said, that when he was compelled to suspend his remarks at the previous Sitting of the House, he was about to point out that the reasons which had been assigned for the suspension of the Constitution in Ireland were entirely insufficient—that they were insufficient to warrant such a change in the law as would amount to an abrogation of the rights of personal liberty in Ireland. The noble Lord the Secretary of State for India seemed to think that because the Irish Judges went beyond; the bounds of their duty, because they delivered political harangues from the Bench, because, instead of confining themselves to the depositions returned the magistrates, they referred to newspaper reports and unauthenticated gossip, that, therefore, the strong opinions they expressed should justify the House to suspend the Constitution of the country. Those political harangues served more to throw light upon the character of judicial appointments in Ireland than to throw light upon the state of the country; and if inquiry were made into the causes which produced disturbance in Ireland, it would be found that it was one of the causes which made the people distrust the administration of the law, it made them distrust the purity of the Bench, and it made them distrust the intentions of the Government and the will of the House to do justice to Ireland. The next reason urged by the noble Lord and almost every speaker in support of the anticipated coercion was founded on the Police Returns. On this point, he could only say that if the reason adduced from the anomalous character of the Irish Bench was a bad one, that adduced from, or based upon, the Police Returns was even worse. He was rather astonished at a paragraph in the papers that morning in reference to Irish "outrages," for that word was now extensively used to inflame the public opinion of England, and to urge on the Government in its headlong and unfortunate career to pass Coercive Laws for Ireland, He was astonished to find by the papers that morning that the Return of "outrages" for this year amounted to 5,609. By the Return of agrarian crimes, which he had three days ago—and he would prove that it included every offence in the Calendar—it appeared that the number was 1,718; and hence his astonishment to find, by the Return submitted the previous day, that the number amounted to 5,609. He referred to that for the purpose of showing that a worse reason could not be given for the suspension of the Constitution in Ireland, and a more thorough condemnation of the accuracy of the Police Returns. The offences more particularly noticeable in the Return referred to were those of sending threatening letters and posting threatening notices, and he found in page 28 that the whole number of offences under that head was 750; but, incredible almost to say, if he had not the document in his hand, on the previous page the total number had been made up, and the number had actually been increased by 1,000. He had a good deal of experience of falsification of evidence; but he confessed that in any Court in the Kingdom, much less in the High Court of the Realm, had he ever heard of such an attempt being made to palm off a false statement to deceive public opinion in England, and to throw odium and calumny upon the people of Ireland. To show that it was not a mere clerical error, this 1,000 had been taken into account in addition to the figures. And it was by this falsification and by this fictitious addition of numbers that the demand for coercion in Ireland was supported by those acting under Her Majesty's Government. But, even supposing the falsified Returns to be accurate, how did crime in Ireland compare with crime in England and Scotland? He was not able to compare the Returns for the Three Kingdoms, as far as last year was concerned; but he could put alongside the Irish Returns the figures as far as they related to England and Scotland in previous years. [The hon. and learned Member then proceeded with this comparison, drawing from it the conclusion that the Returns of crime committed in England and Scotland showed that very much less crime prevailed in Ireland.] Dr. Neilson Hancock, a very high authority, had, in his official Returns, himself instituted the comparison. He stated the number of offences, punishable on conviction, committed in Ireland in the year 1879 as 3,842, or about 300 more than the number mentioned in the Return laid upon the Table. Whether, in the Return before the House, the number had been reduced for the purpose of contrasting with the Return for last year, he could not say. The fact, however, as stated by Dr. Hancock, was that, comparing that number—3,842—with the number of indictable offences committed in England and Scotland in the same year, and making the necessary allowance for difference of population, the number of crimes committed in Ireland was less for the year by 933 than those committed in England, and by 2,645 than those committed in Scotland. The excess of crime in England and Scotland over that in Ireland, even with the 1,000 added for threatening letters, would, he believed, be found to be greater on a comparison of the Returns for last year. Dr. Hancock gave some instances from which might be gathered the manner in which crimes—or, as they were termed, outrages—were manufactured. Turning to the Returns for the year 1869—and, no doubt, the same facts would be found to apply as well to 1879 and 1880—he pointed out that a party of 20 men visited 30 houses in Mayo and swore the tenants on a book not to pay more as their rent than the Government valuation, now said to be a crime hitherto unknown, and in each case levied contributions. These were recorded as 60 offences, the 30 cases being doubled. Again, in 1870, two threatening notices were posted on the doors of the houses of poor persons, and the record stated that as 22 offences. Two offences were, thereby, magnified into 82.

explained that a typographical error had been made in the Return to which the hon. and learned Member alluded. In the last page of it, referring to the threatening letters, the total was put down at 750, whereas it should have been 1,750. Anyone looking over the column would see that the error required to be corrected in order to make up 5,609. It was obvious there was a typographical error, although the Return almost corrected itself.

, while accepting correction, was compelled to add that comparisons had already been made on the assumption that the Return was accurate. But, making the correction, the proportion of crime for Ireland was less than it was for either England or Scotland; and, apart from such errors, what explanation was to be given of two offences being made to count as 82? The only inference must be that the Returns were got up in order to inflame public opinion, and to assist the Government in passing coercive legislation. He only objected to the Returns as grounds for suspending the Constitution. He must protest, with all the earnestness of which he was capable, against the charge that he or his Friends had encouraged crime or failed to repudiate the commission of crime. It was an unfair argument, and altogether a new doctrine, that men were to be deemed guilty of complicity in crimes which they did not repudiate. The Irish Members did not feel it necessary to accuse them selves by excusing themselves in respect of any crime. Over and over again it had been urged that those who committed crime were only playing the game of the coercionists and of the panic-mongers of the Press, who seemed to gloat with detail over the reported outrages; and he was sorry to see the spirit even in the speech of the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India. Who did he mean when he gave his domineering look across the House, and talked of miscreants in Ireland? If that was meant for hon. Members who sat on that side of the House, why did the noble Lord not have the courage and the manliness to say so? He repudiated the statement, and flung back the term "miscreant" in his teeth. If he meant others, let him say so, find them out, and punish them, for the Irish Members did not wish to defend miscreants. In addressing meetings in Ireland he had warned his hearers against committing crimes, because by so doing they would give strength to the enemy—little thinking at the time that the enemy would be found on the Treasury Bench. He did everything to dissuade the people from crime, and he ventured to say that not one single word of that went into the Police Reports. No; they were not sent to take speeches of that character; they were sent to make Reports which could be used to support the charge of conspiracy. From the language used with reference to the alleged state of anarchy in Ireland, the intelligent foreigner would suppose that things were as bad as they were in Paris at the time of the Commune; but there appeared to be an almost total absence of some of the crimes that were supposed to be associated with anarchy. There had been eight cases of homicide in a year, when one would expect to find that there had been eight a-day or eight a-week; and of attempts of murder there was not one. There was not a single case of "conspiracy to kill or murder." To take another offence very likely to occur in a state of anarchy, the "plundering of provisions," not with standing the deplorable state of the country, no single instance was given. There was no case of "levying contributions," "appearing in arms," or "combinations for illegal purposes." As to these offences this Return was a perfect blank. As to what were called "outrages and offences," he wanted to know what proof there was that they were "offences" at all? As to "threatening letters," which had been so much adverted to on the Treasury Bench, what was to hinder a man who did not wish to pay his rent from writing a threatening letter to himself, going to his landlord, and saying he dare not pay because he had received a threatening letter? In this Return there was a heading for "incendiary fires;" but no indication was given as to the value of the property destroyed. He believed that one case referred to was the burning of what was called in Ireland "a cock of turf." Little boys with lucifers did strange things, and he would like to know what was the value of that plot of turf? "Malicious injuries to property," in this Return, numbered 506; but he believed them to be nearly all fictitious, or of the most trifling character. One of these injuries, he understood, was caused by some little boys pulling the coping-stone off a bridge in Roscommon, the damage done being about 6 d. That was reported as an outrage; and the local Land League, in order to rebut the charge brought against them in respect to it, sent a man with a hod of mortar to repair it. One of the constant arguments for coercion was derived from the reports in the newspapers; but reports from anonymous persons were quite unreliable. As a set-off to these anonymous reports, he would call attention to a fact stated that morning, that at a meeting of the Land League yesterday a subscription of £120 to the Defence Fund was presented from a commercial traveller named M'Gough, who bore testimony to the efficiency of the Land League, and stated that he had been on the road for 30 years, and never knew the country to be in a better state. The subscriptions represented 120 commercial houses doing business in Ireland to the amount of £12,000,000. That was evidence which showed that capital was not being frightened from Ireland. It was stated in The Daily Telegraph of that day that 700 magistrates had signed a Circular calling upon the Chief Secretary for Ireland to bring up some measure of coercion. That was not a very convincing argument for coercion. At- tention had already been called in the House to the partizan character of the Irish magistracy, who were drawn entirely from the landlord class, and who history showed to be entirely out of sympathy with the people amongst whom they lived, for whom they were supposed to administer justice. When had 700 magistrates been induced to band together to advocate any reform or any measure for the amelioration of the condition of the Irish people? When famine was stalking abroad, was there a Circular from 700 magistrates, or from one magistrate, calling attention to the condition of their own tenantry? He would like to know what amount of subscriptions had these gentlemen given to the Famine Funds which saved the people from starvation? Their temper and the amount of credence which ought to be given to their assertions might be judged from what had occurred at Tralee as late as yesterday, according to telegrams in the newspapers of that morning. A charge was made against men for holding an illegal court; and one of the witnesses who had been summoned, being asked whether he had not been intimidated into joining the Land League, said he had not.

appealed to the hon. and learned Gentleman whether it was consistent with what he thought proper as a lawyer to refer to a case still pending?

said, he had heard the hon. and learned Gentleman himself, a night or two ago, refer to speeches given in evidence in a case pending in Ireland.

