Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, if it is the destiny of this House again to go through another of those nights which we have passed, with no very great satisfaction either to the House or to the country, I think it would be but right that while the House is still full I should call, in a very few words, the attention of hon. Members to the position in which we stand; and I wish especially to refer to what passed a few minutes ago, on the observations made by my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Lancashire (Sir R. Assheton Cross). We have listened with patience to every argument that has been brought forward; but we have listened to a great deal more. We have listened to the same observations repeated over and over again; we have seen the same speakers rising over and over again, and we have been told, even in the last observations of the last speaker, that if the proposal that was made by some hon. Gentleman sitting below the Gangway some 24 hours ago—that proposal having been to the effect that the House should then adjourn—had been accepted we might now have been dividing on the Main Question. Well, under these circumstances, and having reference to the great number of times upon which the same Members have risen two, three, and I do not know whether some hon. Members have not risen even four times, to speak upon the mere Question of adjournment—looking to that fact, and looking, also, to what is obvious to the whole House and to almost every Member of the House, the meaning and the spirit in which this debate has been carried on, and reading it by the light of the declaration we have had—that if the proposal of the hon. Member below the Gangway (Mr. Parnell) had been adopted it would have saved us many hours' attendance in this House, and we should now be ready to divide—it is impossible, I think, that the conclusion which forced itself on the mind of my right hon. Friend should not also have occurred to the minds of a great many other hon. Members. You will remember, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that my right hon. Friend asked the Speaker while he was still in the Chair whether a debate carried on in that manner and under those circumstances did not amount to something in the nature of Obstruction. The Speaker, feeling, no doubt, the very great delicacy of the position, stated, as nearly as it was possible for him to state, that he agreed with the general views of my right hon. Friend, and that he was ready to say that, at all events, the debate which had gone on had come very near indeed to the limits of Obstruction. Now, Sir, I want to know, if it then came near to those limits, at what point may we expect that those limits will be reached? The speech of the hon. Member who has just sat down (Mr. Dillon), and especially the questions which I have quoted—that if the proposal made last night had been accepted we should now have been dividing—strongly, I think, confirm and carry further the observations made by my right hon. Friend, and which were so observed upon by Mr. Speaker. [Mr. DILLON: Not at all.] I do not know whether the House can in any way be convinced that the debate is being carried on in that spirit, even if Members who have spoken three times should speak six times on the same Question of adjournment. I feel—we all feel—the very great delicacy and the difficulty of the position which is occupied by the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker on this occasion; and I think it is the duty of the House, and I may say it is especially the duty of Her Majesty's Government, to support Mr. Speaker in the exercise of his discretion. I was sorry, I must say, that when my right hon. Friend made his observations just now there was no indication on the part of the Government of their views. I am not proposing, and I am not attempting, to cast any blame upon them for not having done so; but I do think I am entitled, in the name of the independent Members of this House, who, at the request of Her Majesty's Government, have given up a large portion of the time usually allotted to private Members, for the conduct of this particular measure, which Her Majesty's Government have pressed on us as one of an urgent character, and who have also supported the Government in every way, both by speech when it seemed to be the best course, and by silence when silence seemed to be the best course, and by remaining here in sufficient numbers to support them throughout the long hours of the night—I think I have a right, in the name of the independent Members, to ask for some expression of opinion on the part of the Government which may strengthen the hands of you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in endeavouring to put a stop to that which we are fully convinced is of the nature of Obstruction—"No!"—and which Mr. Speaker, while he was still in the Chair, admitted, at all events, had come, even at that time, very near to that limit.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South-West Lancashire (Sir R. Assheton Cross) addressed the Speaker a few minutes before you took the Chair I was rising to follow him and to support his appeal, when I was told that the right hon. Gentleman had risen to a point of Order, and that I should be guilty of disorder if I interposed between the right hon. Gentleman and the Chair. But the right hon. Gentleman in the Chair gave an explicit warning, not only to the hon. Member who had been speaking at the time (Mr. Dillon), but, by implication, to other hon. Members who had addressed the House three, four, or five times in the course of these debates during the last day and a half; and I must say that I expected the warning then given by Mr. Speaker would have been effectual, and that the debate might have been brought to a close by the present time. But, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that appeal by the right hon. Gentleman on the point of Order did not, in point of form, succeed at the moment, because, in the opinion of the Speaker, the line had not been overstepped. And it did not practically succeed, because we have had since repeated repetitions of what I may call these Parliamentary offences which led to the intervention of the right hon. Gentleman. I am very glad that the right hon. Gentleman who leads the Party who sit opposite to us has now again appealed to you, Sir, not merely on a technical point of Order but referring generally to the character of the debate, and that he has pointed out the violation of the recent Rule, and of those principles by which the debates of this House have been guided for so long. And I, Sir, answering his appeal, do emphatically say that if you should think fit, and I hope that you will think fit, to put a stop to this obstruction, which is no novelty, because we had experience of it some years ago, when we had to sit up for 26 hours, in order to meet the obstructive proceedings of certain hon. Members opposite, you will have, on the part of Her Majesty's Government, the most cordial and determined support.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, we are now, I think approaching something like a crisis in this debate. We have certainly heard some very remarkable, some very novel, and, I think, some very dangerous doctrines laid down on both sides of the House. The Speaker, before he quitted the Chair, had ruled that certain hon. Members were not out of Order. ["No, no!"] The Speaker, and the Deputy Speaker, had again and again ruled that certain Members were not out of Order, although it is true that the Speaker accompanied that ruling with an intimation on his own behalf that one or two Members of whom he spoke were trying the patience of the House and approaching a violation of Order. The doctrine which I now understand to be laid down by the right hon. Gentleman, who, for the moment, represents Her Majesty's Government (Mr. Childers), is that the Government can, with the assistance of the leading Members of the Opposition, create a principle of clôture for themselves and call on the majority of the House to close the debate at any moment they please. Although I have not been for a long time a Member of this House, I have long and closely watched its proceedings and debates; and if the right hon. Gentleman an tell us of any authority in the House which has laid down that it is within the power of Her Majesty's Government and of the majority to close a debate by an arbitrary act of their own, I shall be glad if he will refer to that authority. The right hon. Gentleman talked to us of repetitions in the course of the debate. Did he ever hear a debate in which there were not repetitions? The right hon. Gentleman talked to us of Members having spoken three or four times in the course of a very protracted debate. Since when is it a new thing for Members to speak more than once in the course of a debate when three or four seperate Motions have been successively before the Chair? I protest most strongly against this doctrine of a constructive violation of the Rules and Orders of the House. Her Majesty's Government have lately been trying their hands at the device of constructive conspiracy, and they have totally failed to establish their case. Their failure will be still more conspicuous, if they attempt now to cram the same sort of theory down the throat of the House in the shape of constructive violation of Order. I, myself, in the course of these debates, have only spoken twice. This is the second time I have risen since the debate commenced. I have not repeated anything that any other hon. Member has said, and I shall endeavour, as far as possible, not to repeat any observations of my own. But I would ask on what principle is the right hon. Gentleman to make me responsible for the imaginary offences, or even for the real offences, of others? This strange doctrine, this gigantic innovation, is suggested to you, Sir, on the spur of the moment, at the instance of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War, as one by which he, and his triumphant majority, are, forsooth, to start a clôture of their own, in order to bring a debate to a close at any moment. At the same time, I am glad to have heard anything from the Treasury Bench—any contribution whatever to the debate. We have had the pleasure of seeing throughout these long debates some Member or other of the Government sitting upon the Treasury Bench; but all alike maintained all through the same policy of silence. ["Question!"]

It is customary for the House to allow the responsible Minister of the Government and the Leaders of the Opposition to explain their views in regard to questions of Order which may be brought before the House, and I allowed the hon. Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) to rise, because I thought it only fair that hon. Members in that part of the House should have an opportunity of explaining their views on the same subject. I must now remind the hon. Member that the Question before the House at the present moment is the adjournment of the House, and that he is not in Order in speaking upon other topics. Perhaps the hon. Member will continue his remarks in reference to the Question immediately before it.

I was addressing myself simply and exclusively to the Question of adjournment. I am supporting the Motion for adjournment, and, in supporting that Motion, I am appealing to the Members of Her Majesty's Government to consent to the adjournment. If, as I suppose, they have made up their minds not to consent to the adjournment, I ask them at least to favour the House with some reason why they oppose it? What particular reason is there why, on the first reading of this Bill, the House should be forced into a premature decision? We have given reasons, over and over again, to show why we should not be compelled to arrive at a premature decision, and I have, myself, referred to several instances in which, on the first introduction of a measure, a longer discussion took place than we have yet had. I want the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War to explain to the House why the introduction of this Bill should differ from all others, and why Her Majesty's Government refuse to allow to it the same amount of discussion which has often been given to the introduction of other measures? At the present hour we could not possibly hope for a fair discussion of the Question before the House. I, therefore, appeal to the Government, if they will not agree to the adjournment, at least to state their reasons for their refusal.

said, he had voted for the Motion for the adjournment of the debate for a simple reason which, he believed, would commend itself to every friend of fair play. When the House of Commons was asked to come to a decision upon a question of suspending the Constitution throughout Ireland, its Members ought to be in possession of all the evidence upon which that request was made. If, therefore, anybody in that House was showing disrespect to Parliament, it was those ill-advised Members of Her Majesty's Ministry who asked the House to come to such a decision without supplying them with the statistics alleged to exist, but which the House had not been permitted to see. An instance was afforded by no less a person than the Chief Secretary for Ireland himself of the necessity of fuller and more accurate information upon the subject before the House. If the right hon. Gentleman had had the opportunity that would be afforded by this reasonable delay, for which Irish Members pleaded, he would never have placed in the hands of the Chief of the Government the utterly false report of a speech of a Member of that House. He was satisfied the Chief Secretary for Ireland could not in any willing manner be guilty of placing in the hands of the head of the Government a speech falsely attributed to the hon. Member for Cork City.

I fail to see that the observations of the hon. Member are relevant to the Question before the House.

was simply pointing out that if the House was allowed time for reflection and for obtaining more accurate information, the most distinguished Members would not be guilty of mistakes arising from the want of statistics. It was because the House needed further information upon the state of Ireland that the adjournment was asked for. Why, he asked, did not a Member of Her Majesty's Government rise and put an end to the complaints of Irish Members, thereby shortening discussion and allowing the House to come quickly to a decision, by simply undertaking to place in the hands of hon. Members without delay the vast mass of statistics which were not in possession of the House? In any Court of Justice an adjournment would be granted on the demand of counsel for the defence, in the absence of evidence absolutely necessary for the elucidation of the pleas before the Court. Now, there were accusations before the great Court of Parliament all depending upon evidence which was kept back. If the Government forced on a decision immediately and in hot haste, in the absence of necessary evidence, they would be guilty before Ireland of snatching a verdict from an uninformed jury. Therefore, he asked for the evidence which was withheld from hon. Members. The high authority of a Speaker of the House had decided that it was most legitimate for Members of the House to make use of the Forms of the House, in order to obtain delay, on all questions of importance which happened to be before Parliament. The present question was one of great particular importance, and not one of general Business. It was the question of the coercion of the Irish people. They asked for adjournment in order to enable Her Majesty's Government, even out of mercy to their own reputation, to lay before them the facts which they said they could produce, which they had not produced, and which, very possibly, they never could produce. One right hon. Gentleman of Her Majesty's Government relied upon another, and each in his turn relied upon the next. He called upon Her Majesty's Government to produce forthwith the statistics on which they asked the House to establish despotism in Ireland. Her Majesty's Government told them there were the statistics for two months of such a terrible character that, although statistics for the other months had broken down, they would be sufficient to prove their case. Then, why did they not allow the House to adjourn until hon. Members knew that those statistics were in existence? He had come to the conclusion that Her Majesty's Government were the dupes of the officials at Dublin Castle, who had told them that statistics existed which did not exist, and therefore he claimed an opportunity for testing whether his view, or that of Her Majesty's Government, was correct. They asked nothing more than the adjournment of the debate, for the production of evidence, or an open confession that the evidence did not exist. One word from the Treasury Bench would dissipate the doubts of hon. Members, and the manuscript of the quarter's statistics would put an end to Irish opposition at that stage of the discussion. It was, however, very easy to silence the minority in that House. Nothing more was necessary than that an agreement should be entered into between the heads of the majorities.

The hon. Member is travelling beyond the Question before the House.

expressed regret, and concluded by assuring the House that any hasty, unspontaneous vote, any inconsiderate and rash act, would cause the decision of Parliament to be estimated by the people at the same value as the opinion of the hon. Member for North Warwickshire.

The hon. Member who has just sat down has made a demand for statistics, in addition to those already presented to the House. I am not about to enter into any argument with the hon. Member on that question, for I feel satisfied that the preponderating numbers of Members of this House are of opinion that sufficient grounds have been shown for coming to a decision upon the preliminary question of introducing the Bill upon which we are substantially engaged. But we are met once more with Motions for adjournment. Now, in every practical Assembly there is a time when discussion must cease and a decision be taken. Speaking generally, that time may be said to have come when it is made apparent by the constant repetition of the same objections to a proposition that the stock of arguments against it has been exhausted. I ask the House whether it is not evident that that period has been reached in this debate; and whether the arguments against the proposal of the Government have not been, not only stated, but iterated and re-iterated, till it has become abundantly demonstrated that its opponents have no fresh matter to adduce? I put it to hon. Members opposite whether they would not best support the interests of those whom they represent, best advance the cause for which they plead, and best consult their own dignity, by desisting from a barren discussion? Hon. Members opposite must feel that they have long since done all that in them lies in defence of their views upon this stage, at all events, of the question; and, in that sense, I think it will be acknowledged that this debate should be no longer protracted.

did not intend to imitate the right hon. Gentleman who had just spoken, by making any appeal to the Irish Members. Neither would he make any appeal to the majority of the House, because the majority of the House was at the moment powerless. It appeared to him that the Standing Orders of the House had armed the person presiding over the discussions of the House with ample power to put an end to the unhappy and disgraceful scenes to which the House for so many hours had been compelled to submit.

rose to Order. The Deputy Speaker had ruled a few moments ago that it was customary to allow the Leaders of the House to address the Chair on the Standing Orders.

The hon. and learned Member for Chatham is speaking to a point of Order, and is in possession of the House.

He was about to say that the Rules and Standing Orders of the House which were placed in the hands of the person presiding over the House gave ample power to put a stop to the unhappy and disgraceful scenes they had lately witnessed. He would not refer again to the terms of the Standing Order; they had already been spoken of by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Lancashire, the right hon. Baronet the Leader of the Opposition, and the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War. The terms of that Order would be in the recollection of the House; but he would put before the House two short propositions, the first of which was—

I rise to Order.

The hon. and learned Member is speaking to a point of Order, and is in possession of the Chair.

I am about to state two very short and simple propositions, and the first is, that the Main Question before the House—the Question whether leave should be given to the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland to introduce his Bill—has been discussed by the House ad nauseam, and that there remains nothing more to be said upon the subject. My second proposition is, that, therefore, any hon. Member of this House who now rises to prolong this discussion, already exhausted, by moving the adjournment of the House, or the adjournment of the debate, is abusing the Rules of the House by persistently and wilfully ob- structing its Business; and I submit to you, Sir, that if you agree with these two propositions which I have laid down, and to which it is obvious the majority of the House agrees, it becomes your duty—as the person now presiding over the Business of this House—to Name any hon. Member who persists in obstructing Business. I invite you, Sir, to exercise your authority under that Standing Order, by Naming any Member who so offends; and I think I can promise you that your ruling, on your Naming a Member, will be followed by the Order being put in force by an enormous majority.

It appears to me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that the hon. and learned Gentleman who has just addressed you has rather taken on himself the functions of the Chair. Certainly, it appeared to me that the latter part of his speech was an implied censure on the Chair for not having put in force a Rule which it is solely within the competence of the Chair to put in force.

Does the hon. Member rise to address me on a point of Order?

Yes, I am addressing you on the point which has been raised by the hon. Member, and I say that it is solely within the competence of the Chair, and not of any hon. Member, to put in force the Rule referred to. Had it not been for the occurrences of this evening, I should have thought that any debate upon the application of a Rule, or any proposal as to such application, would have been strictly out of Order; but, under the circumstances, and as a definite proposal has been made to you, Sir, with reference to the application of that Rule—as you have been formally asked to apply it—I claim the right, as a Member of this House, to say something in opposition to the views which have been placed before you by the hon. Member.

The hon. Member can only rise to address the Chair on a point of Order. I am perfectly prepared to act upon the remarks made by Mr. Speaker before he left the Chair. They were—

"Although Members speaking to the Question before the House may speak altogether in Order with respect to that Question, still I can well understand that Members may enter into a combination to effect a purpose which would bring them within the operation of this Order; and if I found that there was a distinct and clear combination on the part of Members of this House wilfully and persistently to obstruct the Business of the House by combination, I should consider that this Standing Order would apply. I am bound to say that the course of this debate has brought before me evidence of that combination, in so far as to bring Members wilfully obstructing within the operation of the Standing Order."

