said, he wished to call the attention of the Committee to the course which the Government had pursued in reference to the imposition of a force of extra police upon the County of Limerick. He found that during the year 1882 the county had been charged the enormous sum of £6,966 for extra police. He did not object to extra police being sent into the county if there were reason to suspect disorder or outrages upon life and property; but the County of Limerick was able to challenge comparison with the most peaceful county in England in regard to crime and outrage. Notwithstanding that fact, a tax was imposed upon it in one year of £6,966 for extra police. These extra police were distributed broadcast all over the county, not for the sake of preserving peace and order, but to assist the landlords in collecting their rents. Their services were entirely unnecessary so far as the protection of life and property was concerned, and their time was occupied in driving cattle, and in enabling the landlords to extort rack rents. There was no more quiet or peaceable county in Ireland until, in an evil hour, Mr. Clifford Lloyd made it his headquarters. In the town of Kilmallock, in which he (Mr. O'Sullivan) resided, and which he was consequently thoroughly acquainted with, the peace and order of the place were maintained by 10 or 11 constables up to that time; but immediately after Mr. Clifford Lloyd arrived at Kilmallock 50 or 60 extra police were drafted into the town, notwithstanding the fact that it was altogether free from anything in the shape of crime and outrage. From that moment the inhabitants saw every morning scores of police going out with the military, not for the purpose of putting down crime and outrage, but to collect the rents of the rack-renting landlords. The majority of the landlords in the county were good men; but, unfortunately, there were among them some black sheep. Perhaps there was not throughout the whole of Ireland a worse landlord than a gentleman in that county named Coote. It was almost entirely owing to the action of this gentleman with regard to his tenants that the force of extra police had been imposed upon that part of the county. He had been known to serve writs upon his tenants for a single half-year's rent. His land was more highly rented than any other in the county. He obtained for it £3 or £4 an acre, and yet, notwithstanding that fact, the moment a tenant got six months in arrear he was served with a writ. Three of Mr. Coote's tenants had been evicted who had held their farms for years. Because, owing to the depression which occurred in regard to agricultural operations in 1878, 1879, and 1880, these unfortunate persons found themselves unable to pay the rack rents imposed on them they were summarily evicted from their farms, no terms whatever being offered to them. Mr. Coote was perfectly aware that these three tenants had offered on several occasions even within the last three months to settle the rent at whatever sum the Land Commission might fix as a fair rent. They wrote to Mr. Coote making that offer, but it was contemptuously refused. Indeed, the landlord did not condescend to return an answer to their communication. Nevertheless, this was a man for whose protection Her Majesty's Government had put up a police hut and kept six extra police on his farm. He thought it would afford to the Committee a good illustration of the way in which the tax for additional police operated. As he had said, there were six police stationed upon Mr. Coote's farm. Yet it was a place in which there had been no crime or outrage, and their sole duty appeared to be to mind the farms from which the tenants had been evicted, notwithstanding the fact that they had offered to pay up all arrears and to pay any rent which the Land Court was prepared to fix. It was the conduct of this class of unscrupulous landlords which gave rise to the land agitation of 1879–80, and was the cause of the Land Bill being brought in by the Government and passed by Parliament. If Mr. Coote's tenants' rents were not paid by the 1st of May, he sent them notice that it must be ready on the 14th, and those who were unable to pay it on that day were served with an attorney's letter on the 16th. Certain tenants who went on the 20th to pay the rents were told that it would be refused unless they were prepared to pay 10 s. 6 d. in addition in the shape of costs. He had known one of these unfortunate tenants go to the solicitor's office, six miles off, on the 21st of May, in order to pay half a-year's rent due on the 1st of the same month, with 10 s. 6 d. to the solicitor for writing a letter. Was that a gentleman who was likely to bring peace, contentment, and happiness to the Irish people, or make his tenants satisfied with their lot, even under the provisions of the Land Bill? This was the same gentleman for whom the Government continued to provide a hut and police protection, for no other purpose than to watch the farms of his evicted tenants. Surely the course pursued with regard to him encouraged him in the style of action he adopted towards his tenants. He had received a letter from one of this gentleman's tenants—a tenant whom he (Mr. O'Sullivan) knew intimately, and one of those who had been evicted by Mr. Coote. He was able to say, without fear of contradiction, that the person to whom he referred was one of the most honest and industrious tenants in the County of Limerick; but he had found it impossible to pay the rack rent demanded of him when the seasons turned against him. He would only trouble the Committee with a short extract from the letter written by this tenant, in order that hon. Members might be able to comprehend what it was the Government were upholding by keeping an extra police force in the County of Limerick. He wrote—

"I have been evicted by my landlord, Mr. Coote, for' one half-year's rent. My rent was £103 15 s. per year, but my poor rates on the entire farm and outhouses were only assessed upon £49 15 s., or less than one-half of the rent. I offered, shortly after my eviction, when I had raised some money from my friends, to pay the half-year's rent and costs, which offer my landlord refused, unless I would pay the full rent of the land during the time it was lying idle, although Mr. Coote had possession himself of it during that time."

Mr. Coote had the land in his possession, or in the possession of his bailiff, because no other person would take possession of it. So anxious, however, was this poor man to regain possession of the land, that he said in his letter—

"I further offered to give £150 if I could get my farm again on the same terms as the Land Commissioners had fixed in the case of two farmers on the two next farms to mine, but this offer was also refused."

He (Mr. O'Sullivan) did not wish to go any further into this case; but it was regarded, in the county of Limerick, as a great hardship that this poor man should have been served with a writ and evicted for the non-payment of a single half-year's rent, the rent itself being double that at which the farm was assessed by the poor rate valuation. Yet this landlord, who refused those fair offers to pay rent and arrears, was the gentleman for whose protection the Government imposed upon the county a heavy police tax. He was sorry to say that there were other cases of the same kind in the county of Limerick; but he had selected this one, because he was personally acquainted with the circumstances, residing as he did within two miles of the farm to which he had directed attention. He had stated that the extra police tax amounted in the year 1882 to the sum of £6,966. That extra force was sent into the county, not in consequence of any disturbance, or in order to prevent crime and outrage, but solely because evictions were being carried out broadcast, and the evicting landlords were in dread that either themselves or their property would be injured. He appealed to the justice of Her Majesty's Government to say whether this state of things ought to be continued, and whether this heavy additional tax should still be imposed upon a county which would bear a favourable comparison for peace and order and absence of crime and outrage with any county in England? Would they persevere in this imposition? He contended that it would be disgraceful if they did, especially when their sole object—at any rate in the case of the landlord to whom he had referred—was to uphold a man who refused to make any terms whatever with his tenants, who evicted them when simply half-a-year in arrear, who refused every fair and reasonable offer made to him, and who wrung from his unfortunate victims the highest rack rents it was possible to impose. Could it be supposed that while landlords were permitted to follow a course like this, it would be possible, even with the aid of extra police, to sow the seeds of peace and con- tentment in the neighbourhood? It was too bad that the county should be kept in a fever of excitement and compelled to pay what amounted to a heavy fine on account of the oppressive action of one man. He knew that the Government had no control over the action of this individual; but, at any rate, they could withdraw the police, who were now employed in assisting to evict tenants, notwithstanding their willingness to come to a settlement on fair and reasonable terms, and who were told off to protect the deserted property from which the tenants had been removed.

said, he had stated at the time this extra police tax was imposed upon the county of Limerick that it was entirely unnecessary, and that it would produce the discontent and ill-feeling which it was intended to prevent. If it had ever been necessary to place 50 additional police in the county the times had very much changed since, and at the last Assizes the matter was brought under the attention of the Grand Jury by a Presentment. It was said, however, that that was not the time for taking action in the mater, and that they were assuming to themselves the functions of the Executive. It was pointed out to them that it was a matter with which they had nothing to do, but that the extra police were sent into the county by the Executive Government; that the cost of it was, under the Prevention of Crime Act, to be charged upon the locality in which it was employed; and that, as a matter of fact, the same course had been pursued in other districts where it was feared that serious outrages might be committed. But in most cases the extra police had been withdrawn when tranquillity was restored, and the local expenditure incurred had not been very large. Moreover, he found that in this very county, at the Lent Assizes, Mr. Justice Barry had congratulated the county upon its peaceful and orderly condition, and upon the absence of crime and outrage. Nevertheless, the Government still declined to withdraw the extra police, and the result had been to create great dissatisfaction throughout the county. A more peaceful and law-abiding county than the county of Limerick it was impossible to find, and yet this enormous local taxation was still imposed without the slightest necessity. The Grand Jury declined to take any action in the matter, and threw the entire responsibility upon the Executive. He believed that one main ground of the present condition of affairs was the defective distribution of the regular Police Force. At one time the population of his own county of Kilkenny was more than 150,000; it was now only 90,000, but the police force was maintained at the same strength as when the population numbered 60,000 more. In Limerick the same result had been brought about; and he would appeal to the Chief Secretary and the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland, whether such a condition of affairs afforded any pretence whatever for continuing the imposition of an additional force of police? If there was any disturbance in any part of the county, the Lord Lieutenant had the power of drafting into it an extra force, and to call upon the locality to pay the expense. In the county which he represented the greatest dissatisfaction was expressed at the action of the Executive. Only the other day there was a large meeting of the ratepayers, who had appealed to him to take some steps in the matter. All he asked the Government was that if 50 additional police, or any number of extra police, were required in the county, and their employment were justified by the state of crime and outrage, then let their services be continued, but if not let them be removed. At that moment the extra police were costing the ratepayers of the county of Kilkenny a sum of £2,400 a-year, without the slightest necessity for their employment, and, in addition to that heavy tax, the farmers were suffering from the continued depression of agriculture, and the competition to which they were subjected from abroad. As a matter of fact, the local taxation was becoming enormous and unbearable. Everything was thrown upon it, and every fresh Bill introduced into Parliament added to the local burdens. A great deal of the necessity for having the local Constabulary was owing to the want of perfect confidence on the part of the people in the administration of justice. If the people had perfect confidence in the local Courts, they would not take the law into their own hands; but if they had not that confidence, of course they fought it out. He could not express too strongly the general dissatisfaction there was in the county with this enormous taxation, which the people believed to be unnecessary; the question was not whether this system was more secure, but whether it was necessary, and he challenged the Chief Secretary to say that it was necessary.

said, there never had been a better instance than this in which the people ought to take the advice of Lord Macaulay to "tell those who call for obnoxious taxes to call again," because there had never been so unjust and so unnecessary an impost as this. He would like to know what Englishmen would say if they saw ladies dragged through English streets, as they had been in Limerick, because they sympathized with those who, for their patriotism, had been put in prison? One of the right hon. Gentleman's reasons for these extra police was that when the people saw others being degraded in this way they lost their temper. They were naturally indignant. What could the right hon. Gentleman say to a state of facts which he could not deny? If Limerick was in such a state of tumult; if these occurrences were of such a dangerous character as to render these extra police necessary, why were the rioters not brought before the Judges? The County Court Judges, every Judge of Assize, and every Chairman of Quarter Sessions, had said they had nothing to try; but if there was this disorder, why were not the rioters brought before those Judges? He challenged the right hon. Gentleman to deny that during the presence of the police the County Court Judges had nothing to try. Could there be anything more grievous than that? When did a policeman ever lose his life in Limerick? Did Mr. Clifford Lloyd even lose a hair of his precious head, which had been the cause of so much trouble and tumult wherever he went? Had there been any case to bring before the Judges of Assize? They had gone to Limerick again and again, and had declared that their appearance there was almost unnecessary. In one breath the right hon. Gentleman declared Limerick to be in such a state of crime and danger that he must deluge it with police at every corner, irritating the people with their menaces; while, on the other hand, the Judges declared that there was no crime. Whenever the Judges were attacked a great deal was heard from the Government Benches about the inviolability of the Bench and the purity of the law; but now it seemed that the Judges had been lax, and the law had not been applied, for the Judges had done nothing in the state of things in Limerick which the right hon. Gentleman had described. How would the right hon. Gentleman's statement as to the state of Limerick tally with the fact that the Judges did nothing? He should be glad to hear the answer to that; and, meanwhile, he must again refer to the extraordinary contrast between the salaries of the police who were to repress crime and the salaries and incomes of the teachers whose duty was to teach the young. Last night he and his hon. Friends had pointed out that while there were only 11,000 teachers in Ireland, there were 13,773 policemen. The Government provided fewer people to prevent crime than police to put it down. They paid constables £59, £69, and £79 a-year; but they only paid National School teachers, whose labours would tend to render the police unnecessary if they were properly paid, only £57 a-year. The Chief Secretary must also be aware that the Constabulary in the counties and towns were beyond the control of the Municipal Authorities, while the contrary was the case in England; and yet the right hon. Gentleman was continually drawing comparisons between the two cases. If he would give the Irish Local Authorities a share in the control of the police, they would be quite willing to bear the burden in proportion to their means. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to have forgotten what that proportion should be, and to think they should pay the same proportion from their local resources as the people in England; but he thought the proportion should be only as one to seven. Ireland had grown poorer; her means of wealth had been dammed and dried up by a hostile and inauspicious Government, and she was now less able than she was at one time to pay a large proportion; and yet they were constantly told by this country, which was really the cause of the poverty of Ireland, that they ought always to pay similar sums to the amounts paid in England. Why did the Government think it so necessary to protect Mr. Clifford Lloyd when he went to a town with a population of 40,000, like Limerick? And how many men did they think were required for that purpose? An army of police he supposed. This potentate could not go out without a large body of police, not to protect him, but to intimidate the people; and they had heard how he had been guarded even when going to garden parties by a posse of police. Therefore, upon this Vote Irish Members must take the opportunity of calling attention to these things. If more money was spent upon those who would teach the people to refrain from crime, there would be little need for the maintenance of this enormous army of police. If this God-given Government would take away their police and their soldiers, and leave him and his Colleagues and the hon. and gallant Member for the County of Dublin (Colonel King-Harman) to manage their own affairs, there would soon be an end to this difficulty. It was said that they would quarrel; but what did Shylock say?—

"If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and, if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

He was sure that if the people of England could once grasp the true state of things in Ireland they would rise up as defenders of justice to Ireland. Last night they had heard a great deal of the abolition of Slavery, which occurred 50 golden years ago; but the people of Ireland were still in a state of slavery under these English Pashas, and the slaves of Jamaica and America never suffered more keenly. But there was no Royal Highness, and there were no great Lords, or a great people to take as much interest in the wrongs of Ireland now as they did in the abolition of Slavery half-a-century ago. When speaking of the abolition of Slavery, these people did not forget to pay a tribute to the great Irishman, Daniel O'Connell, who helped to free the slave by his great advocacy. In conclusion, he would ask the right hon. Gentleman to tell him, as a Limerick man, who had filled the office of High Sheriff, who had lived there all his life, and had been there when all these police were there, and saw that there were no cases to be tried, how he could go back to Limerick and tell the citizens to keep quiet under this iniquitous tax? If he could get no answer from the right hon. Gentleman, his advice to the people within the law about these police and the extra tax would be to use that pithy sentence, "call again." He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would return to the rôle of an historian and an English statesman, and give up the rôle of a statesman not inspired by Englishmen, but by Dublin Castle. He had faith in Englishmen, and believed that if they were well-informed upon these matters they would not pursue their present course in regard to Ireland. What a contrast there was between Ministers who were free from the fetters of Dublin Castle, and those who were in its fetters! He hoped the Chief Secretary would forget that he was Chief Secretary for Ireland, and would only remember that he was the biographer of Lord Macaulay, and would not drive the people of Ireland to the necessity of putting into practice the advice to "call again."

