I venture to make an appeal to the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) and to the hon. and learned Member for Lincoln (Mr. Hinde Palmer), both of whom have down upon the Paper Bills for a second reading. Generally speaking, the Government would not make such an appeal; but they naturally supposed that the debate on the Address would be over before the first Wednesday of the Session. That, however, is not the case, and I am sure that the hon. Members to whom I refer will agree with me that it would be very much for the convenience of the House, and that it would conduce greatly to the progress of Public Business, that we should proceed with the debate on the Address with as much expedition as possible, in order that the very important measures, for the discussion of which Parliament has been summoned earlier than usual, should also be proceeded with without delay.

thought that it was rather hard he should be called upon to resign the very good position he occupied in reference to the measure he had brought forward. The disadvantages under which private Members laboured were very great; and when they had an opportunity of bringing forward their Bills, to ask them to give way for the Government Business was taxing their good nature very heavily. At the same time, he fully admitted that in the present case the appeal was irresistible, for the Business under the consideration of the House was far more important than any private Member's measure could be; and, therefore, he requested the leave of the House to postpone his Bill until to-morrow.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be read a second time To-morrow."—( Mr. Anderson. )

said, that it also a great disappointment to him not to be able to avail himself of the opportunity he had the good fortune to gain for bringing forward his measure. In the extraordinary circumstances of the case, however, he felt that it would be ungracious, if not improper, for him not to yield to the appeal of the right Gentleman; and, therefore, he also asked leave of the House to postpone the Motion for the second reading of his Bill. In doing so, he hoped the Government would assist him in getting another and an early day.

said, the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had taken him entirely by surprise. When he (Mr. Cowen) left the House on the previous night, he was under the impression that the ordinary Business was to be taken to-day. He did not receive his Parliamentary Papers before leaving home, and the first intimation he had that the discussion on the Address was to be resumed was from the observations of the right hon. Gentleman. He must protest against such a proceeding. There were many hon. Members in the same position as himself, who did not know the debate was going to be taken at that time, and who were now absent. To force it forward on a day set apart for private Members' Business and take a division would be most unfair. For his part, he was opposed to coercion in every form; and it was his determination to resist the measure of the Government having that object in view by every means that the Forms of the House gave him. He was aware that if Ministers determined upon having their Business taken first there was no power to prevent them. But, whatever course was taken by other hon. Members, he, at least, would strongly protest against a Bill, highly objectionable in its character, and which raised such important Constitutional issues, being taken without Notice and in proper form.

The hon. Gentleman is passing beyond the limits of the Question before the House.

understood that the Question of renewing the adjourned debate upon the Address was involved in the Motion now before the House.

I must ask the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) to name the day to which he intends to postpone the second reading of his Bill.

To-morrow.

said, he had made his observations under the impression that the Question to adjourn the Orders of the Day had been put. If a division on the Address were taken that day, many hon. Members would be absent who would have desired to be present.

The Question is, That the second reading of the Married Women's Property (Scotland) Bill be postponed until to-morrow.

said, he was under the impression that the majority of the Irish Members who were present last night thought that the debate was to be resumed on Thursday. He quite agreed with the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen) that it would be a great inconvenience that a division should be snatched on Wednesday, when hon. Members were unprepared for it, upon a question which had been under consideration for so many nights.

was bound to say that his impression was that the adjourned debate would be resumed that day. With regard to the Bills under discussion, he might say he had had the honour, with others, of an interview with the Lord Chancellor, who expressed a sympathetic interest in the subject; and if hon. Members acceded to the wish of the Government on the present occasion, he hoped the Government would have regard to the importance of the subject, and give facilities for the consideration of the Bills on a future occasion.

said, he became aware that morning that the Government intended to press for the resumption of the debate that day, and he did his best to prevent their doing so, for he had intended to make a Motion calling on the House to give precedence to the most important Motion of his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), to which the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had taken a technical objection. He was informed, however, that it was not within the privilege of anybody but the Leader of the House to make a Motion of precedence. He desired, however, to say that although he had due Notice, from an interview with the Clerks at the Table, of the course the Government intended to pursue, yet the House gene- rally had no idea of that course. The House might have guessed that it was the intention of the Government to proceed with the debate de die in diem; but, no Notice being given from the Treasury Benches, many hon. Gentlemen might be found to agree with the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen). Apart altogether from the fact whether they received due Notice of the resumption of that discussion that day, there was a larger question, whether or not it was convenient that they should resume the debate on the Address. He had no desire to make any charge against the Government which he could not substantiate; but if he had not confidence in them he would be inclined to think that their object in now proposing to continue the debate was to stifle discussion. ["No, no!"] Stifle might not be a happy word; but what he meant was this—that it was generally understood that Wednesdays were reserved for harmless and innocuous measures, such as those placed upon the Table by the hon. Members for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) and Lincoln (Mr. Hinde Palmer) that day; and if the Government persisted in the resumption of the debate on the Address, they must know that it would take place in a comparatively empty House, and that many of the speeches made from the Home Rule Benches would not be heard by the majority of the Members of the House. That, considering the importance of the debate, should not be, for it was eminently unfair to the Irish Members. Another day would be wasted, and that feeling of listlessness and apathy would be induced which was always useful to the Government when they wanted to get rid of an unpalatable subject. He did not know whether his hon. Friends would proceed to a division on the subject; but if they did, they would be defending the rights of private Members, and asserting that it was the duty of the Government to give a full and fair opportunity of discussion upon the important questions involved in the Amendment to the Address.

said, he had no sympathy with the attack which had been made upon the Government, for he could not admit that there had been any attempt on their part to stifle discussion upon that painful and difficult question. He wished to point, out that it was not altogether unprecedented to take Business such as that proposed to be taken on a Wednesday. There were, however, a large number of hon. Members who still wished to consider the question; and later on it would, no doubt, be found inconvenient for the House to take a division on a day when a large number of hon. Members might not have anticipated that a division would take place. Everybody almost had the idea that the debate would go on, and he appealed to hon. Members opposite no longer to delay the Business of the House with the useless discussion that was now taking place. If they desired the House to come to a calm judgment on the question they must concede something to the feeling of the House.

thought it an injustice to hon. Members who wished to discuss the Bill before the House that the Government should force on the continuation of the debate on the Address that day. A large part of the community were interested in the measure under notice, which would be deprived of the advantage of having a full House for its consideration.

said, that a full and fair Notice had not been given by the Government that they intended to continue the debate on the Address that day. It did not seem to him at all desirable that Bills affecting such a large section of the community as the ladies should be postponed in order to enable the Government to introduce, as speedily as possible, their coercion policy in Ireland. It seemed to him, however, that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) was more anxious for the coercion of Ireland than for the rights and interests of the married women of Scotland, or more disposed to agree to any proposition which might be made by the Government in favour of their coercive projects, which, by-the-bye, were not to be based on any evidence which could be offered to the House. [ Cries of "Order, order!"] Some hon. Members were shouting "Order!" Well, he would not now discuss the projects of the Government; but he would to-morrow, and probably, also, on several future occasions. Despite what the right hon. Gentleman who represented the buckshot Government of Ireland had said, he still thought the hon. Member for Glasgow ought to have proceeded with the Bill, and afforded the House an opportunity of discussing its merits.

said, that a great many hon. Members left the House last night with the same impression that he (the O'Donoghue) entertained—namely, that it was doubtful whether the debate was to be resumed to-day, or on Thursday. He would, therefore, suggest that the Government should give an undertaking that no division should be taken that day on the Amendment of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell); that they should proceed with the adjourned discussion on the Address till 4 o'clock, and then the debate should be adjourned, and the measure of the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) taken up.

said, that a great many hon. Members left the House last night under the impression that the debate would not be resumed till Thursday. ["No, no!"] An hon. Member cried "No;" he evidently did not read The Times that morning, for it stated that the debate was adjourned until Thursday. Even his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) was not in his place, doubtless under the belief that the debate would not be resumed to-day. Again, the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen) was obliged to leave the House very soon, having made an arrangement on the understanding that the debate was adjourned till Thursday. The hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands) proposed that they should go on with the debate. Well, they had not yet heard that hon. Gentleman on the Irish Question; and if he would promise to give them a couple of hours of his oratory, and if one of his English Friends would give another couple of hours, they might consider the suggestion. But it was utterly impossible for Irish Members to keep all the discussion to themselves. He had himself a few remarks to make about hon. Gentlemen who generally occupied the front Opposition Bench; but they happened to be not there just now, and it would be unfair to attack them in their absence. He, at all events, sincerely trusted that the Government would see their way to adjourning the debate till Thursday.

thought the proposition of the hon. Member for Tralee (the O'Donoghue) was very rational, and hoped the Government would take it up. Most Irish Members certainly had been taken by surprise with the attempt to renew the debate that day. He had not the slightest idea that it would be resumed.

said, the time had arrived when plain speaking was necessary, for the House seemed to be under the control of a few hon. Members opposite. He was of opinion that there had been an ample discussion on the Address; but was sure the Government did not wish to check the fullest and freest discussion of their proposal. The great mistake the Irish Members were making was what was done, or said to have been done, when a man was sentenced before he was tried. The Government measures had not yet been fully disclosed—they had only been surmised; and, upon that surmise, certain criticisms had been made which were totally unjustifiable. He therefore thought that in the interests of the House, and of all classes of Members, the Government procedure should now go on.

, on the contrary, considered it was to the interest of the Government not to press on the debate at a time when it was un-expected by many hon. Members. He thought the last speaker (Mr. Macliver) had entirely mistaken the nature of the discussion, for it should not be forgotten that it was raised not by the Irish Members, but by the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen). He (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) was bound to say for himself that he was quite aware the discussion was to be resumed to-day; but then he remained in the House to a much later hour than many hon. Members. It was an unusual condition of things, and hon. Members naturally supposed that the debate would be adjourned till Thursday, and that the measures of private Members would be taken that day. He failed to see what loss the Government would sustain if they adopted the suggestion of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Tralee (the O'Donoghue); it would only mean the difference of an hour or two; and he, therefore, strongly appealed to the Government to accept the compromise suggested by him. It was obvious that the Government could not take such an important division to-day in an almost empty House, most of whose Members did not know that any such discussion was to come on.

said, he had no objection to the discussion going on; but a division was a very different thing. If the discussion was prolonged, and a division taken, then the motive of the Government would be apparent. An hon. Member opposite (Mr. Macliver) had spoken of condemning a man first and trying him afterwards; but it appeared to him (Mr. Dawson) that the programme of the Government, in the present great crisis, was to hang them first and try them afterwards.

I cannot think that anyone can suppose the Government wish to stifle discussion; and, certainly, the desire to go on from day to day until the debate is concluded would be an extraordinary way to do so. Another remark that was made has surprised me, and that is that any of us can be supposed to be so exceedingly inexperienced—and, I may say, foolish—as to imagine that in a matter of debate it is possible to take Irish Members by surprise. The whole matter is very simple. It is not merely that we have important Business to bring before the House, for which we have summoned Parliament at great inconvenience earlier than usual; but it is also of great importance that the debate on the Address should be finished as soon as possible. The Government are not attempting to check discussion in any way; but, as the House is aware, it is contrary to custom, and to right custom, to introduce controversial matters until the debate on the Queen's Speech is concluded. With regard to the debate, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister gave Notice distinctly that it would be resumed to-day. One or two hon. Members opposite have frankly stated their belief that the debate would be proceeded with, and I may say, further, that I remember occasions when some of the greatest divisions were taken on Wednesday; but I think hon. Members are really underrating their powers when they speak of a division being taken against their wishes, and it would be the first time that such a thing has happened, if the Irish Members, not wishing a division to be taken before 4 o'clock, did not find some means to prevent it.

wished the debate to go on; but testified to the general impression among Irish Members on the previous night that it would not be resumed that day.

said, that although he failed to hear the Notice of which the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had spoken, he left the House last night under a vague impression that the debate would be continued to-day; but he saw no announcement in The Times to that effect, and, therefore, concluded that the Press were uncertain as to the Business to be taken. If those whose business it was to record the proceedings of the House for the public had been mistaken on that point, it was no wonder if hon. Members also had been mistaken. It was evident, too, from the emptiness of the Opposition Benches, that the hon. Gentlemen who usually occupied them were not aware of the resumption of the debate. If they were not under such an impression, he asked, why were they not in their places? Some of the most violent attacks made on the hon. Gentlemen who sat around him came from the Opposition Benches; and it would appear that if they believed the debate would be resumed they were now shrinking from hearing the replies to their attacks. He had not the slightest doubt that they would have been as ready to hear the rejoinders as they were to make the attacks. They were, however, not in their places; and he would labour under the same disadvantage as the hon. Member for Waterford (Mr. R. Power), if he were to attempt to answer either of the right hon. and learned Members for the University of Dublin or the hon. Member for Mid Lincoln—they would not be in their places that day. He could not believe that the speeches of the hon. Gentlemen upon the Opposition Benches were made for the purpose of pandering to the panic abroad or crushing. Irish opinion; and until he saw in what spirit they took the replies to their speeches he could not admit that such was so. The hon. Member for Mid Lincoln (Mr. Chaplin) had raised a very extraordinary question—it was whether the Business of the House was to be in the hands of the Government, or in those of the Irish Members. He (Dr. Commins) wondered whether the hon. Gentleman had studied the matter so sufficiently as to see that there was a third alternative, and that was, whether the Business of the House was to be conducted according to the accepted and recognized Rules of the House, and according to the methods and forms that hon. Members in the House like to be followed. He was only a novice in that Assembly; but his impression was that one of the best recognized Rules of the House was this—that contentious Business or Business of a very important character was not usually set down for Wednesday, unless there was something in it of a very urgent nature. The urgency of a division being taken on the debate on the Address depended entirely upon the urgency of coercive measures—measures which, although they appeared to be steadfastly contemplated by the Government, were far from urgent. There was not the slightest reason for supposing that the state of things in Ireland would be any worse in February than they had been in December and January; indeed, there was reason to believe the condition of things would be better.