quite recognized the propriety of not referring to a pending case; but the matter in question was not so much a pending case as a preliminary investigation. He was only referring to a newspaper report, which was public property; and in 20 years' experience in the Courts of this country he had never heard of such a case. It was stated that the prosecuting counsel, being disappointed in getting the evidence he wanted, directly charged the witness with perjury, and the magistrate actually issued a summons for perjury on the spot. They had heard a great deal about intimidation, and they were told the magistrates had not the power to bring witnesses forward. But the fact was, the magistrate might issue a summons to anyone to give evidence, put him in the witness-box, and commit him to prison and let him rot there if he refused to give testimony or prevaricated in any way. He did not know what more right hon. Gentlemen wanted, unless they would introduce what in the Middle Ages was called "the question;" or, in other words, the rack, to compel people to give evidence. The epistle of one Archbishop had been referred to; but it should be remembered that there were three other Archbishops and many Bishops in Ireland, and that they pointed out that it was by a better adjustment of the relations of the people to the land that murders and agrarian outrages could be prevented. Then private letters were read describing the state of the country; but the names of the writers were not given. They were told, for instance, that a priest had been "Boycotted," and his dues reduced to 1 s., but that the priest declined to give his name, for fear of being known. And yet, as he had been "Boycotted," his name must have been known to everyone in the district. However, even supposing that a good many of the statements made were correct, what reason was there for attributing the present state of the country to the action of the Land League? The truth was that the League, so far from being the cause of outrages, had done more to prevent them than either the Chief Secretary's Circular or the efforts of the magistrates; and the League had constantly advised the Irish people to abstain from all kinds of violence as being extremely injurious to their interests, and prejudicing the ends the League had in view. But then, it was argued, that the cessation of outrage was due to a triumphant and unopposed system of terrorism, and that an additional reason was thereby afforded for the suppression of the Land League. He did not know how the Land League could legally be put down. Its members did nothing illegal, but taught, in common with all political economists, that the insane competition for land caused the present unsatisfactory relations between landlord and tenant, and, as a consequence, produced agrarian crime. Speeches to that effect were, of course, not unlawful. He admitted that words had now and then been said that were not strictly defensible; but that had happened in the course of every agitation, and a wise Government would have treated such language as extravagant rather than criminal. It was a terrible injustice to the freedom of the Irish people that magistrates should be allowed to use force to disperse a peaceable public meeting. One magistrate had openly stated that he was prepared, if necessary, to disperse a meeting by the use of the rifle and the bayonet. In such action this functionary would be acting illegally, and if bloodshed resulted he would be guilty of murder. Magistrates had the power to cause the Riot Act to be read if they anticipated that there would be any serious disturbance at a meeting; but in superseding that protection to individuals which the Riot Act afforded magistrates would be acting illegally, and these magistrates were the functionaries whom the Government proposed to arm with additional powers—men who had shown their incompetency to hold even the power they possessed at present. It was said that coercion was necessary, and that something like the Peace Preservation Act would be one of the proposed enactments. The Chief Secretary for Ireland had, however, admitted that that Act would have been powerless to prevent the outrages which had occurred; and, as it had been ineffectual in the past, it would be so, if renewed, in the future. Even if the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act were added to it, the power of arbitrary arrest would not prevent one of the outrages complained of. The existing laws were sufficient to maintain law and order. A policeman could arrest any man for felony if he had reasonable grounds for suspicion; but then he would have to specify the precise charge against the prisoner. The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act would enable the police to fill the gaols of Ireland with suspected persons, 99 out of 100 of whom were innocent. He quite admitted that the Land League could be put down, as nothing would be easier, when the Habeas Corpus Act had been suspended, than to arrest every member of the committee and every person who was known to have taken part in the proceedings of the League. But the arrest of hundreds of people who had committed no criminal offence would not remove the causes of crime; and all the conditions which produced the present deplorable state of the country would remain in full force. There would likewise exist an intolerable sense of wrong, for every man who had been arrested would naturally feel indignant at the injustice perpetrated in his own case. The increase in the number of offences was easily explained. It was directly traceable to the bad crops of 1877–8–9, and it would be found that the number of evictions increased proportionately with the misery of the people. In 1877 the evictions numbered 2,005; in 1878, 2,571; and in 1879, 3,526. In the face of these figures, could it be asserted for one moment that evictions had nothing to do with the increase of crime? If the number of evictions was reduced in 1880, it was simply because the spirit of the people had been aroused to resistance. But the figures he had quoted did not represent the full measure of the misery of the Irish population. There were evictions by magistrates' warrants to the number, in 1878, of 11,160, and in 1879, of 14,868. The turning out of poor people by magistrates' warrants was not technically termed eviction; but it really amounted to eviction of the most miserable and deplorable kind. Previous to 1880 there had been comparative quiet in Ireland, because the people, having given up all hope from the Government then in Office, looked forward with hope and expectation to the reins of power falling into the hands of one who had done something, and had shown a wish to do more, towards the amelioration of their condition. They had, however, been bitterly and grievously disappointed, for they had found that the Government had neither the power nor the will to carry out even microscopic measures of justice. It was no wonder, then, that they should express their disappointment so strongly that their enemies accused them of disloyalty. Discontented they were; discontent might be fanned into disaffection, disaffection into disloyalty, disloyalty into insurrection. The Government, by their intention of employing coercion, had entered on this downward course. This great Empire had lasted a long time, but it was not in human things to last for ever; and it was possible that at length the British Empire might be dismembered. Upon the heads of those who brought about that dismemberment by the refusal to do justice to Ireland would the blame lie. Give the people justice, and they would be orderly and contented; give them security, and they would be industrious and thriving; give them protection, and they would be peaceable and law-abiding. But, in adopting coercion, this country would have advanced one step further upon that downward course of which no one could foretell the end.

said, it was not his intention to prolong this painful debate; but he would have contented himself by giving a silent vote on the Amendment, if the speech of the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for India on Tuesday night and a statement of the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government had not afforded some ground for hoping that the Land Bill would be of a more liberal character than that indicated in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech. He did not say that it was altogether impossible to frame a useful measure by simply amending the Land Act of 1870; but experience told the House that it was better and cheaper in the end to build anew from the foundations than to attempt to prop and patch up a crumbling structure. England's legislation for Ireland, not alone with reference to land, but also almost every subject, had failed; because, however well-intended, it did not take into account the sentiments and traditions of the people, who for 700 years had not been English in thought and sentiment. For example, the principle of the "three F's" was not of modern invention. It had the sanction of an ancient Irish custom; and unless fixity of tenure, free sale, and fair rent were accorded the people would not be satisfied, nor would the country be pacified. The "Bright Clauses" of the Land Act might be so extended as to give needful facilities to tenants to acquire perpetuities; but he regretted that the Royal Speech was silent on the subject of waste lands—an important branch of the Land Question. He ventured also to suggest that a Land Bill would not be complete which overlooked the condition of the agricultural labourers. It was scarcely possible, he thought, to settle the Land Question by the adoption of any particular scheme dealing with a branch of the subject only. Several plans had been suggested, and some of them by bodies of gentlemen entitled to speak with a certain degree of authority. The Government could not allege that in that matter they had been left without advice and assistance from Ireland. It ought to be borne in mind, in the division which would soon take place, that the present agitation differed from all former ones in this—that it was purely social. Whether as regarded its means or its ends, it stood alone without a precedent in Irish history. He did not say that by way of reproach. It might be a merit, or it might be a demerit; but it was a fact, from which he drew the conclusion that, if met by a strong Land Act, and not by any means by a Coercion Act, strong or weak, it would pass away like one of those storms occasionally sent us from the other side of the Atlantic. Where discontent sprang from admitted grievances, the first duty of a Government was to remove the grievances. Whatever might be the immediate inciting causes to the discontent, the House might rest assured that it was the natural and inevitable outcome of a conspicuous act of coercion and spoliation perpetrated 80 years ago. And, with the feelings which he entertained regarding that transaction, he could scarcely conceive of a state of circumstances which would induce him to recognize a moral right in that House to pass a Coercive Law against his country.

rose to support the Amendment of the hon. Member for Cork City, and craved the indulgence of the House while he very briefly stated his reasons for doing so. In speaking of Ireland he meant the agricultural classes; because, since, unhappily, the manufacturing industries of Ireland were deliberately destroyed by English legislation, agriculture was the only substantial industry left to the country. The Irish people now wanted security for their natural rights in the soil—security that they should no longer be required to toil, a large proportion of them in nakedness, hunger, and misery, for the exclusive benefit of the landed class; security that they might be able to earn, he was going to say, their daily bread, but, remembering the description given the other evening of the humbler classes in Ireland by the hon. Member for County Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry), he would say their daily dole of Indian meal. They did not require to be coerced by bayonets or by buckshot. Session after Session Ire- land had been conspicuous by its absence from Her Majesty's Gracious Speech, or, if it was referred to at all, the reference was of the briefest character. In the present Speech from the Throne it was conspicuous by its presence, occupying about one-half of that document. The prominence given to Ireland on this occasion was, however, not a subject for congratulation. As long as Irishmen had been content to bear their wrongs in patient silence, England left them to struggle along as best they could; but when they made their voice heard, and cried out complaining of the wretched condition to which, after 700 years of English connection, they had been brought by landlord greed and English misgovernment, and demanded legal redress at the hands of the British Parliament, attention was excited, their cry was heard. But how was it responded to? The people asked for bread, and the Government gave them a stone. They demanded justice; and now, as heretofore, with the most powerful Liberal Government England had ever seen in Office, coercion was their doom. He would point out the extraordinary fusion they had seen taking place between the opposite sides of the House—the extraordinary spectacle of the lion of English Liberalism, as represented by the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for India, lying down with the mild and gentle lamb—the pet lamb, he might say—of Toryism, impersonated by the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill). If he spoke strongly in his own words he might be regarded as being prejudiced in favour of his own country; and he should, therefore, have recourse to the language of one who had never been regarded as a friend to Ireland. In a recent number of The Fortnightly Review an article appeared from the pen of Mr. Froude, in which was written—

"Seven hundred years have now passed since Henry II. attached Ireland to the English Crown. For all these years successive English Administrations have pretended to govern there, and as a result we saw there the miserable Irish people sending their hat round the globe to beg sixpences 'for God's sake' to save them from starving. The Irish soil, if decently cultivated, would feed twice the population of that unhappy country."

He held that it was a disgrace, not only to the English Government, but to the people of England, that in the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century—after 700 years, during which Ireland had been held in subjection—an anti-Irish English writer should thus feel bound to express himself respecting the present condition of Ireland. Coercion had been practised with a vengeance, and a long catalogue of Coercion Acts had already been cited to the House. It was, therefore, unnecessary for him to enumerate the various massacres which had been perpetrated in Ireland under the British flag. One typical instance he would, however, quote from the same authority—

"Tens of thousands of men were killed, and tens of thousands of women and children crawled into the woods, and perished of hunger. So frightful was the desolation that it was said the lowing of a cow or the whistle of a ploughboy was not to be heard from Waterford to Dingle."

He thought, therefore, that it would be plain to the House that where coercion of such a decided character as that had failed to win the good will and affection of the Irish people, it was unstatesmanlike to go back again to it now. But Parliament had been misled by false information, which came to them from tainted sources; and the Government had now, as a last resource, been tempted to try the measures recommended by the author of The English in Ireland. He had said—"As soon as authority has been properly asserted the Land Laws might then be dispassionately revised." He thought that was as good an instance as could possibly be devised of putting the cart before the horse. Coercion had never succeeded against Irishmen, and never would succeed. Another writer on the subject took a more merciful view. The Rev. Malcolm M'Coll, in describing the state of things, said—

"Seven centuries have passed away since England took possession of Ireland, and yet today the Irish question is still the question of the hour in our domestic policy; it still distracts the relations of political Parties, it still baffles the calculations of politicians, and threatens to impair the popularity and the reputation of statesmen."

The fact was, that a great though peaceful agitation had been carried on; and he challenged the Government to specify a single authentic instance of violent outrage in connection with the Land League meetings. Hundreds of thousands of people had assembled in public meetings, and there had not been as much row as might be looked for on a racecourse in England. The Government had been besought to settle the Land Question, and to protect the tenantry from the oppression of their landlords, by an agitation in which the people had made themselves heard and felt in the only way open to them. The Government said—"Yes; we will bring in a Bill, we will give you some relief, but we will not tell you what it is; we must first coerce you, not into peace, because the peace is not disturbed; not into obedience to the law, for—beyond this strike against unjust contracts, in which one of the contracting parties, the tenant farmer, has been powerless to defend himself against the unjust and unfair exactions of the other—the law has not been broken; but we must coerce you into silence." He denied that the agrarian outrages of the past year exceeded ordinary years. Of course, he omitted bogus "outrages" put into the Returns to swell the catalogue. In an able work just printed by a gifted authoress, the "The Nun of Kenmare," whose heart beat warmly for Ireland, he found a large number of cases in which reported outrages had been refuted and explained. In one, a Mr. Barry wrote to contradict a statement that an outrage had been committed on him, and said the only foundation he could find was that an enter prizing pig had made a determined raid on a henhouse. He hoped that pig would be coerced. So much, then, for the manufacture of outrages. He wished the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister had been present, as he did not know how far in his absence it would be proper to make an appeal to him. But he would remind him of a speech which he delivered in this House some 13 years ago. It was on a similar occasion to the present, when the state of Ireland was under consideration, and the right hon. Gentleman then said—

"Many sources of error have been pointed out both from this and the other side of the House; but if I am right there is one source of error which exists more widely and penetrates more deeply even than these, which is that Her Majesty's Government have failed to realize, in any degree at all approaching to truth, the grave, and I would say the solemn fact, which is that we have reached a crisis in the history of Ireland. Ireland has an account opened with this country, and she asks—nay, she expects—that it shall be settled. Ireland has a controversy with this country which has endured through centuries, mitigated, as it has been from time to time, by the removal of one cause of heartburning and dissension; but, unfortunately, enough still remains to be done."

Now, he himself adopted the language of the right hon. Gentleman; because it would be impossible to describe the situation of Ireland more truly or more forcibly than the right hon. Gentleman had done. He would appeal to the right hon. Gentleman not to listen to the evil suggestions of the hereditary enemies of Ireland, or of vacillating and timorous friends. He would ask him rather to listen only to the inspirations of his own genius, throwing aside all considerations except those of natural justice, and refuse to put his hand to assist in forging a new link in the long chain of oppression of a gallant and brave people. He would entreat him not to sully the only bright page that appeared on the Statute Book of England in the shape of legislation for Ireland, and which page had been written by his own hand.

