I am sure the House will only wish me to occupy its attention for a very brief time while I make the Motion which stands in my name— namely, that an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty to appoint Commissioners to inquire whether corrupt practices prevailed at Wigan. I must, however, state the circumstances under which this Motion comes before the House. When the Corrupt Practices Act was passed in 1852 there was a provision in case of the Committee reporting to the House that corrupt practices prevailed, or that there was reason to believe that they prevailed. on an Address to both Houses of Parliament, that a Royal Commission should issue to inquire into the circumstances of those corrupt practices. At that time the duty of determining an Election Petition rested with the Committee of this House, and then it was that the Chairman of the Committee made his Report to the House, and was in the habit of making a similar Motion to that which I am now making. It was then, undoubtedly, the practice of the House to discuss the question whether the Report of the Election Committee was or was not well founded. In 1868 the duty of trying Election Petitions was placed upon the Judges instead of the Election Committee; and it was thought that the Report of the Judges ought to be considered conclusive. A discussion took place in this House in 1869, when Mr. Gathorne Hardy, speaking with authority on the subject, said—

" When the Judge reports in the terms of the Act of last Session, and when a Motion is made, as in the present instance, by the Attorney General, we ought, I think, in order to avoid all painful discussions, to act in accordance with the Judge's Report. The whole of the facts are not gone into before the Judge; there is no occasion for a party to the proceedings to go further than he thinks necessary for his own objects; but the Judge has seen reason to ask the House to go further, and, relying on his Report, and the action of the Attorney General, I think it is our bounden duty to accept the recommendation of the Judge."—[3 Hansard, cxcv. 15.]

From that time the House has followed the suggestion made by Mr. Grathorne Hardy, and, with one exception, has always followed the finding of the Judge on this subject. The only exception was in one case where the Judge reported that the corrupt practice of treating only prevailed, and then the House declined to grant the Commission. That was where the offence was corrupt treating only, and if reference be made to the Corrupt Practices Act it will be seen that the Commission have no power to report persons guilty of treating; but in the case of bribery there has been no attempt to go back from Mr. Gathorne Hardy's suggestion. Now, in this case the Judges have reported that corrupt practices prevailed extensively—that is, in the words of the statute, and they think further inquiry should be made; and I know no reason, from looking into the Report or Judgment of the learned Judges, who have found, in terms that they have reason to believe, that corrupt practices have extensively prevailed, to see why the House should deviate from the path it has followed since 1869. Now, I understand that there is a good deal of local feeling on this matter, and I am warned by one of my hon. Friends that he will oppose this Motion; but I must ask the House to see what dangerous ground we shall tread upon if we go behind the Judges' Report. If once we give way to the feeling of the majority of this House, and say that in some instances we will follow, and in other instances we will not follow, the recommendation of the Judges, we shall lay ourselves open to the charge of determining the matter according to the political feeling of the House, and not according to any acknowledged rule or principle. We shall go back to those very worst days when matters of this kind were made the occasion of voting away the existence of a Ministry.

I must ask the House, notwithstanding what my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General has stated, to disagree with the Motion which he has put before us. The Attorney General asks us not to give way to our political feelings in the matter. I also ask the House not to be led away by its feelings, but rather to judge by the broad facts as to whether they should agree to an Election Commission being sent down to Wigan or not. At the time of this election there had been in Lancashire a strike which lasted six or seven weeks, and more than 50,000 workpeople were without work, and without wages, and without food. In that ease, it is but too likely that they would be tempted; and I believe it is a fact that on each side a number of voters had their breakfasts given to them, and after that they went to vote; and it is also a fact that there was a betting man who went round and betted that Mr. Powell would be returned, and in order to secure his return it is said that he spent some money. This having been put before the Judges, they came to the conclusion that corrupt practices had prevailed to a considerable extent, and, accordingly, they issued their Report. But I ask you, Sir, and I ask the House, whether this is a sufficient ground to issue a Commission? It does not seem to me that it is. I think we ought to have a broader ground before we send down to Wigan, which is practically a very poor place, a Commission to inquire into what has been done there for the last 25 years, imposing an enormous expense upon the town, and then coming to no very satisfactory conclusion. I regret that on this occasion the hon. Member for Wigan is not in his place. He is very ill, and cannot even write; and there is no one in this House to say a single word on behalf of the borough. Had the hon. Member been here, a single word from him would have gone a great deal further than a whole speech from me; but as he is not here, and I represent a borough neighbouring to his, and similar to it in many respects, I must say that I do not think that this Commission ought to issue. I must say that in the sense of Southern corruption, and comparing it with Southern towns, the borough of Wigan is perfectly pure. I live within seven miles of the place, and I know it perfectly well. The people are rough and ready, and a great many of them are colliers, who are certainly a dog-running, pigeon-flying, cock-fighting, Church-and-King-lot, who always vote Tory, but they are not corrupt; and I am certain that if you were to go to Wigan and offered to bribe 20 per cent of that town you would have the money thrown back in your face. I beg my hon. and learned Friend not to go to a division on this question; but if he thinks it necessary to do so I only hope that my hon. Friends will support me, and I believe that I shall get the support of the House. Wishing to expedite Business, I shall merely say that when the Question is put I shall meet it with a direct negative.

The Attorney General has inadvertently misled the House upon the state of the law on this subject, and for that reason I have intervened. The Act under which those Commissions issue, if they issue at all, is an Act which involves one of these conditions—that there should be an Address by the House for further inquiry, and when the alteration was made by which jurisdiction in election matters was transferred from the Committees of this House to the Judges no alteration whatever has been made in the jurisdiction which we are now asked to administer. It is simply an alteration of the jurisdiction of the Committees to the jurisdiction of the Judge; and my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General appeared to assume that there was some distinction to be drawn between the different forms of corrupt practices, both in the Report of the Judge and in the language of the statute. The Attorney General used the phrase that Mr. Justice Grove had reported '' corrupt practices by way of bribery had extensively prevailed."

You will find it so in the Judgment.

I have no doubt that that was the case. But what I venture to point out as an error of the Attorney General is where he states that, by a decision in a former case where the matter was discussed, and private treating only was reported, then the matter might be reviewed; but where the Judges report that corrupt practices extensively prevail all that the House has to look to, if we adopt the suggestion of the Attorney General, is the Report of the Judges. Under these circumstances we must do one of two things—either the matter is to be the subject of inquiry, or it is not. If it is, it is obvious that the whole matter is open; if it is not, and the House is to accept as of course the Report of the learned Judges, as the Attorney General has pointed out, that is not a practice which has uniformly prevailed. I have not gone into it, and I do not know about the matters of fact; but if the facts are as stated by the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Cross), and if it is open to the House to decide the matter, I shall certainly vote with the hon. Member. It seems to me that if it were considered desirable that this matter should not be determined by the House, and if it were desirable to do that which the Attorney General desires the House to do, nothing could have been easier than to have made a provision that in every case where the Judge or the Committee report that there should be a Commission such as is sought for by this Address. But that is not what the statute says. The statute enacts that where this House asks for further inquiry, that on this Address being agreed to a further inquiry should take place. Therefore, if this matter is to be discussed, I think it is fairly open to what the hon. Member has said, and if he goes into the Lobby I shall follow him.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask what course the Government intend to take in this grave political crisis? [No reply was given.]

rose to move—

" That this House considers the re-arrest of Mr. Michael Davitt was not warranted by his conduct during the interval which has elapsed since his release on ticket-of-leave, and is further of opinion that the length of the term, and the nature of the penal servitude previously suffered by Mr. Davitt, warrant his liberation."

The hon. Gentleman said, that, in calling the attention of the House to the re-arrest of Mr. Michael Davitt, he thought he would be able to show the House that the re-arrest, in the circumstances under which it took place, was unprecedented in the history of re-arrests of prisoners who had been released as Mr. Davitt was released. Mr. Davitt was convicted in 1869 or 1870 of the offence of supplying arms for the purpose of making war against the Queen. He was convicted in England before an English jury on the testimony, he (Mr. Parnell) believed, of a common informer. He was sentenced to 15 years' penal servitude. Another man who was convicted at the same time, a man named Wilson, a gun-maker, who was alleged to have made the rifles in question, and who was an Englishman, was sentenced to seven or ten years' penal servitude, from which he was liberated after he had served five years. In 1877, Mr. Davitt still remained in penal servitude. In 1877, the hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power), on the Report of the English Prisons Bill, moved that it was desirable to extend the scope of the Bill to convict prisoners, and incidentally, during the discussion of that Motion, he referred to the case of his friend Mr. Davitt, who was then in prison, in illustration of the hardships to which many prisoners then in convict prisons were subjected. The debate on that Motion, and the interest it excited, had such an effect upon the then Conservative Government that, combined with other reasons, they shortly afterwards liberated on ticket-of-leave all the remaining political prisoners who were then in prison, numbering altogether five. One of these persons— Colour-Sergeant M'Carthy— died of heart disease shortly after his liberation, and a Coroner's Jury of respectable tradesmen in Dublin returned a verdict to the effect that his death had been accelerated by his prison treatment. Of the others, O'Brien and Chambers were still at large on ticket-of-leave. Mr. Davitt took a prominent part in politics after his liberation, and was, practically speaking, the founder of the Land League movement. [Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT: Hear, hear!] During the 12 or 18 months which that movement lasted Mr. Davitt took a very prominent part in England, and Ireland, and America in aiding the organization and objects of the Land League. During the term of Office of the late Government Mr. Davitt was arrested, by direction, he supposed, of the Lord Lieutenant, and was brought for trial. The initial proceedings were taken before the magistrates at the Petty Sessions at Sligo on a charge of sedition contained in one or more of his public speeches. The magistrates investigated the case, and committed Mr. Davitt for trial; but bail was accepted, and Mr. Davitt was released, and continued his public course with regard to the purposes of the National Land League. When the time came for the proceedings against Mr. Davitt in Dublin before a special jury, the Crown declined to proceed further in the matter, and the Conservative Government went out of Office. Upon a Question addressed by him (Mr. Parnell) to the present Attorney General for Ireland as to whether he intended to proceed against Mr. Davitt, the right hon. and learned Gentleman informed him that he did not intend to proceed further in the matter. Mr. Davitt subsequently went to America; but on hearing of the commencement of the State prosecutions he returned to Ireland, as Mr. Davitt considered it his duty to be at the post of danger, though he and all Mr. Davitt's friends specially requested him to continue in America, in order that he might help the Land League more advantageously. Mr. Davitt, however, returned to Ireland, where he remained from November until the day of his re-arrest— namely, about the 4th of February, by the direction, it might be supposed, of the present Home Secretary. He did not know any cause for Mr. Davitt's re-arrest. No convict was re-arrested unless he had done something in violation of the conditions of his ticket-of-leave, or was engaged in some unlawful conduct. He thought the onus of proving that Mr. Davitt had done either of those things was thrown on the Government. Soon after Mr. Davitt's re-arrest he asked the Home Secretary which of the conditions of the ticket-of-leave Mr. Davitt had broken, and the Home Secretary had refused to answer this, implying that neither of the conditions had been broken. On a subsequent occasion a similar Question was addressed to the Home Secretary by his hon. Friend (Mr. J. Cowen), and he thought the Home Secretary definitely stated that Mr. Davitt had not been re-arrested on the ground of any breach of the conditions contained in his ticket-of-leave. But if Mr. Davitt was not arrested for a breach of the conditions contained in his ticket-of-leave, he must have been arrested for the speeches he delivered in connection with the land movement in Ireland. Mr. Davitt delivered 15 speeches after his return from America, between the 22nd of November, 1880, and the 3rd of February, 1881. He (Mr. Parnell) had gone carefully over all those speeches, and he found that they were characterized, to an eminent degree, by their moderation of tone, and by the fact that in almost every one of them—he thought that in all but two of them—Mr. Davitt emphatically urged the people to refrain from any outrage whatever, and from any violation of the law. He thought he could best impress the House with an opinion of Mr. Davitt's conduct—the conduct for which he was arrested—by reading some extracts he had culled from Mr. Davitt's speeches, so that the House might judge for itself as to the general tone and character of the speeches for which the ticket-of-leave was revoked. At Ballynamara, Cork, on the 22nd of November, Mr. Davitt said—

" John Bright had always spoken out honestly for Ireland as an Englishman, and while he apmitted that, and would willingly give him all the credit due to him, still John Bright, far in advance as he was of every English statesman, was not yet sufficiently advanced to meet the views of the Irish people on this Land Question. He thought that Mr. Bright, being a conscientious statesman, could be educated into fuller belief in this programme, provided the Land League organization and the tenant farmers of Ireland made up their minds now, and during1 the coming winter, not to accept any half measure or any tinkering legislation on this Irish Land Question."

Mr. Davitt, when alluding to his recent tour in America, said—

" Nothing tends to injure our cause with the American people so much as the occasional acts of violence which injustice prompts to commit in parts of the country. The landlord organs here and in England take care to colour these occurences, so as to represent them as directly resulting from the agitation and teachings of the Land League (cries of ' It is false '). I believe, from my own intercourse with representative Americans and newspaper men in the United States, that the Irish landlords could do nothing better to create sympathy for their cause and obtain a condemnation of ours in America than to shoot a half-dozen of their number, with a few agents thrown in, to swell the horror, and then charge the deed upon the Land League and the tenant farmers of Ireland. (Lengthened cheering.) Let the world see that we have higher game in sight and a nobler object in view than stooping to war on any miserable individual, while the system that makes him the instrument of tyranny still stands upon our shores, and frowns down the happiness and prosperity of our nation (loud cheers)."

He should not wish to use many words of his own; but he wished to put Michael Davitt's words before the House, and though he was imprisoned, and though he should die there, long after his death his words would live in the hearts of the Irish people. At Sligo, on November 29, he said—

" To Mr. Charles Russell is due the credit of having offered the fairest plan of settlement yet outside the Land League, and I feel assured that our people generally will appreciate the warm interest which he has manifested in the cause of Irish Land Reform…. Let nothing be done or attempted which can endanger this great movement, and give your enemies the advantage over you. Let false friends and land-grabbers be ' Boycotted,' but refrain from any and all acts of violence. If I cared to parade the wrongs which landlordism has inflicted upon me and mine, perhaps there is no man in Ireland to-day who has more cause to harbour feelings of revenge than I have; but revenge is an ignoble feeling, the cultivation of which destroys the better and more manly at tributes with which God has endowed men to combat wrong and vindicate right, and should not be allowed to usurp the mind or direct the impulse of Christian men. The revenge which we should seek in this great movement is to strike down ignorance by labouring to remove its cause, to see the miserable hovels of our people—the blots upon the social life of Ireland, as well as upon its landscape beauty—pulled down and replaced by neat and comfortable dwellings, plenty and wholesome food substituted for the Indian meal stir about and rotten potatoes, which have impoverished the physical life of our people, rags replaced by respectable raiment, and general prosperity rising victorious over national poverty (cheers). Let the victims of the Land League movement be injustice, ignorance, social degradation, and pauperism."

These were noble sentiments, which did not entitle the utterer to the penal cell, but to high honour and emolument from the State. At Mitchelstown, on December the 7th, 1880, Mr. Davitt said—

" Band together, then, in open combination for your just rights…. ' Boycott,' but do not injure your enemies and false friends, and no power on earth can save Irish landlordism from destruction, or prolong the poverty and misery which have hitherto been your lot (loud cheers)." [During Mr. Davitt's speech it was significant that a man who called out ''Shoot the landlords," was roughly taken in hand and kicked out as a disturber.]

At Blessington, on December the 14th, Mr. Davitt said—

"I am not here to ask any man to commit any act or any outrage which would be repudiated or condemned from any platform or pulpit in the land. I do not require you, neither does the Land League, to lay a hand upon a single hair of any man's head."

At the weekly meeting of the Land League, in Dublin, on December the 15th, Mr. Davitt spoke as follows: —

" They were not there to palliate or to justify in the least any outrage that had been committed since the land movement commenced. …. While denouncing these manufactured outrages he desired it to be understood as not in the least excusing any of those outrages that had taken place (hear, hear) … Threatening letters are as unnecessary as they are stupidly criminal and unjustifiable, and we feel assured that no member of our organization has resorted to such a method of making just demands which invites the stigma of cowardice, and clumsily plays into the hands of the landlords. If a just right cannot fearlessly be demanded by a victim of landlord power when a powerful organization is at his back to protect him, he deserves neither a concession from the landlord nor assistance from the League in obtaining it …. In speaking of the injuries inflicted upon dumb animals we cannot for a single instant believe that either the numerous reports of these monstrous outrages, which the landlord organs are publishing, or that a single man within the ranks of our organization would be guilty of participating in the few cases which, we are sorry to say, have been authenticated. No injustice in the power of Irish landlordism to perpetrate upon the people could justify in the least degree the unfeeling brutality which inflicts injuries or suffering upon harmless and defenceless animals in revenge for the wrongs committed by their owners … A fair and judicious use of the power of combination against the enemies of the people, traitors to the League, or instruments of unjust eviction, or other landlord injustice, will work the requirements of our movement in the present crisis without any resort to moans or methods which would offer a pretext for foul play against the organization, or estrange the moral support of public opinion outside of Ireland from a just and noble cause …. He had just one remark to make in reference to what was known as ' Boycotting.' He did not speak on behalf of the executive, but merely as a member of the executive, when he said that what might be used as a just and legitimate weapon when properly directed might degenerate into a means of doing injury or wrong against those who had committed no offence against the movement (hear, hear). He trusted that the officers of the various branches of the Land League throughout the country would endeavour to prevent the name of the Land League or its influence being used in miserable squabbles between individuals in parishes or towns throughout the country. When the movement was called into existence it was undertaken by men who were desirous of advancing the social good of the people of Ireland, and none of them who had taken any part in founding that would approve of its being used in the way which it was, he was sorry to say, being used in some parts of the country (hear, hear)."

Mr. Davitt spoke as follows at a meeting at the Curragh on December the 20th: —

"They think they can goad our people in Ireland, all defenceless as they are, into making an attempt on the military, in order that they may be mowed down. But they will find that the people of Ireland to-day are too well educated to rush heedlessly to destruction. They will find that we have another, and probably surer, way of settling the Land Question."

At Rathcoole, County Dublin, on December the 22nd, he spoke as follows: —

"What the Land League proposed—that instead of having one individual tenant farmer taking the settlement of the Irish Land Question into his own hand by resorting to violence against one landlord—was the more efficacious and more systematic remedy for getting rid of the system. This was by combination and by loyal action between the tenant farmers and the labourers. There was no necessity for making this great organization an engine of tyranny or oppression to any class throughout the country. He had a few words to say to them on the question of 'Boycotting' (cheers). It was a weapon that might be put to uses that it never was intended for; and he was sorry to say that in some instances throughout the country it had been resorted to against individuals who had never injured this movement, and who were not the enemies of the League. He hated tyranny. He hated it whether it came from the landlords or from the ranks of the Irish National Land League. He had warred against tyranny since he was a boy, and he would war against it to the end of his days; and as one of the Irish National Land League he would set his face, and would endeavour to set the organization, against this weapon being used against any man in Ireland simply because he refuses to join the Irish Land League. If they denounced coercion coming from the Government, or injustice coming from the landlords, how could they sanction coercion from their own ranks? (Hear, hear.) This was a great moral organization for a moral purpose, and it must be carried on on moral lines. And while the Land League would never shrink from doing its duty to the tenant farmer, it would set its face against the unjust use of this weapon of 'Boycotting' (hear, hear)."