The hon. and learned Member is not keeping to the Question before the House.

said, he always bowed with the greatest submission to the Chair, for he had no desire to infringe the Rules of the House. He felt it his duty to say that, up to the present, the Government had not shown the slightest disposition to abridge the discussion, so far as the hon. Members representing Ireland were concerned. But it would certainly be most unfair to crowd all that the Irish Members had to say into two or three hours' discussion that afternoon. He appealed to the Ministry to continue that fairness which had characterized their previous proceedings, and not to continue the debate in the almost entire absence of hon. Members from Ireland, and of many hon. Members below the Gangway, who were thoroughly interested in this question.

said, he did not rise to prolong that discussion, nor to charge the Government with any intentional unfairness; but, reference having been made to the emptiness of those (the Opposition) Benches, he must give his personal impressions, and he dared say they were those of others also, as to what was intended to be the course of Business that day. He had, yesterday, asked Mr. Speaker what would be the course of Business that day; and that high autho- rity had told him that he thought that two private Members' Bills would take up a certain time, and probably the debate would be resumed afterwards. He believed that the House generally did not know that there would be any arrangement between the Government and the hon. Gentlemen in charge of those Bills that the Bills would not come on for discussion that day. At the same time, everyone knew perfectly well that the debate would be taken at a later hour. That sufficiently explained the absence of many of his hon. Friends at that moment; and if the discussion of those Bills had gone on an hour or two, the Benches near him would, doubtless, have become more fully occupied. There was no disposition among those who sat on his side to treat Irish questions with anything like contempt. On the contrary, when an important discussion of that kind came on, they had every desire to be in their places; and all who were interested in the question would, he was sure, take care to attend.

said, the question was one of great importance to Ireland, and the Irish newspapers contained very full reports of speeches of Irish Members on Irish questions which had not been noticed by the London papers at all. It was, consequently, necessary that there should be a full House, in order that the Members might be made acquainted with their arguments. English Members never read Irish newspapers; and, unless through personal attendance in the House, they were unacquainted with the debates on Irish affairs. They had no other avenue to the English Parliamentary mind save through the presence of hon. Members in their places in the House. He, therefore, objected to debates with empty Benches.

rose to a question of Order. He understood that the Question before the House was that the first Order of the Day should be postponed till to-morrow. He wished to ask whether it was in the power of the hon. Member to discuss subsequent Orders of the Day until the question relating to the first Order of the Day was disposed of?

It is, no doubt, quite irregular to discuss now the merits of the third Order of the Day. That will come on in the ordinary course. The noble Lord (Lord Eustace Cecil) has correctly stated the course that may be taken if the House thinks proper to postpone the Order of the Day now before it, and also the second Order. The House will then be engaged upon the third Order; and the remarks of the hon. Member would not, in that case, be irregular.

(who resumed amid considerable interruptions) said, he repeated that unless English Members were present when Irish Members spoke they could learn little or nothing of their views. He thought it inexpedient that the discussion should go on in the absence of a fair representation of the House. The Second Party in the House were not present, and there was only one Member of the Fourth Party present. He submitted that it would be better to adjourn the debate now, and thus render unnecessary a mere repetition of the arguments which Irish Members would feel it their duty to bring forward. He put it to the sense and discretion of the House whether they would force on them the necessity of repetitions of arguments, which course would be afterwards censured as causing waste of public time.

did not desire to impute unworthy motives to the Government; but a mine had been sprung upon the Irish Members. He must say that it was extremely remiss in the Government not to make it perfectly clear last night as to when the debate was adjourned to. For his part, he left with the impression that the debate would not be resumed that day, and for that reason he had left the notes of a speech he intended to make at home. He thought, however, if the suggestion of the hon. Member for Tralee (the O'Donoghue) was carried out, it would meet the case, and, everything considered, be a fair compromise.

thought the discussion had been most irregular—he might almost say unprecedented. He sat there till late last night, and to-day, like many other hon. Members who had private business to attend to, and he was taken by surprise by the course proposed by the Government. He did not know until 25 minutes ago that the debate was to be resumed to-day; and when he saw the Prime Minister's Notice on the Paper he naturally expected the right hon. Gentleman would be in his place to move it. Then hon. Members would have been enabled to discuss the merits of the question to which precedence was to be given; but as the right hon. Gentleman was not present and the Motion had not been moved, the course now taken, was a discreditable subterfuge. Whenever any hon. Member, whatever his position, put down such an important Notice, it was due to the House that he should be in his place to move it. He was not surprised that the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) should give precedence to the Government whenever it was to inconvenience the Irish Members, or to abridge their liberties. As an Irish Member, he objected to the Motion on very simple grounds. He had intended to take part in the debate on Thursday; but, unlike his hon. Friend (Mr. Barry), he had not forgotten his notes, for he had not prepared any, and he wanted the interval to prepare and condense his observations, so as to save the time of the House. Therefore he thought that, for the very purpose of facilitating Business, this Motion should be withdrawn, and that the House should be allowed to proceed with the Order in the regular course. The Government would gain no time by attempting to steal a march on Irish matters. He sat now on the Opposition side of the House. He did not take his place there on the first day—he only went on that side when he found it authoritatively stated that coercion was to proceed.

asked if the hon. Member was in Order?

The observations which the hon. Member is now making are certainly out of Order. He is bound to keep to the Question before the House, which is simply that the first Order of the Day be postponed.

said, he had invariably paid deference to the opinions of the Speaker and of the Chairman of Committees. [ Laughter. ] Perhaps those hon. Gentlemen who laughed had not paid the same respect to the ruling of the Chair as he had. As to the condition of married women in Scotland, he was surprised that every woman was not married according to the Scotch law.

The hon. Member is not entitled to discuss the merits of the Bill before the House.

, resuming, said, it was a great inconvenience to private Members that their rights should be taken away from them at the beginning of the Session. He entered a strong protest against it, and should oppose it as far as he was able.

suggested that Business would be best promoted by passing to the Orders of the Day, when, as it would be seen that the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) and the hon. and learned Member for Lincoln (Mr. Hinde Palmer) did not intend to press their Bills, the House would naturally arrive at the third Order, which would be the resumption of the debate on the Address, when the remarks then being made would be in Order. At present Public Business was being obstructed by a course which was entirely Unnecessary.

said, he understood the Question before the House was whether the first Order of the Day should be postponed in order to permit of the resumption of the debate on the Address to the Throne.

The Question before the House is simply that the first Order of the Day be postponed until to-morrow.

could not help thinking that the course taken by the Government in the matter was extremely inconvenient. The House rose that morning at a very late, or rather early hour, and no announcement was made at the time of the adjournment by the responsible Ministers of the Crown that the Motion which stood in the name of the Prime Minister asking for postponing the Orders of the Day would be made. No intimation was given to the House, or to hon. Members desirous of taking part in the debate on the Address, that the Government proposed that the important debate involving considerations of a character unprecedented in the history of the century would be resumed at the Morning Sitting. This morning, when he went up to the Table for the purpose of giving in a Motion upon another matter, he accidentally heard from one of the clerks that the Notice of the Motion which they now saw on the Paper with reference to the postponement of the Orders of the Day was placed upon the Paper, and that, consequently, it was the intention of the Government to resume this most important debate at 12 o'clock that day. He had no time to communicate the information which he then obtained to the hon. Members who acted with him in the House. The Speaker had left the Chair at the time, and it was by the merest accident that he (Mr. Parnell) became acquainted with the intention of the Government to steal a march—["No, no!"]—he repeated, to steal a march upon the House.

rose to Order. He wished to know whether the hon. Member for the City of Cork was in Order in discussing this question on the Motion that the Order of the Day be postponed?

The hon. Member is not entitled to discuss the third Order of the Day; but I cannot say that the observations just made by the hon. Gentleman appear to me to be out of Order.

, continuing, said, he always endeavoured to keep within Order, and to submit to the ruling of the Speaker. He had, too, always shown himself exceedingly thankful for that indulgence which the Speaker extended from time to time to hon. Members of the House, including himself. He did not propose, on the present occasion, to depart in any particular from any ruling the Speaker now laid down. He was merely speaking of the inconvenience which had resulted to his Colleagues and himself from a want of information, which might have been easily given by the Prime Minister, in reference to the resumption of the debate to-day. What were they called upon to do? Private Members were asked to give up to the Government one of the very few days which the Standing Orders of the House placed at their disposal for the purpose of initiating legislation. They knew that all the valuable legislation which had been added to the Statute Book in times past was the result of the exertions of private Members. He could cite many examples; but if he cited one conspicuous example—the Compensation for Disturbance Bill of last Session, which, unhappily, did not become law for reasons to which he need not now allude—it would be quite sufficient to prove the case that he put to the House. The Compensation for Disturbance Bill was the result of a Bill introduced into the House by a private Member, and forced to a second reading by a private Member; and, notwithstanding the obstruction which the Forms and Standing Orders of the House permitted, Business of the greatest public importance and urgency only ought to be allowed to deprive private Members of their privileges, which were at present quite sufficiently limited. Measures providing for the most useful legislation were frequently brought forward on Wednesday. It was hardly proper that they should be asked to resume a debate upon a question of such enormous importance as the one which the House had been discussing that Session at a Morning Sitting, when the great majority of hon. Members had not been warned of the intentions of the Government, and when the collapse of the debate might easily have occurred through ignorance of those intentions on the part of the hon. Member who should be in attendance to resume it. He was ready to admit that the Government were entitled to every assistance from them to proceed with important debates; but, in this case, the discussion adjourned from the previous evening was not particularly pressing. For his own part, he had endeavoured to meet the Government. He and other Irish Representatives had given up Tuesday night, because it was then considered desirable that the debate should be continued. But the issue today was of an entirely different character. The House was asked to resume the debate on the Address on the most flimsy pretexts. He (Mr. Parnell) had come down to the House unprepared, to a certain extent, for the line of action the Government were taking; and he was, therefore, not exactly in a position to shape a definite policy or to decide upon any particular course of action. He understood with regret that one very reasonable proposition had been made to the Government, and contemptuously rejected—namely, that the debate be arranged to be adjourned at 4 p.m., so that other Business might be proceeded with. In connection with this, he wished to draw attention to a circumstance which had occurred. Last night, after the adjournment of the debate on the Address, he (Mr. Parnell) asked leave to bring on a Motion standing in his name on the Business Paper, having reference to the appoint- ment of a Select Committee on the alleged commission of outrages in Ireland.

wished to know whether the remarks of the hon. Member were in Order?

The hon. Member appears to be travelling beyond the Question before the House. At the same time, I should not feel it my duty to interpose if the hon. Member gives me an assurance that the matter to which he is now referring has any bearing on the Motion before the House.

said, he was about to show the bearing of the transactions to which he had referred upon the present question, when he was interrupted by the hon. and learned Member for Bridport (Mr. Warton), who had recently made himself conspicuous by obstructing Irish Members on two occasions. When they heard Obstruction talked about, he hoped it would be recollected that the first obstruction this Session had been committed—

The hon. Member is not now keeping to the Question before the House.

