said, it was not his intention to detain the House for any very great length of time upon this occasion. He had not, up to the present, interfered in these debates; but the time had come when it was the duty of every Irish Representative to raise his voice against the system of tyranny and coercion which the Government now sought to establish in Ireland. He must acknowledge that he was in no way disappointed with the course the Government proposed to take, for they were about to do exactly what he expected they would. Indeed, he should have been greatly surprised if they had decided to do anything else. His hon. Friend the Member for the County of Cork (Mr. Shaw) had, during the Recess, more than once told his countrymen to expect full and ample justice from Her Majesty's Government; and in doing so he had raised false hopes, for he must now plainly see that a giant measure of coercion came first on the Ministerial programme, and then a pigmy measure of Land Reform. If the Government had really good and sound proposals to make upon this question they would not hesitate to let them know their intentions, if they had any intentions at all. He admitted the difficulties with which the Government had to contend, and he always feared that Whig influences would be too strong in the present Cabinet, and once they got their way this miserable agrarian dispute would be left unsettled, and would continue to perpetuate discord and disunion in their unfortunate country. This vital question could never be settled by compromising statesmen and namby-pamby legislators; and he thought they would find that when their Bill was brought forward it would be weak in its conception and worthless in its operation. He had no desire to underrate the grave position of affairs in Ireland; but he maintained that the state of affairs was brought about by the cupidity of the English Government, and by its refusal to listen to the representations too often made by the Representatives of Ireland in the House. The Chief Secretary for Ireland had made statements, which it was impossible to pass unnoticed, that he intended to strike terror into the people of Ireland. He (Mr. Power) was afraid the right hon. Gentleman had hardly sufficiently weighed the importance of those words. Was that "the message of peace" which the right hon. Gentleman was sending over to Ireland? But the Chief Secretary for Ireland had gone even further, and used language most likely to provoke in Ireland a spirit of resistance. He had called the people of Ireland a nation of perjurers and dissolute blackguards. ["No!"] At all events, the right hon. Gentleman, when charged last night with using such language, did not deny it. The Times reported the right hon. Gentleman as saying that "the most powerful man in a particular district" was frequently "a contemptible, dissolute ruffian and blackguard." [Mr. MITCHELL HENRY: Hear, hear!] The hon. Member for Galway said "Hear, hear!" He would ask that hon. Member who was the most influential man in particular districts in Ireland? It was the parish priest. The hon. Member could go to any district in Ireland and assure himself of the fact.

reminded the hon. Member that he ought to address himself to the Chair.

, continuing, said, the Prime Minister had with frankness acknowledged that, in bringing forward his proposals for coercion, he felt himself in a most humiliating position and he (Mr. Power) could well believe that the right hon. Gentleman was sincere in the avowal. It was a humiliating fact for English statesmen that after 700 years of a so-called Union with their country they found themselves unable to govern the country by the ordinary laws, and without suspending the rights and privileges of their much boasted British Constitution. The evil spirit created in their country by former laws was rising up against them to-day; and they would find that their miserable Coercion Bill would utterly fail to remedy the present state of affairs in Ireland. The late Government boasted of their spirited foreign policy, and they could soon boast of a spirited home policy. What were they going to do when they carried their Coercion Bill? The whole Irish people were connected with this movement. They could not incarcerate a whole nation. Hon. Members seemed surprised that so grave a state of affairs should have arisen in Ireland; but his only surprise was that the people in the country had endured their miserable condition so long. When the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) said that until the Land League was founded the best relations existed between landlord and tenant, he (Mr. Power) thought he must have forgotten the history of his own country. Did he not know that in 1849 50,000 persons were driven from their homes, houseless and penniless upon the world, and that the Crowbar Brigade levelled to the ground 27,000 houses that once gave shelter to an honest and industrious peasantry? The right hon. and learned Gentleman might have forgotten these facts; but the recollection of that evil deed had sunk deep into the hearts of the Irish people, and when last year they saw famine and distress at their very doors, it was no wonder that they organized in order to prevent a recurrence of such frightful scenes. But the saddest feature in the history of their country was the lesson they themselves had taught to the people of Ireland. They had taught them no longer to supplicate, but to demand. They had granted little to their supplications, but they had given much to their demands; and whenever the Irish people required any great reform in their country they were obliged to bring her almost to the brink of revolution. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said he was horrified with the state of affairs at present existing in Ireland; but he begged to draw the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the fact that it was one of these outrages that first directed his attention to Irish affairs. Speaking in 1849 the right hon. Gentleman remarked—

"There is a war between landlord and tenant—a war as fierce as those carried on by force of arms."

Such was the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman in 1849, and the very same state of things existed in 1881. When the right hon. Gentleman spoke in pathetic terms of his conversation with Mr. Martin, he could not help thinking of a conversation which he himself held with that honest and distinguished gentleman. On his asking him why he had such confidence in the right hon. Gentleman and so appreciated his character, Mr. Martin replied—

"The reason I have such confidence in him is this—that he has never voted for, but has always opposed, coercion."

The only thing of which the right hon. Gentleman had convinced him was that a Radical, when the Conservatives were in power, was a Radical, and that a Radical when the Liberals were in power was quite a different person. The Irish landlords would doubtless be delighted when they found they had an ally in the person of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham; and the noble Earl (the Earl of Carnarvon), who was the author of a letter to the right hon. Gentleman, would have reason to be proud of the conversion he had made. As a great deal had been said about threatening letters, he might mention that a letter had been addressed to the junior Member for Northampton, the writer of which informed him that bullets had been cast for the purpose of shooting him. [Mr. BRADLAUGH said, he had never received any such letter.] He was glad the hon. Member had not received the letter; but, at all events, it appeared in the newspapers. It ought to be borne in mind that the laws of Ireland were not made by the Representatives of the Irish people, and that they were too often administered by a class against the nation. That was one of the greatest evils of Ireland; and what had been done up to the present time to conciliate the people of Ireland? It was true that the landlords had been made a garrison for that country. They had, in his opinion, very foolishly accepted the responsibility; but the time had now come when that garrison had totally broken down, and when the Government proposed to substitute for that garrison the cowardly spy and the miserable informer; and these wretched men, if he could call them men, would steal into their secret chamber at Dublin Castle; they would whisper away the liberties and, perhaps, the lives of many an honest man; and they would have more influence in the government of the country than all the representations made by the Irish Members—the Representatives of the people. That would be the time when private pique, personal animosity, miserable revenge would be triumphant; justice would be banished, and a reign of terror established; and when they had succeeded in crushing for the moment the movement that was destined to live until its mission was accomplished, did they think they would have increased the loyalty of the Irish people, or strengthened the bond of union between the two countries? Did they not know that a temporary peace founded upon such a basis had, in reality, no real security? When they withdrew the restraints they had imposed upon the liberties of the people, had not past experience taught them that the spirit of the people would be invigorated by their coercion, and strengthened by their high-handed policy? Coercion could never compete with justice. The Prime Minister once stated, with reference to Italian unity, that the real independence of a nation depended on the exclusion of foreign influence from its civil affairs; and that where the spirit of freedom ever so faintly breathed, the intrusion of such influence was resented as dangerous and disgraceful. Would the right hon. Gentleman repeat these words now? They talked of conspiracy and of organization as if such things were never in their own country. They forgot the time when William IV. dared not dine with the Lord Mayor of London, because there was a conspiracy to assassinate him; and they forgot the time when another man of the same name had to seek shelter in a doctor's shop to escape the fury of a London mob. They might force a peace upon the country, and call it a permanent tranquillity; but let them not be deluded by the belief that by such means they had made secure their power over the Irish people. Why, if coercion were an effectual remedy for disloyalty the Irish people ought to be the most loyal people in the world, for British rule and coercion had become synonymous words. And what had been the result of their coercion? Why, it had created more rebels than all the agitators that ever spoke to an excited people. Depend upon it that the safety and integrity of their Empire must depend upon the loyalty and affections of the people, and not upon the terrors produced by their coercive legislation. If coercion were an effective remedy, their conquest of Ireland would have been accomplished many a year ago. They had not proved to them that the existing laws were inadequate to maintain their authority in Ireland; for, at the present moment, they were arresting the people, prohibiting meetings, refusing bail, and carrying out their laws in a somewhat grotesque but most high-handed manner. He was at a loss to know what additional powers they required. Let them remember that for every right they took from the people they gave them a wrong. Every wrong strengthened the power of the agitator and the demagogue. If necessity arose to suspend the Constitution in this country, would they do so upon secret information, and upon the stories of policemen and interested parties? Did they do so in 1817, when they moved for the suspension of the Constitution in this country? No; they first appointed a Select Committee to inquire into the stories and the rumours that bewildered them; and the evidence given before that Committee clearly proved how easy it was to create a panic among English Ministers. They had no Select Committee upon this occasion, and they must trust to anonymous correspondence and frightened Police Reports for their information on this subject. In what a false position did they place the men who had been preaching the doctrine of Constitutional agitation to the people. They sent them back to Ireland with a strong Coercion Bill, worthy of any despot in Europe, and a Land Bill that very likely would not be worth the paper on which it was printed. They might say he was wrong in judging a Bill before he saw it—that they intended to do great things; but they must remember that place, like another place, might be paved with good intentions. They were naturally a suspicious people, their system of government had made the people of Ireland a suspicious race, for they had too often seen in their country the laws administered for a class and not for a people. The Government might crush down the people by coercion for a moment. ["No, no!" from the Home Rulers. ] He hoped he was wrong, and if it pleased his hon. Friends near him, he would withdraw the expression, and say that the Government might disestablish the Land League; but if they did they would disestablish the only organization in Ireland that could now keep the people within the bounds of the Constitution. They defeated O'Connell; but O'Connell had not Ireland organized. Let them pass what laws they liked, imprison the men they thought most dangerous to their rule in Ireland, trample under foot every liberty appertaining to their British Constitution; but let them not delude themselves with the pleasing hope that by such means they could ever establish permanent peace or tranquillity in Ireland. They, the Representatives of the people, had their duty to perform towards them, to raise their voices against this mock Liberalism of the present day, for it was a Liberalism that had now assumed the cloak of despotism, and they could see no reason why the liberties of a whole people should be frittered away because one-half of the Cabinet was in a panic and the other half had not the courage of their convictions. There was a time when the advocates of Free Trade did not fear to raise their voices on behalf of oppressed nationalities; but time, and the influences of Cabinet Councils, worked changes in the minds of men, and when they had secured honours and high places they were apt to forget the teachings and opinions of their earlier days. The eloquence that was used on behalf of Neapolitan prisoners, and in condemnation of the tyranny of the Turk, was unheard when they proposed to suspend the rights and liberties of the Irish people. It was easy to be patriotic when they were not the rulers of the oppressed. Power and ambition often thwarted the best intentions of men, and, to some minds, it was a great exertion to sacrifice Party prospects for the sake of humanity and justice. The people of Ireland did look to the present Government for a final measure of Land Reform, and they had hoped that there was one man in England who would rise and become equal to the occasion—a man who would leave behind him a name honoured by Irishmen and revered by every lover of freedom; but that hope had now passed away, and they saw that they could no longer expect from an English Parliament those rights and liberties which were the just inheritance of a free people.

said, the discussion appeared to have wandered into some side issues which he did not intend to pursue. The arguments which had been presented against the proposal of the Government resolved themselves mainly into two, which were these—the one, that the condition of Ireland did not call for special legisla- tion; and the other that, according to the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Dublin (Dr. Lyons), remedial measures should precede the introduction of this Bill. He submitted to the House that neither of those propositions rested upon any solid foundation. Taking the first of those propositions—apart altogether from official Reports, and from that knowledge which he supposed every Member of the House possessed, of what was taking place in Ireland, the House heard the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), who always had the courage of his convictions, state that in the county of Tipperary the law of the Land League reigned supreme, which meant that the authority of the Queen and the law of the Realm had been superseded by an irresponsible authority with which the ordinary law could not now cope. That was the question with which the House was now face to face. Was that state of things to continue, or was it to be subdued? Was responsible Government to be vindicated, and was irresponsible government to be repressed? That appeared to be not an unfair way of putting the broad issue that House had to determine. It was no idle boast of the hon. Member for the County of Tipperary when he uttered that remarkable statement. The hon. Member took credit to himself for it. The chief organizers of the Association which had brought about that state of things, on the 10th of October, when referring to the county which the hon. Member represented, said that if a tenant were put out of his holding the Land League would put him in again, and would do so again and again—

"And let them, if they dare, see the man that will come there and touch a blade of grass upon your land."

