said, he rose to move, as an Amendment to the right hon. Gentleman's Motion, that the Bill be re-committed in the terms of the Notice which he had given with regard to Clause 35. It was hardly necessary that he should do more on that occasion than shortly state the grounds upon which he asked for the re-committal of the Bill. He took that course because he was desirous of inserting in the clause to which he referred a provision to the effect—

"Provided always, That in case at any time after the expiration of a period of six years from the passing of this Act a Commission shall have been issued by Her Majesty under Her Royal Sign Manual to ascertain and report whether the business of the Land Commission makes it requisite or not requisite that, after the expiration of the said period of seven years from the passing of this Act, there should be, in addition to the Judicial Commissioner, one or two other Commissioners; and, in case that Commission shall report that the business of the Land Commission makes it requisite that there should be, in addition to the Judicial Commissioner, one or two other Commissioners, and that such other Commissioner or Commissioners should be appointed for a period to be stated by such Commission, Her Majesty may, by Warrant under the Royal Sign Manual, from time to time appoint some fit person or fit persons to be such other Commissioner or Commissioners to hold office during the period stated in such Report. If such Commission report that the business of the Land Commission does not require that there should be any Commissioner in addition to the Judicial Commissioner, then upon the expiration of the said period of seven years after the passing of this Act, all the jurisdiction, powers, privileges, and authority by this Act conferred upon the Land Commission shall thereafter be exercisable and enjoyable by the Judicial Commissioner alone."

On a former occasion the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister had courteously accepted the principle of that Proviso. Under the Bill, as it now stood, the Commission came to an end in seven years, and only the Judicial Commissioner retained office, whereas the powers conferred by the Bill would require to be administered by more than one Commissioner. Application, consequently, would have to be made to Parliament to wind up the Commission, or to transfer the powers to the one Commissioner left, or, again, to appoint other Commissioners at the end of seven years to carry out the duties under the Act. Such a state of things would lessen the weight that would be attached to the decisions of the Commission. He thought there could be no doubt, after the discussions in this House and the additions made to the Bill, that that Commission would not come to an end in seven years, and that important interests would remain to be performed by the Land Commission—duties which would probably require the attention—and the undivided attention—of more than one important officer. He ventured to think that in. matters of this kind legislation should not be enacted more often than was necessary. He thought that if legislation on this subject was not again rendered necessary at the expiration of seven years, the duties sought to be imposed on the Royal Commission would be discharged by that Commission with greater advantage to the public, with greater security, more perfect impartiality, and more satisfactory results, than if, at the end of that time, they had to resort to Parliament to determine whether there was sufficient work for one or two Commissioners besides the one Judicial Commissioner, who would remain under the Act, or whether it should be performed by one Judicial Commissioner alone. His object in asking the House to accept this proposal was to secure stability, and also permanence, for the work sought to be accomplished; for it was highly desirable that there should be the utmost stability in all the machinery of the Commission, and that the decisions of the Court should be respected. It appeared to him that if the Court came to an end within seven years, there might be an agitation in the country and discussions arise in Parliament which it would be most desirable to avoid, and therefore it was that he now moved the re-committal of the Bill, so far as the 35th clause was concerned.

said, that on a former day the Government, perhaps unconsciously influenced by a desire to reach the conclusion of the Bill, and on that account having satisfied themselves with a less minute examination of the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman than, perhaps, ought to have been made, expressed themselves favourable to a proposition of this kind; but on a closer examination of the matter they had arrived at the conclusion that there was a flaw or defect in the plan which would prevent them from giving their assent to it as it stood. The machinery of the Royal Commission would be put in operation under the clause, and the Commission might report in favour of the prolongation or renewal of the functions of one or more of the lay Commissioners. In that case, the arrangements would be made complete without any reference to Parliament; and he did not know of any reason why they should withhold their assent to such an arrangement, or why they did not make provision for it. But there was another alternative open. It was that there would be no occasion for the re-appointment of either one or two lay Commissioners, and in that case the plan of the right hon. Gentleman provided that the business of the Land Commission should be handed over entirely to the Judicial Commissioner. There was involved in that proposal a principle of great importance, and one to which the Government would not ask Parliament to give its sanction—namely, that the final appeal in those cases should be confided to the single hands of the Judicial Commissioner. But it might be said—"Strike out that portion of the proposal and retain the rest." If, however, they were to do that, then the proposal became entirely incomplete, because it might happen that after having authorized the Government to put into operation the rather cumbrous machinery of a Royal Commission, it would still be necessary to make application to Parliament, in order to provide some assistance to this Commission in the exercise of its important jurisdiction. Well, certainly the Government could not agree to a proposal for additional machinery at a distant period, unless it were a complete and satisfactory proposal. As it stood it would be unsatisfactory on a very important point, and to strike out part of it would make it incomplete. Therefore, the Government were not prepared to adopt the proposal on either view. He agreed with the observation of the right hon. Gentleman that Parliament was, and probably would continue to be, amply charged with Business, and therefore that it was a good thing if they could dispose at once of something which might otherwise remain and occupy time, and give trouble upon a future occasion. He could not say that he embraced the whole of the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman on the subject, for he seemed to anticipate that it would become necessary, probably at the close of five or six years from this time, to adjust the powers of the Commission. That certainly would be a very formidable affair in Parliament, and would renew all the discussions on the matter. The Government did not take that view. On the contrary, having faith in the provisions of their Bill and in the good sense of the people, they thought that as a matter of business the question would be disposed of without a great amount of trouble. On the grounds he had stated, the Government could not assent to the re-committal of the Bill.

said, the Prime Minister stated that, in the favourable language he employed a few nights ago, he was influenced unconsciously by the consideration of getting on with the Bill. He was afraid the Government had been unconsciously influenced by a good many considerations during the progress of the Bill in Committee. He did not know what the unconscious influence might be at the present moment; but he must say the objections raised to the right hon. Gentleman's proposal were not very formidable, and he should have thought that the Government might still have considered it possible to adopt the suggestion, and allow this question to be at least discussed. They would, he thought, act wisely to go into Committee, and see whether this clause would be adapted to the circumstances of the case. The Prime Minister admitted that it would be highly desirable at the expiration of seven years to renew the appointment of these Commissioners, and that the clause suggested would meet that difficulty; but the Government were now going to make it imperative on the Government of the day to bring in a Bill on the subject. The House, he thought, must be aware that when a Bill was brought in on such an interesting and important subject there was a tendency on the part of the House to enlarge the scope of the discussion. It seemed to him that the course proposed by his right hon. Friend was wiser than that contemplated by the Government.

said, he did not think it wise to occupy time now in an endeavour to save the time of the House seven years hence, because it was manifest that if the labours of the Land Commission were consummated, no Ministry in power seven years hence would have the slightest trouble in dealing with the question. He believed before three years were over they would have to legislate on this question of a Royal Commission. The business of settling rents would be complete, and the Commissioners would have nothing to do but to carry on the process of purchasing estates from landlords and re-selling them to tenants, and it would probably strike Parliament that it was unnecessary to keep up this large machinery for doing what would become a very small matter. Why postpone for seven years what probably they should be bound to do in two or three years? This Commission might be amalgamated with, some other Commission before seven years were over. He hoped the third reading of the measure would be allowed to be proceeded with.

who had given Notice of his intention to move the following Amendment:—

"That the Land Law (Ireland) Bill as originally introduced and as amended in Committee, is the result of a revolutionary agitation, encourages the repudiation of contracts and liabilities, offends against individual liberty, is calculated to diminish the security of property, will not contribute to the peace or prosperity of Ireland, and tends to endanger the union, between that Country and Great Britain;"