said, he would confine his observations to the extra police in the County and City of Cork. He believed that Captain Plunkett, the District Resident Magistrate, meeting the Mayor of Cork in the street, said that if the Corporation would express the opinion by resolution that 170 police were sufficient to maintain the peace, 20 men would be added to the free force of 150, and the remainder of the extra force would be removed. But when the Corporation passed such a resolution, the Chief Secretary said he could not at present increase the force to 170, and that the Corporation would have to wait three years for that to be done. Captain Plunkett must have known what the state of the law was, and he was not satisfied that he had not, in this instance, made that statement in order to lead the Corporation into a trap, and give an excuse for continuing the force in the City. The extra police quartered in Cork for the last 17 years had cost the people £15.000, though no reason was assigned for continuing those men in the City. Year after year the Judges had declared the City to be in a most peaceable condition, and there had been a great absence of crime. In fact, he was sure no community in England could show such an absence of crime as Cork had in the last 17 years; but he believed the reason for maintaining the police there was that Captain Plunkett saw that the country was returning to its normal state of peace and quietude, and he was determined to show that there was some ne- cessity for his presence in the South of Ireland. If he did not keep up this force he would not retain his present office, for which he got £2,000 or £3,000 a-year. That, he believed, was the reason for his action; but he was satisfied that if the Chief Secretary had been allowed to exercise his own judgment, these complaints would not now have to be made. A kind of promise had been given that this extra force, which now numbered 39 men, should be reduced by 19, and that would still leave 20; but, owing to some change introduced by the Divisional Resident Magistrate, he believed the police of the borough were paraded frequently in some central place, thereby throwing such an unnecessary amount of work on their shoulders, that even 170 men were scarcely able to discharge the ordinary police duties. If the police had been left in the hands of the ordinary magistrates there would have been no difficulty, because the people had more confidence in them than in the magistrates who had lately been appointed. If the Government would listen to the advise of the people, who really understood this matter, they would remove these police. The only duty the extra policemen had to perform was to dance attendance on the Special Resident Magistrate. He had 20 detectives on his own staff. What they did no one knew, and yet the people were charged with their cost. Another cause of complaint was that eight of the regular men were absent from the City, which the citizens did not get credit for, and that, in consequence of that, Captain Plunkett pretended that he had to keep a larger force than would otherwise be necessary to preserve the peace. But, strange to say, with all this force in Cork, the only crimes of any consequence which had been committed there for a number of years had remained undetected, and there was a strong suspicion that one of these crimes—a case of manslaughter—was committed by three detectives. The way in which the charge against those three detectives had been investigated had met with the universal disapproval of the people of Cork; the belief being; that the officers of these men had deliberately shielded them from justice, and; that if the investigation had been properly conducted these men would have been brought to justice. However that might be, as the incident was now eight months old, he would not further refer to it; but he would ask the Chief Secretary whether any information had been received from Captain Plunkett or from the police authorities of Cork as to the perpetrators of the outrage which he had already several times brought under his notice—namely, the wrecking of the Lough Chapel? The Corporation, Magistrates, High Sheriff, and other gentlemen of position had several times petitioned the Government to withdraw the extra police from Cork, on the ground that 150 men would be sufficient to maintain the peace; and, in 1882, the then Chief Secretary (Mr. W. E. Forster) promised that when the time arrived for a redistribution of the police, the Lord Lieutenant would consider the desirability of removing the extra police. He would like to ask what steps the Lord Lieutenant took in 1882 to ascertain whether it was necessary to keep these extra police in Cork? He was inclined to think that, as the Corporation did not then refuse to pay the extra tax, the Lord Lieutenant did not take any steps to ascertain whether these men were necessary. He hoped these questions would be fully discussed that day, and that the matter would be carefully considered. The whole question of extra police in Ireland would be raised by the senior Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), and would have to be discussed, and it was for that reason that he had now mainly confined himself to that portion of the force in Cork County and City. Looking over the interesting Returns presented last year, he found that the cost to the ratepayers in 1882, on account of the extra police quartered in the county, was £10,000; and, as far as he could see from the Return supplied to the senior Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) last night, no important reduction had since taken place in the number of men in Cork County. But the Judges had declared at the Assizes in the last two years that the county of Cork was in a very peaceable state indeed, and the number of outrages was very small. Even when the late agitations had been at their highest point, the county of Cork was in its normal condition. Why, then, was this cost of £10,000 to be put upon the ratepayers? He could not understand it, unless it was that the Government wished to take every opportunity they could get for annoying the people and punishing them for endeavouring to wring justice from Parliament. The way in which these police conducted themselves in the country was another matter upon which he had to find fault. He would only refer to one case, about which he had asked a Question in the House a week or two ago. That was a case in which the Head Constable went to the keeper of an hotel, a widow with six or seven children, in Ballydehob, and threatened her that if she permitted meetings of the National League to be held in an outhouse attached to her hotel, he would oppose her application for a fresh licence at the Licensing Sessions, and persuade the magistrates not to grant it. She at once, of course, communicated with the Secretary of the National League, and he (Mr. Deasy) was then furnished with the Question which he had put to the Chief Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman expressed a very strong opinion as to the conduct of the Head Constable, and promised that he would not permit such a wanton interference with the rights of the people. He was perfectly satisfied with the right hon. Gentleman's promise, and he did not think it necessary to prolong his observations now, because, as he had said, the whole question would have to be dealt with in a much more extensive manner. The Government, however, had not the excuse for quartering these extra police on the county of Cork, which they gave with regard to the extra police in Limerick. They could not point even to a single case of a boy throwing stones, and, in fact, he thought that if they looked through the calendar of crime in Cork they would find that it compared very favourably with any county or city in the United Kingdom. There was one other matter to which he wished to draw attention, and that was the course taken by the police in the City of Cork four months ago, after the election in that City. Several meetings of Queen's College students were held at a place belonging to a Benefit Society. Two or three evenings after these young gentlemen had held a meeting, and passed a resolution in favour of one of the candidates and condemning the system of the Queen's Colleges, two policemen visited the room, and endeavoured to frighten the old woman who was in charge of it into giving the names of all who had been present at the meeting. He had put a Question to the Chief Secretary upon that matter, and the right hon. Gentleman gave a very evasive answer indeed. So strongly was that answer condemned in Cork that he had received several letters from people altogether unconnected with the Society or with the Queen's College, asking him to press for further information. He believed the cause of this visit was that a few weeks before the election another meeting was held at the same place, at which a strong resolution was passed condemning the way in which Captain Plunkett had acted in the South of Ireland, and particularly his action with regard to the public meetings of the National League in the county of Cork. He did not know whether the right hon. Gentleman could give him any answer as to the visit of the police to the rooms of the Society in question; but he hoped he would give an assurance that meetings of the National League would not be suppressed during the Recess. There would, he was sure, be great danger to the peace in the county of Cork, if, during the Prorogation, Captain Plunkett was allowed to act as he had acted last winter in suppressing National League meetings throughout the county. These meetings had been most orderly, and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would give this assurance with regard to meetings which the League proposed to hold during the Recess. A series of meetings had already been held, and he would appeal to the Chief Secretary to give an undertaking that they would not be interfered with so long as the people were orderly and kept the peace.

said, there had been thousands of people parading the streets of Cork on one night, without any disturbance taking place; but these police, when under the control of men of the stamp of Captain Plunkett, were a constant source of irritation to the people.

contended that there was no necessity for these extra police, and complained that those who paid for them had not the control of them. The county was in a most peaceable condition, and there was no wish on the part of even the most desperate character to commit any outrage. If at one time these extra police might have been necessary, the necessity had ceased two or three years ago. There were a number of police barracks in the county which served no useful purpose, and in the same way a large number of people received police protection, which, in a great many cases, was quite unnecessary, but for which the county had to pay. At the same time, he acknowledged that the responsibility of deciding whether people needed police protection or not was one of a serious nature; but unless it was very clear that people wanted protection, it should not be paid for by the county, but by the country generally. The Government was bound to protect the lives and property of the public; and unless there was a flagrant case in which a man had been threatened, such protection came within the ordinary circumstances of the general security of life and property which any civilized Government undertook at the expense of the country at large. It was a matter of opinion whether a particular locality or a particular person should be protected. The Chief Secretary might give this protection if he liked; but he certainly ought not to charge it upon the people. The increase of taxation had become enormous, and was most injurious to the people. As an instance of the vicious way in which this system worked, he would mention one barony. It was on the sea shore; the people did not want any rates, and they refused to pay the county cess, which was very heavy. Then they were charged for extra police and for several other things which came under the county cess. The Chief Secretary ought to look into such a case as this, and see that in a poor locality in a mountainous district the taxes were not so heavy as to be oppressive and to drive the people into a state of passive resistance. Then there was another district which was absolutely free from crime, but which, nevertheless, had to pay for the extra police in the county. That tax they regarded as simply vindictive punishment; and he did not think the Government took sufficient trouble with regard to these cases. The Chief Secretary, of course, could not visit all these places, and he had to take the advice of the magistrates, and unpaid magistrates were generally prejudiced. Others were unprejudiced; but the unprejudiced did not take the trouble to write to Dublin Castle. It was to the interest of the police to pretend that a locality was in a dangerous state, in order to show how efficient they were in keeping the peace, and how necessary they were, and how advisable it was, in the interest of the State, to increase their emoluments and promotion; but the Chief Secretary should be kept on his guard against the Reports of people of this kind. He did not pay the slightest attention to the representations of those who were elected by the people. Questions on these matters had been repeatedly put by hon. Members who generally voted with the Government on foreign and other questions; but, as a general rule, the Government did not pay the slightest attention to the elected Representatives of the country. In his view, the Chief Secretary ought to take care to obtain—he knew that was hard—unprejudiced Reports as to the state of the country; and if there was no absolute necessity for these extra police, or a doubt as to whether they were necessary, then he should say he would not put the burden on the people. A second reason why he did not think the people should pay this tax was this—English Members were not always aware of the manner in which the money was allotted in Ireland for police. The Government found a certain number of police which were not charged on the county; and if there were any extra police, then they called upon the county to pay for a certain number of men over their ordinary strength. In England the county would decide for itself whether it should apply for additional police, and then the county would have to pay. It was important to insure that the police were not withdrawn from their ordinary duties; but that frequently occurred. He was perfectly certain, speaking with regard to Galway, that the authorities at the depôt in Dublin found it extremely convenient to keep back 50 or 60 men who ought to be in Galway, so that they could send out three orderlies, instead of only one, for an officer, and in order that they might be able to keep the recruits a little longer under instruction. He had not the least objection to their doing that, so long as it was at the expense of the Government; but he thought that when they charged the county for an extra 100 men, and then only sent 40, in order that the depot in Dublin might have a few more men for other purposes, they inflicted gross injustice on the ratepayers of Galway. His remedy for this was very simple, and was one which the Chief Secretary ought to have adopted long ago. There should be someone to inspect the Reports, so as to see what men were away, and whether their places were filled up; and the Reports ought to be open to Members of Parliament and others concerned in Dublin. The only person who could be intrusted with the inspection of the Returns would be someone representing the cesspayers. The Government might say there were the Grand Juries to represent the cesspayers; but they did not altogether represent the cesspayers, and it would be useless to hand over this duty to a Grand Jury unless there was some special man to look to it, who would not be influenced by the general body of the Grand Jury. This plan would not cost much money or trouble, and ought, he thought, to be adopted by the Government. For the last three years the people had been paying money which ought to have come from the pockets of the Government on their own showing. He had brought forward this idea of public Returns as to the state of the police last year, and the Solicitor General for Ireland then said he would look into the matter. He would like now to know what had been done, and whether he, or any other Member, could go and inspect Returns showing where men were, and why they were charged upon districts when they were not in those districts? This might be considered a matter of detail; but it was more than that to Irish Members, and he must press the Government to take steps to enable them to see these Returns. As to another point, the character of the police seemed to vary a great deal. In his own county (Galway), they did their duty quietly and efficiently. During the last three or four months there had been no complaints; but before that, especially in the Southern part of the county, they had been anxious to pick quarrels, and had been enforcing the regulations with very bad temper. It was most essential that, if there was any excitement, the police should act with good temper and moderation; but, instead of that, their action had, in many cases, tended to provoke quarrels and disturb- ances. They had been very irritating at Loughrea towards the people, and one of the officers had encouraged them in that foolish practice. He saw an instance of it himself. He attended a meeting, which was very quiet and orderly, and nobody who was there wished to interfere in the slightest degree with the police constable who was in attendance, if he would only remain quiet. The constable, however, acted most ostentatiously; indeed, it was evident his instructions were to make as much fuss and as much of a demonstration as possible. The chairman of the meeting was very efficient, and, fortunately, everything passed off quietly. If the police were anxious to interfere with the people, it was not to be wondered at if conflicts occasionally occurred. All he asked was that the authorities should send to the town of Loughrea efficient and good-tempered constables, and not encourage the officers to get in conflict with the inhabitants. It appeared to him that, in many instances, the police, instead of setting an example of moderation and good sense, went out of their way, as they certainly did in Loughrea, to arouse the indignation of the people, and cause petty fights. Complaints to this effect were constantly reaching him from different parts of Ireland, and he could not help thinking they were well-founded.

said, there were two or three points to which he wished to call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary. One point to which he would particularly direct the attention of the right hon. Gentleman was the wholesome monotony in the expressions of the Judges of Assize with regard to the present condition of Ireland. The Charges of the Judges of Assize showed that from Antrim to Cork and from Galway to Drogheda there was a remarkable and unprecedented absence of serious crime. Only that morning he took up an Irish paper in which he saw the statement that at the recent Assizes there was no case of general interest to the public. As a matter of fact, crime and popular excitement appeared to exist to a greater extent in those places where extra police were quartered than in any other. He supposed the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary would say that special police were only sent to districts where there was crime; but the Chief Secretary would see, if he examined the matter carefully, that some of the places in which disturbance and crime prevailed were particularly quiet before the extra police were sent there. He trusted that the right hon. Gentleman would take the recent statements of the Judges of Assize into account in any future police arrangements for the country. Another point he wished to direct the attention of the Chief Secretary to was that in almost every case, if not in every case, where the Resident Magistrate asked for extra police, the request was made without any consultation with the ordinary Bench of Magistrates. He did not think that ought to be the case; the Resident Magistrate ought in such matters to take the advice of his colleagues on the Bench. Another thing to which he would direct the attention of the Chief Secretary was that in the majority of cases the extra police were not stationed under the Prevention of Crime Act, but under previous legislation. He held that if extra police were required, they ought to form part of the permanent force of the country, and ought to be paid for by the Government, and not be an extra charge on the country. Then, he should like to say a word or two upon the question which his hon. Friend (Mr. Deasy) referred to—namely, that of the extraordinary treatment of the Cork Collegians upon the occasion of a recent meeting of theirs. He felt a personal interest in the City of Cork. He was born there, and at one time belonged to the same class as the young men now attending the Cork College. He could hardly imagine anything more wantonly oppressive than to send the police to watch the proceedings of these young students on the occasion of their meeting to pass a resolution in favour of the candidature of the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Deasy). The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary knew perfectly well that in the times of the Wars of Napoleon, the patriotic spirit, extinguished in almost every other class in Germany, was kept alive by the young men of the Colleges; and it was the spark from their patriotic feeling which lit up the whole country. He hoped, therefore, that in future the right hon. Gentleman would be as careful as possible not to allow his policemen to interfere with the demonstrations of the students of Ireland, unless there was the gravest and most pressing cause. Furthermore, he thought the Executive Government should, as far as possible, discontinue the employment of members of the Police Force as shorthand writers to take down the speeches of National and popular speakers. He did not know whether the Chief Secretary knew anything about shorthand writing; but he (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) knew that it was a very difficult art to acquire with anything like facility. He remembered Lord Palmerston once saying in the House of Commons that he had given some study to shorthand, and he found he could write it well enough, but when he had written the notes he could not read a word of them. That he (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) fancied was very often what happened with the gentlemen of the Irish Police Force. It was, undoubtedly, more difficult to learn shorthand than some foreign languages, and he could not believe that Irish police officers could be efficient shorthand writers. He might give an illustration of the way in which police shorthand writers took notes. He once made a speech in his own county, and the shorthand notes taken of his remarks by a policeman were produced in the State Trials. He did not know whether the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary thought he (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) ever talked sedition; but, if he did, he would perhaps admit that the sedition would probably be couched in decent English. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman, however, that in the report of his speech there was neither sense, nor meaning, nor construction, nor grammar. That was of no consequence, because he was not charged with any seditious offence; but it might have been in the case of some younger man carried away by the excitement of the moment; it might easily have been made to appear that a speaker said the very opposite to what he did say. Again, he happened to be in the county of Waterford, and it was announced he would deliver a lecture to a purely Literary Association upon a purely literary subject. He was favoured with the presence of a couple of shorthand writers, although he had nothing to say that might not have been delivered to a Church Congress. He now asked the Chief Secretary whether he would not direct that, as far as pos- sible, public men who were going to make speeches, especially on purely literary topics, should not be honoured by the presence of any of these unprofessional shorthand writers, who were supposed to be sent as guardians of law and order? These were two or three points he pressed on the attention of the Chief Secretary, and he thought that the right hon. Gentleman by attending to them would do a good deal more to secure contentment and good order in Ireland than he could by any extra police he quartered on the country.

