reported Her Majesty's Speech, made by Her Chancellor, and read it to the House.

Sir, I ask the forbearance of the House. Till now I have not addressed it; and in undertaking the honourable task that has been confided to me I have counted upon a full measure of the accustomed and generous indulgence of the House. The circumstances which have rendered necessary the re-assembling of Parliament within the first week of the new year are, perhaps, the saddest which have troubled the domestic affairs of the country within living memory. The House will be all the more glad of the assurance contained in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech, that her relations with foreign Powers continue friendly and harmonious. Certainly, of late years, these relations have not assumed that calm and settled appearance which they wear at this moment; and the country will see in that fact the first fruits of the policy to which it gave its emphatic approval at the late General Election. The rectification of the Montenegrin Frontier accomplishes one more step towards the final completion of the terms of the Treaty of Berlin. There may be differences of opinion as regards the intrinsic merits and importance of this rectification; but the House, I think, will congratulate Her Majesty's Ministers upon an achievement which has placed them in their natural and healthy position before Europe; which has reaffirmed the principle of the concerted action of Europe, vindicated the sanctity of Treaties, and imposed upon the Porto the necessity of fulfilling its solemn obligations. It is to be regretted that the Greek Question could not have been settled concurrently with the Montenegrin Question. At one time there was reasonable ground to hope that such might have been the case, and hon. Members who have perused the official dispatches of the Government of France will have observed that that Power made it a condition of peremptory action, and of joining the naval forces on the coast of Albania, that such action should have reference to Greek claims as well as to those of Montenegro. From that position France appears to have withdrawn, though she still takes a leading part in the endeavour to bring about a solution of the question. The cause of Greece will, I think, have the sympathy of this House. It has been affirmed by Europe and admitted by Turkey herself. The claims of Greece are not of her own formulation. They were determined by the arbitrament of the Plenipotentiaries at the Congress of Berlin, and she has shown as much patience as might satisfy the invocation of a distinguished statesman. The difficulties imposed on the Government at Athens under such circumstances will be readily realized by this House. Greece has certainly exceptional claims upon Europe in general, and upon us in particular, for having sacrificed a golden opportunity, by an act of self-restraint, during the late war. Yet it will not have been expected that Ministers should take any single-handed action in her favour. I believe this House will approve the principle of the policy which actuates Her Majesty's Government—I mean the policy of concerted action by the Powers; not anything in the nature of a Holy Alliance, but a joint action of confederate Europe in the common interests of Europe. Sir, I believe the House will sympathize to the keenest extent with the present position of Greece. We gave to the Greek people the cradle and shrine of their illustrious race; but we did not secure to them a sufficient appanage for their maintenance. Athens attracts the youth, the talent, and the ardour of a scattered people, but cannot give them scope. Her relations with her children under foreign yoke keep her in perpetual unrest. She has now one-third of her men under arms. Her situation is well-nigh intolerable. It is strange that the Power which has, perhaps, done the least for the world occupies the ancestral homes of the two races which, in their separate time and way, have done the most and the best. Europe is beginning to feel the ill results which follow the exclusion of an ancient people from the most natural and healthy field for its ambition and energies. It is enough that the Jewish race should be homeless and scattered in Europe without adding the Greek race also.

I suppose we may consider that the fallacy of bringing Turkey to reason by argument, well enough in its day, is now worn out; and that portion of Her Majesty's Speech will be read with regret which implies that no internal reform has taken place in Turkey. The Turkish Government seems incapable of any spontaneous movement for good, and lies in the lethargy which too often precedes decease.

Turning to the affairs of India, it will be observed that Her Majesty's Government are steadily following that policy which, from the outset, they proclaimed. The disaster of Maiwand has been retrieved by the relief of Candahar; and I doubt not that the names of the two distinguished Generals—Sir Donald Stewart and Sir Frederick Roberts—who devised and executed that brilliant feat of arms, will stand high in the military annals of the country. Stone by stone the edifice of our old Frontier policy, which to some seemed so ruthlessly destroyed (alas, how much easier it is to do evil than good in this world!) is being laboriously rebuilt—that policy which, though connected with the name of Lord Lawrence, was, in fact, during a full generation, the policy of successive Viceroys, chosen from both the great Parties in the State. It is to be hoped that the health and strength so happily restored to Lord Ripon may find their application in attending to the moral and material amelioration of the condition of our marvellous Dependency, in which, perhaps, will be found the truest elements of its strength and allegiance. Last Session Her Majesty's Government declared its intention of giving very substantial aid from the Imperial Exchequer towards the discharge of the Debt of India in connection with the War in Afghanistan. I hope that this Session it may be possible to fix the amount of this aid, and that it will be substantial, if for no other reason than to furnish a salutary check upon the policy which led to the accumulation of that enormous burden.

In surveying our vast Colonial Empire, our attention is still rivetted upon the dark spot in South Africa. The Basuto War, Her Majesty's Speech informs us, still continues. The Basuto War was not of our making, the Disarmament Proclamation, which was issued during the late Election, having been the work of the Cape Parliament, which fully discussed the question, and decided upon the policy which led to the war, by a majority equal to one of 80 in this House. Although the self-governing Colonies will, undoubtedly, commit errors, which are lamentable in themselves, it would seem a questionable course lightly to interfere with their responsibilities; and, so far as this war is concerned, it must be remembered that the Colonists bear the pains and penalties of it entirely on their own shoulders. At the same time, let us hope that the friendly action referred to in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech may be rendered fruitful in the prevention of further bloodshed. In estimating the conduct of the Colony, it is but fair to remember that it had to consider the security of a district in which some 500 Whites were surrounded by no less than 128,000 Natives, bearing arms; and we must also remember that it was under the influence of the forward policy and subject to the charm of the presence of that distinguished man with whose name that policy is associated. Therefore, some pardon must, I think, be extended to what might be otherwise considered recklessness on the part of the Colonists. The unhappy events in the Transvaal will also engage the anxious attention of the House, and it must be a matter full of regret to many that there is no alternative but to vindicate in that district the authority of the Queen by force of arms. At the same time, it will be noticed that Her Majesty in the Gracious Speech has taken that large and humane step of referring to the measures of reform, and the benefits which it was her desire to confer, even while her authority is disputed; and it is not difficult to see that as soon as possible a measure of self-government will be conceded to the Transvaal which ought to satisfy even the most passionate lover of freedom in that Colony. Surely the Dominion of Canada enjoys all the independence that a community like that of the Boers could reasonably demand. As to the responsibility for the state of affairs, it will be remembered that the annexation was not the act of the present Government. One hon. Member of it, whom we must all wish to congratulate, from the first protested against it, and the Prime Minister has constantly condemned it. Once done, any attempt at the time by the then Opposition to reverse it could have been but mischievous; and, in fact, the present Government, on coming into Office, seem to have found it impossible to shake off the unfortunate legacy. To do so would have been to restore 800,000 Natives, whom we had taken under our protection, to the tender mercies of the Boers, and thereby to create a very serious danger to our neighbouring possessions.

But it is the most sad and painful condition of things in Ireland which is the disheartening subject of the hour. It is surely a blow to our pride, our just, but perhaps our overweening pride, to have to confess that our boasted institutions no longer give security or protection to life or property close to our doors, in one of the Three Kingdoms itself, and to have to confess that there the very elements of civilization may be said to be wanting. It is difficult too much to deplore the condition of Ireland'; but it is not difficult to misdescribe it. The loss of life, after all, has not been so serious as was supposed; but, at the same time, it has been found necessary to extend protection to very large number of persons, and I believe at one time there were as many as 125 persons daily, nightly, and hourly under the protection of the police in Ireland. Agrarian offences also have risen with alarming rapidity, and, I am told, exceed by something like seven-fold the fair and ordinary rate of ordinary times. But it would not be true to say that the Government in Ireland has broken down. The Executive has continued to exert its authority. When meetings have been prohibited they have not been held, and where protection has been required it has been given; but too much may be required of the Executive—for instance, it is not the business of the Executive to collect rents. That which has broken down in Ireland is not the Executive, but the administration of justice. It is the administration of justice that is paralyzed, that is dead. It is impossible to obtain evidence, and I fear it is more than difficult to obtain juries of sufficient independence and courage to give impartial verdicts. Sir, under these circumstances, an absolute deadlock has been reached in the government of that country, and it has become necessary for Her Majesty's Government to ask for extraordinary powers. It is the first and paramount duty of the Government to secure order; and it is upon that account, I presume, that in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech we find that it is only subject to the obtaining of extraordinary powers that remedial legislation is to be proposed. That remedial legislation would appear to follow on the lines of preceding legislation. The Land Act of 1870, in the beginning, at any rate, was followed by several years of comparative contentment and calm; but it was, no doubt, defeated to some extent in the integrity of its principles by Amendments which emanated from "another place." No doubt, also, it was evaded substantially in practice by small and successive rises in rents; and, unquestionably, it received a heavy blow from the three years of bad harvests, which enabled some landlords to confiscate the property of the tenants within the provisions of the Act. Some of the suggestions made on the subject of Land Reform in Ireland have been of a speculative character. It will certainly not be expected that Her Majesty's Ministers will give favour to theoretical propositions which upset the very foundations of property. In so far as they contain the germs of a true political economy, they will, I believe, be found in embryo in the Act of 1870, and I trust that Her Majesty's Government will be able to pass such an amendment of that Act as will develop those germs, restore the integrity of the Act, and fortify its operations. No doubt, there are other remedial measures in the mind of Her Majesty's Ministers. Reference is, in fact, made in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech to a measure for the establishment of local county government in Ireland, which, I trust, may ere long extend itself across the Irish Channel also. No doubt, it will be suggested that Her Majesty's Government might have earlier asked for extraordinary powers in order to the better government of Ireland; but Her Majesty's Ministers apparently felt it their duty to exhaust all the ordinary forms of law before appealing to Parliament for special powers. Nothing could have been easier than for the Government to have asked Parliament for special powers; but, in the absence of evidence of their absolute necessity, with which to convince Parliament, this would have been but the shuffling off on to Parliament of the responsibility which belongs to the Administration.

Turning to the home legislation, the House will admit that it would have been barely sincere for the Government, in the face of the Business which will probably monopolize this Session, to produce any long array of measures, or pretend to be in a position to carry forward that scheme of legislation to which, they were pledged when they came into Office. A general measure of Land Law Reform, for instance, must stand over for the present. But there are useful measures referred to in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech which will be welcomed by all. Our soldiers and sailors are to be relieved from a degrading punishment. With reference to the Army, I believe it is proposed to carry to completion the beneficial reforms introduced by a Liberal Administration some years ago. I believe it will be proposed to form county regiments of two battalions of the Line, combined with the Militia, and that some improvement will be made in the pay of non-commissioned officers. The period of service will also be lengthened in order to provide for Inland and Colonial duties. Reference to the measure under which the scandals of our bankruptcy procedure may be removed, and that which deals with electoral corruption, I propose to leave in abler hands than mine. Sir, I shall now conclude by thanking the House for the patience with which it has suffered me to address it, and by moving—

Mr. Speaker—Sir, I rise to second the Motion with a full consciousness of the honour which has been conferred on the important constituency I represent, and incidentally on myself, by the duty with which I am intrusted; and, in view of the exceptional difficulty which attends the position I now occupy, I trust that I may obtain the indulgent consideration of the House for the few remarks which I shall offer to it.

It is satisfactory to learn that the foreign relations of Her Majesty's Government are of a friendly nature. In Eastern Europe the concert of the Great Powers has succeeded in pressing to a solution at least one problem of a difficult and menacing description. The friendly co-operation of the Great Powers in matters of common interest is a principle for which we must all wish a full measure of success; and I beg to express the hope that this principle may be found effectual for an early and satisfactory consummation of those aspirations of the Greek nation, as to which both Turkey and Europe have given such solemn, and, as it seems to me, irrevocable pledges.

From Her Majesty's declaration on the subject of Afghanistan, it would appear that the policy of withdrawal from that country is soon to be completed, and a limit placed on those enormous expenses which fall with such crushing weight on so poor a population as that of India. The announcement that the finances of this country are to be charged with a portion of the sum recently expended in the Afghan War affords an additional incentive, if, indeed, any be needed, for the just and economical administration of India; for it becomes more and more obvious that our responsibilities relate not only to the good government of that country, but extend also, in a large degree, to her financial affairs.

In South Africa events of a very deplorable nature are in progress. The Basuto War, though, to some extent, the natural sequence of a policy in which the present Government had no share, is, in reality, a war for which the Colonial Government is alone responsible, and with which, it is to be hoped, their own resources will be sufficient to cope. In the Transvaal greater troubles have arisen. The annexation of that region involved this country in serious responsibilities; and it is surely desirable that the future action of the Government should be in the direction of diminishing rather than increasing their obligations in that vast and distant land.

The renewal of facilities for secret voting, provided by the Ballot Act, will commend itself to all, I think, who have had experience of the pressure which was brought to bear under the old system; and though, unfortunately, it cannot be denied that influences of the most ignoble description are still found to prevail among a certain class of voters, it would be difficult to show that the system of voting by ballot is in any degree responsible for those abuses. The House will learn with pleasure that a Bill is to be introduced dealing with the shameful practices which have been resorted to at some elections. The recent Commissions have disclosed an amount of wrong-doing in this respect which is little short of a national discredit; and there can, I feel sure, be no difference of opinion as to the necessity of effectively repressing such practices.

There are, I believe, Sir, few measures promised in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech which will be accepted, both in this House and in the country, with more satisfaction than that which proposes to abolish the degrading practice of flogging in the Army and Navy.

The legislation which is to be presented on the subject of bankruptcy is a well-recognized necessity. The enormous expense which attends the administration of insolvent estates; the cost in legal and accountants' charges; and the injustice which now so often accompanies the process of liquidation by arrangement have long been a reproach to our law and a serious burden on the commerce of the country. The prospect of some uniform method of conducting these affairs with economy and despatch, under independent and responsible authority, must, therefore, be hailed with universal satisfation.

In the commercial world—of which I have some little experience—I am happy to discern a more hopeful feeling than has recently prevailed. Our relations with foreign countries being in a less strained condition, there is a manifest increase of that spirit of confidence which is so valuable in mercantile affairs. Our great markets in India have recently displayed an augmented capacity for consuming the industrial products of this country; which shows, at least, that a better harvest is already improving the buying power, and, therefore, the material condition, of our fellow-subjects in that part of the Empire. Our trading relations with foreign countries have not increased as we could desire, their commerce being, in too many instances, restricted by high tariffs. I feel very strongly the necessity, on the part of this country, of promoting those principles of free intercourse which tend so largely to the political and commercial welfare of nations. During the Recess efforts have been made to develop our commercial relations with France, Spain, and Portugal. To these endeavours I attach extreme importance. The special restrictions imposed on our commerce by the almost prohibitory tariffs of the Peninsula tend to destroy a trade which would be of inestimable value to the respective countries; and I sincerely hope that some means may be found of disposing those Governments to adopt a more enlightened commercial policy.

With regard to the Treaty of Commerce with France, which is now about to expire, I am strongly of opinion that every effort should be made to extend its provisions in the direction of Free Trade. Under that Treaty there has been an increase of commerce between the two countries which is capable of enormous expansion, and which tend not only to their material advantage, but also towards strengthening those relations of good feeling and common interest which were so greatly developed by Mr. Cobden's work of 1860. But, Sir, I may point also to many signs of substantial improvement in the condition of the country. Throughout all the staple industries there is now full employment, and, in many cases, higher wages; while the relations between employers and employed have rarely been on a more satisfactory footing. Pauperism is also decreasing throughout the country; while the evidence afforded by the Revenue returns, the railway traffic, and monetary transactions, all point to a return of activity and prosperity in our commerce.

