begged to move, in the absence of the hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire (Mr. E. Stanhope), the next Amendment on the Paper.

said, he hoped that the Amendment would not be pressed. It contained a proposition which had been thoroughly discussed and disposed of at the former stage of the Bill.

said, that he had an Amendment on the Paper which he did not intend to move. Hon. Gentlemen opposite had stated that the Members on that side were only obstructing the passage of that Bill through the House. That he entirely denied. They were only doing their duty; for no matter up to what period, by the tyranny of the Government—and he used the word advisedly—they were obliged to sit, their duty was to sacrifice their own private convenience and amusement, and sit there to take care that the measures brought in by the Government were fairly and properly discussed, not obstructed. He dared hon. Gentlemen opposite to say that their conduct was anything like what was commonly called Obstruction. Nothing that was said would hinder him from expressing his views as fully and clearly as he could on any point that arose in the discussion of that Bill. If he were inclined to be obstructive, he had Amendments on the Notice Paper which, if fully debated, would keep that Committee sitting he did not know how long. But that was not his wish or object, that being merely to show what might be done with the Bill, and how that Bill, which he had more than once characterized as a sham, as necessarily effecting the destruction of hares and rabbits, could be made a really effective measure. The Amendments which stood in his name on the Paper, he asserted, would have that effect; they were bonâ fide in the interests of the tenant, and contained the principle of compensation. That principle had been applied to Scotland, and worked well there. He had taken the liberty of introducing that principle into the Bill. It was the Government Bill he had taken as a foundation, and grafted on it the principle of compensation. He would venture to say that no jury of 12 honest men, looking at the comparative values as regarded the tenant, but would say that his was the most straightforward and effective measure. Having said that much, he did not suppose the Government would change the character of their Bill from an anti-farmer humiliation to that of a pro-farmer protection Bill. He would merely add that, in doing what he had, he was not actuated by motives of Obstruction, and he was not afraid to go before the public with the assertion that his Bill was the better of the two.

wished to ask one question. He was anxious not to obstruct, but, if possible, to improve the Bill. It was upon a point of some importance—namely, the enforcement of a due observance of the limitations contained in the Bill. As he understood it, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary proposed to repeal the 12th section of the Act 1 & 2 Will. IV., in so far as it was inconsistent with the terms of that Bill. Under that Act, an occupier was, in some cases, liable to a penalty for taking and killing ground game; but there were also limitations under that Bill, which the tenant must observe, if he wished to kill or pursue ground game; and he therefore presumed that if he offended against those limitations, he was liable, at any rate, for a misdemeanour. He wished to ask, supposing that the landlord said to the tenant—"You may exercise your right in any way you please," would it be possible for a third party—for instance, an enthusiastic fox-hunter, or some person who thought the trapping of game cruelty—to prosecute the tenant for an offence against the Act? That was rather an important point; and he wished, if possible, to prevent any injustice of that kind happening. He did not see how it was possible to prevent any other person from prosecuting the tenant, if the Bill was carried in its present shape. It would not be right to say that the tenant was in the same position as heretofore, because of the limitation in the Bill. He proposed, therefore, to add these words to the clause, and he hoped that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would agree to accept them—

"Provided always, That nothing in this clause contained shall be construed to limit or restrict in any way the rights and privileges that the occupier may enjoy of taking or killing game, whether by agreement or otherwise."

I must point out to the hon. Gentleman that that should take the form of a new clause.

said, he should be happy to move it in that form.

said, that, as he understood the point of his hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Brand), it appeared that if a tenant had a larger right than that given him by law in the 1st clause, he might still be subject to proceedings for violating that limitation. He would not then be within the scope of the clause. An occupier otherwise entitled would not get a statutory right as against the landlord, but a licence from the landlord; and, consequently, he would be entirely under that licence. It would be seen that Clause 1 gave a statutory right, He believed that the whole point of his hon. Friend would be met by an Amendment he (Sir William Harcourt) had put on page 536. That Amendment was to add these words—

"Save, as aforesaid, the occupier may exercise any other or more extensive right which he may possess, in respect of ground game or other game, in the same manner, and to the same extent, as if this Act had not passed."

said, the Amendment that he was about to offer to the Committee was an important one. There were, in fact, two Amendments which he would venture to discuss at the same time. The proposal was that the owner of the land should be the only person to whom the occupier might be entitled to let the ground game. With regard to the part of Scotland with which he was best acquainted, leases were for 19 years in an agricultural tenancy, and from five to 10 years in a shooting tenancy. Those two arrangements were not affected by the operation of the Bill. So far as he knew, the only person against whom complaint had been made was the shooting tenant; he had never heard of a dispute as regarded the owners themselves. It was quite right that the tenant and landlord should be restrained with regard to second leases, where, by a shooting tenancy, the rent was double; but he thought it unjust that an arrangement should be made with regard to keeping down ground game in which the owner himself was to be entirely excluded. The practice was for an owner to have trappers on the estate, and for rabbits to be kept down by that means; and they were often kept down more than the tenants approved of. He recollected an instance. A proprietor found rabbits on his estate in consider- able numbers; and as they created a bad feeling between landlord and tenant, he determined to destroy them, and 33,000 were accordingly destroyed. At the next rent-audit one of the tenants waited for the agent at the door, and, when asked what he wanted, said, "Compensation for the rabbits." He had been in the habit of receiving £19 or £20 a-year for them, and he said "that it was a bad thing for him when they were ordered to be destroyed." He knew that his hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge was aware that that took place. On an estate with which he was himself connected, the shooting right had been let, and the tenants had complained that the shooting tenant had destroyed too many rabbits. He was confident that the arrangements between landlords and tenants were satisfactory; but the difficulty arose when there were shooting tenants. He thought it quite right, both in the interest of landlord and tenant, that the shooting tenant should be restrained as regarded ground game; but the owner himself ought to be able to make some arrangement by law where there were long leases. There was another point to which he wished to call the attention of the Committee. If the landlord had the power of shooting rabbits as well as the tenant, how were the persons employed by both parties to be prevented from coming into collision when on the same ground? Rabbits were sold at 1s. to 1s. 2d. a-piece, and where there were a considerable number, the selling of them was regarded as a profitable matter. It must be remembered that rabbits were not only an article of food for the population; but their coats supplied an article for ladies to wear, which was known, he believed, as English miniver. How were they to prevent the two sets of employés on the same ground from coming into collision? He would not trouble the Committee with remarks upon the second Amendment; but he should take the division upon that one.

said, the Amendment was opposed to the principle of the Bill. The Bill protected the tenant from pressure, brought by the landlord to let the game. The right hon. and gallant Member (Sir John Hay) proposed that the landlord should be the only person to whom the tenant might let it. That would only make the pressure still greater. An hon. Member, on the previous day, proposed the converse of that proposition—namely, that the owner should be the only person to whom it should not be let. The landlord, having got the game, would let to a third party, and so the object would be defeated. He could not agree with what had fallen from the right hon. and gallant Member; and having regard to the whole scope of the Bill, which was to prevent landlords interfering with tenants in that way, he must decline to accept the Amendment.

said, he was very much obliged indeed to his right hon. and learned Friend for a clearer explanation. A frank confession washed away many sins, and the right hon. and learned Home Secretary had then made a very full confession. He had just told the Committee that the whole scope and object of the Bill was to prevent the tenant from letting the ground game to his landlord. He (Mr. Beresford Hope) accepted that, for he believed that his right hon. and learned Friend was incapable of making any statement which was not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He (Mr. Beresford Hope) looked at the Preamble, and, instead of what the right hon. and learned Home Secretary led him to expect, he found those words—

"Whereas it is expedient in the interests of good husbandry and for the better security for the capital and labour invested by the occupiers of land in the cultivation of the soil, that further provision should be made to enable such occupiers to protect their crops from injury."

Not one single word about the whole scope and object of the Bill, as they had then heard from the Government what it was. If the Government wished that Bill to pass with unanimity on both sides he could tell them how to do it; and if they accepted his advice he would never go into the Lobby again against them on the Bill, while he could assure them that the number of hon. Members who had hitherto done so would be considerably reduced. His advice was to insert in the Preamble, instead of the words which they had got there, owing to the blundering of the draftsman, the statement which would give effect to what his right hon. and learned Friend had stated to be the whole scope and object of the Bill, namely—

"That it is expedient, in case of all farms let to any tenant, the occupier shall be prevented from letting the ground game to the landlord, but shall be empowered to let it to any man, woman, or child in the world other than the said landlord."

If that were done, he would venture to say that that Bill would run through like—modesty prevented him from saying what.

said, that he wished to disembarrass his right hon. and gallant Friend (Sir John Hay) from a difficulty under which he at present lay. He so far agreed with the right hon. and learned Gentleman in charge of the Bill, with regard to its principle, as to admit that there were circumstances connected with the letting of land which rendered it necessary that the tenant should only let the right to the ground game to the landlord under special conditions. But he was sorry that he was unable to agree with the right hon. and gallant Gentleman as to the effect of his Amendment; and, therefore, he hoped it would not be pressed. He could not concur with his right hon. and gallant Friend that the object which he had in view would be obtained by the acceptance of that Amendment.

said, he would suggest to his right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Beresford Hope) that, as the Preamble had been postponed, he should bring up his modification of it at the close of their proceedings. He wished to point out to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary that the arguments which had been used in the year 1871 were totally different from those employed in the year 1880. He could not understand that discrepancy. He would merely add that if his right hon. and gallant Friend (Sir John Hay) intended to go to a division upon the Amendment he should vote with him, if only in the interest of that principle for which he had struggled—namely, freedom of contract between owner and occupier.

hoped that the right hon. and gallant Gentle- man (Sir John Hay) would not trouble the Committee with a division. He thought the question had been fairly discussed, and he hoped he would not press his Amendment.

said, he certainly intended to take a division upon it; in fact, he had pledged himself to his constituents to do so, and he believed he had been returned to that House in consequence of it.

said, he should ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman in charge of the Bill not to regard the Amendment he was about to move in an objectionable light. On the previous day he had gone several times into the same Lobby as the Government, and he did feel bound to press the present Amendment to a division. His object was to enable the tenant, by a separate written contract, terminable at short notice, to do that which, under that Bill, he would be able to do by word of mouth. Nothing in that Bill, so far as he could see, was penal, and there was nothing to prevent any agreement being made by word of mouth between the landlord and the tenant. He would ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman whether that was consistent with the statement that that was a real measure? When the right hon. and learned Gentleman introduced the Bill, he said that the Government had resolved that whatever it might be it should not be a sham Bill. He (Sir Herbert Maxwell) contended that it was a sham Bill; because, although it stated on the face of it that it was impossible for any agreement to be come to between landlord and tenant, it had been shown over and over again that it could be defeated at every turn. But he would ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman to regard the Amendment in the light of one which stood in his name further down the Notice Paper. He thought that, bearing in mind the fact that 19 years' leases exist, no measure dealing with the matter would meet the grievances, or be acceptable to the farmer, or be of any use, unless it was made applicable to existing leases. Rather than have a Bill that was not applicable to existing leases, and which confirmed the right to the ground game in the tenant, and did not enable them to provide for that by a written contract, the tenant farmers of Scotland would, he believed, have a Bill which should give them the free disposal of the ground game, and one that was applicable to those leases. They had already in Scotland Mr. M'Lagan's Act; and he thought that that Act, excellent as it was when it left that House, contained three or four defects, the principal one of which was that it did not apply to existing leases. The consequence was that nine-tenths of the farmers were not even aware of its provisions or that it existed. No stipulation under leases dealing with the subject was effective unless the attention of the tenant were drawn to it. He had repeatedly been told by tenant farmers that they had made a mistake in entering the farm; and if their attention had been specially drawn to the game clauses, as would be provided by his Amendment, in the shape of a separate and written contract, they would have looked sharper after their interests. Many tenant farmers never read their own leases at all. The hon. and learned Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Rodwell) had stated, during the discussion, that those tenant farmers were weak and helpless. He (Sir Herbert Maxwell) supposed he must accept that; but he thought, judging from his own experience, that they were anything but that. They were well able to look after themselves, provided their attention was called to the facts of the case. There was another point to which he wished to draw the attention of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary. He proposed to make that agreement terminable at short notice—say, six months. He had thought that a convenient period; but he was quite willing to say three months, or any other period that might recommend itself to those who were favourable to the Bill. His object was this—that when a farm was let for a 19 years' lease a stipulation might be inserted allowing for the possible amount of damage that would be done by game. In many cases the game increased during the lease, and, by the arrangement he suggested, the tenant would be guarded against loss. He thought that a farmer might safely be allowed to dispose of his privilege, provided it were done by a separate written contract terminable at short notice. As one effect of the value of his proposal, he would give an instance which came under his own notice last year. On a certain estate under trustees, a farmer got into difficulties, which was not an uncommon event during last year. Had the estate not been under trustees, he would have gone to the landlord and asked for a reduction of rent and got it. But the trustees did not possess those powers. At any rate, in that particular instance, a reduction was refused. What did the farmer do? He had invested money in the soil and lost all; but he was able to let his farm at the full agricultural rent to a gentleman from London—a well-known hunter—as a game preserve. He would not have been able to do that under the present Bill; and, therefore, they were going to deprive the farmer of a distinct advantage. He would not detain the Committee longer: but he believed he had pointed out the means by which that Bill, instead of being a sham, might become an effectual measure, and how it might be made a measure of real service, instead of being, as it stood, a punishment to landlords. He begged to move the Amendment which stood in his name.

said, the proposition of the hon. Member (Sir Herbert Maxwell) was not a new one to him, for it was taken from a Bill in which he had some family interest. He meant the Bill which was backed by the hon. Member for West Essex (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson), and Oxfordshire (Mr. Harcourt). As they had abandoned their infant, it was now proposed to engraft it upon this Bill in this Amendment, although that proposal was absolutely adverse to the whole principle of the Bill. He would not reply to his right hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Beresford Hope), because he was always so pleased to listen to him that he was not anxious to answer him. The evil of the Amendment was that pressure might be put on tenants to let their game to landlords, and that then the landlords, having got the game, might keep up such a head as would damage the crops. This proposal simply added a sheet of note paper to existing leases. Exactly the same influences which induced the tenant to give up his game under the present leases would also induce him to sign a sheet of note-paper, undertaking to comply with the rule contained in this proposed alteration. The Amendment would make the Bill of no use whatever, would prevent it from providing any remedy, and it would, in fact, be legislation of the cruellest character to adopt it.

said, the right hon. and learned Gentleman appeared to have but one idea in his head, and one object in view. He was, at any rate, perfectly unable to take in any argument used in favour of any other objects than those for which he was working, though those Amendments aimed at guarding against injuries which very certainly would result from this legislation. The hon. Member who had just made this Motion (Sir Herbert Maxwell) had pointed out a particular grievance under which the farmer would suffer if that Bill was passed. This grievance, and others cognate to it, had been pointed out during the discussion; but the right hon. and learned Gentleman insisted on meeting all these objections by merely repeating, over and over again, that they would defeat the whole principle of the Bill. He wished to know from the right hon. and learned Gentleman whether he really did regard the grievance of a farmer who could not receive, under the present law, compensation for the damage which was done to his land by over-preservation of game? How was he going to meet the case of such a farmer who was willing to part with the right he had to kill game for a remunerative recompense, and who, by this Bill, would suffer a serious harm. The right hon. and learned Gentleman, with some confused idea of simile, had talked of engrafting an infant upon this Bill; but he (Earl Percy) supposed that it would be useless to press him to accept any of these alterations. As to the proposal that the Bill should extend to existing leases, that would be another grave breach of the ordinary principle of legislation; for it was a fundamental rule with all Governments that measures should not be brought in interfering with contracts already made. Though they had made one breach, in principle, for mercy's sake he (Earl Percy) hoped they would make no more. His hon. Friend (Sir Herbert Maxwell) said that farmers did not read their leases, and did not know the conditions in them, to which he (Earl Percy) would reply that it was not the province of that House to pass measures to help farmers who would not take ordinary precautions to defend themselves.

said, if the hon. Baronet (Sir Herbert Maxwell) went to a division he should vote with him; and his only object in rising was to call attention to the speech of his right hon. and learned Friend opposite, because it showed to what arguments men were driven when they lapsed from sound principles of legislative virtue. He did not know whether "pitiful" was a Parliamentary expression or not; but he did not think there was anything un- Parliamentary in calling arguments pitiful. Certainly nothing could be more pitiful than the arguments by which his hon. Friends the Members for Wigtownshire (Sir Herbert Maxwell) and Cambridgeshire (Mr. Rodwell) endeavoured to support this Amendment. At one time they said that farmers were imbecile; at another that they were helpless and weak; and the hon. Member for Wigtownshire had told them that farmers signed leases for 19 years and did not know what they signed. Farmers in his hon. Friend's county might be such benighted individuals; but, for his own county, he (Lord Elcho) should be very much surprised if any tenant there signed any lease without going over it very carefully, and with his lawyer to help him. It was pitiful to have such an argument brought up in favour of such an Amendment, that the farmers of Scotland had not common sense enough to read the agreements they signed. In the name of Scotch farmers he repudiated these arguments. He should, however, support the Amendment, because it was in the direction of what he had so long been struggling for—namely, freedom of contract.

said, he was extremely glad that the perilous position of agriculturists was not confined to England, but extended to Scotland also, and that Scotch farmers were just as powerless as English ones in dealing with their landlords on this question of game. He was also glad that the noble Lord (Lord Elcho) had taken someone else to task besides himself (Mr. Rodwell) on this question. He supposed, however, they would each, after all, retain their own opinions. He could not consistently vote for this Amendment, because, as he understood it, it proposed that the farmer should be asked to give up certain rights merely by signing something written on a sheet of note paper. But, if that Bill were passed, the same influences and the same agencies which were brought to bear to induce the farmer to sign a lease, giving up his right to the game, would be put in force to induce him to sign the agreement now proposed. He could see no distinction between the two cases, and he should be guilty of inconsistency if he voted for the Amendment. He did think that those who were opposing this Bill were troubling themselves with a great many imaginary fears. He said days and also weeks ago that he believed the Bill would have very little effect. Where there was no hardship existing from game, or where the tenants and landlords were upon friendly terms, he believed—and he was confirmed in that opinion by many other persons with whom he had conversed since the Bill had been in progress—that the tenants would not avail themselves of its powers, if their landlords did not persecute them with too much ground game. He believed most conscientiously that the Bill, in one respect, would be a dead letter. He did not mean by that that it would be useless. It would be a dead letter because it would not interfere with the relation between landlord and tenant; but it would be most powerful and useful as a rod to keep in order, and within certain bounds, those who otherwise would transgress those bounds. Those were his views, and he did heartily wish that he could persuade those who had so many Amendments on the Paper to accept them. He did not wish, instead of going on voting on Amendments which all, more or less, struck at the principle of the Bill, that they would accept the measure, and put faith and confidence in their tenants. The very worst policy that landlords could pursue was to attribute those petty feelings to the tenants which he had heard attributed to them time after time in that House For his part, he thought hon. Gentle men would do much wiser to accept the Bill, believing that their tenants would deal fairly with them. With regard to all those Amendments, what on earth was there to prevent a landlord and a tenant, who understood each other and had confidence in each other, coming to a satisfactory agreement about the game? The tenant would say to his landlord—"To the present we have done very well. You have not over weighted me with ground game, and I shall, therefore, not put the Act into force." That fair and honourable understanding would be far more efficacious than any results which would ensue from the operation of the Bill. He had always looked on this question from that point of view. He believed he was consistent in doing so, and with those feelings he would almost venture to ask the hon. Baronet (Sir Herbert Maxwell) not to give the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho) the opportunity of voting with him.

said, if there were any chance that this Amendment would receive the acquiescence of the Committee, or any of considerable number of Members in the Committee, he should certainly be prepared to support the hon. Baronet (Sir Herbert Maxwell) in dividing upon it; but after the experience they had had in the discussion on the previous parts of the Bill, and after the discussion that had been taken upon what seemed to him to be the most reasonable proposition of his right hon. Friend the Member for North Hants (Mr. Sclater-Booth) last night, and after the division they had taken, he thought it must be tolerably obvious that the result of another division would simply be a repetition of the same decision as that which had already been arrived at. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary had told them that he had already resisted personal and official pressure to accept this Amendment. He had hoped that the right hon. and learned Gentleman was going to tell them that he should imitate the example of Amphion, of whom it was recorded that he gave way to his brother's views—Fraternis cessisse putatur moribus; but that did not appear to have commended itself to him, and he was afraid, therefore, that there was very little chance that they would be able to do any more towards impressing him in its favour. He must say he thought the proposition of his hon. Friend was not open to all the objections made. In itself it was a very rational and reasonable proposition. It was far better, in his opinion, for the tenant farmers of the country that they should be taught, to some extent, to rely upon themselves and upon their own examination of the contracts submitted to them than that they should be treated by the country as such children that Parliament must take the matter out of their hands. He did not think that was the way to cultivate a proper spirit of independence. The Committee, however, had decided otherwise for the present; and it would only be a waste of time to keep on dividing again and again upon a point which really involved the same principle as that which had already been decided. Therefore, he would appeal to his hon. Friend not to divide, not because he (Sir Stafford Northcote) dissented from the proposition that he made, but simply because he did not think a division would be any use.

said, he wished to support the appeal made by the right hon. Baronet the Member for North Devon (Sir Stafford Northcote). He was afraid these Amendments were really contrary to the principle of the Bill as adopted and acted upon by the promoters of it. That principle was to treat the farmer as a child who must be protected from the undue influence of his landlord. As that view had been adopted by the Committee, and they had been beaten on division after division in opposing it, it was useless to contest the principle again.

