessed at with great accuracy, from the mere fact that the Prime Minister had taken charge of it; and it was really more than the Government had a right to expect that they should ask the Committee to make progress with the measure, with that Amendment hanging over them all the time, about which they knew nothing whatever. He would not make any comment on the Amendment, and he did not wish to discuss it in any way; but he did hope that the Committee would see the necessity of extracting from the Government a real, candid, fair, and reliable explanation of the character of the Amendment, in order that, having that explanation, they might be able to govern their conduct accordingly.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—( Lord Randolph Churchill .)

remarked that he had only a few words to say in reply to the noble Lord opposite (Lord Randolph Churchill). He would make no allusion to the somewhat amusing personal attacks that had been made upon him, for two reasons—first, that he did not intend to be driven into defending himself against such attacks; and, secondly, because he did not know that he was very much in the mood for such discussion, after having sat up the whole of the previous night. He was rather inclined to stick to the business in hand, and to do very little else. The noble Lord seemed to know a good deal about the proceedings of the Government; more, he could certainly say, than he did himself, and he also seemed to know why certain Members of the Government proposed Amendments. He should have thought that the Government might, at least, be allowed to conduct their own Business in their own way, and as they thought best; and that that was hardly a matter in which the noble Lord, although he took so many questions into consideration, and kindly advised the Committee on so many measures, would have thought it necessary to advise them. There was a special reason why the Prime Minister should move this Amendment. He wished to make quite clear even to the noble Lord, and he thought he had made quite clear to the majority of the Committee, his understanding of the Bill. Having described the Bill, as he thought, very clearly in his speech on the second reading, he found that there were some misconstructions on the part of hon. Members opposite which he wished to remove. There was a good deal of talk about a change of position and a change of front on the part of the Government; and, for his part, that seemed to him only a specimen of the exaggerated manner in which all the debates on that Bill had been conducted. It was almost the first time in which he recollected an instance where a Ministry, having found that the words in which they had expressed their views and intentions were open to misconstruction, or were said by some hon. Members to admit of some misconstruction, and had endeavoured to make their meaning quite clear, were, therefore, charged with having been guilty of a change of front. The fact was, that there was no change at all on the part of the Ministry. His right hon. Friend the Prime Minister had moved these words, in order to make absolutely clear, even to the noble Lord himself, that he was carrying out what he had said in defence of the Bill on the second reading; and he (Mr. W. E. Forster) thought that it would be far better for the progress of Business if they were allowed to go on with the Business, and left the discussion on the Amendment until they reached it, when his right hon. Friend would have an opportunity of making a statement upon it.

said, he was never astonished at anything that came from a Minister of the Crown, when the Government was in difficulties, or else he certainly would have been astonished at the speech which had just been made by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He understood the answer he had given to his noble Friend (Lord Randolph Churchill) was that he was labouring under a delusion, and that this Amendment of the Prime Minister, which had produced so extraordinary an effect on the temper of the Irish Party, was really no change of front at all, but was merely a means of further explaining and making more clear the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland. That was what the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant agreeably asked them to believe. If that was so, what was the good of introducing this Amendment with so much solemnity and formality? Why should not the change have been left until they came to the clause, and then make the alteration, which, it was said, was necessary to explain the meaning of the words; but the way in which this Amendment was introduced, and the effect which it had produced, was a proof that the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant was altogether wrong in saying that this was merely an explanation.

I beg pardon. That is not what I did say. What I said was, that my right hon. Friend's Amendment was an explanation of what he believed to be the meaning of the Bill.

said, the only effect of this explanation was to put the Government in a worse dilemma than before. Either there had been a change of front, or there had not; if there had not, and this Amendment was merely what it had been described—a simple alteration of phraseology, why had there been this solemnity in its introduction, and why should such a mere change of phraseology produce the effect which undoubtedly had been produced on the Irish Party. If, on the other hand, it was a change of front, then his noble Friend was perfectly justified, in order to have that change of front discussed, and the effect of it explained, in moving, as he had, to report Progress. The Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant said that that Motion was not in accordance with the ordinary and regular procedure. That was perfectly true; but why was it not? Because this was not an ordinary and regular Bill; but one which changed like a kaleidoscope. It just made its appearance as a mere clause—that was phase No. 1. From a mere clause, attached to another Bill, it became a Bill itself—phase No. 2. Then followed a strong opposition to it, not so much by hon. Members on his own side of the House, as by some of the most valued and trusted supporters of the Government. Then was introduced the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law), which seemed to give complete satisfaction to the supporters of the Government. There they had phase No. 3. But that alteration did not give satisfaction to the Irish Party, and therefore came the new Amendment of the Prime Minister, which was phase No. 4. That new Amendment, undoubtedly, made a complete change in the character of the Bill. Before it was put on the Paper the landlord had an alternative, by which he escaped from the operation of the measure, by giving his tenant the option of a sale. But now, under the Amendment of the Prime Minister, the landlord had no escape from the Bill, unless he would himself propose some reasonable alternative. Everybody knew what that meant. They had all of them had friends who were in difficulties, who came to them and told them that because of their insolvency it was impossible for them to get on, and asked them to suggest some reasonable course which they could pursue. "Who had ever in his life been able to undertake such a course? And yet that was exactly what Irish landlords would have to do with their distressed tenants, under the Bill as it stood at present. The tenant distressed was to be able to throw upon the landlord the responsibility of pointing out to the tenant some reasonable course which he must take to extricate himself from his difficulties; and if he did not propose such a reasonable course to his tenant the unfortunate landlord could not escape from the terms of the Bill. It seemed to him useless to argue that there was not a change in the character of the Bill; and he did think the Government ought to give some better explanations of the reasons which induced them to make that change of front and the purpose of that change, and what would be the result of it before they went on with the discussion of the Amendment on the clause.

observed, that, in his opinion, it would now be convenient to the Committee to proceed with the Bill; and for that purpose he would ask his noble Friend (Lord Randolph Churchill), under the circumstances, to withdraw his Motion. He did not, in doing so, think his noble Friend was at all wrong in bringing it forward, for it seemed to him that this was an instance in which there had been a change demanding explanation from the Government, an explanation which it might have been for the convenience of the Committee to have received at once. But the Government did not think it was desirable to give that explanation now; and, therefore, the Committee must be content to await the time when the clause itself came forward, and when they were called upon to discuss it. It would certainly be a great pity that they should spend their time in a discussion into which the Government would not enter in the spirit that his noble Friend desired. No doubt he had made the Motion with the sincere desire to obtain information—["No, no!"]—and he was not aware that his noble Friend was not credited with what appeared to be a sincere desire to obtain an explanation of a proceeding which certainly needed explanation. The only question was, when they were to have it; and they would, for his part, he thought, be gaining time, if they proceeded now with the other part of the Bill, until they arrived at the point where, at least, explanation must necessarily be given. He, therefore, hoped his noble Friend would withdraw the Motion.

said, he was not surprised that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland had declined to enter into a polemic discussion after the proceedings of the previous night; hut he was also certain that he had given no explanation of this change of front. He said that the Prime Minister had now made the Bill quite clear, even to the noble Lord (Lord Randolph Churchill); while the noble Lord himself declared that, so far as he and his neighbours were concerned, so far from making the Bill clear,' they did not in the least understand the object of the change, or exactly what the Amendment meant. Under those circumstances, the Committee ought to have an explanation forthwith. He (Mr. Chaplin) was very sorry to differ from his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition (Sir Stafford Northcote); but he must say that the extraordinary change of attitude he had witnessed on the part of the Government, not by any means for the first time, certainly required explanation; and if a division were taken, he should, for that reason, vote with his noble Friend.

said, he was not at all satisfied with the result of the Motion, because he considered that he had been distinctly misled by the Prime Minister. He put a question to him on Friday night, which only required "Yes" or "No," and the Prime Minister said "No," and he had acted as if he had said "Yes." He would, however, point out that the Amendment now proposed really governed the whole of the Bill; and it was absurd—or, at any rate, he was rather surprised that the Leader of the Opposition did not agree that it was absurd—for them to go on and discuss Amendments and clauses when the real governing part of the Bill remained at the end and unexplained. They had now not the slightest information or knowledge, or any opportunity of procuring information or knowledge, as to what the Bill really meant. Under such circumstances, he certainly felt that he would be justified in pressing the Motion to a division; but in consequence of the re- quest that had been made to him by his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, he would, with the consent of the Committee, withdraw his Motion to report Progress.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn .

said, he rose to move an Amendment, in page 1, line 10, to leave out from the word "ejectment" to "possession," in line 16, and to insert instead thereof—

"Eviction carried out by process of ejectment for non-payment of rent in any of the Poor Law Unions mentioned in the Schedule, and which."

He thought that the Amendment would meet the various objections to the Bill that had been raised by so many hon. Members on both sides of the Committee. His object was, not to elicit from the Government whether, in their view, there was any difference between ejectment and eviction. Up to the present moment, the Government seemed to be under the impression that ejectments executed meant permanent evictions, and he intended to dispute the validity of the only facts adduced in support of the Bill. On the second reading of the Bill, the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister dilated on the great increase in the number of ejectments. He stated that—

"If they looked to the number of ejectments they would find that in 1878 there were 1,749, and in 1879 2,677, and…during the first five and a-half months of the present year they had reached the number of 1,690, thus showing an enormous increase over the preceding year."

Then he went on to show that unless these evictions were checked 15,000 persons would be driven from their homes, "without hope and without remedy, in the course of the present year." The fact to which he (Lord George Hamilton) wished to call attention particularly was that the right hon. Gentleman had stated that unless these evictions were checked, 15,000 persons would be rendered homeless before the end of the year. The right hon. Gentleman had clearly taken the number of ejectments mentioned in the Return for the first six months of the present year. He had multiplied it by two, and estimated that each family so evicted consisted of between four and five persons. That statement was doubted by a great many persons; and he, for one, particularly questioned the accuracy of the Return for the two counties with which he was best acquainted—namely, Donegal and Tyrone. According to the Return furnished by the Government, the ejectments in 1878 were 84, and in 1879 122. During the first half of the present year they amounted to 156. A gentleman named Sinclair, an active magistrate in the North of Ireland, a landed propietor, and one who took a great interest in the working of the Land Act of 1870, had sent him a communication showing that the whole of these figures, so far as the North of Ireland was concerned, were an absolute delusion. Mr. Sinclair had taken the trouble, for the last four years, to collect the number of ejectments or evictions which took place in the County of Donegal. In 1878, in place of 84 evictions, there were only 16, and of these only seven were at the instance of landlords; nine being at the instance of other creditors. In 1879 there were 17 evictions, instead of 112, and of the 17 only six were at the instance of landlords, the remaining 11 being at the instance of other creditors. For the present year, in place of 156, there were but 17 evictions, and a considerable proportion of these were at the instance of other creditors than landlords. The statement made by the right hon. Gentleman excited great surprise in the minds of other persons, and particularly in the mind of the Lord Lieutenant of the County of Donegal. His Lordship telegraphed, on Saturday last, to the sub-Sheriff of the county to send the total number of ejectments, and the total number of bonâ fide evictions which had occurred in the county during the first six months of the present year. The sub-Sheriff accordingly sent the telegram, which he held in his hand, stating that the number of ejectments from the County Donegal, from the 1st of January to the 30th of June last, was 156; but that the number of actual evictions was only 18. Of the persons ejected, 45 tenants were reinstated as care-takers upon their farms. In 93 cases agreements were signed, and the tenants retained possession. In cases were the tenant was left as care-taker on the farm, he had it in his option to make arrangements within a certain time to pay rent; and in that case he could continue his tenancy, and he was not turned out either "homeless or hopeless." With respect to the County of Tyrone, he had a letter from the agent of a large property in that county, which likewise demonstrated that the Return was delusive. The writer informed him that he had been reluctantly compelled to take out 40 ejectments against tenants, and that a certain number had been executed. Every ejectment was included in the Return of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister; but, as a matter of fact, not one single farmer was evicted. Only three persons had been deprived of their holdings; one was a bankrupt Scotch timber merchant residing in a town, and two other persons were in business, and were practically bankrupt and unable to pay the rent of the small holdings, for which there was a great demand by people who were able to pay for them; so that, with regard to the ejectments which this gentleman had taken out, there had been no evictions of the kind mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister. If, therefore, they excluded from the arguments of the Government this one statement of fact which they had made, there was nothing left. That was the one solitary fact that, after great pressure, they had been able to extract from the Government. But he would go a little further still. He had read to the Committee a statement showing the increase in the evictions in the County of Donegal. In spite of the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, the Bill was not comprehensive in its present shape. So far as he understood these clauses, the object of the Government was to give something equivalent to tenant right to districts in which it did not now exist. In the North of Ireland, by the Land Bill of 1870, a certain legal interest was given to each tenant in his holding, and what had been the consequence? The consequence had been that tenants had been ejected at the suit of creditors, other than landlords. It frequently happened in the North of Ireland that many a money-lender, or other creditor, sued the tenant in a Superior Court to recover a debt. The only assets the farmer had was very likely his tenant right, which had been conferred upon him by the Land Act of 1870. As the matter stood, a creditor could obtain possession of the farm and oust the farmer from it. Mr. Sinclair, who had furnished the figures which he had quoted, expressed himself very strongly upon the subject. He would read to the Committee what he said—

"Cases of ejectment at the suit of persons other than landlords have been frequent since the Land Act of 1870, and probably they do not occur except in the tenant-right districts. The present practice in this part of Ireland is to sue the tenant who owes £20 or £30 in the Superior Courts; and, if he has anything of tenant right in his farm, he is almost sure to be ejected, and the creditor put in possession of the farm."

