asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, How many counties in Ireland are now proclaimed as "disturbed," giving the dates of the first and last of the proclamations issued for the purpose; also, how many agrarian outrages were reported to the constabulary between 1st January 1880 and 31st December 1880; how many cases of absolute and partial "Boycotting" were similarly reported between same dates; in how many cases is police protection now given for the protection of life; and, in how many cases are people specially looked after for protection purposes?

, in reply, said, five counties had been proclaimed—namely, Galway, Mayo, Kerry, Limerick, and Leitrim—also the West Riding of the County of Cork, and the Barony of Inishowen, in the County of Donegal. The first proclamation was issued on the 7th of October, and the last on the 18th of December. Yesterday he presented and laid on the Table of the House Returns of the outrages, and he hoped they would be in the hands of hon. Members almost immediately. Those Returns stated the number of persons to whom police protection was given, and how many cases had to be specially looked after for protection purposes. As to the question of "Boycotting," that was not an easy matter on which to make a Return, as "Boycotting" was not yet a regularly ascertained legal offence. But, no doubt, there were several cases which might be considered to come under the class of agrarian outrages.

said, that, no doubt, the right hon. Gentleman had laid the Papers on the Table; but they would not be in the hands of Members until this debate was nearly over.

hoped they would be in the hands of Members very soon.

remarked, that the debate would be going on. Would the right hon. Gentleman at once give them any of the figures he had asked for?

said, he thought they were given last night. The number of persons under protection had now, he was sorry to say, increased to 153. As to the number of persons looked after by the police, it was a very unpleasant looking after, inasmuch as it meant a constant finding out where they were going in order that they might be protected, the looking after their houses at night, and, in fact, giving them a general protection, which would be more obnoxious and more distressing to most hon. Members than a great deal of danger. Personal protection was a matter on which he did not know how he should feel unless he were tried; but he almost felt that he would rather be in considerable danger of his life than be accompanied by two armed policemen from morning till night, and have them in the house from night till morning. The number of agrarian outrages to the end of December was 2,573. He believed the Return would be in the hands of hon. Members on Monday.

inquired whether that number included threatening letters?

said, it did. He thought he could show, when the proper time arrived, that threatening letters meant a great deal in many parts of Ireland, although they might not mean much in many cases. As for himself, he was in the position of having received letters threatening his life, from both sides at once, on the same morning. Threatening letters received by persons like himself were not included in the Returns. Those mentioned in the Returns were letters which would very much alarm the hon. Gentleman himself if he received them while living in the West of Ireland. Independent of threatening letters, the number of agrarian outrages was 1,246.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether his attention has been called to the conduct and language of Captain Keogh and Mr. Clifford Lloyd, stipendiary magistrates at Drogheda, on Saturday last, as reported in the "Freeman's Journal" of the 3rd inst.; whether it is true that, when the local magistrates summoned together for consultation declined to stop the meeting or interfere with it, "Captain Keogh said he would take it upon himself to disperse it," and thereon "wired for instructions to Dublin Castle, when a reply came to stop the meeting;" is it a fact that Mr. Clifford Lloyd, in answer to the chairman of the meeting, called upon to disperse at the point of the bayonet, refused to show his authority, stating "I have none and will show none;" whether those magistrates acted upon sworn information or with the sanction or concurrence of their brother magistrates; and, whether their course of procedure was authorised by the Chief Secretary?

It is utterly impossible for anyone in my position to answer these Questions without first having an opportunity, by more adequate Notice, of inquiring into the facts; and I cannot but think the hon. Member must have been perfectly conscious of that when he put his Question on the Paper. I must ask the hon. Member to be good enough to postpone his Question until I can communicate with Dublin in reference to it.

I very willingly accede to the right hon. Gentleman's request; but perhaps he can inform the House in the meanwhile whether the dispersal of the meeting at Drogheda was authorized by himself by telegram?

I may state, in reply to this Question, that I left Ireland two or three days before the meeting in question took place; but I have heard no reason whatever why I should dissent from what has been done by the authorities in Ireland. I sent no telegram in reference to this matter. I think it not unreasonable I should ask for time to ascertain the facts before I give a reply to the Question in this House.

asked the Secretary of State for India, Whether he could produce on an early day the Papers relating to the affairs of Afghanistan, and when the Government would be able to produce any of the other Papers promised in Her Majesty's Speech, especially those relating to the affairs of Turkey?

The Papers relating to Afghanistan are in the printer's hands, and I hope they will be in the hands of hon. Members in a very few days. I cannot give any information as to the other Papers which have been promised.

asked the Prime Minister, Whether he has any objection to lay on the Table of the House the instructions given to Sir Hercules Robinson with a view to the restoration of peace in Basutoland?

Sir Hercules Robinson has taken his departure for Cape Town at a recent date, and cannot arrive at the seat of Government for nearly a fortnight from the present time. There is a serious inconvenience in the publication of his instructions before his arrival. There is a general rule against the publication of such instructions until the person to whom they are addressed is on the spot and prepared to act upon them. These instructions are generally given in great detail, and if insufficient extracts only are telegraphed from this country they may produce an erroneous effect by misleading, more or less, the public on the spot. I hope, therefore, there will be great carefulness exercised by any persons who may telegraph portions of these instructions to the Cape to avoid the difficulty I have alluded to. I am sensible that this is a very special case, and I have been pressed by the Leader of the Opposition to give an opportunity for an early discussion of it. I have reason to believe that a Member of this House may give Notice of an Amendment on the Address, and may produce that discussion in the course of the debate in which we are now engaged. We feel so much the strength of the appeal made in these circumstances, considering the great importance of the questions relating to the Transvaal and Basutoland, that we shall produce the instructions at once for the information of the House, in order that the House may be able to criticize the policy of the Government.

was much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for this information; but he desired to know whether he understood him to say that so far as the Government were concerned if any Motion relating to Basutoland were discussed they would desire it to be brought forward as a distinct Amendment to the Reply to the Address? Would it be convenient to have the discussion in this manner, or to take it on a special day?

expressed the hope that the right hon. Gentleman's answer related rather to the Transvaal than to the Basutoland Papers, because the premature publication of the instructions to Sir Hercules Robinson as regarded Basutoland might really be fraught with danger to his influence with the Cape Government on the subject.

I am not aware that there is any greater objection in the case of the instructions in regard to Basutoland than in regard to the instructions relating to the Transvaal. It is only on very special grounds that there is any justification for departing from the general rule. With regard to any discussion in the case of Basutoland I must leave my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) to exercise his own discretion; and I will only say on our part that it is not in our power consistently to depart as to any arrangement for the assignment of any special day for any subject whatever, except that subject to which, so far as depends on us, we desire for the present, and in the interest of all parties, to give exclusive prominence.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ire- land, Whether he could give particulars of the arrest of a member of the Land League at Tralee?

appealed to hon. Members not to put Questions of that kind without affording him time to obtain the information required. It was quite impossible that he could acquaint himself with every individual case of arrest as it arose.

said, that considering the matter involved the liberty of the individual, if even so insignificant a one as the Irish individual, he trusted that the Government would take steps when there was any interference with a person's liberty in Ireland to acquaint the House with the matter forthwith.

said, he had given the right hon. Gentleman Notice of this Question at noon that day.

Before proceeding to move the Amendment of which I have given Notice, I may be permitted to say that it would have been exceedingly convenient for us to have had more detailed information as to the measures of coercion which the Government propose to introduce for Ireland. We are speaking to a certain extent in the dark, and I could have wished that the Prime Minister had extended the scope of his observations and have given us the same information in regard to coercion as he did with respect to the proposed Land Bill. In the absence of such information we must do the best we can; but I trust the Chief Secretary will be able to inform us this evening of the general nature of the measures of coercion which he proposes. I want to assume at the outset that there are many Members of this House, and I hope the result may prove that it is the majority, who are desirous of being informed on the question of alleged agrarian crime and out- rages, and are desirous of giving fair play to Ireland. In looking at it in this point of view, I think it is our duty to do all we can to remove the prejudices, the misconceptions which have arisen with regard to the state of affairs in Ireland. I have occasionally come over to this country since Parliament last met, and I have been myself alarmed by reading the English newspapers, and I have almost at times been tempted to think that some sudden change had arisen in Ireland during the few days of my stay here, and that instead of a state of disturbance and outrage below the normal condition of the last 30 or 40 years, as I shall prove by statistics, some extraordinary epidemic of crime had arisen there. I am not at all surprised that Englishmen and foreigners should have been led away by the deliberate conspiracy which the Press of this Metropolis has set on foot against the good name of Ireland. I do not mean to say that many things have not occurred in Ireland which we must deplore; but, unhappily, things have always occurred which we must deplore. This conspiracy on the part of the guides of public opinion in England is a very hard thing for us to meet. We have not usually the opportunity of appearing on your platforms, and of speaking to large English audiences; and when we find ourselves face to face with a persistent and repeated attempt to mislead public opinion with regard to Ireland it almost makes one despair of demonstrating the real truth. The difference between public opinion in England and Ireland is really the clue to this. Our people understood thoroughly their own wants and wishes when we set on foot an agitation to carry out certain reforms. If that agitation was proceeding in England the English people would be well acquainted with it; but because it takes place in Ireland an opportunity was afforded for the grossest misrepresentation, and it becomes almost impossible to set public opinion right. I was glad that the Prime Minister said that there had been considerable exaggeration of the actual amount of crime in Ireland, and that he did not base his claim for exceptional legislation entirely on the existence of outrages, but rather on the difficulty of obtaining convictions against persons and of getting evidence. Perhaps I might, before going further, quote the object and explain the purposes of the Irish National Land League. In doing so, I shall not in any way prejudice the trials which are now proceeding. Adverting to these trials, I may say in passing that this is the first jury which has ever been empanelled to try a political cause in Ireland which the Crown has not succeeded in packing. The objects of the League are very simple—1st to prevent rack-renting; 2nd, to enable tenants to become owners of their own farms by paying a fair rent for a limited number of years; 3rd, to facilitate the working of the Bright Clauses of the Land Act—those are the objects which have been working to bring to a successful issue. Hon. Members will admit that there is nothing so very dreadful in those objects; but they may say we have sought to carry out those objects by improper means; that we have incited to outrage, or, if we have refrained from outrage, we have not sufficiently reprobated it. I can only say that, for my part, I think at every meeting at which I spoke in Ireland up to the time when the Chief Secretary sent extra constabulary into the starving localities of Galway and Mayo, that I took care to reprobate outrage and to point out that we did not wish outrage, but we wished to act in a peaceful and Constitutional manner. The other prominent members of the League acted in the same manner, and even exceeded me in the vehemence with which they denounced it. My friend Mr. Davitt, immediately on his return from America, pointed out that nothing would so much go against our cause as the commission of outrages; and although some members belonging to the League may have said incautious, foolish, and hasty expressions calculated to mislead the people to whom they were addressed, yet I believe such occurrences were very exceptional, and wherever they did occur the speakers were always reproved for their incautiousness and took care to remedy it. The course the Land League recommended was agitation by means of public meetings throughout the country; that the people should be recommended to organize themselves, to unite together, and to refuse to pay more than a fair rent, and to refuse also to take farms from which another tenant had been evicted in consequence of inability or refusal to pay more than a fair rent. Some of the apparent accompaniments of that agitation are very much to be deplored; but the agitation has consisted, up to the present time, of something like 200 land meetings, attended by crowds unprecedented in number since the time of O'Connell. Undoubtedly the heart of the Irish people has been stirred in a way that has not occurred before in our generation; and the fact that, although excited and just emerged from a state of famine, during which the landlords took the opportunity to carry out evictions in an unprecedented manner, the facts, as seen in a Return laid on the Table last night, show that the number of outrages is below the averages during the years comprised in the Return, is a striking testimony to general peace and tranquillity of the country. During the first six months of the year 1880, the landlords took advantage of the opportunity which distress and famine afforded them in many parts of Ireland to execute ejectments against 1,696 heads of families, involving probably 8,480 persons. Of these 268 were re-admitted as tenants, and 1,355 as care-takers. Are we not entitled to assume that very much of the sudden increase of the crime during the four months which elapsed since the Summer Assizes arose from an attempt on the part of the landlords to turn out the people who had been admitted as care-takers, and whom they could eject by a summary process, which required neither notice to quit or to bring persons before a Court of Quarter Sessions? The amount and character of the crime has also been enormously exaggerated. The Chief Secretary stated to-night that the number of agrarian outrages in 1880 was 2,573, and of these nearly half were threatening letters. Letters of that kind are very common. I believe the people often write them to themselves, and a country should not get a bad name because of such letters. If a country in which such letters are prevalent deserves a bad character, England is certainly worthy of blame, for numberless letters containing threats are sent to me and other members of the Land League from this country. I received a number of them to-day; but, of course, nobody in his senses takes any notice of them. The man who writes a threatening letter is not the man to act up to his words. In 99 cases out of 100 he is too great a coward. The other day I was travelling to London, and a man who sat beside me, but did not know me, said—"I tell you what ought to be done to that Parnell; he ought to be shot for the way in which he shoots the landlords in Ireland." I am sure the Prime Minister would have been surprised if I had applied for protection when travelling on the North-Western. Threatening letters, no doubt, are foolish and wrong; but I do not think they should be taken much notice of. Well, I find by the Returns just issued that the average number of outrages reported by the Constabulary since the year 1844, including the year 1880, amount to 5,000 per annum. In 1880 the number of outrages reported to the Constabulary only amounted to 4,654. Compare this with the year 1845, when the number was 8,104; or the year 1846, when the number was 12,382; or with the year 1847, when the number was 20,986; or with 1848, when it was 14,480; or with 1849, when it was 14,980; or with 1850, when the number was 10,639, and you will see I can fairly claim that the year 1880, with 4,654 outrages only, is, at all events, among years of peace and order in Ireland. The year 1870 is a favourable one to compare with 1880. We had not then the distress, and, therefore, there was the less cause—I will not say reason—for outrage than to-day, 1870 was one of the years chosen by the English Minister of the day for bringing forward coercion. We find in that year there were 1,359 agrarian outrages, of which 624 were threatening letters, or about half. In 1870 there were only 549 ejectments; in the year 1880 there were 1,696 ejectments. If that ratio had been kept up, it would have given us 2,360 ejectments instead of 549 in 1870; but, owing to the action of the Irish National Land League, they only amounted to 2,000 for the first half of the year, thus leaving only 400 for the six months during which the League had got into operation after the failure of the Chief Secretary and the House of Commons to deal with the question. We find in those two years that the ratio of agrarian crime to ejectments was 2½ to 1; while in 1880—a year of unprecedented agitation, following a year of famine—the ratio was something like 1 of agrarian crime to 1½ of ejectments. In other words, there was 2½ times as much agrarian crime in 1870 in proportion to the ejectments as there was in 1880; but if I compare the year 1880 with 1871 and other years, I find a still more remarkable difference, and I will ask hon. Members to mark well those figures. We find there is an enormous improvement in these days as compared with those old times in 1831 and following years, when the tithe agitation was in full swing. The tithe agitation was an agitation of a very similar character to the present anti-rent war agitation. It was an agitation directed by O'Connell for the purpose of preventing the people from the necessity of paying about £750,000 towards the income of the late English Establishment in Ireland; that was a smaller sum of money. The people were agitated in very much the same way; but they were not organized. The anti-rent movement of the present day is directed to prevent the people from the necessity of paying about £4,000,000 or £5,000,000 in the year. So that you will see that there is about five times the amount of money in question in these days that there was in question in 1831. Now, what do we find with regard to 1831? We find that Petitions were sent in to the House of Lords, complaining that there existed in Ireland a systematic opposition to the payment of tithe, just as they complain to-day that there exists a systematic opposition to the payment of rent, which I deny. I admit there is a systematic opposition to the payment of more than a fair rent, and the people have taken the Poor Law valuation as the most convenient standard of what a fair rent ought to be; but I deny that there is a systematic opposition to the payment of all rents, and that it was impossible to collect them without having recourse to the aid of constabulary. This systematic opposition took the form of organized intimidation, just as they complain to-day, and we are told that the Government found it necessary to introduce a Bill to prevent and punish this rising by what they called the Whiteboy Act; but we have got the Whiteboy Act in full force to-day, and the Act which was put in force to repress the tithe-rent agitation is in full swing in Ireland at the present moment. The Act, though it repeals the punishment of death in certain cases, was, nevertheless, a penal statute. You ask for exceptional powers, and I dare say a great many in this House hardly know the extreme stringency of the exceptional measures that already exist in Ireland and in the shape of the Whiteboy Act. But, in spite of this Whiteboy Act, the agitation against tithes increased in violence and extent, as every agitation in Ireland will increase in spite of any coercive measures this House may think proper to pass until the cause of the agitation has been removed. In Kilkenny during that period there were, is stated by Mr. Stanley in the debate on the Address in 1831, 32 murders and attempts at murder, 34 burnings of houses, 36 assaults of a dangerous character. Contrast the condition of Kilkenny, as depicted by Mr. Stanley, with the condition of the Kilkenny of the present day, or rather, I will say, contrast one of the worst Provinces in Ireland, so far as the commission of outrages—the Province of Munster—contrast the whole Province of Munster with the condition of that day. I have not given the contrast from Judge Fitzgerald's Charge. With regard to the condition of Munster, I regret exceedingly that Judge Fitzgerald's Charge has been relied upon as a reason for coercion. Yet this is the state of Munster, consisting of four counties—Clare, Limerick, Kerry, and Cork; Cork being, as the House is aware, the largest county in Ireland—threatening letters, 287; shooting into houses, and malicious injuries, 18; maiming cattle, 33; arson, 69; therefore, taking the whole Province of Munster, the worst Province in the point of outrages in Ireland is not so bad to-day as the county of Kilkenny in 1831. In Ireland, which has, unfortunately, an unhappy history, the people have been driven to rely too much upon murder and outrage for the redress of their grievances, and to feel there is nothing to keep them in their homes but the fear that may be inspired by threatening letters, or the shooting of landlords or agents, or the burning of some of their outhouses or haystacks; and the politician who attempts to originate a movement in Ireland might do so with the knowledge that there will be crime and outrage wherever there is disturbance and eviction, and that he will be accused and made responsible for the result of the unhappy history of the country in which he has organized this movement, as I have been in the present instance. I have not been able to do away with the usual condition. I wish it had been otherwise; but there is an enormous improvement. I have shown you that, as compared with the number of evictions, the statistics of crime show that there had been in 1870 two and a-half times as much agrarian outrages and crime as we have now in 1880; and recollect that this was a time when there was no distress or famine—when the people had not come through a terrible year of misfortune and oppression, and when there was no agitation or organization. I claim for the organization that it has been most effectual in preventing crime in Ireland. I feel convinced that if it had not been for our exertions the ratio of evictions, which commenced in the first half of 1880 at 1,600 and odd, would have gone on increasing, and that you should have murder and outrage on the scale of some of those unhappy years about which I have just quoted; and I warn the Government that if they attempt to put down Constitutional rights in Ireland—if they take away from the people the right of meeting publicly and discussing their grievances—if they prevent them from organizing—if they prevent them bringing to bear the strong force of public opinion on individuals who defy the public opinion of their neighbours, they will see murder and outrage walking abroad through the land, not with standing all their constabulary, and all their police, and all their Coercion Acts. They may strike down the leaders who are using their influence, and I am thankful to say they have effectually used their influence, to prevent crime and outrage up to the present moment. If they do these things they will have murder and crime. The landlords will be encouraged to evict, and they will grind them down as they ground them down before. The spirit that has been aroused in Ireland will not be willing to submit to this tyranny, and what I have stated will be the result. I think it right to state what I know must happen even from the prospect of coercion as encouraging the landlords to evict. We had yesterday, as the ill-omened accompaniments of the Queen's Speech, the news that the police had fatally injured two men in attempting to carry out an eviction or process-serving, and that several persons were seriously hurt. This is the beginning of what we are going to have. You may take away the arms from the people; but never yet was an agrarian murder prevented in Ireland for want of a blunderbuss to shoot the landlord. Now, the choice that we have before us is this—whether you will have an open organization, which, undoubtedly, has committed some mistakes, whose action in some respects is open to blame and criticism—I do not wish to deny for a moment; this action is being very fast modified by experience and by advice in such a way as to make it exceptional—whether you will have such an open organization, or whether you will have a secret conspiracy. Secret conspiracies do not now exist in Ireland. I used to hear of the secret conspiracy of Ribbonism—a most powerful organization—an organization which, I have been informed, had its head-quarters in Manchester; but if you crush down the people with coercion the result must be that you will have Ribbonism and kindred societies for the purpose of doing that by secret conspiracy which you prevent them from doing by open organization. The majority of the inhabitants of Ireland—the agricultural labourers and farmers of Ireland, who constitute, practically speaking, with their wives and families, 5,000,000 out of the population, or five-sixths of the populace—this class has been stirred in an unprecedented way. They have been taught to rely upon open agitation and organization, to rely upon combination amongst themselves, and upon the force of public opinion to prevent persons from offending against the unwritten law of the majority of the people of Ireland; and when I say the unwritten law, I wish to point out to you that the majority of the people of Ireland do not make their laws themselves, that they are made for them by a nation outside themselves, entirely unacquainted with the wants and wishes of the people of that country. The result is that if there are unjust laws pressing upon them, as the agrarian laws of Ireland are admitted to be, the only way the people can protect themselves from them is by their own unwritten laws, which they have striven to enforce, and have successfully enforced, so far, up to the present occasion, by the strong force of public opinion. I agree that in a well-ordered community, existing under normal conditions, responsible for its own prosperity, with its Representa- tives entirely responsible to those who elected them, and no others, and with power to do everything for themselves, the invocation of public opinion against the law of the land would be a most criminal proceeding; but I deny it is the case in Ireland. It has been at times recognized in every country which has not had the privilege of self-government that resistance to unjust laws is sometimes legitimate; and I can conceive no higher duty of patriotism on the part of the Irish tenant than the willingness to go to gaol and suffer hard labour rather than surrender his right to feed his family and support them by the produce of the soil he tills. We have, undoubtedly, called upon them to resist by organization and without violence, and by passive resistance, by refusing to take a farm from which another had been evicted, by refusing to deal with the person who takes his farm, or with the person who supplies him with provisions. We have, undoubtedly, organized the people to resist in this way those unjust laws which are the result of the legislation of this House; but the emergency was such that there was no other resource open to us. We had been left defenceless after the close of last Session by the rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. During the passing of the Act I voted with the Government on the second reading. It was not until they had spoiled their Bill by striking out a vital portion of it, by the introduction of a limitation, that I felt it to be my duty to walk out of the House; and when it came to the third reading I also abstained from voting. But so long as the Bill remained in its original shape, so long as it embraced the first intentions of the Government, I supported it, and was willing to do that which would have undoubtedly very materially injured the agitation in Ireland by facilitating the passing of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill of last Session. Mr. Speaker, let me, in conclusion, give a very brief history of coercion for Ireland. From 1796 to 1823 nine different coercion measures were passed, including three suspensions of the Habeas Corpus, one Martial Law, and five Insurrection Acts. From 1830 to the present date 48 different coercion measures, including seven suspensions of the Habeas Corpus, were passed by this House. The Government tell us that they cannot get evidence, and that they want measures for the purpose of getting evidence. This reminds me of the saying that one man can take a horse to the water, and 40 cannot make him drink. It is not intimidation prevents witnesses coming forward and giving evidence. It is not intimidation prevents the tenants from paying rent; but it is the public opinion of the majority of the people. I regret that some ground has been given for that charge of intimidation with regard to the payment of rent. I regret that tenants have not yet sufficient moral courage to go to the landlord and say—"We won't pay you more than the Government valuation, because by doing so we believe we shall injure the settlement of the Land Question." I regret that, on the contrary, many of the tenant farmers go and say—"If we paid more than the Government valuation we should have our houses burned down, our cattle houghed, or ourselves injured." But where is the intimidation? The intimidation is on the part of the landlords, to whom the tenant is afraid to speak the truth. The intimidation is not on the part of the Irish National Land League. It is simply because the poor wretched creatures, many of them recollecting so much of their own unhappy history, have not the moral courage to go to the landlord and tell him—"We won't pay you what we believe to be an unjust rent." This question, Mr. Speaker, is a question of money, not of saving lives; it is a question of saving £4,000,000 or £5,000,000 a-year for the landlords of Ireland; and if the Government succeed in passing a Coercion Bill, it will be because they were driven to it by the landlords, who desire to obtain this sum of money, and not because there is any danger to life, and the immediate sum in dispute amounts to £4,000,000 or £5,000,000; and the question on the part of the landlords is one of cupidity and a desire to reap that which they have not sown, to get more than they are entitled to for their land. The tenants think—and rightly think, in my opinion—that it is enough for them to pay the Poor Law valuation; that after they have made the lands what they are, after they have reclaimed them from a state of nature, they are justly entitled to some of the profits, and they have fixed upon this Griffith's valuation as being that on the average which they can afford to pay. It would amount to something like £10,000,000 on the agricultural holdings in Ireland. The landlords claim something like £15,000,000, and the Government have been asked to introduce coercion for the purpose of putting into the pockets of the Irish landlords £15,000,000 instead of £10,000,000. I ask, is that a worthy use to make of a Liberal Party of unexampled strength and liberality, that they should allow themselves immediately on coming into Office to be made the catspaw of a minority over in Ireland? Not even of a minority in your own country; for a minority in your own country could not so hoodwink and blind you as to speak of force. I entreat the House to pause before it plunges into the abyss before it, and enacts coercion for Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government had a chance of propitiating Ireland. He was nearer it than he thought; he had, perhaps, the best chance of persuading the Irish people that this House was desirous of making good and just laws for them; but if he brandishes the weapon of coercion at these people, the result will be that he will make it still more impossible for him to do that. He will never do it by coercion or terror; he might have had a chance of relieving Ireland by goodwill—a generous, a true, and a noble policy. But you have never been able to rule the Irish people by terror and coercion, and you never will be able to so rule them. The hon. Member concluded by moving the Amendment of which he had given Notice.