said, he was sorry the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith) had not taken the course which was usual when a Motion did not meet with any amount of support—namely, to withdraw it, because in that case he (Lord Randolph Churchill) could have moved his Amendment. He could congratulate the House on having at last escaped from the discussion of the intricate and complicated details of the Land Bill, and on being in a position to take a comprehensive view of the i measure before it went to "another] place." Having watched the progress of the Bill through Committee with as much care and attention as was in his power, and having offered no remarks on the second reading, he would now ask the attention of the House while he communicated to them some of the results of his observations, and made a few valedictory comments on the measure. They had been told in all the Radical newspapers, and as far as he could make out by every Radical orator, that this Bill was the greatest measure which was ever submitted to Parliament, and that its contents and its career were subjects of legitimate pride and delight to the Liberal Party, to the Liberal Government, and, beyond all, to the Prime Minister. He did not think he was exactly in a position to give complete assent to that. He might with confidence lay it down that before any mea- sure could be said to be a subject of legitimate pride to those officially connected with it, it must fulfil one of three conditions—it must be the original design of its author, represent the ratification of a great principle for which its author had long and constantly contended, or, in default of these two conditions, it must be the sure and certain means of great benefit to those who would be affected by it. He would just glance at the Bill from those three points of view. Was this Bill the original design of the Government? Was there anything in it from beginning to end of which the Government could be said to be the inventors and patentees? The Government would be doing very great injustice to certain parties in the House, and be acting in an unworthy manner, if they made such a claim. They now knew, from the indiscreet revelations of the Duke of Argyll, that when the present Government succeeded to Office the idea of an Irish Land Bill had never entered their heads. Either the force of circumstances or their own evil destiny compelled them, or as they thought compelled them, to deal with the Irish Land Question. Searching about for a programme, which they were unable to draw up themselves, they lighted upon and adopted the programme of the Irish Land League, and they determined to enable the Irish Land League to fulfil its promises and to justify its existence to the Irish people by conferring on them the benefit of the "three F's." This much was certain, that if there had been no Land League there would have been no Land Bill; and if the Liberal Government had not adopted the programme of the Land League, the Land League would not have allowed the Government to pass any Bill into law at all. The Irish people knew perfectly well to whom they might ascribe that Bill. They knew that its author was not the Prime Minister, the Member for Mid Lothian, but was the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). At every public meeting in Ireland resolutions were passed to that effect. At no meeting in Ireland worthy the name of a public meeting had any resolution been passed giving the Government the smallest credit for the Bill. He must, however, notice that one unfortunate individual whom the Chief Secretary for Ireland had let out of prison did preside at a meeting in that country, and passed a vote of thanks to the Chief Secretary. That was the only public meeting held in Ireland at which the merits of the Government had been recognized. And when the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) told the Prime Minister the other day that the Irish people owed him no gratitude for this measure—[Mr. HEALY: I did not say anything of the kind.]—when the hon. Member said that, he spoke the mature and intelligent conviction of the Irish people. He (Lord Randolph Churchill) could not help thinking that when the Prime Minister witnessed the reception of his Bill in Ireland, and the comments which were there made upon it, he would be heard sadly to say, Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit altir honores. He did not wish to dishearten the Government, nor to infuse too much melancholy into their noble minds. There was one measure which, no doubt, they might console themselves with claiming as their own—he alluded to their Coercion Bill. But while the Prime Minister and his Colleagues could never hope to have their names coupled in Ireland with that Land Bill, they would be eternally identified with the suspension of liberty and Constitutional rights. When the Bill was first brought in by the Prime Minister it embodied, in a more or less imperfect form, the doctrine of the "three F's," which was the programme of the Land League and its sine quâ non. The Representatives of the Land League in the House on that occasion, and on the second reading, expressed great dissatisfaction with the Bill on three chief points. They denounced the Emigration Clause, they blamed the Bill because it contained no provision with respect to existing leases, and they also found fault with it because it did not make any arrangement with regard to arrears of rent. What had happened? The Emigration Clause had been struck out. ["No!"] The hon. Member was severely accurate. It had not been struck out, but it had been reduced to an absolute nullity—a perfect farce; and it was impossible that emigration could take place worthy the name of emigration under that clause. On the other two points the Prime Minister had more than met the Irish view. He did not expect him to admit it; that would spoil the game; but he had no hesitation in saying that the Prime Minister had gone beyond their highest hopes, because, after that Bill became law, every lease in Ireland would be promptly reviewed by a Court of Justice in that country, and, if necessary, quashed. Further, all tenants in Ireland who at the present moment were enjoying fair and reasonable leases would, at the termination of those leases, though it might be 60 years hence, be placed in the same position as if they had never had a fair and reasonable lease at all. And with respect to arrears of rent, tenants up to a certain figure who had been wise enough to refuse to pay their rents were to have them liquidated by the taxpayers of Great Britain, and those who had been foolish enough to pay their rents were left to curse their stupidity and to vow that they would never be so caught again. He said, then, let him who deserved the laurel wear it. He felt it his duty to offer his congratulations to the hon. Member for the City of Cork on the magnificent results which he had achieved, although supported by only a small fraction of the House. He wished that the hon. Member would communicate to him the secret of his success, and he would further remind him of the views which the Prime Minister had sketched with respect to town property and absentee landlords. With that vista of splendid possibilities before him, he could congratulate the hon. Member for the City of Cork on the extended field of usefulness which remained for him as long as the Prime Minister continued in Office. All the merit which the Prime Minister and the Chief Secretary for Ireland could claim in the matter was that by their Disturbance Bill of last year, and the violent language which the latter had used against the House of Lords, they had given the signal which had invited the hon. Member for the City of Cork and Mr. Michael Davitt to commence their winter crusade. Could the Government, then, make out that that Bill affirmed or sanctioned the principles for which they had long contended? In the speeches which the Prime Minister delivered in 1870, he elaborately and painfully argued against and controverted every leading provision in the present Bill. To destroy the theory of the "three F's," to cut the ground from under the feet of its advo- cates, was then the right hon. Gentleman's great object, which it must be admitted he attained as completely as any man ever attained any object in Parliament before. From the year 1870 to the year 1880 the Prime Minister and his leading Colleagues sustained the battle against the "three F's" and against the Bill of Mr. Butt, which embodied the "three F's; "and the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India and the Attorney General for Ireland rose to heights of Parliamentary eloquence and argument on that subject as high as it was possible for those two individuals to reach. They were invariably supported by the whole of their Colleagues, and by a united Liberal Party. Moreover, in all the great speeches made by the Prime Minister before the late Election, and which must be deemed to have exercised a controlling power over the issues of that Election, they found no shadow of a trace that the justice of the "three F's "had dawned on his mind. If that right hon. Gentleman and his Colleagues were to abandon the principles of Free Trade and raise the flag of Protection, they could not undergo a greater or more sudden and startling conversion than they had undergone in regard to the Land Question in Ireland. During the whole course of the recent protracted debate, neither the Prime Minister nor his Colleagues had attempted to disguise that conversion or to escape from the embarrassment of their former declarations. It was a melancholy fact, which must fill anyone who reflected on these matters with gloomy forbodings. Recollecting, as he did, the great political apostacies which had surprised and shocked even his contemporaries, he was tempted to ask in despair whether it was to be the inevitable lot of public men to be compelled at intervals, and at short intervals, to repudiate in a humiliating manner the creeds by which they had formerly sworn to abide. Would the Bill produce any benefit to Ireland commensurate in any way with the time and labour Parliament had devoted to it? No doubt, it was a wise maxim not to prophesy unless you knew, and he did not intend to depart from it. ["Oh!"] He hoped the hon. Member for Stockton (Mr. Dodds), would not interrupt him, although he knew it would be a great demand to make on that hon. Member. The Bill was the result of agitation. That was not of itself against the Bill; but what an agitation it had been! It had been an agitation to transfer property by force from one class to another; to bring the landlords on their knees, by fair means or by foul, had long been the undisguised object of the Land League. The agitation had been furthered by speeches of a kind rarely made before, even in the history of Ireland, and that agitation had reduced the Government of Ireland to impotence, an impotence in which they were still grovelling. It had been accompanied by incidents of a kind permanently to disgrace our boasted civilization. It had been assisted, whether intentionally or not he would not say, by crimes of a frightful nature against men, women, dumb animals, and property. It had enabled terrorism, such as Ireland had been mercifully preserved from for generations, to stalk unhindered through the land. It had been acknowledged by more than one Irish speaker that it had reduced society in Ireland to chaos, that it had put an end to mutuul trust between individuals, and that it had stifled for a time the feelings of kindness, charity, and inter-dependence which ought to exist between man and man in a well-governed State. That was a terrible parent for a message of peace; and, looking at the matter in the most superficial way, he doubted whether anyone would place much confidence in the child of such a father. What, after all, was the principle established by this Bill? It was not the adjustment of rents, nor the perpetuity of tenure, but it was simply that agitation, be it audacious and unscrupulous enough, constant, and pertinacious, would suffice for the destruction of almost any of the institutions of this country. Parliament, acting on the advice of the Government, and following their lead, had invited the Irish tenant farmers to endeavour to set aside contracts which, for all we knew, were fair and reasonable. Parliament had consented to liquidate the liabilities of these men, some of whom we knew were perfectly able to discharge them, and who had merely taken advantage of the prevailing disorder to fly in the face of honesty. They had deprived the few for the benefit of the many of privileges and property which could be easily ap- preciated, and they had, at the same time, denied the claim of the smaller to compensation. They were withdrawing and alienating from Ireland those who were devoted to our rule, and who, moreover, were the only channels through which a higher civilization, a more advanced prosperity, and a nobler morality could descend upon the masses of the Irish nation. A profound thinker, for whom the Prime Minister had great respect, Sir George C. Lewis, many years ago wrote a passage which confirmed this view. He said that in Ireland improvement and civilization must descend from above; they would not rise spontaneously from the inward workings of the community. And what were the objects of this Bill? They were two—one of a temporary, and the other of a permanent character. To buy out the Irish landlord was the great object of the Bill. They had been told on authority that the first part of the Bill, complicated as it was, was only a modus vivendi, to last until the desirable result of buying him out should be accomplished. The other day the Prime Minister said he hoped in six years' time to have bought out £10,000,000 worth of Irish landlords. [Mr. GLADSTONE: Nothing of the sort.] Notwithstanding that contradiction, he adhered to the statement; but he was of opinion that it was a very low and modest estimate to make. Unless the circumstances of Ireland were greatly altered, and if the Land League were permitted to control the destinies of Ireland, it would not be £10,000,000, but it would be £40,000,000 or £50,000,000 worth of landlords who would have to be bought out. Surely, no State ever before took upon itself such a curious task. Who were the Irish landlords? They had lately been designated as the English garrison. He quite admitted that the times were not ripe for English garrisons. The Irish landlords were those who, for many generations, in spite of the greatest trials, had manfully upheld the Union in the midst of a population for the most part hostile to it. For the State to spend its substance in buying out its friends in order to deliver over Ireland into the grasp of its enemies was surely an act of folly of which it might have been thought not even a Radical Government could have been capable. If we recognized the uses of a land-owning class in a country, should we take steps to preserve them, or kill them by inches and cruelly drive them out? The Prime Minister admitted that in 1870 he made an enormous confiscation of the property of Irish landlords; but in 1881 he had gone further and deprived the Irish landlords of every right and every privilege appertaining to the ownership of land, except the right of collecting rent. Nothing else was left to the landlord if this Bill passed. And what security could be given that the liability would be discharged by Irish tenants? He assumed that the Commission would be independent of the Executive Government, and that it would be a Court of Justice. Suppose it found the great majority of rents were fair rents in the sense of the Bill, and imposed these rents for a term of years on the tenants, what guarantee could be offered that the decisions of the Court would be obeyed? If they were not obeyed, would they be enforced? What sign was there of returning peace and order in Ireland now that the Bill was all but law? Had not Crown counsel recently demanded the adjournment of Assizes and the postponement of trial on the ground that the trial was an abortive mockery? He unhesitatingly said that there was no precedence for such an Act in the whole history of the Irish Government. Did they dream that the addition of the Royal Assent to the sanction already given by Parliament to the measure would bestow upon it a Divine energy, which at present it did not possess? He further asked, had the landlords of Ireland any guarantee that the Legislature had now taken from them all that it meant to take, and that what remained to them of their property would not in another year or so be sacrificed? Would the Prime Minister be prepared to enter into a solemn pledge in the face of the House, and with the concurrence of the Parliament of England—a pledge of such a solemn nature that it must bind future Parliaments—that at any rate what was left to the Irish landlords should be absolutely secured to them and impregnably fortified? In such a state of things as now existed he did not see how any capital could be imported into Ireland, and in the absence of capital the resources of the country must languish and wither away. How could they have any guarantee that the law of the land would be respected? Let them not talk about the majesty of the law, for since the present Government came into power the majesty of the law had been as defunct as were the mummies of Ramesis and Pharaoh. He feared very much the effect of the Bill on the quick-witted Irish people, and believed that it would be to the Union what the wooden horse was to the city of Troy. It contained within it all the elements of destruction to States. In it and by it, plunder, rapacity, dishorn sty, agitation, mob-law, all received the final and solemn sanction of Parliament. Originally designed by the Land League, their mortal foe, it had been joyfully captured by the Government and incorporated in the machinery of State. And they were told that if the door of the law was not wide enough to admit the measure, the bulwarks of the Constitution would be levelled and every obstacle swept away. Furthermore, if anything was required to make the analogy complete, all hon. Members who from time to time took part in those prolonged debates and proclaimed their suspicion of the monster had been seized, and enfolded, and strangled, like so many Laocoons, in the multitudinous folds of the Prime Minister's endless eloquence, and had been denounced with increasing vehemence in speech after speech, as men, since the days of the Laocoon, had never been denounced before. Well, this great Bill was not yet in the citadel. It had still a course to travel before it received the Royal Assent; and if in its course it happened to be wrecked, he doubted whether it would have many mourners in this country. But if in the following conflict, which he had no doubt the Prime Minister would immediately precipitate, any institutions succumbed, holding, as he sincerely did, the views of the measure which he held, he still said that institutions, however ancient and respected, which in the hour of trial were not capable of protecting the country from imminent peril were, perhaps, hardly institutions in which they ought to repose very great confidence. He greatly regretted that he was unable to submit his Amendment to the House. He believed the principle of that Amendment was recognized by the oracle of the Tory Party; but the political wisdom which was sup- posed popularly to attach to the prefix of "right hon." decided that the Amendment was inopportune. Well, it was not his business to speculate upon what was opportune or inopportune. It was enough for him that the assertions made in the Amendment were incontrovertible. The Bill, it said, was the result of agitation—a revolutionary agitation. It was revolutionary, because it had been enthusiastically propounded that the Bill which it precipitated was the first rung in the ladder leading to the Olympus of Irish Independence. The Amendment further stated that the Bill encouraged the repudiation of contract and liabilities, offended against individual liberty, and was calculated to diminish the security of property. Whether it would conduce to the peace or prosperity of Ireland, or tend to endanger the Union between that country and Great Britain, he was quite content to leave to time to show. The Prime Minister, in introducing the Bill, said that it was inspired by the Divine light of justice. Well, the opposition to the Bill, of which he did not think the Prime Minister would make any complaint either as having been unfair or unduly obstinate, had been conducted by a brighter light than that of justice—namely, the light of freedom; that freedom which the Coercion Bills and the Land Bill of the Liberal Party had altogether blotted out of Irish life.

said, there was a Latin proverb which urged that it was not for the eagle to catch flies. He trusted that, in the spirit of the proverb, the Head of Her Majesty's Government would not condescend to reply to the speech which had just been delivered by the noble Lord, but would leave to men of humbler position and of less ability than his own the task of making such criticisms upon it as they thought the occasion required. He confessed that, coming rather late into the House, he was, and he remained under the impression, that the noble Lord was about to move his Amendment. It appeared, however, that that was not so, and he could only say that the speech was strongly and strikingly appropriate to the Amendment. It was, in fact, a speech conceived with a view of bringing that Amendment before the House had not the wisdom which, as the noble Lord said, was supposed to attach to the prefix "right hon." prevented him asking the judgment of the House upon it. They should, therefore, take the speech as a speech, and meet it as best they could; and he was pursuaded he was only expressing the general sense of the House on both sides and in all quarters—except, perhaps, in that exalted spot where the hon. and learned Member for Bridport (Mr. Warton) kept watch and ward over the Constitution—when he said that there was one common feeling to which he only gave very feeble expression—namely, one of very great regret that this great legislative performance of the Session should be allowed, at its close, to degenerate into a farce—he used the word advisedly; for, giving the noble Lord credit, as they all did, for abundant common sense, they could not think that in delivering that speech he was actuated by serious motives. It was out of all belief that his speech could commend itself to the moral feelings or the intellectual palate of the House. He doubted whether the speech commended itself to those hon. Gentlemen with whom the noble Lord habitually acted. Even the Members for Ireland with whom the noble Lord indulged in many passages of harmless coquetry—even they seemed tired of his humour. With regard to the effect which the noble Lord expected his speech to produce on the right hon. Gentleman who led the Opposition, it was quite superfluous to speculate; for they all knew that in the noble Lord's relations with the titular heads of his Party was reproduced, in a political form, the history of Eli and his sons. Injudicious indulgence in the days of early youth had produced in the noble Lord in later life an impatience of all control, and a determination to take the bit between the teeth, which might involve the right hon. Gentleman who stood politically in the parental relation to the noble Lord in consequences hardly less disastrous than those which devolved upon the venerable hero of the sacred story. He thought, therefore, that in thus figuring before the House of Commons at this stage of the Bill the noble Lord must have been gratifying merely his own taste for genteel comedy and light farce. Even his political enemies on this side of the House would abundantly allow that the noble Lord was a first-rate actor of third-rate parts. The noble Lord, however, alas! played habitually to the pit and gallery; he meant to say that in his performances throughout this Session they had never detected an appeal to the higher political sense of the House. What they had seen had led to the belief that the noble Lord was, perhaps, after all, wise in his generation, and was preparing himself for an emergency which might come. He was possibly looking to a time—looming in the distance—when, with a re-distribution of seats, the very few sheep of Woodstock would be left without a shepherd. It was against such a dismal day of retribution that the noble Lord was preparing himself, and making friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness in some larger and more turbulent constituency; so that when his friends of Woodstock, in a Parliamentary sense, failed, he might be received, if not into everlasting, at all events, into more enduring habitations. The effort of the noble Lord against a Bill carried through with such unexampled talent and perseverance, which had received the overwhelming assent of immense majorities of the House, was ludicrous, and he had almost said impertinent. It gained neither in decency nor in acceptability when it emanated from the Leader of a Party which in its corporate capacity was appropriately sketched in one of those inspired sentences of the late Lord Beaconsfield, in one of his earlier novels, when he spoke of "a contemptible clique which dined together and called itself a political party."

said, he believed the interests of the tenants would be placed in a more precarious position than before by the action of this Bill. It was the thin end of a wedge which was intended to be driven into the heart of England and Scotland. He was in favour of reforming the Irish landlords if it could be proved that they injured Ireland; but in reference to this Bill he thought the landlords had as much justice on their side as the agitators. As to conciliating Ireland, he believed the measure would be a total failure. The loyal Irish needed no conciliation, while the disloyal would only be conciliated by the total separation of Ireland from England.