At Kilbrin, near Kanturk, on January the 17th, he said—

"Despite the efforts that are being made to drive you from stern, passive attitude into loose and violent action, adhere to the programme of the League, and repel every incentive to outrage and every inducement to give your enemies an opportunity of wiping out this movement in the blood of Irishmen (enthusiastic cheering) … But glorious indeed will be our victory, and high in the estimation of mankind will our grand old fatherland stand, if we can so curb our passions and control our acts in this struggle for free land as to march to success through provocation and danger without resorting to the wild justice of revenge, or being guilty of anything which could sully the character of a brave and Christian people (renewed cheering)."

The hon. Gentleman also read an extract from Mr. Davitt's speech at the Land League mooting in Dublin on the 3rd of February, 1881, which was supposed to have been the cause of his arrest, and in which he called the Chief Secretary for Ireland "Mr. Outrage Forster." The extract was as follows: —

"The reasons, he thought, which should prompt them to call this Convention now were —first, to show Mr. Forster and England, by an assemblage of the League representatives in Dublin, that the local leaders of the organization are neither ruffians, blackguards, nor scoundrels; and, second, to show Mr. Outrage Forster, the chief slanderer of Ireland, that his Coercion Bill will not strike terror into the hearts of the Land League."

He was arrested a few days afterwards. That was his last speech; and that was the only speech which departed from the moderate and even language which Mr. Davitt was in the habit of using. But even the appellation of "Mr. Outrage Forster" was not, he submitted, sufficient to justify the arrest of this noble man—noble in the best sense of the word, from the fact that he possessed the best attributes that it was possible to poor human nature—and dooming him to the horrors of a penal cell. It was not enough that a man able to utter such sentiments at a time of great provocation—such provocation that very few men imitated his moderate language; no man did, not even himself (Mr. Parnell)—it was not sufficient that Mr. Davitt had suffered seven years' of penal servitude, during which he had received the most infamous treatment— treatment which, he was happy to say, had now been remedied for the better, though the discipline of penal servitude must be still severe. That treatment was referred to by Mr. O'Connor Power in 1877; and in one of Michael Davitt's letters, read at that time, he stated that in consequence of that treatment he suffered from catarrh and excessive spitting of phlegm, and that the climate was so severe, and the food so bad and filthy, that it was a wonder that the men could bear out against the cold and hunger. He would now ask the House to agree to the terms of his present Resolution, which were these—

"That this House consider the re-arrest of Mr. Michael Davitt was not warranted by his conduct during the interval which has elapsed since his release on ticket-of-leave, and is further of opinion that the length of the term, and the nature of the penal servitude previously suffered by Mr. Davitt, warrant his liberation."

In a pamphlet written by Mr. Davitt, he stated that the constant story of the English Press was that the Land League never denounced crime; but he could not believe in the truth of the enormous outrages that the landlord organs published, or that a single man in their body would be guilty of participating even in the few cases that were authenticated, because nothing could justify brutality that would inflict suffering on harmless animals. As he (Mr. Parnell) had said, the belief in Ireland was that the arrest was in consequence of Davitt's attack upon the Chief Secretary. It was upon that ground that it was supposed the arrest was ordered by the Home Secretary; but there was no doubt that Mr. Davitt would have been arrested sooner or later, and at least they might have given him the comparative leniency of treatment by detaining him under the Protection of Person and Property Act. If the Government had only waited for a few days it would have been in their power to have re-arrested him under the provisions of the Act. They knew that Davitt's power as a public speaker, his great earnestness and energy, his wonderful belief in his cause, his great influence with Irishmen, would have compelled the Government to have arrested him; but at least they might have done it in an honourable and respectable manner. The hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen) had justly characterized Mr. Davitt's arrest as the meanest and most contemptible act ever done by any Government. Mr. Davitt had at least earned a right to the comparative leniency of treatment involved in detention under the Coercion Act; and why had the Government gone back upon the old offence committed by Mr. Davitt when he was little more than a boy, in the first enthusiasm of youth, and when he thought he would have freed his country by taking the field openly against the armed forces of England? Why seek to punish him over again for an offence for which, practically speaking, the clemency of the Crown had been extended through the late Conservative Government? Even they, when they thought it necessary to take notice of his conduct, did not go to work in this mean and underhand manner. They brought him to trial, and, finding his words were not such as rendered him justly amenable to the law, they dropped the proceedings against him. The present Government might, perhaps, have feared that they would not obtain his conviction; but they had the Coercion Act almost ready to their hand, and Mr. Davitt could hardly have overturned Ireland during the interval required for passing that statute. Mr. Davitt's acts had been done openly, in the light of day; his speeches made on public platforms, in the presence of Government reporters, would have been an honour for their eloquence and purity of sentiment to any man; and he now called upon the Government for the defence of their action—Mr. Davitt's conduct needed none. The hon. Member concluded by moving his Amendment.

said, the hon. Member for the City of Cork had called upon the Government for a defence of their conduct. He was perfectly entitled to do so; and, considering his relations with Mr. Davitt and his proceedings, the Government had no right to complain of the course he had taken and the manner in which he had brought this case before the House. He would endeavour, as far as he could, to avoid any harshness of expression; but, at the same time, it was his duty to place before the House and the country the reasons which had governed the Administration in the course they had pursued in that matter. Although he accepted his own full share of responsibility, it was not to be supposed that any step had been taken on that subject, except upon the united opinion of the responsible Advisers of the Crown. Following the example of the hon. Member for the City of Cork, he must revert to the history of Michael Davitt's original conviction; and, first, he must call attention to the character of the offence for which he had been indicted. The charges against him were conspiring to move foreigners and strangers to invade Ire-laud, by inducing them to become members of a society called the Fenian Brotherhood, having for its object the overthrow of Her Majesty's power in Ireland; and, further, with attending meetings of the Fenian Brotherhood and procuring arms, and other overt acts. That offence was proved, and that Michael Davitt was guilty of it, nobody, he thought, denied. He did not think that Davitt himself—and there was no reason to believe he was an untruthful person —would deny it. The hon. Member for the City of Cork had adverted to the difference between the sentence passed on Michael Davitt and that passed on the man named Wilson, who was indicted with him; and he had suggested —though the suggestion was entirely unfounded—that the difference was made on the ground that Wilson was an Englishman. [Mr. PARNELL said, that was not the meaning of his remarks.] As the hon. Member repudiated that, he would withdraw the observation. The hon. Member had stated that Davitt was sentenced on the evidence of an informer. That was not so. The reason why a severer sentence was passed on Michael Davitt was the evidence of a man who was called in his defence, named Forester, who, on cross-examination, gave evidence about a certain letter in Davitt's handwriting, as to which the Lord Chief Justice, in passing sentence, said it showed that there had been a villainous and dark design, to be viewed with the utmost horror, against the life of some man; and he condemned Davitt to 15 years' penal servitude. [Cries of "Head ! "] The right hon. and learned Gentleman then read the letter referred to, and wont on to say that Forester admitted that it was in Davitt's handwriting; that it came from Davitt; but he said that Davitt had sent it to him "as a police trap." [Mr. HEALY asked who Forester was?] He was a Fenian. The Jury and the Lord Chief Justice formed their opinion as to that letter; and it was upon that letter that Lord Chief Justice Cockburn made the observation—in which he entirely concurred, and in which he believed 99 out of every 100 persons in this country would concur —that there had been a dark and villainous design against the life of some man, who had been referred to as a traitor and a rotten sheep. That was the reason why a severer sentence was passed on Michael Davitt. It was one of the miserable consequences of those secret societies that they taught men, otherwise honourable, to look upon dark designs of assassination as justifiable. Davitt was released on a ticket-of-leave on the 18th of December, 1877, having been convicted in July, 1870. The hon. Member for the City of Cork had given his view as to why the late Government released Davitt, and appeared to know more about the matter than he (Sir William Harcourt) did. He was unable to state to the House the grounds on which they were induced to take that course, and he regretted there was no responsible Member of the Opposition present to give an account of their conduct in the matter. In all the discussions, too, in relation to the conduct of the present Chief Secretary for Ireland, the Government had neither had the benefit of the criticisms nor the support of the Members of the Opposition. They had been free of their charges against the conduct of the present Irish Executive; but there was no one present to state the reasons for the course the late Government pursued in this business.

supposed there was no doubt that the late Home Secretary knew of this letter.

said, no doubt; it was read at the trial. What the reasons of the Conservative Government were for taking the course they did in releasing Davitt he was unable to state. The hon. Member for City of Cork, however, hinted that there were some reasons other than those given to the House; but, if there were such, he (Sir William Harcourt) knew nothing of them. He wished the House to observe that there were several conditions attached to the licence on which Davitt was released, the first of these being that it was to be forfeited if any indictable offence was committed, without any action on the part of the Executive Government. The second condition was that it should continue, unless it should please Her Majesty to alter or revoke it; and, thirdly, it was stated that the licence was given subject to the conditions endorsed upon the same, upon breach of any of which it should be liable to be revoked, whether such breach were followed by conviction or not. It would be seen, therefore, that the licence was expressly framed to exclude conviction on criminal pressure. The hon. Member said it was an unprecedented proceeding to revoke a licence without the commission of some offence for which the prisoner had been proceeded against. But that was not so. There were numerous precedents for the revocation of licences without legal proceedings, where the person on ticket-of-leave misconducted himself. A man released on ticket-of-leave was, in fact, a probationer out on good behaviour, and the observance of law and order was more strictly impressed upon him than any other point. Well, the late Government, also for reasons that he was unacquainted with—and there was no Member of the Opposition present to explain the fact—waived in Davitt's case the ordinary condition that he should from time to time report himself to the police. But it appeared to him that the indulgence granted only made the obligation stronger upon Davitt to observe that conduct which was incumbent on a man out of prison upon the grace and favour of the Grown. He might liken Davitt to a prisoner of war, who, by reason of his having been liberated on parole, was still more bound than he would otherwise have been not to make war upon the enemy. Davitt, as the hon. Member for the City of Cork had stated, went, on his release, to America, and returned in 1878; and he thought the hon. Member raised a very fair issue when he asked, "What was the conduct of Mr. Davitt when he returned?" The hon. Member said Davitt was the author of the Land League, and no doubt considered he was, by saying that, paying him a high complement; but that was not the only light in which Davitt presented himself when he returned to England. Being at large under the special grace of the Crown, Michael Davitt returned to England to carry on agitation as an avowed Fenian. [Mr. PARNELL dissented.] The hon. Member shook his head; but he did not suppose for a moment that this statement was made without authority. In June, 1879, in founding a branch of the Land League, Davitt declared the continuance of the land system to be a criminal disregard of the social well-being of Ireland. He did not object to that. Davitt urged them to organize, and he said—

" What have organizations done for Ireland? They say that the organization to which I have the honour to belong—the Fenian Organization —has disestablished the Irish Church."

They knew what that meant; it was the old Clerkenwell story.

"Well," Davitt went on, "the organization of the tenant farmers will disestablish the landlords in half the time."

[Irish cheers.] That was exactly what he supposed. Here was a Fenian convict coming over from America, founding the Land League, avowedly modelled upon the Fenian Organization, and saying that the methods by which the Irish Church was disestablished were to be followed in this case. He had said in that House before, and he had proof enough of it, that there were intimate relations between Fenianism and the Land League; and if he wanted anything more it would be the fact that the avowed author and originator of the Land League was the Fenian convict, and that he spoke in his earliest speches of it in that relation to the Fenian conspiracy. [" No ! "] Well, people would judge. To show the tone of this meeting he would refer to the speech of another gentleman who spoke and moved a resolution. This gentleman, in his speech, asked this question—

" Why wonder, when scenes like those are of daily occurrence, you should sometimes hear the report of a revolver in the night air?"

This was the early tone of the Land League. The speech to which he was referring was made by Mr. Brennan, who was, happily, now in Kilmainham, and there was, therefore, less heard of the report of the revolver in the night air. [Cries of "Oh, oh!" and "More!"] He did not think there was more heard of these reports; he thought they had ceased; but hon. Members opposite seemed to know more about it than he did. There was another speaker and mover of a resolution, who said—

" Let them continue to be as faithful as the 300 Spartans who fell at Thermopolis, as the three brave Romans who held the bridge, and as the three brave Irishmen who, with the words 'God save Ireland ' on their lips, met a glorious doom at Manchester."

Those were the men who murdered a policeman. [Loud cries of "No ! "]

Order, order !"

Those were the three brave men who murdered the policeman.

Whom you murdered.

Now, this was the earliest style in which the Land League Organization was introduced to the knowledge of the Irish people by a man who was under sentence as a Fenian convict for conspiring with the Fenian Brotherhood to overthrow Her Majesty's power in Ireland. Well, then, the hon. Member for the City of Cork had referred to the prosecution instituted by the late Government against Mr. Davitt. It was a singular fact that as soon as Mr. Davitt returned to Ireland the late Government considered his language as seditious, and instituted a prosecution. He regretted the absence of the Members of the late Government from their places during this discussion, and especially those who took part in the Executive Government of Ireland; but he was happy to see one noble Lord on the Front Opposition Bench who was connected with the late Government, and he (Sir William Harcourt) would be glad if the noble Lord would explain to the House why the late Government instituted a prosecution against Mr. Davitt, and why they subsequently abandoned it.

I had no connection with the Government of Ireland.

But the noble Lord exercised a powerful influence over the Government which governed Ireland at that time. Well, there was no doubt that the late Government instituted a prosecution and abandoned it; but his opinion was that that was not the proper course to adopt.

here made an observation which did not reach the Gallery.

said Order must be observed.

said, the House had given the hon. Member for the City of Cork a patient hearing, and he thought hon. Members opposite might be patient and allow him to state his views. In his opinion it was an absurdity, looking at the terms of Davitt's ticket-of-leave, to proceed against him in that manner. If the Government were of opinion that the man had violated the law so that he ought to be proceeded against, it was his opinion that the proper course to adopt was to revoke his ticket-of-leave. It was not for him to defend the conduct of the late Government at all in instituting the prosecution and then abandoning it. They had been told that there was a want of firmness with the present Executive of Ireland; but he thought that the conduct of the late Government with regard to Mr. Davitt did not show that they adopted a firm course. In his opinion, it rather encouraged such proceedings instead of putting a stop to them. Whether Mr. Davitt, on finding that the late Government had dropped the prosecution against him, was encouraged to go on and become bolder in his language, he did not know; but certainly, with the immunity he then enjoyed, the character of his proceedings increased in their audacity. The hon. Member for the City of Cork had alluded to the Land League having been imported by Mr. Davitt from America. [" No ! "] Well, Mr. Davitt came back from America with the Land League in his pocket. He constantly alluded to America and its bearing upon the Land League; but nobody could properly understand this question who did not bear in mind the relations in America and action in Ireland, both of the Land League and Fenianism. The hon. Member for the City of Cork did not appear to agree with him; but he would say that the Land League was to a very great degree an exotic which had been imported and brought by Davitt from America. ["No, no!"] Well, if it was an indigenous plant, at least the roots derived their nourishment from America.

Not entirely.

Not entirely. What? should he say 19s. in the pound? He had looked at the subscription list with interest every week, and he had found that what was called the "subscription subsidy" was mainly an American subsidy, and he would undertake to say also that it was, to a very large extent, Fenian.

Not at all.

said, he had often tried, and he would make another attempt that day, to see if he could get a disavowal or disclaimer of Fenianism from hon. Gentlemen opposite. It would be a very important disclaimer, and he was also disposed to think that it would be a very inconvenient one. It might do what the hon. Member's Motion was doing—it might stop the supplies; and he believed that was one reason why he had not been able to obtain that disclaimer of connection with American Fenianism which he had always been so extremely anxious to get. Well, there was an old and very true proverb, that" the man who pays the piper ought to choose the tune." The hon. Members opposite knew who paid the piper, and the Government knew very well whore the tune was organized. The piper was on the other side of the Atlantic, and the tune came from there as well. The piper was getting a little tired of his work, and he hoped the tune was going out of fashion in America. He wished to call attention also to what the hon. Member for the City of Cork had said, though he did not wish it to be understood that Davitt was arrested because he called his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant "Outrage Forster." If all the people who called his right hon. Friend names in Ireland were put in prison the gaols would be full. [A VOICE: So they are.]

I said that was the immediate cause of Mr. Davitt's imprisonment; and I may also say that all the people who have called the right hon. Gentleman that name are in prison.

said, that if that were so it might be doubted whether the hon. Member for the City of Cork would be at large.

I shall repeat my language.

said, he had felt it to be his duty to revoke Davitt's ticket-of-leave, and that was done without reference to his language about "Outrage Forster." ["Oh!"] Very little he said, or that his right hon. Friend said, would meet with credence from hon. Gentlemen opposite. [" Hear, hear!"] He observed that the hon. Member for Cavan, with his usual courtesy, cheered that. He hoped he was not speaking in a tone that was offensive. Now, the hon. Member for the City of Cork had read a number of passages from Davitt's speeches, which he (Mr. Parnell) said had had an admirable tendency, and were of the most peaceful character. Of course, it depended very much upon how they collected these passages, and whether or not they had the context in which they stood. Davitt, like a great many other members of the Land League and Fenian Organization, had two voices. They professed, on the one hand, to be the most innocent and quiet people in the world, and to have no desire to commit any acts of violence at all, and they preached most excellent sermons. They also had a tone of another description. In one of Davitt's speeches, reported in The Nation on the 22nd of January, 1881, which was probably delivered on the 16th of that month at a meeting at Kilbride, near Mallow, he is reported to have said—

"If your patience becomes exhausted by Government brutality, and every right, privilege, and hope which is your God-given inheritance, be trampled upon by a vindictive Power, the world will hold England and not you responsible if the wolf-dog of Irish vengeance bounds over the Atlantic at the very heart of that Power from which it is now held back by the influence of the Land League."

[Irish cheers.] That was the language cheered by hon. Members opposite, and that was the language which was held by the Fenian convict under sentence for conspiring to move foreigners and strangers to invade Ireland. He should like to know what that language meant if it did not mean that if these men did not succeed—[Loud cries of "No ! " from the Irish Members]—he believed every man of common sense would interpret them as he did—[Cries of "No!"]— and he would appeal to their judgment whether this language did not mean that if these men did not get their own way and if their patience became exhausted, then the wolf-dog of Irish vengeance was to bound across the Atlantic? He would like to know whether there was any Government in the world who would tolerate such language from the mouth of a Fenian convict?

Fenianism had been condoned.

Fenianism had been condoned! It might have been condoned by the hon. Gentleman who made the observation. Fenianism had not been, and was not, condoned by the people of the United Kingdom. He took issue upon that question, and declared that Fenianism was not condoned. What was the condition of Ireland in January when that speech was made? It was a condition of the greatest excitement; it was a condition horrible to remember. This was also the month in which his (Mr. Davitt's) friend, Mr. Brennan, said that he rejoiced to say that revolvers were heard in the midnight air. [Derisive Laughter.]