said, his hon. Friend (Sir Herbert Maxwell) had represented him in that House, and for that reason he certainly should ask him to go to a division, and if he did he would support him. The convenience of the Committee ought, of course, to be consulted; but the hon. Member must also remember the convenience of the persons he represented. He did not think a large division was always necessary to confirm a principle which they might think it necessary to defend. Speaking, therefore, with great deference, he begged to differ from the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition (Sir Stafford Northcote), and to say that although taking a division might delay the Committee a few minutes, it was often desirable, because it had so much more effect than merely negativing a Resolution. His hon. Friend (Sir Herbert Maxwell) had very fairly and excellently stated the effect of his Amendment. Though he (Sir John Hay) did not quite agree with him that the tenant farmers of Scotland did not read their leases, he could understand, in the great estate his hon. Friend owned, where from generation to generation the tenants had remained on the estate without change, that there they trusted to the interest and to the honourable understanding which was already existing. Elsewhere, however, he believed that Scotch farmers were quite intelligent enough to study leases; and if they did think it worth while to take a farm, he was sure that they did study the leases very closely, and they would do so still more after this Bill became law. He was afraid, if this measure did pass, that the intimate understanding which at present existed between his hon. Friend and his tenantry would not continue to exist. In some places, of course, it must be expected that tenants would take advantage of the Bill, and on an estate of 13,000 or 14,000 acres it must be remembered that there must be occasional vacancies, merely from the death of the tenants. The trustees often carried on the estate for many years to get what they could out of the land for the trust; and, where that was so, they could not expect the same feeling to exist as existed between the landlord and the old tenant. If the Act were put into force in this instance that would be enough to destroy this good feeling.

said, his right hon. and gallant Friend (Sir John Hay), and his hon. Friend behind him (Sir Herbert Maxwell), talking of the different position of people who were trustees, forgot that, by the Scotch law, if, after a tenant had entered on a farm the game was unduly increased, he had a remedy. That was at the Common Law, independently of the law passed by Mr. M'Lagan two years ago. He confessed that he could not accept the view which had been advocated by his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Rodwell). That hon. and learned Gentleman wished them to open their mouths and shut their eyes and see what the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department would put down their throats. Whatever it was they were to take that dose of medicine in the same cheerful way in which he (Mr. Rodwell) was inclined to swallow it. Evidently the guide of his hon. and learned Friend was expediency; but he (Lord Elcho) and some of his hon. Friends endeavoured in all these matters to act upon principle, and to resist, wherever they met it, what they believed to be the vicious principle in that Bill. They would stand fast wherever they found standing ground on behalf of the views they supported. The Conservative Leader had advised hon. Members opposed to the Bill not to divide, because one division had settled the whole question. He disputed altogether that that was the proper action of a minority fighting for a principle in that House. If it were, what number was to settle whether they were to fight or not? He did not care whether he was in a minority of 100, or of 10, when he was fighting for a principle; for the time might always come when wiser views would prevail, when sanity would return, and a minority of 10 might become a very large majority. Certainly, the question of freedom of contract was decided upon an Amendment of his (Lord Elcho's), which raised the point in an earlier part of the Bill in the broadest form. It had cropped up since more than once, but always in a different manner. There was one form of it still before them, and another which would shortly be presented by his hon. Friend (Mr. Chaplin); and he trusted when that was proposed his hon. Friend would stand to his guns, and he (Lord Elcho) thought, if he knew his disposition, that he would. He wished to point out also to the Leader of the Conservative Party that they ought not to be afraid of divisions. They had been too afraid of divisions in the past; but he (Lord Elcho) hoped that a different course would be taken in the future, and that on the third reading the matter would be fought fairly and well.

said, after the advice given to him by his right hon. Friend (Sir Stafford North-cote) he should not divide; but he could not regret that he had put upon record his entire objection to this feature of the Bill. He had had no desire to enter upon a second reading discussion; but after what had been talked of that afternoon, he felt it necessary to say something in his opening speech about principle. His right hon. and gallant Friend below him (Sir John Hay) was mistaken as to what he (Sir Herbert Maxwell) had said about the farmers of Scotland. He did not refer to the case of a farm under trust, but to one where the estate was being managed by trustees. Also he did not say it was the increase of game from which the tenants were suffering, but the bad harvest which had affected them all in common. The tenant, he had said, was unable to make both ends meet in that case except by letting the game for full value.

said, it was a misfortune that whenever they moved an Amendment they were constantly told it was aimed at the principle of the Bill. He did hope that at last he had succeeded in discovering an Amendment which was not only not opposed to the principle of the Bill, but was entirely in consort with it, and one also which had recently found great favour with Her Majesty's Government themselves. That Was a reason which could not fail to commend his proposal to the Committee. The Government, only a short time ago, in their principal measure of that Session, in regard to a much more serious matter than the one now before the Committee—namely, the question of rent itself—had laid down that the offer of a reasonable alternative by the landlord might very justly and properly stop the operation of their Bill. Under those circumstances, it was surely not unreasonable on his part to propose, and the Government could not, without great inconsistency, resist, the proposition that in that question of ground game the offer of a reasonable alternative should act as a bar to the operation of that measure. He proposed this Amendment further in what he conceived to be the direct interests of the tenant farmer. As he had already observed, it appeared to him in no way whatever inconsistent with the principle of the Bill, because that principle was to protect the farmer from injury to his crops. There was a variety of ways in which the Amendment might act favourably in the interests of the tenant. For instance, a considerable reduction of rent might be offered as a reasonable alternative, and he could not understand why an objection should be raised to the proposal. But he might take another case, and a much stronger one. Suppose a gentleman owned a considerable quantity of land next to that of his tenant, and did not care about farming, but liked shooting. The tenant, on the other hand, might be anxious about farming, and be very desirous of increasing his holding. The landlord might say to him—"I have a great deal more land than I want; I shall be very glad if you will give me the exclusive right of shooting, to add two or three hundred acres to what you already have." That would be an operation distinctly to the advantage of both parties. It would meet the views of the landlord, and would conduce to the benefit of the tenant. He did hope that his right hon. and learned Friend, under those circumstances, would see his way to accepting the Amendment, which was really proposed by him (Mr. Chaplin) honestly in what he believed to be the interests of the tenants. It mitigated also some of the most evil effects of the Bill, but it did not directly interfere with it; and as it also conferred considerable benefits on the tenants he could not conceive why it should not be accepted. He did hope the right hon. and learned Gentleman would be able to accept, at least, that one Amendment from that side of the House.

hoped that his hon. Friend (Mr. Chaplin) and others would not think that he (Sir William Harcourt) had refused all Amendments; because, in fact, the provisions which he had moved represented many Amendments which originally were put down to the Bill. When the Amendments were first put on the Paper he examined them all, to see which he could accept without substantial injury to the Bill; and, as a matter of fact, his provisoes did embrace the more reasonable and convenient Amendments which had been suggested. He had put down those Amendments, in fact, in what an hon. Member had called inglobo. Now, the Bill proposed that a certain right should be inalienable in the tenant, and the proposition of his hon. Friend was that that right should not accrue if the landlord proposed a reasonable alternative. [Mr. CHAPLIN: Something better.] But who was to judge that? [Mr. CHAPLIN: The tenant.] But suppose the tenant did not think it was better, there was no provision for that. [Mr. CHAPLIN: Yes, later on.] As he (Sir William Harcourt) understood, if the alternative was not satisfactory the matter was to go before a Judge who was to decide. The effect of that was simply that the tenant was to have a lawsuit given him in place of the right which was conferred by this Bill. That was wholly unsatisfactory. The landlord would only have to say—"You shall not exercise the rights given you by this Bill, because I have given you a reasonable alternative." And then he could take the tenant before an arbitrator, or the County Court Judge, and subject him to all the worry and all the expense of a lawsuit. The whole object of the hon. Member would be answered by the arrangements which he felt certain would be made between landlords and tenants. When the Bill was passed, the landlord would go to the tenant and say—"If you like to accept an arrangement of this kind rather than the Bill, you can have it." But that was a very different thing indeed to allowing the landlord to propose an arrangement in law, which he would be able to enforce upon a tenant by an arbitrator, or by a County Court Judge. There was nothing in the Bill to prevent an honourable understanding between the landlord and tenant; and, on the contrary, he thought it would often be produced by it. One of his great objects was that there should be such arrangements; but that was a totally different thing from allowing a landlord to force a tenant either to accept a reasonable alternative, or a lawsuit. He imagined that if that Amendment were accepted landlords would be constantly proposing a reasonable alternative to their tenants, and the reasonable alternative would be that they should not shoot. It would be a very specious and difficult matter to deal with; and, of course, he could not accept the suggestion. In fact, there was only one thing that was satis- factory in the proposition, and that was that his hon. Friend should have accepted the principles of the Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill. As he had adopted his Amendment from the provisions of that measure, it seemed to be an admission that he considered that Bill satisfactory.

said, he hoped his hon. Friend (Mr. Chaplin) would adhere to the Amendment and press it to a division. It was, as it seemed to him, a very fair and reasonable proposal. That, however, was not a reason why it was any more likely to be acceptable to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. He (Viscount Newport) had no desire himself to offer factious opposition to that measure, for he Was very anxious to see proper protection afforded to occupiers against the damage done by ground game on their holdings; but the present Bill, in the shape it had now taken, went far beyond that. For his part, he had not at present seen any willingness on the part of the right hon. and learned Gentleman to accept Amendments from that side of the House. And since he had had the honour of a seat in that House, he never could recollect any Minister who had adopted so uncon-ciliatory an attitude as the right hon. and learned Gentleman appeared to have done. He had not accepted a single Amendment during the whole course of the Committee; and in no single instance had he given way, except one very small one. He would not say whether such a course was wise or not; but he did very much doubt whether it would facilitate Business.

said, he also hoped his hon. Friend (Mr. Chaplin) would go to a division. This was another of those Amendments which tested the real spirit and intention of the Bill. There could be no question that if the real object of the measure were simply what the Preamble professed—to keep down ground game, it would not only be natural, but it would absolutely be the right thing for the Government to accept the suggestion which his hon. Friend, had made, of allowing for the possibility of the substitution of a reasonable alternative to the provisions contained in the Bill. It was a simple act of justice to those landlords who were on good terms to their tenants, and had satisfactory agreements with them with re- ference to game. In such cases, it was outrageous that the Government should step in and say that it would hear nothing of any private agreements, and that those gentlemen must take the Bill and nothing else. As his hon. Friend had pointed out, that was exactly the reverse of the course which the Government took in their Irish Bill. On his father's estate the agreement as to game was that the landlord and tenant should have a joint right to hares and rabbits, on the understanding that the tenant should do what he could to preserve the winged game, and should make no claim for damage by game of any description. Thus, that agreement being in force on his father's estate, as regarded this Bill, his withers were absolutely unwrung. This agreement only reserved that right control which he maintained owners ought to have. It was now quite clear, as his right hon. and learned Friend continued to treat Amendments in the spirit he had first shown, what was the spirit of his measure. That Bill was clearly directed against landlords and landlords only. He (Lord Elcho) might say that this Amendment would have his entire support, because he had prepared one himself to much the same effect, and, in fact, he was travelling to the same point as his hon. Friend by parallel, though different, roads. For his part, he thought it was most ungracious of the Government not to accept this Amendment.

said, if one single argument had been urged against his Amendment which he could accept, he would not put the Committee to the trouble of a division; but the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary was so unsatisfactory, and had so misrepresented what he (Mr. Chaplin) had said, that he was forced to take that course. Even the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself had been obliged to acknowledge that that Amendment did not attack the principle of the Bill; and, therefore, he took refuge in the argument that it would drive the tenant into a lawsuit; but why was that to happen? He (Mr. Chaplin) could not understand any reason for it. All his Amendment provided was that the tenant might divest himself of his concurrent right to game upon the offer of a reasonable alternative from the landlord. It depended entirely upon the tenant himself whether he was to accept that or not; and, if he chose not to accept it, the contingency provided for in the Amendment could never arise. The sole reason why he provided for arbitration in the case of a difference was that it might be impossible for hon. Members on the other side to say he was providing a loophole by which to escape from the settlement. The right hon. and learned Gentleman told them that the tenant could already do that under the Bill. He had observed that all those arguments so constantly used in that direction were based on the assumption that the Bill was to be nothing but a sham. He agreed with that opinion, and he thought very often that it would only be a sham; but, in discussing a legal question like that, he preferred to discuss it on the assumption that the Bill would not be a dead letter; and if it was not to be so, then some Amendment, such as he proposed, was necessary in order to enable landlords and tenants to make an arrangement of the character he had attempted to suggest. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had taunted him with adopting the principle of the Irish legislation of the Government. He had done it; but why? In mitigation of the principle which he thought bad. It was, however, remarkable that principles which were proposed in that House by the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his Government, as excellent and everything to be desired for Ireland, were repudiated when they were proposed by an unfortunate Tory Member like himself, as suitable to be applied to England.

said, he had an Amendment to leave out the clause; but he did not wish to move it. The clause was the creation of the brain of his right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary. It was not, however, absolutely original, but was a piece of derivative originality proceeding from the brain of Mr. Locke. As there was one of the Law Officers of the Crown now seated on the Treasury Bench, he (Lord Elcho) took the opportunity of asking him whether he could give the Committee any precedent for such a clause as this, which provided that a man invested with a right should not be allowed to divest himself of it.

said, if the question were a legal one, he should be most happy to express his opinion upon it; but he did not think it was the duty of the Law Officers of the Crown, at a moment's notice, to answer the question whether he could or could not find a precedent for a particular kind of right being reserved. The noble Lord would, no doubt, like to receive a satisfactory answer; but as he (the Solicitor General) had not had time to consider the point, he must decline to try to satisfy him.

said, he wished it to go out to the country that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary was creating a thing absolutely new to the law. Could any hon. Member doubt that if there existed any precedents for this reservation the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General would have had them at his finger's ends?

said, he did not wish it to go forth that there were no precedents for the clause. He had stated, on introducing the Bill, that there were precedents for every clause in the Bill, and had given chapter and verse for them at the time.

said, the right hon. and learned Gentleman could not expect that this question, affecting freedom of contract, would be allowed to slip through the Committee without controversy. He should allow the clause to pass, but could assure the right hon. and learned Gentleman that there would be a good contest on that ground upon the third reading of the Bill. Neither the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General nor the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary had pro- duced any precedent whatever in favour of the clause, although the latter had endeavoured to raise false analogies as regarded interference with freedom of contract.

said, he could not think the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary had ever shown that any quantity of ground game existed sufficient to interfere with husbandry. At all events, it was not so generally the case that there could be any justification of that attempt to interfere with contracts in the way which the clause proposed to do. The Amendment he was about to propose would make the clause run thus—"Every agreement inconsistent with the purposes of this Act shall be void;" and that was perfectly consistent with the words of the Preamble. He held that no interference with any agreement could be justified beyond that particular point. Therefore, if the Bill was to be an honest expression of feeling on the part of the Government, as stated in the Preamble, the right hon. and learned Gentleman ought to accept his Amendment. He wished to know how the provisions of the clause were to be carried out as they stood. His Amendment would secure the object of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, who wished to prevent the landlord and tenant making any agreement which would vitiate the principles of the Act. That was also the plain and express object of his Amendment, which he trusted would be accepted in the event of the right hon and learned Gentleman being unable to give sufficient reasons to the contrary. He begged to move the Amendment which stood in his name.

said, it appeared to him that if the words of the Amendment were in the clause they would not change the position at all. Any agreement having for its object to separate this right from the occupation of the soil would be inconsistent with the purposes of the Act. He presumed the hon. Member for West Cheshire (Mr. Wilbraham Egerton) meant that any agreement entered into should be consistent with the interests of good husbandry as expressed in the Preamble. But then it would be necessary to set up some tribunal to consider whether or not it was inconsistent with the Preamble of the Bill. It had been asked whether a person could make an agreement to take a lower rent if the ground game were largely preserved; or a higher rent if it was not. The object of the clause undoubtedly was to prevent such an agreement being binding in law. If such an agreement were made between the parties, it could not, of course, be prevented, nor was there any desire to prevent it. The intention was to prevent the making of legal and binding agreements; and in that sense it was that they were to be void. An agreement of the kind referred to would be like a bet, which was binding upon the parties, but not binding in law. It seemed to him that his hon. Friend would introduce words which would raise tedious questions, which would have to be settled by some tribunal; and, therefore, he hoped he would not press his Amendment.

said, there was such a tribunal in Scotland. As the Lord Advocate was not present, and he could not ask him, he would appeal to the right hon. and gallant Member for the Wigtown Burghs (Sir John Hay) whether it was not the case under Mr. M'Lagan's Act that there was a reference to the sheriff, whose decision was final?

said, he should just like to ask a question, as he saw the Law Officers of the Crown present, and it was not often that he could get the advice of two such eminent authorities. Taking the clause as it stood, it gave the right to the tenant to destroy the game. He wished to know, if the tenant sustained any damage from ground game, could he claim compensation against the landlord, he, the tenant, having the right to destroy it?

said, that, under the cir- cumstances stated by the hon. Member, the tenant would not be able to obtain compensation.

said, that the next Amendment was part of the one he had moved before. He should therefore not move it. He wished to say, with reference to what had just fallen from the hon. and learned Gentleman (the Attorney General), that in Scotland there was a claim for compensation in respect of damage.

said, he hoped the Committee would give a little careful attention to what he was about to say. He was sure he should not be disappointed in that, for he did not often occupy the time of the House very long; therefore, he wished to be allowed to make a few remarks on behalf of an Amendment, which appeared to him to be one that the right hon. and learned Gentleman in charge of the Bill might accept. He proposed to change the last word in the clause from "void" to "voidable." Perhaps it might be asked what he meant by that. He would sketch out in a few words the effect of the change; and he might be, perhaps, allowed to add to the clause more than the word "voidable." He proposed, therefore, to add—

"Voidable at option in manner following:—that is to say, any such agreement, condition, or arrangement shall become void at the expiration of six months from the time of notice being-given by the occupier to the person with whom such agreement, condition, or arrangement was made, that he desires to put an end to such agreement, condition, or arrangement."

The legitimate object of that Bill, for it had a legitimate as well as an illegitimate object, was to prevent the over-preservation of game. The object of his Amendment was to enable the landlord and tenant to enter into a contract; and, therefore, so far, he was supporting the freedom of contract, but not to the full extent, because, so long as the landlord and tenant got on well together, so long the arrangement stood; but if the landlord kept up too much ground game, the moment the tenant chose, he could put an end to the arrangement simply by giving notice, and at the end of six months it would become absolutely void. He could not understand how hon. Gentlemen could say at one time that there should be no contract, and at another that there should be freedom of con- tract. If hon. Gentlemen opposite would, instead of making up their minds before they heard the arguments, listen to them and judge them by their own consciences, he felt sure they would say that his proposal was a reasonable one. He begged to move the Amendment.

said, that if the Amendment had been left as it stood upon the Paper he was not sure that he might not have agreed to it. But, as it then stood, it would establish a permanent agreement for six months, at any rate, and to that he could not agree. He need hardly say that a similar proposition had been made by the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Mr. Knight), which he had been obliged to decline to accept.

said, he would advise his hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Warton) to accept at once the offer of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. He had stated his willingness to accept the Amendment which stood on the Paper. [Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT: No, I did not.] He certainly understood the right hon. and learned Gentleman to say so.

said, that what he had stated was, that he did not know whether he might not have been disposed to accept it.

said, that he had understood that the right hon. and learned Gentleman had intended to accept the original Amendment. At any rate, he would advise the hon. and learned Member for Bridport (Mr. Warton) to withdraw the words he had added, and see what effect that would have upon the mind of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department. He had no doubt that his hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Warton) would accept the suggestion he had made; and he should therefore like to know, whether it was the intention of the right hon. and learned Gentleman to accede to the pro- position of the hon. and learned Member for Bridport?

said, he could answer his right hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Gibson) in a moment. He had not in the least altered his opinion, and he preferred his own words.