That was not all. He told them very plainly how the law of the Land League was stronger than the law of the Queen. This was his language—

"We will show you how we will settle the Land Question. Already a dozen of model farms exist in the County Tipperary. They are model farms, because they are standing there a living witness that the landlord dare not till the land, and cannot get a living man to strike a spade or plough in it, and he dare not, he is too cowardly to go there and till it himself. What has brought about this condition of things? Intelligent organization."

This is the state of things described as "intelligent organization." On the 21st November, in Mayo, the hon. Member for Tipperary advised the tenants on each estate to meet and agree amongst themselves

"What they are able to afford to pay this year, or what is fair for them to pay, and that will differ according to the different circumstances of the case."

Then they are to

"Pledge themselves to each other that no man will go behind his neighbour and break away from the agreement."

Then follows this advice—

"Let them, then, go in as a body and offer to the landlord or to the agent the rent on which they have agreed, and tell him that they require for that sum a full and clear receipt for the year's rent. If he refuses to give that full and clear receipt, take home the money and pay nothing, and wait until he becomes more reasonable. The question then arises as to what the landlord will do, or the agent, when this offer is made to him. He may serve you with notice of eviction, and if he does you must then put down your foot and have it out with him. You must hold the rent, and keep that for your own use."

Was that the teaching of the Anti-Corn Law League, which had been, referred to—was that the teaching of the Church which had been invoked by hon. Members at the opposite side of the House, who said the Catholic clergy had been found leading the movement? Were those the principles inculcated by the Catholic Church, the Episcopalian Church, the Presbyterian Church, or any Nonconformist Church in Ireland? Would not the clergy of any one of these denominations have shrunk with horror and loathing from the blasphemous Lays of the Land League that he formerly had occasion to refer to? Would they not have shrunk with horror from Pandeen O'Rafferty's travesty of the Ten Commandments and of the Apostles' Creed, which he would not pollute the ears of the House by reading. It appeared to him that the clergy were swept away by this movement, which, religion could not arrest. It appeared to him that they had no alternative but to take the course they had taken. They were not free agents. If ever they expected in the future to regain their legitimate influence over their flocks, they had nothing to do for it now but join the movement. They were utterly incapable of stemming the torrent, and they were carried away by it, hoping that the day would come when religion and reason should once more resume their sway. [Mr. T. D. SULLIVAN: Shame! shame!] He was not ashamed. He was ashamed of any institution which travestied religion and mocked the creed which they all hoped one day to be saved by. The result of all that teaching was, as they had been told, that £5,000,000, some of which, at least, belonged to other people, was retained by tenants against what he ventured to say were the precepts of the religion which had been inculcated by the clergy. The first step which hon. Members opposite took was boldly to deny that there was any outrage at all in Ireland. ["No!"] If hon. Members did not deny that there was outrage, they ridiculed outrage.

That has not been done from these Benches.

Order, order.

The hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere), in an exceedingly good-humoured and vigorous speech, ridiculed the outrage Returns, and an entry in those Returns of a broken pane of glass. Now, those Returns had been presented to Parliament in the very same form as they had uniformly been presented year by year, and every care had been taken that they should give fair and straight forward information. Most unfounded imputations had been cast upon the Constabulary, and it had been implied that their expectations of promotion gave them a motive to exaggerate or even to invent crime. Was it to be asserted that because men looked for fair promotion—as he himself or anyone might do in his own Profession—therefore any information coming from them came from a tainted source? He had known the Royal Irish Constabulary for a long period. They had preserved the peace in times of danger with great fidelity and much forbearance; and he could bear his testimony that amore upright, more correct, or more courageous body of men he had never known. The Returns before the House had been compiled in the usual manner, so as to give true and reliable information. The hon. Member for Northampton had ridiculed the entry about an old cabin that was knocked down. Was that too insignificant a fact to be noticed? These were "the short and simple annals of the poor." Were the Constabulary to exercise their own discretion and to suppress such circumstances as they thought fit? If so, the next time the suppression might be more important. The Constabulary were not the masters, but the servants of the public, and had to do their duty as the country required. The hon. Member for Northampton criticized the entry that 10 sheep were missing, and supposed to have been maliciously destroyed by being driven over the cliff into the sea. Now, he would appeal to that entry as a test of the truthfulness of the Constabulary. They had honestly put down the suggestion which was reported to them. [ Laughter from the Home Rulers. ] was it not a crime if the sheep had been driven into the sea? [An hon. MEMBER: There might have been a storm.] What proof was there of a storm? Assertion was not argument, and the word of an irresponsible person was not to be taken against that of the responsible Constabulary. Another case in which there was an assault endangering life had been ridiculed. He did not envy the moral tone of those who could ridicule it. In the Return there was an entry that 14 of one Doran's sheep were maliciously thrown into the sea because he had taken a farm from which another tenant had been evicted. The hon. Member for Northampton had referred to carding. Did hon. Members know what carding was? It might be represented by a currying brush with the bristles taken out and iron wire substituted. In one case a party of armed men entered a house, pulled the man out of bed, cautioned him to give up a farm he had taken—and here was a Christian country and a peaceable agitation—carded his thighs, knocked him down, kicked him on the ribs, and after firing a shot went away. Was there anyone who would permit the meanest person in his employ to be treated in this manner? Of course not; everyone must condemn it. The Returns were made up in the usual way, not prepared for the present occasion, and neither their effect or the total would be diminished by anything pointed out in connection with the Returns. One hon. Member had congratulated himself upon never having taken any part in the agitation of the Land League; but he now openly expressed his contrition for not having done so, having seen their published official rules, and he said after that he would have no compromise with what he was pleased to call coercion, but which he (the Solicitor General for Ireland) would submit was an effort on the part of the Government to restore peace and order and the supremacy of the Queen in Ireland. It must be recollected that the people amongst whom the published rules of the Land League were circulated were keen, or what was known in Ireland as 'cute enough to read between the lines, and they were able to carry out the unwritten code, which, they were told by the hon. Member for Cork, no man dare transgress. Now, what was the kind of intimidation and offence which was being carried on? Let hon. Members turn to the Return, and they would find under the date 28th June, 1880, the following:—

"At about half-past 11 o'clock p.m. two men came to the house of Hessian, and demanded admittance. After getting in they dragged him out of bed and beat him severely, breaking three of his ribs, and held him on the fire until a part of his back, about 30 inches in circumference, was severely burned. They demanded why he paid his rent, which he had done two days previously."

Here was the sole motive for this outrage. He had paid his rent; and that was in a Christian country.

Will the hon. and learned Gentleman read the next entry?

The Solicitor General for Ireland is in possession of the House.

said, he had no objection to read the next entry. He had no desire to be unfair. It was this—

"Same party broke open Hessian's boxes and robbed him of £15, which they found in one of his boxes."

[ Home Rule cries: It was burglary and robbery only.] Well, then, it was not enough that they should break the man's three ribs and burn his back, because he had paid his rent; but they must also rob him of his money. There was a case in the county of Kerry. On the 5th of September last a threatening notice was sent to Mr. C. W. Staughton, warning him to give 25 per cent reduction in his rent; and on the 10th September, about 9 p.m., a shot was fired through his drawing-room win- dow. He and his daughter were in the room at the time, but received no injury, the shot merely striking the shutter. Mr. Staughton would not grant an abatement of rent, and the tenants did not pay the March gale. It was not a question of landlords only; it might be the landlords' case to-day, and his own or anyone's to-morrow. It was a matter purely of debtor and creditor; and it might be anybody's case. There was no grade too high or too low for this mischievous outrage system, which he did not by any means saddle entirely on the Land League. When the law was in abeyance there would be found plenty of rowdy people ready to join in committing crime. Another case, which came officially before him, and to which he would refer, occurred in Sligo. A man had taken a farm from which the tenant had removed owing to embarrassed circumstances. On the night of the 6th of November one of the workmen of the new tenant was visited by a large party, who kicked and beat him; they burnt him on the back with a red hot iron, and went off firing shots. The same party visited another labourer of the same tenant, dragged him outside his house, knocked down, and ill-treated him. Both these men were cautioned not to work for the new tenant. The former man stuck to his employment, and got police protection; but after a little he asked the police to leave him. Why? Because he said he felt quite safe, having become a member of the Land League and subscribed to the Parnell Defence Fund. Whose authority was supreme in Ireland? The Land League, or the law of the Realm? He next took a case in Kerry, which came officially before him. A man named O'Donoghue was in bed with his family, when six men, disguised with women's cloaks and their faces covered with veils, came armed with guns and forced open the door. They dragged him out of bed, and, holding him down, they partly severed his ear, which was afterwards plastered up. His mother, almost naked, escaped from the house and ran to a neighbour for help. A sister, 19 years old, was dragged by her hair from her bed and nearly throttled by one of these armed men, because she screamed for mercy for her brother, whom she thought was being murdered. The younger brothers and sisters escaped, and hid in the turf clamps in the bog till daylight. His crime was connected with a purchase of land by another person; because he preferred to be tenant to the purchaser of the estate, who was a landlord obnoxious to the Land League, and had spoken disrespectfully of "Rory of the Hills." Could it be said, then, that the Queen's authority was still in force in Ireland. Were they reduced to such a condition that people could not live without danger of those midnight visits? The tyranny now established in Ireland was perfectly intolerable; and the House was face to face with the question whether the Land League was to remain supreme under the cover of the irresponsible authority of the men who committed these outrages, or whether the supremacy of the Queen was to be once more upheld? The instances he had given were part of the 1,401 persons not made amenable. One of this party was supposed to have been identified, and was brought to trial at the Cork Assizes and duly acquitted. He would give another instance of the reign of terror with which the law could not grapple, and which had also come before him officially. A lady had received a threatening letter, which was followed by the mutilation of a cow belonging to her, to prevent her letting a farm. He did not believe his countrymen were cruel. Indeed, it had been more than once pointed out that the Act (Martin's Act) for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was the work of an Irishman; but the object of these cruelties was to strike terror, and to make people feel that there was a power greater than the law. It had been said that no importance was to be attached to threatening letters; but he could give instances which proved that the writers of threatening letters had long memories. In one instance the threatening letter was received on the 6th of November 1879, and the person who received it was warned that he must comply with its demand to quit a farm he had taken in 1878 by the 1st of December. November passed, December passed; but on the 5th of January—this present month—three armed men came after nightfall with bayonets fixed. One of the men had also a revolver. The victim was asked why he had taken the farm which he held? In the end he had to promise to pay £50 to the former tenant; and to keep his obligation in his mind these midnight visitors then took down his gun, fired at him, and lodged 17 grains of small shot in his leg. He would not, or could not, identify anyone. But such deeds were not confined to midnight. That intelligent organization carried on its operations by daylight as well as at midnight. On the 8th of January, in the county of Mayo, three herdsmen, who were fixing up sheep nets, were ordered to stop their work by two strangers, and on their refusal were beaten with a stick—one of the strangers, drawing out a revolver and threatening to shoot the herds, ordered them to leave working for their employer. They could identify no one. Now, he would refer to a well-known outrage which took place in one of the principal thoroughfares of Cork. Two constables, about half-past 1, saw a group of young men standing in the street, and said to them it was not a seasonable hour for them to be out. The men accordingly walked on, and turned into a lane, followed by the constables, when one who seemed the leader cried out—"Draw your revolvers, and fire with effect." Instantly about a dozen shots were fired at the police, shooting one of them through the thigh. The second constable drew his revolver and fired two shots at the supposed leader. Well, the following morning a man was admitted to the infirmary, and it was supposed that he was the man whom the constable had shot at; he died and disclosed nothing—such was the perfection of the organization. They had all heard Lord Granard mentioned in that House as a model landlord. In Longford, on his Lordship's estate, ejectment processes were to be served on tenants. The police, with some troops, were protecting the process-server serving the processes, when the parish priest requested a parley with them. After speaking with the police, the priest went away and shortly returned and brought back several armsful of weapons. The magistrate then received information that behind a bank which the police and troops would have to cross there were 50 young men armed with rifles and revolvers ready to fire upon them as they passed. It had been said that the Queen's writ did not run in Munster. Certainly the Queen's authority did not exist in parts of Ireland. Were Her Majesty's subjects entitled to pursue their peaceful occupations, and obtain the payment of debts honestly due to them by means of the law, which, up to the present time, they had always imagined existed for their protection? Now, there was a remarkable case in the county of Cork. In January, 1880, near Bantry, a landlord evicted a tenant for the non-payment of rent, and afterwards stocked the farm with cattle, letting it to a dairyman. Well, in December, 1880, the dairyman received a threatening letter telling him to leave, as there were a good many bad members knocking about, who cared no more for a man's life than they did for a fly's. About 3 in the morning on January 11—this present month — 16 men, disguised with blackened faces, went to the place where the threatened man was, humiliated him by making him put his own furniture out of the place, and then turned him and his wife and children out of the place. They then made him swear on the Prayer Book not to return, and reinstated the former tenant in possession. It had been supposed that someone would be made amenable in that case, as one of the men left the Prayer Book behind him; but even that circumstance failed to lead to a successful prosecution. He would not weary the House with a repetition of these cases. Intimidation existed in every form; terrorism existed in every way, and pervaded every class from the highest to the lowest, from mild treatment to savage brutality, the object in every instance being to strike terror, and the blow was administered apparently according to the sensitiveness of the person aimed at. What, he asked, was the use of comparing the amount of crime in Ireland with the amount of crime in England? The real points to consider were the objects of the crimes, and whether they were committed with the intention of making an irresponsible power superior to the power of the Queen and Parliament. He rejoiced that, thanks to the religious education of the people, social crime was a matter comparatively small in Ireland, and that when it occurred the first to give information and to assert the law were the people of the country. But in regard to agrarian crime all this was altered. The people became changed, and ceased to be the Irish nation as he and others had known them. He had not touched more than the very outside of the fringe of the question; but he did not wish to weary the House by citing further instances of the intolerable tyranny that had many parts of Ireland in its clutch. Now, the second proposition that was urged against the Government was that remedial measures should have preceded what certain, hon. Members were pleased to call coercion; but what he preferred to call a Bill to restore freedom of action and extend protection to Her Majesty's subjects in Ireland. What advantage would have been gained if remedial measures had been proposed first? In his opinion none; for a Land Bill must follow the Bill, before the House, and a tenant, if threatened with eviction before the passing of a Land Bill, would be able to redeem his holding when the Bill became law. It was his conviction that no Land Bill that could be presented to Parliament framed in accordance with the principles of honesty and justice would satisfy the members of the Land League. He might be wrong, he hoped he was; but he had adduced some proof that the land movement was but the fulcrum on which the lever was worked, or was to be worked, for the disintegration of the Empire. If the people of Ireland were to remain in the state in which they now were until the passing of remedial measures, what was to become meantime of the Queen's subjects who now had a right to look to the Government for personal security and for security for their property? Was that right to be suspended while the House discussed a Land Bill? He impressed upon the House the importance of assisting the Government to speed the Bill which they were now discussing. He was sure that no one need fear the execution of the measure in Ireland but those who were guilty. There were many in the House who had known the Chief Secretary longer than he had; and he was sure they would feel that in intrusting him with these powers they would not be applied unnecessarily. Everything would have to pass through the hands of the Chief Secretary. Did hon. Members believe that the right hon. Gentleman would be satisfied with the statements of the spy, the informer, or the schemer? He was sure that whatever measures were adopted they would not be applied in a tyrannical manner; and he believed that the result would be that those who were now going about the country committing crimes and spreading treason would disappear from the scene, and that instead of the gaols being full there probably would not be a single prisoner detained. When the law of the Queen and the Realm should have asserted its supremacy over the unwritten code of this irresponsible body every honest person in Ireland would at once rally to the standard of order; a clear line would be marked between those who approved peaceful institutions and those who derided them, and peace and happiness, truth and justice, would once more prevail in the now unhappy and distracted Ireland.