said, he thought the system of charging extra police in Ireland upon particular localities was a barbarous device, and one that worked very unfairly and inequitably. No doubt, there were historical precedents for it. The Norman tyrants of old inflicted such injuries upon the Saxons; but the system certainly could not be considered applicable to the present day. Extra police might sometimes be required in some parts of the country; but a reasonable thing to do in that case was to let the charge for those police fall upon the general fund, because, see how the matter, as it now stood, worked. It was well known that the men who met together and concocted outrages and atrocities, took every possible care that their secret should only be known to a very narrow circle. That was notoriously the state of the case, and yet it was found that the punishment for whatever offence was committed was levied upon a wide district of the country, and people who had not been privy to the outrages, and who did not even sympathize with them or approve of them, people who often were very badly able to pay this unjust taxation, were called upon to pay these iniquitous taxes. There had been very striking instances of the unfair working of the system. A gentleman in the county of Westmeath, whose sister-in-law was killed by a shot intended, it was generally believed, for the gentleman himself—at all events, for whomsoever it was intended it certainly was not intended for the lady—and the district was taxed and fined in order to pay compensation to the relatives; a portion of the compensation actually was to be paid by the brother-in-law of the lady who was in the carriage with her and at whom, it was believed, the shot was fired. That was a specimen of the working of that splendid machinery for repression of crime in Ireland. This gentleman, the brother-in-law of the lady who lost her life, wounded in heart and bleeding internally from the cruelty he witnessed and the loss he sustained, was asked by this British Government to pay a tax as if he were associated, or as if he sympathized, with the crime that had been committed; he was asked to pay a portion of the compensation which was to be awarded to the relatives of the deceased lady. There was another instance of this hateful system in another part of Ireland. The nuns residing within the peaceful walls of their convent, spending their days and nights in prayer and good works, were served with notice that they had to pay a share of taxation for the compensation for some outrages committed. Could anything be more unjust or unfair? If outrages occurred, and if extra police were required in some localities, surely it was the business of the whole community; it was the business of the British Government to send the necessary force for the preservation of order and to pay for them themselves. There was also this additional argument in the case. Was the British Government free from responsibility for the disorders in Ireland? Could the British Government hold its head up and say—"We are innocent in this matter, we have nothing to do with the promotion of disturbance or the cause of discontent in Ireland?" Why, the British Government—he did not allude to any particular Administration—was itself the chief offender; the maladministration of the British Government in Ireland was to blame for whatever disorder and disturbance and discontent arose in that country, and therefore no one had a better right to pay for the extra police quartered on the country than the British taxpayer. Now, he believed that in the county of Westmeath there were about 86 extra police—the Chief Secretary, of course, was in a better position to give the correct figures than he (Mr. Sullivan) was—there were, he believed about 86 extra police in the county, and he supposed that the cost of that extra force would be something like £8,000 per annum. On the average it was a little less than £100 a-year per man. That was a large amount to be levied upon a particular locality.

pointed out that only a moiety of the sum was paid by the county; he believed that, as a matter of fact, it was about £2,600.

thanked the right hon. Gentleman for the correction; but the charge of £2,600 was quite sufficient for his argument. If the tax were levied upon the whole county it would fall pretty lightly upon individuals; but levied as it was upon a small area, it became a very oppressive tax. And it must be borne in mind, too, that the tax, levied as it was upon limited areas, was, strictly speaking, paid by people who were innocent of any participation in the crime and who entirely disapproved of it. This taxation was no cure for the evil complained of. The few men who made up their minds, for one reason or another, to perpetrate these outrages, would never be deterred by the consideration that a tax would he levied upon any particular district. They were desperate men, and forgot the terrible consequences that might accrue to themselves from their action; and was it to be supposed they were going to be deterred from their evil practices by the consideration that a tax of 1 s. in the pound, or 10 d., or 2 s., as the case might be, would be levied upon a certain part of the country if the crime they contemplated were committed? He claimed from these considerations that this system of taxation was unjust, that it worked no good, but that, on the contrary, it worked great harm. Let the Committee see what means the Government took to discourage crime and outrage in particular localities, to produce contentment, and to preserve peace. A man from the county of Westmeath, who confessed to having been a participator in criminal matters, and to having been a conspirator for the perpetration of murder and outrage, turned an informer some time ago against his fellow-conspirators. What did the Government do with this odious man, upon whose information his accomplices were prosecuted to conviction? Did they send him out of the country; did they send him to some place where his previous career would have been unknown, where his bad character would not have been notorious, and where, consequently, his presence would be no incentive to disturbance and disorder? No; the Government allowed this man to return to the very part of the country from which he came; they allowed him to resume his ordinary mode of living in the place where he was naturally and inevitably hated and detested by everybody, especially by those whose relatives, connections, and friends he had sent to penal servitude, or to the gallows. The Government let that man come to the very spot where they knew his presence must be hated, and especially by one class. And what more did they do? They sent a police force there to protect him. That, certainly, was not the way in which to promote quietude, contentment, and good order in that part of the country, or, indeed, in any other part of the country. As he had said, they sent a police force with the man, and planted a hut there for their accommodation. Just a word with regard to informers. He knew it was said that informers assisted in bringing criminals to justice, and that on that account there was something to be said for them; but it must be recollected that it did not follow at all that informers did, in very many cases, aid in doing justice; they aided in doing injustice, inasmuch as they had been the cause of innocent men being brought to the prison or to the gallows. They had a direct incentive so to do, in the fact that by prosecuting a man to conviction, whether innocent or guilty, they saved their own necks. He had the firm belief that many of the informers in Ireland had, for the sake of saving their own necks, or saving themselves from penal servitude, given testimony on oath that was very acceptable to the Government, but which was decidedly untrue. He maintained that the course pursued by the Government in the case of the informer to whom he had referred was unbecoming, unwise, and improper; it was remonstrated against by the clergy of the locality. They knew the danger of having this odious man reinstated in the part of the country to which he formerly belonged, and they sent a Memorial on the subject to His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant. In that Memorial they said——

"We have heard that it is intended to allow Crowe, the informer in the recent conspiracy trials, to return to his former place of abode; we believe that his presence would seriously endanger the public peace."

Such was the representation made to His Excellency in the interest of peace, order, and quietness, and surely it was worthy attention. It received, as a matter of fact, very little attention—at all events, no practical action was taken upon it by the Lord Lieutenant. The Memorialists went on to say—

"Therefore, we humbly pray Your Excellency will make it a condition of his pardon that he shall reside elsewhere."

The Memorial was signed by the Catholic clergymen of the locality, men who were anxious for the peace and good order of the district; but it was disregarded by the Lord Lieutenant, who chose to send Crowe, who, upon his own confession, stood convicted of outrage and crime, to the place from whence he came, and amongst the people whose hearts and feelings were excited and exasperated by his conduct. Such were some of the beauties of British government and British rule in Ireland. He maintained that in many cases the protection police were not necessary at all, and that they were got from the Government by representations made by Resident Magistrates and others. But who convinced the Resident Magistrates of the necessity of such police? About a month ago he asked, in the House, the Chief Secretary a Question concerning a lady in the county of Kerry named Miss Lucy Thompson. Miss Lucy had a force of six policemen to take charge of her, and she was very proud of her escort, and the men themselves seemed to be very pleased with their employment. The belief of all well-informed people was that Miss Lucy was in no more danger of attack or outrage than any Member of the House; but a friend of her's—some Pasha in the shape of a Resident Magistrate—recommended that the force should be sent down for her protection. He asked the Chief Secretary, the other day, if the policemen were tenants of Miss Lucy Thompson, and whether she, consequently, had any pecuniary interest in the retention of the force? And the right hon. Gentleman was good enough to say that such matters well deserved looking into. He believed the right hon. Gentleman intimated that he would have inquiries made on the subject; and, therefore, if it was within the memory of the Chief Secretary, he (Mr. Sullivan) would be glad to learn, before the debate closed, whether the protecting force were tenants of the lady? The belief in the locality certainly was that the force was not needed; therefore, their retention was a great outrage upon the people. Now, there was another lady of even more warlike and dashing deportment than Miss Lucy Thompson. He referred to Miss Gardner, who lived in the West of Ireland. He did not know how many policemen she had for her protection; but her house was a little arsenal, and she herself went about heavily armed like a trooper. There was, of course, a ridiculous aspect in the matter; but it was very annoying and provoking to the people of the locality to see this heroine flourishing about, armed and equipped in that fashion. He had often wondered, considering this lady's great military capacity, why the Government had not thought it right to employ her in the Soudan; he certainly thought she would have given as good an account of herself against the Mahdi as scores of the warriors the Government had sent out against him. The presence of these extra policemen was nothing more nor less than an encouragement to bad landlords and bad landladies all over the country; they felt that they were superior to public opinion, and that they could defy the common feelings of the people; that they could do just as they liked within the limits of the law; and there was no compulsion upon them to soften their hearts and do justice to the people round them. The readiness of the Government to send out an extra police force was an encouragement to landlords and landladies to continue in a state of hostility to their neighbours. He should like the Chief Secretary to inform them what earthly need there was for 86 extra policemen to be quartered upon Westmeath? He granted that some outrages had been committed in some particular localities; but he could not grant that the localities were in any way responsible for them. Agrarian outrages were committed, as a rule, by small parties of men who laid their plans in private, and carried them out with all possible secrecy. The localities, as he had said, could not be held responsible for them, and, therefore, to put a heavy tax upon the people, mostly struggling tenant farmers who were totally unable to bear the infliction, was as gross an injustice as it was possible to conceive. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary would consider whether the enormous extra force of 86 men in Westmeath ought not to be greatly reduced, and whether the whole system of charging extra police upon localities was not one that should be discontinued.

said, that, unfortunately, the very objectionable dynasty of Resident Magistrates was by no means extinct in Ireland. For example, Cork was cursed with the presence of a particularly objectionable specimen of this dominant race. The Government seemed to have an almost marvellous instinct for finding out the kind of men who were most likely to be distasteful to the Irish people, and making them captains over them. Captain Plunkett had succeeded in making himself exceedingly objectionable and unpopular in Cork in quite a variety of ingenious ways. One of the devices this magistrate had adopted was the frequent shifting of members of the police force. A large number of the police force in Cork were comparatively popular with their fellow-townsmen; that was to say, they were of the same faith, and in many ways were in sympathy with the people. Captain Plunkett, however, had adopted the ingenious method of transplanting such constables to the North of Ireland, and bringing down from the North a large number of young and inexperienced policemen, unsympathetic in feeling and almost diametrically opposed in faith and race. By that process he contrived to make the citizens of Cork, not only personally uncomfortable, but to have little trust in the administration of the law. Moreover, Captain Plunkett had deprived many of the ordinary magistrates—who were not conspicuously or remarkably unpopular magistrates—of almost any power whatever. The extra police in Cork had been very largely increased since Captain Plunkett came there; indeed, it was a curious fact that wherever members of this particular school of Resident Magistrates arrrived the extra police were almost invariably increased. It was so when Mr. Clifford Lloyd came to Limerick. The presence in that historic city of Mr. Clifford Lloyd was almost immediately followed by an increase of the police. The question of the extra police was a serious one for the Irish people, and very naturally they strongly objected to the way in which half of this obnoxious tax was to be paid by the occupier. If any proper portion of the tax were paid by landlords, the Government, no doubt, would have long since abolished this wholly indefensible tax.