But Mr. Speaker left the House without considering the time had come to give immediate application to that Rule; and, agreeing with Mr. Speaker that what has occurred in the debate would go far to bring some of the Members who have taken part in it within the scope of this Standing Order, if they individually persist in obstruction when called upon by the Chair to desist, I shall watch with great care that no waste of the time of the House takes place on Motions for adjournment.

Well, I presume that the subject is now closed—at all events, for a time—until some further appeal is made to you on the subject. But, in reply to the right hon. Gentleman—

Does the hon. Gentleman speak on the general Question?

Yes, on the general Question of adjournment. I do not think that four days is sufficient time to debate this question. We have been able to point to the example that was set to us in 1845, when the first reading of the Bill for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act occupied seven Evening Sittings of this House; and we say that public liberty ought not to be held so much more cheaply in these days; that whereas the House of Commons allowed seven days for the discussion in 1845 of the Bill for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, on this occasion it will allow only four. Now, Sir, we consider that this time has been too little. We ask you for more time, in order that we may have an opportunity of testing the accuracy of the Returns of the Government. This is very important. The Returns of the outrages and agrarian offences refer to districts scattered over the greater portion of Ireland. It must necessarily take considerable time to investigate these different cases. We are at present engaged in these investigations. We have taken, and are taking, the greatest possible pains to obtain information from the different localities with a view of testing the Returns. This investigation must take considerable time, and we are desirous of laying the result of it before the House before these debates have came to a conclusion. I think we have good ground for asking for further time—

I rise to Order. The hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of Cork is one of the 11 Gentlemen who have spoken 33 times on Motions for adjournment of the House. I have listened carefully to the arguments which he has used, and I appeal to hon. Gentlemen opposite, and to hon. Gentlemen behind me, whether he is not now re-stating word for word statements he himself has made during this Sitting of the House, and which have been repeatedly urged by other hon. Gentlemen?

What is the point of Order?

I ask you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, whether such conduct on the part of the hon. Member for Cork City does not bring him under the Rules of the House that have been quoted? I ask you whether he is not abusing the Rules?

. What is your point of Order?

I ask whether the hon. Member has not wilfully obstructed the Business of the House; and whether, therefore, the time has not come when it is your duty, as Deputy Speaker of this House and charged with the maintenance of its authority and dignity, to Name the hon. Member?

The hon. Member for Cork has hitherto very shortly stated that he is taking measures to investigate the accuracy of the Returns in different parts. That has been frequently stated before; but he has only gone a very short way in his statement, and I do not yet think that there is a case for Naming him, for, under the Standing Order referred to, wilful and persistent obstruction must be brought home to each individual Member before the Chair Names him to the House.

I rise to a point of Order. Your attention, Mr. Deputy Speaker, has been repeatedly called by distinguished Members of this House to an alleged violation of the Standing Orders. Now, I wish, to call your attention to the persistent obstruction to Public Business on the part of these right hon. Gentlemen who have alleged points of Order that were not points of Order at all; and I appeal to you to exercise your authority to put down this obstruction by Naming these right hon. Gentlemen and inflicting upon them the consequences of their disobeying your Ruling four times within the last quarter of an hour.

I feel very much obliged to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for your indulgence. I can assure you that I shall never desire to trespass upon the Order of the House, and I believe that I shall never unnecessarily obstruct the Business of this House. It is not my intention, on the present occasion, to obstruct the Business of the House; but I wish to oppose the progress of this particular measure. I believe I am perfectly within my rights in so doing, and in using the Forms of the House for the purpose of obtaining more time for the bonâ fide discussion of the present stage of the Bill. I regret exceedingly—I deeply regret—that this opposition should be accompanied by a loss of public time. No hon. Member can regret this more than I do.

The hon. Member is not now speaking to the Question of adjournment, and I must call his attention to the fact that he is travelling beyond the Question before the House.

I shall conclude very shortly.

I rise to Order. ["Order!" and "Question!"] Members opposite may say what they like, but I am determined to speak. ["Order!"] Oh! shout away. I stand here and call on Her Majesty's Government—

What is your point of Order?

The hon. Member (Mr. Parnell) has been called to Order four times. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith) has appealed to the Chair to Name the hon. Member, and I now call on Her Majesty's Government to support the right hon. Gentleman's appeal.

In conclusion, I merely wish to observe—

I rise to Order. An hon. Member sitting opposite—the hon. Member for Cavan—has called me a "b—y fool!"

Such an expression would be entirely out of Order; but it did not reach my ear, and I understand that the hon. Member for Cavan denies having made it.

I beg leave to make an explanation—

In conclusion, I merely wish to say that we desire more time to investigate these Returns, and that the result of that investigation will throw new light upon the Question before the House.

very much feared that, in rising to support the Motion before the House, he was exposing himself to the danger of repeating something that might have been said by someone else. He would endeavour, as much as possible, not to repeat anything that had been said before; but he could not help stating the reasons why he asked for an adjournment at the present moment. The Irish Members had given just and fair reasons when they asked for it some 24 hours ago; but he had another sound one to offer—namely, that upon the Motion which had been made by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary he had not been afforded an opportunity of expressing his opinion or the opinion of his constituents. Under the circumstances, he thought it only fair that he should ask for an adjournment, so that he might be afforded the opportunity he desired. One of the difficulties with which they had to contend was, that many hon. Members, especially many on the Benches opposite, who had always been opposed to propositions such as that involved in the Motion of the Chief Secretary, and who were generally opposed to coercion, would not examine for themselves the figures of outrages upon which the case of the right hon. Gentleman was founded.

I must point out to the hon. Member that he is beginning exactly the same arguments which have been already advanced. I must, therefore, call attention to the obstruction that is now taking place,

resuming, said, that he was under the impression, he was mak- ing a statement that was not made before. He was stating that hon. Members would not examine for themselves the figures upon which the case was made out—that they were taking it for granted that a case had been made out. He had not made that statement before, nor, to the best of his belief, had he heard it made. He did not want to obstruct; but he asked that he should be afforded an opportunity of speaking at the proper time to express the opinion of his constituents that the proposal was wholly unnecessary. Many hon. Members opposite might, perhaps, think it was perfectly immaterial—

I beg to ask you, Sir, now, whether this is not absolutely obstruction?

I am listening with attention to find whether the hon. Gentleman proposes to repeat the arguments which have been so constantly heard.

said, he did not blame hon. Gentlemen for making those objections, or inviting attention to his arguments; but the effect of the interruptions had been to make it difficult for him to remember whether what he was saying had been stated by other Members before. He did not wish to occupy the attention of the House at any great length, and should content himself with stating that he hoped, if it was not too late, that the Government would even then consent to the proposal before the House. He knew the Government might feel that by yielding they would be giving way to a small minority; but he would ask them to bear in mind that the Irish Members represented a majority of the people of Ireland, and to consider who had a better right to say whether a full and ample discussion had taken place than those who represented the people of Ireland. He hoped even yet the Government would see their way to withdraw their Motion. They had challenged the resistance of the Irish Members, and they could not be surprised if the challenge was accepted. [ Cries of "Name!"]

said, he knew the object of hon. Gentlemen who interrupted was to try whether what had proceeded in the House was obstruction or not. He ventured to think that the question had got to be tried in the presence of his hon. Friend who had just sat down; but he believed that his hon. Friend was as incapable of offering obstruction as any hon. Member. If they were about to try the big question of Obstruction in that House, let them try it with a big man. Let them try it with the hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of Cork.

The Question before the House is simply one of adjournment.

said, they were on the question of Obstruction, and he thought on that question arose a larger question, and that was, whether they were to have Obstruction tried or not? There was not an hon. Member on either side of the House, putting technicalities aside, who did not know that he was addressing himself to the Question, and if it was to be tried, let them have the hon. Member for the City of Cork as the Leader of the Party, and try the question with that hon. Gentleman, and not with any other hon. Gentleman. It was idle to talk of trying individual Members.

I have a few words to offer to the House. I was struck with the questions that were put to this Bench by the hon. Member for the City of Cork, and the hon. Member for Tipperary, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Longford. Questions were asked why it is that we object to an adjournment? Now, I will give an answer to the demands of the hon. Gentlemen, and keep strictly to the Question. I understood the hon. Member for Tipperary to say that if, last night, the Government had accepted some kind of proposition as to the procedure in regard to Business, the House might have adjourned at a reasonable time last night, and that it might have resumed the debate at 5 o'clock to-day—that is yesterday now—and that by this time the House might have divided on the Main Question. That was said by the hon. Member for Tipperary if I understood him aright. I am not sure by whom that proposition was made; whether in private or in public. But, in any case, it was not acceded to. Now, if the proposition that was then made had been adopted, the debate would have ended at 12 o'clock last night, resumed at 5 o'clock to-day, and have ended by about this time (1 o'clock). If that be so, hon. Members for Ireland have no ground for complaint, for they have had 17 hours of discussion of this question— more than, they themselves were prepared to admit last night, was necessary. If I am not mistaken in this, surely the Government have a right, and the great majority of this House have a right, to ask hon. Gentlemen opposite to consent to a division now; and I think they might have consented to one at an earlier hour than 1 o'clock. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Lancashire, and his Friend the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, have spoken with great warmth on this question, and have endeavoured to throw upon the Government the responsibility of the present state of affairs. [Sir R. ASSHETON CROSS: No, no!] Well, perhaps, that is not quite a fair statement. At any rate, they have thrown the responsibility on the Government of making some proposition. [Sir R. ASSHETON CROSS: No, no!] Then I am under a mistake. I understood that was the purport of it. If I am not mistaken, and if that be the view of those right hon. Gentlemen, I think I am at liberty to say that the Government do not by any means reject that responsibility. The House must know, everybody must know, that it is not easy, probably it is not possible, to make any considerable change in the Rules of our procedure without a large unanimity on the part of the House. It may be that, until this time, the case has not been such as to compel that unanimity. I hope the case now presented to us, as it is to-night, has arrived at that point when it is possible to make some change, perfectly consistent with freedom of discussion, which may save the House of Commons from the discreditable scenes which have been exhibited within these walls within the last few days. I know not if I am too sanguine in this matter; but I believe it is the intention of my right hon. Friend at the head of the Government to make some proposition to the House, and the House will have a fair opportunity of discussing it; and if the House is not willing to assert its own right in circumstances such as these, the blame must rest on the House, and they must bear the consequences that may ensue. I will make one other observation only. The hon. Gentleman who sat down just now spoke of the majority of the Irish Members as representing the majority of the Irish people. There has been no division during this Session, I believe, in which hon. Gentlemen opposite have been supported by the majority of the Irish Members, and in all divisions except the first they have only been supported by about one-third of the Irish Members. Do not let them suppose I am asserting that they are not representing a large opinion in Ireland. [An hon. MEMBER: A majority.] An hon. Member says "a majority." I will not say that it is so or not. I admit perforce much that they say on that point; but I am perfectly certain that the time must come—I hope it will come—when the Irish people—all that is thoughtful and all that is sensible amongst them—will find out that the way to do good to Ireland is not to degrade this House of the Imperial Parliament. Further, I am greatly mistaken if it be not the fact that this Imperial Parliament will know how to defend itself from the grossest case of insult and obstruction which, in my opinion, has ever been exhibited here. I cannot promise myself or flatter myself that anything I can say will have any influence with some Gentlemen on the opposite side; but I cannot believe that they all in their consciences approve the course which has been pursued, and although I believe that in that course many persons—many of them and many of their supporters—disapprove of what I am doing now and condemn it, I can assure them I am not less a friend of free discussion and not less a friend to Ireland than I have ever been for nearly 40 years that I have been in Parliament.

said, he naturally felt some embarrassment in rising after the right hon. Gentleman, because he always appealed to the House with so much force. He would not refer to the evident signs of combination on the part of hon. Members in other parts of that House, not only to override the opinion of the House, but to override the opinion of the Chair. He wished to address himself to the main argument of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The right hon. Gentleman called attention to the fact that they had been discussing the Motion for adjournment for the last 17 hours, and, by a process of logic very unusual to the right hon. Gentleman, he arrived at the conclusion that the House had, therefore, had a sufficient opportunity for discussing the Main Question. The right hon. Gentleman forgot the circumstance that hon. Members were obliged to confine themselves to the Question of adjournment, and that upon such a Motion they were precluded from discussing the Main Question. The right hon. Gentleman made a strong point of this; but where was the force of his reasoning? Hon. Gentlemen within the last 17 hours, during the time the House had been engaged in discussing Motions for adjournment, had made various attempts to discuss the Main Question, and had been precluded by the Chair from doing so. They were thus prevented from discussing the Main Question, and had really had no opportunity of entering into it. In the second part of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, he deplored the exhibitions which had taken place in the House during the last two or three days, and referred to the probability of an alteration being made in the Rules of the House as an argument to induce hon. Members to refrain from making Motions for adjournment. The only reply he (Mr. O'Connor Power) had to make to this was that if the House of Commons made up its mind to alter its Rules, having in its wisdom decided, after deliberation and discussion, that the present Rules regulating the proceedings of the House were imperfect, it would be time enough then to act in accordance with any new Resolution, when it should have received the sanction of the majority of the House. But the right hon. Gentleman appeared altogether in the wrong when he invited the Irish Members to assent to the passing of the Bill, and held over them a threat of coercion within the walls of Parliament if they declined to adopt his suggestion. These were the two branches of the right hon. Gentleman's speech, and, for one, he (Mr. O'Connor Power) was not convinced by that speech that his Colleagues were generally exceeding the fair limits of debate, taking into consideration the importance of the Bill for the introduction of which the House was asked to grant leave. Under all the circumstances, he should feel inclined to make an appeal to the Members of the Government and the Leaders of the Opposition who, from their opposition, were able to influence the future character of the debate. He would say, in the first instance, from what he knew of the feeling of his Colleagues, that it was not in the power of Her Majesty's Government or the Leaders of the Opposition, or of both of them combined, to bring the discussion to a speedy close. From what he knew of the feeling of his Colleagues and of his own feeling, the Question would be fully debated, even although some hon. Members might have occasion to regret their language and demeanour, and the sins they might probably have committed in not being able to address themselves to the Question with that solemn dignity which befitted the magnitude of the issue raised. He trusted that as the action of the Chair had been repeatedly invoked for the purpose of repressing the action of the Irish, Members, he might also invoke the authority of the Chair against hon. Members who had so little respect for the House that they declined to go to the trouble of rising from their seats to declare their opinions in an audible and respectful manner, but were content with making and uttering unintelligible and inarticulate ejaculations. A large part of the obstruction complained of proceeded from these Gentlemen who, if they had convictions, did not seem to have the intelligent courage of them. He did not understand the courage of hon. Gentlemen who got as far back as they could upon the back Benches and deliberately interrupted every speaker. ["Order!"]

The hon. Member is going altogether beyond the Motion before the House.

said, he should be very glad to go back again to the Question of adjournment. He had only been led into this criticism upon the character of their proceedings because three-fourths of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster had reference to the character of the debate, and he was simply following in the right hon. Gentleman's footsteps.

rose to Order. The Deputy Speaker had called the attention of the hon. Member to the fact that he was out of Order, and he (Mr. Ritchie) wished to know whether the hon. Gentleman, in proceeding with the observations he was now making, was not disregarding the authority of the Chair? He wished, also, to direct the attention of the Deputy Speaker to the fact that before Mr. Speaker left the Chair he declared, in response to the observations of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South-West Lancashire (Sir R. ASSHETON CROSS), that the time had almost arrived when hon. Members on the Benches below the Gangway would be guilty of obstructing the Business of the House. Since that time appeals had been made to the Deputy Speaker from the Front Bench on that side of the House upon the same point. ["Order!"] More than that, the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster had stated that what was going on was, in his opinion, the grossest case of insult and obstruction he had ever seen. He (Mr. Ritchie) would ask, therefore, whether, seeing that the hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power) was disregarding the ruling of the Chair, in pursuing remarks which had been ruled to be out of Order, and that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster had spoken of the entire debate as a gross case of obstruction, the time had not now arrived for putting in force the Standing Orders passed last year?

I think the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Ritchie) could not have heard the concluding observations which the hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power) was addressing to the Chair. They were an apology for having been out of Order.

thought he might now retire with honour, and he thanked the Chair for vindicating the character of his speech.

wished to call attention to two of the speeches which had proceeded from the Treasury Bench. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Dodson) had made a short speech, in which he had objected to the conduct of an hon. Member for having repeated the same arguments over again. Nevertheless, the right hon. Gentleman, during that short speech, repeated himself at least 10 times over. ["Question!"] He was only following the example of the right hon. Gentleman. With regard to the speech of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, that right hon. Gentleman appealed to the Irish Members to withdraw their Motion for adjournment on a particular ground— namely, that a suggestion had been been made on the first day of the debate that an adjournment should take place at 12 o'clock at night, and that the House should divide at 12 on the next night.

The hon. Member is not speaking to the Question.

said, the ground for the Motion for adjournment was that the Irish Members had not, as yet, had an opportunity of discussing the original Question. He himself had personally intended to make a speech upon the original Motion before the Chair—namely, the Motion for leave to introduce the Bill. He had had a speech prepared on the subject; but he had not had an opportunity of delivering it, because the adjurnment did not take place at 12 o'clock last night—the time suggested; and during all the succeeding time Motions for adjournment had precluded him from offering his opinions in regard to the Main Question. The result was that the time of the House had been wasted, but not through the fault of the Irish Members, who were perfectly reasonable in their demands. Twenty-four hours had been occupied in Motions for adjournment, and the Main Question had made no progress whatever, the only effect having been to prevent him and other hon. Members from saying what they had intended to say.