said, the speech which they had just listened to from the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland (Mr. W. M. Johnson) must commend itself to the minds of every man, and it had certainly proved conclusively the state of lawlessness which prevailed in Ireland, and that crime went undetected and unpunished there. The case of the hon. and learned Gentleman was also supported by the fact that many of them had received from Ireland letters showing the existence of unprecedented misery and crime. He listened attentively to the speech, because it had been stated that the Blue Books which contained the statistics of crime were inaccurate. The hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) last night spoke of the Returns being exaggerated; but what they had to consider was, whether the statements which had been now clearly made by the Solicitor General, and also in a former speech by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, could be disproved by the Home Rule Members. If it could not be shown that lawlessness did not exist—and he ventured to assert that it did largely prevail, and that the amount of crime had never been so great as it was now—then he said the Government had established their case. He wished to say here that the hon. Member for Northampton need hardly have told them that he was a Radical; but he doubted if even his Colleague would support every view which he expressed in his speech. He (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) did not believe that the hon. Gentleman's Colleague (Mr. Bradlaugh) would subscribe to the doctrine that there were millions of people in England who thought that no repressive measures were necessary for Ireland. The hon. Member told the House that he was prepared to support what was now going on in Ireland, and he added that he and his Colleague were the only two Radicals in the House who were prepared to get up and say so. [Mr. BRADLAUGH: I do not think that was stated.] That was very nearly if not the exact words that were stated, and he did not think the Colleague of the hon. Member would altogether endorse the statement. Then the hon. Member said that there were fictitious reports, and that the whole of Ireland sympathized with the Land League; but, for his own part, he (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) was convinced that if a vote by ballot could be taken on the question, 90 per cent of the Irish people would declare themselves against the tyranny which that body exercised over them. A similar state of things, as he knew by his personal experience, existed in Ireland at the time of the great Famine. He remembered well what took place in that country between the years 1843 and 1848, when he was there with his regiment. It was the most unhappy period of his military life—at least, that portion of it between 1845 and 1848—for a state of terror was rife throughout the country, and they were continually harassed by outbreaks and disturbances in all parts. But the disaffection then prevailing did not originate with the poor famine-stricken population, with whom he sympathized from the bottom of his heart, but with a small body of disreputable agitators, who exaggerated everything, and instigated their dupes not only to rebellion, but to murder. Blood-money was spent for murdering men, and it appeared to him that much the same state of affairs, and even a much worse state of affairs, existed now. They knew at the time many of these people; but the difficulty was to get at them. The Government had, however, the courage to take extreme measures, and the result was that they were able ultimately to suppress the lawlessness of that day; and several of the agitators—at any rate, the instruments of those agitators—paid for their misdeeds with their lives. Did not the same necessity present itself for coercion now? He maintained that it did, and he hoped the House would pass these Bills, however much it might be against their inclination and the desire of the country. If they looked at the history of Ireland they would find that during the past 50 years successive Governments had been repeatedly obliged, generally about every 10 years, much against their will, to resort to coercive legislation. Once again law and order in Ireland were set at defiance. He did not wish to cast unfair aspersions upon any Member of that House; but he could not help thinking that if the leaders of the Land agitation in that House had held in lreland the same cautious and discouraging language as they held in that House, the state of things in that country would not have been so bad as it was. If it were necessary to assure hon. Gentlemen who sat below the Gangway that the Government had most reluctantly come to their present conclusion, the very impressive speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright) would suffice. The right hon. Gentleman and his Colleague (Mr. Chamberlain) had, to the last, so they had been informed, been amongst those who maintained that coercion was not necessary for Ireland; and did hon. Members from Ireland suppose that they would have raised their voices on behalf of coercion if the necessity for it had not been demonstrated to them? The House had to consider, not what a few hon. Gentlemen who sat among them said, but what the great body of the people required; and he (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) believed, with all his heart, that never was a case for coercive legislation more clearly made out than that presented by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. It was well known that the Government were prepared to bring in a just and reasonable measure of Land Reform, and such a measure would receive the impartial consideration of every Member of the House; but to leave Ireland in its present state, to do nothing to mitigate the horrors and evils which now existed, would be a disgrace to any Administration. He was only thankful to see that the Government had at last awakened to a sense of the situation, and that they were determined to do their duty.

thought that the Irish people had a just cause for dissatisfaction at the way in which the whole matter had been introduced to the House. If the Government thought proper to take into consideration the sad condition of Ireland, they ought to have assembled Parliament in November, instead of which they allowed Ireland to drift headlong into discontent and get almost into a state of rebellion; and he must say the Irish people had reason to do so, considering the shocking state of the Land Laws. What the Government ought to have done was to call Parliament together in November, for the purpose of considering an Irish Land Bill, and then there would have been no necessity for this coercive measure being thought of. Instead of any such course as that having been adopted, only a very meagre and bare statement of the subject had appeared in the Queen's Speech, and the country was completely in the dark as to the kind of Land Bill the Government was going to introduce. Had such a course been adopted there would have been little of the agitation which had since taken place. With regard to the Land League, he sympathized with its objects as at first set forth, and with its central management; but he very much regretted the manner in which the local work had been carried on, and he altogether deprecated the instruments frequently employed by the different branches of the Association. He had nothing to say against the central organization, and he knew a good deal about it. The objects sought by it were laudable, and able politicians were connected with it. The people of Ireland owed to this central management a great debt of gratitude for its influence in decreasing the number of evictions all over the country. But the central organization, which he had no doubt was properly worked itself, had unfortunately neglected to ascertain that they had proper instruments at their disposal to work the branch organizations. Some of these branch organizations were worked well; but the result was that in his own county (Leitrim), and no doubt in others, the League was represented by the greatest scoundrels, who used it as an instrument of terrorism and lawlessness. As a consequence, those scoundrels had brought nothing but disgrace upon the movement. There was not a single person in his county outside the Land League who dared to express his opinions. Not a shred of the freedom of speech or action, in fact, remained. Their conduct had been such, in short, as compelled the Government to take security for order. Therefore, he did complain that hon. Gentlemen in that House had not attempted to direct the operations of the Land League into a proper channel, so as to make the branch organizations do and act properly, for they possessed great influence, and could have effected a great deal in that respect. As the Amendment that had been proposed by the hon. Member for Dublin (Dr. Lyons) seemed to be the most rational course to take under all circumstances, he should most heartily vote for that; and the course suggested by that Amendment he thought was a reparation due to the Irish people. His special reason for rising was to impress upon the Government the necessity of the Irish people being kept no longer in suspense as to the nature of the Land Bill, of which they had as yet received no indication, and they did not know at all in what way they were to hold the land in the future.