Then the writer inclosed particulars of a case which had occurred, and went on to say—

"In a case on my own property, the tenant attempted to forcibly re-possess himself of the farm. In another case, the original bill was only £20. The plaintiff's bill of costs came to £70, while those of the tenant's attorney amounted to £40, and the rent of the holding was only £4 10s."

It seemed to him (Lord George Hamilton) that they would be very likely to make a very sad state of affairs much worse by hasty legislation. It must be perfectly clear that Her Majesty's Government, when they brought in this Bill, had very little idea of its significance, or of its effect in Ireland. They ought to make every allowance for the exceptional difficulties of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. The post held by him was by no means a bed of roses. So far as he (Lord George Hamilton) was concerned, he begged to thank the right hon. Gentleman for the manly and unmistakeable way in which he had, on more than one occasion, announced his intention of maintaining the law in Ireland. His idea, no doubt, was that there would be a few cases in which landlords would act harshly; and if he could, by a simple form, which nobody could dispute, eliminate these hard cases from the process of ejectment, he could much more easily maintain law. He gave the right hon. Gentleman every credit for his good intentions; but the Committee was placed in great and exceptional difficulties in discussing the Bill. They ought to have before them accurate figures and statistics, as to the number of bonâ fide ejectments taken out, and the number of actual evictions that had occurred or were likely to take place. He was perfectly certain that the sub-Sheriffs of the different counties could supply that information, and could distinguish between the cases in which eviction had taken place at the instance of the landlord and at that of creditors other than the landlord. If they had such statistics before them, he believed they would find that the 15,000 persons alluded to by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister would shrink to a very small number indeed. He would venture to allude to a document which he hoped the right hon. Gentlemen the Prime Minister and the Chief Secretary for Ireland would have time to study—namely, the Report made to the Government with reference to the Deccan ryots. That document showed the fact that when the ryots in certain parts of the Bombay Presidency were endowed with increased proprietary rights, they got more incurably into debt than they were before. He agreed with the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister that if they could establish a bonâ fide tenant right in the whole of Ireland it would be a good thing; but the establishing of a spurious tenant right would practically convey the whole of the property in land to the money-lenders, and debar landlords from getting their rents. He would tell the right hon. Gentleman the effect of the Bill. The landlord would not be able to obtain his rent, to which he was legally entitled. It was shown that it would be possible for other creditors to proceed against the tenant, and, having proceeded, to force the landlord to pay the tenant a sum of money, which would go into the pockets of the money-lender. The landlord would be prevented from exercising his legal right, and the moneylender would be enabled to force the landlord to pay part of the tenant's debt. He hoped that Her Majesty's Government would carefully consider what he ventured to lay before them, and would see that that was contrary to justice and common sense. He hoped the Government would seriously consider it before insisting upon their proposal, and that they should lay before the Committee an undoubted and authenticated statement showing that some alteration of the law was necessary. He felt sure that the Committee would willingly assent to it if necessity were shown. No such statement had yet been made; and in order to elicit from the Government an explanation, he would move in the 1st clause, which proposed to make temporary provision regarding compensation for disturbance, to insert the Amendment of which he had given Notice.

Amendment proposed,

In page 1, line 10, to leave out from "ejectments" to "possession" in line 16, and insert "eviction carried out by process of ejectment for non-payment of rent in any of the Poor Law Unions mentioned in the Schedule, and which."—( Lord George Hamilton .)

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

said, he could not very well follow the noble Lord (Lord George Hamilton) in his inferences, because he did not understand the premises on which those inferences were based. Evictions with which the Committee was dealing were ejectments by the landlord, and wholly different from what the noble Lord called eviction by a creditor. The only eviction by a creditor that he (the Solicitor General for Ireland) was acquainted with was where a mortgagee went into possession. The Bill was only conversant with the action of landlords, and did not propose to deal with any action that might be taken by other creditors of the tenant. He supposed that what the noble Lord referred to, and called an eviction by a creditor, was where the creditor obtained judgment for his demands, and issued an execution under which the Sheriff seized and sold the tenant's interest in his farm, but not at the landlord's instance. In such cases, the tenant was removed from his holding by the action of the law, as between debtor and creditor, and not between landlord and tenant; and the Bill gave the tenant, under those circumstances, no claim to compensation. It dealt only with evictions by landlords. The noble Lord had stated that the intention of the Government was to prevent landlords using their legal rights; but that was not the object of the Bill, which was only to make harsh landlords, in the present exceptional crisis, extend that indulgence to their tenants which the majority of landlords were in the habit of showing. He should not attempt to follow the noble Lord into what he had said with regard to the ryots in the Deccan; for their case was not on all fours with that with which the Committee had to deal, and for the present it was sufficient to confine themselves to Ireland. The noble Lord had asked for an authenticated statement showing that a temporary alteration of the law was necessary. He (the Solicitor General for Ireland) could only say that the figures already in the possession of hon. Members were prepared by responsible officers; and if they were not reliable he should be glad to know what were. If those figures were not correct, the officers who had compiled them would have been guilty of a dereliction of duty, and must have imposed upon the Government, which was not probable. They were figures compiled from the Returns of public officials; and he thought they must be considered much more reliable than the statements of private individuals. That was the distinction between the figures of the noble Lord and those relied upon by the Government. They were compiled from the judicial statistics upon which much of the statistics of the country were based. The Returns showed the number of ejectments executed in the four Provinces of Ireland for non-payment of rent, but had nothing whatever to do with evictions by creditors, who, having obtained judgment, issued execution, and by means of a Writ of fieri facias levied the amount through the instrumentality of the Sheriff. Such proceedings were not landlord ejectments. The cases with which these Returns dealt were those in which tenants owed rent to their landlords, and in which the landlord had taken proceedings and evicted, eviction being the means by which the transfer of the holding to the landlord was effected, subject to the right of the tenant within the limit of six months to redeem the holding and his interest in it, upon payment of rent and costs. The Return compiled from the judicial statistics showed that in 1878, the total number of ejectments executed in Ireland for non-payment of rent amounted to 1,749. Of these, in Donegal, 83 Civil Bill ejectments, and 1 Superior Court ejectment, making 84 in all, were executed, and all these were executed at the suit of the landlord against the tenant. In 1879 the Return also compiled from the judicial statistics showed the total number of ejectments executed in Ireland for non-payment of rent to have been 2,677, and out of that number 122 occurred in the County Donegal. In the first six months of 1880, the number of ejectments for non-payment of rent executed in Ireland was 1,696, a number very much greater than that given by the noble Lord. The question therefore was, had the Sheriff returned the true figures, and had the officers, whose duty it was to compile them, returned them correctly? If so, the Return presented by the Government was perfectly accurate. If the Returns of the Sheriffs were accurate, and if they had been accurately compiled by the officers who received them, then there could be no doubt of the accuracy of the Returns. Such Returns were compiled in the office in Dublin, from the Returns sent there by the Sheriffs of all the ejectments in Ireland for non-payment of rent. And those Returns showed that in the first six months of 1880 there were 1,696 ejectments as against 2,677 for the whole year of 1879.

said, he should like to know whether the hon. and learned Gentleman (the Solicitor General for Ireland) meant that ejectments were evictions?

said, that ejectment executed meant eviction. Eviction, as contra-distinguished from ejectment, merely meant the last stage in the whole process of ejectment—namely, the turning out of the tenant by process of law. That was the meaning of these Returns of "ejectments executed." The noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton) referred to a large class of cases, which they had not got before them in these Returns, but which the noble Lord stated, from private sources of information in his own possession, where the tenants, after having been dispossessed by process of ejectment, had been put back again in their holdings as care-takers or under some agreement. But when the process of eviction was executed, it meant that the tenant ceased any longer to be the tenant of the land. His tenancy was absolutely and entirely put an end to, subject to his six months' right of redemption entitling him to reinstatement. He ceased then to be tenant; and the landlord who put him back as his caretaker, had him completely under his control, keeping him there as his servant, to be turned out at any time afterwards summarily. He was not saying that the landlord did this for any improper purpose; but the fact remained. The landlord determined, by ejectment, the tenancy, and turned the tenant into a servant. The tenant thus became the servant of the landlord usually for a small nominal payment, and by a summary process before the magistrates at petty sessions the landlord could turn him out of the place at any time. Therefore, although the noble Lord was right, and perfectly correct in one sense, when he said it could hardly be alleged that the tenant was driven out of his home, yet, in point of substance, the noble Lord was not right, because the tenant ceased to be a tenant to a landlord: instead of that he became a servant to a master, and unless the right of redemption he would have as tenant within six months by paying the rent and costs was exercised, he would not be put back and reinstated in his position of tenant. It was not necessary to trouble the Committee with any more remarks on the topics which the noble Lord had placed before them; but he would come at once to the Amendment which the noble Lord proposed to make in the clause. As the clause now stood, it dealt with two classes of cases: the first class included those in which the ejectment had commenced—that was to say, where the Writ in the Superior Court, or the process in the Inferior Court, had been issued or served—where the initiatory step of the ejectment had been commenced after the Act became law, and before the last day of December, 1881. That was one class. The second class was, where the initiatory proceedings had already commenced before the Act became law, and where, before the 31st of December, 1881, they had ripened into absolute eviction. The noble Lord proposed by the Amendment to wipe out all that portion of the clause and to substitute for both of these clauses those cases only where the tenant, after the Act became law, and before the 31st of December, 1881, should be evicted by process of ejectment for non-payment of rent in any of the Poor Law Unions mentioned in the Schedule—that was to say, cases in which the tenant had actually ceased to be the tenant of the holding by a process of law after the Act became law, and before the 31st December, 1881. He would not insult hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the Committee by imputing to them the idea of desiring to legislate only in the interest of the landlord; but the fact was that if this Amendment were adopted, the landlord, or the person in the position of the landlord, would be the only person benefited. It was a most unfortunate thing that the question could never be debated in that House, consisting of Representatives of every class of the community and from every part of the United Kingdom, without at once raising up the barrier of class interests between landlord and tenant, whose interests really ought to be identical. Every hon. Member in that Committee ought, he humbly submitted, to do his best to prevent the two classes from being put one against the other. Injury to the tenant was injury to the landlord, and injury to the landlord was injury to the tenant. Where was the landlord if the lands were left untenanted? Where was the tenant if the landlord took his capital away from the country? If he had spoken warmly on the subject it was because the matter was one in regard to which he felt strongly. The result of adopting the noble Lord's Amendment would be this. A landlord might lay the train; he might commence proceedings and bring them up to the point of having the execution or decree ready to be placed in the bands of the Sheriff, up to the 31st of December, 1881; but provided that he did not actually fire the train before that time no consequences would fall upon him. Thus the landlord would be in a state of preparation, ready to do all the mischief; but provided he did not actually put the match to the train until the 1st of January the noble Lord's Amendment would protect him. He was quite sure that the noble Lord did not contemplate that result, or intend to place it in the power of the landlord to commit an act of that kind. But such would be the consequence of the Amendment. He asked the Committee not to accept the Amendment of the noble Lord, but to leave the application of the clause as it stood in the Bill to the two classes he (the Solicitor General for Ireland) had already referred to.

