Sir, I think it right that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland should have an opportunity of explaining a reply he gave to a Question in this House. For the purpose of affording him that opportunity I propose to conclude with a Motion. Before I allude to anything that has been said, I think it desirable that I should not lose this opportunity of thanking the hon. and gallant Baronet (Sir Walter B. Barttelot), who asked the right hon. Gentleman this Question, inasmuch as he has saved me a considerable deal of labour in Ireland; for, by directing the attention of the farmers of Ireland so markedly to the advice I have given them, he has published that advice more widely than I could possibly have done. More than that, he has earned the thanks of the National Land League, and of myself personally. The report he read to this House of the language I used in Kildare is certainly a very inaccurate and bad report; but the meaning, I am bound to say, is substantially the meaning of what I said, and I am prepared to repeat that language at every public meeting that I attend during the autumn in Ireland. To be called a coward by the right hon. Gentleman is just as much matter of indifference to me as if I were denominated a ruffian by the London Times. Such things are being constantly experienced by anyone who sets himself to oppose the methods or results of the British Government in Ireland, or in any other Dependency. The right hon. Gentleman is at liberty to amuse himself as much as he likes by abusing me; for, by doing so, he only strengthens my popularity amongst my own constituents, and will render my seat in this House more secure and less troublesome to myself. He is at liberty to call me a coward and an impostor as often as he thinks fit, or any other epithet which he may choose; but there is one term, which he made use of, to which I object. It was when he accused me of making a wicked speech to the people of Tipperary; because he not only involved me in that abuse, but the people who worked with me in the Land League, the people who applauded my utterances, and the thousands who supported our policy in Ireland. He said my language was wicked. This is so intensely English that I will not pass it over in silence. What is it he found wicked in my language? He found it wicked, because I encouraged the people to resist, to the best of their ability, a law which he knows, in his soul, works the foulest injustice in Ireland. He called me wicked, because I think the people should resist, to the best of their ability, the enforcement of that law. What can we think of a Chief Secretary for Ireland who sits on that Bench to govern Ireland, while he may be called on to enforce a law which he believes to be unjust? What is the meaning of a responsible Government, if the Members of it know that the laws they are called on to enforce are unjust? A great deal of nonsense is talked about the Government having shown themselves friendly to Ireland; but I say the Government has not discharged its duty in Ireland, because it did not act towards Ireland—it never does—as it would have acted towards Great Britain under similar circumstances. If a Minister had said in this House that the present condition of the law was so unjust that it had brought this country within a short distance of civil war, would it be consistent with their duty as men of honour to remain on the Treasury Bench and undertake to carry out that law? The right hon. Gentleman proclaimed that he was determined to enforce the law in Ireland, and some time ago one of Her Majesty's Ministers said he would leave nothing undone to maintain peace and order. Yes, he will protect, as the law has always protected in Ireland, the lives and the property of the rich; but he will refuse to protect, as the laws have always refused to protect, the lives and property of the poor. Not only that, but the right hon. Gentleman himself has proclaimed his intention of assisting the rich in Ireland to rob the poor, and denounces us as wicked because we have identified ourselves with saving to the poor the little they have been left. In my opinion, it would be far better for the Chief Secretary for Ireland to leave that Bench, and decline to administer unjust laws in Ireland, before exercising his ingenuity in framing and applying opprobrious epithets to the men who are endeavouring to protect the people in Ireland, or, on the other hand, wasting his time and the time of the House in ludicrous appeals to the forbearance of rack-renters and evictors—ludicrous to anyone acquainted with the history of Ireland. I have been laughed at here and "elsewhere" because I said we would have riots in Ireland this winter; but if the landlords do as they did in 1849 and in 1863, as regards clearing out the people, from what I know of the temper of the people, such a course will not be pursued without desperate resistance and more or less bloodshed. All this long wrangle I have heard to-day over bullets and buckshot is wide of the mark, because I believe the buckshot was issued to the police under the belief it would have to be fired at the evictions; and, when there is a distinct mention of firing, the probabilities of bloodshed are immensely increased. I will conclude by saying that, if bloodshed does occur in Ireland, the responsibility will lie at the door of the man who persists in maintaining what he chooses to call law and order, but what I call injustice, and in doing what necessarily incites the people to something much worse than civil, and that is social, war. In conclusion, I beg to move the adjournment of the House.

, in seconding the Motion, said, he agreed so far with the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) that he did not regard obedience to English-made law in Ireland as a matter of moral obligation. It was a mere matter of prudence. More cruel, ruthless, and stupid laws, based on force as they were, were never imposed upon the people of one country by the people of another. He entirely endorsed the views of his hon. Friend, and should be proud in the autumn to be by his side in Ireland, as he was now in the House of Commons.

Sir, the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) has said that he wished to give me an opportunity of explaining the answer which I gave to a Question of the hon. and gallant Baronet opposite (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) in reference to his speech. I may say that he has not overstated its effect, and that I have no alteration to make in it. On the contrary, I adhere to every word I used in that answer; but I think the remarks of the hon. Member, as he is present, make it desirable that I should make some explanation of the reason why I gave that answer to the Question put to me. What I stated was this—that the speech was a wicked one. I said it was wicked, and that its wickedness was only equalled by its cowardice; because it had been addressed to excitable men at a trying time, and that the speech was so ingeniously framed as to secure the speaker from being prosecuted. What I said then I adhere to; and although the statement made by the hon. Member to-night may appear to many of us of a serious character—and, certainly, it is a very broad statement—doubtless he is well aware that, just as we think it desirable to fence round the freedom of debate with very strong safeguards, it would not be very difficult to make such a speech as he has made and be protected by the protection afforded to speeches in Parliament; and, therefore, the hon. Member may be quite safe in making such a speech as he has made to-night, although he said in that speech that the law ought to be resisted. But why did I use the words referred to? The hon. Member rather questioned the correctness of the report. Well, I thought it my duty to compare the report of the speech obtained by the Government with the reports in the newspapers, and I found the newspaper reports to be substantially correct. And what does the hon. Gentleman say was his object? His object was to put a stop to rack-renting. [Mr. DILLON: Hear, hear!] Well, I wish that rack-renting could be put a stop to. But what, then, did he say? He insisted that every man who was paying a rack-rent in Ireland should pay it no longer. Would that advice not be understood by those who heard the hon. Member as signifying that they were to decide what was rack-renting? Secondly, he insisted that no man or woman should be put out of his or her farm, and that no evictions should occur in the County of Kildare during the coming year. He also said the House of Lords had rejected a Bill to prevent evictions. I need not refer to the Bill which has taken up so much of the time of the House; but that Bill was not to prevent every possible eviction, but to prevent unjust and unreasonable evictions. We have never stated, and it would not be correct to state, that every eviction is unjust. The hon. Member said to those men, who would not be likely to be very impartial judges in the matter, that every eviction was to be resisted. ["Read!"] I am reading. The next thing the hon. Mem- ber said was that it would be the duty of the people to insist that no arrears of rent should be realized during the coming year—quite independently of the fact whether a man could pay his arrears or not, or whether the case would be a just one or an unjust one. I am now, Sir, putting out of the question the fact that the law as it stands must be obeyed. I have before stated that it must be, and I adhere to the statement, because, if it were not, as I have said before, society would be disorganized. If the hon. Member had studied the question, he must have known that he was absolutely wrong in leading those men to believe that, in every case, arrears of rent ought not to be recovered. That is what he stated was his object. The hon. Member went on to say that the practical question for the farmers was how were they to attain those ends, and he gave one or two means by which they were to attain them. One was that all the young farmers and all the young men should be brought to attend the meetings, to march to the meetings; and the result of the organization would, he said, be that no man would be found to take the farms from which men had been evicted. By that statement he encouraged those men—he might do it safely in Parliament—to march organized and for the purpose of doing an illegal thing.

rose to Order. He wished to know whether the right hon. Gentleman was correct in saying that he was safe in Parliament?

I believe the hon. Member is safe here. Whether he will remain safe is quite another matter, and must rest with himself. Then the hon. Member goes on to another suggestion. In the County of Mayo, he said, they had a good many farms lying idle. That being so, he said the landlord could get no rent, and if he put cattle on the land they would not prosper very much. Now, I suppose the hon. Member is not without knowledge how such a suggestion as that has been followed out, and in what manner the cattle have not "prospered." For some time it has been my painful duty to attend to these matters, and I have been horrified at the cruelties practised upon poor unoffending animals, and with the way in which it was made quite certain that the cattle should not prosper. If the House will allow me, I will give them one case which came before me within the last day or two in Dublin, and it is one of very many, I am sorry to say. I have before me the report of a Sub-Inspector as to a case of outrage occurring a mile from Oranmore, not far from Mayo, where the cattle were not to prosper. On the previous night, he said, five bullocks and 16 sheep belonging to a respectable farmer were houghed—that is, their sinews were cut—by several parties unknown, and no trace could be obtained of the perpetrators of the outrage. The conspiracy, he said, was so widespread that no one could be found to give the slightest information on the subject. The Inspector said he at once proceeded to the scene of the outrage, and found the animals, their sinews barbarously divided, unable to stand up. Will the hon. Member state that he is not aware that such things have occurred over and over again; and how it was he stood before the people, and made the suggestion that the cattle would not prosper very much, instead of denouncing such cowardly and barbarous proceedings? In that case the farmer who owned the cattle rented 56 acres, which had been formerly held by a tenant living in the neighbourhood, who had surrendered the farm on being forgiven a year's rent. The sub-Inspector went on to say that he was of opinion the outrage was instigated by agents of the Land League, because the owner of the cattle had taken the farm. Here was another case, and it occurred in Mayo itself on the 12th of August; and if he went back he could, no doubt, find many more.

wished to suggest to the hon. Member——["Order!"]

said, the hon. Member for Galway Borough was out of Order.

In the case to which I refer the report states that on the morning in question some persons unknown maliciously cut the ears off 17 sheep, the property of Peter Ryan, on his farm, three miles from the police station. The farmer could assign no cause for the outrage, but that he had paid his rent, with a view, as he said, to show a good example. Well, I acknowledge that, knowing as I did of such barbarous acts of cruelty, which, I believe, are contrary to the nature of the Irish people, and which, if they were properly commented upon by men who tried to influence them, like the hon. Member for Tipperary, would soon come to an end. I confess that my feelings were somewhat excited when I read that passage as to the cattle not prospering very much. So much for the past. Now comes this passage—

"It will be the duty of those organizers to tell how many men they can march to a meeting, and they should march those men like regiments of soldiers."

Then he goes on to express a hope that before long 300,000 men would be enrolled in the National Land League; and if they were, he said, all the armies of England would not levy rent in Ireland. Now, that is an incitement to these men to break the law. Marching in that organized manner for the purpose of preventing the legal execution of the law is breaking the law, and it will be the duty of the Executive Government to prevent it. Sir, when I 'used the word "cowardly," I had no reason to suppose that the hon. Member was a coward; but there are men who do things which one is perfectly surprised at their doing, and there are acts committed which are wicked and cowardly by men who are not cowards; and I consider a speech such as this to be one of those acts. What did I feel when I read that speech? I felt that it would be my duty—not merely the duty of the present Chief Secretary, but of any Chief Secretary—to prevent society from being utterly disorganized, to give protection to life and property, and to take care that the law was obeyed; and I knew very well that if the men of Mayo or of any other distressed parts of the country were to follow the hon. Member's advice—advice which, I say, was skilfully framed in order to be safely given, but which, nevertheless, it would be unsafe to follow—it would be my business, as it would be that of any Government, to put down such meetings as those. I knew, too, that in doing so collisions must follow, and what must be the terrible result to the poor unfortunate people who followed such advice; and it was that feeling which made me say that a speech such as that exhibited both wickedness and cowardice. As the hon. Member has brought up this question, I must make a further remark. I did not do it in answer to the hon. and gallant Baronet the Member for West Sussex, because I did not then think it necessary; but I do think it necessary, to prevent misconception in Ireland. The hon. Member, towards the conclusion of his speech says this—

"If they adopt the platform of the Land League for the people, every farmer may obtain possession of his own farm if he chooses"—

that is, if he chooses, and not if he would buy it. And then he states what it is his duty to do in Parliament. He believes that—

"Those in Parliament, faithful to the cause of the people, could paralyze the hands of the Government, and could prevent them passing such laws as would throw men in prison for organizing themselves. In Parliament they could obstruct, and outside of it they could set the people free to drill and organize themselves, and take it out of the power of the police to arrest every man who was out after 8 o'clock at night."

I do not suppose that anyone proposes to do that.

"They would show that they had a right to march to meetings, and to obey the commands of their leaders if they chose to do so."

They have no Parliamentary right under the law now to hold a meeting for the purpose of intimidation.

"They would show that every man in Ireland had a right to a rifle, if he liked to have a rifle."

I think it is desirable the people of Ireland should know the facts of this matter—or, rather, that they should be known to such small minority as is likely to be influenced by the hon. Member. I have already stated to-night that, notwithstanding anything the hon. Member and hon. Gentlemen like him may say, we do not despair of being able to maintain law and order in Ireland without resort to any exceptional powers. We do not believe the hon. Member will force us into a Peace Preservation Act, or a Coercion Act. But suppose we realize what the hon Member and those who second him have said about the autumn and the winter, and suppose we cannot keep law and order without coming to Parliament for further powers, the hon. Member is fearfully misleading the people of Ireland if he supposes that this House would not give those powers, if hon. Members felt that law and order could not be maintained without them. No attempt at obstruction by a minority will prevent the House of Commons sup- porting the Government in its first and primary duty, the protection of life and property. I do not, however, expect that. In my answer to the hon. and gallant Baronet, I guarded myself by assuming that we might exaggerate the effect of a speech such as this, and it would be a mistake to do so. I do not believe the people of Kildare were excited. The reports that have reached me do not show that the speech did much to affect the people of Kildare. But there are parts of Ireland in which there has been great distress, and in which words such as these may have some effect; but it would be a very great mistake to exaggerate that effect. I may tell the hon. Member that, whatever he may do or may not do, there are three things he will not be able to do. First, he will not induce the Government, in any way, to relax the determination to preserve peace and order in Ireland. Secondly, he will not, so far, force the hands of the Government, or oblige, or induce, or tempt them to bring in any special measure until they are perfectly assured that they cannot keep the peace with the existing laws. Lastly, he will not tempt, nor induce, the Government to swerve for one moment from the determination to look at the evils under which Ireland is labouring, to look at the state of things which alone has made it possible for the hon. Member to make such speeches as he has made, and to propose to this House, I trust very speedily, such measure as may be necessary to put the relation of landlord and tenant in Ireland on a better footing, and tend to bring about a better state of things.