I do not wish altogether to give a silent vote on this occasion, and my reasons are that I hate coercion just as much as any man; and during all my previous Parliamentary career, whenever a question of Irish coercion has come up before this House—and it has often come up—I have systematically voted and spoken against it. I wish to explain why I find myself forced to take a different course of action now; and I must say that the onus of it rests entirely on hon. Gentlemen opposite. I mean the Leaders of the Land League. We have heard this evening from the hon. and learned Member (Dr. Commins), a short while ago, a very glowing picture of the evils that may attend coercive measures in Ireland. I agree very much with what he said. I believe there are likely to be great evils from coercive measures in Ireland; but we are driven to a choice of evils. There is evil whichever way you look at it. At present, the evil we have to deal with is a state of lawlessness which is altogether unendurable in a civilized country. And whose fault is it that we are in that condition? It is entirely the fault of the Land League—["No, no!"]—of the Land League. The action of the Land League at first might have been of a kind to carry with it a great deal of sympathy from the Radical Party; but the Leaders of the Land League lost their opportunity. What they might have done to gain our sympathy was, that they should have from the first denounced outrages. They should have endeavoured to put down lawlessness; but they failed in both of those respects. In the next place, they suggested utterly impracticable remedies—["No!"]—well, we will come to that presently. And, lastly, they showed that they had ulterior objects in view, and that Land Law Reform was not the main object they had at heart. Well, we will take first their failure to denounce outrage. I do not mean to say that the Leaders of the Land League have ever preached assassination; that would have been a very gross way of conducting the Land League agitation. They did not do that; but what they did was, that either by absolute silence, or by the mildest of possible disclaimers, they undoubtedly encouraged it. Then, with regard to the impracticable remedies; they proposed the putting down of the landlords. You cannot put down landlords. You must have landords. The only possible idea, in putting down landlordism, is to put down one set of men and raise up another set; and it is quite on the cards that the new set you put up might turn out worse than the one you put down. Suppose you take the land from the present landlords, and give it to a new set of peasant proprietors; what is to prevent those peasant proprietors beginning to let their land the very next day? Then they become landlords, and the probability is that in process of time they become as tyrannical as the others. Coming next to the ulterior objects beyond Land Reform, the hon. Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell) said he would not take off his coat for that. It is something altogether different from that for which he commenced his agitation. He said he did not take the trouble to oppose the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, because he knew the House of Lords were going to oppose it; otherwise, he would have opposed it himself. So he told them, in Ireland. The hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power), in a speech at Clerkenwell not very long ago, said that no alien Government, however just it might be to Ireland, could ever rule Ireland, and, therefore, the Irish Nationalists would never rest while under an alien Government. Now, I think I have shown three reasons why the Irish Land League have failed to get the sympathy of the Radical Members—at least, these are the reasons why they have entirely failed to secure my assistance. I have said before that I hate coercion as much as anyone does, and I regret exceedingly that we are in the position now to require to have recourse to such an evil remedy; but I firmly believe that Her Majesty's Government hate coercion as much as I do. I believe that with them we shall have as mild coercion as they can possibly do with; and I trust that they will give us only that, and nothing more. What would be the effect if the Radical and other Members of the Liberal Party were to go against Her Majesty's Government, and refuse them support in a crisis of this kind? The only effect would be to drive them in the direction of seeking support more from their natural enemies on the Conservative side. That must be the effect of the Liberal Party not cordially and fully supporting Her Majesty's Government; and what would be the tendency of that result? It would be to give us greater coercion, and less remedy. Now, Sir, I want to have as little coercion as possible, and as much remedy as possible; and, therefore, I shall support Her Majesty's Government.

said, that the remarks of the hon. Member (Mr. Anderson) on the question of peasant proprietorship were falsified by the experience of every European country. With regard to that portion of Her Majesty's Speech which referred to Ireland, it had been received in that country with the deepest feelings of disappointment; and if any reliance could be placed on the reports which reached them from the country constituencies, this feeling was largely shared by Liberal constituencies in England. The Irish constituencies had strong hopes for believing that a Liberal Government, in which there were men whose names were so much associated with measures of liberty and freedom, would never yield to the noisy clamour for coercion which had been set up by the landlord Press. The feeling had been ably expressed in a letter written by a life-long admirer of the Prime Minister—the Very Rev. Dr. Kavanagh, of Carlow College—who, writing a few days ago, expressed his confidence that the great, good, and just man who now guided the destinies of the Empire would never resort to the policy of Eldon and Wellington. He felt sorry for the feelings of his rev. friend when he found his high ideas were not to be realized; but that, instead, the Prime Minister had come down in hot haste to this House, and insisted that all their Business should be suspended in order that the Constitutional liberties of the Irish people should be taken away. He should support the Amendment of the hon. Member for Cork City, because he believed there existed no sufficient reason for a coercive measure. A false and mistaken public opinion had been created in this country by the deliberate manufacture of lies in reference to lawlessness and outrage. For months past the Press of this country had teemed with abominable crimes and revolting outrages. They could not take up a newspaper without seeing a long list of agrarian offences. The other day he read with surprise and some alarm in a London paper a detailed and circumstantial account of an attack on a rev. friend of his in County Wexford. His friend, it was said, was driving from New Ross to Dungannon, when he was stopped on the road by four men with blackened faces. They presented revolvers at him, but, declaring that he was the wrong man, let him pass as a warning. Now, the whole of the story was a pure fabrication; in fact, the rev. gentleman was not in the county at the time of the alleged occurrence. The contradictions which were promptly given to those fabrications rarely found their way to the English papers. He had read in a Manchester paper an account of a landlord being tarred and feathered, and in the same paper a long article commenting on the cruelty and savagery of the Irish people; but the landlord himself who was said to have been so treated had shown that the story was entirely untrue. And, in the same way, another landlord, who was said to have been fired at at Loughrea, gave an absolute contradiction, adding that he was on the best of terms with his tenants, and that he was a member of the Land League. So with the story of a man who was said to have had his ears split in the county Clare because he paid his rent. It appeared from The Freeman's Journal that such an outrage never took place. In fact, there had been a deliberate attempt to set the English people against the Irish people, and that was why the Government met Parliament that Session with proposals for coercion. Another important factor in conducing to this state of things was the famous Charge of Judge Fitzgerald. But although that learned Judge declared he was alarmed for his own safety, he was seen, two or three days after the Charge, in the midst of a population whom he had represented as all armed with revolvers and in a lawless state of mind, entirely unattended, and with no more formidable weapon of defence about him than an umbrella. It might be useful to contrast that Charge with the one addressed to the Grand Jury of Wexford, in 1813, by Mr. Baron Fletcher, who boldly pointed out that the evils afflicting Ireland were the result of a vicious land system, and spoke of the tyranny of landlords and agents, who so often used their power for the purpose of oppressing the tenants. They exacted, he said, the utmost penny of the value of the land. If a lease happened to fall due they let the farm to the highest bidder, and showed no predilection to the tenant for past services, and that they were ever busy pouring falsehoods into the ears of Englishmen. In such circumstances, said Baron Fletcher, it was not surprising that the wretched peasant sought to extort from the fears of his landlord the treatment he had failed to win from gratitude and good feeling. The remedy for this state of things was to remove the cause of the disturbance by giving the people a property in their farms and an interest in the peace of the country. These were remedies, added the learned Judge, which would be far more effectual than coercion, the cord, or the gibbet. That was in 1813, before the full effect of the system had worked its evil way, and the ermine of the Judge became the reward of political servitude. He wished to draw the attention of the House to the features of the Return laid on that Table of agrarian offences, particularly relating to the 12 counties of the Province of Leinster. That Return showed that in the first 11 months of last year there was in those 12 counties not a single case of murder, manslaughter, administering poison, assault endangering life; only one case of firing at the person, and only one case of aggravated assault. Could any English Member name any 12 English counties of which such a thing could be said? They had heard a great deal about the difficulty of administering the law, and yet there was not a single case of assault upon a process server or bailiff. How was a Coercion Act to improve that state of things? There was not a single conviction for incendiary fires or arson, and only one commitment and 21 cases reported of taking and holding forcible possession, only one case of levying contributions, not a single case of killing, cutting, or maiming of cattle, only one case for trial, and two reported, in respect to one of which it appeared that some mischievous boys had cut off a cow's tail. From the list of offences he observed that there were 148 cases of threatening letters. Now, threatening letters formed about three-fourths of the agrarian crimes. But surely the persons who wrote those letters must be people of very undecided minds, because in very few instances were the threats carried out. It was well known that the system of writing letters had become a pleasant pastime in Ireland, and for some time past constables and sub-inspectors had been well occupied in correspondence; in fact, nearly all the letters were written by the police or by those interested in the land. Well, that was the tenant side of the question. Now look at the landlord side. During the year, in Leinster, 484 families had been evicted, and this effected a total of 2,195 persons. That represented by far the greatest aggregate of agrarian outrage. Upon what did the Government rely as a basis for carrying its coercive proposals? Was it upon independent testimony? No; they relied upon a military police, a tainted magistracy, and a partizan Bench ["Oh, oh!"] Hon. Gentlemen might say "Oh, oh;" but it could be proved that the magistracy of Ireland, to the extent of about 95 per cent, consisted of men who were directly interested and connected with the land. Every channel of independent evidence was on their side. There was not a corporate body in the whole of Ireland that had not passed resolutions expressing sympathy with the Land League. There was not a Board of Poor Law Guardians in the country that had not given expression to a similar opinion. Ministers of religion, Catholic and Protestant, had gone together in protesting against coercion, and in pointing out that the real cause of Ireland's misfortunes was the abject poverty and misery of the people. Would he be told that all this was the result of the Land League terrorism; and would he be told that the Lord Mayor of Dublin, when he protested against the Government measure, was coerced by the Land League? The thing was utterly absurd. It was ridiculous to suppose that an organization, started by half-a-dozen obscure men, could in 16 months' time exercise the unusual terrorism that was said to exist. It was very remarkable that at a time when his hon. Friend (Mr. Parnell) was charged with inciting the Irish people to assassination and murder, he should be asked by a unanimous vote to accept the freedom of nearly every city and town in Ireland. He had another reason why he opposed, and would bitterly oppose, this attempt to coerce his countrymen, and it was that the measure would fail. He would never be a party to any legislation calculated to produce nothing but failure. They had a long record of failure to look back upon. If the Government could show any single instance in which the imposition of coercive measures in Ireland had tended to restore order and loyalty among the people there would be a good case. Within this century they had 48 times partially suspended, and 10 times wholly suspended, the Constitutional rights of the Irish people, and with what result? Failure. If they failed when Irishmen were weak and powerless and disorganized, was it likely they would succeed when they were combined, organized, and determined? Would they succeed now, when, for the first time in Irish history, the Protestant Orangemen of the North clasped hands with the Catholics of the South. He told them they would fail; and it appeared to him that an appeal to common sense would be quite sufficient to justify hon. Members of the House in opposing coercive measures of a so-called Liberal Government. It could easily be shown that coercive measures had failed, and that hitherto, when they had been passed, crime instead of diminishing had actually increased. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended in 1866, and what was the result? In that year the number of offences against the person was 704; in 1867 they reached 713; in 1868, 785; in 1869, 857; and in 1870, 1,029. In 1866 the number of outrages against property was 797; in 1867, 773; in 1868, 891; in 1869, 815; and in 1870, 1,183. Again, take the offences against public peace. In 1866 they amounted to 418; in 1867 to 492; in 1868 to 803; in 1869 to 1,430; and in 1870 to 1,079; and there was no reason to suppose that any different result would follow coercive measures now. What ground had the Government for supposing that if the Constitutional rights of the Irish people were superseded they would not be forced into secret combinations? If there was any difficulty between the two countries it was this—that with all the power of England it was impossible to coerce the minds or cripple the consciences of the Irish people, and he warned the Government against any attempt upon their part to do so. Coercion, it was true, might be brought to bear with reference to certain offences; but he did not consider it was a crime for men to combine in order to remove an odious and foul system, which had robbed the Irish people of their rights from the first moment of its creation. He should certainly look with sanguine hope to the Irish people to defeat any such measure of coercion as was foreshadowed.