The hon. Gentleman is altogether out of Order, and I must remind him that this is not the first time I have called his attention to the necessity of confining himself to the Question before the House.

said, he would not pursue the subject further, because he was exceedingly unwilling—in fact, he was determined, as far as lay in his power, that he would never challenge any ruling the Speaker might lay down, knowing, as he did, that the ruling of the Chair was always given with thorough impartiality. If he were willing to set the Chair at defiance, he should feel satisfied that he was wrong, and that the Chair was right. He would, therefore, not pursue the subject further. At the same time, he would appeal to Her Majesty's Government to agree to the Motion for adjournment. When he used the word "appeal," he did not mean it is an appeal for mercy or favour; but the reason which induced him to make it was that he thought an adjournment would be more conducive to the interests of Ireland, so that the discussion might be re-commenced at a time when hon. Members would be in a better condition to approach it. Although he had no authority to make any proposition on behalf of his Colleagues, he thought he might safely say that if an adjournment took place, the discussion would be finished before 6 o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, in a manner satisfactory to all parties concerned, and with no substantial waste of time. If, on the other hand, they were to continue sitting for the discussion of Motions of adjournment, the only practical result would be that hon. Members would lose their temper. A very great amount of time had already been occupied; and if the Government would now consent to some arrangement by which the discussion upon the Main Question should be brought to a close, they would be able to spend the time of the House much more profitably than they were doing at present.

Question put.

The House divided: —Ayes 22; Noes 197: Majority 175.—(Div. List, No. 17.) [1.35 A.M., WEDNESDAY, FEB. 2.]

Question again proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

begged leave to bring to the notice of Mr. Deputy Speaker a question of Privilege upon which he desired to have his ruling. During the division which had just taken place, the hon. Member for the North Riding of Yorkshire (Mr. Milbank) came across the floor of the House, and said to him—"Mr. Biggar, you are a mean, impudent scoundrel! "The hon. Member seemed to be rather proud of what he had done; but he would like to know whether, in the opinion of the Chair, he was justified in his conduct? He would, as a matter of personal explanation, say that the hon. Member had charged him with using an expression which he had not used. With regard to the question of Privilege, he might remark that in the last Parliament the late Dr. Kenealy, then a Member of the House, used offensive expressions towards the hon. Members for Meath and Durham, and, on both occasions, was reprimanded and had to apologize.

It has been decided that all offensive words used by one Member towards another Member, even in the Lobby are against the Rules of the House. I must ask the hon. Member for the North Riding of Yorkshire whether he admits having used the words imputed to him by the hon. Member for Cavan?

would only say that, as he was sitting down, he distinctly saw the lips of the hon. Member for Cavan moving, and heard him use the words "b—y fool!" All that he could say was that he deeply felt the offence which he believed the hon. Member had been guilty of, and, as soon as an opportunity presented itself, he walked across the House and called him an "impudent scoundrel!"

The hon. Member having admitted that he used that expression with reference to another hon. Member, it is his duty to apologize not to the hon. Member, but to the House.

would apologize to the Deputy Speaker and to the House. At the same time, he thought the hon. Member for Cavan ought to apologize to him for the expression used towards him.

The hon. Member having apologized to the House, the incident is now terminated.

objected to the introduction of the Bill on several grounds. It was unnecessary in fact, inexpedient in policy, and unjust in principle. It gave certain powers of arrest to the Lord Lieutenant, or the Chief Secretary for Ireland acting as his Secretary. That power of arrest was supposed to be a measure for the protection of person and property; but it was quite unnecessary to confer such powers on the Chief Secretary for Ireland or anybody else. The law in Ireland was the same as the law in England; it gave ample powers of arrest to the persons who would cloak themselves under the provisions of the Act, and who could now arrest in every case in which it was proposed to give powers of arrest to the Chief Secretary. He had been astonished when the right hon. Gentleman sent that remarkable letter to the magistrates in Ireland, because it was well known that both they and the police were only too willing and ready to exercise those powers if called upon to do so by the authority of the Executive of Ireland. It ought to be familiar to every magistrate, and even every magistrates' clerk, that any policeman could arrest upon his own suspicion in every case of felony, although he could not arrest on his own suspicion in every case of misdemeanour. In the catalogue of agrarian offences, there was not one single case which did not come under the description of felony or misdemeanor; and the crime so much relied upon by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, of writing threatening letters, was, in some cases, a felony punishable by penal servitude for life. A policeman could arrest, on reasonable suspicion, in almost all cases; and in cases of misdemeanors, where he could not arrest upon his own suspicion, he could always get a magistrate's warrant empowering him to arrest, upon laying a proper information. So far as the powers of arrest were concerned, they were at present as freely vested in the Irish Executive through the police and magistracy as they would be vested in them under the provisions of the proposed Bill. But, it was said, this power was not enough. We were bound to bring people to trial. According to the law of the country as it stood the magistrate was bound to assign the cause of arrest in the warrant of commitment. Well and good. So, in order to prevent parties continuing in their illicit course, the Government felt bound to detain them, and demanded powers to do so for a period of 18 months. Then, again, the Act was absolutely and entirely unnecessary, for this further reason. There were well known processes put in force every day in England, and there were powers vested in every justice of the peace by his commission to take security from evil-disposed persons for keeping the peace, and for good behaviour. If such evil-disposed persons existed in Ireland, and were well known to the police—as alleged by the Chief Secretary—who could lay their fingers on their names and places of abode, he asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland how it was that in no single instance, as far as he was aware, had the magistrates in Ireland put the power vested in them in full operation, and how it was that the men suspected of incendiary fires, the houghing of cattle, &c., had not been arrested, while if there was the slightest case or ground of suspicion a policeman could go before any justice of the peace exercising his office in the district, and lay an information against the suspected person charging him with a breach of the peace, or with being a person of disorderly conduct or evil reputation? Such suspected person might be arrested, and bound over to keep the peace; and if he happened to be one of the persons described in the speech of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, he could get no person to give bail for him, and could, consequently, be locked up for 12 months, in default of securities. Precisely the same power was vested in the magistrates, acting on their own motion, according to the 5th volume of Burn's Justice of the Peace —a book which ought to be in the house of every magistrate, and on the Bench, and wherever a justice exercised jurisdiction. On page 759, they would find set out in detail the number of offences for which, or rather on suspicion of which, for proof was not necessary, a justice—not even two justices, but one—could have a person brought before him and oblige that person to find security for his good behaviour. There was no limit to the amount of recognizances the justice might fix. If £10 was not enough, the magistrate could oblige a person to give £20 or £40, £50 or £100, or even £1,000; and, in fact, it was possible for a magistrate to fix the recognizances at such a sum that no village ruffian would be able to find the necessary amount, and, as a consequence, the offender could be locked up and kept in such perfect security that he could no longer cut off the tails of horses, or burn turf, or commit any of the other outrages complained of. He would not go through the list; but there were 24 classes of offences the magistrates could deal with in this way, and amongst them were included nearly every one of the offences these so-called "village tyrants" were supposed to commit. The offences were given one by one, and every justice wishing to put the powers vested in him in force, could find them out for himself; and the Executive Government, if they thought fit, could, in the short space of 24 hours, have every one of the well-known, dissolute ruffians and village tyrants on whom the police had their eye, locked up and kept in imprisonment for 12 months. For this reason he opposed the introduction of this measure, because it was absolutely, entirely, and palpably unnecessary; and he could not, under the circumstances, help mistrusting the Government and the Executive which, asked for such powers. It was all very well to disguise, or to endeavour to disguise, powers of coercion by calling them provisions for the protection of life and property. That disguise would not do for the Irish people. They saw through it easily enough, and they had had a little too much of that kind of protection. They failed to see that life and property were any safer in spite of the 47 coercive measures which had been passed against Ireland since the Union. He put it to the House how much better it would have been if, instead of the Coercion Bill before the House, measures of redress, of remedy, had been proposed, because these measures, interfering with the liberties of the people, failed to bind the disorderly portion of the people, and only galled, annoyed, and rendered discontented the well-disposed and the law-abiding. He entirely opposed the introduction of a measure of this kind as unnecessary and inexpedient If they examined into what had been the result of previous experiments of this kind, he thought the conclusion would be forced upon them that it had never, in one single case, been satisfactory. If they were to guide their conduct by reference to the past, they certainly were not encouraged to begin anew by adopting the never-ending process of coercion first and bringing in remedial measures afterwards, because coercion prevented remedial measures from ever having any effect, even if those remedial measures were ever introduced, and sometimes they were not, although they were promised. They found that in no single instance had coercion been followed by any permanent good. He would not go over the statistics that had been so often referred to, and he would endeavour to avoid repeating not only any observations he might himself have made on a previous occasion, but any remarks made by other hon. Members to which he had listened. Some of the hon. Members now present had already heard of the discussion which had taken place with regard to the statistics on which this measure was supposed to be based; and he would, therefore, confine himself to this general observation, that every one of the 47 Coercion Acts which had been passed by this country had proved inoperative, that every one had only served as a prelude to one to follow, and that the severity of one only served to intensify that of the next. The taking of such powers as Coercion Acts seemed to have been very much like dram-drinking and opium-eating, for each recurring dose seemed to render the dose that came after still more necessary. Every dose seemed to increase the appetite for the unwholesome medicine; and he would ask the Government once and for all to cut away the evil and do as the dram-drinker and the opium-eater had to do, if he wanted to cure himself. He would urge the Government to show some strength of mind, and instead of taking refuge in the last resource of weakness and incapacity—namely, coercion—boldly say—"We will rely on the powers given us by the Constitution; we will put them vigorously in force, which no Irish Executive has done yet." And if they acted in this way, he would promise them that they would find the powers at present vested in the hands of the Executive, and at present conferred on the magistracy, sufficient to suppress any disorder that existed in Ireland. And he might say that he regretted as much as any hon. Gentleman who sat on, the Treasury Bench, as much as the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, or the learned Solicitor General for Ireland, whose duty it was to look after these matters legally, that there were any disorders in Ireland. If there were disorders, they were to be attributed to a very different cause to that which Her Majesty's Government seemed inclined to attribute them. He also opposed the introduction of the measure as unjust, and had given some reasons why he considered it should not be introduced; but he had offered only a few reasons, because at this late hour it appeared to him desirable to make a selection of them, and to spare hon. Gentlemen from listening to more of his arguments than he felt it absolutely necessary to address to them. The measure was unnecessary—worse than unnecessary; it was grossly unjust, and seemed to possess all the evils of its predecessors. It was an aggravation of the evils of all Bills of a similar character, because it began by substituting suspicion for proof. If there was any one thing that distinguished this free country above every other country in Europe, it was the openness, the publicity of the method, and the rigid rules upon which its criminal procedure was conducted. Secret tribunals were unknown to us here. Secret accusations were unknown, not only under the ordinary law of the land, but were entirely against the spirit of the Constitution. Secret deletion and the mysterious terror of the "Lion's mouth" may have suited the tyranny of a Venetian oligarchy; but in free and happy England we were entirely unacquainted with it. Ireland was supposed to share the benefit of all the laws passed for England during a comparatively recent period; and so she did, except when Coercion Acts were introduced. There was no secret accusation here; and it was one of the greatest guarantees for the freedom of the people that their criminal procedure was open to the public. The accused was permitted to know what he was accused of. He was arrested, and brought face to face with his accuser, and had an opportunity of examining the charge, and the evidence on which that charge was supported. Moreover, in every case of the slightest importance he could appeal—and some of the cases in which an appeal could be made were very trivial indeed—he could appeal "to the judgment of his country," as the venerable phrase of the old Common Law had it. A person accused of a crime could put himself on his country, and appeal to its judgment, which judgment had to be given openly by 12 impartial jurors, sworn to judge between the Crown and himself. This was the one great protection for the liberty—aye, and the property—of the people of England; but this protection the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary sought by his Bill to take away from the people of Ireland. He proposed, with a stroke of the pen, to cancel these open proceedings, which were the crowning glory of the Constitution of England; which were the guardians—the palladium—of British liberty; which stood between the Sovereign and the subject, the strong man and the weak, the rich man and the poor. And what did he offer in their place? He offered secret procedure, which deprived a man of the guarantees he possessed by the ordinary law, and by which a man's liberty might be taken away, his wife and family, as a consequence, reduced to beggary and misery, and a sense of insecurity introduced into the whole neighbourhood to which he belonged. Under the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman, without being brought face to face with his accuser, without being allowed an opportunity of making a defence, and without bail, a man might be sent to prison for 18 months. Nay, a man might be sent to prison without knowing what he was accused of, and without being able to put himself on his country; and there he might lie and there he might rot for 18 months, which was the limit the Government seemed to intend. But this oppressive and tyrannical power was like the taste of blood to the wild beast. Once the wild beast tasted blood—once the lion's cub tasted blood—no matter how he might have been tamed, learning the ways of his sires of the forest, he never forgot it; and Her Majesty's Government, once they had tasted of the blood of Irish liberty, would, long before the 18 months which was the period proposed for the duration of the Act, follow the old evil precedent, and renew the Bill—as so many Bills of a similar kind had been renewed during the recent history of Ireland. The measure was absolutely unjust, because it substituted suspicion for proof, and left every man at the mercy of the spy and the informer. It would put a premium on private malice and spite; it would give private malice an opportunity of making itself felt without exposing itself to publicity, and without submitting itself to the wholesome check of cross-examination and of public trial. It would give an opportunity to private malice and malevolence; and all this in the name of freedom, and in the name of the protection of person and property. Now, if these unholy, these dangerous powers, were only to be exercised upon criminals, upon men who committed the crimes about which they had heard so much, he, for one—notwithstanding his love of liberty, notwithstanding all his respect for personal rights—would not raise his voice against the proposal. If there were any rule by which the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, or his subordinates, were able to distinguish the guilty from the innocent, and exercise an infallible discretion which told them who was justly and who was innocently and falsely accused, he should not oppose the measure. But there was no such rule, there was no such power. No such power ever existed in the human mind, and no man was ever wise enough or good enough to be entrusted with powers like those contained in the Bill. He was quite willing to give the Chief Secretary credit for all the conscientiousness he claimed, and he was also ready to give the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright) credit for all the conscientiousness and love of liberty that he claimed; but he maintained that conscientiousness—even love of liberty—would be no protection in this case, and no guard against an extensive abuse of the powers such as were contained in the Bill. No human being who merely acted on suspicion—on other peoples' suspicion—could be trusted to exercise these powers. If he acted on his own suspicion merely, there might be some chance of his acting right; for he might guess right in a certain number of cases. But no man could act fairly on the suspicion of other people, grounded he did not know how or on what. Suspicion might have had its origin in private malice, in family disputes, or in the thousands of uncharitable motives sometimes actuating the human heart which only God could know. No man—whatever his industry, his ability, or his capacity might be—had knowledge enough to be trusted with powers such as these. No man could take such precautions as would be requisite to prevent the misuse of those powers; therefore, no man ought to be entrusted with them. The possession of the highest industry, the largest experience, the deepest conscientiousness, could not justify the House in giving such powers to any human being; and even if it could be proved that strong grounds existed for giving such power, it would be grossly unjust, and he would oppose it as unjust, so long as any other remedies were possible. There was another and a still more serious objection to the proposed measure. The Act proposed would establish new and indefin- able criminal offences; but even if it were an Act dealing with well-known and well-defined offences, which could be limited by legal phraseology and legal definitions about which neither magistrate nor Judge would be in doubt as to their extent or meaning—even, if it were of that description, and the persons who were to be amenable to it should understand what they might be accused of, the proposed Act was still grossly unjust on another ground, for it was retrospective. It went back in its action, and made people liable to be severely punished—for imprisonment under that Act was severe punishment—for some offences not at present defined, and which were at present undefinable, and for offences which might have been committed some years, and which, indeed, could have no existence before the passing of the present Act. It would be unjust if it dealt with known offences, and dealt with offences before the passing of the Act; but it went further than that. They knew what treason meant—the history of the country had too many illustrations of the meaning of the word, and the Constitution had plenty of precautions against any person being unjustly convicted of that tremendous offence—but he would like to know what was meant by "treasonable practices"? He knew something about the Criminal Law of England and of Ireland, and he was not aware that there was any such crime as "treasonable practices" recognized in England. He knew what treason was, he knew what every offence in the Blue Book was. He could define every one, and every magistrate could define them; but he would like to know how treasonable practices would be defined. He would like to know what they were. He would like to know whether in the history of Ireland, or of England, anybody had ever been tried or convicted on an indictment for treasonable practices in England or Ireland. What was meant? It was left open to every policeman's imagination, to every magistrate's imagination, to every ignorant magistrate's clerk's imagination, to say what were treasonable practices. One might consider that firing with a popgun was a treasonable practice, another might consider that the putting of a laurel leaf in the coat was a treasonable practice. There were many other things. He had heard of a man carry- ing a green flag; that was another extraordinary thing that figured in the reports of the police. He would like to know whether that would be a treasonable practice? The existing law contained no definition of treasonable practices; no man was ever tried or convicted for treasonable practices. Many had been tried for treason, and been hanged, drawn, and quartered. Treasonable practices did not mean treason, or any offence that could be defined or understood, or any existing offence at present on the Statute Book, because treason itself was mentioned; and yet any man might be confined on the suspicion of a policeman, and placed at the mercy of any village constable. That was not the only new offence—

The hon. Member is discussing a measure which has not been officially before the House.

said, he was not discussing the Act, but the description of it given in the speech of the Chief Secretary for Ireland. He had not a copy of the Act; but his knowledge of it was derived from the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, and if that did not give him a sufficient notion of the Bill about to be introduced, he was perfectly willing to bow to the ruling of the Chair. The Chief Secretary had said—

"We propose to take power to enable the Lord Lieutenant by his warrant to arrest any person whom he may reasonably suspect of having, either before or after the passing of the Act, been guilty as principal or accessory of treason, felony, or treasonable practices, or of any act punishable by law in a prescribed district, being an act of violence, or intimidation, or inciting to any such act, or tending to interfere with or disturb the maintenance of law and order."