(after a pause) said: I waited until you rose, Sir, to put the Question, in order that I might be certain, negatively at least, that there was no intention on the part of the Leaders of the opposite Party to enter into this debate. There is nothing that will fall from me, so far as I am aware, that will give them occasion to change that intention. I take this opportunity of saying that, so far as regards themselves, the bulk of the Party who act with them, although, of course, it is matter of serious lamentation to us that a large body of Members of the House of Commons, and many distinguished Members, decline to recognize the necessity of the provisions that we have proposed, yet, as to the mode of their opposition, I am bound to say of them, and of the bulk of their followers, that I do not think we have any reason to complain. There are one or two more or less eccentric and outlying individuals for whose actions they cannot be responsible, and it is not necessary for me to enter into criticisms upon conduct altogether exceptional. I have another duty to perform, and that is to return my thanks to the supporters of this measure. I am thankful to reflect that when I speak of supporters I am able to include a limited though very important portion of the Party opposite. The Gentlemen representing Ireland as Conservative Members have, in most instances, felt it their duty to give a steady support to all the leading provisions of this Bill. I am informed that out of 103 Members representing Ireland in the division on the second reading of the Bill scarcely more than seven Members took part in the division against the Bill. In the division against the 1st clause, which in its permanent operation may be found to be the most important in the Bill, four Irish Members voted only against the clause, and two of these were Gentlemen who undoubtedly voted against it because they thought that it did not confer new liberty, but limited liberty already existing; so that of the 103 Members sent by Ireland to represent her interests in Parliament only two felt it to be their duty to vote against this most important and fundamental clause. On the 7th clause—the other great pillar, if I may so speak of the Bill, and the one which in the present exigency; has excited the greatest interest—not more than six Irish Members recorded their judgment against it. I think that every dispassionate man, re- viewing the course of these discussions, whatever may be his own personal leanings and convictions, must feel that, if we be indeed a representative Assembly, this division of Irish opinion, which scarcely amounts to a division—which leaves us at liberty almost to declare it a moral unanimity of opinion—cannot, in view of the interests of the country, be considered less than a most significant and gratifying fact. Passing from that, I desire to return my respectful acknowledgments to those other than Irish Members on the opposite side of the House to whom we owe much of the steady, patient labour, and generous and encouraging support that have enabled us to bring this Bill to its third reading. I desire to make these acknowledgments, first of all, again to the numerous and well-instructed Representatives from Ireland who have so considerately made their own proposals, and so loyally and so generously helped ours; and secondly, to that mass of Members who, reckoned by the hundred, and well entitled by their knowledge and intelligence to enter into the discussions on this Bill, have yet refrained upon almost every occasion from entering into those discussions, lest unawares they should multiply the physical obstacles to its passing, and thereby prevent the attainment of the object in view. My hon. Friend (Mr. George Russell), who spoke with much ability from this side of the House, advised that I should not offer any reply to the speech of the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill). I had no intention of offering to that speech any detailed reply, nor of entering into any detailed discussion of the Amendment of which the noble Lord has given Notice. The terms of that Amendment, in fact, enable me to deal with it, from my point of view, in a very convenient and summary manner. It contains six propositions, some of them negative and some of them affirmative, and my humble method of dealing with those propositions is to take all the negative propositions and to convert them into affirmative propositions, and all the affirmative propositions and convert them into negative propositions. By this most expeditious process I find that the noble Lord's Amendment, so modified, becomes an adequate and. satisfactory exposition of my own views on this sub- ject. The speech, however, of the noble Lord does not admit of being dealt with quite so briefly. That speech is a representative speech—it is eminently representative of the opinions and ideas of the noble Lord. It abounded in declamatory invective, of a large portion of which I had the honour and the distinction of being the subject. There are in creation small animals whose office it is to bite, and who are able to produce a sense of irritation on the part of the person bitten. There are also other small animals whose office it is to bite, but whose victim is left unconscious that he has been actually bitten. I must say that, so far as comparisons can be made, the effect of the speech of the noble Lord reminds me of the second rather than the first class of these small animals. Now, one counsel I venture to give to the noble Lord, and that is to keep himself to rhetoric, of which he is, at his time of life, no inconsiderable master; but, above all things, to eschew dealing with facts, for I listened carefully to everything in his speech that purported to be a statement of fact, and I believe I am literally accurate when I say that there was not one of them which would be sustained in their accuracy—from the first which alleged that the "three F's" were the plan and scheme of the Irish Land League, to those later ones, of which two there were concerning myself, the first of which I took exception to when it was uttered, and the second of which was that I had a few nights ago confessed that the Act of 1870 perpetrated an enormous act of confiscation; and, therefore, Sir, I beg humbly to decline being bound by any one of the statements of facts made in the speech of the noble Lord. I would again counsel the noble Lord to keep to rhetoric. If he does that I have no doubt he will do extremely well, for rhetoric and declamation are arts in which it is not difficult to excel, provided you relieve yourself from the fetters and hindrances which are imposed upon some men's speech by a slavish adherence on their part to accuracy of fact. I will not speak of the originality of this measure, nor will I speak of my own consistency, in regard to which I have said on former occasions what appeared to be necessary. I should be doing what would be inexcusable at this stage of the Bill were I to waste the time of the House by making a long speech. There is, however, one point to which I should wish to bring the mind of the House for a moment, and I will do so in as few sentences as possible. It is alleged in the Amendment of the noble Lord that the measure has been the product of revolutionary agitation. I have never disguised from this House that it is, in my opinion, a most grave and serious matter to bring into a Court of Justice for alteration and re-consideration private contracts entered into by private individuals, and I am prepared fully to admit that the institution of a Court for such an object is an exceptional and an extreme proceeding. I, however, entirely deny that the other main provisions of this Bill are open to the same objection. With regard to the provisions for the extension of the tenant right and for the prevention of the too frequent augmentation of rent, there is nothing extreme or exceptional in the Bill. I presume, therefore, that it is to the institution of the Court for the purpose of fixing the rent that the noble Lord refers when he says that the provisions of the measure are the result of revolutionary agitation. But how was it that the necessity for the institution of such a Court was made evident? It was made evident, if anywhere, by the Report of the Richmond Commission, which was concurred in not only by the Liberal minority, but by the Conservative majority, who, in a special sense, represented the landed interest in Ireland, and who felt it to be their duty to recommend that there should be legislative interference to check the undue augmentation of rent. That recommendation is the foundation of the provision that we have introduced into this Bill. Does the noble Lord think, when the representatives of the landed interest found it necessary to go to such a length in the recommendations they made, that even if it had been our disposition to have stopped short of that recommendation, it would have been possible for us to do so? I am quite sure his intelligence will make him perceive that the very moment that recommendation went forth from such a source it became absolutely certain—which I do not think Gentlemen opposite will deny—that any measure which was to have a chance of dealing with the question of land in Ireland must contain, within whatever limitations, provisions giving discretion to the Court with respect to contracts. That recommendation we have dealt with, I believe, in the spirit of moderation, and we have certainly attached limitations to the provisions in which we seek to give effect to it. In the recommendation itself there were no words which conveyed an idea that it was intended that the application of that principle should be other than universal and perpetual. The Bill, as it stands, however, provides that the application of that principle need not be universal or perpetual. No holding in Ireland will come within the jurisdiction of the Court except by the act of either the landlord or the tenant. We have provided that it need not be perpetual, because there are various contingencies contemplated by the Bill under which the tenants in Ireland now invested with power to go into Court may come to be divested of that power; and therefore it remains that Parliament, in its consideration of this most important recommendation, has not accepted it in a spirit of reckless vehemence, but rather, while leaving it in all the force which seems necessary to meet the emergency of the case, has made provision to keep within the limits of that necessity the action of a principle which we deem and admit to be exceptional. Then, again, there was the difficult subject of fair rent which we had to deal with. I think that it does some honour to the House of Commons—and, certainly, the compliment I feel bound to pay the House in this respect falls with full force upon hon. Members opposite—that it should have entered largely into a discussion of this subject, and should have been able finally to arrive at a conclusion in reference to it without having exhibited sharp and painful differences of opinion with reference to it. In using the term "fair rent," I believe that we have secured a rent that will really be fair to all parties. I believe that we have acted wisely in having disembarrassed ourselves of the difficulty of attempting to guide the Court in arriving at a conclusion as to what a fair rent should be, and in leaving the whole matter to the discretion of the Court. We have been able to take that course safely for two reasons. The first is this, that in Ireland the forming of an estimation of fair rent is already a matter known to the usage of the country and its Courts. In Ulster and out of Ulster, since the Land Act there have been various forms of proceedings before the Courts, which have indirectly, but substantially and effectually, raised the question of fair rent. That being so, and it having been found practicable by the Courts to handle that difficult question without dissatisfaction or palpable injustice to either party, I believe we have done wisely to leave the matter in their hands; because any efforts of ours to guide them, imperfect as they must have been, would only have tended, in all likelihood, to induce confusion rather than to facilitate the working of the Bill. But there was another reason why it was well, as I think, that we should not attempt to define scrupulously a fair rent, and it was this—that, happily, in Ireland a fair rent in many cases—I do not now enter into the question whether in the majority of cases or not—but in many, in very many cases, a fair rent is a thing perfectly well known and understood by practical experience. There is no district in Ireland in which fair rents are not known, in which the thing meant by a fair rent is not practically and popularly understood. That being so, we have deemed it better rather to rely upon the traditions of the Court, and upon the knowledge current and recognized in the country, than to attempt difficult, not to say impossible, definitions. I am very glad, if I understand aright, so far as regards any large body of Members of this House, this Bill is to be passed un-contested into the other House of Parliament. It is quite needless for me—I think it would be very bad taste on my part—to attempt to pronounce on the Bill any eulogy whatever. On the other hand, I must be pardoned for saying that against such attacks as have been made upon it I feel it needs no defence.

It is not my intention, Sir, to enter into any long discussion or minute examination of the details of this measure or to review its history. Its scope and its character, its progress, and the various debates that have taken place upon it have been amply placed before the House and the country. The measure has been described by the Prime Minister himself on more than one occasion as one exceptional in its character, and it is absolutely impossible that it can be measured or judged of by any ordinary standard whatever. I venture to think that never was submitted to this House or to any Parliament a measure of so absolutely novel and startling a character. My noble Friend the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill), in a speech somewhat unfairly commented upon—in a speech certainly of marked ability—stated from his own point of view what he conceived to be the circumstances of the introduction of the Bill. I say, without fear of contradiction, that in no civilized country, not in France, Germany, Belgium, or the United States of America, is there any Laud Law having any similitude to that which will be established by this Bill; and anyone who looks at the provisions of this Bill and the exposition that has been given of its principles must recognize its sweeping character, for it includes within its purview all tenants, good, bad, and indifferent, and deals out the same standard of justice to all landlords, improving or the reverse, all landlords, whether they have charged little or whether they have charged much. The right hon. Gentleman says that this Bill leaves this House carried by a moral unanimity—[Mr. GLADSTONE made an inaudible remark across the Table.] I have not the slightest desire in any particular to misrepresent anything that fell from the Prime Minister; but I think it not unreasonable, when notice is taken of the character of the divisions on the Bill, to say that, whether or not there will be a division upon the third reading, many Members thought proper to record a protest against principles in this Bill, and that they have done so on many occasions. Many Members, I have no doubt, voted for the Bill on the second reading, considering that in the present state of Ireland some legislation on the Land Question should take place. But I venture to think that not only on these Benches, but among the Members whom the right hon. Gentleman so ably leads, there are some who took part in the divisions on the second reading of the Bill and on clauses that were challenged who felt serious misgivings as to the principles involved. The present position of the Bill is not, in some particulars, exactly the same as when examined at the earlier stages; but I am bound to say, when we come to consider the changes, they can be regarded from many different points of view. I readily admit that many things that were so indefensible that they could not be argued, and were not argued—that many things that were so unintelligible that they could not be construed—have fallen out of the Bill, and that, as a matter of machinery and administration, the Government found it necessary, to insure any working of the Bill at all, to consent to alterations. But many principles and points of a mischievous character still remain unaltered and un-amended in the Bill, and I regret to say that the catalogue of serious and mischievous points and principles was enlarged during the progress of the Bill, and notably last night. I am bound to say I think the Prime Minister himself had but a scant amount of sympathy for this most recent Amendment, because I remember that he left to the Chief Secretary for Ireland the difficulties of the task of explaining it and did not commit himself to it. The right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government has been the Minister who has had charge of the Bill. He has had the advantage in that overwhelming task, in addition to his own genius, his own enlightened energy, his own infinite resources, and that versatility which enables him in debate to run ''From grave to gay and from lively to severe," of having been encouraged by a strong and obedient majority ready to cheer and support him always—just as much when he is wrong as when he is right. The right hon. Gentleman, in his speech just delivered, has selected one or two points for which he appears specially desirous to obtain the approval of the House and the country. I will pass from his references to free sale without making any elaborate examination of it, but I will make one criticism upon it. Now, at the end of two months, it remains as undefined as it was on the introduction of the Bill what it is that the tenant is permitted to sell. No one who examines the Bill can arrive at the conclusion that a tenant may not be permitted under the operation of the Bill to sell a very substantial part of his landlord's property. In the very clause of free sale some changes which had taken place have been all against the landlord's interest. We were told throughout by the Prime Minister and his Colleagues that the Bill would give a right of preemption to the landlords. I am disposed to think the Bill in its present shape leaves the right of pre-emption absolutely worthless. The way in which the Bill originally proposed that a fair rent should be measured dealt with details and particulars in such a way that it was speedily pointed out that it would enable the landlord's rent to be eaten into and possibly destroyed. The Government sought to meet these objections by leaving the whole question absolutely in the control of the Court. The Government have not, however, adhered to their second proposal in its integrity, and have assented to changes which are open to much criticism. An Amendment was introduced at the instance of the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell), which re-introduced, not in the same form as originally appeared in the Bill, but in more general terms, the same possibly misleading principle, and directed the Court, in measuring the fair rent, to have regard to the tenant's interest, which might be inflamed by prices forced up by giving the pretium affectionis, or by "land-hunger," of which we have heard so much. If the Court are told, without qualification, that they are to have regard to the tenant's interest, it is competent for the Court, under those words, to arrive at every one of those vicious consequences which had been apprehended from the clause as it previously stood. The way in which the matter was sought to be dealt with by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition was entirely logical. My right hon. Friend took up, as the Prime Minister frankly admitted, quite a reasonable line. As late as the year 1878 a Bill was introduced by Mr. Butt—a master of this question—Mr. M'Carthy Downing, who was as well acquainted with it as any Member in this House, and the Member for the County of Cork (Mr. Shaw). That Bill, in its 44th clause, laid down this proposition, which I commend to the attention of the House—and remember that this was the proposition of the Irish tenants, repeated from year to year, and formulated by their most able advocates in Parliament, as to the mode of fixing rents—

"In fixing the rent to be specified in the declaration of tenancy, the Chairman shall proceed in manner following—that is to say, the rent to be fixed shall be that which a solvent and responsible tenant could afford to pay, fairly and without collusion, for the premises, after deducting from such rent the addition to the letting value of the premises by any improvements made by the tenant or his predecessors in title in respect of which the tenant on quitting his farm would be entitled to compensation under the provisions of the Land Act."

Well, that proposal was presented for consideration to the House by an Amendment which stood on the Paper for weeks in the name of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. The Government, however, thought it right in their wisdom to know more about the question than those who had studied it for years. And I invite the attention of the House to the fact that all that was asked was the adoption of that proposition, strengthened and developed by words taken from the Government themselves, and possibly by the addition of others which would have made it more definite. Nevertheless, the Government thought proper to leave the matter at large to the Court, with the addition of the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk, and, also adopting an Amendment which was brought forward a few days ago, they put into the Bill a reference to improvements, not as framed by Mr. Butt, nor as assented to by the hon. Member for the County of Cork, nor as formulated by the Leader of the Opposition, but in a crude and undigested state, which obviously required revision and alteration. This Fair Rent Clause made practically no distinction between good and bad landlords, with this one exception—that a feeble, petty effort was made by the Prime Minister, by taking note of English-managed estates, to save the Bill from the charge of making no discrimination. That little proviso never was of very much practical consequence. It was rendered almost worthless because of the Amendment which had been accepted from the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). Then, the admission of the landlord to the Court was at first denied, but had afterwards to be conceded; but it was not conceded frankly and fully. The tenant can go into the Court and say, "Measure me a fair rent." But the landlord must formulate his proposition and demand an increase. Common justice required that both parties should be put on the same footing. Let each party be equally able to appeal to the Court for a fair rent; or if the landlord is required to formulate his demand, the tenant also surely ought to be called upon to state clearly and definitely what he had to object to. The Prime Minister, a few days ago, in Committee, said—

"They were endeavouring by an almost supreme effort to bring about a great and rapid change in the social condition of Ireland."