That was a year before.

said, this was jeered and ridiculed by hon. Gentlemen opposite. It might have been, spoken a year before; but everybody in England knew what the condition of Ireland was at the time Davitt was threatening—he would not say the English Government, but civilized society—by the wolf-dog that was to bound across the Atlantic. He would now refer to the speech which the hon. Member for the City of Cork said he thought was the immediate cause of Davitt's arrest, and which, the hon. Member said was characterized by such admirable moderation. There was a passage in the speech which the hon. Member had not read, and which ran thus—

"Do you believe for a single moment that if this contest lay in. another field than that of peaceful agitation, or if the weapons in our hands were other than those of ideas, we would strike our colours at the first warning of danger, and fly from the enemy? Would we not rather swear face to face with our enemies that every sod beneath our feet should be a soldier's sepulchre rather than victory should be snatched from us?"

Throughout the whole of this language —whether it be the language of the Fenian conspiracy or of the Land League organization—there was always this menace about ulterior force, a threat to resort to this ulterior force that ran through the whole of those speeches. This sort of language proceeded until the Government thought it was high time that it should be put a stop to, and they had put a stop to it. They had not heard such talk in any part of Ireland as that of the wolf-dog crossing the Atlantic or about drilling since the passing of the Coercion Act and the arrest of Davitt. People in Ireland were now, at all events, more prudent. There was, no doubt, plenty of such talk in the United States. The early tone of the Land League in its lighter and more convivial moments was still to be found. He had seen the account of a dinner which was given to the American and English deputation to the Land League. The dinner took place last month, and in The Dublin Irishman of July 16th he saw an account of it. [An hon. MEMBER: Was Mr. Davitt there?] No; Mr. Davitt was not there; but Mr. Thomas Sexton was there.

I must, in the name of good order, protest against these interruptions, and I shall be bound to notice them if they are continued.

Order, order !

Oh, Home Rule. This he might say, at all events, if he might borrow the expression of the late noble Earl (the Earl of Beaconsfield), that in the minds and in the actions of men like Davitt the Land League was, and was intended to be, veiled Fenianism. The speeches with regard to peaceful agitation were always accompanied by this alternative threat of an armed force being employed against the Government of the country and against the welfare of Ireland. He had found no speech of Mr. Davitt's which had come under his notice which did not contain as much on one side as the other. Considering the condition of Ireland in January last, considering the character of this Land League, and this conduct on the part of Mr. Davitt, was it possible that the English Government should leave him at large? He flaunted Fenianism in the face of the Government; and had they allowed him to go at large it would have been said that they were afraid of Davitt. [Mr. PARNELL: Hear, hear!] And afraid of his braggart talk. [A VOICE: You are the braggart.] He was entitled to use that phrase when a man talked about "the wolf-dog leaping across the Atlantic." What was that but braggart talk? Davitt knew perfectly well that the Government of the United States, and the people of the United States, would take care that no "wolf-dog" of that kind came across the Atlantic; and when Mr. Redpath and other gentlemen went back to America they would find a very different tone of feeling on the subject of wolf-dogs and assassination-talk. Whatever might be the feeling of the people of the United Kingdom, there was just as great a detestation and abhorrence in every part of the United States against this atrocious language of these assassin conspirators. The English Government that would allow the Irish people to be influenced by such language and such proceedings as these would be entirely unworthy of their trust, and would entirely betray the interests of that society which they were bound to maintain; and, therefore, using that right which they unquestionably possessed in law, and accepting that responsibility which they could not decline, they ordered the arrest of Mr. Davitt; and they were prepared to abide by the decision of the House and of the country upon the course which they had taken. In his opinion, the effect of the arrest of Mr. Davitt and the passing of the Coercion Act had been to produce a far more tranquil condition of things in Ireland than prevailed last winter. [Mr. PAR-NELL dissented.] The hon. Member for the City of Cork shook his head—he could not expect the hon. Member to agree with him. With reference to the treatment of Davitt, he did not think, given imprisonment, it would be said that Davitt had any cause to complain of the manner in which he had been treated in prison. [Mr. PAKNELL: For penal servitude.] For penal servitude. He had taken great care that it should be so. All the indulgence possible had been extended to a person in his condition. He was aware that Davitt's health was delicate, and he was treated as an invalid. His own physician could visit him, and his friends could visit him. There was one hon. Gentleman—the hon. and learned Member for Meath (Mr. A. M. Sullivan)—whose absence they all deplored, who, if present, could testify that the treatment of Davitt was not harsh. He knew how hardly it pressed upon a man of an intelligent mind to be deprived of his liberty, and he had provided that he should not have to perform labour for which he was unsuited, and that he should have reasonable occupation. He was also allowed to select his own books, and to have writing materials. As to his health, and the statement of the hon. Member for the City of Cork about his dying in prison, he was informed he was much more likely to live in prison—at all events, his health had very greatly improved. He hoped the House would be of opinion that the Government were justified in the course they had taken. It was a course rendered just and necessary under the circumstances, and that without it peace and order was seriously imperilled in Ireland. It was necessary to show that the law could be vindicated against such proceedings and such language as Davitt "was employing to inflame and exasperate the minds of the Irish people, and to which he did very seriously attribute the outrages which took place last winter.

rose to address the House, when—

said, he thought that it was right the Home Secretary should deal with Irish Business, as it afforded him an opportunity of indulging in his usual slander. He had treated the House to a series of quotations from the speeches of Mr. Davitt and of the late Earl of Beaconsfield. If the extracts made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman from the speeches of the Earl of Beaconsfield were not more accurate than those which he had ascribed to Mr. Davitt, very little reliance could be placed in them. One novel by Mr. Disraeli the right hon. and learned Gentleman had, however, undoubtedly read. He referred to Lothair, in which what was supposed to be the incarnation of all secret societies throughout the world was designated by the appellation of "Mary Ann." The right hon. and learned Gentleman seemed to be haunted by the shadow of "Mary Ann," for they never heard anything from him in the House but stories of treasons, stratagems, and spoils. Among tine quotations which they had from the right hon. and learned Gentleman were some which referred to occurrences with which Davitt had had nothing to do. They had been told, for instance, of a dinner which took place months after Davitt's arrest, at which, according to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, various members of the Land League were present. But the men of "light and leading" who were at that dinner were members of the National Confederation of Great Britain, and not leaders of the Land League at all, and yet Mr. Davitt was to be held responsible in some mysterious way for the utterances of the gentlemen present. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had referred to a speech made by Davitt in June, 1879. That speech, in the opinion of the Home Secretary, was a direct attack on the late Government, and the right hon. and learned Gentleman said that the late Government ought to have taken notice of Davitt's utterances, and ought not to have abandoned that prosecution which was set on foot. But he might remind the right hon. and learned Gentleman that it was the present Government who abandoned that prosecution, for the process of law against Davitt remained over in the Courts owing to some technical details during the General Election which resulted in the defeat of the late Government, and consequently the present Government could have proceeded with the prosecution if they had been desirous of doing so. The fact was, therefore, that the present Attorney General for Ireland and his Colleagues were responsible for the abandonment of the prosecution of Mr. Davitt and his comrades. In the speech delivered in June, 1879, Mr. Davitt, according to the right and learned hon. Gentleman, made use of this phrase—"He had the honour of being a member of the Fenian Organization." These words, however, were an instance of faulty reporting, the reporter having, in turning the speech into the third person, made a mistake in the tense. The phrase ought to have appeared in this form— "He had had the honour of being a member of the Fenian Organization." The right hon. and learned Gentleman appeared to be of opinion that this Fenian Organization was the model on which the Land League had been formed. But he would point out that one was conducted by means of open meetings, and the other by secret conclaves. He did not see how the two things could be considered to be at all alike. Another speech quoted by the Home Secretary was that delivered by Mr. Davitt at Mallow, in which he made use of the expression "wolf-dog." The early portion of that speech was, in his opinion, such as might be found in the mouth of any lover of liberty. The first proposition contained in it was that if all the rights and privileges to which the people were entitled were trampled under foot, certain consequences would follow. Was that a proposition to which Englishmen would say nay? In the case of Greece, or Montenegro, or in that of the Transvaal, would an appeal to arms in the cause of liberty be thought so very criminal by the Government? The House ought to bear in mind the words of Lord John Russell to the effect that it was the right of every nation to choose its own Government, and that if that right were denied to a nation it would be justified in resorting to rebellion. If the rights of these people were denied, as Mr. Davitt was reported to have said, they were, in his opinion, fully entitled to vindicate their rights by any course open to them, and he (Mr. Healy) would not have the slightest hesitation in repeating the same remark in any part of Ireland. The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked whether, considering the language of Mr. Davitt in January last, Her Majesty's Government could allow this state of things to go on?

said, his impression was that the first speech of Mr. Davitt which he quoted was delivered in 1880, and not in 1879.

said, he could assist the right hon. and learned Gentleman on that point. As a matter of fact, Mr. Michael Davitt was in America at the time when the right hon. and learned Gentleman stated that he made the speech in question, and he was surprised that the right hon. and learned Gentleman should seek to alter the dates on which the speeches to which he referred, and on which he based his case, were delivered in order to suit his own purposes.

said, he had also quoted from the speech which Mr. Davitt delivered at Borris.

said, if the right hon. and learned Gentleman relied on the speech at Borris he was perfectly ready to defend that speech, for it simply amounted to an appeal to the Irish people, on the part of Mr. Davitt, not to fly in the face of danger while they were engaged in a peaceable movement simply because threats of coercion were held over their heads. This, he thought, was a noble appeal, and very manfully the people of Ireland had responded to it. Nothing Mr. Davitt had said was half as strong as that which was said by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright) at Limerick, on July 14, 1866, in the height of the Fenian movement—namely, that he was willing to admit that any nation, believing it to be its interest, had a right both to ask for and to strive for national independence, it was said verba volit; but this was not the case in regard to Mr. Davitt, or any other of the supporters of the Land League. He now came to a sentence in the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary on which, in his view, the whole question hinged. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said, in effect—"Considering the state of Ireland in January last, could we have allowed Mr. Davitt to remain at large?" It was most important, in considering this, to have regard to what, in fact, was the condition of Ireland in January last; and on this point he would refer the House to the fact that, while the number of outrages, or so-called outrages, went up in an ascending scale in the months of October, November, and December last, the month of January—which, was the one in which. Mr. Davitt returned to Ireland from America—showed a lower number than any one of the three preceding months, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant himself admitting that the diminution was mainly due to the efforts which had been made by the leaders of the Land League No one who had read the speeches of Mr. Davitt, or who was familiar with the communications which he had written on behalf of the League, could say that he had ever done anything which had not a beneficial tendency. Was it for these that Mr. Davitt had been sent back to Portland, or was it on account of his early speeches, which had been unearthed by the right hon. and learned Gentleman? If this latter was the case, he should like to ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman how he would like to have those speeches which he had delivered in 1874 after the fall of the Liberal Ministry, and with which he fiercely attacked the present Premier, thrown into his face to-day? He could not admire the tone in which the right hon. and learned Gentleman had referred, in support of his argument against the Motion of the hon. Member for the City of Cork, to the early speeches and the former life of Mr. Davitt; nor could he admit that there was any real force in what he had said as to the amount received by the Central Committee of the Land League from America as compared with that which was put down as having been paid into the central fund by the Irish branches. The right hon. and learned Gentleman seemed to have forgotten, or probably he never knew, that while the whole amount received from America was paid into the central fund, by far the larger portion of the amount collected in Ireland was distributed by local organizations, only a very small portion going to the general funds of the League. This disposed of the metaphorical statement of the right hon. and learned Gentleman that the Land League was an exotic imported from America which did not greatly flourish in Irish soil. So far from Ireland being behindhand in its subscriptions to the League, he might remind the right hon. and learned Gentleman that, in the course of the recent State trials in which his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork was intimately concerned, the members of the League resident in Ireland contributed no less than £25,000, and that, speaking generally, nearly half of the funds of the League were found in Ireland. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had invited the Irish Representatives to disavow all connection with Fenianism; but they declined to allow themselves to be dragged one way or the other by the right hon. and learned Gentleman. [Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT: Hear, hear!] The present Chief of the Home Office was fond of quotations; and he would give him one. It was from Shakespeare; and it was—"Can'st hon play upon this pipe?" The right hon. and learned Gentleman talked about paying the piper and calling for the tune; but he could not play upon this pipe. The Home Secretary did not know the stops or the pauses of the Irish Members, and they declined to answer to his tune or to dance to his music. It was all very well for Her Majesty's Government to ask whether certain speeches would be delivered in Ireland which they did not hesitate to make in this country; but it must not be forgotten that the reports of speeches on the strength of which men were put in prison in Ireland were the work of policemen out of uniform. Having been connected with the Press, he had learned shorthand, and could report a speech; and he had seen those shorthand policemen struggling with their notes, and falling into the most helpless confusion over them. But how could they expect policemen to become proficient in shorthand, which required long and patient application, when they had to give so much time to bayonet exercise and buckshot firing? The members of the Land League would decline to place themselves at the mercy of these ingenious stenographers of the meeting. As far as the references to the former life of Davitt were concerned, he did not think the House would attach much, if any, importance to the question of the letter which was sworn to as being in the handwriting of Davitt by a man named Forester—whoever he might be. The facts on the face of them discredited Forester's story, and the surrounding circumstances pointed to the conclusion that he was an informer of the Corydon type—this last-named person being one whom he never saw until his appearance in the witness-box to swear away his liberty. Taking a general review of all the circumstances, he must support the Motion of his hon. Friend in that it had for its object the doing of some sort of justice to a man who, having committed no crime, was arrested for one and receiving punishment for the commission of another entirely different. It was an unprecedented thing to arrest a man on one charge, and, after releasing him, to re-arrest him for the original offence which he had expiated. The so-called precedents were the cases of pick-pockets, murderers, and robbers—persons who, having been in gaol for crimes against social order, had, after having been set at liberty, relapsed into their old courses, and been re-apprehended and made to serve out their sentences. They thoroughly understood in Ireland what Michael Davitt had been arrested for. But, even supposing that the Government considered it necessary, for the preservation of the public peace, to arrest Michael Davitt, what defence had the right hon. and learned Gentleman made of his conduct? Why had they not arrested him under the Coercion Act? Were the walls not as thick, the bars not as strong, at Kilmainham as at Portland? The Government preferred to exercise malignity and spite, and no wonder they wore hated in Ireland. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had given the flimsy excuse that it was for two particular speeches that Michael Davitt was arrested. Well, he (Mr. Healy) would challenge any Englishman to read those speeches through, and then go down to an English constituency— North Durham, where there was a strong Irish element, for instance—and put before the people the words of this prisoner, and ask the question—"For uttering these, does a man deserve seven years' penal servitude?" When Irish electors, for the future, were asked to support the Liberal Government, they would answer—"Remember Davitt?" It would be found that, though Davitt was in prison, his name had a power and a potency which the Government would have bitter reason to regret.

said, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department had treated them to a Nisi Prius speech which was unworthy of the House and of the dignity of the position occupied by a Minister of the Crown. It was the mode which would be adopted by a clever lawyer of putting together a constructive case against a man whose conviction he desired to obtain. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had made Michael Davitt responsible, not only for his own sayings and doings, but for the sayings and doings of other persons, such as Mr. James Redpath, who was an Englishman, and not an Irishman nor an American. If Mr. Davitt was responsible for the doings of Mr. Redpath by reason of their both being members of the same Association, there were persons nearer to the right hon. and learned Gentleman who were equally responsible—namely, the members of the Cobden Club, for Mr. Redpath was a member of their body. The Chief Secretary for Ireland himself was a member; but Mr. Redpath was the more distinguished being an honorary member, whereas the right hon. Gentleman was only an ordinary member. As the Secretary of State for the Home Department had dragged in the case of the attack on the prison van at Manchester, he would direct attention to a controversy in an evening paper upon the English Criminal Law, and to the communication of a writer who cited this case as one of the strongest to show that men had been hanged in this country for causing death when they had no intention to kill. The writer said it was probable the men had no intention whatever of killing the policemen, and had quite a different object in view; and the Irish Members entertained the belief. As to the letters attributed to Davitt, the evidence did not prove they were in his handwriting; but even if they were, it was not made clear that they might not have been extracts copied from a published book. Suppose one of the documents had been a transcript from a work of the late Lord Beaconsfield, in which the writer justified and glorified tyrannicide, would the copying of such a passage have justified the arrest of Mr. Davitt? No witness was clear as to the meaning of the letters; that was a matter of conjecture; it was uncertain on the evidence whether they were in Davitt's handwriting; and yet he had received a heavier punishment on account of them than for the offence with which he had been formally charged The Secretary of State for the Home De- partment had a difficulty in attempting to make out that the passages quoted were necessarily a defence of rebellion. Was it not true that those who drove a people to despair were more responsible than those who organized a rebellion? When the Secretary of State for the Home Department quoted from speeches of Mr. Davitt he loft out of sight those utterances of this gentleman to which the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) and the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) had referred—those speeches in which Mr. Davitt had denounced in the strongest language every kind of outrage and violence. He had a great admiration for Michael Davitt, and he had never been more struck by the nobleness of his character than on Mr. Davitt's return from America, when almost the first words he spoke were to warn the people that the adoption of any kind of outrage and violence would alienate from them the sympathies of their best friends across the Atlantic. Then he came to know Mr. Davitt personally; he admired him as he admired few men with whom he had been brought in contact, for he combined a remarkable power of practical organization, down to the mastery of the meanest details, with a certain antique grandeur of patriotic purpose. Mr. Davitt did all in his power to discourage any attempt at violence, to denounce any attempt at outrage. Mr. Davitt had not much faith in Parliamentary agitation, in the sense of justice of the English people; he was under the impression that the struggles of a minority in Parliament involved something like degradation to a great national cause; and he determined to keep aloof from the controversies carried on in the House of Commons. And could the Irish Members help sometimes sympathizing with that feeling, and entertaining a little of the same doubt? Could they help it when, with their knowledge of Davitt, their belief that there was something in him every earnest man would admire, they heard with astonishment and horror the cry of exultation which broke out from the Liberal Benches when the Secretary of State for the Home Department announced that Davitt had been arrested? That cheer was as ignoble and ferocious as the shriek of the Roman soldiers for the blood of their captive Zenobia. He was bound to say for Conservative Members that they had the decency to receive the announcement with something like silence. He said at the moment that his faith in the genuineness of English Radicalism in the present Parliament was gone. Bearing in mind the attitude the Government had assumed, lie made no appeal for mercy on behalf of Davitt, who would himself scorn an appeal of such a kind. He would, however, assure the House that the Government had made a great blunder in arresting Mr. Davitt the second time, for if over there was a man qualified to keep peace and good order in Ireland, and to stand between his country and violent agitation, it was Michael Davitt. The Secretary of State for the Home Department, with something like exultation, declared that the Government had lately succeeded in silencing violent speakers in Ireland; but did he really think that was a success? To silence those who spoke was to give an impetus to secret organization and the work carried on by means of it. Mr. Davitt was a man more likely and more qualified to keep peace and order in Ireland amid the warmest agitation than a hundred Ministers with sentiments like those of the right hon. and learned Gentleman.