The hon. Member is quite in Order in referring to that description. I thought he was referring to the Act.

said, he was dealing with the injustice of an Act answering to that description. The present discussion would have its effect, and probably the Act might prove to be a different thing from what he had been obliged to anticipate. What he was pointing out was the injustice of these new offences; the injustice of making people liable ex post facto. Those were not the only indefinable and vague offences created by the Act. There was another still more indefinable, and still more vague, and still more dangerous point, because the more vague powers were, the more dangerous they were. One advantage of the law was that a man could not be charged with an indefinable outrage, and the introduction of any indefinable offence was a most serious innovation on the liberty of the subject and on the Constitution of the Realm; and he warned hon. Gentlemen that such inroads on liberty would not be confined within geographical limits. Of all the widespread nets to catch innocent people, of all the instruments of indiscriminate tyranny that ever were invented, the power of committing a man for 18 months, or for 18 minutes, for such an indefinable offence, or suspicion of it—for it was not necessary that the offence should be committed at all, but only that there should be a suspicion in the mind of a policeman—that was the most extraordinary—

I observe that the hon. Member is not only discussing the provisions of the Bill on the statement of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, but the details of the Bill; and I submit that those are fitted for discussion in Committee.

The hon. Member is going beyond the description of the Chief Secretary, and is discussing the Bill. That is clearly out of Order.

said, he was confining himself to the imaginary offences which the Chief Secretary proposed to make punishable. They were to be left to the discretion of the policemen. Supervision by Dublin Castle would be impossible, and the whole thing must lie with the person who put the Act in motion and originated the arrest. But what was the offence?—

"Any person whom he may reasonably suspect of having, either before or after the passing of the Act, been guilty as principal or accessory of high treason, treason-felony, or treasonable practices, wherever committed, or of any crime punishable by law committed in a prescribed district, being an act of violence or intimidation, or the inciting to an act of violence and intimidation, or tending to interfere with or disturb the maintenance of law and order."

Under the Lord's Day Act it was punishable for boys to play pitch-and-toss on Sunday. He was just putting a case, and not at all a case that was beyond the possibility of occurrence. Pitch-and-toss was one of the offences which was punishable as much in Ireland as in England—

Mr. Deputy Speaker, have these remarks any bearing on the Question before the House?

I think the mode in which the hon. Member is proceeding is a waste of the time of the House.

, continuing, said, any offence punishable by law might be considered by an officious sub-constable as "tending to interfere with or disturb the maintenance of law and order," and so become one of those indefinable offences. He opposed the proposal of the Chief Secretary on the ground that it would be exceedingly dangerous and unjust to intrust magistrates with such arbitrary powers. He objected, also, to the introduction of the measure on another ground—namely, the way in which the public mind had been prepared for it. The state of the public mind had been referred to over and over again; but if these extraordinary powers were to be conferred upon the Irish Executive their exercise would be all the more dangerous, because of the way in which the public mind had been prepared for it, and on account of the condition in which the public mind would be after the Act passed. He fearlessly asserted that the public opinion of England had been deliberately led astray by a conspiracy to propagate false and dangerous news. He had read false accounts of outrages by the hundred, of men's ears being cut off, men being carded, and other offences, every one of which were afterwards contradicted. The House had already been told of an hon. Member who was said to have been driven out of his county by actual fear of personal violence. The hon. Member for Leitrim (Mr. Tottenham) had himself contradicted the report; but he (Dr. Commins) had seen no contradiction in the paper which published the false news in the first instance. The public mind had been deliberately and intentionally debauched by persons who, for purposes of their own, wanted to see the exceptional powers now asked for vested in Her Majesty's Government. The public mind had been intentionally and wickedly led astray upon the subject. An impression had been produced that Ireland was in a state of insurrection worse than ever Bulgaria was in, or America during the Civil Wars. This false information was industriously circulated for the purpose of preparing the public mind for the Act the Government now sought to pass; and the debauched public mind had been worked to such a pitch that, notwithstanding all the exertions of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Chief Secretary for Ireland, it would be impossible to prevent the commission of gross acts of injustice and tyranny. And that was not all. Those who were in favour of the measure had not only debauched the outside public opinion; but the measure had been introduced into the House with a certain amount of rhetorical garnish such as seldom made its appearance in the House of Commons. The Chief Secretary, in his very able speech in introducing the Bill, indulged in language which was not often used in Parliamentary debates. Indeed, it was employed so very seldom that he did not remember a previous instance, and he did not believe that any other hon. Member could, in which a debate had been ornamented by such flowers of speech as "low ruffians," "dissolute blackguards," and so on. ["Question!"] If it were necessary, he would read the expressions from the right hon. Gentleman's speech. He strongly objected to such a mode of bringing a question before the House. He was, however, willing to withdraw these expressions if called to Order by the Chair; but, until he was called to Order, he must say that, although his experience of the House was not large, he had never heard of a private Member, much less a Cabinet Minister, introducing a measure with such rhetorical flowers. It almost seemed that the resources of Billingsgate were scarcely sufficient, for the right hon. Gentleman fell back upon a foreign language, and gave a kind of French polish to his vituperations by calling the objects of his wrath mauvais sujets. With regard to these mauvais sujets, the right hon. Gentleman said he knew every one of them, and was able to place his finger upon them. He certainly could not congratulate the right hon. Gentleman upon the circle of his acquaintance; but, if it was the case that the right hon. Gentleman, could place his finger upon them, he (Dr. Commins) was at a loss to know why these mauvais sujets and dissolute black- guards had not found a place in the county gaols long ago. He strongly objected to the House being led astray, or the public mind prejudiced and debauched in the way he had described.

I rise to Order. I wish to ask if the hon. Member is in Order in accusing the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary of having debauched this House?

I did not say that the right hon. Gentleman had debauched this House.

The hon. Member used the term "debauched," and applied it to the speech of the Chief Secretary.

What I did say, if it is necessary to explain, is, that the public mind had been debauched.

I did not hear the words which the hon. Member for Cardiff takes exception to; but I cannot say that they could be ruled as un-Parliamentary.

proceeded. If any objection were taken to the words he had used, he had not the slightest objection to leave hon. Members who possessed a more select vocabulary to find more fitting words to express what he could only express by this common term. Being unable to find another word, he would either withdraw it, or leave it to the imagination of hon. Members, or to their more copious vocabulary, to find another. He hardly thought the House had been dealt with in an open manner by the Chief Secretary. It had been shown how unreliable the newspaper reports were, and how fictitious outrages had been reported. He objected to the phraseology in which these offences were described. It made its appearance first in the newspapers. They knew very well what crimes were. According to the language of the law, it was quite sufficient to designate ordinary transgressions of the law as crimes, misdemeanours, or offences. That was the classification which was given by Blackstone and some of the oldest legal authorities. But the use of words that were simple and intelligible, and that appealed to their intelligence, was not sufficient for the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary; and, therefore, he had adopted the inflammatory vocabulary of the newspapers, which had aided in debauching the public mind out-of-doors. God knew the offences themselves were bad enough; but the right hon. Gentleman did not consider it sufficient to describe them as "manslaughter" or "offences," but insisted on calling them "outrages." Very bad crimes and offences were often committed in this country as well as in Ireland. He made no invidious comparison, because no good would be done by it; and he should not say a word to impute anything to the administration of justice in this country, or the moral and social condition of the people. But it was a notorious fact that in this country they had to deal in their Courts with grave offences against the Criminal Law. They were content to describe them as crimes or misdemeanours; but when they had to deal with such offences as cutting off the tail of an Irish donkey they were described as "outrages." He could not mention the number of times the right hon. Gentleman used the term "outrages." In fact, if he (Dr. Commins) were permitted to say so, the continued use of the word was an outrage on good taste. In one sentence the right hon. Gentleman used the term three times. The use of this sort of sensational language, which was not the result of any Act of Parliament or the description of any offence or crime known to the law, in a great debate imperilling, as this did, the liberty of more than 5,000,000 people, was in itself a most undesirable proceeding, and one which must have operated to a considerable extent in producing that heated state of feeling in the House, of which they had had but too many examples, when the audacity of an humble individual like himself stood up and opposed the measures of the Government. But that was not all. Having prepared the mind of the House for what was to come by the copious use of this phrase, the right hon. Gentleman fell back upon certain classes of offences to prove his case and establish the necessity of the Government measures. One class of offence relied upon by the right hon. Gentleman was the sending of anonymous letters. Of all the offences that could be appealed to, either in a Court of Justice, or in a public discussion, or in any other way, the evidence of anonymous letters was certainly the most fallacious and the least to be relied upon. It had been said that "the tale that comes guarded against all means of proof convicts itself." So far as anonymous letters were concerned, who could attach the slightest importance to the evidence the letters contained? Yet a large part of the case made out by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary was based on these anonymous letters. No doubt, many of them were highly sensational, and gave accounts which purported to represent the state of the mind of the supposed writers; but he could not accept them as good for anything at all. If the right hon. Gentleman wished that he, or any of those who distrusted the tales they told, should place the slightest reliance on them, they ought to know who the writers were, so that they might know whether the persons they were dealing with were entitled to credit or not. The right hon. Gentleman felt that these anonymous letters were scarcely sufficient to sustain his case, and he fell back upon what he characterized as irresistible evidence, and that was the private Reports of the Irish Constabulary. Now, he (Dr. Commins) thought that that was evidence even less to be trusted than either the newspaper reports or the anonymous letters. If they were to place any reliance upon these newspaper reports, they ought to know who the policemen were who made them. It surely could not be said, as it was said about the anonymous letters, that the police were afraid of their names getting into the newspapers. They were certainly not in such a state of abject terror that they dare not reveal their names. Again, the tale came guarded against all means of proof, and, as a matter of fact, could not be relied upon. Such was the character of all the charges referred to by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland in the opening of his elaborate speech. He believed there was only one instance in which the right hon. Gentleman gave the district from which the policeman made his Report. Such cases were liable to the suspicion that the policeman himself had been imposed upon by the Report made to him, which, after all, might rest on nothing but hearsay. It was necessary to know the source of his information; whether the case happened in his own district, or occurred 12 miles away. There was a Circular in existence, issued by the Duke of Wellington, when Chief Secretary for Ireland, warning the magistrates, and pointing out that Reports of this kind were generally exaggerated, both in numbers and character. It also pointed out that the same charge, founded oftentimes on vague rumour, was frequently repeated from three, four, or five police stations at the same time, and entered in the Returns as so many different outrages. In order to test whether the Returns were of any consequence, the House should have been favoured with the names of the person who made the charges, the district in which he was, and the locality in which the so-called outrages were perpetrated. It might be said that this was asking too much; but he thought it would not be asking too much of the Chief Secretary for Ireland that he should descend to particulars, and give the House that guarantee of authenticity which was wanting in all the Returns which had been placed in the hands of hon. Members to prove the correctness of the Reports. Everyone was interested in the Returns; and he thought, in justice to all parties, that particulars should be given to enable them to verify the grounds on which the alleged cases rested. There was another ground of objection to the proposal of the Chief Secretary for Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman had told the House in so many words that the Act was intended to put down the Land League, and he traced the so-called outrages to the operation of that body. But he would like to know where there was one single instance among the 2,590 outrages that had been traced to the operation of the Land League? Yet the right hon. Gentleman had told the House, and the tenour of his remarks was intended to carry hon. Members to the conclusion, that all the outrages perpetrated were the result of the operations of the Land League, and that the Land League was responsible for them. There was not a single instance in which the Land League had been proved to be guilty of exciting to, or the abetting of, outrage. No doubt, some of its supporters on the platform had indulged in language which he condemned as much as any Member of that House; and, no doubt, some of its lower and more indiscreet adherents had said things which he was not there to defend. But he denied that they expressed the sentiments of the Land League, and that the offences committed in Ireland could be proved to be the result of its operations. It was true, as the Prime Minister had said, that crime dogged the steps of the Land League. He was willing to admit that it had done so. He admitted that where the meetings were frequent the crimes had been frequent too; but he utterly dissented from the conclusion derived from that fact by the Prime Minister. He was astonished that the right hon. Gentleman, with his wonderful powers of mind, should have drawn such a conclusion; but the fact that he had done so proved that the brightest minds were sometimes clouded by prejudice, imposed on by opinion, and agitated by public feeling. He held the argument of the Prime Minister on this point to be utterly fallacious, and enough to put the House on its guard against legislating in a hurry, and introducing measures of the kind now proposed. He did not want to shrink from any fact that, provable or capable of being stated, was fair and substantial evidence. But, granting that crime had dogged the meetings of the Land League, it did not follow that it was the result of those meetings. Had it not occurred to the Prime Minister that both were the result of the same causes, and that, although agrarian offences occurred in districts where the meetings had been held, they were in no shape or form related to each other as cause and effect? Could the right hon. Gentleman not look to the causes which produced those frequent meetings of the Land League, and to the struggle for life which had taken place in the autumn and winter months, as well as to the black distress which existed where the offences were committed, and which, if the Land League had not acted as a safety valve, would probably have found vent in crime of a more malignant character than any that had been found to exist? Both these things were the result of a common cause—the residuum of terror existing in the minds of a people just escaped from death, and who had been rescued not only by the kind offices of that House, but by the charity of the world. The tenant farmers in Ireland had only gathered an average crop last year, and that had been fought for between themselves and the landlords. Surely the right hon. Gentleman could see that there was enough in that state of things to account for the state of feeling which had produced the crimes that had been committed for the purpose of frightening the landlords. Again, he objected to a measure like that proposed being brought in for one object while it aimed at another. The Bill was aimed at the Land League, while it professed to aim only at agrarian crime. The proposition put forward by Her Majesty's Government was that the Land League was the immediate cause of agrarian crime. There was one proof of this, which would have been most conclusive, which could have been produced in that House and published throughout England and the world, had Her Majesty's Government succeeded in establishing it to their satisfaction—namely, the test of the trial as to whether the Land League were accountable for any one of these offences or not. That question had been put to the test of sworn evidence and judicial interpretation of the law, as well as to the test of witnesses, supported by the able advocacy of the Attorney General for Ireland. It had been put to these tests, and it could not stand them; and so far from, the country declaring, by its verdict on that trial, that the Land League was accountable for any one of the offences committed in Ireland, the result was entirely the reverse. Again, it was said there was a reign of terror in Ireland. That statement was of the same kind as was made with regard to outrages and atrocities. It was simply a falling back on a rhetorical form of expression which might mean anything or nothing, and which was certainly calculated to excite feelings of alarm and terror in the minds of those who heard it, and to induce them to legislate in a hurry and without consideration. He wondered at what period in modern times Ireland had been without its reign of terror. The present was only an alternative of terror, for Ireland was always either under terror of the landlords or terror of the law. It would be admitted that this was an unfortunate position for the people to be in, and he trusted that before long it would be remedied. He would now appeal to the Deputy Speaker with reference to a remark that had just fallen from the hon. Member for King's County who said, "in his humble opinion, he (Dr. Commins) must be a b — humbug."

Permit me to explain that when I came into the House I found the hon. Member making a long speech upon a subject which had been exhausted; and I gave expression to an hon. Member who was sitting beside me that I thought it was great humbug to hear the hon. Member going on so.

The expression applied to the hon. Member is an improper expression.

Then I withdraw it, Sir.

said, he should like to know when the day was that there was no reign of terror in Ireland. Ever since he had known the country there had been a reign of terror in it—terror arising from the state of the law between landlord and tenant.

I rise to Order. I ask that the hon. Member will express himself so that we can all hear what he says.

was quite indifferent whether the hon. Baronet heard him or not, because, in his present state, it was doubtful whether what he heard would reach his intellect. There had always been a reign of terror in Ireland, and the law of landlord and tenant was such that the latter was always in a state of insecurity. The landlord could exercise his legal powers, and subject him to punishment and inconveniences which it was unnecessary to describe. The unfortunate tenant in Ireland had always lived under a great reign of terror.

