expressed his regret at the absence through illness of the Prime Minister during the continuance of the debate. They all knew that the Government had been repeatedly urged by the Members of the Opposition to propose measures of coercion for Ireland. The question now before the House appeared to him to be simply a Constitutional one, and he was glad that the Chief Commissioner of Works had cleared away the uncertainty that his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) laboured under with respect to the proposals of the Government, when the right hon. Gentleman stated that the measures to be proposed were substantially suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and some modifications of trial by jury. Now, according to Burke and Fox, who were, he trusted, still regarded as Constitutional authorities by the Government, or, at all events, by the Radical Members, it was unconstitutional to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, except in the case of treasonable conspiracy. The Returns laid on the Table did not disclose any such conspiracy; and he denied that either the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act or of trial by jury would contribute to the removal of the evil or disorders from which Ireland was at present suffering. Though force might be remedy for treason, it was no remedy for social disorders such as those which at present arose from the state of the Irish Land Laws. These must be met, and could only be met, by remedial measures. He had always refused to go beyond Constitutional means for alleviating the miseries under which the peasantry of Ireland, or at least three-fourths of them, were now suffering; and to those Constitutional means his hon. Friends near him, he believed, intended to adhere. The Returns of crime in Ireland which had been laid on the Table were voluminous. He had compared those statistics for the past year with those of previous years; and although the number of agrarian crimes in 1880 were beyond the average of other years since 1844, yet the number of the high agrarian crimes, such as homicide, murder, and offences of that character, fell below six or eight of those years, and were not much above the rest of those years. He admitted that in regard to threatening letters, intimidation, and the taking possession of farms, there was an excess over the other years; but he asked, and he hoped he should get an answer to the question, what remedy would the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act afford against threatening letters and similar offences? They had heard the jest about burning a house to roast an egg. The suspension of the Constitution to check the sending of threatening letters and notices was an equally absurd proceeding. In England the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act would not be resorted to for the suppression of these crimes; and it was clear that if the existing laws were not sufficient for their repression, the proper course was to make these laws more stringent, and not to abrogate the Constitutional rights of the Irish people. No stronger argument against the course which the Government proposed to take could, indeed, be adduced than the admission of the Chief Secretary that if the present law could be enforced it would be sufficient. It was true the right hon. Gentleman said that the law could not be enforced, because evidence could not be got, and juries would not convict. But how would the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act procure evidence or get verdicts? It was clear that the object of such a measure was not to prevent or punish outrages such as those enumerated on the Returns on the Table, but to enable the Government to seize the leaders of the land agitation. Was this the time when such an application should be made to the House? Those leaders were now on their trial before an Irish jury; and, pending that trial, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act ought not to be applied for to the House. If the traversers were acquitted by an Irish jury, would the Executive Government, nevertheless, suspend the Constitution and put them in gaol? Would not the effect of that be most alarming as regarded the maintenance of law and order? As to the agitation in Ireland, it was Constitutional, or it was not. If the former, it ought not to be interfered with; if the latter, it was a ground for applying redress to the grievances complained of. It was said by the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Plunket) that an attempt was being made to "Boycott" the Whigs; but the real attempt at "Boycotting" was made by the Opposition on the Prime Minister. The Opposition had gained this by their "Boycotting"—they had forced the hands of the Government to put coercive measures on the Table of the House instead of remedial measures. Why was that done? He believed the Government would yet regret it. The Irish people, from their long suffering and their grievous disappointments, were naturally suspicious. Ministers had often been unfaithful to them. He had no suspicion of the Prime Minister. He had no doubt that what the Prime Minister did he would do openly and above-board. But that was not what the Opposition wanted. They wanted the Government to pass coercive measures first for the purpose of crushing public opinion, in order afterwards to make the Land Bill weak and valueless. It was time for the Government to free themselves from the difficulty in which they were placed by the aid of the Opposition. It was time for them, and he hoped it would be done as soon as the Prime Minister was able to take his seat on the Treasury Bench, and he hoped that would be on Monday, to disclose what was the character of the Land Bill which the Government proposed to bring in. Surely the Government might have introduced the Land Bill and the Coercive Bill, if there was to be one, contemporaneously. Why could they not put the Report of their Laud Commission on the Table, and state how far they were disposed to go? He was a party to the Land Act of 1870; but all his attempts to extend and improve the Bill in that year were defeated. He could not see the crime of giving advice such as they had heard of with regard to providing for their own special necessities to the tenants. He admitted that the Irish people were indebted to Providence for a bountiful harvest; but that bountiful harvest could not deprive the peasantry of the West of Ireland of the terrors of the famine which last year produced upon their mind; and he contended that it was hard to fix it as a criminal or immoral act upon those people that they endeavoured to keep something out of the rent as a defence against future visitations of that kind. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman the junior Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) knew the circumstances of the tenantry of the country, he would not accuse them of immorality or greed for what they had done. An accusation of greed might much more appropriately be brought against such of the landlords in the West and South-West of Ireland as tried to extort rack-rents from their poor tenants, than against those tenants who offered to pay Griffith's valuation. He knew there were cases in Ireland where people had not paid their rents who were perfectly able to do so; but where was the movement, either political or religious, that ever existed in which cases of that kind did not occur? To his mind, the course of the Government was plain; it was to apply remedial measures to the admitted grievances of Ireland. What was the cause of threatening letters and refusals to pay rent but the bad Land Laws of the country? The people were justified in the course they had taken by what had happened during the last 12 months. The Prime Minister ought to have adopted a different course from that which he had chosen, and he had a great authority for doing so. Sir Robert Peel had said—

"You must break up this formidable conspiracy against the British Government. I believe you cannot break it up by force; but you may do so by kindness, forbearance, and generosity."

He commended those words to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. Let them try those remedial measures first, and, if they failed, then apply coercion. Until they did that, to put down Consti- tutional agitation in Ireland, and to apply to the Irish peasant loss of home and liberty, and to put him into gaol by the ukase of the Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary, was a practical severance of the allegiance of the Irish people to the Constitution of this country. The only effect of this coercion had been to put men into prison. Coercion could not try men, nor procure evidence against them. Why should the Government put into goal persons who were constitutionally agitating for the removal of their grievances? Suppose a state of things like that existing at the present time in Ireland existed in the cotton districts of England—suppose the operatives in those districts refused to give up the cottages and gardens let to them by their employers and struck for higher wages, would the Habeas Corpus Act be suspended? Why, no Government which proposed such a step could endure for 24 hours. But in Ireland, during the last 80 years, that Act had been suspended for 30 years. He would give the years since Catholic Emancipation during which the Act had been suspended. It was suspended from 1833 to 1835, from 1843 to 1844, from 1846 to 1848, from 1866 to 1870, and also in 1871. The English people had conquered their Constitution. Would they submit to its being suspended every 10 years? Ireland was to be the corpus vile of such an experiment. No doubt, the state of things in Ireland was very bad. He could not sympathize with some of the acts that had been done; but for all those acts the hon. Member for Cork ought not, in his opinion, to be held responsible. To expect that the starving peasantry of Ireland, or even the middle class, could be kept in prison was entirely out of the question. That was a forcible argument for hon. Members opposite not giving the sanction of their votes to such a measure as that of the Government until remedial measures had been adopted. The consequence of giving coercion before remedial measures would be that public opinion would be crushed in Ireland, and that the Land Laws would not be radically amended. Ten months ago the Irish people were in the pangs of hunger, and they had scarcely emerged from the midst of that famine when a Bill was brought in by the present Government—the Compensation for Disturbance Bill—amend- ing the Act of 1870. That Bill, after being carried by large majorities in that House, went up to "another place," and it was rejected by something like five to one. What was the language used by the Prime Minister in the passage of that Bill through the House? The Prime Minister said that the Irish people were within a measurable distance of civil war; and the Chief Secretary declared that he would not be responsible for the government of Ireland if the Bill was rejected. What did the Government do on its rejection? They accepted their defeat; but what was the result? The people of Ireland rose en masse. Then his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) told the Irish people not to rely upon the British Government, but upon themselves. In that way his hon. Friend ascended to the height of his present eminence. His word was now law in Ireland. Who had made it law? None other than the landlords of England and Scotland—the action of the Opposition, and the imbecility and weakness of the Government. It had been said by a great man that no government could long be carried on in a state of siege. They might govern Ireland in a state of siege; but how long would they be able to do so? Grievances were acknowledged to exist. Let them be redressed, and then peace and prosperity would return to Ireland. It had been said that his hon. Friend the Member for Cork City did not desire a settlement of the Land Question. That statement he believed to be a calumny. But if it were true, the responsibility of the Government was all the greater. If the Government wished to have peace, and order, and prosperity in Ireland, the best mode they could adopt for the purpose of bringing that about was to stop their Coercion Bills, and to pass a Bill that should lay in Ireland a foundation for the permanent settlement of the Land Question; then happiness and prosperity would soon return.

said, that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands) had last night referred to the limited confidence he had in the proposals of the Government in reference to the affairs of Ireland; but it appeared to him that the Government, in the course they were about to pursue, were taking the only course they could properly and rightly adopt. The Solicitor General for Ireland, in the able speech which he had recently delivered to the House, stated the grounds on which Her Majesty's Government had decided to bring in this measure, and it appeared to him that they had made out an unanswerable case. ["No, no!"] The responsibility for such a measure, resting, as it would, on the shoulders of Her Majesty's responsible Advisers, to feel compelled to have recourse to such a measure must cause them even more pain and grief than it would hon. Members of the House. They all regretted that legislation of this character should be necessary; but he was bound to say he could not see how it was to be avoided. The hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), and other hon. Members on the Irish Benches, had declared that the extent of crime in Ireland had been grossly exaggerated, though he did not consider they had made out a very strong case. A great deal of positive evidence required a vast amount of negative evidence to upset it; and the House had had comparatively little evidence of a negative character, as against overwhelming affirmative evidence. The Home Rulers did not even agree among themselves very well. Some did not think there had been much outrage, others treated the matter as a practical joke, while it was also admitted that a reign of terror did prevail in some parts of Ireland. The speeches of the hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of Cork in the House had, he would further remind hon. Members, been very different to the utterances he addressed in Ireland to excited Leaguers. ["No, no!"] It should, however, be borne in mind that he spoke under different circumstances; surrounded, as he was, by excited mobs, he was undoubtedly led away by the excitement of the moment to say that which he did not intend to say, and what, too, he would not say in that House.

Will the hon. Member tell me what it was I said in Ireland that I would not say in this House?

reminded the hon. Member that he had said at an earlier stage of the debate—

"That at several meetings which he addressed, up to the time when the Chief Secretary sent extra constabulary into Mayo and Galway, he reprobated outrage and crime, and endeavoured to urge the people to act in a Constitutional manner."

He wished to contrast this with what the hon. Member was reported to have said at a meeting held after the murder of Mr. Boyd in August. The substance of what the hon. Member said was that such proceedings would not have been necessary if the organization which the hon. Member had promoted so successfully since had been in existence. Well, those words seemed to him to contain nothing else than an incentive to crime, and a justification and excuse for the foul and atrocious murder which had been perpetrated. At all events, the tone of those words was very different from the tone of those used by the hon. Member for the City of Cork in the House of Commons. He could not sit down without alluding to a circumstance which occurred in the debate on Tuesday, when, with astonishment, indignation, and disgust, he heard the allusions of the Solicitor General for Ireland to the murder of Lord Mountmorres greeted with derisive laughter from Home Rule Members opposite. A gentleman some time ago had told him that he was on the spot' where that murder was committed very soon after the occurrence, and that he saw some of the peasantry trampling in triumph in the fresh blood of Lord Mountmorres. It was a friend of his who had seen this. [ Cries of "Name!"] He could not give the name, for it would not be safe to do so. Under the Land League, terrorism and excommunication had reached a pass which made it very unsafe to name people in connection with such a matter as he had described. He might, however, state that his informant was an Englishman.

I rise to Order. I wish to ask whether the hon. Member for Swansea is entitled, on the authority of an anonymous person, whose name he refuses to give, to calumniate the Irish nation? It has been proved that the people who trampled in the blood of Lord Mountmorres were English soldiers and not Irish peasants.

The hon. Member for Swansea is perfectly in Order.

denied that they were English soldiers who trampled on the blood of Lord Mountmorres; they were, as he had already told the House, Irish peasants. The person who gave him the information was one who could be relied upon; and the derisive cheers they heard from certain Irish Members on the other side of the House were a fitting commentary on the incident he had mentioned. The Government, in his opinion, were bound to ask for greater powers than they possessed at present. They had very little alternative what course to pursue. They must either let matters drift on as they were—they had allowed them already to drift too far—and if they permitted them to continue it would inevitably lead to bloodshed and civil war, or they could hand over the rule of Ireland to the Land League. God, however, forbid that any country forming an integral part of the British Empire should ever be handed over to the tender mercies of such a body of men as the Irish Land League! What else, then, could they do but ask Parliament to strengthen their hands in the present emergency? Then, again, they could adopt repressive measures; and the question was, What was the nature of the proposals the Government intended to submit to the House? The Prime Minister was a man who would never lend himself to unnecessary repression of the rights of the people, but was always in favour of giving the poor man the utmost liberty. He had watched the career of the much-maligned Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. W. E. Forster), and he did not believe that there was a Member of the House who possessed a more humane disposition, and who more objected to repressing the liberties of the people unnecessarily, than the Chief Secretary for Ireland. Was the senior right hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. John Bright) the man who would lend his sanction or presence to any measure which would trespass upon the rights of the people, unless he saw a necessity for it? He had no doubt that the right hon. Member did see a necessity for it with regard to Ireland. He, therefore, had every confidence in the Government, and he hoped that they would not have many deserters on that side of the House. He had such confidence in the Government that he was satisfied that any measure they might bring forward would be less prejudicial to the liberty of the people, and less dangerous to the Constitution of the country, than the reign of terrorism and tyranny of the Land League.

was happy to say that he represented a large constituency devotedly attached to the Constitution and to the union of Ireland with Great Britain, in which they resembled the majority of the inhabitants of the Province in which they lived. His constituents viewed with alarm and abhorrence the progress of the Revolutionary Party in Ireland, and welcomed the prospect, of the long-wished-for day, of some measure which would restore security to life and property. He did not intend to go into a discussion of the many subjects which had been brought forward in the course of the debate; the question before the House was, "What is the condition of Ireland? and, if that condition be intolerable, is there any reasonable hope that it can be remedied, and without the concession of some additional powers to the Executive?" Ireland was in the position of a patient suffering from a violent attack of fever, in whose case a physician would not consider the regimen that would be suitable in a state of health, but the best means of subduing the fever. On that ground he would not say what measure, in his opinion, would be for the ultimate welfare of Ireland; but he would rather address himself for the moment to the existing state of things. Since this debate commenced many hard words had been used against the Irish landlords; but the House should remember that the alleged misdoings of the landlords of Ireland had only been charged against them, and they had never been proved. Therefore, it was not too much to suspend its judgment until the defence had been heard; and he, for one, should be surprised if, when all the facts were fully investigated, it would be found that the majority of Irish landlords were distinguished for justice and liberality in the management of their estates. He would not say anything in reference to the question whether the Government had or had not a share in bringing about the existing state of things, beyond remarking that there was a general feeling of irritation among those who had been suffering from the reign of terror at the apparent apathy with which it had been regarded by those to whom they had a right to look for protection; and they felt, also, that but for the indiscretions of speech of some Ministers, and indecision of actions of others, things would not have reached their present position. There was, however, scarcely any position of affairs or current of events out of which good might not come; and, in the present case, it was pretty clear that the Government had seen the error of their ways and intended to amend their errors. Now, what was the condition of Ireland? Every unprejudiced man must have been convinced by the speech of the Solicitor General for Ireland what the real condition of the country was. Now, with respect to the facts, the statistics which had been brought forward must have convinced most people that the matter was not coloured; but, even supposing it was, it would only show, to his mind, taking into consideration the condition of Ireland in other respects, how completely the Land League had got possession of the people. Where there was no antagonism there could be no field for violence, and figures had clearly shown that there were in Ireland a large number of persons under police protection, in addition to which a considerable number of persons had been compelled to leave that country on account of threats of personal violence. They had abundant evidence of this, which showed that the Land League had "made a solitude and called it peace." They had been told that there was less crime of a serious character in Ireland than at former periods; but he had yet to learn that forcible appropriation of another person's property without payment did not come under the description of crime of a serious character. That these things could be done without resistance, either on the part of the individuals wronged or of the State, was only a proof of how completely society and the law had been paralyzed in Ireland. They had been told this was excusable, because it was done in obedience to an unwritten law which had its sanction in public opinion—a law which ought to have supremacy over the law of the State, for the reason that in making the laws of the State the Irish people had no voice. They had, therefore, an opportunity of seeing what sort of law would be enacted by hon. Members below the Gangway if they happened to possess legislative power. The hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) had told the House that the tenants of Ireland did not object to pay rent at all, but were only prepared to pay a fair rent; but on this point they had been told by the hon. Member for Leitrim (Mr. Tottenham) that payment of rent had been withheld in cases where the landlords were willing to accept less than Griffith's valuation. If it was once left to the debtor to say how much he would pay, and the law was powerless to compel him to pay more, the debtor would very soon enlarge his ideas as to how much he should deduct, and he might say—"If I may deduct one-third, why should I not deduct two-thirds—in short, why should I pay anything at all?" As to public opinion, he denied that there was any freedom of opinion in Ireland at all; and the opinion spoken of was only the opinion of a class whose cupidity had been inflamed by the harangues of the hon. Gentleman and his followers. He admitted that he had no personal experience of the state of affairs in the disturbed districts, because, fortunately for himself, he lived among a loyal people, to the majority of whom too much praise could not be given for the firmness with which they had hitherto resisted the enormous temptations thrown in their way to draw them into this movement. On Thursday last, the very day on which this debate commenced, there was a Land League meeting held in the immediate neighbourhood of the town which he represented, and at this meeting the chief speaker was Mr. Davitt, who might be accepted by the House as at least an equal authority with the hon. Member for the City of Cork with respect to the objects of the League. The speech of Mr. Davitt offered a most amusing contrast to that which was being delivered in the House by the hon. Member for the City of Cork about the same time. These gentlemen seemed to carry about with them a complete stage wardrobe, and to change their characters and dresses in accordance with the place at which they appeared, and the audiences they saw before them. The last speaker alluded to the difference between the speeches delivered by the hon. Member for Cork in Ireland and in that House. Now, he did not speak in respect to outrages, for he did not accuse the hon. Member of having stimulated outrage; but those who in Ireland heard the hon. Member excusing the present agitation, and advocating the expulsion of the landlord class, would scarcely have recognized him the other night addressing in dulcet tones the Members below the Gangway, and endeavouring to show that the whole question related solely to a matter of £5,000,000 or so rent a-year. The credulity of Moses in effecting his famous transaction as to the gross of green spectacles would be required to believe that.