said, there was a distinction between the circumstances under which the present measure of coercion was proposed and those under which similar measures had been introduced in past years. One of two things had existed when coercion had been applied to Ireland hitherto. There had either been attempts to sever Ireland from the English connection by plots or open violence, or else certain crimes had been epidemic, and secret societies had existed which had for their object the commission of unlawful and unconstitutional acts. In both these cases the alleged objects against which coercion was applied were not only unconstitutional, but criminal. Now, however, for the first time in the history of Ireland since the Union, coercion was demanded against a movement which sought a Constitutional remedy for acknowledged grievances by means of an Act of Parliament. For his own part, he did not believe the abolition of landlordism was an object possible of attainment, seeing that if it was abolished there was a doubt whether, at the same time, they could also abolish dealings which would create the relations between landlord and tenant. But whether it were wise or not to abolish landlordism, it undoubtedly was perfectly Constitutional to seek to attain that object by means of an Act to be passed by Parliament and ratified by the Queen. He did not, how- ever, allege that the fact that the object sought was theoretically Constitutional disposed of the case. A just and Constitutional object might be sought by unjust means; and he admitted that, under certain circumstances, unjust means might deserve, and would deserve, not merely the severe application of the existing laws, but the enactment of new laws to suppress them. The Land League had recourse to two means in order to secure their object. The first means was the insistance of an abatement of rent; and the second was the creation of a public opinion which would prevent a man taking a farm from which another man had been, according to the rules of justice and equity, unfairly evicted. Assuming that those means were unjust and illegal, he submitted it was quite as unjust and inexpedient to prevent their use in the present circumstances by the adoption of coercion. The adoption by the Irish of the means he had mentioned was the direct and immediate result of the unjust laws of both Houses of Parliament. It was admitted that grievances existed and ought to be remedied; and, therefore, it must be inferred that the refusal of Parliament, during the last seven or eight years, was a gross injustice. All measures of a remedial character introduced into that House were certain of being reduced, in "another place," to something absolutely worthless. The hopes of Ireland had been repeatedly disappointed by Parliament; and it was Parliament, and not the Irish people, that were mostly to blame in this matter. Let them cease to act unjustly towards Ireland, and they would see that the Irish people would soon cease to act in the way they were now doing. It was both unjust and inexpedient to apply coercion at present. The object of coercion was to put down crime. The Government might put down the measures of the Land League; but still the use of them had saved Ireland from other and graver crimes, for, no doubt, the landlords would have availed themselves of the distress of the people and evicted them in large numbers, as they did in 1848, and when reform was threatened in 1870; and then the peasantry would have retaliated by the agency of secret societies, and by murder. It was absolutely certain that the moment the Coercion Bill was passed, the landlords would set about using the powers of eviction. The Coercive Laws, however powerful they might be to put down the organization of the Land League, would be utterly powerless to prevent individuals from taking vengeance on those who they believed had done them injustice. When the Government abdicated its first function of doing justice to every class of society, the Land League was utterly powerless, although they had condemned them, to prevent such outrages as the Chief Secretary for Ireland had related to the House, and which he had heard with great regret. But even for that he very much blamed the Government, for having allowed the functions of the law to be usurped by the Land League, without attempting to check disorders until the very moment when Parliament was about to assemble. In his own county a professional man was threatened, in the open day, by a crowd of people because he exercised his professional functions on behalf of a client. Many such abuses occurred. He maintained the perfect right of the Land League to insist on an abatement of rent. It was an every day occurrence in this country that men in trade combined to abstain from dealing with certain firms, or to abstain from buying certain articles. If there was a law to prevent such a combination in this country, it was simply a dead-letter. No such law could be enforced in this country, and no such law ought to be enforced in Ireland against voluntary combinations. He quite admitted that if men were to be driven by force or by terror into such a combination it would be illegal, and ought to be put down. There were in Ireland a very large number of tenants from year to year, who were in reality tenants at will. Tenants at will enjoyed, in certain cases, a right to compensation, which, it was admitted now, did not at all cover the damage and loss which they sustained by being evicted. Among these tenants from year to year there were a very large number who paid exorbitant rents for their land. They paid those rents because the landlords would come down upon them—and frequently they did come down upon them—and said, "Unless you pay 5 s., or 6 s., or 10 s. an acre more for the four or five acres you hold, I will evict you." There was also another class of tenants in Ireland who, when they went to their landlords for a renewal of their leases, were told, Unless you submit to a great increase of rent, I will evict you;" and they were obliged then, in order to avoid being turned out of their holdings, to submit to an exorbitant rent. Everybody admitted that these were frequent cases in Ireland. With regard to these tenants, who, in order to prevent their being turned out of their holdings consented to pay exorbitant rents, he regarded them as not free agents, as having contracted under duress. It was universally admitted that that state of things required a remedy; that they ought to be relieved from paying those exorbitant rents; that a machinery should be set up which would enable such men to have their rents reduced. He understood that that was one of the objects of the legislation which they were about to pass. This class of tenants, in consequence of the failure of all Constitutional attempts to obtain a remedy, had recourse to the Land League for an abatement of rent; and he must say that if success could justify anything, success was justifiable in their case, because the course they took had led us to the brink of some settlement. They should be told—he hoped they would be told everywhere—that they ought to submit to a fair settlement of their rent by Parliament, and that they ought not to attempt to measure their own rent. There was another class of tenants in Ireland who had contracted freely with landlords as to the amount of their rent with their eyes open. He thought it was totally unjustifiable to suggest that those who had freely entered into contracts should insist, not merely as a temporary measure, but permanently and generally, on an abatement of rent. He had listened to the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) and to others, and had heard no such suggestion made. The man who laid down such a doctrine might as well preach robbery or any other crime. He (Mr. O'Shaughnessy), however, regarded the present time in Ireland as a time of revolution, not carried on with sword and bullet, but with that instrument—the rent; and, having regard to what was fair in open war, theoretically, he believed it would be perfectly just, if it were advisable, to counsel even that class to suspend the payment of a por- tion of their rent for the purpose of compelling their landlords into permitting a great public necessity to be met by the settlement of the Land Laws. It was quite evident the House would pass these Coercion Bills; it had the force necessary to do so. They were told, and he believed it, that the House would also pass a just and adequate measure of Land Reform. He trusted those Bills would secure what he knew the Prime Minister had at heart—the peace and prosperity of Ireland. If they passed those Land Laws now, they would produce those excellent effects instantly; where as he believed that the only effect of prefacing just and remedial laws by coercion, as they now proposed to do, would be to mar the grace of the concessions they were about to make, to generate new crimes, and postpone reconciliation between class and class and between the two nations.

said, that it was the duty of Irish Members to show that the sweeping assertions of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, extending to the whole of Ireland, were not sustainable; and in accordance with that duty, he would call attention to the state of the county which he had the honour to represent. About 50 years ago, as had been already stated by the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) and other hon. Members of the House, the state of the County Kilkenny was deplorable. He (Mr. Marum) found, from a Report of a Committee of the House of Lords in 1831, that in seven months to the end of the preceding February, 12 homicides and 300 insurrectionary offences had been committed in County Kilkenny, while the convictions were only nine. Let them contrast that with the state of things in 1880, when there were only 31 agrarian offences, of which 20 were threatening letters, and one homicide—that of Mr. Boyd. He (Mr. Marum), in that House, had deprecated that homicide; and at a large meeting at New Ross, near where the crime had been committed, he heard the hon. Member for the City of Cork deprecate it in the most feeling manner. In County Kilkenny there were only five persons under police protection, or watched by them, and that was in connection with that solitary homicide. On the other side, among the provocations to outrage, there were 43 families, comprising 193 individuals, evicted within the 12 months. Therefore, considering the great distress which had existed, he did not think the Chief Secretary for Ireland had proved his case with regard to County Kilkenny. A fair argument had been used by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland (Mr. W. M. Johnson) to the effect that it was not the number of outrages that was to be regarded, but whether the outrages indicated had sprung from an evil organization. He (Mr. Marum) wished to show what the organization of the Land League in Kilkenny was. After the Fenian rising, Mr. Butt commenced a tenant-right organization. Upon the occasion of the Land Bill of 1870, a National Conference was held, and he was appointed one of those who, between the first and second reading, were to address the Prime Minister on the subject. He then took the liberty of pointing out to the right hon. Gentleman, that any measure merely of a penal nature, and which did not give a stronger incentive to the improvement of the land, would prove abortive. In a short time what he had stated was exactly verified. There was a property in his county comprising over 1,000 acres. Griffith's valuation was £794. In 1871, a middle interest having dropped, the landlord raised the rental to £1,350—in some instances the rents being made three times Griffith's valuation. On an adjoining property, where the valuation was £34, the rent £49, £76 was demanded; In another case, where the valuation was £7 18 s., the rent £7 19 s., a rent of £28 was demanded. The tenant entered into a compromise, held on for two or three years, and then gave up and became a wanderer. In the case of three tenants whose valuation was £39, rent £47 15 s., notice was given that £106 should be given. He was a judge of land, and he knew the land in question; and he could say that it was utterly impossible for them to realize that sum. The case was taken up by the League, and, under the force of public opinion, the landlord did not proceed in the matter. From 1871 or 1872 successive Land Bills were brought in and ably advocated by Mr. Butt. All those Bills were rejected by enormous majorities, and even an inquiry, such as had lately been proceed- ing, was contemptuously refused. In the meantime, organizations—some of which still existed—sprang up all over the country in consequence of the attitude of Parliament; and in very recent times, the greatest of these associations had a precisely similar origin. In many districts the Land League had been joined and actively supported by the Roman Catholic parish clergy, who necessarily knew the real state of the country with regard to outrages, and who could not be supposed to have lent themselves to "dissolute blackguards and ruffians" in order to carry out the dictates of the unwritten law. He, therefore, could by no means accept the description given by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland either of the Land League or of the reign of terror that he alleged to exist; indeed, he positively denied the truth of the picture that the right hon. Gentleman had drawn. The real object of the League, at any rate in Kilkenny, was to put an end to the competitive letting of land, and also to prevent persons from taking land from which the former tenant had been unjustly evicted. One of the chief principles they advocated as a step towards the settlement of the Land Question was that the result of a tenant's improvements on the land should not enable the landlord to assess rent upon those improvements, or upon the increment occasioned by them. For the tenants he claimed the value both of the public improvements effected by the taxation of the occupier and of the private improvements resulting from industry and capital. By the former the value of estates had been increased at least 25 per cent, by the latter very often as much as 50 per cent, and seldom, if ever, less than 25 per cent. These and like concessions would, he hoped, be made; but Parliament was still tinged with the ideas of feudalism, and had a mistaken feeling that if an Irish Land Bill were passed there would be an agitation for the readjustment of the English land system. He would not detain the House at present as to the nature of Griffith's valuation, further than to deny, in the strongest manner, that it had been recommended throughout Ireland that tenants should not pay beyond Griffith's valuation. No statement, whatever, was made that that was to be the absolute criterion of valuation.

pointed out that the hon. Member was traveling beyond the Question before the House.

, resuming, said, the right hon. Gentleman who now sat upon the Treasury Bench (Mr. John Bright) stated, the previous night, that the condition of the Irish farmer was better than it had been for some years. He (Mr. Marum) had a personal acquaintance with most of the Midland counties of Ireland, and he could assure the right hon. Gentleman that not only had the three bad years which had passed left the Irish tenant unable to pay his rent, but they had caused arrears to accumulate, and he was forced to give acceptances to the landlord and shopkeeper, which at the present moment remained current in the Irish banking institutions. He denied that one good year was sufficient to rehabilitate the farmer, and he thought that statement had been made by one unacquainted with the condition of the tenantry of the country. The price of cereals in Ireland had been very low, while the diminution of stock revealed by the last official Statistics was of a most startling character, indicating that under the pressure of severe distress the tenants had converted a large amount of their stock into money to meet their liabilities; and as one of the proofs to the contrary, he need only mention that this year there were 35,000 acres of barley less than the previous year, while the price had been 5 s. a-barrel less. The Statistics of stock showed a diminution in sheep in Ireland for the previous year of 476,000; a diminution in black cattle of 146,000; a diminution in pigs of 200,000; in all, a diminution of 3,200,000 for the year 1879; and it was most important that the House should study those figures in consequence of the circulation of a pamphlet by a Mr. Gordon, tending to prove that in the matter of stock the tenantry were better off than they ever were before. That pamphlet dealt with the Statistics of the County Down to 1879, and ignored the diminution which was apparent in 1880. He thought that Irish Members, while they gave the House whatever information they possessed, ought not to obstruct or delay Business by talking against time. He had intended to refer to the subject of coercion at greater length; but as he understood that on the second reading he could dispute the principle of the Bill, he would defer his further observations till that stage. He might, however, now remark that it was not so much a question of what law they passed as of how the law was administered in Ireland. That was what exasperated the people. He had himself long acted as a magistrate for the county of Kilkenny, and for the Queen's County also. He, therefore, knew something of the administration of local justice, and, without imputing any want of rectitude to his associates on the Bench in those counties, he asserted that the results of sectarian ascendancy had become almost intolerable to the people. In the county he represented (Kilkenny) there were 97 magistrates on the roll, and though 86 per cent of the inhabitants were Roman Catholics, there were only 16 out of the 97 magistrates of the Roman Catholic persuasion. It might be said, with some force, that gentlemen of fortune, intelligence, and social status did not exist in the same proportion amongst the Catholic population as amongst other populations; but as far as Kilkenny was concerned, he was in a position to name at least a dozen gentlemen, who in education, position, and intelligence, were far superior to the appointments that within the last two years had been made in that county. Under those circumstances, the population of the country naturally looked with suspicion upon the administration of the law. In the towns of Castlecomer and Durrow, the lords of the soil were Protestants, and sat upon the Bench. Their agents were Protestants, and magistrates; the clerks of petty sessions were Protestants, and in Castlecomer that official was a clerk in the Rent Office. The sub-inspector was a Protestant—and the resident magistrates were often connected by family ties with the ordinary county families. In fact, the whole air was Protestant; and was it not reasonable that the people should regard with suspicion the administration of justice from those considerations? He utterly denied that there was ground for the statement that the outrages sprang from the organization which existed. He had made many speeches in Ireland, and he had been accompanied by Government reporters, but he did not think any of his speeches had been found in the Four Courts. In conclusion, he contended that, as far as the existence of disorder was concerned, the Government had as much right to proclaim Lancashire or any English county as the county of Kilkenny, which he represented.