thought his hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General for Ireland did not apprehend the gravity and seriousness of the charges made by the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton). He (Mr. Gibson) had nothing whatever to complain of in the way in which his hon. and learned Friend had met the statement of the noble Lord. He had met it in the most temperate, fair, and reasonable manner. But, as he understood, the charge which his noble Friend endeavoured to convey very deliberately and very reasonably to the Committee was this—that the statistics given by the Government in support of the Bill were inaccurate, and were not confirmed by the facts. No personal charge was made against the Government. It would be absurd and unreasonable to suggest that statesmen such as he had the honour to see before him could, for a moment, intentionally misrepresent a single fact or figure to the Committee. But these facts and figures had been brought before the Committee with a certain amount of haste and hurry; and his noble Friend merely suggested that one of the gravest elements of the case submitted to the judgment of the Committee had not been borne out upon a closer and more attentive examination. His noble Friend, being only a private Member of the Committee, had not the means which were at the disposal of the Executive Government of furnishing himself with figures, and of examining the details of the clause. When the measure was first submitted to the House, it was obvious that the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was not himself in complete possession of the figures. He stated what the number of evictions were; and it now appeared that those figures must have been prepared with a great deal of necessary haste, in order that the right hon. Gentleman should be in a position to lay some figures before the Committee. If he had no figures to place before the Committee, it was obvious that he would have no case to state to hon. Gentlemen; and, therefore, figures became an absolute necessity. But when the right hon. Gentleman was asked some merely elementary question connected with the figures, he was unable to give the slightest explanation of them. [Mr. W. E. FORSTER dissented.] The right hon. Gentleman indicated dissent; but that was certainly the fact. The right hon. Gentleman was asked, in his (Mr. Gibson's) presence, and in his hearing, and within the hearing of the whole House, whether his figures included ejectments on the title as well as for non-payment of rent, and the right hon. Gentleman was unable to answer the question. He (Mr. Gibson) asked if they included holdings in towns as well as in the country, and the right hon. Gentleman was unable to answer. [Mr. W. E. FORSTER again dissented.] The right hon. Gentleman could explain afterwards; he (Mr. Gibson) was speaking now of a matter within his own knowledge. As he had asked the question himself, and had received the answer, he was able to remember the fact well. He asked if the Return included the towns, and the right hon. Gentleman said he supposed not. He then asked if it included the cities, and the right hon. Gentleman said he was not aware that there was any particular distinction between towns and cities. He made no charge against the right hon. Gentleman, except this—that his statement showed the haste with which the figures had been prepared; and that was the excuse for the right hon. Gentleman not being prepared with complete information as to them. They had now the figures before them, and what were they? Fortunately the Committee were not left with one set of figures. He would, however, for the purpose of the observations he desired to make, confine himself to the figures for the year 1879. Those figures were stated in the Return which he held in his hand, and which was one of the Returns laid on the Table during the last few days. That Return stated that the number of ejectments in Ireland in 1879, in the County of Donegal, was 122. He asked the attention of the Committee to that statement. Another Return had been subsequently laid on the Table of the House within the last four days, and it was prepared before there was a suggestion of the present Bill, at the instance of his right hon. Friend the late Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. J. Lowther). One would imagine that the figures contained in that Return, ordered by Parliament months ago, and prepared with deliberation, would tally in all particulars with the hurried Return, prepared in a few days to meet the exigencies of the present Bill. But he was unable to find any concord at all between the figures contained in the hurriedly-prepared Return, and in the Return more deliberately prepared by the order of Parliament. In the Return quoted by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the number of executed judgments in the County of Donegal for the year 1879 was given at 122; but, on turning to the more deliberate Return prepared after an interval of months under an order of the late Parliament, the aggregate of evictions of all sorts in that year in the County of Donegal was 52. He made no charge whatever against the Sheriff or against any public officer. He only wished to point out, with regard to the group of figures thrown at the Committee, that it was reasonable there should be some explanation. His noble Friend who had challenged the figures contained in the Returns presented to the Committee had done so very reasonably. He had not gone out of his way in order to contest the Returns in reference to all the different counties; but, as everyone knew, the noble Lord was specially connected with the County of Tyrone and with the County of Donegal, and everyone knew also that he had special means of obtaining information about those counties. What was the state of the facts in reference to them? He did not think there was the slightest agreement between the figures referred to by the noble Lord and those referred to by the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland. His noble Friend confined his attention to six months of the present year, and passed by 1878 and 1879; and there were no judicial statistics to meet those of his noble Friend, because the judicial statistics were confined to the years 1878 and 1879 only. His noble Friend directed attention to a paper of figures which dealt with six months of the year 1880; and when fully brought out in reference to Donegal, the figures which he founded upon that paper were totally at variance with those laid before the Committee by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. He (Mr. Gibson) forgot what the exact total was stated to be in reference to the County of Donegal. [An hon. MEMBER: 156.] 156 was the Return, according to the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland; but the judicial statistics contained nothing with regard to the six months covered by the statement of his noble Friend.

said, that the Return to which he had referred from 1st January to 30th June, 1880, was compiled from the Sheriff's Returns, for the purpose of the compila- tion of the judicial statistics for the current year.

said, he certainly understood, when he read the Returns, that the judicial statements were confined to the published volume for 1878 and the unpublished volume for 1879. He did not understand that there were any judicial statistics, either published or unpublished, for the year 1880.

said, the information which was furnished in reference to the six months ending on the 30th of June, 1880, was furnished from the Office of Judicial Statistics, from the same sources supplied to that office as those which supplied the other Returns. In point of fact, they formed part of the same Returns.

remarked, that "from the same source" was a very vague statement. He would take the description given by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and the first Return laid on the Table to justify the Bill was described as "A Return of evictions from the published volume of 1878; Return of evictions from the unpublished volume of 1879." When he came to deal with the year 1880, what the right hon. Gentleman did was this—he had no judicial statistics to fall back upon; but what he did was to say that he would lay, and he did lay, on the Table of the House, Returns that were compiled by the Constabulary.

made an observation across the Table which did not reach the Gallery.

said, he made no charge against the right hon. Gentleman; but he only said this—the sanction of preparation which generally attended the preparation of judicial statistics was absent in regard to the Returns for the six months covered by the present year, and there was nothing produced beyond Returns which had been made by the Constabulary. What his noble Friend said, in reference to the particular figures, was that in regard to the County of Donegal there had been a far less number of actual evictions than was stated in the Government Return. That was the broad statement made by the noble Lord—namely, that over 100 evictions were stated in the Returns laid on the Table at the instance of Her Majesty's Government; but that from some cause, of course capable of explanation, the actual number of evictions furnished to the Lord Lieutenant of the County of Donegal by the sub-Sheriff was very much less than that given by the Government. That was a clear and distinct statement, and it was one that required a good deal of explanation. The only explanation now attempted by the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland was that there was a difference between ejectments by the landlord for the non-payment of rent and evictions from other causes. He made his hon. and learned Friend a present of the difference, and would take the evictions of all sorts—those at the suit of the landlord for the non-payment of rent, as well as all others, and, giving the Government the fullest credit for being able to rely upon their Returns, they still fell vastly short of the figures laid on the Table of the House. Therefore, fairly and temperately, his noble Friend suggested that it was a matter which required as serious and speedy an explanation as possible. If there was such a serious divergence in one figure, as there was in this case within his noble Friend's own personal knowledge, his noble Friend was right in distinctly challenging the conclusions of the Government; and surely the circumstance was one which ought to induce the Committee to mistrust very seriously the accuracy of all the figures submitted by the Government, upon which they had acted in drawing up their Bill, and upon which they asked the Committee to act hereafter. He had no wish to take the case further than that. It was a very reasonable way of presenting the figures to the Committee. There was, however, another point, not particularly referred to by his noble Friend, which called for explanation. Two sets of figures had been submitted by the Government to the Committee, as entitling the Committee to ratify the proposals of the Government. One was the number of evictions, and the other the civil war argument. It was said that thousands of persons were employed in the Counties of Galway and Mayo in carrying on a kind of civil war—that there were 3,000 or 4,000 police employed in Galway, the largest county in Ireland, in supporting the service of processes. He challenged that statement in the most distinct way, and he asked the Government to place on the Table of the House a Return showing what was the normal number of police in Galway, and what was the greatest number of extra and additional police sent down, say, within the last nine months, in aid of the ordinary police force, to assist in the service of processes. The ordinary police force of the County of Galway was, he believed, about 500; and he believed the greatest number of additional police at any time sent down to that county was under 400. He should be greatly surprised if any Return was presented to the Committee that would show that at any one period during the last six or nine months there were as many as 1,000 police in the whole of that great County of Galway. He was of opinion that the figures which formed the basis of the calculation of Her Majesty's Government had been sprung upon the Committee, and upon the landlords of Ireland, with unnecessary haste. At no time in the whole history of the anti-rent agitation, when it had been found necessary to afford protection to the service of processes, had there been anything like the number of police suggested by the Government necessarily employed in that occupation; and he apprehended that the cause of the great discrepancy which really existed between the Government figures and the actual facts was this—perhaps, 50 police might be employed in protecting process-servers on half-a-dozen separate days; but, instead of looking upon them as the same police, which they actually were, the Government multiplied them by the number of days they were employed. By that means it was very easy to arrive at a very substantial number of police. It was quite clear that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had not gone into the matter fully. He (Mr. Gibson) had some acquaintance with the topics upon which he had been speaking; and from his own personal knowledge, and from all he had heard since the present debate was commenced, during the last few days, he believed the figures he had named would be far nearer to the fact than the figures given by the Government. He was prepared to assert, as the result of his own conviction, that the number of 1,000 of the Constabulary, ordinary and extraordinary, would be far nearer to the actual figure than the 3,000 or 4,000 mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. If the evictions would not stand the test of simple examination, that state of civil war with which they were terrified could also be examined into without any conclusions being arrived at of an alarming character. And surely those circumstances would justify the Committee in asking the Government to reconsider the position in which the matter stood. He assumed that if the Government, after a careful and reasonable examination, found that the evictions were not what they thought they were; if they found that the tenants were not turned out on to the roadside; if they found that the service of the processes of law, though occasionally difficult, and occasionally requiring the attention of a substantial force of police, did not require the great military display described by the right hon. Gentleman, then he apprehended that nothing that had occurred upon the previous stages of the Bill would prevent the Government from re-considering the matter with the view, he would not say of withdrawal, but of translating the Bill elsewhere.

said, the statistics submitted by the Government, and those placed before the Committee by the noble Lord (Lord George Hamilton) and his right hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Gibson) seemed, no doubt, contradictory; but he (Mr. Law) thought he could explain an error into which his right hon. and learned Friend had fallen with respect to the evictions. Now, his right hon. and learned Friend had had considerable experience in these matters; and he, at least, must have known that the Returns made by the Constabulary gave only those cases of eviction to which their attention had been particularly directed as being cases of something like an agrarian character. [Mr. GIBSON dissented.] If his right hon. and learned Friend did not concur in that view, he (Mr. Law) could not give him all the credit to which he thought he was entitled. If his right hon. and learned Friend would take the trouble to compare the Returns of evictions reported by the Constabulary at any time with the numbers of evictions which actually took place, and were returned by the Sheriffs for the compilation of the judicial statistics, he would find that the disproportion was very considerable. For example, in the Sheriff's Returns, the number of evictions in Ulster were about equal to those in Munster or in Connaught; but when they came to look at the Constabulary Returns they would see that as in Ulster there was very rarely any apprehension of violence or disturbance in connection with evictions, and, thus the cases in which the assistance of the police was required were but few, there was a striking disproportion in the police Returns between the number of evictions in the Province and the number returned in Connaught or Munster. His right hon. and learned Friend seemed to be dissatisfied with the Returns made by the Department of Judicial Statistics; but they were all open to inspection and could be verified. The Returns given by the Government began with 1877, and his right hon. and learned Friend could easily verify them if he pleased. He would, however, find that the figures given by the Government were quite correct. When the Bill first came under discussion, his right hon. and learned Friend asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland for several Returns, and on the next day on which the discussion was resumed the Government did all they could to comply with that request; but the time was too short to enable them to render complete Returns. They gave the statistics previously issued in regard to the year 1878, and those about to be published for the year 1879; thus showing the actual number of evictions in every county in Ireland in those two years. It was true that, dealing, as he did, only with the Constabulary Returns, the Chief Secretary for Ireland was unable to separate the evictions in the cities and towns from those in other parts of the country; but the judicial statistics enabled a distinction to be made; and it was found that there had, in fact, been no increase in the evictions for nonpayment of rent in towns or cities. The numbers were 537 in the first year, 529 in the second, and 531 in the third year. Now, if they deducted these figures from the whole number of ejectments returned on the Paper, they would find the whole of the rural ejectments in Ireland. But suppose they took half the residue for that portion of Ireland not included in the Bill, the figures became more startling; for in place of 1,749, 2,677 and 3,399, they amounted in 1878 to 390, in 1879 to 1,758, and in the first six months of the present year to 2,470. His right hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Gibson) disputed the accuracy of the Return for 1879.