I rise to Order. As I am told the hon. Gentleman has spoken for a certain time upon the adjournment of the debate—["No, no!"]—Oh! then I ask the hon. Gentleman's pardon for interrupting him.

wished to call the attention of the House to the fact that the existing law of landlord and tenant—which he did not propose further to discuss—had been such that the tenant had always been in terror of a notice to quit, in terror of a notice of ejectment, of a notice from the bailiff or driver, or from the 101 officials with strange names which hon. Gentlemen living on this side of the water could never under- stand. Under this law—a law which was admitted by everyone to be cruel—600,000 families in Ireland were always in a state of terror, and, in many instances, in a condition of abject terror. That terror had been removed, and its removal had been clearly traced to the beneficial operations of the Land League. The Land League had given to the Irish tenant what trades unions gave to individual operatives in England—had given him a kind of back that enabled him to stand upright and proclaim himself a man. Owing to the work of the Land League, it was no longer necessary for the tenant to stand, hat in hand, as he had often seen him, disgracing his manhood, cowering before the bailiff, or what was called the "driver." The terror had been removed, undoubtedly through the agency of the Land League, and they could not disguise from themselves this—that people who had been accustomed to exercise extraordinary powers, however legal, and were in the habit of having people standing all round them hat in hand—yes, and on bended knees—for he had seen the miserable tenantry of Ireland on their knees before these people in the driving snow—when they saw these poor tenants, who hitherto had not dared to call their souls their own, lift themselves up in the dignity of manhood and say—"We will submit to this no longer," they themselves became terrified. When the driver and the bailiff saw the tenants audacious enough to themselves propose the amount of rent the landlord should receive from them, the terror was rolled back on those who used to inspire it. He was willing to admit that this class of persons did feel a certain kind of terror in Ireland just now; but it was a terror that would soon cure itself. Certainly a Coercion Act was not necessary to cure it. Even the most despotic "driver" would soon find out that the men who formerly used to submit to him with such abject cowardice, and who now stood upon their manhood, meant nothing worse than to be allowed to live and to keep their families from starvation, and were willing to pay their legitimate debts and their rent. Though the tenant would not, perhaps, take off his hat to the "driver," there would be no harm done to him, and there would be peace in the country without the interference of a Coercion Act. To his mind, the Bill before the House, which was now entitled "An Act for the better protection of Person and Property in Ireland," would be much better described as "An Act for the better protection of Landlordism"—and by Irish landlordism he meant neither more nor less than that relation between the cultivators of the soil in Ireland and the owners of it, which was, admittedly, the cause of all the wretchedness, or nearly all the wretchedness, existing in the country. No doubt, the Act was intended, by those who cried out for it, as an Act for the protection of landlordism, and a guard against the reforms that had been promised, and which, presumably, were coming. From that point of view, he objected to the Motion before the House, and supported the Amendment, which also objected to the Motion and the spirit of the Bill. Any measure affecting Irish landlordism should not mean the protection of Irish landlordism, but the alteration of the system, so as to make it more in accordance with the wants and wishes of the people and the interests that were forcing themselves on the attention of the House.

May I ask you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, whether the hon. Member is applying himself to the Question before the House?

The hon. Member is trying the patience of the House to a very great extent; but I cannot say that as yet he is out of Order, as he is now speaking on the Main Question.

was very sorry if he was wearying the patience of the House; but the gravity of the subject, and the amount of ground it was necessary to go over, rendered it necessary that his speech should be a long one. He was very sorry for it; but if this discussion had not, by an unfortunate circumstance to which he did not wish to refer, been protracted into a third day, probably no hon. Member would have objected to the length of his speech, and there would have been ample time—indeed, he believed there was ample time yet—for those who took an opposite view to answer him.

May I ask you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, whether the hon. Member, by his explanation, has not brought himself within that ar- rangement—within that Rule which has been referred to?

said, he should be glad to see agrarian crime diminished in Ireland; in fact, he was as anxious as anyone that an end should be put to it; but he looked at it as only a symptom of the condition of the people which could only be satisfactorily dealt with by removing the cause. It was not the disease itself, but a symptom of the disease; and instead of its being removed by the Bill before the House, the measure would render its extinction more difficult in rendering more difficult the cure of the disease. He had seen a great deal of the desire on the part of hon. Members on both sides of the House—

May I ask you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, whether the hon. Member, in referring to this, the general Question, is in Order; the Motion before the House being for the adjournment?

The hon. Member is not speaking on the Question of the adjournment, but on the Main Question before the House.

declared that the Bill would not have the effect of suppressing that which was the real disease of Ireland. He should be delighted to see agrarian crime done away with, and trusted that the Bill, if it passed, which he hoped it would not, would have some effect in doing away with it. But Acts of this kind had never had the effect of diminishing crime, for they only intensified the feelings that found their illegal expression in acts of violence and crime. The real remedy could only be provided by attacking the root, and that was what the hon. Member for Dublin proposed to do in his Amendment—to let remedial measures have precedence over this repressive measure. They might, to some extent, suppress such exhibitions of ill feeling as the firing of shots or the houghing of cattle; but it was possible for these exhibitions of feeling to become more dangerous and take an intenser form. It had been remarked, over and over again, that the number of attempts at life and serious crimes which had lately occurred was comparatively small as compared with the number that took place in 1846 and 1847. One result of this Coercion Act might be that instead of the trifling exhibition of popular discontent and popular terror, the discontent and terror might be increased—the anger of the people might assume a more deadly form. The Land League might be suppressed by the Bill. If it was, its popular feeling would evaporate, and that was a thing which no one would regret more than he should, because he believed that a more intense form of agrarian crime would show itself, and that the assassinations, the burning of houses, and attacks on property, that were so numerous in 1846 and 1847, would be repeated. In hundreds of ways the anger of the people would show itself; and, although these crimes would be a disgrace to society, and more disturbing to the people who lived in the midst of such a state of things, they would be only the more difficult to deal with. The condition of things after the passing of this Act would be worse than the condition of things antecedent to it; at least, there was every reason to fear so. There was great eagerness to pass the Act; no doubt, hon. Members, all round, being actuated by a desire to manifest their sense of indignation at what they considered abominable exhibitions of crime. With that desire he did not quarrel at all; but when this Act was passed, containing the provisions he had attempted to discuss—provisions imperfectly calculated to remove the object in view—the eagerness of hon. Members that was for some time apparent to deal with the chronic evils and the chronic discontents of Ireland would be satisfied, and the remedial measures which he had advocated, which only could cut out the cause, would be lost sight of and forgotten. As soon as the Coercion Act was passed no assistance would be given to the Government by the Tories, and very little by the back Benches on the Ministerial side. They would find that the remedial measures, which were the excuse, in the first instance, for passing these repressive measures, would suffer the same fate as the unfortunate Compensation for Disturbance Bill last Session. He thanked the House for the kindness with which it had listened to him, and could assure Mr. Deputy Speaker that, however much Irish Members tried his patience and that of the Assembly, they only did so because they felt that they were bound to do it. They did not do it willingly. They acted as they did from a solemn sense of responsibility, believing that the Bill would create mischiefs far greater than any it proposed to remedy, and believing that if they did not use all the privileges they had in that House—and he hoped they would be availed of to the fullest extent in the course of the discussion, however long it might last—they would be neglecting their duty. He trusted, however, that whatever course they found it necessary to take, they would give every consideration, not only to the feelings of the Speaker, but to those of hon. Members who differed from them in opinion. They only acted, as he had said, under a sense of solemn responsibility, believing that the passing of the measure would be the greatest blow that had ever been struck at the peace and prosperity of Ireland.

rose to address the House, when—

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

, resuming, said, that at that late hour he was very glad of an opportunity of placing on record his protest against the coercive provisions of the Government. He must also protest against the deliberate attempt that had been made, during the progress of the debate, to fasten the stigma on the Irish Members that they had no higher motive for the course they were pursuing during that protracted Sitting than to waste the time of the House. Speaking for himself, he was moved by an overwhelming sense of duty; and, in view and in face of the greatly mistaken public opinion which had been created by a cannonade of calumny, to adopt the course he was following. His first contention was, that there was nothing whatever in the condition of Ireland to justify the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. There was not more than 200 cases that came under the head of serious crimes; and he contended that that was nothing more than the normal condition of things in Ireland, and that there had really been no increase of agrarian offences in Ireland at all. He admitted that these 200 cases were serious offences; but they could quite easily be dealt with by the ordinary law. There were several cases of murder, two or three cases of manslaughter, and a number of cases of incendiarism. Putting the darkest complexion upon these serious cases, there was nothing whatever in them but what might be dealt with very easily by the ordinary process of law. But it was urged that although many ordinary offenders might be made amenable to the ordinary law, yet such was the state of terrorism in the country that it was impossible to secure evidence that would result in conviction. He admitted, in the case of threatening letters, that it was impossible to bring convictions home; but with regard to all other descriptions of agrarian crime, there did not exist, at the present moment, a larger percentage of acquittals than at any other ordinary period of the year. ["Oh!"] Some hon. Members seemed to be sceptical about that statement; but he would refer them to the Government Returns for the proof of the assertion. No doubt, there was a great amount of terrorism in Ireland. He had been much struck some time ago by the able and instructive letters upon the state of Ireland contributed by the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. C. Russell). The hon. and learned Member stated that in commencing his inquiries in the county of Kerry, whenever he endeavoured to elicit information from a poor struggling tenant, it was with the utmost difficulty that he could ascertain anything about the state of things there. The tenants were terrified, and were afraid to give information. It was not the terrorism of an intense agitation, but a permanent and standing terrorism exercised by the landlord system in Ireland. That was the terrorism that prevailed; and, in his (Mr. Barry's) opinion, it produced effects far more disastrous and widespread than any result that could be forced on by a popular agitation. He had listened attentively to the arguments which had been adduced in opposition to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Dublin (Dr. Lyons), and the whole of them seemed to be exceedingly weak. The Irish Members had never attempted to justify the outrages that had occurred. Hon. Members sitting on that side of the House were as anxious as Her Majesty's Government to stop them; and the hon. and learned Member for Stockport (Mr. Hopwood) was labouring under an extraordinary misapprehension when he said that the Irish Members had at- tempted to justify them. The same hon. and learned Member charged the Irish Members with pursuing a course that only tended to light up afresh the old animosities between Englishmen and Irishmen. If that were true it would be a very serious matter; but he utterly denied that it was the case. It was not the Irish Members sitting on that Bench who were trying to light up the old animosities between the two nations; but it was the Liberal Government who were giving encouragement to the old and blood-stained practices of the past by proposing fresh measures of coercion. It was they who were responsible for any heat, bad passions, or animosity that might arise, and the Irish Members were only doing their duty in resisting any unconstitutional attempt to abridge and circumscribe the liberties of the Irish people. A warm defence of the policy of Her Majesty's Government had been made by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He (Mr. Barry) had fondly hoped, until the last moment, that the right hon. Gentleman would have taken a different course, or that, with a view of maintaining his political consistency, he would, at least, have avoided any attempt to bolster up the Government in the policy they were pursuing. He could not help contrasting the speech made now by the right hon. Gentleman with the speech made by the same right hon. Gentleman in 1866, when, although the state of the country at that time was far different from what it was now—when there was danger of open insurrection—when there were foreign emissaries in the country instigating the people to revolt—when, in some parts of the country, the people had actually arms in their hands, and the flag of revolt was freely flying—at a time like that, when there appeared to be, on the part of a considerable section of the Irish people, a fixed determination to offer armed resistance to the authority of the British Crown—the right hon. Gentleman, standing in his place in the House of Commons, used arguments in defence of popular liberty, which, were noble in sentiment, and which expressed very accurately indeed the position taken up by the Irish Members in the course of the present debate. The right hon. Gentleman made a speech on the 17th of February, 1866, when there was a proposal before the House to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act. He had referred to a chapter of English history, and he had pointed out the different Ministers who had filled the Office of First Lord of the Treasury since he entered the House, and he proceeded thus—

"I say, that with regard to all these men, there has not been any approach to anything that history will describe as statesmanship on the part of the English Government towards Ireland. There were Coercion Bills in abundance; Arms Bills Session after Session; lamentations like that of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli) that the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act was not made perpetual by a clause which he laments was repealed. There have been Acts for the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act like that which we are now discussing; but there has been no statesmanship."—[3 Hansard, clxxxi. 689.]

That was precisely the position which the Irish Members took now. They contended that the proposals of Her Majesty's Government when they desired coercion always took precedence of remedial legislation. Instead of giving a radical reform of the Land Laws, they preferred the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. The Irish Members said that this was no statesmanship. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say—

"Men the most clumsy and brutal can do these things; but we want men of higher temper—men of higher genius—men of higher patriotism—to deal with the affairs of Ireland. I should like to know whether those statesmen who hold great Offices have themselves comprehended the nature of this question. If they have not, they have been manifestly ignorant; and if they have comprehended it, they have not dealt with it; they have concealed that which they knew from the people, and evaded the duty they owed to their Sovereign. I do not want to speak disrespectfully of men in Office. It is not my custom in this House. I know something of the worrying labours to which they are subjected, and I know not how from day to day they bear the burden of the labour imposed upon them; but still, I lament that those who wear the garb, enjoy the emoluments, and, I had almost said, usurp the dignity of statesmanship, sink themselves merely into respectable and honourable administrators, when there is a whole nation under the sovereignty of the Queen calling for all their anxious thoughts, calling for the highest exercise of the highest qualities of the statesman."—[ Ibid. ]

That, again, was precisely the position which the Irish Members took up. They said that it was not the exercise of the highest qualities of statesmanship to bring forward coercive proposals. It was once said—by Count Cavour he believed—that anybody could govern in a state of siege; but it was the very last proposal expected from a Liberal Government, whose name was associated with liberty and freedom, that they should recommend the adoption of brute force, instead of bringing forward proposals to show they were really making efforts in the direction of reform, worthy of the highest efforts of statesmanship. In 1866, when the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster protested so eloquently against the imposition of coercion upon Ireland there was an insurrectionary movement in the country which, while it had the general support of the people, had received no endorsement from recognized public opinion. The clergy were universally against it, the corporate public bodies, the Poor Law Guardians, and the various channels of independent thought and opinion in the country were opposed to the movement. The very contrary was the fact now. Every channel of independent opinion in Ireland was ranged on the side of the Land League. The clergy of all denominations, he was happy to say, and all the corporate bodies, were not only passively in favour of it, but had passed strong resolutions in support of it. Non-political bodies, like the Poor Law Guardians, moved by the extraordinary consensus of opinion in the country, had also passed resolutions couched in the strongest terms, and protesting against coercive legislation. Bearing in mind, then, the difference of circumstances—that in 1866 they were in the presence of an open insurrectionary movement, having nothing more behind it than the general sympathy of the people, while, at the present day, they had a movement endorsed by the public opinion of the country, supported by all the recognized public feeling of Ireland, as far as it could be ascertained; and yet they found the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, now a Cabinet Minister, and supposed by many like himself (Mr. Barry) to form the strength and the prop of that Cabinet—they found the right hon. Gentleman getting up now to defend proposals, under these altered circumstances, which he emphatically and eloquently denounced 14 years ago. It was impossible to point to a more remarkable instance of political inconsistency. Probably, on further reference to the language of the right hon. Gentleman in 1866, they might find the key to this political profligacy. In the speech he had just quoted, the right hon. Gentleman said—

"We who ask Parliament, in dealing with Ireland, to deal with it upon the unchangeable principles of justice, are the friends of the people and the really loyal advisers and supporters of the Throne."—[3 Hansard, clxxxi. 693.]