, continuing, said, that his Motion with regard to crime and outrage in Ireland stood on the Paper that day, and he desired to make a proposal to the Government in connection with that Motion which might facilitate Business, and bring about a solution of the difficulty in which the House was involved. He had been frustrated in the attempt to bring his Motion forward last night by the Rule prohibiting Opposed Business after half-past 12. He now asked the Government to allow two hours after 4 o'clock for its discussion. If that were acceded to, he should withdraw his opposition to the Motion before the House. The position of the Irish Members in that House was a very peculiar one. They were a very small minority in the House; and out of the 102 or 103 Irish Members, probably only 63 represented what were called Home Rule constituencies. It consequently happened that the Home Rulers—

I am bound to say that I entirely fail to see the relevancy of the observations of the hon. Member to the Question before the House, which is simply whether a particular Order of the Day shall be postponed until to-morrow or not. I must call upon the hon. Member to keep himself closely to that question.

said, that if his course of argument was not permissible he did not wish to persist in it for one moment. He, however, desired to urge most respectfully on the Government the desirability of acquiescing in the compromise he suggested—namely, that they should give him two hours for his Motion on crime and outrage in Ireland, and enable him to take the opinion of the House on the matter. He would not have another chance of bringing it forward, in the event of all the private Members' days being taken by the Government for their own Business. In the event of their refusing, he should be under the painful necessity of dividing the House not only on the present question, but on the subsequent Motion for the postponement of the other Bill which stood upon the Paper. [ Cries of "Divide!"] He regretted exceedingly to appear to delay the debate on the Address; but there were times when hon. Members were entitled to use the Forms of the House against the progress of Business. He considered that, owing to the extraordinary action of the Government in not giving public Notice of their intention to resume the debate at 12 o'clock that afternoon, the Irish Members, who were, as he said, a very small minority in that Assembly, were entitled to use the Forms of the House for the purpose of preventing progress. He regretted that they should be compelled to do so; but that course had been forced upon them by the action of the Government, who were responsible for the entanglement into which affairs had got, and who would show a desire that this entanglement should continne by refusing the very reasonable compromise which he had proposed to them.

thought the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) was mistaken in supposing that there was an entanglement; There was no entanglement. No one would regret it more than the Government if there were any misunderstandings as to the time of the resumption of the debate for which they could be held responsible. But nothing could have been more distinct than the intimation given by his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister the other afternoon that, in the view of the Government, although, in consequence of the extreme rarity of the precedents, there was no absolute rule on the subject, it was undoubtedly the custom that the debate on the Address to the Crown should be continued de die in diem; and, acting upon that principle, he (the Marquess of Hartington) had himself, when the debate was adjourned last night, named on behalf of the Government this day as the day on which the debate would be resumed. Hon. Members, he pointed out, must be supposed to pay some attention to the Business of the House; and if any hon. Member entertained the slightest doubt as to the day which had been named, nothing could have been more simple than for him to have made the matter certain by putting a Question. It was not from The Times or any other newspaper that hon. Members were expected to obtain their information as to the Business. Parliamentary Papers were issued for the information of Members. On the Paper that day there was a Notice of a Motion by his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister for the postponement of the Orders of the Day. It was not, hon. Members would see, necessary to make that Motion, because the Members in charge of the first Orders had expressed their willingness not to proceed with those Orders on that occasion. It would be in accordance with the usual courtesy extended to hon. Members if their wishes were acceded to. The hon. Member (Mr. Parnell) had made what he considered a very reasonable proposal to the House. But, believing, as the Government did, that the most convenient and proper practice was to continue the debate on the Address until it should be disposed of, they certainly should not take any action or assent to any course which would have the effect of bringing about a different procedure. He would also point out that there was a doubt as to the power of the Government to come to the arrangement suggested by the hon. Member, for they were not absolute masters of the Business of the House; and when the debate was resumed it would be for the House to decide how long it should continue, and the Government would not be able to put an end to it at a stated time. The hon. Member would have an opportunity of bringing his Motion forward, as an Amendment to the Motion of his right hon. Friend (Mr. Forster), on the introduction of the Bill for the Protection of Life and Property in Ireland.

(who rose amid cries of "Divide!") said, he was there till the House rose last night; but he could not ascertain what was going to be done that day. To his knowledge several Irish Members wanted to speak, and he thought as they were not present they should have an opportunity of doing so. It was important that the voices of the Irish Members should be heard there, and their votes recorded; and he protested strongly against any decision which should prevent the Irish Members from stating their views to the fullest extent. The Government had stolen a march on Irish Members; and if they persisted in that course the result would be to inflame the suspicions already prevailing in Ireland, and excite a similar and sympathetic feeling in Scotland and England. The noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington) had said that the hon. Member for the City of Cork might bring his Motion forward when the Government introduced their land proposals; but it would then be too late. For his part, he (Mr. Sexton) challenged the accuracy of the Returns which had been produced on the subject of the hon. Member's (Mr. Parnell's) Motion.

asked if the observations of the hon. Member were in Order? The hon. Member was discussing the Returns.

The hon. Member is bound to confine himself strictly to the very limited Question now before the House.

was not aware that he had exceeded the limits of the Question.

The hon. Member is travelling beyond the Question before the House. He is bound to confine himself to the Question that the first Order of the Day be postponed.

explained that he wished to show that the public interests would not be served by a postponement of his hon. Friend's (Mr. Parnell's) Motion. Once the Coercion Bill were introduced, a Committee to inquire into outrage and crime in Ireland would be too late to be of any use. If the Government persisted in refusing the proposal of the hon. Member for the City of Cork, their conduct would be considered in Ireland unworthy of any English Government, and especially of a Liberal Government.

rose, and proceeded to address the House irrelevantly upon the Question, when—

The hon. Member is not confining himself to the Question before the House. I must repeat to the hon. Member that the Question before the House is simply whether the first Order of the Day shall be postponed until to-morrow or not.

said, he proposed to show that by the postponement very great inconvenience would arise to certain hon. Members of that House. He contended that great inconvenience would arise if the Orders of the Day were postponed. A mine had been sprung upon Irish Members. He, for one, had not understood that the debate was to be proceeded with de die in diem. It was strange that the Government was represented on this occasion by what had been called the "coercive section of the Cabinet." He did not see the Prime Minister, or the Chancellor of the Duchy, or the President of the Board of Trade, on the Front Treasury Bench. On an occasion when an Address was to be voted to Her Majesty, it seemed to him that it would not be unusual for those right hon. Gentlemen to be in their places to assist in the deliberations of the House.

I must repeat to the hon. Member that he must confine himself strictly to the Question immediately before the House. His observations are quite irrelevant, to that Question.

said, he was endeavouring to show the inconvenience which arose from the absence of certain right hon. Members. [ Cries of "Order!"] He would endeavour to confine himself to the Question. The question was, whether an arrangement made very suddenly by the hon. Member for Glasgow and certain right hon. Gentlemen opposite was to be accepted without hesitation? If his hon. Friend (Mr. Parnell) should divide the House against the Motion now before it he would certainly support him.

considered the course adopted by the Government a most inconvenient one. One of its results was to take the Irish. Members by surprise. It was simply through accident that he himself was there; and he was aware that many Irish Members believed that no attempt would be made to have the debate on the Address resumed. Wednesday was the only day on which private Members could hope to forward their Bills, or to have matters discussed which to them were of the utmost importance. The provisions of the Bill of the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) were of great interest to the people of Ireland, as well as to the people of Scotland. ["Order!"] He would avoid referring to the provisions of the Bill, and would only say of it that it was a Bill—

The hon. Member is quite out of Order in referring to the nature of a Bill which is not before the House. The Question is, Whether its consideration should or should not be postponed?

said, he bowed to the ruling of the Chair, and would only say generally that the adjournment of the Business of private Members was not only inconvenient, but improper. If the hon. Member for Glasgow was willing to give up his rights, it was not right to assist in the curtailment of the privileges of other private Members. He considered that the compromise offered by his hon. Friend the Member for Tralee (the O'Donoghue) was a fair one, and ought to be accepted. The action of the Government would not contribute to the furtherance of the Public Business, for they had already wasted two hours. Even now they ought, he thought, to meet the Irish Members half-way.

objected to the course taken by the Government, because he saw that the adoption of it would be the establishing of a precedent which might have the effect of seriously curtailing the rights of private Members—a precedent which would be unfair, not only to Irish Members, but to English and Scotch Members also. The Bill proposed to be set aside was a very important one, and he objected to its consideration being postponed. For his own part, he also had come down to the House by accident, not at all expecting that the adjourned debate would be resumed; and he would, therefore, vote against the Motion before the House.

also protested against the course adopted by the Government. The proposition which they supported was, he thought, an unfortunate one. He knew he was not at liberty to allude to the subject the consideration of which they were called upon to postpone; but this he said, that they were asked to set a very bad precedent. They had been told that it was the intention of the Government, when certain other Bills came on, to attempt to postpone all other Business in their favour; and if they tamely gave up the present Wednesday, a precedent would be set which would be called in aid when the Prime Minister asked the House to postpone all other Business in favour of his Coercion Bills. But he had another reason for not wishing to proceed with the debate on the Address that day. It was said that the Government had not arrived at definite ideas of what their proposals were to be. If so, it was the duty of the Irish Members to give the Government as much time as possible for reasonable arguments to weigh on their minds; and they could not accelerate the debate on the Address without accelerating the decision of the Government on the chief subject of the Address. There was no Rule of the House that the discussion on the Address should conclude before other Business was touched. There was merely a custom, which, if it existed unbroken, seemed to have so existed merely because no attempt had been made to break it. The Irish Members had very strong reasons for the course they were taking, and he should certainly support them.

said, he did not complain of the action of the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) as being improper. In the view of the hon. Member, he might be acting wisely for the purpose of obtaining future facilities for his Bill; but he (Sir Joseph M'Kenna) thought it would be extremely unwise, inexpedient, and impolitic if the House acceded to the proposal before it. Neither he nor any other Irish Member wished to shirk discussion of the Main Question; but they objected to a decision being snatched by a side wind, especially in the absence of so many hon. Gentlemen whose votes it was important to have recorded. He implored hon. Members not to let it go forth to the people of Ireland that in a matter of such deep importance to them as the Address the Irish Members had allowed themselves to be taken by surprise. Many other hon. Members would have been here, including men of independence and spirit, from Ireland, had they known that this question would be proceeded with. They were not now in their places; and although they were men without reproach and without fear, the Irish people would not excuse their absence through a misunderstanding if a division were now taken. He believed Ministers were averse to taking the House by surprise, and he implored the House not to allow them to do so. What would be thought of the matter in Ireland was this—Here was one of the gravest propositions made that ever occupied the mind of the House, a proposition in the discussion of which every Irish Member wished to join.

rose to Order. The hon. Member was discussing the third Order and not the first.

also rose to Order. He was in a better position to hear what fell from his hon. Friend than the hon. and gallant Member above the Gangway (Captain Aylmer); and he was able to say that the testimony borne by the hon. and gallant Member was not accurate or true testimony.

Mr. SPEAKER motioned to Sir JOSEPH M'KENNA to proceed.

said, he was certainly in Order in protesting against any course which might seem to be an attempt to take the Irish Members by surprise. The hon. Member for Glasgow, he had no doubt, had voluntarily suggested that he should give way in order that the debate on the Address might be resumed, and it was not for the Government to refuse such an offer; but, on public grounds, he objected to the sudden unmasking of the Government battery on an army not prepared to meet their fire. He repeated that he believed there was not a single Member of the Government capable of perpetrating such a thing, or laying a trap for them. But, although he said that with all earnestness, in Ireland they would not believe it. They would believe that it was a stretch of Parliamentary courtesy, and a mere straining of politeness on his part to say so; but he believed it, and for that reason only. In conclusion, he earnestly implored right hon. Gentlemen on the Ministerial Benches not to let it go forth to Ireland that they laid a trap for the Irish Members in the matter for the purpose of denying them an opportunity of having full and free discussion of the subject. In the most patriotic spirit, and as a Member of that House, he appealed to the Government not to avail themselves of the offer of the hon. Member for Glasgow.

said, no one could doubt that it would be most improper to take the House by surprise; but, so far as he and his Friends were aware, there was no surprise in the case at all. He clearly understood from the beginning of the evening yesterday, and he had no doubt that the same understanding prevailed to the end, that the debate would be resumed that day. In accordance with that understanding, he saw without any surprise that the Prime Minister had given Notice of a Motion for postponing the Orders of the Day in order to take the adjourned debate on the Address. It appeared that there was no occasion for him to make that Motion, because the hon. Gentlemen in charge of the two Bills which stood first thought it was their duty, and were entirely disposed, to take the course of postponing the discussion of them until a future day. This was a matter entirely within the discretion of any hon. Gentleman in charge of a Bill. Of course, as the stage of a Bill was an Order of the House, its postponement might be objected to; but it was a convenient practice to allow a Gentleman in charge of a Bill to postpone it, if he thought proper. All he wished to say was that it was distinctly understood throughout last evening—and he never heard any doubt expressed on the subject—that the Government would propose that the debate on the Address should be resumed to-day, and he took the usual step of asking his Friends to be down in time for the division, which might be expected on that understanding.

wished he could believe in the sincerity of the objections which had been advanced by Irish Members against proceeding with the debate that day. As to the objection that they were taken by surprise, and were not, there- fore, prepared to continue the discussion, the singular facility with which, in advocating the postponement of the debate, they glided into a discussion of the Amendment to the Address perfectly satisfied him that they were as capable of discussing the question now as they would be to-morrow. With regard to the argument that the Irish Representatives desired the presence of English Members, so that they might reach their minds and judgment, he reminded the House that the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) had said that he did not desire their presence, because he did not expect to reach the minds of the English Representatives—that all he wished was to reach the English people through the Press—

I must remind the hon. and learned Member that the Question before the House is simply that of postponing the first Order of the Day.

hoped that the House would accede to the Motion of the hon. Member for Glasgow, as it was proper that they should at once proceed to the real Business before them.

said, he was very sorry the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland did not see his way to accept the proposal of the hon. Member for Tralee (the O'Donoghue); and he thought that by the time they had arrived at 4 o'clock the right hon. Gentleman would also be very sorry. It might have been very convenient for the hon. Member for Glasgow to make this arrangement with the Government; and he should be glad to know if, in return for his courtesy, the Government had not made any arrangement with him to give him a further day for discussion? As to the remark which had been made in the beginning of the discussion, to the effect that the whole question at issue was whether the Public Business was to be regulated by that House or by the Irish Members, he thought that that was not so, because this point was raised by an English Member. It was also quite evident that the Benches never were so empty upon the discussion of a Coercion Bill for Ireland. The reason they were so empty to-day was because hon. Members believed that the discussion would not take place that day.

said, he also wished to bear testimony to the impression that prevailed in the minds of Irish Members that the debate on the Address would not be resumed until Thursday. Being a young Member of the House, he inquired of one of his more experienced Colleagues as to the probability of the debate being resumed that day, and he was informed that there was no chance of that, as it was contrary to all precedent. If such a course were pursued, it would, in the future, infringe upon the time which belonged to private Members. At the commencement of the Session the Bills which were intended to be brought in were announced, and it was left an open question at what time they would be taken up.