moved to strike out the clause, with the object of substituting another in its place, as its language was such that he could not propose its amendment in the sense he desired, without violating the principle of the Bill, which he accepted. He would shortly call the attention of the Committee to what was the nature of the Bill. The Bill was intended for the promotion of the home production of food, and, therefore, he was not opposed to its object; but it proposed to effect that object by means which, as illustrated by that 3rd clause, were objectionable. As the Common Law now stood the game was the property of the tenant, unless he alienated the right by contract, and the clause limited the right of the tenant by imposing this condition upon him, that he should not alienate it to his landlord, or to the representative of his landlord, and went so far as to declare that any document by which he might attempt to alienate it should be void. This provision was as absolute as the obligation of the farmer, as a ratepayer, to serve on juries. He could conceive of no more stringent provision. It was most stringent, and, as he thought, unnecessarily and unwisely stringent, and it incapacitated the tenant. At present, under the lease or agreement by which he held his farm the tenant usually divested himself of the right which he possessed under the Common Law in the game; and where the tenancy was yearly, no great hardship ought to accrue to the tenant by the destruction of his crops through the excessive preservation of ground game. But, in practice, the tenant's remedy against the landlord—if the landlord preserved an excessive quantity of game—was so involved with other considerations, that, practically, the tenant did not exercise it. He might bring an action against his landlord for damage to his crops. That, however, would be a very invidious proceeding, and tenants usually avoided it. Or he might give notice to quit his farm; but that involved such serious considerations, far beyond the question of game, that few tenants availed themselves of it. Such, then, was the condition of a yearly tenant. But he now wished to point to a case in which the operation of some such measure as this was really needed. He would take the case, which was common in Scotland, where the landlord had let his farm on lease for seven, 14 or 21 years, and reserve the game to himself. Let the Committee suppose that the landlord died, and some other person succeeded to the property, who might have totally different views with regard to game from the man who originally let the land on lease. Under this new landlord, the game might increase in excess, and the tenant had no practical remedy. That might involve much hardship on the tenant. He (Mr. Newdegate) had had 40 years of experience in these matters with several properties, two of which he had been in the habit of letting with the residences upon them; but throughout his long experience he never got into a difficulty by letting the game, until he let it on lease, and then he found that both he and his tenants were helpless against an excess of game being preserved by the person who had the right of shooting on lease; they suffered from the action of a third party, against whose excess neither landlord nor tenant had a remedy. He admitted, therefore, that there was a case for the interference by legislation, though he did not approve of some of the provisions of the Bill. It did appear to him to be totally anomalous to create two rights in one property. By the Bill they limited the right of the tenant in ground game to one-half, and by the 3rd clause they declared that he should make no agreement whatsoever with his landlord, who possessed the other half of the property, and that every contract made in defiance of this prohibition should be void. He thought it was impossible to conceive of a more disabling provision than this. It disabled both the parties, who were jointly interested in this property—the ground game. He was strongly of opinion that that was a disability which ought to be mitigated; and by the clause which stood in his name, but which he could not move at the present moment, he intended to propose that it should be competent for the tenant to let his share of the ground game to the owner of the other half of that property—the landlord—but under these conditions, that the letting should be by means of a document in writing, totally distinct and separate from the document under which the occupier held his farm; that the document which would thus deal with the occupier's share in the ground game, the right created by the Bill, should be stamped, and thus made producible in evidence; but, above all—and this was the important provision of the clause he intended to propose—that such agreement to let the right of the occupier should absolutely cease and determine, and without notice, at the expiration of a year from the date thereof. Now, what would be the effect of such a provision as that? Tenants did not like to give notice to their landlords or prosecute them for damages; but should, this provision be introduced into the Bill, in lieu of the 3rd clause, the tenant, if the ground game had increased within the year more than he thought right, would have nothing to do but to remain perfectly quiescent, and his right in the ground game would by the other provisions of the Bill revive. If he allowed the agreement to lapse, all his right over the ground game which the Bill vested in him would revive at the expiration of the year; and his (Mr. Newdegate's) experience told him that, within a year, it was practically impossible that much damage to the tenant could accrue. Then, what would be the tenant's—the occupier's—position at the end of the year Suppose him to have allowed the contract to lapse, the landlord must go to him, if he wished to renew the contract, and it would be for the tenant to make his bargain with regard to the quantity of ground game, or as to compensation. He (Mr. Newdegate) had had 40 years' experience in reference both to game preservation and the preservation of foxes; and he did not feel so confident as the right hon. and learned Gentleman who introduced the Bill that it would not prove a vulpicidal measure. He should be sorry to see any measure adopted that would interfere with the noble sport of fox-hunting; and, having had to do with a great variety of persons, he could conceive of a man with a troublesome temper using the powers which the Bill conferred upon him as occupier, for the destruction of the value of the landlord's right in the ground game, and also the destruction of foxes. That was an opinion which was not confined to himself. He hoped he had now said enough to convince the right hon. and learned Gentleman who had charge of the Bill that, in objecting to this particular clause, he was not attacking the principle of the Bill, because, by the clause, of which he had given Notice as an alternative, in the event of that 3rd clause being omitted, he had accepted the principle of the Bill; but, instead of disabling the tenant from making use of the right which the Bill created in him as regarded his partner, the landlord, he would provide that the tenant should be enabled to agree with his landlord by a written document, separate from the conditions of his lease, and bearing a 6d. stamp. This agreement would positively terminate at the end of a year; and it was, if not impossible, at least highly improbable, that any unreasonable quantity of ground game should grow up within that interval. He accepted the principle of the Bill; but he objected to this 3rd clause. His experience and observation told him that it was sure to entail differences and bad feeling between landlords and tenants as it stood, and would interpose difficulties in the way of the reasonable preservation of game, which the House had declared by a large majority it was not its intention to prevent. The fact was that there were many tempers and many men. There were men, with whom one could agree once a-year, but with whom few, if anyone, could agree once a-week. He appealed to the knowledge of human nature, which every hon. Gentleman must possess, whether that was not true. His object in omitting the clause, then, was to get rid of the irritation it must, as it stood, create, and with the view of enabling the tenant to use the property, and the right which the Bill reserved to him, in a manner that would preserve good feeling between him and his landlord, and would render the abuse of an undue increase of ground game almost, if not quite, impossible. In other words, impossible without the concurrence of the occupier.

The Question is, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."

said, he did not object to the clause, because it was merely explanatory, and amplified what had already been enacted in the 1st clause. A great deal had been said about freedom of contract; but he maintained that as between landlord and tenant there could be no freedom of contract whatever. He lived in a county (Warwickshire) where the agreements for letting the land were only from year to year, and where also there had been very great damage done to the crops by ground game. If there were freedom of contract, as his hon. Friend (Mr. Newdegate) maintained, at the expiration of each yearly tenancy, it would be possible for the tenant so to arrange with his landlord that he might have remedies with regard to ground game which were necessary to protect his crops. Yet, serious as was the damage done to crops in that county, year after year, from various reasons which must occur to landlords in that House—from their superior social position and advantages, and their reluctance to interfere with the landlord's sport—the tenants had never been in such a position that they could maintain that freedom of contract of which everybody on that side of the House had talked so much. With regard to what had been said by his right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, recently, he had very nearly committed an act of suicide. ["Order, order!"]

The hon. Gentleman cannot discuss an Amendment that has already been passed.

said, he only wanted to point out the difference between "voidable" and "void;" and he would not pursue the subject further. With regard to the complaint that this Bill would prevent fox-hunting, as had been said by his hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. New- degate), they were used to cries of that kind. He was old enough to recollect when railways were established that it was alleged they would break up foxhunting; yet they knew that the sport flourished at the present day in an even greater degree than it did before. It was also said that the Bill would cause ill-feeling between landlord and tenant; but he was under no apprehension whatever on that score. He thought, with his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Rodwell), that the tenant farmers should be treated generously and without that suspicion which seemed to prevail among some of his hon. Friends around him; and he did not think they, for the sake of spiting their landlords, would kill every bit of ground game. He believed the Bill would result in equal advantage to both parties. It would be an advantage to the tenants, because they would be able to keep down the ground game, so that it should not seriously destroy the crops; while, on the other hand, the feeling that had hitherto been shown by the tenant towards his landlord, and which, he believed, he would continue to show, would prevent him from destroying hares and rabbits in such a way as would interfere with the sport of his landlord. He had supported the Bill hitherto, and he had gone into the Lobby against all these Amendments, for they were all intended to defeat the principle of the Bill. That principle, he understood, was to protect the tenant from the ravages of ground game to his crops. His right hon. and learned Friend thought that object could only be obtained by giving the tenant an inalienable right to the ground game. He perfectly agreed with him in that opinion. He was certain that nothing else would give the tenant farmers the remedy they desired; and therefore, as he had said, he cordially supported the Bill.

said, that, so far as interference with freedom of contract was concerned, the question had already been very fully discussed, and he did not think that it was worth while to raise it again. He rose only for the purpose of asking the right hon. and learned Gentleman a question which arose out of some remarks of his in that House. From the views which he apparently took of the provisions of the Bill, he understood the right hon. and learned Gentleman to say that although the clause rendered any agreement void at law, it did not render any arrangement illegal; that it would not be contrary either to the law or to the spirit of the Act, if the landlord and tenant, having joint rights of sporting over a farm by the Bill, chose to make any arrangement as to the time or mode in which those rights should be exercised, but that those arrangements would in no way be objected to as contrary to the spirit of the Act. He was anxious to have that point quite clear.

said, it was very much to be regretted that hon. Members, like the hon. Baronet the Member for South Warwickshire (Sir Eardley Wilmot), could not refrain from making offensive statements with regard to other Members on that side of the House. He rose to repudiate the charges which the hon. Baronet had made.

I beg to rise to Order. Did anything I said deserve to be characterized as offensive?

I listened attentively to what the hon. Baronet the Member for South Warwickshire said, and I observed nothing which rendered it necessary for me to call him to Order.

said, he did not rise to Order. He rose to repudiate the statements made by the hon. Baronet.

I call upon the hon. Member to withdraw the word "offensive."

said, he would withdraw it with the greatest pleasure when he had finished the sentence. [Cries of "Withdraw!"] He did withdraw the word altogether. [Cries of" Withdraw!"] He had withdrawn it, and he could not do more than that. Still, when the hon. Baronet (Sir Eardley Wilmot) attributed to other gentlemen outside of the House that they had regarded their tenantry with suspicion, and that when he (Sir Eardley Wilmot) and the hon. and learned Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Rodwell) said that they ought to put faith in their tenants, he (Mr. Chaplin) repudiated all those assertions, and begged leave to tell those hon. Members that he, and others who sat with him on that side of the House, represented tenants quite as much as they did. He regarded himself as sit- ting there to represent the interests of the farmers quite as much as those of the landlords. He had never had one word of dispute with his tenants. He put a complete and absolute faith in them, and faith which he undertook to say was reciprocated by the tenant farmers, and which they were justified in showing. That was the reason for the indignation which he had exhibited when he was told by those hon. Members that he and his hon. Friends treated their tenants with suspicion. He declared that they did nothing of the kind. He objected to the Bill because it was calculated to engender feelings which did not exist at the present time; and, in support of that statement, he begged to remind hon. Members that in the debate on the second reading he quoted a resolution sent to him, without the least communication or suggestion on his part, by the tenant farmers of Lincoln, in which they objected to the Bill on the ground that it would create the ill-feeling of which he had spoken.

hoped he might be allowed to join in the appeal which had just been made by the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach). They had now been engaged for more than an hour upon a discussion which was really a discussion on the principle of the Bill. He did not think that was a fair way to treat the Bill. The speech of the hon. Baronet the Member for South Warwickshire (Sir Eardley Wilmot) was nothing but a second reading speech, and he did not think such conduct gave the measure a fair chance. It was very dangerous to answer speeches made from that side of the House, because it was almost certain to raise a discussion; and, therefore, all he would say was that this 3rd clause was intended to prevent such agreements as had been mentioned from being enforceable in Courts of Law.

said, he did not intend to delay the Committee at all; but he merely wished to call the attention of the Chairman to a point of Order which had arisen. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lincolnshire (Mr. Chaplin) had risen a few moments ago and remarked that the hon. Baronet the Member for South Warwickshire (Sir Eardley Wilmot) had said something of an offensive character, upon which that hon. Baronet got up and asked the Chairman whether anything in his speech was, in the opinion of the Chairman, of an offensive character, to which the Chairman gave a reply. He ventured to submit that such a question as that was not one for the decision of the Chair at all. The proper question for the Chair was, whether the word "offensive" was a Parliamentary word or not; and with all due submission to the Chairman, and to anyone who occupied the Chair, he (Earl Percy) submitted that it was not a question for the Chairman whether a speech of a Member was offensive. He might add that he did not, in the least, understand the explanation which had been given by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary, and he only hoped that other Members did.

The noble Earl the Member for North Northumberland (Earl Percy) would be perfectly right if that were the abstract question put to me; but I understood the question was whether the hon. Baronet the Member for South Warwickshire had made any remark offensive to other hon. Members of this House, and I replied that I did not think he had.

said, the next Amendment he had to propose was merely one of a verbal character, and therefore he need not further explain it.

said, the next Amendment was also a verbal one.

said, he wished to propose an Amendment, to insert the words "otherwise than by shooting." His idea was that the person who killed hares by shooting should be placed on the same footing as the person who paid a licence and sold game. It seemed to him that there was no reason why a person who, by means of the Bill, got a right to destroy game should have the right to sell it without a licence.

said, the Amendment would really put the tenant in a worse position than ever. To a small tenant farmer the question of a game certificate was a very serious one; but if he had to take out a licence to sell game as well it would be very onerous on him indeed. Surely, a small farmer who killed ground game in order to protect his crops should be at liberty to sell it. A man who killed a rabbit and three or four hares certainly should not have to take out a licence to sell them.

said, his proposal seemed to him to be worth consideration; but if the right hon. and learned Gentleman could not accept it he would not press it.

said, that the Amendment which he had to propose was so much in the spirit of the Bill that he must think it had been omitted by inadvertence. At present, the position of the farmer in regard to a gun licence was that he could scare birds without a licence, and that if he paid 10s. for a licence any person on his farm could be authorized to exercise the same right, if the gun were used to kill vermin and to scare birds. As the Bill now stood, if the farmer was to exercise the right which was given to him by it, of killing hares and rabbits, he would have to take out a gun licence not merely for himself, but for each one of the persons whom he authorized to kill ground game; and the effect of that would be really that the expense to which he would be put would amount to the cost of a game certificate. He assumed that the tenant was to have every right to protect his crops without cost. That was the object of the Bill, and it did seem to him to limit that principle in some way, when they called upon the tenant to pay 10s. for a gun licence before he could exercise this right, and to pay 10s. not only for himself, but for every one of the persons whom he authorized to kill. An hon. Member opposite had said that the Bill gave tenants sporting rights; but, as he (Mr. J. W. Barclay) understood it, it did nothing of that kind, because the tenant, at present, could not invite his neighbour to shoot with him over his farm. There was a very great difference between a tenant protecting his crops and his exercising sporting rights. He, therefore, hoped the Government would give way upon the point.

remarked, that the Amendment seemed to him to be in the wrong place. It surely was intended to come in at the end of the clause.

said, he could not agree to the Amendment, as it would bring down gun licences all over the country, which he thought would be entirely wrong.

said, he thought the Committee ought to have time afforded to it for the consideration of so important an Amendment as that now proposed.

said, the proposed alteration was to meet not probable, but improbable cases. It was conceivable, although he did not suppose such a thing could possibly be done, that contracts might be made with the object of defeating the Bill. The alteration he proposed would prevent anything of the kind. He only proposed to save contracts made previous to the introduction of the Bill.

said, it was entirely novel to make an Act come into operation before it was passed. The proposal was certainly a very serious one, and he should resist it.

agreed with the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho) that this was a most serious proposal, and it was rather remarkable that it should be sprung upon the Committee without the smallest warning. That was the second time the right hon. and learned Gentleman had sprung Amendments of an important kind upon the Committee without Notice. He did not wish to offer any factious opposition to the Bill; but he must say that an Amendment which introduced an entirely new principle, and struck at the root of another great principle, that of freedom of contract, was most improperly introduced in this way. He trusted that the Opposition would resist the Amendment, and take a division upon it.

said, if there was any objection to the proposal, he was willing to withdraw it, and bring it up on Report.

said, he entered his strongest protest against the suggestion of the right hon. and learned Gentleman that there were to be found landlords who had already contracted themselves out of the operation of the Bill. ["Hear, hear!"] That was a suspicion cast upon the character of landlords which he ventured to repudiate. Would the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere), who said "Hear, hear!" name any one landlord who had acted in that manner? He protested against any such principle being introduced into the Bill, and hoped it would be strongly resisted on Report.

said, when the hon. and gallant Baronet admitted there might be one or two such landlords, he had simply meant that he entirely agreed with him. He hoped the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary would make no more withdrawals. There were many hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway who were supporting the Bill on the understanding that there would be no further concessions to hon. Gentlemen opposite. Concessions upon those hon. Gentlemen were entirely thrown away. Like the horseleech, they were never satisfied; but cried, "Give, give!" He could assure the right hon. and learned Gentleman that, if his conciliatory spirit led him to make any further concessions, the consequence would be that many hon. Gentlemen would unite with, those opposite for the purpose of defeating the Bill.

said, he could see nothing of a conciliatory spirit on the part of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. He entered a strong protest against the introduction of the principle contained in the proposed Amendment. It was quite unfair to bring forward Amendments of the kind in this manner. The present Government had been called a "Cabinet of Confiscation;" but he was prepared to style it a Cabinet of sharp practice.

said, he rose to point out that if any further discussion arose upon the Amendment, it would be due to the remarks of the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere), who said if any farther concessions were made, a considerable number of hon. Gentlemen on his side of the House would join the Opposition for the purpose of throwing out the Bill.

rose to Order. He wished to know whether the noble Earl the Member for North Northumberland (Earl Percy) was in Order in the observations he was making, seeing that there was a Motion before the Committee that the Amendment be withdrawn?

said, the noble Earl was quite in Order.

said, so far from the Amendment being a concession, it was a fresh invasion of an established principle. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman had consented to withdraw the Amendment, he would discuss its principle no further; but he asked, if this provision were really brought forward to meet exceptional cases which, at the most, even according to the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere), could only arise in one or two instances, and which, according to the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself, were scarcely to be conceived, why had it been introduced at all? He protested against Amendments being brought in to meet exceptional cases.

said, he had heard the Amendment proposed with great pleasure, having a letter in his pocket informing him that several agreements had been made by landlords since the Bill was introduced for the purpose of contracting themselves out of it. He hoped the right hon. and learned Gentleman would persevere with the Amendment on Report.

said, the Amendment would introduce a novel and dangerous principle.

said, he rose for the purpose of contradicting a statement of the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere), who had stated that his hon. and gallant Friend the hon. Member for West Sussex (Sir Walter B. Barttletot) had said that there were two or three cases in which landlords had made agreements with their tenants for the purpose of contracting themselves out of the Bill. He begged to say that his hon. and gallant Friend made no such statement. He said there might be cases of the kind. It appeared to him (Mr. Rodwell) that the protest of his hon. and gallant Friend had been received with considerable favour by hon. Members on both sides of the House. He thought with regard to the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, that had he been in possession of the fact that cases had actually occurred, he might, perhaps, have been justified in providing against them; but, in the absence of proof, he (Mr. Rodwell) thought he was rather casting a slur upon those persons whose rights were, to a certain extent, invaded by the Bill. He trusted the right hon. and learned Gentleman, after the expressions of opinion which had taken place, would not think it worth while to persevere with the Amendment on Report. He did not think that either the landlord or tenant would be likely to do an act of that kind which would carry with it a certain amount of odium, and he trusted the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary would spare both the slur which would be cast upon them by the passing of such an Amendment.

said, he was not going to deal with the question of the Amendment; but there was one point arising out of the discussion which had taken place upon which he thought the Committee were entitled to further explanation before the matter proceeded. The hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) rose, and, adopting his most conciliatory manner, proceeded to call his (Mr. Chaplin's) hon. and gallant Friend the Member for West Sussex (Sir Walter Barttletot) a "horseleech;" and he added that if any further concessions were to be made to hon. Gentlemen on the side of the House opposite him, that he and his numerous Friends would probably, in the future, resist the further passage of the Bill. It was very desirable for the Committee to know from the right hon. and learned Gentleman whether or not he was going to be influenced by that description of menace; because if hon. Members were to understand that no concessions whatever were to be made to them, it was only fair to tell him that such a course was not likely to conduce to the further progress of the measure. He did not believe it was the intention of the right hon. and learned Gentleman to refuse all further concessions; but, if so, he should feel it his duty to move that Progress be reported.

said, his position was this—the only concessions he had made in the Bill had been made to hon. Gentleman opposite, and how far that had mitigated their opposition it was for the Committee to judge. He had entered into no terms with anybody on the subject, and the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) knew very well the nature of the statement which he had found it his duty to make. The only course he had to take in the matter was the course he deemed right.

said, he thought the Committee had been somewhat hard on his right hon. and learned Friend with reference to that proposal. No doubt, it was novel and suddenly brought in; but he (Lord Elcho) thought it was thoroughly in character with the rest of the Bill.

said, he wished to ask whether the clause on Report was to include parties who had contracted themselves out of the Act, or whether it was to include those who thought the Bill would not become law?

said, he entertained the strongest sense of the unfairness of the proposal, and he thought the Com- mittee ought not to allow it to be withdrawn. He should divide against the Motion.

said, he sympathized with the views of the hon. and learned Member for Bridport (Mr. Warton), because he thought that all that difficulty had arisen out of the reckless way in which the Amendment had been introduced. He had no wish whatever to retard the progress of the Bill: but he must say that if a division must be taken, and it was open to discuss the question, he should be obliged to go at some length into the subject, which was a most important one. The present was the only chance he should have of doing that, unless the hon. and learned Member withdrew his opposition to the withdrawal of the Amendment.

said, he hoped the hon. and learned Member for Bridport (Mr. Warton) would not press the matter to a division, and that the Amendment would be allowed to be withdrawn.

said, he rose to move, as an Amendment, in page 2, line 13, to leave out the word "not." He did so not with any idea of pressing the Amendment to a division, but simply to bring under the consideration of the Government the cases of Scotch farmers under lease. He had presented a Petition from the county which he reprepresented (Kirkcudbright) objecting to this 5th clause. That Petition declared that in Scotland, where leases generally existed, Scotch farmers would not be brought under the operation of the Bill for many years. With all due deference to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary, he (Captain Maxwell) must say that he thought it would be far more expedient, as well as wiser, to bring in a separate Bill for Scotland, for the cases of the farmers in England differed very materially. In England, most of the farmers were tenants at will; and, therefore, if they had any complaint to make to their landlords in regard to the over-preservation of game, they had at least the opportunity of giving short notice of giving up their farms; whereas, in Scotland, farmers were bound by their leases, which were usually for long terms of years, and unless they were freed from the conditions in them as to game, they could not escape from them, and this Bill would be consequently of no benefit. The cases of the Scotch farmers were entirely different from those of the English farmers, and if this Bill passed without alteration, it would create great irritation in Scotland, because farmers would come under its operation at different periods. Take the case, for instance, of three men who had farms under leases. A's lease expired next year, and, after that time, he would have the rights given him by this Bill; but B and C had leases running over 10 or 12 years, and the consequence would be that A would have the privilege of killing the ground game on his farm, while B and C, who rented land contiguous to his, would not. A, of course, would drive all the hares and rabbits off his farm by shooting, and they would go to the farms of B and C, who would, thereby, be very much prejudiced. He did think that that made out a very strong case for the consideration of the Committee, especially as that grievance of game was originally emphatically a Scotch grievance, mainly because Scotch farmers were not able to get rid of their leases. When a Scotch farmer applied for a farm, he was obliged to take into consideration certain facts in connection with the farm, and those facts guided him in his decision as to the rent he should pay. One of those facts was, of course, the amount of ground game on the farm when he applied for it. After he had taken the farm, however, that ground game might be very largely increased. He knew that it would be said that the farmer signed a contract with his eyes open; but, of course, when he signed this contract, he believed that the amount of ground game would not be above the average during the currency of his lease. But he (Captain Maxwell) maintained that it was a fact that in many cases the ground game had been increased very largely of late years, and, therefore, he did ask the Committee very strongly to take into consideration this question. He did hope, when the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary brought up the Bill on Report, that he would be able to give Scotch farmers some hope that at some definite period, say five years hence, he would make the Act apply to all farms in Scotland, whether they were under lease or not.