said, that some hon. Members spoke as if they thought that it was a pleasant task for any Government to propose measures of what he would call protection rather than coercion for Ireland. They seemed to think that it was not distasteful to any Minister. No one could have listened to the Chief Secretary for Ireland without feeling convinced that it was to him one of the most distasteful duties he ever undertook, and that he was impelled alone by a stern sense of imperative duty. ["No, no!"] That, at any rate, was his own opinion; and he hoped that hon. Members who differed from him would permit him to express his conscientious convictions. He was sorry to hear the hon. and learned Member for Roscommon (Dr. Commins) allude in such a bitter tone to that masterly speech of the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India. It was marked by the calmness and the dignity which became a man who felt his responsibility. He uttered no word that should give uneasi- ness or displeasure to those who differed from him; it indicated rather an inclination to draw a veil over the troubles of the past. That speech he had read and re-read with considerable satisfaction, as the first speech made by a Lancashire Member; and it had been received in the county which the noble Lord so ably represented with satisfaction. He could not say he agreed with every portion of that speech; but if it truly represented the Government and the measures they intended to propose they would have his cordial support. He was sorry that Parliament had not met in November to pass either protective or remedial measures. He trusted that the Irish Members would now recognize that there was no disposition to check discussion or to shorten the debate, and would allow this general discussion to come to an early close. Parliament was ready to listen to the grievances Irish Members might bring forward, and to redress wrongs that were clearly proved. Remedial measures, however full and wide, so long as they were characterized by that justice which the noble Lord spoke of, would have his candid support, and, he believed, that of the Conservative Members. It was, he thought, somewhat premature to discuss the scheme which the Government was about to introduce. It had been referred to, however, by the hon. Member for County Wicklow (Mr. W. Corbet) and he had described the measure of coercion in words which the Government had not put before the House. It was a measure, according to the hon. Gentleman, to coerce the Irish people into silence, and to hang them. For his own part, he preferred to wait until he heard what the measure was before discussing it. He was glad to learn that the Irish Members were prepared to come to a division to-morrow. [ Cries of "No, no!"] He might be mistaken, but he trusted he was not. The country would wait with anxiety, however, to hear what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham (Mr. John Bright) would say before the debate closed. They should wait with even more anxiety to hear what would be said by his right hon. Colleague (Mr. Chamberlain), who, no doubt, was a most able administrator, but who, he was afraid, was rather redundant in mischievous policy. He regretted that in the early part of the debate there was so much of recrimination between the two Front Benches. It was a contest as to whose fault it was that these measures had not been brought in earlier; but the time was gone by for that, and the time had come for more important Business. They were all animated by a sincere and fervent desire to restore peace to Ireland. With regard to the agitation, no Irish Member had stated that it was either spontaneous in its origin or natural in its progress. His own belief was that the relentless hands of the Land League had coerced well-meaning people and made them afraid of expressing their own minds, and from doing what they considered was right; indeed, they had been controlled in such a manner that their lives had been placed in danger, and the peace of the country imperilled.

said, if the Amendment were an abstract proposition he should find some difficulty in refusing to vote for it; but it was something very different; it was intended to be a condemnation of the policy of the Government as indicated in the Queen's Speech. It was only fair and courteous to wait for the proposals of the Government and the justification offered for them, and those who had confidence in the Government could not but respond to the appeal made to them to suspend judgment for the present. The Government were perfectly aware that the measures which they were about to introduce were of an exceptional character, and measures that would require strong arguments indeed to justify. The noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington) had said, in the course of the debate, that—

"Parliament is rightly jealous of Constitutional liberty and the forms which guard the Constitution, and Parliament will not—and ought not—to sanction any exceptional measures, except an overwhelming case can be proved beyond the possibility of doubt."

The Chief Secretary for Ireland used similar language when he said—

"I am perfectly aware that in the present case the House of Commons will demand, and rigorously demand, that we should establish a very strong case before they will grant us the extraordinary powers we now ask for."

A strong case would have to be made out; it would have to be all the stronger in consequence of the course the Government had hitherto pursued, and he sympathized with the Chief Secretary for Ireland, knowing how he felt his responsibility and his repugnance to proposing coercive measures. [Mr. BIGGAR: Oh, nonsense!] But in his position the right hon. Gentleman was not free from bias; he was subject to the influence of Dublin Castle, where traditions were in favour of landlord supremacy, and where the right hon. Gentleman on entering upon his Office would find piles of papers and letters from the magistrates, the police, and landed magnates in favour of coercion. He resisted these influences last Session, and said that the Government policy was remedy and not coercion. The noble Marquess the Secretary of State for India had justified the non-renewal of the Peace Preservation Act, on the ground that to have begun the proceedings of a new Parliament with such a proposal would have ruined its chances for good, and surely the same argument held good in regard to the present proposal of the Government. Since the last Session there had been constant pressure brought to bear upon the Chief Secretary for Ireland by magistrates and by the police officials to induce him to bring forward measures of coercion. There was reason to believe that the administration of the ordinary law for the repression of crime had only been feeble; and it seemed as if those officials had sought to force the hand of the Government and to compel them to give them greater powers. The late Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Gibson), in his eloquent speech the other night, said there had been a manufactory in Ireland for the denial of outrages; but he (Mr. Rylands) would say, at all events, there had been a manufactory for exaggeration. He had no knowledge of the proceedings of the Government except through the Press; but there was a general belief that the Chief Secretary for Ireland, on several occasions, had thought it his duty, no doubt with perfect conscientiousness, to represent the urgent necessity for Parliament being called together at an earlier period than usual to pass measures of coercion, and the pressure under which he had acted culminated on Monday the 13th of December, when the Cabinet was suddenly called together. On the previous Saturday it was stated that his right hon. Friend had been closeted in Dublin with the ex-Lord Chancellor Ball and Chief Justice May. [Mr. W. E. FORSTER: That was quite incorrect.] He (Mr. Rylands) was very glad to hear his right hon. Friend's denial. Well, the calmer judgment of the Cabinet overruled the urgency of the Chief Secretary. The Tory Party were loud in their condemnation of the Government, and some of them used expressions of the most outrageous character. The noble Lord the junior Member for Liverpool (Lord Claud Hamilton) wrote a letter to the West Kensington Conservative Association, which was received with tumultuous applause, and what did he say? He said that Messrs. Bright and Chamberlain should be indicted for conspiracy, rather than the miserable Land Leaguers, for having contributed, by their speeches and action, to the murders, bloodshed, and rapine in Ireland, more than the Land Leaguers. [Mr. WARTON: Hear, hear!] Such were the intemperate expressions of political youth and inexperience. The same excuse could not be made for Lord Salisbury, who charged certain Members of the Government with being ready to tamper with disturbance and crime, in order to strengthen their arguments in favour of their Land Bill. The leading Members of the Party joined in one common chorus of condemnation of the Government, holding them responsible for delay in applying their coercive measures. The fact that the Government had not yielded to this obloquy of the Conservative Leaders met with the approval of the entire Liberal Party. The conduct of Earl Grey in 1833, and the language of Sir Robert Peel justifying the policy of postponing coercive measures, was surely a precedent for the delay of a few months by the present Government. He thought it would have justified a delay of a few weeks longer; and if, instead of proceeding with a Coercive Bill in the first instance, they had brought in a bold and complete Land Bill, giving absolute security to the tenant, putting aside all other Business to pass such a measure as a matter of urgency, the announcement of such a course would have assuaged the disturbances in Ireland, and given confidence in place of distrust, hope in place of despair, and gratitude in place of dissatisfaction. He deeply regretted that the Government had not considered that it was competent and wise for them to take that course. He did not presume to criticize or condemn them. Up to December 13, at all events, the Government did not think the necessity of coercion was urgent, and they must now give overwhelming evidence of its necessity. The Liberal Party had been placed in great difficulty. The Members of the Government, and even the Premier himself, had said that it was humiliating for them to be driven to take the course they felt compelled to take. It was humiliating, because many of them, during the autumn, denounced in public meetings the principle of coercion; they declared that they as a Party had no confidence in coercion, and that they should go to Parliament determined to support substantial remedial measures. In one of the most eloquent and powerful speeches ever addressed to his constituents, the right hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. John Bright) said, amidst the cheers of thousands who listened to him, that "force was no remedy," words which were received with acclamation throughout the country and read by millions of his fellow-countrymen with pleasure. There was no one in the House he was more willing to follow than the right hon. Gentleman, who, he well knew, would be most anxious to give a substantial measure of justice to Ireland. In that magnificent speech, delivered on the 16th November, not two months since, the right hon. Gentleman said—

"At this moment you have before you two appealing parties. You have the tenantry with their discontent, with the outrages committed by some of them, with the repudiation of contracts, with all those evils, some of which I have attempted to describe: and you have, on the other hand, the landed proprietors very anxious to gain your ear and the ear of Government and Parliament. Until now, for the past 100 years and longer, the British Government and Parliament have always come to the rescue of the Irish proprietors. England has done it in the past, and the question is now, will she do it in the future?"

He had some fears that she would. History repeated itself. There were social and political influences of great power inside and outside the Cabinet, and it seemed almost impossible to oppose them. The result was they were to have coercion immediately—in hot haste—while remedial measures might be taken at their leisure. Coercion Bills would be cordially supported by the Conserva- tives—always distrustful of remedial measures—would pass that House by a large majority, and would be received with rejoicing by the House of Lords. But what would happen with the Land Bill? He saw the other day a letter in The Times, written by Lord Meath, in which he said they should produce calm before men's minds would be in a position to judge wisely of any land measure. That being accomplished by the repressive action of the Government, then, at some future time, after due consideration, they might pass judgment on a Land Bill. The noble Lord further said that it was necessary that they should have the Reports of the Royal Commissions which had been sitting, and that they should calmly consider, and not hastily act on, those Reports. Well, for the last 250 years there had been discussions without end as to the condition of Ireland and the origin of its evils. There had been the testimonies of wise statesmen, the calm judgments of philosophical writers, the conclusions of Select Committees of that House, and Reports of Royal Commissions, and the great thing in which all these testimonies mainly agreed was that they must give absolute security of tenure to the people of Ireland if they wished to do away with the distress. A noble Duke, in "another place," warned the Government that if they dealt with this case with a rod in one hand and sugar in the other they would fail. The noble Duke wanted the rod; he would have it vigorously applied, and would not be equally anxious to give the sugar. He had the greatest confidence that the Government intended to bring in remedial measures for Ireland, not with standing sinister rumours and articles in The Times and The Daily News, which had created the impression that the Government were about to bring in a weak Land Bill. He did not believe it. He was convinced no half measures would do. He did not believe for a moment that with a Cabinet possessing men of such eminence and wisdom they should have a weak land measure. No declaration of the Government, nothing in the Queen's Speech, nothing in the speech of the Prime Minister implied any such a thing. Nothing less than the security of tenure would bring 500,000 tenants of Ireland to the side of order, by giving them confidence and contentment. If they wanted to destroy the power of the agitators and of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), they must do what would win to their side the large body of the Irish people at present discontented. A great many Members of the House were irritated by what had been done by Members from Ireland; but he trusted they would not on that account be biased against them, inasmuch as those Members were true Representatives of a great portion of the people of Ireland. A short time ago one of those hon. Gentlemen was charged on an indictment for intimidation, and the effect was to send him to those Benches. He believed, if there was a Dissolution now, after the measures indicated in the Speech from the Throne, such was the irritation unnecessarily excited in Ireland, that some of his hon. Friends from Ireland on the Ministerial side would probably lose their seats, and the hon. Member for the City of Cork would have a still larger following. He understood the significance of that fact. It proved that the Irish people were profoundly dissatisfied, and that they called upon their Representatives to act, probably in a violent, certainly in an indiscreet manner. He hoped the feeling already excited in the House would not be still further excited by violent measures of obstruction. If they were to have the humiliation of passing measures of coercion, he hoped they might have the satisfaction of inscribing on the Statute Book remedial measures, which would secure peace, contentment, and prosperity to the poor and wretched people of Ireland.

said, that that was certainly an indulgent House. The hon. and learned Member for Roscommon (Dr. Commins) began yesterday like a good cricketer, and secured 31 runs, he meant minutes. According to the law which allowed the cricketer who had not finished his innings to go in again next morning, the stumps having been drawn at a quarter to 6 last evening, that able cricketer went in again this evening, and with the success of Grace, if not the style of his hits, put in an innings of 127 minutes. He appealed to the sense of fairness which animated that Assembly to hear him (Mr. Warton) for a tenth of the time. The hon. Member for Burnley, who had spoken last, had referred to a meeting of Conservatives at Kensington. He was present at that meeting, and as he was not one of those who would venture to say behind persons' backs what he was afraid to say before their faces, he might say that the cheer which he gave when he heard the hon. Member read a sentence spoken by the junior Member for Liverpool (Lord Claud Hamilton) at that meeting was the repetition of a cheer which he gave at that meeting, and, in doing so, he hoped he was consistent, and perhaps the House would kindly allow him to say something which he had said at that meeting. At that meeting he treated the Conservatives of Kensington, whom he had the honour to address, to a version of the "three F's," which, he thought, befitted the occasion. He would give them the Land Leaguers' version; and he thought it might, perhaps, be expressed in doggrel rhyme. The Land League version was this—

"Fair rent we must first obtain,

Fixed hold will the land retain,

Free sale of what thus we gain—

Fair rent, fixed hold, free sale."