said, that, as one of the oldest friends of Michael Davitt, he claimed to say a few words in this debate. He had the honour of his friendship for many years before his first conviction, and he knew how unjust and unfair were many of the charges which had been brought against him. The case raised by the hon. Member for the City of Cork had been greatly aggravated by the Home Secretary's statement, which showed how flimsy was the evidence upon which a conviction was secured against Davitt in 1870. He told them that the Judge, in summing up, relied chiefly on a letter which was found on a man named Forester, and which was submitted at the trial; but he had not the candour and fairness to state that this letter was found upon Forester in Liverpool many months before the trial torn into 100 fragments, and that experts had to be brought to give evidence, one of whom swore that the handwriting was like Davitt's, while the other swore it was not. As a matter of fact, the only evidence against Davitt to connect him with the Fenian Organi- zation was that of a man named Corydon, whom the Government appeared to have since spirited away. After Mr. Davitt's release, long before it was known that he was likely to be arrested, he informed his confidential friends that he never saw Corydon in his life till he saw him at the Old Bailey. When, in addition to this, the antecedents of the witnesses were taken into account, he submitted that the evidence on which Davitt was convicted was tainted, and ought never to have been received in any Court of Justice. But if the original arrest of Davitt was not justified, his re-arrest was still less justified. The Home Secretary had said that Davitt promulgated the plan of the Land League Organization on the lines of the previous Fenian movement. Far from this being true, the open and Constitutional character of the Land League Organization was such that Davitt's plan was angrily denounced as a "new departure" by the Fenians in America. He therefore submitted that the statements of the Home Secretary were most unjust. The case of the Government, weak enough before, had been infinitely weakened by the admissions of the right hon. and learned Gentleman that day; and he could tell the right hon. and learned Gentleman that his application of the word "braggart" to an absent man like Mr. Davitt was a cowardly act, unworthy of anyone in his position. He remembered the evening when the announcement was made in the House of the arrest of Michael Davitt, and he should never forget the cowardly howl that then went up from the Liberal Benches. And he also noticed that the Conservative Gentlemen had the manliness, at least, to preserve silence. One would have thought that it was the announcement of a great victory, not of the re-arrest of a helpless man, and the sending him back to prison and to a dreary incarceration. The re-arrest of one humble Irishman had so worked upon the feelings of English Radicals that they could not forbear from raising that cowardly cheer. But he could tell them that Irishmen in America, at home, and in that House would never forget that cheer; and he hoped the time would come when the cry, "Remember Davitt, "would have as much effect in exciting their fears as the announcement of his re-arrest had bad in exciting their exultation.

said, that early in the debate the Home Secretary had lectured him on good taste because he laughed when the right hon. and learned Gentleman made a ridiculous quotation about the Irish wolf-dog bounding across the Atlantic. But what was his offence against good taste, if he had committed any, compared with that of the right hon. Gentleman when he applied the words "atrocious" to Mr. Davitt, and called him a conspirator and braggart? He never interchanged a word, except once, with Mr. Davitt; but he esteemed him as one who had loved his country, "not wisely, but too well." He had, moreover, heard Archbishops, clergymen, and magistrates in Ireland speak in terms of the most unqualified appreciation of his fine personal character and the purity of his intentions. In his (Mr. Callan's) study he had two pictures—one a life-like sketch of Mr. Forster from Vanity Fair, and the other a cartoon entitled" The Dream of Davitt," from The Freeman's Journal. There was no allegation against Mr. Davitt except with regard to one speech since his release, but the Government had to go back to a letter found some 15 years ago, and bring it up against him. He always thought that Lord Beaconsfield was the Minister on whom the Home Secretary had modelled himself, except in the matter of courtesy. He was surprised the right hon. and learned Gentleman did not show a better acquaintance with his model. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that he agreed with Lord Beaconsfield when he described Fenianism as "veiled rebellion." Now, he thought Fenianism was open rebellion. It was Home Rule which Lord Beaconsfield had described as "veiled rebellion." As one who had never joined in the Land League agitation, he felt it incumbent on him to say that nothing would tend more to produce goodwill in Ireland, to conciliate the Irish people, and to recommend the Land Bill than the release of Michael Davitt. He, too, hoped that the day would come when, among English constituencies, while the fate of Parties was trembling in the balance, he would be able to revenge the savage shout raised on the Liberal Benches when Davitt's arrest was announced.

said, he heartily approved the Resolution, because it put the Government upon its trial to justify itself for one of the most extraordinary acts of the extraordinary crisis through which they had passed. The re-arrest of Mr. Davitt happened at a most critical juncture. The unfortunate Coercion Bill was then on the anvil. At that time the Press of this country laid every outrage at the door of the Land League. Unhappily, the outrages were only too many; but, in addition to the real outrages, fictitious ones were supplied every morning to gratify the taste of the country at the time. He did not say that the Government felt any gratification at those outrages, but they took advantage of them to forward the Coercion Bill. At that time the loudest voice in condemnation of those crimes was Mr. Davitt, and his was a voice that would be listened to by the people. His word would go further with those who allowed themselves to be precipitated into outrage by their feelings than all the declamation of the British Press. And yet it was at that moment that Mr. Davitt was re-arrested. He had waited to hear from the Government some explanation which would strip that proceeding of the character of a political act, and which would show that Davitt had done something which, in the eye of the law and common sense, would be considered an offence even of the most trivial character. But not one single offence had been produced as a justification of his re-arrest. His only breach of the conditions of his liberation was that from the time of his discharge in 1877 he had not reported himself; but it appeared from what had been said by the Home Secretary that that had been condoned by the late Government. Why, then, was Mr. Davitt re-arrested? The Homo Secretary was obliged to admit that the re-arrest was a political act, part of the programme of Coercion, and one of the things required to be done before introducing the unfortunate Coercion Bill. He would implore the Government—for it was never too late to mend—to retrace its steps, and wipe out as far as possible the recollection of this unfortunate political act. The right hon. and learned Gentleman's speech that day was to some extent an indictment of the Land League, and through the Land League he tried to strike Mr. Davitt as its founder. The Home Secretary had himself furnished an illustration of the charge which he brought against mem- bers of the Land League, for he had spoken with two voices. The right hon. and learned Gentleman, adopting the manner of a dexterous advocate, used language which was hardly fair to Members on those Benches when he insinuated that they had sympathy with murder and outrage, because they did not get up and disavow them whenever the right hon. and learned Gentleman chose to make allusion to them. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had referred to the homely proverb of the piper and the dancers; but there was another homely proverb which he would commend to the reflection of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, and that was the proverb of the spider and the fly. The right hon. and learned Gentleman would hardly find anyone on those Benches inclined to step into his parlour when he invited them. No doubt, the right hon. and learned Gentleman's argument was put very temperately and courteously, and he had not a single complaint to make against the manner of it. But, as he had said, the right hon. and learned Gentleman spoke with two voices, and he should be happy to have more of the gentle voice in which the right hon. and learned Gentleman had addressed them that day. He would only add that, having examined the three speeches upon which the right hon. and learned Gentleman founded his argument, he found that there was nothing in them which excited to a violation of the law. He therefore appealed to the Government to re-consider their decision even now, and, if possible, to procure a favourable reception for the Land Bill.

said, it was his intention to support the Motion of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). He understood the Home Secretary to say that the original offence of Davitt was the reason for his re-arrest. If so, the right hon. and learned Gentleman was less merciful than his Predecessor, who had allowed Davitt a ticket-of-leave, and had practically condoned the offence of which he had been guilty. He had no personal acquaintance with Davitt, but knew that his speeches were in favour of land reform and peaceable agitation. Perhaps those speeches went too far, and contained language that was not altogether defensible; but, whether that was the case or not, the circumstances of the country formed an extenuation of his conduct and a reason for his release. And, besides, it was sufficiently clear that the Government, if they would but let bygones be bygones, would be performing an act not only of mercy, but of good policy also.

said, that, while he joined in deprecating an ad misericordiam, appeal, he would entreat the Government to let bygones be bygones and to set Davitt free. They could easily arrest him again if he offended against the law. His release would be not only a gracious act on the part of the Government, but would gratify moderate men like himself, as well as more extreme politicians. He was not a member of the Land League, which, to a great extent, had been founded by Michael Davitt; and, therefore, he was not guilty of violating its secrets when he stated that there was no doubt that Davitt had been the most earnest denouncer of many of the outrages which had, unfortunately, taken place. If he had not been arrested he (Mr. Blake) believed that the Chief Secretary would have had a much easier task, and Kilmainham would not contain so many "suspects" within its gloomy walls. The Government certainly ought to try the experiment of liberating a man for whom his countrymen felt so much affection and confidence, and who had suffered so much in order to benefit, according to his own idea, his native land.

ridiculed the notion that speeches delivered six months after Davitt's arrest could properly be described by the Home Secretary as concomitant circumstances, and thought it too late to rely on the unproved assertions of such men as Corydon with respect to Davitt's conduct in 1870. The speech of the Home Secretary avoided the point at issue, and tended to discredit English opinion against Davitt, whom the right hon. and learned Gentleman had denounced as a braggart. That the right hon. and learned Gentleman had misconceived the whole state of the case was shown by his assertion that Davitt had founded the Land League on the lines of the Fenian Brotherhood. The object of the Fenian Brotherhood was, by force of arms, by foreign alliances, and by taking advantage of crises in the history of England, to procure the com- plete separation of Ireland from the Crown of Great Britain; whereas the object of the Land League, in its most extreme form, was to make every Irish, tenant proprietor of his holding. What, then, was the meaning of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's statement that the Land League was founded on the lines of the Fenian Brotherhood? If the right hon. and learned Gentleman meant that a large number of Fenians, just as a large number of Home Rulers and of Orangemen, were to be found in the ranks of the Land League, why, then, according as it suited his convenience, he might one day inform the House that the Land League was founded on the lines of the Fenian Brotherhood; on the second, that it was founded on the lines of the Home Rule organization; and, on the third day, on the lines of the Orange Association. There were plenty of Land Leaguers who were Fenians; and, no doubt, when that League had passed away, after completing its work, the Fenian Brotherhood would exist so long as the separation between England and Ireland was not effected. But when the right hon. and learned Gentleman spoke of the Land League and dynamite plots in one and the same breath, he could not suppose he was unaware of the gross misrepresentation contained in such a suggestion. It was true that a few ignorant and dangerous men were in favour of recourse to violent weapons, such as had been freely used in the Italian revolutions which the right hon. and learned Gentleman so much admired; but no one would be more indignant than the right hon. and learned Gentleman if an attempt were made to blacken the many on account of the crimes of the few. He protested, then, that whatever madness and mischief a few desperate men might be guilty of, all Irishmen and all Land Leaguers were not to be smirched by the same horrible charges. When they found a responsible English Minister indulging in such reckless and abominable insinuations, what better weapon could be put into the hands of those who used dynamite? The Home Secretary ought openly to admit that he had imprisoned Davitt in order to secure the success of the reforms proposed by the Government; but he ought not to employ against hundreds, and thousands, and millions of an honourable race any foul charge that suited the policy of an embarrassed Administration.

said, he knew little of Davitt, or of his connection with Fenianism; but could say, at least, that, in spite of frequent provocation from the Government, Davitt's counsels were often on the side of moderation. He must, therefore, protest against the Home Secretary stigmatizing Davitt as a braggart. He wished, also, to repudiate any connection with the American Irish World, which he had only seen once, and would express the hope that before the right hon. and learned Gentleman associated the Home Rulers with that organ he would make himself more assured of the accuracy of his statements. He was also of opinion that, in matters relating to Ireland, the Government should not be above taking advice from the Irish Members. He hoped that the Land Bill would receive a fair trial, and he would advise his constituents to take all the good they could out of it, and agitate afresh to make it more perfect.

said, he had the pleasure of knowing Michael Davitt, and had heard him speak very often on the Land Question; but never once had he heard from him an expression of principle that might not be used in that House or on the hustings in Mid Lothian. He regretted that the Home Secretary had been called upon by the duties of his Office to degrade those great legal and equitable talents which had characterized him for so long a time. He understood, from the right hon. and learned Gentleman's pleadings, that Davitt was sent back to prison, not because he had not complied with the conditions of his ticket-of-leave, but because he was thought to be the head and front of the Land League organization. As he saw the Prime Minister present, he trusted that right hon. Gentleman would make some statement which would take out the malice that had been put into this debate—no doubt unintentionally—by the speech of the Home Secretary.

remarked, that the Chief Secretary for Ireland had been in the House during the whole of this discussion, and that the Prime Minister had been in his place for some time. They both maintained silence, although a direct appeal had just been made to the latter by his hon. Friend the Member for Ennis (Mr. Finigan). He interpreted this silence to mean that the two right hon. Gentlemen were rather anxious to leave to their Colleague the whole responsibility of the act of injustice which had been committed. The Home Secretary had stated that at the time of Davitt's arrest crime and outrages were increasing all over the country. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman had taken the trouble to consult the official Returns he would have found that in the months of February and March crime was diminishing.

Davitt was arrested on the 2nd of February. That was exactly what I said—that crime diminished after he was arrested.

said, he would take serious crime. The fact was that there was not one murder in the month of January. There was one in February, one in March, two in April, and in May the ghastly total was three. Yet the contention of the Home Secretary was that at the moment when Davitt was arrested his continued freedom was a direct incentive of outrage. On the memorable night when 35 Home Rule Members were excluded from the House, he observed to a Member of the Liberal Party that the Government, in putting Davitt into prison, were destroying the best and strongest safeguard of tranquillity in Ireland. Out of the 200 or 300 speeches delivered by Davitt after his release, the Home Secretary had quoted three passages. What did they amount to? The first recommended organization, and alluded to the speaker's past connection with the Fenian organization; the second put a hypothetical case as to what the Irish people would do if they were in the field of arms; and the third quotation was in the shape of a warning as regards the action of the Government. It was conceded, he believed, that Davitt was at one time connected with the Fenian organization. The Report quoted by the Home Secretary was in these terms—

"He urged thorn to organize. What had organization done for Ireland? They saw the organization to which he had the honour to belong—the Fenian organization. They saw that organization disestablished the Irish Church. So said Mr. Gladstone. Well, the organization of the tenant farmers would disestablish the landlords in half the time."

The whole case rested upon this— whether Davitt said he was at that moment a member of the Fenian organization? If he meant that he had been a member of it he was only stating a fact of public knowledge; and even the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself would not argue that his past connection with Fenianism justified his being put back into prison. The report was a very slovenly one, in the third person. If the reporter had written—"They saw the organization to which he had had the honour to belong," it would have been clear that Davitt was referring to the past. Many years ago a friend of his said to him— "I am afraid the pluperfect is a very weak tense with Irish journalists." Therefore, on the omission of the word "had," in a slovenly report in the third person, the Home Secretary rested his whole case as regards Davitt's present connection with the Fenian organization. The second quotation put a perfectly hypothetical case; and the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself would hardly deny that a large number of the Irish people would be ready, if there were a chance of success, to appeal to arms in order to obtain a separation from this country. The third quotation conveyed a warning. Was a warning a menace? If so, there was not a Member of the Government who had not menaced the supremacy of the Queen and the safety of the Empire. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright) had warned the Ministry of the day that, if the just rights of the Irish people were not granted, outrage, violence, and perhaps rebellion would result. Davitt had done no more. The Home Secretary had quoted a passage from one of Davitt's speeches about the "wolf-dog of Irish vengeance bounding across the Atlantic;" but that passage was directly qualified by another. Mr. Davitt said—

"Glorious indeed will be our victory, and high in the estimation of mankind will our grand old fatherland stand, if we can so curb our own passions and control our acts in this struggle for freedom as to march to success through provocation and danger without resorting to the wild justice of revenge or being guilty of anything which would sully the character of a proud and Christian people,"

Those words were an exhortation to the people to be manly and to shun all cowardly and brutal crime. Knowing, as he did, the dangers that were hatched in the insane brains and, he would say, the curdled hearts of certain Irish revolutionaries in America, Davitt acted the part of a Christian and humane man in uttering the words which had been quoted. He could not justly be held responsible for the rather disgusting language uttered by someone at a dinner six months after he was under lock and key. That the right hon. and learned Gentleman should have thought it necessary to refer to that matter was a striking proof of the weakness of his case. Then, touching Davitt's arrest, he put it to the House whether there was any other country in Europe, except perhaps Russia, where a man, after being released from imprisonment for a political offence, could be again thrown back into his prison cell. He had the pleasure and the honour of this "convict's" acquaintance, and he could say that no man was more filled than Davitt with the spirit of pure and honest political feeling. They all knew the sadness and bitterness of his early career. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman's earliest recollections were of his being turned out of house and home and sent into exile, would not he endeavour to put an end to the vile system which produced such results? In conclusion, he had only to say that, although Davitt was, at the present moment, within the walls of a prison, his name was enshrined in the hearts of millions of his countrymen.

said, he knew that at that time of the day it was unreasonable to make speeches, and his right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary had already spoken on behalf of the Government, and had stated the case of the Government very fully and very faithfully. He must, however, express his gratification at hearing the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) characterize certain language as "disgusting." He should not have thought that that was the opinion of the hon. Member. The language seemed to have been received by the hon. Member's friends at the time it was uttered with loud cheers. It was a mistake to regard the arrest of Michael Davitt as a political necessity. In assuming it to be so, hon. Members opposite showed they were not aware of the real necessity with which the Government had to deal. Poltical necessity meant generally rebellion or insurrection, or difficulties involving the relations of England with Ireland, or the independence of Ireland. Now, what the Government had to deal with was an administrative necessity arising out of a very hard struggle which they had to maintain against those who were making government in Ireland almost impossible. No doubt, there was much in Davitt's early life to induce one to make allowance for him. His language even showed occasionally a nobility of feeling which might fairly give reason to hope that, being still a comparatively young man, he might some day become a more useful member of society than he was at present. But at the time of his arrest it was clear to the Government that Davitt was very reprehensibly the main conductor of an agitation that endangered life and property, perhaps more than he intended. In addition to that, he was a ticket-of-leave convict out upon good behaviour. If they had allowed him to go on longer taking the part he did, an idea would have got abroad in Ireland—as, indeed, it did—that the power of the law had failed. It would have been said that they could not be serious in their attempts to vindicate law and order if they left it to a man whose sentence had not expired to be one of the main instigators of disorder. ["Oh!"] Such was the opinion of the Government, though they did not expect hon. Members opposite to agree in that statement. If Michael Davitt had not been arrested it would have been exceedingly difficult for the Government to convince the Irish people of their intention to give them security and protection. He would make no allusion to the paltry charge that he had arrested Michael Davitt on account of some personal charge which had been made against himself. It was those remarks against himself that made him anxious that for a time Davitt should not be arrested; but very soon he was obliged to give up any feeling of the sort.