said, he had not gone more widely into the figures than he thought reasonable. He had taken the figures with reference to Donegal, and showed that the total was far in excess of the addition of the figures added together with reference to Donegal, contained in the Return ordered by the late Parliament at the instance of his right hon. Friend the late Chief Secretary for Ireland.

said, that was probably so, because that Return in question did not purport to give all the evictions throughout Ireland. Besides, if his right hon. and learned Friend would look, he would see that there was a number of blanks in the Return, there being as many as four on one page. All the Government could do was to give the Committee the figures contained in the published statistics of 1878, those from the statistics of 1879 not yet issued, and from the Returns of the first six months of 1880, which came from identically the same source—namely, Doctor Hancock. His right hon. and learned Friend wanted to distinguish the Return of 1880 from those that went before; but there was no distinction. They were, in short, all prepared in precisely the same way. The Return was made up for the first half of the present year from answers obtained from the different Sheriffs, tabulated in the same office, and signed by the same officer; and if the right hon. and learned Gentleman looked at the manuscript Returns of 1879 and half of 1880, which had been laid on the Table, he would see that they were signed by Dr. Hancock. Of course, there was a great discrepancy between these and the police Returns, because the latter gave only the number of cases which, for special reasons, had been reported to them. What figures could his right hon. and learned Friend expect to get besides those already returned by the sub-Sheriffs? The Returns presented had been directed to be made up by the responsible officers in the same way as the Returns of previous years had been made; and the result was that they showed the evictions to have increased, and to be still increasing. Hon. Members spoke of reinstatement of tenants after eviction in the guise of care-takers. But the moment an execution was executed there was an end of the tenancy; and if a man went back as care-taker, he went back as the care-taker and servant of his former landlord, and as such could be turned out at any moment. No doubt, if a man, after the regular process of eviction had been gone through, the furniture put out, and the fire extinguished, was allowed to go back as care-taker, that was not just so bad as being turned out on the roadside; but the tenancy was extinguished and gone all the same, and it was this extinction of the tenancy that was the formidable part of the business. As to the number of police employed in carrying out the evictions, what his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland had said was that 3,300 police had been employed in 40 or 50 cases of process serving. Many of these were, no doubt, employed more than once. His right hon. and learned Friend never could have imagined—and he (Mr. Law) would venture to say, never did imagine—that this number of men were employed at the same time. What was meant was that to this extent the Constabulary had been diverted from their ordinary duties to assist in the service of ejectment processes, and in carrying out and enforcing evictions in the western part of the County Galway.

said, however much the right hon. and learned Gentlemen who had addressed hon. Gentlemen from opposite sides of the Committee (Mr. Law and Mr. Gibson) had disagreed in their statements, they had agreed in one thing—namely, in omitting all reference to the real point raised by his noble Friend who commenced that debate. They had given the Committee a great deal of useful information; but not of the particular kind required on that occasion. They had made an able defence of certain officials; but not of those officials whose conduct had been called in question. Nobody doubted that the information furnished to the House of Commons by its officials was accurate or trustworthy. The Opposition had made no imputation against Dr. Hancock. It was the Government whose conduct was in question. The case of the Government had been rested, to a great extent, upon this allegation. They said that through the action of hard landlords a large and increasing number of tenants were being turned out into the roads, homeless; and he believed it was the Chief Secretary for Ireland who drew a moving picture of people clinging to a raft or ship that had been wrecked, and said that the Irish tenants were the unfortunate sailors. The right hon. Gentleman was a master of that kind of pathos. The right hon. and learned Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Law) asked what it mattered what proportion of evictions in each year were really at the instance of the landlords, provided that the statistics compiled in each year on the same plan showed an increase of evictions? But the point was, what was the absolute number of evictions, or, rather, were there so many evictions—not whether they had increased—that a Bill of this exceptional kind was necessary? His noble Friend had pointed out that the number of tenants the Government believed to be turned out was vastly in excess of the number actually turned out; and what they wanted to know was, whether the Government could furnish the Committee with information with regard to the other parts of Ireland of the same kind, and in the same detail, as that which his noble Friend had been able to obtain with reference to Donegal, because it was believed when they received it that it would lead to as startling conclusions as had been arrived at in the case of the County of Donegal. The whole conduct of the Government showed that they had first determined to bring in their Bill, and then cast about to find arguments in support of it. They had grasped at every shred of statistics which seemed to tell in favour of their case, without giving them the consideration which they ought to have given them before they used them as arguments in support of their Bill. What they desired was to have the same information as regarded the whole of the distressed districts in Ireland as his noble Friend had furnished to the Committee in the case of Donegal, without which it would be impossible to estimate the grounds on which the Government asked the Committee to pass this extraordinary measure.

said, he rose to ask an explanation of the Chief Secretary for Ireland with reference to other figures in the Returns. He alluded to Paper No. 150, which contained figures relating to the first half of the year 1880. And in comparing these with the total number of evictions for non-payment of rent, during the first half of the year, contained in Paper No. 246, he had found some most remarkable differences. Now, if hon. Members took the figures relating to the County of Armagh, they would find the total number of evictions noticed by the Constabulary in the first Return to be 6, while, according to the other Return, the total number of ejectments was 81. Again, in the first Return, the total number of evictions in Donegal was 50, while, in the other Return, it was stated to be 156. Then, with regard to the County of Mayo, the whole number of ejectments mentioned in the second Return was 55; whereas the first Return showed that 74 had been brought to the notice of the Constabulary. The same thing happened with regard to Waterford. The ejectments were 33; but the number brought to the notice of the Constabulary was 54. He had been a good deal puzzled by those figures. He presumed the ejectments brought to the notice of the Constabulary, Returns of which had been placed on the Table of the House, showed the number of evictions of a dangerous character as being accompanied by a certain amount of agrarian disturbance. The comparison was exceedingly puzzling, and he should like to receive an explanation of the discrepancy.

said, he thought he could answer the question raised by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. W. Fowler). The Return on which he rested his case was that of the Police; but he had produced the other Return, which made his case stronger. The Constabulary Return gave a much smaller number than the Judicial Statistics Return. The Constabulary Return gave the cases where the help of the Constabulary was required to carry them out. The hon. Member asked for some explanation of the difference. He would take the cases in which the Constabulary Return was much less than the Judicial Statistics Return. Armagh and Donegal were cases quoted in which the Constabulary Return was much smaller; but the reason for that was clear. In Donegal there was a better arrangement of the relations between landlord and tenant; and, therefore, when evictions happened, the tenants had something on which they could rely, and the Constabulary knew less of them. In Mayo and Waterford, the Constabulary Return was the larger of the two. The explanation there was also easy. The Constabulary Return bore on the face of it, that it included all evictions—those for non-payment of rent, and for other reasons. The other Return included only those for non-payment of rent. With regard to the police employed, he should be sorry if he had misled the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposite (Mr. Gibson). What he intended to convey was the serious fact, not that 3,300 men were employed at one time at Galway; but that generally from 40 to 50 men were required to assist in serving a process, and in some cases not fewer than 200, seeing that 600 men were employed in 12 cases of actual eviction. He should be sorry to be supposed to be likely to make an exaggerated statement; but he thought it a most serious matter that what might be called a common process of law required from 50 to 1200 men to make their way through the mob and protect the process-servers.

said, he did not intend to ask the Committee to go again into the comparison which had been laid before them as a guide in estimating the number of evictions which had actually taken place. It was perfectly plain that no answer could be given to the question of his noble Friend, because no answer had been forthcoming as to whether the Government had any information upon the subject to which he had called their attention, and whether they were prepared to contradict the truth of his his statement. He was also certainly not going to press the right hon. Gentleman about the number of police employed. It cast a certain air of ridicule upon the whole matter, to hear that the process of the law had to be carried out by a great army of police, which afterwards turned out to be something like an army in a pantomime, where the same actors were passed round behind the side scenes, and made to re-appear as fresh regiments, so as to impress the innocent audience with the magnitude of their numbers! He wanted, however, to come to the point, which was one of vital importance. He begged hon. Members to remember that he was one of the few Irish Members who re- presented the interests of landlords, who were so deeply concerned in the question before the Committee. They might be right or they might be wrong; but Irish landlords believed that a vast majority of their numbers would be so affected by the Bill as to be ruined by it. When the Bill was brought in with such urgency and solemnity by the Ministers of the Crown, they rested their case on this—that a vast number of evictions, in the English sense of the term, were taking place in Ireland, and were likely to increase in number, and that by this process of putting out persons by hundreds and thousands, and under such painful circumstances, the conscience of the Government was pricked to give protection to the tenants against the existing law. He asked, was not that the meaning of the speeches made in support of the Bill? The Prime Minister had said that 15,000 individuals would be ejected from their homes without remedy or hope in the course of the present year; but it had turned out in the case of Donegal, for instance, that instead of 156 evictions during the present year, there had only been 18. He would like to ask was there any man in England who had read the speech of the Prime Minister, that did not believe that it was an actual fact that all these evictions had been carried out—that all these tenants had been turned out on the roadside, and remained there? But if the figures of his noble Friend were to be relied upon, nothing of the kind had happened. Again, he would like to know how many hon. Members had been strongly impressed by the arguments put forward in support of the Bill; by all the stories which had come from Ireland, and by the representations of agitators that the poor people were starving? The figures relied upon were altogether erroneous and misleading; and it appeared now that of those who were said to have been turned out on the roadside, more than nine-tenths of the families had been put again into their houses. He might be told that it was just as bad to deprive a man of his tenant right, as of his house and home, and that if families had been re-instated, it was for the purpose of putting them out again. That, however, was a strong assumption, and he was sure that in the majority of cases it was not justified. But supposing that, in some instances, it was a fact, the true answer would be to investigate the cases, to make up the figures, and then calmly and deliberately re-consider the state of the law; and when the figures had been sifted, and reliable information was obtained, to come to Parliament, if Government thought it necessary, and ask for a change of the law. It was quite another thing to bring in this exceptional measure, putting aside all Business for it, telling those who wished to criticize it that they were Obstructives, founding all upon this general and pressing state of misery, and saying clearly that the Government could not be expected to enforce the law of the land unless that state of misery was put an end to. After all this pressure put upon their Supporters by the Government, what was the simple result? That they were abandoned by some of their most respected and honoured Supporters, and by some of the best of the Whig Party, and that all the foundation for their measure had vanished away. The case was much worse, because the Government could not tell them whether or not the circumstances were true. He asked, again, had a case been made out upon which a responsible Government ought to go to the House and ask for such a measure as this? The noble Lord the Secretary of State for India (the Marquess of Hartington) had said, very characteristically, and very honourably, a few nights ago, that he was not in favour of violent measures, but that he was assured by the Chief Secretary for Ireland that the Bill was absolutely necessary for the government of that country. He was confident that there were many more Supporters of the Government, English Supporters, who had acted under precisely the same impression, because they did believe in an overwhelming and painful necessity for what they were asked to do; but unless the Government could give a more satisfactory answer than they had given that afternoon to the challenge which had been directly flung down to them by his noble Friend, speaking with a sense of his responsibility, and calling upon them to answer with a sense of theirs, they would find it very difficult indeed to press forward this Bill. He repeated, that it was no answer to suggest that there was something in the operation of the Land Act of 1870 which was faulty, and that though no great misery was actually produced at the time, yet that there was something with regard to the tenant right which required changing. That was matter for deliberate investigation, for deliberation on full information given on firm ground, reviewing the whole subject, taking everything into consideration, and then bringing forward some proposal. It was not an excuse for bringing forward a measure in this hurry, and with this pressure. The Government had no right to carry through the House a measure which was a great departure from the established laws of the time and from the established principle of the great Act which they themselves carried in 1870, and to justify this startling, dramatic legislation by the terrible state of affairs in Ireland, in which it was now shown there was nothing to justify this most unnecessary and this most unfortunate Bill.