That, again, was precisely the position taken up by the Irish Members. They contended that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who were supporting coercion were not the loyal advisers and supporters of the Throne. They contended that the proposals of Her Majesty's Government would not only fail to accomplish the object for which they were intended, but would create a wider gulf between the two nations, and it would take years to undo the mischief that would be done if the proposals of Her Majesty's Government were passed into law. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say—

"All history teaches us that it is not in human nature that men should be content under any system of legislation and of institutions such as exist in Ireland. You may pass this Bill; you may put the Home Secretary's 500 men into gaol. You may do all this and suppress the conspiracy and put down the insurrection, but the moment it is suppressed there will still remain the germs of this malady, and from those germs will grow up as heretofore another crop of insurrection and another harvest of misfortune."—[ Ibid. ]

That was the result which all those who knew the country well, and were best acquainted with its social and political condition, anticipated from the present proposals of Her Majesty's Government. The right hon. Gentleman proceeded thus—

"And it may be that those who sit here 18 years after this moment will find another Ministry and another Secretary of State to propose to you another administration of the same ever-failing and ever-poisonous medicine."—[ Ibid. ]

It was not yet 18 years since the right hon. Gentleman addressed the House so eloquently against coercion—only 14 years had elapsed—and it would be seen with what prophetic force the right hon. Gentleman was addressing the House on that occasion. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say—and this was the portion of the right hon. Gentle- man's speech which would probably explain his extraordinary political inconsistency now—

"I say there is a mode of making Ireland loyal. I say that the Parliament of England having abolished the Parliament of Ireland is doubly bound to examine what that mode is, and, if it can discover it, to adopt it. I say that the Minister who occupies Office in this country, merely that he may carry on the daily routine of Administration, who dares not grapple with this question, who dares not go into Opposition, and who will sit anywhere except where he can tell his mind freely to the House and the country, may have a high position in this country; but he is not a statesman, nor is he worthy of the name."—[ Ibid. ]

It was a remarkable coincidence that almost every position which the Irish Members contended for from those Benches formed the position held by the right hon. Gentleman in 1866. They declared that the statesman, no matter how high his position, who came before the House of Commons, in the last quarter of the 19th century, with all the failures of the past before him, to submit proposals of this kind was no statesman, and that he had altogether misunderstood the occurrences of the time. A fierce and almost irresistible agitation was sweeping over Ireland. Every indication of the time pointed to the conclusion that the one thing to remedy the mischief and restore peace, order, and prosperity to Ireland was immediately to apply radical changes in the existing Land Laws of the country. The Irish people felt extremely indignant—he might almost say that considering the promises made by Her Majesty's Government—considering the position taken up during the last Session by the Government—when, by their own admission, the state of things in Ireland demanded prompt attention, the only measure the Government should yet have brought forward should be one of coercion. He remembered when the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland was introducing the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, and when he was offering explanations or apologies to the House for introducing it at the time he did, the right hon. Gentleman said the Government were compelled to bring in the measure by the accumulated evidence that was forced upon them day after day of the condition of Ireland by the privations and misery and starvation which existed in the country, by the increasing number of evictions, and by the terrible consequences which fell upon the people if the evictions were carried out. If such a condition of things influenced the action of the Government last Session, then he would say that there was no alteration in the position of things which would justify them now in their change of front. He said, advisedly, that if this Coercion Bill passed into law, as probably it would within a short period, the very consequences from which the Government shrank last Session would inevitably follow in Ireland, and that there would be evictions on a large and terrible scale. Not only would 15,000 run the chance and risk of eviction with all its dread consequences, but there would be 30,000 or 40,000 subjected to that terrible curse. Therefore, he contended that if the Irish Members could show to the House sufficient reasons for concluding that evictions would follow in Ireland on that large scale, and that some 30,000 or 40,000 people would be thrown out upon the highway without a home and without a refuge, it was the duty of the House to pause before endeavouring with such indecent haste to pass these coercive measures. The Amendment submitted by the hon. Member for the City of Dublin (Dr. Lyons) afforded a most excellent opportunity of meeting the feeling and wishes of the Irish people in some slight degree, under the exceptional circumstances in which they were placed in the present hour. He objected to the proposals indicated in the speech of the Chief Secretary. Rather than leaving the liberties of the people of Ireland at the mercy of a sub-constable, who might have a personal grudge against individuals, he thought he was justified in calling on the Government to pause, and take the golden opportunity they had within their grasp, of offering to the Irish people a real message of peace. In 1871, after the passing of the Land Act, there were only 391 agrarian offences; and this was not the result of any Arms Act or Peace Preservation Act, but the immediate and direct result of remedial measures. It could be shown from the figures supplied by the Government that in every case where coercive legislation was resorted to it was immediately followed by an increase of agrarian crime. He warned the Government that the same result would inevitably follow the passing of these coercive measures. The people would be driven once more into the secret and devious paths of conspiracy; and in the heated state of the public mind, with hopes largely aroused by the utterances of Liberal statesmen at the last Election, what could be expected from any course of secret conspiracy in Ireland, but the same unfortunate and unhappy results which made so many dark pages in Irish history? History would only repeat itself, and, instead of Her Majesty's Government securing the object they aimed at, there would be an increase of agrarian crime. The consequence would be that, instead of being able to proceed with their Land Bill, they would probably be compelled to come down to the House to ask for further coercive legislation. Was that a prospect which at all captivated the intelligence of the English Liberal or Conservative Party? Was it always to be the case that when public agitation had reached a certain point in Ireland it must be met by everlasting acts of repression? Such was not the history of England. It was not the custom in this country to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and place the liberties of the English people at the mercy of any sub-constable in the country; but when a popular agitation reached a certain point, Parliament wisely came to the conclusion that concession should be made to the people, and the popular excitement and feeling allayed. The same result would follow in Ireland if the same Constitutional course were adopted by the British Parliament. There was another reason why this proposed coercive measure should not be allowed to pass into law, and it was this:—That the ground upon which the Government established their case was rapidly melting away from under their feet. There had been this year, with only a month of the year gone, an extraordinary diminution of agrarian crime in Ireland. A diminution amounting to something like 33 per cent had taken place within a fortnight. It was, therefore, only fair on the part of Her Majesty's Government, before rushing in so hastily to abridge popular liberty, to give time to see if this satisfactory and most gratifying diminution of agrarian crime was going to continue. If it was going to continue, why coerce the Irish people while law and order were maintained? It was only when the Irish Members succeeded in demolishing that portion of the case of the Government that they came into fair view of the real object of Her Majesty's Government. Their idea was not so much to deal with outrages and violence, because they knew that they existed to a limited extent only; but the mainspring of their action and their real object was to suppress and put down the Land League in Ireland—in point of fact, to grapple with Constitutional agitation in Ireland. Having failed by the ordinary law to suppress the League, or to find the chief supporters of the League guilty of any offence—after a full and fair trial in the highest Court of Justice in Ireland, and having failed to convict them of any illegal act, they now wished, by carrying this Coercion Bill, to suppress the League altogether, and to arrest its leaders. There could be no doubt that that was the chief object of Her Majesty's Government. Their Returns had utterly broken down, and there was not the ghost of a case for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. Their chief object was to suppress the Land League; and no course more unwise or more unstatemanlike could be adopted by any Government of this country, Liberal or Tory; because by openly suppressing the free expression of opinion they would drive the people away from the open paths of Constitutional agitation into the far more dark and dangerous paths of secret conspiracy. It was necessary that time should be given for cool reflection and deliberation on the subject; and there was no reason why the matter should be hastily determined. There were strong reasons for believing that a change was coming over the English mind, and that the great pulse of this country was beating rather on the side of remedial legislation than of coercive and restrictive proposals. Seeing that that feeling was growing and enlarging every day, he thought the Irish Members were justified in appealing to Her Majesty's Government again to consider their position, and to meet them with proposals to remedy the existing state of law in Ireland, and not to insist on forcing coercive legislation down the throats of the Irish people. He sincerely trusted that Her Majesty's Government would withdraw this hateful proposal for circumscribing the liberties of the Irish people.

regretted, considering the heavy responsibilities which rested upon him, that the conditions under which he found himself obliged to address the House were so unfavourable to an adequate consideration of the question. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland asked for leave to bring in a Bill for the better protection of life and property in Ireland. It was no exaggeration to say that many months had passed since the Government abandoned the care of life and property in Ireland, and since the important function of taking care of life and property in Ireland was taken up by the National Land League. The position of the Government on the question was one that was extremely irregular. Last year they were sensible of the need of approaching the protection of person and property in Ireland in a very different spirit from that which marked their present efforts. They brought in a Bill to relieve the poorest class of tenants in Ireland, if not from the exactions of their landlords, at least from the exercise of landlord tyranny. That Bill was rejected in "another place," and the Government tamely accepted the rebuff, and allowed the Session to close without making any further effort to pass into law a measure for the relief of the Irish tenants. Even the Chief Secretary for Ireland confessed that he could not continue to administer the agrarian laws according to the demands of the landlords. His mind had undergone a considerable change since; and although he and his Government condemned the use to which the agrarian laws were put in Ireland, and alleged that they could not, with a good conscience, continue to administer them, they now found him continuing these laws in operation, and, instead of reforming them, actually bringing forward a measure to restrict the liberty of the Irish tenant, and to place him more than ever at the mercy of the Irish landlord. He regretted that he was obliged to address the House at a time when Her Majesty's Government were absent, and when every one of the Cabinet Ministers to whose speeches he desired to make allusion were not present to hear his observations. With regard to the speech of the Solicitor General for Ireland it demanded only a casual observation. If delivered in a Court of Law, it would, no doubt, have been considered able and appropriate; but the House of Commons, in considering the present state of Ireland, especially with a view to the question whether coercive legislation should be applied, had a right to expect from those who expounded the question on the Treasury Bench much larger views than those which applied to the legal application of criminal cases. He could only say that the House, by giving urgency to coercion, decreed a sort of landlord carnival, in which the rich landlord class might run riot, and the tenants, divorced from their homes during that period, might practically he said to have no hope for the future. There had been a remarkable diversity in the treatment of this question, as appeared by the speeches delivered upon it by Members of Her Majesty's Government. The Chief Secretary for Ireland had prided himself upon not quoting newspaper reports, and attached considerable value to his own statement, on the ground that it was based entirely, or almost entirely, upon official records. On the other hand, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster turned his back upon official records altogether, and appeared to base his case a great deal upon unauthorized, and, in many cases, grossly exaggerated reports of the state of Ireland, which, for many months past, had deluged the British Press. After the great experience of the right hon. Gentleman it might have been expected that, in dealing with a case of such gravity, he would, at least, have taken care beforehand to consult authentic records, and not rely on those which were to be found in the columns of British newspapers, with reference to the state of Ireland. But the right hon. Gentleman had another kind of evidence, and referred to numbers of private letters sent to him during the last three months. He did not, however, allow the House to form any opinion as to the value which ought to attach to those private letters, although he admitted that they did not all condemn the Land League. Upon the general question he would say that, as the proposal was to take away, for so long a time, the primary liberty of a whole people, without which the comforts of life were lessened, and the advantages of civilization might be said to disappear—when such a proposal was before the House, it ill became the right hon. Gentleman to attempt to justify it by reference to private letters. Such a proceeding would better suit a Richlieu or a Mazarin. England had been for many a long day the home of those who found themselves uncomfortable in other lands; and the name of refugee had been given to them in England, because they were not allowed to have a home in their own country. But the case was entirely different with regard to the Irish landlords, who came to London because they could no longer, with the same impunity and ease, exercise at home that despotism which in the past had proved so destructive to the welfare of the tenant farmers in Ireland. He would say that while some of the poorer tenants in Ireland had been suffering hunger, their landlords had not passed so melancholy a time during their exile in the London Clubs and hotels, especially as they could occupy part of it in pouring their woes into the ears of Cabinet Ministers. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster endeavoured to justify his support of the Government, of which he was a Member, in introducing this measure, by saying that he would not support it if it were not to be followed by a measure of remedial import to Ireland. But it was clear that if coercion was to be made the initial letter of the alphabet of legislation for Ireland the remedial measures of the Government would be pushed into the future. There was but one course open to Irish Members, according to an intelligent view of their duty. They found the liberties of the people of Ireland subjected to wanton and unprovoked attack, and they had no choice but simply and resolutely to resist that attack by every means in their power; and when they were told they ought to retire and allow it to be successful, because there would be measures of remedial legislation, he said that proposal was corrupt, because it was calling upon the Irish Representatives to sell the liberties of the Irish people.