said, he desired to call attention to the harsh and cruel conduct of the constabulary in Ireland. Undoubtedly, the Irish Constabulary were placed in a very different position to the force in England. They were encumbered with their rifles and bayonets, and wore called upon to do policemen's duty. The consequence was that, instead of doing it as policemen performed their duty in England, they used the butt end of their muskets, and handled their bayonets in a most savage fashion; and the dispersal of a crowd, which might be effected without injury, was frequently attended with loss of life and serious injury to many persons. He did not, at that late period of the Session, wish to go over every case in which the constabulary had exceeded their duty; but he would only mention one or two. Hon. Gentlemen might remember the ease of the beating out of a man's brains by a policeman at Bodyke, in the county of Clare. A large police force had been sent to evict several tenants of Colonel O'Callaghan, and the circumstances were remarkable in many ways. The Chief Secretary for Ireland said, at the conclusion of the last Session, that if he found that he was compelled to use the military and police forces of the Crown in Ireland to any large extent for the support of injustice he should resign his Office. Well, the case of the employment of the police and military, and the taking of this man's life at Bodyke, was a case of remarkable injustice inflicted by Colonel O'Callaghan. He was selected for a visit by an enterprizing correspondent of an English newspaper, and was portrayed in the usual vivid colours as an example of the persons terrorized over by the Land League. He showed how Colonel O'Callaghan was "Boycotted" in his own house. Well, Colonel O'Callaghan's rents were so high that it was notorious his tenantry were unable to pay them. Notwithstanding their absolute inability, he proceeded to the last extremity of eviction, and compelled the Chief Secretary to send a large force of police and military down to protect the officials who were carrying out the evictions. A disturbance ensued, and during its course one of the spectators, who had not been taking any part in it, and had never struck, or attempted to strike, the police, was set upon and killed. A man named Slattery swore, at the Coroner's inquest, to the identity of the policeman who did it, and a very short time after Slattery was arrested as a "suspect" by the Chief Secretary, and thrown into prison under the powers of the Coercion Act. Well, some of Colonel O'Callaghan's tenants were evicted; but Colonel O'Callaghan— whether it was that he saw the Land Bill coming in, or that he knew it would be impossible for him to evict all his tenants who, it was perfectly evident, were unable to pay the rents—shortly after the murder of this man by the constable, gave a permanent reduction of 60 per cent to his tenants, thereby admitting that the amounts he had previously charged were monstrous rack-rents. He came now to the Mitchelstown evictions, which were going on at the present time. These evictions were somewhat different in character from those that took place on the estate of Colonel O'Callaghan. It was the case, he believed, that some of the tenants on the Kingston property were not rack-rented to such a degree as their neighbours; but, at the same time, he had it on the very best authority that a very large portion of these tenants, if they paid the rent demanded of them, could only do it by borrowing money from the shopkeepers and the banks. It was true they had credit, and, by borrowing money, could pay their rents— in fact, many of them, where the evictions had taken place, had paid their rent after the evictions, and thereby, he thought, had acted dishonestly. To him it appeared that a tenant who borrowed from a bank or a neighbour to pay a rent which he had not made out of the produce of his farm, and left nothing for the proper support of himself and his family, acted dishonestly. Well, a large number of writs were obtained by Mr. Webber— who, he believed, was the husband of the Countess of Kingston, the owner of this property. These writs were enforced in some cases, and, according to The Daily News of Friday, July 1—

"The Colonel halted suddenly and forded the river, and the advance guard of constables followed his example with an amount of alacrity which quite disconcerted a small crowd of spectators that stood on the opposite bank."

It was not alleged that that "small crowd of spectators" was doing anything more than looking on— not an unusual occupation for these poor people when they saw a large army of police and military passing through a small country place with all the paraphernalia of war. It was a very usual thing for people in Ireland to stand on the fences and watch a procession of this kind go by.

"The police immediately charged this crowd of spectators, and gave a few of them cause to remember the circumstances for same time to come. It was quite evident that the police were not at all grateful to those who had added this wetting to their other discomforts."

The report went on to say—

"All the evictions, with the same result in each ease, wore carried out by 1 o'clock; and when the seventh house was being cleared of its occupants, the police, now drenched with rain and covered with mud, found it necessary to charge with their bayonets."

It was not said why this was necessary. They were not told that stones were thrown, or that the people were interfering at all with the progress of the police. They were simply acting as peaceful spectators. Then the correspondent described the work of breaking in the door of another tenant; and it appeared that—

"The door was smashed in with a crowbar and a pick-axe, and then the police had their revenge for having been so long kept in the blinding rain. They fixed bayonets and advanced into the house. The method of evicting those within was very summary and effective. In exceptional cases, where the men showed signs of resistance, they received blows from the butt ends of the guns. About 30 persons were found inside, including several children. The police retreated to a considerable distance, and watched the bailiffs as they flung out the tenants."

Then, in describing another eviction, the correspondent said— "The police entered through the windows with fixed bayonets" —always with fixed bayonets. He should like to know what use these fixed bayonets were. Surely they were useless where no resistance was offered.

"Meanwhile a number of people had assembled in the road and in the fields; but the police instantly took to the fields and dealt unmerciful blows indiscriminately."

The harmless spectators were looking on doing nothing. They could not be throwing stones, because there were no stones in the field; indeed, in one or two cases, injuries of a serious nature were inflicted on rather inoffensive persons, whose only fault was that they could not run fast enough to escape, for the people were pursued for a considerable distance. He had merely quoted these extracts, and mentioned the case of the murder of a peasant by a constable, to show what was of common daily occurrence in Ireland. The passions of the police were very frequently excited by drink when they were sent out on these eviction expeditions. Each constable, he was told, received 2s. 6d. extra allowance, which he was entitled to spend entirely on whisky if he pleased; and the consequence was that almost daily throughout Ireland were to be seen large numbers of police returning from these eviction expeditions in a state of intoxication, which rendered them unfit to discharge their duty with any sort of forbearance.

Will the hon. Member give a case?

I am speaking of that which is a matter of common notoriety.

Give me some case.

said, the right hon. Gentleman did not suppose that he could get even Irish policemen to knock women and children about unless they were excited by drink—unless they had been carefully prepared for the work. When a body of constables were brought together for any special duty, they came from distant neighbourhoods, perhaps from other counties, a distance of 50 or 100 miles, and the Irish Constabulary were not numbered as were the policemen in England. They did not wear numbers, they were too much of soldiers for that; consequently, whenever one of these young, strange constables exceeded his duty there was no possibility of identifying him afterwards. In connection with this matter of identification, he would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant whether he would have any objection to allowing the policemen, or to ordering the policemen, in Ireland to wear numbers similar to those worn by the police in cities, considering that they were daily brought into contact with the people, and that they were daily making attacks and assaults on them. Was it unreasonable to ask that the same protection they afforded to every rough in London, enabling him to identify the policeman who maltreated him, to be extended to the peasantry—to the women and children—in Ireland? With regard to this question of identification, a person named Travers, the manager of the Gas Works in Cork, complained that he was crossing the bridge during the time that rioting was going on, for the purpose of looking after his two young sons who had gone into the Park that day to see the races, and while he was on the bridge, there being no considerable crowd to disperse, three policemen rushed at him; one knocked him down, and another stabbed him in the groin. If the wound had been half an inch higher, according to the medical testimony, Mr. Travers would have been killed. Inquiries were made into the case by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary; but no evidence to identify the policeman who committed the deed could be obtained, simply through the fact that the Royal Irish Constabulary did not wear numbers. There were a great many strangers in the town; and even if that had not been the case, the police force of Cork being a very large one, it was probable that it would have been impossible to identify the man. He thought they were entitled to ask from the Government that there should be some check upon the young headstrong constables of Ireland when they went out on special duty. There should be some means of identifying them in cases like that to which he referred. He would give the Committee another instance which had been related to him by his sister. When she was arriving at Limerick, about two months ago, by train, there were in the same train a number of constables returning from an eviction ex- pedition very tired. A respectable Protestant farmer came down to the railway station to meet his (Mr. Parnell's) sister, and he was accompanied by a young lady he had on his arm. A small crowd also came down to the railway platform to meet his sister, who, fortunately for herself, remained in the carriage and allowed the police to get out first. Immediately the police got out they commenced to attack the people on the platform indiscriminately, right and left, without the slightest provocation. The gentleman who had come down to meet his (Mr. Parnell's) sister was knocked down and brutally beaten like a dog, and the young lady who was with him was also knocked down; and his sister, seeing the state of things on the platform, got out of the carriage on the other side and crossed the up line. She got out of the station that way, otherwise, no doubt, she would have been injured. As Irish Members were now going to Ireland, it was probable that all of them would be exposed to that kind of treatment on the part of irresponsible constables; and they were, therefore, entitled to ask that, if they escaped being killed by these attacks upon them by the police, they should have some opportunity afforded them of being able, subsequently, to identify their assailants. At present it was impossible to do so. Constables were brought in from all parts, and they had no opportunity of knowing them, because directly they committed an outrage they were sent away to other parts of the country. He had said it was his duty to move the rejection of this Vote. Last year they had asked that the rifles and bayonets should be taken away from the police. They had pointed out that if any rifle or bayonet was necessary amongst the police, it would be better to use the military than the constabulary. Well, the Government were now adopting the plan of using the military, and he was bound to admit that in every case the soldiery had acted in a most temperate manner; but not so with the constabulary, who had acted in very many cases in a most infamous manner. Why should they encumber the police with rifle and bayonet? They sent the soldiery with weapons of that kind, and if there was any need for their use the military would be there to use them. Certainly, rifles and bayonets were an incumbrance to the constabulary when it was their duty to go through windows in evicting tenants. Rifles and bayonets were surely useless when the police had only bailiffs' duty to do— when their occupation was simply to turn women and children out of their houses. Bâtons were far more useful things at close quarters; and he should have thought the opinion of the Chief Secretary would have matured a little by this time, and that he would have seen his way to reducing the constabulary of Ireland more to the condition of a civil rather than that of a semi-military force. He placed this question as to the numbering of the constabulary before the Government, simply declaring that it was a disgraceful thing that the lives of the people of Ireland should be at the mercy of a constabulary whom it was not possible subsequently to identify. They were entitled to ask that the Irish constabulary should wear numbers as well as other policemen in the United Kingdom.

I rise at once, because I consider I should be greatly to blame if I did not immediately vindicate the Irish Constabulary from the attack made upon them by the hon. Member, although it will, no doubt, be said that I always hasten to defend every one of my subordinates, and listen to nothing but their story. Notwithstanding the possibility that that may be stated, I think every man in the position of Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant would be greatly to blame if he did not rise immediately to vindicate the Irish Constabulary from an attack made upon them with regard to their conduct during the past year. The hon. Gentleman made a general attack upon them, and I do not think anything more contrary to justice. I do not think anything could possibly be more unfair and more unreasonable than this attack. I will not now go into the question of the kind of work the constables have had to perform recently, and I will content myself with saying they have had most wearying and arduous duties to perform —duties wearying and arduous enough to try both their constitutions and their tempers more than has been the case with any body of men for many years past; and I think anybody who reads the papers, putting aside the information I give them from official sources, will confess they are surprised at the courage and forbearance shown by the police in Ireland. In many cases it has been utterly impossible for the Government to send as many men as were wanted for the duty of protecting persons whose lives were in danger, for trying to prevent outrages, or for patrolling the country day and night. A great many of the men have hardly ever got a sufficient amount of sleep, and have been constantly exposed to great danger. It is said— Why are the police encumbered with rifles and bayonets? Why, often and often their lives would not have been worth an hour's purchase if they had not carried these arms. For instance, what would have become of the policemen with Sergeant Armstrong when he was battered to death if they had not been so armed?

It was not the arms that saved them, it was their legs.

Therefore, the hon. Member actually says that policemen who are sent into a district to put a stop to law-breaking are instantly to run away when confronted with opposition—they are to save themselves by their legs. ["No, no!"] Then, what did the hon. Member mean? The hon. Gentleman is mistaken in supposing that the rifle or the bayonet is always used in these cases. He has mentioned cases in which not rifles or bayonets, but bâtons should be used. But batons are used at present; and I would remind him that in the Mitchelstown case the police were divided, the men with rifles and bayonets being kept in the background to be used if it was found that the men with batons were not sufficiently powerful. The hon. Member alluded to a particular case in the county of Clare— a case in which, he said, a man was murdered by a policeman. Well, the Committee will, I think, be surprised when I tell them the other side of that story. It is true that it was an eviction upon Colonel O'Callaghan's estate. The hon. Member has alluded to a very vivid description of that estate that appeared in The Daily News, as illustrating the system of "Boycotting." Well, I have heard a great deal spoken of with regard to "Boycotting;" but if hon. Members will look back on that description, they will find that the position of the man who dare not leave his house without the fear of being murdered, and is, therefore, obliged to have constables constantly with him, is very uncomfortable. I am not going to enter into the relations between Colonel O'Callaghan and his tenants, except to say it is a fact that he has reduced his rents; but to carry out the law a force was required. Now, what had happened before this man to whom reference has been made was killed? Why, the police had been fired upon three or four times.

That was subsequently.

No; it was the same affair. The police had been fired upon. A number of shots had been fired before that affray in which the man was killed.

There was no firing by the crowd in which this man was killed.

It was really all the same disturbance; the policeman, as a matter of fact, had had to struggle for his life.

Oh, no; that is altogether incorrect.

At any rate, that was my opinion and conviction upon a very careful study of the case. Now, take the other case—that of the Mitchelstown evictions—and that will be found a very curious illustration of the condition of things in Ireland. The Mitchelstown tenants—I do not know whether they have a balance on the credit side at their bankers or not— but, notoriously, they were not badly off. Notoriously, again, the estate is not over-rented. I do not mean to say that the estate is under-rented; but it compares very favourably with other estates. Notoriously, the tenants were as able to pay their rents as tenants in any part of England; and I would say this, in addition— that no one who has looked into the question can doubt that everyone of these tenants would have paid his rent if it had not been for the instigation of the Land League. There can be no doubt at all about it; they were not small cottier tenants, but well-to-do farmers. Well, one weeks or months ago, there was an attempt made by the owner of that estate to get the money due to him; and there is not a man in this House who, under similar circumstances, would not have done the same. Unless a man wishes to give up the payment of all debts, there is no reason at all why a landlord, under these circumstances, should not attempt to get his money. The hon. Member's statement is a very curious one— that it would have been dishonest in them to have paid. I was in Ireland at the time of these events, or just after, and I was very confident that unless we sent a large force down with the evicting party there would either have been a defeat of the ends of the law in enforcing payment of the rents, or there would have been a very bloody collision and great loss of life. A large force, I say, was sent down; and the hon. Member seems to suppose that the people in the district were merely spectators of the action of the military and the police. Well, I suppose the spectators were very much the same people who rendered it impossible for the law to be carried out without that large force. I looked forward to the matter with very great anxiety, as I feared that would have taken place in that district which I so very much wished to avoid— namely, a collision in which there would have been great loss of life. The result of the steps taken, I am thankful to say, has been that the evictions have been carried out, batons have been used to some extent, nobody has been seriously injured, and, in every case, I believe, the tenants who gave all this trouble produced the money before the end of the day and paid their rents. I do not think the hon. Member could have brought forward a more unfortunate illustration of his case.

said, he was not at all surprised to find the right hon. Gentleman in a hurry to defend the police. Every Chief Secretary, as the right hon. Gentleman had justly stated, was anxious to defend the character of the Irish Constabulary. And why? Because every Chief Secretary knew very well that the Irish Constabulary were the basis of the law in Ireland, and not the popular will. The Irish police were the garrison of the foreigner. He remembered a time when decorations were given to Irishmen for victories gained over their countrymen. The men who fought under the Roman generals were never decorated for victories in civil wars. The police system in Ireland was the most irritating and annoying portion of English rule in that country. If they went to a railway station they found two or three of these insolent fellows trying to stare them out of countenance, looking into every carriage, and, where a person was met by friends, having special attention bestowed upon them. Go through the streets of an Irish town; everywhere they would see these fellows with their caps on the side of their heads, wearing a general air of braggadocio. He had heard several of these scenes which his hon. Friend (Mr. Parnell) had alluded to described by, he thought, one of the most eloquent speakers it was ever his pleasure to listen to—namely, Jessie Cregan. He was over in Mitchelstown lately, and that lady went to Mitchelstown; and he thought that even the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, however much he might try to harden his heart and stop his ears against the truth, if he had heard of the scenes which that lady saw with her own eyes—and be it remembered she had not a drop of Irish blood in her veins—he would have been seriously moved when he heard her description. It really required all his self-control to remain unmoved. Had the right hon. Gentleman really taken the trouble to learn any of the facts? What were the number of casualties? How many were killed and wounded on these two occasions? He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) knew how many, and the Solicitor General for Ireland also knew, because he had informed the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, in an aside, which hon. Members could not help hearing, that there was one horse injured in that fatal affray. What was the man doing who was killed?

I saw in a newspaper that one of the horses in a cart amongst the crowd was killed by one of the rioters.

said, that was all very well; but what was the man who was killed doing when he met with his death? A mounted policeman was coming on him, the murdered man lifted up his hand to keep off the horse, and was at once stabbed. That man had no share or part in the violence, whatever violence there was that was going on. The widow of the murdered man had described how that policeman had been allowed practically to go scot free, though he was brought in guilty of murder by a Coroner's jury. Take the case of the Mitchelstown evictions. Miss Cregan was there also. She took care to give the facts at first hand, and not at second hand, as the Chief Secretary was in the habit of doing. What did she do? Why, he had heard her declare, before two meetings of her countrymen and countrywomen, that she put the greater portion of one of her hands into a wound inflicted upon a person by one of these powerful policemen. She went and saw a little boy, a lad of 14 or 15, who was attacked by the police, and she described with such truth and tenderness his condition that it appealed to the mind and heart of everyone who listened to her. She vividly described the miserable looks, the dejected appearance of these poor creatures on whom the employés of the British Government exercised their violence. The net increase in this Vote was £58,514, extra pay and allowances were £69,759, travelling expenses amounted to £28,000, and last year to £38,000. The pay amounted to £736,800, in place of £710,000. Every working man in England who found a great portion of his wages—who found a large portion of his 20s., or 25s., or 30s., or 35s. a-week— going away in taxes, should be given to understand the real merits of the case, and should be reminded that the Chief Secretary was this year asking for many more thousands for the purposes which had been described in the course of the debate.

said, where there was really no room for differences of opinion he thought that general opinions wore best; for it would be urged by the Chief Secretary, if particular cases were given, that these were all the cases of complaint that could be collected in the whole of Ireland. He had correspondence from different parts of Ireland, some of which he would read; and he could, if necessary, give the names of his correspondents, and the Chief Secretary could verify them if he pleased. Some of these cases he had made the subjects of Questions in the usual way in the House; but the right hon. Gentleman had met them in the usual way, and said they did not call for further inquiry. Listening to the right hon. Gentleman, it would seem that he thought evictions were rather pleasant transactions for those evicted, and exceedingly pleasant spectacles for those who were looking on. ["Oh, oh!"] He really believed that the Chief Secretary was delighted with the whole business. He should like to call the attention of the Committee to one point of the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) which had not been referred to by the Chief Secretary— namely, as to the badges or numbers of the police. One letter he had received from an Englishman who lately travelled in Ireland with a view of seeing the country for himself, and it exemplified the manner in which affairs were managed. It showed no very great case of brutality on the part of the police; but it did of very serious misconduct. His correspondent wrote—

"Will you kindly ask Mr. Forster how a stranger is to identify one of his pet police, seeing that they have no numbers on their uniforms as we have in England?"