I feel bound to accept the challenge of the noble Lord (Lord George Hamilton), that, in consequence of certain figures which he has produced, the whole basis on which this Bill is recommended to the Committee has disappeared, and, consequently, we ought not to expect the majority of the Committee who have been misled thus far by our statements to support it. In my opinion, the statement of the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Plunket) is entirely inaccurate; and I will, in correction of it, give my own explanation of the statement of facts, as far as I understand them. Certain figures have been submitted to the Committee in the shape of official Returns by Her Majesty's Government, and, founded upon those official statistics, my right hon. Friends the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland, have estimated that if the ejectments continued for the present year in the same rate as they have during the first half of it, there will be about 3,500 families ejected. That number is, of course, subject to some deduction for persons, who, though a decree had been obtained against them and were evicted, yet were replaced in their houses. I have no means of knowing what that number would be; but I have made a deduction for it, which may be either sufficient or insufficient, but for which I think I made fall provision, Now, it is admitted that there is no challenge of the figures laid on the Table. ["No, no!"] It has been admitted all through the debate that the figures on the Table are accurate. They have not been challenged in the debate, and I do not know that anyone has said that they are inaccurate. Subject to the condition that affairs were the same in the last six months of the present year as they have been in the first, I do not think it is unreasonable to assume that, if there be no change in the law, we shall have a state of affairs as unfavourable as during the first half of the year. It may be that there will be a great increase in the number of evictions, just as we have had a great increase in the corresponding months of the previous year; but I will not press the question so far as that. Assuming, then, that this is a statement of facts, and that these official figures are unquestioned, the noble Lord produces figures which it is impossible to check, obtained partly on the authority of a gentleman named Sinclair, and partly from a telegram from the County Donegal. The noble Lord does not undertake to tell us what were all the rest of the cases recorded in these Returns as having been cases of eviction. He stated the very large difference between the total as given in our Returns, and the total as reported to him. How are these disposed of?

reading from the telegram of the Lord Lieutenant, said, that the number of ejectments for non-payment of rent executed in the county from the 30th January to the 30th June was 156; and these were the figures which were contained in the Government Returns—there were, of these, 18 actual evictions, 45 tenants were re-admitted as caretakers, and there were 93 cases in which they signed an acknowledgment without disturbance.

Then, it seems that in 45 cases they were re-admitted as care-takers, and in 93 cases these persons were re-admitted as tenants. This was in the County Donegal, where, being taken as tenants, I apprehend they entered again into the full enjoyment of the Ulster Custom. It appears to me, that if I am to deal with these facts as they are given, and with these re-admissions as tenants of the County Donegal, where the tenant-right of Ulster prevails, that is not to be taken as in the slightest degree raising a presumption that similar re-admissions have taken place in six counties where the Ulster tenant-right does not prevail. But let that remain as it is, until we are able to make fuller inquiry. I am going to grant you the whole of your re-admissions, but I entirely contest the doctrine of the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Plunket) that the ground upon which this Bill was first recommended to the House has disappeared. The right hon. Gentleman says that this Bill was brought in on the grounds of compassion, and that, as an appeal ad misericordiam , this Bill was recommended to the House. Sir, it was nothing of the sort. ["No, no!"] You will allow me, if you please, to state what are misconceptions of our own words, and the meaning of our own acts. It was not on the grounds of an appeal of compassion that the Bill was introduced. If numbers of persons supposed to he houseless and homeless were mentioned, they were mentioned with reference to the bearing that such a fact had upon the security of the country. Now, let us see what is the case. Some thousands of persons have been, so far as we are able to say, or are likely to be, within the present year, judging from the facts before us, evicted and removed—either absolutely evicted in a strictly literal sense, and, therefore, in a strictly literal sense, houseless and homeless, or reduced to the condition of mere beggars. Now, what is that condition? It is, in its effect upon the general state of the country, very much the same as if an absolute eviction and the absolute expulsion of these persons from the premises took place. The man is deprived of his status as a tenant. He is deprived of his tenant right; he is deprived of that which the Land Act of 1870 constituted for him; and I affirm, that with regard to the whole of these people, who, having been evicted, are re-instated as caretakers—although it is quite true, and I am very thankful for it, that the bodily suffering may not take place—yet, as regards the effect upon the mind and temper of these people and of the people among whom they live and upon the political and social state of the country, is only one degree less bad than if they were turned out altogether. They become servants, instead of being tenants. Our object is to keep them as tenants, and to prevent the destruction of the tenant's interest by the arbitrary act of harsh landlords, in cases where these tenants are suffering under conditions which they could not control, and are reduced by those conditions to a state where, if temporary relief be afforded, there is every reason to suppose their case is not hopeless. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman has done us the justice to apply what we have said, he will see that it is the condition of the country with reference to the maintenance of the law that has been the main consideration urged by the Government upon the Committee. I do not care, Sir, so much for the total number of persons who are employed in serving processes. I look to the numbers required to serve processes. We have arrived at a state of things where 50, where 100, and where 200 people are required to enable a legal act to be done, which legal act ought to require no support whatever. That is one stage, and only one stage, apart from civil war; and if we are desirous to enforce the law for the adequate maintenance of the rights of property, we must consider the circumstances in which it is to be enforced, and the necessary limitations of human actions. The destruction of civil rights, the stroke struck by these numerous evictions—whether people be critics or not—at the civil status which has been created for the Irish occupier by the Land Act, and the consequences of that stroke so struck in the difficulties attending the execution of the law, and the force that is required to enable it to be executed, these are the grounds upon which we have recommended this Bill to the House. We will endeavour to do our best to ascertain throughout the country, or, at any rate, throughout the disturbed districts, how many of these evictions have resulted in actual expulsion, and in how many the tenant has been re-admitted to the condition of a servant dependent on the pure will of the landlord for this sojourn from day to day in what was once his home, but cannot now be called so any longer, for he holds it by no right. But this fact, upon the showing of hon. Gentlemen opposite—which I am now assuming to be in all respects accurate—this fact remains, that all this happens in a considerable portion of the country where there is a morbid sensitiveness prevalent among the class of occupiers as well as landlords, resulting from the recollections of the past. A considerable number, probably, at this time on which we speak, some thousands annually, are, in consequence of a visitation over which they have no control, cast out of their houses, and either expelled from them, so far as we know, without compensation or remedy of any kind, or are entirely deprived of the civil and social status that has been conferred upon them by Parliament, and that constituted, possibly, the main reason of their existence. The bearing of these facts upon the country, combined with all the other circumstances stated by my right hon. Friend near me and by myself, constitute the vindication and justification of this Bill, and lead us to believe that if there are evils at present resulting from this Bill—and I am afraid there are—that there are also evils which spring not out of the Bill itself, but out of the exaggerated apprehensions, and I must say, out of the—involuntary, doubtless—very gross misrepresentations which have been indulged in. ["No, no!"] It is the hon. and learned Member for Bridport (Mr. Warton) who says "No." He says that with a great deal of authority; but I have heard a Gentleman say that we are handing over a rental of £5,000,000 a-year from the landlords to the tenants of Ireland. I suppose the hon. and learned Member for Bridport considers that a moderate and a just statement. That is, no doubt, an involuntary representation, but it is a very gross one. These then, Sir, are the circumstances which lead us to act, and they form a justification of the Bill. It is in order that we may be able to perform our duty as the persons charged with the execution of the law and the maintenance of the rights of property, that we ask the Committee to furnish us with those just provisions having reference to the adequate state of the country, and which will, we believe, enable us to discharge that duty with a good conscience, and will conduce to the ultimate security of property in Ireland. And just as it is now admitted that the Irish Land Act—which, when it was introduced, was assailed upon these very grounds of its disturbing the foundation of property—has produced a degree of confidence in the stability of property in Ireland such as of late years have been most satisfactory; so we hope, Sir, that it will be here- after admitted that this Bill has conduced to the security of property in Ireland.

Sir, the Prime Minister talks of exaggerated apprehensions and involuntary misrepresentations. I venture to think that, if there are exaggerated apprehensions and involuntary misrepresentations, they were indulged in by others than those who were alarmed at this Bill. If there is anything of importance for the settlement, for the maintenance of the peace and quiet in a country like Ireland, it is that we should avoid anything like panic legislation, especially at a time when we know we have to deal not only with actual and admitted, and perhaps serious evils, but also with an agitation which, exaggerates, and altogether misrepresents evils. Now, this Bill is one which it cannot be denied is of an alarming character. It has been justified—not shutting our eyes, for nobody shuts their eyes to the disadvantage of such a measure—upon the ground that there is urgent and immediate necessity for it. That was explained by statements as to the amount of evictions which were going on, and the number of persons who would be turned out homeless and houseless, and have no other means of subsistence. It has been impressed upon us, over and over again, that the Irish tenant does not know where to turn his hands, if he is not able to employ himself in agricultural work; but my noble Friend (Lord George Hamilton) looking into a particular part of the circumstances of the case, presents a statement to the Committee which has not been shown to be inaccurate, and which altogether alters the character of that which we have had supplied. It is not that my noble Friend says that these figures are wrong. My noble Friend admits that the figures are accurate; but he gives an explanation of them, derived from the same authority which is responsible for the figures, which shows that they have an entirely different bearing and meaning. It may be that the Government had not intended to rely upon these figures to the extent we had supposed. It may be that the language used in this House was a rhetorical expression used in the heat of debate; but there can be no question, if you go to anybody out-of-doors and ask them the meaning of the object and the intention of this measure, that they will tell you that they are alarmed at the frightful evictions which a re going on, and which are turning so many people out into the roads. Some persons may say that they are alarmed and distressed because of the danger which it implies to the peace of the country; but when it turns out that, out of 156 evictions, only 18 persons have really been turned out, and that in 93 cases the tenants were never disturbed at all, and that only notices were given to them—probably rendered necessary by the factious anti-rent agitations—because the tenants would not pay unless they had those notices; and when we see, also, that as to 45 tenants, although they lost their position as tenants, they have a position which gives them home and employment, and allows them time and fair consideration, then we see that the whole case is entirely changed. When, in connection with that, you find that the alarming figures as to the number of police necessary to be employed for the purpose of serving processes crumbling away, as they have done to-day, then we cannot but feel that, at all events, the case is so far altered that we are relieved from the necessity of legislating in a panic, and we can go on and consider the question submitted to us deliberately and carefully. And from this time forth, therefore, let us carefully and quietly consider the circumstances with which we have to deal. When we are told that these proceedings may excite the people of Ireland, and may lead to breaches of the the peace, and to very terrible events, I would point out that there is danger that this very legislation may produce evil, if not in one part of Ireland in another; and, therefore, we should be very careful and cautious as to the steps we take. Whatever the results of this Motion, my noble Friend has certainly done good service in calling attention to the state of the important part of the foundation on which this Bill has rested, and I feel sure that the effect of his observations will not be lost upon the Committee.

said, the case against the Bill was not at all so conclusive as the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Plunket) seemed to imagine. The opponents of the Bill rested their case upon the small number of evictions, comparatively speaking, that had taken place; but those who knew what the landlords were doing in Ireland knew perfectly well that these figures afforded no means whatever of judging the amount of pressure that was brought to bear. What was wanted to enlighten the House on the subject was two Returns, one, unfortunately, he thought they would not be able to get—namely, a Return of the number of times that eviction for non-payment of rent was threatened. The other, which they could get, was a Return of the number of Civil Bill processes served upon the tenants for non-payment of rent. This would show that the rent was only paid under threat of eviction or seizure of stock. [ Ironical cheers and laughter .] He could not see how that could excite the laughter of hon. Members. Hon. Members must remember that a tenant against whom an ejectment had been brought was in the position of a man round whose neck a noose had been placed which might at any moment be tightened. When an ejectment had been made, a tenant would make almost superhuman efforts to endeavour to obtain rent for the landlord; and he imagined that one reason, at any rate, for bringing this Bill was, if possible, to compel the landlord to make some arrangement which would enable the tenant to remain in his farm, and to retain something which would enable him to support his family. He did not think the opponents of the Bill had made any case whatever, in pointing to the small number of evictions that had taken place; because, in almost every case in Ireland, rent was only paid under threat of eviction or some other legal proceeding.

said, the noble Lord opposite (Lord George Hamilton) had called attention to the fact that hardly any independent Members had spoken on behalf of this Bill. If the independent Members had not been speaking, they had, at all events, been listening and noticing; and the conviction brought home to the minds of a great many independent Liberals, some of whom were new to the House, was that the tactics which were being used to delay and defeat the Bill had already passed the limits of fair and legitimate opposition, and were now developing that modern form of political warfare which in that House was called Obstruction. When Her Majesty's Ministers, the men who were responsible for the preservation of the peace and property of Ireland, came down to that House, and, on their responsibility, told the House they thought a certain measure was necessary in order to preserve good government in Ireland, they were entitled surely to have that measure fairly debated, fairly treated, and its true effect fairly represented. But that was not so. To go no further back than to the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson), he had said that in a vast majority of the districts the effect of this Bill would be to bring about the absolute ruin of the landlords; and that statement was loudly cheered. Now, if he understood the Bill aright, it proposed to interfere with one, and only one, of the three remedies which the landlord in Ireland possessed in the case of a tenant in arrear.