said, that Irish Members had up to this attacked this Vote, on the ground of the extraordinary and entirely unjustifiable manner in which extra police were drafted into almost every county in the South of Ireland. Extra police were quartered upon particular counties under two Statutes. The first of these Statutes was that of Will. IV., under which the Treasury paid half the cost of the force, and the county cess was levied for half. The majority of the extra police drafted into the Irish counties were so drafted under the Act of Will. IV.; but there were a great number of extra police drafted into the counties under the Prevention of Crime Act, and when police were drafted into a district under that Act the district became liable for the cost of the force; and it not un-frequently happened that policemen were quartered in out-of-the-way districts, so that the tax for their maintenance proved very burdensome to the people. There were cases in which certain localities had been taxed to the extent of 12 s. or 14 s. in the pound for the staff of extra police. He complained that, in the majority of instances, the presence of extra police was entirely and absolutely unnecessary. The fact was, there were too many policemen in Ireland. Three or four years ago, a great effort was made to recruit the Police Force in Ireland. The original number of the Force was something like 10,000; he should think the present number was 15,000. The Government did not know what to do with their policemen, and the result was that, partly with the object of getting rid of them, they sent them down to places where their presence was absolutely un-required, and taxed the county with the moiety of their expense. He entirely objected to the adoption of such a principle. His hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) asked the Chief Secretary yesterday whether he would give a Return, or state in reply, the number of extra police drafted into the different counties in Ireland? The Chief Secretary stated that it would be inconvenient to reply to the Question within the usual limits of an answer; but he would be glad to place the hon. Gentleman in possession of the facts. It would be of interest to the Committee to hear from the Chief Secretary, in his speech upon this question later on, a statement as to the number of extra police quartered in the various counties of Ireland, not only under the Prevention of Crime Act, but under the Act of Will. IV. He (Mr. Kenny) had frequently noticed that, when he had asked the Chief Secretary under what Act certain extra police were quartered in a given district, the right hon. Gentleman invariably succeeded in getting out of the responsibility of answering the Question by stating that he was not informed, or something to that effect, or else that the immediate district was not taxed for the maintenance of the force. That was a disingenuous method of avoiding questions upon the subject. As a matter of fact, the localities were taxed, and taxed very heavily. If extra police were drafted into a district under the Act of Will. IV., a moiety of the expense would, of course, be defrayed out of the Consolidated Fund; but if a hut was erected for the men's accommodation, the entire expense of the building would be thrown on the district, so that in one way or another it was contrived to seriously tax every district in which the extra police were brought. He would come later on to a few special instances in which the drafting of extra police into a district was entirely unnecessary. But, previous to doing so, he would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to state, in his reply, what was the present position of Mr. Jenkinson? To the general public in Ireland the position of Mr. Jenkinson was a complete mystery. He desired to know whether Mr. Jenkinson was to be paid under this Vote, or, if not, under what Vote he was to be paid? If Mr. Jenkinson's pay had ceased in Ireland, perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would tell the Committee when it did so. Was it proposed to reappoint him in Ireland? If so, what position was he to hold in the future? They also wanted to have a clear understanding with regard to Mr. Clifford Lloyd. The other evening, when the Magistrates' (Ireland) Salaries Bill was brought forward, the Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Courtney) ventured the statement that Mr. Clifford Lloyd would not be one of the magistrates appointed under that Bill. He (Mr. Kenny) desired to know whether the fortunes of that Bill had in any way affected the fortunes of Mr. Jenkinson? Mr. Jenkinson was now a pensioner under the Crown, and received something like £1,000 a-year for services he had rendered in the past. It was somewhat too bad to have him foisted on the people of Ireland, as he believed it was proposed, because, when it was found inconvenient to continue the gentleman in the position of Director of Criminal Prosecutions, the Government went to the trouble of introducing a Bill in the House to make provision for his further maintenance. There was an item in the Vote, under the head of "Good Service Pay," for five County Inspectors. He believed that four of those Inspectors were Captain Reed, Captain Plunkett, Mr. Butler, and Mr. Slagg. He should like to know whether County Inspector Smith, the gentleman who issued the famous Circular to the police, instructing them to shoot down any person they saw looking in a menacing manner towards Mr. Clifford Lloyd, was one of the gentlemen who was to receive good service pay? It looked very like a matter in which the Irish Government desired to patronize the persons who offended most violently against popular feeling in Ireland, if County Inspector Smith was to be one of the five gentlemen rewarded. There was an enormous difference between this year and last, in the allowances which were made to the Constabulary. The difference consisted in an increase of £22,000. He should like to know how the extraordinary change from £55,000 to £77,000 had been brought about? Furthermore, in the ordinary pay of the police, there was an increase of £20,000 making altogether an increase in those two items on this Vote of over £42,000. These were increases which required explanation. They were very grave and serious items, and it was too bad to have the expense of the Constabulary increasing year by year in Ireland, especially now, when the services of the police were more than ever unnecessary. Wherever they went in Ireland they found the country swarming with policemen. If they drove along a road they found a police hut at every corner; policemen were to be seen at every turn, and in the most out-of-the-way places, and for this state of things the country was to be severely taxed. It was a well-known fact that the policemen in Ireland did nothing towards the discharge of the functions which policemen performed in this and other countries. The Irish police were a military force; they prowled about the country armed with rifles and bayonets, and they looked with disdain upon any such menial function as attending to sanitary arrangements, or other properly organized police duties. There must be a complete and radical change in the Irish Constabulary system; but until the firearms and other military accoutrements were taken from the men, it was impossible to expect that the duties of the Constabulary in Ireland would be efficiently and properly discharged. Now, he begged to bring under the notice of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary a case to which he had already directed the attention of the House by way of Question, and that was the extraordinary claim that was made for compensation under the Prevention of Crime Act by a certain police constable in the county of Clare. The police constable in question claimed £405 compensation for money and a watch which he alleged were destroyed by fire—maliciously destroyed, as he represented, by fire in a wild and out-of-the-way district in Ireland, where he was on police duty; £395 of the total amount had been, according to the statement of the constable, in the bank. He represented that he had had that amount in his possession for a number of years, and he produced, in support of his statement, a pass book, or what he represented to be a pass book, which was supposed to prove everything. Now, that pass book was all written at the same time, and was offered by the constable for the purpose of proving his case. He represented that he had lost, or in some way mislaid, the original book in which the accounts were entered, and consequently he improvised this new book in order to prove the amount of money in his possession. He stated in his evidence that at a certain date a fire took place, and he had in his possession a sum of £196; but when the items in the improvised account book were examined, it was found that he had only the sum of £110. Furthermore, he represented in his evidence before the Chairman of Bounty Sessions, that a sea captain in Galway had cashed a cheque for him of the amount of £196. Now, sea captains were not in the habit of cashing cheques for £196, and policemen were not in the habit of having such cheques in their possession. The constable further stated that the sea captain sold him a watch, and that he presented the cheque for that enormous sum in payment and received the balance. He (Mr. Kenny) considered that, upon the face of it, the statement was a lie; it must be perfectly plain to any person who knew anything of sea captains and policemen, that sea captains were not in the habit of placing so much confidence in ordinary policemen as to change cheques for them. The evidence called to prove the case of the constable was extremely weak indeed. The wife of the man was called, and she swore she had never seen such an amount of money in the possession of her husband. In reply to his (Mr. Kenny's) Question, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary stated that £100 of the total sum came from the constable's father-in-law and £100 from some other relative of his. In evidence before the Grand Jury, he stated distinctly that he only got £35 from his father-in-law and £48 from another relative; altogether the amount he received from extraneous sources did not reach £100. The Chairman of Bounty Sessions, at which the claim was in the first place decided, stated that, in his opinion, there was no evidence whatever that Sub-Constable Carlow lost his money; but that, on the other hand, his witnesses contradicted themselves in a variety of essential particulars; in fact, in the opinion of the Chairman of Bounty Sessions, the claim was utterly groundless. The Chief Secretary had stated that it had been known that a sub-constable of police in Ireland had had in his possession £1,500. It appeared to him (Mr. Kenny) that if police officers in Ireland could, out of their earnings, amass such a large amount of money as £1,500, or even as £395, as Sub-Constable Carlow represented he had in a hut, which he was in the habit of leaving unguarded for days together, there was very small ground indeed for the proposal which the Chief Secretary made last year to increase the pay and pensions of the members of the Irish Constabulary Force. There was, however, such a habit to champion the Constabulary in the House of Commons, that he was not at all surprised the right hon. Gentleman should get up and defend them. Of course, the Chief Secretary would base his defence of Sub-Constable Carlow upon the action of the Grand Jury. But hon. Gentlemen knew what Irish Grand Juries were. They knew that Grand Juries were not representative bodies. They were directly nominated by the Sheriff of the county, and indirectly by the Lord Lieutenant. They knew that Grand Juries were essentially a class of men who were not concerned by the taxation they levied, that they were men who took good care to levy taxes upon small districts, and possibly to increase a rate of 5 s. in the pound to 10 s. in the pound. Of course, it was a very convenient method for policemen who wanted to make a little money, to come forward and swear that they had had bank notes, the numbers of which they did not remember, maliciously destroyed. It was a convenient way of making money, and as policemen in Ireland could not make money so easily as by committing perjury, they were great fools if they did not commit perjury. ["Oh, oh!"] Yes; hon. Members knew that the chief qualification of a man for the office of policeman in Ireland was that he had no regard for the truth. The experience of many hon. Gentlemen was, that Irish policemen never told the truth when it was not convenient for them to do so; and his opinion was that policemen would be perfectly certain to take the advantage of the prejudice of a Grand Jury and make money at the expense of the ratepayers, if they found it necessary. Furthermore, his opinion was that those ratepayers who were taxed by an irresponsible body, such as a Grand Jury, were fools if they paid the taxes levied upon them. He recommended the people who were taxed unjustly to precipitate reform by refusing to pay iniquitous taxation. He could cite many cases in which the police tax in Ireland was unjustly levied. He did not propose to go into them at any length; in fact, he would only cite one. There was at Lisdoonvarna a person named Gardner, who had a police hut and five policemen to guard him. Notwithstanding the fact that there were seven or eight constables, and a sergeant-constable, in Lisdoonvarna, the sergeant-constable had thought fit to recommend that five constables should be told off for the special protection of Mr. Gardner. To judge by recent circumstances, Mr. Gardner was quite able to take care of himself, the last instance of which occurred a short time ago, when he assaulted a peaceful individual, and was sentenced to a fine or seven days' imprisonment. Besides, Mr. Gardner had told the police that he did not require their services; and it appeared to him that it was only a piece of false generosity on the part of the Irish Government to insist on forcing that assistance on persons who were not anxious to have it. It simply bore out the argument used in the beginning of his remarks, that there was an excess of police throughout the country, and that for their employment the Government had to adopt an extraordinary and unjust course towards the various districts. As long as the Government retained in their service in Ireland a number of policemen largely in excess of the number required, it was certain that those districts would be mulcted by the Government in order the more conveniently to dispose of the extraditing, and so long would the country be forced to suffer the imposition of unjust taxation, which was at that time creating feelings of dissatisfaction and political rancour, which would not very easily be allayed.

said, he would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, before he replied, whether, in connection with the case mentioned in debate, he intended to give any instructions with regard to police constables keeping large sums of money in their barracks, or huts, with the object of discouraging them from asking for compensation should those barracks, or huts, be burnt down? He would also ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, in consideration of the absolute peace which reigned throughout County Clare, a large number of police were to be removed, or had been removed; and, if so, whether he would cause inquiry to be made with regard to those who remained, with the view of removing them also?

regretted that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary was not in his place, because he wished to ask him for some explanation with regard to the extra police force in the county of Waterford. He had put a Question to the right hon. Gentleman a few days ago on this subject, and the right hon. Gentleman stated, in reply, that the number of the police force in Waterford County was 219. He (Mr. Leamy) submitted, that if these figures were correct, it was most extraordinary that so large a force should be kept there, chargeable upon the ratepayers, especially as the county had been distinguished for its quietness for some years past. If the right hon. Gentleman thought it necessary to have this extraordinary force in the county, it would be perfectly easy for him to apply to Parliament for the powers necessary for the purpose; but he contended that it was manifestly unjust to send this large force into the county and charge them upon the ratepayers, at a time when they were already burdened with taxation. If the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland had to pay for the extra police out of his own pocket, he would, no doubt, think a very much smaller force sufficient. He would ask on whose recommendation these men were sent into the county? The right hon. Gentleman, when he answered his former Question, said that the county was not the most peaceful place in Ireland, and that there had been many cases of intimidation there; but it was extraordinary that the Prevention of Crime Act should be put in force there under the actual circum. stances, and a very large number of extra police sent there. Such a state of things would not be permitted in an English county for 24 hours. The whole proceeding was most unconstitutional; and to charge people who had no voice in the control of the police force with a large sum of money for its maintenance, was an act of which no honest man would be guilty. It was all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to get up and make statements about the disturbed state of the district; but, of course, he must know that no one had any means of ascertaining whether those statements were correct; but there was no doubt that in making them he was dependent upon others for his information—that was to say, upon the Resident Magistrates—who could show their gratitude in no better way than by saying that the districts were disturbed. Perhaps an additional force of 20 or 30 men might have been required; but to send down the enormous number complained of was out of the question. Was it Captain Stack that recommended the men to be sent? He trusted the right hon. Gentleman would be able to give some information to the Committee on this point. The right hon. Gentleman said they were not extra police at all; but how could he (Mr. Leamy) know whether they were extra or ordinary police? It was perfectly absurd to tell him, under the circumstances, that they were not extra police. Were they to be told that they were not extra police because they had been withdrawn from the ordinary force, their place being filled up by others? It was not the custom in England, when crime was committed in a county, for the Home Secretary to send down an extra police force; he hoped, therefore, that this extravagant expenditure for police in Ireland would be at once abolished.

Sir, upon two occasions during this Session it came to my lot to call attention to part of the question of the extra police in certain districts of Ireland with regard to the quartering of extra police in the cities of Cork and Limerick. We had discussions in this House upon this limited branch of the question, and we received very little satisfaction from the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. We made out an overwhelming case against the necessity of extra police in those two cities; but we were put off in the usual way. Although there was considerable correspondence between the Local Authorities in Cork and the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary and the Resident Magistrate, Captain Plunkett, the result has been, practically speaking, to leave the people of Cork pretty much as they were before, to pay for the extra police until the time when the right hon. Gentleman promises that the subject of the amount of the police force to be allowed for that city shall receive the attention and reconsideration of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. But the question to which I have to direct the attention of the Committee is of a very much wider scope, extending, in fact, to the quartering of extra police throughout the whole of Ireland£throughhout, I may say, almost every county and city of Ireland; and I think I shall be able to show that there exists no longer any practical necessity for this extra force of men—in fact, that the necessity never existed at all, or, at any rate, that it cannot be said to have existed during the last two years as regards a considerable proportion of Ireland. I shall, I think, be able also to show that although the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary may have recently, within the last three months, turned his attention to the advisability of reducing the extra police force in some of the Irish counties, yet that he commenced to do so very much too late; that the steps he has taken in that direction are entirely inadequate; and that we have a fair claim to urge upon him a very much larger and more immediate reduction with regard to a very considerable proportion of these extra forces in many Irish districts and counties. Speaking generally, the Irish Executive is entitled, under the Act regulating the matter, to have a free force of 10,636 men and officers, besides a reserve force of, I believe, 400 men and officers, and the revenue force, the number of which I do not exactly know, but which may be somewhere between 150 and 200. Exclusive, then, of revenue and reserve men, the total free force for which the authorities are entitled to charge extra when they are sent out of the county, and for whose payment the Executive was entitled to ask Parliament to grant a Vote, is 10,636. The actual free force distributed under this power by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at the last quinquennial period in 1882—in July, I believe—amounted to 10,030, or 630 men short of the actual full free force which might have been legally raised for service in Ireland. Now, Sir, at the very threshold of our case I think we are entitled to make a very serious complaint with regard to the action of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in this matter. I believe that the free force in Ireland was distributed in 1882 by Earl Spencer, after the period of Office of the present Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant had commenced—at a time when the Government had applied to Parliament for their coercive powers, and were representing to Parliament and the coun- try that the state of Ireland was very serious indeed. Well, Sir, at that time, and under such circumstances, the Lord Lieutenant and the Irish Executive deliberately refrained from raising a free force in Ireland to the extent of the number of men which the Act of Parliament authorized. They kept it 630 men short. I suppose I am not allowed to impute intention or motive to such an impersonal body as the Irish Executive; but if I were allowed to do so, I can only say that it would appear that their intention must have been to obtain further means of fining and levying imposts upon the districts and counties concerned—further means than those supplied to them by the Act of Will. IV. and other Acts by which they are entitled to send extra men into the different districts. Well, as I have shown, the Irish Government deliberately kept the free force at the last quinquennial period of redistribution 530 men under the number authorized by Parliament; on the other hand, they sent into various Irish counties the enormous extra force of 3,426. As I have just explained, there are various enactments under which the Executive Government can levy and send extra forces, and quarter them on the inhabitants. Under the 13th section of the Act of Will. IV., which gives power to the Lord Lieutenant to proclaim a district, they levied and quartered on the districts 2,221 men. Under Section 12, which gives the magistrates power to call for an extra force, and which requires a representation from the magistrates before it can be sent, 859 men were sent, and I think the Committee might with profit note the smallness of the number of men who were considered by the local magistrates to be necessary as compared with the number that the Lord Lieutenant sent without their advice or request: 859 men were quartered on the 31st of December last, and on the 30th of June of the present year they had been reduced to 844. The authorities have also sent from the reserve force 91 extra men; and under the Prevention of Crime Act, which permits all the force to be levied upon the district, no matter how small, upon the 31st of December, 1883, there were 195, making a grand total of 3,421 extra men quartered on the 31st of December, in the greater portion upon the ratepayers, and with respect to 195 wholly so quartered. I wish to call the attention of the Committee to the section of the Act of Will. IV., under which these quarterings have been made. Section 12, under which 859 were quartered, provides that in any case in which seven or more magistrates of any county, at any Petty Session, being a majority of magistrates present, shall certify to the Lord Lieutenant that the number of chief or other constables and sub-constables so appointed for any such county is inadequate for the due execution of the law, it shall be lawful for the Lord Lieutenant to appoint such further number of constables to such county as may be so certified to be necessary, and to remove such chief, or other constables and sub-constables, from time to time. There are some points in regard to the application of this section which we have no information upon, and I should be glad if it could be supplied to us in the course of the debate by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary. In the first place, I am anxious to know the dates of the applications by magistrates for the extra forces in the different counties, whether they are of recent date or of late date, and what the practice of the Irish Executive has been in reference to the removal of such extra forces. There is no provision, and it appears to me to be a serious omission in the section, for the removal of this force which has been quartered on the application of the magistrates. It is left optional to the Lord Lieutenant to remove them as he thinks fit. It is very possible that the applications in some cases for these 950 men may have been of ancient date, and that they have been allowed to remain, possibly against the wishes of the local magistrates themselves. Then I come to the 13th section, under which the great bulk of the extra police in Ireland have been, and are still quartered, a moiety of the maintenance being levied on the ratepayers. This section provides that the Lord Lieutenant, by the advice of the Privy Council of Ire-land, may declare by Proclamation—and I wish distinctly to direct the attention of the Committee to these words—that any county, city, or town, or barony, or half barony, or county at large, or any district that is, or are, in a state of disturbance and require an additional establishment of police, and thereupon the Lord Lieutenant may appoint such extra police as he may think proper, not exceeding so many in each district so declared to be in a state of disturbance. Well, Sir, it appears to me that the true meaning of this section is that there shall be an actual state of disturbance within the district to entitle the Lord Lieutenant to issue this Proclamation; but I doubt very much whether in respect of any of those counties where it has been made the issue of the Proclamation was originally justified; but if, in any case, this were so, that justification no longer exists. It is quite impossible for the right hon. Gentleman to say that any county or district in Ireland is at present in a state of disturbance, and consequently the original justification for the Proclamation has entirely ceased, and we are entitled to ask upon what ground this large force of extra Constabulary is still kept quartered upon the ratepayers throughout the country. Since the 31st of December there has been some slight reduction of the number of extra police. The figures on the 30th of June, 1884, as supplied to me by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, give for the extra men under the 13th section of the Act of Will. IV. 877, and for the extra men under Section 12—namely, those originally requested by the local magistrates, 849; for the extra men from the reserve, 86; and for extra men under the Prevention of Crime Act, 30. This last head is the only one which shows any material reduction—namely, from 195 to 30, leaving the total number of extra men quartered in the different districts under the enactments which I have explained, on the 30th of June, 1884, at the enormous figure of 2,827, or a reduction of 599 extra men in six months; a reduction which amounts to something like one man in every six. Now, I wish to refer to the cost of these extra men in the counties, and I find the total given in the Estimate as the cost of the extra men is £110,800. Under the Prevention of Crime Act there is £18,000, making the enormous sum of £128,800, which is levied violently, unconstitutionally, and, as we contend, illegally, and without the slightest local control, upon the Irish ratepayers. Now, Sir, it has been very much the custom with English Ministers, and particularly with the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to allude to this amount of reduction which has been obtained by the tenants under the Irish Land Act; but I find that the reductions given by the Land Courts during the three years' working of that Act amount to £270,000. The Irish ratepayers consequently have to pay back to the Government for extra police half of the money which they have received in reductions. The Government having decided to despoil the landlords to the extent of £270,000 a-year under the working of the Land Courts for three years, in order to make themselves still more beloved in Ireland, they proceed to despoil the ratepayers by compelling them to pay a sum equal to half that sum for the cost of extra police. I stated a short time ago that I wanted to prove that there was nothing in the state of Ireland which required this extra force of police. Now, the fact is that the Government, having deliberately neglected at the last quinquennial period to raise the number of free men to the amount they were entitled to do by the Act, and having also raised a large number of extra men—having thus raised the total number of men authorized by Parliament from 10,636 to 13,456—now do not know what to do with them. They have no power under the law to distribute these 3,000 extra men as a free force, and they therefore distribute them as extra men, part of the cost of whom is to be paid by the localities. In view of the peaceable state of Ireland, which has now continued for two years, and in view of the Charges of the Judges, I maintain that if the Government still desire to keep up this swollen police establishment in Ireland they should apply to Parliament either for a Supplementary Estimate, or for an amending Act enabling them to make this charge upon the taxpayers. It is monstrous that it should be charged upon the districts. This matter affects nearly every county in Ireland. The county of Clare does not seem to have participated in the reductions made in some of the other counties between December, 1883, and June, 1884; indeed, it heads the list for the large number of extra men which, on the 30th of June, were still quartered in that county. I find that at a former period in 1883 there were 235 extra men quartered there under the Proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant under the 13th section of the Act of Will. IV. There were in June last still 235 extra men, involving a charge on the ratepayers of that impoverished county of between £8,000 and £9,000. I find that at the first period in 1883 there were 33 additional Constabulary under the Prevention of Crime Act, and that the only reduction which was made in the county of Clare between the end of March last and the middle of this year has been in respect to these 33 men, the cost of the large force of 235 extra men being still left to be borne by the taxpayers of the county. I do not know whether any recent reduction has been made; I am now speaking from the most recent information I have received on the subject, some of which has been furnished to me by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland this morning. The free force to which that county is entitled is 328 men under the last distribution of the Lord Lieutenant. Therefore, there are very nearly as many extra men placed in this county as there are free policemen—that is to say, that the police force of the county Clare is nearly double the normal number. Let us turn to the state of the county, as disclosed by the Parliamentary Returns for the last quarter. I find that for the whole of county Clare—a very large county, containing a very considerable population of small farmers who have derived little benefit from the Land Act—in the whole of the county the number of outrages, exclusive of threatening letters, which I do not notice in matters of this kind, amounted to four. I will ask the right hon. Gentleman what justification there is for keeping up this swollen police force in that county in view of the Returns in reference to crime during the last 12 months? Well, now, another county which is very much imposed on is the county of Cork. In the East Riding of the county of Cork, on the 31st of December, 1883, there were altogether 185 extra men—11 extra men sent from the reserve force, and 174 men sent under the Lord Lieutenant's Proclamation. In this Riding of Cork there has been no reduction whatever made in the six months between December, 1883, and June, 1884. The same number of extra men that were quartered there on the 30th of June last are now quartered on the ratepayers at an annual cost to them of £7,500 for the half county. Well, now, Sir, in the East Riding of county Cork there were only three agrarian offences committed in the last quarter. This Riding is entitled to a free force of 422 men, so that the number of extra men is over one-third of the total of the free force. Going on to the West Riding I find that on the 31st of December, 1883, there were 143 extra men quartered, all under the 13th section, or Proclamation Section, of the Act of Will. IV. During the period of six months, up to the 30th of June, 44 of these extra men were removed, still, however, leaving the enormous and entirely unnecessary extra force of 99 men for this Riding, in which only six agrarian offences were committed during the quarter. I should also like to direct the attention of the Committee to Judge O'Brien's Charge to the Grand Jury at the recent Assizes in county Cork with reference to the state of the county. He says—