The version of the right hon. Baronet, whom he was proud to regard as the Leader of the Conservative Party, might be thus expressed—

"Fraud to steal what's not their own,

Force to keep all they can bone,

Folly seasoning crime thus shown—

Fraud and force and folly."

The views of the gallant Colonel Burnaby, who also spoke at the West Kensington meeting with respect to the conduct of the Government, might be rendered as follows:—

"Feeble counsels weakly planned,

Funk that fears the traitor band,

Forster in supreme command—

Feeble, Funky Forster."

However, as the hon. Member for Preston (Mr. Hermon) had said, the present was not the time for recrimination, but for supporting the Government like honest Tories when they did right. And that they were now endeavouring, though tardily, to do their duty, was, in his opinion, perfectly clear. He had no wish to make any lengthened observations; but he felt bound to denounce the attempts that had been made to minimize the outrages in Ireland. For his part, he took them at the estimate of the Government, and did not believe that they had misrepresented the real state of things. He held in his hand a letter from a young lady in Ireland, the daughter of a widowed mother, who had written in indignant terms of the lawlessness and violence that prevailed in the neighbourhood of her house. This poor young lady—they were rich some time ago—stated that they dare not have lights in the house; that no one in the house ever went to bed without expecting a nocturnal attack; and that her mother had been threatened, though she had given back 50 per cent of her rents in the spring. So many outrages were kept from the knowledge of the newspapers that only a small part of the truth was known respecting them. In a second letter, his correspondent mentioned that a man who had been detected buying soap at a "Boycotted" shop had been compelled to eat what he had purchased; that another had been taken out of his bed and "carded," and burnt with a hot iron after being carded, and that the tortures inflicted on the cattle of obnoxious persons were too horrible to be related. They themselves expected to be "Boycotted" for having refused to subscribe to the Parnell Defence Fund. [ Cries of "Where?" and "Name!"] He must refuse, for obvious reasons, to give any clue by which his correspondent might be identified. Now, when such statements were made, it was idle to suppose that a solitary instance of exaggeration discredited the accounts of all the outrages. He would not detain the House any longer, because he was anxious that no further time should be wasted. As he had said, he believed that the Government had stated the case accurately; and he, therefore, trusted that the promised measures for the protection of life and property would be passed without undue delay.

said, the debate, since its commencement, had turned almost upon the condition of Ireland, and the alleged demerits of the Irish National Land League. That organization had been charged with all sorts of misdeeds and illegalities in speeches delivered from both the Liberal and Tory Benches of the House; and in so doing it seemed to him that the case which was now being tried before the Courts in Ireland was being very unfairly prejudged. The allegation had been made that the League sought dishonest and illegal objects by dishonest and illegal means. The question was being tried out judicially, and he could not see the fairness or propriety of pronouncing an opinion upon the case in that House. The jurors empanelled to try the case would, of course, read what had occurred in the House on the following morning. He did not, however, fear that they would judge of the case otherwise than impartially; but there were not only jurors to be considered. There were also the Judges. He had noticed that during the debate almost all those who pleaded for the conviction of the traversers flattered the Judges engaged on the trial. That, he believed, was a specimen of English fair play; but then he had never believed in English fair play. He knew that, as between Englishmen, there was fair play; but, as between England and Ireland, there never had been fair play, and he did not believe there would be fair play now. It was not fair play which violated the Treaty of Limerick and the Act of Union; and he did not see any change in the temper of the legislators of England which led him to expect that there would be fair play in this case. One of the prosecutors in the case now pending in Dublin had been empowered to speak from his brief in the House. He had heard from the Solicitor General for Ireland some strong accusations against the National Land League and its leaders. He had heard some days previously a very similar speech delivered in the opening of the League prosecution by the Irish Attorney General, and he had heard the same extracts read. In fact, it was like the Corsican brothers appearing in the House. He would read some of the extracts to which he had alluded. What did the Solicitor General for Ireland read? He read from an Irish newspaper a report of a meeting which had created great emotion, the resolutions passed at which were very strong, and the speakers more than usually outspoken. He did not think there was anything very terrible in that account, or in any of the other extracts read by the Solicitor General for Ireland, or he would undertake to prove the truth of every allegation contained in the extracts. It was quite true, for instance, that the land system in Ireland tortured, robbed, and enslaved the people. In the Acts of Parliament which were passed by the British Legislature there had been, from time to time, several amendments made in the Land Laws of Ireland. What was implied by that fact? It was implied that the Land Laws were oppressive. Previous attempts had been made in that House to curb the power of the Irish landlords. Why was that done? Because their power was unjust, and there was a necessity for an Act of Parliament. Attempts had been made to curb the power of rack-renting the Irish peasantry, and that proved that rack-renting existed, and was being carried on in Ireland. What was rack-renting? It was robbery—legalized robbery, if they liked, but robbery nevertheless. It was alleged in the extracts referred to that the system tended to enslave and degrade the people. Unquestionably it did. Taking the case of good landlords in the country—and no one denied that there were some individuals of that class—was not the position of the Irish tenant living under him one of absolute dependence? He would give a few facts with regard to rack-renting. One of the correspondents of an English newspaper, who had been lately sent over to Ireland to report on the condition of the country, said, in one of his letters to the paper, that in the district he had been visiting there lived a Mrs. Blake, who owned one of those heavily mortgaged estates. Her rental was about £2,000, and her personal income about £300. That was the case of many Irish landlords and landladies; but that only proved that they were a spendthrift class. The correspondent went on to say that the £300 was obtained by making a charge for the seaweed obtained from the sea. The land was not enough for the Irish landlords, but they must also take toll from the sea. In proof of his assertion that the land system tended to degrade and enslave the Irish people, he invited the attention of the House to the following notice served upon the tenants of a large property in Ireland:—

"I hereby require you to prevent the trespass of any person with dog or gun on the lands you occupy from me, or in the adjoining bog or mountain; and should you at any time after the service of this notice permit such a trespass, I shall give directions for your removal from the property."

That notice was signed by F. A. Knox Gore, and was dated August 15, 1860. He might also mention that on the occasion of the Royal visit to Killarney, in 1861, Lord Castlerosse's tenants were obliged to wear hats with the name of their landlord printed on them, just as dogs wore a collar. So much for the manly feeling of independence and self-respect expected to be created under this blighting land system. They had heard something about crime in Ireland and crime in England, and the Solicitor General for Ireland had said that crime in England was always detected, although he could not conceive that crime being detected made any great matter; but in England there was a detective police, whilst in Ireland it was a military police. Every Irish policeman considered himself a son of Mars, whose favourite reading was about battles, sieges, and sorties, and whose favourite song was, "Let me like a soldier fall." He had been greatly struck by the unity that prevailed in the House when the question was one of coercion for Ireland. There were two political Parties in that Assembly who differed on most questions, and who argued them with great energy, and even bitterness; but when it came to a question of destroying the small remnant of liberty still left to the Irish people there was brotherly love and union between them at once. Indeed, the only charge that the Tories made against the Government was that they did not commence to coerce soon enough, and did not mean to flog hard enough when they did set about it. It was alleged that coercion was necessary in order to protect life and property in Ireland. But it was only intended to protect the lives of a class, and the so-called property of that class. What protection had been given by the Legislature to the lives and property of the Irish tenants? They might talk of the safety of life in Ireland; but he contended that life was more safe in Ireland than in England. ["Oh!"] He maintained that the destruction of human life by violence in England was greater than in Ireland. Of course, he did not wish to urge that two blacks would make one white; but he certainly failed to see why, if measures of coercion were unnecessary in England, and exceptional laws were also unnecessary in England, where violent deaths were so prevalent, they should be considered necessary in Ireland. He would show them what was the condition of things in England by reading extracts from English newspapers. One paper, dated the 4th of November last, said—

"Never, in our experience, have we read of so much serious crime as exists at the present time in England. Day after day the newspapers are teeming with reports of murders and other serious offences."

Another, dated the 5th—

"The state of Ireland has become a daily chapter in our newspapers; agrarian outrage and fearful assaults; but if England were to be scrutinized in the same manner, the condition of Ireland, not with standing all its shooting from behind hedges and the houghing of cattle, would show a brilliant contrast."

The Times, at the end of last year, in an article, stated—

"We are accustomed to be startled by the lists of murder that occur again and again at our Assizes; but seldom has there been such an abundant crop of atrocities as has received its punishment this autumn. Now there are two others added in a season which has teemed with murders. The believer in civilization generally, and in English civilization in particular, must feel his faith considerably shaken on a contemplation of this fearful list."

He had a handful of other instances giving details of ferocious atrocities and disgusting crimes perpetrated within a recent period in England—perpetrated not upon landlords, not upon men who could do something for their own protection, but upon the most defenceless portions of society—women and children. Still, no coercion was thought necessary to curb this state of things. Yet they in Ireland must endure coercion whenever there was an outbreak of crime. The other night the ex-Attorney General for Ireland made a very impressive speech on the subject of the National Land League, Irish illegalities, and Irish crimes. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had related how a woman and daughter had been taken out of the house in Ireland, and the hair cut off their heads; but in an English newspaper the right hon. and learned Gentleman would have read of women and children not having their hair, but their throats, cut. It was a one-sided affair to refer to crime in Ireland. Why not consider that there was crime in every country? But he (Mr. T. D. Sullivan) thought the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman was prompted through the hard exigencies of Party feeling and Party servitude. What was this coercion against which such a cry as had been raised to be introduced for? They had heard a good deal of humanitarian sentiment from the opposite Benches about the torture of cattle in Ireland; but very little consideration seemed to be bestowed upon the torture likely to be the result of coercion. It was considered a light matter to tear away the breadwinners of a family from their homes, to cast them into gaol unaccused, and leave them there as long as Her Majesty's Government chose to detain them. Such things might be passed by lightly in England, but they were felt very keenly in Irish families, because Ireland had been ravaged by such Acts before; and when such Acts were visited on Ireland the English people had their reward in the feeling entertained towards them by the great masses of the Irish people. As regarded criminal statistics, it was admitted that all countries had ordinary and extraordinary crimes; but the crimes of Ireland, both ordinary as well as extraordinary, had all been put into one Return and called the extraordinary crime of Ireland. A great deal had been said about the infliction of physical cruelty upon individuals, such as cutting off their ears and "carding" them; but he believed that all such accusations were baseless. He (Mr. T. D. Sullivan) had a letter from an Irish lady, in which she said—

"Mr. Bence Jones refers to the case of cutting off ears in Limerick. After an exordium he announces that it is becoming quite an institution in Ireland."

Now, the man's ears were on his head today. He got a threatening letter, and that was all. Had the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin forgotten the daily outrages that were taking place in England at the moment that he was holding up his own country to the execration of an English audience? Had the right hon. and learned Gentleman read of a case in England where a mother reddened a poker and thrust it into the body of her infant? Had he read of a case where a man reddened a poker and ran it through the body of his sleeping paramour? ["Oh, oh!"] Were they not justified in referring to these things, when their country was being calumniated in such a gross and atrocious manner? He was there to defend his country, and he claimed his right to do it. Even the young Member for Thirsk (Colonel Dawnay), in a maiden speech, spoke strongly in favour of coercion for Ireland. One would have thought that an hon. Gentleman in his position would have raised his voice in favour of liberty, and that, if he could not say a word in that behalf, that he would have held his tongue. The present Prime Minister, speaking in that House on the 17th of February, 1866, said he declined to recognize the voice of the Irish people, or to accept an interpretation of their real feelings and opinions, other than that which was conveyed through the mouth of its Representatives lawfully chosen. So much for the representative character of the Irish Members. One word on behalf of the National Land League, a body which had been so freely abused and assailed in that House. They had heard that Her Majesty's Ministers intended to propose remedial measures; they intended to bring in a Land Bill which they believed would be satisfactory to the Irish people. Who was to be thanked for it, if they were about to bring it in? Who had caused them to take the question into consideration? What, however, compelled them to deal with this question? It was not the habit of that or any Government to meddle with questions that were not pressing. Their motto was to "Let sleeping dogs lie." Who had wakened up the Irish people which had compelled Her Majesty's Government to deal with this grievance? The Irish National Land League. In a wide-spread organization and agitation something might be said, and perhaps something might be done, that was unadvisable; and they knew very well that things had been said at meetings of the Irish National Land League that were reprehensible. Who could control the tongues of thousands of people? In a movement of this sort, why should the movement be judged by the words of some foolish men? But the aim of the National Land League had been the benefit of the Irish people; and, whatever abuse might be heaped upon them, whatever sufferings might come upon them, they would have the satisfaction by-and-bye, and the glory, too, of having contributed to bring about a great and beneficent reform for the benefit of the Irish people.