Sir, it would be well if these cheering signs could find a parallel in the sister country of Ireland, where, unhappily, a condition of disorder prevails as sad as it is serious. Experience must now have demonstrated that, whatever may have been the capabilities of the Land Act of 1870, as originally framed, the modifications imposed during its passage through the Legislature took away, in a large degree, its utility, and the measure has broken down as to many of its most important provisions. The tenant has not teen secured against unjust and arbitrary advances of rent and consequent eviction, nor has the Act prevented, in many cases, the appropriation of his tenant right. Further, the clauses known by the name of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster have largely failed to fulfil the intentions of the framer. In a country whose people have little resource but the land, where their passion for the soil is intense, where the legal rights of landowners are, in many instances, unjustly founded and pushed to intolerable extremes, a neglected or inequitable system of land tenure must necessarily constitute a standing menace to social order. Under the aggravation of scanty harvests, and an agitation of exceptional dimensions, we are now confronted with a condition of affairs in which the law stands practically in abeyance. Whether at any stage of these proceedings it behoved the Government to intervene is not now within my province to discuss. But history surely teaches us that repression as a policy has not only failed in its ultimate object, but has tended finally to aggravate the disease of which it only at best attacked the outward symptoms. That order and public safety; should be maintained in every part of the Empire I think few will dispute; but if the Government should hereafter demonstrate the necessity of exceptional means for the recovery of those conditions in Ireland, it would, in my judgment, be wise also to determine that the just and ample reforms—which are by no means newly-born intentions of the Liberal policy—shall still constitute the most powerful weapons for the pacification of the country. But, Sir, I discern some element of hope in the fact that this ever-recurring question of Irish grievances is at last brought completely before the bar of a fully-awakened public opinion in this country. It can be of as little advantage to England as it is to Ireland that the Government should be perpetually distracted, that the current of Public Business should be continually stemmed, through the importunity of those cries of suffering, those demands for justice, which all humanity must now surely admit have, at least, some grave foundation. May I venture, Sir, to express very fervently the hope that those extreme aspirations, which are the invariable progeny of justice too long delayed, may be modified by the desire to bestow quickly on that unhappy country the blessings of order and equitable laws?

In the belief, Sir, that the measures of the Government are designed and calculated to promote the welfare and contentment of the Empire, I beg to second the Motion now before the House, and to add the expression of my gratitude for the patience and courtesy with which the House has received my imperfect remarks.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That, &c." [See p. 82.]

Mr. Speaker, if I feel some embarrassment in paying the usual compliments to the speeches of the Mover and Seconder of the Address, it is not because I do not do full justice to the ability with which both those Gentlemen have spoken, and the skill with which they have performed a task of no little difficulty; but I am afraid that if I simply content myself with paying the compliment which their skill deserves, I may, perhaps, be thought to admit much that has been said by them, and which I am not at all prepared to agree with. Now, I wish to say, with regard to the speech of the Mover of the Address, that I must compliment him upon having thrown a rose-coloured tint over a great deal of very disputable and anxious matter. I speak particularly of the earlier part of his remarks, and his observations upon the earlier part of Her Majesty's Gracious Speech. I think it very possible that the hon. Gentleman is in possession of information with which we have not been so liberally supplied, and which may, perhaps, permit him to take the views which, for the present, at all events, I, and I believe a large propor- tion of this House, find ourselves utterly unable to accept. He has told us that, with reference to the relations of this country with foreign Powers upon Asiatic and European affairs, the position of the present Government is a calm and settled position, such as has not been known for many years. I trust that is so. We are promised that Papers shall be, in due time, laid before us; and when those Papers come before us, I must hope, and am ready to believe, that the observations of the hon. Gentleman will be found to be justified by the evidence laid before us. But, from the information at present in our possession, I must frankly say that it does not appear to me that we are in the position in which we can rely with the extreme comfort and satisfaction upon the condition of foreign affairs that appears to animate the Mover of the Address. We have heard but little on the direct authority of our own Government as to what has been going on in the last few months, or, indeed, since they acceded to Office. The few revelations that have from time to time been made to us have been from sources of general information, open to all the world, or from the publications of foreign Governments. The intimations which have occasionally been made to us from those sources have raised in my mind, and the minds of others, great anxiety lest we should find ourselves on a sudden committed, without our knowledge or consent, to uncomfortable conclusions and an unsatisfactory position. If I read aright what we have heard of what has been going on, this country has not been very far from finding itself committed to actual war, or, at all events, to complications which must have led to that very undesirable state of things; and how, if that is so, we are to reconcile the proceedings to which I refer with the description which has now been given of them I feel unable to see. I am unwilling to enter at any length into this part of the subject—especially unwilling, because we are not yet furnished with information—but I hope that when the Prime Minister rises, in the course of this discussion, he may be willing to tell us, rather more fully and authoritatively than the Mover and Seconder have been able to do, what is the actual state of our relations, and what are the prospects we have in these interesting but difficult and important matters. Is it the case that our relations with foreign Powers are, in all respects, friendly and harmonious? Of course, that is put into the Speech delivered from the Throne, and there can be no doubt that it is literally true; but what I want to know is—Is there unity of purpose amongst those foreign Powers and ourselves? Are they and we agreed with regard to the steps to be taken in relation to the matters referred to? We have been told that the main question between Turkey and Montenegro has been settled. Well, that may be satisfactory. [ Ironical Liberal cheers ]. Well, I should like more particulars, that we may know how far it is complete as well as satisfactory, though I am not at all prepared to doubt that the settlement may be so described. With regard to the next paragraph of the Speech from the Throne, the question with respect to the communications of the Powers as to determining the Frontier between Turkey and Greece, we have received the most meagre and barren information. We are simply told that the Powers are now engaged in such communications. We are not told what the nature of the communications is, or what prospect there is of any result being arrived at. The Mover of the Address, having told us that everything in our relations with foreign Powers is harmonious and friendly, went on to express regret that the Government of France had apparently withdrawn from the position which they at first took up; and he also went on to tell us that the Greek Army had been trebled, and that great burden and expense were thrown upon Greece, which that country was ill-fitted to bear. If that is the case, I can hardly regard the state of things as fairly settled. I am most unwilling to say anything which could in any degree inconvenience the proceedings of Her Majesty's Government in relation to foreign communications; but I do say it is now incumbent upon the Government to present to us at least as much information as foreign Governments have presented to their Legislatures. As I presume that will be done, I will not enter further on the question. We have been called together, as Her Majesty's Gracious Speech observes, at an earlier period than usual—a period at which it is impossible for hon. Gentlemen to assemble without some inconvenience, and at a particular season of the year which many Members devote to the consideration of local matters. But whenever Her Majesty summons her Parliament to assemble, in order to consult them and to ask their assistance in dealing with important and urgent affairs, it will never be wanting in readiness to come. We come with the greatest readiness, prepared to assist Her Majesty's Government in every proper step they may wish to take. [Mr. W. E. FORSTER: Hear, hear!] We come in January, as we would have come in November, and we shall be told by-and-bye why we were not called upon to come then. I will only add at this moment that we are perfectly prepared to give our time, and to give it to any extent that may be really required for the discussion of important questions that may be brought before us. Well, there are other passages in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech which go beyond the domestic administration of this country. We have a reference to that unfortunate rising in the Transvaal, of which I would only say at this moment that it has been suddenly sprung upon us; and that we await, with anxiety, further information on the subject. It is one of so large a character that it demands a discussion to itself. Neither do I propose to enter into a discussion of the next paragraph of the Speech, which relates to the war in Basutoland, further than to say that there is a very remarkable expression in the Speech which I have read two or three times over. It says—

"I regret that the War in Basutoland still continues, notwithstanding the efforts of the Cape Government. It would cause me much satisfaction if a suitable occasion should present itself for friendly action on my part, with a view to the restoration of peace."

That is, no doubt, a sentiment by which a Government must always be animated in its relations with other friendly States which are at war among themselves; but here we are dealing, not with the case of an independent Power, but with the case of a British Colony, and I think we ought to have a fuller explanation as to the attitude in which the Members of the Government feel themselves to stand in regard to these hostilities. The Cape Colony, after all, is a Dependency of England, and part of the British Empire; and we cannot be expected to treat the affairs of the Colony as if they were merely on the same footing as the affairs of some independent country. There is another question upon which it will be necessary at some time to have a full discussion, and that is with regard to our position in Afghanistan, and the views of the Government as to Candahar. I do not propose to raise that question now. I only refer to that paragraph in Her Majesty's Speech in order to say that I think Her Majesty's Government might find it advisable to acknowledge the great gallantry and great skill with which our military operations have been carried on in Afghanistan. I think they might have done that wholly apart from any question as to the policy of those proceedings. But, perhaps, in the midst of all the business pressing upon them, it has escaped attention; and I hope before the debate closes we shall have that matter set right by an expression of the pride and satisfaction with which we have seen those military exploits. With regard to the paragraph of the Speech which refers to the Military Estimates of India, I presume the time will soon come when we shall be informed of the views of Her Majesty's Ministers with reference to the proposed contributions from the Imperial to the Indian Revenues on account of the expenditure in Afghanistan. I come now to the part of the Speech which, after all, is that to which every man is looking with attention in both Houses of Parliament, and among the public as well. I feel that it is a matter of the gravest and most serious consequence to us to see the condition in which the Sister Island is now placed. The hon. Gentleman has told us that the Government of the country has not broken down in Ireland, but that it is the execution of justice—the administration of justice—which has failed. Well, let us examine that for a moment. Are we going really—can the Government be going—to endeavour to remove from their own shoulders the responsibility which rests upon them, and throw it upon the Executive officers or the judicial authorities? Sir, I can well believe that the feelings of the Government in regard to the position of Ireland must be intensely painful. The feelings of any Government which, found so important a part of the Kingdom in such a state as is here described must be anything but enviable. But when we remember the history of the present Government and its action towards Ireland, when we see how many considerations must enter into their minds in regard to the condition in which Ireland is now, I cannot but feel that their position, thoughts, and feelings must be of the most painful description. The paragraphs in Her Majesty's Speech which we now have before us are paragraphs which I have read and re-read; and the oftener I read them the more extraordinary does the picture they present appear. I am told that there is a comparative ignorance—I will not go so far as to say there is an apathy, but a want of realization—of the condition of Ireland amongst a great part of the people of this country. They see from time to time, and indeed every day, the columns of the newspapers filled with most fearful accounts of the proceedings in that Island; they see every appearance of insecurity, of the entire destruction of law and order, and a great overbearing of all the rights of property and of individual liberty, which are so dear to Englishmen. But the people in many parts of this country, I believe, look at all this with wonder and amazement, and do not believe it. They cannot bring themselves to believe that things are so bad as they are said to be; and it is not until evidence comes before them in the shape of a pronouncement by an authority which cannot be disputed and which has no temptation to overrate the difficulties or the evils of the situation, by an authority speaking solemnly in the name of the Crown to the Parliament of England, that people can in any degree realize the position of that portion of Her Majesty's Dominions. Her Majesty's present Government, Her Majesty's Prime Minister, must look back with amazement, as the other subjects of Her Majesty look back with amazement, to the words which he himself spoke much less than a year ago, when he was not in Office, but when he was aiming at Office, and when he was on the point of assuming that great responsibility, when words coming from him could certainly not be said to be the words of an irresponsible personage. In the middle of that great contest which took place in the beginning of last year for the possession of power, the right hon. Gentleman made use of this language to his constituents, describing the condition of Ireland—

"There is an absence of crime and outrage, with a general sense of comfort and of satisfaction, such as was unknown in the previous history of that country."

That was the state of Ireland, in the judgment of the right hon. Gentleman, at the end of last March. And very shortly afterwards he acceded to power, and became responsible for the administration of the affairs of Ireland, as well as of the rest of the Empire. What was the first question which came before him? It was whether or not the Government should renew the Peace Preservation Act. They had all the information that was in the possession of their Predecessors. They had information of a minute, elaborate, authentic character from persons who were responsible for the administration of the country, all pointing in a general way, I may say, to one conclusion—namely, that it was necessary that that Act should be renewed. They had that before them. They waited, and they came deliberately to the conclusion that it was not necessary—and if not necessary of course it was not desirable—that they should advise Parliament to renew that Act. They announced in the Speech from the Throne that they believed that Ireland would be sufficiently well governed without any resort to measures of an exceptional nature; and they therefore pledged their character as statesmen, when they came to deal with the matter in a responsible position, that it was not necessary that any measure of this kind should be passed. Well, what happened? Time went on, and various uneasy symptoms appeared, and Questions were put and discussions were raised. Matters went so far that the Lord Lieutenant who had just quitted Office, and who had administered Ireland for some years and was thoroughly well acquainted with its condition, thought it right to call the attention of the Government and of Parliament in his place in the other House to the great imprudence of proceeding without the renewal of this Act. The Ministry were thoroughly warned and prepared for the whole matter, and they had, no doubt, the fullest information always at command from the persons they consulted in Ireland. They concluded that it was not necessary to bring in this measure, and they did not do it. They passed through the Session without doing anything towards it. There were very uneasy symptoms even in the course of the last Session; but Parliament was allowed to separate without a word falling from the Throne on the subject. It is true that the attention of the Chief Secretary and of the Government was called in this House before we separated to the condition of affairs and to some of the meetings which were then taking place, and which appeared to many of us of a dangerous character. On the 23rd of August Questions and discussions were raised in this House with reference to meetings in Ireland which we believed to be of a dangerous character; and the Chief Secretary told us that he believed it was perfectly possible to deal with and prevent the spread of the mischief then apparent; but further, that if it should be in the judgment of the Government necessary to take further measures and to ask for additional powers to accomplish the task, they would not shrink from calling Parliament together without delay for that purpose. Now, we separated comparatively late in the autumn, on the 7th of September, and before we had been gone many days into the country we began to see what was really going on in Ireland. About 10 days or a fortnight after the Prorogation the first and very significant speech of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) was made at Ennis, in which he told those who listened to him, clearly and distinctly, that they must look out for the Land Bill that would be introduced next Session, and that the measure of that Land Bill would be the measure of the energy they threw into their operations in the autumn and winter. The hon. Member began then that remarkable course of political procedure which he and his Colleagues have since followed with such wonderful results—the organization of the Land League and of that secret government which is now fast becoming the true Government of Ireland. The Government were perfectly aware of what was taking place. Of course the Irish Government had information, and not only that, but a distinguished Member of the Cabinet—the Secretary of State for War (Mr. Childers)—had himself visited the country in order to see with his own eyes what was really the state of matters. That right hon. Gentleman was received with the hospitality for which the Irish are deservedly celebrated, with that courtesy which distinguishes them, and with the respect which I must say was due to his own position and character. But he was there in the middle of all this agitation, and at the laying of the foundation, or at the rapidly erecting, of the structure which has now become so formidable in his eyes. What did he see? What did he report? Did he see anything? He had the advantage of the Chief Secretary, because he was not tied to his post in Dublin, and was able to go about the country. It must have been an advantage, under the circumstances, for the Chief Secretary to know that a Colleague with such powers of observation was thus going about. With regard to the right hon. Gentleman's tour, I am only speaking from what I have been told by a friend when I say that I understand he described himself in rather a peculiar way—as not a visitor, but a passer-by. And when that phrase was suggested to me, I asked myself what that passing by could mean; and the only passers-by I could recollect were the priest and the Levite, who had passed by the poor man that fell among thieves. Whatever were the observations of Members of the Government, however, there were others whose observations on the state of the country were not so skin deep. There was a most remarkable Charge delivered some time later, and I ask permission to read a few lines from it as a companion piece to the few lines I have read from the Prime Minister's speech in March. In the early part of December, Mr. Justice Fitzgerald, in his Charge to a Grand Jury, said on the Bench—

"I do not wish to be guilty of exaggeration or to create excitement or alarm. I desire to express myself in the calm and measured language which best becomes one to whom the administration of justice is committed, and I should fall short of my duty if I did not point out that in a large part of Munster true loyalty has ceased to exist, and an intolerable tyranny prevails; that right is disregarded, the process of the law is not enforced, and lawlessness and disorder desolate the land."