I must point out to the hon. Member that he is travelling very wide of the Question really before the House.

said, he was always ready to bow to the decision of the Chair on a point of Order. He was simply desirous of explaining the position in which the House was placed. As the Speaker had decided that he was out of Order, he would now move the adjournment of the debate.

Does any hon. Member second the Motion?

said, he would beg to second the Motion, and, in doing so, he would point out that, if the conduct of the Business of the House depended upon the will and pleasure of right hon. Gentlemen who represented the Government, it would tend to a curtailment of the liberties of Members of the House, and, therefore, a curtailment of the liberties of the people of the Empire.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—( Mr. Gill. )

said, the Question now before the House was that the debate be adjourned.

said, that the discussion had drifted into something in the nature of a wrangle, and he hoped he should not introduce into it any unnecessary heat or anger; but it was distinctly stated by the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington), and he certainly understood the Prime Minister last evening to say, that the debate on the Address would be continued de die in diem until it was concluded. This was also clear from the Order Book, which was the official and regular authority to which hon. Members looked for the arrangement of Business. If the authority of the Prime Minister and the Order Book of the House were not to be conclusive, he did not know how Business was to be carried on.

said, he sat calmly observing the proceedings of the House, and he had refrained from wasting a moment of the time of hon. Members, which, he might be permitted to say, was very frequently wasted in talk. He tad seen strategical movements, and he had seen marches stolen by experienced generals upon those whom they should have met by straightforward procedure; but the question of coercion for Ireland would not be decided by the movements of either Party in the House. Public opinion was too strong in this Island. ["Order!"]

I must call upon the hon. Member to confine himself to the Question before the House. He is now travelling very wide from it.

continuing, said, it would be seen that he was out of Order already. Order was a very curious thing. It often served to produce disorder, and much oftener it served to produce dissatisfaction in the minds of hon. Members. He ventured to suggest to right hon. Gentlemen who sat on the Benches opposite that they would conduce to the advancement of the influence of the House as a deliberative Assembly, and they would conduce to the advancement of their own power in Ireland, by avoiding anything like the appearance of management in the debate. He did not know that in the whole course of his life he felt more pained than by a word which dropped from the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington) last night.

I cannot allow the hon. Member to refer to debates which have already taken place in this House.

said, he was there as the friend of Ireland, having no personal interests to serve, and he was not there as a "miscreant." [ Cries of "Order!"] Though he was very much a junior as to the Forms of the House, he took it for granted that they could go on with the Bills on the Notice Paper then, and postpone the Irish Business until to-morrow, in accordance with the desire of the Irish Members. Whenever he trespassed upon Order he would bend to the House, and whenever he said an unkind word of hon. Members, he would withdraw it at once; but he would not submit to be called a miscreant.

, as an old Member, could not adopt the course suggested by the "junior" Member, as he called himself, who had just sat down (Mr. Nelson). He must appeal to the House to have some respect for its position before the world. [ Cries of "Order!"] He was not to be put down by nonsense of that kind.

rose to Order. He wished to know if it was regular to speak of observations made in that House as "nonsense?"

motioned to Mr. BERESFORD HOPE to proceed.

thought there was nothing un-Parliamentary in the use of the word. He would, however, withdraw it, and say that he would not be put down by the exquisite sense which hon. Members below the Gangway had so often shown. He must say that it was the full and complete understanding yesterday that the debate on the Address should be continued de die in diem, and also that it was the ancient traditionary Form of Parliament that the Answer to Her Majesty's Speech should be disposed of before other Business was proceeded with. If there was anything which would be uncommon or strange in this matter, it would be if, on the first Wednesday of a Session, the Bills of private Members were ripe for discussion.

said, that his object in postponing his Bill, and that of the Government in asking him to do so, had been equally misunderstood and misrepresented. They were accused of having made a private arrangement; but if that had been so, last night he might have taken his Notice off the Paper altogether, in which case there would have been no necessity to discuss the question at all. He mentioned that to show that no private arrangement had been made. Those hon. Members who had been in the House since 12 o'clock had heard the whole of the arrangement; and the fact was, the Government asked him to postpone his Bill for the convenience of the House, and he had consented with great reluctance, for he had got a splendid opportunity for proceeding with his Bill—such an opportunity as he should probably never get again. He consented, not only to oblige the Government, but, he had supposed, the Irish Members also, for he thought it would have been far more advantageous to them to proceed with the debate on the Amendment to the Address. He was exceedingly sorry that they had not entered into the spirit of an arrangement made in their interest.

said, that if the representations of the case and this discussion were as stated by the hon. Member for Gateshead (Mr. W. H. James), he should be very much disposed to oppose the Motion for adjournment; for on looking at the Orders of the Day, he found they were calculated to mislead the Members of the House. Usually, when the Government intended to take a substantive Order, attention was attracted to the fact by a Notice of Motion that the Orders of the Day were to be postponed in order to make way for the resumption of an adjourned debate. [ Cries of "Look at the Paper!"] He could assure hon. Members on both sides of the House that he was in no difficulty at all. [ Laughter. ] He had not nailed his colours to the mast; and if he were to express his feeling of the matter, he would say that he should regret as much as any hon. Member of the House that a discussion of the kind should go on. There could be no doubt that the argument of the hon. Member for Gateshead was perfectly conclusive, and he could count on his (Mr. O'Connor Power's) support. But there was another matter that should be taken into account that would go to justify, if not to excuse, the action hon. Members had taken. The Telegraph of that morning contained an announcement that the debate that was adjourned last night would not be resumed that day, and in consequence of that a large number of Irish Members who were prepared to speak on the resumption of the debate had not come down to the House. He would also say that he regretted that some Members of the Irish Party should have come into collision with hon. Members opposite before they had come to consider the proposals to be laid before the House. He would be very anxious to avoid a collision of that kind, when serious questions were pending, upon which the opinion of the House was required to be given without fear, favour, or affection. He would, therefore, ask right hon. Gentlemen to offer some suggestion which would enable them to get out of the difficulty.

said, that the Motion before the House was the adjournment of the debate, the debate having arisen on the Motion for the postponement of the first Order. He did not suppose anyone expected that the Government could assent to the adjournment of the debate. They had already wasted much time, and perhaps more time would be wasted, and it was very desirable for the convenience of the country that the debate on the Address should be proceeded with from day to day until it was concluded. His right hon. Friend the Leader of the House last evening gave it as a reason for asking for last night, and he and other hon. Members thought the reason applied to all after days. Notice was given by his right hon. Friend last night that the debate would be resumed to-day; and, no doubt, at the close of the evening, the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington) also gave Notice of it. Notice was put on the Paper to that effect; but there was no necessity to make the Motion for the reason that his hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) and Lincoln (Mr. Hinde Palmer) acceded to his appeal. There was no arrangement between them and the Government whatsoever. Now, would it not be for the convenience of the House that they should proceed with the debate on the Address that day? Was it not for the convenience of the House and for the Service of the country that, as soon as that debate could be reasonably got through, the Business for which Parliament had been summoned should be brought before it? He could hardly suppose that hon. Members from Ireland wished to prevent the Government from being able to state to the House and to the country the special grounds why Parliament had been called together. Allusions had been made as if the Government wished to surprise the House into a division. No one would be surprised more than he should, even if the debate had begun at 12 o'clock, that they should have a division that day; but he thought there would be a feeling in the country that unless they were allowed to proceed with the discussion on the Address there was an attempt, he would not say to stifle discussion, but to delay discussion, on the important proposals the Government had to make. That would be the general opinion of the country; and he could not conceive that hon. Members from Ireland, even with the views they held, could consider that it would advantage their cause to give the impression—he did not say they intended it—that they wished to prevent the Government from being able to state the grounds upon which Parliament was called together. He trusted they would be allowed to go to a division upon the adjournment of the debate, and then to take a division upon the Motion of his hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson). As for saying that Wednesday was a day on which the debate could not be continued, he might remark that they had now in the House a very much larger number of hon. Members than was generally present in the House on important debates between 8 and 10 o'clock at night. The hon. Member for Kerry (Mr. Blennerhassett) had possession of the House when they came to the third Order, and could proceed with his speech, for he (Mr. W. E. Forster) believed he would have an attentive audience. Practical men throughout the country would see that there was absolutely no reason why they should not go on, and he trusted they would be permitted to do so.

said, the speech of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. E. Forster) was one which should not be made without an immediate answer. There could not be the slightest doubt that to-morrow morning there would be a feeling in this country that the Irish Members were desirous to delay the progress of Business. ["Hear, hear!"] The expectation that the feeling would be prevalent in this country to-morrow was more than corroborated by the cheer they had heard from the Benches opposite. He should not be at all surprised that the country, which had not had an opportunity of listening to that debate, or following its course, should fall into an erroneous impression and judgment with regard to it when hon. Members, who had an opportunity of following it, had already arrived at a conclusion so unjust to the Members from Ireland. He thought, however he would be able to prove to the satisfaction of the House and the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson), that any such feeling as had been referred to was founded altogether on a misapprehension of the facts. In the first place, he would desire to call attention to the fact that the debate was not originated by the Irish Members. The debate originated in the complaint, by his hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen), that the rights of private Members were being trampled upon by the course that was taken. It would also be found that the discussion was not exclusively continued by hon. Members from Ireland. The debate had also been joined in by some speakers representing English and Scotch constituencies. When the debate originated, there was not a single Member except one on the Front Opposition Benches. The noble Lord who represented the Conservative Opposition at the time (Lord Eustace Cecil) stood up and said that his impression was, and the impression of the Leaders of the Opposition, in whose name he spoke, and whose absence he excused, was, that the debate would not have been resumed at 12 o'clock that day. Did not that distinctly prove that the misapprehension with regard to the continuation of the debate was not confined to the Irish Members alone, but that it was shared in by English Members, and especially by the Leaders of the Conservative Party of that House? It showed that the debate was not originated by Irish Members; that it was not protracted solely by Irish Members; and that the question involved was not an Irish question; but, as had been admitted by hon. Members representing English constituencies, it was a question affecting the right of private Members of that House.

The hon. Member is now referring to a past debate. He must confine himself to the Question before the House.

said, he bowed to the decision of the right hon. Gentleman; but he could scarcely think that his observations were open to the construction put upon them. He did not intend to refer to past debates, and anything he had said had reference only to what occurred in the course of the present discussion and within the past hour. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland stated that a feeling would exist to-morrow in England that a day was deliberately wasted by Irish Members. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) fully admitted that; and he fully admitted also that that was the impression of English and Scotch Members of the House at the present moment. But he thought he had shown that that was an utterly erroneous impression; and if the feeling in the country to-morrow should be that the debate was originated and continued by Irish Members, and that the question involved was an exclusively Irish question, that feeling would be contrary to the facts known to the House. It would also follow that English public opinion was easily excited against Ireland, and easily led astray; and it was for the very reason that English public opinion was so fickle, treacherous, and hostile, that the Irish Members objected to its having its present supremacy over Irish affairs.

said, that, in his opinion, hon. Members from Ireland could hardly believe the intensity of the feeling that existed in many large English constituencies unless they were face to face with it. Most of them thought that the Business of the House was thrust altogether on one side, and certainly it was continually and systematically the practice—

I must request the hon. Member to confine himself to the Question before the House.

, resuming, contended that hon. Members opposite had been wasting the time of the House by the course which they had taken. Why should they continue a practice that could only have that result?

pointed out that the confusion which existed in the minds of hon. Members, in consequence of the discussion on that side issue in presence of the many Amendments to the Motion before the House, was sufficient to warrant him in appealing to hon. Members to allow the debate to be adjourned before they would forget the question before them. He considered also that it was desirable to allow the feelings which must have been aroused in the minds of hon Gentlemen by the expression "miscreant," by the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington) the previous night to subside, before resuming the debate on the Address.

the hon Member's observations are not relevant to the Question before the House.

said, his argument was, that the words used by the noble Marquess—

The hon. Member is referring to words used in a debate upon another question. He is not entitled to refer to them.

said, the words he referred to had been used by his hon. Friend the Member for Mayo (Mr. Nelson) in the course of the present debate and within the last half-hour. His hon. Friend made use of the word "miscreant."