said, this was a very important question, and he was perfectly aware of the feeling of the great body of Scotch farmers on the subject. From the moment he introduced the Bill, and, indeed, from a period long before that, he had taken this matter into his careful consideration. He knew perfectly well that its provisions would place occupiers who held leases in a less favourable position than those who were merely tenants from year to year; but the Government, in introducing the measure, did not think themselves at liberty to touch existing contracts. The language of confiscation had been very lavishly, and, as he (Sir William Harcourt) thought, foolishly applied to the Bill by people who always used that word just as other people were in the habit of calling everybody who did not hold their particular creed an Atheist. It was merely a word of abuse; for all who did not like the measure called it a measure of confiscation, Confiscation, he thought, consisted in taking something from a person which he possessed. The Bill took away nothing that a man possessed; it merely prescribed certain terms by which he was to be bound whenever he made certain contracts. After its passage, therefore, a person would only make contracts subject to the condition that the game was to belong to the tenant, and not to himself, and he would arrange his contract upon that basis. Everybody who knew the meaning of words knew it was silly to call that confiscation. It was a common thing that people had to make contracts upon such a basis. It was, however, a very different thing, when persons had already made contracts upon one basis, to alter or change those contracts; that was a totally different thing from saying that a contract was to be made on bases known to both parties. There was a great difference between a new contract which had to be arranged and an old contract which had been arranged on different terms. It was for that reason that the Government thought it was necessary that existing contracts should be saved from the operation of the Bill. He admitted that it was a difficult matter to deal with; but he did not at all see how it was possible to arrive at a different result in cases of this description. A man who had made an engagement was entitled to say that he ought to have what he had bargained for before the Bill, and that the bargain that he had made ought not to be interfered with. For that reason, he could not see his way to agree to the Amendment.

said, if the right hon. and learned Gentleman had wished to invite discussion, he really did not think he could have adopted a course more likely to accomplish his object than by making the exceedingly gratuitous and uncalled-for attack which he had just thought fit to make on hon. Gentlemen on that side of the House. He (Mr. Chaplin) had said, and believed, and would believe, despite what had fallen from him, that this measure embraced the principle of confiscation. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had been good enough to call hon. Gentlemen on that side of the House, who held that opinion, foolish, ridiculous, absurd, and silly. He (Mr. Chaplin) begged leave to tell the right hon. and learned Gentleman that he would do far better, instead of lavishing his senseless abuse on the arguments of hon. Gentleman on that side of the House, if he would endeavour to adduce some argument of his own to disprove the statement they had made. He would take the definition of confiscation out of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's own mouth. He said confiscation consisted in taking away from a person that which he possessed. By that definition he would test the value of the assertion which he made during that debate. Who possessed at that moment the right of shooting ground game? Why, the landlord, as a general rule. [An hon. MEMBER: The tenant.] Well, what was the object of the Bill, then, if the tenant had it now? Why should they introduce the Bill if that were so? It was absurd to say that, for everybody knew, at the present moment, that landlords, generally speaking, did possess the sole right of shooting. Then, by this Bill, they were going to take away that sole right from the landlords, and were going to give it to the tenants, or, at any rate, they were going to do what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said was confiscation—namely, they were going to take away from a person that which he possessed. Until the right hon. and learned Gentleman was able to adduce some argument to prove that that was not the case, he would do well to abstain from using such strong language.

said, he would withdraw his Amendment; but he wished to record his protest against the Bill as it stood, because he thought it was most unjust to the farmers of Scotland not to give them some redress. He had, however, put his protest on record, and that was all that he felt it possible for him to do.

said, the farmers of Scotland felt so strongly about that question, that he would give the hon. and gallant Member who had just sat down (Captain Maxwell) an opportunity of recording his opinion by going to a division. He had listened with very great care and attention to the arguments of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary. The principle of the Bill he understood to be, that in the public interest, leaving out of the question the owner and occupier, the latter ought to have a right in every case to protect his crops from damage by ground game. That had now become necessary, not only in the interest of the tenants, but of the public at large. Upon that principle, it seemed to him, so far as he could judge, that Parliament was bound, in the public interest, to make these clauses applicable at once to all occupiers, giving compensation, of course, to those parties who were directly injured by that proceeding. He would define confiscation to be the taking away of property without giving compensation for it. He did not propose to do that at all. His suggestion was, that in every case the tenant who wished the farm he occupied to come within the operation of the Bill should pay such compensation as was fair and reasonable to his landlord. This question of ground game peculiarly affected Scotland, and if the Bill was not made applicable to existing leases it would be exceedingly hard on the Scotch tenants. As was admitted on both sides of the House, this game question was raised principally in Scotland, and it was a grievance from which they had long suffered. Now, however, that they had pressed it so far that the matter had been taken in hand by Parliament, it was very hard indeed on them that they should miss the protection and the benefit which English farmers were about to derive from the Bill. He (Mr. J. W. Barclay) should be sorry to say that the measure was a sham; because, even as it was, it would give, by-and-bye, a very substantial measure of relief to tenants in Scotland; but it did seem to him rather a long day for the reform of an abuse to do so by a Bill payable in 19 annual instalments. The leases in Scotland were mostly for 19 years, and many Scotch farmers feared they would not live to derive any benefit from the benevolent intentions of Her Majesty's Government'; and it would be on an average 10 years before the law took effect in Scotland. If the question were not settled now, it would certainly be raised at the next General Election, and the result would be that the Government of the day would have to bring in a measure amending this Bill. It would be much better to deal with the question finally. He knew that some hon. Gentlemen were quite willing that the game question as between landlords and tenants should be left as an open sore to push on the complete reform of the Game Laws. He did not take that view himself, and he was very anxious that the Bill should be a permanent settlement of the question. He therefore urged upon Her Majesty's Government to accept the Amendment he was about to propose. If they did not, the tenants would have a right to complain that instead of keeping hares and rabbits for their landlords only, they had to keep them for their neighbours also. As a result, tenants not under the provisions of the Bill would suffer more than they did before, because the effect of the measure would be to drive hares and rabbits from farms where shooting was allowed to others where they could not be killed. The landlord also would not benefit; because, if two or three tenants could kill game under this Bill, the effect on his exclusive sporting right would be just as much as if they all had had a similar right. He hoped the Government would accept the Amendment in the interest of both landlords and tenants. His Amendment simply was, that on the farmer giving notice to the landlord and paying him such compensation as might be determined either by a valuator or by the County Court Judge, the farm should be brought under the operation of this measure.

said, he wished to urge upon the Government that really this was a concession which might very properly be made. He entirely agreed with what the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary had stated, that limitations which had been introduced into the measure were all of them at present concessions to hon. Members opposite. He knew that the farmers in Scotland would like the Bill to apply to existing leases. That, how- ever, was not the sole question for the Committee to decide; for it must also inquire, not whether the Scotch farmers wanted this Amendment—and it was natural for them to want it—but whether the Bill could be fairly and justly applied to them. Having listened to what had been said, and having considered the matter carefully for himself, he did think it was perfectly possible, by means of compensation, to do justice between the parties, and to bring the Bill everywhere into operation at once. He was quite sure the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary, if he could, would agree with them on this point; because, if some Amendment of this kind were not made, the Bill really would not apply in Scotland at all until well on in the century; while, in Ireland, where 30 years' leases were in vogue, they would be fairly well into the next century before it would apply everywhere. As regarded yearly leases, as to which this Bill would come into operation very quickly, the Bill, in his (Mr. A. Elliot's) opinion, would have very little effect at all; because he had never yet been able to understand, if tenants were not able to protect themselves as the law at present stood, that they would be able to protect themselves from their landlords under the operations of the Bill. Such tenants would not be able to resist the pressure put upon them to forbear from the exercise of their rights. But whilst he objected to the principle which underlay the Bill, he wanted to make the best of it that could be made of it, and to give it a practical effect. It was perfectly clear that if a farmer had taken land without the right of killing game, he calculated the value of that right in rent he paid; and it, therefore, would be unfair to apply the Bill to the existing state of things without the tenant paying compensation. But, on the other hand, he could not see that there was any great difficulty in arranging what the value of that ground game was, and in making a fresh arrangement at once. He could not see why the landlord and tenant should not be allowed to agree as to the increase in the letting value of the land which would be brought about by these rights being transferred to the tenants; and, therefore, he ventured to think, as far as the case between the landlord and the tenant was concerned, that the better thing to do would be to bring the Act into immediate operation, and to allow a compensation to be paid. As regarded confiscation, it was very irrational to apply such a word to such an Amendment, because it should be easy to make sure that proper compensation was paid. It seemed to him, therefore, that hon. Gentlemen did carry their notions of not interfering with existing rights to an extraordinary extent. Every change in the law to some extent affected existing bargains. Every new addition to the Mines Regulation Act added so much to the cost per ton of the coal which was won; and yet if a man had made a contract to supply coal for so many years at a certain price, the effect of the Act was that he made a smaller profit than he otherwise would have done. They could very well have regard to all interests, could give substantial protection, and yet could very well pass this Amendment. He only wished that those who had leases and those who had not should be put in exactly the same position. Most of the shooting in Scotland, also, was grouse shooting, and, therefore, it would be very little affected by the Amendment. He had supported the proposal of the right hon. and learned Gentleman; but he would suggest to the Government that it would be far better to make the Act apply after the next shooting season, and then to apply it everywhere. By that means reasonable notice would be given to all parties; they would be able to make fresh arrangements, and no harm would be done to anyone.

said, he understood that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary definitely declined to make the Bill apply in any way to existing leases; but it appeared to him that the Act ought to name some date on which it should come into general operation, otherwise some occupiers of land might be kept out of the benefit of the Bill for a very unreasonable length of time. He was himself acquainted with instances where the right to kill game was separated from the occupancy, under a lease of 999 years, and he could hardly suppose the Government would wish that the occupier should wait until the expiration of his lease before he had the benefit of this Act. There was, of course, much room for difference of opi- nion as to the exact time when the Bill should come into general operation; but it seemed that three years hence, or the commencement of the shooting season of 1884, would be a very suitable time, and was preferable to the immediate application which was proposed by the hon. Member (Mr. A. Elliott). The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary had said that one of the principal objections to this Amendment was that it would give rise to great difficulty in assessing the compensation. That difficulty, of course, would be greatest in cases where the game was let, and where there were, consequently, three people having rights over the land—the landlord, the shooting tenant, and the agricultural occupier. By fixing a date for the Bill to come into general operation three or four years hence, they would give sufficient time for shooting leases to expire; and during those three or four years there would be ample opportunity for the making of fresh arrangements. He was sure the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary himself was desirous of putting all tenants on the same footing; and, therefore, if this Amendment were accepted, he (Mr. R. Bruce) believed that amicable arrangements would, in every ease, be made between the landlord and the tenant, and there would be no need to go to the Courts to settle the question of compensation. If, however, his hon. Friend went to a division, he should vote for him; though, at the same time, he was of opinion that it would be far better to get over the difficulty in the way he had suggested.

said, he desired to point out that this Amendment in reality was opposed to the principle contained in the 5th section of the Bill. In substance it was opposed to it, and in principle it was unquestionably so. The reasoning of the right hon. and learned Gentleman applied against that Amendment equally as it did against the last. Of course, the wording was different, but the substance was the same. What was the principle sought to be maintained in the 5th section? That no existing contract should be interfered with. This Amendment said that existing contracts should be interfered with; and though it also said that the interference should be accompanied by compensation, yet the principle remained the same. The fact that the tenant was to pay the compensation which was assessed by some person or other did not in the least degree take away from the fact that the Amendment interfered with existing contracts. The Amendment practically said to landlords or the occupiers of shooting—"I am going to interfere with the deliberate contract you have entered into, but I shall compensate you for the breach. "The landlord might reply—"I do not want compensation. I am perfectly content to look after my own interests, and I desire to retain these game rights; one of my considerations for entering into this contract was the reservation of those rights, and I can afford to have them, and I prefer standing to the contract to taking the compensation which is offered me under this disturbing process." Thus, the Amendment of the hon. Member (Mr. J. W. Barclay) was really opposed very substantially to the principle in the clause to which he (Mr. Gibson) had referred. The Amendment dealt very fully and completely with the entire subject. Where a landlord had reserved his right to game, and had himself transferred that right to another person by contract, the Amendment said that that somebody else should be compensated under the machinery of the clause. Yet the 5th clause, declaring that existing contracts should be preserved, was in terms to be retained, although, in reality, the Amendment was a roundabout and complicated way of indirectly doing what was done more directly by the previous Amendment. He hoped the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary would be content to leave the Bill as it now stood.

desired to point ont that any delay which might occur in the passing of this Bill was due to the speeches of hon. Gentlemen opposite. He merely rose to take up a point which dealt with a matter now before them. They were told that one of the great arguments for the Bill was that it was to cement the spirit of friendliness between landlord and tenant; there were to be no more heart-burnings, or ill-feelings on the matter of game. Yet, What did the hon. Gentleman the Member for Forfarshire (Mr. J. W. Barclay) now tell them? That if the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary stuck to the old prin- ciple, that when a Bill was passed existing contracts were always saved, and did not adopt the novel principle of interfering with leases, there would at the next General Election be an agitation to do away with this state of things. That was what was before them. The game question was not to be settled by this Bill, judging by the speeches of hon. Gentlemen opposite, especially of that hon. Gentleman who always spoke in the name of the farmers of Scotland.

said, it was not really his fault that he was obliged to speak, and he did not think that he had addressed the Committee very often. He must remind hon. Gentlemen that he warned the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary that this question would be raised, and that he would be obliged to speak upon it. According to the arguments that had been used, if a man had one coat, and they gave him two pairs of trousers for it, they did him no harm. It was not the less confiscation that they gave the landlord compensation under this proposal, for the landlord would not get what he wanted—the game—and, therefore, the Amend-mend proposed confiscation. His hon. Friend opposite (Mr. J. W. Barclay) had said that there were many measures pressed through the House of Commons which interfered with existing contracts. He (Earl Percy) would remind him that it was one thing to say that legislation might incidentally affect existing contracts, and another that that House expressly, and not by implication, would make all existing contracts null and void. That was what was proposed to be done by this Amendment; and he could not see what security there was, in fact, for contracts at all under the Bill. The objections urged to the measure had been urged by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary himself quite as strongly as by any other Member in the House; and if the right hon. and learned Gentleman would only apply his own arguments to his own Amendments, he (Earl Percy) should be quite satisfied. He was sorry to hear from hon. Gentlemen opposite that the concessions which the right hon. and learned Gentleman had made, and the Amendments which were introduced into the Bill, were considered to come from the Opposition. He should have thought, from the course which his hon. Friend and some of the hon. Gentleman round him had pursued with regard to the measure, that some of those Amendments met -with his approval. But he was very glad to learn, from a Party point of view, that that was not so, because then the country would know that he and those around him had no claim because they had induced the Government to accept them.

rose to move—

"That it is inexpedient, in the interest of Public Business, that important measures should be brought under the consideration of the House at a period of the Session at which it is impossible that they should receive adequate discussion."

The hon. Gentleman said, he was going to call attention to the present state of Business. The point which he wished to bring before the House was not the inconvenience which Members were suffering from having to remain in town at an unusual period—though that might be a proper subject to discuss—but he wished to direct attention to what he considered a grave question from a purely Constitutional point of view. They had now reached the 20th of August. At that period the House was usually either prorogued or was merely finishing that formal and necessary Business which interested few Members, but which had to be done, and which might be done without the attendance of Members and without discussion. But the Business now before the House could not be done without discussion. They had still to consider the details of the Burials Bill, a subject that would excite a great deal of interest both in that House and in the country. They had still to complete the discussion on the Indian Budget. There was a time when the Opposition—the Party now in power—was disposed to make it a Party question whether that Budget should be taken in May or July; but they had now reached August 20, and the Indian Budget was still undiscussed. He could hardly doubt that there must be a debate of some length—and probably of some interest—on the foreign policy of the Government. The Census Bills raised many points of interest which would involve discussion. He trusted they might finish the Committee on the Hares and Rabbits Bill to-night; but he trusted also, that on the third reading of the Bill, there would be some protest against the principle upon which it was constructed. The question of South Africa had to be raised on Supply; there was Supply itself to be finished; and, in connection with Supply, he believed Gentlemen from Ireland meant to give the House the benefit of a great deal, doubtless, of valuable information; and they should be fortunate if they did not have to discuss before the end of the Session the state of Ireland. Thinly attended as the House was, and tired as they were now—["No!"]—hon. Members opposite might not be tired, but he was. At all events, Gentlemen would not deny that the House was thinly attended. He recollected, about three months ago, it was thought necessary to ask the Prime Minister to take steps for increasing the accommodation of the House. Since the serious Business of the Session had commenced, he wanted to know whether any hon. Gentleman on the opposite side had found himself incommoded from want of space? The state of Public Business being such as he had described, he thought the Government must feel that they had pursued a somewhat unusual course, as they must admit that at this time—the 20th of August—it was scarcely possible, as his Resolution said, that important measures brought before the House could receive adequate discussion. At all events, that was the opinion of the Prime Minister on the 19th of July. When the right hon. Gentleman was asked whether he would give facilities for continuing the discussion on the Sale of Intoxicating Liquors on Sunday (Wales) Bill, he used these words—

"I think it will be admitted that we are too far advanced in the year to have any hope of having an impartial discussion of the subject such as hon. Members would desire."—[3 Hansard, ccliv. 773.]

Therefore, it appeared that, though in the opinion of the Prime Minister the 19th of July was too late to discuss the Sale of Intoxicating Liquors on Sunday (Wales) Bill, the 20th of August was not too late to discuss measures which affected the interest not of Wales alone, but of every part of the United Kingdom. He would give one or two examples of the inconvenience which had arisen from discussing important questions at that extremely late period. It would be in the recollection of the House that the most important measure which had hitherto occupied their time was the Employers' Liability Bill. Now, in connection with that Bill, the most important Amendments, in the opinion of large numbers of Members of the House, both of those opposed and those not opposed to the Bill, was a clause proposed by the hon. Member for South Durham (Mr. J. W. Pease), and a clause proposed in a similar sense by the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Knowles), dealing with the subject of insurance. The first time that question came on was at half-past 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, when the House was worn out by a Sitting of 12 hours. The next time it came on both the hon. Members he referred to had left the House, and the Committee lost the advantage of their opinions on the most important question that was connected with a most important Bill. In the same Bill an Amendment was moved by the hon. Member for Bedfordshire. He recollected, that when that Amendment was proposed at half-past 2 in the morning, the adjournment was moved by the hon. Member for Bridport (Mr. Warton), and the right hon. Gentleman who had charge of the Bill (Mr. Dodson) got up and asked the House not to adjourn at that hour. The hon Member for Bridport on that recommendation withdrew his Motion, and the Bill was proceeded with at the special request of the Go- vernment. He recollected that the hon. Member for Bedfordshire could not get his Amendment adequately discussed, and he had to write to a daily paper and request the House of Lords to consider the Amendment which the House of Commons failed adequately to discuss. He could multiply examples of the inconvenience that had arisen from the length of their protracted Sittings. Only last night an incident had occurred which proved the perfunctory manner in which the Business was got through. The Merchant Shipping (Carriage of Grain) Bill was brought on at half-past 2 in the morning, and passed through the whole stage of Committee between that hour and 4 o'clock, in the absence of the hon. Member for Hull (Mr. Norwood), who took a special interest in the subject. Was there anything in any of the Bills brought under notice of sufficient urgency to make it justifiable in the Government to adopt that unusual course? The two Bills which had occupied most of their time were the Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill and the Employers' Liability Bill. With regard to the Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill, he believed no one regretted its introduction more than the Members of Her Majesty's Government. They must have known perfectly well when they introduced it what would be its fate, if not in that House, in "another place." He did not hesitate to say that it had gone to the limbo of abortive legislative efforts unhonoured and unmourned by any single person on either side of the House, including the Gentlemen from Ireland. The other Bill which occupied most of their time was the Employers' Liability Bill—a Bill, he admitted, of very great importance, but one of which those who were most ardent in its support would not for a moment say that it could be considered a final measure. Everyone acquainted with the subject must be perfectly aware that another Bill, dealing with the same subject in a more logical manner, must be brought in not many years hence; and yet these were the two Bills for which the Government had asked the House to sit on until, he was afraid, the middle of September. That Bill being admitted to be of no pressing character, he should like to know what was the justification which the Government alleged for the course they had pursued? He had devoted some time, and all the ingenuity at his command, to discover the motives by which they were actuated. The first thing which occurred to him was that they were making a strong effort to show that the General Election had cut the Session in two; but it was the duty of the Government to cut their coat according to their cloth, and not endeavour to force measures through in the short time at their disposal, and when it was impossible that those measures could be fully and fairly discussed. The Government might, perhaps, allege that their calculations were upset by unexpected Business taking up the time of the House at the beginning of the Session. There was the Business of the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Bradlaugh); but if there was a waste of time on that subject, it was largely owing to the manner in which the Government themselves conducted the question. [Opposition Cheers.] Perhaps hon. Members opposite would remember the pressure the Government had put on them—the exertions the Government had to make—in order that they should return on the first vote they had given. Then there was the Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill. If ever a Government dug a pit for itself to fall into it was that Bill. They must have known the opposition they would have met with in that House, and the fate which was before the Bill in "another place." Then, when he looked to the state of the House, it should be remembered that, supposing the constitution of Members as vigorous as it was in June, they were wearied, and the Government knew they would be absent, and they must take the House as it was. There was still another excuse that might be put forward in defence of the Government. They might say Business had met with undue obstruction. He was not aware that any Minister had made that complaint but the Home Secretary; but, still, the accusation had been made, both in the House and out-of-doors. He did not deny that those who made that accusation were wise in their generation. There was no accusation more easy to make, or more telling, or more difficult to refute. Those who were new to the House—and he believed there were 220 new Members—might naturally be induced to believe that if they heard remarks which were irrelevant or untimely, they might imagine the Business of the House was being obstructed; but it required no knowledge of the House to be aware that when Business was discussed by a large number of hon. Gentlemen of very different opinions there must be always talkers who had better be silent, and Members who might make Motions when they had better be still. If he were asked to indicate whence, if anywhere, Obstruction proceeded, he should point to the Benches opposite; and he should remind the House of the interminable Amendments, and of the no less interminable speeches delivered by hon. Gentlemen opposite on the subject of the Employers' Liability Bill. He did not accuse the Gentlemen who brought forward these Motions of any intention to talk out the Bill; but, still, if there had been a deliberate attempt to obstruct the proceedings of Parliament, that attempt had its origin, not on the Opposition, but on the Government side of the House. The Gentlemen who orginally made Obstruction a bye-word in that House desired to render the whole Parliamentary machine unworkable. They attempted to stop Business, and to bring into contempt a Parliamentary system for which they themselves had no love.