said, he had listened with sincere regret to the speech which had just been made by the right hon. Gentleman, because the former speech, which he (Mr. A. M. Sullivan) had hoped might have been spoken in a moment of irritation, had been magnified into a Government declaration against Ireland, and the one they had just heard in no sense removed that impression. ["No, no!"] The moment was one of greater gravity than some hon. Members seemed to imagine. When he read the language which the Chief Secretary for Ireland applied to an hon. Gentleman whom he (Mr. A. M. Sullivan) was proud to claim as a Friend, he remarked that if there was one Member of the Government whom he thought incapable of falling into such an error it was the right hon. Gentleman, and if there was an Irish Member of Parliament who did not answer to the description it was the hon. Member for Tipperary. The man who ventured or dared to call John Dillon a coward exposed himself to a taunt and an answer which Parliamentary propriety forbade him (Mr. A. M. Sullivan) to utter. The man who uttered such an accusation against his hon. Friend, whether broadly or veiled under Parliamentary euphemism, knew not the man whom such a description would libel. His hon. Friend dared to speak all he felt. He had never incited, he never would incite, anybody to the commission of any act which he was not ready to share, and the full penalty of which he was not himself ready to bear. If that was cowardice, he knew not what manliness and bravery might be. He had no wish to retort on such a Gentleman as the Chief Secretary for Ireland; he had no wish to imitate his lamentable error by using against him, for the purpose of argument, the charge which, in his conscience, he did not believe to be true. He believed the right hon. Gentleman to love the truth, and to be kindly disposed towards Ireland; but he would say, if he did not know the right hon. Gentleman as well as he did, with his creditable and honourable antecedents, he should have said it was cowardice for a Minister of the Crown to use his high position to hurl such a charge against an absent man. What defence did the Chief Secretary offer for the use of such language? If a Minister of the Crown felt uncomfortable—and, no doubt, the position of the right hon. Gentleman was painful in the last degree—it was painful to him, because he was a conscientious man, and because he found himself compelled to administer a law founded in injustice and oppression upon a people who were determined to resist it—if his position was painful, he had no right to retort in venomous and violent language upon political opponents. If his hon. Friend were charged with inciting to a breach of the peace, and he was guilty of it, the right hon. Gentleman knew that that was a crime, and that he could be indicted for it. If he had not so offended, how dare a Minister of the Crown apply such a word as "coward?" The tribunals of the law were higher than the mind, the temper, or the caprice of a Minister. There had been times when the right hon. Gentleman the present Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright), if he had not been protected by the genuine public opinion of the country, and if there had not been tribunals of English law in Westminster, might have been described by his opponents as a wicked, inflammatory, and seditious coward. If any Minister of the Crown had dared so to speak of the right hon. Gentleman, when he was identified with a great agitation in this country, there would not have been wanting hon. Members of that House to rise and defend him, independently of his political opinions. Hon. Members would have protested against such a grave scandal as a Minister of the Crown resorting, in the face of the tribunals of the law, to vituperative language in order to overwhelm political opponents. To-night, the right hon. Gentleman endeavoured to beg the question as between himself and the hon. Member by the harrowing details of atrocities in Ireland. Sharing his horror and abhorrence, he (Mr. A. M. Sullivan) would never hesitate out-of-doors, or in the House, to express his detestation of those crimes. But the right hon. Gentleman began by declaring that society would be dissolved if the law were not enforced; he would tell the right hon. Gentleman how it would be dissolved, and how it might be dissolved, under his own Administration. It might be, if the law were not enforced; but it was much more likely to be dissolved when injustice, tyranny, and oppression were garbed in the guise of the law. He had himself declared that he would not be the minister of injustice; but the good intention of the Government had been frustrated "elsewhere;" and the right hon. Gentleman, though he had a kindly nature, and was a conscientious man, could take the matter very coolly. He said it might be that the Government would be called upon to administer injustice if the measure were not passed; but when it was not passed, the Chief Secretary did not, like Pontius Pilate, wash his hands of the responsibility. He did not say—"I will not go to Ireland to shoot down people in the administration of what I have declared to be injustice; I will go into private life rather than be the Minister of such an Administration." He did nothing of the kind; he retained his place; and the Government proclaimed that bullet and bayonet would be used to enforce laws which in that House they had declared to be fraught with injustice. Here exactly lay the whole test of the case against the right hon. Gentleman. It was easy for a cool, long-headed Yorkshire Gentleman to take a Parliamentary view of injustice to the Irish people; but it was another thing for one of their own race and nation, standing face to face with the men who were to be robbed, with the victims who had been shot down, to talk with that measured coolness which was impossible for him under the circumstances. Let not the right hon. Gentleman call him (Mr. A. M. Sullivan) a coward, if he said he should despise himself if, face to face with these things, he were to be as cool as a stranger viewing them. He preferred to be human, rather than inhumanly cool, in such a case. The right hon. Gentleman had told the House of houghing cattle, and such detestable, horrible, and wicked crimes. But he (Mr. A. M. Sullivan) invited right hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench to say if ever there had been in the history of Ireland for the last 60 years a period like that of the last 10 months, a period of such terrible distress in Ireland, such dire temptation to disorder and crime, and yet which, on the whole, had passed so peaceably and tranquilly? He confessed he looked last year to the approach of November with terror and misgiving, and he said so; but it passed over with comparative peace and absence of crime, and why was that? He (Mr. A. M. Sullivan) would tell the right hon. Gentleman that it was because of the agitators whom he denounced. In former times, the people were in despair of redress from that House, or through it; and the disordered popular mind found vent in outrage and popular feeling, which all deplored; but it was a notorious fact that, during the past year, the people throughout the land meetings in Ireland had found a vent and an utterance for the popular emotion which really had been the best preservation of the peace of the country. The right hon. Gentleman might remember a Yorkshireman named Mr. Broadhead, and the terrible atrocities which marked his career and the movement of trades unionism in a portion of this Kingdom. A few people then were unwise enough to denounce trades unions, as a whole, because of the atrocities which marked such combinations here and there in England. Trades unions, however, had their legitimate use; they had proved themselves useful in ameliorating the condition of the working classes, and of drawing the attention of Parliament to industrial questions which might otherwise pass unheeded. What had been the suggestion and advice of his hon. Friend (Mr. Dillon) on this subject? As he (Mr. A. M. Sullivan) understood that language, it meant that the tenant farmers of Ireland ought to take a lesson from the industrial classes of England, and combine in a gigantic trades union; then they would be respected and a strike would accomplish their purpose. If that were the suggestion, he (Mr. A. M. Sullivan) would say, on his own responsibility, he believed it would settle the question in 24 hours. It had often been the subject of contemptuous reproach to the Irish tenant farmers that they had not the spirit of union, like the Amalgamated Engineers and other similar Bodies in England and Scotland. Whenever they took the advice of his hon. Friend, and 600,000 tenants became as well organized and as well able to strike as the Amalgamated Engineers, they would be very near a settlement of the Irish Land Question. No doubt, during the past eight months language had been used in Ireland with respect to which he (Mr. A. M. Sullivan) could not express himself too strongly. But the right hon. Gentleman ought to weigh well his words when he came to speak of a Member of that House, who had the name and memory to uphold of one who had left behind him in his home and family a reputation as proud—he did not mean to offend anyone when he said even prouder and higher than that of any hon. or right hon. Gentleman on the Treasury Bench. He was quite sure, whatever might be his hon. Friend's career, whatever course he might pursue in politics, that he would never bring a stain on the memory which was bequeathed him by his father, and he never would give any man cause to shrink from his side, or to refuse to stand up and say he would not sit silent while the hon. Member for Tipperary was charged with cowardice. Let him stand in the dock, as was his right if he had broken the law, and answer for it, as higher and better men had stood before; but, if he had not offended, let not the Chief Secretary for Ireland use words in the House, under the cover of Parliamentary privilege, which he dared not address to the hon. Member outside the House, and which no Minister of the Crown was treating him in a manly way that was.

said, he wished to eliminate the personal part of the discussion, as he thought hard and personal epithets applied to hon. Members of that House were not likely to be of useful service underany circumstances. He confessed, therefore, he had read with some regret the word "cowardice" attributed by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland to the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon). But he thought there was something much more at stake than whether the hon. Member was or was not a coward. The real matter which they had to consider was the object with which the speech of the hon. Gentleman had been delivered. He (Mr. Mitchell Henry), as an Irish Representative, was as anxious for the freedom of the Irish people and the redress of their grievances as any hon. Gentleman opposite; and the question he had a right to ask those hon. Gentlemen was how far they endorsed the speech of the hon. Member for Tipperary. The hon. and learned Member for Meath (Mr. A. M. Sullivan) spoke of the hon. Member for Tipperary being justified in everything he had said, on the ground——

I rise to Order.

Allow me to complete my sentence. The hon. and learned Member stated that the hon. Member for Tipperary was justified in whatever he said, if he was prepared to stand in the dock, if necessary, and take the consequences of his speech.

I beg to say I never made such a statement.

said, in that case, he must confess he was utterly incapable of understanding what the hon. and learned Member did mean. His memory was as accurate as the memories of hon. Gentlemen opposite, yet he constantly heard them deny that which was the just inference of what they had said a very few minutes before. He said it was a very low estimate of the moral responsibility, which belonged not merely to a Representative, but to a Christian Gentleman, to state that he could say anything if he was prepared to stand in a dock and be prosecuted for it. They had all a much higher responsibility than that. It should be remembered that they had to deal with a people many of whom were uneducated, numbers of whom were sorely oppressed, who had been greatly tried, and who had an exceedingly excitable constitution. It was, therefore, their duty to be very careful in what they said to the Irish people. It was their duty to take care not to give such advice as "Don't nail his ears to the pump." But when the people were told it was in their power to become possessed of rifles, and that they ought to go to meetings, marching in military array, everybody knew what inference would be drawn from such statements. The hon. Member who was the Leader of the Irish Representatives on the other side of the House told the people of Ireland what use was to be made of these weapons. At Liverpool he had said—

"Let us see, as in 1782, 100,000 swords, both Catholic and Protestant, leap from their scabbards, and it will not be any mean acts of Party, or anything else, that can possibly interfere with the rights of the people to make their own laws on the soil of Ireland."

["Hear, hear!"] Then, did hon. Members accept the situation? ["Hear' hear!"] Then, they were to declare war? ["No, no!"] It meant nothing else but that the people of Ireland were to be incited to insurrection. ["No, no!"] Well, it was a contempt of common sense for hon. Members to cheer words which desired that the Irish people should draw 100,000 swords, and wave them in the face of their fellow-subjects—which desired the Irish people to march in military array, and to possess themselves of rifles; and to say that all those recommendations meant nothing, but that they were to endeavour to redress their grievance by peaceable and Constitutional means. It was a mockery for hon. Gentlemen in the House, or anywhere else, to attempt to make fools of those who listened to them. Let the hon. Member who cheered so loudly there, let him draw his sword.

I must ask the hon. Member to address himself to the Chair.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to Order. Is it in Order for the hon. Member for the County of Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) to endeavour to incite the hon. Member for Ennis (Mr. Finigan) to revolt?

Let the hon. Member for Ennis, who approved of the 100,000 swords being flashed in the face of the English people, let him be the first to head the movement; but let him not incite the poor, humble, and weak men, who were only too easily led away, to incur danger while he safely sat in that House. That was the point he wished to bring out—that those who used the brave words which misled the unfortunate people took care not to do anything which brought themselves into the meshes of the law. It had sometimes been supposed that hon. Members like himself (Mr. Mitchell Henry), who uniformly advocated the rights of the Irish people upon a Constitutional basis, were so much attached to their position as Irish Representatives that they were ready to lose their sense of moral obligation and of honour rather than jeopardize their seats in Parliament. That certainly was the ridiculous notion of those who put something before duty, who put their personal position and their personal objects before the much greater objects—the advancement of their country; but it could never have been truly said of many Members of the Irish Party. They knew very well that a Constitutional agitation took place in that House under the Leadership of the late Mr. Butt, which continued for many years. That agitation had the object, not of separating this country from Ireland, but of strengthening both countries by redressing the grievances of Ireland, and giving her such a measure of autonomy, that in future the two nations should stand arm and arm before the world; but the object which appeared to actuate some hon. Members opposite was to dissolve the Union, and to sever Ireland from England completely. ["No, no!"] He (Mr. Mitchell Henry) said that, unless those speeches had no meaning whatever, hon. Members had no right to use language liable to be interpreted in an ambiguous manner, if they bore any other meaning than the one he (Mr. Mitchell Henry) had put upon it. That, however, was not the object for which he had been returned to the House, or which he should ever countenance. With regard to another matter—the land agitation—no doubt, great distress had existed in Ireland which was due to the visitation of God, aggravated, he admitted, by the very unjust condition of the land tenure in that country; but they had been told that those landlords who had held their hands and not pressed their tenants in time of distress might expect, if the harvest was good, to be repaid. He hoped that might be done; but the advice of the hon. Member for Tipperary was that no arrears of rent should be paid, and he now wished to know whether hon. Gentlemen opposite really desired that the Irish people should not pay their just debts? Hon. Gentlemen might easily, if they chose, repudiate that advice, and might remember the existence of many impoverished landlords who had done their best to help the people. He knew many of them who had not received any rent for the last 18 months, or two years; and his heart had bled for some who, formerly in a good position, had now come to great distress. The prospects of harvest were unusually good, and very good prices were obtained at the fairs for cattle; so that there was no excuse for pleading absolute inability to pay. At one of the "pattern" fairs near his residence the other day in Galway a meeting was held, at which the usual extreme resolutions were passed, and an American friend of the hon. Member for Tipperary made a very violent speech. His advice was very like that of the hon. Member, to pay no rent, although not a few of those who attended that fair had ample sums of money in their pockets. He (Mr. Mitchell Henry) was glad to say, however, from the testimony of independent witnesses, that not one-third of those pro-sent at the fair went to the land meeting, and that the person who expressed his disapproval of the course taken by himself and his Colleague in not joining the Land League had to run away from the indignation of his constituents. He had received a letter giving further particulars as to the meeting. From that communication it appeared that not one tenant of his own took part in the meeting, and that the fury of the populace at what was stated was prompted by the impulse of a grateful people who still had a spark of fair play left. He wished to preserve among Irish people a feeling of something like fair play to those who had practically proved their friends. He would ask those hon. Members, who, for the most part, had nothing to do with the land about which they talked so much, what would be their view of a doctrine laid down by hon. Gentlemen that debts owed to them should not be paid? What would hon. Members who wrote for newspapers say if there was a general strike against remunerating them for their leading articles? Or, if an hon. Member were engaged in a large bakery, or in any mercantile pursuit, what would he think of men advising his customers not to pay their debts? Why, would it not be regarded as an attempt to institute a gigantic injustice? Could they, then, advise the same course being pursued towards those long-suffering persons who, by the act of God, in the bad harvest had been deprived of the proceeds of their property. There were good Irish landlords as well as bad ones. The total amount of his own rents was very small, and in consequence of his mercantile occupations in this country it personally made less difference to him than to many others whether they were paid or not. But it would wound him to the quick if his tenants did not manifest an appreciation of the forbearance that had been shown to them. It was gratifying, therefore, to find that gratitude was not lost among the people of the West, even against the advice tendered by hon. Gentlemen opposite. Let there be an end to this farce, and let there be something like honesty. Let hon. Members say distinctly what they desired. Would the hon. Member opposite, when he went his rounds during the autumn, tell the tenants to fulfil their just obligations, and to pay some portion of their good harvest as rent to their long-suffering landlords? Did he think, as his notion of fairness in the matter, that no rent at all ought to be paid? [Mr. DILLON: NO.] If the hon. Member meant that the tenants should pay rent, let him go farther, and say what he considered the measure of their obligation. Why, since he came back from America, the first words of the hon. Gentlemen were—"Hold your harvests; do not pay your just debts."[Mr. DILLON: No, no!] Why, if he (Mr. Mitchell Henry), with ordinary intelligence, so understood the words, how would the ordinary tenant understand them?

The hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) said I said—"Do not pay your just debts." I never used such words.

, continuing, said, he did not pretend to use the exact words. Nothing could be more contemptible than a denial of this kind.

rose to Order. Was such an expression Parliamentary?