We have now laid before us a statement fully as serious as that on the part of the Crown itself. We are told that "agrarian crimes in general have multiplied far beyond the experience of recent years." It is far beyond "a fair and ordinary rate." I do not know what a fair and ordinary rate is. But then a little light is thrown in, for we are told that the attempts upon life have not grown in the same proportion as other offences. Well, Sir, I have no doubt that that is perfectly true; and as far as we are able to say that a smaller number of lives have been sacrificed it must be a matter of thankfulnes to us all. But let us ask how it is that there has been this comparatively small growth of attempts upon life. The Government advise Her Majesty that

"Efforts have been made for personal protection, far beyond all former precedent, by the police, under the direction of the Executive."

I am not prepared to express a doubt on that point; but let me give another reason, which I believe is the true reason—at all events, the main reason—why there is less loss of life than might be under other circumstances. This reason was supplied by the hon. Member for Cork when speaking of the organization of the Land League. When they have rebuked violence and murder, they have generally coupled their disclaimers with the remark—"We can show you a more excellent way. By organization, organization supported by terrorism, you may carry your point without the necessity for outrage." And they have organized. They have organized a Government which is now, as I have said, the real Government of Ireland, a Government of which a friend recently wrote to me—a man whose judgment and position would command respect among all the Members of this House, but I dare not give his name—and said—

"There is now in Ireland a Government the most powerful, the most unscrupulous, and the most merciless that the world has ever seen;"

and he showed me by instance after instance, which he was able to give from his own knowledge, how the effect of this organization was to paralyze and utterly reduce to submission all classes brought under its influence or within its reach. And when you are talking of outrages, about how many people have been shot, how many have been beaten, how many have been mutilated, and find that the number is not so great as it has been on other occasions, you have to ask yourselves how many men there are who dare to disobey the orders given by the Land League. They have invented a new punishment, and one so terrible that the person from whom I have already quoted says—"for Heaven's sake don't expose me to being Boycotted. It is worse than the risk of being shot." It was once said that "Order reigns in Warsaw," and in the same way you may now say that "Order reigns in Mayo" and other places in Ireland. There is no need of murder. The fear of murder has done its work. The spirit is cowed and crushed, and that is the condition of affairs with which you have to deal. Do not let us then be told that the Government has not broken down. The Government has broken down. There may, no doubt, be many cases in which the administrators of justice are unable to do justice. Of course, they are. We know that perfectly well. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. E. Forster) some little time ago sent a Circular to the magistrates, calling attention to the position of the law, and pointing out that there were various powers which they might use, and which, if they would use with effect, would put an end to the state of things of which they complained. [Mr. W. E. FORSTER: The Circular did not say that.] I have not quoted the exact words, for I have not the Circular by me, and I will not further refer to it, as I have no wish to misquote the Circular. I have, however, in my hand the reply of the Cavan magistrates which appeared in The Times of Monday, December 27. Their reply is well worth considering. It is as follows:—

"We, the undersigned magistrates of the county of Cavan, having carefully read your Circular of the 8th ult., defining our powers under the Acts 15 & 16 Geo. III. and 1 & 2 Will. IV., desire to point out that we were already acquainted with the powers conveyed to us under those statutes, but that, owing to the terrorism exercised throughout the county by the members of the Land League and its sympathizers (as well as by other societies), which renders the law powerless, it is absolutely impossible for us to obtain information sufficient to bring to justice the perpetrators of the outrages alluded to in that Circular. Shopkeepers, farmers, labourers, and, in fact, all classes of society are coerced into joining the League, knowing full well that if they refuse to do so they are in imminent danger of having their houses burnt, their cattle houghed, and their fences levelled without even a remote probability of obtaining redress or protection from the law. We are anxious to do our duty to the utmost of our power, and regret that, in consequence of the reasons already stated, it is impossible for us to deal with the offences mentioned in your Circular. We also earnestly request you to inform the Government that, in our opinion, immediate measures should be taken to protect life and property. We feel called upon to make this reply to your Circular, as it might be inferred that we were either ignorant of or unwilling to do our duty, and also to relieve ourselves from the responsibility of the present state of affairs."

When we consider what these bodies are that administer justice throughout this country—the earnest way in which Magistrates and Judges and all concerned in the administration of justice devote themselves to their duties, and the risks they are prepared to run in carrying them out—it is too hard that reflections should be cast on them in the discharge of their duties. There is only one word which I should suggest should be changed in the reply of the Cavan magistrates. They say—"Without even the remote probability of obtaining redress or protection from the law." I should say "protection from the Government;" because the Government are bound to use the powers they possess, or, if that is not sufficient, to come to this House to obtain other powers which may be necessary. [Mr. W. E. FORSTER: Hear, hear!] The right hon. Gentleman cheers that sentiment, and, no doubt, he says—"That is what we are now doing. We are calling upon Parliament to arm us with those further powers which you tell us, and we feel, we stand in need of. What can you want more?" I do not know that we want anything more now; but why did you not do it before? This is the case of a movement which began with small beginnings, but which has gradually and rapidly extended; and in proportion as it has extended from county to county, and place to place, so will the repression become a more difficult and a painful operation. You might have put out the flame when it was small. Every day that you allow it to proceed and gather strength, you make the putting it out more difficult and effects left behind more serious. The matter will not be put an end to by the abolition of the Land League and the re-establishment of the payment of rents. The mischief which has been done is in- calculable, and it will take many years, and many years of careful and steady government, to repair the evil. Confidence has been shaken, credit has been shaken. Men who have been devoting their time, strength, money, and skill to the improvement of their properties in Ireland have been driven away from the country, and they have received such a lesson that they must be bold men to return and go on with the work they had in hand. But, worse than that, men have been demoralized by the doctrines which have been preached and the example set. If there is one thing more painful than another, I think it is the demoralization of the men ready to pay their rent, who have been forbidden to do it, and who now find themselves in the middle of an atmosphere where the rule is not to pay that which was due. Do not suppose that this is a matter which affects only the landlords of Ireland. There may have been occasions in which there have been attacks made upon particular parties. This combination, this movement, is an attack upon more than one class. It is an attack upon every class of property holders, upon all creditors, upon every class that represents that element in Irish society which is against those managing the Land League. We have been recently told on very high authority that it is remarkable—and it is remarkable—that the managers and promoters of this Land League are men not interested in the land. They are men who, with all their ability and success in other walks of life, have really no more to do with the land than many of us have to do with the land in Ireland, or than men who are engaged as soldiers or sailors or anything else have to do with it. But they are banded together for an object, and that object goes far beyond the mere dealing with the question of the land. It is not mere sympathy with the tenants which animates the League. The hon. Member for Cork, who carries on all this movement and conspiracy openly and in the light of day, was candid enough to tell us what was the real guiding and animating spirit that has impelled him in his work. He tells us—"I would not have taken off my coat in regard to this work if I had not known that we were laying the foundation of a movement for the regeneration of our legislative independence;" and it is because he sees that the landlord element hinders the progress of that movement that he and others are so keen in the matter. That is the condition of affairs. If it were possible to go beyond what I have already said, that is the confessed, the leading statement of the Government. I do say, as I said a little while ago, I cannot read over these passages in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech without unmixed astonishment at seeing that which I believe to be wholly unprecedented, and which amounts to an indictment against themselves. I do not wish to detain the House by going through the proceedings which took place after Parliament rose and before this decision was taken. But I must draw attention to this. Early in November, before the great political day to which we are accustomed to look as a sort of mid-Lent, if I may use such an expression—the Guildhall banquet—early in November, before that day, the Government had found that matters were becoming intolerable. They must have taken the advice of their Law Officers, and they then determined to institute proceedings against the leaders of the Land League. That step was taken on the 2nd of November, or, at all events, as I am not certain of the exact date, very early in November. That, therefore, was an acknowledgment by them that they were then satisfied, and had been advised by their proper Officers, that these meetings were illegal, and that those who took part in them were liable to be prosecuted. Having that advice, why did they not take any steps to put them down? The hon. Gentleman who seconded the Address told us, as though it was a matter for congratulation, that government in Ireland had not broken down, but had interfered and stopped these meetings. But, if that is so, why did they not do so earlier? What was the Government guilty of at that moment? They were guilty of one of two things—they were either guilty of unstatesmanlike want of foresight, or of what I may almost call criminal negligence. Now, Sir, we want to know what are the grounds upon which they abstained from action when action would have been effective, when these affairs were just beginning, and put it off to a time when things were very far gone? I expect an answer to that question. Then I cannot but add what is the real and serious question in the present position of Ireland, and that is the absence of all security and of all private rights and the protection of individuals. Now, what is the excuse given by the Government? Why, that they were unwilling to control individual liberty. Individual liberty! I do not wish to undervalue the principle of individual liberty, though that principle does not apply when you are endeavouring to prevent a man from setting a house on fire. But I ask what has become of the principle of individual liberty as regarded the great mass of orderly people? "What has become of the individual liberty of men who are willing to work, but are told that they shall not go to work for their landlord, that they shall not supply him with the necessaries of life, or do the slightest piece of service for him? Not only that they shall not pay him rent, but that they shall avoid him as a leper or a loathsome outcast; and not the landlord only, but anybody desiring to do him service, is put under the ban. The matter was carried so far that even great public companies—Railway Companies, Steamship Companies—were not able to perform the public duties which they had undertaken. These excuses are excuses which make everything worse, which are utterly unworthy of the British Government. I can understand that the step would have been painful to any Government, and doubly painful to a Government upon which it would bring great personal mortification, inasmuch as they would be compelled to say that their declaration just before they came into Office and what they had said and done after they came into Office had been so singularly falsified. They would have had to suffer considerably in their pride in that the beneficial legislation of 1870—what good that legislation may have done I do not know; but I do not wish to question that it has done good in its way—as they would have had to confess, had utterly and wholly failed of the object they had in view, which was the pacification and settlement of the country; that it had not touched the root of the evil—that tinkering with the Land Laws did not reach the root of the evil; and that that was not the way to deal with the evil, which lay far deeper than that. I must apologise to the House for having spoken at such length on this subject. But it is one on which one might speak endlessly, because of all subjects which can come before us it is the one which most deeply touches our feelings. I do not pretend to have a very minute personal acquaintance with Ireland. I have been in that country on several occasions, and I have had at different times to pay some attention to Irish affairs; and I have numerous friends in different parts of the country. From all of these friends I hear accounts which, though varying in detail, all breathe the same spirit and contain uniform assurances—first, that not one-tenth of the outrages which are committed are reported to the public; and, secondly, that the evil is one that is growing gradually but rapidly. Cases have come to my knowledge of men who, in the beginning of December, were on such terms with their tenants that there was every readiness on the part of the latter to pay their rents. But before the day came, within less than three weeks, the tenants had been overawed and refused to pay. The same state of things prevails all over the country; at all events, over so large a district that one may fairly use that expression. I have letters describing it from several parts of Ulster, from Mayo, Cork, Limerick, Kerry, Kilkenny, Wexford, Tipperary. Though we look with dismay upon the effect produced by this state of things, and with shame at the contemptuous messages which we hear of from abroad, and Resolutions passed in the House of Representatives in America, and the language freely used by Oriental statesmen, to the effect that, when we begin to speak of their misgovernment, we had better look at our own, the really most serious question is the effect produced upon Ireland itself. If this were a question of promoting or securing the greatness of the Empire, at some cost to a part of it, I should not wonder at or blame those who, in the interests of Ireland, opposed the interests of England. But that is not the question. I look to the condition of Ireland itself. I look to every part of Her Majesty's Dominions, and I ask where does lawlessness produce so much harm as in Ireland, where should it be more the duty of statesmen and the object of patriots to maintain the principles of right and the truths of political economy, the truths of morality and of justice, respect for law and order, than in Ireland? You have two great dangers in Ireland now. There is, in the first place, the organization which is now being formed, and which is so perfectly managed by its chief that, I was going to say, as Wellington said of his Peninsular Army, it could go anywhere, and do anything; or as was said of a great secret religious Order, that its Superior could manage it as if it were a corpse in his hands. [Mr. PARNELL: The Land League is not a secret society.] I do not say it is; but that makes it all the worse, for it flaunts itself in the light of day, whilst we are sitting here paltering with the details of Land Laws. The Land Laws, I admit, are a matter of great interest in any country. They are a matter of great interest in Ireland. When we were in Office we appointed a Commission to inquire into those Land Laws. Our Successors have appointed another. We shall soon see the Reports of those Commissions, and shall be able to consider whether further legislation is desirable. If any measures are brought forward of a rational character, we shall give them our candid consideration. But it must be on the merits of the measures themselves and not for the sake of pacifying the Land League. For this is the second danger to which I have adverted—the danger of the arguments which are being drawn, not from the case itself, but from the attitude of the Land League. If any measures are to be considered not upon their merits, but because they will give satisfaction to men who are openly defying the law and subverting all the principles of liberty and justice in that country—[Mr. BIGGAR: No!]—then they must fail, and they will deserve to fail. I thank the House for having listened to me so patiently. I am quite certain that this is a matter which must engage the warm feeling of every true lover of his country; and I believe that the calling of Parliament together, late though it be, and sadly as it was needed, is a measure for which, at least, we may thank Her Majesty's Government.