wished to know whether, as neither Mr. Raikes nor Mr. Lowther was in the House, those remarks were in Order?

proceeded to point out that the result of stopping legitimate criticism by accusations of that sort would be to interfere with the proper relations of Parliament quite as effectually as Obstruction itself could do. He had disposed of all the justifications, as far as he was able to discover them, which the Government might urge in defence of their conduct; and he would now point out the evils which must necessarily result from the action which the Government had been pleased to take in this matter. Towards the end of the Session, and as the House began to thin, the power of the Government day by day increased. Full discussion became more and more impossible, not only because the Members who criticized were away, but because the Members who ought to listen were also absent. For more than half this Session the Government had had powers which no Government ever before possessed for carrying on Business. About the 14th of July the Prime Minister came down and asked that Wednesdays should be taken for Government Business, and soon afterwards Fridays were also taken. The Prime Minister remarked that previous Governments had at that period of, the year always asked for exceptional powers. But the right hon. Gentleman forgot, in deciding the date at which the Government should obtain exceptional powers, that regard ought to be had not only to the time which had elapsed since the beginning of the Session, but likewise to the time which had still to run before the end of the Session. The result would be that before the Session closed at least half the time would have been occupied with Public Business, and the Government would have taken every single day of the week except Friday at 9 o'clock. No previous Government ever had such powers. They also had Mondays for Supply, which no Government every had before, except the late Government during the Session at the beginning of this year. Independent Liberals, who then protested against that privilege being granted to the Government, appeared now to have got over their scruples. He did not see any protection against the autocracy with which the House was threatened, except the endurance of right hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench. He supposed there was a limit after which even the endurance of Ministers would not hold out; and when the only Gentleman capable of leading the House was a junior Lord of the Treasury, the Government might then be forced to reconsider the policy they had adopted. A tyranny and absolutism of that sort was not one which they should desire to continue to exist. This house could not now properly attend to Business, and the other House was reduced to even a worse condition—not, he was bound to say, from overwork, for they had sent up hardly anything to the Lords this year. As the other House was not in a position to give adequate attention to Government Bills, he maintained that the Government were not carrying out their proper function when they attempted to legislate under such conditions. They went to the country at the last General Election and abused the late Government for carrying on important transactions behind the back of Parliament. They alleged that certain matters had been kept back which it would have been proper and expedient for Parliament to consider. Even if that allegation were true the late Government had only prevented the House from doing what it could never do adequately—namely, discuss the details of foreign negotiations while they were in progress. The present Government had made that discovery since they were in Office. But the present Government desired to prevent the House from discharging its proper function of discussion in all their details, and in the presence of all the Representatives of the people, the measures brought forward for its consideration. The hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the Resolution of which he had given Notice.

It appears to me that the hon. Member for Hertford, in the course of his observations, made several assumptions which were scarcely constitutional, as to the knowledge possessed by this House of the proceedings of the other branch of the Legislature. The hon. Member assumed that Her Majesty's Government and the majority in this House know, or ought to know, what would be the fate of a certain Bill in "another place;" and towards the close of his observations he expressed his opinion that the other branch of the Legislature was not now in a condition to conduct the Business of Legislation. Now, Sir, I am rather inclined to believe that we have no right, unless we receive some communication of a formal character, to ground our Business or our deliberations on any knowledge derived from hearsay of the state of the other Chamber. There is a great deal in the Motion of the hon. Member, and there are some things in his speech, with which I am extremely disposed to concur. I quite agree with him that it is inexpe- dient and highly undesirable that important measures should have to be brought under the consideration of Parliament at a late period of the Session. Hon. Gentlemen opposite are wrong if they think—I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman said it, but it has been said in the course of this Session—that there are no precedents for the course the Government are pursuing. I believe there was a precedent in the year 1835. ["Oh, oh!"] The precedent of that year was absolutely applicable to the present time, when the House met at very much the same time of the year as this House met, when it passed some of the most important measures ever enacted, and when the King's Speech on the Prorogation of Parliament was delivered on the 10th of September. But I do not think it necessary to go back to precedents, or to avail myself of any one of the excuses which the hon. Member has been good enough to suggest as the defence of the Government. I have said I am perfectly willing to admit that it is highly inexpedient that important Business should be transacted when the House is exhausted, and when many hon. Members are absent. But cases frequently arise in which it is impossible for anyone to do that which he would desire to do, or that which is absolutely good in itself, and where he has only a choice of many evils before him. I think it can be shown that the course the Government are taking now, and in which they are supported by a large majority of the House, is the only course which they could have taken; or, at all events, is the course attended with least evil and inconvenience, and that, in the position in which the Members of the Government found themselves, it was impossible to take any other course. I am willing to admit there is a sort of unwritten law that measures of great importance should not be taken late in the Session. That sort of understanding, no doubt, has existed, and it is desirable that it should exist. But I entirely deny that there is any hard-and-fast rule on the subject, because the inconvenience of any such hard-and-fast rule would be obvious and would be very considerable. It is quite obvious that if any rule of that kind existed, where two or three measures of considerable importance were introduced at an early period of the Session, it would be open to Members to take objection to Bill No. 2 or 3, and to prevent discussion and to protract consideration until a late period of the Session; and certainly no facilities should be given of turning what is a convenient understanding into a hard-and-fast rule. If there has been on the part of the Government and the House an understanding of the kind referred to, there has also been a correlative understanding, equally convenient in its way, that Bills introduced at an early period of the Session should be discussed within moderate bounds and limits. The understanding as to when important measures should not be taken is, as I have said, convenient and desirable; but that convenience must be subject, above all, to the interests of the country; and I believe there are few hon. Members who will deny that the country, as represented by the constituencies, does require legislation, and that there are many subjects on which legislation is necessary. That is a proposition which, I think, was sufficiently proved by the result of the General Election. The majority of the Members of this House are undoubtedly pledged to support a Government which will introduce legislation upon a great variety of subjects. I do not know how we can have any plainer or more authoritative expression of the opinion of the country than that of Members of Parliament who are fresh from a General Election. Well, if that be the case, if it be the case that the country which has sent us here does desire legislation, and if the necessities for prolonged discussion are so great as the proceedings of this Session have proved them to be, what alternative is left to the Government and the House but to protract the Session somewhat beyond the limits which it is usually convenient to observe? I have referred to the necessity which seems now to exist for much fuller discussion than seemed formerly to exist. I think no one will deny that. I think anyone who has sat in this House for any considerable period will be willing to admit that every question—questions of legislation and questions that are raised for general discussion—are discussed now at much greater length, and in much greater detail, than formerly. I think that a great many measures of former times—measures of quite as great importance in principle, and at least equal in complexity, to any that hare been introduced in recent times—were discussed in this House with much less expenditure of speech, with much less expenditure of time, and I think that those Members who recollect those debates will say that they were at least as deeply discussed, both as to principle and as to the details which they contained. There is no question which can require, as some hon. Members appear to think, unlimited discussion. It is an entirely novel principle that a discussion should not be considered terminated as long as there is any hon. Member who has anything to say about it, and who is able and willing to say it. No doubt, the conditions of Public Business have changed of recent years. Many more Members are competent and willing to take part in discussions, and a greater sub-division of interests exists; and there is, perhaps, more occasion for protracted debates than there used to be. But I cannot help thinking that some of the increased prolixity of debate has arisen from causes over which the House ought to have some control. My right hon. Friend at the head of the Government pointed out the other day that the practice had greatly increased of multiplying the occasions for discussing the principle of a measure which had been already fully debated. My right hon. Friend might have gone further, and quoted many instances, both in the present and in the late Parliament, in which details of measures have been discussed on the second reading, and in which the principles of measures have been discussed over and over again in Committee. I think if the House tolerates or encourages an undue extension of the opportunities of discussion, both of the principles and of the details of measures, it tolerates that which it has within its control, and which it ought, in the interests of Public Business, to exercise some control over. Let the House consider for one moment the facilities which now exist for absolutely unlimited discussion in the absence of any self-control on the part of hon. Members. Some of the Bills which come before the House are of great length and complexity, and necessarily lead to prolonged discussions; but even in the case of Bills of a simple character the practice now existing permits hon. Members to discuss the question of principle not only on the second reading, but in every clause and in every Amendment to a clause. With one exception, the Bills introduced by the Government this Session were Bills of an extremely short and simple kind. That exception was the Employers' Liability Bill; and I do not for one moment complain of the discussions which took place upon that measure. Whatever may be thought of the Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill, that Bill contained a very simple principle—[Ironical Opposition Cheers, and An hon. MEMBER: Confiscation!]—and I do not know, if the old-established form and practice had been regarded, what excuse there was for any hon. Member to take any other opportunity than the legitimate one of discussing the principle of the Bill on its second reading. Some hon. Gentlemen cheer my remark that the principle of the Bill was simple; but, notwithstanding its simplicity, it took the House 11 nights to discuss it fully, and then one or two other partial discussions. Then there is the Hares and Rabbits Bill, which we have been discussing lately. That is not a Bill of a complicated character. The principle which it contains is one that is easily understood; and when the House decided, without a division, upon its second reading, one would have thought that a continual reference in Committee to its principle was unnecessary. But it does not in the least facilitate the passage of a Bill that its principle should be clear and simple, and its provisions short; because, by the Forms of the House, the clearest and most intelligible measure may be converted into a code of the most complicated description, containing all manner of provisions subverting the principle of the Bill. These are the facilities which are in the possession of hon. Members for unduly protracting the labours of the Session, though this enumeration does not exhaust them. Take the case of Committees of Supply. We have more than 200 Votes to pass, and if hon. Members think it is their duty to their constituents to take advantage of these 200 Votes to discuss once a year the whole of the principles which underlie our Administrative Departments, and every detail of those Administrative Departments, how is it possible that the House can either, within a convenient or inconvenient time, devote itself to other Business? But that is what has, to a very great extent, been done this Session. The hon. Member has given the House some illustrations of his argument. I will not follow him into them; but I will give the House an illustration of how these facilities for protracting debates may be used, and have been used within this short Session by some hon. Members of this House. Let the House understand that I am not bringing any charge against any hon. Member. Any hon. Member who is in the possession of the most unlimited powers of protracting the debate, so long as the Speaker does not tell him that he is wilfully obstructing the Business of the House, is in a position in regard to which I do not know that any Member has the right to blame him. Let me just show how these facilities are availed of by some hon. Members. I had the curiosity to have an inquiry made into the number of speeches delivered by some active Members of this House. I do not know that I have selected those Members who have most distinguished themselves. I find in the records of Hansard and The Times—and I am afraid I shall hardly do justice to some of those hon. Members, for in cases where our discussions have been protracted into a late hour of the night, they have not been reported at all, and, consequently, they have found no public record—but I find from these sources that the hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) has spoken 105 times, and has asked 18 Questions; the hon. Member for Portsmouth (Sir H. Drummond Wolff)has made 68 speeches, and has asked 34 Questions; the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill) has made 74 speeches, and has asked 21 Questions; the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) has spoken 58 times, and has asked 14 Questions; the hon. Member for Ennis (Mr. Finigan) 47 times, and has asked 14 Questions; and the hon. Member for Queen's County (Mr. A. O'Connor) 55 times, but he has only asked two Questions. In fact, I find that six Members of the House, within the limited period of the Session, have made 407 speeches. I believe what I have been hitherto considering have been facts which can be verified; but I am going for one moment into the region of speculation, and, if I am wrong, any hon. Member can correct it by a speculation of his own. I do not think it will be unfair to say that every one of these speeches averages ten minutes. ["No, no!"] Well, it does not in the least matter, for my purpose, whether they average ten minutes or five. My calculation is on the basis of ten minutes for each speech, and, of course, I have made no estimate of unreported speeches late at night, or of the amount of time consumed in the discussions provoked by those speeches. Suppose these 407 speeches occupy 4,070 minutes, or 68 hours. In a House of Commons week we have 37 working hours—eight on an ordinary night, and five on Wednesdays. According to the calculation, these six hon. Members occupied nearly a fortnight of the available working time of the Session. I am not making the slightest complaint of the activity of these hon. Members, though I do not know that they have any overwhelming or superior claim to engross the attention of the House over that which is possessed by many other hon. Members; but I find that if the remaining 642 Members thought it necessary to speak as often and at the same length as the hon. Members I have referred to, it would take 215 weeks, or something over four years, to get through the ordinary Business of a Session. And these efforts of these hon. Members have been all made in the comparatively short space of three months. The Session usually extends over six months, and it is not unfair to assume that in such a time their activity would have been doubled, so that the whole House, if all were equally active, would require for a single Session a period of eight years. It is, therefore, perfectly immaterial to my argument whether I give an average of ten minutes or five, for if I reduced the speeches to five minutes in duration, I should only prove that the House by following their example would occupy the period of four years for the work of an ordinary year, which, as has been observed by Euclid under similar circumstances, is absurd. I have not used, nor do I intend to use, the word "Obstruction;" but we have it on the best authority—the authority of the hon. Members themselves, and I am therefore bound to accept it—that their object has been, not to obstruct, but, on the contrary, to assist the Business of the House; but what would be the consequence if all the Members of the House were to assist the Government in the same way? What I want the House to consider is if, with these unlimited facilities for discussion, instead of desiring to assist the measures of the Government, these six Members had shown equal activity in a desire to obstruct, what would then have been the effect! These are some of the consequences which arise from the mode in which we conduct our Business, and these are some of the difficulties which force the Government to take the course so strongly reprobated and condemned by the hon. Member for Hertford. After what I have stated, I think it is quite unnecessary for me, as I began by saying, to fall back upon any of the excuses which the hon. Member was good enough to offer the Government. After the examination I have made of the assistance we have received from the hon. Gentlemen I have mentioned I am astonished, not that we should be here to discuss measures of importance, but that we should make so much progress as we have made, and that we should be so near, as I hope we are, to the conclusion of our protracted labours. But, seriously speaking, it seems to me a matter for the consideration of the House that all this should have been done in the name of freedom of discussion. It appears to me that no phrase can be more grossly misused to describe the state of things that might possibly exist. There is, in fact, freedom of discussion for some hon. Members, but for the great majority none at all. What is possible, what may happen, what does happen to a certain extent, and what I fear in future Sessions may happen to a still greater extent, is an unlimited, a forcible, and an uncontrolled appropriation of the time of the House by any Members who have sufficient self-confidence and sufficient disregard of the opinion of the majority of the House on both sides to avail themselves ruthlessly of their privileges. It may be freedom of discussion to them; but it is the complete exclusion from discussion of a vast number of Members, and the enforced silence of many a Member who has at least as much to say—perhaps more—on our most important discussions as those whose voices are so frequently heard, and whom the House would as willingly—perhaps more willingly—hear. Sir, these are no new opinions I have uttered, as I expressed them in the last Session of the late Parliament. My opinion is that the grievance is one which, if the House does not shortly express its opinion of it, may become intolerable, and which is not far from having reached that point now. My opinion is that when the House and the country understand what is the real nature of the circumstances which have made it necessary to discuss important measures at this period of the Session, when they discover what is the real nature of those causes, they will be more inclined to reprobate and censure a system of procedure under which the protraction of debate is possible, and to justify the Government in not having abandoned measures which the country desired that they should pass.