Amendment proposed,

At the end of paragraph 9, to add the words "but we humbly assure Her Majesty that we are convinced that the peace and tranquillity of Ireland cannot be promoted by suspending any of the constitutional rights of the Irish people."—( Mr. Parnell. )

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

said, they had heard a statement from the hon. Member for the City of Cork which anyone acquainted with Ireland knew was the most misleading statement and most incorrect representation that had ever been laid before the House of Commons or the English public. The hon. Gentleman said there had been the greatest possible exaggeration on the subject in the English newspapers. On the contrary, he emphatically stated that the English public had no conception of one tithe of what was daily and hourly occurring in Ireland. The hon. Member said there had been no objection to pay what he called a fair rent, and he made the Government valuation the measure of its fairness. Now, he could quote numberless instances in which tenants whose holdings were valued at or below Griffith's valuation had refused to pay any rent at all. He knew of one case in which the rents were below Griffith's valuation, and a meeting was held on that estate at which a resolution was passed declaring that Griffith's valuation was a most exorbitant amount, and no man could afford to pay it. The hon. Member said that there were no secret societies existing at present in Ireland. Anyone who had anything to do with the administration of justice in that country knew that that was not the fact. The hon. Member also said that the majority of the Irish people only refused to pay more than what was called a fair rent. That was not the case. The majority of Irishmen were still honest and wished to meet their obligations; but they were under the influence of the system of intimidation practised in the country, owing, in a great measure, to the action of the hon. Member and his Colleagues. The Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant last Session repeated, from time to time, his opinion that it was the clear duty of the Government to enforce the law, and that that was their primary obligation which they intended to carry out. The Prime Minister, both in Parliament and at the Guildhall and elsewhere, and various other Members of the Government at different times and places, endorsed that statement in the most emphatic manner. In fact, such an obvious proposition hardly required the ostentatious reiteration which was accorded to it. Now, he charged the Government with the most distinct and open violation of that pledge, and with having for four months permitted a state of things to go on, daily increasing and getting worse, under their eyes, which had resulted in reducing Ireland to a Pandemonium of crime, outrage, and chaos, which was a disgrace to a civilized nation, and had made England the laughing-stock of the civilized world. Could a more damning indictment be framed against an Executive Government than that which, within the past week, had proceeded out of the mouth of their own Colleague, the Attorney General for Ireland, who, in a speech lasting three days, had conclusively shown that a more utter collapse of Executive authority than had been exhibited by Her Majesty's Government in Ireland was not to be found recorded in history? Step by step he had shown the progress of the country from bad to worse, and from one crime to another, resulting in total insecurity of life, property, and comfort, till at last the Government, goaded on all sides into doing something, did—what? They instituted a State prosecution, which would cost the country a large sum of money, but with what result to the future of the country was a matter of grave question. They had proclaimed four or five counties as being in a disturbed state and requiring additional police. They had sent four or five extra regiments to aid the civil power, which was rather a mockery, as the civil power was seen to be in total abeyance; and, lastly, the Chief Secretary had issued his famous Circular reminding magistrates of their duties under certain practically obsolete Acts of Parliament. Some of those magistrates had pointed out to the right hon. Gentlemen that it was utterly impossible for them to enforce the administration of the law, as in the case of the magistrates of the county of Cavan, who had replied that they were perfectly aware of the powers and duties under the Acts referred to, but that the law was at present powerless to enforce any orders made by them. A friend of his employed a small number of labourers, who, at the bidding of the Land League, were desired to quit his service, and other means were taken of annoying him in various ways. That gentleman was neither a magistrate nor a landowner, but the renter of a small shooting-lodge in a mountain district. He applied to the resident magistrate of the district to know whether, in the event of informations being sworn by him of the facts of the case, the Crown would proceed under the Acts referred to in the right hon. Gentleman's Circular and take action against the parties, whom he was prepared to swear that there were reasonable grounds to believe were acting on the orders of the Land League? After an interval of a week, the resident magistrate replied that he had applied to the authorities of Dublin Castle, and had received for answer that unless the witnesses came forward and gave sworn testimony in the usual manner the Crown would not proceed. That was the only result of which he had heard from that Circular. Had the crimes and outrages which were of daily occurrence diminished in the slightest degree? On the contrary, in his closing address to the Grand Jury in the county of Cork, Mr. Justice Fitzgerald told them that he had been at pains to ascertain whether any diminution of crime had taken place since the Assizes began; but that he regretted to inform them it was rather on the increase than otherwise. The Judges had one and all described the state of things as intolerable in a civilized country; and there could be read in the impartial and straightforward statements of these, the highest officials of the law, the strongest condemnation of the inactivity of the Government. The right hon. Baronet the Member for North Devon gave the House last night an extract from the Charge of Mr. Justice Fitzgerald to the Grand Jury of Cork at the Winter Assizes last month; but what said the other Judges of Assize in corroboration of Judge Fitzgerald's estimate of the state of the country? Mr. Baron Dowse, on the Connaught Circuit, said—

"If this state of affairs is allowed to continue much longer immediate danger to Ireland will be the consequence, and ultimate disgrace to the Empire of which she forms a part. I fervently pray to God that the cloud of discontent and crime which is brooding over this Province may be speedily removed, and that peace and happiness, truth and justice, may be once more established within its borders."

The Prime Minister had spoken as if the present state of things had only recently culminated; but what said Judge Barry at Waterford on December 9?—

"There has been for some months past prevailing in many parts of this country a determined spirit of lawlessness and insubordination, and defiance of and contempt for the law have been manifested in offences against the person and property, more or less serious and aggravated, and of the class commonly known as agrarian."

The learned Judge went on to observe—

"Some people say that in the accounts of these matters that reach us there is much ex- aggeration, that some of the reports are mere inventions, mere fabrications, or that the offences are not of the agrarian class to which they are attributed, and that the accounts given of them are the result of heated imagination or credulity stimulated by panic. This may be so; but, making every allowance for exaggeration, still, if one-tenth of what we hear and read be true, no sane and candid man can deny that there exists in many parts of this country a state of things demanding grave and anxious consideration."

Judge Lawson, speaking on the North-East Circuit on December 13, said—

"I have known this country now for nearly half a century, and never in the course of my experience do I remember any state of things at all parallel to that which is now existing. A system of intimidation on a large scale, perfectly unconcealed and openly avowed, is practised, and those concerned in the administration of the law, from the very Judge on the Bench down to the bailiff serving an ejectment process, are all sought to be made subject to this system of intimidation.…. Is that a state of things to be tolerated? I should be glad to know whether all the people of the sister countries, all the people of England, are aware—because, if not, it is high time they should be—that while you and I are here administering law under the Queen's commission, there is, at the same time, another system of law being openly executed and carried out, which threatens to supersede altogether the operations of Her Majesty's Courts of Justice."

From North, South, East, and West they had there the most unimpeachable testimony as to the state of things which had existed for months, of course with the full knowledge of the Government. He might refer to a remarkable Memorial lately sent to the Prime Minister signed by 700 magistrates, chairmen of counties, and other persons charged with the administration of the law, and describing the terrible state into which the Government had allowed the country to drift, and to a Memorandum which accompanied the Memorial, stating that time had only permitted it to be sent to those whose names commenced with one of the first eight letters of the alphabet, and that had there been, time to send to all those on the official lists the number of signatures would have been trebled. The hon. Member the Mover of the Address had told the House that the increase of crime had been six or seven-fold above the fair and ordinary rates. If he had studied the statistics of crime he would, unfortunately, have seen that the increase had been a far higher percentage In the Province of Connaught and part of Munster, included within the Connaught and Munster Circuits, and embracing only nine counties out of the 32 in Ireland, there were within the four months between the Summer Assizes in July and the Winter Assizes in December, 1,110 indictable offences reported; but there were only 36 cases for trial. Worse than all, there were 580 persons who refused to give any assistance or information in bringing criminals to justice. The 1,110 cases were only, he believed, about one-half of the indictable offences committed, for the same influence which prevented the 580 persons from giving information deterred people from reporting outrages, fearing that worse might happen to them. He hoped the Chief Secretary would not spring the Returns he had promised upon them as he sprung the Returns over the Disturbance Bill of last year, when, at the close of the debate, the Prime Minister quoted an entirely new set of figures and statistics, altogether different from those previously produced, and which he said he hoped would be in the hands of Members the next morning, after the debate was over. If the Chief Secretary had the Returns, and he must be in possession of them, as he had already given some of the figures in reply to questions by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin, it was his bounden duty to produce them for the general information of the House. Extracts had been given from the addresses of Judges; he wished to read to the House the statements of the sheriffs of counties in the South and West of Ireland. He held in his hand letters from eight sub-sheriffs of different counties, which were practically identical in their opinion that the law was in abeyance, not only as regarded the levying of debts due for rent or recovering the possession of land, but that ordinary decrees for debt of other descriptions could not be executed. One sheriff stated—

"As far as the execution of decrees is concerned, whether for possession or for rent, the law is now totally in abeyance. With a large police force only would I attempt a seizure on a decree for rent; and if I succeeded, such is the state of terror, I would not get a place to keep cattle seized if I were to pay ten times what the law would allow for their sustenance between seizure and sale. I drove 15 miles on Friday last to execute a Superior Court writ, but did not succeed, and my horse would not be admitted into any stable in the village—in fact, having put my horse up where I had been in the habit of stopping, he was ordered out at once, the Land League, I was told, having given instructions to that effect, and I had to move off at once."

Another sheriff wrote—

"I am sorry to inform you that the present state of the county is such that the execution of even a 5 s. decree is an impossibility where a sale has to be resorted to. At the present time no one can even be induced to bid or buy at our sales when in any way connected with land."

Another said—

"I am decidedly of opinion it would be unwise to proceed to obtain decrees at present for rent. It would be impossible to realize."