I do not deny that the effort was a supreme one. It was so when the Bill was introduced, and it became more so during its progress. The measure was not brought in, I feel sure, without very anxious consideration. We know that the Government had been considering it for months, and that the Cabinet held meeting after meeting on the subject. As to leases, they deliberately arrived at the conclusion that they could not ask the House of Commons, no matter what might be their majority, to interfere with existing leases; and anyone who reads the original clause saving existing leases will see that a more intelligible series of propositions was never laid down. For no purpose or consideration were the Government to have tampered with the obligations which tenants had contracted by existing leases. That having been the position taken up by the Government in introducing the Bill, when did the change take place? As lately as June 29, after the second reading of the Bill, when the measure had been for weeks and months, I might almost say, in Committee, the Prime Minister, meeting an Amendment from the hon. Member for Wicklow (Mr. Corbet), said—

"If the hon. Member proposes to say that every provision of these leases shall be brought into Court, that is a proposition to which we are not prepared to assent."—[3 Hansard, cclxii. 1600.]

The very day after that, I believe, we had an absolute—I will not say change of front, because the Prime Minister has requested that that word may not be used—but a very rapid development of opinion took place, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland, who has had some disagreeable things given him to do which must have tried his legal mind very much, had the task imposed on him of putting on the Paper Amendments with which we are all familiar. The first of those Amendments proposed in regard to every lease in Ireland, no matter when or for what time it was made, or what was the rent, or what its conditions as to improvements, or as to the valuation of the farm, that the most important covenant for the landlord is to be broken and that the tenant may hold on for all time if he likes. Under what circumstances was that Amendment moved? My right hon. and learned Friend moved it in a House not of half its ordinary strength, and he occupied just two minutes in moving it. He read it out as if it were a mere verbal Amendment that required no explanation. The Amendment spoke for itself; but it was impossible to explain or defend it. The Prime Minister is almost always able to say he is adhering verbally to everything that he has said. I have much pleasure in reading his speeches, and I find that it is the hardest thing in the world to take one of his sentences which appears to convey to the House the clearest meaning in regard to which he is not able readily to say he was only referring to some particular thing mentioned in discussion, and, no matter what the language may have been, there is some little word that enables him to point out that he was not correctly understood. On the 29th of June the Prime Minister said that if the object of the hon. Member was to bring the covenants of existing leases under the cognizance of the Court, that would be enlarging the Bill to an extent to which the Government were not prepared to assent. Accordingly, the Prime Minister, severely accurate, to quote the expression of my noble Friend (Lord Randolph Churchill), does not submit the covenants of leases to the cognizance of the Court, but he saves the Court the trouble, and he himself in the Bill breaks the most important covenant in every lease. The next Amendment was one that conferred on the Court the power of breaking every lease made since 1870. The Irish Land Act of 1870, in clause after clause, indicated to the landlord and to the tenant that they were encouraged and invited to enter into contracts by lease; and to prevent all questions or doubt about the matter the Prime Minister, speaking on the second reading of the Land Bill of 1870, used these emphatic words—

"The Bill will proceed on the principle… that from the moment the measure is passed every Irishman, small and great, must be absolutely responsible for every contract into which he enters…. We ought to embody nothing in it that can encourage any man to tamper with good faith or to disparage or undervalue in any shape security and solidity of contract.''—[3 Mansard, cxcix. 380.]

It would be impossible for any man to use clearer and stronger words. Is the conduct of the Government in reference to leases defensible? Can any man say it is in accordance with good faith? If solemn and serious contracts, entered into as leases have been, can be broken in the summary way these leases may be, can any contract that can be made or suggested for any purpose be regarded as safe? As to the "three F's," the Prime Minister has no objection to be responsible for fair rents and free sale; but he will let no man say fixity of tenure is involved in the Bill. Why?. Because in 1870, in speech after speech, he demonstrated that if it were granted in any shape it would bring with it the right of the landlord to compensation. Accordingly, having committed himself to the principle that no matter what happens to the Irish landlord, he shall get no compensation, we have fixity of tenure in this Bill, real, substantial, but denied and very slightly disguised. In the West of Ireland there are a vast number of small tenancies, many of them under £4. What is the position of the landlord there? Under the existing laws of Ireland, the landlord has to pay all taxes and local rates for such small tenancies; and under this Bill he will have to continue paying with great certainty as to the necessity of paying, but with great uncertainty as to whether he will receive the means to do so. If there was one thing in the Bill for the benefit of this poor population, it was the Emigration Clause, which was kept before the House for three nights, and which elicited from the Prime Minister a powerful and eloquent denunciation of the delay; but on the same night that he delivered it, and as a tribute to the delay, he cut the clause down to something so shadowy and frail that, except for the principle involved, it is not worth having. These poor tenants in the over-populated districts of the West, if you freed them this moment from all rent, could not save themselves from periodic famine without relief and substantial assistance. In the face of all these changes—fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure—with all the other advantages in the Bill, why the Government deemed it necessary to give an increased scale of compensation for disturbance puzzles me; it is illogical, un-needed, and out of place. It will puzzle anyone to say why it was introduced except as a further anomaly in an. exceptional Bill. With all these stupendous and unprecedented changes, where is there about this Bill the element of durability, of certainty, of anything verging on a settlement? Everyone admits there is nothing final in politics; but when Parliament is asked to make a great change by a great measure they have a right to expect that great results will be accomplished, and that the measure will bear fruit for a considerable time. The Prime Minister himself, in the way he has dealt with many topics, has from time to time suggested the possibility of this being anything but a permanent settlement. Whenever it was intimated by the wily, quick-witted, sagacious Members from Ireland that a certain thing would lead to a discussion which would occupy a considerable time, there was a consultation of three wise-heads on the Treasury Bench, and shortly afterwards the wish of the Irish Members was sometimes conceded, with verbal changes, and sometimes postponed until a more convenient season. In this way have been left as legacies to the future the question of absenteeism and of town park lands. Instead of saying—"We are dealing with questions of sufficient magnitude by this Bill, and we will not pledge ourselves now as to how we will deal with other questions, or whether we will deal with them at all," as the Prime Minister was fairly entitled to do, he has said that the views of the Government were not matured, or that the matter may well come up for consideration at a future time. In one point the Prime Minister has almost taken care that this shall not be regarded as a final and durable measure. We are not responsible for the drafting of the Bill or for its shortcomings; the whole responsibility of its passage, its interference with principles, its results, rests absolutely upon the Government. We pointed out to the Government a great flaw in their new drafting which did not exist in the original drafting—that at the end of seven years this Bill would require a further Bill. But because the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Callan) said yesterday that if the Bill were re-committed to deal with this point proposals would be made for the re-committal of several clauses, the Prime Minister re-considered his position, and gave ingenious reasons for leaving the matter so that there must be a Bill dealing with this question at the end of seven years. The Government, having had an opportunity to make this Bill a final one, deliberately elect to leave it open so as to render legislation necessary at the end of seven years. Is this Bill a message of peace to Ireland? Has it been accepted as such? It will concede much that was asked for by the Land League, and more than the most sanguine member ever expected. At the meeting of the Land League last Monday, a meeting at which they acknowledged a munificent contribution of thousands from America, and of £2 or £3 from Ireland, the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) said—

"The Land Bill might he the business of the Government, but it was not the business of the Land League as an organization to favour any proposal for alleviating the horrors arising from landlordism, thereby making it more tolerable and giving it a longer lease of life. They did not seek to change landlordism into some tolerable shape; they sought for its extermination."

And that in the face of the stupendous efforts of the Prime Minister to pass this exceptional Bill. That is the way it is received by the Land Leaguers in Ireland. Lately a new proposition has been put forward, in the form of a construction of the Bill which I am happy to say is a false construction, and that is that when this Bill is passed no rents need be paid until they have been fixed and sanctioned by the Court. Bad as the Bill is, it leaves the old rent payable and the landlord in possession of his right to recover it until the gale day next following the fixing of a judicial rent. I admit that the wretched Amendment for the suspension of writs of fi facias, which was passed yesterday, may possibly mislead some people to a confused understanding of the matter. It was passed in a House of less than half its strength, without any Notice whatever, being brought up in manuscript by the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). The Land League, I believe, have a proposition for the extermination of landlords; the Government are more moderate—they seemed to favour an Amendment which would only have the effect of starving them. If the Amendment had been considered, it would have been seen that it had the practical effect of damning the Bill, for it announces to every tenant who owes money that if he goes into Court he can tie up the debt. Never before was such an invitation given to enter upon litigation. We all know that one of the great difficulties in the way of accepting this Bill, and one which may cause the most serious interference with its progress, is the serious danger of litigation; and, in the face of that fact, I decline to accept this Amendment as a serious proposal of statesmanship. I do not suggest motives, or say that the way it was accepted points to what may be expected to happen; but the Government may have remembered that an untimely birth is often followed by a premature death; and I pass by the Amendment, treating it as an unwholsome fungus in an unsound part of a not very sound Bill. There is one serious and substantial omission from the Bill. If, for high purposes of State, it was found necessary to apply this drastic measure to Irish landlords, to mutilate their property, and deprive them largely of their means of usefulness, at all events in common justice some provision might have been put in which would have guaranteed and insured the enjoyment of the small residue of property which remains to them. Instead of that, we have accepted Amendment after Amendment permitting a possible extension of the redemption period, interfering with the landlord's right of sale and with every possible right, short of getting rent; we have, on the other hand, Amendments proposed, not to give new privileges to the landlord, but to save him from some uncertainties and doubts, and we are met by distinct refusal; and the fact that the Opposition is conducted with forbearance is made a ground for denying measures of justice, which might have been conceded to Obstruction. I am bound to state that there is one thing I contemplate with satisfaction in this Bill. At all events, now that it is about to be passed, we have a right to expect and a right to insist that in Ireland we should have a firm and capable Executive. The nation will insist that the miserable scenes of last winter shall not be re-enacted, Never before in the history of a country or of Parliament has any Government been given, and that without stint, so full a measure of ordinary and extraordinary powers. They have, in fact, been given every power, coercive and remedial, which they asked for or suggested. There can, therefore, be no justification for faltering action, no excuse for feeble words or palsied hands. The responsibility of the Government, always existing, now stands out in conspicuous relief, and the nation will see and judge how that responsibility is fulfilled. The responsibility of the Government must be fulfilled by a resolute maintenance of law and order and full protection of life and property in Ireland. The Government have got all they asked for, and they cannot complain if, during the Recess, their course of administration of affairs in Ireland is regarded, not by us alone, but by the whole nation, with constant vigilance and jealous watchfulness. I am no pessimist. I have hope for the future of Ireland; but my hopes do not depend upon or centre round this Land Law Bill. I have spoken of this Bill, I hope, in no unreasoning spirit. My opposition has been frank and open. I have made already my protest by word and by vote, and shall not vote again against the progress of the Bill. I am speaking now my last words with reference to it. But in parting from this Bill I cannot say that I regard its possible future without much solicitude and many misgivings. It is a measure which has been largely procured and directly influenced in its progress by unrighteous agitation, and which involves, in the case of Ireland, the sacrifice of principles which have tended to make England herself great.

I cannot but regret, Sir, that a Member of the Opposition, occupying the high and distinguished position which my right hon. and learned Friend worthily enjoys, should have marred the generous tone he took during the Committee stage of the Bill by the course he has now adopted. ["Oh, oh!"] It may be owing to my inexperience in this House, or possibly to the fact that everything is fair in political warfare; but I think it strange that my right hon. and learned Friend, having a carefully prepared speech to deliver, seeing that the Speaker rose, and seeing, too, that the Prime Minister then rose, should not himself have first risen and allowed the Prime Minister to follow him in debate

I wish to explain. I did not see you, Sir, rise, and I was quite suprised to see the Prime Minister rise.

Of course, I accept the explanation of my right hon. and learned Friend. But what has been the course adopted by the Opposition? They have criticized severely every part of the Bill, and now my right hon. and learned Friend has delivered a strong protest against it; but will they dare now to divide upon the third reading? I have crossed swords before now with the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill); but I think the course that he has the courage to take on the present occasion does him credit when compared with the course adopted by the Opposition. Why was it left to an outsider to raise this debate? Why have the Leaders of the Opposition disappeared from the House during the debate? I say it with great respect, but I am bound to say, after observing the course which has been taken by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, that the Opposition has not the courage of its convictions, and the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock has. My right hon. and learned Friend has, in the absence of the Prime Minister, spoken of him in a way that, I think, might have been spared; and he has summed up his criticism by saying that under the Bill the landlord will be damnified, and the tenant assisted at the expense of the landlord. I deny both those propositions. My right hon. and learned Friend asks—What has the tenant to sell if he does not sell the landlord's property? Well, over and over again it has been explained that what the tenant has to sell is his interest in his holding—that is, his right of occupancy, and, outside that, the improvements he has effected, often by his money, and always by his labour. This is not his landlord's property. The tenant must give notice to his landlord of his intention to sell, and as the landlord can buy, in what respect is he damnified? Does he ask to get the tenant's interest in his holding for nothing? My right hon. and learned Friend says that the Court may actually have to say what is a fair price to give. I was, I confess, under the impression that a Court was the proper tribunal to resort to if a man has a right to assert or a wrong to be redressed; and I submit that an impartial Court is the right tribunal to decide the questions which may arise between landlord and tenant in the event of their not being able to agree between themselves. The next point criticized by my right hon. and learned Friend was the fixing of this fair rent by the Court. Does my right hon. and learned Friend want the landlord to obtain an unfair rent? Where is the landlord who will assert that? The provision in question is the best that could be devised for Irish land lords themselves, among whom I have many personal friends. Only yesterday I spoke to one, who said that his rents had not been raised during the 40 years he was in possession of the estate, and that, notwithstanding, he felt he should assist them by making them gifts of timber, slates, and other things. In these good relations how stands his rent. It is paid even in these times. After all, in fixing a fair rent, the Court would simply moderate—to use a University term—between the parties. But, said my right hon. and learned Friend, at least the landlord should be paid the old rent till the new was fixed. The Bill provided that such should be the case, as the new rent was not to become payable until the gale day next after the fixing of it. What unfairness was there in that? And yet, to hear my right hon. and learned Friend, it would be thought that some scheme was carefully wrapped up in the Bill for inflicting injustice on the Irish landlords. As originally brought in, the Bill did nothing more than carry forward the principles of the Act of 1870, which gave protection to occupancy. I will not delay the progress of this measure by any lengthened observations; but will simply say that, in my view, no one who has any knowledge of Ireland can deny that there is an eager wistfulness for the passage of the Bill, and a feeling of great anxiety occasioned by the delay which has occurred in its progress. It will give a security of tenure, which is most strongly desired and needed in Ireland; and it is not the visionary or disastrous scheme which has been pictured from time to time by hon. Members who are opposed to it. I deny that the measure will operate against the landlord; but the peasant as he drives his spade into the ground will feel that his arm is strengthened by knowing that wife and weans will be bettered by it. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has immensely exaggerated the effect of the clauses in regard to leases, which only give power to the Court to set them aside in case it is satisfied as to their injustice, and that they have been obtained under a threat of eviction. The hour has well nigh struck when the Bill will pass, and I believe it will be a great and generous message of peace to Ireland. But to bring that peace, language must be used very different from that used by my right hon. and learned Friend. Those are not the words which will win back alienated friends or heal the wounds which civil discord has left festering amongst us. It is my belief that this Bill will give safety to person, will add to the stability of property and the security of the Constitution in Ireland, will give a more manly tone to the nation's strength, and restore a healthy beat to the nation's heart.