I hope, Mr. Speaker, that hon. Gentlemen connected with Ireland will not suppose that, by presenting myself to the House at this early period of the debate, I have the slightest intention of endeavouring to impede the execution of the determination they have announced—to raise at large upon this occasion the question connected with the state of Ireland. My object, on the contrary, is this. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has, in conformity with the usual practice and in the exercise of his right, criticized the terms of the Speech and the conduct of the Government; and it appears to me that it would be for the convenience of all parties if we were to endeavour to keep those more manageable issues—if I may so term them—apart from the wider questions that may be open, and leave the field perfectly clear for those hon. Gentlemen who intend to plead for what they believe to be the cause of their country at large. My right hon. Friend has paid a compliment to the Mover and Seconder of the Address for their speeches in terms which I should have expected from him, and I do not remember an occasion on which the task of the Mover and Seconder of the Address has been so arduous as on the present occasion. I am happy to be able to join my right hon. Friend in the compliment he has paid, and without the reserve which he was compelled to attach to his acknowledgment, in consequence of the expression of opinions at which he, as Leader of the Opposition, was greatly shocked, but which are naturally more congenial to me. I will follow the right hon. Baronet briefly in the comments he has made on certain passages in the Speech. He complained, among other things, of the want of information as to the action of the Government. Well, Sir, when I recollect to what treatment this House has been subjected to for about the last three years—what schemes of vast importance, involving wars, annexations—as some contended, breaches of Treaty and of law—were matured in secret, and announced to this House when they were full-blown and far past the opportunity of revocation—I am a little astonished at the squeamishness of the right hon. Baronet, who seems to possess that insatiable appetite which declares that food enough has not been administered to him. Why, Sir, the right hon. Baronet really thinks that the case has been extraordinary for reticence. I will venture to say that it has been extra-ordinary for the reverse of reticence. Papers are promised on certain subjects. Papers upon one of these subjects have been distributed this morning; but I do not refer to those Papers. I refer to an authority who, I suppose, may be considered a pretty good authority—a statement by my noble Friend Lord Granville, made within the last few weeks, in which he gave details as explicit of the whole of our course with regard to the communications with Turkey—our anxious communications with Turkey—and the European Powers during the last few months, as if he had made the statement in the Upper House. The right hon. Baronet himself cannot make out that there has been the slightest mystery as to anything which has taken place; but his demand is not that we should inform him as to what has taken place, but as to what is going to take place. He does not want to know what has happened in respect of Montenegro—for that he in the main already knows—but he thinks it is in our power to inform him upon everything that is about to happen with respect to Greece. With respect to Montenegro, his question is a perfectly reasonable one, and I will endeavour to answer it. The entire Montenegrin Frontier is not yet marked out; but the best authorities are of opinion that no grave question of a practical nature remains which is likely to lead to difficulties, or is likely to require the serious intervention of the Powers. That is the state in which the question remains. The statement in the Speech is strictly accurate, and the main—we might, perhaps, have left out that epithet—the main question with respect to the Frontier has been settled. The right hon. Gentleman says that that may be satisfactory, and it ought to be satisfactory to him, as he and those who sit near him consider themselves as the authors of the Treaty of Berlin, but have not been able to bring the Treaty to a conclusion. If I cannot predict everything that is going to take place with respect to Greece, I am sure I shall have his sympathy; for in the course of two years, during the time when he held Office, he had not advanced one single step, or obtained from the Sultan one single admission or concession with respect to the Greek Frontier. With regard to the Greek Frontier, all I can say is this—that every step that has been taken has been taken in harmony with the European Powers. I will not pretend to predict how near this question is to its solution; but progress has been made, at a time when I am able to say that steps of the kind have been taken, and have been taken concertedly. If I am not forward to enter into detail as to what may happen next month, or the month after, at this moment, it is because the nature of the case does not encourage confident predictions; and it is also because at the present moment it is not England, it is rather France, that is assuming the part, with our perfect and absolute goodwill, of offering suggestions intended in the common interest. All I can say is that I am very sensible of the great difficulties and serious dangers that may attend any serious miscarriage of this question. I know of no means of obviating those dangers, of diminishing the risk of those miscarriages, at all equal to the means which we have endeavoured heretofore to use—that is to say, to abjure all petty motives and all selfish interest in the honest effort to unite together those Powers, which we may fail to unite, but which, if we do unite them, will have at once the greatest right and the greatest force to give effect to justice and good policy in the East of Europe. My right hon. Friend passes very lightly over the rising in the Transvaal, and I do not wonder at it; but there is no reason why I should, I think, intrude into this debate comments upon that subject, inasmuch as the topics pressed upon us on that subject are so many and so grave. I pass on to the regret and surprise which the right hon. Baronet expressed that we should offer nothing more than a desire for an opportunity for friendly action in the matter of the Basuto War. Well, Sir, I do not know exactly what the right hon. Baronet would have us offer. Would he have us offer to take that war into our own hands? Does he think that that is what we ought to do? We, who, at present, have the honour to serve the Crown, have no responsibility whatever for that war—absolutely none; and the questions with which it is mixed are doubtful and difficult questions. But even if we had felt that we were more thoroughly associated than we do feel with the causes which led to that war, it would not be in our power either to relieve the Colonial Government of its responsibility or to interfere with its rights. We have endeavoured to do what justice requires. We have reserved our title, our free judgment, to do what justice to all parties may seem to require when that war reaches its issue. For the present, we believe we have done all that the case requires and all it permits in proclaiming our desire to be of use, and in expressing the obvious satisfaction we should feel to be of service when the opportunity presents itself. With respect to the Military Estimates for India, the Speech is of greater length than we have commonly advised to be delivered, and it was not thought necessary to do more than insert those few words which my right hon. Friend has rightly interpreted to mean that the subject of the expenses of the Afghan War will be introduced to the notice of the House probably before the Session is far advanced, and we shall then endeavour to redeem the pledge we have already given upon that important question. The right hon. Baronet, not unnaturally, passed over some parts of the Speech, and then went into that which fills all our minds and all our hearts upon this painful occasion. On one subject, indeed, I can set my right hon. Friend at case. He referred again and again to the particular mortification which he considered that we who sit on these Benches must feel with respect to Ireland. Well, Sir, I assure my right hon. Friend that we feel no mortification whatever. We feel a great deal of pain—more grave than we can easily describe—but mortification absolutely none. The acts we have done with respect to Ireland in the Disestablishment of the Church—["Oh, oh!"]—Well, I am much obliged to the hon, and learned Gentleman opposite (Mr. Gorst), whose stock of tolerance, I hope, is not quite exhausted yet, nor that of his Friends near him. [Mr. GORST disclaimed having interrupted the right hon. Gentleman.] I can give the hon. and learned Gentleman and his Friends an assurance that, so far from feeling mortified from believing what we have done has been falsified or condemned by events, on the contrary, I believe I may say that if we had to do it again to-morrow we should set about it with good heart, and only endeavour to do it better if we could. I will not follow my right hon. Friend through portions of his speech; but shall reply to it as a whole. The matter with which we had to deal was a most grave one, and we have had to deal with equally grave questions during what has been called the Recess. I do not deny the right of my right hon. Friend to challenge the manner in which we have endeavoured to deal with the questions to which I have referred; but it appears to me that his condemnations ought to be distinct and intelligible, so that we might know as to what we are arraigned upon. When we are told that what we do now we ought to have done sooner, we have a right to ask the right hon. Baronet—What ought we to have done, and when ought we to have done it? Upon that subject his speech is totally vague. ["No, no!"] His references to what we have done were totally misleading. What was the use of quoting the Charge of Judge Fitzgerald? It was delivered in December, after we had determined to call Parliament together. What was the use of quoting words which the right hon. Gentleman says were used by me in the end of March, when, he says, I said the state of Ireland was distinguished by a remarkable absence of crime and outrage? What I believe I really said was a description of the period which had elapsed since the passing of the Land Act. I do not believe that I spoke in the present tense, because, speaking in March, I had no Returns or information about outrages in Ireland. I am bound to say that I do not think there was anything in March to create great alarm on the subject of outrage. There was great distress; but I learn from the right hon. Gentleman that I ought to have taken alarm from the state of Ireland at that time. ["No, no!"] Well, then, what am I censured for? Either the state of Ireland gave cause for alarm, or it did not. If it did not, why are my words criticized? If it did give cause for alarm, why did you dissolve Parliament? When the late Government advised the Dissolution of Parliament, they knew perfectly well when Parliament would meet again. I suppose they did not think that they had obtained absolute fixity of tenure either by fraud, force, or folly. When they advised the Dissolution, they were bound to take into view the possibility that the Elections might result in the return of a hostile majority. They were bound to compute the time at which the new Parliament could go to work. I have never censured the late Government for not renewing the Peace Preservation Act; but we are now severely censured by my right hon. Friend. But if there be censure at all, it is to be retorted on the late Government. By their advice as to the Dissolution, they made it impossible for us to approach, before the 24th of May, the first attempt to introduce a law for the revival of the Peace Preservation Act in Ireland, which expired on the 1st of June. It was not possible for us to renew the law in the ordinary sense of renewal, because, by renewal, we mean renewal before expiring. All that was possible for us was to propose a revival of that law after an interval during which its provisions were not enforced; and we ought, according to my right hon. Friend, to have come down to Parliament and to have stated to the House that, although there was no large number of outrages in Ireland, there was vital necessity for preventing the entrance of arms into that country, and we ought to have done this within a week of the time when, in spite of whatever we could say, such entrance must be perfectly free, and those who would thus have been instructed by us as to the value of their privilege would have used it all over the country. I see no reason to believe that we arrived at a wrong conclusion when, on coming into Office in May, we determined not to make any request to Parliament, and not to raise the long, angry, and embittered controversy which we should have had before it would have been possible, with rather a slender case, to obtain a renewal of the Peace Preservation Act from the new Parliament. If, therefore, there be ground for condemnation, the condemnation falls back upon the head of the late Government. There is much in the consideration of the condition of Ireland which must make us feel ashamed and humiliated in the face of the civilized world; but when a Government like the present one is placed in a trying situation, when they have to deal with topics which are so serious, so painful, and so overwhelming, in my opinion the first duty of every man who enters into these discussions is to register for himself this resolve—that for his part he will not speak one word, will not deliver one accusation, will not indulge in one retort, and will not use one highly-coloured epithet beyond that which the absolute necessity of the case requires; but will address himself simply and solely to the attempt of finding the best solution which the situation demands. My right hon. Friend, I think, is not well informed upon some matters that are Ministerial. I shall not debate at very great length this question; but I shall endeavour to show, by reference to statistics and precedent, that we have not been careless in what was done, in circumstances and problems which are admitted to be problems of difficulty, and that we have endeavoured to act for the best, and we have acted for the best. We have been advised by our Law Officers. It is said that the meetings of the Land League were illegal; we have been advised no such thing; and, consequently, with that statement falls to the ground the most definite charge which comes from the opposite side, so far as the conduct of the Executive is concerned. We have been advised that the meetings would be illegal under certain circumstances, if attended with certain conditions; and I think I am right in stating that in every case where we found those circumstances and conditions existing, the meetings have been prohibited and prevented. I heard in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman a reference to "Boycotting." I heard also a reference to the Steamboat and Railway Companies; but Steamboat and Railway Companies are suffering, as far as I understand, mainly from a system of exclusive dealing. But is it intended that we are to legislate and give additional powers to the law in order to prevent exclusive dealing? Exclusive dealing is a most doubtful engine in all circumstances; but, at the same time, let us understand that these matters are brought forward by the Leader of the Opposition to heighten the colours, and let us understand whether it is really intended that we should legislate in order to prevent persons dealing with people whom they do not like. But my right hon. Friend says that we arrived at our decision on the 2nd of November. We did no such thing, Sir. We decided on the 13th of September, so far as we are concerned. My point is this—that there was nothing in the state of the country known to us which would have justified us in taking a decision earlier. What was the decision? The decision was to examine immediately the state of the law with a view to putting into full force all the existing powers of the law before making a fresh demand upon Parliament. I should like to know whether in that decision we were right or not? Does the right hon. Baronet think that before attempting what force there was in the existing law we ought to have come to Parliament for legal orders? No; there is no answer to that question; and it will be seen how much truth I speak when I state that it is the vagueness of the statement of my right hon. Friend of which I complain. He describes in high colours—and I cannot deny that high colours are warranted in the case of Ireland—and he mixes all the particulars together, and affirms that the whole of these things are due to the Government, and that Parliament ought to have been called together sooner. But when? Were we right in determining to try the existing law first? I must make an admission to my right hon. Friend. His own mode of trying the existing law was not a mode we are disposed to imitate. He charged four men, three of whom were utterly insignificant; one of them, indeed, has since proved himself to be a man of great ability, but his ability was not known at the time. He did not aim his weapons at the chief of the agitation, but he was content with these comparatively insignificant victims. Having charged them, what did he do? He did not bring them to trial. That is a mode of acting upon the existing law, and of exhausting its powers, which we have no inclination to follow. I am glad that the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Gibson) is going to speak, and to give us some explanation of the course which was then adopted. The method of threatening without striking is, in our opinion, the worse course of action that could have been adopted. But what did we do? On the 13th of September we desired that the state of the law should be carefully examined, with the view to ascertain whether a statutable offence had been committed. Allow me to say one word of apology to the right hon. Gentleman. I shall avoid, as I am bound to do, with greater strictness than the right hon. Baronet opposite, saying one single word in reference to the trials that are now taking place in Ireland; but what I have to say is this. On the 13th of September we desired that examination of the law to be immediately made, and the conclusion that was arrived at was that we could proceed against certain persons in respect of their actions. True it is that we might have taken the first step earlier if, instead of coming to Dublin to the Court of Queen's Bench, we had gone before the magistrates. There were, however, many reasons that led us to believe that it was wiser to come to Dublin, and one of those reasons the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate—namely, that by so doing we secured a more speedy determination of the issue raised. We had then hopes that by coming to Dublin the trials might be decided in December—certainly in January—whereas, had we gone before the magistrates, the probability is that they would not have been concluded until two months later. Therefore, let it be recollected that, although we might have proceeded before the magistrates a fortnight earlier than we could at Dublin, on account of our having to wait for the opening of term at the latter place, had we done so the real settlement of the decisive issue of the trial would have been considerably delayed. It was, however, later than that that we came to any further serious decision, and I will state why. I suppose that it will be obvious that when we had determined to institute these State trials it was our duty to watch their effect. Some effects they did produce; but I will not refer to them, because were I to do so I should be compelled to deviate from the rule I have laid down. Other effects they might have produced, not merely in the way of checking agitation, but in the way of the diminution of outrage. They did not, however, have those effects. Outrages rapidly increased, and assumed in November a more decided character than that which they had possessed in October, and consequently left us nothing to expect in the way of diminution. I am, therefore, totally at a loss to know how many days—for I can hardly say weeks—according to the right hon. Gentleman, we might have saved by calling Parliament together for the purpose of making the application which we now, with sadness, do make. The right hon. Gentleman says that the Speech from the Throne, or rather those of the Mover and Seconder of the Address, contain an indictment against ourselves, inasmuch as they endeavour to throw the responsibility which rightly attaches to us upon others. I assert that we have attempted nothing of the kind. We have simply stated what we believe to be the fact. It is not the fact that there has been less of Executive exertion on the present than on former occasions. I believe, on the contrary, that there has been much greater Executive exertion on this than on any other occasion. We have heard that protection has been given to life in 125 cases, quite independently of an amount of day and night, of domiciliary protection which is absolutely unknown on such a scale in the history of Ireland; and now the accounts which have been received by my right hon. Friend show that the number of such cases has risen to 153. It is quite true that the administration of justice with reference to agrarian offences has been frustrated. And why do we say that? We do so because if we ask for extraordinary powers it is our duty to state, in the most distinct form to Parliament and to the country, what is the real state of the case which constitutes our justification for asking for those powers. And our justification for asking for such powers is, not that we have not sufficient police and military forces at our command—because in that case we could increase those forces—not that the stipendiary magistrates are unwilling to do their duty; but that whatever is done by them to give effect to the laws for the protection of life and property and to prevent illegal meetings is frustrated, and that we are totally unable to restore life to the administration of justice in Ireland through, not the difficulty, but the impossibility of procuring evidence. I am not going to enter into proof of that. That will be for a later stage of this debate, or a later debate. I pass on to address a few general words, not controversial, to the right hon. Gentleman upon the subject of the supposed inaction—the supposed guilty inaction—of the Government in not making a much earlier appeal to Parliament. I will assume that what is meant by that expression is a considerably earlier appeal to Parliament. The speech of the right hon. Gentleman struck me as being that of a man who did not, in the slightest degree, think it to be worth his while to take into view that this is not the first time that Ireland has been disturbed. This is not the first time that violence has prevailed in that country, and on former occasions it has prevailed to a far greater extent than it does at present. The amount of violence that actually prevails does not constitute the hinge on which the case turns. What I wish to point out is this. I see opposite to me a Conservative Party—a Conservative Party, as I hope, regardful of its own precedents—and I should like to ask them whether it has been the practice of former Administrations—of former Conservative Administrations—upon the first appearance of a state of lawlessness in Ireland, at once to conclude that the case is hopeless, and to proceed to call Parliament together? I will refer to two cases. One of them will not, perhaps, have so much authority with hon. Members opposite; but still, for a Liberal Government, it will be admitted that the Government of Lord Grey was a great Government. The Government of Lord Grey asked Parliament for additional powers in January, 1833; and what was the case they showed? They proved that the most frightful outrages had provailed throughout Ireland throughout the whole of 1831 and 1832; but, such was the sense that then prevailed among all Parties of the sacredness of Constitutional right and of the danger of passing beyond the boundaries of the ordinary law, that that Government waited for two years before they made their application to Parliament. I have read this very day the speech which Sir Robert Peel delivered on that occasion; I heard it myself in February, 1833, and have never forgotten it; a speech in which he described the horrors that were taking place in Ireland; but, although those horrors had continued for two years, that speech contained not a word of censure upon the Government for the lateness of the period at which they invoked the aid of Parliament. It may be said that that was the time of Reform agitation, and that, therefore, the case does not carry much weight with it. Well, I will go back further, and endeavour to please you by offering a precedent better suited, perhaps, to your tastes and inclinations. Will you be satisfied with the precedent of the year 1814? That was the year of the Corn Law. I do not know how far that may commend it. But I will take that case. In that year it was the misfortune of Sir Robert Peel to be obliged to describe the state of things in Ireland, and this case has some very significant features with reference to the present one. The case then was a double case—it was partly a case of direct danger to the State, but it also had that which is a more distinctive feature of the present case—it also had the character of a most extensive and organized interference with the exercise of private rights. The chief difference between the two cases is, perhaps, that the private rights then interfered with were those which existed among the people themselves, and not so much those possessed by the class possessing property in land. But what did Sir Robert Peel say on that occasion? Speaking on the 23rd of June, 1814—I am quoting from Hansard —Sir Robert Peel said—

"The evil which it was now proposed to remedy had not, he was sorry to say, arisen on a sudden; it had existed for a considerable time, indeed, he might say, for the whole period that he had had the honour of forming a part of the Irish Government."—[1 Hansard, xxviii. 163.]