Sir, had not my conduct when in Office been challenged in the course of the debate I should not have risen to take part in it. I have no intention of entering upon many subjects which have been alluded to, and I shall not attempt to discuss the character of the Irish Land League. That is a subject on which every Member of this House has already formed a judgment one way or another. Nor shall I enter on the very interesting topic which was raised by the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands)—namely, whether or not what is now going on is a humiliation for the Liberal Party, or whether the promises of the present Government during the last autumn, or the expectations held out to their followers, have been adequately performed. Those are matters which we may very well leave to be settled among the Liberal Party themselves. It seems to me that what we have to decide upon the present occasion is this very plain and simple issue—Is the state of Ireland such, or is it not such, as to require exceptional measures to be taken for the protection of life and property in that country? And when I speak of the state of Ireland I hope that I shall be understood as not merely referring to the position of Irish landlords. We must all feel that matters have gone far beyond that. I refer to the condition of the peaceable and law-abiding subjects of the Queen in that country, whatever social position they may happen to hold. We have heard on this important question, as we always do hear when any topic relating to Ireland is concerned, very different opinions expressed. We have heard hon. Members below the Gangway on this side of the House take one view of the matter, and we have heard Her Majesty's Government express another view. Which is this House to believe? I have no wish to be guilty of any discourtesy to hon. Members below the Gangway; but, having listened to many of their arguments, I feel bound to believe the statements made on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, rather than the views they have expressed. They have not merely questioned statistics, but they have made allegations themselves which, perhaps, if we consider them for a moment, may help us to judge of the value of the rest of what they have stated. They have actually alleged that such deeds as rick-burning, as the sending of threatening letters, have been done by the police, and not by those who ought to be made amenable to the law; and in the whole discussion on this subject, so far as I have observed, they have entirely ignored the fact that, whatever the result of a comparison of crime between Ireland and Great Britain may be, in their country a certain class of crime remains undetected, and there exists in certain parts of Ireland a reign of terror. That being the state of affairs in Ireland, Her Majesty's Government have, not one day too soon, thought it necessary to announce their intention to ask the House for exceptional powers, and, on the very threshold of the question, are met by the Amendment of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). I hope that I shall be believed when I assure the House that I am no friend to measures of this kind, and that I regret as much as any hon. Member below the Gangway the necessity for coercion in any form. I, however, feel bound to admit that the statement of the Government on the subject is sufficient, and amply sufficient, to justify the consideration of the proposals which they have announced their intention of submitting to the House. Therefore, I feel that it is my plain and simple duty, first to support Her Majesty's Government in their attempt to obtain an early opportunity for the submission of their measures to the House; and, secondly, not to interpose anything which might tend to delay the enactment of those proposals, if they should appear to be necessary and adequate to meet the present crisis. Holding these opinions, I should have been very glad had I been able to refrain from taking any part in this debate, and to give a silent vote in support of Her Majesty's Government. But in the course of the last two speeches which have been delivered on behalf of Her Majesty's Government remarks have been made with regard to my conduct, and with regard to the conduct of the late Government when in Office, which were abso- lutely uncalled for, and which I shall be able to prove were entirely unsupported by the facts. I shall refer very briefly to the speech of the Solicitor General for Ireland. We all listened to that hon. and learned Gentleman with pleasure; but I think that he would do well in future not to attack those who are inclined to give him their support. The Solicitor General for Ireland went into a long history of the Irish Land League, and traced its origin to a letter written by a Mr. Devoy, which appeared in a Dublin newspaper in January, 1879, and to a meeting in the county Mayo held in the same year. The hon. and learned Member referred to the prosecution of certain individuals by the late Government, to the delay in carrying on those prosecutions, and he made sundry charges against us on account of these matters. The hon. and learned Member said that we should have taken some notice of Mr. Devoy's letter; but I do not know what notice we could have taken of a letter written by a gentleman living in America. If the late Government had prohibited meetings on account of that letter they would have found no greater opponents than some of the right hon. Gentlemen now sitting on the Treasury Benches. There was nothing whatever in the state of Ireland at that time which would have justified the Government in taking so arbitrary a proceeding. The Solicitor General for Ireland has told the House that if there had been a serious intention to prosecute those who were instrumental in getting up those meetings the hon. Member for the City of Cork would have been included in the prosecution. Does the Law Officer of the present Government mean to say that he has so low an opinion of the love of his Predecessors for justice as to suggest that they ought to have prosecuted the hon. Member for the City of Cork not for words used by himself, but for words which, had been used by other persons in his absence. The hon. and learned Gentleman talks of the law's delay in the matter; but did he ever know of any important case in which there were not delays in the law? Have there been no delays in the prosecutions now impending? And is it well for the Law Officer of the Government—who, if the story be true, so managed matters that the trial was only commenced by the kind-heartedness of the traversers in waiving their right to challenge a juryman—is it right for the Law Officer of the Government, who risked such a failure as that, to taunt his Predecessors with the law's delays? The hon. and learned Gentleman had told them that he did not wish to make any charges against the late Government on this question; but, if that were so, with what object was that part of his speech made unless it was to show that Ireland at the time the present Government took Office was in a state of incipient anarchy; and that, with the country in that state, they had deliberately abandoned the powers of the Peace Preservation Act? I do not want to enter into that question; but I think it unfortunate that some reasons for that course which we have heard in this debate should ever have been given. I should like to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his task would not be less difficult if the people were not in possession of arms? The real reason for abandoning the Peace Preservation Act was, of course, that which Her Majesty's Government stated in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech from the Throne when Parliament met in May last. It was the reason fairly stated by the noble Marquess opposite—namely, that they thought they could govern Ireland without the exceptional powers of that Act, and they desired to make the attempt. I am not inclined to bring a charge against the present Government in that respect. I can understand the difficulties under which they laboured. They wished to avoid the possibility of any question being raised as to the consistency of their performances when in Office with the promises they had made when in Opposition. I can well understand the temptations of the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to attempt, for once in a way, to dispense with those exceptional powers in the government of that country. I have had some experience—I am not sure that I have not had as long experience as any Member in this House—in connection with the Government of Ireland; but I will venture to say that in the whole course of my connection with that Government I never remember having to perform so odious a task as that of renewing the Peace Preservation Act in 1875. It was then my duty to renew that Act, not in its entirety, but with such relaxed powers as were adapted to the improved state of the country. The renewal of the Act last Session would have been more disagreeable, and I am not surprised that the right hon. Gentleman shrank from so unpleasant a task. But, having decided not to renew the Act, the right hon. Gentleman, at the end of October last, was face to face with a condition of the country which has been described by the Attorney General for Ireland in the course of the trial now proceeding in Dublin. During the autumn I addressed a portion of my constituents in a speech which has been referred to "elsewhere." I said, not having as full information as to the state of Ireland as was in possession of the Government; not knowing precisely what course they were about to pursue further than that it was stated some steps were to be taken under the ordinary law, I was glad they were proceeding under the ordinary law before they applied to Parliament for exceptional powers. I see no reason to regret those words; but when I spoke I believed that in acting under the ordinary law they would apply the whole of the powers which the ordinary law placed in their hands. Did they do so? There is one point, and only one, on which I feel I must criticize their conduct in that respect. It has been well referred to by my right hon. and learned Friend the junior Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson). Why did not the present Government prohibit future meetings of the Land League when they initiated prosecutions against its principal members? I cannot venture to express a very confident opinion; but I have conferred with many men who are well acquainted with Ireland, and I do believe that if the Government had taken this course, to which, looking to the circumstances then existing, I think they were both morally and logically bound, the result would have been a very different state of affairs from that with which we are now called upon to deal. Why, the prohibition of those meetings would have prevented that agitation extending into parts of the country which had hitherto been untouched by it; it would have prevented the spread of that reign of terrorism which the noble Marquess opposite the other night pictured in such vivid colours; and it would have had this further effect—that in applying now for exceptional powers, if they were required, the Government might have confined them to a much smaller portion of Ireland than that to which I fear they will now be compelled to apply them. I will not dwell on the question whether that action could or could not have been legally taken; but in that matter I attach, and I think the House will attach, great importance to the opinion deliberately expressed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for the University of Dublin the other night in favour of its legality; and I would add that if any hon. Member cares to turn to the terms of the proclamation prohibiting the meeting in the county of Cork on the 2nd of January, and remembers the circumstances in which that meeting was held, the condition of the population in that district, and the utter absence of anything like Orange opposition, he will feel that if the prohibition of that meeting was legally justifiable the prohibition of the other meetings which have been held since the beginning of November would have been equally justifiable. Yesterday the right hon. Gentleman the First Commissioner of Works (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) felt it necessary, in a speech in which he entered into the Land Question at length—a question which, so far as I am aware, is not now really before the House—felt it necessary, both specially and generally, to impute blame to the conduct of the late Government. Although, in comparison with the important issues before us, the special accusation of the right hon. Gentleman refers to a small matter, I hope the House will bear with me, for that special accusation was directed against myself. The right hon. Gentleman, while good enough to refer in kindly language to myself, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, yet made the special charge against me that I had allowed one part of the Land Act to lapse. I confess that I was astounded by that charge. Of course, it meant that by my action, or by my inaction, I had prevented what are known as the "Bright Clauses" from having such a wide and useful application as Parliament had intended. As some proof that the charge is unfounded, I may say that although the right hon. Gentleman has been for the last three years actively engaged in the promulgation of his opinions on this question he never made it before. Turning to the Report of the Select Committee appointed by the last House of Commons in 1877 on this subject, I find that in the Report drafted by the right hon. Gentleman, which was not, however, adopted by the Committee, while the question is very fully discussed, the late Government is never charged with any want of attention to, or any inaction whatever in, the matter. The right hon. Gentleman says in that Report—

"It is clear, from the evidence which has been given to the Committee by the officers of the Landed Estates Court and others, that even if such Amendments be made in the Act, and in the practice of the Departments concerned in administering it, as have been suggested, no great increase will be effected in the sales to tenants. The difficulty of the residues will still remain."

He went on to say—

"As now framed and worked, the clause of the Irish Land Act of 1870 having this object in view—the purchase of their freeholds by the tenants—are wholly inadequate for the purpose, and are the cause of much disappointment; and but little better result is to be expected from them by such minor Amendments as have been suggested, which will leave the administration of them divided between the Landed Estates Court, the Board of Works, and the Treasury."

The right hon. Gentleman then goes on to propose that a Special Commission should be constituted to protect the interests of the tenants; and when the Committee finally considered their Report, it was resolved, on the Motion of the present Attorney General for Ireland, that—

"The fundamental difficulty of the present system was this—So long as the practically inconsistent duties of forming the land into lots to suit the tenant purchasers, and, at the same time, paying due regard to the interests of those whose property is being sold through the Court, continue to be imposed on one and the same functionary, your Committee believe that no substantial results can reasonably be expected from the clause of the Irish Land Act to which their inquiry has been directed."

There is not one word blaming the late Government for their action or their inaction in the matter. I should like to know what it is that the right hon. Gentleman would have wished us to do. Would he have wished that we should have attempted, without some inquiry, to amend those clauses of the Land Act which undoubtedly deal with a very difficult and complicated question, as the fact of the continuance of his inquiry for two years conclusively proves? Is that the way that the present Government are proposing to deal with the whole of the Land Act? If so, why, last summer, did they appoint a Commission to make a preliminary inquiry into the subject? That, Sir, is precisely analogous to the course of the late Government in the smaller matter to which I am now referring. When the right hon. Gentleman proposed an inquiry into these clauses when I was Chief Secretary for Ireland, I readily, as he will remember, accepted his Motion. I then expressed the opinion, which I have always felt, that it would be a great advantage to Ireland if the number of proprietors could be increased, provided always that it could be done consistently with the natural growth of properties of this kind, and not by attempting to force them; and consistently also with the avoidance of any loss to the State, and with justice to the existing owners of property. That opinion, Sir, I still hold; and last year, when the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) brought the Report of his Committee before the House, and asked the House to adopt a Resolution on the subject, that opinion was by no means discouraged by my right hon. Friend, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Stafford Northcote). My right hon. Friend consented in the following words:—

"We accept the Resolution with the intention at present in our minds of making as soon as may be convenient a proposal which shall, at all events, facilitate the working of these clauses."—[3 Hansard, ccxlv. 1667–8.]