I must again call the attention of the hon. Member to the fact that these observations have no reference to the Question before the House.

said, he bowed to the right hon. Gentleman's decision, and should not refer further to the word in question; but the argument that it had aroused strong feelings in the minds of hon. Members still remained in force, and it was proper that those feelings should be allowed to subside before the debate was resumed. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Beresford Hope) referred to the exquisite common sense that characterized that portion of the House; but to some of the Members to whom that observation would apply he might have an opportunity of pointing to the exquisite grace that occasionally characterized hon. Members who sat even on the Front Opposition Benches. In conclusion, he would appeal to the House to allow the debate to be adjourned, as it was clear that many hon. Members were under the impression that it would not be continued that day.

supported the Motion before the House, and urged that the only course hon. Members could take was to allow the debate to be adjourned. He said, that as the Government had refused all reasonable offers which had been made to them by way of compromise, he hoped hon. Members would stick to the Motion for adjournment. They should do so not only in their own interest, but in the interest of every individual Member and the interest of free debate and free discussion in the House. If certain hon. Gentlemen were disposed to abdicate the rights and privileges to which the Rules of the House entitled them, the Home Rule Members were not disposed to yield one jot on that particular. If they were to do so, a Motion might be proposed some fine morning that all hon. Members sitting in any particular part of the House should be ordered out of the House altogether. Therefore, he said that so long as there was a plank of the Constitution left, so long as it was left in the House, although they might not have it elsewhere, hon. Members should be prepared, if necessary, to speak on every Motion for the protection of their rights and privileges to the letter. The Members of the Government ought to see that public order and decorum were maintained in the discussion of all Business; and he did not see how that could be done, or how they could expect to have due respect and confidence, if they began at the very opening of Parliament to make bargains with private Members, which enabled them to violate the privileges of the House.

said, it was well known that there was a strong deputation gone to the Prime Minister on Irish Business, and, in the absence of those Gentlemen, he thought the debate ought not to be resumed. When they returned, however, particularly as his Friends on the Home Rule Benches were now much strengthened in numbers, he would not object to the resumption of the debate.

said, he also had been misled by a paragraph in the newspapers, and therefore had not come down until after 2 o'clock. When he heard the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland charge the Irish Members with a wish to obstruct the debate, he for one was not concerned to deprecate the charge. He was not afraid to say that he did wish to delay it by every possible means that the decorum of debate and the Rules of the House would permit. His object, of course, was to stave off the Coercion. Bill, which was now in view, and therefore he wished to protract the debate on the Address.

The hon. Member is not speaking to the Question before the House, which is the postponement of an Order of the Day.

said, he would, of course, bow to the ruling of the Chair, and would conclude by protesting against the proposal to go on with, the debate as a direct attempt to encroach on the rights of private Members to whom Wednesday belonged.

said, he did not join with the hon. Member for wicklow (Mr. M'Coan) in a desire to protract the discussion either of the present Amendment, or any other Amendment to the Address. He thought he had sufficiently shown already that was not his desire by the brevity of his speech; and he thought the great majority of his hon. Friends had also shown that was not their desire by the brevity of the speeches with which they had supported his Amendment. With regard to the present matter, he wished distinctly to declare that he believed it to be quite within his right as a private Member of the House to use the Forms of the House legitimately, properly, and fairly against the resumption of the debate on the Address on the present occasion; but he wished to explain that he should not take upon himself the responsibility of initiating any such course. That morning, after the House rose, he heard accidentally from one of the clerks at the Table that it was proposed to resume the debate that day. He was very much surprised, and felt indignant, but did not decide to oppose the resumption of the debate, and did not come down to the House till a quarter past 1, when he expected to find the debate in full swing. But what had occurred in the meantime? The hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen) rose, and, from the point of view of the general interests of Public Business and private Members, objected to the course which the Government proposed to take; and he having taken that step, several Irish Members supported him, and urged the desirability of stopping the debate, on account of the very great inconvenience which it would cause to the Irish Members. When he (Mr. Parnell) arrived at the House, he was hurriedly made acquainted with the position of affairs. He considered the opposition which had been got up was a just and proper one, and accordingly he proceeded to express his views on the general situation. At the same time, he would admit, to the fullest extent, that those considerations influenced his action that the Irish Members were exceedingly likely to be mis- represented and misunderstood in the country. ["Hear, hear!"] He did not mean in his own country. He had always felt it was very desirable, whenever they could, to take advantage of any opportunity of directing and informing public opinion in England with regard to the situation in Ireland; and he could not help seeing that any attempt at obstruction on the Address, or any undue prolongation of the debate, must re-act against them. He wished to give an opportunity to English public opinion to assert itself, and to inform itself on the real facts of the Irish Question. He did not wish to interfere, in the slightest degree, with the success of that process. But he did feel that the Government had acted unfairly in putting down the debate for that day. They must have known that they were affording only a very brief interval of rest to those hon. Members who remained in the House until its rising, and that the occasion would not be propitious for the resumption of debate of that kind. The Government undoubtedly knew that the majority of the Irish Members were averse to resuming the debate that day; and, whatever arrangement might have been come to between the two Front Benches, it was without the knowledge and against the desire of the Irish Members. In consequence of opposing themselves to the majority of the House, the Government had brought about the present tangled situation; but he could not help thinking that, as hon. Members had now made their protest against the course the Government had taken, they would sufficiently register the protest by taking a division, and then allowing the debate on the Amendment to the Address to proceed. The House had now filled. Many hon. Members who were absent at first were now in attendance; and the same reasons which influenced those who opposed the Government earlier in the afternoon did not influence them now. Therefore he would ask his hon. Friend (Mr. Gill) to withdraw his Motion for adjournment, and allow hon. Members to register their protests on the Books of the House by a formal division. He said, in conclusion, what he said in the beginning, and he appealed to his conduct in the House in confirmation of that statement. He did not desire to prolong the debate on the Address; but, in saying that, it must be understood that he did not pledge himself or his hon. Friends as to their future conduct when Bills for the coercion of his country were before the House.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Original Question put.

The House divided: —Ayes 230; Noes 33: Majority 197.—(Div. List, No. 2.)

said, every hon. Member of the House, especially any Member who represented an Irish constituency, felt when he rose to speak on this question under a grave sense of responsibility. For his own part, he felt there never was a time when plain and honest speaking was so necessary on the part of the Irish Members as on the present occasion. He would not have ventured to intrude in this debate did he not feel that he should do so for the purpose of speaking openly and boldly, and without the slightest regard for consequences, which must be painful to himself if he did his duty to his constituents. The part of the House from which he rose to speak sufficiently indicated that he did not feel himself at liberty to act with the large body of Irish Members who sat on the other side of the House, and who, he admitted, represented a large portion of the public feeling in Ireland. He was unable to accept the principles which those hon. Members had propounded for the settlement of the great question which was now agitating public opinion in Ireland to its depths. He was unable to approve the mode those hon. Members had adopted to give effect to those principles. He was unable to recognise in the utterances which they had made in connection with this question in every corner of Ireland during the last few months any indication of that spirit of calmness by which he believed alone this great question should be approached. Nothing could be further from his intention than to make the slightest attack on hon. Members opposite. He differed from them with pain and regret, and this position had been forced upon him by an overwhelming sense of public duty. He knew well how serious it was for a public man, especially representing as he did a large agricultural constituency in Ireland, to feel himself unable to co-operate with those who were supposed to speak for the country at large. He knew that by the course which he had taken he had laid himself open to the danger of being misunderstood by many whose opinions he valued, and with whom he had long acted in common; but the opinions which on several occasions had secured his election by a large constituency still remained unchanged. He was not there to recant or recall one single word which he had ever said on the great question of the Irish Land, nor to qualify one word which he had ever spoken. He still felt that he represented the fullest desire of the Irish tenant farmers on the great question of Land Reform; and he believed that the time would come when the farmers who sent him to Parliament would acknowledge that in the course he was taking on the present occasion he was doing that which was best for their true interests. He should not have ventured to introduce personal considerations, did he not feel that the best contribution which any Irish Member could make to this debate was to speak honestly and openly that which he really believed. The crisis at which they had arrived contained lessons of the utmost value. For seven or eight years he had been in that House the constant advocate of those large and comprehensive measures of Land Reform in Ireland which he still believed to be essential to the prosperity and happiness of the country. He had been the advocate of these reforms when there were not many men to advocate them; he had been a Member of an independent Irish Party when the Members could be counted on the fingers of one hand. He knew he had incurred the painful imputation of being willing to advocate wild impracticable schemes, because he wished to conciliate the popular feeling in Ireland, or lose his seat in that House. All that was now changed. Numbers of those gentlemen had then told him that they would gladly accept the views which he had put forward as a settlement of the question; and he had now the painful satisfaction to know that his refusal to change from those views would give him something very different from the popular favour and applause. He held that the violence of the present agitation in Ireland was due to the refusal of this country to consider the just claims of the Irish people. [Mr. BIGGAR: Hear, hear!] To the attitude with which the late Government refused to approach the consideration of a real remedy for a real grievance was in great measure due the condition in which we were now placed. But, while he was deeply anxious to remedy the present state of things—and hon. Members opposite would probably do him the justice to say that he was as anxious to see justice done to the Irish tenant farmer as they were—yet he was not willing to go beyond the principles of justice in doing so. He was not willing even by silence to appear to assent to any invasion of the just rights of any great class of the community. He had already stated before a popular assembly in Ireland that no fresh confiscation, no matter in the interest of how large a number, could be of advantage to Ireland. On the contrary, it would be ruinous to that country. There were no persons in Ireland who would suffer more deeply, who would be more permanently injured by any violation of the great principles of justice in the settlement of the. Land Question, than the poorest and humblest of the population. Any settlement of this question must be carried out not only on sound economical principles, but also with just and due regard to the interest of those who, relying on the past policy of the country and the existing state of the law, had invested their fortunes in the ownership of Irish land. The case of the Irish tenants was so reasonable and just that nothing would do it greater wrong than to exceed the bounds of justice in its advocacy. He felt it might be right to take an instalment of justice when you could get no- thing more; but he could not admit that, under any circumstances, it was right to ask for more than it was just to receive. To ask for more was immoral and degrading to those who did it. It was entirely inconsistent with that respect and that reverence for truth which was the highest duty of every individual and of every country. He must refuse at any cost to support demands which he believed to be unjust, or to encourage hopes that were delusive. There was another duty equally imperative, which he as an Irish Member felt at the present time he ought to discharge, and that was to point out to Her Majesty's Ministers that no imperfect or inadequate scheme of Land Law Reform would meet the necessities of the present case. He wished for a reform, and not for a revolution; but the reform, to be efficacious, must be just, complete, and full. He was not prepared to say that the measure about to be proposed by Ministers would not be a full and complete measure. He was rather inclined to think it would be of an unsatisfactory and imperfect character; and he thought it was very deeply to be regretted that the House had no more satisfactory assurance than that the measure would be necessary for the circumstances of the case. The House ought to have been assured that no just effort would be left untried to settle that great question; that no tinkering of the Land Act was intended; but a thorough and complete measure, which would for ever place the one great industry of the Irish people in a condition which would enable them to enjoy happiness and prosperity in their own country. His own belief was that there could be no greater misfortune to Ireland than to attempt, by a weak and imperfect measure, to deal with the question. Such a measure would be a great misfortune, not only to the agricultural class in Ireland, but also to the owners of property. They had been reminded, in the course of this debate, that this was not the proper occasion to discuss the details of the Land Question, and he had no intention of doing so; but this he must say—that no measure dealing with that question could be effective or satisfactory which was not based upon the great principle of fixity of tenure. They must, to use a popular phrase, root the Irish people in the soil, and until they recognized that great principle, and so long as they permitted capricious evictions, this could never be done. There was a great opportunity now for Her Majesty's Ministers for the settlement of that question. It was an opportunity which had been purchased at an enormous price, a price which Ireland would have to pay for many years to come. That opportunity had been purchased by a great disturbance of social order and by the destruction of many of those ties that kept a happily-constituted community together. In his opinion, this question might have been made ripe for settlement by other and far better means—by a legitimate use of the weapons of political power, and by appealing to the better feelings and to the higher intelligence of the Nation. But the opportunity had come, and he thought every friend of Ireland must feel that no greater misfortune could happen than the not using that opportunity. What was wanted were wisdom, determination, and courage on the part of the Government to settle this great question once for all. Therefore, he heard with pleasure a sentence in the speech of the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India, that the measure which would settle this question should not only be a measure in harmony with the great principles of justice, but a measure which would be a final adjustment. There was a great responsibility upon Her Majesty's Government on this question. He believed if they would not rise to the height of that responsibility, they would be severely judged in the future and in the present. He believed that if they would rise to the height of that responsibility, and if they brought forward proposals worthy of this great occasion, and of that great Party which inherited such noble traditions of services to Ireland, they would triumph and carry their measure over all obstacles. He still hoped and believed they would rise to the height of that responsibility; and for that reason he must refuse to give a vote for the Amendment of the hon. Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell) which, if passed, would be equivalent to a Vote of Want of Confidence in the Government and prove fatal to the proposals which they intended to make. Representing, as he did, a great agricultural constituency in Ireland, he believed he should best serve the interests of those whom he represented by approaching the proposals of the Government on this question, not in any spirit of bitterness or hostility, but with an earnest and sincere desire to find in them a true, just, and adequate settlement of one of the gravest and most difficult questions which had been necessary for a Government to bring before Parliament.