He said that in June, 1814, and he had formed part of the Irish Government since August, 1812, and this state of things he had allowed to continue for 22 months before he asked the House to go beyond the bounds of the Constitution in dealing with it. At the most, all that we can be charged with is a delay of a month or six weeks. Most certainly I am here to maintain that until about that time, until the middle of November was passed, the question had not become a question that any Government of any politics would for a moment undertake. Now, I have shown what wonderful long-suffering a Government had in times when the ideas of freedom and popular government were far less developed than now, and that long intervals were permitted to pass before appeals were made to Parliament. Perhaps it may be said I am proving too much, and I am showing that we are coming too soon to make this demand. When that charge is made we shall be quite prepared to meet it, and to argue the contrary. We think we have waited in difficult circumstances, and not pretending to any infalliable mode of solving the difficulty, a long time. We do not think we have I waited too long. But I will point out very slightly some of the considerations which tend, within due bounds, to recommend the exercise of patience, and even to recommend encountering the evils—I quite admit they are most serious evils—that tend to delay. Having caused the trials to be instituted, and done everything to expedite them, it was our duty to see whether they afforded us, after a certain time—I am not speaking of their issue, but of their moral effect—any satisfaction. It will be remembered, I dare say, in the great case in Ireland in 1844, that the institution of the trial of O'Connell was of itself a political event of very great effect and consequence. We found, after a certain time, that nothing was to be expected from that source—nothing, at least, that was effectual for the purpose. It was also our duty to take into view the fact—I do not say it is without explanation—I am afraid it may be explained—it was our duty to allow a good deal for the fact that offences endangering life did not increase, but rather diminished in comparison with the preceding year. I am not putting that as a matter that should operate very long or very largely; but it was a point that could not be rejected from consideration of the Government, anxious to take into view all the circumstances of the case. It would have been of the greatest advantage, further, if we could have hoped that these trials could have concluded before we made application to Parliament. I think that everyone will admit that we have neither included in our proposals, nor excluded from them, that which must be regarded as a danger until these trials were concluded. We did entertain some hope that we should not put the hon. Member (Mr. Parnell) in the painful predicament of working under conditions which would be destructive to his physical powers, and that we should have been able to see him brought to the conclusion of that great judical proceeding before we called upon him, or upon other Members of the House, to consider the precise proposal which we must submit to it, and for which we must be held responsible. But there is another consideration which appears to me to escape altogether the notice of most of those who discuss the conduct of the Government. One common phrase is to speak as if it were in the power of the Government, when they find that a judicial system will not work, to issue some ukase or decree that should supply the means necessary to make it work. The Government is the Government of a Constitutional country. All they can do is to make their appeal to Parliament. Do you think the duty of the Government is perfectly fulfilled unless they carefully and maturely consider, not merely the evidence that is before them as it impresses itself upon their minds, but the state of mind in which they have to meet Parliament? I contend that it was our duty to come here with such a case as would carry the points and spread conviction to the minds of the Members of this House, and yet representing the sentiments and the opinions of the people of this Kingdom in something like a united form, and with an authority which belongs to you. You will see that nothing could be more fatal to the cause of order, liberty, and life, and the cause of property in Ireland, than for us, by premature proposals, to have run the risk of producing serious divisions of Party in this House, and to have been engaged in a struggle in which, considering the nature of the proposals we might make, it would have been perfectly possible that we might have failed simply through our premature resolutions. I make the statement frankly and verbally, that when the Government had considered what was sufficient for itself, it also had to consider whether the case was in such a state that they could boldly come before Parliament, and expect Parliament, with what may be called something like moral unanimity, to give them support in the proposals they were to make. I was very sorry when the right hon. Gentleman said these subjects ought not to be dealt with by what is called tinkering with the Land Laws. Why did he use that, I think, unfortunate phrase? There was no proposal before him to tinker the Land Laws—that is to say, no proposal calling upon him at this time to proceed with any measure for the reform of the Land Laws. But he seemed to disparage altogether all attempts of Parliament to see whether they could introduce further improvements into the land system of Ireland. Well, if he did not, there could not be a more infelicitous expression than that of which he made use, and which was received with enthusiasm by his Friends, and with which, I must say, it appeared to me at the moment that he was himself particularly pleased.

I said that was not a remedy for the extent of the disorder prevailing.

Well, Sir, neither can I say is your coercion. Coercion may be necessary; and we shall endeavour to show that protective measures are a necessary, and an absolute necessary, condition for producing a state of things in which remedies may be applied; but I differ from my right hon. Friend, and I am inclined to hold against him, that what he has unfortunately called tinkering with supposed, if not with real, grievances is the true remedy; and however necessary it may be to take repressive measures for the maintenance of law and order, Sir Robert Peel was justified when, in the year 1814 or 1830, I forget which—perhaps in both years—he most frankly and broadly declared that repressive measures could be no remedy for the wrongs of Ireland. And it would be totally out of place in this debate were I to enter into details on that subject. My right hon. Friend himself cannot be, I think, wholly acquitted of this disposition towards tinkering, because he says he appointed a Commission which recommended him to tinker. That is merely the sense in which it was appointed, unless it was appointed for the purpose of satisfying—as I am afraid Royal Commissions sometimes are—the wants of the moment, with a shrewd calculation that before the Commission is appointed it will not be wanted. We have endeavoured to describe generally in the language which the Crown has used the nature of the case in Ireland; and my hon. Friend who seconded the Address is not in his place, or I would say to him that I should not despair in bringing him to a more favourable view of the operation of the Land Act of 1870 than that which he gave. But, at any rate, we are not at all prepared to admit that the Land Act has been a failure. We are prepared to make admissions to a certain extent; but this would not be the time—it would be almost an offence against regularity and convenience were I to enter upon the consideration either of the repressive or protective legislation for Ireland, or the legislation we intend to propose with regard to the Land Question. But as in the Queen's Speech itself we have advised the Crown that the protection which the Land Act supplies has, in some respects, been found not sufficient either in Ulster or in other Provinces, there can be no reason why I should not briefly indicate in three or four sentences what amendments we are inclined to propose with regard to the Land Act. In the first place, there were some provisions in the Land Act which were adopted with the view of bringing about a reduction of exorbitant rents in cases where they prevailed. I do not wish at all to convey, by referring to these provisions, that it is my impression that rents in Ireland would, in general, be described with any fairness as being unfair or exorbitant. But these provisions have been insufficient, and almost entirely inoperative. We certainly have arrived at the conclusion that a very important provision of the Act, as it finally passed—I will not now go into the question of how it passed through Parliament—a provision which confiscated the whole of the tenant's right to compensation for disturbance, was a provision too severe in its operation, and one which, in our opinion, is a part of the Act requiring alteration. We are also obliged by the evidence to admit that the provisions of the Act—and this was an original defect of the Act—havo not prevented undue and frequent augmentations of rent which were not justified by the real value of the holding, but have been brought in in consequence of the superior strength of the position of the landlord. That I conceive to be a serious matter; and in referring, to it again, I do not intend to say—I am as far as possible from saying—that such has been the general practice of the landlords of Ireland. Next to that, we certainly think that new provisions of the law will be requisite respecting the assignment of the tenant's interest. I will not use the terms commonly current, but I use an accurate legal phrase; and the question, I think, is one of very great consequence, lying near to the root of the matter. That is one of the points on which the Bill was unfairly changed in its passage through Parliament, and one to which we must pay great regard. Lastly, there is the question associated with the clauses well known by the name of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright), which were intended to give pretty full and free scope to the creating of a peasant proprietary in Ireland. They are known not only to have been insufficient, but almost wholly inoperative. These are the points in which the Land Act has been feebler than we could have desired. I will not refer to that subject on this occasion any further. We shall have ample opportunity of returning to it. We hope it may be in our power to propose to Parliament, and to obtain its assent to measures for the efficient remedying of the Land Act on all these points. I do not think I need detain the House further at this stage of the matter, except to say one word as to the Notice given of a question with regard to the Borough Franchise for Ireland. I will answer that question now, with the greatest pleasure. The Government considered whether they should advise the mention of that subject in the Queen's Speech, and they arrived at the conclusion that the pressure of subjects with which we had to deal was such that, on the whole, we thought it better not to hold out a promise that it might be very difficult for us to redeem. [ Murmurs. ] That is the sole reason for postponing the Borough Franchise Question. Those hon. Gentlemen who do not seem to be quite satisfied I must venture to remind that, though every Irish question is of great importance, yet there are the two other Kingdoms of England and Scotland, whose concerns cannot be totally and absolutely excluded from our consideration. There is another subject which I forgot to notice. Complaint has been made that we have omitted to recognize the brilliant march and victory of Sir Frederick Roberts from Cabul to Candahar. That complaint is entirely owing to an inadvertance on the part of the complainant. I do not imagine that it can be thought necessary that Her Gracious Majesty should repeat in January what she has already said in her Speech of September, when she used these words—

"The prompt measures taken by the Government of India for the relief of the garrison of Candahar, and the conspicuous ability and energy displayed by my officers and troops in the execution of those measures, resulting in the brilliant victory recently gained by the gallant force under the command of Sir Frederick Roberts, will, I trust, speedily bring to an honourable termination this war."

I will only express the hope that approaching, as we have now to approach, some tasks that are among the gravest and most difficult which the last half-century has presented to the notice of Parliament, we shall be sensible of the great responsibility that weighs upon us, and shall, with a total disregard of every personal motive—be it what it may—as well as every Party motive, address ourselves to a task in which, through human weakness, we may fail, but which will redound to the honour and the happiness of us all if, by the blessing of Providence, we succeed.