Another sheriff wrote—

"I have received your letter in reference to the 41 decrees you lodged with me for execution against the tenants on above estate. I regret having to inform you that at the present juncture these decrees are worthless, as it is quite impossible that I could realize 1 s. under any of them. I dare not go on the lands on such a mission without being accompanied by a force of, at least, 150 police. It is idle to disguise the fact—the law in this country, so far as landlord and tenant are concerned, is a dead letter, in illustration of which I may mention that for the last two months in this large county not a single decree or writ for rent could be levied for the reasons I have mentioned."

Nothing has been said as to the execution of ordinary decrees, not connected with land.

said, he had forgotten to read the extracts referring to that part of the question, one of which was as follows:—

"They are now opposed to even levying ordinary debts, and shout and cheer myself and bailiffs as we pass along the road. The moment we are seen entering any locality with the view of executing a legal document, a signal is given, and it runs along so that is impossible to make any levy."

Let them compare this picture with the one which the Prime Minister drew in Mid Lothian of the state of Ireland some eight months ago. The words which were read to the House last night by the right hon. Baronet the Member for North Devon, and which the Prime Minister seemed to question the accuracy of, but which he had taken the trouble to verify for himself to-day from The Times newspaper of the 1st April, 1880. The Elysium he then spoke of had been turned into a howling wilderness of crime, outrage, and terror. The right hon. Gentleman and his Colleagues had, indeed, permitted the country to come within a measurable distance of civil war; and in this they had been vigorously assisted by those who, remembering his words and advice, had striven in the most unprincipled and criminal manner to bring it within the range of practical politics. They had been gravely told by the Chief Secretary that if the Disturbance Bill did not pass the Government would not be responsible for the peace of the country during the winter owing to the large number of evictions which might be expected.

Will the hon. Member be kind enough to quote the words?

said, he had not the extract there; but if the right hon. Gentleman referred to his own speech, no doubt he would find the words there. The Prime Minister had stated that it might be expected that 15,000 people would be turned out homeless and helpless on the road-side; but what had the evictions to do with the existing lawlessness? And he challenged either of the right hon. Gentlemen to say whether it was not the fact that they had not been up to the usual average of ordinary years? It had been said that the late Government did not intend to renew the Peace Preservation Act; but the fact was the new Bill lay already drafted in the Office when the right hon. Gentleman entered it; and the best refutation of these insinuations was the words of the late Prime Minister, who, on the 15th March last, in "another place," and in reply to a Question from Lord Oranmore and Browne, said that it was prudent to assume that the new Parliament would re-enact the Act, and, if necessary, support it with stronger measures, should such be required; and, again, on the 20th of May, during the debate on the Address to the Crown, he strongly animadverted on the decision of the Government in allowing it to drop, and stated that had he remained in power it would have been the duty of his Government to renew it. It had been stated also by the Prime Minister that there was no time for the Act to be renewed between the time of their coming into Office and the expiry of the Act on the 1st of June; but he would remind him that the Peace Preservation Act of 1870 was only introduced on the 17th March, and had passed through both Houses by the 31st, receiving the Royal Assent on the 4th of April. Following this precedent, therefore, there was no reason why a renewal of the Act should not have been passed by the 4th or 5th of June, and in the three or four days' interval between expiry and renewal it was not very likely that there would be any considerable increase of crime, or large importation of arms. He would ask whether the warnings received by the Government from all the permanent officials and from their Predecessors who were best qualified to judge of the state of the country had not been realized? And he would say that a more fatal mistake had never been heedlessly committed in the face of warnings and remonstrances, the neglect of which had left the right hon. Gentleman hopelessly floundering in the mud. On the 7th of October, exactly three months ago, a deputation of Peers, landowners, magistrates, and others, both Liberal and Conservative, waited upon the Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary, urging upon them the necessity of taking immediate steps for the protection of life and property, and placing before them facts of the strongest character. The Lord Lieutenant, in return, asked for the sympathy of the deputation, and the Chief Secretary asked for suggestions. Sympathy they had none to give, but suggestions were freely given, though it was no part of their province to give such, and those suggestions were unanimous in their character; but no more had been heard from that time till the Gracious Speech from the Throne, in which had been foreshadowed the very measures suggested to the Chief Secretary three months ago. Meanwhile, the Government had sat still apparently in a state of coma, silently and indifferently regarding the ruin and chaos they had permitted, and utterly indifferent to the interests of all law-abiding classes of the community in Ireland who were crying to Heaven for vengeance upon them. Ruin, absolute ruin, had been brought upon hundreds of Her Majesty's subjects in Ireland; widows were reduced to beggary, tradesmen brought to bankruptcy, enterprize checked, property rendered unsaleable, securities depreciated, children removed from school because parents were unable to afford the expense of education, servants discharged, and labourers sent home. Capital and employers of labour everywhere leaving the country. That was no fancy picture; but similar instances might be multiplied almost indefinitely. One case he would give in illustration. A gentleman of his acquaintance, who received some £500 or £600 a-year from his property, and whose tenants were rented at 10 per cent under Griffith's valuation, and who, in order to secure something, authorized his agent to offer a further reduction in cases of prompt payment of 15 per cent, had been unable to get 1 s. of his rents, and he had written to his agent appealing to him to send him something, as he could no longer get credit or bread for his children, and the agent had to send him £10 out of his own pocket. That one case illustrated sufficiently the state of things that he had described. Feelings of hostility had grown up between landlord and tenant, master and servant, and next door neighbours who had, up to that time, been the best of friends. Such a state of lawlessness existed throughout the land as had never been paralleled in the present generation. A statesman had not thought it beneath the dignity of a Cabinet Minister to sneer at the misfortunes of those who were now suffering from the effects of his advice, in the contemptuous remarks in his recently published reply to a justly merited rebuke. He ventured to say also that no English man or woman had read the cruel and heartless reply of the Prime Minister to Captain Boycott without a blush of shame. ["Oh!" and "Hear, hear!"] That gentleman had been ruined by the political inaction of the Government; and yet he had received, in response to his appeal for assistance, an answer which was practically to the effect that he had already given too much trouble. He had no hesitation in saying that there was no exaggeration in the accounts which came from Ireland on the state of things existing there. Not a hundredth part of the actual facts reached this country. The sentiment of every honest man in Ireland, whether landlord or tenant, merchant or trader, magistrate or professional man, he believed, was that no Government was worthy of the name that would permit such a state of things as existed in Ireland for even a week, much less for four months. Notwithstanding the accumulated proofs which were presented in October, no less than now, the Government had ruthlessly sacrificed the interests of a large class of Her Majesty's subjects to their political needs, and for such conduct they deserved the reprobation of every law-abiding citizen. There was but one opinion among Liberals and Conservatives alike about the delay and inaction of the Government. The only reason for that inaction, they were told, was that the Government might bring an unanswerable case before the House. That was but small comfort to those who were suffering from that inaction. He would certainly support the long-expected measure for the maintenance of peace in Ireland—a measure which was rendered absolutely necessary by the state of affairs in that country—which he understood the Government were about to bring forward; but with the full conviction that had Ministers not allowed the Peace Preservation Act to expire they would not have seen this degradation of the country, and the Government would not have been under the necessity of asking now for additional powers.

said, those whom he had the honour of representing had the fullest confidence in Her Majesty's Government being able to deal successfully with the questions which had arisen in Ireland—[ Cries of "Order, order!"]

The Question before the House is the Amendment of the hon. Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell).

, continuing, said, he did not agree with the hon. Member who had just sat down (Mr. Tottenham) in thinking that there was any question of a laughing-stock in the matter. He thought it was a very grave and serious matter indeed both for this country and for Ireland. He thoroughly agreed, however, with what was said by the hon. Member for Cork City, when he declared that the circumstances of the present time were very much less grave than they had been at former times when coercion was suggested and recommended by the Government. He regretted to say that he, for one, could not accept the speech they had had from the hon. Gentleman, eloquent and able though it was, as an acquittal of himself and Colleagues, and an excuse for the conduct of the Irish National Land League, whose proceedings he (Mr. Arnold) condemned. In 1848 a much more serious condition of affairs existed in Ireland, civil war being openly advocated in almost every meeting; and the late Mr. Sharman Crawford, who was considered a moderate man, when the Government of that time were bringing forward coercive measures, proposed an Amendment very similar in terms to that of the hon. Member for Cork City, to the effect that the discontent in Ireland was owing to misgovernment, and no coercive legislation would avail and to bring peace and tranquillity to the country. In doing so, that hon. Gentleman declared that he could not occupy a seat in that House without recording his opinion upon the inutility of coercion. When it was an established, though not legalized, practice throughout the South of Ireland that a tenant should purchase and sell the goodwill of his holding at an average of five years' purchase, which was about the average under the Land Act of 1870, was it reasonable to say that because a tenant was unable to pay a year's rent he should lose the five or six years' rental value to which he might otherwise be entitled? That was so clear and palpable an injustice that it was not surprising that the liability to suffer it had produced agitation. One injustice led to another; but with regard to the recommendation of the hon. Member (Mr. Parnell) that men should not pay debts they had contracted to pay until there was a just settlement of the Land Laws, he, for one, could have no sympathy with that teaching. Tenants ought to pay what they had contracted to pay; but when the law affecting the tenure of land was so unjust, he was not surprised that, as a consequence, 10,000 acts of injustice should arise throughout Ireland. The circumstances now were not nearly so grave as in 1848, when the late Prime Minister said that if he thought the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act was occasioned, by political and social evils, he should view the proposition with the greatest jealousy and distrust. They knew perfectly well that the circumstances of the present time proceeded from social and political evils; and, therefore, he viewed the proposal of the Government with some jealousy and distrust. As to the statement that the real object of the agitation was separation from England, he never heard but one man, Feargus O'Connor, advocate that; but if any policy was likely to contravene such advocacy, it was a policy of justice rather than of coercion. He desired to retain Irish Members in the House, and to listen to every plea from Ireland with a sincere desire to do that country justice. It might be that the Government would be able to assign far better reasons than he had yet heard for persevering in a policy of coercion; but at present he considered that if they did persevere in that policy they would so infuriate and exasperate the Irish people that they might expect, not open, but secret crime, and crime of the worst and the most malignant and cruel character. When it was said that in nine-tenths of the crimes reported nobody was made amenable, that betokened the terrible security of criminals. They ought, however, not to place incautious confidence in the Charges of Irish Judges as to the conclusions to be drawn from the statistics with which they were furnished. The learned Judges referred to threatening letters as "extraordinary" crime. But were threatening letters extraordinary? That view could not be maintained by anyone who had read in a recent Return that in 21 months, ending with December 1879, there were 156 cases of threatening letters in the county of Mayo, for which no one was made amenable. The way to stop threatening letters was never to publish them. In his opinion, nothing stimulated the writing of threatening letters more than the publication of them. With regard to the offence of firing into dwelling-houses, the House would bear in mind that such a crime was one that specially indicated some inefficiency in the police. In recently addressing his constituents at Salford, he expressed his regret that the Constabulary had not succeeded in arresting, on the scene of their crimes, the ruffians who fired into dwellings; and he regarded that fact alone as a sufficient proof of the incompetency of the Constabulary for the purposes for which they were required. In England, even poachers hesitated to fire their guns. The question of the Constabulary would be a fit subject for future inquiry by a Select Committee. They were brave and faithful; but they were soldiers rather than policemen. The crime of killing and maiming cattle, which, more than any other, had impressed the feeling of the English people, had been described by the Irish Judges as extraordinary. He could not, however, consider it as extraordinary, for he found that in the Province of Connaught, within 21 months ending December 1879, there had been 72 cases of killing and maiming cattle, of which only 20 were reported by the Constabulary to have an agrarian character, while 52 were reported to have no agrarian character whatever. Such crimes unquestionably marked the degradation of the people, and the only possible mode of exterminating offences of that kind was by raising the moral standard of the Irish people. How could they do that, if they withheld a policy of justice, and if, when a policy of justice was demanded, they substituted a policy of coercion? The hon. Member who had just sat down had referred to the magistrates of Ireland; but he confessed he was not inclined to expect too much from that class. From much observation of the magistracy of Ireland he did not believe that they had done their duty; nor was he surprised. They had been reared on coercive measures; they had always displayed an indecent haste for the suspension of the Constitution; and it was remarkable that these were always the men who were loudest in declaring their admiration for the British Constitution, which they were ready to throw overboard on the first outbreak of disorder in their country. An expression upon this subject was attributed to a right hon. Friend of his, which he thought had been misreported. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was said to have used the phrase that "force was no remedy for lawlessness." He (Mr. Arnold) knew no other remedy for lawlessness than force. He fancied, however, that what his right hon. Friend really said was that force was no remedy for injustice, and if those were his words he should agree with him.

did not know whether he had been so reported; but his hon. Friend had entirely misunderstood him.

thought he had correctly interpreted the meaning of his right hon. Friend to be as he had stated, that force was no remedy for injustice; and it was because he entirely agreed in that sentiment, and considered that force was no remedy for injustice, that he appealed to his English Friends to support the Amendment of the hon. Member for Cork City, for which he would undoubtedly give his own vote. Language had been used in Ulster which, he thought, showed a disposition to forget the benefits which Ulster had received from a custom which he hoped would be extended over the South of Ireland. With regard to the non-payment of debts and the decline of credit which had been referred to by the last speaker, he wished to lay before the House some figures which had an important bearing on the question. He held in his hand evidence which he regarded as irrefragable on the subject, bearing, as it did, on the present position of the credit of the banks of Ireland. He had taken the pains to compare the price of £100 capital in each of the Irish banks on the 1st of January, 1880, and the 1st of January, 1881. The following was the result:—Bank of Ireland, January 1, 1880, £300; January 1, 1881, £310. Belfast Bank, January 1, 1880, £400; January 1, 1881, £400. Hibernian Bank January 1, 1880, £178; January 1, 1881, £172. Munster Bank, January 1, 1880, £220; January 1, 1881, £195. National Bank, January 1, 1880, £197; January 1, 1881, £222. Northern Bank, January 1, 1880, £227; January 1, 1881, £222. Provincial Bank, January 1, 1880, £269; January 1, 1881, £235. Royal Bank, January 1, 1880, £300; January 1, 1881, £315. Ulster Bank, January 1, 1880, £440; January 1, 1881, £415. The result was that in 1880 the average was £281, and in 1881, £276. The Provincial Bank alone showed a considerable falling off. Every Irish Member was aware that the Provincial Bank was the bank of the landlords; and the falling off in the value of its capital was, doubtless, due to the forced sale of a few shares. The most striking fact to which this comparison led was that on the 1st instant the average value of £100 capital in the banks of Ireland was £276, while on the same day the price of £100 Bank of England Stock was £280. He asked his right hon. Friends whether they were prepared to propose a measure of coercion for Ireland—to suspend the Constitutional rights of the Irish people—at a time when, as regarded the state of credit in that country, £100 Bank Stock was close on the value of a similar sum in the far-famed Bank of England. That fact shattered completely all that had been said of the destruction of credit. The entire capital of these nine Irish banks represented a market value of nearly £19,000,000, held by all classes of Irishmen and women, except the poorest. The price afforded a barometer of the secret thoughts of about 20,000 shareholders, possessing an average invested property of nearly £1,000. They included magistrates, landowners, land agents, clergymen, professional men, tradesmen, and farmers. If those persons thought the condition and prospects of Ireland such as was represented by the hon. Member for Leitrim (Mr. Tottenham), was it not certain that the shares of the banks would have been thrown upon the market, and that there would have been a heavy fall in prices? Upon what was the confidence of these Irish shareholders based? They did not look for profit from coercion. It was based, he (Mr. Arnold) said, upon the belief in their minds that the Government both could and would legislate for the benefit of Irish agriculture, and would thus increase and insure the general prosperity of Ireland, and, consequently, that of the banks. He believed, further, that the object which all parties had in view was the welfare of Ireland, although they might be guided by different lights. Coercion, he had no doubt, would intensify the evil; nothing but justice would be a remedy. He confidently hoped, in conclusion, that the majority of the House would bring to the consideration of the affairs of Ireland knowledge, well-placed sympathy, firmness, and patience, and that by a wise and just legislation they would succeed in laying so firmly the foundation of peace, contentment, and happiness, that the voice of sedition should, be heard no more in Ireland.

said, that he was sure he only expressed the general feeling of his Irish Friends and Colleagues when he prefaced the observations he was about to make by thanking the hon. Member for Salford (Mr. Arnold) for the very candid and honest support he had given the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell). At the same time, he wished to guard himself from endorsing every expression he had used. The hon. Member for Salford had quoted that famous saying of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in reference to the application of force. As he (Mr. O'Connor Power) endorsed the sentiment which the right hon. Gentleman uttered, he was anxious that it should not be misunderstood. When the right hon. Gentleman used that expression he had been discussing the whole question of Ireland. He had been discussing the position of Ireland as a whole, and, in passing, he said—"Such is a diagnosis of the situation, and for that situation I say force is no remedy." He was surprised that the hon. Member for Salford should think it necessary to notice the accusation of anyone who was dishonest enough to torture that honest and manly declaration of statesmanlike policy. The right hon. Gentleman did not say that force was no remedy for lawlessness; but he said that force was no remedy for the existing condition of things in Ireland, and certainly the whole history of Ireland was sufficient to support him in the declaration that force established no principle; it had no argument, but only stimulated in the minds of people to whom it was applied a desire to rebut force by equal force, and it only prolonged the bitter struggle which might exist between a disaffected population on the one hand, and a tyrannical Government on the other. It was his (Mr. O'Connor Power's) duty, at the opening of the present Parliament last Session, to move an Amendment to the Address, and he then described the programme of Her Majesty's Government as "a meagre programme." The Prime Minister objected to the description, and said he would have more correctly described it as "a modest programme." Be that as it might, he was bound to say that the programme for the present Session was neither modest nor meagre. It was not meagre in the catalogue of measures the introduction of which it contemplated; and he could not recognize the features of modesty in any speech which not only contemplated, but recommended, an attack on Constitutional liberty. There were one or two mis-statements in the Royal Speech which he felt called upon to notice. In the second paragraph they were informed that—

"The anticipation with which I last addressed you of a great diminution of the distress in Ireland, owing to an abundant harvest, was realized."