We have, Sir, to thank the noble Lord for a very interesting speech; and I am sure that under the melancholy circumstances in which the House is placed, and seeing that we are probably condemned to sit here for a good while yet to come, it is a matter really to congratulate ourselves upon that we have among us one who can enable us to pass an evening so agreeably. I fully admit that there is much force in many of the things the noble Lord has said; but I hope we shall not allow ourselves to be drawn away by the speech to which we have just listened from the really important question which was raised by my hon. Friend, and which, I think, was also raised by many of the statements of the noble Lord himself. The noble Lord has said that this is not the first occasion on which he has called attention to the undue waste of time in the discussions of this House, and I thank him for having made that remark; because it may be of some value to hon. Gentlemen who were not Members of the last Parliament, and who apparently think that there was then no obstruction, and that there never was any obstruction such as they have, or think they have, encountered in the present Session. The noble Lord has unconsciously borne testimony to the fact that it is an evil—if it be an evil—of very recent growth. He has taken the trouble to count the speeches which a certain number of hon. Members have made in the course of the present Session. I very much doubt if it ever occurred to anyone to count the number of speeches made by a single Member in a Session of the last Parliament. I am sorry to say that, not having foreseen the calculations which the noble Lord presented to us, I have not provided myself with the calculations which might have been made on the other side. But I rather think I should not be far from saying that the 400 speeches made by the five or six Members referred to by the noble Lord were not more than something like half of the speeches made by a single Member in a Session of the last Parliament. [Cries of "Name!"] In the absence of the precise figures I had rather not give the name, although it may be possible to give names by-and-bye. Will any hon. Gentleman tell me that there has been any Member, or any three Members, of this House in the present Session who have made as many speeches as, let us say, the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell)? [An hon. MEMBER: Chelsea.] Well, say Chelsea. But I should rather prefer to remind the noble Lord of the length of time that was spent in the last Parliament over measures in which he himself took a great interest. When the noble Lord speaks of the length of time spent in discussing some of the measures which the present Government have brought before the House of Commons, might I ask him whether he had in his mind the length of time that was spent over such measures as the Regimental Exchanges Bill and the Army Discipline Bill? The Army Discipline Bill was a measure of very great importance, and one on which it was right and proper that there should be a good deal of discussion; but, certainly, the same questions were raised and debated upon it over and over again, and a very great length of time was spent in the discussion of that measure. But I really think we do no good in balancing, by charges of this kind, one side of the House against the other; and it is far from my object to enter upon a question of that kind. But when the noble Lord has taken this line, I feel it my duty to remind him that there are two sides to the picture. Let us, however, go seriously into the question which my hon. Friend has raised. The principle he lays down will, I think, command very considerable support—namely, that it is inexpedient in the interest of Public Business that important Business should be brought under the consideration of the House at a period of the Session at which it cannot receive adequate consideration. Taking that, without refer- ence to the circumstances of the present Session, everybody would agree that it was a very reasonable proposition. But what are the circumstances of the present Session? We have in one sense undoubtedly had a shortened Session. It may be, in one sense, said to have commenced on the 20th of May, when the Gracious Speech from the Throne was delivered. But it must be remembered that, although that was the beginning of the present Session, it was not the beginning of the work of the year. A great deal of very important work that must be done within the year had been already done. The whole of the Army Estimates, which usually occupy a considerable time, had been passed. The Army Discipline Bill, which, on certain occasions, takes up much of the time of the House, had also been passed. Supplementary Estimates had been taken, and the Budget had been passed. Therefore, the House met on the 20th of May with the work of the Session lightened by a great deal of important work. At the opening of the Session Her Majesty was advised to recommend to the House several measures which were thought desirable and important. The programme was not excessive, and it did appear very possible that it might be adopted, if it were not interrupted by other Business. The Government had considerable advantages in the course of the Session; one advantage which we were only able to obtain on one occasion, and that after a good deal of fighting, they obtained at once—the entire command of the Mondays for Supply. Therefore, when we talk of the number of Government nights at their and our disposal, the number was very much more valuable to them than it had been to us. Then, again, they have been free from Motions challenging their foreign policy, for we have been most chary and reserved in raising questions as to their foreign policy. ["Hear, hear!"] The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster cheers that statement, as if we had anything to shrink from. [Mr. JOHN BRIGHT: I said "very properly."] The right hon. Gentleman is always charitable; but sometimes his charity goes a little astray. Hon. Members, like other people, judge others by themselves; and I suppose the right hon. Gentleman cannot easily understand the views and the feelings which may prompt an Opposition to refrain from embarrassing a Government by raising discussions which may possibly be inconvenient. But I hope, if we are challenged in this way, we shall be allowed, before the Session comes to an end, to have some explanation of this remarkable foreign policy, with regard to which we really should very much like to know what the Government have to tell us. If I may judge from the interpretation of the right hon. Gentleman, I presume they rather wish to tell us what they are doing, and what the results are; and I hope that this is an indication that we may soon have a statement on the subject. As I was saying, that does not at all affect my argument, which is that during the present Session the Government have had, so far as any interruption from the Opposition is concerned, a much fairer and freer field than we had. I suppose it will not be denied by anyone that we had to meet a great many Motions and discussions which interrupted the progress of ordinary Business, and that they have not. The Government mentioned in Her Majesty's Speech certain measures which they thought it desirable to bring forward. There was not a word to be said against their submitting those measures for consideration; but since they have done that we have found ourselves—I will not say whether through their fault or their misfortune—engaged in discussions which were not contemplated at the time, and which took up a great deal of time; and they must take into consideration that time has been occupied necessarily by these interruptions. The Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill was not contemplated at the time of the Queen's Speech. I do not wish to raise now the question whether that was or was not a proper Bill to have brought forward; but I do think that if it was, considering its great importance, it would have been well it should have been mentioned in the Queen's Speech, and that we should have had it brought forward in a more solemn and deliberate way than it was. If you occupy so much time as you did over measures like that which had not been announced, it was not unnatural that you should diminish the time for the discussion of the measures you had announced. I wish to say a word with regard to the character of the measures which have been actually submitted to us, and especially those to which reference has been made. I do not go into their merits or demerits; but they have been measures of this character—they have touched the interests and social relations of different classes in this country; and when you introduce measures which closely touch such interests, and the social relations between class and class, you must expect that there will be a considerable discussion of those measures, if they are to result in anything satisfactory. If you take upon yourselves to regulate by Act of Parliament the relations between landlord and tenant with regard to game, or if you take upon you to settle the relations between employer and workman in the case of accidents, you must expect that the measures, if they are to be of a final or stable character, will have a great deal of discussion. I complain of that class of legislation when carried too far. I think it is a very great mistake to regulate by Act of Parliament matters which are better left to the freedom of private arrangement; but if you will insist on curtailing individual liberty, if you will insist upon prescribing what everybody is to do and everybody is not to do, you must expect that there will be a great deal of discussion of details, which may, perhaps, appear to you to be unnecessary, with your clear views of the manner in which Parliament ought to deal with those interests. But I say it is very hard upon the House, and hard upon the country, that measures of that sort should be pressed forward in such a manner as at all to cripple the fair and full discussion of them. What have we been doing lately? We have been endeavouring to do what the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster once told us we ought not to do—to drive two omnibuses abreast through a small and narrow space. We have been endeavouring to deal with two large and difficult questions—the relations between employers and workmen, and the relations between landlords and tenants—at one and the same time; and it has been found exceedingly difficult to carry both those measures properly forward, and to give them the discussion which they demand, and, at the same time, to suit the arrangements which the House has been induced to make. I wish to lay stress upon the last words. Sometimes we are taunted by the public with being so desirous of getting away to the moors and to other amusements that we will not submit to remain longer at Westminster to conduct the Business of the country. I emphatically deny that there is any justice in that charge. My firm belief is that the Members of the House of Commons, equally on that side and on this, if they have fair warning of what is expected of them, will be found in their places. What I complain of is this—the noble Lord fairly admitted that we have been always led to understand the Business of Parliament would be concluded by about the middle or the latter part of August; and in the present Session we have been especially invited to believe it by the representations made to us at the time we were induced to give up all the days of the week to the Government by the assurance of the Prime Minister that, in the circumstances, he thought it probable the House would not called upon to sit into the last week of August. I say it is not fair to talk of any laxity on the part of the House when they have had this kind of assurance given them. Members have made their plans; many of them have other occupations besides their public duty in this House; and it is not always pleasure, but it may be other business which is adapted to the duration of the Session. And then we find ourselves, at the time when the end of the Session ought to be approaching, confronted with several measures of great importance which the Government insist upon our passing, which they challenge us to stay here and pass, and yet which we cannot pass adequately, and properly, and to the satisfaction of the country without discussion. You may say that futile objections are raised, and from your point of view they may be futile; it may be that they have no force in them, and that you can dispose of them; but they are objections which are entertained not only by the individual Members who put them forward, but by large classes in the country, and which, even though they are absurd and weak, ought to be answered publicly. This is the only security for our legislation. The great merit of English legislation is this—that it takes place after full discussion, after hearing all that has been stated, or that can be stated, by the in- terests which are affected, on one side or on the other, and that, after everything has been heard, after foolish objections have been heard and fully exposed, the House and the country are satisfied with the result which is attained. I do not desire to prolong the discussion. For my part, I am only too anxious to get through the Business which is before us; and I have endeavoured, so far as my power went, to facilitate the Business, so that the House may be able before it rises to complete the programme that is before it. I do not for a moment complain of the criticisms of the noble Lord. Some of them, no doubt, are such as I should have made from the place where he now sits last Session; but if I had followed the same line of the examination of speeches, and had endeavoured to find out six Members who had made the most speeches by counting them, I believe, from a paper just put into my hands, I could have found six Members who would have compared very fairly with the six Members who have been singled out for condemnation or the reverse by the noble Lord. Four of those Members are now sitting on the Ministerial Bench opposite. I do not wish to complain of the number of times they spoke; they were well qualified to enlighten the House; and I should not be the least disposed to say they had spoken at all too much. Certainly of one of them I should say we had no complaint to make, and that is the noble Lord himself, who figures here as having spoken only 96 times. [The Marquess of HARTINGTON: In what Session?] The Session of 1879. The next is the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, who spoke 135 times. The hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs spoke 175 times, and the Home Secretary 177 times. I am reminded by the noble Lord I am speaking of a full Session, and he has spoken of a Session of only three months. [Cries of "Four!"] Certainly, these four Gentlemen cannot be reckoned among those who obstruct Business. Then there come two other hon. Members—one the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell), who spoke 310 times, and the other the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), who, in the course of six months, spoke 490 times. These were very considerable figures and scores. I do not think it was worth while of the noble Lord to bring them forward, as if implying that my hon. Friends had been so singularly loquacious that there had been nothing to compare with them since the days of 1835. There is no doubt the noble Lord is right that the practice of speaking frequently has been growing too much in this House; and I am not at all disposed to deny that the practice is increasing more than is convenient, and it would be a very good thing if we saw our way to its diminution. At the same time, I cannot help remembering that some time in the course of last autumn or winter the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister published a very interesting article in one of the periodicals, in which, taking notice of the complaint of obstruction—I cannot repeat his words, but they are to this effect—he said the real cause of obstruction was not so much in the conduct of those who obstructed as in the Government, and the manner in which they had brought forward their measures. Though I do not wish to excuse any Gentlemen, friends or not friends, who may have abused the time of the House, there have been some occasions on which the noble Lord and the Government were themselves open to that charge. If Government come forward with an Employers' Liability Bill—a subject of so much importance and difficulty—if they say the Bill is laid on the Table, but it by no means expresses more than the general desire of the Government to deal with the subject, that the law is defective and ought to be altered—they must expect, if they make up their measure in sight of the House, that Members will take part in its discussion, and speak, perhaps, at undue length and frequency, but naturally, in order to the production of a measure on a subject on which it is acknowledged something ought to be done. If they bring forward measures touching so deeply on the social interests and relations of classes, and say these are matters which must no longer be decided by private individual contract, but must be made the subject of binding agreements and laid down by Act of Parliament, it is quite natural that the question should be raised as to what it is that Parliament is going to impose on those who have hitherto been allowed to settle their own affairs. I do say, if the Prime Minister was right in accusing the late Government of being the real cause of obstruction by the imperfect way in which they introduced and brought forward measures which had not sufficiently commanded the attention of the public, I think the present Government may, at all events, look a little at home before they say so much of others. I do not like this kind of controversy. It is not my habit or wish to indulge in it; but every now and then we may do good by speaking out our minds; and, at the same time, I hope I have done something to call attention to the fact that there are two sides, at all events, to the question we have been discussing. We on this side have a most important position and trust. The House has a great record; it has obtained a great position in the eyes of the country. Nothing, I think, ought to interest the Members of the House of Commons more than a desire to maintain in the eyes of the country the position which their Predecessors obtained. I put it to the House from two points of view—one should make us exceedingly careful not to abuse the rights and Privileges of the House; and the other that we should not be too ready for purposes of a Party character to throw dirt at each other. It produces comments out-of-doors which are painful to read. Let us take the lessons, but do not let us try and make out ourselves worse then we are; and do not let us, at all events, give any colour, so far as we can avoid it, to the attacks made upon us. Depend upon it the time is coming when this House will need all its energies and all its wisdom in order to maintain its proper place in the eyes of the country. I wish to say to my friends, bear in mind the possibility that before many years are over, perhaps even sooner, we may have to fight a great battle for the rights of minorities. Do not let us overstrain the Forms of the House which give minorities the protection they ought to have. I quite appreciate the views of my hon. Friends who say—"Our only chance of resisting the overwhelming majority opposed to us who are bringing forward measures we object to is to have recourse to the Forms of the House for the protection of minorities; but I say, do not let us use those Forms unnecessarily, lest, perchance, we injure and lose them. I believe we have before us a great oppor- tunity. Though in a minority, we on this side are not, on that ground, to be deprived of our legitimate influence in the conduct of the affairs of Parliament. While we are ready to stand up for our rights, I trust we shall be able to show that we do not stand up for them in such a way as to give any just cause for the complaint that we are obstructing the will of Parliament.

felt it would be extremely presumptuous if he attempted to add anything to the wise and weighty words which had fallen from the right hon. Baronet. He had, to a great extent, met the veiled attack of the noble Marquess. The noble Marquess, no doubt, began his speech with moderation, and continued it with humour; but he ended it with some severity. He hoped he was not endeavouring to hold up some of his more active opponents to the odium of the House of Commons. He recollected that when in the last Parliament the Irish Party took an extreme course upon measure after measure of the Government, though they might not have had the vote, they certainly were under the impression that they were not without the goodwill of the noble Marquess, and night after night the then Government looked with appealing eyes for some assistance from the Front Opposition Bench, and looked in vain. But, be that as it might, there was no doubt that the Irish Party, in the measures which they adopted in the last Parliament, and which embarrassed, and, to some extent, discredited the late Government, had invariably the vote and support of the President of the Board of Trade and of the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He was inclined to think that the noble Marquess lived somewhat in a glass house. He would not pursue these recriminatory matters further, as at the end of the Session they were not likely to advance the Business of the House. The noble Marquess had referred to the number of speeches which he (Lord Randolph Churchill) had made. It was said he had spoken 74 times. That might be so; but of these 50 he was sure did not exceed one or two minutes. The noble Marquess had also referred to the speeches of Irish Members. Well, between the 74 speeches which he had made and the 490 made by the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) there was a large margin. He had some observations to make to the House which, if the Prime Minister were present, he himself would have offered. They had lately to deplore the absence of the Prime Minister, and, no doubt, had he been present during the last two weeks, they would have been better off; but on this occasion he was enabled, to a great extent, to supply the right hon. Gentleman's absence. There were some hon. Members opposite who were not much given to respecting people or things. But if there was any man they respected, or pretended to respect before their constituents, it was the present Prime Minister; and he would read to them words written by that right hon. Gentleman which were extremely appropriate to the present occasion. In an article written in 1879, in which he made a powerful attack on the late Government, the present Prime Minister said—

"The public has lately heard much on the subject of obstruction in the House of Commons. … But to prolong debate, even by persistent iteration, on legislative measures is not necessarily an outrage, an offence, or even an indiscretion. For in some cases it is only by the use of this instrument that a small minority with strong views can draw adequate attention to those views. … There are abundant instances in which obstruction of this kind had led to the removal of perilous or objectionable matter from legislative measures, and thus to the avoidance of great public evils."

Having recalled instances of obstruction by a great Party, the right hon. Gentleman went on—

"Now, if a great Party may obstruct, it is hazardous to award narrower limits to a small one; for it is precisely in the class of cases where the Party is small and the conviction strong that the best instances of warrantable obstruction may be found…The House of Commons is, and it may be hoped ever will continue to be, above and beyond all things a free Assembly. If so, it must be content to pay the price of freedom…Nothing can be worse than the impotent display of the spirit of coercion, or the attempt to repress offences, which require to be proved in argument, by obstreperous disorder, which is an offence ipso facto."

These passages which he had read would be the charter of himself and his hon. Friends; and acting, as they did, within the limits laid down by the Prime Minister, and under the sanction of his great Parliamentary experience, he thought they ought to have escaped the censure of the noble Marquess. As for himself, who had been personally attacked, it had been his extreme good fortune during the few years he had been in the House, on almost every occasion on which he had ventured to trespass on its attention, to meet with great and undeserved indulgence. To forfeit that indulgence would be the greatest disaster that could befall a Member. If he had lately trespassed too much on the attention of the House, hon. Members would be kind enough to consider that he and his hon. Friends had principles as dear to them, and convictions as strong, as those which animated hon. Gentlemen opposite; and perhaps the best way of meeting those convictions, and of arguing with those principles, was not by what the Prime Minister called obstreperous disorder, but by cultivating "the magic of patience."

remarked, that the noble Lord who had just spoken, and those who acted with him, appeared to make up for the smallness of their numbers by the strength of their convictions. He should not have troubled the House with any remarks had not the noble Lord charged his noble Friend (the Marquess of Hartington) with having given a covert encouragement to obstruction in former days. This he emphatically denied. The greater part of the last Session was occupied with a measure of great importance and complexity—the Army Discipline Bill—which contained no less than 300 clauses. What was the conduct of the Gentlemen who sat opposite to the late Government on that occasion? Did they show goodwill towards those who endeavoured to thwart the progress of that measure; or did they not do everything in their power to help the Government to carry it? According to his humble powers, he did what he could to assist them, and he had the good fortune to receive the thanks of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. The House might look a little further back to the celebrated nights when the word "Obstruction" was first used, and might ask whether it was true that the then Opposition encouraged that obstruction. The recollection of the noble Lord opposite was, no doubt, very imperfect on that point; but the late Government would admit that they had received much assistance from the Opposition Benches. The charge brought against them by the noble Lord opposite was altogether unfair. There was only one other point on which he wished to touch. The late Prime Minister said, a few years ago, that the great difficulty he had to deal with was that he had not one Opposition, but three Oppositions to encounter. The present Government had not three Oppositions, but he did not know how many. Besides the three Oppositions, there was the fourth, consisting of three persons. But there were, besides, a fifth and a sixth Opposition, which did not consist of three persons, but of one person. An explanation of the difficulties of the present Government might be found in having to deal with Members of an Opposition who did not recognize the authority of their Leaders. If there was anything which more than another led to difficulty in the conduct of Public Business it was the want of an organized Opposition, to which the House of Commons could look for some principle of action on the part of the Opposition. He only alluded to that because it was one of those things which Lord Beaconsfield had pointed out as one of the possible causes of the difficulty experienced in carrying out the Business of the House of Commons.

desired briefly to reply to some of the remarks of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary. If he were disposed to treat the matter in the light and bantering spirit of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, he might allude to the loyalty he had on all occasions displayed to his Leaders before he became a Member of the Government; but he proposed to regard the question in another manner. The noble Lord the present Leader of the House, in answer to the speech of his hon. Friend below the Gangway, referred to a precedent which had happened in 1835, and said it was by no means unusual for the House of Commons to be called on to sit into September. That was rather an ill-omened reference. It was true that in 1835 the House of Commons was called on by a Minister supported by a powerful majority to sit into September, and what happened? The Minister resigned; and it seemed to him not improbable that, if the Government continued to conduct the Business of the country as they had hitherto done, the precedent of the year 1835 might be followed not only as to the length of the Session, but as to the second particular also. The noble Lord had said that the position of the House was due partly to the number of speeches on that side, and partly to the necessities of the country, which were clearly elucidated at the General Election, when it became imperative to carry out a great programme. But if there was one thing more notorious than another, it was that the late Opposition had no domestic programme whatever, and professed only the necessity of uniting to turn out the Government. The noble Lord had complained of the prolonged discussion on the Government Bills, and had charged hon. Gentlemen on that side of the House with repeatedly debating the principle of those Bills. He might remind the noble Lord that on one Bill of the late Government—the Army Discipline Bill—he had challenged the principle of the measure on five distinct occasions, and that charges of that kind could not very properly proceed from him. It had been said that the Bills introduced during the present Session were short and simple, and the noble Lord had complained of the 11 nights' discussion on the Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill. The Chief Secretary, however, had said on such a Bill every branch of the Land Question ought to be discussed, though the noble Lord now thought it unreasonable to do so. Again, the Hares and Rabbits Bill involved novel principles of legislation which necessarily involved considerable discussion. It appeared to him that the attacks of the noble Lord on the independent Members were totally uncalled for. Even the noble Lord himself had frequently addressed to them speeches that sometimes produced a more or less lethargic effect on both sides of the House. There was, he regretted to find, a disposition on the other side to prevent Gentlemen on the Opposition side from defending themselves. The noble Lord had come out in a new light to-night, and had addressed to the House an animated and a most aggressive speech. The noble Lord denounced hon. Members on that side of the House because six of them made 407 speeches in the course of the Session. Why, a Session or two ago one hon. Gentleman made 500 and another 248 speeches, and what action did the noble Lord take then? His noble Friend below the Gangway had spoken of appealing eyes directed to the noble Lord; and he had himself risen on more than one occasion and appealed to the noble Lord as Leader of the Opposition to take his part in upholding the dignity of the House of Commons. The noble Lord was loud now in denouncing obstruction on that side of the House; but when night after night speeches were made which delayed the whole Business of the Conservative Government, and which were condemned throughout the whole length and breadth of the land, the noble Lord sat like a log on the Bench. He remembered one time when the House of Commons sat up all night on account of obstruction. Did he give any assistance then? The result was that the House was detained until 7 o'clock in the morning. The secret of this animated attack of the noble Lord was not very difficult to discover. This Government came into power not long ago with unexampled advantages. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright) stated at a convivial meeting that it was the wisest Government, supported by the best Parliament, the country had seen for many years. Yet the Government was soon put in a minority by the best Parliament the country had seen. The Government were already beginning to be found out. During the short period they had been in power they had succeeded in harassing every interest; they were plundering, or attempting to plunder, every class; they had alienated so large a number of their own supporters that the chief measure of this Session was defeated in "another place" by a majority of their own followers; and now, in order to disguise their own misdeeds, and to conceal from the country what a hash they had made of their Business, the noble Lord came forward with, for him, a most unusual, an extraordinary, and a flashy speech, in which he endeavoured to throw on his opponents the onus of all the mismanagement of his own Party. The country would not, however, be hoodwinked in this manner. It knew perfectly well that the Government were to-day pursuing a most unusual and almost absolutely unprecedented course in order to try to get some little credit for themselves. They were pressing forward measures which they professed to be of the utmost importance, but which, with hardly an exception, no one believed to be necessary to be passed this Session, merely that they might go to the country and recover some portion of the credit they had lost. But the country knew perfectly well what had happened; and before the Session came to a close this powerful Administration, with its immense majority, would appear to the country in its true light—namely, as a weak and an already discredited Administration.

pointed out that the debate had wandered from the real question, and had become a pot and kettle argument. On the Army Discipline Bill he had himself spoken frequently, and regretted that he had not spoken upon it oftener. He thought private Members were entitled to speak on such a measure as that as often as they thought it their duty to do so; but if hon. Members wasted the time of the House in needless harangues they must be prepared to bear the penalty of a prolonged Session. The hon. Member for Queen's County (Mr. A. O'Connor) had done good service in criticizing the Estimates. Talking, therefore, was not without its uses; and, so far from agreeing with the hon. Member for Hertford (Mr. A. J. Balfour), that the season for Business was passed, he thought the Government ought even now to bring in a Bill for Ireland embodying some portion of the Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill, which the House of Lords had rejected. He agreed with most of the measures which the Government had brought in, and he was fully prepared to give them his support in passing them, even if it were necessary to sit till October.

regarded the irregular fashion in which that very debate had been carried on as a proof that the House was no longer in a fit condition to discuss the serious Business before it. The debate had been, as had been happily said, a mere pot and kettle cry from one side to the other—a wrangle as to who had howled most or obstructed most. Touching this question of Obstruction, he begged to point out that, from the nature of the case, most of the burdensome talking in Supply was done by independent Liberals; it was they, and not the aristocratic Whigs or Tories, who had, from Mr. Hume's days downwards, wished to cut down the Estimates. The first, second, and third places in the race of obstruction fell to independent Liberals below the Gangway—English, Irish, or Scotch; and the Whigs and Tories were nowhere. As for the Hares and Rabbits Bill, it was, no doubt, a short measure in mere dimensions; but it trod on a great many corns, and excited a great deal of feeling among men who were accustomed to, and had the right to, make their voice heard on the affairs of the State. All things considered, this Bill had really consumed a very small amount of Parliamentary time; and had it been brought forward in March or April the Government would have congratulated themselves, at a date corresponding to the time which it had now reached, on the little opposition it had met with. He could not sit down without giving the House an illustration of the political wisdom of one whom he regretted not to see in his place that evening, and still more so, considering the reason of that absence. The extract which he was about to read contained the instructions of one of the greatest statesmen of the age as to how Members of the House should deal with discussions in Committee on Bills which were popular with the majority of the House, but which excited strong feelings on the part of small minorities. He was physically and actually sitting at the feet of his right hon. Friend, from whose speech the quotation was made, in those days when they were, both of them, Peelites, and were, as such, acting as the candid friends of both Parties. Mr. Gladstone said, late in the Session of 1857, speaking upon the Divorce Bill, that—

"He had listened with some amusement to his noble Friend's (Lord Palmerston's) statement with regard to the shortness of the Session, seeing that three-fourths of the Members had been sitting in that House since the month of January, their attendance only being interrupted by the agreeable interlude of a General Election, and that his noble Friend, one or two nights ago, in reply to an appeal from the noble Lord the Member for London, maintained that the Session must be considered, not from the time at which it began, but at which it should conclude. His noble Friend had had an affirmation of the principle of his Bill by a decisive majority, and no doubt the minority ought to bow to the fairly-expressed will of the majority, and if his noble Friend chose to persevere with the measure, they must struggle on at whatever personal inconvenience, and maturely discuss the provisions of the Bill. Still, it could not be maintained that the Bill was of a nature peculiarly urgent to be passed in the present Session. He would also remind his noble Friend that the same duty which bound the minority to comply with the declared opinion of the majority on the principle of the Bill did not absolve them from the obligation of watching, discussing, modifying, and altering the provisions of the measure. As an opponent of the Bill, it might answer his purpose to retire from the Committee altogether, and depart into the country, allowing the Bill to pass with all its blemishes; but such a course he held to be contrary to his duty, and he conceived that it was incumbent on those who objected to the Bill to attend there night after night, and week after week, to debate, line by line, and word by word, if necessary, the details of a Bill of such great importance."