said, he joined in the hope that the measure would have the effect of bringing peace to Ireland, even although it sinned against all those principles that had heretofore guided legislation. He was, however, glad that the decencies of procedure had been so far maintained, that a measure of this importance was not passed through both the last stages—Committee and Third Reading—in one night; for, in his experience in Parliament, no Bill of such importance had thus been dealt with. The discussion had been a very useful one, and the House had listened to some very able speeches. He had said little in Committee, but had followed the Bill carefully, and had given his vote whenever he thought its injustice or harshness could be modified or remedied. He felt bound to say that after all the weeks of careful labour in Committee, he did not find that the Bill was any sounder in principle than when he denounced its principles in the debate on the second reading. So far from that being the case, the Bill still was a return to the legislation of the Plantagenets, and to the French Revolution law of "maximum." It destroyed individual liberty and freedom in men's dealings with each other, and confiscated property without com- pensation. And this was the act of so-called Liberals. The Bill, now more than ever, made the landlord nothing more nor less than a plundered rent-charger. Fair rents were to be fixed, not by the ordinary transactions of ordinary business, but, for the first time in our modern history, by the State. The Court was put in the position of the landlord, and the privileges of property were taken away from the landlord and placed in Commission; while the Bill severed for ever—unless he was prepared to purchase it—the labourer of Ireland from the future occupation of the soil. It further established the principle of the State breaking leases, and using State money to pay arrears of rent—that was, to advance money from public funds for the benefit of those who had repudiated their rightful contracts; while those who, through all this trying agitation discharged their contracts, were left out in the cold, without any benefit at all. A Bill such as this was not worth the support of the House. Its character and origin might be summarized thus. It was a measure "begotten by lawlessness, conceived in fear, founded on injustice, its ends corruption." They could not deny the truth of this. They could not deny that if there had been no Land League, and no resistance to the law, they never would have heard of this Bill. Was any hon. or right hon. Gentleman prepared to say the contrary? He also averred that there had been ill-concealed fear on the part of the Government, which had led them to introduce this measure; and he based his assertion on the words of the Prime Minister himself. The Prime Minister looked astonished at that statement; but he had himself heard the right hon. Gentleman say, on the 19th of July, that this Bill differed materially from the Irish Land Act of 1870, inasmuch as every line and every clause of this Bill was of vital importance, because the maintenance of law, the security of life and property in Ireland would depend upon them. He therefore asserted that it was in consequence of the fear of lawlessness in Ireland that the Government had brought in this Bill, in the hope of thus protecting life and property, which they should have been able to have secured without legislation of this kind. He maintained that the Bill was founded in injustice, and, further, that its ends were corruption, inasmuch as it was a bribe to the 600,000 tenants in Ireland to obey the law. But would the Bill have the effect of tranquillizing Ireland? He ventured to say, reasoning by the analogy of the past, that this system of concession, followed by coercion and further concession, had alone brought about the present state of things in Ireland; and what was there in this Bill which was calculated to render it more effective for its professed purpose than previous measures? He believed, on the contrary, that it would encourage greater agitation in the future; and, looking at the effect the Bill was producing in this country and in Scotland in disturbing men's minds, and in altering their views as to the rights of property, and the relationship between the different classes which had hitherto governed society, this Bill was fraught with great danger. He was not prepared to let it pass in silence, or without recording his vote against it. He intended to divide the House on the Question. A speech had been made a short time ago by a right hon. Gentleman on the Front Opposition Bench, in which he denounced the Bill, root and branch; and in the good old days such a speech would have been naturally followed by a division. Now, however, we lived in different, if not better days, and the Bill was to be allowed to pass a third reading unchallenged. He admitted that the Conservative Party was in a difficulty. They, or rather their principles, found themselves between the upper and the nether millstone. The upper millstone was the fact that two great Conservative Peers and three Conservative Members of Parliament had put their names to a Report—the Duke of Richmond's—which the Prime Minister had often told the House was the basis of legislation. In their rear, and even on their own Bench, they had right hon. and hon. Gentlemen whose action had also been appealed to by the Prime Minister, as it was in similar circumstances in 1870, in reference to the Disturbance Clause of that Act. He referred to the Representatives of Ulster, whom he would call, if he might do so without offence, the Esaus of Ulster; for what was their position as regards this question of tenant right? They or their fathers or grandfathers, for beneficial purposes to themselves, had sold their birthright, and, to obtain payment of rents and arrears, established tenant right on their estates. He could not understand, for the life of him, how these hon. Members, having done that—either themselves or their ancestors—could bring their consciences to vote for this Bill, which imposed tenant right for ever on every estate in Ireland now free of it, they knowing that the tenant, and not the landlord, would have the benefit of the free sale of tenant right under this Act of Parliament. The Bill allowed tenants to sell their right in the market for the highest price; but the landlord was debarred from getting the highest price he could for his land. Thus, between the upper millstone of the Duke of Richmond's Commission and the nether millstone of the Ulster Representatives, the principles of the Conservatives were ground into impalpable powder. Now, as to the hon. Members below the Gangway on the other side, no doubt their motives were perfectly patriotic, but the fact remained that, in acting as they had acted, they had cast aside all their traditions and principles; and although they might think they were doing what was right and would be beneficial to the country, they were establishing the principle that justice must be measured, not by justice, but by votes; and as sure as they had done that, they would find, when they enfranchized the masses, that they had taught them a lesson they would not forget. In every line of this Bill they had hatched a legislative chicken, that would come home to roost in the homesteads of England and of Scotland, in the houses of the large towns, in their manufactories, in their mines, in their ships, in their scrip and stock. For do not let them imagine if the great Liberal Party thus sanctioned the principle of the spoliation of one class for the benefit of another, that when they had enfranchised, as they no doubt would do one day, an ignorant and unintelligent Briareus, he would be slow to learn the lesson they had taught him, or fail to apply it to all kinds of property alike. He had a good many Friends among what was called the old Whig school. He knew they hated this Bill as much as he did; but they had submitted to it. They were bound down by ties of Party. And these same men who bowed down before the fetish of Party, when held up by their medicine man on the Treasury Bench, laughed at those who worshipped and believed in the Black Virgin of Loretto, and sneered at the untutored Natives of the South Sea Islands who worshipped stocks and stones. [Cries of" Question!"] He was speaking so much to the question that the il-Liberals did not like it. He would venture simply, as regarded his weak Whig Friends, to say that he believed that Party, properly conducted on sound and distinct principles, was the best and soundest form of government. But he would also say this, that he believed man was not made for Party, but that Party was made for man. Holding these views, he believed that this measure, whilst outraging all sound principles of government, would be more hurtful than beneficial to Ireland. This Bill would absolutely destroy the foundation on which our social system had hitherto rested. [Mr. HEALY: Thank God for that!] He accepted that expression in support of what he was saying. It was the truth, and he hoped it would be taken to heart by right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite. The Bill would destroy liberty of contract and the security of property, the only sound principle upon which nations could hope to prosper and progress. Holding these opinions strongly, he must record his vote against it. He did not care whether more than half-a-dozen hon. Members accompanied him into the Lobby. "The fewer men the greater share of honour." And if evil should come of this legislation, they would at least be able to say that they had taken advantage of all the Forms of Parliament to resist unprincipled and pernicious legislation.

said, that notwithstanding the strong eloquence poured out by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) against the Bill, it struck him forcibly, when listening to that speech, that after all there was an undercurrent of feeling that, on the whole, it was not such a bad Bill. But the noble Lord who had just sat down had the courage of his convictions, and had taken a very different course. He had attacked it root and branch. The noble Lord believed it to be a bad Bill, and, that being his be- lief, he would not be justified in adopting any other course than that which he had mentioned. The noble Lord said that the lawlessness existing in Ireland was the result of the operations of the Land League; but did the noble Lord think that in any country, even in Ireland, a body of young men of no social position, and no wonderful powers of eloquence, could have got up such a state of things as existed in Ireland if there were no social wrongs in Ireland that gave them power? The social state of Ireland which had brought about this measure sprang from the effects of a series of bad harvests and the action of the landlords themselves. He had by his side the original first copy of the Bill of 1870, and on the margin of it were the notes he made when it was discussed, and they embodied precisely the principles that were involved in the Bill now before them. The noble Lord said the Government had adopted the programme of the Land League. Nothing could be more absurd or incorrect. Why, the Land League at their meetings ridiculed and made it a special point to attack the "three F's." The noble Lord said the Bill would not pacify Ireland. Well, it was very hard to prophecy about Ireland. He thought he might say he had a fair knowledge of the country; and his opinion, which was fortified by letters which he received every day from all parts of Ireland relating to this Bill, was that the Land League was not Ireland; that there was in Ireland an amount of common sense; that the Land League had an amount of common sense; and that when this Bill became law they would see it to be their duty to lay hold of the real principles of amelioration in the Bill, and try to apply them for the benefit and welfare of Ireland. He could not think so meanly of the men at the head of that League as to believe that they would be so lost to all patriotism and right principle as to keep up the agitation for the mere sake of agitation, independently of the good or evil to be effected. He firmly believed that in the Bill there were many things which would tend to cure the sores and evils of his country, and also many things which would improve the system of land tenure. It was true there were points in the Bill that he would like to see improved; but he believed that in the circumstances, with all the surroundings and difficulties that Ministers had to contend with, no better or more complete Bill could possibly have been passed. He earnestly hoped and believed that it would do much in the direction of pacifying Ireland; and, so far as regarded himself, he could honestly say that nothing that one man could do would be left undone to bring its provisions fully and fairly before the minds of the Irish people. He expressed the feeling of every Member of the House when he said he was astonished by the ability with which the Prime Minister had conducted the Bill. The oldest Member in the House had never seen anything like it, and the youngest Member, as long as he lived, would never see anything like it—the earnestness, the wonderful power of language and. expression of "the old man eloquent." The masterly grasp of facts and details, and his enthusiasm in conducting his measure had never been excelled. The Irish people would be grateful for what the right hon. Gentleman had done. He believed that in the hearts of the Irish people there was a deep feeling of gratitude to the right hon. Gentleman, and a conviction that he had done his very best for the settlement of the Irish Question. During the right hon. Gentleman's absence from his Office he had opportunities of becoming acquainted with the opinions of Bishops, priests, and laymen in Ireland, and he found that there was no living statesman in whom the Irish people had such confidence as in the right hon. Gentleman, not because of his great ability, not because of his unexampled position in the world as a statesman, but because they believed he had earnest and honest principles. The Bill was about to pass to "another place." For himself, he was not concerned as to how the other House treated it. If they showed the wisdom that the aristocracy had always shown in looking at all the circumstances in the face and acting generously with the facts before them, they would send the Bill down to the House of Commons very little changed from the condition in which it was sent up. If, on the other hand, they sent it down so changed that the Government could not accept it, then the agitation in Ireland would broaden and deepen, and the settlement of the question would be as remote as ever. But they anticipated different treatment of the measure by the other House.