And if that intention was frustrated by the more pressing necessity of relieving the distress which existed in Ireland last winter, and by the subsequent events of the General Election, at any rate, the late Government can hardly be accused of blame in that respect. The right hon. Gentleman made not only this special charge against myself, but he also made a general charge against Her Majesty's late Government in reference to the law regulating the tenure of land in Ireland. He told us that our neglect for six years of all questions relating to land tenure in Ireland was really the cause of the difficulties in which we now find ourselves—the main cause, for he put it first. Well, Sir, I think it is rather too much for a right hon. Gentleman sitting on that Bench—a Member of the Government which passed the Land Act of 1870—to assume that we, who were not responsible for that Act, ought, within 10 years of the passing of that measure, which has been so often boasted of by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite as a great settlement of the Land Question—ought, within 10 years of the passing of that measure, not merely to have re-opened the question, which they had claimed to have settled by the Land Act, but to have attempted to deal with it on entirely different principles. It is perfectly true that when Mr. Butt, on more than one occasion, brought forward proposals in the late House of Commons for a radical and entire change in the system of land tenure in Ireland, we met his proposals in the only way in which they could be met—namely, by a decided negative. But in that negative we were joined, as the right hon. Gentleman will find, if he cares to refer to the debates, by none more heartily than the two noble and right hon. Members who represented the present Government in discussing that question. I will only say this—we declined at that time to meet demands of that sort with concessions which could not satisfy those who made the demands, but which, perhaps, might have led to false impressions as to the likelihood of our being able to comply with their real desires. I think, Sir, we were right in taking that course; and it is a principle which, with, all humility, I would venture to recommend to the Government in dealing with Irish legislation. I do not at all wish to discuss the Land Question, which, as I have already said, is not now before us; but I own that I was surprised that the right hon. Gentleman should, apparently, have expressed an opinion that any measure which could be proposed dealing with the system of land tenure in Ireland in conformity with the principles which were, the other evening, enunciated by the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for India (the Marquess of Hartington), could either have prevented or remedied the state of things which is now existing in that country. I trust that when Her Majesty's Government approach this great question they will approach it in the spirit of the speech of the noble Marquess, rather than in that of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Shaw Lefevre), who used, in expressing his hopes in regard to it, that dangerous and, I think, very mistaken phrase of dealing with it according to Irish ideas. Of course, in dealing with it, Her Majesty's Government and the House at large would consider well the undoubted differences between the system of land tenure in Great Britain and Ireland, and between the circumstances of the different classes that are connected with it; but I do trust, in whatever they do, they will adhere firmly to the statement of the noble Marquess, that they will deal with it on principles conformable to justice. If Her Majesty's Government follow that course, I will venture to assure them that they will receive, not merely fair consideration, but something like hearty co-operation, from those who sit on this side of the House. Sir, before that question can be approached, we have to settle the Business which precedes it in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech from the Throne, and to discuss the measures which are proposed to be introduced by Her Majesty's Government for restoring the reign of law and order in Ireland. Parliament has been called together a month sooner than usual, in order to deal with this question. The state of Ireland has been described in language to which I need merely refer, by the responsible Members of the Government who sit on that Bench, and yet all we have done is this—that for a week we have been engaged in what is merely a preliminary discussion. Sir, I feel sure that in the conduct of these discussions everyone in this House will agree that full liberty of debate should be allowed, and especially to those who represent Irish constituencies. But I think, at the same time, we must see that there is a growing impatience in the country of the delay under such circumstances as these—that there is a desire that something should not only be promised by the Government, but that something should be done by this House, and promptly done, to restore the authority of the Queen in Ireland; and I do trust that in the future conduct of this debate, and in their general dealing with this question, Her Majesty's Government will, both by their influence and by their example, show that what they have told the House of the state of Ireland is really present to their minds; that their promise of legislation is one which, so far as they can secure it, will be carried into effect on an early day; and that they will, by every fair means in their power, accelerate the arrival of the hour when the law of Parliament may again be supreme, and the Queen's authority rule throughout the whole of the United Kingdom.

thought that both sides of the House would fully admit the unfortunate position of the landlords in Ireland. As a Liberal, and not a Liberal of last week, he hoped to be allowed to say a few words on the question. He had taken an humble part in previous agitations, and he had protested in that House against the measure of 1870, because he believed it was one that would not bring peace and prosperity to Ireland. Under these circumstances, he thought he was now warranted, in the year 1881, in saying to the Government that any amendment of that measure would not satisfy the wishes of the people. He was one of those who supported principles in regard to Irish legislation which, he regretted to say, had not found so universal an acceptance as he could have desired. He was not one of those who were in favour of measures rendered expedient to-day, but he took his stand on the three F's; and although he found from recent utterances, both in England and Ireland, that there was a strange conjunction of opinion in opposition to it, he believed, however, that that was not the true expression of the opinion of the people either of England or Ireland. The right hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Stafford Northcote) denounced the three F's as "fraud, force, and folly." A gentleman who had now arrived at great distinction, and whose name was in as many mouths in England, Ireland, and America as that of the right hon. Gentleman—Mr. Davitt—paraphrased the right hon. Gentleman's expression, and spoke of the three F's as "feud, folly," and something else which he had forgotten. Men not generally united in political views were united in supporting the present measures of the Government and in opposing the three F's. The landlords opposed them; but where were they? Mr. Davitt and the right hon. Gentleman were in happy conjunction in opposing them; but the Northern Orangemen, the Southern farmers, the priests from Cork, and the priests from Kerry, were united in their favour, together with the Presbyterian Church, so ably represented by the minister who had a seat in that House (Mr. Nelson), and the scion of one of the great proprietary families of Ireland. It might be said that this was not strictly the question before the House; but he contended that it was, for it was impossible to separate the application of remedial measures from the coercion which was to be applied. They must both be considered together. He was not there to press on the Government the adoption of any particular measure as a remedy for Irish grievances, or to inflict upon the House the speeches of others, or details that were by no means novel. What he did say was, at any rate, his own. The hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. T. D. Sullivan), who addressed the House a short time ago, came forward manfully to support the position of the National Land League of Ireland. He had listened attentively to the speech of the hon. Member, and had waited patiently, for he thought that at last the good time was coming, and that he should hear from the hon. Gentleman what the policy of that body was. Yet all he succeeded in discovering was that the hon. Member protested against the three F's, and against the platform universally accepted throughout Ireland by the League, not eight months ago. He regretted that the Land League Representatives had not favoured the House with the advantages of their intelligence, and the result of their inquiries. If they had, the House would have been able to see why, in the twinkling of an eye, the stage had been changed; why what was only eight months ago right and deserving of support and patronage was now the abomination of desolation; and how it was that contentment and land tenure were two things that could never be connected together. He was not one of those who swallowed his opinions, or hid his light under a bushel. When he thought a thing, he said it out straight; and he hoped, before the debate closed, that the Members of the Land League would say what it was they proposed; what they would accept; what their real object was. If not, their position was an anomalous one. He knew they were loudly cheered when they got upon a public platform; that they were met with flags and played upon by bands; but, nevertheless, their position was untenable. What Parliament was called upon to do was to repair a practical injustice—to wipe away an old confiscation; but he did not see why they should be called upon to hug and embrace and treat as patriots and the only true friends of Ireland the descendants of the planters whom James had placed to fatten upon the marrow and bone of the Irish people. Even the descendants of the Dutchman were now found to possess qualities far different from those formerly attributed to them, when they were regarded as fit only for that place which Dante called "Inferno." The Irish Members were told that the League had changed its ideas, and that they must change with it. He ridiculed the notion of calling this National Land League a national concern. It was a social concern, and ought only to be considered as a social concern. He freely admitted that at the present moment, on any platform in Ireland, he might not have a very happy opportunity of enunciating these sentiments; but if he were permitted to do so, he would declare, as he now declared, to the Representatives of the people, that, in his belief, many of those who had joined the Land League were perfectly contented with the arrangement in regard to the three F's previously arrived at. No doubt, something was required in addition to the three F's. In the West of Ireland, if they gave the people their land for nothing, they could not live upon it; and, in order to maintain them in the country, it would be necessary for the State to make some additional provision. Recognizing this fact, he asked Her Majesty's Government to pass measures which would give the surplus population of Ireland some hope and expectation of possessing a home. He was not in favour of the compulsory expropriation of the property of landlords, and he was equally opposed to the compulsory emigration of tenants to America or elsewhere. As he had mentioned emigration, he might remark that people would do equally well in emigrating from England and Scotland as in emigrating from Ireland. Emigration to America was taking place largely from Germany—much more largely than from Ireland—and their only inducement, possessing, as they did, full security of tenure at home, was the hope of improving their position. Touching the Amendment of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), he wished to say that he had been in that House on many former occasions when coercive measures had been introduced, and that it would be a difficult thing indeed to get him to forsake old principles and forget old promises, and induce him to join in a step which he had always met with unremitting opposition. But, while he said so, he refused to join those who desired to make a Pandemonium of the country. He admitted that outrages were committed: but he did not believe that such outrages should be met by the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, which would imprison a few individuals and leave the rotten sore still festering. As to "Boycotting," it was one thing for Jack to say that he would not deal with Bill; but it was altogether a different thing for Jack to say that he would break Jemmy's head if he did deal with Bill. He asked his hon. Friends not to fence with this question; let them hold up "Boycotting as a holy pursuit;" but let them not deal in generalities as to what might be done in Sussex, Naples, or anywhere else. They were endeavouring to remedy the state of things which now existed in Ireland, and he contended that no coercive measures introduced by the Government would be effectual. He admitted that the proceedings to which he had referred must be discouraged; but coercive measures were no remedy. The tyranny of them was unexampled in the history of modern Europe. It was abominable that four or five men were to act together in a town, and, because they had a grudge against an individual, were to hold a court and condemn him, telling him that if he did not consent to do as they required in regard to his property he must be put down and sat upon. He believed Ireland to be in a bad state. If, therefore, the Government came forward with a measure for the good of the country, he should give it his support, and cared not what might afterwards be his popularity in Ireland. He should cease to consider it an honour to hold a seat in that House, as he had done for 29 years, if his action must be guided by this confederation, which had its origin in America amongst a section connected neither with the people there, nor with any political Party. He was content to be ruled by no class of his countrymen, who, although they could not make him change his opinions, might, perhaps, make him change his course of action. With regard to the assistance to the Irish people which had been spoken of, he had con versed with many hon. Gentlemen who were fully acquainted with American opinion, as far as it could be gathered; and he could say that not one of them had ever heard a good word expressed by the Americans for the Irish residents in New York. It was idle to say that any body of native Americans would do aught in a revolutionary sense to assist the Irish people; but he should forget himself in omitting gratefully and respectfully to acknowledge the conduct of the great mass of Americans during the distress which had prevailed.

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

said, he rose, not to offer opposition to the Motion for adjournment, but to express a hope that the debate would be allowed to close this evening (Friday).

said, they could not come to an understanding of a definite character that the debate would terminate that evening, as that would be an admission of the principle of the clôture; at the same time, he was willing to allow that at the time referred to sufficient discussion would have taken place, and would be quite willing that a division should then be taken. Of course, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland did not intend to take either of his Coercion Bills after the adjournment of the debate?

hoped that some reply would be given to the question of the hon. Member for Cork.

said, there were only two minutes unexpired before the time when Opposed Business could not be taken, which could be occupied with other matters.

said, it would have been more in keeping with the usual practice to have occupied those two minutes by proceeding to the Business on the Paper than by detaining hon. Members. With reference to the closing of the debate, he thought it would have facilitated the discussion had the House been favoured with speeches from the Representatives of the borough which had two Members in the Cabinet. The expression of the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the President of the Board of Trade was awaited with greater interest than any speeches which had been delivered in the course of the debate; and had they been given he believed that a division might have been reached within a short time at the present Sitting.

Motion agreed, to.

Debate further adjourned till To-morrow.

, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, this Bill was the same as had been read a second time last Session. He was quite willing that it should be submitted to a Select Committee.