If the hon. Member—["Order, Order!"]—I do not know—

The hon. Member for Downpatrick is in possession of the House; but, of course, if he chooses to give way, it is in his discretion. If, however, the hon. Member for Downpatrick does not choose to give way, he is entitled to proceed with his speech.

again rose amid cries of "Order!"

The hon. Member for Downpatrick is in possession of the House, and is entitled to proceed to the end of his address without interruption. If the hon. Member for the City of Cork desires to make any explanation regarding the statements of the hon. Member for Downpatrick, he will be in Order in doing so at the conclusion of the address of the hon. Member now in possession of the House.

said, that if he was wrong in stating that the speech to which he had referred had for its object to persuade the House that the whole question was one as to about £5,000,000 of rent a-year, he must apologize to the hon. Member; but, so far as he recollected the speech, that certainly was the impression it left on his mind. However, he would not pursue the matter further. Well, if the system that he alluded to of acting in many parts was to be successful, there ought certainly to be more concert between the players; and he would read a few extracts from a speech delivered by Mr. Davitt at the time the hon. Member for Cork City was assuring the House that the Land League and the tenants were perfectly willing to accept Griffith's valuation as a fair basis of rent. Mr. Davitt was haranguing the farmers of the County Down, and scouting the idea that they ought to accept Griffith's valuation. He said that Griffith's valuation was a rack-rent in Ulster—that they themselves should be the judges of the rent they should pay. He appealed to them to know what the rent should be; and when there were cries of "Five shillings an acre," he offered no word of contradiction. Mr. Davitt added—and, lest he should misrepresent him in any way, he would read the words Mr. Davitt used—

"What would be the basis of a fair rent in Ireland? If you consider Griffith's valuation fair in Munster, Leinster, and Connaught, I say Griffith's valuation is a rack-rent in Ulster, and that the sturdy tenant farmers of the North of Ireland should show their opposition to any such basis for a so-called rent."

That was to say, that if rents were in that part of Ireland low now, their lowness should not be taken as a reason why they should not be reduced. He went on—

"I deny that any tribunal can be appointed in Ireland by the English House of Commons, which is crowded by English and Irish landlords, which could define what a fair rent is—such a rent as could be accepted as fair by the Irish tenant farmers."

Griffith's valuation could not, therefore, be regarded by the tenant farmers of Ulster as a fair rent; they were themselves to be the judges of the rent they should pay; and a chief element in the calculation was, apparently, to be the dissatisfaction of the landlord. Mr. Davitt further said that even if the rent were so settled now it would only be a temporary settlement, to be followed by a subsequent reduction, probably in a short time. He said—

"If the rent so fixed to-day should be considered a fair rent by the tribunal to be appointed under the Land Act, how do we know that the struggling farmers will be able 12 months hence, or five years hence, to pay it?"

The object of that was clear. It was to prevent any settlement being a final one. Mr. Davitt said with respect to the forthcoming Land Bill—

"I say that the Land League has compelled them to do this, has wrung from them this miserable concession, whatever it is, to-day; and whether it is good to the Irish people or not, all that is good in it must be credited to the action of the Irish National Land League."

He hoped that Her Majesty's Government would see how useless and vain it would be to make any concession in the hope of conciliating the leaders of the Land League. In fact, they could never be conciliated, because if they were to admit that they were satisfied it would be equal to the extinction of their trade. There was one extract he should like, before he concluded, to read to hon. Members opposite, who appeared to show some symptoms of sympathy occasionally with the Land League. It ran thus—

"Of course, society and its code declared that your superfluous earnings would be better spent in providing luxuries for the landlord class than in purchasing health and substantial food for your children; but the people of Ireland have resolved to the contrary, and have made up their minds that they will continue this agitation until, having produced wealth, they will be allowed the privilege of enjoying that wealth, as is the case of every other civilized country in the world. This system of land monopoly and rack-renting that has obtained in Ireland in the past is the fundamental injustice from which every other injustice follows, and is a reason why the producer of wealth is condemned to poverty while the non-producer of wealth can live in luxury, while the miserable cabin is erected on one side of the palace."

That was an attempt to set the poor against the rich by a comparison of the inequality in their position, and a suggestion to them to take from the rich because they were rich. It was simply Communism. The contrast between the cabin and the palace might be found in London—perhaps even in Birmingham as well as in London—and it was not in Ireland alone that the non-producer obtained a share of the produce. The fact was, that the agitation and the principle advocated in Ireland were a mixture of revolution and Communism. Some of the leaders of the agitation, perhaps, desired political change for its own sake; but the majority desired political change merely to subvert the structure of society, and all of them looked to the Land Question as being merely a prelude to something more. The Land Question was taken up merely to secure a following. It was found that the people of Ireland did not care much for Home Rule; but it was believed they would appreciate a change to be brought about by the Land League, which would enable them to share £5,000,000 or so a-year, with a prospect that that sum might be afterwards increased to £15,000,000. The only other question he would suggest to the House was this—Was there any prospect that this condition of affairs could now be remedied without granting to Her Majesty's Government additional powers? The Prime Minister, at the Guildhall, on the 9th of November, said that he was only waiting for the necessity for such additional powers to be demonstrated. He could not help thinking that if the right hon. Gentleman had lived in Ireland he would have had that demonstration long ago. Certainly those who lived in Ireland had no doubt on the subject. It appeared to them surprising that the peculiar character of the conspiracy should have been disregarded so long. But now it was the duty of them all to forget the past in the present, and to join in doing whatever might be required to do away with such an intolerable condition of affairs. He was sure that the Conservative Party would give their united assistance to Her Majesty's Government in passing whatever measures they might think necessary. What they had a right to ask was that what would be proposed would be adequate and effectual; and he was glad to say that they had in the speech of the noble Marquess the other night a guarantee that that would be the case. They were in the midst of a great crisis—one of the turning points in the history of a nation where two courses offered, and where upon the choice made depended the destiny of the country. He did not believe it was too much to say that upon the vigour shown now by Her Majesty's Government depended the peace, the happiness, and the prosperity, not only of Ireland, but of Great Britain—perhaps of the whole Empire.

said, he quite agreed that they had now reached a period in connection with Ireland when two courses diverged, and upon the course the Government now took would depend the future credit of Liberalism in Ireland, and would depend, he believed, for many a year the peace and prosperity of that country. The question at issue was whether the great bulk of the Irish people—the tenant farmers and the labourers of Ireland—should be enabled to carry a reform of the law to maintain themselves in comfort in their own country? If, instead of proceeding to enact remedial measures at a time when the people were suffering intensely, they proceeded to limit the liberties of the people—if they began at the wrong end of the question—they would enter upon the wrong one of the two courses which were before them, and they would set out on a course every path upon which would remove them further and further from wise government and true statesmanship. He would not follow the quotations which had just been made from the speeches of Mr. Davitt. Mr. Davitt was a man competent to defend himself against any attack made on his arguments in that House or elsewhere. The remarks of Mr. Davitt with regard to Griffith's valuation were delivered at an Ulster meeting; and it was well known to every man who had studied, even in a casual way, the merits of the Land Question in Ireland, that Griffith's valuation in Ulster did not stand on the same basis which it occupied in the other Provinces of Ireland, and that it could be indubitably shown that Griffith's valuation in many instances meant rack-renting. Some hon. Gentlemen had, in the course of the debate, thought it necessary and desirable to indulge in a method of reference to his hon. Friend (Mr. Parnell) which was unusual in the House. His demeanour, his tone, and even his very garb, had been made the subject of more or less humour and sarcastic observations in the House. It had been said by the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Gibson) that his hon. Friend addressed the House "in bated breath and whispering humbleness." He did not know what metaphorical or literal meaning was intended by that phrase; but his experience taught him that "bated-breath," a very moderate tone of voice, might be sufficient to fill the House of Commons, but it would not be sufficient to find its way to the ears of 20,000 people gathered in a field in Ireland. The arguments of his hon. Friend, when carefully examined, would be found to have lost nothing by his moderation, or manner, or by the gravity or collectedness of the tone in which he had addressed himself to this Assembly. The Irish people believed that his hon. Friend had much of the nature and much of the capacity of statesmanship, and that no occasion ever occurred to which he could not rise. He (Mr. Sexton) wondered if the right hon. and learned Gentleman in addressing an Orange meeting in Belfast—or, to refer to a more eminent instance, if the illustrious man who was at the head of the Government, in addressing a mass meeting in the county of Mid Lothian—used the same tone, and appealed to the same considerations, that he relied on in that House. He had heard with regret and pain the speech of the hon. Member for Swansea (Mr. Dillwyn), who was sup- posed to represent whatever was fair and manly, democratic and progressive, in the people of England. It might have been hoped that so experienced a Parliamentarian and politician, before proceeding to fling so horrifying an imputation against a people as that contained in his reference to the blood of the ill-fated Lord Mountmorres, would have taken the same care to ascertain the truth of his statement that he would have taken if the matter were one dealing only with private life and the character of an individual. The hon. Member for Westmeath had testified, with regard to it, that those who cut away the congealed blood of that unfortunate nobleman were not Irish peasantry, but British soldiers on furlough, and not in uniform; and Mr. Mills, artist, Dublin, had been named as a witness, while no name was given in support of contrary statements. The debate, however, had not been entirely without its cheering incidents. He heard with pleasure and gratitude the speech of the hon. Member for Salford (Mr. A. Arnold). It was not to-day, or yesterday, that the hon. Member for Salford had proved his sympathy in the cause of the sufferings of the Irish people, and his earnest desire to defend the cause of human liberty and progress. It was with more than ordinary pleasure that he listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Bradlaugh), and for the reason that he declared his intention to vote against the Government, not only because of his own honest conviction on the subject of popular liberty, but because he had received a special mandate from his constituency to vote with the Irish Members on this occasion. That was a proof, if proof were needed, of the strong feeling which prevailed in England that rents could not be collected in Ireland if they could not reasonably be paid. He (Mr. Sexton) complained of the many attempts made in England to incite opposition to the demand now made by the Irish, people. He held in his hand one of the illustrated and satirical papers which were published in London, and which did so much to frame public opinion. This paper contained a cartoon which exhibited Mr. Bull setting on a bulldog, wearing a collar inscribed "Martial law," upon a number of rats, whose backs bore initials supposed to indicate Irish Members. The bulldog of martial law had between his teeth a rat, marked "P—I," designating, he thought, very clearly his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). Martial law, too, had one of his jaws upon a rat, marked "B—r," designating, of course, his hon. Friend the Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar). Another rat, marked "F—n," intended to designate the hon. Member for Ennis (Mr. Finigan), was making a furious attempt to climb a wall and escape. Another rat, marked "D—n," to designate the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), was supposed to be lying dead; while the identity of a rat marked" S—n" was doubtful, it lying between himself and the hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. T. D. Sullivan). Such productions might have their comic aspect; but the scoundrel who devised the cartoon, and the base instrument who executed it, knew that it would act as an incentive to public opinion in England in a way which would be fatal to the free discussion of this question. This cartoon would, perhaps, be the only argument on the question which would reach the eyes of many of the readers of this paper. [ Cries of "Name!"] The name of the paper was the appropriate one of Moonshine. Although the hon. and learned Member for Southwark (Mr. Thorold Rogers) struck all round in his speech, still he came to the conclusion that the landlord system in Ireland could no longer be maintained, and, in the interest of the people, ought to be finally got rid of. He felt he should not be discharging his duty to the House if he did not refer to the speech of the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry), and, in doing so, he could say that he was not only expressing his own views, but the views of those who sent him to Parliament. Since Parliament rose he had attended six meetings on this Land Question; and whatever he said might be accepted as the conclusions arrived at at those meetings. He could not, however, say quite the same of the hon. Member for Galway, for since the House rose last year that hon. Member had held no communication with his constituents in public meeting upon the subject. Whatever he said on this question might have some weight, because of his own influence and ability; but not because it expressed the sentiments of those who sent him to that House before the question of Land Reform reached its present state of development. He blamed the Irish Members for not having confidence in the Government of Her Majesty; but how did the Government seek to merit the confidence of the Irish Members? In the first place, they doubled the subsidy which the Conservative Government gave to the Irish landlords. The Irish tenants were in a state of bankruptcy, the Irish labourers were starving, and the Government of England adopted the very strange and illogical system of lending money, not to the people in need, but to those who had brought them to that condition. The next thing they did was to refuse to place a tenant farmer on the Land Commission appointed to inquire into the Land Question. Until other reasons were given for confidence, he thought they would be justified in withholding it. He was shocked to hear the hon. Member for Galway say that there were secret committees connected with the Land League. He might reply to that statement by appealing to the speech of the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland. The Land League was a public body, a public organization, and was public in every part of its proceedings. He could not commend the fairness of the hon. Member in thus referring to a body, the principal members of which had been brought within the purview of the judicial authorities of the country; nor could he admire the good taste with which he suggested to the Government the statutory means by which they might embarrass a patriotic movement. The right hon. and learned Members for the University of Dublin had taken a prominent part in this debate. Politically, those Gentlemen might be described as waiters on Providence, Providence taking the form of their own Party; and, no doubt, they felt that stronger and more positive form of gratitude, which had been well described as a lively sense of favours to come. The senior Member for the University (Mr. Plunket) had excited some amusement by referring to Jack Cade. Well, he would only say that the edifice of British freedom was a very composite structure that had been raised by men of very different sorts, and by some who might be described, in the slang of the day, as "queer characters;" and he was not sure that among them might not be included Jack Cade. The point was, that Jack Cade wished the people of England to follow him as King, and the right hon. and learned Member drew some parallel between Jack Cade and the League of the Irish people at the present time. Well, if affection and confidence constituted Kingship, his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork was practically King of Ireland before the land movement was started. [ Laughter. ] Hon. Members opposite might laugh; but the fact still remained. His course of conduct, courageous and high-principled, had won for him affection such as was seldom given to Monarchs. But if they were to quote Shakspeare, why should they confine themselves to Jack Cade? Why should they not refer to an eminent Hebrew, to whom, for want of the knowledge of his prenomen, he must refer to as Shylock? Shylock would have his pound of flesh, he refused to be bought out, he conspired against the life of a citizen, and, in the end, his goods were confiscated. If the Irish landlords continued to play the part of Shylock, they might, in the pursuit of their tyrannous policy, find themselves treated as enemies of the public rights, and though not treated as harshly as Shylock was, they would, doubtless, be dealt with harshly enough to enable the Irish people to emancipate themselves from their grasp. A lady lawyer intervened on behalf of the defendant, and stated his case with an ability which reflected more lustre upon her Profession than some of the male lawyers did upon theirs in the House of Commons. With regard to the general subject, the speeches and silence of Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench had been equally painful. Five speeches had been delivered by Cabinet Members, and in every one of them was matter to which the Irish people might rightfully object. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright), and the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Chamberlain), had publicly committed themselves to what he considered an indubitably rational view in the present case. They said that the remedy of intolerable grievances should precede the use of force. He thought the House would be curious to know how they justified the silence by which they gave a tacit consent to the case of their Colleagues on the Land Question, which practically reversed the thesis which so short a time ago they had placed before the public. He desired to speak with the most profound respect of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He believed Ireland had never a better, abler, or more high-minded friend; but he regretted that influence should have been brought to bear on him to induce him to sit silently by while a case opposite to that which he so short a time ago advocated was being enacted into law. The speech of the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland was merely an endless string of extracts, selected for a special purpose, and resembled more that part of the French Criminal Law—namely, the Act of Accusation—which all Englishmen so heartily condemned. But the speech of all others which would be read with pain and indignation in Ireland was that of the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for India. He was not surprised at the time; but he said that the tone of that speech would better fit him for a position of rule in India as it was a century ago than to take a part in discussions on such an era as the present was—our present ideas of respect for public liberty and the respect and consideration which were due to the Representatives of the Irish people. One day the noble Marquess, whose tone appeared so much to charm a part of the British democracy, might, perhaps, adorn "another place;" but so long as he maintained that tone in that House, he would embarrass the course of his Government. If the Government wished to rid themselves of obstacles arising from personal want of judgment in dealing with public affairs, he thought they would do well to come to the conclusion that the affairs of India and of Ireland put together were too much for the intellect of the noble Marquess, and that he had much better devote the whole of his powerful intelligence to the affairs of India while these debates continued. A word or two about some passages in the speech of the noble Marquess. The noble Marquess said that there was no proof that the Irish people, as it had been asserted, were accomplices in the state of crime which was now prevailing; and that it appeared to him it was hon. Members opposite who took the same view as the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell), who drew an indictment against a nation of whom 99 in 100 disapproved what was being done. A more extraordinary statement he never read in the speech of anyone in the position of a statesman or professing to be a trained and practical politician. How could it be alleged that his hon. Friends near him held the Irish people responsible? Were they not there to say that the people of Ireland had nothing to do with these crimes? But because of 2,500 crimes in a country of 5,500,000 people, the Government were endeavouring to destroy at a blow the liberties of those 5,500,000. For every outrage committed they proposed to place at the mercy of the servants of the State the liberties of between 2,000 and 3,000 people. What was that but making the whole body of the people responsible for crimes of which they had no knowledge? Who were the champions of the Irish people in that House but those who said that the ordinary law had been used incompetently, if not feebly, and that it ought to be put in force against the perpetrators of crime and not against the people? The noble Marquess said that the existence of crime in Ireland could not in any way be connected with the prevalence of distress or the harsh action of the landlords; and he developed that argument by saying that when there were many evictions in the first quarter of the year there were but few outrages, and that in the last quarter, when there were few evictions, there was the largest number of outrages. But Dr. Neilson Hancock, the official statistician of the Government in Ireland, in his Report for 1879, remarking upon the increase of crime for the year, said that the state of distress, as tested by the withdrawals from the savings banks, the increase of pauperism, and by the State measures which had become necessary, had no parallel unless they went back so far as 1847. Then Dr. Hancock said that the increase in crime between 1879 and previous years illustrated clearly the permanent relations between distress and crime. Dr. Hancock was directly opposed to the noble Marquess; and he invited the noble Marquess to study the Reports of the official statistician of the Irish Govern- ment as to whether the existence of crime could not in any way be connected with distress. The noble Marquess seemed to imagine that an outrage arising out of an eviction must necessarily occur in the same quarter as the eviction; but a moment's consideration ought to convince him that a poor evicted tenant was more likely to reach the stage of destitution in which the counsels of desperation and despair might have their sway three, or six, or nine, or twelve months after the eviction rather than within the same quarter as the eviction. How could the noble Marquess tell that the outrages in December were not in consequence of evictions in September, or even in March? It was impossible to separate the evictions of one quarter from the outrages of another; the whole sweep of evictions from year to year, and from decade to decade, bore relation to the whole sweep of outrages, and the two great facts could not be split into lengths and considered in relation to periods of three months. Besides, the winter months were the hardest on the Irish people; and had the noble Marquess considered the question of magistrates' warrants against the cottier tenants? He supposed they must be thankful for every small attention which the noble Marquess condescended to give to their affairs; but it would be more statesmanlike to make himself acquainted with at least the superficial details of the question before he proceeded to deliver himself with an air of infallibility upon it. The warrants against cottier tenants were alone sufficient to explain the increase in outrages. To avenge themselves on the Land League, the landlords had resorted to the unmanly and shameful expedient of dismissing their poor labourers, thus increasing the terrible total of distress, which might have produced a greater degree of crime. He must, however, do the noble Marquess the justice to say that upon the attitude of the Land League towards crime he had not been so unjust as other Members of Her Majesty's Government. For example, the First Commissioner of Works (Mr. Shaw Lefevre), whom he had always regarded as an accurate and thoughtful politician, had committed himself to the statement that the speakers at Land League meetings had not condemned outrages. The right hon. Gen- tleman must have read little on the subject. The noble Marquess referred to the matter in terms more accurate, though he used contradictory expressions. In one portion of his speech he said that agrarian outrages injured the cause of the land agitation, and then a little further he said he could not agree with him who said that agrarian outrages injured the cause of the Land League. The noble Marquess spoke with two voices, and it was difficult to say which he wished to present to the House as his deliberate opinion.