It was a mis-statement to say that the distress in Ireland had been considerably diminished owing to an abundant harvest. It had been diminished because the people held the harvest. They had not been afflicted with the spectacle of distress bordering on famine since the harvest, because, owing to the agitation of the Land League in the country, the people had held the harvest, and declined to pay it away in exorbitant rents. Then, again, the right hon. Gentleman had put into the mouth of Her Majesty these words—"The Irish Land Act of 1870 has been productive of great benefits." Now, he (Mr. O'Connor Power) was slow last year to describe that Act as a failure; but the additional experience he had had during the last 12 months, and the events that had happened during that period, left no doubt in his mind on the subject. Historically and literally it was a mis-statement to say that the Land Act of 1870 had conferred great benefits on the people of Ireland. The Royal Speech went on to say—

"In some respects, however, and more particularly under the strain of recent and calamitous years, the protection which it supplied has not been found sufficient, either in Ulster or the other Provinces."

Now, he protested against making the Land Act of 1870 the Alpha and Omega of all the legislation on the subject of land. The sooner they emancipated themselves from the opinion which the right hon. Gentleman had, to a great extent, produced in reference to that measure, the more free they would be to examine the Irish Land Question from its very foundation, and to take a true measure of what would be required to reform the land legislation of Ireland. He joined with his hon. Friends who had already addressed the House in the dissatisfaction they expressed at the prospect of being face to face with a very strong and stringent Coercion Bill, side by side with a very inadequate measure of Land Reform. It was plain, from the description given last night by the Prime Minister of the Land Bill which the Government were about to introduce, that there was no intention of dealing thoroughly with the question. Therefore, they were face to face with this situation. Though it had been proved over and over again that the poverty of the masses of the Irish people was due to a vicious land system, and though the country had for nearly two years been agitated by a movement almost unparalleled in the history of Irish national struggles, they were face to face with the fact that the Liberal Government proposed to find a remedy simply in an amendment of the Land Act of 1870. Such a proposal was nothing more nor less than a mockery of the wrongs and sufferings of the Irish people; it was an imposture on justice; and it would be the duty of Irish Representatives who, perhaps, like himself, had not attended a single land meeting to expose that imposture to the intelligence of the Irish people. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition asked the Government why Parliament was not summoned in November for the purpose of dealing with the condition of Ireland. He (Mr. O'Connor Power) agreed with the right hon. Baronet that it was the duty of the Government to call Parliament together in November, but for a very different purpose from that which the right hon. Gentleman sketched out. The Government ought to have foreseen the extent to which the land agitation would spread. If they were dealing with disaffection in England, or a great national movement in England, similar to that which was now going on in every part of Ireland, they would not wait until the agitation had forced itself beyond Constitutional bounds before divining the cause and applying a remedy. If Her Majesty's Government had realized the situation and assembled Parliament in November, without touching the vexed question of Land Law Reform at all, they might have done more to destroy the occupation of his hon. Friend the Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell) than by all the Coercion Bills which, with the co-operation of their political opponents, they might be able to inscribe on the Statute Book if the House sat on until the 31st of December next. In view of the fact that the Government had appointed a Commission to inquire into the question, it would not have been fair to have expected from them a measure dealing with the tenure of land; but they might have acted on the suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright), made two months ago at Birmingham, in reference to the improve- ment of the resources and the reclamation of the waste lands of Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman asked what was £10,000,000 for such a purpose? He, for one, had been misled by that speech, for he read that suggestion in the light of a foreshadowing of one of the measures which Her Majesty's Government intended to introduce side by side with any proposals they might deem it their duty to submit upon the question of the tenure of land. If they had assembled Parliament on the 2nd of November, and said to his hon. Friend the Member for Cork City that they were inquiring into the subject which his agitation had been endeavouring to advance, and, pending that, tendered remedies to meet the poverty and distress in those parts of Ireland which were suffering from a crowded population, the result to-day would be very different. Certainly, they would not have been obliged to ask Parliament now to permit them to use the rude remedy of coercion. They might pile Commission upon Commission, and their ablest Commissioners might pile Report upon Report; but they would have to come round to this stern fact in the end—one of the most prominent facts in the agricultural condition of Ireland—that there was in certain districts in the South and West of Ireland, owing to a process of eviction from better lands carried on for the last 50 years, a surplus population for those lands. The easy-going English politician said at once that the remedy for that state of things was to be found in emigration. He (Mr. O'Connor Power) totally denied that emigration was a real remedy, especially as those in Ireland who had hitherto emigrated were the wealth-producers and not the wealth-consumers. It must be further remembered that in saying that a surplus population existed in certain parts of Ireland, he did not mean that the country as a whole was too thickly peopled. The fact was that the population was unequally distributed through the operation of the proceeding he had mentioned, and that circumstance alone had led to the circumstance that they were now brought face to face with this talk about an over-peopled land, and the necessity for emigration. If the Government had been duly sensible of their responsibilities, instead of having to come to the Land League for instruction, they would have paid attention to the proposals made year after year by the Irish Members. If, in November, a Royal Commission had been appointed and £8,000,000 or £10,000,000 had been raised by loan for the reclamation of waste lands, at least half of those 200,000 tenants who, in every crisis, suffered most from distress might have been accommodated on those lands, and those 100,000 tenant farmers would have represented 500,000 of the population. The testimony of scientific men proved the practicability of the idea, and the result would be that more room would be found for those who remained in the hitherto crowded lands. Had the Government acted in that way, there would have been no necessity for calling Parliament together in January for the purpose of suspending the Constitution, and a great advance would have been made towards the solution of the Land Question, and they would have struck at the root of Irish poverty and misery. The Prime Minister, probably without intending it, had lent some force to the complaint that was very common in England as to the amount of Parliamentary time and attention occupied by Irish affairs, and had reminded his hearers that England and Scotland, not less than Ireland, formed part of the United Kingdom. That might conceivably have been a delicate way of bidding for the gratitude of Irish Members after again taking Irish affairs into consideration. To his mind there was a feeling in England that the English Parliament had been making concessions to Ireland, and that for a series of years they had been presenting that country with great boons. Representing for the time being, at all events, one of the Irish counties, he would say, in the name of that county, that he wanted no concessions to Ireland. He wanted concessions to justice; and if they conceded justice no Irish Member would ask for concessions to Ireland. He utterly repudiated the idea that they had been making concessions to Ireland. They had only been paying back gradually, and with stinted and reluctant hand, the debt that for centuries had been due to the people they had robbed, and whom they had attacked in all the elements of their civilization. They had already heard that force was no remedy for Irish discontent; and yet the Premier came down to the House with a Coercion Bill in his pocket. Was ever a Minister in a more painful, he might say in a more ridiculous, position; and would anyone be surprised to hear a man so situated confess that he laboured under a deep sense of shame and humiliation? It was simply reversing all the teachings of the Liberal Party, and borrowing the policy and the principles of their opponents. The policy in times past in Ireland, as even Conservatives would admit, had been a policy of brute force and tyrannical and unconstitutional violence; and they now found the Liberal Party of England making a shameful retrograde movement, and going back upon the policy which had been proved, over and over again, to be a failure. The right hon. Baronet the Leader of the Opposition represented that policy; but there was no sham, no humbug, no misconception about his acts. The Prime Minister, he (Mr. O'Connor Power) supposed, represented the policy of the present—that was the policy of expediency, which sacrificed public liberty in order to prevent, as he said himself, "a serious division of Parties in this House." He believed they also wished to prevent, primarily, a serious division of Parties in the Cabinet itself. He (Mr. O'Connor Power) claimed for the Irish Party that they represented the policy of the future, and that they were, therefore, entitled to some degree of sympathy. Thirty years hence, and he hoped and believed long before, all the proposals contained in the programme of the hon. Member for Cork City would be written in the Statute Book; but he appealed to the Prime Minister to consider what Ireland would suffer in the interval, what national antipathies would be fanned into flame, what mutual denunciations would be heard among Saxons and Celts, and all because the right hon. Gentleman, to prevent "a serious division of Parties," had swallowed his own public professions and Constitutional principles enunciated in public upon the hustings for the sake of keeping a divided Cabinet in power. A celebrated American statesman, Henry Clay, had said that he would rather be right than be President of the United States; but the Prime Minister preferred to remain at the head of an ostensibly united, but really divided, Cabinet than to do justice to Ireland. ["Oh, oh!"] He had some grounds for his suspicions; but if the relations between the Members of the Cabinet were really happier than he had been led to believe, time would show whether that unnatural harmony could last. As he had said last year in the debate on the Address, it remained to be seen whether the Liberal Party, in fighting the battle at the General Election, had struggled for principle, or for power. He had no idea that in so short a time the question would be decided in such a manner. Where were their principles? One short year ago the name of the right hon. Gentleman stood as powerful for the cause of liberty to the oppressed as an army in battle array. What was the right hon. Gentleman's position to-day? He was the victim of political necessity. Twelve months ago he was the Leader, not only of English Liberalism, but when he spoke there was not a slave shivering in his chains in any part of downtrodden Europe who did not feel his soul exulting in the prospect of a glorious emancipation. When, however, the slave read the message which the champion of Bulgarian rights was now sending to the people of Ireland, he would say that times were changed, and that men had changed with them. He would say that if English Liberalism was truly represented by legislation of this character, English Liberalism was remarkable for its arrant hypocrisy. These appeals to the principles of Liberalism would, he feared, fall very flat on Her Majesty's Ministers to-day. Twelve months ago they would have had considerable force. ["No, no!"] Well, they had had considerable force. The contest in Mid Lothian, as far as the Prime Minister was concerned, was made up of appeals to the principles of universal liberty. Even the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department, who could not be accused of posing usually as a champion of oppressed nationalities, went through the country saying that the doctrine of nationality lay at the basis of international peace. That doctrine had now evaporated. It was no longer mentioned in the declarations and speeches of Her Majesty's Ministers. But the General Election had now gone by, and they might be some distance from an- other Election—he did not know, and he must say he did not care very much. For he could not conceive that any General Election which might take place would result in a policy more opposed to the true interests of Ireland than the policy contained within the four corners of the Queen's Speech, written by the hands of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister had acted in direct opposition to the great principles of Liberalism associated with his name, and had disappointed the greater portion of the Liberal Party. He would conclude by an appeal to Her Majesty's Government, which might have some force. They had succeeded in destroying the last chance of the existence of a Liberal Party in Ireland. He did not hesitate to say that if the hon. Members for Ulster cared, they could inform the Prime Minister that he had made it impossible to construct the Liberal Party in Ireland. He asked the hon. and learned Member for Tyrone (Mr. Litton) where was the policy of the "three F's," which the hon. and learned Member submitted for the acceptance of the House? That policy was not embodied in Her Majesty's Speech; and he thought he might likewise assert that Her Majesty's Government had done something to damage the Liberal Party in England and Scotland. He was perfectly sure that if the hon. Members whom he saw opposite to him were to echo the sentiments which were deep down in the hearts of the masses of the English people in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Northumberland, and Durham, they would tell the Prime Minister that they were thoroughly disappointed with his programme. [ Cheers from the Ministerial side below the Gangway. ] Those cheers were an ample proof of the correctness of his statement. Therefore, upon what principle did Her Majesty's Government come before the House with any feeling of confidence? They had anticipated opposition from their old and legitimate foes, and they could not hope to win any measure of support from the Representatives of the nation which they were about to coerce. They were repudiated, at the present moment, by the masses of the English working people. ["No, no!"] They, therefore, came forward with a programme upon the adoption of which no Party was bold enough to stake its reputa- tion; and the only chance of passing it was to be found in the appeal which the Prime Minister had made to the divided elements of the temporarily united Party which had placed him in power.

The hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power) has spoken with his usual ability, but with less than his usual fairness, and I might almost leave his remarks to answer themselves. I believe that in Ireland, excited as it is now, to say nothing of England and Scotland, there is hardly a man in the hon. Member's own country who would charge on my right hon. Friend (Mr. Gladstone) that his policy affecting the interests of Ireland has been merely devised in order that he may remain one more year in Office. Why, the hon. Member does not think so himself. In one remark he made I quite agree with him. He repeated a remark of my right hon. Friend, and I repeat it again, that we do not believe any more than he does that coercion is a remedy for the evils of Ireland. We do not believe that by a coercive or repressive policy we can heal the wrongs of Ireland. But this we are most reluctantly forced to believe, that protection to person and property is wanted in Ireland, and must be given; that it is necessary; and that of all the wrongs which could be done to the Irish people there could be no greater wrong than for the Government not to fulfil its first duty, which is the protection of life and property. If, when we bring our measure before the House, we cannot prove that it is necessary; that without it life is not safe, that personal liberty is not safe, and that industry cannot be carried on—if we cannot prove those things, then, I suppose, the House would properly consider that we had failed to make out a case for it. I presume that, personally, I have more direct responsibility with regard to Ireland than any of my Colleagues; and the House would therefore expect me to make some remarks before this debate comes to a close. In doing so I am in this position. I shall have to defend myself and the Government from attacks on both sides. First, let me say a word or two in regard to the speech of the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell), who moved the Amendment. The hon. Member spoke with great moderation. My work would have been somewhat easier for the last two or three months if all his speeches had been marked by the same moderation. But, taking his speech as it was delivered to-night, he stated what the object of the Land League was. He spoke of meetings for agitation. Those meetings, instead of having had the effect the hon. Member says they have had, or were meant to have, of preventing outrages, have, I have been forced to find, been followed by outrages. Outrages have followed the meetings in almost exact proportion. The hon. Gentleman says that the other object of the Land League was the recommendation to persons to refuse to take farms from which others had been evicted. This is the most extraordinary moderate way in which the hon. Member described that object of the Land League. I do not know if I should have alluded to the special circumstances of any of his speeches if he had not forced me to do so by that remark. Let him look back to his speech at Ennis, made very soon after Parliament was prorogued, and I think he will find that his recommendation was made in a way that he would not like to have anything recommended to himself. This recommendation to persons to refuse to take farms from which others had been evicted included a recommendation to ruin them if they did so. It was a recommendation to take care that no one bought of them or sold to them. It was a recommendation to taboo them, socially, in the market-place, in domestic life, in the church, and to treat them as lepers. All I can say is that the language which he has brought before the House to-night, as to the objects of the Land League, is somewhat different, and a great deal more moderate, than that which he addressed to the people of Ireland. Never the less, the hon. Member, in what he proceeded to say, really, to my mind, stated very much the case of the Government. He showed the painful necessity under which we are of bringing forward some measure, and asking for further powers, for the protection of person and property. What do I understand him to say? That the force of public opinion was to be brought to bear in the case of persons offending against the unwritten law. The hon. Member assents to that; and he went on to say that while, generally speaking, it is a great crime to excite public opinion against the law of the land, yet in this case it was no crime. In fact, he declared in moderate but in very plain language, which will be well enough understood in Ireland, that the object in which he intended to persist was to replace the law of the land by the unwritten law—that is, by the law of the Land League. Now, I ask every Member of this House, I would ask even the Irish Members, whether it can be expected that a Government should thus allow the duties and authority, which are their prerogative, to be taken from them? I ask the Members for Ireland whether, if ever they succeeded in obtaining a separate Irish Government, by the Repeal of the Union, or by the establishment of Home Rule, they would for a moment expect that such a Government could continue if it were to allow its law to be replaced by an unwritten law?

The right hon. Gentleman, I am sure, does not wish to misrepresent me; but what I should say was that our desire was, by acting upon public opinion, to replace the bad portion of the law of the land.

It will be in the recollection of the House that the hon. Member distinctly said that what he wanted to carry out was the unwritten law—to replace what he calls the present Land Law by an unwritten law. In other words, by the action of public opinion, as he calls it, the law of the land was to be disregarded and another law put in its place. He went on to state the effects which had followed his speeches. He said how patriotic it was for people to be willing to go to gaol, and to suffer hard labour, for keeping his law, and for breaking and setting at defiance the law of the land which had the power of punishing them. But the position in which we find ourselves is, that there is no great danger of those persons who follow his teaching having to suffer for what he calls their patriotism. The state in which we find Ireland at this moment is this—that all law must, more or less, have a force behind it in order to make it obeyed, and which must be able to make those who break it fear punishment. What I have to prove to the House—and unless I prove it the Bill it will be my painful duty to bring in I hope will be rejected—what I shall have to prove, I am sorry to say, is this—that those who break the law of the land have no fear of punishment under the present condition of things, because very few persons, hardly anyone in fact, dares to give evidence against them, and very few juries dare to convict. It was upon that account that the remark was inserted in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech as to the reign of terror which has followed from the existing state of things. But, although those who break the law of the land have no fear of punishment, those who break the hon. Member's unwritten law have very great fear of punishment indeed. I do not charge the hon. Member with having himself incited the people of Ireland to commit outrages; but he knows very well that the result of his speeches and of his action would be that to a certainty these outrages would come. [ Cries of "No!"] And he knows that these outrages have followed upon the observance of his unwritten law. [ Cries of "Withdraw!" and "It is false!"] In the Gracious Speech from the Throne, Her Majesty says that there is already terror, and that it is reasonable terror; there is fear on the part of any man who ventures to disobey the mandates of the Land League, and to obey those of the law of the land.

I rise to Order. I want to know, Sir, if I understood the right hon. Gentleman correctly when I understood him to say that the hon. Member for Cork knew the result of his teaching would be the commission of outrages? If I understood the right hon. Gentleman rightly, then all I can say is that it is as base and abominable a calumny to be uttered against a Member of this House—

The hon. Member for Dungarvan has spoken to a point of Order, and he has himself been guilty of disorder in imputing calumny to the right hon. Gentleman.

I desire to ask, Sir, whether the right hon. Gentleman was in Order in speaking as he did?

The right hon. Gentleman, as I understood him, spoke of the results of the speeches of the hon. Member for Cork. In so doing he did not appear to me to transgress the Rules of the House.