I did not observe anything in what the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) said that was out of Order or of an un-Parliamentary character.

said, he must repeat that the hon. Member had told the Irish people since his return from America to "hold the harvest," and in a speech which had been commented upon he told them not to pay any arrears of rent. Did the hon. Member mean to say that the arrears of rent, extending over the past 6, 12, or 18 months, were not just debts? If such was not his meaning, let him repudiate the meaning which had been attached to his words. With an adroitness which might be considered very skilful, but which was not very manly, the hon. Member also told the people that if cattle were put on certain lands they would not thrive very much. Now, what did the hon. Member intend the people to understand by that language? Did the hon. Member mean to recommend the mutilation of animals in order to spite their owners? Hon. Members who used language of doubtful import, and who just kept clear of the law, ill discharged their duties as Representatives of the Irish people in that House. Let the hon. Member do away with such ambiguous language, for cases of the mutilation of cattle or of their being driven into the sea were too common in Ireland. He (Mr. Mitchell Henry) trusted the Government would not be diverted from its policy, and he sincerely hoped that if individuals who ought to know better went about giving advice to the Irish tenants of a doubtful character, that something would be done to mark the sense which all right-minded people must have of those who put on others the responsibility they would not share. Nothing could be more distressing, after the Peace Preservation Acts had been allowed to lapse, than that an endeavour should be made to show that Ireland was not prepared to abide by the ordinary law. But he believed the good sense of the Irish people would triumph over the bad advice which the hon. Member for Tipperary and other hon. Gentlemen had said they had intended to give them; and he trusted that when Parliament re-assembled in February, the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant might have the satisfaction of stating that, in spite of such bad advice, law and order had been preserved.

said, he deplored and deprecated acts of cruelty; but the answer to the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) was simply this—that the ham-stringing of cattle was nothing as compared with the atrocities accompanying the driving of people from their homes. Let the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland put an end to that, and then his humanity would be believed in. Irish farmers had agreed with the body of the Irish people that the eviction of tenants for non-payment of unfair rent—that was to say, rent arbitrarily fixed by the landlord, or rent that a tenant could not pay owing to the failure of his crops, was an act of unparalleled tyranny. Farmers had resolved to resist such eviction to the ut-utmost of their power, and there was nothing sensible men could do that he (The Donoghue) was not prepared to do to support that resistance. For his own part, he agreed with every word of the speech of the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon). It was a fact that some 10,000, or, at the outside, 12,000 persons laid claim to the whole produce of the soil of Ireland, without regard to the fate of the occupiers, 600,000 in number, who, with their families, numbered some 3,000,000. Now, in the face of such a state of things as that, what right-thinking man could refrain from strong language? If the hon. Member for Tipperary had used the moderate language which went down in that House, he would have been unworthy of his position. It was not his hon. Friend who ought to feel ashamed in the present case; it was the Government, who were prepared to use the armed force of the country to maintain a law which permitted such a state of things to exist. In a word, the landlords, in his opinion, had no right to claim any rent which they themselves had arbitrarily fixed; the fixing of rent ought to be, as the late Mr. Butt proposed it should be, a matter for arbitration.

said, his hon. Friend (The O'Donoghue) must have forgotten the time when he himself was an Irish landlord. When his hon. Friend came forward and lent all the power of his eloquence in the endeavour to dissuade people from paying rent which he thought they had no right to pay, had he in his recollection the number of years during which he used to collect his rents in the Valley of Ken-mare? Did he ever call the tenants together and ask them what they thought they ought to pay? He did not in those days preach the doctrine that no man ought to pay rent. [The O'DONOGHUE: Unfair rent.] Well, he adopted the term, and he would ask the hon. Member for Tralee, whether, when he collected his rents, he caused any inquiry to be made as to whether those rents were fair or not? If he did not, was it not too much that he should now come down to the House with the "high-falutin" and the ad captandum language he had held? [The O'DONOGHUE: No tenant of mine has ever been evicted or served with a notice to quit.] He was not speaking of evictions; he had merely asked a question as to the rent which the tenants of the hon. Member formerly paid. [The O'DONOGHUE: They are paying it still.] They might be paying it still, but not to the hon. Member. [The O'DONOGHUE: Yes.]

requested the hon. Member who was in possession of the House to address the Chair.

said, he recognized the justice of the correction, and would address himself directly to the question. He had not the honour to be personally acquainted with the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), although he knew his respected father; but, without at all endorsing the hon. Member's statements, he could not help thinking that the word "cowardice" was not a becoming expression for the Chief Secretary for Ireland to apply to any Member of that House. The men of 1848, of whom the hon. Member's father was one, were not, at all events, lacking in courage. So much for the personal question. He now came to the question of the land. An accident made one man a shoemaker, another a cabinetmaker, another an owner of land in Ireland. Why was the income of the latter suddenly to be cut off? Because the hon. Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell) wanted to create for himself a political position, and found the cry of "No rent" the best means to that end. Now, how long was that humbug to continue? In 1848, and again in 1867 and 1868, there were friends of hon. Gentlemen who did not hesitate to ask his (Sir Patrick O'Brien's) humble assistance with the Government of the day to save those people from the position in which their follies had placed them, and he could only offer his humble mediation. Isolated outrages might lead, if not stopped, to greater and more frequent outrages, and the effect might be to induce persons, who he hoped would never lose their quality of humaneness, to endeavour to suppress with an iron hand such a state of things. Then, what would occur? The Americans would go back in the In man or Cunard steamers with their pockets full of—not the dollars which they came over with, but the sovereigns they had exchanged them for. The populace of Ireland would be left behind with feelings of disdain; the visitors would say—"We never expected to have to lead such a lot of fellows as you. We thought that we should have had such men as we meet upon Broadway in a good row. You are not fit comrades for us, and we leave you to your fate. "The Representatives of Ireland would have to come again to the House of Commons to endeavour to do what he (Sir Patrick O'Brien) himself had been trying to effect by his humble efforts, and what had been attempted by men of greater ability—to ameliorate the condition of the Irish farmer, and to reform those landlords who had trampled upon the farmers for 300 years. The answer such true efforts would probably get was that which had been made to some of the Irish Representatives already—namely, that such and such a person, although he might have been in Parliament for 20 or 30 years, was only looking for a place, and had been all his life looking for a place, just as the hon. Gentleman who represented The Nation newspaper, and his Colleague beside him, who wrote the leading articles, had been pursuing and blackguarding him (Sir Patrick O'Brien). Next some wild scheme was advertised, and articles were written in the Irish papers to remedy all the ills of Ireland. He was there to protest against that kind of thing in common with his hon. Friend the Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry), who, he dared say, would be called a Whig. Every man had his ambition. The hon. Member for Cork City had his. He would ask the hon. Member, whose ability had been recognized very soon after he had entered the House, to look at the state of society now in Ireland—to look at the condition of things, which included the presence of a number of men who had accompanied him in the steamer over here, over whom he had no control, and who were fighting for their own hand, and working on their own hook. The hon. Member bore a name which was adored among those who had read anything of Irish history. But if Sir Henry Parnell had lived till this time, would he have lent himself to what would lead to a state of revolution and savagery? He, for one, was opposed to the hon. Member. He (Sir Patrick O'Brien) knew well there were many parts of Ireland where, the morning or two after his making these few observations, he would be treated after the manner of what the French called a "charivari." But he knew well who had been great patriots, who had been great Irishmen, and who had been after a while forgotten by Ireland. He had one consolation—in the many times on which he had spoken in that House, or out of it, or wherever he had endeavoured to express his opinions, he had never attempted to catch the public favour by jumps, and he had always maintained one class of opinion which he would never desert. He had risen on that occasion to say what he honestly thought—namely, that, in his own judgment, if this agitation went on, it was not the landlords who would suffer—though they might for a time-—but the people that would eventually lose would be the wives and children of those who had been sold by these American adventurers to whom he had referred.

said, he thought the House was deeply indebted to the hon. Baronet the Member for King's County (Sir Patrick O'Brien) for the very facetious speech he had made. He failed, however, to see that personalities could alter the composition of hon. Members of that House. Under the Constitution every hon. Member, whether he owed his position to the accident of birth or to his own energies, was equal to the rest; and, therefore, it was a very great piece of folly for any hon. Member to indulge in such personalities as they had heard. Somewhat too much had been made out of this alleged treasonable speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary; or if the charge of treason had not actually been brought against it, some charges very nearly as grave had been made. He had copied from The Times all the indictments brought against his hon. Friend by the hon. and gallant Baronet the Member for West Sussex (Sir Walter B. Barttelot). He would deal with the indictment thus brought against his hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary. His hon. Friend had been attacked because he advocated organization among the Irish farmers. What harm was there in his hon. Friend's exhortations to unity and organization? If they had organization, they must have sections and sub-sections. Why should not the Irish tenants do what had been done for political purposes at Birmingham and other great towns in England? His hon. Friend (Mr. Dillon) simply asked the Irish people, if they wanted to organize, to get two active young men whose moral character would bear investigation, whose courage was undoubted, and whose principles were in accord with those of the people generally, to advocate the cause which they had at heart. Why should they not do in Ireland what had been done in Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool, and which the friends of the Premier of England did in Mid Lothian? Therefore, the accusation brought against his hon. Friend was not justifiable, since the advice he had offered was reasonable, consistent with the Constitution, and logical. He wished the principles of his hon. Friend to succeed; and the characters of his hon. Friend and those who were associated with him would bear investigation. There was nothing wrong, he repeated, in the doctrines advocated by his hon. Friend. Let the Irish help those who would help them. Let them do nothing for those who had done nothing for them. It might be un-Christian and unworthy to adopt a different course; but it was a sound political doctrine to help those who gave help in return. His hon. Friend had really only preached what had been practised in England. The people of Ireland had too long helped those who had not helped them; and from various causes they were suffering, especially from the operation of unjust laws. The present was a time of great need for them—a time when they required help; and, therefore, he held that it was a moment when it was more than logical—it was statesmanlike—to interfere between landlord and tenant with a view to adjusting their differences on a basis of justice to both. His hon. Friend held that if a man was evicted, the people were to call a meeting to denounce the landlord. It was a recognized principle to call meetings to discuss grievances. It had been admitted by the Government that, in that time of distress, the law of eviction pressed unjustly on the unfortunate tenant, and that doctrine had been embodied in the Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill, which, at any rate, had passed the House of Commons, though it had been rejected in the House of Lords. Therefore, what wrong could there be for a peasant or a townsman, from a legal or Constitutional point of view, in advocating principles the truth of which had been acknowledged by Ministers and by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland? No one could deny that the Irish tenants were anxious to pay as much rent as they could. But there was an unwritten law that was higher than any written law—a right which belonged to every class and nationality—to unite together in their own interest. The law was not morally binding unless it was a just law. No man was bound under any law to starve himself and his children in order to give his landlord rent. But as much as he thought he could conscientiously give, the tenant was bound to give to the landlord for rent, and no more. His hon. Friend had said that he would not let a man unjustly evicted starve. What harm was there in that? The Land League was only doing what the Government ought to have done. But for the efforts of the Land League, the distress would have been infinitely worse than it was, and men might have had recourse to conduct dictated by the wild spirit of revenge. The money sent from America, and collected there by the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), was remitted, not to pay rent, but to give relief to the poor, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, and to find homes for the homeless at a time when the House of Commons, professing to take a paternal interest in Ireland, meted out a few thousand pounds for the starving when it was voting away millions for war. He, therefore, failed to see any reason for applying to his hon. Friend (Mr. Dillon) that epithet of "coward." The hon. Member for Tipperary also said—

"That it would be the duty of the organization to tell how many men could march to a meeting, and that they should inarch like a regiment of soldiers."

For his own part, he (Mr. Finigan) was sorry that the people of Ireland could not imitate the people of Liverpool and Birmingham in 1832, when they put rifles on their shoulders and threatened to march to London, unless that miserable place called "the other place" passed the Reform Bill. As a consequence, the Re-form Bill of 1832 was passed, because Parliament gave way to force, not to principle. If, in the organization referred to, military terms and phrases were employed, it was because the Government had set the example. The terms companies and regiments were equivalent to sub-sections of larger bodies, formerly a natural organization. In the Army there were many Irishmen who had ever been "semper et ubique fideles." But in the Army they were treated on the same basis as the English and the Scotch. With the peasantry it was different. They were treated as people from whom as much blood in the shape of money as could be drawn must be got for the landlords. The law gave the English peasant a right to six months' notice before eviction; but no time was allowed to an Irishman. The law affecting Ireland had been a tyrannical law, passed in the interest of a class, and had driven the people to feel distrust of anything in the form of law. He contended that his hon. Friend was acting within the Constitution, which must be a reflex of the opinions of the people for whom it was framed; and if it was not such a reflex, it ought to be struggled against by every power in the hands of the people in Ireland, and of Members in the House of Commons. For his own part, he belonged to the new school, to which the Premier had belonged, to which he once thought the Chief Secretary for Ireland belonged, and certainly of which the President of the Board of Trade was a member—that school which agitated, organized, and claimed a free expression of opinion, in order that it might safeguard the rights of the people and enlighten them. They had a right to go to the very brink of the Constitution in advocating their views. The Constitution in Ireland was represented by the bayonet, the sword, the musket, and the camp. The people of Ireland were loyal to God, truth, and justice; but when injustice was meted out to them, they could not be loyal, and they were within their right to agitate and organize. He believed they were right in agitating and organizing; and if the landlords persisted in resisting justice, and refused to moderate their claims for rent, they would ask the people to strike against rent and pay no more. He endorsed the sentiments expressed by the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon). Ever since the accursed Act of Union the Irish people had been asking for justice, and yet they had obtained nothing from the spirit of justice. The few little points they had gained had been won by Parliamentary action and outside agitation. He should be the first to ask the people to march in military array, and, if the law allowed it, to put rifles on their shoulders, as they had done on a former occasion. The Irish people could not be loyal to wrong and injustice. They could only be loyal to the Constitution so long as that Constitution gave them the rights which were their due. The Government could not starve the people; but sooner than that, they would have to tax the landlords to provide the people with food and clothing. The first principle in English law was that the land belonged to the State; but the landlords had gradually eluded the trust on which they first secured the land, and instead of maintaining the Army and Navy, they had placed the taxes necessary for that purpose on the people. The people of England really had the same grievance on the Land Question as the Irish people; and if the English people were only rack-rented, evicted, and tyrannized over, they would rise and strike down their masters—the landlords and nobility. There could, therefore, be nothing wrong, he contended, on the part of the Irish Members in preaching that which English Members had so long practised. He perfectly agreed with his hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary in all that he had said, and he only regretted that Ireland was not in a position to resist the Armies of England under the Constitution. They could, however, resist the conversion of Ireland into a Bulgaria and a great camp. The Government might make Ireland a desert, but they would never conquer the Irish race. He was surprised that an English Minister had charged a Member of the House, in his absence, with cowardice; but he attributed it to age. ["Oh, oh!"] Well, he was saying nothing he should not be prepared to say anywhere out of the House. There was no misconception on the part of the Irish Members as to what the policy of the Government was; but there was a terrible mistake made as to what the Irish were going to do. They were not going to rise in rebellion, either to suit the Government, or the enemies of Ireland; but they were going to organize and agitate. Driven, as the Irish people were, into opposition to the law, no man could say what was the best mode of settling their difficulties until they had had an honourable pronouncement from the Government as to their intentions. They were told that peace and order would be preserved. Peace and order could be best preserved by peaceful and orderly means; but if the Irish were told that peace could only be kept by the sword and the musket, it was a bad sign, because the Irish would resist. If the Government forced Irishmen to hold illegal meetings and incited them to resistance, the responsibility must rest on the Government. If the day should come when the people were found in violent hostility, there were Members of that House who would meet the Government with force to force.