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

said, if the Bill was the same as the English Bill, and on the understanding that it would be referred to a Select Committee, he thought it would be well that it should be read a second time.

said, he would agree to the second reading of the Bill, on the understanding that it would be referred to a Select Committee.

said, he had always been under the impression that a Motion for the second reading of a Bill should be accompanied by some explanation of its details. He certainly deprecated the course which it was sought to pursue on that occasion, and saw no reason why he should countenance it.

said, he could not understand why the Bill should not be read a second time merely because the course taken by the hon. Member for Glasgow did not stand well in the eyes of some hon. Members opposite. He could hardly have imagined that opposition should be offered by them to an act of remedial legislation of this kind, which had received favour on all hands, and was of great importance to large classes of the community. He was quite sure that the hon. Member opposite and his Colleagues would be well represented on the Select Committee to which the Bill would be referred.

said, he hoped the second reading would not be opposed. Overburdened as the Session must be with Irish Business, it was but fair to give an opportunity to consider questions of importance to Scotland, such as this Bill involved. It was, no doubt, one admitting of great alteration and improvement, and he was glad that the hon. Member who introduced it had agreed to refer it to a Select Committee, a course which had been attended with great advantage last Session in the case of the Fraudulent Debtors' Bill for Scotland.

said, he should not pin his conscience to every proposal of the hon. Members for Stockport and Glasgow. If the Bill were submitted to the House every man that voted for it would do so on his own responsibility; and being himself in complete ignorance of its details, as well as an unmarried man, he knew not how his future might be affected by the measure, and therefore claimed his right, before giving so important a vote, to know something of its principles.

said, the hon. Member for Glasgow got the Bill discussed in the House very fully last Session, and after the discussion obtained a second reading for it. If the hon. Member had refrained from explaining the principles of the measure to-night it had been merely for the purpose of saving the time of the House. Instead of there being any charge brought against him for having taken that course, he should be commended and receive every consideration.

said, that one point seemed to be overlooked in this discussion—namely, that the hon. Member for Glasgow had a good opportunity yesterday of carrying it through Parliament. The Government might give the hon. Member a day for the debate; and as it was very inconvenient to take measures of this kind at such an hour of the night he would move that the debate be adjourned.

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

said, he had refrained from making a speech because from the lateness of the hour he wished to save the time of the House, and because the measure had been so abundantly discussed last Session, or only a few months ago. The hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Gray) said he was ignorant of the provisions of the Bill. Well, the hon. Member had only himself to thank for that, as the measure had been printed and distributed amongst the Members of the House. The hon. Member himself had received a copy, and it was his own fault if he had not read it; and it was his own fault, also, if he had not seen in the Orders of the Day that the measure was down for second reading. The hon. Member should have properly informed his mind with the materials before him if he wished to form a judgment to enable him to vote on the question. He was quite ready, if desired by the House, to explain the principles of the Bill; but he thought it was altogether unnecessary to take that course, and that he should only be wearying the House if he did. But, in order to show the House the extreme necessity of some measure for the protection of the property of married women, he would refer to a case that came before the Courts only the other day. It was the case of Mr. Birchell, who had a wife with £45,000 in her own right. There was no ante-nuptial settlement, and accordingly the money went to the husband. The husband, however, to make the wife safe, made a will in her favour, and handed that will over to her. The husband died in the house of his mistress, and it was then discovered that he had actually made a subsequent will, by which the whole of his wife's property was conveyed away to the children of a former mistress. That was an example of what a bad husband could do under the present law. Bad husbands like this were, he believed, the exception; still there were bad husbands, and women ought to be guarded against them. The law, as it at present stood, was faulty; and he had merely mentioned the Birchell case to show the necessity for some greater protection of the property of married women than married women at present enjoyed. He sincerely hoped the House would pass the second reading on the condition he had named—namely, that when it was read he would move its reference to a Select Committee.

said, he made a point of never reading a Scotch Bill until he heard it explained. Those measures were usually so abstruse that it eased his mind to have them explained. Hearing the hon. Member's statement about a certain individual's former mistress, present mistress, and deceased mistress, he should have thought it could only have been in Scotland that such a complicated case could occur; but, although it had been seriously urged as an argument in favour of reading the Bill a second time and referring it to a Select Committee that an injustice of this kind had happened in Scotland, if his memory served him right the case did not occur in Scotland at all. [Mr. ANDERSON: It might any day.] Of course, it might; but, at the same time, it might not. It was a mere suppositions case as far as Scotland was concerned. If it had been applied as an argument in favour of the Bill that stood third on the Paper it would have had some weight, as that measure referred to England, in which country the case had occurred. The case had occurred in Lancashire within the last few months. It was one of a most painful character, and he would refer to it no farther. There were two classes of property which he objected to being dealt with at that hour of the night, one being real property—even real property in Ireland—and the other being married women's property. Both classes of property should be dealt with in a calm mood, and at an early hour—at such an early hour as it could have been considered yesterday if the hon. Member for Glasgow had cared to have it discussed. As the hon. Member had not availed himself of the opportunity he had had of explaining the measure, hon. Members should not be asked to remain out of their beds to take it after midnight. He should give his support to the proposal for the adjournment of the debate.

said, he should be glad to stay out of his bed for a short time longer, in order to help the hon. Member for Glasgow to pass his Bill to remove a law so abominable as that which at present applied to married women. He hoped the hon. Member would go on with his Bill, and failed to see what good hon. Members opposite could hope to effect by opposing such a valuable measure. These hon. Members were showing themselves the enemies of all married women in the United Kingdom.

said, that, no doubt, it was a very dreadful example which had been exposed to the House; but trusted that it would not, as usual, be sought to be shown that the monster in the case was an Irishman. He hoped the matter would not be pushed any further, because he did not think it of sufficient importance to justify a division. As a matter of principle, he did not see that because a Bill had been read a second time last Session it should be accepted this year without explanation or discussion. If that doctrine were accepted it would be found to apply to most Bills; but the hon. Member must know that the argument would not hold water. He (Mr. Gray) trusted the Motion for adjournment would not be pressed.

wished, in the first instance, to express the very strong repugnance which he felt to the transaction of any Business whatever after half-past 12 o'clock at night. In the last Parliament he had made a point of opposing most strongly every measure brought on after that hour, without having regard to whether it applied to England, Ireland, or Scotland. When hon. Members, then, were called on to waive their strong convictions in a matter of this kind, the appeal being made to them on the ground of courtesy, the request should come from those who had established a claim to the courtesy of the Irish Members. He made this observation in the hope that it would convey some instruction in a modest and modified form to some hon. Members of the House. The hon. Member for Glasgow was fighting his side of the question under considerable advantages—namely, under the protection of the married women; and he was sure that his hon. Friend the Member for the Borough, of Wexford (Mr. Healy) would, in deference to them, withdraw his Motion for adjournment.

said, he should have the greatest pleasure in seeing the law as to married women's property amended, not only in regard to Scotland, but also in regard to England and Ireland—if, in the last-named country, any married woman had any property. He knew the difficulties of the subject as well as the hon. and learned Member for Stockport (Mr. Hop wood); and he did not think that a better illustration of the inexpediency of dealing with the matter now could be offered than that contained in the argument of the hon. Member for Glasgow. The hon. Gentleman said that at that late hour of the night they should take the second reading without discussion. When they wished to correct a wrong of any sort they should try to understand what the wrong was. He had not had time to read the Bill of the hon. Member for Glasgow; but it certainly must be a very extraordinary one if it provided a legislative remedy for such cases as the one he had referred to. He (Dr. Commins) knew something about the case; and if ever there was one in which the protection of the Law of Settlement was given to the property of a married woman, it was that. Every penny of Mrs. Birchell's money was in trust under the Law of Settlement; but the husband managed to become possessed of it; in fact, he simply embezzled it. He should like to know what remedy could be provided in the present Bill which was not already embraced in the general Criminal Law. Mr. Birchell, it would be remembered, had been a man who had occupied a very considerable position, being Clerk of the Peace for the County of Lancaster; but, not with standing his position, if his offence had been discovered during his lifetime, he would have been amen able to a Court other than any the Bill might propose to provide. He showed the utter inappropriateness of the arguments of the hon. Member for Glasgow in order to point out the necessity for properly protecting discussions of this nature, and for preventing measures from passing without adequate explanation. The matter of the property of married women had been dealt with over and over again, and every successive judicial decision showed the difficulty of the question.

said, an appeal had been made to him to withdraw the Motion; but, before he said anything as to that, he should like to point out that although, no doubt, the Bill was printed—["Order!"] He was speaking on the question of withdrawing the Motion.

The hon. Member is not entitled to make a second speech; but if he desires to explain the grounds on which he proposes to withdraw the Motion, doubtless the House will grant him its indulgence. He is not allowed to make a second speech.

said, he would withdraw the Motion in deference to the hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power), and not in deference to hon. Members opposite.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Original Question put, and agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

. moved, "That the Bill be committed to a Select Committee."

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be committed to a Select Committee."—( Mr. Anderson. )

I object to that.

I have to ask Mr. Speaker, for my own information, whether it is now competent for me to avail myself of the half-past 12 Rule to object to a Motion of which no Notice has been given, and, by so doing, to prevent its being further proceeded with to-night?

The hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) is quite in Order in making the Motion he has submitted to the House.

Am I to understand that I am also in Order in objecting to it?

The hon. Member is not in Order in objecting to the Motion of the hon. Member for Glasgow. The Question is, "That the Bill be committed to a Select Committee."

I object to the Motion. We have read the Bill a second time to-night—a thing which we could have done yesterday quite as well—and now we are asked to agree to a Motion which is not on the Paper, and to which, therefore, I have had no opportunity of putting down Notice of opposition. The matter has now come within the half-past 12 Rule; and I ask if I am not within my privilege in objecting to any further progress being made at this hour?

I have already stated that the hon. Member is not in Order in raising the objection that he now does to the further progress of this Bill.

said, that as Mr. Speaker had decided the point against the hon. Member for Louth, the only thing for him to do, and for the House to do, was to leave it to the hon. Member for Glasgow whether he ought not to be content with having advanced his Bill a stage. For his own part, he had the greatest sympathy with the hon. Member and all engaged in amending the law in this direction; and if the hon. Member would only consider the matter he must see that it would be to the benefit of the cause he represented that the House should have an opportunity of discussing the Bill a little further. Hon. Members might have Amendments to propose. He assured the hon. Member he entirely sympathized with him.

said, he had been allowed to carry his Bill through the second reading stage only conditionally on his promising to make the Motion to refer it to a Select Committee immediately after. He had, therefore, been bound to make the proposal. The House might object to the Motion; but he had simply fulfilled his pledge. He trusted the House would allow the measure to go before a Select Committee, where its details could be well considered and discussed. No doubt, if any Irish Representative desired to be a Member of the Committee, he would be put on it.

said, he wished to ask a question. As he was not in Order in his previous objection, and as he did not hear the promise made to which the hon. Member referred, and as he believed it was not made to the House—["Order, order!"] He did not mean that the hon. Member had not made the promise; but, under existing circumstances, he felt bound to move the adjournment of the debate.

seconded the Motion.

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

said, that as the House had allowed the hon. Member for Glasgow to take the second reading stage, he did not think they could fairly prevent his referring the Bill to a Select Committee. If there was any objection to the measure, it could be expressed by putting Notice of opposition on the Paper a little later on. He did not think there was much to be gained by prolonging the present discussion.

said, as it was pointed out to him how he could effectually stop the Bill at the next stage, he would withdraw his Motion; but it should be understood that in acceding to the suggestion of the hon. Member for Cork City, he only did it as an act of courtesy to that hon. Member, and not to the hon. Member for Glasgow.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Original Question put, and agreed to.

Bill committed to a Select Committee.

, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, expressed his willingness that it should be referred to a Select Committee, together with the Bill of the hon. Member for Glasgow.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—( Mr. Hinde Palmer. )

Motion agreed, to.

Bill read a second time.

moved that the Bill be referred to a Select Committee.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be committed to a Select Committee."—( Mr. Hinde Palmer. )

Motion agreed to.

Bill committed to a Select Committee.

moved for a Return showing, with respect to each Parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom, the total number of electors on the registers now in force. The hon. Baronet, referring to a conversation he had had with the hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Dawson) on the subject of the debate which had taken place yesterday, said, it was the object of the hon. Member to point out, by means of statistics, that there was a different franchise in Ireland from that in England and Scotland, and also that, even given the difference in the franchise, there were certain registration difficulties in Ireland which had been discussed last year—

I must point out to the hon. Baronet that as there is a Notice of Motion on the Paper with regard to this Motion, although it may not be of a hostile character, still, having regard to the Constitutional Order of this House, I do not think it is competent to the hon. Baronet to proceed with the Motion.

Then I will consult with the hon. Member.