rose to address the House, when—

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

, resuming, said, that although he thanked his hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) for having endeavoured to obtain him an audience of English Members, he was quite satisfied that his speech would have reached the Irish people to whom it was addressed, and on whom it would have some effect, whilst he was quite sure it would be quite lost in that Assembly. In speeches made that evening, and especially in that of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, a charge had been made that Her Majesty's Government at present was not the real Government of Ireland. That was an extremely strange charge; but it amounted to this—that the right hon. Gentleman recognized the Irish Members of the Land League as the only Representatives of the Irish people, as the only persons who were able to exercise control over them. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) was not concerned to deny the charge; he gloried in it. If that were the case, then let Her Majesty's Advisers abandon their sham of government, and hand over the government to those who really exercised it. But he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) would qualify the statements made by the right hon. Gentleman. The Irish Members were not enabled to do that good for their country that they wished because of the action of the Government; but he would say that at a great crisis in the history of their country, at a great emergency, he and his Party alone did their duty. If a similar crisis had taken place in England, the Government would not have dared to act as they had acted towards Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister had said last year that 15,000 persons in Ireland were threatened with eviction, and that "eviction" was equivalent to "sentence of starvation." And yet the right hon. Gentleman had allowed Parliament to dissolve without taking means to save those 15,000 persons. That work was left to him (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) and his Friends. When the Government failed to provide any means, then the Irish Members stepped in, and they had fortunately been able to effect what the Government were unable to perform. In 1848, Sir Robert Peel, who had often been referred to in that debate, made a speech in which he drew attention to the conduct of Mr. Blake, an Irish landlord and magistrate, who had turned a family out of doors on a winter's night, notwithstanding that he had been told that some of the children were suffering from fever, and would die if exposed to the cold. The children did die, and he unhesitatingly said that Mr. Blake was guilty of murder. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) challenged the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland (Mr. W. M. Johnson) to deny that Mr. Blake was guilty, both morally and legally, of murder. Sir Robert Peel thought it would be sufficient to expose such cruelties to prevent their recurrence. But that had not proved to be the case. The heartless cases of eviction had been over and over again exposed, but they had not ceased. If there was nothing but the voice of the present Parliament to protest against the cruelties of landlords, they would never cease. He was glad to hear from the Prime Minister that all meetings for the discussion of the Land Question in Ireland were not illegal, but that peculiar circumstances had rendered many of them illegal. Now, he would invite the right hon. Gentleman to tell them what it was which made a particular meeting legal or illegal. He would ask the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland why some meetings had been prohibited, while others had not been interfered with at all? Meetings had been prohibited for the most flimsy reasons, and he would call attention to the conduct of the magistrate at Drogheda, who had forbidden a meeting on his own mere ipse dixit, and without the production of any authority for doing so. The reason given for this meeting being considered illegal was because the trials were to be the subject of discussion; but was it less permissible for subjects of the kind to be discussed by the Irish people, who were most interested, than by the present alien Government? The charge that particular individuals were to be denounced at the meetings was false. The placard which had been complained of, calling a meeting at Drogheda, had carefully avoided any such intentions. He would challenge the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. W. E. Forster) to point out any illegal wording in the placards convening meetings. It seemed that all that was required to prevent the holding of a meeting was the ipse dixit of a magistrate, and he should like to know if the aspirations of the Irish people were to be thus stifled? Every one of these magistrates, with scarcely an exception, from the highest Judge to the pettiest magistrate, was an enemy of national aspirations. The whole body formed a conspiracy against any such aspirations. He would invite hon. Gentlemen to consider whether it was a proper state of things that the entire judicial functions of the country should be in the hands of a particular faction and caste? In Ireland they had on one side the landlords—on the other the Irish people; and the vast majority of the magistrates of Ireland belonged to the landlord class. They were the relatives or dependants of that class, and in the struggle between the landlord faction and the tenantry the magistrates were on the side of the landlords. The judicial Charges which had been referred to were couched in the language of passion and of Party feeling, and were degrading to the judicial ermine, which should be the symbol and type of judicial impartiality. Justice, in fact, which should hold the scales fairly, was blindly on the side of one class, and that class was the tyrannous minority of the Irish people. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland declared last year that the law with respect to the tenure of land in Ireland was a harsh and unjust law, and he pledged himself that if he found it necessary to enforce the carrying out of that harsh and unjust law, he would simultaneously introduce a Bill to modify the law. The essence of the statement of the right hon. Gentleman was that a coercive measure should be accompanied by a remedial measure. That pledge had not been fulfilled, for Her Majesty's Government were now determined to force on coercion if they could, and not until coercion was within sight of harbour would remedial legislation be attempted. How did the right hon. Gentleman reconcile that with his former statement? The right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government made allusion to the subject of the Irish Borough Franchise—one which was referred to in the Speech from the Throne last year. The Bill which was promised was not proceeded with, and the excuse of the Government for dropping it was that they were compelled to bring in the Compensation for Disturbance (Ireland) Bill. But was it not the duty of the Government, when they failed to pass their Irish Bill No. 2, to have fallen back on their Irish Bill No. 1? At all events, ought they not to have placed the Borough Franchise Bill in the forefront of their measures for the present Session? The right hon. Gentleman, as a further excuse, reminded the House of the fact that not only had Ireland, but England and Scotland also, to be dealt with; but he might have made out a much stronger case by adding that the affairs of a vast Empire had to be dealt with. The right hon. Gentleman would then have made out the case of the Irish Representatives, which was, that the House could not give due attention to Irish affairs. No doubt it would be unreasonable in them to demand so much time, if they were there by their own wish; but their case was, that there was too much Business for that House to do, that it could not possibly attend to so much at once, and that the only proper plan was to give to each part of the Empire large powers of dealing with its own affairs. The English Household Suffrage Bill passed in 1867. They had waited for an Irish Household Suffrage Bill for 13 years, and for all he could tell they might have to wait for it 13 years more. It was all that time before it was decided to give to Ireland the same privileges as England possessed; while, at the same time, it was more necessary for Ireland, and the only chance Ireland had of getting the Bill passed in the present Session depended on whether the Government were able to wedge it in among other Business. The right hon. Gentleman in the course of his address had quoted from speeches made by Sir Robert Peel; but he seemed to have a shrewd suspicion that the arguments of the Conservative Minister made against his case, and he delicately suggested that he was proving too much. The right hon. Gentleman was, doubtlessly, proving too much. It took Sir Robert Peel 22 months to decide upon applying a coercive measure to Ireland; but a Liberal Minister in these more enlightened days made up his mind in two months to apply coercion. That proved that while the cause of progress and liberty had been advancing in England, it had been sadly deteriorating in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman also alluded to the case of Earl Grey, who, though convinced that an enormous amount of crime was committed in 1831 and 1832, did not seek to interfere with the liberty of the Irish people until 1833. The present Government, however, determined upon a course within two months which it required two years in the case of Earl Grey to decide upon adopting. The right hon. Gentleman, moreover, had carefully omitted to state what was the result of that legislation. From a pamphlet which he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) held in his hand, it appeared that in the year 1833 the number of offences against the person were 4,180; while in the year following, after coercive measures measures were taken, the number of the same class of offences rose to 5,547. The offences against property in 1833 were 2,177. In 1834 they were 2,752. The political offences in 1833 were 1,125. In 1834 they were 1,157. The miscellaneous crimes in 1833 numbered 3,962, and in 1834,4,797; so that the effect of coercive measures was, that they got an increase of crime in 1834 of 24·5 per cent, seeing that in 1833, without coercion, they had 11,440 offences, and in 1834 they had, with coercion, 14,253. Now, he thought the right hon. Gentleman showed a large amount of rashness in appealing to 1833; for he had to confess that the Prime Minister of that day took two years to make up his mind to do that which the right hon. Gentleman had taken two months, and that the effect of coercion was to largely increase, rather than to diminish, the number of offences which were committed against both person and property, and also against the laws which had reference to what were called political offences. Then the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition protested against "Boycotting." Why, did not the Conservatives of Rochdale some years ago "Boycott" a shopkeeper there, and drive him out of the town? In fact, he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) was not certain that the Liberals had not done the same. This was a matter in which the Irish had been initiated by the English masters of the art, the trades unions. Did not the English trades unionists "Boycott" all who disobeyed the societies' views? He contended that everyone had a right to a choice as to the person with whom he would or would not deal. What was the charge against the Irish people? They had in times past been disunited, they had been factious; but the Land League had got them shoulder to shoulder, and thereby had taught the people lessons of union, lessons of self-reliance, and lessons of independence, which would go far beyond the present struggle, and would have great effects upon the future of the country. The Leader of the Opposition said the Land League exercised tyranny over the Irish people. They could not exercise such tyranny when the Irish people showed they were willing agents and willing servants of the Land League, knowing that its members and leaders were men imbued with love of their country, and desired to add to its peace and prosperity. The Government could only put down the tyranny of the Land League by putting down the people. If the Government introduced coercive legislation twice as stringent as that proposed, it would fail to put down the Land League. They might pour into Ireland as many troops and sham policemen, who were really soldiers, as they choose; they might pass through Parliament any hasty measure for coercive purposes. The Land League was too strong for them. Nothing that they or any other Government could do would ever bring back the Irish tenants to the condition of absolute serfdom from which the Irish Land League had for ever released them. The hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Russell), who, no doubt, had the interests of Ireland at heart, warned the Government—as the Leader of the Opposition had—that no tinkering with the Land Question would settle it. That was true. It was a question which lay deep in the hearts and interests and conditions of the Irish people; and if they were going to deal with it effectually, the disease being radical, so also must the remedy be. With regard to the Land Act of 1870, although much had been said in its favour, he ventured to tell the right hon. Gentleman that those who knew most about it held that in many respects it had been a curse and not a boon to the Irish people. ["Oh, oh!"] He challenged contradiction whether, in the North of Ireland, it had not led to deterioration in place of improvement? In many cases, landlords who had previously been willing to behave kindly to their tenants, as soon as they found themselves face to face with legislation, tried to evade it. The landlords of Ulster, since the passing of the Act, had been more exorbitant, more tyrannical, and more encroaching on the rights of the tenants of Ulster. The object of the right hon. Gentleman was to make eviction a luxury, and an expensive luxury, and thus to decrease it. But, instead of that, eviction had largely increased. That day an hon. Member had received a telegram from Mr. Michael Davitt, asking what the legislation was proposed by the Government. The hon. Member felt justified, he said, in replying to that telegram—a fine, big Coercion Bill, and an extremely small and tinkering Land Measure. That was the way the Leader of a Liberal Ministry, a Ministry friendly to Ireland, proposed to deal with one of the most gigantic crises that had ever occurred in Ireland or any other country. Only 13 Irish Members voted against the second reading of the Land Bill of 1870; but everything they prophesied with regard to that measure had been realized. The late Sir John Gray said that the Bill would tend to the consolidation of farms, that it would not stop evictions, and that it would not finally settle the Land Question; and every foreboding as to the Bill which was pronounced by the Irish minority then had been realized by the events which had since taken place. It was a measure to which, in his (Mr. T. P. O'Connor's) opinion, the present Prime Minister ought to look back with a sigh, and think that it was simply a gigantic, and, at the same time, tinkering attempt to settle a question which fell far short of meeting the just demands of the people. And now, in 1881, they were about to repeat the things that were denounced by the Irish minority of 1870. The Bill of 1881 would not finally settle this vexed question; and unless the Irish Members could settle the question outright now their successors would be coming here in 1891, and begging the House to give the Irish people some settlement of this life and death question. In the last 11 years homes had been desolated, hearts had been broken, fathers and mothers had been separated from their children; and did the House think that the Irish people were going to wait for 10 years more in order that this Parliament might make up its mind? The Irish Members had done their best to make the question ripe for settlement; and he had no doubt that if they had the settlement of the question in their own hands they would be able in three months to pass a measure which would set the Land Question at rest. Instead of that, the right hon. Gentleman was about merely to tinker the Land Act of 1870. If the Government did not now completely and finally settle the question the responsibility would rest upon them, and upon them alone. Many hon. Gentlemen were enamoured of the three F's, and he understood the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Shaw) was of the number; but in the measure of the Government no provision was made for fixity of tenure, and all the schools of thinkers in Ireland were of opinion that fixity of tenure should, once for all, be granted to the Irish tenant. The right hon. Gentleman might make exorbitancy of rent one of the grounds which would give the tenant a right to compensation for eviction; but it would be impossible to constitute any Land Court for the decision of these questions which would command the confidence of the people of Ireland. That day must, he thought, be one of deep disappointment to the supporters of the Government. The Prime Minister might, if he liked, have settled this question; and he might, if he liked, have resisted the clamour of the territorial class on both sides of the House for measures of coercion. He need not have yielded to the clamour of manufactured outrages. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) denied that the outrages were so numerous as was alleged—in fact, he ventured to assert that there was not one well-authenticated case of mutilation of men or women. The hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Gray), who was the proprietor of a very influential and popular journal in Ireland, the other day pledged his credit, speaking in Dublin, that, although he had a large staff of reporters at his command, not one of them had been able to trace a single case of human mutilation which had been reported. It was reported that women had been carded, and that men's ears had been cut off; but no foundation could be found for the reports. With regard to mutilation of animals, he should show at the proper time that the reports on this subject had been greatly exaggerated; and he should also venture to show that such cases as had occurred could easily be paralleled in England. And now he would refer to a statement which the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) had ventured to make. He was not sure whether it was made to his Ulster friends in the Ulster Hall, at which meeting there were such cries as "Shoot Parnell;" "Shoot priests,"&c. He did not know whether it was there the right hon. and learned Gentleman slandered away the character of his countrymen, or whether he had come to the country of the enemy to denounce and blacken the character of his countrymen. The right hon. and learned Gentleman spoke of the tragic and terrible occurrences in connection with the murder of Lord Mountmorres. Another right hon. and learned Gentleman, who also came to the platform of the enemy to denounce and blacken the character of his country—he meant the right hon. and learned Gentleman's Colleague in the representation of the so-called National University (Mr. Plunket)—actually made this charge—that the leaders of the Land League, either at the central office or the local branches, deliberately planned and deliberately carried out the murder of that unfortunate Nobleman, in order to lend prestige to the movement. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) appealed to the House, and asked them was there ever such an atrocious charge made against the character of public men, or against the character of a whole people, than that they actually conspired and planned together a brutal murder, in order to lend prestige to the movement? The right hon. and learned Gentleman spoke of a woman having refused admission into her house of the corpse of the unfortunate Nobleman; and the comment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman was that the conduct of that poor woman showed that the Land League had unsexed even the women of Ireland. The right hon. and learned Gentleman ought to know the superstitions of the Irish peasantry as well as he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) did, and ought to know that it was a superstition planted in their breasts under the misrule which had promoted the ignorance of the people—he ought to know that there was a superstition among the peasants that if you allowed under your roof a person who had met an untimely death, that within twelve months some of your own household would perish themselves. It showed the recklessness of those who would run away with the character of the Irish people in a charge of this gross and scandalous character brought against the women of Ireland. He thought the right hon. and learned Gentleman, with the gallantry which he possessed in common with all his people, should have investigated the facts before he had made such a reckless accusation, when he would have found that the Land League was perfectly innocent of having intimidated the woman in question. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) did not excuse the superstition. He regretted and abhorred such a senseless superstition as much as anybody; but he asked right hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench what had they been doing during the seven centuries they had held the rule of that country to eradicate the feelings which prompted such a superstition? Turning to the position of the present Government in reference to Ireland, he maintained that if the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, who he was glad to see now in his place, did not bring in a complete and satisfactory and final measure on this question the responsibility, as he had said before, rested upon him and upon his Ministry alone. There were plenty of Whig Members in that House, he had no doubt, who would be quite willing to play fantastic tricks with a large, permanent measure on the Irish Land Question, as they had done with the Disturbance Bill; but the right hon. Gentleman had behind him the English people on this question, who were now convinced that the wrong and the folly and the crime of the land system in Ireland had gone on long enough, and wished to be rid of the question once and for all. The right hon. Gentleman had thrown passion, energy, and enthusiasm into other questions; and he had only to show the same sympathy, the same energy, and the same enthusiasm for the peasant of Connaught that he had shown to the peasant of Bulgaria, to settle the question. And, finally, he told the right hon. Gentleman, and he told all his Colleagues, Members of the Liberal Ministry, that in this great question, oppression and injustice on the one side, and the liberty and rights of the people on the other, were defined by as distinct and plain and visible a line as ever they were in the war between the States of America, or in the great controversy in the East, for the glorious result of which the right hon. Gentleman was so largely responsible.

said, he had read with great anxiety that portion of the Queen's Speech which referred to remedial measures for Ireland in a weak and vague manner, while, side by side with it, that portion of it which referred to coercion assumed a most prominent position. It would have been wise, he thought, if the Government had reversed that order. Never had there been presented to a Government a more favourable opportunity for effecting the pacification of Ireland. The inflammatory language that had been used at certain meetings in Ireland by no means represented the real feeling of the bulk of the Irish people, who would be completely satisfied by a moderate measure, which would secure to them their rights. The condition of Ireland was, undoubtedly, very serious; still, there was no need for despair, and he believed that, by measures just, generous, and decisive, and by wise legislation, they might end the tumult. He did not for one instant believe that the bulk of the people wished to repudiate the payment of their just debts; and he thought they had been induced to join this agitation only as the last means, short of civil war and bloodshed, of bringing about a satisfactory settlement of this long-pending question. The people sought a settlement based simply on morality and justice, and the House should not hesitate to grant such a request as that. Coercion was proposed; but there was a much greater need for reform. He might be allowed to speak upon this question impartially, dependent as he was, perhaps as much as any man in the House, upon the produce of Irish land. He implored them to reform before it was too late. He was not there to defend hot words. He was not there to defend dark deeds of assassination and murder. Where, indeed, these things occurred, he thought, he was sure, that in many cases they were, if not manufactured, grossly exaggerated. Would coercion be successful? How could they coerce a whole people? They could not compel the people to bid at a sheriff's sale, nor to take land from which a tenant had been evicted; neither could they force a whole country to pay rent. In past times, when it was attempted to compel the people to pay tithes by sending soldiers to enforce the payment, the military expedition cost £15,000, while the sum collected only amounted to £12,000. He spoke not merely in the interest of the tenant farmers, but in the interest of the tradesmen and shopkeepers; and he was perfectly certain that he, to a considerable extent, represented the minds of many intelligent landlords. What was really important was, that they should not dally and tinker with this question, but that they should give them a just and speedy settlement. He did not fear that settlement, whatever form it took. He feared no just or fair settlement. What he did fear was a limp and faltering policy—a policy of hesitation on the part of the Government.

said, that, having been pointedly alluded to by the hon. Member opposite (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), he felt bound to rise at that early stage of the debate. The hon. Gentleman had asked why the Government had not interfered with some meetings, and had interfered with others. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister had already given an answer to that, in which he stated that the Government in Ireland believed that public meetings to discuss public questions might be perfectly lawful under certain circumstances; and that, under certain conditions, they would be so unlawful that it would be the duty of the Government to interfere. He (the Solicitor General for Ireland) could state that in no single instance in Ireland had any public meeting been prohibited in which information had not been laid before the Government, and almost invariably on oath, showing very strong and reasonable grounds of danger of violence, and possibly to life. The only exception to that was the meeting at Clondalkin, near Dublin, the placard convening which was sedulously silent as to the object of the meeting. A circular, however, was issued accompanied by a series of resolutions to be moved at that meeting, and one of them was to protest against the trial pending in the Queen's Bench at Dublin, and calling upon the people in numbers to assemble to do that, the real object being to overawe the jury, and prevent a fair and impartial trial of the cause, and interfere with the administration of justice. He apprehended that no Government would deserve the name of Government that would allow the law to be set at defiance in that way. The proposed meeting at Drogheda, again, was prohibited by his Excellency when he was assured, not merely on information, but from personal inquiry, that if that meeting were held the reasonable consequence would be danger of violence to person or life; and he apprehended that no Government would deserve the name of a Government if, under such circumstances, it allowed the meeting to be held. Other meetings had been called for purposes, not necessarily unlawful, and, it not being believed that they would be turned into illegal assemblages which should be prevented, there had been no reason for interfering with them. The hon. Gentleman had asked, when a meeting had been prohibited by a resident magistrate for one day by the authority of the Government, was the magistrate entitled to prohibit another meeting to be held on another and different day? He (the Solicitor General for Ireland) apprehended, if there was no connection whatever between those meetings, the resident magistrate would not take upon himself to prohibit the second meeting. But he had known this to take place—that a meeting which was illegal, and had been prohibited by the Government on proper evidence, was sought to be held, by an ingenious evasion of the prohibition, by holding the meeting for the same identical purpose in the same identical—or a neighbouring—locality, but on a different day. In such a case the resident magistrate, he believed, was perfectly justified in prohibiting the second meeting.

said, the hon. and learned Gentleman had mistaken his question. The question he had put was, whether a resident magistrate had a right to call upon a meeting to disperse without producing a written or other authority but his own ipse dixit?