said, he would at once fully concede to the Government that in the land agitation there was much speaking that could not be defended. He believed in the maxim of Mr. O'Connell, that "whoever committed a crime gave strength to the enemy." He had not shrunk from ex- pressing his disapproval of some of the programmes put out by the agitators, and it was the duty of Irish Members not only to expose the evils under which the tenants suffered, but also to press on the tenants the proper means of resisting; but the strong language used at land meetings did not absolve the Government from the duty of distinguishing between what was just and reasonable as against that which was unjust and unreasonable. While there had been much of exaggeration in the speeches made at Land League meetings in Ireland, he could not admit such exaggerations as an excuse for the Government in neglecting to deal with the grievances which no one could say did not exist. He had confidence in the good intentions of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, and he believed the people of Ireland had the same feeling; but he could not think that his Colleagues were standing loyally by the Chief Secretary, any more than he could admit that the Government, as a whole, were dealing in any other than a most foul manner with the people of Ireland. They were delaying the Session for Bills which were of trifling importance compared with settling the state of Ireland. The Prime Minister said they were within a measurable distance of civil war in Ireland. Yet, in the face of that, nothing was to be done for Ireland. He was convinced that the Chief Secretary for Ireland would endeavour to put an end to the unendurable state of affairs, if his Colleagues would let him. The Government were pottering and tinkering with measures of minor importance, and throwing all the responsibility on the right hon. Gentleman of preserving peace in Ireland, where peace could not possibly be kept under present circumstances. They were told to wait until next year before a measure could be introduced to save the people. They did expect from the Government that they would not place the Chief Secretary for Ireland in a false and hopeless position. The right hon. Gentleman would be a failure as an Irish statesman, and have to give up the practice of his Liberal principles to rule Ireland with Tory weapons. They found the Chief Secretary for Ireland admitting the possibility of calling a special Session for passing coercive laws for Ireland; but they did not take a single step to aid him in his responsibility, or to aid him in carrying the impossible burden they were laying on his shoulders. If the right hon. Gentleman broke down, the responsibility would rest on the Government, from the Prime Minister to the most unpretentious Under Secretary. The Land League was a vast trade union. What the trade unions did for the English working classes, the Land League would have to do for the Irish peasants. There could be no reason why the Irish tenants should not be entitled to form themselves into an organization similar to the trades unions in this country. So far as he could see, the chief aggravation of the tenants' condition in Ireland was that so soon as a tenant was evicted there was someone else, no matter what the terms might be, ready to take his place at an even higher rent, so putting a premium upon eviction. To prevent that they must have a trades union. The only way to put down the land grabbers was by organizing public opinion in Ireland, so that an evicting landlord, if he did evict, should have a barren farm, instead of a fairly cultivated one. He deplored many of the proceedings of the Land League in Ireland, but they were only the inevitable exaggerations of an enormous popular movement; and what he said was, that if they wanted to get rid of these exaggerations, they must remove the cause of their occurrence. They had had such exaggerations in all their English movements, and the blood of English public life was never cleared of them until the Government of the day laid the axe of needful reform to the root of the existing evil. In the same way, they would have the evils of Chartism and of Luddism in the Irish agrarian movement, until they removed the evils which necessitated that Irish land agitation. So far as Ireland was concerned, great responsibility rested upon them all. They knew that acts of illegality would be committed. The movement in Ireland, of which so much had been said, had been organized to meet an unendurable evil; but to meet the evil effectually law must come a little nearer to justice than it stood at present. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had expressed his indignation at the evil counsels offered from time to time to the Irish people. He did not know whether the time was not at hand when the right hon. Gentleman would feel himself compelled to say to his Colleagues in the Cabinet—"You have no right to place me in an untenable position. You have no right to ask me to solve problems that are capable of no solution, unless you place in my hands the means of solving them. If you refuse to do so, then, for my own sake, and for the sake of my reputation, I must retire from the Cabinet." If the evils which the Government admitted to exist when they brought in their Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill still existed, then, he said, the position taken up by the Chief Secretary for Ireland was hardly tenable; because if that Bill was thrown out by the House of Lords, that was no excuse for the Government not bringing in another measure, which would be free from the defects of their first Bill, and at the same time afford protection to the Irish tenantry. Was that the way the Government were acting to pacify Ireland? He was no friend of exaggerated measures; but he was only doing his duty, not only to his Irish constituents, but to the English Liberal Party, in pointing out that if the Government were right in their condemnation of the methods of the Land League, the condemnation fell upon their own heads with ten-fold force as long as they refused to deal with the question. Did the Government believe their own words? Did they believe that Ireland was in a condition that required instant remedy? If they did not believe their own words, then they had no right to use them. If the necessity did exist for the Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill, or some other measure with a similar object, the Government was not absolved from its duty of governing Ireland by the mere fact that the House of Lords had thrown out the Bill which the Government introduced. The position of the Government was absolutely indefensible, if, after the warning they had received, the Government allowed bloodshed to take place which now they might, by a timely measure, prevent. He repeated that the Premier had warned them that they were within a measurable distance of civil war. Nothing could absolve the Government from allowing the country to drift into such a war. The hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Major Nolan) had a very moderate measure before the House. Did the Government mean to support that measure, or had they a single Bill of their own to avert the possibly awful doings which might occur between the present time and the next Session of Parliament? What was to become of the Irish peasantry while the Government were preparing their measures? What was to become of men in whose ears incendiary counsels were ringing? Were they to be dealt with by repressive measures only? If so, the Government were treating the people of Ireland as the Turk treated the Bulgarians—making them promises for the future. The great question was the Irish Question, and they all knew it. Did they want an insurrection in Ireland? He believed they did not; but they were doing their very best to produce one, for if the people of that country were not protected, they would be driven to protect themselves. The House knew how in American cities Irish men and women were fallen and sunk, who, had they been afforded a fair opportunity of living in their native land, would have been an honour and a pride to Ireland. Yet, now, writers and flippant correspondents in The Times from many of those towns sneered at the drunkenness and degradation which prevailed among those poor people, for they must record them for the sake of ministering to Saxon self-complacency. English rule threw them ignorant, impoverished, and unprotected on the shelter of a foreign shore, and still held them responsible for the disgrace which in many cases his unfortunate countrymen so situated brought upon the Irish race. He read the other day a speech of a noble Lord who, as his contribution towards the solution of the problem of Irish distress, compared the wretched people to wild beasts. He could only wish that a transformation could be effected, and that noble Lords and their offspring had, for a short time, an experience of the mud and slush and misery in which these poor people lived. They would not then, perhaps, be so ready to indulge in such comparisons. He would, in conclusion, beg the Government, collectively, for it would be scarcely fair to address himself entirely to the unfortunate Chief Secretary for Ireland, to take the neces- sary measures to meet the terrible crisis in that country.

Sir, I think it is time I should rise to ask the House to consider for one moment the position in which we now stand. This is not, or it ought not to be, a debate on the state of Ireland. There is no question before the House which raises that issue, and I must decline, upon the present occasion, on an issue so raised, to enter upon any discussion whatsoever as to the conduct of the Government with regard to Ireland, either in reference to matters of administration or legislation. The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down (Mr. O'Donnell), and others who have preceded him, have gone at considerable length into a discussion of the agrarian question in connection with Ireland, and they have passed a great many strictures on the conduct of the Government and of Parliament with respect to that question. My right hon. Friend has admitted that the difficulties with which the Government have to contend in dealing with Ireland at the present moment are great, and that those difficulties have been increased—I frankly admit it—by the action of the House of Lords in rejecting a Bill the passing of which would, in our opinion, have greatly facilitated the government of Ireland. The difficulties under which we labour, however, will not be diminished; but, on the contrary, they will be considerably increased, if Irish Members will insist in bringing on discussions of an irregular nature such as this, and so attempting to force from the Government a declaration as to the policy which they will pursue in circumstances which at present are not strictly defined. We have heard from all parts of the House—and the anticipation may, I hope, be realized—that there is in store for Ireland this year the blessing of a good harvest. If that be so, many of the difficulties which we see, and which several hon. Members opposite seem disposed to paint in so much darker colours than we do, will disappear. A tribute, and nothing but a just tribute, has been paid to the wish of the Government, and, above all, of my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland, to bring forward measures for the removal of any grievances under which the Irish occupier may be at the present moment suffering. It is, however, ad- mitted that the Government cannot be expected in the present Session to introduce a large measure dealing with that most complicated and difficult subject; and I do not know what useful object hon. Gentlemen opposite think can be attained by a declaration of policy on the part of the Government which can be properly given only when some measure is laid before Parliament for its consideration. I have said this debate is not in any sense, and ought not to have become, a debate on the condition of Ireland. It arose out of a personal explanation which was made by the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), and that hon. Gentleman was perfectly justified, in my opinion, in calling attention to the strictures which were on a former occasion passed upon his speech. The House is always willing to grant indulgence in a case of that kind to one of its Members, and it has done so in this case; and I think, after the reply of my right hon. Friend, the debate ought long since to have ended. But the debate ought, I think, to have been confined to the question which was thus raised. As to the explanation given by the hon. Gentleman, it does not seem to me necessary that I should trouble the House at any length by giving my opinion upon it. I concur with my right hon. Friend near me (Mr. W. E. Forster) in thinking that the explanation is not calculated greatly to modify the impression which was produced on the great majority of the Members of the House when the speech of the hon. Gentleman was first brought under their notice, or the general feeling with which the remarks of my right hon. Friend upon it were received. After the explanation of the hon. Member to-night, I cannot see in the speech anything but an appeal, and that an appeal very slightly veiled, to the Irish people to resort to physical force for the redress of their grievances; and whatever may be our opinion as to the moral responsibility incurred by men who counsel an excitable people to use physical force, I feel that one condition must be sacrificed before any speaker can be acquitted of such moral responsibility, and that condition is that he who addresses language of that sort to an excitable people should show himself to be willing to take the responsibility of that language, and to bear his share in the risk they may run while acting on his advice. Now, it does not appear to me that the hon. Gentleman, or those who defended his conduct this night, are willing to incur that risk; they rather seem disposed carefully to abstain from doing anything which may bring them within the meshes of the law; while their omissions in that respect might be easily supplied by the audiences to whom such speeches are addressed. But, be that as it may, the speech of the hon. Member has, I think, been sufficiently commented upon; and I think the House would do well to put a stop to this discussion, which, it seems to me, can have no practical result, and to devote itself to the Business which is before it. The House will remember that we have for consideration to-night subjects of great practical importance in connection with the administration of Ireland to discuss. The Irish Estimates have been, with the assent of hon. Members from Ireland, placed upon the Paper for to-day, and I cannot help thinking that it would be well to devote ourselves forthwith to that Business, and to refrain from continuing any longer a discussion which, in my opinion, can have no practical end.

said, he had expected that some Member of the Government would have offered an excuse for the language used by the Chief Secretary for Ireland towards the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon). The hon. Member was really on his trial before the Irish people, and not a single Member of the Government had attempted to justify the right hon. Gentleman's language. The noble Lord (the Marquess of Hartington) complained of the House having drifted into a general discussion on the condition of Ireland; but he forgot that the speech which the hon. Member for Tipperary delivered in Kildare arose out of the condition of Ireland. The Chief Secretary for Ireland had, by his language, damaged the cause of the Government, and of that justice which he was always professing to have so much at heart. It would, perhaps, be well if the right hon. Gentleman indulged in a little less profession and a little more practice. He (Dr. Commins) looked with some suspicion on a man who was always brandishing his conscience in his face. He looked to people's actions, and not to their professions of conscience. They had heard a great deal of maudlin sentimentality, and of mock humanity, that night about certain houghings of brute beasts in the West of Ireland, but not much sentiment or humanity with respect to human beings. He not did approve of cutting the legs of poor brutes, but still less did he approve of the conduct of people who, as the right hon. Gentleman himself had said, would, by repetition of it, draw on themselves the execrations of all right-minded men. And yet that conduct had been going on ever since the right hon. Gentleman had used that expression. The crowbar brigade had been abroad doing its work, levelling the cottage and turning out the wretched inhabitants into still worse misery. These were the things which caused expressions to be used which could not always be justified on grounds of strict logic; but in no country had people confined themselves in the expression of their feelings to language suitable to a deliberative Assembly. But, supposing that some excesses of language had been committed, they knew how wide the law of sedition was—how big the net, and how small the meshes. They knew how the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland, with a clever Crown prosecutor and a carefully-selected jury, could secure a conviction. The right hon. Gentleman said that the language of the hon. Member for Tipperary was seditious. If so, the right hon. Gentleman shrank from his duty in declining to prosecute him. The position of the Government in Ireland, therefore, was one of failure, for, although the right hon. Gentleman had the hardihood to accuse the hon. Member for Tipperary of breaking the law, he had not the courage to prosecute the hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman had backed out of the language which he used in a way not very candid; for, while stating that he did not mean to call the hon. Member a coward, he said that the hon. Member's cowardice was equal to his wickedness. What did the right hon. Gentleman mean by mentioning cowardice in connection with the hon. Member for Tipperary? He meant an insult. He had given no apology for that insult. But was a man a coward who used language which subjected him to all the amenities of a State prosecution in Ireland, or was it not rather the man who, from the safe cover of the Treasury Bench, indulged in language which he dared not employ in the Lobby, much less in the street? He did not agree with the hon. Member for Tipperary in all that he had said; but such language was not to be weighed in golden scales. He regretted what the Chief Secretary for Ireland had done. He believed there were men in the Cabinet who would do all they could to redress the wrongs of Ireland; but they must put a bridle on the tongue of the right hon. Gentleman, or all their good intentions and efforts would be marred. The people of Ireland were only kept by the hope of some beneficial legislation from that civil war of which, as the Prime Minister had said, they were within measurable distance; but if their demands were to be met with buckshot and insult, the consequences must be upon the heads of the Government responsible for both.

said, he yielded to no one in respect for the character of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secre-Secretary for Ireland, and for his services to that country in the past. He admired his anxiety to benefit the Irish people, his kindliness, his candour, his firmness, and his sympathy; but, nevertheless, he thought that the language the right hon. Gentleman had used towards the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) was neither wise, moderate, nor statesmanlike. In fact, it was highly improper and impolitic for one in his lofty position. He did not agree with the noble Lord, the temporary Leader of the House (the Marquess of Hartington), that there was no necessity for the present debate, the condition of Ireland being such that it was the duty of hon. Members like himself, who represented Ireland first and England secondly, to do what they could to obtain justice for Ireland; and they would not be justified if they missed the smallest opportunity of calling attention to it, and demanding a remedy. The people of Ireland were tired of threats of the bayonet and the musket, which had been made so often that they did not really appreciate them, If ever there was a time when conciliation towards Ireland was needed it was the present; and he trusted that the recent conduct of the Chief Secretary for Ireland was not a sign that the Government had abandoned the policy of conciliation. As for the landlords of Ireland, he did not say, and never had said, that they were all bad. There were, no doubt, good men among them; but the landlords of the past had been as improvident as the tenants of the past, and all parties needed remedial legislation. He was afraid, however, that that House would never be able to supply the remedy needed. With regard to the rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill by the House of Lords, he remarked that the Upper Chamber might well be called the "House of Landlords," and he for one objected to the mode in which they got there. He would much prefer their election by ballot. He feared that, hitherto, the Government, in their anxiety to appear respectable in the eyes of what was called society, had governed Ireland on the principle that "Cæsar's wife should be above suspicion;" but they ought rather to adopt the motto, "Be just, and fear not." The House had done many things for the landlords, and it was now time for the Government to promise distinctly to do something for the tenants, even at that late period of the Session.

said, he was sorry that the Chief Secretary for Ireland had not taken the honourable and manly course of withdrawing his offensive and unfounded statement respecting the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon). In not doing so, he had allowed to rankle in the minds of the people a gross insult upon an honourable man. As for the conduct of the Government towards Ireland generally, it encouraged the landlords to continue their oppression, for when they said they meant to enforce the laws of Ireland, with what face could they ask landlords to forego the rights which those laws gave them? He had heard a great deal about honesty and humanity from hon. Gentlemen who sat on the Ministerial side of the House, and who seemed to pretend to a monopoly of those fine qualities. Could they not conceive for a moment that it was a feeling of humanity that induced the bulk of Irish Members to take the stand which they did take. It was no pleasure to be unpopular in that House, and was only done at the imperative call of duty. He appealed to the House to remember that on that side of the House, as on the other, there were men of honour and humanity, whose feelings were naturally inflamed by recent events. Why should not Irishmen keep step and march to their meetings to ex- press their views as well as Englishmen? Some horror had been expressed at an allusion to 100,000 Irish swords leaping from their scabbards; but he failed to see why anybody's soul should be harrowed up by an allusion to a simple fact in Irish history. The cry of "law and order" had been used to back up every iniquity that had been perpetrated in Ireland. There was never a period of suffering in Ireland so great that the cry of law and order was not raised against the Irish people, whenever they raised their heads against it. With regard to the charge which had been made against the hon. Member for Tipperary of ingeniously framing his language so as to protect himself, he (Mr. T. D. Sullivan) knew the man too well to imagine that he would do anything of the sort. He believed that his hon. Friend had spoken fearlessly and boldly; and, if he had overstepped the limit of the law, he was ready to abide by it. No doubt, it was hoped that the Irish Members would be betrayed into seditious language. At all events, they would have the courage of their convictions; they would judge their own course, and, when they had resolved what that course should be, they would fearlessly and faithfully act up to it.

said, that he deemed it his duty to express his opinion as to the language used by his hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon). It was language of which he most heartily approved, and he endorsed it in every particular. He should take every opportunity he could of addressing the Irish people, and he should enforce and urge upon them the admirable advice given at Kildare by the hon. Member for Tipperary. Was it cowardly to call upon the people to agitate against unjust laws? Such language was perfectly justifiable; and he would incidentally mention the fact that much stronger language had been used by English speakers on English questions, and that no action had been taken by the English Ministers on the subject. He thought his hon. Friend had a right to expect some explanation from the Chief Secretary for Ireland. They had been told by the Prime Minister that Ireland was within a measurable distance from civil war; and yet, when the Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill was thrown out in "another place," the Government, instead of devising measures of justice to Ireland, sent out an additional military force. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland alternately used entreaty and threat; but both systems had failed. He repeated that he should lose no opportunity of addressing his countrymen, and urging upon them the admirable advice of his hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary. When the Government fell back upon the old alternative, so often tried with the same result, when their efforts failed to carry their Bill—the old theory of bayonets and bullets—then they must expect that Irish Members, despite the right hon. Gentleman's stream of entreaty one day and torrent of threats the next, would speak out loudly, as the hon. Member for Tipperary had done.