"So far as I can collect from the sources which are open to me, I am happy to state that the condition of this great county is one that very nearly justifies the description of entire and absolute quiet and security."

He refers to a temporary small increase of crime since the last Assizes in the East Riding; but he goes on to say—

"I find that that small increase is more than balanced by a very large diminution of offences in the West Riding of this county, in the proportion of 68 reported offences."

Of course, Judge O'Brien is speaking of all offences, agrarian and otherwise, which came before him—

"In the present year, as against 114 in the past year for the same period, and I find that this great decrease appears to be almost entirely in offences that tend to indicate by their diminution a restoration of social peace and tranquillity, and the absence of agrarian outrage in both Divisions of this county."

He goes on to say—

"I observe as a most important feature of the change that has taken place the subsidence of almost all forms of intimidation, and an absence of all restraint on personal conduct,"

and so on. Well, now, Sir, I ask the right hon. Gentleman if he does not intend to show his appreciation of this state of affairs in the county of Cork? Perhaps I had better not weary the Committee by going over the whole list of Irish counties; but, speaking gene- rally, I may say that the list shows that there are extra men quartered in almost every county and city in Ireland. In county Donegal the number of extra men was not so large as it was in some other counties. In that county there were 100 extra men at the end of 1883, and they were quartered there at a cost to the ratepayers of over £2,000 a-year. Seventy of these extra men have been taken away in the six months which have elapsed since December, 1883, leaving 30 men still as an extra charge upon the district at a cost of nearly, according to the information in my possession, £1,000. In the East Riding of Galway there were 183 extra men on the 31st of December, 1883, there were now 145 extra men in that Riding, and during the last quarter there were only two agrarian offences, exclusive of threatening letters. The total cost of the extra men in this Riding during the year ending the 30th of June last was £5,800. In the West Riding of Galway there were on the 31st of December, 1883, 270 extra men, and on the 30th of June, 1884, there were 200 extra men quartered there under the Act of Will. IV. On the 31st of December last there were in the same Riding 22 extra men under the 12th section of the Act of Will. IV.—that is under the magistrates, requisitions, and there were eight extra men on the same date sent from the reserve force. There were 70 extra men under the Prevention of Crime Act, making altogether an extra force in this one Riding of 300 men, or 12 men in excess of the free force establishment to which the Riding was entitled. Well, now, Sir, in the county of Kerry there were on the 31st of December, 1883, 11 extra men from the reserve force, and on the same date there were, under the 13th section of Will. IV., 196 extra men, and these numbers remain now practically unchanged, for the total number of extra men quartered in this county on the 31st of December was 207, and the total number of extra men now quartered there was 203, or a diminution of only four men. These men involved a cost to the county of over £8,000 a-year. In his Charge to the Grand Jury of the county of Kerry on the 16th of July, Mr. Justice O'Brien said—

"The present condition of the county compares favourably with the past."

The county of Limerick was another very oppressed county in this respect. On the 31st of December, 1883, there were 235 extra men quartered, and that number has not been diminished in the six months ending the 30th of June, 1884; 235 extra men still remained in county Limerick, this county being entitled to a free force of 281 men. There were only six agrarian offences, all of them of a very trivial character, committed in the county of Limerick for the last quarter of which we have any Return. Judge Fitzgibbon, in addressing the Grand Jury of the county of Limerick on the 11th of July, said—

"There are altogether eight cases to go before you. There is one of manslaughter, but there does not appear to be any great difficulty in dealing with it. The other seven cases are simply for assaults. Having regard to the large population of your county, and the circumstances of your district, there is nothing on the face of the list requiring any observations from me."

The question of the extra police force of the City of Limerick has already been debated fully in this House, and I will not refer to it further. The county of Mayo on the 31st of December, 1883, had 50 extra men under the 12th section of the Act of Will. IV.—that is to say, requisitioned by the magistrates. On the same date, there were in the county 125 extra men under the Lord Lieutenant's Proclamation. Mayo does not appear to have had any men quartered upon it under the section of the Prevention of Crime Act. There were altogether at this date a total extra force in Mayo of 178 men. That force has been reduced in the period of six months to 112 men, involving a cost to the ratepayers for the year of nearly £4,500. For the last quarter in which we have any Returns, the number of agrarian offences in the county of Mayo only amounted to three—that is to say, the ratepayers of the county have been charged £1,500 for each agrarian offence committed during the quarter. The county of Sligo, on the 31st of December, 1883, had 50 extra men under the magistrates' requisition section. They had 45 extra men under the Lord Lieutenant's Proclamation, making altogether 95 extra men in this county—a force which was not reduced up to the 30th of June, 1884. The list of agrarian offences discloses only the small number of two for the last quarter, and the cost to the ratepayers of the county of Sligo For the extra men will amount to something like £2,000 for each agrarian offence committed during the last agrarian offence committed during the last quarter. In the North Riding of the county of Tipperary on the 31st of December, 1883, there were 114 extra men quartered under the Lord Lieutenant's Proclamation. That number was reduced on the 30th of last June to 94, involving an annual cost to the ratepayers of £3,760. In that Division of the county of Tipperary there were no agrarian offences during the last quarter. In the South Riding of the county of Tipperary there were 80 extra men quartered under the magistrates' requisition section of the Act of Will. IV. On the 31st of last December there was one extra man from the reserve, and there were 100 extra men quartered on the Riding under the 13th section of the Act of Will. IV.—that is to say, under the Lord Lieutenant's Proclamation, making altogether 181 extra men in the South Riding of Tipperary on this date. That number on the 30th of June was reduced to the number of 155. The 100 men under the Lord Lieutenant's Proclamation have been reduced to 75, and the extra man from the reserve has been taken away. The number of agrarian offences in the South Riding of Tipperary during the last quarter only amounted to four, while the cost to the ratepayers of the extra force amounted to something like £6,000 a-year, or, on the average, £1,500 for each agrarian offence. The offences, I notice, were of a very trivial character. Now I should like to direct the attention of the Committee also to the Charge delivered to the Grand Jury by the Judge who presided at the Tipperary Assizes. On the 8th of July the Lord Chief Justice, addressing a Grand Jury, congratulated them on the smallness of the Calendar, the disposal of which, he said, would not detain them very long. Westmeath is the next county on my list. I find on the 31st of last December there were 23 extra men quartered on this county upon the requisition of the magistrates. There were 63 extra men quartered there under the Lord Lieutenant's Proclamation, and one man was quartered upon the county under the Prevention of Crime Act. During the six months which elapsed from December last to June, the one man had been removed, so that the extra force of Westmeath still stood at 86 men. Now, I wish to direct the attention of the Committee to the case of some other counties which have always been regarded as quiet counties, and in the case of which there seems to be still less justification for the maintenance of extra police forces. Take the case of Meath. In December, 1883, there were 72 extra men quartered there under the 12th section of the Act of Will. IV., and three under the Prevention of Crime Act. There are now 52 extra men quartered in this county under the Act of Will. IV., at a cost to the county of something like £2,000. I should like to know if the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary could give me any information as to the date of the representations made by the magistrates with regard to those counties on the list where extra police are quartered under the 12th section of the Act of Will. IV.? I refer to the West Riding of Galway; to the county of Kilkenny, where 55 men are quartered under this section, and none under the Proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant; King's County, where 15 men are quartered under the provisions of the 12th section, and only 12 under the Proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant; Queen's County, where 15 men are quartered under the 12th section, and none under the Proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant; the county of Longford, where 34 extra men are quartered under this section, and only 22 under the Proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant; County Mayo, where 50 men are quartered under this section, and 60 under the Proclamation of the Lord. Lieutenant; County Meath, where 52 extra men are now quartered under this section, and none under the Proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant; the county of Kildare, where 18 men are still quartered from the reserve force by the Lord Lieutenant, but none under his Proclamation; the county of Louth, where 15 men are quartered under the 12th section, but none under the Lord Lieu-tenant's Proclamation; the county of Sligo, where 50 men are quartered under the 12th section, and 45 under the Lord Lieutenant's Proclamation; the South Riding of the county of Tipperary, where 80 men are quartered under the 12th section, and 75 under the Lord Lieutenant's Proclamation; the county of Waterford, where 16 extra men are quartered under the 12th section, and 50 under the Lord Lieutenant's Proclamation; the county of Westmeath, where 23 extra men are quartered under the 12th section, and 63 under the Lord Lieutenant's Proclamation; Belfast, where 320 extra men are quartered under the 12th section by the desire of the magistrates or the Corporation, and none under the Lord Lieutenant's Proclamation; the county of Dublin, where 10 extra men are quartered under the 12th section, and none under the Lord Lieutenant's Proclamation; the county of Fermanagh, where 10 extra men are quartered under the 12th section, and none under the Lord Lieutenant's Proclamation; the county of Monaghan, where 12 extra men are quartered under the 12th section, and none under the Lord Lieutenant's Proclamation; and the city or county of Londonderry, where 45 extra men are quartered under the 12th section, and none under the Lord Lieutenant's Proclamation. Now, Sir, I could go on indefinitely referring to the statistics on this subject; but I think I have proved enough to show that in almost every Irish county there is an extra force of police; that in every Irish county there is a very low Calendar of crime; that at all the Assizes the Judges were unanimous in their testimony to the peaceable condition of the different counties. The police force throughout Ireland generally is enormously swollen by the number of 2,800 extra men over and above the free force authorized by Act of Parliament. I think we are entitled to ask the right hon. Gentleman for his justification of this state of things. I do not see how the Government can expect us calmly to pass this Estimate upon the Returns with which we have been presented—Returns showing that the condition of Ireland is absolutely normal as respects its tranquillity and freedom from crime. All the contentions upon which successive Chief Secretaries have justified the retention of extra police forces are entirely absent. In the present case it is impossible for us to allow this Estimate to pass without very strenuous protest and opposition, unless we hear something far more satisfactory than we have yet heard from the Government. The reduction of 500 and odd men which has taken place during the last few months out of the total force is entirely inadequate. There are several of the counties to which I have alluded which are amongst the most impoverished throughout Ireland. The county of Clare contains a very large population of very small tenant farmers. The county of Cork is also in a similar position; the county of Galway, where the police tax is also most crushing, is in a very impoverished state; the county of Kerry is notorious as being one of the most poverty-stricken counties in Ireland; the county of Limerick, the only rich county on the list where the force is very high, is remarkable for having been absolutely free from crime of any kind during the last two years; the county of Sligo is another impoverished county; and the county of Tipperary is at present, and has been for a considerable time, exceedingly quiet. I might go over the whole list and show, in the same way as I have abundantly done with respect to those counties, that there is not the slightest justification, even from the point of view of the Government, for the maintenance of this cruel tax resulting from the quartering of large extra forces of police upon the people. Three years ago the Predecessor (Mr. W. E. Forster) of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary (Mr. Trevelyan) informed the Committee, during one of the discussions which took place on this Vote, that in a short time he hoped to be able to hand over the police force to elective authorities in Ireland. The lapse of time which has taken place since then do not justify the prediction and hope of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. E. Forster). Instead of the force being reduced, we have had it enormously increased. Apart from the hardship to the localities, and to the ratepayers who have to pay these crushing inflictions, the force in its character is absolutely unconstitutional. Eminent Constitutional lawyers, like the late Mr. Butt, have given it as their opinion that the maintenance of this police force in Ireland, an absolutely military force in its character, is a breach of the annual Army Discipline Act. Certainly, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary should tell us to-day that he proposes to diminish this extra force by at least one-half during the next six months, and that he hopes within the subsequent period of six months to dispense with it altogether, If we do not receive some assurance of that kind, the action which will have to be taken by the people of Ireland and by their Representatives is a matter which will have to be very carefully considered. The rates for extra police are now levied by the Grand Juries, bodies absolutely without any particle whatever of a representative character. If in any district the Grand Jury refuse to levy the rate, there is the Judge's fiat to compel them to do so; and if they then refuse to levy the rate, there is the further order of the Queen's Bench; in fact, the whole levying of the extra police is beset with a series of cast-iron enactments which might do credit to an age of barbarism and a rule of despotism, but which are certainly out of place on the Statute Book at the present time. For our part, we shall not cease to protest against these enactments; and, as I have just said, in the absence of any satisfactory assurance from the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, it will become a matter for serious consideration whether the collection of this oppressive tax cannot be prevented by the organized action of the people of Ireland. We have from the glowing pen of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Trevelyan) himself some very significant and good advice upon the subject. The taxes, the refusal to pay which was referred to by the right hon. Gentleman in terms of approval, were taxes levied upon the people by the Representatives of the people in Parliament, so far as the people were then represented; but these taxes are not levied upon our people by Parliament; they are levied by an irresponsible clique in Dublin Castle, some of whose iniquities have recently been brought to light by the exertions of my hon. Friend the Member for Mallow (Mr. O'Brien). I have no doubt that the distribution of these extra police amongst the unhappy counties I have referred to depended very much upon the Reports of the notorious person whose conduct is now the subject of examination by the Dublin Police Court sitting in camerâ. I have no doubt that if the system could be further examined into, and I trust that a long time will not elapse before an opportunity may be found of examining into the system which obtains in Dublin Castle—I have no doubt that if the system were further investigated and examined into, we should find that the action of the Irish Executive was directed and depended upon the advice of men very little better in character and position than that of the Government officials, whose conduct so recently became the subject of criminal investigation. So long as you rule Ireland by a centralized system of Government at the dictation of a group of permanent officials in Dublin Castle the possessors of swollen and enormous salaries, whose existence necessarily depends on keeping up a state of alarm in the minds of the English people and Parliament with regard to the condition of Ireland, so long you will find it is impossible for you to rule her justly, and that it will continue impossible for you to escape the complaints and the criticisms which we have been compelled to direct against you and against your system of administration during the present Session, and so long will the administration of Ireland by England and by the ring in Dublin, who have got possession of that administration, be a subject of reproach amongst the peoples of the civilized world. I beg to move the reduction of this Vote by the sum of £100,000.