He went on to say—

"The following is my complaint:—On August 4 I took a tourist ticket, and travelled by the Connemara route, as an Englishman desirous of seeing the country for myself. I was surprised to see the police armed and taking up positions on the Company's private property, whereby they prevent free egress and ingress from and to the trains. While travelling to Galway, a policeman took a scat at Athenry Station, and at once proceeded to fill the compartment with smoke, to the annoyance of the other passengers, among whom were several ladies. He was requested to desist by a young priest who was in the carriage; but he refused, and proceeded with a tirade of abuse. I asked him his name; but he declined to give it, and he had no number such as the police have in England. I said I would report him at Galway, and when we arrived there I wont to look for the station master, and meanwhile the constable decamped. On the following day (the 13th) I wont to the County Constabulary office to see who the scoundrel was. I made my complaint, and asked if he could be summoned for breaking the Company's bye-laws. The sub-inspector asked if I was a stranger, and when I said I was, and had come over to see the country, he replied— 'Then you had better leave the country, for if you do not you may be fastened up.'"

His correspondent went on to say there were no means of identifying the man, because of the absence of a number; and that he had since heard that the constabulary boast of the immunity they enjoyed from this cause. This was evidence in point showing the misfortune of not having numbers, as in England, which would check the tyrannical, impertinent manner with which the con- stabulary treat all those with whom they came in contact. The custom in Ireland was for the delinquencies of the police to be screened from the highest to the lowest positions, and it was in that manner the replies of the Chief Secretary were given. Then, from County Cavan he had received complaints of the misconduct of Sub-Inspector Shaw, who was in the habit of getting drunk, and was the source of much annoyance to the neighbourhood. On one occasion, he broke into a person's house at night while in a tipsy state. On a recent occasion, Shaw was not to be found at his post in Ballyborough, and had to be sent for from Kells, where he was found cutting drunken capers in the streets of that town. In a drunken state, he had been known to sally out and make indiscriminate arrests. Of this conduct of Sub-Inspector Shaw he had testimony from three different persons. He would not read all the letters; but he would refer to one. It was from a decent, respectable man, who described how, on the morning of July 19, about half-past 5, as he was going to look for mud-turf, and having only his coat and shirt on, being without trousers and bare-footed, Sub-Inspector Shaw arrested him, and would not allow him to dress, but marched him in handcuffs into Ballyborough, where he was detained from 7 to half-past 11, until Mr. Simpson, J. P., ordered him to be liberated. Shaw was very drunk, and gave his prisoner a great deal of abuse on the way. The writer, whose name was Nixon, complained to Shaw that his treatment in marching him off without allowing him to put his breeches on—almost in his bare skin— was too bad; but he replied that he was "arrested under the Coercion Act, and he would be arrested again if he did Dot hold his tongue." In three instances he had complaints that Sub-Inspector Shaw had made arrests on charges of murder, but without any evidence; in fact, he could not make a charge, and had no authority to take the persons prisoners. If the Chief Secretary did not like general charges against the action of the police, these were of a specific character; and he could give proofs that this man, Stanley Shaw, had behaved in a most reprehensible manner, and it was the duty of the Chief Secretary to have these charges investigated, and Shaw dismissed from the force. When Philip Brady was arrested and conveyed to Mullingar, he complained of his treatment by the police there; but, when he (Mr. Biggar) put a Question on the subject to the Chief Secretary, the latter, as usual, defended the police, said they were not to blame, and the charge was unfounded. Philip Brady, seeing the report of this in the newspapers, wrote to him a reply, in which he said they were detained two hours at Mullingar waiting for a train to Galway; and that, with the exception of about 10 minutes in the day-room and some 15 minutes for refreshment, the time was spent in the lock-up. Head Constable Lynch, from Ballynamore, could testify to this. The constabulary at Mullingar had no right to interfere while the prisoners were in charge of constables and being conveyed to Galway. Another complaint he had made the subject of a Question in reference to the misconduct of the police at Moville, where one of the constabulary, named Moffat, was so outrageously drunk in the house of Mrs. M'Graddy that he lay on the floor for hours. He entered Mrs. M'Graddy's kitchen, and ordered her out, and behaved in such a rough, coarse manner, and frightened her to such an extent, that she was forced to call in civilians to remove the police from the house. In spite of these and many other cases that could be brought forward, the Chief Secretary could stand up and certify that the police were a highly respected, well-behaved, and trustworthy body of men. He trusted he had said enough to show the Committee that they were not justified in granting the Vote, unless they wished to perpetuate a system that could not be defended.

said, he could hardly concur in all the remarks of the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar). So far from the constabulary being a force open to unlimited condemnation, it was a force, in many respects, deserving the approbation of the people among whom it was located. The Irish Constabulary were a respectable, well-conducted body of men; and he questioned whether in any country in the world a force of equal strength placed in such circumstances—if, indeed, in any country such circumstances could be paralleled—as those under which the Irish Constabulary were placed would conduct themselves so well. But it was beyond question that many of their faults were induced by encouragement from head-quarters, and provocation under circumstances in which they were placed. He would not contest the allegations against particular individuals; but he felt bound in conscience to say that he believed such were entirely exceptional. They were due to the system under which the force was administered. If anyone wished to understand the position of a sub-constable in Ireland, he must remember that if the man was a Catholic, if he belonged to that religious body, of which the great majority of the people were composed, then his chances of promotion were very much lessened. If he did not demean himself towards the population in an overbearing, tyrannous manner, he would have very little chance of commending himself to his superiors. A Parliamentary Return was furnished some time ago by the Chief Secretary of the number of Catholics and Protestants in the force, and the different ranks and grades; and from that Return it appeared that, as the ranks rose in status, the proportion of Catholics fell off, until at the top there were absolutely none at all. He did not wish to dwell unfairly on this question of religious difference. Catholic as he was himself, he trusted that in personal demeanour he had not borne himself differently to another man on account of a difference of religion; but this question of religion did so underlie all the relations of Irish life that it was simply affectation to disregard it in the consideration of this question. It must be borne in mind, also, that the constabulary were administered and directed by a certain handful of men in Dublin, whose instincts were directly antagonistic to those of the population; and the principles they inculcated were—"Keep the men down, keep the people down. Do not allow them to hold their heads erect before you. Men, women, and children must be taught that the word of a policeman is law, and if you do not induce that idea you are unfit for promotion or for the force." He had heard it from men in the force, and in different parts of Ireland, that the great majority of the police went very much against the grain to all the scenes of evictions, and often and often they put their hands in their pockets to assist the unfortunate people whom they were called on to evict; and he had been assured by the police themselves that that would be done more frequently but for the fear the men had that by so conducting themselves they would interfere with their chances of promotion, by bringing upon them the displeasure of their superiors. A little time ago there was an indication of the spirit in which the police force was directed. Some months ago, when the Chief Secretary was trying to force the Coercion Bill through the House, he was assured by the police that once the Bill was passed they could put their hands upon 100 of the classes for whom the Bill was intended—village ruffians and village tyrants. He (Mr. Arthur O'Connor") challenged the Chief Secretary to deny this; but the right hon. Gentleman declined to say what communications had passed between himself and the responsible authorities at Dublin, though it was notorious in Ireland and perfectly well known to every well-informed person. When the Coercion Bill was passed, the police authorities could not redeem their promise; and then a Circular was issued, pointing this out, and twitting them with their want of diligence. "You ought to know," it was said, "the people who ought to be reasonably suspected; "and it was as much as hinted," whether suspected or not, we must have something to show the necessity of the Coercion Bill." It reminded him very much of an expression put into the mouth of one of Shakespeare's characters—"Seem to see the thing thou dost not." The complaints against the police in Ireland arose not so much from the conduct of the men themselves as from the system under which they were placed. There was another point in connection with the Vote to which he wished to draw attention, and that was the question of charging localities for extra police when they wore drafted from a different county. He was prepared to contend that this charge for extra police was utterly illegal, and on this ground. The charge for police was thrown on the Consolidated Fund, and this Consolidated Fund had to bear the charge for the whole of Ireland, and the total force appointed was 10,003. This force had not been increased. The returns of the effective strength of the constabulary on any particular date would show that the Establishment had never been exceeded; and his contention was that the Government had no legal right to enforce the charge for extra police upon any particular district. What did the Government do? They took, say, 40 police from Queen's County, and sent them into Mayo. But these men incurred no extra charge on the Government; their pay, allowances, and travelling expenses were provided for in the Vote; but yet, over and above that, the Government exacted from the district into which the men were sent a charge as for extra police, and they claimed the power to do so under statute. But a careful perusal of the statute showed that the power to charge a district with extra police when they were drafted from another county, unless the men belonged to the Reserve did not legally exist. Last year the Chief Secretary expressed some doubt about the matter, but he said he would inquire into it; and perhaps now he would state the result of that inquiry. He had not heard that the right hon. Gentleman had given any opinion, or declared the result of his investigation, and he was interested to know the answer. Unless the Government could clearly show they were within their statutory authority in making the charge, he would be prepared to reduce the Vote by £14,000, that being the amount of the charge for extra police.

said, the hon. Member had alluded to what he said last Session; but the only doubt he then expressed was whether the moiety of the cost should be levied on the district, or on the county. That was the point upon which he had doubt—he had no doubt whatever that it could be levied on the locality, either the county or the district. The hon. Member seemed to be confident that it could not be legally charged on the county; but if that were so, no doubt, when the presentment came before a Grand Jury, that body would, if they saw any ground for doing so, dispute the claim. But on the legal advice he had received he had no doubt whatever that the charge could be levied. As regarded the points raised by the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar), the Committee would not expect him to say more than that he could not be expected to give eredence to the charges, for which there was no proof beyond the statements of the ton. Member's informants. According to the regulations in force inquiries would be made into the conduct of individual members of the force; and although the hon. Member for Cavan might think there was no good likely to result from an application to the authorities, he could only say that he had always found them anxious to inquire into all cases of the kind brought before them. There were two other modes by which redress could be obtained—to have the case investigated at Petty Sessions, or claim damages in the Courts of Law.

said, he had two remarks to make with reference to the reply of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. First, he believed the right hon. Gentleman was very much mistaken in imagining that the Grand Jury would be likely to assist the people of Ireland in any way as against the administration of the police; and, secondly, with regard to the question of the right of the Government to charge a moiety of the expense of the extra police to the counties, he would ask him to bear in mind the provision of the Act 9 & 10 Vict., c. 97, that before the moiety could be charged to the counties the magistrates in Session should certify that the existing force was insufficient. Now, that provision had never been regarded, and he did not think the right hon. Gentleman could show that in any instance this necessary meeting had taken place and the certificate been obtained. He therefore felt it his duty, under the circumstances, to move the reduction of the Vote and press the Motion to a division. He would also point to the 29 & 30 Viet., which dealt with the same question of extra police, and provided for the reduction of a proportionate number of constables from the extra force. The whole of the extra charge appeared to him illegal and unjust; and he begged to move the reduction of the Vote by the sum of £43,000.

said, he did not think the hon. Member for Queen's County was quite correct in his remark with reference to the Grand Jury. The hon. Member seemed to suppose that the Grand Jury would wish that the county should pay more than the proper amount. That was not his experience, and he did not think it was the experience of the Committee. He did not believe that any Member of the Committee was more jealous of the interests of his county than the hon. and gallant Member for Leitrim (Major O'Beirne), who was a very active member of Grand Juries; and he thought that the views of the hon. and gallant Member would be allowed to afford a proper indication of the course likely to be taken with regard to the charge upon the counties. He was, however, just informed by his hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General for Ireland that the decision did not lie with the Grand Jury. The presentment could be traversed by any ratepayer, and the question brought before a Judge.

said, he should like to bring to the notice of the Committee in a few words some of the details of a case of police interference that had taken place in the county which he had the honour to represent, and which showed that the police were sometimes sent to places where their presence was not required, and without the observance of the rule which was said to be observed when an extra police force was sent to any part of Ireland. It had been stated a night or two ago by the Chief Secretary for Ireland that the modus operandi for the purpose of getting a force of police to attend a sale by the sheriff was for the sheriff to enter into communication with the police authorities, and that on his representation that such force was, in his opinion, necessary for the preservation of order, a body of police would be sent by order of Government to the place of sale. That was certainly not the course followed at a place called Red Cross, in the county of Wicklow, on the 30th of June last, to which he desired to call attention. In that instance the sheriff positively declared he had no apprehension of any danger, and that he did not want any police whatever to be present at the sale, and he further protested against their being sent there. However, no attention was paid to the remonstrances of the sheriff, and a large force of police was sent down; and, although no disturbance took place, this proceeding on the part of the authorities very nearly resulted in a collision between the people and the police. Immediately after the occurrence he had drawn the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland to the circumstances of the case; and he was bound to say that the reply of the right hon. Gentleman furnished him with very scant information on the subject. The inquiry addressed to the right hon. Gentleman was to this effect—Whether it was true that any police force had been sent down to attend a sheriff's sale at Red Cross, in the county of Wicklow, by the Government, without the consent of the sheriff, and in direct opposition to the publicly expressed desire of the sheriff; whether his attention had been called to the correspondence which had taken place upon the subject in the newspapers, and so forth? He asked the right hon. Gentleman whether he was aware, as the sheriff had anticipated, the whole amount of the rents had been peaceably paid, and whether the sheriff had not said he could not help thinking that such unnecessary displays of physical force were calculated to create alarm in the district, and to inflame the minds of the people? He had also inquired on whose application the county of Wicklow had been subjected to the expense consequent on the movement of the force. He was bound to say that the right hon. Gentleman did not always give that candid information in his replies to Questions which hon. Members were fairly entitled to. On the occasion referred to the right hon. Gentleman replied that in putting the Question he (Mr. Corbet) was under some misapprehension. He did not see what misapprehension he was under. The right hon. Gentleman then said there would be no extra expense to the county for the removal of the force; that the force had been sent on account of information which the Government had received, and but for the precautions taken there would have been a serious disturbance at the sale. He wondered how the right hon. Gentleman could know that a serious disturbance would have taken place. They had in this case the direct assurance of the sheriff that he apprehended no danger whatever; and yet in spite of the assurance of that authority, who, according to the statement of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, was the proper person to apply for the assistance of the police in cases where danger was apprehended, a police force was sent down. He had felt it his duty to bring this case again before the right hon. Gentleman upon the present Vote, as an illustration of the way in which the police were sent to various parts of Ireland at great expense to the ratepayers; and before the large amount now asked for was passed by the Committee, he thought that some further information than that given by the right hon. Gentleman on a former occasion was desirable in reference to this matter.

said, the hon. Member for Wicklow (Mr. Corbet) was under a misapprehension in regard to the expense to the county which he represented of sending down the police force to the sheriff's sale at Red Cross. Wicklow was not one of those counties to which the Government had thought it necessary to send any extra police force; and, therefore, it was only natural that he should, in replying on a former occasion to the Question of the hon. Member, state that there would be no extra expense to the county. He was informed that the police force was sent without any cost to the county. The hon. Member had stated that no force was required at the sale at all. That might be so, and he would not take upon himself to deny the statement of the hon. Member; but he wished to press upon the attention of the Committee the necessity of considering the position in which the Government were placed in reference to these matters. He believed hon. Members would agree with him when he said that in cases of this kind it was much better that a force should be sent where it was not wanted than that where it was wanted it should not be sent, because the effect of not sending it might be the loss of life. It was perfectly true that he had said that the sheriff should inform the authorities in all cases where he expected there would be resistance; but it must be borne in mind that it was the Government who were responsible for the preservation of order and the protection of life and property, and that the sheriff might sometimes be too sanguine in the view he took of the peaceful character of the proceedings about to take place. There had been instances of that kind, and the greatest danger had occurred in cases where the sheriff's officers had been over-sanguine and had endeavoured to execute their duty with too small a force. Therefore, he contended, it was better to err on the safe side, and for the Government to do what they believed to be right for the preservation of law, whether there was any resistance or not.

wished to impress upon the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland the desirability of not placing implicit reliance upon the reports of police shorthand writers, which, owing to their inaccuracy, would lead the Government into grave mistakes. It was much more difficult to learn to write shorthand in a proper way than to learn to speak a foreign language. It required almost constant practice to master it and to retain it. No doubt, a policeman could write something which might be called shorthand; but he believed that by no possibility could a trustworthy report, even of the shortest speech, be made by such a process. Some passages that were attributed to him had been quoted at the recent State trial at Dublin, and afforded a perfect illustration of his contention. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman that nothing could be more ungrammatical or more unmeaning than the speech that was attributed to him. Irish Members had good reason to believe that the Government had, by placing reliance upon the report of a constable, committed a great mistake in the case of Mr. Boyton; and, therefore, he urged upon the right hon. Gentleman that if he must have reports of every meeting that took place in Ireland, and if he could not trust to the newspapers, where he would generally find a good report of the proceedings, he should, at least, employ competent and qualified men for the purpose, and not send incompetent persons—three-fourths constable and one-fourth reporter—to furnish him with excuses for arrests.

said, he must confess he should be very glad if the hon. Member for Queen's County (Mr. Arthur O'Connor) did not proceed to a division upon the special point contained in the Motion before the Committee. For his own part, he thought it would be better to divide against the whole of the Constabulary Vote. There were several points which he might have been inclined to raise; but which he should not on that occasion dwell upon. With regard to one which he had been requested to raise—namely, that relating to the conduct of Sub-Inspector Smith in Donegal, he had already brought it before the Committee on a former Vote a few days ago; and he would only repeat his hope that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland would look fully into the matter. But there was one subject that he had referred to last year on which he desired to say a very few words. It was a matter of interest to both Englishmen and Irishmen that some means ought to be found that would have the effect of correcting the numerical inequality between the numbers of persons of different religions which existed in the higher ranks of the Constabulary Force in Ireland. He believed that the proportion in those ranks of Protestants and Catholics was as 250 to 40. There were five or six times as many Protestants as Catholics; while in the rank and file it was just the reverse. It was not necessary for anyone to characterize that state of things as a scandal. It was a scandal, however, which could not be corrected in a day. But he looked to any Government who wished to give its own police a fair chance in Ireland to correct, as far as possible, such a state of things. He again expressed a hope that no division would be taken on the special point, but that they should divide upon the Main Question, as a protest against police tyranny in Ireland.

said, he wished to recall the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland to his explanation, or rather reply to his question, with regard to the case of Sub-Inspector Shaw. Amongst other means of redress, the right hon. Gentleman had said that the complaint would be inquired into by the police authorities; but he (Mr. Biggar) had pointed at one of Sub-Inspector Shaw's superiors, whose conduct in this matter ought to be investigated.

said, the hon. Member must be aware that the complaint ought to be put forward, with a detailed statement of the facts of the case.

said, if the right hon. Gentleman wished for a detailed account of the facts, and the names of the parties concerned, the case should be investigated, and a written statement sent in. The right hon. Gentleman had said that an aggrieved person could claim damages; but, supposing an action was brought, what would be the result? Why, the Government would, of course, get the verdict, and the unfortunate applicant would have to pay all the costs incurred. It was, therefore, of no use to apply to the Courts of Law. The only way for a person to get redress was through the right hon. Gentleman in the House of Commons. If redress did not follow after an appeal to the Chief Secretary for Ireland it could be got in no other way.