, in reply, said, he apprehended that every magistrate was a conservator of the peace, and, as such, was charged with the lives and security of those under his supervision, and with the care of the property in his district. Of course, in such a case as that put by the hon. Member the magistrate would act upon his own responsibility. At the same time, he did not mean to contend that a man, because he happened to be a resident magistrate, had a right to act on his own ipse dixit, or to strain the law. There were one or two observations which he would have to make with great regret. The Amendment proposed—[ Cries of "No, no!" "No Amendment!"] Well, he was out of the House for some minutes, and was under the impression an Amendment was moved; but the general scope and tone of the speech he had just heard endeavoured to create the impression that the peace and tranquillity of Ireland was such that no special legislation was required. Now, speaking from some knowledge of facts, and from the experience he had during the last few months, he must take issue with the hon. Member on that subject. Peace, no doubt, there was, in a sense; but it was that peace in the body politic which might be compared to the peace which mortification produced in the body corporal. The peace which existed was largely due to intimidation. He disliked to appeal to personal experiences; but he could not forbear stating that when in the South of Ireland, prosecuting in an important case, it was found impossible to submit the case to the Court, or to expect a jury to impartially consider the issues; those facts were deposed to on oath, and on those affidavits the Judge acted. How, in such a state of things, could it be contended that peace and tranquillity prevailed in Ireland? He knew, from official experience, that there were assemblies of persons in lreland purporting to be connected—he would not say they were—with the central association of the Land League, which purported to usurp the Prerogative of the Crown, and to pronounce sentence, and enforce that sentence by means within their reach. He did not wish to go further, in anticipation of a debate that must arise hereafter; but, knowing these facts, he would ask the House to come to the conclusion that he had stated sufficient primâ facie ground for saying that peace and tranquillity in Ireland was not the peace and tranquillity that showed a healthy vitality among a free people.

said, he had listened with interest to much that had been said, but largely mingled with disappointment. He had been disappointed exceedingly when he found that in the Queen's Speech precedence was given to coercion over remedial legislation. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister to quote a single instance of a coercive measure producing the effect anticipated by its promoters in the whole history of coercion since the Union, and there had been in 57 years out of the 80 Arms Acts, suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and other Acts various in title and powers. He would give the same challenge to the Party opposite the Government, who were more in favour of coercion, and who now attacked the Government for not proposing coercion enough. Could they give one single instance supported by facts, and not general declamation, where coercion was effectual in producing the object sought for? It was a saddening reflection for Irish Members to find no fulfilment of the grand promises held out as to the willingness of that great House to entertain Irish questions with spirit and earnestness. Instead of that, they found threats of coercion of a stringent kind, with the lame and impotent conclusion of a promise to redress grievances. Fortified by past experience, he would say that not only would this coercive measure not diminish what were called outrages, but instead of these sham, outrages, instead of threatening letters—which, in most instances, were written by those receiving them or their abettors—instead of sham attempts at shooting at ladies and gentlemen; instead of all these manufactured outrages to satisfy the pabulum of readers of a certain class; instead of these, the attempt at tyrannically repressing the liberties of the people would probably produce real and serious outrages, instead of shams. The people would find that when they agitated for redress of grievances they got coercion; instead of bread, they got a stone; instead of fish, they got a serpent. In Connemara, as in Bulgaria, human feelings of resentment were much the same, and on the mind of the ignorant peasant the effect would be such as to create those outrages which now did not really exist. It was a commonplace of politics, more especially among those professing Liberal opinions, that the law which did not embody the wishes and will of the people was unsound and tyrannical, and that resistance to such a law was necessary in the ordinary course of events. The Representatives of Ireland were crying out for reform; and it was an unfortunate fact that reformers, whether on the platform, in the Press, or in the House, before having gained their ends, were held up by monopolists and selfish politicians as revolutionists who wished to overturn all authority. Those who offered such resistance in the Turkish Provinces were held up as patriots and reformers, and as the salt of their country; yet here the House was told it was the first duty in Ireland of Her Majesty's Government to enforce a law against which the moral sense of the people revolted, and under the administration of which they had been so ground down, that they were worse fed, worse clothed, and worse housed than any other people in any part of Christendom, and that no other remedy should be tried. Legitimate complaint must be met with coercion; and when the people were crushed into abject submission then it was said that superior wisdom and civilization would probably consider whether the law should be amended or not. Could it be maintained that agitation in a way recognized and practised, and which had been successful in England, could not be tolerated in Ireland, and that the condition of existence in Ireland was absolute submission? In reference to Irish misdeeds and outrages the House had been treated to many generalities during the debate. They had been told that "law and order" did not exist in Ireland. The fact was, there had been a great deal too much "law" in Ireland, such as it was, in the sense of unnecessary force and restrictions; and they would be better without the order maintained by proclamations and the presence of 30,000 soldiers in red and 12,000 in blue uniforms. If the population of the Sister Isle had a little less of the kind of law they had they would do a great deal better. As to "order," when it meant coercion, and military force, and keeping up inequalities between England and Ireland, there was plenty of that kind of "order." If the law and order were good, support them; but if bad, why should they have popular support? Another matter he commended to the attention of those who went in for coercion, and that was, that if a comparison were made of outrages in the United Kingdom it would be found that Ireland had less than other portions. He had the figures to support that. Take any crime dealt with by prosecution and punished by gaol, crimes as he understood them, not merely wild assertion of outrages, and it would be found that in England they far outnumbered those in Ireland. In the face of those hard facts they were told that these things could not be found out in Ireland. But did Parliament think that a Coercion Act would produce evidence? How was this evidence proposed to be got? It was admitted that no Act of Parliament could compel a person to deal with or speak to another if he did not choose to do so. Again, the House had not been treated to any figures that would show there was a larger amount of actual crime in Ireland than at any former period. That was not what he should have expected from a Liberal Government, or from the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury. The Government ought to have shown that crime did actually exist; but it had not done so, He hoped the House would be treated to substantial figures to show the real nature and extent of the outrages in Ireland, for the outrages were very sel- dom properly particularized, and when particularized were not proved. The most unfounded and wildest reports appeared in the London newspapers; and when the time came for the contradiction to be made arrived, the fallaciousness of the stories were not so extensively published as were the false rumours when set afoot. Those allegations should be proved, especially when the liberties of the people of Ireland were at stake; but no proof was forthcoming. With reference to the Land Laws, what was the nature of the proposition of the Government? He should have expected something higher than what had been proposed by the Government. That the Act of 1870 had done some good he admitted; but, on the other hand, it had produced an exorbitant increase in rents in the North, as well as the other parts of Ireland. It had led to evictions to a large extent, and to the consolidation of farms, so as to enable the landlords to compel their tenants to contract themselves out of the Act. He should like to know whether those who proposed to amend the Irish land system expected to be able to do so by simply tinkering up the Act of 1870? Indeed, he should have expected that the present Government would have been able to rise above the low level from which they now proposed to deal with this question. The question here was the status of the people, and the relations between the landowners and the occupiers of the land would have to be considered. Yet the Government were dealing with it as if the whole knot could be cut by making a simple alteration. Here they had practically a whole people aggrieved, because in Ireland the cultivator of the soil in scarcely any instance was a free agent. He was no more a free contractor than the black slave in Virginia before the Civil War. The question would never be solved by applying the laws of free contract to the relations of the Irish landlords with their tenants. A higher principle must be here adopted, and a wider view taken. Under these circumstances, he felt very much disappointed with Her Majesty's Speech, and he would ask the House to consider whether it must not take broader views, instead of those narrow ones which prevented it from remedying, once for all, a system which had not only made Ire- land miserable, but had even threatened the integrity of this great Empire. He held that any mere tinkering with the Land Act of 1870 would never solve the difficulty with which they had to deal.

said, that what had struck him particularly in Her Majesty's Speech and in the debate of that evening was the fact that the case which they understood was to be made against Ireland on the head of the Irish outrages had utterly broken down. For weeks and months past the British Press had had not one agony column, but several agony columns, containing lists of outrages, some of them, perhaps, real, but most of them imaginary. This had been kept up day after day for the purpose of pervading the minds of the people of England with the idea that the state of Ireland was one of anarchy and bloodshed. He, however, had long been aware of the explanation of this cropping up of outrages in the British Press, and of the great prominence which they had received. He found that in England there had been from time to time not merely many outrages and crimes of an ordinary and extraordinary character, but that sometimes there had been great outbursts of crime; but on no one of these occasions had any British statesman ever come to the House of Commons, and founded upon those crimes—numerous as they were—a claim to have the Habeas Corpus suspended in England. He would tell the House how the British Press set itself to find excuses for this great outburst of crime. Some years ago all the London papers were dealing with an exceptional condition of crime in England; and The Times, commenting on that state of things, wrote—

"It is a strange and by no means agreeable reflection that the principal product of the present day should be murders. That such, however, is the fact must be plain enough from the aspect of our columns during the last few days. Murders in some shape or other, assumed or established, have been every day the chief subjects of reports, discussion, or inquiry. The Stepney, the Road, the Wakefield, the Durham, and the Aldershot murders have all been detailed and discussed in terrible succession; and no sooner is one report concluded than another is commenced."

Yet, although this was written in The Times, no Minister came to the House and piled up the agony, and asked that the ordinary liberties of the British subject should be suspended. There was then, and there was now, one law for England and another for Ireland. Another London paper, The Globe, of the same date, accounted for the great prominence given to crime in England at certain periods. It explained that the reason why they were all reading so much about murders at that particular time was, not because more murders were committed then, but because in that dead season, when Parliament was not sitting, the papers could afford to give a larger amount of space to the chronicles of crime, and that there were on the average as many murders committed when Parliament was sitting as during the Recess, but that during the Recess they heard more of murders because they heard nothing of Parliament. Perhaps that explanation went far to account for the great prominence given in the dead season just past to the chronicles of Irish crime, real and imaginary. They heard much about the outrages perpetrated on dumb animals in Ireland; but no cry was raised about the outrages perpetrated on women and children in this so-called peaceable and civilized country. In the speeches which had been delivered on both sides of the House that night, there was a complete shirking of that great outcry which had been raised in regard to the criminal condition of Ireland, and for this reason—hon. Gentlemen knew that it would never suit them with a Coercion Bill on the stocks to enter upon a comparison of the crime in Ireland now with that which prevailed at former periods when Coercion Acts were in full swing. He could, however, well understand that there was no desire for any comparison to be made between the crime of England and that of Ireland. They were told from the Ministerial Benches that there were not so many murders in Ireland of late; but there were many people placed under the protection of the police. It was the game of a certain party in Ireland to pretend that they were in need of such protection, and they addressed their applications to the only too willing ears of the Chief Secretary for Ireland. It was not an unpleasant thing for gentlemen to be posing before the country as martyrs, and to send letters to the London Times and other newspapers describing the hardships of their condition. Furthermore, it was argued that the country was subjugated, and that that was why order reigned in Mayo. It was his firm opinion that if the measures about to be adopted were put into force they would very soon see not order, but disorder, in Mayo and elsewhere. The Leader of the Opposition might have received letters from landlords and others in Ireland describing the terrible state of the country; but he (Mr. T. D. Sullivan) was in possession of letters from tenants far more numerous than the lamentations which had been sent to the right hon. Gentleman. Allusion had been made to the murder of Lord Mountmorres, and accusations based on that crime had been made against the character of the Irish people by Gentlemen on both sides of the House, one of whom took it upon himself to describe the people of that country as being in a very degraded condition owing to the manner in which some of them had acted after that tragic occurrence. Exception had also been taken to the refusal of the people to take in the corpse of Lord Mountmorres. That there was that refusal there was no doubt; but then the fact was owing to some superstition common amongst the people. He was sorry there should be superstition amongst his countrymen; but then he could point to many superstitions which were entertained by people in Dorsetshire and Somersetshire, which were as debasing and as ridiculous as any existing in Ireland. It had been denied that some young men had walked through and actually dabbled in the blood of Lord Mountmorres. He believed it to be true, for he had a letter from a witness of the scene, and he should read an extract to the House. The writer said—

"I arrived on the scene of Lord Mountmorres' murder on the day after the crime. The actual spot on the roadside was marked by a large mass of congealed blood. While I was making my sketch (the writer was an artist for a London publication) a party of men approached, whom I afterwards found to be members of a band in the temporary employment of Lord Ardilaun, who was entertaining company. The party included some members of the Guards' band on leave, and one, the leader I think, was a foreigner. They all watched me working for some time, and, growing weary of doing so, they took to rooting up the blood with their sticks and canes. One of them took out a penknife and cut a square piece of the blood, and, calling out to a companion, said—'Bill,' ave a bit. I shall take a bit home to the old woman just to show I have been to Hireland,' while another took up a bloody stone from the road. They all walked on laughing. This was witnessed by the representative of an English news agency and by a gentleman from Ballinrobe. When any of the natives chanced to pass they went on the opposite side of the road, and did not even look at it."