I certainly did not say that outrages injured the land agitation. I think the passage which the hon. Member has given must be a quotation from a speech of some member of the Land League, who said that outrages injured as well as discredited the agitation. I expressed my own opinion as exactly the opposite.

said, the noble Marquess said that crime benefitted the League. But if there were any men in Ireland whose interest it was to dissuade the people from crime it was his hon. Friend the Member for Cork City and the other members of the Land League. As a member of the Land League and one of its Executive Council, he might be permitted to say a few words as to the reasons which rendered the land movement necessary in Ireland. In the year before last they found the Irish people in a desperate position. They had passed through three bad years. They were left entirely without any money at their disposal. Their crops were extremely poor, and they had sunk themselves in debt to such an extent with the shopkeepers and traders that it was impossible to hope for any further credit. Moreover, they found the landlords of Ireland in large numbers pressing for exorbitant rents, and even for arrears of rent; and the time had come when, in the opinion of those to whom the Irish people looked for guidance, and in the opinion of the people themselves, they could no longer be held back from desperate courses unless some determined effort was made to give them redress by legislative action. The function of the Land League was to give them such a hope. The Land League was established, in the first instance, to bring down rack-rents which abounded in Ireland to such a fair level as would allow the tenant and his family a decent means of living; but the second object of the League was to bring about such a reform as would make tenants proprietors of their farms by a negotiation based upon a system of State purchase, which would give the landlords the fair and equitable value of their lands. It had been asserted that the Land League was not a spontaneous movement; but he defied anyone to point out in history a movement which was so thoroughly and passionately spontaneous as the Land League movement in Ireland. No sooner had the original organization come into existence than the most piteous appeals for help poured in from all quarters, and the leaders of the movement found themselves borne along on a wave of popular enthusiasm. The League, therefore, while it supplied the machinery of organization, in no way stimulated an artificial movement. He protested in the strongest manner against the system of criticism applied to the Land League by hon. Members in that House, a system which endeavoured to make the movement responsible for every outrage perpetrated in the country, no matter under what circumstances of secrecy. He attended about a score of land meetings in Ireland since the Prorogation of Parliament last year; and after a sincere examination of his memory he believed that at every one of those meetings he, in the strongest language he could command, warned the people against the immorality, against the folly, and against the futility of outrage, violence, or illegality of any kind whatever. He had never omitted to tell the people that the law of God, that the law of the land, and of every civilized country forbade acts of this description. He did this notwithstanding the observations which had been made on the subject by the landlord Press of Ireland—a Press as unscrupulous as any in the world. It was to be remembered, too, that most of those meetings had been presided over by Roman Catholic priests, who, as the moral teachers of the people, naturally and necessarily condemned the commission of crime. He believed most devoutly and solemnly that the outrages in Ireland had not been perpetrated as the result of speeches made by those who were in sympathy with the Land League. In common with other speakers he had told the people to help themselves; but what other counsel could he possibly have given them? After having seen the failure last Session of an infinitesimal measure of relief, he could not honestly have told them to expect much from the English Parliament. The Compensation for Disturbance Bill had been opposed by the territorial Whigs, who sat behind the Government, but were ready at the first opportunity to desert them; and it had been thrown out with arrogance and scorn, and without the semblance of decent discussion, by the powers that inhabited "another place." Other Bills, also intended to benefit the Irish people, had been rejected; and how, in the face of those facts, could he have told his hearers to confidently await rapid and effectual reforms from a Government that allowed the wishes of its great majority to be completely frustrated? Instead of countenancing delusions of that sort he had told them to rely upon themselves, by which he meant that if they could not pay their rents they should consult together and offer as much as they could reasonably afford. [ A laugh. ] The advice might seem comic to hon. Members; but what else could he have said to the people when eviction stared them in the face? The landlords were demanding rents which it was impossible for the people to pay. The people offered as much as they could pay, but the landlords did not choose to accept that offer; and then the League counselled the people to stand by one another, and to sustain any tenant who might be evicted for non-payment of an impossible rent. But they did not counsel the people to resistance to the law. They simply advised that they should assist such tenants as had been unjustly evicted. They further advised the people not to take any farm which had been the scene of such unjust eviction. Such advice was absolutely necessary to the urgency of the case. The power which the landlords had used arose, in many cases, from the fierce competition for the land. The people were thrown upon the soil as their sole means of subsistence, thrown upon it by a series of shameful enactments. Whenever and however a farm became vacant, no matter under what terms, the landlords found it an easy matter to obtain a tenant on any terms they might choose to dictate. It was impossible to maintain the movement in Ireland unless they advised the people to stand together and put an end to that competition, which made the landlord an irresponsible despot. But they never in all their counsels counselled violence or illegality; and it was a calumny against the Land League to say that they had advised the people to enter upon a course which they clearly saw would be futile. The Government now proposed to abolish individual liberty, and to embarrass, if not to prevent, the exercise of the right of public meeting. Whenever coercion had been applied to Ireland it had had the effect of increasing, and not of reducing, the number of outrages. A Coercion Act was passed in 1833. The number of outrages committed in that year was 6,547, and two years later the number of outrages had increased to 6,645. In 1836, indeed, the number fell; but the decrease, he contended, was owing, not to coercion, but to the final abolition of the system of tithes, which had so long exasperated the people. The moral to be drawn from that was that crime could only be diminished by remedying promptly, speedily, and radically, the evils under which the people laboured. The Viceroyalty of Lord Mulgrave, between 1835 and 1843, was the only period since the Union in which the Executive had been content to make a serious attempt to rely upon the ordinary law, and the evidence as to that period was that crime decreased yearly, and that the proportion of convictions to committals, and of committals to offences, constantly increased, a proof that offenders no longer to the same degree attracted the sympathy of the population. In 1843 an Arms Act was passed; in 1847 a Crimes and Outrages Act was passed; and in 1848 the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. Did crime diminish under the influence of those measures? Far from it. It was at this time that Sir Robert Peel and Earl Grey were so energetic in proposing repressive measures; but he believed it was this conduct which finally resulted in their being hurled from power; for the great masses of the English people hated coercive measures as much as the Irish. But at that time the wishes of the people were not always considered, and were only felt when the public feeling was manifestly very strong. Well, in 1849–50, there were three coercive measures in force—namely, the Arms Act, the Crimes and Outrages Act, and the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. As each additional coercive measure came into force crime increased proportionately. In 1847 the number of agrarian outrages reported by the police amounted to 620. The Crime and Outrages Act, which was in force that year, gave the Lord Lieutenant power to proclaim districts, to levy taxes, and to endow the police with authority to effect an intrusion into the privacy of dwellings by domiciliary visits. In 1848 the number of agrarian outrages had increased from 620 to 975, and in 1850 the number reached 1,362. In 1851 the number decreased again, because the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act was allowed to pass away. The effects of distress and repression had also thinned the population and increased emigration. Committals for various classes of outrages against persons and property were as follows:—In 1846, 13,201; in 1847, 24,000; in 1848, 29,000; and in 1849, when the three descriptions of Coercive Acts were in operation, 31,800; in 1850, when coercion was somewhat relaxed, they fell to 23,000. Could there be evidence more conclusive that coercion tended to stimulate rather than repress crime? Between distress and crime, also, as the experience of that period showed, there was a continual relation, the number of committals rising and falling with the number of persons obtaining relief. From 1866 to 1869 the Habeas Corpus Act was again suspended, and the number of agrarian outrages within that period steadily increased. In 1866 the number was 87; in 1867, 123; in 1868, 160; in 1869, 767; and in 1870, when the pressure was removed, but while the people still nursed resentment against the law, 1,329. In 1871 the beneficial influence of remedial measures appeared, and agrarian outrages fell to 360. The larger class of indictable offences showed during that period a similar increase. Another test was applied by looking at the whole class of indictable offences. They numbered 9,082 in 1866, 9,260 in 1867; there was a decrease in 1868; in 1869 the number was 9,178; in 1870, 9,517, or more after three years' suspension of the Habeas Corpus than in the year before; and in 1871, 8,155. The moral to be drawn from the history of the last 50 years in Ireland was that these coercive measures were unworthy the age of the world in which they were living. If the present Government did not know better than to continue the old policy of oppression, the effect would be the repetition of the old catalogue of increased disturbance and violence. He had shown that all classes of crime, agrarian, indictable, and non-indictable, increased under coercion; that whenever there had been a great increase of crime it was immediately after a resort to coercion, and that whenever there had been a great decrease it had been after a resort to remedial measures. He had shown that the true course for the Government was not to set forth on the path of coercion, but upon the liberal, enlightened, and progressive path of respect for public liberty, in travelling on which they could rely, not only on the support of the Irish people at large, but on the support of the more educated classes of Englishmen and of the enlightened democracy of England. He had some thought of referring to the evidence which the Government had produced in the shape of three or four Returns of crime; but he should not proceed to enlarge upon that point, as he should have future opportunities of doing so. He would simply say that to rely upon those Returns which the Government had placed upon the Table was a thing which he, for one, could not consent to do. He had had some experience of police protection, and his experience led him to look upon those Returns with suspicion. For instance, there were three cases of police protection returned for Sligo. In one of those cases a man who had been a teacher in a school in Ireland was returning, no doubt, in a somewhat hilarious condition from a festive meeting of an Orange lodge, and saw a young man walking peaceably along the road. Thinking the young man was about to attack him, though no assault was committed or attempted, the teacher drew a pistol, took aim, and fired, seriously wounding the young man. The teacher was tried; but whether the jury thought he was not responsible for his action, or for some other reason, they acquitted him. Since then the teacher had been under police protection. The midnight roysterer and law-breaker had had devoted to himself the services of four men of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and was maintained in his position by no less a person than the Lord Lieu- tenant of the County of Sligo as a standing sore to the locality. He supposed this worthy now figured in the Returns of the Government as one of the persons for whom Parliament was asked to take away the rights and liberties of the Irish people. Another of the cases was that of a landlord who had emptied the house of a poor man driven to the wall by hard times. Two of the evicted tenant's daughters crept back to the house out of which they had been turned at night; but the landlord came back to the house, and, finding the girls there, seized one of them by the hair of the head and dragged her with violence out of the place. He said that until the whole list was scrutinized, until they knew how many cases proceeded from threatening letters, until they were able to investigate those cases one by one, they must decline to say there was any moral, reasonable, or proper ground for interference with the liberties of the people. In considering the number of evictions and their causes, the Government had great reason to be thankful to the Land League. During the three quarters ended March, June, and September last year, the number of persons rendered homeless in Ireland by eviction was 1,417—persons who were not merely evicted, but refused admission, and could not go back as tenants—not even as caretakers. In the December quarter of last year, owing to the operations of the Land League, there were only 388 evictions; and this great decrease, saving many lives, was due to that splendid organization. The Land League, by its peaceful operations, had effected this. [ Laughter. ] Yes; the hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite could not restrain his mirthful scorn; he did not consider it beneath his scorn—

said, he had not shown his scorn at that, but at the inaccuracy of some of the statements previously made.

said, the time the hon. and gallant Member had chosen for his mirthful scorn conveyed to his mind a different impression. Though the Government spoke of the law being paralyzed by the state of affairs, he maintained that but for the peaceful attitude of the Land League the Government would have found themselves unable to make the constabulary and the section of the military under their command sufficient for the execution of the processes of the law which the landlords might have called upon them to execute. He trusted that the Government would adopt the true course of resorting to remedial instead of coercive measures. In adopting the latter, they were yielding to the influence of that class which had been always opposed to the amelioration of the condition of the people. They were yielding to the stimulation and promises of support which they ought to be ashamed to receive—the promises which came from their political opponents, who knew that a resort to coercion now on the part of a Liberal Radical Administration would hasten the day when the Conservatives would re-cross the floor of the House and resume the reins of power. They were yielding to the men who sat behind them, and who represented those ideas most repugnant to liberty and progress. They were yielding to fear of those who sat in "another place," and who last year treated them with contempt and scorn. These were influences which they might expect a great Government to resist; and it would be a matter of grief, and perhaps of despair, to many people in Ireland to find so great an intellect and so great a moral nature as that of the Prime Minister wrought upon to such an extent as this, and for such an end as this, under the influence of those sordid principles and those base motives which guided and governed stragglers and the hangers-on of Party. He did not propose to address the House at greater length. He was bound to thank the House for the courteous manner in which it had heard him. Certainly, as far as he was concerned, that Assembly was an Assembly of Gentlemen. He would conclude by expressing his belief that the Government would alienate for ever the Irish people if they adopted coercion. If they took that course, in the face of the evidence which they had of its futility, they would not only alienate the Irish people, but they would expose themselves to that contempt and that scorn which were illustrated and foreshadowed by Cavour, the great master of Italian statesmanship, when he said any man could govern in a state of siege.

supported the Amendment moved by the hon. Member for the City of Cork, because he sincerely and honestly believed that coercion was not wanted in Ireland. What was wanted to make the Irish tenants contented and happy was a good, sound Land Bill, and a measure which would satisfy the just demands of the people, expressed as those demands had been in almost every district throughout the country. Public meetings, lawfully held, had been largely attended, and the wishes of the people had been unmistakably expressed; and now it was proposed, by coercive measures, to deny the right of public meeting. He recollected how, in 1867, the people rose in an agony of despair to try and effect a settlement of their grievances by force, that rising being put down; then throughout the public Press in England they were called upon to bring their grievances before the House, and so find a remedy. Now, in the present instance, when they had acted within the limits of the Constitution, holding their public meetings, they met with the same measures of coercion their fathers met with before them. They simply asked for security in their holdings. What good would coercion effect? Not a Parliament had sat since the time of the unfortunate Union in which Coercion Acts had not been passed for Ireland by that House, and what was the result? The Irish peeple were now as disaffected towards the laws imposed on them by this country as they were in 1641 and in 1798. The attention of the House had been drawn to the case of a landlord, who was in such distress that he had been obliged to give up the education of his daughters; but did the House forget that in 1847–8–9, hundreds and thousands were expelled by the landlords, and allowed to starve and die in the ditches? The hon. Member for Leitrim (Mr. Tottenham) and the junior Member for the County of Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) had stated that at the meetings of the Land League the people had been told not to pay any rent to the landlords. Now, having himself attended 20 of those meetings during the Recess, he emphatically declared that he had never, at any one of them, heard any man advise the tenants not to pay fair rents; but they had been advised not to pay rack-rents, which it was impossible for them to pay. At one of the last meetings which he attended, and which was held about six weeks ago in the County of Limerick, the very first resolution that was passed was one indignantly repelling the calumnious accusation that the tenants desired to repudiate their just debts, and also declaring that just rents involved the same strict obligation as any other contracts. At those meetings he had attended he had not been ashamed or afraid to denounce, in the strongest language possible, any crime which was committed. He told his audiences that although they had many enemies, yet the greatest against them was the man who encouraged or committed crime. He knew their cause was just, and that they would ultimately get a settlement of it; and the man who committed crime in their name would only do them the greatest possible injury. He had heard a great deal from time to time of threatening letters, and he agreed with the remark that the man who sent a threatening letter was either a coward or a scoundrel. After all, they were only ink and paper. There was no more convenient place in which to write such letters than the office of the agent or the bailiff. His county had obtained some notriety in regard to threatening letters, but many of these letters were evidently written by men of education. It was, in fact, well-known that the letters received by Mr. Justice Fitzgerald and Mr. Baron Dowse were not letters written by illiterate men, because they were filled up with French quotations, and it was not likely that such was the class of men from whom they would expect midnight mauraders.