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

, resuming, said, Her Majesty's Government had brought for- ward a measure of repression, and in the first stage they found themselves confronted by the full strength of the Irish Party in the House. It would not be possible for them to relax their opposition, which a sacred duty pledged them to make to this measure; and it could not, therefore, be supposed that the Bill would be speedily passed into law. But when the Bill was passed, and its place was taken by remedial legislation, the arguments and opposition given to it by hon. Members below the Gangway would be so prolonged, that it was easy to see that the progress of remedial legislation through the House would be very uncertain. The result of the Session, therefore, would appear to be the Coercion Bill, and nothing else. One remark of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster showed how little of serious care he had applied to the consideration of the details of this subject. The right hon. Gentleman said that an hon. Member had complained that meetings were suppressed, and yet he said that 460 meetings had been held; and he did not know how one fact could be reconciled with the other. But the explanation was that these meetings were held before the Government began to interfere with free expression in Ireland. Could the right hon. Gentleman see any inconsistency in that? He would only say that it appeared the right hon. Gentleman had addressed the House without having bestowed that care upon the subject which had always marked his speeches on English politics. The Chief Secretary for Ireland made it the basis of the demand for coercion that person and property were not protected, and that liberty was not secured in Ireland. But the Government appeared to confine their protection to the persons and property of one especial class. Irish Members did not yield to them in their desire to protect person and property and to secure liberty in Ireland; but they said that the person and property of every class, and the liberty of the whole community, had an equal claim upon a statesmanlike Government; indeed, a greater claim upon them than the liberty, property, or life of any particular class. Now, the Irish Land League devoted itself to the protection of property and the security of liberty in Ireland. But the charge made against it in that House was that it had preferred the rights and happiness of the many to the liberties and privileges of the few. There were 10,000 landlords in Ireland, many of whom had hitherto exercised their rights in such a manner as to inflict grievous suffering and hardship on the community; and there were 500,000 tenants-at-will the supporters of the Land League. Her Majesty's Government claimed protection for the landlords solely on statistics which did not justify this attempt on the liberties of the people. He submitted that neither of the years 1845 or 1869 offered any strong analogy to the case of Ireland in the year 1880. A just analogy was to be found in the year 1831, at which time Earl Grey was willing to wait two years before recommending Parliament to pass a Coercion Bill. It had been said there had been a considerable increase of crime during the last three months of the year. But it was well known that crime increased with distress; and an official statistician of the Government had acknowledged that there was a permanent relation between the amount of distress and the amount of crime in every country. When it was remembered that the second portion of rent became due in the winter quarters, and how an harvest, exceptionally good, but not equal to that of some former years, excited the cupidity of the landlords, and how they held writs of ejectment over the heads of their serfs, it was not a matter for astonishment that crime had increased in the latter portion of the year. But the Return which he had of the agrarian crimes for the first fortnight of the present year revealed a total absence of crimes of the gravest class. If they took the agrarian crimes of all descriptions, it would be found that in the first fortnight of the month of January, a period of great distress, the total of agrarian crime was less than three in each of the counties of Ireland. Her Majesty's Government were, therefore, pressing on their Coercion Bill in the face of a decrease of crime. He believed that this was the first time such a policy had been persevered in by any Government, Liberal or Tory; and he was able to say, with reference to the Coercion Act of 1870, that the Government of the day, before the Bill left the House, were able to show a continuous increase in the class of crime with which they had to deal. He confessed his suspicion that the feverish haste of the Government in presenting this Bill was only to be accounted for by their fear that if they took the stages of the measure at the ordinary speed, and gave time to the House fully to consider it, it would be found that serious agrarian crime had almost disappeared in Ireland, leaving them no case for dealing with that part of the subject. When he moved for the Return of the first fortnight in January, he was met with opposition on the part of the Government, and it was only after great efforts that the damning fact was disclosed that the proofs of the increase of crime did not exist. Again, very effective and melodramatic use had been made of the term "unwritten law of the Land League," in the course of the debate; and the Chief Secretary, whenever he spoke of that unwritten law, sank his tones to a tragic depth. But this law was as familiar to the landlords as it was to the tenants; and if not written, they were printed and circulated broad-cast amongst the people. The Land League recommended people to try as honest men to do what they could to pay their rent; to offer to the landlord what they could pay, and that had been stigmatized as inciting to breaches of contract. He ventured to say it was nothing of the kind, and that, had it not been for the Land League, there would have been many more breaches of contract. The theory of the Chief Secretary for Ireland was that there was a deliberate and sinister sequence in the outrages committed in Ireland; that they commenced by the slightest of suggestions; were followed by threatening letters, and when these proved unavailing recourse was had to incendiary fires, outrages on the person, and even murder. He maintained that theory to be entirely unsupported by any fact brought forward by the Government; and he asserted that it was not true that there was any such sequence of outrages in Ireland as would entitle the right hon. Gentleman to say that there was any deliberate and organized attempt to cause intimidation. Out of 22 threatening letters received in nine months by persons in Sligo, no other consequence followed except in two cases, in one of which a rick of chaff and in the other a rick of hay was burnt. Therefore, he thought that threatening letters ought to be once for all excluded from the consideration of the House. With regard to the maiming of cattle, he regretted to point out to the House that this was a measure of revenge unfortunately of frequent occurrence in Ireland, and was probably a relic of former times, when the people were in such a state of slavery and subjection that they were driven to that cowardly means of carrying out revenge. But if he compared the year 1831 with the year 1880, he found that the houghings of cattle amounted then to 455, and in the face of that fact Earl Grey was enabled to wait a much longer time than Her Majesty's Government before recommending measures of coercion. With regard to carding, he admitted it was a barbarous offence; but then there was not a single case of carding to be found in the Blue Book presented to the House. In fact, the total number of cases of wounding the person in 1880 amounted to 10 only. Again, if they compared the meetings of the Land League with the number of crimes of cutting and wounding, it would be seen that there was no ground for the belief that the Land League meetings had stimulated crime. In January, 1880, there were 26 meetings of the Land League and one person cut and maimed; in February 15 meetings and no such crime; in March six meetings and no such crime. In the last month of the year there were 190 Land League meetings and only one of these crimes. Even supposing that the 10 cases of cutting and maiming the person committed in Ireland during the year 1880 included one or two cases of carding, he asked what justification there was for the general and sweeping statement that when outrages on property proved insufficient outrages on the person followed? Whatever was the intention of making that statement its effect was to lead the British public to believe that this crime was common in Ireland. While he did not wish to proceed to the length of charging the right hon. Gentleman with attempting to mislead the British public, he said that the effect of his statement was as injurious and unjust as if it had been made with a deliberate intention. Again, the right hon. Gentleman said there had been few cases of murder, and then he went on to make the following extraordinary remark—"O! but they were not necessary." He asked the House fully to consider what was intended to be conveyed by those words. The right hon. Gentleman in that statement said to the House and to the country, as clearly as words could convey it, that if they had been necessary to cause intimidation murders would have been committed. He (Mr. Sexton) submitted that when the total of murders committed in Ireland amounted to eight only according to the Returns, and when that number had been reduced by the scrutiny of Irish Members, the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that murders were not committed because they were not necessary involved a gross, unprovoked, and most wanton attack on the character of a people to whom the crime of murder and all grave crime was as alien and horrifying as it was to any civilized people in the world. When they proceeded to examine the details of the eight murders committed in the course of the year, the result was the same as when they compared the totals and the details of all the Returns laid before Parliament in relation to this question—the number fell to seven. He did not know how the eighth crept into the total; he could find only a total of seven fully accounted for, and in the detailed account he could find only six. The Chief Secretary had stated that an agrarian murder was never committed unless in pursuance of some cold-blooded plan to intimidate; but he would call attention to the six agrarian murders described as having been committed in the nine months of last year. One was the case of Bernard Morris, who, according to the Constabulary Report, had had a dispute with a relative named Patrick Morris about the ownership of a piece of land, and was subsequently shot by him in the right thigh, the wound ultimately proving fatal. It was clear that this was a family dispute, culminating, unfortunately, in the death of one of those who were parties to it. It had no reference to the question of rent, but to the question of the ownership of land, and, as a matter of fact, could in no way affect the question with which the Land League was concerned, and which caused the great tension which at present existed between the different classes of Ireland. There were two reasons why this case should not have been put in the Government Return, one being because it was a family dispute, and not an agrarian offence having any proper or intelligent relation to the claim for the coercion of the people; and the other because the ordinary law was found quite sufficient to meet and deal with the case. Patrick Morris pleaded guilty at the Winter Assizes, and was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment for manslaughter. It was a misleading of the House, and a great increasing of the difficulty in which hon. Members found themselves, to admit such evidence as this on behalf of the coercion of the Irish people. He only mentioned these cases because murder was charged against the Irish people, and because they heard so much about the bloodthirstiness of Ireland, and, therefore, because it appeared to him right to point out how infinitesimal and unworthy was the case of the Government so far as it related to this particular crime. Another case given in the Returns was that of Kryle Power, who was attacked and killed by his step-brother George Power, with whom he had quarrelled concerning a, piece of land which had belonged to his father. This was another family dispute, and not a case arising out of the tension between the classes—out of the state of the law or the disordered condition of society, and, like the other case, was only a manslaughter, the offence having been committed under provocation. The ordinary law was found sufficient to deal with it, and George Power was brought up at the Winter Assizes and convicted—notwithstanding that they were told that Irish juries would not convict anyone—and sentenced to 20 years' penal servitude. This left only four murders; and he thought, as to some of these, it might be fairly contended that they were not agrarian, although he did not feel constrained to go into any cases but those in which there was not a shadow of a case for saying that they were agrarian. He had proved that two of the cases were not agrarian, and came to the residue of four; and, with regard to these, he must say that when the Government asked for coercion of the people on a case which—in regard to murder—was sustained by only four instances, that case was founded on a measure of crime which had been more than equalled in many of the most peaceful and tranquil years through which Ireland had ever passed. Periods might be referred to in which, although there had been no necessity to seek measures of coercion, owing to the objectionable nature of the Land Laws the number of agrarian murders had exceeded that upon which the Government now relied. The Chief Secretary had referred to police protection given to individuals; but the Irish landlord saw nothing disgraceful, or even unpleasant and inconvenient, in being attended through the country by two stalwart constables. Some, indeed, looked upon it as adding to their dignity, and many would like nothing better than to receive a threatening letter, so that they might be able to present themselves to the Government as persons entitled to have police protection. According to the Returns, the number of threatening letters sent during the period in question was 1,300, and the number of persons receiving police protection was also 1,300. It appeared to him that, in some parts of the country, nearly every landlord received a threatening letter, and considered himself entitled to have police protection; and he would go further, and add that when the landlords of Ireland found that the fact that they were receiving police protection was regarded by the Government as a reason for coercion, their demands for that protection would considerably increase in number. He wished he could induce the House to reflect upon the ease with which a man in the position of an Irish landlord could persuade himself that police protection was a needful thing for him. In Ireland the landlords were not as they were in England, for they did not mix with the people amongst whom they lived, nor meddle with their affairs, nor constitute themselves a part of the general community; but they stood aloof from the people, and, in many instances, acted the part of tyrants. They knew they were hated by the victims of their despotism, and when a time of agitation came they experienced that fear which sprung from a bad conscience, and the feeling made them very ready to appeal for police protection when there was not the slightest necessity for it. There were cases, moreover, that could be quoted in which landlords had, by absolute breaches of the law, excited the animosity of the people, and, when they had placed themselves in that unpleasant position, had thrown themselves on the Government as claimants for police protection. The way to put an end to the necessity for police protection was to put an end to the state of society in Ireland which provoked passion and resentment. To refer to another part of the question, the Chief Secretary had said a great deal about Land League "Courts;" but really he did not think they deserved the name which had been bestowed upon them in the House. They were only meetings of local committees of the Land League; and it was only just to the Central Committee to say that it did not, and does not, include in its plan of operations any proceeding by "Courts," or the hearing of complaints or the arrogating to itself of any function of the law. It was true many persons whose conduct had been complained of had made requests to be heard before the committees; but it was absurd, on such a ground as that, to accuse the Land League or any of its branches of taking to itself any part of the function of the law. The Central Committee of the League in Dublin had certainly never requested anyone to go before it; but requests had been made to it to grant interviews on the part of persons who wished to have the opportunity of explaining certain conduct alleged against them. In many cases it had granted such interviews, and he did not believe the local branches had ever intended to do more than this. They took on themselves the function of arbitrators, and had proved very useful in that capacity, having, in many instances, allayed passions that might have caused trouble; and it seemed to him that instead of this being alleged as a reason for the condemnation of the Land League, it ought to be recognized as something that should stand to its credit in the account. But whether or not the Land League "Courts," as some hon. Members were pleased to call them, ought to form no case for the coercion of the people, for the Chief Secretary had himself declared that the proceedings taken at Tralee had induced the local branches to discontinue the practice objected to. He (Mr. Sexton) did not know whether this was so or not; but if it was, so far as the Land League Courts were concerned, if the ordinary law was sufficient, it was, of course, unnecessary to resort to any extraordinary measures. Then the right hon. Gentleman had based a good deal of his case upon the proportion of apprehensions to the total number of agrarian crimes, saying that out of 2,590 agrarian crimes the apprehensions were only 295, or, deducting those for threatening letters, 182; but he had here to charge the right hon. Gentleman with having committed a very grave error in his statement. He supposed he was bound to believe that the mistake had occurred through inadvertence; but, at any rate, the Chief Secretary had greatly under-stated the apprehensions. These were not 16 per cent, as made out by the right hon. Gentleman, but 23 per cent, a proportion, he submitted, which, considering the difficulty of detecting agrarian crime, was a very respectable one; and, so long as it could be maintained by the police, the people of Ireland might very well claim that the Government should not resort to any coercive measures. The right hon. Gentleman had said that the police knew the offenders; but how could that be the case when they did not succeed in detecting the offenders? And how could the Government base their application for general and plenary powers to arrest them on such a statement? But, in another part of his speech, the right hon. Gentleman said the police did not know the offenders. If the measure was passed the police in Ireland, in order to show their diligence and prove their activity, would pounce upon a great many innocent people, the result of which would be a great deal of suffering on the part of those who had committed no offence whatever against the law. He made no doubt, however, that the measure they were asked to pass was not so much a measure for the restoration of peace and order in Ireland, as a measure for the repression of the Land League—as a measure of revenge on that body for its action in the past. If the Bill were merely intended for the general purpose of restoring peace and order the Government would not deem it necessary to make it retrospective, but would be content—as all Governments had been hitherto—to apply themselves to the future, and to take powers for the arrest of every man who should, after the passing of the measure, be found guilty of the commission of crime. They might have been content with this, seeing that agrarian crime was de- creasing day by day in Ireland, and had now reached a very low level. In view of that fact the Government might very well have taken powers for the future—that was to say, powers for the seizure of future criminals—and not have asked for extended and plenary power of arrest in regard to acts committed in the past. His explanation of the matter was this—that the Government had failed to discover any legal means of impeding or embarrassing the Land League. They had failed to procure a conviction against that body in the recent State Trials. They had failed because they deserved to fail; because they had endeavoured to bring a law in operation with regard to facts against which the law was not applicable; and, to compensate themselves for that failure, and in order to satisfy the Irish landlords, they now brought in this measure, not for the purpose of restoring peace and order, but for the purpose of attacking that body—the Irish National Land League—which they found they could not attack under the operation of the ordinary law. As to the non-efficiency of the police to deal with existing crime in Ireland, which the right hon. Gentleman had referred to, it must be borne in mind that there were several classes of offences in which detection, from the nature of the offences, was next to impossible—such, for instance, as arson, incendiary fires, the maiming of cattle, threatening letters, and injury to property. He would submit to the most searching scrutiny the axiom he laid down—that these offences were almost impossible of detection. But out of 761 agrarian crimes, affording to the police some reasonable chance of detection, there had been 243 arrests—that was to say, that the arrests had been 47 per cent of the crimes, which proportion came up to the ordinary proportion in such cases in every other civilized country. The number of trials had been 176, and the number of convictions 79, so that here, again, the proportion was very respectable, and testified to the efficiency of the police and the ordinary law to deal with agrarian crime. The right hon. Gentleman complained that the lawlessness that prevailed was affecting every interest of the country, and that the shopkeepers were unable to serve processes; but against this he would put the fact that within the last few days Petitions against the Coercion Bill had been presented from almost every one of the Municipal Bodies of Ireland; and these Corporations—like the Corporations of other countries—were the quintessence of the mercantile community. These were people who would be affected, if anybody was, by inability on the part of the shopkeepers to issue processes against their debtors. He was at a loss to imagine how the Government could continue to pretend that the shopkeepers were unable to issue processes or unable to collect their debts when they found the chiefs of the shopkeepers of Ireland, the merchants and traders, opposed to the policy which the Ministry declared was for the protection of the shopkeepers. In the course of the evening he had seen a Petition or letter addressed from Tipperary to the Member for that county, in which was resented, as a slander and calumny, the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that the shopkeepers of Tipperary were unable to collect their debts or issue processes. The writers declared that the only difficulty they experienced in collecting their debts from the farmers in the district arose from the poverty and extreme necessity of some of the individual farmers, and they—the shopkeepers—were too high spirited and too rational to allow the inability to pay on the part of some of the farmers to betray them into a policy of insulting and coercing the people, even though the Government endeavoured to recommend it to their favour by telling them that it was for the protection of their interests. To refer to the question of Irish juries, it had been remarked by Mr. Justice Fitzgerald that Irish jurors did not appear in sufficient numbers in answer to summons.

believed the observation had been made by Mr. Justice Barry.

continued, that the matter was not important; but he contended that statistics showed Irish jurors were not remiss in answering to summons, and, as to their not daring to convict offenders in every class of case where conviction was at all rationally possible, the juries, as he had already shown, were ready and willing to convict; and, in all these classes of cases, there was a proportion of 45 per cent of convictions to be shown. The Chief Secretary, referring to another matter, had said that it not unfrequently happened that the most powerful man in a district in Ireland was a most contemptible, dissolute ruffian and blackguard; and, by a series of skilfully-contrived phrases, he had managed to convey to the House and the country that there was a connection existing between the hon. Member for Cork and the Land League and such "contemptible, dissolute ruffian and blackguard." He (Mr. Sexton) could not too strongly or too indignantly resent the imputation, no matter from what quarter it might come, that there was between the hon. Member for Cork, or any other hon. Member in that House, or between the Land League and those who perpetrated these crimes, any sodality or sympathy whatever. One of their objects in promoting the Land League had been to put an end to crime, because, although they saw that some crime would come from the distress and from the endeavours of the Land League to get the rent, and that the enemies of the people might be, in consequence, enabled to accuse them of some sympathy with such crime, and, in fact, of some responsibility for causing it, yet they did not feel justified in standing aloof from the people in their distress. They knew that the people had no hope from this Parliament, seeing how easily the Government was put down last year; and they saw there was nothing for it but for the people to organize, and, by organized and peaceful action, oppose the landlords who were disposed to tyrannize. They were confident that by substituting such a method for the unfortunate method of terrorizing by private and cowardly crime they would be able to bring down the level of crime in Ireland; and he thought he could safely say that if the Land League had not existed, and had not exerted itself to show the people that there were peaceful and public means of pressing their claims on the landlords, and of showing their determination to keep themselves and their homes, it was not hundreds, but thousands, of outrages the House would now have on the records before it. The consciences of the members of the Land League acquitted them of any complicity in crime. Outrages were especially painful to them, and it was really exasperating when, after having devoted their efforts so thoroughly as they had done to the direction of the spirit of the people into public channels of agitation that were peaceful and legal, they found themselves coupled with such innuendoes as that they had connived at, or contributed to, the commission of these crimes and outrages. It was not without reason that the Chief Secretary had been accused of using unjustifiable language towards the Catholic clergy in Ireland, although the character of these gentlemen stood so high that he did not feel constrained to defend them in that House. The right hon. Gentleman knew that the priests were the most powerful men in many districts, and were, in many cases, the presidents or secretaries of the branches of the Land League. He did not feel constrained either to defend the characters of the leading members of the local branches of the Land League, who could very well afford to treat with disregard any language levelled at them in these debates by the Chief Secretary or any other Member of the House. But he really was entitled to ask who were referred to as the powerful, contemptible, dissolute ruffians and blackguards? It had been endeavoured, in most cautious phraseology, to identify them with some members of the Land League; but, seriously, it was the greatest travesty of the facts to endeavour even to suggest such a thing. The Land League ought to be judged on its public platform and labours; and those who had borne the brunt of its labours, and subjected themselves to much acrimony and misapprehension, might at least claim not to be held responsible for more acts than they owned, and to be protected from innuendoes—innuendoes by which it was sought, not openly and manfully, but in an oblique and covert fashion, to connect them with acts which they condemned, and which they denounced and deplored. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken of "Secret Committees," which were another part of the melodramatic machinery by which the Government had endeavoured to establish their case. But surely the House was entitled to something more than declamation on such a subject as this. He (Mr. Sexton) denied that these Secret Committees existed, and declared that the whole operations of the Land League were public and above board, and, he believed, legal, let who might differ from him. He was stating what was indisputable, when he said that ever since the Land League began to take a part in the public affairs of Ireland it had always denounced crime of every kind, making such denunciation an important plank in its platform. He had himself expounded the doctrine from the first, and had never ceased expounding it on every platform on which he had stood. There were, as he had told the people, three reasons against the commission of crime—first, the law of religion condemned it; secondly, the law, not only of England, but of every civilized country, condemned it; and, thirdly, he had told the people that if crime was committed in the country, no matter by whom, an effort would immediately be made by the landlord classes to establish connection between the operation of the Land League and the commission of crime, and that if they wished to save the League from annoyance, false accusations, and insult they must not only abstain from crime themselves, but endeavour to keep all whom they could influence from the commission of it. He recorded here that he and, as far as he knew, all prominent members of the Land League had not only recently, but for many months past, had never ceased to impress upon the people, not only the religious and moral objections to crime, but also the inutility and folly of it, because it could be used by the enemies and opponents of Ireland as an argument for resorting, not to remedial but repressive measures, and for delaying that reform which was the aim of their exertions. With regard to the provisions of the Bill, as the right hon. Gentleman had stated them—

The hon. Member must not discuss the details of a Bill which is not before the House. He can refer to anything descriptive of it used by the right hon. Gentleman.