Motion made, and Question proposed,

"That a sum, not exceeding £840,095, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1885, for the Constabulary Force in Ireland."— (Mr. Parnell.)

Sir, I propose, in replying to the considerable number of Gentlemen who have spoken upon a subject of such interest to Ireland, to go through their speeches consecutively, and to come last to the speech of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), who spoke with an amount of statistical preparation that deserves special notice. While, however, the last words he spoke are still ringing in our ears, I cannot but enter my protest against them. The hon. Member said that he considered that it was very likely that if some leading officials in Dublin Castle had their conduct examined, their characters would stand little higher, I think he said, than the characters of the two people connected with different parts of the government of Ireland, one of them not connected with Dublin Castle at all, who have been accused of very great crimes indeed. Sir, it is quite plain that if the hon. Member has evidence of that fact, he ought to produce it. I must call the greatest attention to this, because it is a very serious matter. Everybody knows very well who the Lord Lieutenant and myself are advised by in high matters of criminal and police administration. If the hon. Member has evidence against any of the persons who are well known to advise us, that evidence ought to be produced in a Court of Law.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give me a Select Committee of the House of Commons to inquire into the whole system of criminal investigation in Ireland?

This is not a question of the criminal system of Dublin Castle; it is a question whether a singularly odious imputation, which I am inclined to think the hon. Member does not feel the full gravity of, ought to be made without evidence against any people, whether they are members of the Irish Administration or whether they are private individuals. The first hon. Gentleman who addressed the Committee was the hon. Member for Limerick (Mr. O'Sullivan), and the particular point to which he referred in connection with this question was the protection of a certain landlord, a Mr. Coote. The hon. Gentleman said Mr. Coote was an extremely unpopular landlord, and he asks if we uphold him and the system he adopts towards his tenants. We neither uphold Mr. Coote nor the system of his dealings with his tenants; his dealings are not, as a matter of fact, a subject for consideration by the Executive Government. What we did was to give him such protection as his safety required. It is certainly a very unfortunate thing that these relations between landlords and tenants should have existed in Ireland, and that so much evil should have come out of them; but if one consequence of them is that the life or the limb of any individual, be he landlord or tenant, is in danger, it is plainly the business of the Executive to afford them protection. I may say with regard to the question of the hon. Member for Limerick (Mr. O'Sullivan), respecting the police of Limerick, there is some prospect that at no distant date there may be a reduction of the extra police quartered in the county.

To what extent?

To the extent that safety will allow. I hope hon. Members will think I do my best to reduce the number of extra police whenever I can. I now come to the review of the remarks of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Kilkenny (Mr. Marum). Kilkenny is a county in which the Lord Lieutenant has had no direct concern with the police. In Kilkenny there are extra police, because they were asked for originally by the magistrates. The hon. Member (Mr. Marum) says the number of police ought to be reduced on account of the suffering of agriculture and the overburdened rates of the county. Well, Sir, I do not think that on that account alone Kilkenny has any special right to a reduction of its local burdens, which reduction would mean throwing the expenses on the general taxpayer. There has very recently been a reduction of 15 extra police in Kilkenny. The extra police in that county are now 55 in number, so that that county, a rich county, and a prosperous county agriculturally, compared with a great number of the English counties which have to join in paying the taxes out of which these police would be paid for if they were not paid for by the county of Kilkenny—that county is only burdened to the extent of about £2,200 or £2,300 a-year. If the hon. Member for Kilkenny (Mr. Marum) would take an English agricultural county of the same rating as Kilkenny, a county in which the agricultural industry is the same as in Kilkenny, he will find that that county would be glad, and glad many times over, if its contribution to the police of the county only amounted to £2,300. I am bound to say there is no county in England which stands in the same position pecuniarily as Kilkenny, which has not to pay at least twice as much for its police; and, therefore, I think it would be extremely hard if the English counties were to be called upon to pay for the extra police required in Kilkenny. The hon. Member may say that these 55 extra police are not required. It was not the Lord Lieutenant who placed them there of his own accord; he placed them there on the application of the magistrates. The hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) asks on what date these applications of the magistrates were made? On that point I am quite ready to call for a Return; they are, for the most part, of considerable standing, because the present number of the police, generally speaking, represent what the magistrates, who are responsible for the quiet and peace of the country, consider ought to be the nominal force of the country. In the case of Kilkenny, however, the application was made in 1882. I have only made a general observation, because, whether they are of long or short standing, the magistrates, I feel sure, would listen to the general opinion of the country; and, at any rate, whatever their own opinion might be, the Government most certainly would listen very attentively to the opinions of the magistrates upon a subject of this kind. The hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Dawson) began his speech by referring to the City of Limerick, and he said we had increased the police force there in 1882 on account of the riotous state of the town, and yet we had obtained no convictions; we had not brought any prisoners either before the Petty Sessions magistrates, or before the Assize Judges. Well, Sir, that is not the case. I say that in the case of almost every riotous disturbance that is recorded in Limerick there was some conviction more or less important. But that in itself is not all, because the main cause of the bringing extra police into Limerick in 1882 was the general riotous state of the streets, and the danger in which policemen would be who were either patrolling singly, or patrolling at too great a distance from their nearest comrade. The hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Dawson) says that the state of things in Ireland is so oppressive that he almost expects, or at any rate hopes, that the English people themselves will rise up and put an end to it. Sir, I am not quite certain whether it is altogether judicious to call the attention of the English people to the question of police in Ireland. I have got the figures here which are taken from the last published Criminal and Judicial Statistics—namely, those published in 1883 for the year 1882.

The English people control their police.

I am aware of the main arguments of hon. Members from Ireland upon this question; but I was speaking about the financial state of Ireland, to which the hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Dawson) referred. I find that in England the total cost of the police was £3,264,000; of that the proportion paid by the localities is £1,985,000—that is, 1 s. 6 d. per head is paid by the population of England towards the maintenance of their police. In Scotland the cost of the police is £331,000, and £197,000—that is to say, l s. 1 d. per head of the population is paid for the maintenance of the police by the localities. In Ireland the total cost of the police in 1882 was £1,452,000. The part paid by the people was £124,000—that is to say, 6 d. per head of the population. Since then the total cost of the police in Ireland has somewhat risen; and I take it that the part paid by the community has risen to such an extent that probably it comes to 7 d. per head. I cannot see that that represents a state of things which would excite the overwhelming indignation of the people of England if it were brought before them. Well, now, the hon. Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) has just suggested one argument bearing upon this question; but there is another which, of course, every hon. Member on those Benches feels the force of, and that is that though Ireland pays extremely little for the cost of her police the cost is very unequally distributed. If it were 7 d. per head for the whole of Ireland that was paid towards the cost of the police, the tax would not be so severely felt, and I allow that 7 d. per head grows to be considerably more in the counties which are specially taxed; but in only one case does the police tax amount to anything like what it does in English counties; in no part of Ireland, except in the City of Dublin, is the payment at all equal to that of an ordinary English county or an ordinary English town; still, undoubtedly, in many places it is considerably more than 7 d. per head. The hon. Gentleman the junior Member for Cork (Mr. Deasy) referred for a time to the police for the City of Cork. He stated that Captain Plunkett had 20 detectives on his staff. Well, Sir, he has not 20 detectives on his staff; he has nine; and these detectives are not paid for by the City. I explained the other day that the hon. Member labours under a misapprehension with regard to the police question in the City of Cork; no exception is made and no more of the police force are charged for than those on duty.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Captain Plunkett stated before a Committee of the Cork Corporation, a few weeks back, that he had 22 detectives on his staff?

I am not aware of it. Captain Plunkett has nine detectives quartered at Cork, and those are not paid for by the City. If there are any other detectives besides, they would be used for purely local purposes, and they would be as much local policemen as any other of the local staff. The nine detectives who are there, are there for the purpose of providing for the general safety of the Kingdom by preventing the importation of dynamite, and checking the arrival of dangerous men from America; but, as I have said, they are not charged to the City. The hon. Member (Mr. Deasy) asked me for an assurance that meetings would not be interfered with this year. On that point I can speak very positively to this effect, that our interference or non-interference depends upon those who call the meetings together. If meetings are called together in places where there are "Boycotted" farms in any number, and places where outrages directed against special persons are really apprehended, and places where special persons would be put, for some reason, in fear of their lives, the Irish Government would have to act up to its now somewhat long-established principle of action. It is impossible to allow meetings to be so announced, so placarded, and so conducted as to interfere with the civil rights of individuals by putting them in terror of life or limb. Those parts of the country in which that is likely to be the case are now few, I am glad to say; and most certainly, so far as ordinary political excitement is concerned, the Government is of opinion that such excitement is rather healthy than unhealthy. ["Oh, oh!"] Yes, that is my opinion; and I think it is borne out by my speeches. The hon. Member for Limerick (Mr. O'Sullivan) explained to us that during his election, which he said was an election exciting a good deal of interest in the town, no outrage or rioting took place. Our general experience in Ireland, as elsewhere, is that well-contested elections, whether they are for municipal or Parliamentary purposes, are times when the worst passions of the people are merged in the great flood of healthy and legitimate excitement in which the population are involved. So far as that is the case with elections, it is the case with meetings which are held for purposes of getting up political feeling, and not for the purpose for which some meetings have been held in certain parts of Ireland, of putting pressure upon the minds of particular individuals. The hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Colonel Nolan) said he considered the number of the free force was too many, and he asked for Returns from the different counties. I will see whether the Return for which the hon. and gallant Member asks can be given. I have got a little Return here which shows that the difference between the regular normal force and the real force is about 5 per cent. The hon. and gallant Member thinks that Galway is badly used in this particular. Well, Sir, that is not the case. The free force in each of the Divisions of Galway is in one case 288, and in the other 289 men, while the normal strength is 266 and 268 men; so that Galway preserves, as nearly as possible, the actual average. I am glad to inform him that Galway is a county in which there have been pretty considerable recent reductions of the extra force. The force has recently been reduced in the East Riding from 173 to 145, and in the West Riding it has recently been reduced from 220 to 200. There are still a certain number of people under protection in the West Riding; but the Riding is becoming steadily more peaceable, and further reductions may be hoped for at no very distant period. The hon. Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) asked a question about the attendance of shorthand writers with the police at meetings—a matter which shall receive my almost immediate attention. I should be very glad if the police authorities could be induced to see that, at large open meetings attended by Members of Parliament, shorthand writers could be dispensed with, for this appears to me one of the relics of a more turbulent state of things which we may hope has passed away. The hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. Sullivan) has spoken with some severity of the Government, because they allowed a witness to come back to the country where he had been living, and then sent a police force to protect him. The hon. Member applied to that person very strong, though possibly not undeserved, language, though I must say I think he should have applied it to those persons who were convicted by that man's testimony. He described him as a pet of the Government, and as a very valuable individual. Now, Sir, I must say that I think it would have been a most arbitrary stretch of power for the Government to say where a man should or should not live; and if he lives where he chooses to live, I must say that I think he has as much right to our protection as every other citizen. The hon. Member has asked me whether a particular lady—a Miss Thompson—profits by the protection of the police. I have been asked that question before, and it shall not go without an answer. I regret to say that I have known some other instances where a person does profit owing to the attendance of the police. As to the presence of extra police being an encouragement to bad landlords, that would carry the hon. Member very much further than he probably meant to go. In the first place, the relations between landlord and tenant have now been placed upon such a footing that, except in comparatively rare cases, a man can hardly show himself a bad landlord.

There are 100,000 leaseholders.

I said in the majority of cases. In the next place, it is an extremely dangerous principle to lay down that you are not to keep the number of police—the force which the law requires—in order to enforce the law, because certain individuals may strain the law. I cannot imagine any doctrine which would lead to a more perfect state of lawlessness, upheld by the moral sanction of the people. Whether a man strains it or not, the law is still the law; and you cannot accuse the police, who are required to enforce the law, because it is put by some people to a use which you would not wish it to be put to. The hon. Member for Ennis (Mr. Kenny) has asked for the number of extra police under all heads; but I think that in some respects the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) has relieved me from that task. At the same time, I shall be glad to provide the hon. Member for Ennis with any papers or particulars that he may wish for. They lie in a narrow compass, and half-an-hour's reading will put him in possession of the facts. The hon. Gentleman has asked what is the present position of Mr. Jenkinson, and whether he is paid out of this Vote. During the last few months Mr. Jenkinson has been much in London, guarding the public from the attacks which have been made upon them. The very serious case which was brought to an end yesterday proves that these attacks are not imaginary. Now that the case is over, I may say that it is impossible for anyone to read the scientific evidence as to the effect produced by these bombshells without feeling sure that they were meant for murder, and that they could not be used for any other purpose, and murder of the most terrible sort. Anyone who reads this evidence cannot fail to see that the men who use these weapons are terrible enemies, and Mr. Jenkinson's duty in London has been to enable the Government to meet these enemies with success. But Mr. Jenkinson is paid out of the Civil Service Vote, and not out of the Vote now before the Committee.

Will he for the future be paid out of the Irish Establishment, or will he be paid out of the English Votes? Will he be sent back to Ireland?