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

, continuing, said, he was not in the House on Tuesday evening last, when an attack was made on the county of Limerick by the Chief Secretary for Ireland; but he could say, without fear of contradiction, that for the last 20 months he could not bring to mind a single crime of high magnitude or violence. He was, therefore, very much surprised to hear the right hon. Gentleman make the attack which he did. He had, however, forgotten there was one outrage. He was sitting in his office one evening, when he distinctly heard two shots fired. The matter caused some consternation; but ultimately it turned out that the shots had been fired by a young man, who was in the habit of firing one shot at the end of the old year and another at the beginning of the new year, and it was construed into an attempt to shoot two men who had taken shelter in the marketplace. He appealed to the Prime Minister not to take the false step of bringing in coercion. Let him resign sooner than tarnish his hands with this dirty work. Let him pass a good Land Bill, and the Irish people would settle down happy and contented. If a Coercion Bill was passed it would be abused, and great irritation would be caused all over the country. He advised the Prime Minister to retire, and leave coercion to those who had always imposed it on Ireland—the Tory Party.

said, that, as a new Member, he had been disinclined hitherto to take a more prominent part in the Business of the House than to give a silent vote in favour of such measures as commended themselves to his judgment. But the question now under discussion greatly interested him, and although he was aware that three out of the five hon. Members who represented the joint constituency of Salford and Manchester had already spoken, and although it might appear that there was at present a want of harmony between the opinions already expressed by his esteemed Colleague and those which he desired to present to the House, he begged the indulgence which he knew was always generously accorded to anyone like himself, who was somewhat inexperienced in the customs of debate. The fact that the present Parliament contained so large a majority of Members earnestly desirous to legislate for the relief of Irish grievances was a certain indication that the same desires were felt by the great mass of the people of this country. He, for one, most heartily sympathized with those desires. He represented a constituency numbering over 23,000 electors, and had been all his life closely identified with the neighbouring constituency of Manchester, which had more than 60,000 electors, and he could state confidently that the disposition of the people of that populous district was most friendly towards the Irish people, and greatly in favour of speedy, well-matured, and useful legislation in respect of the affairs of that country. The people there were only solicitous that their Re- presentatives in Parliament would now have the opportunity which they had long desired of furthering such legislation as should permanently improve the condition of the country; and they were hopeful that the measures to be submitted to Parliament by the Government would not be offered with any stinting hand. Moreover, they felt that, notwithstanding the disturbing and somewhat exciting events which had transpired in Ireland during the last few months, there was no reason why Parliament should be deterred from the course that they had taken with the view of calmly and dispassionately enacting some wise and useful legislation for that country. While Government had intimated that they presently intended to submit to the consideration of Parliament measures with a view to legislation in Ireland, they also stated, in almost the same breath, that they found it necessary to ask the House for something more than the ordinary powers for the purpose of the defence and protection of the people of Ireland. That such a necessity had arisen he was fully satisfied, not only by the evidence on the highest authority which had already been offered to them, and of which they were told abundance more was forthcoming, but by much evidence which supplemented and confirmed the rest, and which had come within his own personal experience. It was useless for hon. Members, who were ostensibly the advocates in that House of Irish interests, to attempt to make light of and to extenuate the importance of that evidence. Having given this question his most careful and unbiased consideration, he had come to the conclusion that it was his duty to vote with the Government on this occasion. Certainly there had not been much said in the Queen's Speech to indicate to them the extent or the nature of the reforms which the Government proposed to bring forward. In the little that was said hon. Members were guided as to what they expected would come of it by the confidence or the distrust which they felt in the good faith of the Government. To some hon. Members it appeared likely that the measures of coercion were to be strong, while the reforms promised were likely to be very weak. He regarded the present Government with the profoundest respect and confidence, believing that it was a reason for great satisfaction that, at the present time, they found a combination of men forming an Administration rare, powerful, and more willing than any he had known in our past history to deal with this important question. He felt as great an aversion as anyone could possibly feel for any measure which was calculated to restrict what was called the liberty of the people. He thought, however, that the measures to be brought forward by the Government were likely to restrict, not the liberty, but only the license, of a small, but active, section of the people. He had the greatest confidence in giving extraordinary powers to the Government, because he believed that in their hands the measure would be administered with due moderation and justice, and with as little likelihood as possible of causing hardship to those who would be affected by it. He believed that the measures of the Government, both for the improvement of the Land Laws and for the protection of the people, would be wisely designed, and would prove a terror to evildoers only, while they would be useful and acceptable to those who did well.

said, that during the last Elections the Irish people had been assured from all quarters, and especially by expectant Ministers, that the only section of the English community which would consider the claims of Ireland with justice or moderation was the Liberal Party. The ordinary progress of Parliamentary procedure was not speedy enough for this so-called Ministry; but they must suspend all the Business of Parliament until a coercive measure for Ireland had been passed into law. What answer had the Irish Members to give to their constituents after telling them to trust to Parliament for the redress of their grievances? They had no answer to give now. It was a perfect farce to expect justice at the hands of the British Parliament, unless there was some force outside of that House and the Empire that would pay some attention to the demands of the people of Ireland. ["Oh, oh!"] Hon. Gentlemen opposite said "Oh, oh!" but he would refer them to the history of their own country and that of Ireland. They knew that the first great occasion in which Ireland obtained redress from the British Parliament was in 1782, when she furnished 1,000 sailors, by whose aid Lord Rodney was able to achieve a victory over France in the West Indies. When England required the assistance of Ireland in any emergency, then would the demands of Ireland be attended to; but if they had no call for them, then they could afford to let them die by thousands and emigrate to America by tens and hundreds of thousands. Their sense of justice seemed to be remarkably dull, unless there was something very exceptional to ask of the Irish people. Now, when they turned to the Speech from the Throne for an explanation, what did they find? They found that, as Ministers had often said, it was the first duty of a Government to secure the safety of life and property; but that was precisely what they—the Irish Members—said. It was undoubtedly the duty of a Government, and every Government, to secure the safety of life and property; but the whole gist of their contention was that while the present Land Laws existed, and while the present relations between landlord and tenant existed in Ireland, they never could have anything like security for life and property. These relations had never admitted either the one or the other, and never would. Look at 40 years ago, or even less, in the time of the Famine. As the Prime Minister himself said, the sentence of eviction, ruthlessly carried out as it was then, was a sentence of starvation and a sentence of death. The sentence of eviction existed still, as it did then; but in the very half-year in which the Prime Minister made use of that truthful description there were reported to the police evictions which affected 6,131 persons against whom this very sentence of starvation was pronounced. But was this sentence of eviction merely a sentence of starvation or death? No; it was a sentence of confiscation too. For they must not look at the relations between landlord and tenant in England as being identical with Ireland. In England the landlord, as a rule, furnished four-fifths of the total capital engaged in the land, in the shape of building, fencing, drainage, and roads, and one-fifth was furnished by the tenant. In Ireland the landlord furnished the land, and nothing but the land. It was the tenant who drained, who fenced, it was the tenant who paid for the maintenance of the old roads and the formation of new ones. But whereas the landlord in England exacted in return for that which he furnished for the tenant only an average of one-third of the total produce of the land, in Ireland, as a rule, he extorted from the starving tenantry two-thirds of the total produce of the land. These statements were borne out by the Reports of the Council of the Institute of Surveyors. In support of his case he might also cite an English authority who had for 40 years discharged the duties of a land-agent in Ireland. Mr. Wiggins said that in the South of Ireland the rent exacted was often nearly the whole value of the principal saleable produce of the farm, and that even those who were reckoned reasonable landlords would calculate the value of what could be sold off a farm, and, after allowing for public burdens payable out of the produce, would exact the remainder as rent. By an Act passed in the reign of Queen Anne it was enacted that when an ordinary Protestant landlord let a farm to an Irish tenant, he should exact a rack-rent of not less than two-thirds of the total produce of the farm, and that was still the average rental of farms in Ireland. An English landlord would no more think of attempting to exact such rent than of trying to pick his tenant's pocket. But the Irish landlords had contrived, by two very skilful manœuvres, to delude the public of this country as to their real position. In the first place, they had pushed to the front as representative men those few bright exceptions from the general class, and the English people had no idea whatsoever that when they were listening to the panegyrics passed on certain Irish landlords, they were really hearing the praises of men who stood in bright contrast to the great bulk of the Irish landlord class. Secondly, the Irish landlords had by personal influence induced the landlords of this country to identify their cause with their own, although there could not be a greater calumny on the English landlords than to attempt to identify them with those of Ireland. Cases of the cruellest hardship existed under the present system, and he had had under his own notice cases in which landlords had warned their tenants that if they gave shelter to evicted families they must run the risk of being evicted themselves. To prove how great had been the inhumanity formerly shown to Irish tenants, he begged to refer to the Pastoral of Bishop Nulty, Roman Catholic Bishop of Meath. In that Pastoral the Bishop described how he had seen 700 human beings evicted from their homes in one day, on an estate where there was not a shilling of rent due except in one case. The Bishop's Pastoral went on to say that the bailiffs engaged in these evictions recoiled from two houses in which members of the occupants' families were ill of scarlet fever. They implored the agent to spare the houses, but he was inexorable. He ordered winnowing sheets to be placed over the beds on which the patients—who were, happily, unconscious—lay, and then the cabins were carefully unroofed. The Bishop next day administered the last rites of the Church to three of these patients. His Lordship described the misery of the men, women, and children who were driven from their homes, and went on to say—

"The landed proprietors, in a circle all round and for many miles in every direction, warned their tenants with threats of direst vengeance, against extending to these unhappy people the hospitality and shelter of their roofs"

Would any English landlord be a party to such a proceeding? But he might be told that the case to which Dr. Nulty referred occurred many years ago. Well, he would mention what he had himself witnessed in Kerry within the last six months. A poor man who found himself at the mercy of his landlord was offered two alternatives, either to face the world—an impossibility for him, as he was without means—or to take 10 acres of marsh land at £1 an acre, being 10 times its value. He was compelled to close with the cruel offer. By the ready assistance of his friends he drained the land, fenced it, set up a house upon it, and made it a good farm. For 23 years he paid the exorbitant rent; but three bad years, 1877, 1878, and 1879, came, and he fell into arrear and was evicted. A neighbour gave shelter to the evicted tenant, his wife, and five children; but next day, the "driver"—which was a very good name for agent in Kerry—came and told the neighbour that he too would be evicted if he continued to shelter the poor people. The man and his family returned to the farm, and for two nights obtained shelter in the house the man had built; but the agent hearing of this, sent a number of men and had the house pulled down. He (Mr. Arthur O'Connor) saw the evicted tenant and his wife and children sitting near the gable of the ruined cabin endeavouring to obtain a meal consisting of potatoes they had gathered on the ground their industry had converted into a farm. Again, he asked, would any English landlord act in such a way? The truth was, that a sentence of eviction was a sentence of confiscation and of starvation, and the landlords had the power of enforcing the raising of rents under the threat of eviction. Protection for the tenant there was none, for the Bright Clauses only afforded a semblance of protection. The tenant might struggle on and on for years; but the gradualraising of rent at last became crushing, and he sank lower and lower, his rent fell into arrear, and he became at the mercy of the oppressor. He forfeited in this way all the benefits of the Land Act; and, as he had before observed, the only channels open to him were the emigrant ship or the workhouse. To call those laws which enabled extortion to be practised was to profane a sacred name. It was to be remembered that most of those who were now sucking the very life-blood out of Ireland in the shape of extortionate rack-rents were absentees. Of the 20,000,000 of acres in Ireland 11,000,000 acres were owned by absentees, and the natural consequesces were traceable in the diminution of the population and of their means. The population was 5,750,000 after the Famine, and he doubted whether it would be 5,000,000 at the next Census. The last Agricultural Returns showed a falling-off in the number of cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, and fowls, and of acres under cultivation. No wonder there were discontent, misery, and distress; no wonder the Irish people were putting their backs against the walls and saying that they would not stand it any longer. It was admitted by the English Press, by Members of Parliament, and the Government, that something must be done; but what was it to be? A great deal of nonsense was talked about English capital in Ireland. They did not want a penny of it. Capital was defined to be accumulated labour, and Ireland had plenty of hoarded labour if only the iniquitous Land Laws did not render it unavailable. There was one landlord, a personal friend of most Members of the Ministry, who drew from the West of Ireland a rental counted by tens of thousands, and, like many others, he was an absentee, and employed nobody. If he borrowed money from the Board of Works at 1 per cent, he charged the tenants 5 per cent for the use of it, and he increased the rent, whenever an opportunity presented itself, for any improvements which a tenant had been rash enough to make. Thus he paralyzed industry, and made improvement a folly. The tenant refused to employ labour to his own ultimate loss. There must be security for the tenant-farmer, and then that hoarded labour, which was now unavailable capital, would at once become available, which would not require to be supplemented from the English store. The Irish Members were now justified in refusing to make any proposals, considering the way in which their measures had been treated during the last few years. Not one in thirty of the measures brought forward for the benefit of Ireland was passed; and the Irish Members who attempted the task of introducing a Bill to the notice of the House rendered themselves a laughingstock on all sides. It was clear that the whole evil consisted of this—that by the threat of eviction the Irish landlord could extort what rent he chose from the perfectly helpless tenant, and the remedy was to take away the power of eviction. The land agitation would never cease until that power was taken away, and the condition of things was restored under which the landlord's interest might be acquired on certain terms by the tenant. To ascertain the landlord's claim there must be valuation of some kind; and whether it was one for the whole of Ireland, or one by local tribunals, was a mere question of detail. The landlord's rent-charge could be redeemed on the same plan as the tithe or rent-charge was being redeemed, either by a Commission or by Land Banks. Coercive legislation was to be based on the alleged increase of crimes of an agrarian character; but Members of the Government carefully avoided speaking of the total amount of criminality, which was less in Ireland than in England. They were told that the offences in Ireland were such that it was impossible the Government could disregard them. But the Judicial Statistics of 1878 and 1879 showed that England was preeminent in crime as compared with Ireland. There was no country in the world more deeply implicated in crimes of every kind than England. As regarded some crime, scarcely spoken of elsewhere, England was the black spot on the face of the globe. Even in regard to the houghing of cattle, which had excited the grave animadversion of the Chief Secretary, there were 74 cases in England to 42 in Ireland. When connected with agrarian crime, there were extenuating circumstances in such outrages, and hon. Members, instead of calling for coercive legislation, should treat them with a view to the removal of the causes which had produced them. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright) said, a few years ago, that as long as the population of the country was prevented from possessing the land by legal enactments and chicanery, so long would outrages continue. He called, therefore, upon the right hon. Gentleman to put his principles into practice. With regard to the statement that after all this movement of the Land League was nothing more than a movement of a veiled rebellion, he said it was nothing of the kind, and he was quite as likely to be as well informed on the point as the Secretary of State with all his emissaries, acknowledged and unacknowledged. From his own personal knowledge, he declared that there could not be a more unfounded charge than that which he heard put forward by three Members of that House, on separate evenings, as regarded the Land League agitation. He would draw the attention of the House to one very simple but important fact. Every Member was perfectly well aware that the English Army was to a great extent dependent for its recruiting upon the Irish population of the United Kingdom. Everyone knew that the Irish soldiers were sent to do the heaviest and the hardest, the most dangerous work of the British Army. What had they in Ireland? They had the police, which they did not trust. They had so ruled them and so managed them that they could not trust them, and it would be against humanity and human nature if they could. He knew they did not trust them, and he believed they had very good reason for not trusting them. Some time ago he happened to ask a constabulary officer in Ireland whether any ammunition had been served out to them, and he replied, "Yes; but, begorra, it's not on my own countrymen I would like to be using it." He felt sure, and he hoped that a similar sentiment largely pervaded the constabulary in Ireland. Not trusting to the constabulary, they had drafted into Ireland a military force stronger than they had ever brought together even at Aldershot. That force was exclusively composed—and the English newspapers exulted over it—of English and Scotch soldiers. He was very glad of that, for he held that each of these 25,000 men, so far as they were honest, was amongst the best apostles they could have of the doctrines of the Land League. Knowing, as they did, the condition of their own country, when they returned from Ireland they would disseminate among the poorer classes of their countrymen correct information as to the real state and condition of the Irish people, and the circumstances under which they existed. The question of recruiting was the tenderest point on which the Irish people could touch England. During the last 12 months the right hon. Gentleman had obtained between 3,000 and 4,000 soldiers from Ireland. That did not represent the proportion of Irishmen in the 19,000 or 20,000 recruits, the remainder of the 4,000 or 5,000 required to make up the proportion was obtained from the centres of Irish population in England. Now, the Irish in these centres were as amenable to the impulses of national feeling as anybody in Ireland, and if anything like sedition or rebellion was intended, nothing would have been easier than for them to paralyze the whole military system of England. "Boycotting" was a very efficient system, and if Irish women came and told the recruiting sergeant that not a single Irish recruit should be had, there would be some reason to accuse them of sedition or veiled rebellion. He would not detain the House any longer, simply because he believed there was no use in appealing to hon. Members. They had made up their minds to coerce Ireland. The Government was stronger than the Irish Members, and would coerce. But before they passed a Coercion Bill, Irish Members would have a word to say, inasmuch as their countrymen had done them the honour to allow them to stand in the breach. Speaking for himself, if he could find one single man to stand by him, he would oppose to the uttermost and with the greatest zeal every measure of coercion brought forward by Her Majesty's Government.