I rise to a point of Order. The right hon. Gentleman not only spoke of the effects—what he termed the results of the speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork—he not only spoke of those speeches as having led to the commission of outrage and of crime, but he also said that my hon. Friend was aware that those speeches would lead to outrages and crime. I ask you, Sir, to rule if it is within the competence of the right hon. Gentleman, and the Order and decencies of this House, that such a charge should be put forward.

If the right hon. Gentleman in his speech had attributed motives of that kind to the hon. Member for Cork he would have been out of Order; but I did not understand that that was the effect of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks.

I have no objection to put it in this way—[ Cries of "No!" and "Withdraw!"]

Apologize.

I have no objection to put it in this way—

Withdraw.

I shall withdraw nothing at the peremptory demand of any hon. Member of the House, unless, Sir, I am requested by you to do so.

Do I not understand, Sir, that you ruled the right hon. Gentleman to be out of Order? If so, I ask him at once to withdraw the objectionable words.

I have already said that, as far as I understood the right hon. Gentleman, no observations fell from him that, in my opinion, were out of Order.

I desire that there should be as little heat in the matter as possible. I will, therefore, put it in this way—that the hon. Member for Cork, with his knowledge of the Irish character, and with his ability, ought to have known, and it is a wonderful thing to me if he did not know, what the natural effect of his speeches would be.

I again rise to Order. Is it in Order for the right hon. Gentleman to say that the hon. Member for Cork, knowing what the Irish people are, ought to have understood that they would commit outrages as the result of his speeches? That is what I understand the right hon. Gentleman to say, and, I would ask, is that a decent explanation?

I call upon Mr. Forster.

At any rate, the outrages undoubtedly followed upon the meetings of the Land League. I repeat what I stated before, that there has been great fear of punishment on the part of those who have followed the unwritten law, and there has been very little reasonable fear of punishment by those who broke the law of the land, and the reason is because there have been these outrages, and because of the terror which has resulted from them. I wish to say a word or two now in regard to the hon. Member's statistics. I observed that he took the outrages which have occurred for many years past, and he showed that altogether crime in Ireland has not increased. I believe he is right in that statement. But agrarian crime has very largely increased. It has very largely increased during the last year; very largely increased within the last two or three months, and remarkably so within the last month. And the agrarian crime which has most increased has been the crime of intimidation—violent and lawless intimidation, and intimidation likely to strike terror into the minds of the people—that very intimidation which has made those who keep the law afraid of keeping it, and those who break the law able to break it with impunity. The hon. Member compares the evictions with outrages, and he gives the impression that the evictions have increased, and that with the evictions the outrages have also increased. Against that statement I have to inform him—or rather remind him, for I think he has all the figures before him, and will, therefore, I suppose, be aware of it—that although, as he states, there have been far fewer evictions within the last six months—I believe there have been hardly any during the last month or two—yet the outrages have very greatly increased. Indeed, the outrages within the last month or two have immensely increased; and the endeavour to fasten them upon the evictions is, I think, disproved by the facts. There is another matter which I have also to state, and that is that there are outrages now prevailing in parts of Ire- land in which there have been but few evictions. Take, for instance, the county of Limerick. In those parts of the county in which there have hitherto been but few evictions there is now very great insecurity. A system of terrorism exists, and there is great prevalence of crime and outrage. I am afraid it will be my painful duty, in bringing in the Bill with which the Government have intrusted me, to give to the House very many more reasons for it than I can give now; but still, I cannot quite allow the hon. Member's statement to go over to Ireland without giving one or two cases just to show that intimidation does exist, and what the character of the intimidation is. I will take a case which occurred within the last day or two in the county of Limerick. I give it, not as a very violent outrage—not as an attempt to kill, but as just that kind of outrage which carries out the unwritten law, and which most successfully makes those who break it fear punishment. The report says—

"On the 27th ult., at 5.30, a shot was fired into the shop of a lady. The bullet pierced the shop window and a partition,"

It seems there was a bullet. It is evident that I was mistaken as to the character of the outrage, and that it was an attempt to kill.

"She was in the shop and stooped. Had she been standing she would have been shot dead. At 5 o'clock on the morning of the 28th, a shot was fired in the road in front of her house."

The only motive that could be assigned for this outrage was that she had refused to join the Land League, or to subscribe to its funds. I will read another case, and, for obvious reasons, I do not give the names. The report says—

"I beg to state that in county Clare, on Tuesday evening at half-past 7, a very small farmer residing in my district was shot at in his own house and wounded. Two men entered his house, asked him why he sent his children to a school kept by a man who was a Government spy, and told him to beg his life. This he refused to do, and they fired upon him. The teacher had made himself obnoxious by tearing down a threatening notice posted near the school-house. The farmer is a very poor man having only 2 cows and 11 children."

[ Cries of "Oh!" and laughter from the Home Rule Members. ] I am surprised that such a statement should be received with laughter by any hon. Member. I can imagine the indignation with which laughter would have been received if any one of these hon. Members had quoted this case as one of distress. It is stated that these outrages have been much exaggerated. Well, there have been exaggerations in the Press, and I was very sorry last night to hear the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Devon (Sir Stafford Northcote) make a statement which made me think that he has not really very much studied the question. The right hon. Gentleman stated that only one-tenth of the outrages came before the police. The hon. Member for Leitrim (Mr. Tottenham) said 50 per cent; but how the right hon. Gentleman could fall into such an error very much astonishes me. The statement is about as correct as that of the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), that one-tenth of the outrages reported by the police are not outrages at all. In point of fact, the truth is rather on the side of the right hon. Member for North Devon than of the hon. Member for Galway. There has been a good deal of denial of outrages, and the case I am about to mention is one in which I think the denial ought to be disproved. A lady was shot at recently near Limerick. Yet one of the most influential papers in Ireland, or probably in the United Kingdom, The Freeman's Journal, stated as a positive fact that that outrage was an entire exaggeration. Some Roman Catholic clergyman wrote to say he was quite sure that no shot was ever fired at Miss Ellard, but that there was some hooting, and, fearing that she was in danger, she fired at those who were hooting her. Now, the facts are these. The lady was in her own waggonette, and when 300 yards from the railway station a shot was fired from a gateway on the side of the road. The shot struck the splashboard with such violence that she thought one of the springs of the carriage had broken, and she called on her servant to pull up. Immediately a second shot was fired which struck one of the iron supports of the cushion against which she was leaning. Why was this lady fired at? Because she had been written to by the Land League on the subject of rents, and had not answered the letter. Hitherto she had been very popular with her father's tenantry and labourers with whom she came in contact. Her father is very old, and, I am sorry to say, is in a very bad state of health. I will not give any more cases of outrage now. I might keep the House until to-morrow morning, and it is not my duty to anticipate the remarks which I shall have to make when I shall have to bring in the Bill which I must bring before the House. I will, however, make one remark in regard to a statement made by the hon. Member for the City of Cork at the beginning of his speech. The hon. Member expressed a hope or expectation that I would give the exact details of the Bill to-night. That would be a perfectly unprecedented course to take. We are now debating the Address; and if I were to give the outlines of the Bill before bringing in the Bill, this debate would really be a debate upon the Bill itself, and would neither be in accordance with precedent or custom, or convenient to the House. I will now turn to another branch of the subject, and to a speech of a very different tone—that of the hon. and gallant Member for Leitrim. If the hon. Member for Cork heard that speech it must have given him some comfort, because it is quite clear the hon. and gallant Member for Leitrim does not think that the hon. Member for Cork has anything whatever to do with the present state of things. The hon. Member puts it all on the shoulders of Her Majesty's Government. He charged Her Majesty's Government with the most distinct violation of pledges, and accused us of reducing Ireland to a Pandemonium, saying that we had converted our Elysium intoa howling wilderness of crime and despair. He evidently thinks that not only have the speeches of the hon. Member for Cork not caused the outrages, but I suppose he imagines that we committed them ourselves. At any rate, his remarks would seem to imply that. But these were general remarks, and I am willing to make very great allowance for them. He has not had—very few Irishmen have had—a pleasant time of it during the last quarter of a year, and I can say also that the Irish Secretary has not had a pleasant time. The hon. and gallant Member said we were—

"Silently and indifferently looking on at the wreck and misery which is caused, careless of the cries of vengeance that were raised up against us."

I do not think I ought to allow this debate to pass without showing to the House to what extent we have not been indifferent to the state of affairs in Ireland. Let us come to the definite charges of the hon. and gallant Member. He asked—"Why did you not renew the Peace Preservation Act?" and added—"Had not the Peace Preservation Act expired, the country would have been spared the degradation which it has endured." I am very much surprised at that expression on the part of the hon. and gallant Member, looking at the experience which he possesses. He must be aware that if the Peace Preservation Act had been continued into this year, there is no reason to suppose that it would have checked the outrages which have occurred. He must know very well that outrages increased last year, not so much as they have recently, certainly, but increased on the whole, and to that extent that they clearly show that the Peace Preservation Act was powerless to prevent them. Last January, when I, at any rate, was not an Irish Secretary, silently indifferent to what was going on, offences against the person, which are the most serious of agrarian outrages, were more than in any part of last year except December—more than they had been in any month since March, 1850. Therefore, I absolutely demur to the statement of the hon. and gallant Member that had the Peace Preservation Act not expired we should have been saved from the present state of things. But he says we might have renewed this Act, and that we found a Bill ready prepared in the office pigeon-holes. A noble Lord also, in "another place," said that a Bill was courteously presented to me by my Predecessor. But what was the use of courteously presenting me with a Bill when the House met on the 20th of May, and the Bill had to be passed by the 1st of June? Then the hon. Member said—"You might have done as you did in 1870." We are going to carry the measure we shall propose with all the strength in our power; but I do not suppose that the hon. Member thinks ten days are sufficient for the purpose. What he ought to have recollected, and what the late Government ought to have recollected, was the state of public opinion with regard to this measure, the probable opposition they were likely to have in the House of Commons, and, particularly, they ought to have remembered their own experience in 1875, when they thought it their duty to renew a portion of the Peace Preservation Act, which it took them six weeks to carry out. That measure, too, was brought in on the 1st of March, and not on the 20th of May. With the view they say they held, and with the information possessed by the Members of the late Government, on which they say we ought to have acted, and upon which they themselves might have acted, it was their duty to have brought in that Bill, and made it safe in the early part of last year. The facts were these. I have stated that the agrarian outrages in January last year were larger than they were in any month until September, and that offences against the person were larger than they were in any month until December. The information received from the magistrates was in their hands in January, and yet they silently and indifferently looked on, and took no steps to pass this Bill, which hon. Members opposite, perhaps, suppose would have prevented the present state of things.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give the succeeding months?

Yes. In the month of March the number of outrages fell to 83; but, according to the case of the hon. and gallant Member, the Government ought to have brought in the Bill before they knew what were the returns for the month of March; and when it is stated that they were perfectly sure that if they had succeeded in the late General Election they would have had time to bring in this Bill I am not at all sure that they would. Judging from the experience of 1875, that would not have been the case. The hon. and gallant Member quoted a speech of the late Prime Minister, in which he stated that, if necessary, he would renew the Act. That was before the Elections. After the Elections he stated that he would have brought it forward. I can only state that the impression which I found existing in Ireland was that it would not be brought forward, and that the Coercion Act would be allowed quietly to expire. The Dublin Evening Mail of May 15, when it was thought the present Government were going to bring forward the measure, said—

"The course which the late Government undoubtedly would have adopted was to allow the Coercion Act quietly to drop."

All I can say is that the noble Lord and his supporters had not taken the care which they ought to have taken to make it clear in Ireland that they meant to bring it forward. Again, there were the remarks of influential organs of Conservative opinion in England— The Standard and Globe —to the same effect. The non-fulfilment of duty on the part of the late Government would not have excused us; but we had before us these facts. First, that the Peace Preservation Act, as it then existed, had done little or nothing to check outrages. Secondly, we found them diminishing. Thirdly, that it was impossible for us to have passed that Bill, so courteously presented to me, although it was only a renewal Bill. It was absolutely unavoidable that five or six weeks should elapse before any such Bill could be passed. There was, therefore, no time to bring before the country a perfectly new Act, which it would have to be; and we not unnaturally thought that as we should be six weeks about it, as it had not been effectual, as matters were getting better, as distress was not increasing, but diminishing, and as there might be a good harvest, we might try whether Ireland could not be governed in exactly the same manner as England. [ Laughter. ] The noble Lord opposite (Lord Randolph Churchill) laughs at that proposition. I certainly plead guilty to the fact that we had some hope that a good harvest would do something towards quieting Ireland. I am now going to say something which I daresay will meet with ironical cheers from hon. Gentlemen opposite, as well as hon. Members below the Gangway. We had the hope, and I have not given up the hope, that the Irish people would have some confidence in a Government which, at any rate, means well towards them; and, not with standing the efforts of the hon. Member for Cork and the hon. Member for Cavan, who sits near him, I believe that they and I shall live to see that expectation fulfilled. But what happened during the Session? Outrages did not very materially increase; in fact, it may be said that they did not increase at all, for though they increased to some extent in number they diminished in seriousness. In the month of July there were 84 agrarian outrages, and only three outrages against the person. There was, indeed, a matter that occupied a good deal of attention during last Session, to which, however, I should not have alluded had it not been for a remark of the hon. Member for Cork. It will be within the recollection of the House, and I think it is worthy the recollection and attention of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, of the hon. and gallant Member for Leitrim, and the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin, that the hon. Member for Cork, who lost no opportunity of sneering at the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, made a statement to-night similar to that he made soon after the Session in the country, to the effect that if the Bill had passed it would have undoubtedly crushed, or very much injured, the agitation in Ireland. I have been led, by the remarks of the hon. Member for Leitrim, to reply to the charges made by the Members of the late Government, perhaps more than I should otherwise have done. I am perfectly aware that this question is far too serious, and that the interests involved are of far too painful an intensity for either the House or the country to be patient with much bandying to and fro of responsibility with respect to it. I am, however, obliged to reply, to some extent, to the attacks which have been made. I acknowledge this—that whatever have been the difficulties which we inherited, or which have been forced upon us, it was our business to try to meet and overcome them; and I think that the House will, perhaps, give me a short time, while I state very briefly what our attempts to overcome them have been. But before I describe what we have done, I must explain what we have not done, which, I believe, is more in the minds of hon. Gentlemen opposite than what we have done. It has been stated in "another place," and frequently in the country of late, that we ought to have summoned Parliament together long ago, and that we ought to have asked for much stronger and greater powers. Well, hon. Members who say that are under one mistake to begin with; they seem to suppose that the Government has only to ask for powers, and that they will be immediately granted. Especially they seem to think that my noble Friend the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and I had only to say we wanted some extraordinary powers and that we should get them. But we have, after all, to deal with a Representative Assembly, and with the House of Commons, which requires a very strong case to be made out before it will grant any extraordinary powers to the Executive. I am perfectly aware that in the present case that demand will be made; and I say it will be a sorrowful thing for the country when a demand is not made, and rigorously made, that the strongest case for such further powers should be made out. The hon. Member opposite has complained that when a number of gentlemen connected with Ireland came to see me some months ago I asked them for suggestions. I do not think it would have been courteous to such a deputation as that which came before me had I not done so. They made suggestions, and very strong suggestions they were; but I told them the liberty of the subject ought to be considered. They came with experience, with much anxiety, and many of them with much suffering; but they seemed to suppose that when crime first appeared, even to a slight extent, and on the first appearance of the inability of the tribunals or the usual modes of justice to stop that crime, such events ought to be immediately followed by the suspension of liberty. I stated to them that we had to exhaust all the Constitutional powers reposed in us before we asked for more, and that the House of Commons was very jealous of the liberty of the subject. There is another reason why, especially as regards Ireland, I look with very great reluctance upon any such demand as we are now about to make, and that is that, time after time, it has been found necessary, I will not say without ground, but in some cases with insufficient ground, in others with sufficient ground, to ask Parliament for larger powers in the government of Ireland; and, therefore, there is at this moment a very sorrowful reliance in Ireland, not so much upon Irish determination to support the law, as upon English help to see that the law is enforced. Of that there can be no question. I felt—and probably that was one reason, and a very strong reason, why I did not come so quickly as the hon. and gallant Member opposite to the conclusion to which I have now been forced— that every officer of the law, every officer of Government in Ireland, from the Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary down to the junior resident magistrate, the local magistrate, and even the youngest policeman, had been taught too much to rely upon British power. All these were reasons why we were reluctant to come to the conclusion at which we have arrived. Will the House pardon me if I enforce these views by an authority much more powerful than mine, whose words have been, I believe, read in "another place," and which were spoken some 50 years ago by Sir Robert Peel, in a speech addressed to the House of Commons, and when he was in the position now occupied by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Devon. The circumstances were that the Liberal Government of that day found themselves forced to bring in a Bill for very much stronger powers than we shall now ask for the government of Ireland. The state of Ireland was worse then than it is now. Murders were then more common, and apparently, owing to the increase of civilization, we now think more of murders and outrages than our ancestors did, and we think more of hanging for them, while the Government is now more blamed for not preserving law and order than it was then. But how did Sir Robert Peel meet the Government of that time? Did he do what, as the right hon. Gentleman opposite did last evening, all he could to damage the power and prestige of the Government in Ireland by saying it is true that he would support it in what they were doing now, but that they had been neglecting their duty, and were a Government scarcely worth supporting? No. He said—

"He had never taunted His Majesty's Ministers for not proposing at an earlier period the measures of coercion which they now demanded. When others said that they ought to have applied for coercive measures, he had been no party to the complaint. His language had always been—'Try the ordinary laws; there is great evil in coercive measures. You cannot rely on them for any permanent good, but there is great risk that they will relax the energy of the ordinary law.'"—[3 Hansard, xv. 371.]

I say that though we are forced to bring these measures forward, from the very bottom of our hearts we feel the truth of that saying. Sir Robert Peel goes on to state that he thinks that—

"The time has come when, if necessity were made out, he would go in for the suspension of the ordinary law now ineffectual for its purpose."