said, that as a new Member rising to address the House for the first time this Parliament, he had to claim the indulgence usually granted on such occasions. He should not, however, detain it for more than a few minutes. He very much regretted that he had not a chance of seeing the Government Land Bill; but after the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and that of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, he should, however reluctantly, as regarded the Coercion Bill, support the Government. At the same time, he could bear testimony to the warm expressions of sympathy which existed in South Yorkshire towards the Irish people; but he could not help feeling that the Government had shown great forbearance, for the law must be maintained. In his opinion, the advice given by some of the hon. Members from Ireland sitting on the Opposition Bench, in the agitation instituted by the Land League, given, as he (Mr. W. H. Leatham) was certain with the best intentions, was of a most mischievous character. If they saw they had made a mistake he hoped they would say so before it was too late; because we were all liable to mistakes, and they might wake up to find their occupation gone. The Irish were an excitable people, and they were also a quick-witted people, and he was reminded of a story he had heard many years ago of a gentleman who was travelling in Ireland with a guide. They were both mounted on horseback, and came to a wild heath, where a highway robbery, attended by murder, had been committed. The highwaymen had been convicted and executed for the murder, and their lifeless bodies were still hanging on a gibbet to warn others. The gentleman, in a half joking way, said to his guide, pointing to the gibbet—"Pat, where would you be if every man had his deserts?" The guide replied—"Please your honour, sir, I should be riding alone"—that was, the gentleman would be hanging on the gibbet, and he would be riding alone. Now, he thought it would be better for Pat to be riding alone than in the company of some of his present advisers. He (Mr. W. H. Leatham) had full confidence in the Liberal Government of the day that justice would be done about the Land Laws of Ireland, and he respectfully asked the Irish nation to have confidence also, and that they should trust to the Government now in power to right their intolerable grievances. He hoped, when a good Land Bill was brought in and other measures followed—such as the further cultivation of waste lands, the establishment of manufactures, the establishment of fisheries, and the emigration of some more people where they were too thickly placed together, as had been hinted at by the right hon. and gallant Member for Wigtown (Sir John Hay) in a former debate, whether by Government aid or not—that Ireland would raise up her head and become what she was intended to become to England, and what every one would wish to see her, "a thing of beauty and a joy forever." He thanked the House for the patient hearing it had accorded him, and would conclude by saying he should heartily vote for the Government measure.

said, it was with pleasure that he rose to acknowledge the courtesy with which the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland (Mr. W. M. Johnson) had laid before the House his supplement to the statement of the Chief Secretary; and he could only say that if a spirit of similar conciliation had been shown to the hon. Gentlemen sitting on these Benches, the progress of the debate up to the present time would probably have been marked by less acrimony than had sometimes characterized it. Now, a great deal of the discussion which had hitherto taken place had, he conceived, been wide of the main issue before the House. As he understood it, the real issue narrowed itself to this. It was proposed by the Government to pass a Coercion Bill for Ireland, and the question for the House and the nation to give their verdict on was—Whether coercion was necessary in the present circumstances of Ireland? He should endeavour to show that it was not. Since the Union there had been 57 coercive measures for Ireland, and 10 of these had been the suspension of the Habeas Corpus. Pro- tracted as might have been the discussion on that Bill, there were analogous cases. When, for instance, the Bill of 1846 was brought before Parliament, though introduced into the House of Lords, it was four months in passing through the House of Commons. Therefore, that showed that the Irish Members were well within the limits of usage in continuing the debate as they had done. The Chief Secretary for Ireland based his right to ask for such exceptional legislation on the present alleged criminal condition of Ireland, and the insufficiency of the ordinary law to meet the situation. He further supported his statement by referring to the official Statistics, which comprised no less than 1,590 alleged agrarian outrages, which had been officially reported in 10 months of last year. Although in the debate on the Address, the right hon. Gentleman made the most of the gross total, he now had the candour to throw over the threatening letters, which amounted to 1,337 out of the whole number. Thus the question remained—Did 1,100 odd agrarian offences demonstrate to the satisfaction of the House that Ireland was in such a state of disturbance, anarchy, and disregard of law that it required coercion? The occasion was one of such extreme importance both to the reputation and dignity of all concerned, that he (Mr. M'Coan) should now join issue with the Chief Secretary for Ireland on the subject of the Returns, and should endeavour to show that the foundation on which he rested was a foundation of sand and nothing more. Many of the alleged outrages were duplicated, many triplicated, and some made to do duty even four times over. In some cases it was as if a man who had been given two black eyes were to reckon that he had been the victim of two assaults. The very first case in the Blue Book to which he should call attention was of a trivial character. It was that where the thatch of a cottage was pulled down, probably for mischief merely, and the perpetrator, when brought before the magistrates, was dismissed. On page 5, there was a case of maliciously injuring some grates and chimney-pieces. Surely that was not a grave agrarian offence. Then there was a case of a family quarrel, in which a woman had, first, thrown stones at someone, then a basin of water, and finally had fired a pistol and missed. He was altogether at a loss to see how this case could be considered an agrarian outrage. On page 8 of the Blue Book an assault by one man upon another, with whom he had been drinking in a public-house, was set down by a police reporter to a bad feeling existing between them about a piece of land. There was absolutely nothing but the gratuitous suggestion of the police reporter to give the case an agrarian colour, and he could assure the House, on his honour, that there were not scores, but hundreds of cases reported of a similar kind. It was hard to speak with patience in respect of those who were responsible for getting up such Returns. The Chief Secretary for Ireland naturally extended his confidence to his subordinates; but he (Mr. M'Coan) could not help thinking that if the right hon. Gentleman had analyzed this Blue Book for himself, his demand for coercion on the strength of it would never have been made. A weaker, more misleading brief was never placed in the hands of counsel. It was really beneath the dignity of Parliament to have to discuss such things. Cases of the smallest possible import were magnified by the language of the Return into agrarian crime. On page 20 of this Return was the case of a woman who took forcible possession of her brother's house. Now, if this woman refused to quit her brother's house, was not the existing law sufficient to meet the case, and was it an outrage? She was taken into custody by the police, and when convicted of the offence was fined 10 s. He would not permit himself to say all he felt when he saw such cases brought before the House, for he had the greatest possible respect for the Prime Minister and the Solicitor General for Ireland. On page 23 he read, in the same category, the act of some foolish person who had stuck harrow-pins into a field with the intention, it was thought, of breaking a reaping machine. At pages 14, 15, and 20 of the Return there were instances of the duplication and even triplication of cases; and on page 27 a case was mentioned of a man named Christopher Moran, who was evicted from his house and farm on the 16th of August, and who, on the night of the 22nd of August, took forcible possession of the house and land. A breach of the law was committed; but he contended that the ordinary law was quite adequate in dealing with this case and with all the cases enumerated in the Return. He did not justify any of the offences reported; but he did contend that they were not sufficient to justify coercion. It was perfectly astounding that cases of so trivial a nature should be included in the Return, and be taken as a basis for asking Parliament to grant extraordinary powers, when they could be so amply met by the ordinary law. Some of the "outrages" were simply laughable, as, for instance, the case which detailed the circumstances attending the throwing of a stone at a process-server among a crowd of people. It was said a number of persons had assembled in face of a force of 65 police. All that happened in the way of violence was the throwing of this one stone, and the police could have easily taken the delinquent into custody if they had thought fit. He was, however, subsequently arrested, and the case was tried at the Ennis Assizes, when the prisoner was acquitted; and he (Mr. M'Coan) did not wonder, seeing, forsooth, that the country was in such a disorganized and terror-stricken condition, that no jury could be got to find a verdict. Yet this offence, which the police themselves looked upon as trivial, was included in the Return as an agrarian outrage. One of the cases of intimidation was that of Austen M'Keane and Michael Malone, who, on the 19th of October, entered the house of Patrick Hayes, a process-server. Hayes invited them to sit down, and M'Keane answered that he would not sit with a process-server, adding—

"You stole a march on me the other day when you served a process on my mother for rent; but if I had been there I would have broken your neck, or cut the ears off you as they did others at Mayo."

The victim of this outrage thought so little of it that he declined to prosecute, yet the officials reported it to the Castle, and it appeared in the Blue Book. He supposed, however, hon. Members would say that was owing to a system of terrorism and intimidation. On page 27 of the Return was an instance of taking forcible possession which he (Mr. M'Coan) did not in any way condone; but he certainly thought it could have been adequately dealt with by the ordinary law—as, indeed, it had been, for on going for trial the charge against the man was dismissed. He was obliged to quote a number of instances, for he desired to impress upon the Government the character of the materials upon which they asked for powers of an extraordinary character which aimed a blow at the liberty of the subject. There was another case of an evicted man's wife retaking possession of the house of her husband, after the sheriff, who had executed the decree of ejectment, had turned his back. This was set down as an agrarian outrage, and went to build up the foundation on which the Government based its demand for a suspension of the Habeas Corpus. Again, a sheep was found dead in a drain. There would be nothing in this fact alone; but the policeman appended the note that the owner of the sheep was on bad terms with a man whom he had evicted. It was an outrage on the intelligence of the House to accept such a suggestion in support of this Bill. Under the heading of "Resistance to legal process," a case was put down in which the entrance to a house was blockaded and missiles were thrown from an upper window. Fourteen persons were arrested; some were committed to the Assizes, convicted, and sentenced to fine and imprisonment. The sentences were heavy, and the case showed that the ordinary law was more than enough. Among the cases of duplication, and therefore of substantial falsification, was one in which a man was fired at and wounded in the arm, and this case was put down both under "Firing" and under "Riots and affrays." In another case, 52 yards of a bank, called in Ireland a ditch, was thrown down, and it was stated that there was a lawsuit about the land on which the dike had been built. It was difficult to put the finger on any case which was of a graver character. Could frivolity go further than to describe as "injury to property" the breaking of a single pane of glass in a bedroom window and knocking down the top of a haycock in a field? And yet the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had asked them to impose martial law upon Ireland, because, amongst other things, a single pane of glass in a common window had been broken. These were the cases on which the Government relied to show that a state of anarchy, of lawlessness, and of organized disregard of the law existed in Ireland which could only be met by he suspension of the Habeas Corpus. In another case under this heading, case 7, page 93, a drawing-room window was broken by the throwing of a stone; and he sting of the matter consisted in the allegation of the policeman that the cause for the commission of the offence was that the occupant of a house was about to issue ejectment processes for non-payment of rents. A great deal had been made in the course of the debate of the offence against the person known as "carding;" but he could not, on the most careful examination of the whole list of offences, find that more than one single offence of this kind had seen committed. He did not attempt a justify that outrage, which was an atrocious, a cruel, and a vile one; but when the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had dwelt with such emphasis and indignation upon the offence of carding, as if it were one of the most common known to Irish Criminal Law, common candour might have induced him to inform the House that only a single offence of that character had been committed. The last case to which he would refer was triplicate—one, a case where three assaults had been Committed by the same party. The instances he had quoted supported his averment that a more monstrous case of official concoction than the Blue Book before him never was issued from the Press. There were, no doubt, cases of crime which he greatly regretted had been committed; but they were, as he had said, crimes with which the ordinary law could quite adequately grapple. It was said that evidence could not be procured and juries would not convict; but how could the suspension of the Habeas Corpus mend that state of things? If it existed, there was a remedy for it; and to that he would invite the attention of the House. What was the average of crime of all kinds in the year 1831? The total was then 16,008. In 1833 the number was 9,000, including 172 cases of murder as against 8 cases of murder in 1880. In 1845 the total was 5,738, including 137 cases of murder; in 1846, 6,689, including 176 cases of murder. After the passing of the Land Bill in 1870, emasculated though it was, the cases of crime of all kinds greatly fell off. That Bill was the sole remedial measure passed, the first act of agrarian justice done to Ireland since the Union, and its effect was immensely to decrease crime. The course which the Government ought now again to take was that which every true friend of theirs would advise—to apply remedies to the patient, not stimulants, which only made the fever worse. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, seeing that his 2,500 outrages lessened by 1,100 threatening letters would not support his case, said that it was justified by other information in the possession of the Government. But had not the House a right to know what that other information was? For he held that there was not sufficient evidence in the Blue Book to justify the conviction of a pickpocket. It was intended by this Bill to hand over the whole power of government to a particular class in Ireland, and practically to place the entire population under martial law. Was it fair, humane, or just to place such a power in the hands of a hostile class? At any rate, before the Government Bill became law, it would be necessary to get rid of its odious feature of retrospection, which was intended to strike terror into the breasts of those who had stood up for their country's rights, and who had yet kept themselves strictly within the four corners of the existing law. By an easy form of abuse the action of the Irish Members had been characterized as obstruction, and thus the feelings and the sympathies of hon. Members and of Englishmen out-of-doors had been turned against them. The conduct of the Irish Members on the present occasion, however, was not without respectable precedent. He gave the Government warning that from the present moment he should offer every opposition to the passing of this Bill that the Forms of the House would permit. Irish Members objected to the measure because it proposed to outrage the liberties of the Irish people. It was an historical fact that during the 80 years that elapsed since the Union they had continued coercion in Ireland without intermission. Scarcely a year had passed in which the ordinary law was not supplemented by some arbitrary measure; but the result of that policy had been a miserable failure to produce prosperity or contentment in Ireland. Should not that suggest to the Government the necessity of trying a change; and even if they only brought on a moderate Land Bill, far short of the Land League programme, he should have advised its acceptance, trusting to the generosity of Parliament to develope its provisions at a future time. He would conclude by asking the attention of hon. Members to statements in The Belfast Morning News, The Londonderry Standard, and The Cork Examiner, which showed that even Orange journals denounced the Coercion Bill. The first of those papers, The Belfast Morning News, directly contradicted the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, and said that Ireland was at that present moment in a perfectly tranquil state. The Irish Members had been charged with alienating the sympathies of their English friends. He could only say he had expected a more generous display of kindly feeling. Party spirit would excuse much; but he did not think justice had been done to them. It was because he so highly respected the House that he had taken so much trouble thoroughly to analyze the Returns in the Blue Book, and the result was so striking that even from him he believed the facts would tell. He congratulated himself that he had been enabled, probably for the first time, to direct the attention of the Prime Minister to the real facts of the case, and would conclude by apologizing to the House for the protracted speech he had thought it his duty to make.