said, that when he entered the House he had not the slightest intention to take any part in the debate or utter a single word. But he was present when his hon. Friend the Member for Swansea (Mr. Dillwyn) made a statement of a very painful character as to something that had occurred about the time of Lord Mountmorres's murder. That statement was denied by the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). Now, he (Mr. Hussey Vivian) was in a position and felt called upon to confirm every word of the statement of the hon. Member for Swansea. He had the same source of information from which his hon. Friend quoted. An intimate friend, who was present on the occasion, had informed him precisely of what had occurred. He had another friend present who also informed him precisely of what happened; and, therefore, he could hardly withhold his confirmation of the statement made by the hon. Member for Swansea. What occurred was this. There were a considerable number of men returning from a Land League meeting along the road on which Lord Mountmorres was murdered. These men, for the most part, passed by the pool of blood which lay upon the road; but about five or six of them linked their arms together, and, in a defiant manner, seeing strangers present, marched along the road, and two of them walked through the blood. His informant saw the people upon their way. His informant saw the blood upon their shoes. [ Cries of "Name!" from the Home Rule Members. ] He would not give the name. In the condition of terrorism which now prevailed in Ireland, he did not consider that he was called upon to give the name. He gave the statement upon his honour. Had the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), like another Frankenstein, raised a hideous monster of which he was now afraid, and of whose ghoul-like deeds he was ashamed? If not, why did he so vehemently deny the facts stated by the hon. Member for Swansea?

Because it is a gross falsehood. [ Cries of "Order!"]

If the hon. Member has applied that observation to any Member of this House he is out of Order. If the hon. Member says that a statement made by another hon. Member is a gross falsehood, I must call upon him to withdraw the expression.

I am not aware, Sir, that I applied the word to any Member of this House.

I must have an assurance from the hon. Member that he did not apply that word to any Member of this House.

When I am charged with having applied the word to any Member of this House, Mr. Speaker, I shall be happy to give you the assurance which you ask for. [ Cries of "Order!"] I submit, Mr. Speaker, that until some Member of this House specifically charges me with an offence against Order, I am not called upon to give any such assurance. [ Renewed cries of "Order!"]

Does the hon. Member decline to give to the Chair that assurance which the Chair has thought it its duty to demand?

I applied the epithet "falsehood" to the statement which was made by the anonymous informant of the hon. Member for Glamorganshire (Mr. Hussey Vivian), that my countrymen waded through the blood of the murdered Lord Mountmorres.

MR. SPEAKER motioned to Mr. Hussey Vivian to proceed.

, by the leave of the House, repeated the statement he had made, and said, he left the House to judge between him and the hon. Member for the City of Cork. He had given the House his honour that he received that account from an English gentleman, an old and valued friend, he would now say an officer in the British Army. Whether the hon. Member was within his right in availing himself of a technicality to avoid the direct withdrawal of the allegation of falsehood applied to a statement so substantiated—whether he was pursuing a right and honourable course, he would leave to the good sense of the House. He thought it was possible that the hon. Member had not been well informed as to what occurred; but the hon. Member could take it from him that what he stated now did most distinctly occur. Now, it was his wish to ask hon. Members opposite what was to be the outcome of the course they were pursuing? He approached this question from a point of view entirely favourable towards Ireland. He had voted, he believed, in every division in favour of the Land Bill of 1870, and he voted last year for the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. Therefore, he approached the discussion with a friendly feeling towards Ireland. They had debated this Amendment at great length—seven nights—and in the course of it they had debated the Coercion Bill and the Land Bill. It was quite possible—he would not suggest the contrary—that, under the grave circumstances of the moment, it was proper to debate this Motion at considerable length; but what was the course to be pursued when they had voted the Address? Were there to be interminable discussions on the Coercion Bill? No one could have a greater horror than he had of imposing a Coercion Bill. Those feelings were shared by all on his side of the House, and he did not believe that the Party opposite were in favour of governing Ireland by coercion. But coercion was forced upon the Government by the action of certain persons in Ireland—by the action of the Land League, ["No, no!"] However unwilling they might be, it was forced upon them by such a state of terrorism and social misrule as left no other course open than to pass a Coercion Bill, and that Coercion Bill would be passed before the House came to the Land Bill. He was in favour of doing the strictest justice to Ireland. He had no prejudice, and was desirous of meeting the case in the fairest manner. He knew the unfortunate condition of land tenure in Ireland, which was wholly different from that of England. He took considerable pains last year, before he voted for the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, to make himself acquainted with those conditions. But he would point out to hon. Members from Ireland that if they put the House to the trouble of interminable debates on the Coercion Bill, they would postpone the consideration of the Land Bill. The House was determined to pass the Coercion Bill, so inevitable was it in the condition of Ireland. No doubt, hon. Members might use the Forms of the House to a considerable extent to delay that Bill; but the time would come—[ Cries of "Question!" and "Order, order!"] He was an older Member of the House than any of the Home Rule Members; and he would tell them that neither the House nor the country would stand the Business of the House being obstructed by any body of men. Some remedy would be found, and found tolerably quickly. ["Question!"] He believed he was talking to the Question, though some hon. Members might not like what he said. Obstruction would fall through—

I rise to Order.[ Cries of "Order!"] May I ask you, Sir, whether the hon. Member is entitled on the Question before the House, which is the Question of the Amendment I had the honour to move—whether the hon. Member is entitled to charge us with Obstruction about another Bill which is not yet before the House, and the course which he thinks the House ought to adopt in the event of a certain course of Obstruction being followed by the Irish Members in reference to that Bill? [ Cries of "Order!"] I submit, Mr. Speaker, that it is an extremely inconvenient course, and one which is not at all calculated to facilitate the progress of Public Business.

The hon. Member (Mr. Parnell) desires to raise a point of Order; but it seems to me that he is now expressing an opinion. I am bound to state that it is quite correct, as the hon. Member has stated, that the Coercion Bill is not now before the House. At the same time, the Amendment of the hon. Member himself distinctly raises the question of coercion; and it appears to me, therefore, that the observations of the hon. Member for Glamorganshire (Mr. Hussey Vivian) upon that matter are in Order. But I would submit to the hon. Member for Glamorganshire that it is most desirable that an hon. Member should not, in debate, address himself to any particular section of the House, but to the Chair.

I wish to have your opinion, Sir, on a point of Order. The point, and I will put it very briefly, is this—Is the hon. Member for Glamorganshire (Mr. Hussey Vivian) in Order in imputing to, and charging a body of Members in this House with, an intention to obstruct? That is what the hon. Gentleman really did; and I would ask you, Sir, if the hon. Member was in Order?

I have already stated, in answer to the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), that the hon. Member in possession of the House did not appear to me to be out of Order.

continued. He explained that he had been alluding to an observation made by the hon. Member for Queen's County (Mr. Arthur O'Connor), who spoke last, that as long as he remained a Member of the House he would obstruct any measure which had a coercive tendency.

He said resist.

understood the hon. Member to use the word "obstruct;" but "obstruction" and "resistance" were much the same. His desire was to facilitate the passing of those measures that were necessary for the maintenance of order in Ireland, and for its future tranquillity. Those remedial measures might be postponed to a late period if the course that he had indicated as possible were pursued. The hon. Member for Queen's County (Mr. Arthur O'Connor) had said that as long as one man stood by him he would oppose to the utmost every measure of coercion. He hoped that the hon. Member would not act in that suicidal manner; but that he and those who acted with him would allow the Bill to pass with no more than the necessary discussion. By taking the course proposed, the hon. Member would delay what he (Mr. Hussey Vivian) hoped would be a thorough-going measure of Land Reform for Ireland. He could assure Irish Members that if they did not assist the Government now to pass their Land Bill, there would hardly be another Government in this country more likely to do justice to Ireland than the present Administration.

said, the hon. Member for Glamorganshire (Mr. Hussey Vivian) commenced his speech by informing the House that he had no intention of addressing it at any length He (Mr. Gray) took it that most hon. Members would regret that he did not adhere to his original intention. The hon. Gentleman, as far as he (Mr. Gray) could follow his observations, did not contribute very materially to elucidate the question before the House. He made a very odious charge against the body of Irish Members who sat on that side of the House, and substantiated it by the statement that he heard it from a friend. They did not want to doubt his honour at all—they did not doubt his assertion that he heard the statement—but they took the liberty of doubting the authenticity of that hearsay evidence. The unpleasant incident which the hon. Member provoked by that allusion might very well have been dispensed with, and the House might have been saved the necessity of listening to disorderly observations with reference to the conduct of Members of that House upon a measure not before them; and he thought the time had been wasted, not exclusively by Members sitting on that side of the House. He should endeavour, at that hour, to occupy as little of the time of the House as possible; and he desired to commence by disclaiming individually all sympathy with the attacks which had been made personally, both inside that House and outside it, upon the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. He (Mr. Gray) had no sympathy with them. He thought the right hon. Gentleman made a self-sacrifice in assuming the position which he did assume. He believed that, although mistaken, the right hon. Gentleman went to Ireland with an honest intention of doing his best; and he did not think, on the whole, that the right hon. Gentleman met with that reception which he was entitled to. He (Mr. Gray) said that with the more freedom, because he anticipated that for the future he and the right hon. Gentleman would find themselves in opposite Lobbies. As there were a good many Members of the late Liberal Administration now sitting on the Treasury Benches, he would take the liberty of reminding them that if the present condition of Ireland was not all that they would desire, they had themselves to take a considerable amount of the responsibility for that condition of affairs. He did not wish to go back into the records of past misgovernment in Ireland. He only desired to go back to the year 1870; and he wished to remind right hon. and hon. Gentlemen who were now Members of the Government that in 1870 they had an opportunity of settling the Land Question on a final and satisfactory basis, and that they deliberately threw away that opportunity. The opinion of Ireland and of all leading Irishmen in 1870 was declared with unanimity and with distinctness as to the policy which should be adopted on the Land Question. Every representative body in the country, all the Irish Members sitting for Liberal constituencies, declared that the only final and satisfactory settlement of the Land Question should be upon the basis of fixity of tenure, fair rents, and free sale. The Government deliberately ignored Irish opinion upon that occasion. They framed a Bill which no Irishman had ever asked for, which no body of Irishmen ever sympathized with, and they forced that Bill through the House against the protests of Ireland. It was quite true that on the second reading but a very small minority divided against the Bill—only, he believed, 11 hon. Members—but it was proved that the minority of 11 had more reason upon their side than the majority who carried the Land Bill; but that minority of 11 represented the distinctly declared opinion of the whole country upon the question, both by public meetings, by Petition, and by any other means by which it was open to the country to declare its conviction. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland would probably remember that not only in 1870 did his Government scout that settlement, but that even such epithets as Communists and robbers, which were now applied to hon. Members sitting on that side of the House, were then applied to the minority of 11. He remembered the thing perfectly well, though he was not then a Member of the House—such was their objection to the very name fixity of tenure, that when that remedy was repudiated by the then Government, a section of the Irish Members asked that a permissive Parliamentary form of fixity of tenure might be adopted, and that the Government refused to permit even the permissive clauses to be introduced into the Bill. He apprehended that the very course which was adopted in 1870 was now about to be adopted by the same Government in 1881. They would probably frame a Bill upon their own lines without any regard to Irish opinion on the subject; and in another ten years, or perhaps a shorter period, they would discover their mistake quite as completely as they had now discovered the mistake they made in 1870, and they would then have greater difficulty in putting it right. That was what he apprehended, and it was for that reason that he referred to what occurred in 1870. Not only in 1870 had hon. Gentlemen sitting on those Benches as Members of the present Government to reproach themselves with their failure of foresight, but since 1870 they had pursued an identical course. When the late Mr. Butt introduced his Land Bill in the House most of the Members of the present Government would not now consider the Bill an extravagant one. Where were the Members of the present Government? Were they not invariably, or almost invariably, found voting against the second reading of the Bill? He did not blame Members sitting on that side of the House; but he did say that Members of the Liberal Party who had voted against or tacitly opposed all the attempts of the Irish Party since 1874 to bring about a peaceful, Constitutional, and reasonable settlement of the Land Question had distinctly themselves to blame for the result which had now come upon them. It was only when the country despaired of the Constitutional action of the late Mr. Butt, and saw that his arguments, urged with a force and cogency which he (Mr. Gray) was afraid no Member of the Party now could pretend to, was utterly disregarded in the House, that the Irish people arrived in despair at the conclusion that there was no use in argument, and that they must adopt some other course. The action of Parliament drove them to despair, and they were now blamed for adopting the only weapons to their hands. Upon every Irish question since 1874 they had had to face either the apathy or the active hostility, not merely of the Members of the Governing Body in the House, but of the Leaders also who sat on the Opposition Benches. Take the Franchise Question. How many times did the Leaders of the Liberal Party oppose the assimilation of the Irish to the English franchise? How many voted against it? The Leader of that Party refused, again and again, to permit a Whip to be issued in favour of t. It was only in the last two Sessions; that it was adopted, when they found Parliament was coming to an end, and a Dissolution pending, that they gave their support to the proposal, and adopted the equalization of the franchise. They should not forget that kind of thing—Irishmen did not forget it. If they had wished to prevent the exasperation of the Irish people, they should have long before met the reasonable and moderate proposals which had been urged in that place, again and again, in the most temperate manner in a different spirit. Possibly Ireland was never in such a grave condition for the last quarter of a century, possibly not since the Union; and the Members of the Liberal Party were far more responsible for the state of affairs than the Members of the Conservative Party, because they had nothing to expect from the Conservatives, and while they had much to expect from the Liberals they got nothing. They remembered the Compensation for Disturbance Bill of last year, and the declaration that was made by the Chief Secretary for Ireland on the subject. He (Mr. Gray) did not remember the right hon. Gentleman's precise words; but, practically, he said that he could not be responsible for the condition of affairs in Ireland if that Bill was not passed. The right hon. Gentleman anticipated very serious results; in fact, he foresaw the very things which were now occurring as the inevitable result of the policy pursued by the House of Lords. It was inevitable that they would have some disturbance; it was inevitable that the Irish people would be driven to adopt whatever means came to their hands, and which they thought best to bring about a reform of the intolerable condition of affairs under which they existed. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson), in his eloquent speech the other night in favour of a policy of coercion, alluded to the case of the tenantry of Colonel King-Harman, and their refusal to pay more than Griffith's valuation. Now, the great bulk of Colonel King-Harman's tenants last year were kept alive upon Indian meal. He (Mr. Gray) happened to be Chairman of the Dublin Mansion House Belief Committee, and Colonel King-Harman was a member of that Committee. The gallant gentleman was also one of the chief advisers in the Duchess of Marlborough's Committee, and was a member of the other Committees. He (Mr. Gray) had not been able to ascertain, but he in- tended to ascertain, the exact amount of charity which was dispensed to the tenants of Colonel King-Harman. He had, however, telegraphed to Boyle, and the reply he got was—

"The town of Boyle and almost the whole parish are on the property referred to. The number of farmers relieved was 681, including 370 small tenants. Total from all relief sources, £1,478, with about £400 worth of seed potatoes."