I give these words in order that hon. Members from Ireland may not think that Sir Robert Peel is an authority they can quote. Well, we came to the conclusion that we ought to exhaust the ordinary powers of law before we applied for more. Now comes the question—Have we done so or not? I maintain that we have done so, and I challenge any Member of this House to prove the contrary. Before the meeting of Parliament many charges were made against the Irish Government of not using the powers we possessed, and I have postponed addressing the House longer than I should otherwise have done, because I thought the charges would have been repeated here this evening. But they have not been repeated; and I will say again that I challenge any right hon. or hon. Member to make out a fair case in which we have neglected to use our powers, and show, with regard to the Irish Executive, that any officer, from the highest official in the Castle to the policeman in the country, has not done his utmost for the preservation of law and order. I wait for any such accusation, and am ready to meet it. Although such accusation is not made, I must make one or two remarks. What were our resources, according to our Constitutional powers? We had the police to detect and prevent crime, the military to assist them in preserving order, and the Law Officers—the Attorney and Solicitor General and the Crown Solicitors—for instituting such prosecutions as appeared to be necessary to vindicate the law. Now, as to the police; what have we done? The hon. Member for Cork has complained against the employment of the police. We sent the police, as it was our duty to do, into the disturbed districts; and the House will, perhaps, be surprised to hear that in the county of Galway there has been and is at least one policeman to less than 50, and one soldier to less than 100 adult men. And yet there has been a great prevalence of outrages, although there have been many fewer than there would have been had the number of police been less. With regard to the proclaimed counties, 591 police have been sent into them, and the number of troops has been increased from 19,000 to nearly 26,000. I am sometimes not surprised that, smarting as they were under the sufferings they have had to endure, gentlemen of all classes in Ireland have complained against the Government; nor am I surprised that many gentlemen in England, labouring under the sense of humiliation occasioned by these difficulties, should suppose it was owing to some fault on the part of the Government that these difficulties have not been overcome. We have been blamed, indeed, for our precautions; but I suppose that had we not taken them we should have been very much blamed. I cannot adequately describe the help I received in the discharge of my functions from the calmness, patience, and judgment of Earl Cowper; and here I must say one word with regard to the Permanent Under Secretary in Ireland. I understand that one or two attempts have been made to cast blame upon him; but, if so, never was blame less deserved. After some experience of official life, I can in justice say that I never met so hardworking a man, with such courage, judgment, and impartiality, as Mr. Burke. I have seen statements to the effect that the police are a failure as detective officers. I have not found this to be the case, and I do not believe that charge is true. I will not now detain the House on this subject; but I think I could convince the House that if the police have not detected crime it has not been from any want of vigilance, still less from any want of courage, but from the essential difficulties of their task. You must remember with what a country they have had to deal. These farmhouses where outrages are generally committed are isolated; not easy to get at by day, almost impossible at night. But the chief fact is, no man dares to give the police any information. Lord Grey wrote a letter some few days ago giving his opinion upon Irish questions, and his view as to how outrages could have been prevented. I was really surprised, considering the experience of the noble Lord, that he should suppose this could have been done in the way he imagines. I merely quote what he said as a sort of warning, if I may say so, to hon. Gentlemen, whatever may be their ability, in coming to crude opinions as to the state of affairs in Ireland. He said—

"If the police were not sufficiently numerous to act as a patrol, they could easily do so if mounted and employed singly, each being supported by a small body of cavalry."

Why, that was one of the first things that occurred to me; but I almost immediately found that it was through ignorance of the circumstances, for long before one policeman and the party of soldiers reached the house the tramp of the horses would be heard, and the marauders would then be warned and enabled to keep out of the way until the force had gone by, and immediately afterwards to spring out and commit the outrage. The Duke of Marlborough, in "another place," made allusion to a Circular sent to the Constabulary. He seems to suppose that it was sent out as a reflection upon the Constabulary. I cannot allow that remark to remain without giving it an answer to-night. In the first place, that Circular was not meant for publication, and how the noble Duke obtained possession of it I do not know. In the second place, charges had been made against the police of laxity of duty, and it was my business to afford them an opportunity for vindication. The answers I have received from the County Inspectors are a complete vindication. Let me read an extract from one—

"When an outrage is to be committed, a party of 15 or 20 men could be assembled almost at once, from an adjoining town land, at any particular place where the members of this institution intend to carry out their design. With these 15 or 20 men two or three strangers appear to act; they go into the houses, the party from the locality, who would be known, remaining outside on the watch, and to assist if required. There is no movement made by the police that is not closely watched. They receive no information from anyone. Well-disposed persons are afraid to be seen speaking to them, so complete is the state of terrorism."

I could quote many instances of the great courage the police have shown and of their great forbearance. There are many matters we must look upon with sorrow in Ireland; but it is a hopeful thing for the country that such a body of men can be found without difficulty to show such unvarying fidelity, such courage, such loyalty, such sympathy with the population amongst whom they have to act, and such forbearance under the most difficult and trying circumstances. One other charge made against us is that we have not enforced the law or given power to enforce the law. We have done what I stated we should do. I said it was our duty to carry out the law, and we have done so. Whenever an application has been made to us for assistance in enforcing the legal rights of landlords or of others we have given the necessary force; and I have thought that humanity, as well as the duty of the Government to see that the law was carried out, made it incumbent on us to send such force which would make resistance to the law as difficult as possible. When we are charged with not doing that duty, it must be considered that we have had 217 applications for assistance in enforcing rights, and that we gave that assistance in 214 cases, there being a satisfactory explanation with regard to the other three cases. In some cases we have sent large bodies of men—as many as 100—and, instead of being lax in this respect, we have suggested to the sheriffs that it was their duty, when necessary, to ask for assistance. The hon. and gallant Member said that in the debates of last year I said I would not be responsible for the peace of the country. I believe I never said anything of the sort. I said I knew I was responsible for the peace of the country, and that, as far as I could do it, I was determined that the peace of the country should be preserved. But I also stated that I believed it would be far better if the law had been improved in the way we thought it ought to have been improved. And, again, I said that it was the duty of the Government to enforce the law as it stood; otherwise there would be no law or order in the country, and no power for any man to enjoy his rights. The hon. and gallant Member alluded to a Circular that we sent out to the magistrates. It has been referred to in "another place," and has been alluded to pretty frequently in the course of this debate; so much so, that the hon. and gallant Member called it my famous Circular. Nothing shows more the excited, and not unnaturally excited, state of men's minds than that so much should be thought and said about that Circular. It was a very natural thing to send it out. Surely it was my duty, and that of the Executive Government, to do everything we possibly could to make use of our powers without coming to Parliament for fresh ones. It was no slur upon the magistrates to send round information of one or two Acts which they might possibly have lost sight of, and of one or two provisions in regard to witnesses which some of them might not remember. We knew that, generally speaking, the magistrates, both local and resident, were aware of these Acts; but we thought no harm would be done by sending the information round. The most remarkable interpretations have been put upon that step; and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Devon, last night, seemed to suppose that we thought all the difficulties might be met by it. We never thought so, nor said so; and if you look at the Circular, you will find that it gives no impression of the kind. I will tell the House the immediate reason why we issued that Circular. In looking back into the records of past times, some gentleman in the Irish Office discovered that a similar Circular had been issued in the year 1866. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Stafford Northcote) will kindly give me his attention, because I dare say that he was in the Government at the time a similar Circular was issued in 1866, and signed by Lord Naas. He thought it necessary to send it out. We were informed of it, and we thought it well to do so also. It is precisely the same Circular with two alterations. The one was that we found there was a legal mistake in the former Circular, which we corrected. The other was that there had been an improvement in public feeling since that time. In the former Circular the magistrates were reminded that whipping was a possible punishment; but we did not think it advisable to repeat or enforce that. I do not intend to detain the House much longer; but I have a word or two to say in regard to meetings. Something was said about meetings in the beginning of the evening. I dare say more will be said about them. All I wish to do is to make a remark on the right hon. Gentleman's speech of last night. He said, to my surprise, that we had taken the advice of our Law Officers, and that they had advised us that the meetings of the Land League were illegal. We had no such advice. The right hon. Gentleman also said—

"Why did you not take steps to put down those meetings? The Government have interfered now and stopped these meetings—why did they not do it earlier? The Government have been guilty of one or other of two things—either of an unstatesmanlike want of foresight, or of what I may almost call criminal negligence."

There were loud cheers at that statement. It was a most remarkable statement for the right hon. Gentleman to make. These meetings were nothing new; they had been going on since April 1879. Two hundred and three of them had been held under the right hon. Gentleman's Government. If there be criminal negligence in not stopping these meetings, there was also criminal negligence on the part of the late Government. I would ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposite (Mr. Gibson), who was a Law Adviser to the late Government on this matter, and who will probably speak in this debate, did he advise, or did the late Solicitor General for Ireland advise, that these meetings should be stopped? I wonder that he did not give the right hon. Baronet the Member for North Devon a little information on this matter, and tell him how the thing really stood, before he allowed him to make a charge against us of criminal negligence for doing precisely what he had done under the same circumstances. Well, we have thought it our duty to try and exhaust the Constitutional powers we possessed, and we have exhausted them; and we are driven to the distressing conclusion that further powers must be asked for. We believe that it is our first duty to protect liberty, and person, and property. We believe that the Irish people would have a right, and a well-founded right, to resist and to defy the English Government, or rather the Imperial Government—hon. Members constantly called it the English Government—to defy the Imperial Government if they neglected this duty. We cannot quietly sit by and allow the law of the land to be replaced by another law. We cannot allow men to be interfered with in the daily walks of life by a system of terrorism. But we do not for a moment suppose that the fulfilment of this painful duty—by far the most painful duty with which I ever had to do—is fulfilling our whole duty to Ireland. We still intend, and we still believe, that we shall be able to look into the grievances of Ireland, and especially into the grievances connected with her chief industry—old grievances which we fully acknowledge are at the foundation of the state of things which now exists, and which have enabled Gentlemen like the hon. Member for the City of Cork, and his associates, to bring about the state of things which they have brought about. We believe that it is our duty to probe these evils to the bottom and to remove them. The hon. Member for Mayo, judging of how we are going to deal with the land measure, before he knows anything, or scarcely anything about it, has chosen to come to a conclusion and to say that he exposes an imposture. He is generally moderate, and I think it would be better that he should wait until he hears our explanation and until he obtains information. I would appeal to all persons in the Three Kingdoms to wait for two or three weeks and see what we shall do in the matter. There is another matter mentioned in the Queen's Gracious Speech in which great alteration is required in Ireland, and upon which also we have determined to deal. I will not detain the House longer. I am much obliged to it for the kindness with which it has listened to me. I hope I have not been heated in the remarks I have made; if so, I regret it. I have had attacks to repel; but I am most anxious that we should, if possible, all of us on both sides of the House, treat this matter as seriously as we ought to treat it, bearing this in mind—that we who have these measures to propose feel that they are of the most painful necessity; that they ought not to be passed unless they commend themselves to the general feeling of the country and of Parliament; and that they do not for a moment relieve us from the duty of giving good government to Ireland—rather, if possible, they make that duty more imminently incumbent upon us than it ever has been before.

Mr. Speaker, I desire, with the permission of the House, to make a few remarks, as concisely as I can, upon the Gracious Speech from the Throne, and upon the speech just delivered to the House by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant; and I can assure the House, and I can assure the right hon. Gentleman, with entire sincerity, that, although it may be my duty to offer some criticisms conceived in a frank spirit, I shall endeavour to present those criticisms entirely free from bitterness, and, as far as I can, divested of Party spirit. The Gracious Speech from the Throne contains a statement of the past and of the present, and it contains promises as to the future. It deals with topics possibly graver, more important, and more full of deep interest and anxiety than any that have been presented to the House for a great number of years. Unquestionably, in reference to my own country of Ireland, it deals with a state of facts which, in the long and chequered history of that country, is absolutely unprecedented. I think that anyone, criticizing at all the Irish Executive, is bound to approach the consideration of the question with great caution and with great forbearance. Anyone acquainted with the history of Ireland, and anyone acquainted with the responsibilities of its administration, knows that it is a subject beset with anxiety and surrounded with grave difficulties; and, therefore, I think it is right to concede in the fullest and in the frankest way to those who at any time may be charged with the responsibility of its administration, at all events, that before they are criticized they should be given the fairest possible construction for their actions, and that they should be given full and ample time to as certain the position of affairs. I shall endeavour, in the few remarks I shall address to the House, not to depart from what I have stated in reference to this matter; but it must be borne in mind if it is the duty of the Opposition, if it is the duty of this House, if it is the duty of the whole Empire to bear the topics which I have referred to in mind, that there are special circumstances which surround the present Government of the Queen which show that they are peculiarly acquainted with all the circumstances of Ireland, and, therefore, though entitled to an ample measure of forbearance and consideration, almost less than most Cabinets can they lay claim to it; because they contain with in the ranks of the Cabinet two able and experienced ex-Lords Lieutenant; because there is also sitting on the opposite Bench a Nobleman who performed with great ability and success the important Office of Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant; and because the Cabinet itself is presided over by a Prime Minister who has devoted a great part of his time to a consideration of what is rightly called "the Irish problem." Now, there is another circumstance which, I think, in addition to that special knowledge, should make the Government recognize the special responsibility which presses upon them individually; and that is the topic which, I think, was present to the mind of the right hon. Gentleman who last spoke, because he tried to anticipate the criticisms I might make upon it, and in regard to which many observations have already been made, and that is in reference to the Peace Preservation Act having been allowed to expire last June. As I understand, the way in which that topic has been presented to the House by the right hon. Gentleman is this. He has endeavoured to suggest that that Bill was a small Bill, and that it was not a very important Bill; and then he adds that, whether it was important or not, the late Government hardly left themselves time to pass it, and left the present Government still less time to pass it. That is about the way in which he has presented the matter to the House. Well, I admit that that Act was a mitigated Peace Preservation Act. Many of the clauses in it which made it most unpopular in this House and in the country were removed by my right hon. Friend near me (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) in 1875; but it contained in it provisions which the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India (the Marquess of Hartington), in 1875, said he recognized as of first importance in Irish legislation of this kind—first, the restrictions on the possession and sale of arms, and, next, what in that debate the noble Lord said was second only in importance in this class legislation, and that was the power of fining a locality for an extra police force. They were not very stringent provisions, but they were provisions of importance. They would not of themselves be able to cope with the crisis; but they were provisions which, at an earlier stage of the crisis, would have been an important complement and supplement to the power of a capable, vigorous, and energetic Executive. It is suggested, in regard to this Act which expired in June, that we had hardly allowed ourselves time to pass it into law. I do not think that the dates show that. It is obvious that if the late Government had been returned to power, and been able at once to resume their position on the Treasury Bench, and without delay to apply themselves to the measure, the dates justify the belief that they had amply sufficient time to pass this measure into law before the 1st of June. It is urged by the right hon. Gentleman, as it was urged by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister yesterday, that the time left to Her Majesty's Government was still less, because the Members of the Cabinet had to seek re-election. Now, in the Gracious Speech from the Throne to the new Parliament, which I will not trouble the House by reading in detail, they stated that they did not renew that Act, not on the ground that they had not sufficient time, or that the short interval before the 1st of June prevented them, not for any such reason at all, but because they regarded the matter as a question of high policy—as a question of well-considered statesmanship calculated to show the contrast between the new Administration and the old. They said they were anxious to show a desire to avoid the evils of exceptional legislation in abridgement of liberty; and for that reason, and not on account of any want of time, they declared to Parliament and the country that they allowed the Act to lapse. Well, Sir, I make no charge, or suggestion of any charge whatever, against the Government on that ground. I impute no unworthy motives to Her Majesty's Government. I think it reasonable to concede that Ministers were actuated by a generous spirit of hopefulness that their trust and confidence would not be misplaced. But, Sir, that responsibility they incurred. The decision they arrived at certainly threw the weight of responsibility on themselves, because they acted against experience, its warnings, and its teaching; against the advice respectfully given to them by their Predecessors, and against the advice tendered to them by those in Ireland in whom they might have placed some confidence. For some time nothing occurred to show that this confidence on the part of the Government was misplaced. The condition of the country last July was fairly satis- factory and hopeful. There was a noble harvest—the best in Ireland for 40 years; and the Judges in the last Summer Circuit were able substantially to say that the position of the country, although there were some features to cause anxiety, showed that there were not any grave elements of crime to call for special or particular notice. But what is now the state of the country? The hon. Member for the City of Cork, in about one of the most adroit, intelligent, and sagacious speeches I ever heard delivered in this House, showing a thorough knowledge of the men he sought to convince, entirely and absolutely ignoring the tone, the language, and the manner he has adopted elsewhere, wishes to make the House forget what the true position of the country is. Now, Her Majesty's Gracious Speech presents in strong language the position of the country; and, in my opinion, it underrates, if anything, the real position of Ireland, although it presents it, as I have said, in strong and clear language. At present there is a great army in Ireland, with flying columns arranged to go all through the country, with 6,000 more troops necessarily there than in last year, while the Constabulary are recruited to their full strength; at least one-third part of the country is declared, by Privy Council Orders, to be in a state of disturbance, and Munster and Connaught are in an absolute state of pure and unmitigated anarchy. ["No, no!"] I have heard hon. Members below the Gangway with consideration and respect; and as there are not many hon. Members who express my views on Ireland, I ask them to give me the courtesy of listening to me. I think the remark I have just made as to my own position and independence in the matter is worthy of some note in this House, because there are not many Members in this House—and I do not wish to make the slightest reflection upon them—who occupy the same position. There is a natural desire on the part of a county Member, particularly if he represents a locality where this agitation and its operations prevail, not to say anything which might lead even to a transient feeling of misunderstanding in reference to the question. I have said that Munster and Connaught are in a state of absolute and unmitigated anarchy. Leinster and Ulster are in a condition which is rapidly in some cases, if not in all, growing into a state of anarchy. They are not as yet as bad as the other two Provinces; but the movement is growing and spreading in them rapidly. ["Hear, hear!" from below the Gangway. ] Yes; the movement that is spreading over them is one of organized lawlessness, of ostentatious terrorism that seeks unscrupulous ends by unscrupulous means. To many in Ireland it has appeared, as I believe it has to many in this country too, that during the last two or three months the Irish Executive—I do not wish to use any disagreeable words—have hardly been as firm and as resolute as they might have been, and that, at all events, they have been no match for the organization of this terrorism, whose executive is resolute, whose code is clear, and whose action is remorseless and certain. In the Provinces to which I have referred there is absolutely no assertion of legal rights. Hundreds and thousands of Irish tenants are anxious and desirous of being honest; but they are terrified out of honesty. The landowners are anxious to do their duty, and adhere as long as courage, manly and firm, will permit them, to the discharge of their duty. They cannot receive the rents they are offered in the name of this agitation—rents which would divest them of one-half of their property. And then the law—I do not complain of this, because it is the statute law of the country, enacted by the intervention of Parliament—the law demands and compels that the landlords in holdings of £4 and under have to pay all the poor rates; and thus, in Connaught, where the poor tenants paying upon a holding of £2 or £3 may be counted by thousands, the landlords, who do not receive a single shilling in the shape of rents, must pay all the poor rates. The Government also claim and demand that those landlords who have to pay succession duty should be assessed, not upon Griffith's valuation, but upon Griffith's valuation with 33 per cent added; so that everything is taken from the landlords, while the Land League would give them nothing. Again, look at the position of the Civil Courts of the country, and take Limerick and Tipperary, two of the greatest counties in Ireland, where the Courts usually have the largest measure of business at this time of the year — the Queen's Courts for the poor man in Ireland usually thronged with suitors—and it is a fact that they have almost nothing to do. Why is this? Because terrorism has put down all appeals to the Courts of the Queen; while the Land League Courts in some places sit weekly, examine witnesses, and issue their ukases, that the people should not go to the Petty Sessional Courts but to them. The Land League Courts—I will speak of what has appeared in the newspapers—these Land League Courts, presuming to administer jurisdiction in the Queen's Dominions, I hear it asserted on all sides, award fines and punishments and "Boycotting" as sentences; and such is the fine adjustment of their equity, that a man who had the audacity to pay his rent was sentenced to employ four labourers who had left a "Boycotted" employer for a period of a month. The hon. Member for Cork, in his able speech, said there had not been many outrages, and took to himself a great deal of credit on that account. Why, anyone listening to him would think that Ireland was now a kind of Arcadia, and that he ruled it with a shepherd's crook, leading his interesting lambs behind him. The hon. Member said there were not many great outrages now, and that in those places where the Land League organization was most perfect they were fewest in number. Surely this is about one of the most terrible signs of disorganization if rightly understood; for as the operations of the Land League become more fully developed and better known, its minor penalties become more efficacious, its capital sentences less necessary, and as the law recedes the terror becomes more crushing and remorseless. It is also necessary to bear in mind that in those counties where the Land League organization is most perfect—in Mayo, for instance, the real Arcadia of Ireland—the people whose lives may be in danger and might be worth very little if unprotected have to go about with two policemen when they go to fair, market, or church. The hon. Member for Cork, with a noble courage worthy of a better cause, commenced his speech—I do not like to use the word audacious, and, therefore, I will not use it—by saying there was a gigantic and incomprehensible conspiracy on the part of the English Press, the object of which I do not see, to malign Ireland on the subject of outrages, and that we are dreaming, in fact, in thinking there is any disturbance or outrage in that country. Why, Sir, the figures stated by the right hon. Gentleman, startling and painful figures as they were to listen to, are well under the mark. It is stated at every one of the Land League meetings that there is exaggeration of the outrages, and that they were manufactured. My conviction is that there is gradually developing a manufactory for the denial of outrages in Ireland. I need not repeat the figures; I shall only refer to them. The Judges, in their Charges to the Grand Juries, gave an account of the number and character of the outrages which were in themselves appalling. The figures given now by the right hon. Gentleman are also so startling that they cannot be explained away by any suggestions of exaggeration. One circumstance with reference to these outrages I shall state in a single sentence—namely, that relating to the pressure which has been brought to bear in many cases on the Catholic clergy who disapprove of this agitation and refuse to join it. Now, this is very remarkable; because, unquestionably, upon platforms it has been indicated that if the Catholic clergy hold aloof from this movement it will be remembered against them at Easter and Christmas, the times at which they collect their dues; and notices have been placed on chapel walls directed against the clergy who refused to join the movement. One case, of which I heard lately, will illustrate what I believe happens in a good many places. A parish priest of great respectability refused to join the movement; and the word went out, as they say in Ireland, that he was not to get dues exceeding 1 s. An old parishioner in good circumstances, who was in the habit of giving £1, resolutely gave it again, and his ricks were burnt down that night. This agitation is not Constitutional; it is not designed for the reform of the Land Laws. You have had hundreds of meetings of this Land League, and at not one single meeting was there a Petition drafted to be sent to the Imperial Parliament. The wants of Ireland are resident landlords and capital, and the Land League have adopted a machinery to make every Irish landlord an absentee, and to drive capital out of the country. The agitation is not Constitutional. It is against the best interests of the Empire, and it is known to be so. The hon. Member for Cork, in that inimitable speech of "bated breath and whispering humbleness" which he delivered a few hours ago, seems to have forgotten the words which he used on another occasion, when he said—