I rise, Sir, to plead, very respectfully, the advantage of our bringing this debate to a close. Permit me to say that, after having closely attended to the arguments that have been employed, having heard the elaborate discussion of the tables placed before the House, I find nothing in those arguments, or in that discussion, to render it useful for the public advantage—but much to suggest the contrary conclusion—that we should carry this discussion upon this preliminary stage of the measure into the coming week. I will venture to say that it would be a great advantage to hon. Gentlemen themselves who are the opponents of this Bill, that they should have in their hands the measure itself. I am sure, after listening to much that has been said, they have little idea of its scope and bearing. If they will permit us to divide, to-morrow morning they will have the Bill in their hands, and they will then know exactly what they have to expect. I know not whether it is possible to produce an effect upon their minds. They look, I know, for a large and liberal hearing from this House; but if they are to have that large and liberal hearing which they ought to have, it is incumbent upon them also to accommodate themselves to reason. I do put it to them in a case of this kind, where so much depends upon the exact effect of a small number of carefully-chosen words, where the subject-matter is of the highest delicacy and importance concerning the personal freedom of the subjects of Her Majesty, it is really much better that, instead of vague, and I will say most inaccurate, statements as to the purport and probable effects of this Bill, they should allow themselves to be placed at length in possession of the authentic text. Sir, I know it may be said that we have only debated the introduction of this Bill for three nights, and that, on a former occasion, a Bill of a wider and more varied scope was debated, I think, for five. But, on the other hand, hon. Gentlemen achieved an extraordinary feat on the Adress to the Throne. They will find that in that debate they far surpassed all former performances, and that a little concession to the general feeling of the House at this particular stage would still enable them to say that they have spent many more days and hours of the time of Parliament in opposing the measures of the Government up to the present stage than has ever been so consumed in any Parliament and by any Representatives before. I will not dwell upon some questions, especially at this advanced hour, which, perhaps, I should like to have touched at greater length. But there is one subject upon which I will only say a very few words, because some hon. Gentlemen have attached to it greater importance, at this stage, than I think it deserves. It has been said that we ought to have given precedence to remedial over coercive, or what we call protective, legislation. And here I come upon the inaccurate conception of the Bill that has been formed by many hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway. They have spoken as if we were legislating against the agitation of the Land Question in Ireland, or as if we were legislating against popular discontent in any part of Ireland. Were it so, I would at once admit that it were far better to proceed, in the first instance, with our remedial measures. But we are legislating, as was said by my right hon. Friend, against the abettors and perpetrators of outrage, on whose fears we desire to operate, as we do not know any other mode of acting upon their minds, or influencing their conduct. These abettors and perpetrators of outrage are, in certain parts and certain cases in Ireland, the suffering population; they are the Whiteboys and the ex-Whiteboys. They are the remains of the Fenian agitation. They are the persons, unfortunately, to be found in every community, who may not unfitly be called its dangerous classes, and who might be described, not unjustly, by harsher terms. These men are not the men to be converted by remedial legislation. What they fear is personal consequences; and it is for the power of administering these personal consequences that we plead; and, whether we have a sufficient case or whether we have not, it is idle to speak of governing the minds and conduct of such men by what is termed remedial legislation. If there be hon. Gentlemen outside and beyond the circle around the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), who are in doubt as to the vote they may think right to give, or the definite judgment they may think it right to pronounce on this question, I trust these hon. Gentlemen will accept from me the suggestion, how much safer will be the ground on which they tread when they see the very measure and the terms of the proposal of my right hon. Friend, than when they take from the mouths of objectors a description of the measure, the accuracy of which we challenge, and the accuracy of which the text will refute. The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down (Mr. M'Coan) addressed himself during the first hour of his speech to a task which did not pretend to entertain, but which was legitimate, and might be useful. He challenged the tables laid before the House by my right hon. Friend. He appeared, however, to lie under the misapprehension, common to many of his Friends, that my right hon. Friend had produced special information upon which he founded his application to the House; whereas these tables are tables which are usually and regularly produced; but which, on this occasion, for the convenience of the House, my right hon. Friend desired to expedite as much as he could. But now I do not deny that, though they do not form the foundation of my right hon. Friend's request, they contain important matter. The hon. Gentleman has gone through a number of those cases. It would be impossible for me to follow him point by point; but he kindly acquitted me of responsibility for the contents of this particular Blue Book. I cannot say that I have any particular acquaintance with it; but, at the same time, I welcome all criticism upon it; and I say we consider that the man does a service who can show that there is less to be said on the subject of agrarian crime than is alleged by the Government. But I will say, with confidence, however, that, having followed the hon. Member point after point through his selected cases, I am prepared to affirm that there is no foundation for his charge; and on my own part, and also on the part of my right hon. Friends near me, to say that all the objections that have been taken to these Returns from the Irish Constabulary only confirm our confidence in their accuracy. Without troubling the House in detail, I will take a single instance. The hon. Member, as he went through the Blue Book, took out a great number of the most trivial cases and then said—"Is it upon such a case as this that you come to demand coercive legislation against Ireland?" Most certainly not, Sir. So far as we rest on the Blue Book, we rest on the graver and not on the more trivial cases. It is upon the aggregate of those cases and the circumstances connected with them; it is upon the source from which those offences spring, upon the combinations by which they are supported; it is upon the total failure of the administration of justice in the attempts to detect and punish crime that we rest, and not upon those selected items and units from the tables which the hon. Member paraded one by one as totally insufficient to sustain our very grave allegation. I will take one example. It is a case of a man named John Tunby. John Tunby is charged with an assault. He is recited here as having been charged with an assault upon a process-server. "An assault upon a process-server!" says the hon. Member. "A character so odious as a process-server!" He seems to thing it ridiculous that we should be regarding a process-server as invested with any of the rights of humanity. This process-server was under charge of the police. Aware of the dangers that he incurred in the regular performance of his duty, he had obtained the assistance of the police. The police were escorting him when he was passing over a bridge. A man named John Tunby threw a stone at the process-server which knocked him down, and the stone, which was sufficient to lay this unfortunate process-server prostrate, the hon. Member regards as if it had been a pebble tossed by a schooboy, and treated a thing of this kind as totally unworthy of notice in a list of agrarian offences. But what is the case? This is not paraded in a Blue Book before you as an offence of the most serious order. It is simply described as "an assault upon a process-server." Well, I submit it is an assault upon a process-server. If the hon. Member, or any one of us, were subjected to a similar operation in passing over a bridge, we should not be at all surprised that some notice were taken of it. But the hon. Member found his great occasion for triumph in this—"This case was tried at the Ennis Spring Assizes on the 2nd of March, 1880, and acquitted;" and then, in the remarkable words of the hon. Member, he said—

"It is no wonder that he was acquitted, for in the disorganised and terror-stricken condition of the country no jury could be found to find a verdict against him."

I spoke those words in a feeling of sarcasm, and nothing else.

I am very sorry for the deficiency of faculty which prevented me from distinguishing between the sarcastic and serious portions of the hon. Gentleman's speech. The hon. Member has attained such a faculty for its practice, that it is difficult for me to do so. I assure him that I was extremely struck by the warmth and the force and the effect of that declaration; and if I am now told that that portion of his speech was sarcastic, I should like to know what other portions of his speech were also sarcastic. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) was far more astute than the hon. Member for Wicklow. He was satisfied with the selection of three or four cases, and then he left the rest alone. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, if I may be permitted to call him so, said that some of these outrages were non-agrarian, which had found their way into the agrarian list. It is quite evident that that cannot be extensively the case, and for this reason—the strength of our case as to agrarian outrages is the want of convictions; whereas everybody knows that in non-agrarian outrages convictions in Ireland are as sure as everywhere else. Then it is said that in certain cases one outrage is made into two or three. [A VOICE: Five!] Actually five; a case of five. I followed those instances, and will be prepared to contest them. I say there are a great many cases in this Blue Book where there is stated under one head—that is, as one outrage—what might very fairly be stated as three, five, six, or ten. I will take a few cases. Two houses are fired into, two distinct dwellings of different persons. That is put down as one outrage. I say there were two. Three cabins are destroyed. That is put down as one outrage. It would be at least as reasonable to put down three. Eight threatening notices are placed on the separate doors of eight separate people. There would be nothing irrational in treating each of those as separate outrages. Twenty-one persons were charged out of a large crowd who assaulted the police. Their cases were various, and were dealt with variously. Some were detained only for a short time, some went before the magistrates, some to the Assizes. The whole of that is put down as one outrage. I repeat the words of my right hon. Friend, who said—

"The greatest pains and care had been taken to act upon those rules of classification,"

—and this is the main point—

"which the Constabulary have uniformly observed for a series of years, so that for the purpose of comparison these tables are perfectly good. While there is over-statement alleged and under-statement alleged, it is under-statement and not over-statement in which I believe."

Well, so much for the Blue Book, and the allegations of the hon. Member as regards their number and their character. It is greatly complained that we are infringing liberty in Ireland; and, although I hope we shall infringe the liberty of no single individual among the peaceful and law-loving subjects of the Crown, yet I admit we must show cause for what we are doing, and enable you to understand the extent of what we are doing. It was said, I think, by the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), that if we were aiming only at outrage he was with us; but he believed we were aiming at the Land League, and therefore he was against us. Well, I say this without fear of contradiction to those hon. Gentlemen who think with him. When once they consent to look at the Bill they will, I believe, find themselves to be of my opinion, that neither the Land League nor any other person or body of persons in Ireland can be touched by the Bill except as far as they fall within its very stringent definition, according to which no one can be arrested, except upon reasonable suspicion—and the reasonableness of that suspicion may be challenged on the floor of this House—except upon reasonable suspicion that he has been

"A principal, or an accessory to a crime punishable by law, committed in a prescribed district, being an act of violence or intimidation, or inciting to an act of violence or intimidation,"

—and likewise, and over and above this—

"tending to interfere with or disturb the maintenance of law and order."