said, as a Member of the moderate independent Irish Party, he was anxious to see the Land Bill brought forward, and wished to say a few words with reference to the vote he intended to give. He regretted extremely the wording of Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech, because he saw coercion written in very big letters and remedial measures in very small. He said that with a sense of deep responsibility, because he firmly believed that coercion was of no avail in the present state of Ireland. He deeply deplored much that had happened, and he could not condemn in too strong terms much that had been said, and much that had been done, in Ireland. But, at the same time, he believed there had been great exaggeration in the matter. He could not understand why so many hon. Members thought that any person of moderation must necessarily support Her Majesty's Government, especially on the question of the land. They had been told repeatedly to trust to a Liberal Government on the Land Question; but, so far as he had read and seen, the Liberal Government had done nothing to settle the Land Question in Ireland, save the bringing in of a Bill in 1870, and that Bill was a complete failure. It was prophesied beforehand that it would be, and it had proved so. Not only had it done no good in the Provinces of Munster, Leinster, and Connaught, but it had unsettled everything that was previously good in Ulster. The hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. Thorold Rogers) the other day, in a most amusing speech, taunted Irish Members with being very impracticable. He said they howled to the moon. He (Mr. Bellingham) must confess that to trust to the Liberals for a settlement of the Land Question, and to ask them to legislate for Ireland as her people wished, was very like howling to the moon. If he had read history to any purpose, he found that the only reason- able and fair attempts to settle the Land Question had been made by the Conservative Government, for twice they had embodied tenant right in Cabinet measures; whereas a Liberal Prime Minister had called tenant right "landlord wrong." Some years ago the Prime Minister taunted Catholics, English and Irish, with re-furbishing rusty tools. Was he not now re-furbishing the rusty tools of coercion, which were not wanted, and were perfectly useless in Ireland? Hitherto the Government had flooded the country with troops to such an extent that it was enough to incite the people to rebellion. With regard to the outrages that had been committed, he fully admitted that in some parts of Ireland there had been gross outrages, and he deplored them. But it was equally true that in other parts of Ireland there had been no outrages whatever. In his own county there had been no outrage on man, woman, child, or beast. There was one report of an outrage of so serious a kind that if it had been true it would have been terrible; but he held in his hand a contradiction. Perhaps hon. Members would remember being startled by a report that a lady had been fired at upon driving up her own avenue. He was in Ireland at the time the report was first started, and, as he was convinced it was false, he took the trouble of making inquiry and getting authentic information on the matter. When he came back to England, fully eight weeks after, he saw the same paragraph going the round of the papers. Some of the papers published a leading article upon it. He wrote a letter to several papers, contradicting the statement, but his letter was only inserted in one or two of them. The same thing had happened in connection with an outrage committed in Galway on a Protestant minister, for while the outrage was reported in every English paper, Metropolitan and Provincial, no notice was taken of the fact, to which he called attention, that immediately afterwards a meeting of the inhabitants of the district, at which 800 persons were present, was held, with the parish priest in the chair, to condemn what had taken place. In his own county there had been three meetings, or rather, he should say, only two, for the Government had suppressed one. All of them were largely attended by people who behaved quietly and orderly. The Standard, describing the land meeting at Drogheda, said that the Riot Act was read by one of the resident magistrates; but that for that proceeding there appeared to be no necessity, that the people dispersed quietly, and no disturbance whatever occurred. Neither was there any disturbance at the meetings at Dundalk and Ardee. In regard to his own county (Louth), he could say that it was in as peaceful a state as, for example, any county in England; and it was, therefore, intolerable that the people of that district should be deprived of their Constitutional rights, simply because of the existence of crime elsewhere. [Mr. W. E. FORSTER: Hear, hear!] He objected to coercion on principle, quite independently of the different state of counties in Ireland; and, in conclusion, he believed that if Ireland had been governed so as to obtain the goodwill and affection of the Irish people, and in the same spirit as a Parliament sitting in Dublin and fairly representing them would show, matters in that country most probably would not have been in the serious state in which they were at present.

said, the impression had gone abroad, and had been fostered by certain of the public newspapers, that a large section of those who sat on the Ministerial side of the House were losing confidence in the Government. That impression he believed to be entirely unfounded. They had the utmost trust in the Government, feeling confident that their Land Bill, when brought forward, would completely and radically deal with Irish grievances; and they were content to wait until it was convenient for the Ministers to disclose to them what the provisions of the Bill might be. But they were alive to the fact that the embers of rebellion were glowing in Ireland, and were prepared to give the fullest support to the Government in their endeavours to prevent incendiary agitators from fanning those embers into a flame. What did hon. Members who sat on those Benches think they would be doing by supporting the Amendment of the hon. Member for the City of Cork? He should like to ask these hon. Gentlemen if they altogether realized what that vote would mean? It would mean a Vote of Want of Confidence in the Government. It would mean that they did not believe that the description given of the condition of Ireland was a true one—that they would set up their own private uninformed judgment against the fully informed judgment of Ministers; that they condemned the Bill of the Government without having heard its provisions. Oh, men of little faith! They were told that faith but as a grain of mustard-seed would suffice to remove mountains; and would hon. Members, he asked, not have that amount of faith in their own Leaders till, at any rate, the Government policy was fully disclosed? They had frequently in the course of the debate heard the idea that the Land League was responsible for the state of things in Ireland vehemently challenged; and efforts had been made to show that any blame that might be attached to that organization was due to the unauthorized action of its smaller and irresponsible county branches. But the cheers with which the hon. Members from Ireland greeted those portions of the eloquent speech of the late Solicitor General for Ireland (Mr. Plunket), in which he described cruel and outrageous acts—the story of Mr. King-Harman's tenantry, and the Land League emissary that met them—were surely alone sufficient evidence that a very large share of responsibility—he had almost said criminality—must be credited to occupants of Benches opposite. He presumed that the hon. Member for the City of Cork wished the House to believe that one branch of the conspiracy of the Press against Ireland, of which he complained in such dulcet tones the other night, was the manufacture of speeches, and the putting of those speeches into his mouth. Well, certainly, that would be some explanation of the strange inconsistency between speeches delivered by the hon. Member on Irish platforms and on the floor of the House. But if he (Mr. Marjoribanks) rightly understood the drift of much of the argument that had been advanced, it amounted to this—that at other periods there had been many more agrarian murders than there had been recently; that at those periods coercive measures were not adopted, and therefore were not to be adopted now; and, moreover, that this comparative immunity from murder was due to the action of the Land League. He quite under- stood the sequence of thought that had governed the policy of this Land League. With but the change of a letter or two, Cicero's reflection on Cæsar exactly expressed it— "Hos primum mortales, deinde etiam multis modis exstingui posse cogitabam." Murder, naturally, was the first crude plan of getting rid of an adversary—had been since the first great criminal slew his brother—but the crime was apt to be dangerous to the murderer. Other expedients were soon discovered, and efficient means of dispensing with murder was found in making life intolerable. So the order had gone forth—"Threaten—refuse to fulfil your lawful contracts—Boycott." It might be that destruction of property and life was less now than at some other periods of disturbance. He could make hon. Members who opposed the protective measures of the Government a present of that statement to use for what it was worth. But of this there could be no doubt—there was now a state of terrorism rampant such as there never was before. Where one person was in fear for his life at any former time, 20 were in like fear now. Where the property of 100 persons was threatened with destruction before, the property of 1,000 was threatened now. Those were facts which could not be denied, and they justified—nay, demanded—the very strongest measures to suppress them. And what, he asked, could be said of the recent policy of this great Irish Party—if they really were to regard it as the policy of a great National Party, desirous to obtain a great measure of Constitutional Reform by Constitutional means? Should it not be stigmatized as at once irrational and unreasoning? Last spring a Ministry came into Office, at once strong and determined to remedy permanently Irish grievances. Amongst its very first acts it displayed its goodwill towards Ireland by suffering the Peace Preservation Acts to lapse, and thus proclaimed its conviction that the Irish people might be trusted to abide by the law, whilst the endeavour was being made to rectify what was faulty in that law. How grievously that confidence had been shown to be misplaced. It might have been imagined that the leaders of the Land League would have thrown the whole of their great influence into the scale of law and order, and so have strengthened the hands of those who desired to help them, by showing that they desired to obtain reasonable reforms in a legal and Constitutional manner. But these leaders had done nothing of the sort. The land agitation had been but the cloak for wilder and more revolutionary projects. The probability of a just and final settlement of the Irish land grievance—and a great one he admitted it to be—had only made these leaders the more anxious to use their strongest and longest lever for exciting the people while yet it remained to them. Severe strictures had been passed on the Government for not sooner applying for the protective powers they were now asking for. It seemed to him that to have done so sooner would have been a proof of the greatest weakness, of the smallest confidence in their own carefully-considered judgment, on the part of the Government. A strong Government, whose motive of policy was principle, not mere expediency, whose motto was, "Mihi res non me rebus subjungere," on accession to Office, came to the deliberate conclusion that it was justice to Ireland to dispense with the Peace Preservation Acts, and relied on the Irish people to take this determination as some tangible proof of their desire to redress long-standing wrongs. Surely, then, six months' trial was not too long to give so large-hearted an experiment. Six months had elapsed, and the Government had to confess themselves deceived and disappointed. It seemed to him that instead of deserving censure, the Government had the right to demand the sympathy, to command the respect, of every subject of the Empire. The House had had the speeches of several statesmen quoted, and he, too, should ask leave to quote a few words from the speech of one of the greatest living statesmen—the late Prime Minister, who—in his speech in that House in 1844, said—

"A starving population, an absentee aristocracy, an alien church, and the weakest Executive in the world—that was the Irish Question."—[3 Hansard, lxxii. 1016.]

Let them leave out one clause, and this sentence exactly described the Irish Question now; and surely it should be some reason for confidence in the present Government that it was owing to the present Prime Minister that that one clause, "an alien Church," had been struck out of the list of reforms to be accomplished. In the same speech, Mr. Disraeli wise foreshadowed the objects to be aimed at in the settlement of this Irish Question. He said it was the duty of a wise English Minister "to effect by his policy all those changes which a revolution would do by force."—[ Ibid. ] That was, he believed, the line of policy proposed by Her Majesty's Ministers; and he hoped there would be few indeed who would not give their sanction to those protective measures which now seemed necessary to check a revolution on the point of breaking out.