These poor tenants were kept alive upon Indian meal, supplied to them by the charity of the world—by American charity, by Australian charity, Indian charity, Chinese charity. With regard to the extraordinary course taken by the English Press and some public men respecting crime and outrage in Ireland, he did not propose to go over the statistics, which had been already ably dealt with. Even if the Government statistics were absolutely true, they contained no sufficient reason for coercion. All great and popular agitations were accompanied with more or less of crime. The English Reform Bill agitation, the Corn Laws agitation, the Trades Union agitation, were all accompanied by crime of a far more serious character than those which had characterized the Land League agitation. ["No, no!"] "No, no!" said an hon. Member; but he (Mr. Gray) did not remember an instance in which any body of Irish tenantry had assembled and threatened to burn down the landlord and his family. That was what occurred in a mere trade dispute in England, where there was no danger of starvation, and no danger of sentence of death. Yet the men coolly assembled in their hundreds and threatened to burn down the owner of the factory and his wife and family. That was the case at Blackburn. That a considerable amount of crime and disturbance existed in Ireland he did not want to deny; but, in all sincerity, he declared that he believed that if the Land League organization had not existed the crime would have been ten-fold what it had been. ["Oh, oh!"] On his honour he believed that, and was quite certain of it. He would relate an instance in which the public mind was deceived. A statement had been made that the hon. Member for Leitrim (Mr. Tottenham) had been obliged to leave the country. That statement was made by an Irish Conservative paper, The Dublin Daily Express, and copied into the English, papers; and when the hon. Member wrote to The Daily Express, saying there was no foundation for the statement, that paper, which was interested in keeping up the alarm, would not insert the contradiction, and consequently the hon. Member was obliged to request another Irish paper to publish his contradiction. He must apologize for having accidentally named the hon. Gentleman, who was a Member of that House. Again, a statement appeared in The Times, to the effect that the hon. Member for Galway County (Mr. Mitchell Henry) had been obliged to leave the country; and he (Mr. Gray) believed he was not mistaken in saying that the hon. Member had written to The Times to say there was no foundation for the report. Now, really he was not exaggerating when he said that three-fourths of these cases were exaggerated, and one-half had no foundation whatever. [ Laughter. ] If it was not permissible for an Irish Member to make an Irish bull, he did not know to whom it was permissible. Some person was kind enough yesterday to forward him a copy of a newspaper, which, though a newspaper man, he had never had the pleasure of reading before. It was The Protestant. It was not very well printed; but at the end there was this—"Please excuse the typography; our printers are only 11 or 12 years old." It was printed at Carough Orphanage, Naas, by Protestant orphan boys. This ought to be a very Christian publication. He would take the liberty of referring to what it said in reference to the Prime Minister. He (Mr. Gray) was sorry the right hon. Gentleman was not in his place to hear it; but he would send him a copy. It was really very interesting. The passage contained in it to which he referred described the right hon. Gentleman as a robber and a murderer, and represented the country as in the hands of a wild, shrieking array of banditti, with a small band of resolute men, with women and children in the centre, waiting for death. That was the kind of literature that had got up a certain state of alarm, about which they who lived in Ireland knew but very little until they came over to England. It was then they knew the desperate condition of affairs in which the country was placed. The whole object of this exaggeration was simply to get up an alarm in England, and so facilitate the passing of a Coercion Bill. He felt considerable difficulty in trespassing on the time of the House, and, therefore, he would not say anything more on that subject; but there was one other matter to which he would wish to refer. If they were determined to introduce a Coercion Bill, of what nature, from their own standpoint, must that Coercion Bill be in order to be effective? Hon. Members would bear him out in saying that the whole attack during the debate which had taken place had not been based on statistics of outrages, but that it had been a direct attack upon the Irish National Land League. The outrages had only been a side issue; the sole object of the attack had been the attack on the Land League; and, therefore, the Coercion Bill was bound to be ineffective unless it crushed the Land League. That was what they had to face. What Coercion Bill would do that? To attack the National Land League directly would not produce the remotest effect. They had tried that in the Emancipation Act with reference to the Catholic Association, which was suppressed by name, but which was immediately resuscitated under another name. What kind of coercion did they intend to introduce to be effective? Regulations for the taking away of arms, for the prevention of conspiracy, would not be effective in securing the dissolution of the League. They would have to go very much further than even the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland or any Member of the Government was prepared to go, if they wished their coercion to be effective from their own standpoint. They would have to go to this extent, if they did anything—to put an end to public meetings and to resort to martial law. Nothing short of that, in his opinion, would do anything beyond driving moderate men, who had not up to this identified themselves with the movement into becoming members of the Land League, as a protest against the policy of coercion. He wished to tell the House of a conversation he had with a Catholic Bishop within the last fortnight, when discussing, as everybody was then discussing, the possibility of coercion, and its probable effect. That rev. gentleman had never identified himself with the Land League—he was not one of those whom some Members of the Government had in their mind. He was quite an inoffensive Bishop, who had, up to that time, abstained from any connection with the Land League. He (Mr. Gray) asked the Bishop what would occur in the event of something like the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, or coercive legislation which might cause numbers of Irishmen to be arrested. The reply was—"What will happen, so far as I am concerned, is this—the day the first man is arrested under a Coercion Act, that day, or as soon after as I have an opportunity, I shall publicly advise my people to pay no more rents at all until that man is released." That conversation, he could assure the House on his honour, actually took place, and that Bishop meant what he said. What would they do with him? Arrest him? [ Cries of "Name!"] It was not customary to give names now; and he was only following the example of a very eminent authority in declining to do so. How would the Government fight the whole people if they identified themselves with this movement, as he believed they would, in consequence of the application of coercion? If the Government passed a Land Bill, not such a measure as an extreme section of the people would ask for, but a reasonable Bill, they would put an end to the formidable features of the agitation; but if they preceded the message of peace, as they were determined to do, with a Coercion Act, they would force men as a protest into the arms of the Land League. He (Mr. Gray) had all his interests bound up in Ireland, being concerned in its peace as well as its well-being; and he confessed that he looked forward with the greatest apprehension and the greatest fear to the results of their approaching legislation. With the feeling that had been shown by the Members of the House, no doubt the Government would succeed in passing any Bill which they desired; but it would be for the Irish people to calmly consider their proposals. He failed to comprehend the policy of the Government. If it were a Conservative policy he would understand it. He would say that they desired to exasperate the people so as to enable the Government to get out of any legislation on the Land Question at all. But this was a Government who had announced their determination to deal with the question. Members of that Government had, again and again, logically traced all the evils of the country to the land system, and had, again and again, shown that coercion had always failed; and the position of the Government was to him incomprehensible. There were a good many other things which he should have wished to say had time been permitted; but he did not feel hat he should be justified in trespassing much longer on the time of the House. But he should like to state that the Rev. Mr. Newell had written to him from Ennistymon with reference to the exaggerations which were so common in the London Press, and which had imbued the mind of England with the notion that Ireland was in a state of anarchy. That gentleman stated that the Special Correspondent of The Standard had written a letter to that paper maligning the people of the locality and himself. The rev. gentleman stated that that part of the country was most peaceable, and that no outrage on man or beast had occurred, and yet the people were represented as a lot of assassins; that the people were very indignant, and asked him to take steps to get the fallacy exposed. Now, this was a very common case. A good many allusions had been made in the course of the debate to Mr. Davitt; and an attack upon him was made one or two nights ago by the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill), which he (Mr. Gray) was bound to characterize as one of the most cowardly he had ever known. The Government had at last discovered that Mr. Davitt was a very able man, and they had indicated that they considered he was a very formidable man. Certainly, he was a very able man, and he would be a very formidable man after the Government had passed their Coercion Bill. It appeared that the Government considered that Mr. Davitt had certain revolutionary objects in view. He (Mr. Gray) was not in Mr. Davitt's secrets, and he knew nothing about that; but, no doubt, he had very extreme objects in view, which, however, as far as he (Mr. Gray) could see, he proposed to promote by Constitutional means. Therefore, he was perfectly justified in the course he was taking. The Tories thanked the Government for introducing a Coercion Bill. They were now the best friends of the Government, ready to stand by them in any and every emergency. What did Mr. Davitt, whom the Government thought to be their enemy, think of them? From his speeches it might be gathered what the effect would be on the mind of the extreme section in Ireland. At Tralee, last Sunday, Mr. Davitt said that when they looked at the action of the so-called Liberal Government—he (Mr. Gray) was sorry that that expression "so-called" was now spreading throughout Ireland—when they saw the so-called Constitutional rights of the people trampled on, the only conclusion they could come to was that Constitutional Government in Ireland was committing suicide; and, having come to that conclusion, he saw no reason why the Land League should do anything to take the razor out of the hand of the would-be suicide in order to cut its own throat. The Government had expressed their opinion as to the ability of Mr. Davitt. There was his estimate of what they were doing. For himself, he (Mr. Gray) would only say that, having the deepest possible sympathy with the great Liberal Party, and feeling the greatest possible pain in being conscientiously forced into a position of hostility towards it, he regretted most deeply the course they were now taking. He believed that if a Land Bill had been introduced, and that if the Chief Secretary for Ireland, or any leading Member of the Government, had, during the autumn, done what had been done on all previous occasions when the Government contemplated great Constitutional changes, and had declared beforehand their determination, they would have done a great deal to allay excitement in Ireland, and prevent agitation. The Government had themselves to thank, both for their conduct when in Opposition, and for their imperfect action when previously in Office. At the present moment it appeared that either they did not know their own mind, or, knowing it, they kept silence, for which there was no justification in the circumstances. He believed that if they introduced a Coercion Bill for Ireland, they would find that events would go too fast for them; and it would not then be in the power of the Land League to keep the country in check. All the talk about "armed rebellion" was pure, unmitigated nonsense. The introduction of large forces of military into the country was utterly unneces- sary; but he was convinced that serious outrages, and numerous outrages, would follow upon the passing of a Coercion Bill. He said, also, that he made this declaration as a conscientious belief, which he felt bound to express, that the outrages would not be confined to Ireland; and that the Government would have to face a condition of affairs in England which would tax their resources to the utmost. He sincerely trusted, from his heart, that he was mistaken. No man had less sympathy with outrages than he had; but, believing what he did, he should feel most culpable if he did not declare that belief. He regretted the absence of any definite announcement from Government as to the nature of the Land Bill. He believed that, if they wanted to settle the question thoroughly, they must not only give the Irish people the reality of protection from eviction, protection from increase of rent, and the right of free sale, but they must also give the appearance of it. He dreaded some attempt to cobble the Land Act of 1870, and to get round the difficulty without facing it. They must have the appearance of a new departure; they must have a measure that would strike the imaginations of the people; and he feared that the declaration of the Premier in 1870, when he spoke so forcibly against fixity of tenure, might actuate him, and lead him to give the reality of fixity of tenure without the name. If he did that, one-half of the good that the Act would do would be gone at the outset. If they did not pass a measure which would strike landlord and tenant alike as being a new departure in legislation, they would make a great mistake. He believed the Irish people would accept fixity of tenure at fair rents, some people as a permanent settlement of the question, and others as a step in the right direction; but this must be the name of it, and there must be no cobbling, as he had said, of the Act of 1870; otherwise, they would simply put a plaster on the sore and leave the wound unhealed.

said, he would have been content to have given a silent vote in favour of Her Majesty's Government had it not been for the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell). To him it was sufficiently painful to have to vote for granting these additional powers to Her Majesty's Government, especially after he had so often voted with the Irish Members last Session. The reason he intended to support the Government was this—that he was not, in doing so, voting for coercion; he was voting to give Her Majesty's Government additional powers to free the people in Ireland from the bondage of a power which now rivalled, and, unless some steps be taken, would soon endanger, the authority and existence of Parliament in Ireland. The policy of the Government was not one of coercion but of liberation; therefore, rightly or wrongly, he declined to follow any inquiry into the number of agrarian outrages; but if he thought those outrages were isolated acts arising from misconduct, or the manifestation of a rising against injustice, he should be slow to suspend the Constitution, or to vote for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. It appeared, however, that in Ireland neither the feebleness of sex and age, nor the sanctity of home, could avail to protect the people from the terrorism that was being exercised; and it was absolutely necessary to the maintenance of the honour of Great Britain that the power of the Land League, which was eating out the authority of Parliament, should be suppressed and put down. That organization was illegal in its conception; illegal in the methods it adopted; illegal in the objects at which it aimed; and the suppression of every land meeting in Ireland, he maintained, would not strike the slightest blow at the right of public meeting. A meeting, however large it might be, which was called for the purpose of informing Parliament of the nature of its duty, and to guide it in the performance of its duty, was perfectly legal; but a meeting held for the purpose of redressing grievances without the consent of Parliament, and effecting changes which it was within the competency of Parliament to effect, was an act of sedition, and trod closely upon a still more grave offence. A person was guilty of sedition who incited people to take other than legal courses to alter what the Government had in charge. These were not his views, but that of Erskine, an authority whom most hon. Members would respect; and Erskine further said that he who wished to avoid sedition must not incite individuals to withdraw from their subjection to the law. It was a remarkable fact that not a single Petition had been drawn up at any of these meetings for presentation to that House, which had only been referred to with contempt and derision. He desired hon. Members sitting on the Ministerial side of the House to bear in mind that unless this Land League were suppressed, and measures taken by the Government for that purpose, they never would be asked to consider a Land Bill for Ireland. The crime of the Land League was this—that they had, according to their own statements, in a large part of Ireland redressed the grievances of the tenants—["Hear, hear!"]—without the sanction of Parliament. He was surprised that a statement like that made by a Member in the British House of Commons should be cheered, for the statement meant that, without the consent of Parliament, an organization had been created that had passed laws, both civil and penal, as if it were an Assembly authorized by Parliament to change the laws of Ireland. It was boasted that the area of that organization was daily widening, and that soon what was the law of the League would be the law of the greater portion of Ireland. It would be a disgrace to any Government that allowed such an organization to continue. There were hundreds of persons who could no longer claim the law of Her Majesty's Courts, but were subject against their wills to a merciless and cruel power. Might he read the law of the Land League?—

"Whereas rents in Ireland are often unjust, be it enacted that it shall be lawful for any tenant who thinks his rent is unjust to appoint an arbitrator and to call upon his landlord to appoint another, which said arbitrators shall determine what is a fair rent to be paid. If the landlord shall fail to appoint such arbitrator, it shall be lawful for the tenant to offer to the landlord such a sum as the tenant considers he can be fairly called upon to pay and to ask for a clear receipt. If the landlord refuse to take such sum and to give such receipt, it shall be lawful for the tenant to withhold payment altogether until such time as the landlord offers to accept the same; but, until such offer on the part of the landlord, it shall be lawful for the tenant to remain in undisturbed possession of the land without paying any rent, all writs, processes, and decrees of Her Majesty's Courts notwithstanding."

I rise to Order. [ Cries of "Order!"]

Mr. SPEAKER motioned to MR. WILLIS to proceed.

I rise to Order, Sir.

Unless the hon. Member for Cavan rises to address the Chair upon a point of Order he is entirely out of Order.

I rise to a point of Order. The point of Order I wish to raise is this—I wish to ask the hon. and learned Gentleman—

The hon. Member is not entitled to interrupt the hon. and learned Member for Colchester.

continued. He must ask permission to tell the House when that law was proclaimed.

What law?

said, that what he had read was as much law in parts of Ireland as if it was on the Statute Book, and obeyed more completely than measures that Parliament passed. On the 12th of October, 1879, there was a meeting at Navan; 20,000 persons were present. There were flags and banners with these mottoes—"Tenant right against landlord might;" "Down with landlords;" "Reduce rents." The hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) said—

"The only course for the tenant farmers of Ireland is this—now that they are in possession of their farms to see that they remain in possession. Go to the landlord; if he disagrees with your estimate of what a fair rent should be, ask him to appoint one man, and say that you will appoint another, and they will settle it between them. If he refuses the arrangement, offer him what you consider you can fairly be called upon to pay, and ask him for a clear receipt. If he refuses to give you a clear receipt, put the money in your pocket and hold it till he comes to his senses."

That was received by the people, whom he (Mr. Willis) did not blame, with deafening cheers. The hon. Member for the City of Cork, on the same occasion, went on to say—

"If the tenants on each property join together and do this, the cause of the tenant farmers in Ireland is won. No landlord can prevail against you. Do not fear that they will be allowed to evict you and drive you from the country en masse, as they did in 1847, when they had the famine on their side and the starving people to deal with. They have a strong people to deal with to-day, who are fast becoming resolute and determined to act unitedly together in order to save themselves and keep themselves on the land."

At that part of the speech there were shouts of "Down with them!" and "Shoot them!" Then the hon. Member had, on other occasions, said—

"It is the duty of the Irish tenant farmers to combine among themselves and to ask for a reduction of rent; and if they get no reduction where reduction is necessary, then I say it is; he duty of the tenant to pay no rent until he gets it; and if they continue to act in that way, and if, being refused a just and reasonable reduction, they keep a firm grip of the homesteads, no power can prevail against hundreds and thousands of the tenant farmers of this country."

Now, that object was utterly illegal; and, after the delivery of that seditious speech, the hon. Member for the City of Cork might, under the powers properly exercisable by the Executive, have been arrested for the very utterance of those words. The hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) had delivered a speech to much the same effect, advising the tenants to make agreements among themselves as to what it would be fair to pay, or what they were able to pay, and that no man should go behind his neighbour and break away from that agreement; that they should offer the landlord that sum, and if he refused it they should pay nothing until he came to his senses. Was that law being obeyed? It was a serious thing for the Members of that House, from whatever part of the Kingdom they came, to find that such a law as he had read was being actually enforced upon unwilling persons. To show how it was being obeyed, let him read another extract. Within the last two months the hon. Member for Tipperary made another speech, in which he said—

"We have now in the South seen landlord after landlord come down and take the reduced rents which we advised the people to offer them, and thank them for them, and go home again civilly."