Mr. W. C. Mills was the name of the gentleman who was a witness to that scene; and he told him (Mr. T. D. Sullivan) that the men who were meddling and fiddling in that way with the blood on the road were not Irishmen, but Englishmen. He told him also that whenever the country people passed by the blood-stained spot where Lord Leitrim was murdered they eyed it furtively and went to the other side of the road. So much for the allegation that they were Irishmen who acted in this disgraceful manner at the scene of the murder of Lord Mountmorres. As to the refusal of the poor peasant woman in Connaught to admit the dead body of that Nobleman, he (Mr. T. D. Sullivan) thought he could instance much worse cases which had occurred in England. Some time ago a poor woman in the town of Sheffield was taken in the pangs of labour. She went from door to door, but was refused admission. A mob collected about her, not to pity her, but to feel amused at her condition. A policeman came up, and by great difficulty kept the crowd clear, and finally the poor woman was delivered of a dead child in the streets of Sheffield. He considered that Sheffield case a much grosser case of inhumanity and cruelty than the alleged refusal of the poor peasant woman in Mayo to let into her house the dead body of Lord Mountmorres. The House had that evening an admission from the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury that there were such things as exorbitant rents. The words were very easily uttered; but how much suffering and misery did they not cover? Exorbitant rents ground the people to the earth, and sent them exiles from their native country. An eminent member of the Legal Profession in Ireland, describing the condition of the Irish tenants, said that their landlords extracted almost all the produce of the land. The tenants lived only on turf and potatoes, and when those failed they became paupers, and their children became beggars and prostitutes. The gentleman he referred to was Mr. Serjeant Heron, who was now prosecuting the traversers in Dublin. It would appear from a list of rents and valuations affecting tenants in Galway that the operation of the system which permitted them to be so trampled upon had become absolutely intolerable in Ireland. The Land League had been charged there to-night with being the real governors of Ireland. What a confession it was from England after its rule of Ireland for five centuries that a few men who had nothing at their disposal but the public sense of injustice and oppression had become practically the rulers of Ireland. All that they had resolved to do was to go as far as they could by peaceable means to prevent such a state of things. They did not intend to employ force. They had not swords, and did not possess bullets for the furtherance of their cause. They simply relied on the hearts of the people, on a sense of justice, and on no other force than that of reason. The old rude and worthless remedy of coercion was again about to be tried, and all he could say in conclusion was that whilst such a state of things lasted Ireland would fail to improve. He would simply warn the Government that at the expiration of that coercive legislation Ireland would be in a worse state than she was in to-day.

said, that the reference to the Land Question in the Queen's Speech he heard with a feeling of disappointment, which, however, had been somewhat diminished by the speech of the Prime Minister. If any redress was proposed for admitted grievances, he was sure that many of the people of Ireland would be ready to give up the agitation now in existence, especially if they could see a hope that the Land Question would be satisfactorily settled. He spoke from personal knowledge. There were those who had great influence in Ireland over the people; and though they had not joined it, many of them, in fact most of them, had refrained from opposing openly the present agitation. They had never approved its worst features, and only joined it as a means of obtaining redress for admitted grievances. He referred to the clergy of Ireland. He believed the great majority of them had never lost faith in the will and also the power of the right hon. Gentleman to settle the Land Question; and they were only waiting for the enactment of a measure giving the only remedy asked for, and which, although decried, was well described as fixity of tenure, fair rents, and free sale. They were only waiting for that to call upon the people to abandon the agitation, and ask them if they would throw away for the shadow what was the substance? But what announcement was there in the Queen's Speech? He must say he had been disappointed. There was absolutely nothing in the Queen's Speech but a promise to amend the Land Act of 1870. He looked upon that as a good and noble measure, and one of inestimable benefit to the tenants of Ireland. The blots and defects in the Bill the Prime Minister had promised to remove, and, no doubt, that in itself would be an enormous improvement, if nothing else was done; but that would not go to the root of the question. That would not close the Land Question, and it never could be closed unless the power of eviction was taken away, and it was enacted that so long as a man paid a fair rent he should not be disturbed in his holding. There was nothing in the Speech which would preclude such a settlement; and he implored the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister not to consider that his announcement of what was going to be done would settle the question.

thought the hour had arrived when a change should take place in the tenour of the discussion. They had never met Parliament under more sad and serious circumstances, and there was very little to re-assure them in Her Majesty's Speech. It was bad enough to have 30,000 troops employed in keeping down our fellow-subjects in the Sister Isle; but much worse was it to see that all hope of reform for England, Scotland, and Wales was likely to be abandoned, and that the time of Parliament was likely to be devoted to that country entirely. It was something, too, to think of the weary nights and days which Parliament was destined to spend over Ireland before the end of the Session. But there was another pressing question besides Ireland, there were other people in the world who had wrongs and sufferings. There were our fellow-subjects in South Africa who were being ruthlessly shot down at the present moment. He was considerably astonished at the tone of the right hon. Gentleman in referring to that subject, which he rather seemed to wish should stand over. Well, if the right hon. Gentleman did not wish to speak on it, why did not his hon. Friend the Member for Liskeard (Mr. Courtney) give them his views upon it? It would be very satisfactory, and he (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) would await the statement with pleasure and anxiety, for he saw by the newspapers that the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department had exactly the same views on the Transvaal Question which he stated two years ago. [ Laughter. ] Well, if the hon. Member for Liskeard had those views, of course the Government had them also. He was positively horrified at what was going on. They were sending out a small army to Africa. What to do? To crush an independent Republic, which they had no more right to do than they had to put down the French Republic. ["No, no!"] The only difference was the one was weak, the other strong. Then there was the Basuto War, in which our troops were shooting down and destroying the houses and homes of the most loyal, the most civilized, and, as far as it went, the most Christianized of the tribes of South Africa. That was most unjustifiable. It was very well for the Prime Minister to say the Colonists were responsible. An hon. Friend had suggested to him that there was one word in the sentence of Her Majesty's Speech referring to this subject which should be altered. The Speech said—

"I regret that the War in Basutoland still continues, notwithstanding the efforts of the Cape Government."

The word "notwithstanding" should be left out, and the words "in consequence of" should be inserted. While the Colonists were fighting with their troops and raising their levies, we had 5,000 soldiers in that country, and these soldiers were aiding in putting down the Basutos. It was not possible for us, therefore, to say that we were not responsible. If it was a just war, we were bound to aid the Colonists; if an unjust war, we ought to try to put a stop to it, and not to pass it over in that way and say the Colonists were responsible. If we allowed injustice to be done to these poor people in South Africa, was it likely that the constituents of the Irish Members would believe that we should do justice to them? If these poor South Africans had Repre- sentatives in that House, the House would be discussing their rights and wrongs at as great a length as it was now discussing the rights and wrongs of Ireland. But of one thing he was sure, whether they discussed them or not, the people of this country would discuss them. They were already looking into this question, and a great feeling was rising in the country on the matter. Who placed the right hon. Gentleman in power nine months ago? Why, the people of this country. It was a popular triumph if ever there was one. Why did they place the right hon. Gentleman in power? Because they had read his eloquent denunciations of the Afghan and Zulu Wars, and speeches in which he left it to be understood, if he did not distinctly state, that he did not look with approbation on the proceedings in the Transvaal. He (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) believed that that memorable triumph of the right hon. Gentleman was due more than anything else to the statements he made in some of his eloquent speeches in Scotland, that he was in favour of equal rights for all nations. But the conduct carried out in South Africa was utterly opposed to the policy advocated in Scotland by the right hon. Gentleman. If Russia were to do what we were doing now in South Africa his Friends on the opposite side would denounce it; and if Turkey were to do it the right hon. Gentleman would go through the length and breadth of England denouncing it. He remembered one of the right hon. Gentleman's speeches in which, speaking of what Lord Salisbury had said about asserting our rights, the right hon. Gentleman said that these were sentiments only worthy of a political bandit. He (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) would like to know where was the political bandit now? There were hundreds and thousands of people who to-morrow would read with regret that nothing was to be done to put a stop to the British atrocities which were now going on. He had seen lately, even in Radical papers, that the quarrel was atrocious, and that we had no business to make this war; but they went on to say—"Oh! our arms have met with a reverse, and we must go on until we wipe that out." That was a sentiment worthy, not of a civilized people, but of the greatest heathens; and unless the Government did something to put a stop to what he had described the result would be most disgraceful to the honour of England, and, he feared, would leave a stain never to be effaced upon the reputation of those statesmen who, having the power, had not put an end to this war.

said, his hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) had spoken of the annexation of the Transvaal in terms which showed that he was hardly acquainted with the circumstances of the case. The first speech which he (Mr. R. N. Fowler) himself made in the House 12 years ago was against the system of slavery carried on by the people of the Transvaal. They were in the habit of sending parties among the tribes around, murdering the men and women, and carrying the children into slavery. Mr. Monsell, now a Member of the other House of Parliament, who then represented the Colonial Office in that House, admitted, on that occasion, that every word he uttered was true. A Republic which committed such atrocities was not entitled to sympathy in that House or out of it. The result was that the Transvaal Republic, had it been suffered longer to exist, would have been attacked by the Native Tribes, and the peace of South Africa would have been seriously endangered. It was in such circumstances as he had described that the Transvaal was annexed by Lord Carnarvon, who, in doing so, had carried out a policy of humanity. He could not conceive a greater misfortune to humanity than the restoration of the Transvaal Republic. The history of that Republic was a history of rapacity, cruelty, and murder. But he was glad to be able to agree with his hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle in his remarks on the Basuto War. On the first evening last Session open to a private Member he had called attention to the subject, as the right hon. Gentleman opposite would recollect, because he took the opportunity of his (Mr. Fowler's) Motion to inform the House that it was not the intention of the Government to recall Sir Bartle Frere. [Mr. GLADSTONE: Not at that moment.] He had listened with surprise to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman in the early part of the evening that the Government were in no respect responsible for the present war. The Government kept Sir Bartle Frere in office two months after his Motion. Though the disarming policy of Sir Bartle Frere was originally permitted by his right hon. Friend the Member for East Gloucestershire, it was carried out with the sanction of Her Majesty's present Ministers; and, therefore, it could not be said that the Government were not responsible for the war now being waged in Basutoland. He hoped that Sir Hercules Robinson, who had just sailed for the Cape, would be able to carry out a policy which would result in the restoration of peace in Basutoland.

remarked, that in November, 1879, the present Prime Minister had said of the late Government that they had annexed "a territory inhabited by a free Republican, Christian community," although 6,500 men protested against the act. Those were the circumstances in which we had transformed a Republic into a Monarchy. He believed he expressed the feeling of many hon. Members on that side of the House when he said that, in supporting the clause in the Address which related to the Transvaal, they did so without prejudice, and declined to recognize that Her Majesty's Government had any legal authority in the Transvaal. For himself, he did not regard the inhabitants of that territory as rebels, but as independent Republicans, who had never given their assent to the annexation; but regarded it as one of the grossest frauds ever committed in a country similarly constituted to the Transvaal. He hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would not provoke a collision in the Transvaal till the subject had been discussed, but would send Commissioners to look into the question and give due weight to the wishes of the Boers, as to whether they wished to remain Republicans or become subjects of Her Majesty. If they wished to remain Republicans, it would be but an honourable act to withdraw our authority from that country. ["No, no!"] At any rate, they ought not to be coerced for a just, an honest, and an honourable act.

said, he had anticipated that, with a Liberal Government in Office, they should have within that House the same enunciation of principle as they had had out of it. He thought that as a Liberal policy was based on the principle that force was no remedy, that the Irish Members would not have been compelled to listen to such illiberal principles as those enunciated by Her Majesty's Government. He felt with the hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) that it was a great inconvenience that Irish questions should occupy so much of the time of the House; but it was an absolute necessity that they should do so until the House had brought itself to reason, and had passed a Resolution by which all purely Irish Business should be settled by a Local Parliament in Ireland. He thoroughly sympathized with the unfortunate people of South Africa who, under a Liberal Government, were experiencing all the tyrannies inflicted by a Tory Ministry. He should certainly give his name and vote in favour of the independence of the Transvaal, because as he recognized in Ireland the right of the people to self-government, so, to be logical and just, he must, and did, grant the same right to others outside this Imperial Kingdom. He had hoped that Her Majesty's Speech would have contained a message of true peace towards Ireland; but he found that the Liberal Government of to-day were merely repeating the Whig tactics of 1870 and 1871. As in 1871, they had to-day no message of peace for Ireland, but rather of war; and a Liberal Ministry in Office had departed from the lines adopted by them when in Opposition. The hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle had alluded to the absence of a Member of the Government whose eloquence had always been heard on the side of oppressed nationalities. Perhaps the hon. Member in taking Office had lost his voice; and the same thing, he (Mr. Finigan) feared, might be said of several Colleagues in the Ministry. He regretted that in that Government there were men of whom he had hoped for better things. There were men in that Government from whom Ireland had reason to expect some fair measure of reform, some fair promise of justice. If one had trusted to the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman the present Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright), one would have thought that when the Liberal Government came into Office they would have brought peace and true concord to Ireland, and would have bound Irishmen and Englishmen of Liberal principles in one solid union. But the Irish people, who believed in reasonable speeches, had trusted to men out of Office, who, when they came into the present Ministry, found their words were merely uttered for political purposes, and to mislead the Irish people. He (Mr. Finigan) did not belong to either one Party in the State or the other; but he was always ready to vote upon English measures as he considered the English people thought and wished. He maintained that on matters concerning Ireland it ought to be the policy of the House to govern Ireland, not according to the opinions of the English Representatives, but according to the exigencies and the opinions of the Representatives of the Irish people. He must say that Her Majesty's Speech was totally opposed to this Constitutional right—the right of one part of the Empire to govern itself, and to endeavour to rule Ireland by Irishmen and England by Englishmen. The Queen's Speech alluded to the diminution in distress; but that diminution was not owing to the "abundant harvest," which had not been too abundant, or to the action of the present or of the late Government, but to the action and exertions of the hon. Members for Cork (Mr. Parnell) and Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), and all the members of the Irish National Land League, who had organized Ireland, and had prevented the people paying exorbitant rents. If the people of Ireland had been compelled by the bayonet, by the bullet, by the buckshot to pay their rents according to law, Ireland to-day would have presented a sad and very different appearance. He considered that Ireland owed by accident to the Conservative Party much more than she did to the Liberal Party at that moment, as the rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill in the House of Lords last Session led the Irish people to take the whole of the Irish Question into their own hands, being convinced that neither the Liberals nor the Tories in that House could ever deal effectively with Irish grievances. In his opinion, it was an insult to the Irish people to tell them that the great diminution of distress was to be traced to the abundant harvest. With respect to agrarian crime, he would remark that it must always result from unjust agrarian laws, and it was an absolute necessity where the law had not that respect amongst the people which a just law ought to have. Law could only be morally respected when that law was made in the interests of the people; but when the law was tyrannous and unjust, then outrage and crime must follow its administration. In point of fact, however, a great number of the reported outrages were mere canards, and nothing more than the gossip of newspaper correspondents. But it mattered, little whether the outrages numbered 100 or 10,000. Outrages must and would happen so long as that House and that country were determined to carry out an unjust law and the policy of coercion. The administration of law in England was pure, and Englishmen had rightly perfect confidence in it; but the administration of justice in Ireland was wholly corrupt. The way to the Judicial Bench in that country lay through the slimy paths of Party politics; and there was not a Judge on the Irish Bench who had not gained his position by illegitimate, not to say politically immoral, means. Not only the Judicial Bench, but the whole judicial administration of Ireland was one piece of political corruption; and until Englishmen understood this, and dealt with it accordingly, the administration of justice in Ireland would always be a mockery, a delusion, and a snare. With regard to the policy of coercion, the Government ought to know that if they deprived men of the right of free speech they would drive them into joining secret societies. If it were just or courteous, he would like to say a few words on the conspiracy trials going on. He did not wish to imitate the language of the retired Chief Justice; but he would only say it was not one individual or 14 placed on trial—it was the whole Irish nation. Whatever the result, those people personally interested were indifferent; but it could have no result but one—that of discrediting the Government. If a verdict of acquittal was returned, they would be condemned in the eyes of both Liberals and Tories; and if the contrary event happened, they would be execrated by the Irish people. The Government were ruling Ireland with the rod of tyranny. They were not governing her. Until the Irish people were governed accord-to their wishes, the Members representing them must continue to oppose Governments whose Liberalism was mockery, and who re-introduced tyran- nous measures under the disguise of reform.

Motion made, and Question, "That the Debate be now adjourned,"—( Mr. Parnell, )—put, and agreed to.

Debate adjourned till To-morrow.

House adjourned at a quarter after Twelve o'clock.