said, that he rose to Order. He wished to know whether an hon. Member was justified in delaying the Bill by discussing its principle upon the Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex?

said, that under the Amendment relating to ejectment, a great many hon. Members had discussed the general scope of the Bill, and he had noticed nothing in the remarks of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. H. H. Fowler) which was out of Order.

said, that he was sorry that the hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) should have departed from the usual courtesy which was accorded to hon. Members when they addressed the House for the first time. He was showing that the Bill did not interfere with the first, and probably the best, remedy that the landlord possessed—namely, that of distress. The second remedy, which was not affected, was that of action, by which the landlord could reach the tenant's property off the land. The third remedy was that of eviction. What the Bill proposed was to prevent the tenant, under very exceptional circumstances, being deprived of his property in the land, when nothing was left upon which the landlord could distrain. In these cases, and under certain limitations and restrictions, the tenant was to be entitled to the same compensation for eviction which he would have been entitled to under the Land Act, if evicted for any other cause than non-payment of rent. The Bill provided that the tenant should not be deprived of his property in his holding without compensation, and that was the principle of the Bill of 1870 and of the legislation affecting the position of landlord and tenant in Ireland. The Bill said that the landlord was not to take advantage of the exceptional circumstances of the present year to deprive the tenant of his property. To talk about confiscation of the landlord's property was idle. What the Bill did was to prevent the confiscation of the tenant's property by the landlord under the exceptional circumstances of the present distress. In order to obtain the benefit of the Bill the tenant would have to make out to the satisfaction of the Judge that his inability to pay was from distress by failure of the crop, and also that he had made a reasonable proposal for payment of his rent, and that it had been unreasonably refused. It seemed to him that it was a misuse of words to say that this Bill in the least interfered with the rights of property. He was at a loss to understand how it could be said that this Bill interfered with the rights of property, and shook the foundations of property to their centre, when the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India, and the noble Duke the Lord Privy Seal, and the noble Earl the Lord President of the Council, all large landed proprietors in Ireland, were Members of the Government which brought in the measure. The noble Lord the Member for Middlesex seemed to consider the proposals of the Bill contrary to common sense; but he (Mr. H. H. Fowler) thought it was contrary to common sense to suppose that such eminent landowners as he had mentioned should sanction such an interference with the rights of property as would take place if the effect of the Bill was as had been stated by the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex. He would say nothing at all as to the accuracy of the noble Lord's statement as to the effect of the Bill; but he would ask whether it was wise to tell the people of Ireland that one of the most powerful Governments of modern times, placed in power by an overwhelming majority, and composed of eminent statesmen who had hitherto written upon the Statute Book most of the measures they had advocated during their political career, had brought in a Bill to put an end to the payment of rent? He thought these statements were as dangerous as they were inaccurate. As an independent English Member, having an interest in English legislation, he must protest against the deliberate delay to which this House was being subjected by the manner in which this Bill was being discussed. The treatment this Bill was receiving hindered other legislation which was behind this measure, and its stoppage prevented the other Business of the country being proceeded with. They had a debate on the second reading which lasted two or three nights, and the principle of the measure was fully discussed. This House went into Committee, and for six or seven hours a discussion took place upon the Preamble, which was at last postponed. It was now 5 o'clock, and they were still discussing the principle of the Bill. He was a new Member of that House, and, therefore, not thoroughly conversant with its Forms; but he had always understood that the principle was adopted on the second reading, and that the House either affirmed or rejected the principle at that time. It was not, therefore, either fair or legitimate to discuss on the clauses of the Bill carrying out the details of the measure, the general principle upon which it was based. ["Hear, hear!"] The cheers of hon. Members on the other side would indicate that they thought he had been discussing the principle of the Bill. But he had done so because it had been discussed by nearly every other speaker, and the progress of the Bill had been delayed by a trumpery contest about these statistics, which did not affect the matter one way or the other. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister had stated, with perfect candour, that he based the principle of the Bill upon something far higher than figures—upon a principle which statistics did not affect. He said it was based upon the broad and general principle that landlords ought not to take advantage of exceptional circumstances of distress to interfere with property that legitimately belonged to the tenants under the Land Act of 1870. This Bill was to give legislative sanction to that indulgence which a large proportion of the landlords of Ireland always gave to their tenants, and to prevent unfair and harsh landlords taking advantage of the exceptional crisis.

said, that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolver- hampton (Mr. H. H. Fowler) was, in his view, the only speaker who, in the course of the debate, had caused the delay which he so strongly deprecated, by discussing the principle of the Bill in its progress through Committee. He had listened very carefully to what had been said in Committee, and he could safely affirm that the hon. Member himself was the only one who had touched upon the general principle, and had, so far, delayed the progress of the measure. He would state, for the benefit of hon. Members who might not have been present, that the discussion had turned, not upon the principle of the measure, not upon whether it was just or unjust, not upon whether it confiscated the property of the landlord or protected that of the tenant; but the question turned simply upon the accuracy of the figures laid upon the Table by the Government. At the commencement of the discussion, the accuracy of the figures placed upon the Table by the Government was disputed by his noble Friend the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton). The line taken by the Government was that they had not rested their case upon these figures. Hon. Members on that side of the House were under the impression that the Government had rested the case for the Bill upon the extreme distress which existed in Ireland. He thought that the Government would not deny, and that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland would not deny, and that their Supporters would not deny, that the impression given was that the original object of the Bill was to prevent, by extraordinary legislation, the large number of evictions which the Government statistics showed to have taken place. The noble Lord the Member for Middlesex had now produced figures which showed that, in 1878, instead of 84 evictions as shown by the Government Returns, there were only 16; and in 1879, instead of 122, there were 17; and that during the first half of the present year, in place of 156 evictions, there were but 18. It would be in the recollection of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland that, a few weeks ago, he (Lord Elcho) put a Question to him with regard to these evictions, and asked whether the Government figures meant bonâ fide evictions, or simply the processes of ejectment. He asked that Question mainly because he knew that on one estate in Mayo, with which he was conversant, there had been a considerable number of ejectment processes, but only a small number of actual evictions had followed. The number of processes was 58; but the result was that not one of the tenants were evicted, and, except in 13 cases, the rent had been paid, and the tenants were in possession of their farms. If the other 13 tenants paid their rent, they would be allowed to retain their holdings; and, until the Government Bill was brought in, it was believed that they would have paid their rent. Thus, out of the 58 ejectments in the County Mayo, not one single tenant had left his holding. The Paper containing these figures was in the possession of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland when he answered his first Question. He did not say that the right hon. Gentleman was in any way to blame; any man who came new into the Office which he occupied was not likely to know the difference between ejectment and eviction; so he (Lord Elcho) put the Question down on the Paper, "whether the ejectments referred to in the Government Returns meant actual evictions?" and the right hon. Gentleman got up and said that they did mean actual evictions. He (Lord Elcho) rose, and said—"Do you mean evictions from house and home?" and the answer was—"Yes, from house and home." The right hon. Gentleman told him that such figures as were laid on the Table implied eviction from house and home, and that the tenants were helpless and homeless, and that statement had a most material bearing on these discussions, and to some extent had an effect on opinion out-of-doors. It was contrary to reason to say that that was not the effect of the statements which had been made. Of course, in this discussion, various pleas had been put forward on the part of the Government. The noble Lord the Member for Middlesex, and he (Lord Elcho) believed the majority of hon. Members, were of opinion that the Government rested their case for the Bill on the alleged cruelty of the landlords, who, it was said, had unjustly taken advantage of exceptional circumstances to deprive the tenants of their holdings. That, he believed, was the main argument—the foundation upon which the Bill rested, and when that was cut away from under the Government, the whole position changed. So material was the change, that he was surprised that the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, on the figures of the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex being presented, did not get up and say—"Such a different light has been thrown upon this subject, that I will ask the Committee to let us report Progress, in order that we may consider the matter." The position was now so materially altered, that the Government ought to have time to re-consider their position. He was surprised that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition (Sir Stafford Northcote) had not moved to report Progress. This was the first time in the history of the country that a Government had asked Parliament to remit rent by a public officer. Sentiment and everything else put aside, that was the plain and naked truth. It was land now, and Irish land; but he should like to know whether hon. Gentlemen representing Scotch and English constituencies would like to have this principle, which had been introduced with regard to Ireland, applied to the countries they represented? Did they not think that, having been introduced with regard to Ireland, this principle would not rapidly spread across the water to England and Scotland? It would not stop at land; but mine-owners, shipowners, et hoc genus omne, and, in fact, everyone interested in property, had cause for alarm at the adoption of such principles as this Bill contained. Hon. Members who supported this measure might rest assured that principles of this kind would extend very rapidly.

said, he thought the case in favour of the Bill was much strengthened by the figures which the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton) had produced. He would maintain that the figures upon which he had rested the case for the Bill had not been in the slightest degree shaken or impugned by anything which had been said. The figures which he had laid before the Committee had been those furnished him by the Constabulary. He stated, when first alluding to those figures, that it was the Return of evictions, and that there were some cases in which the evicted tenant had been readmitted to his tenancy, and he expressly omitted reference to those cases, reckoning only those in which that did not take place. He based his statement on behalf of the Bill, upon the ground that they found that evictions had increased and were increasing. By these evictions, the tenants were deprived of the proprietary right which the Land Act acknowledged. He also said that, in losing his tenancy, the Irish farmer was losing what was to him his only means of livelihood. All that was strictly true. It was shown that the small tenants would lose their holdings by these evictions, and that when they had lost their holdings these men were in the position of shipwrecked sailors. He further said, that for the good government of Ireland they would have to enforce the law in many cases, believing that the tenant against whom the law was to be enforced had in reality justice on his side. The Government did not wish to be in the position of being obliged to enforce the law where it was unjust. Certainly, in those cases, it would be unjust for the landlord to take advantage of the pressure of the circumstances of this year, and to deprive the tenant of his proprietary right. The noble Lord (Lord Elcho) said that the Bill would deprive the landlord of his property in the rent. But rent was only one kind of property. The tenant had a property in his holding, while the landlord had a property in his rent. What it was desired to do was to prevent the landlord from confiscating the property of the tenant. The Bill prevented the landlord from doing so, and in any case where the landlord wished to take advantage of the exceptional distress, then the Bill came into operation. There had been a general and universal statement by Irish landlords or their friends, that the Bill meant something perfectly different, and that it would prevent the payment of rent. That would not be the effect of the Bill, and that was not what it was intended to do. He was not surprised, however, that when so many hon. Members of that House said that the Bill did mean the prevention of payment of rent, that the tenants in Ireland should believe that that would be the effect of the measure.

said, that in justification of the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton), he begged to state that he had telegraphed to the sub-Sheriff of the County of Cavan for some information on the subject to which the noble Lord had referred. He had asked the sub-Sheriff how many tenants had been ejected from their holdings since the beginning of January. The answer was, there had been 58 evictions, and that in 54 of these the parties were re-instated in their holdings. It was said that those tenants who were re-instated were each still at the mercy of their landlords, and that they required protection. That was not so, for those men had the right to pay within six months, and, if they did so, they were exactly in the same position as before eviction. With regard to the County Cavan which he had mentioned, he wished to say that the landlords had, without exception, behaved with the greatest kindness and consideration to their tenantry. They had made large abatements, and had waited most patiently for their rent. He might observe that he was connected with a property on which there were about 900 tenants, and in the last 10 years there had been only two ejectments carried out on that property for non-payment of rent. It could not be said, at all events, that the landlords of County Cavan behaved with anything but kindness and consideration towards their tenants. He thought it would be a very great hardship upon them that, by this Bill, they should be almost entirely prevented from receiving their rents; for he believed that the tenants, with very few exceptions, would take advantage of the Bill, and would endeavour to escape paying any rent until after 1880. How were the landlords to meet the charges upon their estates, such as rent charges, tithes, and interest on mortgages, unless they received rents from their tenants?