And the hon. Member boasted that the Land League had not only stopped the hand of the evictor, but that it had undone the evictor's work, and eviction decrees had been delayed through fear of the Land League and its followers. A stronger proof of the domination of the Land League could not be given. An hon. Gentleman had told the House that the action of the Land League had reduced the number of evictions. Now, he (Mr. Willis) confessed that he heard with regret that the evictions were few; not because he would not be the first to relieve those who were suffering, and were unjustly evicted, but because he was attached to Her Majesty's Courts and to Her Majesty's authority, and because he was unwilling to see them openly defied and set at naught. It was as if men by force of arms had taken possession of a large district in Ireland, and, by a cordon of fortified places, prevented the operation of the law within that district. He maintained that the Land League was an illegal organization; and his last words addressed to the Irish Members were that every measure of justice should be given to Ireland through the British Parliament, but nothing without it.

Mr. Speaker, I think that I ought to apologize to the House for addressing it at the present hour; but I do so in consequence of the inability to wind up the debate of my right hon. Friend at the head of the Government (Mr. Gladstone), who intended to take part in the debate towards its close. I am sure, however, that in the very few words I am about to say—and I shall speak as shortly as possible—I shall have the indulgence of the House. It appears to me that the time has now passed either for Party recriminations, or the bandying about of statistics, or the recital of doggrel, or for any of the other processes which have lengthened out this debate. I will simply ask the House to consider what is the exact question before it. The question is the adoption of an Address which re-echoes the words of Her Majesty's Gracious Speech, and which thanks Her Majesty for having placed before us certain information, with a view of telling us the measures which will be submitted to us for intrusting her with additional powers for the protection of life and property. The House proposes to inform Her Majesty that our careful consideration will be given to the subjects which Her Majesty has recommended to our attention. To these words the hon. Member for the City of Cork takes no exception whatever; but we are asked at the same time—in the same breath—to pass an Amendment, informing Her Majesty that we decline to entertain the very proposals to which we have promised our careful consideration. Sir, probably the hon. Member who proposes this Amendment, and his Friends, do not see the utter inconsistency of the course they propose to take. But I would ask the House—I would ask those who, sitting on these Benches, may hesitate whether they shall support the Amendment or not—this simple question. Are they prepared, by this Amendment, to preclude the Government from stating to Parliament what the present condition of Ireland is; what the evils of that condition are; and in what way we propose to meet those evils, because that is the simple purport of this Amendment? Can anyone doubt that the present state of Ireland, at any rate, demands that inquiry? We do not, by the Address to Her Majesty, conclude anything; but we do admit, in that Address, that the present state of Ireland demands inquiry; demands that Her Majesty's Ministry, who are responsible for advising Her Majesty as to proper legislation for Ireland in its present necessity, should be allowed to state their proposals, and then that the House should have an opportunity of considering the measures which we shall place before them. The hon. Member for Cork City certainly made a very ingenious speech, in which he endeavoured to show that there was nothing particularly wrong in the state of Ireland. It is quite enough for me to say only this, in reference to that part of his speech in which he said that evictions and outrages had advanced pari passu, that the whole of that statement, and the figures which the hon. Member gave, have been entirely disproved in the debate. There can be no question whatever—whatever arguments may have been used to show either that one species or another species of crime has advanced or diminished in equal or unequal proportions—that the present state of Ireland as to agrarian crime is of the most serious character, and one which demands the careful consideration of Parliament. The hon. Member for Cork City really went very far a field in alluding to a matter which related to myself. The hon. Member asked a question of my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant about the prosecution of certain gentlemen at Tralee, and he gave what he apparently considers a reason why these gentlemen should not be prosecuted—namely, that one or two of them had presented to me an address in the month of September, and must, therefore, have been quite blameless in these transactions. Now, Sir, what was the fact? In September last, when I was at Tralee, the tainted breath of the Land League had not passed over the county of Kerry. At that time, gentlemen connected both with the town of Tralee and with other parts of the county of Kerry came forward to present an address to me, as a Member of Her Majesty's Government, and, with expressions of goodwill towards that Government and myself personally, asked me to mate certain inquiries into their general and local wants. But who does not know that long before it was any question of coercive measures the action of the Land League had terrified moderate men to that extent that the friendliness exhibited towards me was no longer safe? It is absurd to make the goodwill exhibited in September any apology for the violence excited in December. On this subject I may now, perhaps, be allowed to allude to another matter somewhat personal to myself. The right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson)—I am not sure whether he is in his place now—a few weeks ago made a very violent attack upon me under these circumstances. He stated that while Lord Mountmorres was lying dead in his own house, and while the news of his murder was ringing in every capital in Europe, he having been murdered on the 25th of September, I, on the 28th of September, made a speech to these gentlemen at Tralee in which I took no notice whatever of that murder, and made no attempt to reprobate it. I am sure, Sir, that I shall have the indulgence of the House if I say one word in reply to a charge of so odious a character. Lord Mountmorres was murdered on the night of Saturday, the 25th of September. I spoke at Tralee early on the morning of Monday, the 27th of September. The first news of the murder of Lord Mountmorres was contained in a very few lines in the papers of that morning—Monday morning. When I left the house where I was staying to meet the Tralee deputation I had not heard a word of the murder, though a rumour of it reached me a few minutes before I spoke. [Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL: What about Killarney in the afternoon?] At Killarney, on my way back, some gentlemen met me; but we had not received the Dublin papers, and I should have been most unwise to speak of it as an agrarian outrage on, virtually, no information. Perhaps, Sir, I may now refer to a matter on which the hon. Mem- ber for Queen's County (Mr. Arthur O'Connor) laid much stress in the speech which he has delivered this evening. The hon. Member for Queen's County, trying to minimize the character of the present agitation, said it could not be very serious, because there had been no difficulty in recruiting soldiers in Ireland.

May I be allowed to explain. What I said was, that the present movement in Ireland did not partake in any way of veiled rebellion or sedition.

Just so; he thought the action of the Irish soldiers justified him in minimizing the character of the movement. All that I have to say in reply to the hon. Member is, that there never has been a time, whatever might have been the state of Ireland, in which the Irish soldiery have not been loyal to this country; and no stress, therefore, ought to be laid upon the fact that Irish soldiers now are as loyal as Irish soldiers were as an argument to prove the innocency of the policy of the Land League. There is one point of view to which I do not think any hon. Member has addressed himself in connection with this large question. We have heard a great deal from some hon. Gentlemen as to the way in which the operations of the Land League are viewed in Ireland, and we have heard much as to their appreciation in other parts of the United Kingdom. Is it fair to ask how they are viewed in other parts of the world? I happen to have a very large correspondence with gentlemen in several other liberally-governed countries—in France and the United States, for instance—among those who belong almost exclusively to the Liberal Party. I say, and this will be confirmed by those who read French, or American, or German papers, except the Fenian Press of America, or the Communist Press of Paris, that there is a unanimous expression of opinion that the present state of things in Ireland does require further provision for the protection of life and property; and I am bound to admit that, in many cases, there is an expression of surprise that legislative action has not been taken. Sir, I will read only one extract from one of the most able publications in France—a publication in which very moderate opinions are expressed, but which, I believe, expresses correctly the sentiments of the French people on this subject. In the Revue des Deux Mondes for the current month there is this passage—

"The Land League has acquired in a few mouths a power such as nothing can resist. Everywhere its orders are obeyed. It surrounds its whole population with, a network of revolt and insurrection. Security of person, right of property, business transactions, all are in a state of suspense. What is to be done in such a state of things?"

An hon. MEMBER: Who is the author?

M. de Mazade. Now, I believe that these words, or words like them, do represent the general opinion, not of countries autocratically governed, but of the Liberal countries of Europe, and of the United States of America; and if, with the knowlege that that is the general opinion of the world, we absolutely refuse, as the Amendment of the hon. Member for the City of Cork would lead us to refuse, to entertain the question and to ask Parliament to take action, after the evils which afflict Ireland shall have been put before the House by my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, the civilized world will agree that we have not done our duty. For my own part, I can only say—and I am sure that I am speaking also for my Colleagues and many Members of the Liberal Party—that there is no pleasure whatever in being connected, either directly or indirectly, with exceptional legislation for Ireland. The House will forgive me if I allude for a moment to my own opinions. For some years past I have taken, as many hon. Members may know, no little interest in the affairs of Ireland; and I only say that I wish to God I had had the opportunity and means of taking a more lively interest in that country earlier. The fact has already been alluded to that during last autumn I went for some little while to study for myself the state of Ireland. I visited the most distressed parts of Ireland, and I did what I could to obtain information for myself; and this I will say—and I say it from the bottom of my heart—that I only wish, when I first entered the House, that I had devoted more time to the study of the affairs of Ireland, and to an endeavour to do what I could to assist in placing them in a more satisfactory condition than that in which I find them. There is no nobler ambition for any English public man than that of devot- ing himself to this great and important question. We do a great deal in this House to endeavour to make happy England more happy. But I would that I could have done more than I have to endeavour to make unhappy Ireland less unhappy. I have seen myself in the West of Ireland such a state of things as, to my mind, renders it impossible for any man of feeling not to use his best endeavours to raise the condition of the Irish people, to set right their grievances, and especially to place the tenure of land upon a more satisfactory footing. There are few hon. Members in this House who have not studied some time or other in their lives the burning letters of Swift, written now 150 years ago, in which he describes the condition of Ireland, the ignorance and misery which prevailed in his day, the almost barbarism which existed in certain parts of the country. While Ireland has, no doubt, made great advances since then, England has made far greater; and the Irish Question is relatively, therefore, weightier and more urgent. Sir, I consider that it is a great libel on the Irish people to say that they are turbulent, inferior, ungenerous, or illiberal—a people whom it is impossible to govern or to improve. I do not believe in that doctrine. On the contrary, I believe most fully that the people of Ireland are a generous people—a simple people—[ Laughter from the Home Rule Members ]—Yes; I repeat, a simple people; and although they may be easily led away, in certain circumstances, by agitators, yet if they are met in a proper spirit, and if the Government, on the one hand, takes care to repress what is injurious to them, and gives them good laws, they are as capable of rising in the scale of civilization as any race in the world. For these reasons, I hold it to be the duty—and I hope the House will feel that it is the duty—of Parliament to do its utmost to reform the laws of Ireland, and to give her good government; and this Her Majesty's Advisers have told Parliament, in the Gracious Speech from the Throne, that they are prepared to do. But, at the same time, I hope that in taking that course, and in doing our duty to Ireland, we shall do our best not to tolerate revolution, and not to allow Ireland to be swayed by a self-imposed and self-asserting tyranny.

said, he felt he should only express the sentiments of his Colleagues by returning to the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down his heartfelt thanks for the statement of his conviction that, with care and attention, the Irish people might, in course of time, cease to be savages.

Allow me to state that I said exactly the reverse. I said the Irish people were not savages.

was not disposed to take hold of any slip of the tongue on the part of the right hon. Gentleman. The embarrassments of a Liberal Government engaged in a policy of coercion must be very disturbing to the best regulated mind. The right hon. Gentleman, however, had made statements of more importance. Amongst the rest, he informed the House that the general opinion of the civilized world was on the side of the view taken by Her Majesty's Government as to the condition of Ireland. He observed that he quoted some anonymous passages out of that nondescript periodical the Revue des Deux Mondes, perhaps written by a citizen who owed something to Her Majesty's Government for a reception in this country which he might not have received elsewhere. But the right hon. Gentleman took very good care not to quote the emphatic condemnation passed on the conduct of the Government by the great Parliament of the Republic of the United States. But he and his Colleagues could appeal from the anonymous scribblers of the Gambettist Press to the opinion of their kinsmen and allies beyond the Atlantic. He thought there was little in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman that required a particular answer on the part of the Irish Members, the nearest approach to an argument advanced by him being that the passing of the Amendment of the hon. Member for the City of Cork would prevent Her Majesty's Government dealing with the case of Ireland. But he (Mr. O'Donnell) understood that the passing of that Amendment would only declare that the opinion of the House that coercion previous to the introduction of remedial measures was not the way to improve the condition of the Irish people. However, it had been justly pointed out that hon. Members from Ireland would have a great many opportunities of examining at length into the conduct of Her Majesty's Government; and he had no doubt that many such opportunities would present themselves, although it was well, at that stage, to remark that there were already some things upon which opinion could be at once passed. In the first place, he did not think it unwise to ask the House to remember what was the nature of the evidence on which it had been asked to approve a policy of coercion towards Ireland. This evidence, he thought, could be fairly summed up by saying that the information had been contributed by the London edition of The Dublin Orange Express, while the other portion of the evidence pressed on the Liberal Party was that supplied by the personal experience and knowledge acquired by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant. Before proceeding further, he was only doing his duty in congratulating that right hon. Gentleman on what all sound Constitutionalists must consider the happy change which had come over him during the last two months. He had still ringing in his ears the burning declaration of the right hon. Gentleman against Irish landlords, and his appeal from the House of Lords, who rejected the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. He doubted not that he felt himself to deserve the applause which had greeted him during the last few days, even though his conduct might deepen still further the feelings that existed against the institutions of the country, and excite still more an unhappy people against the laws. What was the information at the disposal of the Chief Secretary, and the opportunities which he possessed for arriving at a knowledge of Irish affairs? Was it not clear, to use an expression now become familiar, that there had been no more complete instance of the Boycotting system than that to which the right hon. Gentleman had been exposed? From the moment of his arrival in Ireland to the present day he had been as purely thrown upon the resources of Dublin Castle as Captain Boycott himself—in his beleaguered farm. He did not particularly blame the right hon. Gentleman for ignorance of Irish affairs, for in that respect he was no more ignorant than the average of Irish rulers; the only difference between the right hon. Gentleman and others being that he seemed to be utterly unaware of the smallness of his information upon Irish, subjects, while his Predecessor never made the slightest affectation of having any acquaintance with them. However, it was notorious that the ignorance of the right hon. Gentleman had been the common jest in all circles in Dublin for weeks and months past. Nor had this ignorance of Irish affairs been jested Upon by any class of persons more than by the Conservative Party, which calmly enjoyed the predicament in which the right hon. Gentleman was placed. Without any disrespect to the right hon. Gentleman, he trusted he might repeat a story which illustrated the peculiarities of his position. A Member of the Conservative Party, speaking to another official in Dublin, asked what was thought of the new Chief Secretary, and the answer was one of high approbation of the qualities which he was already showing. It was remarked that this was strange, considering the liberal professions of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford; but the reply was—

"At the great agricultural exhibition, held last year or the year before in London, there was an old woman from Rouen, with a machine for getting chickens ready for market; she just put the bird into the machine; there was a metal tube inserted into the bill, and the primary process of maturing was begun by turning a handle."