said, that he had had no evidence of the good intentions of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, of which they were always being told. The unfortunate position of Ireland had always been that those who managed her affairs in Parliament knew nothing of the country or its inhabitants. The same ignorance might be said to prevail with regard to the speech of the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), which had been so much complained of, for it had been represented in quite a different way from that in which the hon. Member had intended it. It was really not such bad advice, after all, that rent should not be paid for land, because it was unjust that landlords should insist on getting the full rent for land at a time when it was worth nothing at all. It was not intended that the recommendation should be taken in a literal sense; but the advice had some reference to the character; and where rents were unreasonably high, the advice was justified by the facts of the case, because the absolute ruin of the tenants would be a greater evil than the loss that would otherwise fall on the tenants. Another objection had been taken to the speech of his hon. Friend, which was that he had urged the people of Ireland willingly to submit to eviction, and suggested that pressure should be brought to bear upon others to keep them from taking farms from which tenants had been unjustly evicted. Now, he could not help thinking that that was advice which the hon. Member was thoroughly justified in recommending. Turkey was the only country in the world which could compare with Ireland in the unfairness and misgovernment in the land system. There was more guilt in driving tenants out to starve than there was in the maiming of cattle; and the dishonest landlord was far more vicious and wicked, and less entitled to consideration, than were the wicked people who maimed the cattle. It was very good advice to the people to organize, because organization facilitated the holding of orderly mass meetings; and he thought it was a very desirable thing for Ireland, even in an electioneering point of view, as the popular candidates could be elected under much more favourable circumstances than they could under the old system. It was not the object of the Land League to take the land from the owners without paying for it, although much of it had been obtained by fraud or conquest; but what the League advocated was that the landlords should be compelled to sell to the occupiers at a fair and reasonable price. His hon. Friend did not advocate physical force; but it was quite as well that the people should show that they were strong and well armed. On the whole, he thought the advice given by his hon. Friend was good advice, and he should take care to advocate it on the platform in Ireland, as he had done in that House.

thought the debate had logically brought the House to a consideration of the Irish Land Question. If the Government considered that any time had been wasted that evening, it was only the first of the penalties which they were called upon to pay for the rhetoric indulged in by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. If the right hon. Gentleman had maintained a more careful guard over his language, it would not have been necessary to enter upon the debate at all; while, as to the second penalty, in the speeches which the Government had had successively to listen to from Irish Representatives rising in their place, and adopting the sentiments that had been expressed by his hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), there might be said to be a unanimous verdict on the part of the whole Irish people in favour of that hon. Member. Everyone who had looked with interest to the advent of the right hon. Gentleman to the post of Chief Secretary for Ireland must have felt grieved and disappointed that he had that night adhered to the language he had previously used. It was a strange interpretation of the speech delivered at Kildare to call it wicked and cowardly; and if the Government had taken the trouble to inquire at all into the career of the man whose character they were thus pronouncing on, they must have hesitated before applying to him such epithets. As his hon. Friend would not in public or private utter one word, especially before an assemblage of his fellow-countrymen, which he did not, in his heart and soul, believe to be true, and just, and necessary for the guidance of the national cause, he (Mr. Sexton) did not see how he could by any rendering be accounted wicked. According to the logic of the Government, if any hon. Gentleman now wished to keep clear of imputations of wickedness and cowardice, he must not only refrain from addressing the Irish people from a platform, but must also provide the Government with a jury for convicting him. The hon. Member for Tipperary was not to be called upon to provide a jury; that was for the Government to do. If they were ready for him, he was ready for them. The cowardice really lay on the side of the Government. Why did they not bring the hon. Member to trial? They knew they could not find 12 men to go into a box and convict a man on such a charge. To what had been said by hon. Members that night, he would add that they would not be deterred, by any epithet that the ingenuity or eloquence of the Treasury Bench could supply, from doing, in the course of the coming autumn and winter, what they considered to be their duty by their own people. Already it was becoming obvious that the counsels delivered some time ago by the right hon. Gentleman to the landlords might as well not have been spoken. He had received that morning an Irish country paper which contained under the head of the last Board of Guardians the word "evictions" printed in large letters, and which showed what intentions were held by the landlords in Ireland. In 1847, the Irish people had perished in multitudes, and had fled across the Atlantic to America; but it was not to be expected that the Irish Representatives were going, at the present period, to advise them to tamely submit to the harsh enforcements of the law. Should these harsh measures be persisted in, he and his hon. Friends around him would encourage the people to resist by means of organization, and by every other constitutional method in their power. They would exert themselves to show to the landlords of the country, and to that House, that the present system of the land laws in Ireland could not be maintained, and that the people would stand up at last for their great natural, unalterable right to live in a manner consonant with civilization and freedom, by honest toil in their own country.

said, he did not concur in all that had been said by his hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) in the speech to which reference had been so often made. That was a speech such as he (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) would not himself have delivered; but none the less did he feel bound to protest against the unmeaning extravagance and in appropriateness of the language applied to it by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. One reason why he did not agree with his hon. Friend in all that he had said was that he (Mr. Justin M'Carthy), for one, still believed in the possibility of obtaining redress for the wrongs of Ireland from that House. Had it not been for that belief, however, it was not improbable that he should have made a somewhat similar speech to that made by the hon. Member for Tipperary, whose advice to his fellow-countrymen was evidently inspired by despair of any remedy ever being afforded by the Legislature. The question was, did his hon. Friend's speech deserve the epithets of cowardly and wicked? They knew it was neither wicked nor cowardly. What was the speech after all? He maintained that the combination to which the Irish people were invited in that exhortation was only a gigantic counterpart of those which, under the name of trades unions, had long existed in England. That was the head and front of his hon. Friend's offending. His hon. Friend thought the tenants ought to bind each other not to pay more than a certain fixed amount to the landlords. That was the principle of the trades associations of this country—not to work below a certain amount of wages. He was sorry that the right hon. Gentleman had thought it right to indulge in the epithets he had used towards the hon. Member for Tipperary. What possible good had those epithets produced—what possible good could they have produced? Did the right hon. Gentleman think they would influence the Irish people, or that they would have the effect of convincing anyone in Ireland that the hon. Member was either a wicked person or a coward? They might have been applied with equal justice to many other men of intelligence and integrity who devoted themselves to the benefit of their country. He could not help thinking that the problem of how to ameliorate the condition of the Irish tenant farmer was far more worthy of the right hon. Gentleman's attention than the invention and application of such inappropriate and extravagant epithets. When hon. Gentlemen of honour and undoubted intelligence came down, and not only defended, but actually adopted, the language which had been reprobated by the Government of the day, it was surely an evidence of popular feeling which must be met, not by offensive epithets applied to men, but by calm statesmanship applying itself to legislation.

said, he wished to remind the House that, during the past seven years, all the efforts made by Irish Representatives for the better government of their country had been in vain. He had, in consequence, been driven, with great reluctance, to the conclusion that mere Parliamentary action would never succeed in enabling the Irish people to obtain a settlement of the Irish Land Question. They had been told that it was very hard that a country gentleman's income should be so cut down that he could not send his children to school; but it should be remembered that wretched tenants had been dying of starvation to pay the interest on mortgages and meet marriage settlements. The effect of agitation, however that means might be decried, had been to bring about a decided change in the attitude of the landlords of Ireland. He remembered the time, not so very many years ago, when the proposal to extend the Ulster Custom to the rest of Ireland was received with something like a sneer by the Irish landlords; but only the other day, when in Dublin, he met gentlemen of that class who told him they would like to see the Ulster Custom expanded and extended to the rest of Ireland. Why was there that change in the opinion of the landlords? It was because they knew that their rents were in danger. As to advising the tenants generally not to pay rent, he thought any such advice deliberately given was unjust and contrary to good conscience. But there were cases in which, unless some advice of that kind were given, the landlords could not be brought to reason. Nothing could be more demoralizing than an agitation which might be construed into advice to men not to meet their lawful obligations; but on those who refused any other remedy for the present state of things, the sin must lie. Let those tenants who had been compelled, as many were, by coercion, and not in the open and free market, to pay rent, offer what, according to their consciences, was a fair rent and no more. If there was danger of that advice being abused, they could not help it. If there were Roman Catholic clergymen in Ireland who took up that agitation, it would be their duty to tell the tenants not to make an unjust use of it, but to pay their rents honestly, unless they were excessive. If there was any danger, as it was said there might be, of that advice being abused, he could not help it, for what else could be done? Were things to go on as at present? When landlords evicted tenants from farms, because they did not pay excessive rents, the neighbourhood had a perfect right to do all it could to prevent those farms from being taken by other men. He did not mean to say it would be right to use violence, or to commit any crime; but he did think that when a tenant had been evicted, the neighbourhood were perfectly justified in doing all they could, through the creation of a public opinion, to prevent the farm from being occupied by other tenants. A large number of Irish tenants were over-rented. To speak under the mark, he would suppose that one-fourth of the tenants were in that position; and if they refused for a couple of years to pay excessive rent, he believed that question would be settled. He would tell them why. The majority of the Irish landlords were men who could not stand the drain for two years. They would be reduced to ruin. It was every man's duty to banish dreadful thoughts from the minds of the people; but he was bound to say as long as the law remained as it was—as long as it did not afford protection to the tenants—it was not the sympathy with the law to which he could appeal in addressing Irish tenants, but he would appeal to them on higher grounds. He should appeal to them not on the ground of law to withhold their hands from violence and bloodshed—indeed, he trusted that not one drop of blood would be spilt in Ireland during the coming winter in connection with agrarian matters—but he should appeal to them to do it for the honour of Ireland, and for the sake of the religion of their forefathers, which taught them patience, which taught them self-restraint, and which had preserved them heart-whole notwithstanding the troubles of so many centuries.

said, he could assure the House that he wished to speak on the subject in language which would be approved by the judicious both within and without its doors. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had thought it consistent with right and his duty to denounce the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) as wicked and cowardly. With all the self-complacency of the Treasury Bench, and the dignity and case of Office, the right hon. Gentleman made an attack on his hon. Friend. Every man who entered Irish politics entered them not only without hope, but without fear, and he would only trust—he would not say by device, but by compromise, in which all one's principles were sacrificed—to maintain a position on the Front Bench. It ill became the right hon. Gentleman who had so secured his position, and who had got his reward, to use the language which he had presumed to apply to the hon. Member for Tipperary. It was not at all becoming of the right hon. Gentleman to apply language inconsistent with the dignity and position of his Office to a man who had entered on the troubled sea of Irish politics, and who could not be cheered on his path by hopes of honour or power. It was said that his hon. Friend, in using language which encouraged a breach of the law without any risk to himself, had acted a cowardly part. He would apply the test of cowardice to the right hon. Gentleman and the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington). What of the advice given by the right, hon. Gentleman and his Friends to the Bulgarians? Did they tell the subjects of Turkey to obey Turkish law, or did they tell them to disobey it, and did the disobedience lead to bloodshed? They did disobey, and it did lead to bloodshed. The right hon. Gentleman having used words which did lead to violation of the law and to bloodshed, according to his own dictum he was guilty of cowardly and wicked conduct, because he was not in Bulgaria, or within the reach of His Gracious Majesty the Sultan at the time he used those words. [Mr. W. E. FORSTER: What words?] He knew very well to what the right hon. Gentleman referred. He referred, perhaps, to his so-called "words of moderation" in the heat of the Eastern Question—words of moderation which, if acted upon, would have left the Eastern Question unsettled. If those words had been spoken in the Turkish Parliament, where those who uttered them would be amenable to Turkish law, they would have been brave utterances; but as they were spoken in the House of Commons, where those who made use of them were free from any risk to themselves, then, according to that dictum, they were also cowardly. Thus, on his own showing, the right hon. Gentleman was as wicked and as a great a coward as the hon. Member for Tipperary. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) did not say that by way of reproach, as nothing could have been more holy than the revolution brought about by the words to which he alluded; but merely to show that the right hon. Gentleman had no right to blame his hon. Friend for the use of language calculated to lead to similar results in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman, in his ignorance of the affairs of Ireland, still admitted that the present state of the law was unjust. He and the Prime Minister had given pathetic descriptions of the hundreds of men, women, and children upon whom the sentence of eviction would be passed—a sentence which, according to the Prime Minister, amounted to a sentence of death. If it were in the power of the Chief Secretary for Ireland to prevent that sentence being pronounced, what would be more cowardly and more wicked than not to prevent it? If he wished to carry a Coercion Bill, it would be carried in a night, and the Lords Spiritual and Temporal would sit, as they did once before, even on a Sunday, to pass such a Bill. Now, he put those two facts in contrast. They could, as far as English and Scotch Members were concerned, pass in three days a Coercion Bill, and yet because of their inability to pass a good Land Bill, they were willing to allow thousands of people to die by the roadside from starvation. Much had been said concerning the wicked and immoral teaching of the Land League on the question of rent. The hon. Member for the County of Gal-way (Mr. Mitchell Henry) said the advice of the League was that the tenant should only pay such rent as he himself believed to be just. In point of fact, however, his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) did not tell the tenants to judge of the fairness of the rents themselves, but recommended them to submit the question to two arbitrators, one of whom was to be selected by the tenant and the other by the landlord, and the tenants were never advised not to pay a just debt. That was very different from the dictum of the hon. Member for Galway, that the landlord should fix the rent. It was said there was a very good harvest this year. Would that make good the bad harvest of several years past? He discovered that, owing to the sagacious statesmanship of the right hon. Gentleman, there had already been two Amendment Bills to the Belief of Distress (Ireland) Bill, which had been justly described as a Bill for the Belief of Distressed Landlords. How was the tithe settled in Ireland? By resistance to the law, and by combination against it. So that there was ample precedent for combination against unjust taxes; and he maintained that an excessive rent by the landlord was an unjust tax. He spoke the sentiment of every well-wisher of Ireland when he said they yearned and they longed for the end of the era of agitation and outrage, and sometimes atrocity, which had so long marked the history of their country. They had no Representative Government in Ireland when the wishes of the people could be disregarded by the House of Lords. That House—and he was not going to say anything in its honour—would not have dared to throw out a Bill in which 2,500,000 English people were concerned, had it gone up to them with a majority of 66 English votes; but because they found that that majority of 66 contained 60 Irish votes, they threw out the Bill. It was because it was Irish and not English public opinion that demanded that reform, that they felt that they were perfectly safe in throwing out that Bill. He told the right hon. Gentleman, and he told the House, that any acrimony he had used was excused by the acrimony of the right hon. Gentleman, and he assured them that the only way to settle this question was in a Parliament based on the confidence and respect of the people. When such a Parliament was formed, and sitting in Dublin, and not till then, they would find it would command moderation, good sense, and obedience to the law, such as was one of the finest characteristics and the highest and noblest heritage of a free people.

said, he had listened for several hours to a debate which was as irregular as any debate to which he had ever listened in that House. What were the circumstances under which that debate had arisen? Mondays were allotted by a Standing Order to the Government for Supply, and it was not in the power of any hon. Member to prevent the House immediately going into Committee on Mondays by moving any Motion. This particular Monday had been allotted by the Government, he believed, after communication with hon. Members for Ireland, as the day upon which the Irish Estimates, and particularly the Constabulary Vote, should be taken into consideration; yet he found that six hours had been occupied in a debate on an answer given by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland to a Question asked him in that House a few days ago. Without entering at all into the subject-matter of that debate, and without touching upon any of the numerous questions which, as it appeared to him, had very irregularly arisen, he (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) would venture, as far as it was in his power, to second the appeal, which was made more than an hour ago by the Leader of that House, that they should, at any rate, now proceed with the Business of the evening. He was quite aware that anything he could say was likely to have little influence with hon. Gentlemen from Ireland; but, surely, they would remember that during all the time they had been discussing this question, which seemed to them of great importance, and which had now been amply discussed, they had been preventing the House from entering on the Business of the evening. He hoped that now, at any rate, they would be allowed to go into Committee, and do something towards carrying on that Business for which he had thought the House had met that evening.

said, they had just received a lecture from the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach), which must have been actuated by an impression that he was still occupying his old post on the Treasury Bench, when, with a big majority behind his back, he used to deny every demand of the Irish people. At that time, everything that they asked on behalf of their constituents was sneered at on coming before the House by the right hon. Gentleman and the mechanical majority which followed him; and, apparently, he thought that, in Opposition, he could carry on the same system of lecturing in the same manner. For his part, he (Major Nolan) hoped that that House was not at all in the same condition as the House of Lords, and that Irish measures would at least get a hearing. He trusted most sincerely that Ministers would not listen to the insidious counsels of the right hon. Gentleman. The Irish Members did not get everything that they expected from the present Government; but when they contrasted what they had got, with the way in which they were treated by the last Government, they must admit that there was a very great change for the better. He (Major Nolan) did feel, however, that there was one thing which the Government ought to do before the House broke up, and that was that they ought to bring in some Bill to effect some compromise in Ireland. It was true that there was a bad harvest last year, and that there was a promise of a very good one this; but, then, the tenants owed everybody money. The landlords had not received their rents; the shopkeepers, in many cases, had not been paid; while the tenants were, on every hand, overwhelmed and burdened with debts. He thought, therefore, that the Government ought to do something to provide some means of meeting this difficulty as to debts, whether in regard to landlords, or tenants, or shopkeepers. The County Court Judges in the country might have the power, when debts were brought into their Courts, to award that a certain portion should be paid for a certain time. A temporary measure of that kind, introduced and passed by the Government, would have a very mitigating effect. He had himself a Bill before the House which would go in that direction, and which had already passed the second reading. He would not stop at that moment to discuss its merits; but he desired very strongly to press on the Government the necessity of doing something, before the House broke up, to promote a compromise in Ireland. He did not want to see the landlords deprived of their rents; but, at the same time, it would be very hard upon the tenants to be called upon to pay up two or three years' rent in one year. There was only one thing to regret, and that was that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, who had always behaved with such good temper and kindness and affability, and who was so evidently anxious to promote Irish measures, had, in a moment of forgetfulness, used the word "cowardly." There were a great many things of which his hon. Friend (Mr. Dillon) might be accused; but one certainly was not cowardice, for he occupied a very dangerous position. He (Major Nolan) knew perfectly well, as a fact, that officers who were acting in command of troops, and likely to go to public meetings at which the hon. Member was to be present, and where they might be called upon to fire, had talked about shooting him. Under those circumstances, the hon. Member ran some considerable risk; and, so far from being cowardly, he (Major Nolan) thought that quite another epithet might be applied to him. He regretted those words very much; because he was quite sure they would rankle very much in the hearts of the Irish people; and he did hope that, in some way or other, they might be withdrawn.