said, he had no wish to delay this Vote; but before it was passed by the Committee he desired to call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, who was charged with the administration of public education in Ireland, to the position of the Irish model schools. It had been his intention to address the House upon the whole educational system of Ireland; but he should not, at that period of the Session, occupy the Committee with the larger question. He reserved that subject for a future occasion, and should, in the meantime, confine his observations to the model schools. The educational system of Ireland was denominational. The schools had become thoroughly denominational in their character; and although that might be so far in harmony with the wishes of the Government, still, in a matter of this vast importance, where differences of opinion existed, they ought to bring it to the test of public opinion, because the will of the people ought to be taken as the proper verdict in such matters. But that principle had not been acted upon in Ireland, and the result was that these schools were not in harmony either with local aspirations or the wishes of the Irish people. They were managed entirely by the Board of Education. Some time ago he had moved for a Return showing the number of model schools which existed in Ireland, the cost of their construction, and the annual cost of their maintenance. That Return had been furnished, and it showed that there were 30 of these schools, built at a cost of £2,000 each, and maintained at an annual expense of £36 each. Now, according to the last Census, the population of Ireland was thus divided. The Catholic population amounted to more than 76 per cent of the entire population of the country. Yet, notwithstanding that fact, it was found that scarcely 20 per cent of the children who attended the model schools were Catholics, the remaining 80 per cent being made up of non-Catholics; in other words, they found that out of a total number of 11,873 pupils in these schools, only 3,198 were Catholics. The anomalous character of the schools would be still further apparent to the Committee when he drew their attention to the fact that of the 3,198 Catholics who attended them, the vast majority attended in Dublin. That fact would show that the Provincial schools were entirely denominational. There was scarcely a Catholic within their doors. Again, when the question of their cost was considered, it was found to be out of all reason. In some schools so small was the number of pupils that it had amounted to £5 or £6 per head, and he found it now amounted to over £3 or nearly £4 per head. In England it amounted to 15s. a-head, as stated by the Vice President of the Council of Education. It was preposterous that such a cost should be incurred in Ireland, because it was in no way rendered necessary by the position of the people whose children were educated in the schools. This would be shown by the Return to which he had referred, and which showed that the persons who made use of the schools for their children were agents or managers of property, apothecaries, architects, attorneys, auctioneers, barristers, chemists, mill-owners, non-professional men, shopkeepers, and others. Out of 4,000 persons who made use of the schools for the purpose of educating their children, 3,000 belonged to the classes named, and were, from their position in life, perfectly well able to pay for the support and instruction of their children. To such an extent was the present system carried, that, as was perfectly well known, carriages and other equipages were frequently seen rolling up to the school doors to drive to their homes children who were being educated at the cost of the State. Then with regard to the quality of the education given in these schools. They were, so far as that was concerned, the subject of constant inquiry, he was bound to say of constant disputation also; and it came to this, that on examination it had not been shown that they stood out in any degree of prominence as being exceptionally good in the matter of education. There had been conflicts with regard to the schools in several districts, and the outcome of those conflicts had been that these highly paid schools had not turned out exceptional in their teaching, nor were they found to excel in the class examinations which, in the great national schools, cost the country only 15s. or 16s per head of the children educated in them. It was reported of them by one Commission that they were not very successful in teaching, nor were they really mixed in attendance, so that they had really not achieved either of two objects which they were intended to secure. They were not successful in the matter of education, nor was a mixed attendance obtained. Mr. Kelan, who had lately got a title for his efforts, not only in Ireland, but in other parts of the Kingdom, in the course of his examination gave evidence against the Provincial model schools. He said they were not carrying out the object for which they were intended, and he recommended that they should be given up. In answer to a question as to whether he knew that in many towns the children of wealthy people were taught in these model schools, he said he was aware of the fact, and considered it a very objectionable arrangement. Then, again, in a Report of the Commissioners it was recommended that the model schools should be closed, so that there was a complete concurrence of testimony against the schools, and from no source whatever did he hear one word in defence of those expensive establishments, Their extravagance was profuse; their utility nil; and, therefore, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland would suspend their operations, which had been carried on at so great an expense to the country. When it was proposed to do away with any institutions, those who were in favour of that course were often asked what they intended to do with the buildings; and, no doubt, in the present case it would be said—"There are the schools; they are splendid structures; they were built at an immense cost to the State; what are we to do with them?" There was no encouragement to technical education in Ireland. During the debates which had taken place on the Land Bill in that House they had been told that the gravity of the situation in Ireland was due to the fact that there was no occupation in Ireland but that connected with the land. If that were true, he appealed to the Government to foster Irish art and manufactures. There were societies which spent the revenues which they derived from Ireland in promoting technical instruction in England; at any rate, if that were not so now it was the case a short time ago, because he had read their reports in connection with the prizes given by them to technical schools. But, however that might be, he suggested that these model schools, which had failed to achieve any of the objects for which they were intended, from which the general population of Ireland were absent altogether, whose benefits were confined to the children of well-to-do people, and whose educational results were of the poorest kind, should be turned into technical schools for the benefit of the Irish people. He would not detain the Committee any longer. He did not wish to embarras the present topic of the model schools with the question of the national system. He knew the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland must be convinced of their utter inutility and of the inability of the resources of the country to retain them in their present expensive form; and, therefore, without moving the reduction of the Vote, he would simply ask the plain question— what did the right hon. Gentleman intend to do with the model schools?

said, the supply of school books in Ireland was a monopoly, whereas in England the school boards were allowed in every locality to choose their own books and designs. Now, he very much objected to the kind of instruction conveyed by these books, the whole series of which he had carefully gone through. The manner in which the character of the people of Ireland was described at a part of Book No. 4 was absurd, and no one could regard it as in any sense a production that did credit to the liberality or the judgment of the person who wrote it. It was ridiculous to single out two or three national characteristics in order to convoy an idea of national character. For instance, what would be thought of the fairness of his description, supposing he were employed to write an official school book, if he wound up by saying that "the English people were a very energetic and able people. Occasionally they beat their wives and got drunk?" Moreover, the instruction was not always conveyed in grammatical language. His second charge against these Departmental books was that they contained nothing whatever about Irish history. That was a very objectionable feature, because there was nothing more necessary than that children should learn the history of their own country. The children were taught to repeat "Ye Mariners of England;" and under the head of the National Anthem he found "God save the Queen," which, although it was the National Anthem of England, was not so of Ireland. There was, also, a good deal of information about Mungo Park and African manners and customs, as well as the Polar Sea, and other things very interesting in themselves, but which were certainly not so interesting to the Irish people as the history of their own country. This was a question which affected the well-being of all the children in Ireland, and he protested against the present system of supplying the Irish schools with books so deficient in the necessary elements of instruction. With regard to the model schools. There was a model school in the town which he had the honour to represent. He had attended this school himself, and at the time he referred to it was much more largely attended than now, for all the Catholic children, as well as the Protestant children of the town, went there. At that time the Catholic authorities in the town raised no objection to the school; but they did so afterwards, and the result was that nearly all the Catholic children had been withdrawn. That was the case with other schools throughout the country. They were expensively maintained; but the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland knew that he could not force the Catholic children to attend them. Therefore, he asked, what was the use of keeping up these schools when they were conducted on a system opposed to the conscience of the people? And he appealed to the right hon. Gentleman to give this question of education in Ireland his most serious consideration. He had no wish to weary the Committee by any lengthened remarks upon this subject, and accordingly he would not go into any statistics; but he said it was high time that the right hon. Gentleman should carefully consider the necessity which existed for compulsory education in Ireland. He cared not from what quarter opposition to his views upon this subject might come. At whatever risk to himself, political or otherwise, he would support any effort to make education in Ireland compulsory, with the single condition that allowance should be made for those seasons of the year in which sowing and reaping was done. If the right hon. Gentleman could see his way to establish compulsory education in Ireland, he could promise him not only his own earnest support, but, as he believed, the support of every Member of the Irish Party.

said, he regretted that this Vote had come forward at so late a period of the Session, both on account of its importance and the great personal interest which was felt in it by himself and other hon. Members. With regard to the statement of the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), it was perfectly true that there was a difference between the English and Irish systems of supplying the schools with books, and no doubt a good deal was to be said for and against both systems. School books in England were by no means what they should be, any more than the books used in Irish schools; and a good deal of fault had been found that in England no attempt was made to prescribe books for the use of the schools. The advantage of having the books chosen by the Board was that, on the whole, a better class of books for educational purposes were obtained than would otherwise be the case; and, al- though perhaps there was something to be said in favour of allowing managers to get what books they liked, for his own part, if they were to start in England, de novo, he should prefer the Irish to the English system. The hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Dawson) and the hon. Member who had just sat down, both made remarks upon the position of the model schools. He did not think that the model schools in Ireland had entirely answered, at any rate, in the Provinces, the expectations of those who established them, and to a certain extent he agreed with the observations of hon. Members respecting them. With regard to the whole system of Irish education, it had not been hoped by its first framers that it would be a secular system; but it was certainly hoped that it would be unsectarian. The hon. Member for Carlow had very properly stated that a large number of the national schools had become denominational schools. But it ought to be remembered that the model schools were, to a certain extent, at least in Dublin, training schools for teachers, and they had, therefore, a value quite independent of their use as mere schools; and, although it was possible that they did not meet the requirements of all the children around them, yet they were useful in the great system of education. But there was another question connected with the model schools which, undoubtedly, required great attention, and that was the amount of training which they afforded. It was said that they did not give all the training that was desirable, and he was ready to admit that the model school system did not provide as much training for teachers as was required for the purpose of a satisfactory system of education in Ireland. That was largely owing to the dislike on the part of a large portion of the population to resort to the model schools, and he agreed that this was a matter which demanded the closest possible attention from the Government. He had gone into statistics, and found that of the teachers and assistant teachers in Ireland only 31 per cent had been trained in the model establishments, whereas in England the proportion so trained was 60 per cent. It was, therefore, quite reasonable that these questions should have been raised, and it would have been a matter of regret to him if Irish Mem- bers had not thought that the subject ought to receive the attention of the Government. He had listened with pleasure to the remarks of the hon. Member for Galway on the question of compulsory education in Ireland, and he hoped before long it would be possible to introduce that system. He was certainly very glad to find that so much unanimity existed with regard to this subject amongst hon. Members for Ireland. He did not wish to detain the Committee at any length; but there were a few figures in relation to the number of pupils in the Irish national schools that he should like to lay before hon. Members. The percentage of children in the national schools in Ireland, that was to say, on the school roll, compared very favourably with the percentage in English schools. In the year 1880–81 there was in Ireland an average number of pupils equal to 20¾ per cent of the total population of the country, whereas in England, even after the enormous increase due to the Education Act, the average number of pupils in England and Wales was only 15 per cent of the population. There was, consequently, a larger proportion of Irish children in the Irish national schools than there was of English children in the English national schools. It might be the case that there were more schools outside the national schools in England than there were in Ireland; but he did not think this was the case. The average attendance in Ireland was 9 per cent of the population; but in England, whore there had been every effort made to screw up the average attendance, it was 10 per cent; consequently, although there were more children on the rolls in Ireland, there was a less average attendance. He believed the Irish people cared a great deal about education; but what was wanting was a compulsory system. He earnestly hoped that in future such would be the condition of Ireland that they might attend to the education of the country more closely.

said, he was glad the right hon. Gentleman concluded with the admission that there was no want of desire on the part of the Irish parents to give their children, as far as possible, the advantages of education. But the right hon. Gentleman seemed to overlook one very important point in connection with, the question, and that was that not only was there an absence of any system of compulsion in Ireland, but the means of education were not such as commended themselves to the great bulk of the population. One of the principal blots upon the present system had been referred to by the hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Dawson), and it was one which certainly deserved immediate attention— he referred to the entire absence of any Government-aided Training Colleges in Ireland. The Training Colleges in England, no matter whether Protestant or Catholic, were aided by the Government; but there were nothing of the kind in Ireland; at least, the Training Colleges which did exist and received Government support were such as did not commend themselves to the consciences of the Irish people, and that was the secret why, while they had 60 per cent of the teachers in England who had passed through the Training Colleges they had only some 30 per cent in Ireland. The reason of this was that the Catholics objected to the Training Colleges at present in existence. The Irish people considered that to send their children to a school taught by persons trained in establishments which were out of accord with their principles and views and sympathies would be fraught with danger to religion and morals. The ideas Catholics and Protestants had with regard to education were as wide as the Poles. The ordinary British teacher would consider he had amply discharged his duty if he gave a child half-an-hour's instruction daily in some matter of Scripture history; but the Catholic teacher knew that religion should be the all-pervading influence throughout the day, that the atmosphere of the school should be redolent with religion. But they had nothing like that in the Training Schools of Ireland, and nothing less than that would content the Catholic population of Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken about the books which were used under the National Board of Education in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to forget that Archbishop Whateley, who was one of the men who drew up those books, and who sanctioned their use in the first instance, declared in his correspondence that the surest means of undermining the Catholic faith of the population of Ireland was to be found in the national school books. The Irish people were perfectly alive to that fact, and that was the reason why, as far as they possibly could, they avoided having recourse to the present system of education. He thought it must commend itself to any right-minded man that in a Catholic country there should be Catholic Training Colleges aided to the same extent by the Government as the Training Colleges of England. That was the demand of the Irish Bishops, and, perhaps, between this and next year the right hon. Gentleman would find himself in a position to draft some scheme or other by which the point he had raised would be dealt with. With regard to the position of teachers, it could hardly be expected that the teachers of Ireland should be highly qualified men when it was considered what pay they received. In England, male teachers received on the average, £120 11s. 9d.; in Scotland, £139 3s. 0d.; and in Ireland they received something over £66. The Irish teachers had to do precisely the same work and produce the same results as the English teachers, and, in spite of the laxity of attendance, to which the Chief Secretary had referred, the results obtained in Ireland were more satisfactory than those secured in England. In reading in England there passed 87·53; in Scotland, 91·08; in Ireland, 91; there passed in writing in England, 80·08; in Scotland, 88·09; and in Ireland, 93; in arithmetic there passed in England, 73·87; in Scotland, 82·49; and in Ireland, 74·02. [Mr. W. E. FORSTER,: The examinations are not the same.] He knew very well that the Kerry boy was never found behind those who were in his nominal Standard in England. In reality, he believed the Standard was higher in Ireland than in England. He would not go over the other points which might very properly be raised if the Estimate had come on at the proper time; but he would direct the attention of the Chief Secretary to the position of national teachers in Ireland. The residences of these teachers were most wretched; they were small and dirty; in fact, it was clearly shown that in some of them the ordinary decencies of life could not, in any way, be observed. Some of the circumstances under which the teachers in Ireland lived were almost too painful to relate; and yet these were the people who were responsible for the maintenance of discipline, and for the forming of the mind and character of the children committed to their care. How could children be expected to respect persons who were so housed? Surely, it was very essential that the surroundings and circumstances of a teacher should be such as to inspire respect. There was another point in connection with the question of education which had just occurred to him, and it was in respect to the Irish language. He saw that under the Scotch Code the extent of examination in Gaelic in these districts where the language was spoken was indicated. That might appear a very trifling point; but he assured the Committee it was a matter of real importance, and if those who were concerned in the examinations in the Gaelic speaking districts were allowed to do that in Ireland, one of the most serious and practical difficulties in the way of teaching the language might be removed. He would not detain the Committee with the numerous points which ought to be considered in connection with the question of popular education in Ireland; but he did think the Irish Members were justified in complaining that the Government had relegated to this period of the Session a matter to which they had a right to claim the respectful attention of Parliament.

said, he was greatly in favour, not only of compulsory education, but of the school board system. He also considered that they ought to insist upon the local people paying the expenses of the education of their children. It would shortly be found to be the duty of the British Government to throw the education of the people of Ireland upon school boards, as in this country, and to thus take it out of the hands of any particular manager, who, of course, was now able to dictate what the education of the children should be. He had to complain very strongly of the intellectual stops the people of Ireland got to their mental improvement. He was at school until he was 13 years of age; but he was not taught a bit, and it was not surprising. Perhaps there were 150 boys at school, only one unfortunate man to keep them in order, and the only things the boys would learn would be sums in addition, and how to read. It was a most extraordinary education that was imparted to the people of Ireland, and in his opinion the State did not get a proper return for the money it expended. He was rather practical, and he would ask the Government what was the good of compelling boys to learn the number of the slaves in Africa and the height of the mountains in Asia? As to spelling and arithmetic, the boys of Ireland simply got a smattering of them. He would like to see instruction given in such subjects as physical chemistry; and next year he trusted they would have an opportunity on this Vote of discussing in some better way than they could now the curriculum in the Irish schools. With regard to the reading books, it was surprising to find what silly books were given to the boys in the Irish schools, especially when they remembered that English literature teemed with beautiful subjects which were by no means controversial, but which were most suitable for compilation in a school reading book. In the Irish school books they read something of a Malch, or some little fable about Cain and Abel. Such were the sort of absurd things they got in the school books of Ireland. As to the teaching of the Irish language, he thought more ought to be done by the clergymen. If the clergymen cared to give their daily instructions to the people in their Native lauguage, if they cared to say the Common Prayers in Irish, it would be the best means possible of preserving the language. That was what was done in Wales, and it had proved a great success. The priests of Ireland were responsible for the decline of the Native language, for there was a large number of Prayers given in English which might very well be given in Irish.

said, the State ought to say what the schools should be from a secular point of view; but it ought to leave the managers free to deal with religion as they thought proper.

said, that last year he had asked the right hon. Gentleman a question as to the average of 70 being required before a poor man could get the assistance of a pupil teacher in a school, and the right hon. Gentleman had promised to look into the matter, especially in reference to remote country schools. He wished now to know whether anything had been done in the matter; he wished to know how many managers of national schools had com- plained of this injustice; and whether the right hon. Gentleman would modify this rule, which was so destructive of education in Ireland?

desired to know why a balance of £2,200 from. fees paid by children in Dublin was paid into the Exchequer?

said, the cost per child in Ireland was much larger than he had supposed. It was £1 10s. 6d., but the grant was £1 5s. 6d. In England the cost per child was £1 16s. 6d., and the grant was 14s. 4d. As to the question of proportion, having received a deputation upon this matter, he had gone very carefully into the subject; but his position was very different from that of the Vice President of the Council. He had always found the Education Board in Ireland most anxious to do their duty, and to consider fairly any suggestion brought before them; but he must remind the Committee that he himself had not the same power as the Vice President.

explained that his question referred to the model schools in Ireland. The amount for teachers of model schools for 1881 was £5,100, and the remainder of the school fees, amounting to £2,200, was paid into the Exchequer as an extra receipt. Why was that?

said, the reason was that the model schools were expensive, and after the expenses had been paid out of the Government grant, whatever was made by the fees went back to the Exchequer.

complained that the Catholics in Ireland had no share in this money.

said, he had been asked by several graduates of this University whether any of their rights would be interfered with by the new changes. Several of these undergraduates had left the Colleges to pursue other occupations, with the intention of returning to take their degrees, and they wished to know how they would be affected. Formerly, they could go up at any time to obtain a B.A. or an M.A.; but now there was a limitation put upon the period.

said, that this point should be further considered.

said, that, while not desiring, at that hour, to enter into this question at any length, he should challenge the Vote, because these Colleges were to a large extent only schools whose initial examination lowered the standard of culture for the country, and because the non-dogmatic class were specially subsidized in proportion to their non-belief. Further, he held that the Irish nation was entitled to far more national institutions than these Colleges; and he hoped the day was not far distant when every national institution, and every other institution, would be thoroughly inspired by a greater spirit of Irish nationality.

said, he wished to point out that in the Queen's Colleges the most distant allusion to history was not permitted. As a result of the present system, education in Ireland was thoroughly bad, and most Irishmen knew more about English history than about their own. He could not agree in the opinion that the Queen's Colleges did harm to education; but he did think that the matriculation examination was ridiculously easy. These examinations were necessary, he was afraid, because of the educational condition of the country; but they were very much too easy. The salaries of the Professors were also too small.

complained that, while there were three Colleges for the secularisation of Ireland, there was no College for the great mass of the people.

asked the Government to postpone the consideration of the Bill until Monday, in order to give Irish Members an opportunity to discuss it. As he understood the Bill, its object was to transfer all the officers at present in the employment of the Church Temporalities Commission to the Land Commission. Now, that was a most objectionable mode of proceeding, because it would give employment to a lot of "true blue" Protestants and Orangemen in connection with the working of the Land Act, to the prejudice of that measure. He thought the working of the Land Act should not be hampered by the engagement of these persons; and he moved the adjournment of the debate, in order to give Members time to discuss the subject.

seconded the Motion.

hoped the Motion would not be pressed. The danger which the hon. Member apprehended would not arise. It was not proposed to transfer the entire staff of the Church Temporalities Commission to the Land Commission. The 3rd section of the Bill regulated the appointments which the Land Commission might make. They would only select those who were competent to discharge their duties. The Land Commission would be without a staff, and it was necessary that they should have an office and a staff with which to carry on their business. By transferring all that were required of the staff of the Church Commissioners, and utilizing their office for the purposes of the Land Commission, a good deal of expense would be saved to the nation.

said, it was most desirable that the Land Commission should be free from all sectarian and landlord bias. On looking over the list of officers of the Church Temporalities Commission, he found that they were, almost without exception, Protestants of the Orange Tory true blue stamp. Out of some 60 officials, only two were Roman Catholics, and this, he contended, was a most undesirable Board to hand over the work of the Land Act to.

said, that, if the Bill did not pass, the Church Temporalities Commissioners must continue their work for another year, when they themselves were of opinion that their work was done; but provision must be made for continuing the collection of the funds, and the Bill would transfer the work of supervision to the Land Commission.

said, the explanations were satisfactory; and he hoped the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) would withdraw his Motion.

said, the Government had no intention of accepting the Amendments of the right hon. and learned Member for Dublin University.

asked if he were correct in stating that if this Bill did not pass, and they did not renew the Church Temporalities Bill, that Viscount Monck and Judge Lawson would not receive their salaries beyond the 31st of December?