He is, of course, on the Irish Establishment at present; but his ultimate position will have to be arranged between the Irish Government and the Home Office. The hon. Member has asked about Mr. Clifford Lloyd—whether Mr. Clifford Lloyd's position, as defined by the Secretary to the Treasury, is to be modified by the withdrawal of the Magistrates (Ireland) Salaries Bill? Sir, what was stated by the Secretary to the Treasury was stated, if I may use the expression, baldly, without any other circumstance being mentioned. The fact of the matter is this—it is the intention of the Irish Government that all appointments to these Divisional Magistracies shall henceforth be made from the ranks of the officers of the police, and Mr. Clifford Lloyd does not belong to that Force. The hon. Member for Ennis asks me to explain the cause of the increase of the Estimate; but I must say that I am almost afraid to say anything to meet his wishes, because on one occasion, when I made a speech explaining an increase in the Estimate in the ease of the Vote for Law Charges, the hon. Member for the City of Galway (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), in a very bright speech of his own, charged me with having made a discursive and rambling speech, although I kept very closely indeed to the Estimate. The principal cause of the increase in pay arises out of the Act 46 & 47 Vict., which was passed by Parliament last year, and is caused by the lodging and bait allowances, which were granted pursuant to the recommendation of a Committee of Inquiry, and which formed part of the elaborate financial statement which I made to the House on a previous occasion. The principal decreases are in extra pay and in travelling expenses, owing to the country being in a more settled condition. A great deal, however, occurs on the item of rent of barracks. Actually the amount paid has risen by £400; but I apprehend that the very great decrease in the rent arises simply from the fact that the police have now ceased to pay the 1 s. a-week which they did pay by way of rent for their quarters. The hon. Gentleman referred to the case of Sub-Constable Carroll, which was certainly a very singular and curious case; but a case in which the Grand Jury, so far as I can gather, are absolutely responsible. It is not a case for the Executive Government at all, except so far as we might adopt the recommendation of the hon. Member for Clare (Mr. O'Shea), and issue a Circular to inform police constables that they must not keep large sums of money about them in the expectation of being compensated by the Grand Jury. Whether there is sufficient likelihood of such cases recurring to make such a Circular necessary I do not know; but if such a case did recur, and no such Circular was issued, I should feel a little guilty towards the locality that had to pay. I now pass on to the hon. Member for Clare, who asks me whether there is any chance of the number of protection huts in Clare being diminished. I am glad to be able to inform the hon. Member that there has been a very substantial reduction recently in Clare. As to the instances in reference to which the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) has provided statistics, I may say that those statistics are not up to the very latest date, and I take all blame to myself for that; but within the last few days the number of extra police has been reduced from 235 to 200.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the sum paid for them was over £9,000?

I said at the beginning that this was a very important point, and that I. believed there were counties in Ireland where considerable reductions might be made. If the force in Clare is still somewhat in excess—and I take the hon. Member's word for that—I cannot hold out the same hopes of further reduction as in other counties, because there have been rather serious outrages in Clare within the last month, and the state of the district is very decidedly disturbed. The hon. Member for Waterford (Mr. Leamy) inquires as to the extra police at Waterford, and he is evidently under the impression that they are still at the number at which they were recently put. But the police have been reduced to about 66 from all sources—16 from one source and 20 from another. He asks me on what information they were originally sent down there. It was upon the information of the Special Resident Magistrate that they were sent, and they have been reduced upon the recommendation of the same gentleman, who is now a Divisional Magistrate. The hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) began with an allusion to the grievance of that City. Sir, I stated that I was very anxious to take into consideration the opinion of the Corporation of Cork. Their view was that the City requires 170 police. Some hon. Gentleman—I do not remember who—said that, in his opinion, that was in consequence of some misstatement, or some misrepresentation; but their statement is that their City requires 170 men, and we should have to weigh their opinion most carefully. If they think it requires 170 men to do the duty, then I must say that a great community like Cork does not labour under a great pecuniary grievance, whatever may be their grievance in not having the control of the police, in having to pay for 10 extra police—a moiety of 20—at a cost of between £800 and £1,000 a-year. The hon. Member, speaking of the Proclamation under which the police were sent down, states that he doubts whether any Proclamation was justifiable. But it must be remembered that these Proclamations were made, for the most part, in the years 1881 and 1882, when the country was in a state of very great and dangerous excitement, and when there was a very great amount of crime. During the period of the late Government and of the Government before it the Police Force of Ireland was 9,800 men or thereabouts, and the outrages were very few; but when the outrages grew up to the enormous numbers of 1881, 1882, and 1883, the additional police were all required—they were necessary to preserve the peace of the country. The hon. Member for the City of Cork has compared the amount gained in the reduction of rents with the amount paid for extra police; but the hon. Member, when dealing with the reduction of rents, only gave us the figures of the reductions obtained by the fixture of fair rents. I always claim to have added to them the reductions made under agreements, and these two come together to considerably over £500,000; and I am inclined to think that at least as much more—hon. Members opposite would say very much more than that—is due to the indirect operation of the Land Act, and if we make the comparison in that way, I should say that at the very least the Land Act has put 10 times as much into the pockets of the farmers, in the shape of reduced rents, as has been taken out to pay for extra police.

It was not the Land Act that did that.

The hon. Member has so completely confined himself to the operations of the Land Act, that I naturally gave the Land Act credit for it. Now, the hon. Member, in his appeal to the Committee, has entirely left out of sight one most important question, with regard to which I have not heard a single word said to-day, and that is the question of the police pensions. It must be remembered with regard to these pensions—of which we heard a good deal yesterday, when they supplied an argument or a comparison with the pensions of the National School teachers—that, while in England the State contributes nothing at all of any sort or kind, in Ireland it contributes everything.

Shame! Give them nothing.

I am stating a financial fact. I am not quite sure to which country that expression applies; but, as I have already stated, this matter has not been mentioned before to-day, although it greatly reduces any grievance which Ireland may have against the payment of the extra police. The moment the extra policeman is taken off, the county pays nothing for him—it gets rid of him entirely—but, in England, a moiety of every policeman is paid for by the locality, and his pension is paid for by the locality alone. The hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) has asked what we are going to do with the reduction of the police? The hon. Member for Ennis (Mr. Kenny) did the same, and both hon. Members gave vent to something approaching to a serious menace in the shape of a sort of appeal to the Irish people not to pay police tax. But I think that even those hon. Members will confess that if you reduce the police too suddenly and too entirely in all the counties in Ireland, you would give rise to a state of things which would compel an increase of the police tax. I would never for a moment consent to the immediate total reduction of the extra police in such counties as Kerry or Clare. I should consider it most wicked to do so, both for the sake of those counties immediately, and for the sake of the peace of Ireland in the future. But the Government have been, and are, anxious to take advantage of the improved state of the country, and to reduce the police in a fair proportion. The hon. Member has stated, with perfect accuracy and fairness, the amount of the reduction that has been made in the last six months. The net reduction in the number of the police during that period has been about 475, counting those in Clare, of which the hon. Member was not aware. The extra police have been reduced at the rate of about 80 a month—I wish I could say that during the last month the outrages had fallen off quite in the same proportion. Well, Sir, at such frequent intervals do I consider it my duty to write around to the Resident Magistrates and ascertain what reductions can be made, that even since these figures, from which I was enabled to provide this Return, came in, I have been told of four counties where there are hopes of reduction, and all round Ireland the authorities are constantly looking about to see what reductions can be made. At this moment it is hoped that almost directly we may reduce all the extra police in Donegal, all the extra police in King's County, and make a substantial reduction of 25 in Sligo, and of 20 in Tipperary. If the police can be reduced in this way—not doing it for dramatic purposes; not for political purposes; not in such a manner as to spare six or eight hours' debate upon the Estimates, and a disagreeable Division at the end of it; but doing it conscientiously and practically, and with reference to the state of each given locality where the reduction is made—I can see that at the end of the next six months there would be a very substantial relief to the ratepayers of Ireland. I can say for myself that I will spare no exertion to see that these reductions are kept up to the very maximum which we can induce the local police authorities to agree to. Further than that I certainly cannot go; for, in the first place, I am of opinion that to run the risk of burdening again the taxpayers of the country by any renewal of the state of agitation and lawlessness which before existed in Ireland would be extremely wrong; and, in the next place, I am very much struck by the small price which the Irish people are called on to bear for the police of the country as a whole.

Cannot the right hon. Gentleman give us the relative figures for England, Ireland, and Scotland?

I will directly. I am very anxious, I repeat, to reduce the police; but I cannot do it at the risk of any renewed agitation or disturbance. Another motive which governs me is that I conceive it would be a most terrible confession, both for rulers and ruled, if the alienation between the two countries should be so complete that we could not hope to return to the same state of law, order, and goodwill that existed before the occurrence of the outrages and crimes of 1881 and 1882. Sir, the figures which have been given to me are taken from the Criminal and Judicial Statistics for the year 1882, when the total cost of police in England and Wales was £3,264,000, of which £1,985,000 was paid by the localities—that is to say, about 1 s. 6 d. per head. In Scotland the total cost was £331,000, of which £197,000 was paid by the localities; and in Ireland the cost was £1,452,000.

What is the sum this year?

I have not got the figures; but it will be more than that. A sum of £94,000 was paid for extra police in the country, and £50,000 in Dublin. I should think that £144,000 would be about the amount.

The statement in the Estimates does not refer to the Dublin police?

No.

What is the amount for Dublin?

About £51,000; and my impression is that it is about £94,000 for the counties.

What we want to get at is this—is the county and City of Dublin included in this?

They are not.

Then you add these?

By adding the three items together it would come to £ 180,000.

said, there was one point that the Chief Secretary did not touch upon in that part of his speech in which he expressed his desire to lower the tax now levied upon the ratepayers, and that was the number of men short upon the Establishment. He (Colonel King-Harman) had called the attention of the House to this subject at various times by Questions and in other ways; but he had never been able to get a satisfactory reply from the Government. Not only he, but others had also called attention to this question without getting any satisfactory answer. He understood that in December 1882, the free force, so called, was 630 men short, and the extra force for which the country had to pay was 3,426. That number had now been reduced to 2,827; but he had not been told what state the free force was in. If it was 600 men short at the present moment, as he believed it was, why was not the country—why were not the ratepayers—credited with those 600 men; why did not the Government give the country their full free force, and reduce the extra men by 600? That was to say, why did not the Government reduce the extra police by about one-fourth? To him it seemed they were entitled to have a free force of 10,000 men; but instead of having that number they only got 9,000, and yet the Govern- ment charged them for the full 3,000 extra men. He thought they ought to have their full free force before they were charged for an extra force.

said, he was sure the Irish Members below the Gangway were extremely glad to receive the support the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the County of Dublin (Colonel King-Harman) had given them. He thought that when Gentlemen in the position and holding the politics of the hon. and gallant Gentleman supported them, it was time for the Government to consider whether this grievance was not one that should be seriously looked into, especially when it was evident from the remarks of the hon. and gallant Gentleman that there was no privilege at stake. They were told that it required a certain number of police to keep down crime and outrage; and although they were entitled to a certain number under the Act of Parliament, they did not get them, and he was sure that the Irish people would be as satisfied with coercion by a free force as being coerced by a force for which they had to pay extra. That was a contention that every Conservative could support as well as every Nationalist, and it was astonishing that the Government should act in the way they were doing. He trusted that the speech of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the County of Dublin (Colonel King-Harman) would, be read by the narrow-minded landlords throughout the country; for it really proved that it was not in the interest of the landlords to go on maintaining a force that ought to be paid for out of the British Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman opposite used a very remarkable sentence when he said he would make a maximum reduction if he could induce the local police authorities to agree. But what did that mean? It meant that they were altogether in the hands of the local landlords; the local landlords would "Boycott" them and their wives and families unless they did as they were required. The Police Inspector would not be asked to the landlords' dinner, and the magistrates' wives and daughters would not be able to stretch their legs under the landlords' mahogany. Now they had had the sensible and clear speech of the hon. and gallant Gentleman he was sure the stupid landlords would begin to see they had no particular interest in allowing the country to be swindled on the present system, and would cease to "Boycott" the local magistrates and local Inspectors of police if they made the recommendations that the Government said they would appeal for. This was entirely a matter which was dependent on the local feelings of the landlords. If the landlords would now be induced to see, from the speech of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, that the free force was quite sufficient to get them their rents, they would at once have recommendations from all the little landlords throughout the country, recommendations coming up from them that the free force might be relied on, so that expense should be saved, and they would thus have very valuable results from the speech of the hon. and gallant Gentleman. But if that was not the case, he would put this point to the Government. If the Government still persisted in keeping up the paid free force he would put this case. At present the expense of the force was thrown entirely upon the county cess, as there was much more likelihood that people would strike against the poor rates than the county cess. The poor rates involved a vote, and the people had always been recommended to pay their poor rates in order that they might have a vote. In his opinion, however, this charge ought to fall on the person who wanted these extra police, and it was therefore monstrous that the people should have to pay that out of the county cess. If it was thrown upon the poor rates, and the landlords having to pay half the rate, and not now being able to raise the rents as they used to do, the landlords would be much more careful in asking for these extra police when they knew they would have to pay half the cost. He would ask the Government to consider, if there were not to be a stand against this extra police tax, and in view of the unfair amount that the people had to pay, whether they would not change the incidence of the tax to the poor rate, which the people had a clear incitement to pay in view of obtaining the vote, and which was an incitement to the landlords not to call for extra police because they would have to pay some trifle of the money themselves? It was very remark- able that the Government should rely solely on the demands of the magistrates in these instances. The hon. Member for the County of Kilkenny (Mr. Marum) referred to that, and stated that the Government would be willing to listen to what the magistrates had got to say. Of course, seeing that the right hon. Gentleman just admitted it was on the demand of the magistrates the extra police force was given, of course on the demand of the magistrates that force would be reduced. It had been said that the landlords were out of the country, but he believed that if every one of them were out of the country there would be more peace and order than there was at present. The landlords in the country were the chief cause of the crime, disorder, and outrage that prevailed; the magistrates, therefore, being the sole fount of opinion the Government had to go to, the Government could only expect the one reply, so long as it cost them not one single penny to saddle the people with this extra police force. Let them get some other advice in Ireland besides these interested parties. Where were the people to come in in this matter? There were 5,000,000 of people in the country and about 100,000 officials; the 5,000,000 counted for nothing, and the 100,000 officials counted for everything. Had not the time come, therefore, when the people should have some assurance on this matter? As had been said by the right hon. Gentleman, he hoped they should come back to the time when there might be pleasant relations between England and Ireland, but how could they have those pleasant relations when the people were entirely unconsulted on these matters? Take, for instance, the way in which Captain M'Kernaghan was treated after Francis Hines was hanged. He was removed from the County Fermanagh because he gave decisions against the Orange interest. He was "Boycotted," and he was now scarcely received by a single magistrate in the country. Such things exercised an enormous pressure upon the minds of these people. These local officials were obliged to go in accordance with the opinion of the local hierarchy, the landlords; therefore, when the Government asked for the opinions of the officials they were only getting the opinion of the magistrates themselves, not the opinions of the people of the country. The Government to-day had also drawn attention to the extraordinary generosity of the Government towards the police in the matter of pensions. There was also a Police Bill before the House to give pensions to the police of Scotland. But did the Irish Members wish to pension the Irish police? Not a bit of it. Cut the pensions off to-morrow and ask for their support, and they would be most joyfully gambolling to the Lobby to support the Government. They spoke of the high amount they paid per head to what they paid in Ireland. Was that the Irish Party's fault? If the Government increased the wages and the pensions, the Irish Members did not ask them to do it. No, it was because the police struck, and would have turned their bayonets against the Government. It was a condition of things brought about entirely by the Government. They paid the Irish police extravagant sums and gave them pensions, and then said that in England they only paid 8 d. or 10 d. in the pound, whilst in Ireland it was 3 s. 6 d. in the pound. He was surprised that the Government should resort to that kind of logic. If they wished to make a proper comparison between England and Ireland, they must put in force the system that prevailed in England. He thought a great deal of weight would be attached in Ireland to the remarks of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) with regard to this free force. The fact that the country was paying £180,000 per annum for police they did not want and could not control, would be taken into serious consideration by the people of Ireland. The grievances of the people of Ireland were so cunningly glossed over by the Administration of the country, that it was hard to get at them. They had to peg away in that House for weeks and weeks, and months and months; and it was only now that they had succeeded in getting the facts of this free force out of the Government. Now that the people would know that in the City of Dublin alone they paid £50,000 a-year, and outside £130,000, he ventured to think that the Irish people would take this matter seriously to heart, and before long they would have such an outcry that the Government would be compelled to change the system.