said, a little while ago they had heard from the hon. Member for the City of Galway (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), of the dignity and case of Office; but he (Mr. Courtney) thought the House must be of opinion that there was no great case at the Irish Office; and, from the speech to which they had just listened, it was evident that there was none, even after an hon. Gentleman had quitted it. The memory of the past followed the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach), so that he could not even propose that they should proceed with the Business of the evening without his having a severe rebuke from his hon. and gallant Friend—[A cry of" He deserved it!"] He was also desirous that they should go on with the Business; and he would, therefore, detain the House but a very few moments. On this occasion, however, it might be convenient that something should be said by an independent English Member, who had shown, by his speeches and his votes in that House, that he was not without sympathy for the Irish Party. It was to him a matter of considerable regret that hon. Members opposite, who had spoken that evening, had not taken pains more clearly and distinctly to dissociate themselves from the language of the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon). He could understand the generosity of the motives by which they were actuated; but, at the same time, he did regret that. It would be seen, no doubt, upon examination of their speeches, that almost every hon. Member who had spoken had intimated, in some degree, his difference with the hon. Member, although he had not openly and clearly expressed it. He could refer to hon. Member after hon. Member who had said that they would not quite say what he had said at Kildare; that they were not entirely of the opinion of the hon. Member for Tipperary, and other expressions of that kind; and yet those same hon. Members had taken pains to justify and applaud the conduct of the hon. Member. He ventured to think that that was not judicious conduct on their part, whether as Members of the Irish Party, or as Irishmen who would have to address meetings of their countrymen in Ireland. It was not judicious, because it detracted from their influence here; it was not judicious, as they themselves must admit, when they realized the meaning and force of the expression used by the hon. Member at Kildare. He had said that hon. Members had, to a large extent, covertly, and with qualifications, expressed some dissent from the conduct and action of the hon. Member for Tipperary. His hon. and learned Friend the Member for Meath (Mr. A. M. Sullivan) was one of the earliest who spoke in that debate, and what did he say by way of apology for him? He declared that the object of the hon. Member was to create amongst the Irish peasant farmers a trades union, and that it was necessary that a trades union should be created amongst them, in order that by mutual help they might sustain themselves against the action of the landlords. He certainly should not for one moment dissent from that view, and he should not for a moment condemn the action of the Irish farmers if they attempted to form, and succeeded in forming, a trades union among themselves. But, then, how did the hon. and learned Member go on to speak? He spoke of Broadhead, of Sheffield, as an illustration of trades unions, and actually advocated the conduct of the hon. Member for Tipperary, because what he said was not worse than, indeed, was not so bad as, the action of Mr. Broadhead. [Mr. A. M. SULLIVAN dissented.] He observed that the hon. and learned Member shook his head. Perhaps he had an explanation to offer of the words different to what he himself understood their introduction to mean; but he thought the hon. and learned Member must admit, if there was to be any rational and logical interpretation of his sentences, that that was the meaning of his argument. He seemed to contend that it was part of the necessity of trades unions that they should resort to this means of violence, and that trades unions were a good thing.

begged to explain. The hon. Member for Liskeard (Mr. Courtney) was confounding two sentences of his observations. He said that no one should condemn the trades unions of England because of those atrocities; and he mentioned Mr. Broadhead's name, when asking the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland to recollect that such a thing took place in connection with trades unions, though it was not a necessary consequence of them.

said, he would endeavour to follow out the reasoning of the hon. and learned Gentleman. He maintained that no one should condemn trades unions because of Mr. Broadhead; and, secondly, that no one should condemn trades unions among the peasant farmers of Ireland on account of the language of the hon. Member for Tipperary. They were not going to condemn the trades union of Ireland, but they did condemn the language of the hon. Member. The hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) also referred to it, and he said, quoting his observations from memory, that they had heard a good deal last year about the War in Zululand, and many observations had been made about burning villages and the destruction of kraals, and that was defended by the right hon. Gentleman the late Colonial Secretary (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) on the ground of military necessity. The hon. Member for Cavan argued that as this was part of the military struggle in Zululand, and as the Colonial Secretary defended the struggle in Zululand, would he not admit the same thing in Ireland. But he (Mr. Courtney) had always understood the hon. Member for Cavan to condemn, like himself, the mode of warfare practised in Zululand; and he could not now allow him to apologize for what was suggested in Ireland by a reference to what he had condemned in Zululand. He would say—"Even if it is a war between the peasantry and the landed proprietors in Ireland, do not attempt illegal methods of warfare. We condemn the cruel warfare in Ireland, as we did the cruel warfare in Zululand; and do not attempt to apologize for what is done in Ireland by reference to that which was not admitted in Zululand."

Perhaps, Sir, I may explain my argument. I wished to point out that what was charged against the Irish land system was very much less than what was acknowledged to have taken place in Zululand, and I drew a comparison between the two, and maintained that what was done in South Africa, and for which was pleaded military necessity, was infinitely worse than anything done in Ireland.

replied that it was not a matter of less or more at all; but he must acknowledge that he felt a difficulty in arguing with hon. Members opposite, and getting them to see how one link of the argument was connected with the next. He had listened very attentively to the speech of the hon. Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy), and he did regret that he had not expressed a little more distinctly than the other hon. Members round him his dissent from the language of the hon. Member for Tipperary, and that he had not said also a few words to express, even more emphatically, the abhorrence which he, at least, must feel of practices which the language of the hon. Member for Tipperary was too well calculated to promote. He must feel, and he must recognize the imprudence of that conduct. He would impress upon him, then, why did he not say that, even for the sake of the Irish Party, and as a matter of patriotism in talking to Irish peasants, who were engaged in an unequal war, it would be the worst possible policy to speak to them as the hon. Member for Tipperary had spoken, and to act as he had acted. Why did not the hon. Member for Longford show his patriotism by openly dissociating himself from the hon. Member? The chivalry of companionship was an error, and a common error prevalent everywhere. If one landowner behaved badly as a landlord, the mass of his fellow-landlords, instead of sending him to Coventry, stood by him. If one shipowner behaved badly as a shipowner, the mass of shipowners, instead of disavowing him, stood by him and shielded him. If one Member of the Irish agitating Party did something which was more than an error, hon. Members opposite, because of their sympathy and good fellowship, instead of condemning his error, instead of pointing out, in a clear way, that they dissented from him, stood by him and apologized for him. It was generous; but it was, nevertheless, a fault, and it was a fault in which they forgot their duty to the Irish peasant. Seme remarks had also been made by the hon. Member for the City of Galway (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), to which he (Mr. Courtney) should like to direct attention. That hon. Member said that, after all, the language of the hon. Member for Tipperary was nothing compared with the language which was used by present Members of the Treasury Bench in reference to the war in Bulgaria. But the hon. Member was able, he (Mr. Courtney) was sure, to conceive the limits within which rebellion was not only justifiable, but a duty. One of the conditions under which rebellion was justifiable was the condition and the possibility of success. Now, when that language was used with reference to the rebellion in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the rising in Bosnia against Turkey promised to be successful from the experience of years of warfare in which all the powers of Turkey had been used in vain. For two years, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Turks had striven to put down rebellion there, and had failed. But language which might properly be used, and justifiably used, and used with every moral right, with reference to rebellion in the Ottoman Empire, was language which could not be addressed by any Irish patriots to Irish peasants, in reference to their quarrel with Irish proprietors. Was there any possibility of anything but misery resulting to the peasants, if they once attempted, as suggested by the hon. Member for Tipperary, to set the law at defiance? There was some hope for them, though they might have to wait for it. Though they might have delay, yet there was some hope that they might get redress from Parliamentary action, because redress had been secured by that means in the past. But what hope was there of obtaining any redress by a rising by armed organization, or by this miserable cruelty to animals of which they had heard? What hope was there in all that for redress for Irish grievances? The only effect of it all was to alienate English sympathy, to lessen the strength of the Irish appeal, and to destroy the feeling which was rising in England on behalf of Irish peasants, and which, in time, would help them to achieve the objects which they desired. Before he sat down, he should also like to say a few words in regard to the phrase used by his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland with reference to the hon. Member for Tipperary. When he (Mr. Courtney) heard those words used, he wished them unsaid. He doubted whether the right hon. Gentleman himself had not since wished that he had not uttered them. The phrase did not appear to him, as he knew the hon. Member, to be correctly used as a description of his conduct; and by his speech there that night he had assuredly vindicated himself from any aspersion of cowardice in what he had done. The hon. Member seemed to him (Mr. Courtney) rather one of those ardent enthusiasts who were too much engrossed in their own thoughts—too devoted to their own plans, to know always exactly how what they said and did would act upon their fellow-men, or to see precisely, at any moment, what would be the exact consequences of their own conduct. He (Mr. Courtney) would not say the hon. Member had been cowardly or had been wicked; but he would say that he had been culpably and criminally careless in not thinking what might be the effect of his own language on the excitable, the miserable, and down-stricken crowds he was addressing. If a man talked to poor Irish peasantry, suffering as those men had suffered from the past winter and the winter before that, as the hon. Member had talked, surely he must know what must be the effect of his language. Surely he must be aware that the effect was to produce such barbarities as had been described by his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland—barbarities which made them ashamed and angry at such want of civilization in the people by whom they were perpetrated, and which alienated all English sympathy from the people amongst whom such acts were committed. When the hon. Member for Tipperary talked of this organization going in military array to the meetings, could he have realized the meaning of the words he had used, could he have foreseen the consequences to the Irish peasantry, could he have understood that he was inviting them to civil war? If he had not understood that, then he had been criminally careless of the effect of his words. If he had, then the language of his right hon. Friend might not have been precisely accurate. But some even stronger words would be justifiable in reference to such language as that. But while he regretted the language of his right hon. Friend, he must confess, for his own part, that he could understand very easily how he must have been tempted to use it. He had had some months' experience in the Irish Office; he had made himself acquainted with the facts of the case; he was pledged to a course which, if successful, would bring him little gratitude, and in which failure would bring him a good deal of disgrace; and yet, when he was struggling to infuse some better feeling into the relation between classes in Ireland, and was struggling to persuade Parliament to adopt legislation which should improve the condition of the people, when he was devoting himself heart and soul to the problem of Irish land and the amelioration of Irish society, he found all his efforts thwarted, all his good intentions checked, all promise of success in the future extinguished by the action of such men as the hon. Member for Tipperary. That was, no doubt, the state of mind of his right hon. Friend when he spoke as he did; and, although he (Mr. Courtney) regretted the particular words which were employed, he could not possibly condemn him, when he remembered what he had done, and when he saw how his hopes, his desires, and his labours were likely to be frustrated by this ill-feeling, this criminal carelessness, on the part of those who supposed, and in their own narrow view of things did, no doubt, conscientiously suppose, that they, and they alone, were the friends of the Irish people.

said, he did not think they could reasonably complain of the tone of the speech which they had just heard from the hon. Member for Liskeard (Mr. Courtney); and if the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, at the commencement of his speech, that evening, had shown the same desire calmly to argue the question out, and to refrain from the temptation to repeat the odious charge, and he (Mr. Parnell) would add the unfounded charge, against his hon. Friend the Member for the County of Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), he thought that very much of the heat which had unfortunately been infused into this debate would have been avoided. At the same time, the speech of the hon. Member who had just sat down (Mr. Courtney) exhibited very strongly one of the great difficulties under which Irish Members laboured in endeavouring to bring the real state of things in Ireland before the English people, and before that House. It illustrated also one of the great difficulties which the English Government laboured under, even though it was most liberally disposed towards Ireland, and must labour under, in endeavouring to bring forward measures for the amelioration of the state of affairs in Ireland. His hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary had been charged with a variety of heinous offences which, to one like himself who knew his character, and to those who really were acquainted with the state of things in Ireland, and who knew the way in which his words would be interpreted by those who listened to him at those meetings, were very much calculated to create a smile. Englishmen had taken an entirely different view of the effect of the words of his hon. Friend from the effect and effects that were intended to attach to them by the hon. Member himself. That was not an unnatural result; Englishmen were unnaturally influenced by the general tone of their newspapers. They were perfectly unacquainted themselves with the state of affairs in Ireland, and they necessarily adopted a more or less inaccurate idea of what actually existed there. He (Mr. Parnell) and his hon. Friend had been asked by many hon. Members that night to do one of two things; either to endorse the words of the hon. Member for Tipperary, or to dissociate themselves from those words. There was certainly one thing that he did not at all like to do, and that was to denounce men sitting on his own side of the House. They were in a very small minority, and he always found that there were plenty of other people to denounce him and his Friends without their undertaking that duty for themselves; so that, even if the meaning could be attributed to the words of his hon. Friend, which had been attributed to them by the hon. Member for Liskeard, he should be inclined to pass them by in silence, and to leave to English Members the task of denouncing them. But he would say, as regarded those words, that he cordially agreed with every one of them, and with the views which his hon. Friend had advocated, with the exception of one small passage which he had not seen reported in any of the newspapers, and had not heard until it was read out by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland at the Table, a passage also which he thought could not have been before the right hon. Gentleman, and to which his attention was certainly not directed when he was answering the Question of the hon. and gallant Baronet (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) upon a previous occasion. That passage was the one in which his hon. Friend referred to animals not prospering.