Now, if you will take these words and weigh them, I say they bear out in the strictest sense the definition of my right hon. Friend, that we aim by this Bill, and aim solely, at the perpetrators and a betters of outrage. If there be a perpetrator or a better of outrage connected with the Land League, you will hardly claim exemption for him on that account. I stand upon the words of the legislation we propose, and I say that they do not in the slightest degree justify the suspicion that we are interfering with the liberty of discussion. I will go further. We are not attempting to interfere with the license of discussion. There is no interference here with the liberty to propose the most subversive and revolutionary changes. There is no interference here with the right of associating in the furtherance of those changes, provided the furtherance is by peaceful means. There is no interference here with whatever right hon. Gentleman may think they possess to recommend, and to bring about, not only changes of the law, but in certain cases breaches of positive contract. I am not stating these things as a matter of boast; I am stating them as matter of fact. I must say it appears to me that it is a very liberal state of law which permits hon. Gentlemen to meet together to break a contract into which they have entered. And yet, liberal as that state of things is, there is no interference with it whatever by this Bill. Interference is limited to the terms which I have described. But if you say that the arrest of a person upon suspicion of his participation in the commission of acts of violence and intimidation, in crimes punishable by law and tending to disturb the maintenance of law and order, is an interference with private right, I say it is an interference brought about solely by that singular condition of the country to which I will presently refer; but it is no interference with private right. It is an attempt towards the re-establishment of private right. Hon. Gentleman say, "What a dreadful thing it is—it should make you blush—that you should be receiving Conservative support;" and they really seem to think that the simple fact, that that support has been given in speeches, is of itself a condemnation of what we are doing. I may remind hon. Gentlemen that in the short period of the nine months of this Administration, we have been by no means fortunate enough to attract uniform Conservative support. One of the first things that we did was to decline attempting the revival of restrictive legislation for Ireland. The Conservatives censured us for that. The next step we took was to introduce an exceptional measure, a very exceptional measure, but a measure of relief for the distressed tenantry of Ireland—the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. I am not aware that, on that occasion, we received Conservative support. After that we determined, amid whatever difficulties and uncertainties, to resort to the ordinary law, and to trust to that ordinary law until it entirely gave way in our hands. We did not for that proceeding receive Conservative support. And, lastly, we have been censured, and shall without doubt be censured again, on account of the length of time through which we waited, till we had not only a surmise, not only an impression, not only a personal persuasion, but the means, as we thought, of fully and conclusively demonstrating to Parliament the necessity for the course of our restrictive legislation. If we have received Conservative support on this occasion, it is no fault of ours. Nor is it any fault of theirs. As far as I know, there always has been, I trust there always will be, in the midst of the selfish and sometimes wide divisions of Parties in this country some common stock, of common regard for the maintenance of the principles of law on one side and for British liberty on the other. And sad, indeed, will be the day when the mere reproach of receiving Conservative support can for one moment shake a Liberal Government in giving effect to its deliberate convictions. Now, Sir, the Land League has assumed a remarkable prominence in these discussions. I shall carefully abstain from all attempts to define its character. It must be read in senses different and even contradictory, according as you estimate that institution by the few regulations which it has promulgated to the world at large, or as you estimate it by the unwritten laws which are the favourite code of its leader, and its inspiring spirit. But this I must say—that I not only do not admit, but I resent, the parallels which have been attempted to be established between the Land League such as we have seen it during the last six months, and other institutions of this country. It has been attempted to compare it with the League against the Corn Laws; but on that I will not say one word after the demolition of that miserable comparison by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright). It has been attempted also to compare it with the trades' unions in this country. Sir, the trades' unions of this country, I do not hesitate to say, marked an onward step in the intelligence and in the love of law and order among the working classes of this country. The trades' unions of this country—I set aside now that which I believe to be their primary and most noble purpose—namely, that of maintaining the independence of the working order, and preventing its members from becoming a burden to the community—the trades' unions of this country, when entering into the competition between labour and capital, have never for one moment tainted themselves either by a word or by an act which could bring them into suspicion in connection with outrage or the maintenance of law. [An hon. MEMBER: Sheffield and Broadhead.] Sheffield! do you call Sheffield an instance of the trades' unions? It was never owned by the trades' unions; was never supported by the trades' unions, who were utterly distinct from it in their temper and in their aims. What a poverty, then, of case there is. It is attempted to be shown that the reproaches now made against the Irish Members, the leaders of the agitation in Ireland, had their parallel in former times. And what was the parallel which was produced last night by one of the ablest of those Members (Mr. O'Connor Power)? He said that Sir Robert Peel reproached Mr. Cobden with promoting assassination. Well, Sir, it is perfectly true that Sir Robert Peel, under an unfortunate momentary misapprehension of an expression which fell from Mr. Cobden, let fall hasty words which might have been understood, when carried to their extreme, to convey a charge of that kind. ["Oh!"] The hon. Gentleman who jeers at me is evidently totally unacquainted with the history of the circumstances of that time. If he knew anything at all of the history of that great struggle, he would know that Sir Robert Peel in his place in Parliament expressed, in the most unequivocal terms, his deep regret that he should have been supposed to cast that charge upon Mr. Cobden, and he stated that which, indeed, was known to all the world, that there was no man less capable of so wild and so dark and base a proceeding. Then, again, to show that the leaders of the Land League are the martyrs of today, and that they are only undergoing martyrdom like those of other times, we are told by the same ingenious speaker, that Mr. O'Connell was persecuted by a Liberal Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; and with great triumph the hon. Member produced the name of the man whom that Liberal Lord Lieutenant (Lord Clarendon) had employed in that persecution. Unfortunately, the hon. Member was ignorant that Mr. O'Connell was in his grave long before Lord Clarendon was ever Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

I rise to explain. Will the right hon. Gentleman permit me to acknowledge, in the frankest terms, that I was wrong when I said that Lord Clarendon employed that scribe to vilify Mr. O'Connell. It will be remembered, however, that I mentioned the Young Ireland Party in the same breath. In the heat of the moment I said that he was employed to vilify O'Connell. That was incorrect; but I was correct in saying that he was employed to vilify the Young Ireland Party, who were just as honourable as O'Connell.

Far be it from me to say a word impugning the honour of the Young Ireland Party, or of any other party whatever. But I am not prepared to say of the Young Ireland Party, so far as I recollect and understand of their history, that which I think ought to be said of Mr. O'Connell—that upon every occasion in his lifelong agitation, so far as his intentions and his best efforts were concerned, he ever set himself to avoid anything whatever that might lead to a breach of law and order. Sir, we have now got before us a state of crime widely extended in Ireland. The fact is hardly to be denied; but the cause is made a matter of controversy. Hon. Gentlemen would have us suppose, sometimes, that this crime is owing to distress in Ireland; sometimes, that it is owing to evictions in Ireland. It is evident, by the testimony afforded by facts, that it is owing neither to the one nor to the other. ["Oh, oh!"] Well, Sir, the distress of Ireland in the first six months of last year was very great and bitter in many portions of the country. But those six months contributed only one-fourth instead of one-half to the agrarian outrages of the year. In the last six months of last year that distress was wonderfully mitigated, and in many districts of the country entirely removed. But the agrarian outrages rose to threefold the figure they had reached in the first half of the year. It is not easy, then, to fix the crime upon the distress. Can you fix it upon evictions? Let us see how they stand. In the first quarter of the year 1880 the crime was small, and the evictions were very large. There were in that quarter 490 evictions. In the next—the second quarter—there were 622 evictions, or about 1,100 for the half-year; and that half-year was not marked by any considerable, scarcely any perceptible, increase of crime. We come to the third quarter. There was still a large number of evictions, about the same as in the second quarter—629. Crime, I admit, increased in that quarter; but the evictions have not materially increased. We pass on to the fourth quarter, when evictions almost disappear. They sunk to 152; but while the evictions sink from 629 to 152, the crime rises from about 600 to 1,300 cases. It seems to me that if we wish to ascertain whence this crime really comes, we must watch its movements, and we must see what are the concomitants of this crime. That which diminishes while the crime increases is not likely to be the immediate and direct cause of that crime; but that which increases with the crime and the movements of which correspond with it with wonderful exactness, then it is that the judicious inquirer will begin to believe that he is getting nearer to the true cause and incentive to the crime. Now, Sir, let us see what is the real relation of the operations of the Land League to the crime of Ireland. I do not speak of these operations as a whole, because I am persuaded that there are many persons who have connected themselves with it who would not tolerate or excuse crime, or willingly contribute to it in the slighteet degree, however indirectly. But, at the same time, we must look to the words that have been used, and we must look to the consequences that have followed from the use of them. The hon. Gentleman says—"Why had you not the courage to withdraw the ticket-of-leave from Mr. Davitt?" Well, Sir, it appears to me that if we have to deal with anyone whose words and actions are to be called in question, there is no safer, no more upright course, than to challenge some Member of this House. I will take the speech delivered by the hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) on the 19th of September at Ennis. The hon. Gentleman gave us in this House a most attractive account of the operations and objects of the Land League. Nothing could be smoother than his language, nothing could be more moderate than its purposes, as he described them. But let us see what is the language he holds on the other side of the water. "Now, what are you to do," he asks, "for the tenant who bids for a farm from which his neighbour has been evicted?" He then describes, as I will read by-and-bye, the punishment that is to be inflicted. But I wish to observe, before going on to the punishment, what the hon. Gentleman's definition is of the offence. We are told in this House that the object of the Land League is to prevent persons from taking farms from which others have been unfairly evicted, harshly evicted, tyrannically evicted—evicted for the non-payment of unfair rents. All these limitations, with which we in this House can perfectly well dispense, are prodigally showered upon us here; but they disappear from the speech of the hon. Gentleman in Ireland. [Mr. PARNELL dissented.] Well, I will read the words of the hon. Gentleman, and a shake of the head will be in vain—

"Now, what are you to do with a man who bids for a farm from which his neighbour has been evicted?"

Unjustly evicted.

I read the words as they have been reported accurately upon what I believe to be authentic evidence.

Jeremiah Stringer. ["Order!"]

I rise to Order. In all the speeches that I have made in Ireland, in which I have referred to tenants being evicted, I cannot recollect a single occasion upon which I omitted the word "unjustly."

All I can say is, that the memory of the hon. Gentleman seems to be fallible. At any rate, I am not quoting from any haphazard and unauthentic report, but from a report prepared by a shorthand writer of the highest credit and eminence, and sworn and proved in a Court of Justice. Such, Sir, is the crime. It matters not whether the landlord has been tyrannical and harsh, or whether he has been kind, indulgent, considerate, and forbearing. The crime is of occupying a farm from which, even in the last extremity—even to meet his own personal wants and those of his family—a landlord has felt it necessary to remove a tenant. That is the crime. What is the punishment? "When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted"—

Unjustly evicted.

It is a pity these odd words so constantly drop out. ["Shame!"] Such, Sir, is the crime. What is the punishment? "When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted"—

. Unjustly. ["Order!"]

I shall read on, Sir, from the sworn testimony which I have in my hand—"You must show him on the roadside—["Shun him!"]—when you meet him; you must show him in the streets of the town—["Shun him!"]—you must show him at the fair and market-place, and even"—["Shun him!"]—

Order, order! The right hon. Gentleman is entitled to be heard without interruption.

"You must show him at the fair and marketplace, and even in the House of Worship, by leaving him severely alone, by sending him to a moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his kind as if he were the leper of old; you must show him your detestation of the crime he has committed, and you may depend upon it if the counties of Ireland carried out this doctrine, that no man, no matter how full of avarice, how lost to shame, will transgress"—

What? The regulations of the Land League? No. "Your unwritten code." Does the hon. Gentleman believe, or does the House believe, that words like these are calculated to promote the observance of the law? The words sworn in Court are these—

"That if a man occupies a farm from which any man has been evicted, from whatever cause"—

Unjustly evicted.

These are the words sworn to in Court; they were not shaken in Court, and if there had been an attempt to shake them those who attempted to shake them would have been subjected to cross-examination. These are the words which are so declared to have been used, and irrespective of the cause, the circumstances, and the character, of the proceeding, it is characterized as a detestable crime deserving of complete isolation from all human kind, for any man to enter upon a farm from which another man, for whatever reason, has been evicted. And here is another passage from a speech of the hon. Gentleman, spoken, I believe, at Galway—

"Let no man take a farm, no matter what has been the cause—let no man take a farm from which a man has been evicted; let him be looked upon as a leper whenever you meet him in the street. In this way landlords cannot stock your land"—

Will the right hon. Gentleman—["Order!"]—state from what he is now reading? Is he now reading from the shorthand writers' notes?

The right hon. Gentleman is in possession of the House, and is entitled to proceed without interruption. If the hon. Member for the City of Cork desires to make any explanation at the termination of the right hon. Gentleman's address, it will be open for him to do so.

It was simply to deny that, that I rose. I have no explanation to make.

In a matter of this kind I should be liable to severe censure if I had attempted to disguise the quarter from which I have derived what I have been citing, or if I had taken it from any secondary source. All I can say is that I am citing these speeches in the hearing of my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General for Ireland and the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and I am speaking from the evidence sworn in Court on the Dublin Trial.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give the date? ["Order!"]

I believe I ought to have mentioned that the date is the 24th of October last. That which I speak of is not the intention, it is not the motive, which are entirely beyond my cognizance; but the tendency of the language, and the tendency of such language coming from a Gentleman in the position of the hon. Member, especially when taken in conjunction with the rapid growth of agrarian crime, much of which has been associated in a most direct manner with this very business of eviction, with which I have to deal. It is not uncharitable or rash to assume a connection between the words of the speaker and the acts which followed. I will now read one other passage, not from a speech of the hon. Member, but from a speech of one of his leading Friends—who I hope is in his place—the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar). These are the words of the hon. Member for Cavan, spoken at Kinlock, in the county of Leitrim, on the 31st of Octo- ber, 1880. "It is your duty"—he was recommending, of course, the cause of the Land League—

"It is your duty, and it is your interest, to give your assistance in such a manner as I will now point out to you. We do not recommend shooting landlords—that is an extreme measure, and certainly we do not recommend it, and, besides, it is held undesirable for the interests of the cause that it should be done, and for this reason—that when such a thing takes place it is blazoned forth in all the English newspapers, and prejudice is excited in English minds against the Irish tenant farmer, which is calculated to interfere to a material extent with the advocacy of my hon. Friend Mr. Parnell and others on behalf of the tenant-farmer."