said, that in the course of this long debate, so far as the main opposition was concerned, the discussion came in like a wolf and promised to go out like a lamb. On the first night the Leader of the Opposition commenced the debate with a very vigorous attack on Her Majesty's Government, charging them—first, with not having renewed the Peace Preservation Act at the beginning of last Session; secondly, with not having called Parliament together in November for the purpose of passing a Coercion Bill; and, thirdly, with not having administered the law with sufficient severity during that time. The late Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Gibson) renewed the attack on the second night in a powerful speech, in which he spoke of criticism, but not of arraignment; and it made one wonder what arraignment might be in his hands. After his speech the attacks against the Government had dropped, and they had heard no more of them. The right hon. and learned Member for Dublin addressed himself entirely to the subject of coercion, and promised his earnest support to the Government in passing that measure. The criticisms, therefore, to which he had alluded had now become matter of ancient history, and it was scarcely necessary to advert to them. There was one matter, however, in connection with the Peace Preservation Act which had not already been alluded to, and which he would venture to bring under the attention of the House; it was, that all previous experience showed that a mere Arms Prohibition Act had been of no avail whatever in putting an end to outrages or preventing a dangerous agitation. He need not remind the House that Lord Stanley passed an Arms Act in 1831, and in the two years that followed there was dangerous agitation and numerous outrages; in fact, outrages were at least more than tenfold what they were in the previous year, and in 1833 the then Government of Lord Grey was compelled to introduce a coercion measure and to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act. The same thing followed in 1847–8. In 1847 there was in like manner an Arms Prohibition Act; that was not sufficient, and in the following year Lord John Russell was forced to ask for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. The same thing occurred again in 1866–7, and once more in 1870–1. He thought, from this experience, it must be clear that for Her Majesty's Government on coming into power to have caused a renewal of the Peace Preservation Act would have been useless, and, further, would only have irritated the Irish; and he need hardly say that for a new Government to propose such a measure as that at the beginning of a new Parliament would not have been a wise act. With reference, again, to the complaint that coercive measures had not been applied for earlier, his confident belief was that if the Government, two months ago, had summoned Parliament and proposed the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act at the time, there would have been found a very considerable section of Members on the Liberal side of the House who would have been opposed to such a measure. He might remind the House that it was during these two months they had had the most important evidence as to the necessity for such a measure. This was borne out by what had taken place at the Winter Assizes. Coercion and the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act could only be justified when all the ordinary remedies of law had been tried and been proved to be wanting, and it was only at the Winter Assizes that there had been conclusive proof of the insufficiency of the law. He need hardly remind the House that at the Summer Assizes there was not proof sufficient of the unwillingness to convict. It was only at the Winter Assizes they had conclusive proof of that. They were commenced in the second week in December, and they were only over a few days before Christmas. They brought out very distinctly two main points—the one, that in the West and South of Ireland, notwithstanding an immense increase of agrarian crime, it was impossible to bring the offenders to trial, owing to the unwillingness of witnesses, even the injured persons, to come forward to give evidence; and, secondly, that juries were unwilling to convict in the face of the most clear and certain evidence. Mr. Justice Fitzgerald showed in his Charge in Munster that although there were only 20 agrarian cases for trial before him, the police had reported to him nearly 500 other cases of indictable offences of an agrarian character. Of these about half were the sending of threatening letters. He quite agreed with what had been said by some hon. Members that they must not attribute too much importance to these offences; but, at the same time, he would venture to point out that the sending of threatening letters at a time when other crime was undetected and unpunished, was a matter of much more serious import, and much more likely to cause terror than such a practice would do at another time. Even if they subtracted the threatening letters, there still remained nearly 250 cases of agrarian outrage, consisting of arson, maiming of cattle, injury to persons, firing into houses, and other acts of a similar criminal nature, where the facts were reported to the Judges, and where the witnesses were unwilling to come forward to prosecute. Of the 20 cases that came for trial the jury in 17 refused to convict, and there were only three most trivial cases where the juries convicted. Mr. Justice Fitzgerald, in discharging the Grand Jury, pointed out that the unwillingness of the juries to convict arose from some external influence, which deterred them from doing their duty, Therefore, there was conclusive evidence that there was a system of terrorism at work. The case of Connaught was even stronger. Mr. Justice Dowse informed the Grand Jury of Galway that there were 469 cases of agrarian outrage reported to him by the police, and that in the vast majority of those cases the injured persons were unwilling to come forward to give evidence. In the case of the West Hiding of Galway, the Judge reported 208 cases of agrarian outrage, and only 31 were threatening letters, leaving 177 cases of arson, maiming, and other offences, and in those cases 127 persons, who were actually injured themselves, declined to come forward and give evidence. In Mayo there were 135 cases reported of agrarian outrage, 121 of which were cases other than threatening letters, of which 29 were for arson, 24 for maiming of cattle and other serious agrarian offences, and 215 persons refused to bring cases before the Court. In the whole Province there were 469 cases, of which a certain number were threatening letters; but there remained 334 other cases of serious agrarian outrage. Only 10 of them were brought to trial. In only three was there a conviction. It appeared that in these cases the convictions were less than 1 in 100 of the agrarian outrages committed in the winter months. That produced, in his mind, the conviction that there did exist at that moment, both in the Provinces of Munster and Connaught, a system of terrorism which prevented people coming forward to give evidence, and juries from performing their duty. These facts had only become public within the last few weeks; and if Parliament had been called together at the beginning of November to consider this question they would have been altogether wanting in these facts, and, therefore, wanting in the most important link of the chain in which coercion could alone be justified or founded. Now, some hon. Members had suggested that the word "protection" should be substituted for "coercion." He should object to the change, because it would indicate a normal remedy. Coercion was not a good expression, it was a short term for the suspension of the ordinary checks which the Constitution afforded upon the action of the Executive and the arbitrary arrest of individuals; these checks secured to them trial by jury, but those Constitutional checks implied and were conditional on, or at least, only consistent with, the working of the jury system and the Courts of Law. If those did not work, if injured persons were intimidated from coming forward to make their charges, and if juries were intimidated from giving verdicts, then the groundwork of the Constitution itself failed; if crime were unpunished, the fabric of freedom itself was dissolved, and the Government, if it meant to exist and to keep society together, must be armed with power temporarily to put down terrorism, to allay panic, to restore order, and to enable the Courts of Law to resume their functions. The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act was to the criminal law what the suspension of the Bank Charter was to the monetary world. A crisis arose, a panic prevailed, ordinary laws were suspended. It was necessary for the State to intervene for the purpose of allaying panic, and to enable the ordinary laws to resume their calm and quiet operation. In this view, then, he believed that at the present time the emergency had arisen, and that it was necessary to arm the Government with special powers. Coercion, it had been said, was no remedy for the disease. He fully admitted it. The noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill) had jeered at the phrase; but he would call his attention to the words of a wiser man than himself, the greatest Constitutional statesman his Party had ever produced—Sir Robert Peel—whose speech on the Coercion Bill of 1833 was eminently worthy of study. If he recollected rightly, he said—"Coercion is no remedy; I admit it; but it may still be necessary, for continued anarchy would be death to the State." Coercion, indeed, might be necessary to stay the violent symptoms, to arrest the spread of the disease, but it could not cure the disease which was the cause of the symptoms; rather would it drive the disease inwards into the body politic, and the danger was that we might be lulled again by the restoration of order into the belief that the disease was over. He thought, too, there was some reason to complain of hon. Members opposite that they had not shown the slightest sign of any attempt to probe the nature of the disease from which Ireland suffered, or the causes of the present agitation. He must, however, except the hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire (Mr. Chaplin) from this, who had shown an earnest desire to approach the question from this point of view. With this exception, the speakers opposite had contented themselves with calling loudly for coercion, with blaming the Government for not sooner resorting to coercion; but their minds were perfect blanks upon other questions, upon the causes for what they saw. They had no suggestion for the future. The right hon. and learned Member the ex- Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Gibson) had promised to give fair consideration to any reasonable Bill that might be brought forward. That was not a very vigorous promise, and, from former experience, they might judge what that meant. He ventured to ask the House what was really the cause of the present state of things in Ireland? No person who looked into the condition of that country could doubt that its present state was due to the evils of its land system. He had no doubt that the hon and learned Solicitor General for Ireland (Mr. W. M. Johnson) was right in saying the promoters of the agitation had other objects in view—namely, the disintegration of the Empire—but, at the same time, they could not doubt that the disaffection was due to the evils of the land system. Unless there had been some power of that kind, these agitators would not have been able to do what they had done. He might remind the House that during the last General Election all questions of Home Rule for the moment disappeared. ["No, no!"] Home Rule questions were, at all events, very subordinate, and the main questions discussed were questions affecting land. Who could doubt that at the root of this agitation lay the Land Question when they looked at the condition of landed property in Ireland, the vast number of small tenants having practically no security for improvements, and, on the other hand, the very small body of landholders? He would have another opportunity, and therefore he would not enter into details. He had frequently pointed out the unsafe condition of property in Ireland, and he had made that the basis of a Motion in the House on a former occasion. Independently of the actual condition of landed property in Ireland, there appeared to him many reasons for the present disaffection which existed in Ireland. He was bound to say that he thought one cause of the disaffection was due to the neglect by the late Government of all questions effecting land tenure. That neglect was not merely ordinary neglect, but a matter of policy; and he would venture to call as a witness the right hon. Gentleman the late Colonial Secretary (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach), who, speaking a few weeks ago at Cirencester, explained his policy when he was Irish Secretary. He said, on that occasion, that his Government had opposed a fierce resistance to any demand for changes of the Land Laws. But, not only content with opposing a negative to any proposed change in the land tenure, the right hon. Gentleman did not even carry out the existing law with efficiency, for he allowed one-half of the Irish Land Act to be obstructed by the ordinary officialism of the Departments in Dublin. It was not merely a question of carrying out any new changes; but the right hon. Gentleman did not put into effect those conditions which Parliament had passed with the view of effecting changes. He was bound to say that, in other respects, the administration of the right hon. Gentleman when Irish Secretary was just, prudent, and moderate, and one which did him credit. The right hon. Gentleman, however, was followed by Mr. Lowther, whose administration was not either a prudent or a moderate one. The right hon. Gentleman presented not only the same firm resistance to any proposal to change the Land Laws; but he went further, because he never opened his mouth upon the Land Question affecting Ireland, but he repudiated and condemned in the strongest possible terms the Irish Land Act of 1870, and denounced it as Communism and robbery. Now, he ventured to think that language of that kind was not calculated to appease the Irish community, but to aggravate the disaffection. There were other causes for the present state of affairs. It was in times of distress, as a general rule, that people began to look more closely into political questions, and that agitation such as they had seen during the last few months had its origin, and was able to lay its foundations. Therefore, in the course of the autumn of 1879, after the unexampled bad harvest, it was natural that an agitation of this kind should arise. He was bound to say that he did not think at the time that the Irish landlords were sufficiently quick in meeting the emergency which arose, by making those remissions of rent which were only to be expected in consequence of the calamitous harvest. He ventured to point out at the beginning of last Session—and he drew a contrast between Ireland and England in this respect—that when in the previous autumn there was grave agricultural distress in England, the late Prime Minister went down to Aylesbury, and pointed out to the landowners of the county the very serious nature of the crisis. He told them that the time had come when very great remissions of rent ought to be made, and that it was not a mere question of 10 or 20 per cent. Now, so far as he was aware, no responsible or official person made a like statement in Ireland, or had reminded landowners there of their duties, and yet it was only reasonable that some equally important personage should have led public opinion there. It was, therefore, left to the Land League to initiate a great movement for the remission of rent, and the movement to a great extent fell into their hands. He ventured to think that was one of the causes which had given rise to the agitation. He also thought at the time there was a considerable fear among a large number of the smaller tenants in Ireland that opportunity would be taken of the distress for the purpose of turning them out of their holdings and depopulating parts of the country. They had the recollection of what took place in 1848, and it was not unreasonable that some should be alarmed lest the same course should be pursued again. The other day he read in one of the reviews an article by an Irish landlord containing the statement that he had himself evicted numerous tenants in 1848, and he spoke of it as having signed their death-warrant, and the writer of the article recommended the same course to be taken now. That only showed the opinion of some of the Irish landlords on this question. It appeared to him that such language, used by an Irish landlord, was not unlikely to lead to serious agitation and disaffection in Ireland. He might also remind the House that when a deputation waited on the late Chief Secretary for Ireland and asked him to contribute his assistance towards the public purchase of seed, for Irish tenants, he remarked that what was wanted was not seed potatoes, but grass seed. The meaning of that was that it was desirable that the land should be laid down to grass, and that many of the small tenants of Ireland should disappear. Such language was unwise, and was likely to create great disaffection. No doubt it was hoped, and possibly it was expected, that the good harvest of last year would put an end to the agitation and the disaffection; but they must bear in mind the treatment which Irish measures received last Session in "another place." He did not wish to make too much of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. He held then, and he held still, that it was a just and necessary measure. He thought the rejection of it was unwise, and still more was the rejection of those two other Bills by the House of Lords unwise. But, even more so, was the justification given by speakers in the other House and elsewhere for its rejection. It was said that the majority of this House in favour of the Disturbance Bill was composed entirely of Irish Members. Now, that appeared to him to be an argument unsound and improper, and one which was unjust to Ireland, and against the principles of government in this country. As long as the Irish Members were in this House they were bound to treat them as other Members. A majority composed of Irish Members was as good as a majority composed of any other. The use of such arguments was calculated to create great discontent in Ireland. There were many other reasons which accounted in part for the agitation. They must remember they had given democratic institutions to Ireland; and they could not be altogether surprised that, under democratic institutions, they should be dissatisfied with the constitution of their land system. They should also recollect that every year the influence of the United States was increasing; and that was a most dangerous point with regard to the future. They must remember that that influence was growing, that it was of a democratic character, and that it tended to make the Irish more and more discontented with their present land system and English institutions. Those were questions which must be considered by everybody connected with the administration of Ireland. Hon. Members opposite should bear that in mind. They might say it was only 10 years since they legislated for Ireland. It was his confident belief that if that measure had passed in its original state, and been treated in a proper way by the Irish Executive, and due effect given to that portion of it which went by the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham (Mr. John Bright), it would have gone a great way towards the settlement of the Irish Land Question. Unfortunately, great and unwise Amendments had been made in the measure, and one-half of it had proved to be altogether ineffective, and had produced no result whatever, and the result was they were now called upon to legislate again for Ireland; and he feared that the settlement which would have been permanent and effective in 1870 would not now satisfy the Irish people. He hoped the Opposition would recollect that fact, that in any fresh settlement for Ireland they would do their best to enlarge its provisions rather than to restrict them. He hoped they would endeavour to deal with the question in a generous spirit—in the same way that he observed the Ulster Tory landlords were endeavouring to deal with it. The latter appeared to be conscious of the difficulty of the question, and were trying in generous rivalry with the Liberal Members to devise a plan. Therefore, he hoped the Opposition in that House would not do as they did in 1870—namely, endeavour to restrict the settlement, and thus prevent its being a permanent one. Above all, they must bear in mind that the settlement should be according to Irish ideas, and not English ones. On that point he would refer to a speech of that great statesman, Charles James Fox, who was quoted approvingly by the late Earl Russell, in the debate on the Irish Municipal Reform Bill, as follows:—

"I would have Irish legislation regulated by Irish notions, and even by Irish prejudice, and I am convinced that the more this is the case the more Ireland will be bound to English interests."