I must beg to correct the hon. Member. I had that passage in my mind at the time I answered the Question.

said, that, of course, he accepted immediately the statement of the right hon. Gentleman, that he had the passage in his mind; but, at least, that passage had not been reported in the newspapers at the time, and had not been noticed by the hon. and gallant Baronet who put the Question. He would say that he thought his hon. Friend (Mr. Dillon) was unguarded in the use of that expression; because it was one which might be interpreted in two ways; it might be interpreted as a sanction to certain outrages which had been committed upon certain animals, which had not been committed very frequently in Ireland during the progress of this agitation, and which he (Mr. Parnell) joined with the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland in condemning to the fullest extent. But, on the other hand, that phrase might have been interpreted, and he thought, probably, was interpreted by everybody who heard it, in connection with a superstition which was very prevalent in that part of Ireland, that a man who took land from which a farmer had been evicted would have no luck in his undertaking, and that his cattle would not thrive on the pastures, and that his crops would not succeed on the land. The language of his hon. Friend was most probably interpreted in that way; but as it was also capable of being interpreted in another way, he thought the hon. Member should not have used the expression. He was, however, surprised to hear the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland imputing to his hon. Friend an intention of suggesting that cattle should be maimed if they were put upon such lands. He (Mr. Parnell) had said before that he exceedingly regretted that cattle should be maimed under such circumstances; but, for his part, he believed that the land agitation had been enormously instrumental in preventing outrages not only upon cattle, but in preventing the far more serious outrage of taking the lives of landlords by assassination. He believed that the land agitation of the last ten months had done more to save the lives of landlords than any Peace Preservation Acts that had been passed. It had directed the attention of the tenantry of Ireland to combinations amongst themselves, to going to meetings in the light of open day; marching along roads in military order; at least, the rudimentary military order of the formation of fours. He was surprised to hear the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland say that he was going to put down such a thing as walking in military order in fours. That was a question which needed to be very carefully considered. He believed it was perfectly legal to walk along roads in fours, for the purpose of making peaceful demonstrations. He believed that the lessons they had been teaching to the Irish tenantry had been enormously instrumental in saving people from outrages. If they could have been left to themselves, he believed that they would have obtained a satisfactory solution of the difficulty, and a remedy for their grievances. If they compared the present time with previous times of distress the comparison was very favourable. During the past year 250,000 people had been living from day to day upon charity; many subsisting upon only one meal a-day. Thousands upon thousands of ejectments had been actually carried out, and an enormous number of evictions had actually taken place. Under those circumstances, it was remarkable that there had been such little crime and outrage in Ireland. He could only attribute that to the action of the Land League. By the encouragement and organization which it had given to the tenantry, it led them to believe that all their wrongs could be remedied by constitutional means. He admitted that many of the things said at recent meetings must be disagreeable; but the state of affairs in Ireland was very serious, and they were unable to protect the Irish tenantry. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland brought forward a Bill for the purpose of protecting them, and said that it was absolutely necessary in order to prevent grievous injustice being done in the name of the law; he failed to carry that Bill; he had failed in his attempt to protect these tenants. He told them that he was not going to try anything else, and that he was going to use the whole force of the law in carrying out these unjust evictions. Under those circumstances, what were they to do; were he, and his Friends, to stand idly by, and leave the tenants, who had trusted them, to their fate? They refrained from reproaching the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, because he had shown his goodwill towards the Irish tenantry, by making this unsuccessful attempt to protect them. The landlords were frightened by the prospect of more legislation in the next Session of Par- liament, and were anxious to clear their estates during the present distress. To protect the tenants, it was necessary to raise a healthy public opinion in their favour, and that was what they had been trying to do. The keystone of the land movement was this—they discouraged the tenant from paying rent, which, taken in connection with all the circumstances of the time, seemed to be too high. It was based not upon what the land yielded at the present time, but upon what if had yielded in past years. They also, where tenants were evicted from refusal or inability to pay the rent, discouraged other tenants from taking such holdings. They believed they could settle the Land Question in that way. If they could carry out those two objects, they believed the Irish Land Question would be settled; and there was nothing unlawful or revolutionary in such proposals. His view was not the formation of an army to carry out that purpose; an army would not answer for such a purpose, if one were formed. What they desired was simply to form a sound public opinion in the different counties. One very good way of doing so would be the marching of people along roads in large bodies. Farmers who were anxious to compete for their neighbours' holdings would see by that that they ought not to take those holdings; and that if they did so they would become unpopular with their neighbours. They would create a different spirit amongst all the people living in the country. He denied that this was inciting the people to outrage or to violation of the law; and he said that the comparative absence of serious crime in Ireland, notwithstanding the trying period through which the country had passed, proved that the agitation had saved the country from very serious trouble. He believed that, but for such agitation, they would have had scores of lives sacrificed on both sides—landlords and tenants—where they had now had only one life lost. Let the House consider the state of affairs in the County of Mayo and in the County of Galway, where agitation had been most rife. Those counties had been free from agrarian murders. The assassination of Ferrick, the other day, was held up as an example of agrarian murder; but he (Mr. Parnell) was disposed to believe that Ferrick was shot for some other reasons than for offending against the Land League. His master was, he believed, not a harsh landlord. He had not heard that he had committed any offence against his neighbours, or that any infraction of regulations in connection with the land had been imputed to him. He (Mr. Parnell) wished to express his belief that his assassination was not connected with the land agitation in any shape or form. In the Counties of Mayo and Galway there had been no assassinations. Where did they find such crimes? In the County of Wexford, where there was no Land League and no land meetings, and the people had been left to their own devices. He did not wish to prolong that debate; but he thought that they ought to mark their sense of the importance of the question, and of the unfair way in which his hon. Friend the Member for the County of Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) had been treated, by taking a division upon the Motion for the adjournment of the House. His hon. Friend was very sincere and earnest in that question—perhaps more so than any of them; he was fearful of any distress coming upon the people by which they would have to beg their bread from day to day. He had seen him going round meetings in America, hat in hand, gathering 10-cent pieces from the poor, and dollars from the rich, to help his people at home. He (Mr. Parnell) had noticed how much it went against the grain for him to do that, and was sure that nothing but a strong sense of duty had induced him to take such a course. It was only when his hon. Friend saw the readiness of the people to pay rack rents, and to give the whole of the harvest to the landlords in satisfaction of their claims, that he had warned the people, strongly and determinedly, to hold the harvest. For his own part, he (Mr. Parnell) fully indorsed the speech which his hon. Friend had made, with the single exception which he had mentioned. He had never given way to despair, or on any occasion advised the tenants to refuse to pay rent. On the contrary, he had always told them to refuse to pay an unjust rent. His suggestion was, that the tenant and the landlord should each have an arbitrator, who should settle what was fair rent to pay under the circumstances of the case. Nevertheless, he had been accused of advising the tenants to pay no rent, and he could not help saying that all legislation for the purpose of saving the tenantry had been in the direction of mixing up the good with the bad landlords. The House of Lords had rejected the opportunity of saving the good landlords from being mixed with the bad landlords, and it was impossible to suppose that an organization like the National Land League would be able to discriminate as closely as a Court of Justice between the good and the bad landlords. He could not help saying that, in his opinion, the tendency of agitation must be, in the future, to involve the good landlords with the bad. He thought that the decision of the House of Lords had brought that result upon their own heads. He regretted it very much, for he thought that, by preventing eviction in Ireland at the present time, many evils might have been prevented, and the way paved for dealing with the subject in a more comprehensive manner. Now, however, they were told by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland that the law would have to be enforced. They desired, in a perfectly peaceful manner, to show that it would be perfectly impossible for the right hon. Gentleman and the Irish landlords to put in force these unjust laws, and to dispose of the tenants in the way contemplated. He did not know whether the coming winter would pass over quietly or not; but, at all events, the onus did not rest upon them. He was sorry that the opportunity of meeting the case by the Compensation for Disturbance Bill had gone by. But they would share the danger, and he did not think that the hon. Member for Tipperary could be fairly charged with giving advice and himself remaining in a position of safety. The only dangerous services that there had been with reference to the land movement recently were performed by his hon. Friend, who went down and put himself at the head of, 4,000 men and marched to where an eviction was going on. He did not think it was, therefore, fair to charge his hon. Friend with remaining aloof from danger. He certainly did not stimulate others to get into a scrape which he himself was unwilling to share. If the hon. Member for Tipperary was ever proved, he (Mr. Parnell) was sure it would be found that he was not a coward.

said, he had not intended to divide the House; but the debate had taken such a course, that he thought it right that he should take that step, and thereby give an opportunity to the Irish Members to record their opinions. It had become very much a question whether the Government would take any measures, or would not take any measures, before the House rose, to protect the Irish tenantry against eviction. He wished to make a reply to some observations which had been made in the course of the debate, and he would not take up more than one or two minutes in doing so. With reference to the observation of the hon. Member for Liskeard (Mr. Courtney), he might say that the hon. Member was under an entire delusion with regard to the movement with which he (Mr. Dillon) was connected in Ireland. The ignorance prevailing in England with regard to this and other Irish matters was exceedingly great. The hon. Member for Liskeard shared the ignorance which most Englishmen had upon these subjects. There was nothing in what he said at Kildare that could be interpreted into inciting to revolution or civil war. None of the Land Leaguers had any expectation that such a thing would arise. But there was danger of a social war in Ireland, and that danger would be very much increased by the conduct of the Government in refusing to afford any protection to the Irish tenants. He would not follow the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland into all the points he urged in detail with regard to his (Mr. Dillon's) speech at Kildare. He would only say that he could not understand the feeling which induced hon. Members of that House to almost melt into tears over the sufferings of cattle in Ireland. He was as strongly opposed as any man to the infliction of unnecessary suffering upon cattle or any dumb beasts. But if the case were put, between the eviction of an Irish family and the destruction of a few cattle, it seemed to him to be a false humanity which, passing over the brutalities inflicted upon the people of Ireland, melted into tears over the cruelties inflicted upon animals. And though not supposed to be a warm admirer of Irish landlords, if it became a question between the murder of cattle and the murder of landlords, he, for one, should infinitely prefer to see cattle murdered, rather than landlords.

said, he could not allow the Vote to pass without making a very strong protest against the action of the Irish Board of Works in connection with the Shannon Navigation. He had brought the question up on a previous Vote, and the noble Lord the Secretary to the Treasury promised to go thoroughly into the matter. He (Mr. Finigan) had since received a very long account of the injustice practised towards these people in several parts of Clare, through the total neglect of the Irish Board of Works. Of the Clare Castle Harbour and Pier he did not wish, at that late hour of the night, to go into the whole of the details sent him; but he would point out that last year, when a Conservative Government was in Office, this Clare Castle Harbour was brought under their attention by his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Clare County (Captain O'Shea). The right hon. Gentleman the then Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. J. Lowther) and the then Secretary to the Treasury (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson) promised that something should be done. Looking over the 48th Report of the Commissioners of Public Works, he found that they did acknowledge, with regard to this Clare Castle Quay, that something should be done; and they stated that their Lordships had sanctioned a loan of £2,000 for the extension and repair of the pier at Clare Castle, that certain plans and sections had been made, and that the works would be commenced as soon as possession of the land had been obtained. If that were really something new, he should be very sorry to raise the question now; but, really, this was the same old tale that he had been told several times for the last 12 months, and which hon. Members previous to him had been told in many previous years. He might point out that Clare Castle Pier was built in the year 1844, and that between the year 1844 and the year 1878 the receipts from that port amounted to £3,167 13s. 2d., and that the expenditure, which was chiefly, and almost totally, in the shape of salaries, amounted to £939 6s. 8d., leaving a balance in favour of that port of £2,228 6s. 6d. One would have thought, when an Irish port paid into the Irish Treasury such a large excess over what it cost, that it would have been a very easy thing to have got this sum of £2,000 for its extension, which was really less than the balance carried into the Treasury, especially when interest was offered to be paid on it at the rate of 5 per cent per annum. That loan was agreed to on the 25th of October, 1979; and he heard from the Treasury that this matter had been finally settled; but that was not so, for it had not been settled to this day. He understood the difficulty now arose from the fact that, while the Irish Board of Works was willing to purchase the piece of land belonging to Lord Inchiquin, one of the noble Lords who voted against the Compensation for Disturbance Bill—[a laugh]—an hon. Member opposite laughed; but he (Mr. Finigan) did not know that a Peer who voted against a measure of relief for the Irish people was also stubbornly and unjustly holding out upon a question such as this. Lord Inchiquin wanted an enormous price for this land, which was necessary for the harbour, and in order to prepare the way for this Clare Castle Pier. If the Government would only bring pressure to bear on the Irish Board of Works, they might insist on Lord Inchiquin placing his claim before arbitrators, and then there would be very little difficulty in settling the sum which was to be paid him for this piece of land which was necessary for these works. This House, not only by its own Act, but by the Act of a previous Government, had sanctioned this loan of £2,000, for which the people of this district were willing to pay 5 per cent; and, therefore, he thought the noble Lord the Secretary to the Treasury ought to tell them something really definite, and to state whether the work would be done at once. If this matter were carried through during the coming winter, some work would be given to the poor tradesmen and the poor labourers round there; and, therefore, he hoped the noble Lord would be able to undertake to carry the matter out.

said, that he was not aware that that subject would be brought up again that night. He ought, of course, to have remembered it; but it did not occur to him. He hoped to be able to give the hon. Member for Ennis (Mr. Finigan) further information on the Report, and he could now only state that the last account he had from the Board of Works in connection with this subject was that all obstacles to the progress of the works would be soon removed.

said, he must, first of all, point out that these £37,000 to be voted for the work in connection with the Shannon they owed, as they owed almost all remedial measures proposed for Ireland, to the Conservative Government. This was a Conservative proposal, placed by the Conservative Government upon the Estimates, and thoroughly taken in hand by them when they had once placed it there. But the conduct of the present Government was very different from that of the late Administration in that respect. They obtained, first of all, an advance of £5,000 out of the total of £20,000 asked for during the financial year, and they only took that sum, because they knew perfectly well that the summer was the time of year when this kind of work could be carried on. They went on for some three months with that sum, and then they came to that House again, and in another Vote on Account they asked for a sum of £2,500—that was to say, for the very best six weeks of the year they only took a Vote at the nominal rate, and they actually did not take the trouble to obtain, as they might have obtained, the whole of the money for the working months of the year. As a consequence, they now came for the balance, more than half the money voted, at a time when they would not probably be able to expend the whole of it; and they would find, consequently, by the Appropriation Account of next year, that this sum which had been voted in order to give employment to that very distressed part of Ireland, had not all been spent. They often found that after the House had voted money for a large number of services in Ireland, the Government did not spend the money. Here was a single instance in which the Government had wilfully and deliberately and designedly refused to take advantage of money which had been voted, and had refused to avail themselves of the facilities offered them. He did hope they would receive an assurance from the noble Lord the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, or the Chief Secretary for Ireland, that the money would be spent as rapidly as possible during the short period of summer which still remained in which this kind of work could be done. If the noble Lord would really see that the money was spent, he would confer a very considerable boon on the distressed people of Ireland; but he was certain if the noble Lord did not himself move in the matter, that a large proportion of the money would be returned.

said, he had explained, more than once, that everything in connection with these works was being proceeded with as rapidly as possible; but, as he had already pointed out, more mischief than good would be done if they did not proceed in order, and did not do the lower works before they begun to make the higher ones. If they let down the large amount of water from the higher part of the river before they had made provision below they would be likely to cause damage. It was, therefore, absolutely necessary that they should do the lower work first. In one place, also, it had been impossible to obtain contracts; and the work was, consequently, in the hands of the Board of Works themselves. He could assure hon. Gentlemen, notwithstanding the somewhat uncharitable insinuations that he (Lord Frederick Cavendish) attempted to save money out of the Estimates, that this work would be attended to.

said, he would like some assurance from the Government with reference to the reduction of the weirs on the Shannon, near Jamestown. For some time since, in consequence of the height of these weirs, the lands in the neighbourhood had been annually flooded, thereby causing great damage to the crops. Representations had been made to the Government by the Board of Guardians of Gargoyle, and by others in the county of Leitrim and the county of Roscommon, with reference to the injury done by these annual floods to the crops, and promises had been made that the height of the weirs should be reduced. He should like to have some statement from the Government in reference to the probable time when that very necessary work should be undertaken. He understood that the annual loss by these floods was greater than the whole receipts from the river navigation.

said, that it was proposed to deal with these weirs in order to improve the navigation, as well as for the purpose of relieving the floods.

wished to ask one question only upon this Vote, because he did not understand what one particular item meant. On page 247 under sub-head A it appeared that the Purse-bearer of the Lord Chancellor was paid £350, and he found by a foot-note to the same page that the Pursebearer "also received £200 as Registrar's Clerk, from the funds of the Irish Church Temporalities Commission." That was another instance of that system of duplicate officers which was too common, not only in Ireland, but in England. He objected very strongly to these duplicate offices on principle. He did not see why the Lord Chancellor, in the first place, wanted a Pursebearer at all, in any shape or form; because Lord Chancellors were usually, he believed, paid by cheque. Evidently, the whole office was a mere sinecure, kept in existence either for political or other purposes. He should certainly move to reduce the Vote when it came on; because, unless they made some effort to put down some of these sinecures, they would not get rid of the immense amount of corruption prevalent at present in the Irish Office.

said, there were one or two other points he wished some information about. Was the office of Assistant Secretary to the Lord Chancellor a permanent office, or did each incoming Lord Chancellor appoint his own? He saw that the minimum salary was £300, rising by an annual increment of £15, to £450. And as the maximum salary was charged against the present year, and as the Lord Chancellor had only come into Office a few months ago, he supposed that the office was a permanent one. Then he found that the usher was paid £350, and he believed that one might search through the Estimates to find any parallel to that extraordinary salary. The usher at the hall of Lincoln's Inn received £300; but that was a more important post, while other ushers received only £100, and the marshals were paid but £75. The other salaries, indeed, were very modest compared with this mammoth official of the Lord Chancellor, varying, as they did, from £50 to £150. He should like some explanation of this salary, for the position was not one requiring either much ability and expensive education, or any expensive social position. Why should a subordinate receive a salary which many gentlemen in Her Majesty's Service did not obtain? Again, there were two junior clerks at page 48, whose salary was £250, rising to £350. Both salaries had reached the maximum, of £700; but he should like to know why those two clerks were charged at £800, because, apparently, £100 was being inaccurately or improperly disposed of?

said, the salaries of all these officials had been very recently revised, and next year's Estimates would show a very considerable change. This revision had taken place in pursuance of an Act recently passed; but, as the new salaries did not come into force until there were vacancies, it would be some considerable time before the changes would be completed. All these officials held permanent appointments; and, therefore, it would be impossible to bring the new salaries into operation, except as vacancies occurred. The Pursebearer's salary would hereafter be reduced to £100. He believed the office of Assistant Secretary was a permanent one; while the usher alluded to had to provide stationery for the Lord Chancellor. The alterations in these offices had taken place since the Estimates were presented; and, therefore, it was impossible to mention them in them; but, next year, the changes would be shown and the amount of reduction which ultimately would follow.