Had the Bills which were now before the House, he would ask, been debated "line by line, and word by word?" He was ashamed to say they had not; and if his right hon. Friend were present that evening—as he was sure every hon. Member wished him to be—he would, no doubt, lecture some of them on their culpable laches, self-seeking, and laziness in allowing important measures to pass through their hands without adequate discussion. In short, the House would not be fulfilling its duty, as prescribed by the Prime Minister, if Bills like the Burials Bill and others which he need not name were not duly, fully, and minutely criticized.

said, that he, at all events, did not feel that he was open to the charge of obstruction. Nor did he think that any section of the Conservative Party was fairly liable to such an accusation. It had been said that the Conservative Party was not a united Party. There was no foundation for such a statement. There was no difference of opinion between the Party and its Leader. They were unanimously determined to support their opinions by any means in their power. But it was said that if there was no obstruction, still the opposition practised by the Conservative Party was such as should not be practised in the House of Commons. He denied that charge, and, in support of his views, he would read a letter written by a well-known person, which appeared in an influential Provincial paper published in the North of England. He referred to The Newcastle Daily Chronicle. The letters in that paper on the subject of Business in that House were known not to be uninspired by a gentleman greatly respected in that House, and a supporter of Her Majesty's Government, to whom he was not at liberty more particularly to refer. [The noble Earl then proceeded to read extracts, which were to the effect that there had been but little obstruction in the House this Session; that the Opposition had criticized the measures of the Government, and tried to alter, and, in some instances, to delay them, but that this course had been the one usually adopted by a Parliamentary Opposition, and resembled that of a Liberal Opposition in the last Parliament, and that of a Conservative Opposition in the Parliament of 1868, which succeeded in throwing over the Ballot Bill from one Session to another.] There seemed to be some confusion in the minds of some hon. Members between a legitimate and an illegitimate opposition. He was sorry to say that since he had been in the House a great change had taken place in the ordinary conception of the duties of an Opposition. In his opinion, the minority opposed to a Bill should take their stand upon some clause of that Bill, express their views upon it, and uphold those views by every means in their power, whether they were a minority of 50 or a minority of 5. The Hares and Rabbits Bill raised a great principle; and were hon. Gentlemen, having taken one division and been beaten, to go into the country and leave the Government to fashion the measure as they pleased? That was not his view of the legitimate duty of an Opposition. But what really deserved to be called obstruction was the opposing of all measures on all occasions for obstruction's sake. The Government had received very determined opposition to some measures they had brought forward; but the reason was because they had deferred the consideration of the most important Bills of the Session to a late period, and had spent a great part of the Session in pushing on a Bill of an extraordinary character, which nobody wanted. They had determined to force that Bill not only through that House, but also through "another place." But if Her Majesty's Government, or any other Government, could act in that way, it would be able to rule the country without any check from the House of Commons or from the other House. Many shifts and changes had characterized the policy of the Government during the last few weeks. Those shifts and changes had been forced upon them by a section of their followers. Well, then, he would ask the Government what, in common fairness, was the duty of a minority in such a case? If the Government placed themselves in such a position as to exempt themselves from all criticism, not only to pass their measures by the force of their majority, but to drown all criticism by the force of the same majority, there were but two courses for a minority to take. One course was for a few Members to maintain their right to criticize, and thus lay themselves open to a charge of obstruction; the only other course was for the minority to take that action which would be inexcusable in any other circumstances, and which was worse than anything except the control of an absolutely uncontrollable and irresponsible Government.

said, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department, a high official of the Liberal Government, had taunted the Opposition with its want of organization; and it really seemed to be a characteristic of modern Liberalism that it objected to independent action. One of his (Mr. Newdegate's) earliest lessons in politics was taken in the United States of America, and it had been his fate to live to see the organization, which the Americans called Caucus, imported into Birmingham, and to see, also, on the Front Bench opposite two right hon. Members of the Cabinet, who were Members for Birmingham, as also Members of a Caucus. He had been gratified, at the commencement of the Session, when a most important Constitutional question—as to the admission of one of the Members for Northampton—was before the House, to see some spirit of independence which was then manifested by hon. Members, who were usually supporters of the Government. The occasion was one well worthy the manifestation of independence; but he regretted to have seen that the independence of hon. Members on the Government side of the House did not survive a second trial, and that it appeared to have now quite faded away. He (Mr. Newdegate) claimed to be an independent Member; but there were few independent Members now in the House, and the House of Commons would lose its chief characteristic if it lost the presence of independent Members. Anyone who had witnessed and watched the conduct of the House of Representatives in the United States must be conscious of the great superiority of the English House of Commons, and that the latter had owed its superiority to the independence of its Members. But this importation of the Caucus system was most dangerous to independence. American experience had shown that independence was far more grievously compromised by the democratic system of Caucus than by almost any extent of aristocratic interference. He really thought that Her Majesty's Ministers had nothing to complain of in the conduct of the legitimate Opposition; and, speaking as a humble but independent Member, he begged to affirm that he for one was not, even at that late period of the Session, prepared to hand over the authority and functions of the House of Commons to the Representatives of the Crown. He and those who agreed with him meant to maintain the independence of that House; and if they were kept there for an unusual period, for that Her Majesty's present Ministers must be held responsible, and had no just reason to complain if they had met with opposition. For what had happened this Session? Her Majesty's Government introduced the Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill. That Bill had not been announced in Her Majesty's Speech at the opening of Parliament. It was an ill-conceived Bill; a measure fraught with a vicious principle; and the other House of Parliament had rejected it by a vast majority. The waste of time in that House had been the consequence chiefly of discussing that futile Bill, and for that Her Majesty's Government must bear the blame. The independent Members of the House might be charged with unduly opposing that measure; but they might, in their justification, point to the verdict of the House of Lords. They were determined not to make over the authority of Parliament to the Crown. It was time that that should be affirmed, when Her Majesty's present Ministers attempted to pass through the House important measures at an undue period of the year—measures which ought to have been considered earlier in the Session; but the best days of the Session were wasted in the discussion of that Bill. The hon. and gallant Member from Ireland (Major Nolan) said that if that measure was deemed necessary for Ireland, as the consequence of its defeat in the House of Lords, some other measure ought to be substituted. He (Mr. Newdegate) could understand that some measure with respect to Ireland might be deemed urgent, and the Government justified in retaining the House in Session; but not one of the measures which they were thrusting upon the House in such an untimely manner was a measure of that urgent character, and if they had met with opposition it was an opposition directed as much to maintain the independence of the House of Commons as it was against the measures they had pressed forward. He hoped the House would excuse him, as an independent Member, for thus briefly expressing his convictions, the result of long experience, and declaring that if the time of the House had been wasted this Session, it had been wasted by that abortive measure which had been rejected by the other branch of the Legislature—the Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill.

said, he wanted to state one little statistical fact. That House had now apparently constituted itself a statistical society, and they had had a number of figures as to the number of times particular Members had spoken. It had been stated that six hon. Members spoke this Session some 400 and odd times; but it was a fact that one Member of that House, in the year 1870, spoke 223 times on one Bill, and the Member who did that was the present Prime Minister.

said, the course of the debate had wandered somewhat from the terms of the Motion, and he only desired to recall the House for a very short time to the considerations which that Motion suggested. The principal things that were touched upon in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech were Foreign Affairs, Indian Affairs, Indian Finance, South African Affairs, Peace Preservation in Ireland, the Burials Bill, Ballot Act, Ground Game, Employers' Liability Bill, and Borough Franchise. Of Foreign Affairs they had heard next to nothing, and they had heard scarcely more of Indian Affairs. Indian Finance had got one evening, late in the Session, devoted to it, and the debate was now adjourned to a day of which at present they had no knowledge. South African Affairs, he believed, were to be debated on the Estimates, which, he imagined, would be some time towards the end of next week. The Peace Preservation Act for Ireland was going to be abandoned—had been, in fact, abandoned—and he fancied that the Government wished they had not taken that step. At any rate, the question of Peace Preservation for Ireland was likely to require a good deal of their attention during the Recess. The Burials Bill, which probably was considered by the country, and those who were sent to that House to support the Ministry, as the most important measure in the programme, was read a second time on the 12th of August, and the Committee on that Bill, they were told on the previous night—he admitted wrongly—by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary, was to be relegated to the close of the Session, because it would not be necessary to discuss it till then, as it was not going back to "another place." He imagined that the Government, when they entered the Burials Bill upon their list, desired not only to reward the fidelity of their supporters, but also to get rid of a burning question of which they might equally have got rid by a Bill to prohibit cremation. The Ballot Bill remained for consideration. The Ground Game measure had occupied a great deal of their time, and was still in Committee. There had been a complaint that night that second reading speeches had been made over and over again on that Motion. But he agreed entirely with the observations of the noble Lord beside him (Lord Elcho) that it was the duty of the Opposition, when a principle of vital importance was attacked in a Bill, to take every opportunity of recording their views. Therefore, in his opinion, it was not chargeable against the Opposition that they were indulging in obstructive tactics, when they raised the question of the proposed violation of freedom of contract every time that it came up in the course of the debate in Committee. The Employers' Liability Bill had at last gone to "another place," and there he had no doubt it would receive ample consideration, considering the time' of the year at which it arrived there. The Borough Franchise (Ireland) Bill had been dropped; and there was the whole programme. Her Majesty's Government was in this dilemma—either the Bills which they had brought forward were of great importance, and, therefore, they ought not to be asked to hurry over them, and to carefully criticize and examine them; or else they were not of great importance, and then why should the House be kept there to discuss them at that time of the Session? He thought the hon. Member for Hertford (Mr. A. J. Balfour) was entitled to the thanks of the country for having raised that question, because the state of things existing at the present time, as had been shown by various speakers, was almost entirely without precedent. The noble Marquess the temporary Leader of the House had gone back as far as 1835 for a precedent; they had heard from a very high authority of musty precedents, and that must be one which was mildewed, if not musty. But what was the result of all that work? To force the House, at the end of August, either to abandon its functions of discussing measures, or else to fasten upon the Opposition the charge of Obstruction. The result of keeping the House together had been also to half kill the Prime Minister, and to render more than one Member of the Government hors de combat. He did not know how many more would fall from their perches during the next week. But he knew that a very arduous task was before them. If the Government had dealt with Supply de die in diem at first, he maintained that there would not have been so much time wasted. The difficulties in which the Government was at present placed were mainly due to the fact that at first the Government could not make up its mind that the hypotheosis of infidelity ought to be seated upon their Benches; and when they had made up their minds to it, they had to lose much more time in getting their followers to support the entry into that House of the Apostle of Agnosticism. After wasting time in that way, there came the Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill. He would not waste time in discussing it. The other House had made short work of it, and he did not think people regretted its premature decease. Reference had been made to the number of speeches delivered on one side of the House or the other; but that had very little to do with the question now before the House. What they had to consider was, whether it was desirable that the present system, introduced in 1880, of deferring important measures until the very end of the Session, and then calling upon the House either to abandon its functions, or to pass the measures, was one which ought to be followed hereafter. He thought the Motion of his hon. Friend was very necessary; and he was sure that debate would not be in vain if, in future years, the Government were induced to lay down their programme early in the Session, and to stick to it, instead of wasting time in discussing questions which were of no importance.

said, he begged to propose an Amendment the clause. In line 17 he wished to omit from the word "for" to the end of the clause. The passage he wished to leave out was to the effect that tenancies at will should be deemed to determine at the time when they would by law become determinable, if notice or warning to determine the same were given at the date of the passage of the Act. His object in moving the Amendment was to maintain, as far as he could, what was left of the principle of the Bill. He wished to enable the Government to be consistent. They had steadily refused the Amendments of the hon. Member for Forfarshire (Mr. J. W. Barclay). He wished to call the attention of the Government, particularly that of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary, to this—that when he asked their permission, some time ago to alter the words at the beginning of the clause —"the date of the passing of this Act" to "27th May, 1880"—which, no doubt, the right hon. and learned Gentleman had withdrawn, although he (Mr. War-ton) hoped not for ever; he did not mention whether he was going to apply the Amendment to the last words of the clause—namely, those words to which he was now calling attention. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman did that, it would make the notice shorter than that given by the latter part of the clause. Why, he (Mr. Warton) asked, should a tenancy from year to year, or a tenancy at will, determine except by contract between the parties? Why should the artificial measure be brought in to place the leases he was referring to in a worse position than those in the earlier part of the clause preserved so carefully? He would not take up more time of the Committee, and what he wanted to do was to call the attention of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary to this, that what he had proposed was a still further limitation.

said, he must decline to accept the Amendment. It was unnecessary in order to deal with cases of tenancy from year to year. If they were not dealt with, the Act with regard to them might remain inoperative.

said, he had on the Paper the following addition to the Clause at end—

"Provided always, That when the sporting rights of the occupier of any land are vested by any lease or otherwise in the owner of such land; and such owner has leased the sporting rights over such land to a third party, the occupier may, unless the owner has previously given him authority in writing to destroy ground game according to the provisions of this Act, sue the owner in the County Court of the district in which such land is situate, and recover damages for injury done to him by excess of ground game, and the owner shall pay to the occupier such amount by way of compensation for such injury as the County Court Judge may order and direct, having regard to the nature of the land, the rent paid, and the quantity of game found upon such land when the occupier entered upon his tenancy."

After the decision which had been arrived at with regard to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Forfarshire (Mr. J. W. Barclay) he did not think he would be justified in pressing his Amendment on the consideration of the Committee; therefore, by leave of the Committee, he would withdraw it.

said, he wished to move, as an Amendment, in line 23, after the word "mean," to insert the word "deer." The words of the clause would then run—"the words ground game mean deer, hares, and rabbits." Whatever objection might be raised to that Amendment, it seemed to him that it could not be said to be contrary to the spirit of the Bill. The Bill said—

"Whereas it is expedient in the interests of good husbandry, and for the better security of the capital and labour invested by the occupiers of land in the cultivation of the soil, that further provision should be made to enable such occupiers to protect their crops from injury and loss by ground game."

Now, when it was proposed to extend the provision of the Bill to all sorts of game, he could not support the proposition; because, having carefully considered the evidence on the subject, it appeared to him that there was no case at all made out for such a course. However, another proposal was made, to the effect that instead of the words "ground game" in the Bill, the words "hares and rabbits" should, be inserted. Well, the Committee had pronounced against that almost unanimously, and the words "ground game" were retained. Except in this 6th clause, there was no mention of hares and rabbits at all, the invariable phrase being "ground game"; and he thought it would be admitted that hares and rabbits were not the only game in the country which could be considered "ground game." There was another animal that, in every sense, was on all fours with hares and rabbits. It was a fact that the kind of game to which he was referring did a considerable amount of damage in particular localities, and under particular circumstances. A few years ago, in the evidence given before the Committee on the Game Laws, some questions were asked upon this subject; and he remembered the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council (Mr. Mundella) stating that deer would come many miles, even 12 or 13 miles, to feed on turnips during the summer. Then the hon. Baronet the Member for Berwick (Sir Dudley Marjoribanks), who was not that evening in his place, stated in evidence that deer would come miles and miles to eat oats when they were ripe. He (Sir David Wedderburn) himself had had some personal experience of this. He had known a great deal of injury inflicted on the crops of small farmers by the deer coming at night to eat the oats and potatoes. The deer were never disturbed, and committed their depredations with impunity; and, in fact, in course of time, they became so tame that it was almost impossible to drive them away. People had sometimes to sit up all night watching their crops, in order to save them from the; deer. Of course, the Amendment would not apply to deer parks, where there was no occupier but a lessee, neither would it apply to mountain forests. It would be applicable only to cultivated land. He knew there were many hon. Members who would corroborate the statement that the injury in the case he was referring to was sustained mostly by poor people, small farmers, shepherds, and so on. He hoped the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Sir William Harcourt) would see his way to accept the Amendment.

trusted his hon. Friend (Sir David Wedderburn) would not add to the difficulties of the Bill by insisting upon this Amendment. He was in error in supposing that his proposal would not apply to deer forests and moors. It would bring them under the 4th sub-section of the Proviso, and any sheep farmer, on what some Members had been in the habit of calling sheep-farm land, would have the right of killing a stag, if he could get sight of one, from the 11th of September to the 31st of March. That would lead to the destruction of every deer forest in the country; and he, therefore, trusted that the Amendment would not be pressed.

said, he was not much of a sportsman, only having been out stag hunting once in his life, under the auspices of the hon. Member for West Somerset, who was a great stag hunter. In the absence of the hon. Member, who, no doubt, would have spoken on the subject had he been present, he wished to express a hope that nothing would be done hastily to destroy stag hunting.

asked the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary, if he spoke advisedly when he said the Amendment would apply to deer forests?

said, it would apply to sheep grounds which deer frequented, and where they were sometimes shot. Deer forests were, as a rule, places where the sheep had been taken off, although sometimes sheep were still to be found upon them.

said, the hon. Member (Sir David Wedderburn) spoke from the Scotch point of view, and, perhaps, he did not know that there were many herds of deer in this part of the United Kingdom which were very highly prized by the people. They were a great ornament to many park lands which were let for grazing purposes. If the Amendment were carried, any farmer who rented these park lands for grazing purposes might destroy one of the greatest ornaments of the country.

moved to omit the following words from the Clause—

"The word 'agents' means any member of the household of the occupier habitually resident upon the land in his occupation, or persons in his service on such land, or bona fide employed by him for reward for the taking and destruction of ground game."

They had become unnecessary, owing to alterations which had been made in previous parts of the Bill.

said, he had no objection to the Amendment; but he wished to point out that it would be much more important to consider the necessity of retaining the clause at all. It was absurd to retain, as a clause, a provision of only one line—an Interpretation Clause saying that for the purposes of the Act the words "ground game" meant "hares and rabbits,"

said, he wished to move an Amendment to omit the latter part of the clause—namely, the words "in so far as it is inconsistent with this Act." He could not see any other way of meeting the object he had in view except by the omission of these words. The section referred to in the Bill, "section 12 of 1 and 2, Will. 4, c. 32," was a section under which tenants were liable at the petty sessions for breach of agreement with the landlord. No doubt, a large majority of the Committee would be with him—hon. Members agreeing that this measure in the Bill ought to stand in the same position as breaches of other clauses of agreement. Supposing the tenants ignored any of the other provisions of their agreement, no summary remedy of this sort would apply; and he could not help thinking that if there had been Representatives from tenant farmers in the House when that Act was passed, section 12 would not have been allowed insertion. It would be much more satisfactory to all concerned if that enactment were now repealed. He appealed to hon. Members opposite whether that section was of any use, and whether it was not seldom that it was had recourse to? As a matter of fact, the only time it was put in force was when it was desired to show the superior position in which the proprietors stood when they had a grievance against their tenants. He had no experience of prosecutions under the section, and he did not remember a single tenant farmer having been convicted under it. He was sure that if a landlord wished to prosecute a tenant under that section, it would be better that the landlord and tenant should part at once. The country would prefer the omission of the words, and the total repeal of the section to which he referred.

said, he concurred very much with the view of the hon. Member for Cardiganshire (Mr. Pugh), and when the Game Laws came to be reviewed—and in many particulars he considered they required review—he thought one of the first things that should be done should be the repeal of Clause 12 of that Act of William IV. He agreed that, in many respects, it was vexatious and useless for the landlord to have, under this provision, the power to enforce penalties against an occupier for killing game on his land; but the present measure, it must be remembered, affected only ground game, whereas the Amendment would repeal a section which had reference to all game. He did not think it would be advisable to go entirely out of the provisions of the Bill as the Amendment would take them in providing a general reform of the part of the Game Laws. Whilst he did not oppose the view of the hon. Member with regard to this 12th section, he thought they ought only to legislate in view of the present measure, and that the section ought to be altogether repealed when the Game Laws were reformed. It would be adding considerably to the difficulties of the measure, if it were to go forth as a Bill not only to attempt the destruction of ground game, but to alter the law as to winged game. He hoped the hon. Member would not press the Amendment, but would allow him (Sir William Harcourt) to substitute for Clause 7 an Amendment repealing any provision in the Act of Parliament, and any law inconsistent with the present Bill, so far as it was so inconsistent.

said, the clause stated that the Act should be cited for all purposes as "The Ground Game Act, 1880." He wished to move, as an Amendment, in page 2, line 35, to substitute the words "Hares and Rabbits" for the words "Ground Game." His reason for bringing forward this proposal was that the measure, for more than two months, had been endeared to them by the familiar name of "Hares and Rabbits," and it would be as well that in the future they should not be met by any other title than that with which they were accustomed. The "Ground Game Act" might be confused with the "Burials Act." ["Oh, oh!"] Well, there was a better reason still—namely, that the alteration would dispense with the necessity for the 6th clause. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) had shown them, it would be absurd to have an Interpretation Clause consisting of only one clause. No interpretation would be necessary, if his (Mr. Warton's) proposal were accepted. He knew the objection to his Amendment would be that, throughout the whole of the Bill, the words "ground game" had been adopted. But his reply to that was, that that was no reason why, in the title of the Bill, they should not have the words by which they knew it, and loved it so well. There was a recent precedent for the change he proposed; for, at the last moment, the proposed short title of the "Employers' Liability Bill" was altered, the words "Workmen's Compensation Act," in the clause, being struck out, and "Employers' Liability" inserted.

moved the following new Clause, in lieu of Clause 7:—

said, he could not help thinking that that was a new way of dealing with provisions in other Acts of Parliament, for he must say that, to the best of his belief, the general practice was to recite the sections of the Acts which were inconsistent with the Bill, and state, in the measure, that they were repealed. If they did not do that they left it to those who had to carry out the laws, the Judges of the country, to find out and declare what Acts were or were not inconsistent with the measure. Those who had to carry out the law and interpret the measure might take a very different view as to what was inconsistent from that which would be taken by Parliament itself. He thought the best course would be for the right hon. and learned Gentleman to add a Schedule at the end of the Bill, declaring what Acts were hereby repealed.

expressed a hope that the spirit of the Amendment moved would be accepted. The section to which he had before referred, Section 12, was one which ought to be repealed, if any of the Game Laws at all were got rid of in the Bill of the right hon and learned Gentleman. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary told them that such provisions would be repealed at the proper time; but what time, he (Mr. Pugh) would ask, could be a more proper and fitting time than the present? The repeal of the Act to which he had referred would benefit the country and give great satisfaction; and he trusted the right hon. and learned Gentleman would agree to the insertion of the words in the spirit of his proposal before the new clause which he had just introduced.

said, he should like to know from the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary what was meant by the words—

"Any provision in any Act of Parliament and any law inconsistent with this Act should, as far as it was so inconsistent, be repealed."