The Conservatives at the Castle were turning the handle all day, in the case of the right hon. Gentleman, who had been utterly helpless in the hands of the men who surrounded him in Dublin. He had been in contact only with the permanent staff of Toryism in Ireland. The Liberal Party should take into consideration the fact that there was no Liberal permanent staff in Ireland; the staff at the Castle was Tory and reactionary from the highest to the lowest, and English Members going to Ireland had no other source of information with regard to Irish affairs. He would go so far as to think that the good intentions of the right hon. Gentleman might, under the circumstances of the situation, have called for kindlier treatment on his first experience of Office in Ireland; indeed, he thought it a misfortune to both Parties that the sharp differences between, him and the bulk of the Irish Party unhappily took place at such an early stage. He was of opinion that the right hon. Gentleman was disposed to hear both sides of the question, though he must qualify the statement by saying that he brought to the task views as to Irish nature and characteristics which would have repelled those whom he consulted. But, as a matter of fact, the Irish Party cut him, and "Boycotted" him, and from that time he had been thrown entirely upon the resources of Toryism. Hon. Members might respect the Chief Secretary in his private and public character as much as they pleased; but they could not shut their eyes to the fact that it was almost impossible to conceive a situation in which a man could receive less information with regard to popular impulses or rights and wrongsin Ireland than an Englishman condemned to take it from the inspirations of the Tory staff. He would now draw attention to the statement which had been pressed very often and very offensively on the Irish Party in the course of the debate—the alleged superiority of England in the matter of crime and its detection as compared with Ireland. He found, for instance, that the Solicitor General for Ireland, when an interruption from the Irish Bench reminded him of the paucity of outrages in Ireland as compared with. England, replied that "in England murder was detected." The return of the number of coroner's inquests held in England and Wales during 1879, which he presumed to be a normal year, and one in which the passions of the people were not unusually excited, showed that verdicts of murder were returned in 153 cases, 78 of which were against females, the remaining 75 being against men. During the same year only 13 men were executed, from which it appeared that there was an enormous discrepancy between the crimes and the number of punishments inflicted. But that was not the only conclusion to be drawn from this formal return of verdicts of coroners' juries in England and Wales for a normal English and Welsh year. During the same period 272 persons died from injuries of which the causes were described as unknown; and he asked the House what would be the comment passed by the united Press of England and Wales if some scores and hundreds of coroners' juries in Ireland could be quoted as returning a proportionate number of verdicts for deaths by injuries, "causes unknown?" What a bloody picture would, under those circumstances, be displayed by the fervent imagination of Ministers, of the condition of affairs in Ireland! He had intended to refer to the speech of the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for India, to which he had listened. He had the pleasure of reading the unanimous approval passed on the justice of its views and the closeness of its reasonings by all the morning papers; and he certainly, for his own part, came to the conclusion that there was no immediate fear of the measure suggested last year by the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, when in an improper temper with the aristocratic institutions of the country, when he was witness of the present respect expressed by all Radicals for the utterances of the noble Lord. But the most remarkable statement of that speech was, that it had not been proved that the existing state of things was in any way connected with the state of distress or the action of landlords in Ireland, a statement which he thought fairly gave the measure of the noble Lord's Irish legislative capacity. Nevertheless, the noble Lord admitted that within the first three months of last year, while the full force of famine and distress was still upon the country, the Irish landlords had evicted 554 families, representing 3,000 persons, and that these evictions had been thoroughly carried out in 235 cases. But it was quite unnecessary to deal further with the noble Lord's speech, or with the accusations of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, after the reply which had been provoked from his hon. Friend the Member for the County of Sligo (Mr. Sexton). They were asked to give their support to a policy of coercion before the application of remedial measures to the Irish tenant. He wished the House to consider this fact. Was it not true that at that moment there were thousands and thousands of Irish tenants, the vast majority of whom, although some, perhaps, were culpable, were entirely and necessarily unable to pay the existing rents? It was admitted by the foremost men of the Liberal Party that Ireland was overrated at the present moment; but there were not only the ordinary overrates, they had also arrears from past years of eviction and distress. There was also this fact before them—that the landlords of Ireland were frenzied with the fear of change; that those landlords had reason to believe, if any credence were to be placed in the professions of the Liberal Party, that this was their last chance of eviction, and of clearing the soil of Ireland of what they pleased to call the superfluous tenantry. Was it not certain that numbers of the landlord class—a class which was not only socially opposed to the interests, but politically opposed to the Irish people, and the direst enemy of the Liberal Party—would take advantage of the opportunity for the suppression of combination among the tenants, in order to carry out those evictions by hundreds of thousands, which they might never be able to carry out again. Whether they were Irish or English, Liberal or Conservative, the fact that landlords were approaching their last chance must be regarded as self-evident, for if the promises of the Liberal Party were carried out, they would never more have the opportunity of evicting the Irish farmers. Knowing, as they did, that those landlords succeeded in rendering the Land Act of 1870 worse than a nullity, that they showed no consideration for the tenants, but took care of their own interests only, there could be no doubt that they would consider that they were making the best terms with the tenants by getting rid of as many as possible from the face of the land. Suppose that they succeeded in putting down the trades unionism of Irish farmers, why should not an attempt be made to put down the trades unionism of 40,000 English miners who were at that moment exerting themselves in opposition to the capitalists in the North. If Government broke down the lawful combinations of the Irish tenantry, it would leave them at the mercy of landlords and agents during the next few months; and for how many more months would not the Second Party and the Fourth Party keep the Government at their work? The destruction of that combination would be a provocation, uttered in the very extremity of servile stupidity, to civil war and insurrection. The summons was now being given to the Irish tenantry to abandon the paths of open agitation by Constitutional means, such as trades unionism, and to take refuge in the last desperate resort of hunted and miserable men. The Land League was said to be guilty of and responsible for the outrages which had been committed, although from every platform outrage had been condemned and deprecated. He was opposed to many members of the Land League; but, notwithstanding, he was assured that they were right in making the stand they had made on that occasion. He himself had not been laid under the slightest risk by reason of his action with regard to the League. There was no man more independent than he was. He had nothing to gain by remaining in that Parliament. Even if he were to give up the advocacy of the Transvaal Republic ten times over he should never obtain a place on the Treasury Bench. It was impossible that the Land Leaguers could have any object in violating the laws. The views of that League had been always against every kind of outrage, for the simple reasons of practical politics as well as those of morality and justice. It would be stupid in the highest degree for the Irish tenantry to rush into lawlessness and crime when they had nothing to do but to refuse to take the farm, rendered vacant by unjust eviction, in order to bring the richest landlord in due time to the feet of the people. If, notwithstanding, some Members of the Government persisted in throwing on the Land League the blame for the outrages that League had condemned, what blame and responsibility was not to be thrown on the Government itself? If in reply to what had been urged by them, a prohibition were issued against a lawful combination, and permission were given to the landlord class, who were hungry after arrears and desperate at the prospect of reform, to evict by hundreds of thousands, what an amount of moral and legal responsibility would not be justly due to the Government that left the Irish tenantry no resource but that fearful one which he recoiled from naming. If a single Land League orator had approved, in the slightest degree, of any murder that had been committed in Ireland in consequence of the teachings of the Land League it would have been different; but, as matters stood, the hand of the Government which forbade lawful combination and invited to wholesale eviction would be redder than the hand of Lady Macbeth. He begged to remind hon. Members opposite that on the present occasion he stood in a some- what more advantageous position than a good many of his hon. Colleagues of the Irish Party. He never professed any exaggerated belief in the enlightened declarations of the Liberal Party when in Opposition. He remembered with satisfaction on that occasion that he made appeals to the present Leader of the Government and his Colleagues on behalf of the Bulgarians and half-a-dozen other nationalities a great deal further away from London than any part of Ireland. Who did not believe in official Liberalism? He observed with the most intense satisfaction that a great number of the Liberal Party had come down that night to support a policy of coercion for Ireland. Heaven speed every vote which would strike home another nail in the coffin of Liberal hypocrisy. Let England and Scotland, the sisters of Ireland, such sisters as Goneril and Regan were to Cordelia, enjoy the riches and honour of Liberalism from the hour in which the Government pledged themselves to give priority over remedial measures to measures of coercion for Ireland, after the right hon. Gentleman who headed the Government had refused to listen to that plea on behalf of Turkey—namely, that they would first put down the Bulgarian insurrection, and then introduce Bulgarian reforms. From that hour he would say the Liberal Government would have completed and consummated the blackest act of apostacy from its own professions that was ever perpretated by any Liberal Party, and Irish Liberalism and Whiggery would be dead and damned politically for ever.

said, he merely rose to say that the burning of buildings near Blackburn, in Lancashire, referred to by the hon. Gentleman the late Lord Mayor of Dublin (Mr. Gray) was not due to trades unionism in any way. It was rather the result of a want of combination and discipline among an undisciplined mob. He was sure that the hon. Gentleman himself would thank him (Mr. Broadhurst) for correcting him, and that he would be glad not to be the medium of casting a slur upon a body of trades unionists in Lancashire who were amongst the most honourable and law-abiding of Her Majesty's subjects.

denied having stated that trades unionism was responsible for the outrage referred to by the hon. Member. It was no more responsible than the Land League was responsible for the murders that had been committed in Ireland.

Question put.

The House divided: —Ayes 57; Noes 435: Majority 378.

Original Question again proposed,

"That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, to thank Her Majesty for the Most Gracious Speech which Her Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament."

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

Debate adjourned till Monday next.

moved for a Return of Agrarian Offences specially reported by the Royal Irish Constabulary as having been committed in Ireland during the week up to the 7th day of January instant. He said it was not necessary for him to use many words in order to show the desirability of the Return being granted at the earliest possible moment. The proposals of the Government in favour of coercion were based, in a large degree, on the alleged increase of crime.

The Motion being opposed, the hon. Member is not in Order.

Then I will renew the Motion on Monday.

moved for leave to bring in a "Bill to revise the constitution of Endowed Schools and Hospitals in Scotland." He stated that the Bill was drawn on substantially the same lines as the Bill of last year.

I object, Mr. Speaker.

I understand that Notice was given yesterday.

Notice has been on the Paper for a week.

Notice having been on the Paper for a week, the hon. Member (Mr. Healy) is not in Order in objecting to the Motion.

I am quite sure the hon. Member would not wish to obstruct the introduction of a Scotch Bill.

I do object.

I was about to say that we have made a few Amendments to the Bill of last year. The object is first to facilitate the machinery of the Bill, and, in the next place, to make quite clear the intentions of the Government on some points which were misapprehended. No change has been made as to the class to be benefited by the Bill, or as to the localities which are already benefited by the endowments, It is not intended to delocalize the endowments. It is also proposed to extend secondary education, for which there are further provisions; and it is proposed to enlarge the number of the Commissioners, in order to give a more representative character to the Commission; and, further, that municipal representation, which has hitherto largely prevailed in certain Scotch endowments, shall be adequately maintained. I hope the Bill in its present state will commend itself to the general satisfaction of the House, and to the favour of Scotch Members. It will link the elementary and endowed schools with the Universities, and practically provide that secondary education which is so much required.

agreed that the Bill would form a link between the elementary schools and the Universities; but he would have been glad if the right hon. Gentleman had been more explicit as to the future Governing Bodies of the various charities. Objection was taken to the Bill of last year, on the question of their constitution; and he hoped the Government would propose to appoint to the Governing Bodies members either of municipal bodies or of educational boards in Scotland. This would be the surest guarantee the people of Scotland could have; and if the Bill were of that character it should have his cordial support. Under the last Bill there was reason to apprehend that these educational endowments would be placed in the hands of bodies who did not represent the feelings of the people of Scotland on education, and that there would be a tendency to perpetuate that kind of education which was now given in the Universities, but which was not in accordance with the wants and wishes of the public in Scotland. If this Bill was really to be a popular measure, the Government might rely upon his support, and also, he believed, on the support of the other Scotch Members and of the people of Scotland.

Motion agreed to.

Bill to revise the constitution of Endowed Schools and Hospitals in Scotland, ordered to be brought in by Mr. MUNDELLA, Mr. GRANT DUFF, and Mr. SOLICITOR GENERAL for Scotland.

Bill presented, and read the first time. [BILL 61.]

said, he did not know what the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland proposed to do in reference to a Return he desired to move for respecting outrages in Ireland other than agrarian; but he did not propose to move for it that night unless the right hon. Gentleman was prepared to give it. He was anxious that the Government should have time to consider, the point; but he had looked into the matter since the conversation he had had with the right hon. Gentleman yesterday, and he had come to the conclusion that the Returns could be prepared in the Office, and that there would be no necessity to refer to the local constabulary. He believed the Return could be prepared by the Irish Executive; and he did not want to do anything which would render recourse to the constabulary necessary. He merely wished for as much information as could be compiled by clerks in the Office from Returns already given, or from information in possession of the central constabulary authorities in Dublin.

Motion made, and Question proposed,

"That there be laid before this House, a Return in continuation of Return [C. 2756], classifying the Outrages other than Agrarian Outrages enumerated in said Return, in the same way as Agrarian Outrages are classified in said Return."—( Mr. Parnell. )

It is not very easy to give the hon. Member these particulars.

I merely move for the Return as a matter of form, and will not press the Motion.

I do not think it will be very easy to give a Return in these terms exactly. The hon. Member, from Returns already given, can see that for the convenience of the House I made a division of the different kinds of outrages. I wished also to distinguish between threatening letters and other outrages; but such a distinction of crime generally would be unmeaning. The whole number of outrages since 1844 in Ireland is given, and I do not see how I can meet the wish of the hon. Member. I have no desire to avoid giving information, and I shall be very glad to do so so far as the constabulary can give it. They are very much, overworked at present, and I do not see how I can give this Return; because, as the hon. Member is quite aware, distinctions are made about the agrarian outrages which do not exist in the case of other outrages.

Can you give a Return classifying the other outrages?

If the hon. Member will tell me what classification he wants, I will look into the matter; and, if I can do so, I shall be very glad to give the information.

said, he might give the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland fair warning that he and several other Members were extremely dissatisfied with his Return; and, as the case of the Government was founded on this Return, they meant to sift the matter to the bottom. He did not charge the right hon. Gentleman with desiring to keep any information back; but they would be in a better position to see whether that charge could be made against him when they saw what reply he gave to a question to be put to him next week. But he might give the right hon. Gentleman fair warning that the sooner he made up his mind to give the most detailed information possible—or such as might fairly be demanded, respecting every one of the cases included in the Return—the better. In looking up this question of crime in Ireland some months ago, he came across a Return in the British Museum far more exhaustive than any he had yet seen. He had not been able to find that Return in the Library of the House; but in it—its date, he thought, was 1844 or 1845—there were full details of at least all the homicides, and, if he was not mistaken, all the murders. Now, it was perfectly plain that the case of the Government depended, not merely on so many crimes having been committed, but on these having been of an agrarian character. But whether they were of an agrarian character or not, the House could not decide until they had all the information before them. He found under the head of "Murder," eight agrarian murders—that was the complete number given for the entire year. Now, he should be ready to argue that a certain proportion if not all of the murders were dis- tinctly treated as agrarian murders; and he would beg the right hon. Gentleman—[ Interruption ]—he was only endeavouring to draw his attention to the points which he should have to raise—to consider that the word "agrarian" was an exceedingly ambiguous word; and one of the points he should direct attention to was the exact meaning of the adjective "agrarian." The point raised by several writers on agrarian outrages was how far crime which was committed in a country, and by persons dwelling in that country, was to be regarded as crime connected with the tenure of land and with the agricultural labouring population. It was plain that crime committed by agricultural labourers or in consequence of the relations of labour in the country, was not the same class of agrarian crime as that consequent on the relations between landlord and tenant. That was a more important distinction than might appear at first sight. His attention was called to it by an eminent Irish statistician, who had written several essays on the subject; and he wished to give the right hon. Gentleman fair warning that what he and his hon. Friends would demand would be, that every one of these 5,609 crimes should be given in detail, so that they might be able to discuss this question. He had already intimated his intention to demand particulars with regard to the several heads of crime. For instance, when he found in the Report, "Firing at persons," he should require to know—he meant, he should request the right hon. Gentleman to inform him—who were the persons fired at, where it took place, and what was the evidence upon which the statement was made that firing took place at all—[ Laughter ]—because, in support of this demand that would be advanced by his hon. Friends and himself, he would point out to the right hon. Gentleman whose hilarity was so excited that this whole case of crime depended on the hearsay evidence of police-constables.

wished to know whether the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) was in Order in referring to matters which had no bearing, as far as he could see, on the Question before the House?

I must say I think the observations of the hon. Member have some bearing on the Question.

, continuing, said, he was speaking, as the right hon. Gentleman in the Chair had decided, in reference to the demand for Returns in regard to agrarian crimes. He was speaking with regard to the question of outrages in Ireland He was endeavouring to raise a distinction between agrarian and other crimes, and he begged to be allowed to proceed. The importance of the inquiries, he suggested, was this. In the first place, these were not cases of outrages committed, but of outrages reported to have been committed; and the question whether they were committed or not was comparatively open—it was a question not yet decided. At present these reports were not proved; they were only proof of crimes having been reported by policemen. Therefore, the whole case of these Returns was a case of hearsay evidence by the police; and it would be absolutely essential to a fair discussion of the Returns by the House that they should have an opportunity of examining the statements made by the police, in order to judge how far the evidence placed before that body was trustworthy, and how far it was untrustworthy. Secondly, the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) demanded not only that a distinction should be drawn between ordinary and agrarian crime, but that the circumstances of each one of the 5,609 reported crimes should be laid before the House. He did not mean to say that the Irish Members would require an exhaustive history of each of these cases. They had no desire to be unreasonable in their demands; but they certainly would demand such an account as would explain the character of the crimes that had been reported.

The hon. Member is now speaking to a subsequent Return, proposed to be moved for by the hon. Member for the City of Cork, and, in doing so, he is out of Order.

was sorry if he had travelled beyond the Return now before the House. He had not intended to infringe the Rules of the House, and he should speak upon these matters when the next Return was moved. His only reason for going beyond the present Return was that he might save the necessity of prolonging the discussion which it might be necessary to raise on Monday next. He bowed to the ruling of the Chair, and would only say this, finally, that a demand for particulars with regard to these outrages was justified by the fact not merely of the hearsay character of the evidence, but by this additional fact—that it was upon such hearsay evidence that the Government were now asking the House of Commons to suspend the liberties of the Irish people. Such a vital proposition ought not, he thought, to be adopted until they had the most complete evidence before them of the facts upon which it was based. His own opinion was that the commonest thief would not be put upon his trial, or, if he was, he would certainly never be convicted, upon such miserable evidence as these alleged outrages.

intimated that he would withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

, who had a Motion on the Paper for a

"Return in continuation of Return No. 3, showing the number of Offences other than Agrarian reported to the Inspector General of the Royal Irish Constabulary, between the 1st day of January 1880 and the 30th day of November 1880, and summarised by provinces and counties, as in Return No. 3,"

said, he did not think it would be necessary to move for the Return, as he understood the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland to say that he intended to place it on the Table.

Yes.

Will the Return be given in counties?

Yes; I intend that there shall be a Return for the several counties.

moved—

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

In moving for this Return, he wished to repeat what he had already stated on a previous occasion, that he quite agreed with the hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Dawson) that it was desirable to have accurate Returns of the population of the various boroughs. The difficulty of obtaining an accurate Return of these populations at the present time was that there had been no Census Return for 10 years, and there would be none until June next. What he wished to promise now in reference to that matter was that as soon as the Census Returns were complete, a Return, similar to one previously moved for by the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands) should be given, showing the population as well as the number of electors on the register. With that explanation, he begged to make the Motion he had placed on the Paper.

Motion made, and Question proposed,

"That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty for Return showing, with respect to each Parliamentary Constituency in the United Kingdom, the total number of Electors on the Register now in force."—( Sir Charles W. Dilke. )

wished to make a suggestion to his hon. Friend the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs—namely, that in the different boroughs in England the Return should specify the freemen, as distinct from the ordinary voter. He could never understand why; but it was the fact that the freemen were also placed upon the register, and their names returned twice over. The consequence of this practice was that the Return of the total number of electors, especially in boroughs, was very misleading. If his hon. Friend would include in the Return a statement of the duplicates, it would be of great assistance, not only to the Government, but to every Member of the House. He merely threw this out as a suggestion to his hon. Friend, who might add something to his Motion.

said, there would be some difficulty in dealing with these duplicate Returns. In one year they were described, and it was afterwards found out that the Return was inaccurate.

Question put, and agreed to.