(who spoke amid the marked impatience of the House for a division) was understood to say that the Prime Minister, whatever charges might be fairly brought against him in other respects, had been wonderfully consistent at least in what he had said in 1870 and what he had said this year with regard to Irish ideas. The right hon. Gentleman stated in 1870, as he stated now, that there was an old Irish notion that even when the contract between landlord and tenant had expired, what was called the right of occupancy still remained in the tenant. But while he admitted the consistency of the Prime Minister on that point, he regretted it, because it showed that the right hon. Gentleman's notion of statesmanship was to give way to Irish ideas. The connection between England and Ireland ought to exercise a civilizing influence on the latter country, and there was no surer mark of the civilization of a country than the observance of contract. In a barbarous country contract was not understood, and when a contract had there been entered into it was not felt that it should be religiously respected. By this Bill the Government were perpetuating ideas which ought to be discouraged, and were not raising Ireland to the high standard of civilization which was indicated by a regard for the sanctity of contract. He looked upon this measure as a relapse from a civilized state to a state of barbarism.

said, he did not know whether the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill) intended to go to a division on the question of the third reading of the Bill or not—["Yes!"]—but if he did, he could not refrain from saying a few words as to the vote which he meant to give on that occasion. He had listened to the speech of the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock with great interest, because every word which had fallen from the noble Lord had found an echo in his heart. The noble Lord the Member for Woodstock had been taunted by the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. George Russell) with being the exponent of comedy in that House; but the hon. Member for Aylesbury appeared to be the exponent of broad farce— And it being ten minutes to Seven of the clock, the Debate stood adjourned till this day.

said, that although the subject he desired to call the attention of the Committee to was one of very great importance, involving nothing less than the middle class education of the country, he hoped, considering the lateness of the hour and the necessity of making progress in Supply, to dispose of it very shortly. He did not propose to move the reduction of the Vote, particularly as he expected to obtain a satisfactory answer from the Government to the questions which he proposed to put. Nor did he propose to enter into any general question with regard to the policy of uniting the Charity and the Endowed Schools Commissions. He was quite aware that that policy had been questioned in many quarters, and that the Government had incurred great responsibility in changing the organization of the Endowed Schools Commission. A Commission to inquire into the working of the Endowed Schools Commission sat for some years from the year 1865, and presented Reports in 1866 and 1868. He had had the honour of being one of the Commissioners, and he was, therefore, able to explain what the result of the inquiry was. It went a long way towards showing that the education of what might be called the middle classes of the country—namely, that which was above the elementary education, but below that given in the higher class schools and Colleges, was eminently unsatisfactory. In many cases the endowments for educational purposes had been entirely neglected, and the education given was most defective. The consequence of the disclosures made by the Commission was the appointment of the Endowed Schools Commission in 1869. That Commission worked on until the year 1874, when there was a change of Ministry, and it was superseded in that year by the Commission which, at the present moment, continued to carry on the work. The Act of 1874, although it continued the Commission which was specially charged with the work of reorganizing the Endowed Schools, united the Commission with the Charity Commission, and placed it under the control of the Chief Commissioner of that Commission. Since then the work had been carried on under the auspices of the Charity Commission. Nearly 11 years had now elapsed since the Endowed Schools Act of 1869 began to take effect, and during that time the progress of the re-organization had been very much slower than was anticipated by those who framed the Act of 1869, or by those who made the alteration in the Act of 1874, under which the work was now carried on. It was expected in 1869 that the whole work of preparing new schemes would be completed in five or six years; but since 1869 the schemes which had been framed for the Endowed Schools of the country dealt with less than one-half of the total number of Endowed Schools. It was true that the value of the endowments was slightly in excess of one-half of the total amount; but the number of schools remaining to be dealt with was greater than the number which had been dealt with in the 11 years which had elapsed since 1869. Therefore, at the same rate of progress it was clear that 11 years more must elapse before the work of re-organizing the Endowed Schools could be completed, and before that time some of the schools which had already been dealt with by schemes would require to be dealt with afresh, so as to amend and remove defects that were not foreseen when the schemes were originally framed. It had become quite obvious that something more must be done to improve the secondary education of the country; and he thought he was entitled to ask the Vice President of the Council (Mr. Mundella) the causes which had made the progress in the work of re-organizing the Endowed Schools so exceedingly slow. The matter was one of the highest importance, because it could not be forgotten that the education of the country, as far as it did not depend on the small number of public schools which existed, mainly depended upon these Endowed Schools. It was they which should set the standard of education for the middle class schools of the country, which should give a better tone to the people, and in all respects act as models for the schools at which the children of the middle classes received their education. But that could not be done without introducing change into the generally obsolete regulations under which these schools were managed, or without the framing of such schemes as the Endowed Schools Commissioners has been directed to frame. He did not propose to enter into details upon the question as one of the educational policy of the country, or to inquire to what extent it was that the Endowed Schools were defective. It was well known that there were great deficiencies in the present working of the system; and he asked from his right hon. Friend the Vice President of the Council an explanation of the cause to which he attributed this slow progress and the measures he proposed to take in order to remedy this great evil. The Act under which the Endowed Schools Commission was now working would expire next year; and it would consequently be necessary, during next Session of Parliament, to bring in a measure which should renew the Commission, and endeavour, if possible, to set it going anew with greater locomotive power. The present time was, therefore, opportune for calling attention to the defects of the system which now existed, and for endeavouring to obtain some pledge from the Education Office that something would be done to remedy those defects, and bringing the whole matter before the country with the view of passing a satisfactory measure of reform during the ensuing Session. He would not anticipate what the Vice President of the Council would have to say to the position of the staff; but he would point out that one result of the policy adopted in 1874 had been to throw the Endowed Schools Commission into the hands, and place it under the control, of the Charity Commission. It was well known that the Endowed Schools Commission, between 1869 and 1874, went on faster than was conformable with the policy of the Party which came into power in 1874. It was the evident wish and desire of the Conservative Party to put a drag on the wheels of the Commission. The Commission at that time consisted of three able and eminently qualified men. At the head of it was the late Lord Lyttelton, of whom he spoke with the greatest respect as a Nobleman, thoroughly competent to deal with the work of educating the country, and who had greatly identified himself with it. The next Commissioner was Mr. Roby, who was also a man of great ability, and equally devoted to the cause of education; and the last was the Rev. Canon Robinson, who, fortunately, still continued on the Commission. In 1874 those three gentlemen were replaced by a new Commission, consisting of two only, one of whom was Canon Robinson, while the other had had no previous experience, who did the work as well as could be expected, but in whose hands the work of the Commission advanced much more slowly. This gentleman had since quitted office. He (Mr. Byrce) did not make any accusation against him; but he cited the substitution of this Commissioner for Lord Lyttelton and Mr. Roby as a reason why the work of the Commission must have gone on much less quickly and efficiently, and he cited it in the hope that some step would now be taken to remedy the mistake then made by adding to the number of Commissioners directly connected with the Endowed Schools. The amalgamation of the Endowed Schools Commission with the Charity Commission had the effect of making the question of the Endowed Schools one of secondary consideration. It was thought at the time that the Charity Commissioners would be able to devote some of the spare time and labour at their disposal to the work of the Endowed Schools Commission; but he believed he was right in saying that they had found it impossible to do so. The work of the Charity Commission itself was constantly accumulating. It was very important work, and it was becoming more important owing to the increase of the number of charitable foundations which were always growing; and, owing to that fact, the progress of the schemes under the Endowed Schools Act had been slower than might otherwise have been the case, because the schools, when re-organized, were constantly coming to the Charity Commission asking to have orders made, and the Charity Commission was occupied in meeting their needs. The consequence was that the three Charity Commissioners, who had done their work with a considerable amount of public spirit, found that they had no time to spare for the work of the Endowed Schools, and the Endowed Schools' work had been intrusted entirely to the two Endowed Schools Commissioners, who were far too few in number to grapple with the large mass of work they were required to perform. There was a further evil in the limited powers which the Endowed Schools Commission enjoyed. In place of inspecting the schools—he did not mean executing an individual inspection, because that could be properly done by Examiners—but he meant that where a scheme had been framed it might be found, after it had been at work for some years, that it was not working satisfactorily, either owing to some defect in the scheme itself, or some want of heartiness on the part of the trustees in carrying out the scheme—in place of exercising a supervising inspection over the schools, the Endowed Schools Commissioners found themselves unable to ascertain how the work was going on, and could make no provision for remedying the defects of any scheme unless they were prepared to go the length of drafting a new scheme. It was very desirable that powers should be given to them to send down the Assistant Commissioners, who were highly competent men, to examine into the working of the schools, for which schemes had already been framed, to report on that working, and that the Endowed Schools Commissioners should then be authorized to make such alterations in the existing schemes as they thought necessary without going through the long and complex process of framing an entirely new scheme. Further, there were many places which were entirely wanting in Endowed Schools. The most ancient towns in the country generally had endowed grammar school foundations; but there were a number of towns of enormous growth, and some of them even old towns, which were destitute of these schools, and very much wanted them, because it was found that private enter-prize did not come forward with suffi- cient promptitude to supply the wants which these endowments covered. They were, consequently, left to the mercy of private adventure schools; and he believed that every hon. Member who was acquainted with such schools would say that there were very few of them indeed which were fit to give a proper education to the children of the middle classes. The masters, as a rule, had neither the experience nor the skill which enabled them to do the work which might fairly be required from them. The remedy would seem to be to employ the Endowed Schools Commission to apply other charitable funds not heretofore devoted to education to educational purposes. An attempt was made to do that under the 30th section of the Endowed Schools Act of 1869. Under that section, the Endowed Schools Commission, in the case of various specified charitable foundations, were to apply the money which was being spent to charitable purposes in connection with education, provided they received an application for that purpose from the Governing Body of the charitable foundation. He need hardly say that it was only in comparatively few cases that the power was acted upon, because, as a rule, the trustees of these charitable foundations were very far from being enlightened men, and were not aware that, to a great extent, the purposes to which these charities were applied were really pernicious. Take the most obvious case of all—the case of dole gifts. An enormous sum of money was distributed annually all over the country in the shape of doles—tens of thousands a-year. Indeed, he should not be surprised to find that a sum amounting to £100,000 or £120,000 a-year was spent in doles—small gifts of bread, coals, clothes, blankets given away, often to people standing at the church door, and, generally speaking, given away by the trustees on their own unaided responsibility. No one who had studied the subject, and paid any attention to the condition of his fellow-townsmen, would fail to know that gifts of this kind were an unmixed evil. Personally, he did not know of one case out of 10 in which they did any good; and, in the great majority of cases, they did serious harm. But, unfortunately, the trustees of these funds were so much under the belief that they had no right to devote them to purposes other than those originally prescribed by the founder, that even in cases where they confessed that the charitable funds as now applied were doing harm, they could not be induced, in their corporate capacity, to make an application to the Endowed Schools Commission to devote the fund to educational purposes. The consequence was that the money, worse than if it remained absolutely idle, was positively doing harm. Many years, however, must elapse before public opinion would be sufficiently enlightened to induce the trustees to make an application to the Endowed Schools Commission, on their own motion. In that state of things, it would appear to be necessary to enlarge the powers of the Endowed Schools Commission, under Section 30 of the Act of 1869, and give them the initiative in the matter. Power should be given to them, where they were satisfied, on competent evidence, that a charitable foundation of this kind was doing mischief, to apply it to educational purposes. He was far from saying that this power should be given without control. He was fully aware that a good deal of jealousy was felt in the country as to the action of the Charity Commissioners. He had heard it constantly said that this was a proposal to hand over the charities of the country to two or three gentlemen sitting in Whitehall; but he believed that two or three gentlemen sitting in Whitehall were much more likely to do good with them than the large number of irresponsible trustees who existed throughout the country, and who had never considered the matter from the large point of view of those who had gained their experience through the working of the Charity Commission. The state of feeling was undoubtedly such that it would become necessary, in the event of handing over extended powers to a Board in London, to surround their action with numerous safeguards. Nobody would contend that the power given to the Charity Commission or the Endowed Schools Commission should be an absolute power, and it must be accompanied with a power of reference or appeal in the event of discontent being excited. Moreover, it might be generally felt that it would not be proper to take funds which were originally given to the poor and apply them entirely for the benefit of the middle class. In a case where an endowment originally given to the poor was applied to the purposes of secondary education, it would be proper to require that a number of free places—places accessible to the poor—equivalent to the advantages taken, should be reserved. The ultimate advantage would be that while they gave benefit to the poor they would also give benefit to the town generally, by establishing a higher class education than private adventure schools were now able to give. The last point he wished to mention had reference to the education of girls. The Endowed Schools Act of 1869 directed the Endowed Schools Commission to make provision for extending the education of girls. The Commissioners in their Reports stated that they had been able to do much less than they expected, and much less than the House expected, when this power was originally given. The cases in which they had been able to establish girls' schools had been comparatively few; and of the total amount of money applied to educational purposes that applied to the education of girls as compared with boys had been a lamentably small percentage. It was hardly necessary to point out to the Committee that the education of girls was rendering, in reality, quite as great a service to the community as the education of boys. When they taught those who were to become their next generation of mothers, they were doing the best thing they could for the education of the coming generation itself. It was, he thought, very much to be regretted that a far more adequate provision had not been made for the education of girls. He believed that the Commission had been met in some cases by a little opposition in the efforts they had been desirous of using in this direction; and, therefore, he thought there should be a stronger direction from Parliament than any that had hitherto been given for making proper and adequate provision for the education of girls. Those were the evils of which he complained, and which he hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council would, next Session, see occasion to remedy. He had already pointed out what appeared to be the chief remedies required—namely, the strengthening of the staff of the Commission, the enlargement of their powers, the propriety of giving them the initiative in cases where it was desirable to apply charitable endowments to educational purposes, and a more specific direction on the subject of the education of girls. Before sitting down he wished to ask the Committee to consider seriously the great importance of the question, and to express in some way their feeling that next year it ought to be dealt with by the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council in a bold and sweeping measure. Instead of keeping on the Commission for a few years longer, dealing with the Endowed Schools in a manner which could only be temporary, it was desirable that it should be rendered permanent and strength given to it. It must not be forgotten that great educational institutions like Dulwich College and Christ's Hospital were still asking for new schemes, although many years had not elapsed since the schemes upon which they were at present worked were framed. They were two magnificent institutions, with ample revenues, and yet they could not be properly worked, because the Commissioners had not had time to deal with them. In that state of facts, considering the great importance of the Educational Question, and how dependent it was upon the action of the Endowed Schools, considering that England was far behind every other civilized nation in Europe in regard to intermediate and secondary education, considering that some reform, although far from adequate, had been introduced into our system of University education, it was not right that the Endowed Schools should be left longer untouched; and it was not too much to say that the question was one of the most important that could engage the attention of Parliament and of the Government.