"He would never have taken off his coat for the movement if he did not think it would lead to something else."

Are we to forget what was said by the last apostle of the movement, when returned for Wexford the other day, that his mandate from his constituents was—

"To give expression on every occasion, in every way, to the undying spirit of hostility which animates us all to the domination of England in Ireland."

[ Cheers. ] Some hon. Members cheer that sentiment, and yet they ask the House to believe that their agitation was for the reform of the Land Laws in a Constitutional way. My right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland, in a masterly description during the pending trials of the whole agitation, pointed out that the Irish farmer in this movement was a mere cat's-paw. The agencies that are used to win him to the side of the League are those which the honesty of no human being can easily stand against—greed and terror. Greed: a real ready money business down. Terror: that there is no resisting, for the sanctions to its resistance are remorseless. Landlords are, as a rule, not disliked in Ireland. I know this as well as any Gentleman who contradicts me—they are not, as a rule, disliked. Until the movement came on, the relations between landlords and tenants in Ireland were, as a rule, harmonious and kindly. And yet this movement is against the landlords. Why? Not only because they have land, but because they are loyal and true to the cause of the Queen and the country. Every stage, every step, every tendency of this movement was known to Her Majesty's Government from the earliest times. They were known to the Prime Minister when he spoke at the Guildhall on the 9th November last; and he, as might be expected, in worthy and fitting language described the position of affairs. At that time the Prime Minister had in his possession a great amount of information. He must have known the facts which were unfolded by my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland, two or three days ago in Dublin, in describing the state of affairs to the 2nd of November, a week before the dinner at the Guildhall. Lord Mountmorres had then been murdered, and so had Mr. Boyd, and the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin had then issued a Pastoral describing the painful position of affairs, and pointing out that the soil of Ireland had drunk deeply of the blood of her sons. Again, the words which the right hon. Gentleman used yesterday, show that he was conscious of the seriousness of this position. He pointed out at the Guildhall that the rights of free citizenship, of landlords and tenants, were almost then a nullity; and he said the Government would be prepared to act when they had a truer and sounder demonstration of the facts. What more demonstration, I ask, exists at the time of my speaking of the necessity for vigorous action than existed at the time of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman at the Guildhall on the 9th November? What new fact has since developed? We have the statement of the Attorney General for Ireland, made three or four days ago, that every step and stage of this movement has been watched in its undeviating criminality; its steadily progressing mischief unchecked and uninterrupted by a single lull. Is it not legitimate and fair to ask what new fact has come to light between the 9th November and the present time? What new fact was wanting then which prevented the Prime Minister acting on the 9th November, that now compels him to come to the House and say that the present state of the country puts us in a position before Europe of shame and humiliation? If Parliament had been then summoned, two precious months might have been gained from this agitation, and the people of Ireland might have been spared from allowing themselves to live in the illusion of hopes now dashed to the ground. We are told by the Prime Minister that on the 30th November the Government asked for or obtained the opinions of the Irish Law Officers; and I have no doubt that the present Law Officers gave to the Government wise and well-considered counsel, nor have I the shadow of a doubt that in any advice that the Law Officers gave to the Government it would have been pointed out what would be the chances of convictions for agrarian outrages by juries as at present constituted, what crimes could be dealt with under the existing law, and what were the chances of reaching those crimes by punishment. It is said that the prosecutions instituted by the late Government were dropped by them; but that, in my opinion, is not an accurate description of what occurred. The prosecutions were instituted at the close of 1879, not by information; but the steps taken then by the traversers were not at all so rapid, and did not show any such desire for a speedy trial, as the hon. Member for Cork and his Colleagues have shown recently. They applied for and obtained further time for the different rules, and when we left Office we left all the machinery ready for the application requisite for a change of venue. Everything was in perfect order for the legitimate continuance of the prosecutions, and it was the present Government who elected upon their own judgment not to proceed with the prosetions we had instituted. The excuse alleged for the tardy action of the Government is, that this is a new and unprecedented movement. I will not dwell upon that, nor upon the proceedings at the Winter Assizes, for they have been sufficiently commented upon. But we have had one statement from the Prime Minister which I do not clearly comprehend. The Prime Minister stated, when my right hon. Friend (Sir Stafford Northcote) referred to Judge Fitzgerald's Charge, that that was delivered after the Cabinet had determined to summon Parliament. I do not think I understand what is the point of that statement, because, though there was something new to the public in Judge Fitzgerald's Charge, there was nothing in it that was new to the Government. They knew what was in Judge Fitzgerald's Charge long before it was delivered. Judge Barry—about, I suppose, one of the most popular Judges in Ireland, and certainly a very able man—delivered an extremely moderate Charge at the Waterford Assizes recently, and, dealing with the exaggeration theory, he said that, making all possible allowance for exaggeration, if one-tenth of what was alleged and reported to him was true, the country was in the gravest and most serious condition that could well be imagined. The effect of the Winter Assizes was an acquittal in nearly every agrarian case; and at the end of the Assizes, Judge Fitzgerald had to point out that practically the jury system had in many cases broken down. It has been suggested in the course of this discussion that there is some analogy between what is going on in Ireland and the innocent simplicity of a strike. It is a kind of blasphemy on trades-unionism to compare it with this. There is no analogy, unless trades-unions insist not only upon not working, but on having their wages at the same time. Then it has been said that there is some analogy between these cases in Ireland and the Tithe war; but the tithe case was one of a hardship, not owing to the payment of money—for thousands of Irish farmers only paid one farthing, and some only a fraction of a farthing—it was the feeling of the Catholic farmers against having to pay even the smallest contribution to maintain the clergy of a Church to which they did not belong. There is not the faintest analogy. But I wish there was this amount of analogy—then, Parliament stepped in and gave £1,000,000 to help the poor clergy; but I am not aware that it has now been proposed to give any such sum to the landlords in Ireland. Now, I am very sorry that the right hon. Gentleman thought it necessary to disinter the poor old Disturbance Bill, which, I think, has now pretty well mouldered away in its unregretted grave. But, as he has referred to it, I must say this. He quotes the hon. Member for the City of Cork as he was speaking here to-day; but he forgets how the hon. Member spoke in Ireland of that great legislative achievement—the first heir of the invention of the right hon. Gentleman. He forgets how the hon. Member said, at Waterford, that it was such a contemptible, miserable, little Bill, that if he had not known that the House of Lords would reject it—and do his dirty work for him—he would have kicked it out himself. If that Bill had passed it would not have obviated a single hardship, it would not have prevented a single outrage. In fact, it would not have been in operation, for there has been the best harvest that Ireland has had for a generation. I do not like to remind the right hon. Gentlemen of un- pleasant things; but I think the teachings of that Bill were the only things of any great importance about it, and they were mischievous. I am afraid that when the right hon. Gentleman indicated that the enforcement of some rights, just according to law, might, in his opinion, be unjust, that conveyed to the agitators what, by a slight extension, would say that it was not unjust to resist rights whose enforcement would be unjust. Now, what did the Irish Executive do? I have been challenged about the Memorandum of the 1st of December. I do not appeal to that Memorandum; everybody knows it was a thing to be forgotten, and I do not say anything about it. [Mr. W. B. FORSTER: What Memorandum?] That of the 1st of December, 1880—that Whiteboy Memorandum. Somebody or other told the right hon. Gentleman and his advisers, prior to the 1st of December, that certain Acts of Parliament were in existence, and then he told the magistrates—what they had known all their lives—what they contained. And the excuse is that the Chief Secretary in 1866 had issued a similar Memorandum. The only other matters that remain are the prosecutions of the 2nd of November. I do not criticize them, because they are matters pending; but I really think the Prime Minister was not called upon to give that suave apology to the hon. Member for the City of Cork for the inconvenience to which he had been put in having to come over to attend Parliament, for I am bound to say I never saw any Member of this House look less put out, less inconvenienced, than the hon. Member by his present painful and melancholy position. And I see from the public journals that he has contracted an interesting engagement for New York on the 17th of March. I cannot, of course, speculate on the result of these trials; but my opinion is that there is no reason why they should be over this time 12 months, or by any definite time whatever. Now, these prosecutions must have been founded upon the Law Officers' opinion that the Land League operations were illegal. The right hon. Gentleman challenged me to state—he was rather cautious, and I thought he was going to say he wanted to know in what particular the existing law had not been adequately applied; but he challenged me to state—that the Government had not done their best. Well, I do not know what the right hon. Gentleman's best is; but I am bound to say that if the Irish Executive had the courage of the Law Officers' opinion, upon which the prosecutions were founded, they were bound by that opinion to prevent a single meeting of the Land League being held after the institution of the prosecutions. Experience had demonstrated the danger and the poison of these meetings. Four or five meetings were put down on the eve of the meeting of Parliament; but on what rule or plan? Is there any system? The Prime Minister stated yesterday that the Law Officers advised that the Land League meetings, under certain conditions and certain circumstances, were illegal. I assert that the sound definition of an unlawful assembly is this: Any meeting assembled under such circumstances as, according to the opinion of rational and fair men, is likely to produce danger to the tranquillity and peace of the neighbourhood, is an unlawful assembly. And I will tell you what, in the opinion of the highest Judges in the land, is also an unlawful assembly. If the persons assembled say, "We will have what we want, whether it be according to law or not"—a meeting for such a purpose, however it may be masked, is unlawful. Now, an unlawful assembly is not confined to a case of threats against persons. It is not confined to meetings which purport to interfere with the course of justice. The application of the definition which I have given requires caution, tact and discretion; but it also requires that the Executive which will have the administration of that definition shall possess some nerve, some courage, and some resolution. They must not act too soon, and they must not be too late. The only explanation given by the right hon. Gentleman with regard to these unlawful assemblies is a poor, petty, puny, sophistical tu quoque. He said, "Now I come to the unlawful assemblies;" but he said nothing on the subject, except that "When you were in Office you did not put them down." That is no answer. We were dealing with an earlier, less dangerous, and less developed, phase of the crisis which had been going on during a time of exceptional difficulty and distress in Ireland. You are dealing with it at a time when it has attained dangerous, serious, and most important proportions, when there is no excuse of distress, and when the people have enjoyed the most abundant harvest they have had for years. Now, I say the Government might have interfered before the 2nd of November. They are prosecuting now in respect of 90 meetings which took place before that date, and each of these must have been unlawful. They had had abundant experience of the character of the agitation; at each of these meetings there was the invariable denunciation of landlords, the same invariable advice not to pay rent except in certain proportions, and they were invariably followed by intimidation. I ask what excuse or justification there was for not interfering, at all events, after the 2nd of November? I suspect they were hampered by an arrangement made between the Irish Government and the hon. Member for Cork City. It was a very remarkable arrangement, and I venture to say there was never anything like it before. It was stated in open Court, in the pending trials, that an arrangement was made between the Irish Government and the hon. Member for the City of Cork, that if the hon. Member would protect—[The SOLICITOR GENERAL for IRELAND dissented.]—I am perfectly familiar with the matter; I have a note of it from the Freeman's Journal. If I mis-state anything I shall be glad to be corrected; but it was unquestionably proved in open Court, and the evidence given was not as far as I am aware, contradicted either by the Attorney General for Ireland or the Solicitor General for Ireland, that the Irish Executive had made an arrangement with the hon. Member for the City of Cork that, if he would protect the Government reporters, they would no longer send police to the Land League meetings.

As the person who examined the witness, I distinctly stated that there was no such arrangement.