He believed it would be wise in the matter to legislate in the sense of Irish ideas, and not English ones; and if right hon. Gentlemen opposite would take that view, and endeavour to enlarge rather than to restrict any measure which might be brought before the House, they would do more to benefit Irishmen, to bring prosperity to Ireland, and to prevent outrages and agitation such as had been lately seen, than by a hundred Coercion Bills. Although he had ventured to explain the causes of the present agitation, it must not be supposed that he approved of the agitation or of the methods by which it was carried on. Few Members on the Ministerial side of the House sympathized more deeply than he did with the Irish tenants, or more freely recognized the evils under which they suffered, and the instability of the present land system of Ireland, or were more desirous to see the system brought into harmony with Irish ideas. But, for those very reasons, he felt bound to express his opinion as to the objects of the Land League and the methods they had pursued. Last year, in the debate on the Address, he had referred to some of those objections. He pointed out that the leaders of the agitation stated in the previous autumn that their object was to depreciate the value of land with a view to its purchase by the tenant at a reduced value. He said then that the policy was a dishonest policy; he repeated it now. So far as he could understand, during the past autumn the programme had been enlarged even beyond that. The object of the Land League appeared to be not only to depreciate property, but also by a process of terrorism to expropriate all the landlords of Ireland, and to put the tenants in their place at a price to be fixed by themselves. He said that was a dishonest programme, and should not be carried out in the real interest of Ireland. It would involve the expenditure of an enormous sum of money, and what Ireland had been paying in the shape of rent to the landlords it would in future pay in the shape of interest to the fundholders in England, who would provide the money. The result would be that for very many years all the evils of absenteeism would be multiplied tenfold, while the whole rent of Ireland would have to be remitted out of Ireland for the benefit of those who lent the money, so that financially and economically, and in whatever point of view it was looked at, such a measure could not be for the interest of Ireland. Any measure for promoting and increasing ownership in Ireland must be of a slow character, and could not be carried out in the manner it appeared to him to be proposed by the Land League. He regretted very much to hear the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell) saying that he approved of the avowed objects of the Land League. He did not know whether he drew any subtle distinction between the avowed objects of the Land League and its practical working. He (Mr. Shaw Lefevre), for his part, could draw no such subtle distinction. He refrained from saying all he thought of the Land League, because their proceedings were now before a Criminal Court. He would not express his views as to whether what they were doing was criminal or not. He would leave that to be determined by the Criminal Court; not merely by the verdict of the jury, but by the opinions of the Judges. But whatever might be the finding of the Judges or the jury, he said, looking at it from another point of view, that their action and their programme were dishonest and immoral. Not merely did he find fault with their programme; but still more, he was sorry to say, he was bound to find fault with the methods by which they were carrying them out. He deplored most deeply, and most of all, the fact that throughout the whole of this agitation he had not been able to observe that any prominent member of the Land League had ever boldly, honestly, and vigorously denounced the outrages which had taken place through Ireland. He looked in vain for any language of that kind. He himself was not opposed to agitation. He was of opinion that no great measure had been carried in Ireland without agitation. He believed that if he were an Irishman he would be an agitator too, not, indeed, such an agitator as they had seen lately. But there were agitators and agitators. There had been agitators of the O'Connell type, who had carried out agitation boldly, no doubt, but yet honestly; and he need hardly remind the House that O'Connell frequently took the opportunity of repudiating connection with outrage, and he stated boldly, on more than occasion, that no political change he could conceive was worth one drop of blood. Well, he had looked in vain for any such language from the agitators of the present time. They had heard, indeed, some gentle language used upon the subject. They had heard, for instance, one hon. Member, a leader of the Land League, say he considered outrages were unnecessary in those parts of the country where the tenants were properly organized; but he did not say whether they were necessary or unnecessary in districts where the Land League was not organized, and where the tenants had no such organization. Language of that kind seemed to him to lead the Irish tenants to believe that outrages might be necessary in other parts of Ireland. Then they had the language which another member of the Land League, another Member of that House, had used, saying it was not part of the duty of the Land League to shoot landlords, and then he went on to say it was the duty of the Land League to take care that anybody who shot a landlord should have a fair trial. [Mr. BIGGAR: Hear, hear!] He thought that language was an attempt to mislead the Irish tenants into the belief that they might shoot Irish landlords, and then receive the protection of the Land League. Another leader, the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) himself, offered as an alternative for murder a course which was only second to death—namely, civil death. In language the most powerful in which a curse was ever uttered, more powerful, he ventured to think, than the well-known curse of Kehama, he told his audience to treat as a leper or outcast from society anyone who should venture to take a farm from which a tenant had been evicted. Even the Church was not to be a sanctuary for such an offender. Even in the House of God the offender was to be severely left alone. He could conceive no more terrible throat. He wondered the hon. Member did not go on and quote the words of Southey a little altered—

"And he shall ask death to release him in vain,

He shall live in his pain while King Parnell shall reign."

He cared not whether these sayings were criminal or not, they were equally detestable to honest men. There were many things in this world condemnable in themselves which the Criminal Law did not reach. It was no crime to abstain from saving a drowning man when by holding out a hand he could be saved. It was no crime to abstain from interfering to save another from assassination. So it might be no crime to hold meetings in disturbed districts where agrarian outrages were numerous, and to excite the populace by violent speeches while abstaining from expressing any condemnation of crime or from any warning against it, or offering these charitable alternatives of social death. These might not be crimes, but they were acts abhorrent to any man of honour and right feeling. He regretted to have to speak thus strongly; but the lan- guage of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell) compelled him to do so. He regretted to say that he had come to the conclusion that coercive measures were necessary at this time for Ireland. There could be no doubt whatever that the ordinary Criminal Law of the country had been superseded by some other law, and that some government other than that of Her Majesty's Government prevailed in some parts of Ireland, that secret societies practically ruled to-day, and enforced their orders and pronounced their decrees. That the ordinary Criminal Courts of the country were set aside appeared to him conclusively to be shown, and that a reign of terror existed in some parts of Ireland which prevented witnesses coming forward to give evidence of outrages, even though they were the victims themselves, and prevented juries by the same means from giving their verdicts. It appeared to him an imperative necessity that the Government should interpose to allay the panic that had arisen, and to restore order; and, in his humble judgment, any Government that refrained from doing so at the present moment would cease in any real sense of the term to be a Government, and would forfeit the respect and confidence of every honest citizen.

said, he had listened with feelings of pain and admiration to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down. He admired some of his eloquent expressions of sympathy with the interests of the people of Ireland and the desire he expressed to do something for their grievances; but that feeling was entirely dashed by the conclusion of his address, and by other sentiments to which he gave utterance. However he might have studied the case of Ireland, whatever remedies he might propose for the ills of Ireland, it seemed to him that the right hon. Gentleman had not gone the right way to understand what was wrong in Ireland, or the right way to redress it. It seemed to him when he concluded his address with an indictment against the Irish people that he should have supported it with something stronger than he had introduced. He had told them he had only repeated what had been stated ad nauseam from both sides of the House—that the ordinary law was sus- pended in Ireland. He need hardly remind the House that in no country in the world could the ordinary law be suspended until that law was found to be directly hostile to the welfare of the people. In the histories of all countries they knew that the people did not set themselves in antagonism to the law unless that law was, in the first instance, in direct antagonism to themselves. When such charges as these were made against the people of Ireland they should expect that some reliable facts would be advanced in support of them—something to show that these charges were not the product of the imagination of the hon. and right hon. Gentlemen that gave utterance to them. They had been told yesterday by the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India that he would produce statistics on a subsequent occasion; but statistics were still wanting to show some grounds for the attempt to take away the Constitutional liberty of the Irish people that was involved in the proposals of the Government. What had the Government condescended to show them with regard to the statistics they had acted upon? Nothing whatever. The right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down went so far as to say that the legislation for Ireland should be in accordance with the feeling of the people of Ireland. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman if, before agreeing to the proposals for coercion in Ireland projected by the Government, he consulted in the slightest degree the opinions of the Irish people, or of those they had sent to represent them in that House? The Ministry had not consulted the feelings or wishes of the Representatives of the great majority of the Irish people, nor had they shown them their confidence in the faintest degree. The Government had to undergo the humiliation of receiving promises of support from, the Tory Members of that House to any measure of coercion they might bring forward, and there was no limitation whatever to those promises which one and all of the Tory Members offered—he would not say to the insult, but to the humiliation of promising to support any coercive measure they might bring forward; but if that measure was accompanied by any measure of redress for the Irish people, all they promised was to give such a measure their consideration. No doubt, they would give it their consideration; but there was no doubt as to what that consideration implied. The right hon. Gentlemen sitting on the Government Benches had subjected themselves to the humiliation of seeking the confidence of the Conservative Party. They had, in fact, descended to the low level of bended knees to the Conservative Party for not bringing in a Coercion Bill last year, while they had not vouchsafed the slightest confidence to those who actually represented the people of Ireland. Now they proposed to take away the Constitutional liberties of the people of Ireland, and on what grounds? The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Reading had let fall an intimation which did not come from any of the previous speakers on the Treasury Bench. He had given the House to understand that one of the intentions of the Government was to take away the right of trial by jury in Ireland. He could understand nothing else from the description of the right hon. Gentleman of what took place in Cork, and from his iteration, for the tenth time during the progress of the debate, of the statement of Mr. Justice Fitzgerald, that juries in Ireland did not perform their duty—as if he and those that repeated that statement, without the slightest justification, were better judges of the facts of the case than the juries who were sworn to try it upon the evidence adduced before them. It was upon the flimsy evidence of newspaper reports and private letters, the names of the authors of which were not disclosed, that the Government proposed to take away the important right of trial by jury in Ireland. He would like to know what Government existed for the last 200 years in England that was strong enough to take away the right of trial by jury in the smallest shire in England? Yet that was the proposal which, from the statement of the right hon. Member, he judged to be floating in the distance which the Government intended to spring upon the House without the slightest notice, and which they could only guess at by inference in that way; and they were asked to shut their eyes and accept with something like the subjection which they yielded to Divine Providence any Coercion Bill which they intended to introduce. The first argument used by the right hon. Gentleman in favour of a suspension of the Constitution in Ireland was founded upon the expressions of Judges Fitzgerald, Dowse, and Barry at the Winter Assizes. He wondered whether the right hon. Gentleman had considered whether those were expressions which would have been tolerated from an English Judge. Did those three Judges so far forget their duty, did they so far depart from the recognized Constitutional usage in England—and he supposed the same usage should prevail in Ireland—as to appeal to sensational reports in the newspapers, instead of speaking of the depositions returned by the magistrates, which they were bound to do? The English Judge that would so far forget himself as to go off the depositions and appeal to the public newspapers and roadside gossip, a great deal of which had been imported into this debate, would find his place a very uneasy one on the Bench; and unless he conducted himself better in future he would not find it a bed of roses. The Judiciary in Ireland was tainted by this panic which was attempted to be got up. It was tainted by the perversion of facts which had been practised, and by the substitution of the imagination for truth which appeared in all the newspapers; and, when that was so, was it to be wondered at that they should have such political harangues from the Bench as had been referred to during the course of the debate? In regard to the alleged outrages, there was a large substitution of imagination for truth, and there had been more alacrity in giving publicity to them than in denying them when they had proved to be untrue. Out of 1,718 cases in the Return laid before the House, 851 were threatening letters, and a large proportion of the remainder were the mere statements of individuals, which had been in no way investigated or corroborated.

It being a quarter before Six of the clock Debate further adjourned till To-morrow.

moved—

"That a Select Committee be appointed, to whom shall be referred all Petitions presented to the House, with the exception of such as relate to Private Bills; and that such Commit- tee do classify and prepare abstracts of the same, in such form and manner as shall appear to them best suited to convey to the House all requisite information respecting their contents, and do report the same from time to time to the House; and that the reports of the Committee do set forth the number of signatures to each Petition only in respect to those signatures to which addresses are affixed:—And that such Committee have power to direct the printing in extenso of such Petitions, or of such parts of Petitions, as shall appear to require it:—And that such Committee have power to report their opinion and observations thereupon to the House:—Sir CHARLES FORSTER, The O'DONOGHUE, Mr. O'CONOR, Mr. M'LAGAN, Mr. CAVENDISH BENTINCK, Mr. REGINALD YORKE, Sir CHARLES RUSSELL, Viscount NEWPORT, Mr. MULHOLLAND, Marquess of TAVISTOCK, Mr. CHARLES TENNANT, Marquess of STAFFORD, Mr. HANBURY-TRACY, Mr. LOWTHER, and Colonel DIGBY:—Three to be the quorum."

said, he had given Notice of opposition to the Motion, because, while on the Committee there were no fewer than three Scotch Members from the Liberal side of the House, the Scotch Conservative element on the Opposition side of the House had been altogether unrepresented. This he had opposed for two reasons. First, it was desirable that every shade of representation in the House should be considered in the appointment of the Committee; secondly, that to serve on this Committee gave immunity from serving on any other Committee of the House. However, he understood that to rectify this error would cause considerable inconvenience at the present moment; and he would withdraw his opposition to the appointment of the Committee on the distinct promise that the hon. Member for Walsall (Sir Charles Forster), on the next occasion that he had, would nominate a Scotch Conservative on the Committee.

Motion agreed to.

moved for a Return, showing, with respect to each Parliamentary Constituency in the United Kingdom, the total number of Electors on the Register now in force.

wished to have a paragraph inserted in the Order, requiring a Return of the number of inhabitants in each constituency.

explained that he was now moving for a Return in a form that had been annually issued for some years. Every few years his hon. Friend (Mr. Rylands) had been in the habit of moving for a more detailed Return, which gave the number of inhabitants in each constituency; and as the results of the new Census would probably be in the hands of the Government about the month of June, no doubt his hon. Friend would move this Session for the particulars desired by the hon. Member.

considered it important the two sets of figures should be given together, and no extra expense or trouble would be involved. He trusted, therefore, that the hon. Baronet the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs would consent to the small addition to the Return, which had really now become a matter of some importance.

replied, that as the last Census was 10 years ago, the figures now would be entirely conjectural.

said, that might be; but it would afford some basis for Her Majesty to form some opinion upon. He hoped the suggestion would be acceded to.

said, he would undertake to consult his hon. Friend (Mr. Rylands), and see if he would move for the extra Return.

pointed out that the fact of the Census being 10 years old applied to both England and Ireland. He was of opinion that the Return would be quite misleading without the number of inhabitants.

repeated that he would see his hon. Friend on the point.

considered the answer of the hon. Baronet unsatisfactory, and therefore would oppose the Motion.

Motion postponed.