said, if the Government had introduced any measure which would have been of real benefit to Ireland, without infringing the principles of justice, he would have been very glad to have given them his support. He had been present, night after night, in order to support a measure for the benefit of Ireland; but he had come with great reluctance, feeling that this Bill introduced principles of so unusual a kind, which would lead to results little expected, perhaps, by hon. Members, and that, therefore, he could not support it. He had failed to hear, in the speeches of the Prime Minister, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland, any reasons which justified a Bill of that kind. Such a Bill could only be justified by reason of extreme emergency and extreme pressure, and he could not help thinking there were some points in connection with the question which had not been fully considered by the Committee. The Bill had been too much discussed as if the removals under the Act were caused entirely by landlords. He had been struck by the remark of the Prime Minister, that there had been very many removals in Ulster. But, in nine cases out of ten—and here, he thought, they might reconcile the figures of the Chief Secretary for Ireland and those of the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton)—those evictions might have been caused, and he believed they had been caused, by the action of creditors of the tenants, rather than by the landlords themselves. He was of that opinion, because they had been told that in Ulster, where many of the evictions had taken place, the tenants had been re-instated in their farms. He asked the Committee to consider what was the position of the landlords? The tenant was sued by his creditors, and execution was levied. The Ulster Custom allowed the sale of the tenant right, and a landlord who wanted to serve his tenant could only do so by ejectment, thus severing the connection between the creditor and the tenant. The tenancy being broken, it would be in the power of the landlord to put the tenant again into his farm; and that, he believed, had been the case in many hundreds of instances. Possibly, that might explain the difference between the figures of the noble Lord and the Chief Secretary for Ireland. He thought it would be wise on the part of the Government to make further inquiries, and satisfy themselves whether the interruption of these tenancies had been caused by the action of other parties than the landlords, who had been obliged to protect themselves and their tenants in the manner described. He did not think it would be wise to go on with the present Bill. The Prime Minister had himself admitted that the figures ought to be inquired into. To hold up the landlords of Ireland to opprobium could not be justified; but the passing of this measure would bring this about, for the Prime Minister had said that these proceedings had been taken in order to protect tenants from the injustice of landlords. He asked whether, in introducing this measure, the Government were not injuring the landlords, who were acting in the interests of their tenants? The reason which had led to these ejectments, was not, he thought, clearly understood. As one desiring to support any measure for the welfare of Ireland, he urged the Government to make further inquiries. While he felt sure that every measure for the benefit and true interest of Ireland would receive the cordial support of hon. Members on that side of the House, the Government must not ask them to pass a measure which they believed would be unjust to the landlords of Ireland. He appealed to the Government not to proceed with a Bill which could not be defended on any principle which had actuated former Governments in this country.

said, he wished to make one or two observations upon what an hon. Member had called "those trumpery statistics," which, after all, were the grounds upon which the Bill rested. The Prime Minister had, not long ago, contested altogether the assertion that the grounds of the Bill had disappeared. He was rather inclined to agree with the right hon. Gentleman, for the reason that they had never existed at all. In the early part of this Session the Government announced that they had no intention of dealing with this question. Shortly afterwards, however, they introduced the Bill; and when pressed to state the reasons which had brought about this change on their part, the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland said that the number of evictions had increased and was increasing. Now, he wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman this question. Did or did he not know at the commencement of the Session that the evictions were increasing? He knew that they were greater in 1878 and 1879 than they had been in previous years. What, then, became of the grounds on which the Prime Minister thought it right to introduce this Bill? Why, they had never existed at all. From that time to this, they had never given one single reason for introducing the Bill. Further, he would like to know how many of their evictions were duplicate and triplicate? He had heard of a good many cases where the tenants had been ejected two or three times over. Again, how many of these ejected tenants had four or five different holdings, which, in case of ejectment and eviction, were all put down separately? All these were points upon which the Committee ought to have information, more especially as it was upon account of these evictions that the Government had said they introduced this measure. The hon. Member for Armagh had said that, according to the Government Returns, there had been 71 evictions in Cavan; but now the Committee was told that there had only been 58, and that in the case of 54 of them the tenants had been re-instated. Were the Government prepared to say that the statements made to the Committee were correct, or utterly unworthy of belief? Hon. Gentlemen never dreamed of making deliberate assertions like those which had been made without good reason, and when the Government, who said that the real ground for introducing the Bill was the increasing number of evictions, heard those assertions, they were bound to pause and make further inquiries. The opponents of the Bill had been accused of making grossly misleading statements as to the probable effects of this measure. All he could say was, that whatever statement they had made had been made in perfect sincerity and good faith, as well as in the conviction that what they had stated was not one word more than the truth. But all the misrepresentations they had been charged with were shared by the leading landlords, merchants, bankers, and men of business of all classes in the country, all of whom were agreed that if these pernicious proposals of the Government were allowed to proceed, it would involve little less than absolute ruin to the great majority of the landlords in Ireland.

said, the Prime Minister and the Chief Secretary for Ireland had rested their case upon totally different grounds. The Prime Minister threw over the figures, and said he relied upon the argument of justice to Ireland and the principles of the Land Act of 1870. The Chief Secretary for Ireland, on the other hand, maintained that the case of the Government rested upon the figures upon which there was such hopeless contradiction between the two Front Benches. The speech of the Prime Minister had caused him (Mr. Leighton) much astonishment. The right hon. Gentleman proposed, as a cure for the ills of Ireland, the resuscitation of the cottier system; while he seemed to throw contempt upon and altogether condemn the idea that those who lived upon potato ground would be benefited by living upon wages. He (Mr. Leighton) knew that was the assumption supported by the Irish Members. They wished to maintain the potato system, and the Prime Minister seemed, so far, to agree with them. But he would read the words of an old Colleague of the Prime Minister. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, in his chapter on "Distress in Ireland," said—

"The transition from the state of villien to that of free labourer cannot be considered as fully effected in Ireland until the peasant is able to live upon wages, without cultivating his own land, and until his wages be regularly paid to him in money. The remedy wanted in Ireland is to change him from the cottier living on the land to the labourer living on wages to support him by employment for hire instead of by potato ground."

How totally different was this from the scheme supported by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister! Supposing, by one stroke of the pen, rent were to be abolished, they all knew it would not make the Irish people happier or better. They could not prevent the increase of population.

said, the hon. Member (Mr. Leighton) was travelling out of the limits of the question before the Committee in discussing the whole question of tenant proprietorship. The subject before the Committee was the Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton).

said, he wished to recall to the minds of right hon. Gentlemen opposite some of the principles on which the Bill was founded. He wished to know whether hon. Members supported the Bill on the figures of the Government, which had been contradicted, or upon the principles of the Land Act of the right hon. Gentleman?

said, the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, in replying to him, had not in any way answered the point he had endeavoured to make clear. But, as the legal purport of the words which he proposed to insert in the clause would not be affected, he would not, therefore, press his Amendment to a division. The Committee would, perhaps, allow him to make one or two observations upon the conduct generally of hon. Members on the other side of the House. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. H. H. Fowler), no doubt, unintentionally, had seemed deliberately to accuse him of obstruction, or making use of trumpery figures for the purpose of delay. He would only say that his statement was void of truth. If, in the present instance, he had been compelled to discuss the principle of the Bill on the Preamble, the Government, and not he, were responsible for that. As it was not for the convenience of the House to divide on the subject on the first night of going into Committee, he had deliberately postponed his Amendment. He had shown that the Prime Minister had put forward certain facts and figures; and although he had only been able to test those figures in one case, he had found them, so far, absolutely illusory. The hon. Member for Armagh (Mr. De La Poer Beresford) had quoted figures which, undoubtedly, corroborated his statement; and he would repeat his disbelief that, at the present moment, in Ireland evictions were going on as the Government alleged. Everybody knew that, in the present excited state of the country, the eviction of a tenant caused great commotion. He would suggest that the right hon. Gentleman should lay on the Table of the House a Return of the actual number of bonâ fide evictions which had taken place during the present year. Let a distinction be made between the evictions by the landlord and the evictions by moneylenders, and he ventured to say that the Government would not then be able to support the figures that had been brought forward on behalf of the measure. The Prime Minister had commented, in indignant terms, on the exaggerated apprehensions entertained with respect to the Bill; but if exaggerated apprehensions existed, they were mainly the consequence of the language the Prime Minister himself had used. The object of certain Amendments introduced by the Government was to establish tenant right. In Ulster, where they had tenant right, people who were unable to pay their rent were reinstated, to enable them to make arrangements to pay their rents by selling their interests in their holdings. What happened in Ulster was, he believed, happening to the greater part of Ireland; and landlords, instead of simply ejecting their tenants, were placing them in a position to make arrangements for paying their rents or for disposing of their tenant right. He wanted to get from the Government the number of instances in which that process had been carried out, because it was clear that where landlords were acting in that way, they were acting in accord with the wishes and desires of the Government. It was unfair to make use of those cases were persons had been re-instated, for the purpose of impressing the Committee with the idea that those persons were homeless. Having made these observations, he begged leave to withdraw his Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn .

said, in the absence of the right hon. Baronet the Member for South-West Lancashire (Sir R. Assheton Cross), he would move the Amendment standing in his name. He trusted the Committee would think the proposal reasonable and fair. The Bill, as introduced, contained no limitation as to the extent of the tenancies. It was to include all tenancies within a certain area, and would apply alike to a poor tenancy of £2 a-year or to a tenancy of £2,000 a-year. The case for the Bill made out by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, the Prime Minister, and the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland, was that it was intended to give protection to the poor class of tenants. The proposal of the Amendment was that the Bill should only apply to holdings at a rental not exceeding £15 a-year, and would include all the poorer class of tenants throughout Ireland. That limitation was already in the 9th section of the Act of 1870, and was considered by the then Government of the present Prime Minister a reasonable one. When they came to consider whether the rent was reasonable or not, there was not exactly a governing figure; but the line must be drawn in a more or less arbitrary way. He was not inclined to insist upon the exact limit of £15; and if the Government objected to the particular figure, they might name another near it which would carry out their wish, and, at the same time, meet the sense of the Amendment proposed by his right hon. Friend. Again, if it was thought by the majority of the Committee that valuation was a sounder test than rental, he would be quite satisfied to accept their view, not losing sight of the reality of the limit. It would, he thought, be admitted that it was quite outside the reasons for the Bill to have it applied to all tenants alike. He merely wished to add one thing—that English Gentlemen were quite unaware of the smallness of the tenants' holdings, or of how many there were under £15. In Thoms' Directory for 1880, it was stated that the number of tenancies for the year 1878 in the whole of Ireland was 379, 399, and of that number 280,642 were under 15 acres. Applying that figure to Connaught, they would find that the small tenancies were in a greater proportion there than in the rest of Ireland. In Connaught, the whole number of tenants was 126,517, and the number of tenants under 15 acres was 70,787, showing that far more than half of them were small tenancies. He admitted that these figures did not exactly come to the point he was urging on the Committee; but they did have a considerable bearing on it, and he should be very glad if the Government would see their way to accepting what he believed to be a fair and reasonable principle.

Amendment proposed,

In page 1, line 11, after "holding," to insert "held at a rent not exceeding fifteen pounds per annum."—( Mr. Gibson. )

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

hoped that the Government were not going to agree to the Amendment, because, if they did, they would destroy the only valuable portion of the Bill. He had always thought the chief, if not the only, value of the Bill of the Government was to enable the larger classes of tenants, as compared with the smaller classes who might be paying too high a rent, to obtain a fair abatement from their landlords. He had never been able to see that the smaller classes of tenants had the material advantage of the Bill. They could only be benefited by a measure of suspending ejectments for a certain period, because they were in such a position from the failure of their crops and the smallness of their holdings, as to be unable to pay any rent at all. It was not a question to them of an abatement of rent, or of more favourable terms; but, in a vast majority of cases, an absolute inability to pay rent, owing to the failure of employment in England, and to the failure of their crops at home. He had, therefore, always looked upon the Bill of the Government as of far more value to the larger class than the smaller class of tenants; and, in the word "larger," he included the medium-size farms as well as the larger farms. But if they took a valuation at £8 or £10, they would find that the practical operation of the Bill would not have advantage to tenants below that valuation to any appreciable extent; in as much as if they took one above that, they would find that, more or less, advantage would be given to those tenants who, he was assured, the Government desired to benefit—that was to say, tenants under hard landlords. Tenants who had good landlords would not need any protection whatever. In the case of evictions, the class of tenants above £8 or £10 was the very class to whom this Bill would be of the greatest advantage. It must be recollected that at the present time, in Ireland, claims for rent were being executed which the tenants were only forced by the process of ejectments to pay. Rents were being exacted by harsh landlords where the tenants ought not fairly to be called upon to pay, under the circumstances of the case, and which they were only forced to pay by the process of ejectment. In order to do this, they were borrowing the money, and were being compelled to use their utmost exertions. If they had not recently paid their rent, they were now being driven to their neighbours or friends for advances. These tenants had a saleable interest in their holdings; and the original provisions of the Bill, as well as of the new Amendment proposed by the Government, would be a considerable advantage to them, because it would enable them to effect a re-adjustment of the high rents they had been paying; but if they were to except all holdings above 15 acres from the operation of the Bill, the result would simply be to place a large amount of property which was protected by the Land Act of 1870 at the mercy of rack-renting landlords. The class proposed to be exempted were just those who were most at the mercy of the landlord. Turning to the Amendment just proposed, he assumed that £15 rent meant a £10 valuation, because the rent was usually one-third above the Government valuation; then, this Bill would afford the tenants a very slight protection. By the Bill, the landlord was to be allowed to compel the tenant to sell his interest. He and his Friends had always looked upon this power of sale of small interests as a danger to be guarded against. When they were drafting the Bill of his hon. Friend (Mr. O'Connor Power), they expressly guarded against the danger of the landlord forcing his small tenants to sell their interest. They saw that the tenant's interests would be, in a round-about way, sold out, the landlord proceeding for the recovery of rent as if it was an ordinary rent, and putting up the tenant's interest at sale, and having it brought in at a nominal price, and, therefore, they excluded that power. Now, if the Committee agreed to this Amendment, they would deprive the very class for whom the Bill was of any value of its protection. In his opinion, it would be far better to give the County Courts power to suspend ejectments until September, 1881, giving power to the Board of Works to compensate those landlords who were unable to do without their income by advancing their money. In that manner, time would be obtained for the examination of this question, while the Government would have to pay only a very small amount of money in compensation. It would also get over a very great difficulty which was only dealt with in a very partial and inadequate way by the Bill under consideration.