At this late hour of the night, and considering also the late period of the Session and the necessity of making progress with Supply, I will not detain the Committee long in answer to the able and interesting speech of my hon. Friend. I have no fault to find with the statement he has made. I am sorry to say that I agree with its general accuracy. There is, no doubt, a general feeling of anxiety and dissatisfaction at the slow progress made with regard to Endowed Schools in England. But I do not think it is necessary to lay any blame at the door of the Commis- sioners for this. The real fault rests with the Act of 1874. I think that the passing of that Act was a great misfortune for the education of this country. It had the effect of reducing the number of Commissioners devoted to the work of the Endowed Schools from three to two; it merged the two Commissions—the Charity Commission and the Endowed Schools Commission, into one; and it made it necessary that every scheme should be considered at a meeting of the Board when the Chief Commissioner was present. The result was, that you increased the difficulty of dealing with the question, and you practically brought down the work to the narrowest possible limits. Now, the work of the Charity Commission itself is a very largely increasing work. For the last 20 years it has been going on augmenting at a rate that makes it quite sufficient for the Commission to deal with without undertaking the work of the Endowed Schools in addition. The two previous Chief Charity Commissioners—Mr. Peter Erle and Sir James Hill—found the work more than they could well get through; and I understand that it was the anxiety displayed by Sir James Hill to accomplish, with one Commissioner, the work of two, that aided very materially in bringing about his death. He found the labour was far more than he ought to undertake. To show the increased nature of the work of the Charity Commission, perhaps the Committee will allow me to point out that in 1861, 207 orders were made by the Commissioners. In 1862 the number had increased to 280, and it has been going on augmenting ever since until last year, 1880, it reached 444 schemes. That represents the charitable work alone; but let me point out what the amount of stock transferred has been. It began with £6,360 in 1854, and it now amounts to £11,443,000, of which £1,500,000 has been invested, so that, in round numbers, a sum of £10,000,000 has been transferred. Every transfer has to be brought before the Board, and, of course, a large amount of additional work is necessarily devolved upon them. The Commissioners themselves, in their last Report, speak of the increase of the work. My hon. Friend has urged the importance of strengthening the staff of the Commission; and we have pointed out in our 24th Report the amount of labour which the effective regulation of the public interest in the Parochial Charities of the City of London would require. My hon. Friend himself brought in a Bill this Session which most Members will regret he was unable to pass dealing with the Parochial Charities of London. If it had passed, it would have done much to increase the work of the Charity Commission. The result of placing on the Commission the double work of the Charity Commission and the Endowed Schools Commission has really been to block the progress of the two Commissions, and to hinder effective dealing both with the Charity Commission work and the work of the Endowed Schools Commission. I will point out to the Committee how the Endowed Schools Commission stands now. Since the year 1869, the amount regulated by new schemes in a period of now nearly 12 years has been £294,000 per annum, and there remains still to be dealt with of educational schemes more than £340,000 per annum, in addition to a number of other endowments which are only partly educational. It is, therefore, not unreasonable to say that it will take a quarter of a century, at the present rate of progress, to deal with the educational endowments of England alone. In the present state of middle class education, I would ask the Committee if that is at all a satisfactory state of things? As my hon. Friend has stated, we were told in 1869 that in the course of six or seven years we should have dealt with the whole of the educational endowments of the country. We have now reached the year 1881; and at the rate of progress we are now making it is still contemplated that it will take a quarter of a century before the work is completed. The matter is too serious to be passed over lightly, and some effectual means must be devised for dealing with it. I believe it is the fact that many of the schemes already passed now urgently stand in need of revision; and, owing to the want of inspection and examination, many have not been put in operation. Indeed, there seems to be no sort of control over those which the Commission have passed. The Commissioners ask, in their last Report, that there should be examination and inspection; and I must say that the way in which that Report was denounced in "another place" was most extraordinary. It was one of the most astonishing things I ever heard of in the course of my life. All that was asked for was what was reasonable to carry into full effect the schemes framed by the Commission; and it was one of the most extraordinary statements ever made that the Commissioners desired to constitute themselves into a roving Commission, in order to deal with all the charities all over the country. All the Commissioners asked in their Report was that they should have the means of examining the working of the schemes after they have framed them, in order to see whether they are put fairly into operation. They further proposed that they should have power to inspect the schools once in three years, in order to see that they were doing their work satisfactorily. Every hon. Member will recognize how important the inspection of the schools is as an educational matter. I think that there should be a periodical Report as to the working of the schools, showing what their condition is, and how they compare with one another. I know myself of various schools in regard to which schemes have been framed by the Commission; but, because there has been no inspection and no examination within the last 10 or 11 years, some of these schemes, which started very well, and began to do noble work, are now falling into disuse and decay. All I can say now is that the whole question must be dealt with in the coming year. The only desire of Her Majesty's Government is to promote the true interests of the education of the country. We only desire that what is given through the means of these charitable endowments shall be useful to the poor as well as advantageous to the children of the middle classes. I trust that during the Recess, seeing that we are bound to consider the subject, and that the Commission must be renewed, or a new Commission appointed in the coming year—I trust that we shall be able to devise some measure that will, while consulting the interests of the schools themselves, afford adequate means for their examination, and utilize the vast endowments of the country in the promotion of the higher education of the people, and in opening up the means of education to poor and clever children.

said, he heartily and cordially agreed in much that had fallen from his hon. Friend the Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Bryce); but, at the same time, he regarded with some reluctance the proposal to give larger powers to the present Charity Commission. The statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council as to the intention of the Government to deal with the question next Session was entirely satisfactory; but he was anxious to point out to the right hon. Gentleman the desirability, when the subject was taken up by the Government next year, of not going too far in the direction of centralization. They must all remember the vigilance of the opposition that was brought to bear on the Endowed Schools Commission which was dispossessed in 1874; and, at the same time, it must be borne in mind that in a great number of these local questions there were a great many local prejudices to consult which required a certain amount of local knowledge, and with respect to which a board in London would find itself incompetent to deal. He wished to point out to his right hon. Friend that when the Government took up the question, they ought, as far as possible, to give to the local authorities in various parts of the country powers analogous, or to some extent analogous, in dealing with Charities and Endowed Schools, to those possessed at the present time by the Charity Commission. By that means, he thought they would be able to get rid of a great deal of the local prejudice and intense local irritation which reduced to a wreck the great measure passed in 1869. If the hour of the night had not been so advanced he would have wished to say a few words from his own personal knowledge in regard to the great Endowed Institution in London, in respect of which he was a Governor—Christ's Hospital. But at that late hour he would not interfere with the course of Public Business further than to say, without desiring in the least to impute motives to the Governors of Christ's Hospital, that nothing could be more unsatisfactory than its present condition in regard to the relations between the Governing Body and the Charity Commission. He hoped his right hon. Friend would bear these remarks in mind when he came to deal with the question next year.

said, he rose for the purpose of thanking the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council for the promise he had held out to the House and the country that some system of inspection would be carried out in future in regard to the middle class schools. Having been Chairman of the Governing Body of a small Endowed School in the country, he could bear his testimony to the fact that one of the greatest difficulties the Governors had to contend with was the difficulty of getting their schools properly examined and inspected from time to time. One of the schools with which he was connected, although it had only a small income, educated 100 children. There was another point that was also of importance, and that was the selection of teachers. He and his colleagues, as Governors of an Endowed School, had not had the assistance of the Education Department in the training, selection, and nomination of teachers. They were very much at the mercy of any persons who proposed to go to them for the somewhat low fees they were able to pay. He therefore hoped, through the operation of some measure for the registration of teachers, or in some other way, it might be practicable to provide means for affording the Governors who had the management of these schools an opportunity of knowing where to apply to for thoroughly competent teachers. As far as his own experience went, these were the two great difficulties in the management of Endowed Schools—namely, the selection of teachers and the securing of an efficient inspection.

said, that after the satisfactory statement of his right hon. Friend the Vice President of the Council, he would only venture to express a hope that the right hon. Gentleman would not only bring in a satisfactory measure next year for dealing with the Endowed Schools Commission, but that he would also be able to deal with the Charitable Trusts Bill.

thought that one or two inaccurate statements had been made on the other side of the House. The hon. Gentleman who introduced the subject (Mr. Bryce) made a very able speech, to which he had listened with great interest; but the hon. Member did not seem to recollect the whole history of this important transaction. The hon. Gentleman spoke of the slow progress which had undoubtedly been made, and which he (Mr. Talbot) would be one of the last to deny. He was very sorry that the progress had not been greater; but he thought it ought not to be forgotten that the slow progress did not entirely date from the year 1874. The first legislation upon the subject took place in 1869, and it was then expected that the work would be completed in four or five years. But, notwithstanding all the energy of the gentlemen who constituted the Endowed Schools Commission—of whose energy, ability, and integrity there could be no doubt—when the year 1874 arrived the work had not been half done. Indeed, it was not much more than one-quarter done. Therefore, while not wishing to extenuate the slow progress which had been made altogether, he did not think it was fair to put the whole of the blame upon the progress which had been made since 1874.

said, he had no intention of imputing blame to the present Board for their action in the matter. All he wished to say was, that the progress had been even slower since 1874 than it had been before.

said, the explanation of the hon. Member set the matter right; but without such explanation anyone hearing his speech, or the statement of the right hon. Gentleman, would have fallen into the error of supposing that the Commission, which had been in charge of the Endowed Schools since 1874, were solely to blame for the slow progress which had been made. He now wished to ask the attention of the Committee to a point raised by the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to imply that when the Conservative Government came into Office in 1874 they had a desire to retard the work of the Commission. Now, he did not know what the motives of the Conservative Government might have been when they entered upon Office; but he did not believe that anybody wished to retard the progress of the work of the Commission. All he knew was, that some Members of the House wished to put that progress on a slightly different basis in regard to control. That might have been wise or it might not; but the desire was not alone confined to the Conservative side of the House. It was a point that gave rise to serious deliberation. The late Government wished that the progress of the Commission should be greater, but without undue friction with the prejudices—or call them what they liked—of the persons who had charge of institutions. He did not see the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant in his place; but he was Chairman of the Committee which sat in 1869 upon the subject, and he would agree that this was one of the points the Committee wore most anxious to consider. He (Mr. J. G. Talbot) did not think it would have a brightening effect upon the country generally if it was now to be understood that on reconsidering the question of the Endowed Schools Commission they were going to re-open the difficult question of non-educational endowments. It was, no doubt, true, as the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council said, that many of these charities had been greatly abused, and that the system of doles had been, on the whole, unwisely administered. But, on the other hand, he thought it would be a very startling thing if it were to go forth from that Committee—and he had risen to enter his humble protest against the acceptance of the suggestion—that there was any intention of diverting the funds which had been designedly left for the benefit of the poorest classes of the community to objects that were, after all, for the education of the middle classes only. It might be wise to do something in that direction; but the proposition of the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets was simply this—that the Charity Commission, or the Endowed Schools Commission, whichever body was to act in future, should have the power of initiating, in regard to these doles, whether the managers of them wished to deprive them of their present character or not, a scheme which should have the effect of making them educational endowments. By that means, funds which had been left for the benefit of the very humblest portion of the community, although it might be in a mistaken and misguided manner, would be taken away from those it was intended to benefit, and applied to the education of the middle classes. That, he thought, would be a very dangerous course to take, to say the least of it. There was only one more remark he would venture to make on the matter, and it was this—the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council spoke of the question as one which, must engage the attention of Parliament next Session. It was obvious that as the Act must expire next year something must be done in that direction; and, that being so, he would earnestly press on the Government that it would be unwise to make an alteration in this important question, either by constituting a new Commission, or arming the existing Commission with increased powers, without full and deliberate consideration. The constitution of the original Commission was made the subject of a careful inquiry by a Committee of that House; and it would be wise, if it was intended materially to alter the conditions under which the Commission was to work, to institute a fresh inquiry next year, cither by moans of a Royal Commission or of a Committee of that House. With regard to the question of amalgamation, it was said that harm had been done by uniting the Endowed Schools Commission with the Charity Commission. It might have been so; and the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council had given them some important statistics as to the increased work which had fallen upon the Commission. That was a matter which probably ought to be determined before they renewed the connection between the charitable work and the educational work; but it was only fair to the late Conservative Government to say that, although they were often charged with extravagance and lavish expenditure, this was an attempt to amalgamate two Commissions, and if it had not proved successful, at any rate it was an attempt in the direction of economy. Personally, he should certainly not stand there as an obstructive of any well-considered change; but he hoped it would not go forth to the country without challenge that any fundamental alteration should be made without due and careful consideration.

wished to say a word in answer to the remarks which had fallen from the hon. Member for the University of Oxford (Mr. J. G. Talbot). As far as he knew, there had never been a case in which any charitable endowment had been deviated in the direction of education without coupling the educational scheme with machinery which enabled boys to rise from the national schools to the gram- mar schools. He knew of one case, in Bristol, in which the change took precisely that form, and the endowment was made the means of promoting boys from the national schools into the Bristol Grammar School. The same sort of thing had happened in the City of Oxford. Some doles had been left for purposes that were entirely obsolete, and they were taken away and given to the grammar school; but provision was made by means of which boys from the lowest stratum of society in Oxford were enabled to enter the grammar school. As a matter of fact, every hon. Member knew that all the Endowed Schools of the country had been originally intended for the poor.

said, the hon. Member for the University of Oxford (Mr. J. G. Talbot) had fallen into an error. He (Mr. Bryce) had not intended to imply that any of the funds now given to the poor should be taken away from them and given to the middle class. To the best of his belief he had stated distinctly that, in taking the initiative, the Commission should be restricted by ample safeguards, and that equivalent advantages should be secured to the poor.

asked whether anything had been done since last year with regard to Jackson's Trust Fund?

said, he was unable to answer the question of the hon. Member at the moment; but if he would make an application inquiries should be made.

inquired as to the amount of fees paid by candidates at the Army examinations?

said, that nothing could be more unsatisfactory, or even scandalous, than the present system of conducting military examinations. He believed that on the last occasion of the examination in connection with the Woolwich Military Academy there was in the morning a concert and in the evening a recital in the Hall where the examinations were conducted, which could not but interfere very much with the proceedings. He had always been in favour of the system of competitive examination; but it seemed to him very difficult to attain to a proper standard in the examinations if such a state of things were allowed to continue.

said, he had strongly pressed upon the authorities that they should take steps for obtaining better accommodation for the purpose of these examinations; and he trusted that his representations would this year lead to a more satisfactory arrangement. The Commissioners of Works had sought for a room more adapted for the examinations; but, up to the present, unfortunately, they had not been able to meet with one in which a sufficiently large number of persons could be provided for. The Government were, however, fully alive to the position of affairs.

asked why the fees for the Civil Service of India examinations were paid into the India Exchequer?

said, that the question was about to be taken up by the Government.

said, he would make inquiries, before the Vote was reported, on the question of the amount of fees payable by candidates at the Army examinations.

said, that this Vote was one of several instances of the public money being advanced and not repaid. There was a note relating to this charge which said that the whole of this Vote was a temporary advance, which was to be repaid to the Exchequer when the works of inclosure and drainage were completed. But the fact with regard to this Vote was that, although a considerable sum was annually repaid, it did not amount to the whole sum advanced; and, therefore, the amount of the arrears increased rapidly. The matter had already been before the Public Accounts Committee, who had urged a reduction of the arrears, but, up to the present time, without success. In the year 1878 the noble Lord the Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Frede- rick Cavendish), and in 1880 the hon. Baronet the Member for Midhurst (Sir Henry Holland), as Chairmen of the Public Accounts Committee, had both inquired into the subject; and in reply to the inquiry as to whether any arrangement had been made for providing the Comptroller and Auditor General with particulars to enable him to report to Parliament the progress made with regard to these loans, an answer was sent by an official to the effect that he regretted to say that he could not report that any arrangement had been made. The Committee would be aware that the Comptroller and Auditor General was an officer specially appointed by the House to investigate questions of this nature; and yet it was found that the very materials necessary for his investigations were withheld from him. As he had pointed out, the Public Accounts Committee had expressed regret at the delay that had taken place, and pointed out that the question was one which ought to be settled as soon as possible. The subject had been before the Committee again in the present year, and it was stated at last that the Commissioners had furnished some accounts of a fragmentary character, and that a satisfactory examination of accounts was hoped for in the future. He regarded this as scarcely a satisfactory state of affairs. As a matter of fact, this Vote was not merely a temporary advance, because it was perfectly certain that a great deal of the money could not and would not be recovered. Although it was certain that there would be a loss, it was uncertain what the amount of loss would be; and he questioned whether the noble Lord, on the part of the Government, could tell the Committee the amount of money which had been advanced, the amount which had been repaid, the amount which was still outstanding, or the amount which would have to be wiped off as an irrecoverable arrear, and charged against the country. He regarded this case as a fair illustration of the statement that the system of advancing money to be recovered, if possible, from parties who were not in a position to repay it was an unsound one."