declared that the provisions of the Bill were a mean and cowardly and covert means of attacking the members of the Land League, which the Government had not been able successfully to attack openly and publicly. What particularly led him to think that the Bill, if passed into law, would be used for the destruction of the Land League was because the execution of the new law would rest exclusively in the hands of the class against whom the Land League operated. The Land League had directed its operations against the landowners; and if the Act was passed the landlords would have their enemies thrown into their hands. They would single out some particular man, pounce upon him, and throw him into gaol. He could easily imagine how the Bill would operate in Sligo or in other counties. He did not wish to impute any degree of influence to any class; but the promotion of the police in Ireland rested wholly with the magistrates. The same remark applied to the resident magistrates, who were under the influence of the landlords. The machinery of suspension which they contemplated would be put into operation by the police, and if there was in any locality a man who was a prominent member of the Land League, what was more reasonable to suppose than that a resident landlord would go to a constable, or head constable, to administer a seasonable spur to that officer's power of "reasonable suspicion." Everyone knew that among those whose duty it was to execute an act suspicion became a disease, and when the Irish police found it was to their interest and the interests of the landlords to suspect a particular man they would not be slow to do so. In fact, the whole machinery of the Act would be in the hands of the landlords, who would be able to apply it against the tenants, and that was what the Government called restoring peace to Ireland. The effect of the Act would, however, be the reverse of that, because in the interval that would pass between the passing of the Coercion Act and the Land Act the landlords would have ample time for gratifying their revenge and carrying out any designs they might have against the lives of the people in their power. The landlords would say if the tenants were to be allowed to punish them, and to be enabled to become possessed of interests which the landlords could not buy with money, their course would be to take possession of the tenant's lands in anticipation of the Act. They would ruthlessly clear out multitudes of tenants. They would not only put in execution evictions of 5,000 people because they had not paid their rents, but they would evict a vast number of small tenants likely to be evicted by the Land Act. This course, he believed, would greatly increase the outrages in Ireland, and upon that House would rest the responsibility of allowing the landlords to act in that way, because if the House had passed a remedial measure first the landlords would not have been enabled to take that course; but by passing the Coercion Act the landlords would be able to throw into prison the only people who would have given fresh life to the country. Those would be the shocking results of the policy of the Government. The Prime Minister had stated that it was upon the total failure of the administration of the law in Ireland that the Government rested their case. He thought he had already shown that there had not been any such total failure of arrests and convictions. The right hon. Gentleman based a very important part of his argument on the circumstance that while evictions had decreased in the last quarter of last year crime had greatly increased. No doubt evictions were one of the elements which determined the increase or decrease of crime in Ireland; but evictions only formed one of the elements, and if they wanted to determine the increase or decrease they must take a wider view than the evictions of that quarter. It was not only the evictions in December that would influence the December crimes; the evictions in June or in March would also have a direct bearing on the crime at the end of the year. That was especially the case at the end of last year, because when the landlords were evicting tenants in March and June there were four organizations in Ireland which distributed £4,000,000 in relieving the people who had been evicted. That continued in all cases until the end of June, and in many cases until September, and he need not point out how effectual that had been; but the people who were evicted in September had no such relief; the unfortunate people who had fallen victims to the landlords' power in the last quarter of the year had no such relief, and agrarian crime might well have been higher than in the previous quarter. It was only in winter that the final test came that had driven those people to crime; therefore the test of evictions was not conclusive. The right hon. Gentleman had endeavoured to show that there was a connec- tion between the meetings of the Land League and the increase of crime. That was very ingenious. He was able to show that there was an increase in the number of meetings and in the crime; and he used the remarkable expression that the movements of agrarian crime appeared to correspond with the movements of the Land League. He (Mr. Sexton) would say with the utmost confidence that the increase of the Land League meetings, and of crime in the last quarter of last year, were two independent facts arising from a common cause, but neither exercising any influence on the other. The Land League meetings were more numerous in that quarter than in previous quarters, because it was in the last quarter that the conflict between the landlords and the tenants reached an acute stage. The harvest having been gathered in—and it was a larger harvest than there had been in previous years—the landlords desired to make use of that fact to gather not only the rents for that year, but for previous years. The result was that tenants, especially in the Western parts of the country, urged the Land League to hold meetings in their districts. The League held meetings where the tenants were most in need of organization; and, therefore, the meetings in the districts suffering from distress were naturally very numerous, there being no other way of helping the people to retain their homes. Last winter the springs of charity had been dried up, the landlords had not only ceased to expend the loans they had received from Government, but, in many cases, they revenged themselves on the Land League by wantonly dismissing the men in their employment; and he apprehended that the dismissal of those men might account, in a considerable degree, for offences against property and person. The argument as to the relation between the increased number of meetings and increased crime would not bear examination; and an analysis of the figures as to the crimes and meetings would entirely demolish the theory of the Prime Minister. The landlords had exercised in eight counties their power in the most despotic manner; that had excited terror and apprehension. He submitted, no matter how elaborate and ingenious the figures brought to bear on this question might be, the fact that two-thirds of the crime arose in eight counties, principally on the West Coast of Ireland, which abounded in a small and poor class of tenants, was a conclusive reply to any such theory. Those eight counties were the special zone of landlord despotism. It was not the Land League meetings that had increased the crime; but the distress and the obstinacy with which the landlords had endeavoured to utilize the harvest of last year. He did not think there was anything more for him to say except to express his deep disappointment at finding that the Government, instead of applying remedial measures to Ireland, had chosen to imperil the ultimate affections of the people by a measure which would arouse their fears and apprehensions. He regretted that the Government had taken the wrong course. It was the boast of English statesmen that they had known how to take action to widen the boundary of public liberty. In Ireland they had known how to do that which would widen the gulf that was between the two countries. That gulf would now be made more deep and wide. The additional powers would be an additional weakness. The real power of the Government would be in the affection and confidence of the people, and it would have gone a long way to win that affection if they had inaugurated that Session by a measure of relief instead of a measure of coercion; but as they had taken that step the course of the Irish Members was plain. They could only offer opposition to any measure seeking to restrict the liberties of the people, and they would offer a determined resistance. They could have no compromise, no matter what remedial measures the Government might have in store; they could not postpone for a moment their opposition to that measure. The question was one of the utmost importance, and they felt it their duty to meet the Government foot to foot, and they would fight the battle inch by inch.

said, the Solicitor General for Ireland had referred to the case of two men who were charged at the late Waterford Assizes with the murder of Mr. Boyd, and stated that he was compelled to apply for a postponement of the trial, because the intimidation was so strong in Waterford that a jury could not be procured. He thought the whole conduct of the Crown in that case was sufficient to justify the apprehensions of the Irish people as to how the Irish Government would use the exceptional power about to be given them. He would not dwell upon the offer of £500 reward for information after the two men had been committed for trial and every detail as to the manner in which the murder had been committed was published in the newspapers, or on the inducement which so large reward held out to any wretched tramp, whose whereabouts on the day of the murder were unknown to anyone save himself, to come forward and swear away the lives of the men whom the Crown pointed out to him as the guilty parties; for the Government, in offering this reward, under such circumstances, was probably within the law. But it certainly was not within the law, but, on the contrary, trampled upon the law, when it took from their parents two girls, under age, witnesses in the case, and hid them in a house in Dublin, following, apparently, the practice of the dark days of '97, which Curran described as that of "burying a witness to dig out an informer;" and it was not until a threat was made of an application to the Queen's Bench for a Habeas Corpus that these children were sent home. When the Irish Government could act in this way while the Habeas Corpus Act was in force, the Irish people had every reason to fear that they would misuse the exceptional powers about to be conferred on it. When the Irish authorities could be guilty of such offences against the law, how could they be trusted with the exceptional powers proposed? It was not necessary for him to allude to the Bill, which had been circulated amongst Members, because the Chief Secretary for Ireland had stated he proposed to take power to enable the Lord Lieutenant by his warrant to arrest

"Any person whom he may reasonably suspect of having, either before or after the passing of the Act, been guilty as principal or accessory of high treason, treason-felony, or treasonable practices, wherever committed, or of any crime punishable by law committed in a prescribed district, being an act of violence or intimidation, or the inciting to an act of violence and intimidation, or tending to interfere with or disturb the maintenance of law and order."

He submitted that of all the numberless Coercion Acts that had been passed for Ireland that the new Bill was the worst, inasmuch as it gave such exceptional powers to the authorities. The right hon. Gentleman had said he would exercise those powers upon his honour; but Grattan had said that

"When the liberty and security of one nation depends upon the honour of the other, the former might have much honour, but the latter could have no liberty."

And if the liberties of the Irish people were to depend on the Lord Lieutenant, the Lord Lieutenant might have much honour, but the people would have no liberty. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said the laws would only be tyrannical in the hands of tyrants; but there was nothing more likely to convert a Minister into a tyrant than to invest him with such powers as those. The right hon. Gentleman said he opposed former coercions because he thought they were not necessary; if he thought that when they were not necessary how much more was it incumbent upon the Irish Members to resist a measure when they believed it to be unnecessary? Then, again, the Act was to be retrospective; but they did not know how far Ministers would go back. They might go back to 1848. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said they only wanted the Bill for 18 months. The Bill of Earl Grey was only for six months; but it was renewed in September, and in May, and several times afterwards, and they knew very well that the renewal of Acts were the most familiar proceedings of legislation with which they were acquainted. How did they know that the Chief Secretary or his Ministry would last as long as the Bill? If such laws were tyrannous in the hands of tyrants, what guarantee had they that a Minister more tyrannical than the Chief Secretary might not have the power of exercising those laws? They objected to the Motion of the Chief Secretary; first, because they thought it wholly unnecessary; and, secondly, because they believed it was not a true remedy for Irish discontent and Irish grievances; and also because they thought that the present laws, if vigorously and intelligently exercised, would be sufficient. If in a particular year distress and excitement and agitation had increased, that was no reason why the Ministry should say that the ordinary law was not sufficient. How long had the present Ministry tried the ordinary law? For seven months; and because crime had increased they rushed to Parliament and said—"Crime is on the increase; suspend the Constitution. We cannot govern Ireland with the ordinary law." Lord Brougham had said there was no better argument against such extraordinary power that the tendency of such powers being repeated; and one would think they had had quite enough of enactments of that kind in Ireland. What was the object of imposing coercion? Was it to break the spirit of Irish people? They had failed to do so up to the present time; they should fail to do it now. His hon. Friend was right when he said that the vague thing "treasonable practices" and the retrospective effect of the Bill might put down the Land League; but they could not kill the spirit of independence and self-reliance which that agitation had given to the people, nor restore to the landlords the power that agitation had wrested from them. It was not the Lord Lieutenant, but the landlords and magistrates, who would really exercise these powers, and it was only human nature that they should endeavour to punish the men who had weakened, if not broken, their power. The Bill was called a Life and Property Protection Bill. The right hon. Gentleman objected to its being called a Coercion Bill; but he had heard Members speaking of former measures as Coercion Bills, and so long as Ireland was connected with this country and governed by the English Parliament so long would there be Ministers pressing Coercion Bills upon Ireland. They had been told that the Land League and the unwritten law had been reigning for some time; but what was the Irish Government doing during the Recess? The Government knew of the League being proclaimed in a dozen places every Sunday. It was proclaimed from every platform of every meeting to which the Government reporters were sent. Why did not they hear anything from the Government then? If the Land League was illegal now it was illegal then? They had heard of the illegality of the Land League Courts. Was there a Gentleman on the Treasury Bench who had not heard of the Courts of the landlords? Landlords had frequently summoned and fined their servants for offences; but it was only when the Land League announced such Courts that the Government condemned such Courts as illegal.

charged the bad landlords of Ireland with having entered into a conspiracy to deceive the Chief Secretary, and to spread false and exaggerated reports of crime and outrage, so as to prejudice the people of England against the Irish. These men still desired to retain their power to evict tenants without mercy, and to extort exorbitant rents, and the statements emanating from such a source were utterly untrustworthy. He thought that apprehensions concerning Ribbonism and Fenianism were the main causes that had influenced the Chief Secretary in bringing forward this Bill, and he regarded those apprehensions as altogether without foundation. He knew nothing whatever about the Fenian leaders. The ultimate aims of that society, as far as he understood them, were right and laudable; but with regard to their present policy he knew literally nothing, and he thought the Chief Secretary must have been imposed upon by paid spies. ["Question!"] He knew that he was speaking to an adverse audience; but that would not deter him from doing his duty. The Land League, it had been said, issued commands to the people. As far as he knew, the Land League issued no commands to the people. The Land League, it had been said, forced people to agree with them. On the contrary, the Land League aimed only at moral influence. It went no further. At the meetings which he attended he always advised the people not to violate the Criminal Law. [9 A.M. WEDNESDAY, FEB. 2.]

At this time, Mr. SPEAKER returned to the House and resumed the Chair; and the hon. Member for Cavan at once resumed his seat.

thereupon addressed the House as follows:—

The Motion for leave to bring in the Protection of Person and Property (Ireland) Bill has now been under discussion for above five days. The present sitting, having commenced on Monday last, at Four o'clock, has continued until this Wednesday morning, a period of forty-one hours, the House having been fre- quently occupied with discussions upon repeated dilatory Motions for Adjournment. However prolonged and tedious these discussions, the Motions have been supported by small minorities, in opposition to the general sense of the House.

A crisis has thus arisen which demands the prompt interposition of the Chair, and of the House. The usual rules have proved powerless to ensure orderly and effective Debate. An important measure, recommended in Her Majesty's Speech nearly a month since, and declared to be urgent, in the interests of the State, by a decisive majority, is being arrested by the action of an inconsiderable minority, the Members of which have resorted to those modes of "Obstruction," which have been recognised by the House as a Parliamentary offence.

The dignity, the credit, and the authority of this House are seriously threatened, and it is necessary that they should be vindicated. Under the operation of the accustomed rules and methods of procedure, the Legislative powers of the House are paralysed. A new and exceptional course is imperatively demanded; and I am satisfied that I shall best carry out the will of the House, and may rely upon its support, if I decline to call upon any more Members to speak, and at once proceed to put the Question from the Chair. I feel assured that the House will be prepared to exercise all its powers in giving effect to these proceedings.

Future measures for ensuring orderly Debate I must leave to the judgment of the House. But I may add that it will be necessary either for the House itself to assume more effectual control over its Debates, or to entrust greater authority to the Chair.

Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

The House divided: —Ayes 164; Noes 19: Majority 145.

Mr. SPEAKER then proceeded to put the Main Question, which was agreed to without a division.

[These proceedings caused great excitement among the Members present; and those who had voted in the minority withdrew from the House, crying "Privilege! Privilege!"]

Ordered, that leave be given to bring in a Bill for the better Protection of Person and Property in Ireland, and that Mr. WILLIAM EDWARD FORSTER, Mr. GLADSTONE, and Secretary Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT do prepare and bring it in.

Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 79.]

having asked at what time the second reading would be taken?

said: This day, at 12 o'clock. The right hon. Gentleman added: Before moving the adjournment of the House, I wish to give a Notice which has reference, I need not say, to the appeal made by yourself from the Chair, with reference to the better conduct of the Business of the House on future occasions. I propose to move to-morrow the following Resolutions:—

"1. If upon Notice given a Motion be made that the state of Public Business is urgent, and if on the call of the Speaker 40 Members shall support it by rising in their places, the Speaker shall forthwith put the Question, no Debate, Amendment, or Adjournment being allowed; and if, on the voices being given he shall without doubt perceive that the Noes have it, his decision shall not be challenged, but, if otherwise, a Division may be forthwith taken, and if the Question be resolved in the affirmative by a majority of not less than three to one, the powers of the House for the Regulation of its Business upon the several stages of Bills, and upon Motions and all other matters, shall be and remain with the Speaker, until the Speaker shall declare that the state of Public Business is no longer urgent."

That is the first Resolution, and I propose to follow it by a second—namely—"2. That the state of Public Business is urgent."

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—( Mr. Gladstone. )

asked if the Notice just given would come on at half-past 4 o'clock to-morrow?

Yes.

asked if it was intended to rescind the Resolution giving precedence to the Coercion Bill?

This Motion will take precedence.

As a Member who has neither moved nor seconded any of the obstructive Motions introduced during the Sitting of the House, but as one who has sat here calmly watching, with anxiety, and with feelings of the deepest interest, the course of events, I take this opportunity of stating one reason why I did so.

I rise to Order. There is no Motion before the House.

There is the Motion for adjournment.

I do not intend to refer to the unseemliness of the interruptions which have taken place; but I have waited here in patient expectation since the House met on Monday, hoping that good taste or kindly and generous feeling, if not a sense of justice, would exact from the Treasury Bench, on the part of the Prime Minister, an apology or explanation as to the gross charge which he has made against the hon. Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell) and the Party to which I belong. But no apology has been made, no explanation rendered. I see in the newspapers a letter written by a third party; but even there no apology is made for the blunder into which the Prime Minister was led by the Chief Secretary for Ireland. A charge was made against the hon. Mem- ber for Cork City; and, notwithstanding his repeated denials in this House in the course of the debate, the Prime Minister insisted that the words were not qualified by "unjust," or any term, approaching to it, and he read an extract from a speech, in which he stated that they should resist evictions, no matter from what cause they came. If those words were not withdrawn, an apology should be given by the right hon. Gentleman who hurled that unfair charge.

It is quite true that the facts are as stated in the letter which has been referred to by the hon. Member, and I dare say hon. Members may also have seen that letter. The House will recollect what took place when my right hon. Friend was speaking upon the Main Question. He quoted a speech of the hon. Member for Cork City (Mr. Parnell) at Ennis, and stated what he said was to happen in the event of a tenant taking a farm from which another tenant had been evicted; and he also stated that there was no qualification in such speech as to whether the eviction was a just or unjust one. The hon. Member for Cork City objected to this quotation, upon which I put into the hands of my right hon. Friend another speech which I supposed to have been made by the hon. Member. I afterwards discovered that an uncorrected proof had been put into my hands, attributing to the hon. Member a speech really made by another person. Finding the mistake that had been made, I at once wrote to the hon. Member, and told him that when I next spoke upon the matter I would publicly explain it. I simply stated the facts as I found them, and did not in the letter apologize, because I felt that the hon. Member for Cork City had not taken care to give an impression that it mattered whether the eviction was just or unjust. At the meeting at Ennis the speech quoted was made, and not only was the word unjust omitted, but a resolution was passed with such omission in the presence of the hon. Member, and without any remark from himself.

Question put, and agreed to.

Then, after an unbroken Sitting of 41½ hours,

House adjourned at half after Nine o'clock in the morning.