It seemed to him (Mr. E. Clarke) that the Act must have the same effect without any such provision. [Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT: Just so.] The right hon. and learned Gentleman agreed with him; surely, then, it was mischievous to insert in the Bill that which was utterly useless. Either that provision was necessary, or it was not. If it was not, it certainly was mischievous to put it in.

said, if they were all lawyers, that, no doubt, would be true. But, as he had said several times in the course of the discussion, the whole of the measure was unnecessary as a matter of law, except the 1st clause, which said that every occupier should have, as inseparable from his occupation of the land, the right to take and kill ground game thereon. In fact, the substance of Clauses 2 and 3 was contained in the 1st clause, and yet those clauses had been inserted in order to make the Act clearer to the general public. He appealed to hon. Gentlemen opposite, whether, in the Army Discipline Act of last Session, it had not been thought desirable to provide—

"That the clauses of any enactments inconsistent with the provision of the Army Discipline Act of 1879 should on that Act coming into force in any place be repealed as effected that place."

As a matter of fact, the proposal he now made was inconsistent with the modern form of drafting these Bills. [Mr. GIBSON thought it was quite different.] On the contrary, that was the proper form of dealing with other Acts of Parliament. He had the authority of Sir Henry Thring for saying that. It was true that every Act of a positive character did repeal every previous statute which was inconsistent with it; but that had never prevented draftsmen, in drafting Acts of Parliament, in order to make them intelligible, declaring that such portions of other Acts as were inconsistent with the Act in hand were repealed. The moment they said, in the present Bill, that the occupier was to have a right of shooting ground game as inseparable from his occupation, they rendered unnecessary the rest of the provisions. The object of the Amendment was that people who were not versed in matters of this kind might clearly understand the measure, and it was for that reason that he had agreed to put in Clauses 2 and 3, which were perfectly unnecessary from a legal point of view. He had only to ask the Committee to accept the clause on the authority of the draftsmen.

said, that, no doubt, great weight attached to Sir Henry Thring's opinion; but, at the same time, the opinion of the House of Commons was also entitled to consideration. They were bound to exercise their judgment in matters of the kind, and he did not think the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary had properly met the very fair and temperate proposition of his hon. Friend. Let them look at the thing in the light of common sense, and not in view of the opinion of any authority, however august. The effect would be to practically hand over to the magistrates the administration of a very difficult and complicated duty. It was not fair to hand over to those who had to administer this measure the consideration of a lot of Acts of Parliament which were proposed to be covered by this new clause. He did not wish for a moment to detract from the great benefit successive Governments had derived from the drafting powers of Sir Henry Thring; but he (Mr. Gibson) would suggest that, in a matter of such consequence, if it were possible before the Report, without undue trouble, for a Schedule to be prepared, referring to the sections of other Acts repealed, it would prevent a great deal of litigation. He did not think that was an unreasonable proposal. Of course, if it could not be done before the Report he should at once acquiesce in the course proposed by the right hon. and learned Gentleman; but he thought it desirable that the draftsmen, and those who had charge of the Bill, should consider the clauses of those Acts of Parliament with which this measure would come into contact. If it could be done, therefore, for the guidance of the magistrates and the proper administrators of the law, the information should be put in the Schedule. If it could not be done, it was no use pressing the matter any further. The present proposal really carried the Bill no further, as it did not give any light to those who had to administer the law; and he really thought that, except as an ornament, it had no practical use.

thought the suggestion made by his right hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Gibson) would tend to give magistrates, who had to administer the Bill, facilities for doing so, and would be likely to prevent errors into which they might otherwise fall. For instance, the Bill declared that it would repeal whatever was inconsistent with the Act; but that raised the question of what was the present state of the law. In England, they had no compensation for damage by either Common or Statute Law. In Scotland, the occupier had a right of compensation for damage by game, whether it was ground or winged game, both at Common Law and at Statute Law. He (Lord Elcho) wanted to know whether the Common Law of Scotland and the Statute Law of Scotland—namely, M'Lagan's Act—were to continue in force as they were inconsistent with that Bill? By the Bill, as it now stood, they would establish two different laws in the two countries, and would leave the Scotch landlords in a much worse position than the English landlords, for they took from the landlord what, in Scotland, was his property, and not a mere right of sporting, and to this they gave the tenant a concurrent right, and yet they left the landlord liable to pay compensation for damage by game. The Committee could not intend to establish such an anomalous state of things as that, especially as in the leases which he had read that day there was a provision that when the power of destroying, or shooting, or trapping ground game was given to the tenant, he was not to ask compensation for any damage done. How would those agreements be affected by the Bill? He ventured to think that if this question was postponed for consideration until the Report the whole matter might be properly and carefully considered in the meantime.

asked, if there was any insuperable objection to including this clause in the Schedule to the Act, giving the names of the Acts, instead of dealing with the matter in this way?

hoped the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary would stand by the clause. The magistrates, who would have to interpret the Bill, would otherwise find themselves in the difficulty of having to hunt through every Act of Parliament, and to contrast its clauses with those of the Bill, in order to find out whether the Bill did or did not repeal them. As the clause stood, it made a clean sweep of everything, and there would be no difficulty whatever in the interpretation. It was a rule in the interpretation of statutes that special enactments were not repealed by general; and if this special repealing clause were omitted, it might happen that some particular clause in an existing statute might be discovered which, it might be urged, was not overridden by the general provisions of this Bill. As the measure at present stood, however, the whole matter was put in a perfectly satisfactory position.

said, he had not at all lost sight of all that; but the point he was making could be at once grasped, and was quite consistent with his suggestion. Let the draftsman and the right hon. and learned Gentleman together set forth all the Acts that must have been present to their minds when they were drafting the Bill, and when they had set them out, let them add general words which might be added, in order to cover other cases which might possibly turn up on investigation.

asked the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary, whether some distinct notice ought not to be taken of M'Lagan's Act, because that gave compensation for damage done by ground game. Unless the Bill especially dealt with that Act, it would be open to the tenant to maintain that this measure merely conferred on him an additional privilege, and was not a substitute for the privilege conferred by that Act. Therefore, the measure ought distinctly to state whether it did or did not repeal M'Lagan's Act.

said, he supposed when the tenant could kill the ground game as much as he liked he would have very little chance of getting compensation for damage done by it from his landlord. It would be very dangerous to insert a Schedule, with the Acts that were inconsistent with this Act, because there would be some danger of leaving out some particular clause. Again, the noble Lord opposite (Lord Elcho) had mentioned that a tenant had certain rights by Common Law in Scotland; but it was impossible to schedule the Common Law; while if they accepted the principle of scheduling the Acts they would merely get all the evils of a hard-and-fast definition. He was sure that that was merely a theoretical discussion, and he hoped the Committee would not spend much time over it.

thought the arguments of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General did not meet the arguments which had been put forward in favour of scheduling the statutes. In his opinion, the laws of England ought to be as plain as they could possibly be made; and, therefore, he did appeal to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary to listen to the suggestions which had been made in respect of incorporating in a Schedule all the statutes which this Act repealed. He had had some experience, during the last few years, in endeavouring to find out what was the law of England upon particular subjects; and the interminable trouble he had found in referring to Acts of Parliament, and then tracing them backwards and forwards, was almost inconceivable. He, therefore, hoped that all the statutes repealed by the Act would be incorporated in the Schedule.

said, his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General and his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Oxford (Mr. Chitty) had both failed entirely to meet the suggestion he had offered. His proposition was a very clear one, and it was impossible, he thought, not to understand it. The draftsman of the Bill and the right hon. and learned Gentleman in charge of it must have considered, at some point or other, in putting it together, the Acts of Parliament and the provisions of the Common Law with which it came into conflict. All he asked was that, so far as the Acts of Parliament were known to them, they should be set out in the Schedule to the extent they were thought to be inconsistent with this Act. That alteration could be made perfectly well by putting at the beginning of this clause a few words—

"That the Acts of the Schedule herein, to the extent set forth in the second column, and any provision of any Act of Parliament, and any law inconsistent with this Act shall, so far as it is so inconsistent, he repealed."

["Oh!"] It was very easy to get rid of a criticism by attempting to convey to the Committee that it was one not approved of; but he should like to know whether his proposition, which was a clear and straightforward one, would not be a great deal more satisfactory to magistrates than the words at present proposed in the clause, which did not give the magistrates one single ray of light to assist them in their work. It was desirable that Acts of Parliament, as far as they were known, should be stated; and as he did not lay down any hard-and-fast line in his proposition he did not understand why it should not be accepted. All he asked was, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary and the draftsman, who, he supposed, was Sir Henry Thring, should settle between them the Acts which, during the preparation of the Bill, came to their knowledge. If his right hon. and learned Friend, however, on consideration, thought he could not do this before the Report, he (Mr. Gibson) would not raise the question again.

said, his right hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Gibson) would perhaps allow him to pre- sent a case as it would actually occur. When there was a prosecution, the prosecutor proceeded either by Statute or at Common Law. The magistrate would not have to inquire what any of these Statutes were, or what the Common Law was, because this section told him that whatever the Statute was, and whatever the doctrine of the Common Law was, if it was inconsistent with this Bill it was repealed.

said, he thought it was exceedingly cruel to introduce the name of Sir Henry Thring. Until he heard that gentleman named as the draftsman of the Bill he had a great respect for him; but now that he learned that he was a draftsman of these Acts he lost that respect, because magistrates and Judges, day after day, were deliberately condemning the slovenly way in which Acts of Parliament were drawn. Nothing gave the Judge more trouble than clauses of this sort; and the precedent found by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Oxford (Mr. Chitty) did not apply exactly, because he referred to Acts of Parliament which dealt with particular places, while this Bill, as a general Bill, was still worse.

said, that whatever the observations he made, and the objections he had to offer, they would none of them be either technical or theoretical. He would ask the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General and the Committee this question. Supposing a tenant gave verbal permission to a man to go and kill hares upon his farm. He would be entitled to give that permission; but it would have to be in writing. Supposing, further, that the tenant was thereupon summoned, and proceeded against at the petty sessions under Section 12, was he, or was he not, liable to a fine of 40s., and in default to a month's hard labour, simply because he did not give the permission properly in writing?

said, he would not be liable, under those circumstances, in any case. This only applied to the occupier and the person who went on the land, whether with that permission or without, would be liable only as a trespasser.

said, Section 12, the section under notice, was to the effect that if an occupier went upon the farm he occupied, and killed game himself, or gave permission to another person to go there to kill game, that he was liable to be fined, and imprisoned in default of payment.

said, that was a very important question as regarded Scotland; and he wanted it to be made very clear as to whether, by these words, they were to consider that both M'Lagan's Act and the provisions of the Common Law were to be repealed, and of none effect.

said, that he thought the point raised by the noble Lord (Lord Elcho) about M'Lagan's Act and the question of compensation deserved consideration, and ought to be cleared up. He would give an answer to the noble Lord on the Report.

said, he must repeat what he said last night, that there was not the slightest reason for the clause. The Government had admitted that there was no reason for it; and, for his part, he thought there was a conclusive and irresistible reason against it, that a close time for hares was inconsistent with, and in opposition to, the interests of good husbandry. Hares required no more protection in Ireland than elsewhere. In Ireland the tenants were poorer, and the difficulties of cultivating the land much greater. Therefore, he did not understand why hares were to be protected in Ireland and not anywhere else. He thought that the clause should not be inserted, and he knew that many hon. Gentlemen agreed with him. He felt sure that Irish tenants would be aggrieved, if a limitation which the Government itself thought was not in accordance with good husbandry in England and Scotland were to be enforced in Ireland. He appealed to the Government not to allow this close time for hares to remain in the Bill; he could not see any reason in support of it, and certainly none had yet been given.

said, the clause was inserted, because it was represented to him that it was in accordance with what was done last year. He was told then that this close time for hares in Ireland was universally desired; and a measure to that effect was passed, as hon. Members would recollect, only 12 months ago, with the universal support of all Irish Members of all Parties. He was told also, by the hon. Member for Waterford (Mr. R. Power), he (Sir William Harcourt) believed, that if the close time for hares was interfered with, that he would move, with the support of all the Irish Members, that Ireland should be altogether excluded from the operation of the measure, and he was naturally alarmed at that, especially when the hon. Member for the City of Cork added that he intended to support him. Naturally, at the eleventh hour, he did not wish to bring down on himself a great amount of opposition. He would be glad, however, to ascertain what was the actual feeling of hon. Gentlemen from Ireland about the Bill; and, therefore, he would suggest that the matter should be left over until Report.

said, whenever he had moved an Amendment in Committee he had been told that it was utterly inconsistent with the principle of the Bill; and, consequently, he had never yet been able to get any support from hon. Members sitting on his own side of the House for any of his Amendments. He really did think, however, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary would have accepted that opportunity of introducing a clause which was consistent with the Bill, or, rather, would have taken the opportunity not to press a clause which was utterly inconsistent with it. There was only one reason why the right hon. and learned Gentleman should press that alteration on the Committee, and that was that it was agreeable to hon. Members representing Irish constituencies. Now, however, hon. Members representing Irish constituencies did not desire this clause. Let them remember what was the intention, and what was the Preamble, of the Bill. It was to protect the crops of the tenant farmers—[Cries of "Divide!"]—Surely hon. Members would like to know what the principle of the Bill was. His right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary said he wanted to protect the crops of the tenant farmers, and yet he proposed a close time for hares in Ireland, after having been exceedingly indignant with hon. Gentlemen who proposed a close time for hares in England and Scotland. If there was a division on this clause he (Mr. Brand) should certainly support its omission; and, in doing so, he should feel sure that he was only doing what was thoroughly consistent with the argument of the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself, who had declared that he would accept no Amendment which was inconsistent with the words of the Preamble.

said, the hon. Member below the Gangway (Mr. Sexton) had declared that Irish Members were opposed to this clause. He (Mr. Tottenham) maintained that the Irish Members—and he had consulted a great many who knew something about the subject—were agreed that there was a great necessity for a close time.

hoped the Amendment would not be pressed to a division. As he understood the principle of the Bill, the clause was thoroughly in accordance with it. So far from wishing this clause taken out, he (Lord Elcho) heartily desired that it should remain; it was so delightfully consistent with the Preamble that the Bill should provide a close time for hares in Ireland.

said, he opposed the Hares Preservation (Ireland) Bill when it was before the House last year, and he only withdrew his opposition on the earnest request of Irish Members who usually voted with him.

said, in reply to the remarks of the hon. Member for Leitrim (Mr. Tottenham), he (Mr. Sexton) did not expect to find, an identity of opinion between that hon. Gentleman and other Irish Members on the Bill. He would take the suggestion which had been offered to him by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary, and consult with other Irish Members before raising the point again.

said, he did not think there would be any objection in Ireland to the clause, because it would leave the landlord and tenant in the same position in that country. He thought it would be admitted that in Ireland tenants cared more for coursing hares than the landlords did.

moved, in page 2, after Clause 4, to insert the following Clause:—

(Protection of plantations on lands in Scotland.)

"The owner in fee of any land in Scotland to which any other person is entitled in life-rent shall, for the purpose of protecting the plantations thereon from injury, have the right, concurrently with such person and with any other person in the occupation of such land, to kill and take ground game within such plantations, and to enter upon such land for that purpose."

The hon. Member said, that while the Bill provided for the protection of the ordinary occupier of land—namely, the tenant, it made no provision for the protection of another class of occupiers in Scotland whose interests were frequently seriously affected by over-preservation in ground game, and who had, for all practical purposes, no power of protecting themselves—namely, those who had the right to the fee—that was the absolute right of property in land, where the enjoyment of the estate or annual income was left to another person in life-rent. The life-renter had the right to all the uses of the land, and, amongst these, the right to the ground game. But, subject to the life-renter's right to the cutting of natural wood, and to such parts of the timber as might be required from time to time to repair farm houses and farm buildings, and to make and repair fences, the trees and plantations belonged to the holder of the fee who, in order to replace wood cut down or blown down, had to plant from time to time. Where, however, the life-renter, or the tenant to whom he might have let the game, failed to keep it down, the young trees were sure to be destroyed by the depredations of the hares and rabbits. It often happened that whole plantations were ruined in a short time, and the expense and labour bestowed on them rendered abortive. A case in point was lately brought under his notice in which the holder of the fee in an estate in a county in which one of the boroughs which he (Mr. Dick-Peddie) represented was situated had about 30,000 young trees destroyed that year by ground game. The fiar might claim damages; but that was of little use, as he required to make out excessive preservation, and that amidst all the difficulties which surrounded such questions. In short, he was in the same position as the agricultural tenant, exposed to have his young plantations, which were what might be called his crop, exposed to the ravages of hares and rabbits. But the injury was much more serious in his case than in ordinary cases. In ordinary cases, a great part of a year's crop might be destroyed; but the destruction of a young plantation might imply the destruction of several years' value; and on many estates the maintenance of a succession of growing timber formed a very important element of their value. Now, it appeared to him that the principle of the Bill required that the fiar's interest should have protection in the same way as that of the ordinary tenant, and that his right should be declared of destroying game, concurrently with others having that right. He had, therefore, to move the insertion of the clause of which he had given Notice.

said, this was travelling out of the object of the Bill, which was to deal with crops, and he saw great difficulty in dealing with persons whom he should call the "remainder" men in England. He was afraid the concurrent right would lead to great social inconveniences between the parties, and he could not consent to introduce the clause.

moved the following new Clause:—

observed, that the wording was taken from the Hares Act of 1848. He did not think it would do in that form, though he was as willing as anyone to introduce a prohibition against the laying of poison. But he would not commit himself to accept the clause in this form, and would consider how to meet the point before the Report of Amendments.

moved the following new Clause:—

explained, that it was true that such a provision found a place in the Bill he framed; but it was one of a series of compensation clauses, which all hung together.

said, he had always presented the Bill as a non-compensation Bill. The system of compensation was not workable, and the Bill was founded on the principle of self-protection, not compensation; and into such a Bill he did not see that he could consent to introduce a piece of purely compensation machinery.

quite agreed that the clause could not be properly inserted in the Bill. He remembered, as a Member of the Committee of 1872, that the evidence given showed that the grievance most felt was the damage done to crops by the game from the land of a neighbour. In dealing further with the Game Laws, that was one of the questions that required attention.

said, as a general rule the tenant would be able to protect himself; but there were cases where he could not; for instance, where his land was bordered by a railway embankment. However, he would not press his Motion.

said, he was sorry to return to the point he mentioned before, the scheduling of the Acts of Parliament; but he found in the Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1879, was precisely the same drafting which he ventured to commend to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary—namely, the scheduling of those Acts or portions of Acts which were repeated as inconsistent, with the Bill under discussion. He should draw attention to this on Report, and ask, if possible, that the drafting might be amended. There should not be the slightest difficulty in scheduling the different Acts.

said, then he would propose to say the same thing in a different form, and simply propose that no person should be liable for any penalty by Statute or Common Law for anything done in accordance with this Act.

asked, when it was proposed to take the Report of the Amendments, and when the third reading?

said, he wished he could tell. It depended upon the progress of Supply, and that was rather an uncertain quantity. He understood the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington) intended to go on with Supply on Monday and Tuesday. He could say nothing further.

hoped that on Monday they would have some further information.

said, money was wanted, and Supply must be proceeded with. At the earliest opportunity the next stage of the Bill would be taken.

said, he had omitted to call attention to one point. There were certain rights—manorial rights of shooting—which overrid the rights of proprietors and occupiers. How would they be dealt with by the Act?

said, supposing that the Irish Estimates, upon which there was likely to be some discussion, went over Monday and Tuesday, would they be followed by other classes of Estimates, or would the Report of that Bill intervene?

said, that in the absence of his noble Friend (the Marquess of Hartington) he could give no more definite answer.

asked would the Bill be reprinted as amended?

said, it would.

observed, that the game rating fell equally upon the owner and occupier. That was not provided for in the Bill, and he wished to have the point cleared up.

said, the point was very clear, and the Bill would not affect it. At present, the man who was responsible for the game rate was the occupier, because in the eye of the law he was the proper owner of the whole of the game. Then he had the right to deduct from the owner that for which he was liable. Of course, the portion he enjoyed he would not be allowed to deduct—that was the half for the ground game.

said, that as to the question of half, how was that portion to be decided? He thought it ought to be made clear.

moved that the title "Ground Game Bill" be substituted for "Hares and Rabbits Bill."