["Hear, hear!"] The hon. Member appears to approve of this language. I cannot understand that cheer otherwise. If he does approve of it, I would advise him to repeat the cheer, and then we shall know that there are two, and not one only, among the leaders of the people of Ireland who consider that such language as I have just now read is within the limits of just and legitimate popular agitation. I will not trouble the House with other citations. Now, let us look to the facts, these being the words that are used. The Irish people are naturally, and from long tradition, a susceptible people, and the relations that exist between them and their landlords ought to impose special care in dealing with these subjects. It is for the House to judge—I would even say it is for the Members who have made these unhappy speeches to judge—whether their own consciences can acquit them from having used language which, whatever the intention, must necessarily tend, when addressed to less educated persons, under stronger temptations and with fewer restraints towards breaches of the law? Now, Sir, what has been the relation of the movement of crime to the movements of the Land League? In 1879 the meetings of the League were comparatively few, and yet even in that year as the meetings of the Land League moved upwards in number, so did the number of agrarian crimes—

And also the evictions?

What description of crimes?

In the third quarter of 1879 there were 50 meetings of the Land League. I do not quote the quarter before this, because although the League was in existence it was in its infancy. In the third quarter of 1879 there were 50 meetings of the Land League, and 155 agrarian outrages. In the fourth quarter the 50 meetings grew to 106, and the 155 agrarian outrages rose to 462. We then come to 1880. In the first quarter of 1880 there were 42 meetings of the Land League, and there were 293 agrarian outrages—

How many evictions?

I shall allude to the evictions presently. I am not quoting this as a case of great increase. On the contrary, 42 is not a very large number of meetings of the Land League, and, compared with the number in some previous years, 293 was not a very excessive or extravagant amount of agrarian outrages. But this quarter is my starting point. In the second quarter of 1880 the meetings of the Land League, for what reason I know not, fell to 31; and sure enough the agrarian outrages went down with the meetings to 247. But in the third quarter of 1880 the meetings of the Land League became very frequent indeed; they rose to 137, and the agrarian outrages rose to 354. In the fourth quarter of 1880 the meetings of the Land League were more than double—nearly treble. They rose from 137 to 392, and the agrarian offences rose from 354 to 1,671, the evictions in the meantime having enormously diminished, and having been in that quarter only about one-fourth of what they had been before. I will carry this one step further. I have hitherto spoken of Ireland as a whole. Perhaps it may be thought there were fitful movements in different directions, and that one of these movements may have neutralized the other. Now, I will compare the four Provinces of Ireland; not for the quarters, but for the years 1879 and 1880. In 1879 Leinster had 22 meetings, and 147 agrarian crimes. In 1880 these meetings rose to 117, and the crimes to 351—

Nearly all of them threatening letters.

In Ulster in 1879 there were 44 meetings, and 109 crimes. In 1880 the meetings rose to 83, and the agrarian crimes to 259. In Connaught in 1879 the meetings were 71, and the crimes 471. In 1880 the meetings rose to 213, and the crimes to 961. In Munster in 1879 the meetings were 26, and the crimes 136—both very low numbers; but in 1880 the meetings rose to 160, and the agrarian crimes to 990. So that with fatal and painful precision the steps of crime dogged the steps of the Land League, and it is not possible to get rid by any ingenuity of facts such as I have stated by vague and general complaints, by imputations against parties, imputations against England, imputations against Governments. You must meet them and confute them if you can. None will more rejoice than myself if you can attain such an end. But in the meantime they stand, and they stand uncontradicted in the face of the British House of Commons. ["No!"] They will tend to show how wide of the truth are the vague and general statements that hon. Members laid before us as to the innocence of the intentions of the Land League, and the purity of, at least, its written laws. But we have never said that the amount of this crime, taken by itself, was the basis of our propositions. That is not the case. You must consider the amount of crime in conjunction with its source, with its character, with what it indicates, and what it means. Nothing can be more idle than to confound this agrarian crime of Ireland with the ordinary crime of England, and the agrarian crime of Ireland with the ordinary crime of Ireland. What we have founded ourselves upon, has been, above all things, the failure of the administration of justice. It is the administration of justice which constitutes the safety of the private individual, and which is the true guarantee both of rights and liberties. It is the failure of the administration of justice, with regard to which there has not been one single effort made, however trivial, in the course of this debate to establish a case against the statement of my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland. ["Oh!"] I have heard more of the debate, I think, than the hon. Member has, and I can recollect no argument or statement of that kind to show that the administration of justice has not failed in Ireland. On the contrary, there has been a practice pursued which, in my opinion, is, to say the least of it, an inconvenient and an unfortunate practice—namely, that of mixing up together the case of agrarian crime and the case of ordinary crime. No doubt, if you do that, you so perplex and confuse the whole facts that it is impossible to arrive at any just conclusion whatever. We have nothing to do on this occasion with the condition of ordinary crime. The state of Ireland, happily, with regard to ordinary crime, is comparatively satisfactory; and in the midst of all the deep unhappiness of these proceedings to-night, do not let us lose sight of the future of Ireland, or fail to take note of circumstances which show that, however bad her present condition, Ireland has made great advances. Her population are better clothed, are better fed, and better housed. The hon. Member for Mayo said last night, and I believe he was justified in saying it, that there were still hundreds of thousands of Irishmen who live more or less on the brink of want and starvation. It is painfully true. But had the hon. Member been speaking 40 years back, he would have been entitled to tell us, not that hundreds of thousands were in that condition, but millions. Together with the improved condition of the people, as shown by the fact already mentioned in the course of this debate, that the rate of wages in Ireland have doubled or more than doubled, there has been a great diminution of crime. Unhappily for Ireland, I do not think she would compare favourably with the limited portion of this country with which I have the happiness to be connected—namely, the Principality of Wales, which stands, I believe, at the head, so far as the absence of serious crime is concerned, of all the divisions of the United Kingdom. But Ireland, with regard to general crime, holds a high and honourable place; and not only so, but the administration of justice is thoroughly efficient so far as general crime is concerned, and the arrests and convictions will bear comparison—perhaps even favourable comparison—with this and other portions of the Kingdom. But what is the case with agrarian crime. We must carefully sever this class of crime from ordinary crime. It is fatal to all true investigation of the case if we allow ourselves to mix them. What is ordinary crime? Ordinary crime is due sometimes to momentary passion; often to weakness and inability to resist temptation, and sometimes to hardened depravity. But in all cases where it occurs it is at once recognized as the foe of society, and society arms itself by a natural instinct to discountenance it and to put it down. An ordinary crime means the thing that it is, and means nothing more; but when you come to agrarian crime how different it is! Agrarian crime is the expression of the will, tendency, and determination not of one, but of many. It is not only a single occurrence; it is a symbol, and a reproduction of that occurrence in every similar case, where a similar provocation exists, and that provocation may consist either in the exercise of private rights or in the discharge of private duties. Agrarian crime is, above all things, important in its character as a symbol; in its character as a menace, and in the indications that it gives, and, unhappily, in the support that it receives. Whether it is or is not true that the administration of justice has broken down in Ireland with respect to agrarian crime, there are, no doubt, some who think how alien it is to the spirit of Liberal policy to propose restrictions. I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy), who, after a few weeks in this House, has already given indications which promise for him considerable prominence; but, as he may have occasion to plead against the policy of interruption himself, I would advise him to show a little tolerance—[Mr. HEALY: We have got none.]—in the permission of a free expression of opinions by others. [Mr. HEALY: We have got none.] If he will take a little friendly recommendation from me, I will say that his demeanour is not the best way to get it. The case of the two kinds of crime in Ireland is most extraordinary. What I was saying when the hon. Member casually interrupted me was that, no doubt, every man in this House must feel, and undoubtedly that those associated with the Liberal policy must feel most, the extremely painful nature of the duty we have to perform; at the same time, if it is our duty we must look it in the face, and must not allow the least emotion, recollection, or any secondary consideration to stand in the way of the performance of our solemn Parliamentary obligations. How does the case stand with regard to agrarian and non-agrarian crime in Ireland? In the year 1880, there were 3,084 non-agrarian crimes recorded. Out of these 1,269, or 42 percent led to arrests, and out of the 1,269 arrests there were 694 convictions. Upon the gross total of offences returned, there were 42 per cent of arrests and 22 per cent of convictions. I have referred to the English Returns, and I find, as far as I can make out, that this percentage is quite as high, perhaps a little higher, than in England; so that as regards criminal inclinations generally the people of Ireland stand in an eminent and honourable degree acquitted; and, as regards the administration of justice, they gave as efficient co-operation to that administration as is given in any other portion of the United Kingdom. Now, let us turn to agrarian crime. In the case of agrarian crime the offences recorded are 2,590, the number of arrests 295, and the number of convictions 83. So that, instead of having 42 percent of arrests, we have 12 per cent of arrests; and instead of having 22 per cent of convictions, we have 3 per cent. When 33 persons are guilty, one is brought to punishment and 32 walk abroad with impunity. I ask the House whether that is or is not a breaking down of the administration of justice; whether we, whatever be our Party designation, are to allow our fellow-subjects to live under a régime of unwritten law, the effect of which, whatever be its intention, is that as regards this description of crime, which bears directly upon the relations of life and impedes its action, 33 persons are guilty, one is punished, and 32 enjoy perfect and absolute impunity? No attempt has been made to meet this case. The hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere), in his able speech, made no attempt to meet it. He mixed up the two kinds of crime, ignoring altogether the fact that if you do mix them you make it absolutely impossible to get at the truth. I now, however, point out to him that the state of things which we seek to correct, and which he will not yet agree to give us his co-operation in correcting, is one in which impunity is given to 32 offenders for every one offender brought to justice. This is the first stage of a measure which Her Majesty's Government have, with pain, resolved to propose to the House. They think that their first duty is, without being drawn aside by any other object, so far as depends on their free will, to apply an efficient remedy to this state of things. The hon. Member for Tralee (the O'Donoghue), in his speech last night, said he would offer the strongest opposition to this measure of the Government, and that in doing so he hoped to have the support of the feelings and the sympathy of the people of England and Scotland. Well, Sir, I think we are in a position to judge somewhat of the feelings, opinions, and sympathies, of the people of England and Scotland on this question by the course taken in regard to it by hon. Members in this House. We, at all events, know something of the feelings and of the opinions of the people of England and Scotland. It is true, they are divided into political Parties. One great political Party which, at times, returns a majority to this House is the Conservative Party. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Tralee hopes to obtain much support from that portion of the people of England who wear those colours. With respect to the Liberal Party, my position places me in intimate, immediate, and constant relations with all Liberal Bodies, Organizations, and Associations throughout the country; and I must say that since Parliament met, since the announcement in the Queen's Speech and since the powerful statement of my right hon. Friend near me, not one single day has passed without Her Majesty's Government having received from the Associations and Bodies qualified to speak and accustomed to speak the sense of the Liberal Party throughout the country, without the slightest evasion, constant assurances of approval and support in the policy we have pursued with regard to Ireland. It will not do for hon. Gentlemen opposite to deal in generalities. They must grapple with the facts which are established. They must by some statement of fact give, if they can, a different colour to the relations that exist between the Land League and agrarian crime in Ireland; and they must, by some statement of fact, if they can achieve the impossible, meet that which I think I have demonstrated to the House by a few figures of the breaking down of the administration of justice in Ireland. What does the breaking down of the administration of justice mean? That breaking down means the destruction of peace and all that makes life worth having; it means the placing in abeyance of the most sacred duties and most cherished rights; it means the establishment of the servitude of good men and the supremacy and impunity of bad men. We were unwilling to move in such a state of things without demonstrative evidence to support us. That demonstrative evidence has been unhappily accumulated upon us, and that evidence it has been our painful duty to present to the House. As to our convictions, I can assure the House that the pain and the amount of deliberation with which we have arrived at them is the measure of their present strength and solidity. We shall not cease to press our proposals on the British Parliament, and we feel confident that we shall have a truly national assent and support to this assurance, that our effort is an honest effort to restore to Ireland the first condition of Christian and civilized existence.

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

Debate further adjourned till Monday next.

said, he rose to call attention to the fact that the hon. Member for Wexford had challenged the Vote.

said, that no challenge had reached him or the Clerk at the Table; and he had, therefore, declared the Vote carried.

asked when the Estimates would be in the hands of hon. Members?

believed they would be presented in the course of a fortnight.

Resolution to be reported upon Monday next;

Committee to sit again upon Monday next.