I accept my hon. and learned Friend's statement; but it is to be regretted that, although public attention has been called to the fact, and it has been mentioned on public platforms by the hon. Member for the City of Cork, it has not, so far as I am aware, been denied in the Freeman's Journal or by the Chief Secretary. Now, there is one other matter. I think the Land League Courts might have been put a stop to sooner. They have been going on for weeks, and yet it was not until the 5th of January, the day before the meeting of Parliament, that an attempt has been made to put down one of them. I do not want to suggest any scape-goat theory, nor, that if there is any blame, it falls only upon the right hon. Gentleman. He has Colleagues, whom he must have informed of every step he took, and they, of course, must share the responsibility. But I cannot understand the crisis of the Cabinet Councils in November. I cannot understand the shortness of the Prorogation from November the 26th to December the 2nd. The very fact of the shortness of time shows the urgency of the crisis; but if there was a crisis then, why was not Parliament summoned? What new fact has arisen since then? Another crisis occurred shortly after that. A Cabinet Council was summoned for December the 16th; but it was hurried on and held three days earlier, on December the 13th. This showed that there was an urgent and acute crisis, at all events, in the right hon. Gentleman's mind. I suppose that was an endeavour to do his best. The dates that I have given condemn the action of Her Majesty's Government. For my part, I do not see that any explanation can be given. None has been seriously attempted. At the last moment the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary appears to have asked for special measures, and the Cabinet took upon itself the immense responsibility of refusing them. I have already detained the House for a long time, and there is only one word more that I wish to add. The Bills that are to be brought in are open, I think, to the possibility of misconstruction. I think it is unfortunate that what are called remedial and protective measures should be mixed up together. In such a case there is a double danger. First, there is the danger that the remedial measures may be taken as a concession to the tenants made through terror; while, by the landowners, they may be taken as being rather like a reversal of the conditions of Magna Charta, and that as justice has been delayed and denied to the former so long, it may now look like an endeavour to sell it. It is alleged, with reference to the Protection Bill, that it is likely to be useless, and that Coercion Bills have often been tried and have always failed. That statement has been repeated so often that people have come to believe in it. But I deny the truth of the statement altogether. What occurred in a previous case? I will not go back to the questions of 1814 or 1831; but I will take the precedent of 1870, a, precedent which all here present can remember. The Peace Preservation Act of that year was introduced in April. In the four months preceding its introduction there were 1,161 agarian outrages, and in the four months after only 91. Do not let it go forth, therefore, that when there is a state of lawlessness, anarchy, and terror, a Protection Bill affords no protection. I entirely object to, and protest against, the use of the word "coercion." The proper word is "protection," for the object of the Bill is the protection of the honest and loyal subjects of the Crown. Such legislation has also been stigmatized by the use of the word "exceptional." I equally denounce the use of that term; the proper word is "effectual." Is it better that lawless men should go in dread of a strong law, or that honest men should go in dread of the impotence of existing law? Everything will depend upon the administration of this new law, which requires caution, forbearance, firmness, and vigour. I deplore—everyone deplores—the necessity of introducing this Bill. No one likes measures which interfere in the slightest degree with liberty. But such measures have now become a necessity. In my opinion, every citizen who values the best interests of Ireland, and law and order, is bound to give his support to this measure, which should be administered so as to be attended with the best possible effects. The land proposals of the Government I will not discuss. I do not suppose that anyone thinks I ought now to discuss them. When they are submitted to us and we have had an opportunity of considering and studying them, to those proposals which may be reasonable and fair I shall myself give a reasonable and fair consideration to. But that is not the question now. The paramount question before the House, as has been rightly presented in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech and by the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken, is that of preserving law and order. I am sure that everyone hopes that the Government measure will have the effect of restoring law and order, of ending terrorism, and of removing a state of things which is an outrage upon civilization.

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

Debate adjourned till Monday.

, in moving for leave to introduce a Bill dealing with Corrupt and Illegal Practices at Parliamentary Elections, said: I will, as shortly as possible, endeavour to place before this House the necessity of some legislation upon this subject. I assume that there is a general concurrence of opinion that it is the duty of the Government to introduce some measure, and to endeavour to mitigate, if not to stop, the corrupt practices which have been proved to have taken place in certain constituencies of this country. Before stating the nature of the provisions of the Bill, it would be well to consider the evils with which we have to deal, and, therefore, the object towards which legislation is to be directed. It seems to me that one of the greatest evils that exists, and which has sprung up of late years, is that of the extravagant and lavish expenditure which seems to pervade the great majority of elections throughout the country. The mere fact that a candidate is called upon to provide an extravagantly large sum for his election is in itself a great evil. It prevents men of great mental capacity from entering the field. Such men have to yield their places to others who possess the one virtue of wealth, and that alone. But it is in the course of the expenditure that the greatest evil is produced. In the increase of that expenditure the greatest and most serious danger that arises is, that it brings into the arena of electoral contests a state of things which tends to destroy the morals of the electors in the constituencies of this country, and to give opportunity to a class of men whose sole object is to make money out of elections. I think that the real object of consideration for the House is whether we could not base the political contests, not upon results produced by organization, or by agents, but rather upon the honest expression of political opinion, and upon the voluntary efforts of men actuated by a desire that their political views should prevail. There is one further objection to the employment of an electioneering staff for money. The men so called into existence have, as I have said, but one object—the making of money. They are the people who always encourage, frequently practise, the more serious corrupt practices with which we have to deal. The man who receives £1 a-day as a messenger for doing nothing, rightly enough can see no difference between the receipt of that sum and an additional payment for his vote. I have regarded, therefore, this excessive expenditure as the root from which corrupt practices are apt to grow; and many of the provisions of the Bill I am asking permission to introduce are framed with the object of greatly reducing the class of expenses to which I have referred. Before stating what those provisions are, I hope hon. Members will forgive me for saying that I am about to draw largely upon one quality which, I believe, is possessed by all—namely, earnestness with which to approach the consideration of the question. If we merely attempt to alter the present system by bits, it would be better to leave legislation alone. We have had a great deal of legislation on the subject, and any further enactment would be of little use unless we are disposed to make alterations in the present system of elections; otherwise it would tend to encourage, rather than prevent, the existence of corrupt practices. If that earnestness on the part of hon. Members exists, as I believe it does, they will have ample opportunity of showing it by giving consideration to the Bill which the Government propose to bring in. The first question which presents itself is, how shall we deal with the payments, many of them entirely colour- able, made to persons employed in elections? I have received many suggestions how to mitigate the evil, and I have to make acknowledgment to many to whom I could not personally reply. For myself, I am inclined to recommend the House to go further than a mere mitigation of the present system of paid employment. By one sub-section of the Government Bill it is proposed, substantially, entirely to abolish it. It proposes, with exceptions I will mention, to prohibit the employment for payment of any agent, canvasser, clerk, messenger, watcher, or any person in any other capacity. The exceptions are one election agent, whom we bring into existence for an important purpose, one personation agent in every polling-station, and one clerk and one messenger—who are not to be electors—for every polling district in counties, and for every 500 electors in boroughs. The Bill will also prohibit, within like areas, the use of more committee-rooms than one, which is not to be in a licensed house. It also prohibits any payments for the conveyance of voters to the poll, both in counties and boroughs. In order to mitigate the inconvenience resulting in the case of county elections, an equivalent will be given by making polling-places more numerous. Other expenses, such as payments for exhibiting bills or the use of boards, are prohibited. But I feel we have to deal with an ingenious class of people, and I much fear that means will be found to evade these prohibitions against personal employment by making contracts with different persons, who, in order to fulfil their contracts, such as to print and deliver bills and addresses among a constituency, will employ voters, and so perpetuate in another form the evil we are seeking to check. It is therefore, proposed that the limit of expenditure for all purposes shall be fixed in a Schedule, such expenditure graduating according to the size of the constituency. Care will be taken that the expenditure shall be sufficient, without leaving any opportunity for expenses for illegal purposes. No expenses will be allowed at the house at which the candidate may put up, except such as are legitimate; for instance, the hire of a room for a meeting, where the candidate might have the opportunity of placing his views before his constituents. One other safeguard, I think a very material one, remains. It is proposed that no contract or payment shall be made except by the election agent. Every account must be sent to the election agent within 30 days of the Return; within 40 days payment must be made; and within 50 days a detailed account must be sent to the Returning Officer of the district of every claim made upon the agent and of every payment made. It must also state the amount received by the agent, and from whom it has been received. The Bill makes it an illegal practice for anyone to pay or provide any money for the election except to the election agent. The statement of expenses and receipts so made must be accompanied by a declaration made before a Justice, and on which perjury can be assigned, by the candidate or his agent, stating that no payments have been made or monies received beyond those shown in the Return, and that no further payments will be made. Any breach of these provisions amounts to an illegal practice, and the seat is vacated thereby. I may, however, add that clauses are inserted to protect persons who are prevented, from unavoidable causes, from complying with these provisions. I have mentioned only the main portions of the Bill dealing with this expenditure; but, leaving these, I have to deal with other evils which exist in connection with elections—namely, the more acute forms of corrupt practices, as distinguished from the illegal practices which are created by the Bill. It would be absurd for us to deal only with illegal expenditure if we did not also, at the same time, deal with corrupt practices, as the two things are brought very much together. The first matter I would mention is this—we propose to make the law more stringent in relation to withdrawal of Election Petitions. Among other things, it is made a misdemeanour to enter into any agreement whereby for money, or for the vacating of a seat, or for other consideration, a Petition is to be withdrawn. It is proposed to render the punishment for corrupt practices more severe. It is important that the commission of bribery should be regarded as involving degrading consequences—we think that probably the best means of putting an end to bribery is to make it degrading for anyone to be convicted of practising it. It is proposed, there- fore, to add hard labour to the punishment of imprisonment in the case of a person convicted on indictment of bribery. In relation to treating, it is proposed to make the licensed victualler who personally permits corrupt practices to take place with in his licensed house, or who keeps open house for the purpose of influencing an election, giving persons permission to consume liquor without paying for it, liable to imprisonment with hard labour, and in addition to have his licence suspended for two years if the offence is a grave one. Moreover, there are some further penalties in the way of incapacitating the guilty individuals from voting, and so forth, in order to strengthen and increase the punishment. It is then proposed to accept the suggestion contained in the recommendation of the Committee of 1875, that upon all trials of Election Petitions the representative of the Public Prosecutor shall be present. He will have to see that the Petition is thoroughly and properly tried, and that all the evidence which could be material is brought forth. If he finds there is sufficient evidence of corrupt practices on the part of any person who has not received a certificate of indemnity, it will be his duty to summon that person before the Judge, who shall forthwith, in the presence of the constituency, proceed to try the matter—and in this respect the Judge will have no greater power than that already vested in a Justice of the Peace—and, on conviction, shall have power to sentence the guilty person to six months' imprisonment with or without hard labour. Following the practice before Justices when dealing with indictable offences, the accused may elect to be tried by a jury, in which case the trial will take place at the Central Criminal Court. The Judge, if he thinks the circumstances of the case warrant it, may send the man for trial; but it must not be in the district where the alleged offence has occurred. It is thought desirable to avoid the partizanship of the locality. It is also proposed to add somewhat to the punishment of a person convicted of a corrupt practice. It is important that the commission of bribery should be regarded as involving degrading consequences. Hard labour, therefore, is added to imprisonment in cases of corrupt treating or of keeping open house and supplying liquor with- out payment, whether to voters or non-voters, and the licensed victualler is liable to have his licence suspended for two years. Another alteration in the law is suggested. Hon. Members are aware that at present the law so stands that if a person has committed corrupt practices, however flagrantly, if he is reported and scheduled by the Judge as having been guilty, or in the same way reported by the Commissioners, he still remains a voter on the Register; and it is not until an Act of Parliament declares that he is disfranchised, that there are any means of removing him from the Register. The result of the present state of the law is that persons who have committed corrupt practices vote in subsequent elections, and set the example to other people that they can break the law without fear of consequences. By the Bill it is provided that if a person is reported or scheduled by the Judge or Commissioners, after being heard—for all must be heard and have an opportunity of being heard before being reported—the fact of his being so reported shall incapacitate him from voting for 10 years. There is another matter I might mention. We propose that when a candidate has been guilty of corrupt practices personally, he shall never sit again for the constituency amongst which those corrupt practices have occurred. I trust the House will understand that while these are the main provisions of the Bill, there are many which I hope will be beneficial to which I have not referred. For instance, it has been thought desirable to cause solicitors, many of whom have taken and do take conspicuous parts at elections, to bear the full responsibility of officers of the Court to which they belong. The certificate of indemnity will no longer relieve a solicitor from an application to the Supreme Court of which he is an officer to punish him for misconduct. In the case of a Justice of the Peace who has been guilty of corrupt practices, the Public Prosecutor shall call the attention of the Lord Chancellor to the circumstances, and the guilty person shall be removed from the Commission of the Peace. I feel, Sir, that at this late hour of the night, I ought not to detain the House any further. I think I have in the main stated the provisions of the Bill, which I now submit for approval. I would merely say that to the principles of these provisions the Government will adhere. Of course, the details will be for the consideration of the House, and to every hon. Member I would respectfully recommend their consideration when they come before him. I do hope we shall all feel the time has come when some action must be taken in regard to the practices dealt with in the Bill. We have sat long enough on the bank; but the stream of corruption flows on, and it seems useless to hope that it will cease to flow unless something is done to stop it. We have cause to know how deep and how strong the current is, and how unchecked—though I hope not uncheckable—it still runs on. It is a disgrace to us all. Foreigners and foreign journals can point with derision to its existence in the midst of a Constitution for which we ever claim superiority, and to such criticisms now reply must be absent—

"Pudet hœc opprobria nobis

Et dioi potuisse et non potuisse refelli."

Let us, however, hope that, by the passing of this Bill, we may not only be able to reply that we, as a Legislature, have strenuously striven to show how sincerely we desire to remove corruption from amongst us; but, also, that before long we shall point to its effect as giving greater strength to the Representation of the people, grounding it upon a pure and not a corrupt basis. I beg to move for leave to bring in this Bill.

I do not rise for the purpose of offering any observation at the present moment upon the principles of this Bill. I wish simply to ask a Question of the hon. and learned Member, if he will allow me to do so. I presume the measure will at once be laid on the Table, and that we shall have it before us before long? When we have it before us, I am sure we shall give it every possible consideration, for the purpose of achieving a most desirable end, and one which for many years—I can only say for myself—I have sincerely desired. I would venture to put a Question to the right hon. Gentleman who is sitting next to the hon. and learned Gentleman (Sir William Harcourt), as to when the Reports of the Election Commissions are likely to be submitted? There is considerable anxiety in the country to know when they may be expected. The proceedings before the Commissioners have been very long, though I have no doubt all those officials have been striving to do their duty in a very disagreeable matter.

And I should also like to ask the hon. and learned Gentleman whether he proposes that the Bill shall extend to Ireland, or whether he intends to introduce a separate measure dealing with that country?

I hope the Bill will be in print in the course of next week. As regards the Reports of the Commissions, I believe one is already prepared, and will be at once delivered, and the others, I trust, or some of them, will be ready in a fortnight. As to the character of the Bill, it will be a general measure, and will extend to Ireland and Scotland.

did not wish to discuss the measure, but merely to say that if it came up to the statement of the hon. and learned Member, it would improve the electoral system of the country, and give the constituencies greater freedom of choice in candidates. The measure was not before them, therefore, he could not say much with regard to it. Nevertheless, he thanked the Government most heartily for introducing it.

Motion agreed to.

Bill for the better prevention of Corrupt and Illegal Practices at Parliamentary Elections, ordered to be brought in by Mr. ATTORNEY GENERAL, Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT, Mr. CHAMBERLAIN, Sir CHARLES DILKE, and Mr. SOLICITOR GENERAL.

Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 1.]

At this hour of the night it is not my intention to detain the House by any lengthy statement as to the details of the Bill I am about to ask leave to introduce; and much less should I do so, because, on the whole, I think it will be the opinion of every Member of this House that, considering the many great difficulties that attended the first introduction of secret voting into this country, the law, as it is at present administered, is one which has met with considerable success. The first desire which, I think, should be felt by all of us, should be to thank the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) for the manner in which the Ballot Act has worked. In asking leave to introduce a Bill to render perpetual the present mode of election by ballot, I would ask the House to wait until they see the measure in Committee before they discuss it, for the reason that the Amendments we propose to make are chiefly Amendments of extreme detail which could not be properly considered before the Bill is in Committee. I would merely ask leave to introduce the Bill.

expressed a hope that the hon. Baronet would see the propriety of extending secret voting to elections of Poor Law Guardians, as well as elections of Parliamentary and Municipal Representatives. He never, himself, could comprehend why Poor Law Guardians had not been included in legislation of this kind. The Ballot Act was about to be amended and rendered perpetual, and it appeared to him that now was the time when all public bodies should be reformed in accordance with the principle of that measure.

said, that while the Members of the Government were favourable to the view of his hon. Friend (Mr. Gray), yet they were of opinion that Parliamentary and Municipal Elections should be dealt with by the present measure, and Guardians' Elections by another Bill. There would not be time to introduce such a Bill during the present Session.

Motion agreed to.

Bill to amend and make perpetual "The Ballot Act," ordered to be brought in by Sir CHARLES DILKE, Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT, Mr. CHAMBERLIAN, and Mr. ATTORNEY GENERAL.

Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 2.]

moved for leave to bring in a Bill to prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors on Sunday.

said, he intended to oppose the Motion.

Then the Motion must be postponed until another day.

remarked, that no Notice of opposition had been placed upon the Paper.

believed that it was necessary for an hon. Member to give Notice that he intended to oppose.

said, the Notice of the intention to move for the introduction of the Bill appeared on the Paper for the first time that day, and he apprehended that, under the half-past 12 o'clock Rule, it could not be proceeded with now that it was opposed.

was of opinion that it was necessary to give Notice of opposition, and that the Notice should appear upon the Paper.

said, the half-past 12 o'clock Rule stated that if a Bill was before the House, then Notice of opposition must be placed on the Paper; but in this case, as the Bill did not appear upon the Paper until that morning, he was with in his right in opposing its introduction without Notice.

If the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Stevenson) will refer to the Standing Order, he will find that it is in these words—

"Except for a Money Bill no Order of the Day or Notice of Motion be taken after half-past 12 of the clock at night with respect to which Order or Notice of Motion a Notice of opposition or Amendment shall have been printed on the Notice Paper, or if such Notice of Motion shall only have been given the next previous day of sitting and objection shall be taken when such Notice is called."

Objection being taken to the Motion of the hon. Member for South Shields, it must be postponed.

Motion postponed accordingly.

moved for leave to bring in a Bill for closing public-houses on Sundays in England and Wales, making provision for the sale of beer for consumption off the premises during certain limited hours, and for the exceptional requirements of large towns.

begged to oppose the Motion.

As the hon. Member opposes it, it cannot be taken to-day.

Motion postponed accordingly.

moved—

"That a Standing Committee be appointed to control the arrangements of the Kitchen and Refreshment Rooms in the Department of the Serjeant at Arms attending this House."

said, he felt compelled to oppose the appointment of the Committee. He was bound to confess that the Kitchen arrangements had hitherto been most unsatisfactory. Suggestions for improvement had frequently been made; indeed, material alterations were required, and although promises of amendment were made last year, they had not yet been carried out. He would suggest that there should be a material addition made to the Committee as now proposed, and he would further propose the name of the hon. Member for Clare (Captain O'Shea).

As the Motion is opposed it must be postponed.

Motion postponed accordingly.