hoped the Government would accept the Amendment, because it minimized the number to whom the Bill would apply. He made that remark in the interests of the tenants. [ Ironical laughter. ] Well, the subject had certainly not been looked at from the tenant's point of view; while he maintained that the tenants would be sufferers from this Bill, and many other Irishmen besides himself had come to the same conclusion. The tenants were very poor, and the landlords would be forced by creditors to eject them in order that there might be compensation paid, and, as a consequence, the poor people would in future have very much harder times.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) and the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) have stated their respective views with great clearness and perfect temper; so that, in fact, there is nothing to be added on the subject. I will distinguish between the principle of this Amendment and the precise limit at which it is fixed. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Cork City delivered an opinion which, proceeding from him, must have considerable weight with the Committee—that, in his view, the favourable operation of this Bill to the tenant was more to be found as bearing on the larger tenants than the smaller.

In consequence of the principle of sale which is in the Bill.

In consequence of the principle of sale which we have always supposed to be in the Bill, and which, if the hon. Member approves, we will insert; but I am bound to say that, in the first place, the Committee should recollect that we have never had, as the primary idea in our minds, the interest of every class of tenants so much as the maintenance of law and order in the country. That is our especial attitude, and, much as we feel interested in particular classes of tenants, undoubtedly it is with reference to the execution of the law that we are bound to approach a question of this kind. If that be our first object, what is our second? Undoubtedly, it would be this. The affording to the larger tenants exceptional means of protecting their interests in periods of difficulty against their landlords in a matter which has little or no connection with the subject which, undoubtedly, has formed the legitimate and imperative ground of this question—namely, the maintenance of the peace of the country. Beyond that, I am bound to say that all the declarations made by the Government must have impressed the Committee with the belief that it was the smaller—I will not say the smaller class of—tenants, who are infinitely the most numerous, whose case it was our intention to comprehend in the operations of this Bill, and I think we are entitled to take cognizance in the interest of the larger tenants. I know many of them have been suffering; but so they have been suffering in England and Scotland. But the sufferings of the larger tenants in Ireland are much more analogous to the sufferings of the larger tenants in England and Scotland. And they are, in each case, due to temporary circumstances. But in the framing of the Land Act, I need not remind the Committee and the hon. Member, although they were not excluded from the operation of the Act, yet the scale was so arranged, beginning with seven years as a maximum for smaller tenants, that it was gradually decreased until it reached the minimum of one year. That is certainly an illustration that they were entirely to fall within the view of Parliament in an altogether minor degree. Thus, when we come to that which touches most directly that part of the Land Act, and which also touches the principle of this Amendment, I am bound to say the limit named in the case of exorbitancy of rent was confined to a £15 rental. I therefore think, Sir, that I am bound to admit that, as regards the principle of this Amendment, there is much to be said on its behalf. The case of the larger tenants is not legitimately within our view. What the Government felt they had first to consider was the case of the smaller tenants; but the larger tenants come within the legitimate scope of this criticism, and, therefore, we propose to accede to the Amendment. This may be called a change of front. I will state, once and for all, what I conceive to be the attitude of the Government which has introduced an important measure into Parliament. I think it is their duty, when they get into Committee on the Bill, irrespective of Parties, when suggestions are made, to lend a ready ear to any of them which are equitable and reasonable in themselves, and to cast aside, altogether, as perfectly cowardly and unmanly, any regard whatever to these charges of changes of front which, when they are resolved into their real meaning—if they have any real meaning—simply come to this, that the Government are willing to adapt the details of the measure to the actual necessities of the case, while they have endeavoured in principle to be just. I was very glad to hear the terms of moderation in which the right hon. and learned Gentleman spoke. Primâ facie , I must admit that he was entitled to refer to the Land Act; but I will ask him to bear in mind that that provision in the Land Act was inserted in the very last stage, by way of compromise. It took place in the very last struggle about the Bill, and was put in in order to meet the objections of the Lords. I remember very well, at the time, the object of the Government was to get a £15 valuation, instead of a £15 rental; and I recollect, also, that, at the time, we deemed the best arrangement would have been a £30 rental. Therefore, Sir, if the right hon. and learned Gentleman be willing to accede to that arrangement, we shall be willing, on our part, to accede to that figure of £30 which, on the whole, I hope may be satisfactory to everyone. I cannot deny that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is entitled to argue strongly in favour of some alteration of this kind, and if he will accept that which I have suggested, the Government will insert it.

said, he quite admitted the difficulty of arriving at any figure which should cover all purposes; but he was afraid that that which had been named by the right hon. Gentleman would not at all meet the case he had suggested. He chose the figure of £15, because in Connaught, for instance, where the land was poor and the rents low, they would hardly find any portion of the farms which would let at more than £15. The major part of Connaught was within the scheduled districts, and the figure of £15 was certain to include more than half the holdings in Connaught, and considerably more than one-third of the holdings in the West of Ireland. The figure proposed by the right hon. Gentleman would practically include five-sixths of the whole of the tenantry, and such an Amendment as that would not at all do what he desired. Therefore, he was afraid that he must adhere to his Amendment.

said, that the calculations of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University for Dublin (Mr. Gibson) were based upon an erroneous assumption—namely, that £1 per acre was the rent of land in the West of Ireland. If he had applied to people who were acquainted with the subject, he would have found that that was not the case. He should have taken the trouble to write to some of his constituents, and to ask what was the usual rent in that county. In one case in which he was informed four acres were held at a rent of £8 4 s . 2 d ., and a further sum had been added to the rent in 1874, making a total rent of £9 10 s . 10 d . In another case, as much as £4 7 s . was charged for the rental of a single acre, or more than four times as much as the rent upon which the right hon. and learned Gentleman based his calculations. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) must express his very deep regret that the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury had yielded to the representations made, and had accepted the Amendment. He would endeavour to show how the change made had really been a surrender of principle. The right hon. Gentleman said that the large tenants were excluded from the advantages given by the Land Act. That was true; but their exclusion from the Land Act was accompanied by a certain amount of protection which was diminished in proportion to their ability to protect themselves. But in those cases where £100 was paid one year's compensation was allowed. Therefore, they allowed in the Land Act the principle of compensation to a tenant of a large farm, although that compensation or protection was, to a certain extent, diminished according to the tenant's ability to defend himself. Thus, in a way, the principle of partnership in the soil was recognized in the Land Act. In making this Amendment this principle was entirely disregarded. If the principle of compensation to a tenant who paid £5, £10, or £20 was adopted, he did not see how they could escape giving some amount of justice to a tenant who paid £100 a-year. There was one other point to which he wished to allude. He thought it was clearly proved, not only from the words of the Land Act, but still more from the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, that making non-payment a bar to compensation was strictly opposed to the whole principles of the Bill, which was that a man should not be deprived of his rights through inability to pay rent. It seemed to him unjust that men, who were unable to pay their rent from being ruined, should be turned out without compensation, while the prosperous tenant received full compensation.

An hon. MEMBER said, that he wished to make a few observations with regard to the Amendment before the Committee. Speaking of his own neighbourhood on the West Coast of Ireland, there were men there who held 15 or 25 acres of land, and who paid rent from £15 to £35 a-year each. He had in his mind, at the present moment, a case of five tenants of that class who were obliged to apply to charitable funds for money to buy seed for their land. They had been supplied with money for that purpose, and now two of those tenants had actions for ejectment brought against them, and decrees had been taken out. As soon as it was known that the Land League had supplied them with seed for their farms, the landlords had supplied them with notices of ejectment, and they were now liable to be evicted at any time. The Amendment, if adopted, would do the greatest injury, and would very much reduce the benefit that would result from the Act.

said, that the suggestion of the hon. Member who had just sat down had shown that the suggestion of his right hon. Friend would not really meet the whole requirements of the case. In this Bill they had to deal with a temporary evil, and they wanted to confine its operations to such cases of hardship as were likely to occur. He did not think that cases of hardship would occur to any appreciable extent among tenants who paid £30 a-year. Therefore, he should move to amend the Amendment to insert £30 instead of £15.

said, that the original Amendment was in page 1, line 11, to insert "held at a rent not exceeding fifteen pounds per annum," since which it had been proposed to amend the Amendment, by leaving out the word "fifteen," in order to insert "thirty." The Question was, that the word proposed to be left out should stand part of the Amendment.

said, that he viewed with very great regret the extensive change which the Government proposed to make in the Bill. Every argument the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had made use of, if carried to its logical conclusion, showed that the Bill ought to be extended over the whole of Ireland. Those winged words made use of by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister had penetrated into every farmhouse in Ireland. Great, indeed, would be the disappointment of the Irish people, when they found that the Government, instead of being prepared to extend the Bill, were at the last moment about to thus limit its operation. There was no meaning in this limit, and it was utterly uncalled for. The Amendment proposed by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland placed £30 rent as a limit for the operation of the Bill. Everyone acquainted with Ireland would know what the effect of that limitation would be. They had already had, unfortunately, an illustration from the practical working of the provisions contained in the Land Act of 1870. That Act had, unfortunately, the effect of, in very many cases, leading to the consolidation of small farms, and the conversion of land which ought to be used for tillage into bad grazing farms. He trusted that the Government would reconsider the position which they had taken up. This Bill had been introduced as a proof of the good intention of the Government and their anxiety to protect the interests of the small holders of land in Ireland. He wished the Government to understand that the effect of limiting the operation of the Bill to tenants under £30 would prevent the Act from producing any good results, and would entirely neutralize its operation. In what position did they at present stand in the House? They had heard very eloquent words from the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister which had penetrated into every homestead in Ireland. It had been pointed out by the right hon. Gentleman that there was not a tenant in Ireland who, under the provisions of the Land Act of 1870, was not entitled to an interest in his holding. After making an admission of that character, it was most unfortunate that the right hon. Gentleman should endeavour, at the last moment, to limit the operation of the Bill in the way that was now being done. They now found that tenants, even in the scheduled districts, were to be subject to all the injustice which the Bill sought to remedy, if their rent exceeded £30. He did trust that the Government would again re-consider the matter, and that they would not yield to the Amendment which had been proposed by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson). On reconsideration, he hoped that the Government, so far from limiting the measure, would do away with any limit and extend it throughout Ireland. If the mea- sure was to do good, and was to be a useful one, it must be extended rather than limited in its operation, and he hoped that the Government would take that view of the matter.

said, that as it had been proposed to make an entire change in the Bill by removing from its operation the cases of seven-eighths of the tenant farmers of Ireland, who had property in the scheduled districts, the Irish Members ought to be afforded an opportunity to consider the new situation. He begged, therefore, to move that the Chairman report Progress.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—( Mr. Parnell .)

said, as it now only wanted a minute to the time when the discussion must stand adjourned in accordance with the Rules of the House he should not object to the Motion.

Question put, and agreed to .

House resumed .

Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow .

objected to the Report being taken at that hour, observing that he wished to call attention to the Eastern Question in connection with the new position of affairs in Bulgaria.

Report deferred till To-morrow .