said, he was sorry to find that this system of duplicate places ran all through the Estimates. There was an office-keeper in one case holding another office; while, in the second, he found an Examiner holding the office of Clerk of the Crown to County Meath. One would have thought that an important office like that would be sufficient to occupy all the attention of one gentleman without his holding a duplicate office also. The Assistant Clerk also held a duplicate office. The Head Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper got £800 a-year; but he found what was very strange, that a clerk in his office, called the Clerk of Records and Writs, got £1,540. Then, again, he found items for late Clerk of Enrolments £450, rising by £20 to £650, and late Clerk of Affidavits £300. Would he be right in assuming that these were pensions? If so, that should be stated.

said, these officers had to be provided for in 1879–80. But they had now become vacant, and were not being filled up; and if the hon. Member would look at the column for this year, he would see that they were no longer provided for in the Estimates. The late Clerk of Enrolments had £650 provided for him in 1879–80; but no sum whatever was voted in this year. The next item, late Clerk in the Affidavit Office, was explained in this way. These clerks in the Record Office were formerly in the Affidavit Office, and had now become clerks in the Record Office. They held a new position, but retained the same salaries that they had before. He agreed with much that had been said about duplicate places; but he could not agree that the system was always wrong. There were cases in which both economy and efficiency were obtained by allowing a man filling one office, with very slight work, to fill a second at a smaller salary than that for which two men could be obtained.

said, he had had no explanation of the fact that a junior clerk was paid £1,540.

said, his hon. Friend (Mr. Byrne) had not observed a line in large print in the Estimates, which would have informed him that this included money paid to clerks for piecework in different departments under the Lord Chancellor. He should like to know, whether he correctly understood the noble Lord, that the re-organization of this Department had taken place since these Estimates were drawn up? It was assumed that the re-organization would result in the reduction of expenditure; and, if that were so, it would be satisfactory to the Committee to know what was the amount of saving which was likely to accrue this year. If the noble Lord knew what it would be, it would be proper to submit to a reduction of the Estimates by that amount, as he could not want money which he knew would be saved.

said, he was sorry to say there was no saving this year, for the reason that certain officers had had improved salaries, and that the reductions would not, at first, take effect.

said, the noble Lord had admitted that duplicate offices were generally to be condemned. Now, he (Mr. Finigan) thought this office of Pursebearer, who carried a purse with no money in it, ought to be abolished; and, unless he was told by the noble Lord, as he hoped he should be told, that his salary would be done away with, inasmuch as he had an office in which he had nothing whatever to do, he should be obliged to oppose the Vote.

said, it was impossible to abolish these offices, inasmuch as they were of a permanent nature, and could not be abolished without giving compensation. He imagined that the Pursebearer had duties to perform; for, after careful consideration, it was determined by the late Government that the office should be maintained.

said, he thought that a Liberal Government should do something more in the way of reduction of expenditure than a Conservative Government had done. The Conservative Administration had managed to reduce this Vote by £250; and he (Mr. Finigan) thought that the Liberal Government, with the views they entertained with regard to economy in expenditure, should abolish the Vote altogether. This office was really useless, and he should like either of the hon. and learned Gentlemen, the Solicitor and the Attorney Generals for Ireland, to tell the Committee what the duties of the Purse-bearer were.

said, that the scheme which had been adopted with regard to these offices would not come into operation until after the death of the present holders.

said, he should like to ask the noble Lord the Secretary to the Treasury, why the salary of one of the taxing masters had been increased from £600 to £1,000 at one jump. The salary of one of the taxing masters was stated to be taken from the Consolidated Fund; whereas the salaries of the Clerk of the Writs and other functionaries were placed upon the Votes.

said, that these gentlemen were appointed under different conditions, and the system of payment from the Consolidated Fund had been abandoned with regard to the officers more recently appointed. For the future, these salaries would all be taken by Vote, and would not be charged upon the Consolidated Fund.

said, perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland would explain why the item for the expenses of the Election Judges in Ireland for 1878–9 amounted to £220, while there were no Election Petitions to be tried in Ireland. The Vote taken for the reception of the Judges amounted to £100. During the present year there had been five Election Petitions tried, and two prolonged inquiries had been held, and yet only the same sum was charged on account of Election Petition expenses. He did not understand, if £100 was sufficient to cover the expenses for the reception of the Election Judges when no Petitions were tried, how was it that the same sum covered the expenses when two Judges were employed upwards of five weeks trying the Petitions?

said, that on page 252 it was stated that the taxing master had had his salary raised from £600 to £1,000. It did appear to him that the salary of this officer should not be raised in such a liberal manner. Similarly, in regard to the office of the Clerk of the Writs, there was a note stating that—

"The office would cease when the Records were moved to the new building. The salary of the late Clerk of Writs was charged on the Consolidated Fund. The present Clerk of Writs holds office subject to future legislative changes."

He thought that it was time that the sum of £800 a-year to these gentlemen was saved to the country. It was a strange thing to pay a man a salary for doing work which could be perfectly well dispensed with.

said, that in the case of one officer it was stated that the annual increment of his salsry was £20; but it appeared, by these Votes, that, during the present year, his salary had been raised £40. With regard to the office of Writ Clerk, he hoped that the Records would soon be removed to the new buildings. With regard to the Crown Office, it might be in the recollection of many hon. Members that several persons were recently accused of seditious language, and had their trials removed to the Queen's Bench. They were told that it would be necessary for them to enter an appearance at the Crown Office; they presented themselves, upon a specified day, at very considerable trouble to themselves; but they were told that they could not be allowed to put in any appearance on that day, because the official in charge of the office had not the necessary papers. This was a similar case to an attendant at a village shop, saying that he was quite out of the article that he usually kept. It seemed to him (Mr. Sexton) that this was an instance of grave official neglect. The persons accused were told that it would be necessary for them to return on a future occation, and they were thus illegally bound to put in a second appearance, when one ought to have sufficed. He begged to move to reduce the Vote by £240, the salary of the official of the Crown Office.

said, that he had great pleasure in seconding the Amend- ment, that the salary of the officer who had been so grossly negligent in his duty should be reduced. This official had rendered it necessary for the persons in question to go a second time to the office, because he did not provide himself with the necessary printed forms. With regard to all these legal forms, the official in charge of the office ought to have been able without the smallest difficulty to have drawn them up, with the aid of the ordinary text books. No doubt, for the purpose of facilitating business, printed forms were usually filled up; but, in this case, if printed forms were not ready the necessary papers ought to have been drawn up in manuscript, so that individuals who wished to put in an appearance could have done so. It to him that the official in charge of this official was unworthy of his salary; and he had, therefore, great pleasure in seconding the Motion.

said, that he rose to Order. He said it was provided by the Standing Order of the 19th of September, 1867, that where a Motion was made in Committee of Supply to reduce a Vote, the Question should be put upon the Motion to reduce such Vote. That course had not been taken in the present instance.

said, that two items had been mentioned by the hon. Member together, and he should take it, therefore, as a reduction of the whole Vote, and not as a reduction of any particular item.

said, that if any hon. Member desired to make any reduction of a particular Vote, he supposed he would still be at liberty to do so.

said, that any further reduction could be moved.

said, that the Votes had been prepared at the commencement of the year, on a calculation of the amount that would probably be required. The hon. Member for Queen's County (Mr. Arthur O'Connor) had pointed to a salary which was stated to be paid out of the Consolidated Fund. That was so at present; but when the present holder died or retired, that salary would disappear altogether as a charge upon the Consolidated Fund, and would be transferred to the Votes. With regard to the case of the officer whose salary was stated to increase by an annual increment of £20, having £40 added to his salary in one year, the explanation was that this was due to a reorganization of the office. The re-organization would ultimately result in the reduction of the number of officials from five to three. Meantime, the salaries of four of these officers remained charged upon the Votes, and the salary of one upon the Consolidated Fund.

said, that with regard to the occasion which had been mentioned, when it was impossible for the persons charged with seditious language to enter an appearance, the facts, as would be recollected, were these—the Clerk of the Crown, who was a very excellent official, unfortunately had no more stamps on that occasion. He had only enough for one appearance; but the others did not directly seek to enter an appearance, but only asked for information on the occasion. He might say, from his own knowledge, that the Crown had served notices upon these gentlemen; and, therefore, they had an opportunity of entering an appearance subsequently. Unquestionably, the Clerk of the Crown was a necessary officer. From his (Mr. Gibson's) own opinion, he believed that, in this matter, he had acted with all the courtesy and consideration that was consistent with his duty. With reference to taxing masters, he was thoroughly well aware that reorganization was going on, although he did not know the exact figures at the present moment. At the beginning of the re-organization, there were five taxing masters paid very substantial salaries, and the effect of the re-organization had been to reduce that number to three.

said, that as he was present on the occasion which had been referred to, when the official at the Crown Office had not the necessary stamps, he could state that he had treated the gentlemen present with the greatest possible courtesy. Some of those gentlemen had come up at great personal inconvenience to themselves, and some said that they would not come up again. He believed that the reason for the stamps not being forthcoming was owing to a misapprehension in the Crown Office, and to the stamps being very seldom required. He should suggest to the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) that he should not persist in his proposal.

said, that he did not think that the courteous explanations which had been given on both sides of the House with regard to the management of the Crown Office affected the question which he had raised. It was notorious in the country for weeks that these gentlemen would appear on a particular day, to put in an appearance; and as the result of their not being able to do so on that day, more than one expressed the determination to be rather brought up by force than put in a second appearance. After the publicity which had been given to this matter, however, he thought that greater carefulness would be pursued; and he should, therefore, withdraw his Amendment on that subject. With regard to the other point, he should ask that the Vote should be reduced by the sum of £40.

moved to reduce the Vote by the sum of £40, as it was inaccurate upon the face of it by that amount.

said, the hon. Member appeared to think the Vote must be necessarily wrong, because it did not agree with the annual increment stated. That, however, was not so; for the hon. Member would find that the Act of Parliament enabled a complete re-construction of business to be carried out. It would be found that the Irish Judicature Act of 1877 sanctioned a certain scheme of re-organization, by which certain offices could be abolished and others consolidated; and, if necessary, larger salaries given to existing officials by way of compensation. That very probably was the reason why this officer had been given a larger increase of salary in the present year than was justified by his annual increment.

said, that, as upon the face of these Estimates they were inaccurate, he thought his hon. Friend was justified in moving the reduction. The explanation given by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) was of no use whatever. That explanation would not hold water; because he (Mr. Arthur O'Connor) had learned from the noble Lord the Secretary to the Treasury that the Estimates were prepared before the re-organization was carried out, and that they did not contain any provision with regard to reorganization.

begged to move to report Progress, as it was then 10 minutes to 2 o'clock. He thought it was scandalous to keep them there at that time. In his opinion, it was perfectly unreasonable to ask the Committee to proceed further with the Votes at so late an hour.

said, he hoped the Committee would be pleased to go on with some of the other Votes which did not require discussion. He would be quite ready to stop when they reached a Vote on which there was to be some debate. The advantage of dealing now with those which did not excite much discussion was that, on the next occasion of going into Committee, they at once began with the Vote which required to be debated; whereas, if they had the remainder of the Votes to pass which were not likely to excite much discussion, it would be quite uncertain as to what time the more important Votes would be reached.

said that although the hour was very unusual, he would appeal to his hon. Friend the Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) to withdraw his Motion, and let the Committee go on with the Votes down to No. 32. Upon those which intervened there was not likely to be any very long discussion. It was quite true that no Motion to report Progress had previously been made; but then, on the other hand, it was fair to remember that they did not get into Committee until a very unusual hour.

said, he would join in the appeal to the hon. Member for Cavan; for he thought they might finish Class III., if such Votes as the Dublin Metropolitan Police and the Constabulary and the Prisons Votes were held over.

said, he would agree to that, and he would ask his hon. Friend (Mr. Biggar) to withdraw his Motion, if the Government would also omit the Vote for the Court of Bankruptcy, and the next Vote for the County Court officers. There was now before the House a Bankruptcy Bill for Ireland of a very important nature, which, he was sorry to say, had been blocked by hon. Members on the other side of the House; and as he wished, on that Vote, to draw attention to the matter, he hoped the Government would leave them over.

said, he was always averse to voting money after it was half-past 12; but, as they had had a very important debate on a very important subject, at a time which would otherwise have been devoted to these Estimates, he would ask his hon. Friend (Mr. Biggar) whether he could not strain a point that evening and allow this money to be voted, even at that late hour? Hon. Members who took the trouble to study the Votes performed a very thankless task, and were deserving of some consideration. He should certainly, therefore, have supported his hon. Friend in asking that those Estimates should be taken at a reasonable time, had it not been for the fact that they had themselves occupied the earlier part of the evening. As the Government had agreed to postpone the Votes which were contentious, he thought it would be fair to take such Votes as were not contentious at once.

said, he did not wish to stand in the way of the suggestion, and he would consent to withdraw his Motion, on the understanding that the Government would not take the Votes to which his hon. Friend had alluded.

said, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland had now a very good opportunity for facilitating Public Business and getting an additional Vote if he would drop the absurd County Courts Bill, which there was not the slightest chance of passing. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman had known what the Bill was, and what a job it was intended to cover, he might not have been so ready to bring it in.

Order, order! It is not allowed to discuss a Bill before the House on the Question of Supply.

said, that he did not wish to discuss the Bill; but, as a motive had been imputed to him (Mr. Callan) in blocking the measure, he ought, at least, to be allowed to explain that there was some reason for doing that. He would suggest to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland that he would greatly facilitate Public Business if he would drop the Bill.

wished to support the suggestion that the Bankruptcy Vote should be left over. A little discussion would probably clear the way for future legislation next year, and the proper application of public money.

asked, whether the next Vote was likely to be a contentious Vote? If not, he would like to take it.

said, it included the salaries of stipendiary magistrates, and that would certainly cause some discussion.

said, he had moved some time ago for a Return with reference to the County Courts of Ireland. For some reason, which had not been explained, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland refused to give him the Return. Now, he might point out to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that if that Return had been granted it would have saved a considerable amount of discussion, and might have enabled him also to have passed that Bill. The Return he (Mr. Callan) asked for was one giving the name and occupation of persons appointed Registrars under the County Courts Act, the duties assigned, and whether the office was discharged by the person appointed, or by a deputy. Probably, the right hon. and learned Gentleman would now kindly state that he would grant this as an unopposed Return, and so facilitate the discussion of these Votes the next day.

That Question must be asked in the House; it cannot be asked in Committee of Supply.

said, he was obliged to the Committee for allowing the Votes to proceed so far that night. With regard to the course to be taken by the Committee when next it met, he was inclined to think it would be more convenient for the Committee generally, and, perhaps, more especially to hon. Members from Ireland, if he were to put down the Police Votes first. They would begin with the Metropolitan Police, and go on with the others. He did not wish to go out of the proper order, if that was inconvenient; but it seemed to him that it would be a preferable course.

asked, if the Government would take the Vote for Public Buildings immediately after?

said, he should think, after getting that Vote, they would proceed in order, and go back to Class I.

asked if the Government could give Notice of the Votes and of the order in which they would come on the Paper?

said, it had never yet been done, and there might be a question whether it could be; but he would see.

said, that there was one point in regard to this Act to which he wished to direct the attention of the noble Lord the Secretary to the Treasury. By the 13th section, power was given to the Commissioners of Public Works to make loans to railway and other public companies, and to the trustees of canal, river, and navigation works, and to harbour commissioners. By the 14th section, it was provided that the baronies should be enabled to give guarantees in favour of such railways and other public companies or trustees of any canal or navigation; but the giving of a guarantee on account of harbour commissioners was entirely omitted. He did not know what opinion the noble Lord might have as to the legal effect of leaving out the harbour commissioners in that clause; but he (Mr. Parnell) had been asked whether the harbour commissioners could avail themselves of the Act? The question was whether the 14th section authorized extraordinary presentment sessions to give guarantees with reference to harbour commissioners.

said, that he thought it would be difficult to put in the harbour commissioners in the clause; and he would remind the hon. Member that it was at his own suggestion that the works on account of which guarantees were to be given were to be inserted in a Schedule.

said, that he had not wished that harbour companies should be scheduled.

said, that he would consider the question raised by the hon. Member, and would deal with it upon Report.