pointed out that more than £8,000 had teen repaid last year, and that the net loss was about £800.

said, that, notwithstanding the importance of the duties of the Comptroller and Auditor General, that officer, unfortunately, did not receive from the Public Departments, whose Accounts he had to examine, that assistance which it was desirable he should have. There was probably no Department of the Public Service whose Accounts would be more improved by a careful overhauling than the War Office; and yet the audit which the Comptroller and Auditor General was able to give of the Accounts of that Department was little more than an appropriation audit. Even the first Army Vote had never yet been examined in detail, but only partially, by the Comptroller and Auditor General; but the Committee would see the immense advantage of having a careful and detailed examination of that expenditure by an independent body. He would merely point to one item, the Stock Purse Fund of the Guards. For 25 years that House had voted something like £6,000 annually for the Hospital and Recruiting Service of the Brigade of Guards in perfect ignorance that the money was not used for the purposes for which it was intended, but that it found its way into the pockets of the officers of the Brigade, and that the hospital and recruiting expenses were paid for out of other moneys. Under that system the officers of the Guards had divided amongst themselves since the Crimean War a sum of money which, in the aggregate, amounted to £150,000. But directly the Comptroller and Auditor General got a hold upon the Army Votes that system had entirely disappeared, the War Office authorities having found it necessary to admit that the money had not altogether been applied to the purposes for which it was voted. There were, it appeared, certain allowances to the officers carefully veiled in the Returns furnished, and which were for a long time kept from the knowledge of the public, but which appeared in the Army Estimates as now drawn up. He mentioned this case as an illustration of the immense advantage in the way of preventing jobbery which resulted from an independent investigation by such an officer as the Comptroller and Auditor General. But, apart from that, there was a system of audit in the War Office which had this great weakness about it, that every Departmental Auditor was obliged to pass charges which he himself might know to be wrong—that was to say, where the money, as in the case he had referred to, did not go for the purpose intended. The charge was covered by the authority of the Secretary of State, and he was a subordinate of the Secretary of State. The audit of the War Office was a perfect farce, there being no independent audit at all; and those who knew the details of the Service knew that the Audit Department should be handed over in its entirety to the Comptroller and Auditor General, and placed in a position of independence so far as the War Office was concerned. He would not go into other matters in regard to the work of the Comptroller and Auditor General; but it struck him (Mr. A. O'Connor) that there were a great many accounts which it would be well to have audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General. He did not know whether the Metropolitan Police Accounts could properly be submitted to him for the purpose. He did not think they were audited by that official; but, at any rate, there were a good many accounts that escaped him which ought not to do so. There was an item on the Paper which struck him as being very singular—namely, £25 for the purveyor of luncheons. He could not, for the life of him, imagine why a man who entered into a contract to supply refreshments should be allowed a money grant, seeing that he made fair charges, had gas and coals for nothing, and lived rent free. He (Mr. A. O'Connor) thought it would be a very reasonable thing to reduce the Vote by £25.

said, he would not follow the hon. Member into many of his statements concerning the audits, as this was not a favourable opportunity for the discussion. He was glad to be able to say that the best audit was now being applied to the Department mentioned. As to the sum of £25, an injustice would be done if it were not granted.

said, this was a grant in aid of local taxation; and as there were several Amendments and a great deal of discussion would take place, and as it was already a quarter to 1, he would move to report Progress.

said, that, under ordinary circumstances, it would be advisable to report Progress at that time of the night; but they had now arrived at the end of July and the beginning of August, and had only passed a few Votes in Supply. He thought, therefore, they should go on a little longer.

said, an hon. Member opposite had an important Scotch question to raise on that Vote—a question in which the people of Scotland took great interest. It was undesirable that it should be debated at that time of night; therefore, he trusted the Government would agree to the Motion.

said, he presumed they would have all Monday night for the Estimates, and the noble Lord would then be able to get a good deal of money. Under those circumstances, and seeing, as had just been stated, that an important question was to be raised on the Vote, it was not unreasonable to ask that Progress should be reported. There were 17 Orders of the Day; and, as one or two of them involved important questions, the House should be allowed some little time to go through them.

said, that nearly all the Orders of the Day were blocked. He would not propose to take the Vote upon which, as it was said, an important question was to be raised; but he would appeal to his hon. Friend to allow them to take what Votes were not opposed.

said, that, looking at the period of the Session, it was not unreasonable on the part of the Government to ask the Committee to go on a little later.

said, that, having regard to the fact that they had now nearly reached the period at which it was usual to end the Session, and at which shooting commenced, hon. Members ought to assist the Government to make progress with Supply, even at some personal sacrifice. He would, therefore, ask the hon. Member for the City of London (Mr. R. N. Fowler) to withdraw his Motion. It would be possible to dispose, at any rate, of a few Votes to-night.

would undertake to say that that was the first time in his Parliamentary career that the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands) had suggested that they should hurry over their Business in order that they might go to shoot. He (Mr. O'Donnell) was at a loss to suppose what had produced so marked a change in the hon. Member. There had been references made to the lateness of the hour at which the important question with which that discussion commenced—namely, that on the Endowed Schools system—was taken, and on that point he could say that a great many Members who had observations to make had refrained from making them because it was too late. They were now asked, at a still later hour, to go on with the discussion of the Estimates and vote public money. He did not think, from the hour and the time they had been sitting, that the Committee were in a position to discriminate between the Business which was so unimportant that it might be safely hurried over and the Business that was so important to deserve attention and full discussion. The real Business was the voting of Supply; and unless hon. Members had a fair opportunity of scrutinizing the channels into which the money was to go, even by the present most virtuous of Ministries there might be reckless and ill-considered expenditure.

YOU, Mr. Playfair, have put this Vote from the Chair, and I wish to ask you whether it is possible to withdraw it in order to take unopposed Votes? I would remind you, Sir, that on a previous occasion you ruled that a Vote, having been put, could not be withdrawn.

A Vote cannot be postponed by a Motion; but if the Government desire to withdraw a Vote they can do so.

said, that some hon. Members seemed to think that there were only two things to be done at this period of the year—either to sit here, or shoot partridges. So far as he was concerned, he should shoot nothing; but he did not want to sit in the House of Commons beyond the month of August. If they did not take Supply up to a later hour than this they would assuredly have to sit into September. The next Vote was for the Lunacy Commission of England, and he did not suppose that any hon. Member from Ireland or anywhere else intended seriously to oppose that Vote being granted; therefore, he would ask the hon. Member to withdraw his Motion, and allow the Business to be proceeded with.

Does the hon. Member for Northampton suggest a certain connection between the Vote he speaks of and the hon. Members who desire to carry on Business beyond a certain hour?

Yes.

said, that if Progress were now reported they would get through a large number of Votes on Monday, as there would be no delay, such as there was now, over the unopposed Votes.

appealed to the Committee to allow unopposed Business to be taken for a short time.

said, it appeared to him that hon. Members opposite who were interested in Votes not yet reached were exceedingly anxious that they should get over these intermediate Votes as soon as possible, and then report Progress, so that, at the next Sitting, the proposals they wished to discuss should come on without delay, and they should have an opportunity of making their elaborately prepared speeches at a time at which they would be reported. These hon. Members had regard only to their own personal convenience. The Committee, however, were concerned in the administration of the public funds. There was no Vote here that was not a contentious Vote. Hon. Members seemed to think that the English Lunacy Vote was not one in which Irish Members could take any interest; but to show them that this was not the fact, he had here four pages of notes from the Reports of the Lunacy Commissioners, and four columns of notes from various reports from the medical authorities concerning the treatment of lunatics in this country out from The Lancet. He thought it was not at all difficult to show that, in many respects, the Lunacy Commissioners of England had not done all that they might have done in their office. He, therefore, objected entirely to the statement that the Lunacy Vote for England was a non-contentious Vote. He would defy any hon. Member to mention a single Vote in Class II. which was a non-contentious Vote.

said, he had had considerable experience of similar wrangles as to reporting Progress, and he had noticed this—that the Government were always in the wrong, and only wasted a good deal of time and expended a good deal of heat unnecessarily, and without doing good to anyone. It was looked on as an established rule that no public money should be voted after half-past 12 o'clock at night, and he did not see why that rule should be set aside now. It would be a saving of time for the Government to give way, for the unopposed Votes would be got through as rapidly as possible on Monday, whereas now they would lead to continued wrangling. They had already wasted more time than it would take on Monday to go through them. The Government would have in the end to give way. They seemed to think that time was valuable at 1 o'clock in the morning; but they evidently did not attach much value to the early part of the day, otherwise they would not, at 4 o'clock, come down and read long speeches in reply to questions. He would not name any individual Minister; but they all knew that this sort of thing was done. And now, when hon. Members wanted to go to bed, the Government made a great point about getting rid of non-contentious Votes. Her Majesty's Ministers evidently wanted to get Business disposed of and Bills passed at an hour when they could not be carefully examined into or fully criticized, and when hon. Member's speeches could not be reported in the papers. This sort of thing might be very pleasantly carried on, no doubt, if there was no opposition in the House.

said, he and several other Members had been sitting on a Committee from 12 o'clock to 4, and almost incessantly since then they had been in the House. They wanted now to go to bed, and he thought it perfectly absurd that a Vote of public money should be taken at 1 o'clock in the morning. He should take every opportunity of protesting against the practice. The Government would have plenty of time for these Votes during the whole of next week. They had no Bills to pass, or if they had they ought not to have any; and not a single Bill ought to be read a second time after the 1st of August. He begged to move that the Chairman leave the Chair.

said, that as the minority of the Committee had not shown the feeling displayed by the majority he would not oppose the Motion.

said, the words "proper care shall be taken to prevent any petroleum escaping," which he proposed to omit, were too vague, and he did not think any convictions would ever be effected under them. Where any person allowed petroleum to escape into a sewer, the fact itself was sufficient evidence of a want of care which ought to be subject to penalty, otherwise people would allow escapes, and then declare that they had taken all proper care, and the magistrate would have to decide the point. The escape ought to carry the penalty with it; and he urged that the clause ought to be made stringent, for the presence of explosive substances in sewers was a very serious thing, and they could not tell what mischief they might cause. He proposed, therefore, to get rid of the vagueness of the clause, and to make it definite by making the accident itself proof of carelessness.

said, he could not assent to the Amendment, and observed that there was a much more serious objection to the Amendment than the vagueness to which the hon. Member objected. It was not safe, it was unreasonable, and it was not just. What the Bill proposed to strike at was the absence of proper care on the part of any person licensed to hawk petroleum. The hon. Member was not content with that provision, but wished to add actual escape as subject to penalty. It was not safe to make escape a subject of penalty before the act of carelessness was made penal; neither was it just, because, although the person might have taken the most absolute care possible, yet, through some defect which he could not have foreseen, there might be an escape. As to the clause being vague, it was simply a matter for the magistrates to decide upon the evidence adduced; and he thought the magistrates were perfectly competent to deal with the matter.

thought the clause vague as it stood; but he recognized the difficulty of inserting the Amendment in the clause, drawn, as the Bill was, in a peculiar form. He agreed that there should be something in the Bill to more carefully provide against carelessness; but he did not think the hon. Member had thoroughly solved that difficulty, and, therefore, he thought it would be better to abide by the language of the clause.

said, he was willing to withdraw his Amendment.

said, he had another Amendment, in line 3, after the word "sewer," to add "shall on conviction thereof be liable to the penalty hereinafter imposed;" but it amounted to very much the same thing as the Amendment just disposed of, and he would not, therefore, move it. It appeared to him, however, that the clause, as it stood, was very vague and indefinite, and that the third Amendment which appeared in his name upon the Paper would remove some of that indefinite-ness. The words in the clause were "due precaution," and he certainly did not know what they meant; and he would propose the substitution of words that were much more definite. He begged to move the Amendment which stood in his name.

said, he was afraid the same objection really applied to this Amendment as to the former one. In the first place, the proposal of his hon. Friend amounted to the transformation of a most important clause of the Bill. There were three things provided for by the clause, the third of which was that due precaution should be exercised; and, although it might be a somewhat vague expression, it appeared to him that the necessities of the case required that some latitude should be given to the magis- trates in dealing with the cases likely to be brought before them. He could not see how there would be any miscarriage of justice under the clause; and, on the other hand, these words were wanted in order to cover cases where it was made clear to the magistrates that due precaution had not been taken. He hoped his hon. Friend would not press the Amendment.

said, he would not press it if his hon. Friend declined to accept it; but he could not help feeling that the words, as they stood in the clause, were vague and indefinite.

moved, in line 15, to leave out "no article or substance of an explosive or." He proposed afterwards to add the word "highly" before "inflammable," which would make the clause more stringent.

said, he objected to the Amendment, because its adoption would make the clause absolutely unreadable. It would not run together at all, nor would it be possible to make sense of it. It would read in this fashion—"inflammable character other than petroleum nor any of them."

said, he intended, if the Amendment were adopted, to put in the word "highly" before "inflammable."

said, that on comparing the clause and the proposal as it stood on the Paper, he was utterly at a loss to comprehend what it was his hon. Friend desired to do.

Of course, the hon. Member for Bolton (Mr. Thomas-son) does not propose to insert words in the clause that are incapable of being considered with it. The Amendment, as it at present stands on the Paper, will render the clause unreadable, and, therefore, cannot be put.

remarked, that if the words proposed to be struck out were omitted, he should then propose to insert the word "highly," which would make the clause correspond with Section 4.

moved, in line 15, after "or," to insert "highly." He explained that his reason for proposing the Amendment was that the word "highly" appeared in the other sections of the Bill.

said, his hon. Friend was probably not aware that the word "highly" had a technical meaning in connection with petroleum. Petroleum was variously described as "petroleum" and as "highly inflammable petroleum;" and it was proposed in the clause that neither the high nor the low test should be taken.