Of course not.

said, he would rather that the Chief Secretary answered the question.

said, that if the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill were not passed, or the clauses with regard to the Church Commission were taken out of it, and if this Bill were not passed, it was quite true that Judge Lawson and Viscount Monck's office would come to an end at the close of this year. And this, further, would happen—all the immense income of the Irish Church, with the arrangements for repayment, would come to an end also. In order to provide against this, the House must do one of two things—either give the power in the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, which continued the salaries, or pass this Bill.

said, it behaved the Government to provide the machinery for working the Land Commission. It was not too late now to introduce a Bill to empower the Board of Works or the Local Government Board to collect all the moneys collected by the Church Temporalities Commission.

We are now in Committee, and we must only discuss the clauses of the Bill.

observed, that if a short Bill were passed simply changing the 3rd and 4th sub-sections of the 2nd clause in this Bill, and to confer upon the Board of Works or the Local Government Board "all the powers, authorities, and duties, rights, titles, and interests;" in fact, if the whole sub-section were put upon the Board of Works in Ireland, and all the powers vested in or exercised by the Commissioners of Church Temporalities in. Ireland under the Irish Church Act were vested in or exercised by the Board of Works in Ireland, or by the Local Government Board in Ireland, they would get rid of these most offensive jobs. It was on of the most iniquitous jobs that had ever been attempted.

said, the course that the hon. Member suggested was not open to them, because if this Bill were not passed then it must come under the operation of the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill.

said, they took power under the 2nd clause to vest the powers of the Commissioners of Church Temporalities in the Land Commission. He wanted to know when they were going to meet?

was understood to express a hope that something would be done shortly.

proposed to add, in page 2, line 25,the following new sub-section:—

"(3.) All records and documents in the possession of the Commissioners of Church Temporalities at the time of their dissolution shall be transferred to the Irish Land Commission, who shall retain such of them as are in their opinion necessary for the management of the property transferred to them under this Act. The Land Commission shall preserve all such records and documents, and shall permit reasonable access to them, and shall from time to time lodge such of them as have ceased to he necessary for the aforesaid purpose in the Public Record Office of Ireland

"Alter the numbers of the subsequent subsections."

The only reason that this sub-section became necessary was this. Under the Irish Church Act, Section 7, the Church records were placed in the hands of the Church Commissioners, and were subject to the inspection of persons who had the right to inspect. The sub-section which he proposed to add was for the purpose of incorporating that provision of the Church Act into this Bill, and it was necessary for its working.

asked whether the Government intended to continue the right of a pension to the Irish Church Commissioners who were to be transferred to the Land Commission? Under the Land Bill no official was entitled to a pension.

said, the Government had no idea of perpetrating a job. The object was to save the money of the country by utilizing the services of persons who would be unnecessarily employed if this were not done. He begged to disclaim the smallest idea of any job, or of any object beyond that which he had mentioned.

said, he did not think that the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) said that the Government intended to perpetrate a job. He understood him to ask the Solicitor General for Ireland what number of the staff was necessary to continue the work of winding up the Church Commission, and what provision was to be made for pensions.

said, the new Land Bill, not having yet received the Royal Assent, no appointment had yet been made by the new Commissioners.

said, that the only appointments in the hands of the Commissioners were the secretary and his staff. He had to raise an objection to the 3rd clause from line 10 to 20. The words were in contravention to the Standing Order of the House, which, he believed, stated that any Money Bill, or any Bill imposing or commuting or in any way dealing with money matters, should be introduced in the Whole House, or should appear in the Bill in italics. Those 10 lines imposed upon the public funds the salaries of all persons entitled to receive salaries under the Land Commission, and would continue them to the 31st day of December next after the passing of the Act. He asked whether that was not in contravention of the Standing Orders?

asked whether, if there were substantial ground for the objection, it could be raised after the second reading?

The question is not one for the Committee. It is not paid out of the taxation of the country, but from the funds of the Church.

said, the words were that—

"The Treasury may, if they see fit, direct that the salaries of the said Commissioners and of all persons employed by them on salary, and not appointed to situations entitling them at the same time to receive salaries under the Irish Land Commission, shall continue."

That was imposed upon the Treasury, and not upon any private party.

said, his question was, whether the Government gave power in the Bill that any person who, being in a situation under the Church Commissioners, was to be transferred to the Land Commission, should forfeit his right to a pension? He was not going into the question of pensions; but the idea that this clause gave to the House was that there was no right of pensions. Why should the public be charged with the pensions of men simply because they were tranferred to the Land Commission, whereas, if the Government engaged new men, they would not be entitled to pensions under the Land Act? He supposed they would say they gave them upon the services rendered under the Church Temporalities Commission— that they would have no choice in the matter.

said, that was so.

asked if the Government would give an undertaking in the Land Bill to make an Annual Return to Parliament of the separate account of the property transferred to them under this Act?

Certainly.

said, he hoped that no party would be taken by the Land Commission whose want of sympathy with the working of the Act was apparent.

said, he gave this assurance to the Irish Members that no person should be appointed on the transfer of the staff of the Irish Church Temporalities Commission to the Land Commission, whose want of sympathy with the Land Bill had been publicly manifested.

begged to move an Amendment with a view to showing veterinary surgeons in the country what the fees for registration were to be, there being nothing in the clause upon this point.

said, he thought there was no use in inserting these words, for the fees could only be settled by the Privy Council, and they would take care that they were moderate. Their idea was that the fees could be more moderate than the present fees.

said he thought this clause was a departure from the original idea of the Bill. The Preamble asserted that it was desirable that it should be better known what persons were duly qualified for veterinary practice; but it was clear that a person who had practised for five years was not necessarily qualified for the work, and the Preamble would be wrong, and the proposed lists would give no assistance in ascertaining whether a person was qualified or not. Those persons who had practised without a diploma should be left where they now were. He should propose to strike out the clause.

objected to the omission, and the clause was retained.

said, he had an Amendment to this clause to leave out all the words beginning at the last word of the third line on page 7, to the end of the sixth line. There wore in the country a number of extremely useful persons who, though not veterinary surgeons, were very skilful as farriers, and were very often extremely valuable in attending to animals; but if this clause stood that class of people would be done away with. It was right that a person wrongly describing himself as a veterinary surgeon should be made liable to a penalty, but the words following that provision would restrict the action of the useful class of men he had referred to.

said, he could not assent to this Amendment. The object of the clause was to impose a penalty for misrepresentation, and it did not affect the humble class calling themselves farriers so long as they did not describe themselves as veterinary surgeons. An immense amount of cruelty was inflicted upon animals by unskilled persons.

objected to veterinary surgeons being placed in the same position as physicians and barristers in regard to their fees.

said, the object of the Bill was to avoid any distinctions between veterinary surgeons and others, and the Bill followed in this respect the Medical Acts and all Bills dealing with surgery.

said, it was proposed to confer the power of arrest upon the Governors of every Province of Her Majesty's Dominions, in addition to Judges and Magistrates. To the last he saw no objection; but he would suggest that after the words "Governor of that possession," there should be inserted the provise—"if there is no Judge of a Superior Court in that part." The effect would be that where there was such a Judge, the power would be vested in him and not in the Governor. If, however, he was assured that what the Bill proposed was now the rule, he would not press the Amendment, for he did not want to restrict existing power. But he thought the power to issue the warrant should rest with the Judge.

said, he could assure the hon. and gallant Member that the practice that the Bill would provide was that which at present prevailed. The warrant would be only that for the apprehension of the offender, not for his extradition. He would be brought up subsequently before the magistrate, when the question of extradition would be considered.

asked leave to withdraw his Amendment.

said, among the offences enumerated were those of treason and piracy. It might suit the convenience of the authorities to put a very broad interpretation on the word '' treason," but it was altogether contrary to the usual practice for fugitives to be extradited for political crimes. If an Englishman were accused of a political crime, and took refuge in France, the French Government would not extradite him at the request of the English Government; and the same thing would be done by an English Government, or would have been done when Liberalism meant Liberalism—he was not sure what might he done now. But it used to be a dogma of English rule that such extradition should not take place for political offences. Why should a different practice be introduced in their relations with Colonial Governments to that which obtained in their relations with Foreign Nations? The word, he thought, ought to be left out.

said, the Government could not possibly agree to this. Of course, the reason why, as between Nations, the one did not recognize political offences committed against the Government of the other, was because the one Government did not inquire into the laws of the other. But, as regarded the Mother Country and her Colonies, the authority of the Crown extended over the whole. The result of allowing such an Amendment would be that a person in this country might pass over to a Colony and yet not be made answerable to a law general to both the Colony and the Mother Country.

said, even if the Amendment were accepted it would not have the effect of excepting treason from the list of offences, for, although the word should be blotted out where it was expressed, it would be at once re-inserted by necessary implication from the words concluding the clause.

asked, was that so?

said, yea; it was usual to have the crimes defined in every place.

(speaking from the place usually occupied by the Leader of the Opposition) said, he begged to move, as an Amendment, to leave out from the words "Bill be" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "recommitted in respect of Clause 1." His object was to propose that the borough of Cardiff should be exempted from the provisions of the Bill. He had taken great pains to ascertain the opinions of the people in that large and prosperous seaport, and from all that he could learn he was in a condition to contend that the feeling of the population there was against the Bill, and that the signatures to the Petition from Cardiff in favour of it wore improperly obtained. The Petition was signed by a large number of women and young children, and among the signatories were twins who, at the age of seven, had expressed their opinion as to the necessity of Sunday closing. Again, a number of fictitious streets had been inserted as addresses of the people signing, and many persons had had their names signed without their knowledge. With regard to the necessity of the Bill for Cardiff, he found that in the five months from the 1st of January to the 9th of May the whole number of persons charged with drunkenness was only 133, and of that number only three were drunk on the Sunday. These figures for such a mixed and floating population were of a remarkable character, and justified him in saying that there was no necessity for any change in the law. Under these circumstances, he moved the re-commitment of the Bill.

I rise, Sir, for the purpose of opposing the Motion of the Leader of the Opposition. I am quite sensible of the weight that attaches to the new position the hon. and learned Gentleman has attained after a short Parliamentary career. I oppose the Motion on these grounds. First, that the hon. and learned Member has had a full opportunity, and a more favourable opportunity than he has had this evening, in a much fuller House, to set forth the whole of his argument to show why Cardiff should be excluded from the Bill; but he has not only had that opportunity, but the House did consider the question and decided when its numbers were three times more than we have now present. On the 15th of June, a Motion having the same object was debated, and a division was taken, and the Motion was rejected by 118 to 27. I submit that we ought not, with our reduced numbers and in the exhausted condition of the House, even under the increased, the enhanced authority that the hon. and learned Member has acquired with his new position, to endeavour to revoke a decision that carried with it much greater weight than any we could now arrive at. We have had experience in Ireland of such exceptions in regard to this subject. In the Sunday Closing Bill for Ireland it was granted, for the sake of passing the Bill rather than on the convictions of the party making the concession, that certain of the large towns in Ireland should be excluded from the Bill. But now I understand Irish opinion, after the experience there has been, is altogether unfavourable to a continuance of these exclusions, and when the temporary measure that was passed for Ireland comes to be renewed, undoubtedly Parliament will be asked to put an end to these exclusions, and to pass a Bill for the whole of Ireland. I am sorry to observe the hon. and learned Gentleman relapse. [Mr. WARTON had retired to his usual seat on the Fourth Bench.] I am sorry if anything I may have said has had the effect of checking the noble aspirations of his mind. [Mr. WARTON: Oh, no!] The hon. and learned Gentleman, I think, admitted that in Wales generally there is a disposition, a feeling widely spread in favour of passing this Bill. I was sorry to hear in one part of his speech a reference to Nonconformist chapels in Wales, which took the nature, I hardly like to call it of a sneer, but he did not treat with cordial respect those voluntary efforts of the people to provide themselves with a ministry, when the grossest abuses prevailed in the Church, to which they are entitled. But, Sir, the exclusion of a town of this kind causes an anomaly of the most inconvenient kind; and I do not think we should be justified in such an exclusion. It is true that the hon. and learned Gentleman has told us that he had made discoveries, or has had them made, in reference to the signatures to a Petition in favour of the Bill from Cardiff; but then the other Petition that he has quoted has not been made the subject of a critical examination, or possibly very interesting discoveries might be made in reference to that Petition. It is a good thing, no doubt, to have regard to the public opinion of a country like Wales; but I cannot say that it is desirable to carry that principle down to its minutest ramifications, and examine into the public opinion of each spot in Wales. I do not admit his statement as regards Cardiff; but, if it is true, it is extremely doubtful whether we can rely on it for such a proposition as this. We have had a much more authoritative adjudication upon the question than we can have now, and I hope that on this account, if for no other reason, the House will agree we should not upset the judgment which has been passed.

said, he would support the Amendment for the re-committal of the Bill, more by way of protest against the manner in which the Bill had been pushed on through its stages than with any hope of reversing the former decision of the House. Considering the imperceptible line that separated England from Wales, he thought it very impolitic to make special laws for the Principality. He had on a previous occasion expressed his conviction that the Bill was undesirable, and especially for the large towns such as Cardiff. The inconvenience would be very great indeed to some people. He did not deny that there was a strong opinion in its favour, but it was among the classes which did not use the public-houses. He had himself been the guest of a family where he found everyone had signed Petitions in favour of the Bill; but he asked how much it would affect their comfort, and they answered not in any way. They had their own supply of beer. It appeared to him extremely undesirable to legislate as they were doing now. He was sorry that he did not see the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. P. A. Taylor) there, who described the supporters of these measures as "the virtuous party"—a party who professed a virtuous desire to interfere with the habits of other people when they did not cause the smallest inconvenience to themselves. He would vote for the Amendment by way of protest, and he hoped that in "another place" the way in which the Bill had been dealt with at 11 o'clock on Saturday night, at a Sitting intended for Supply, would be fully taken into consideration; for he was sure that if the Bill had been exhaustively discussed, it would not have commended itself to the judgment of the House of Commons.

said, he was strongly opposed to the Bill. The alteration in the law that was contemplated was most extraordinary. It was suggested that anybody might libel anybody else by publication in a newspaper, provided that it was established that the original statement was made at a public meeting, and that it was for the public benefit that the publication should take place. These words were copied from Lord Campbell's Act, but with one remarkable distinction to Lord Campbell's Act. For the purpose of enabling the question of the truth or falsity of the libel to be raised, it was enacted that if the person indicted should be able to show that the matter published was true, and its publication was for the public benefit, this should be regarded as a sufficient defence. That was intelligible enough; but this measure, if it were passed, would establish that, without reference to the truth or falsity of the thing published, if it was for the public benefit, it should be known this would be the justification of the person publishing. This was a serious proposal, which should not be agreed to without full consideration. Another important provision was that no proceedings for libel should be taken under the circumstances specified in the Bill without the assent of the Attorney General. Hitherto every subject of the Queen might put the Criminal Law in motion. ["Divide"] He heard the Chief Secretary for Ireland saying "Divide!" If that was the way in which the Government were disposed to treat the matter, it were idle to discuss it, and he could only pro-coed by way of protest. He held that the Government were going to inflict on the Attorney General a most disagreeable function. [Mr. COURTNEY: The Public Prosecutor.] The Public Prosecutor acted under the Attorney General. [Mr. COURTNEY: The Home Office.] That was worse and worse. They were to have the Home Office, the Public Prosecutor, and the Attorney General to exorcise a fiat in relation to these indictments.

resuming, said, that in cases of a semi-political character the position of the Attorney General in exercising a veto respecting indictments would be most invidious. He should oppose the Bill, because, in his opinion, it would seriously curtail the liberty of the subject.

said, that the hon. and learned Gentleman was under a misconception as to the scope of the Bill. The measure would make no change in the Law of Libel, except in respect to reports of public meetings, where what was published was in a fair and open manner published, and was understood to be for the public benefit. Every other form of libel would remain in exactly the same form as before. The Bill had been considered by two Select Committees, and had been unanimously approved by the House. It had been blocked in its third reading for two or three months, and he hoped the House would mark its sense of the reduction of legislative proceedings to an absurdity by passing the measure.

opposed the Bill. The Prime Minister stated yesterday that, in addition to Supply, only the Regulation of the Forces Bill and the Irish Church Act Amendment Bill would be put down for to-day; but this Bill and other Bills had been put down, in violation of the pledge. He was thankful to say that. though the opposition to the measure had been received with impatience, there was "another place" where a better temper, more justice, and a sounder judgment prevailed.