said, he wanted to draw the attention of the Committee for a few minutes to the cost of the Liberal Government in Ireland, as the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant had made some remarks as to what happened, and endeavoured to show that the state of Ireland was never better than it was now. The Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant was asking the Committee for a very large sum of money; he was asking for £1,440,000 for the Constabulary of Ireland, and had just had £146,000 for the Dublin Metropolitan Police. He (Lord Randolph Churchill) thought the right hon. Gentleman should have followed the example of his Predecessor, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster), and should have given the Committee some information as to the state of Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman gave absolutely no information as to the state of Ireland, and not a single Member of the Committee would be able to say whether the condition of the country was more favourable or less favourable than last year or the year before. Considering this sum was very large, considering it was an increase on last year, and considering that it had been, as far as he could recollect, the invariable practice of former Chief Secretaries always to give some information as to the social condition of Ireland, he certainly trusted that the Committee would not sanction this Vote without getting further information from the Government as to those points, because it appeared to him the design of the Government was perfectly obvious. They wished to go down to the country, to their constituents and followers in England, and point to the greatly improved condition of Ireland, to the almost total absence of crime, and then attribute that improvement to the ground of their remedial legislation. But what did they find from the speech of the hon. Member of the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell)? They found there was an extraordinary diminution of agrarian outrage, having sunk, as they saw from the list of the last quarter, from four to nothing. The outrages during the last quarter were 130, of which 93 were threatening letters; and, of course, threatening letters were excluded from the calculation in considering Irish crime; so that the state of Ireland, so far as agrarian crime was concerned, was really nought. Without agrarian crime, there was hardly any sort of crime in the country. The hon. Member for the City of Cork pointed out that, although the state of Ireland, so far as agrarian crime was concerned, was normal, or less than normal, the extra police who were being maintained in Ireland by the ratepayers, over this Vote for which the Committee was now being asked, amounted in number to 3,000 practically, and cost in money £180,000 over the Vote. That was what the hon. Member for the City of Cork had stated; but he should like to add an illustration for the advantage of the Committee, or anyone outside who might care to read it. The cost of the administration, in addition to the £50,000 for Dublin, and in addition to the £180,000 for extra police, should be put down at another £100,000, or nearly £100,000 for the expenses of their land legislation. That was the cost of the Liberal government of Ireland. That being so, he had the curiosity to get the Estimates for the last two years the late Government were in Office, and they were really worth the attention of the Committee. He would take the year 1878, at the same time asking the Committee to bear in mind what the Chief Secretary insinuated as to the condition of Ireland at that time. The Vote the Chief Secretary was now asking for was £1,500,000. The Vote which the late Government asked for was, in round numbers, £1,000,000. That was in 1878; so that there was now an increase over 1878 of £500,000. But the cost of the extra police in 1878 amounted to only £27,500, and the extra police in proclaimed districts was only £332. £27,000 in 1878 against £180,000 in 1884, after four years of Liberal Government. But the year 1879 was a still more favourable one. In 1879 he found—and this was the last year of Office of the late Government—the cost of the Constabulary in Ireland was again, roundly speaking, £1,000,000, no increase to speak of; and the extra police cost to the Irish people was less than the year before, being only £25,000, and the extra police in proclaimed districts was only £350. That was in 1878 and 1879, when, he ventured to state, the statistics of Irish crime, such as they had been favoured with to-day, were, if possible, higher than at the present moment. That was what the people of this country and the people of Ireland had to pay for the luxury of Liberal Government; an increase of £500,000 alone in the Constabulary Vote, and an increase of £160,000 in the cost of extra police; and yet, in the face of those figures, the Chief Secretary did not trouble to give to the Committee the slightest authentic information as to what were the Government's views of the state of Ireland; notwithstanding the extraordinary crisis Ireland went through two or three years ago, the right hon. Gentleman did not trouble to give the Committee the slightest information as to the state of Ireland from the records of Dublin Castle, or as to the policy the Government meant to pursue. The Chief Secretary did say that, so far as the reduction of the extra police was concerned, he had been looking it over calmly, and, perhaps, in four counties there might be some hope of a reduction.

I said that for the last six months we had been reducing the number of extra men by 80 a mouth; that I could not name the reduction that would take place; but I named those counties in which the force had been reduced, and I have every hope of going on reducing the number for some time to come.

said, he apologized to the Chief Secretary if he did not hear him correctly, for there were some Liberal Members below the Gangway who carried on so loud a conversation that he had the greatest difficulty in following what the right hon. Gentleman did say. But he wished to put this to the Chief Secretary and the Committee. Seeing that the Session had nearly terminated, and that statistics were now before the House; considering that was the last opportunity they would have of ascertaining the state of Ireland before the Autumn Session, he should like the Chief Secretary, if he would so far trouble himself, to state to the Committee more comprehensively and more lucidly what was the exact state of Ireland with respect to crime, and what were the prospects of Ireland returning before long to a more Constitutional and more normal Government. The right hon. Gentleman who represented the borough of Huntingdon (Sir Robert Peel) said that the state of Ireland was repugnant to the English mind. So it was, and he (Lord Randolph Churchill) believed there was not a man on either side of the House who did not admit that the form of Government which they applied to Ireland was repugnant. Therefore, viewing the fact that the form of Government was entirely different from that of this country; viewing the utterances that the Liberal Ministry were continually using with respect to Ireland and the success of the present Administration; viewing all these things, and seeing the enormous contrast between the sums of money asked for by the late and the present Governments, he invited the Chief Secretary to give them some further information as to the state of Ireland.

said, that as the Chief Secretary did not rise immediately, he would like to draw attention to one point in connection with this extra police force—namely, that the taxation for extra police should only be put in force when the free force, to which the country was entitled, stood at its full complement. In the year ending March 31, 1883, they had voted £11,632,000 for the cost of the Constabulary in Ireland. Of that no less than £92,000 had been saved; but the saving was to some extent balanced by £33,000 of extra cost. The saving was, to a large extent, made out of pay and extra pay, the country being so quiet that there was no necessity to spend all the money that had been voted. But, in regard to extra money, fuel and light were stated as having cost nearly £5,000. The Committee ought to know how this large sum came to be required, the exact sum put down as being spent for these purposes was £4, 894. Then, again, there was a large sum, £3,840, for arms and ammunition for the Constabulary; a great deal of the extra charge of £33,000 consisting of money put down for these purposes. It might be asked, why was it that when they had effected so large a saving on the previous year that the Government should charge the country anything in the shape of extra rates? As it was, the Government charge to the country, by way of extra rates, was £84,000. This question of over-estimating the cost of the police and charging the counties with extra rates was an important one, and he thought the system most unfair; and he should like to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant if there was any expectation that there would be a saving out of the £150,000, such as there had been last year. This over-drawing of accounts should be avoided as much as possible, because it was sure to lead to waste. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Childers) should look after that matter very closely. The ordinary Estimate for arms and ammunition was £1,900, and yet the sum that had been expended in these things was £3,840. That could not have been needed by anything that had occurred in the country, and, to his mind, there had been extravagance and waste simply because Parliament had voted so much money. The House of Commons ought not to encourage this sort of thing by voting any larger sum than was likely to be actually needed.

said, he, for one, should be sorry to interfere with the charge made for extra police in any district where outrages were shown to have occurred; but he desired to point out how unfairly the existing system worked. In the county of Cork, in a district with which he was acquainted, the police force had been reduced below the necessary level, and the number of men at the station was the smallest number that could supply patrols, the strength being reduced to some two men, the rest being sent to some other county instead of the necessary number of extra men being sent from Dublin to such counties where the numbers might be short of the full establishment, or of what might be specially needed. Under a system by which men were taken from this or that county station to supply deficiencies elsewhere, the consequence was that patrolling ceased and outrages commenced, so that, in a little time, it might be necessary to send extra police, which would be charged on the district in which outrages might occur, owing to the number of police having been thus reduced. He thought the whole system of extra police, as had been well pointed out by the hon. and gallant Member for the County of Dublin (Colonel King-Harman), required to be revised; and he certainly should support any proposal to reduce this Vote, for this reason and no other—that he did not object to making the districts pay for extra police where they were rendered necessary by outrages; but he did object to the rules being increased through the necessity of sending extra men to districts in which the stations had been denuded of their ordinary complement of men.

said, he was sorry to intervene between the Government and the statement they were about to make to the Committee, which he was sure was at the present moment in a state of nervous anxiety, that had been created by the reference made to another subject, to be discussed bye-and-bye. He felt assured that Her Majesty's Government would kindly pardon him for preventing them, by this inter position, from fulfilling the expectation of the last triumph they had prepared for themselves in the statement on that other matter they were desirous of submitting to the House. But, in spite of the anxiety of the Government to announce their victory, he must take leave to detain the Committee by a few remarks on an important question that had been brought before it by various Members for Irish constituencies. He could not think that this discussion had been particularly satisfactory to Her Majesty's Government. It had been characterized by what had been the main features of all the discussions they had had throughout the week on this question of the Irish Constabulary—namely, that all the facts and arguments were on one side, and all the miserable and shallow pretences on the other. There was, on the one hand, this remarkable fact, that they had had the Representatives of all sections of Irish opinion denouncing Her Majesty's Government, and they had had the Representatives of every constituency that was practically affected by the police tax rising up, and, in the names of their constituents, condemning that tax. They had had that tax denounced with equal fervour by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Cork (Colonel Colthurst), who was ordinarily one of the loyal supporters of the Government; and they had also had it reprobated by hon. Gentlemen on those (the Irish) Benches, who could scarcely be regarded as persistently loyal in the confidence they gave to Her Majesty's Government. Even the hon. and gallant Member for the County of Dublin (Colonel King-Harman), who almost invariably disagreed—and hotly disagreed—with the opinions expressed on those (the Irish) Benches, had concurred with them on that occasion, in bringing against Her Majesty's Government the charge that they had not deferred in any way to the wishes of the Irish people. The statement of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the County of Dublin agreed with that of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Cork (Colonel Colthurst), that the Government ought to be compelled to pay for the large extra force with which they sought to charge the Irish people. He would now turn to another point—namely, that upon which the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, in dealing with the large amount the Irish people had to pay for the police, had indulged in one of his favourite answers to the arguments employed by the Irish Members. The right hon. Gentleman had entered on what he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) could not but term a mischievous and foolish comparison between the respective payments of the English and Irish taxpayers. Did the right hon. Gentleman think that the conditions of the taxpayers in the two countries supplied a fair basis of comparison? The right hon. Gentleman was positively eloquent on the small amount per head paid by the people of Ireland as compared with those of this country. Let them take, for example, the case of the county of Galway. Let them just look at the large amount the people of the county of Galway had to pay—namely, £14,960. There were several other counties that had to pay equally large sums; and yet it was a fact that the Province of Connaught, which was called upon for such vast sums as compared with its actual resources, was a Province in which the people were in such a condition that they could not afford to pay so heavy a charge, many of them having to live in houses which had been frequently discribed as hardly fit for beasts. In that part of Ireland, in which the tenant farmers were scarcely above the position of labourers, they were, nevertheless, compelled to pay these exorbitant charges for the maintenance of the police employed by the Government. The right hon. Gentleman, in reply to the interruptions which had come from those (the Irish) Benches, had asked what was the difference between the amount of crime that had to be dealt with under the late Conservative Government and that which had to be met by the present Liberal Administration? The question was, he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) thought, sheer nonsense. The right hon. Gentleman said there was three times the amount of crime during some of the years in which the late Conservative Administration held Office.

said, he had not made that statement.

said, at any rate, the right hon. Gentleman had said there was under the late Government sometimes as much crime as there was at the present moment in Ireland. Now, how did that statement agree with the very remarkable figures that had been brought before the Committee by the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill)? The fact was that crime was three times less than it was during the last months of the late Administration; and yet, notwithstanding the decrease of crime there was the enormous increase of £500,000 in the amount charged for its repression. Let the Committee realize this—three times as little crime, and £500,000 more to pay in the shape of police taxation! He could not but think that the Government must be utterly unable to reconcile these two sets of figures. The noble Lord would be justified, when he went down to his constituents, in drawing attention to these bloated charges which a Liberal Administration were calling on the Irish people to pay. He would ask the Committee to recall the remarkable scenes they had lately witnessed in that House when the arguments of the Irish Members on the different questions they had brought forward had found acceptance in all parts of the House. These things showed that the exposures made by the Irish Members of what had been going on in Ireland were beginning to tell, and that the secret of Irish Government was ceasing to be a secret, but was rapidly becoming one of the common places of politics, the discussion of which must immediately precede a drastic reform. They had discussed, last night, the question of National Education in Ireland; and a great many English Members must have been astonished to find that there was such a system in Ireland as had then been disclosed. He remembered the famous boast that was said to have been made by the Minister of Education under Louis Napoleon. He said that when the clock struck a certain hour exactly the same lessons were being repeated in every school in France; and, in the same way, the socalled Board of Education in Ireland, consisting of men alien in every sense of the word to the Irish people, could say that, in spite of all the wishes and aspirations of the Irish population, at a certain hour of the day in every school in Ireland a particular system of education was being enforced. In regard to the police, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant had had the courage to enter into a comparison between the treatment of the police, in the matter of pensions, in the two countries—England and Ireland. In doing that, he had left out of the question the great central fact that in England the Local Authorities had the control of the police, while in Ireland, as had been stated over and over again, they were simply and mainly a military garrison, neither controlled by the Local Authorities, nor wanted by the people. They were not required to keep the peace; they were not needed to preserve order; but were maintained as the only sanction to British rule—the sanction of subsidized bayonets.

I have now to ask the Committee that as the discussion has lasted several hours, this Vote may be agreed to, and any further remarks upon it postponed until the Report, inasmuch as the House is in expectation of a statement upon an important matter as to which delay would be highly inconvenient.

said, he did not intend to stand for any length of time between the Committee and the statement about to be made by the Prime Minister; but he would remind the Committee that since 12 o'clock that day and down to within a very few minutes ago, hon. Members on the Irish Benches had been obliged to retail the grievances of their country in connection with the Constabulary Vote to almost empty Benches; but now the House had began to fill they were asked to put aside these Irish questions, in order that the Prime Minister might announce the collapse of the Conference to an anxious and expectant audience. Not a Cabinet Minister had been present during the whole of the discussion on the Irish Constabulary Vote. During most of the time occupied by the exhaustive address by the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), the strength of the Liberal Party had varied between six and four Members, including the Representatives of Her Majesty's Government. That was the sort of attention the Imperial Parliament had been in the habit of giving to the statement of Irish grievances in that House; and now, after six hours of discussion carried on before empty Benches, when there was at length an opportunity of having something like a full House to listen to a debate on Irish affairs, the Premier suddenly and confidently came in and asked that the Irish question might be put off until the Report or some other period, in order that he might have the joy and satisfaction of telling his faithful henchmen that he had managed to wriggle out of the Conference. He asserted that the proceeding of the Government that day in interrupting the discussion of an important matter, under such circumstances, was a scandal which, however, was entirely in keeping with the worst spirit of their political conduct towards his countrymen. They had brought the Irish Members together at 12 o'clock on a Saturday, and had kept them for hours with no one to listen to their grievances, and when a number of hon. Members, excited by the rumours in the morning papers, came down to the House, the Prime Minister said—" Let us get rid of this Irish discussion; it can go on at any other time; nobody cares about it; but there is a House for me to glorify the Government, by telling it that the Conference has failed, and that the little game we have been playing for so many months has at length been successful." That conduct capped the insolence with which Her Majesty's Government had treated Ireland again and again throughout the Session, and he hoped his countrymen would look at it in its proper light and draw their own conclusions. They should be told that the Irish Members had been for six hours speaking to empty Benches, and that as soon as the House had begun to fill, Irish questions were to be shelved, in order that the Prime Minister might make a statement on Egyptian affairs.

said, he should not attempt to discuss the question that was then before the Committee; as he thought that the particular point raised in connection with the Constabulary Vote had been pretty well exhausted; but there were other points to be raised in relation to that Vote, which would not be decided by the Division they were about to take. He wished, therefore, to ask the Government whether they would not make the Report of that Vote the First Order some day next week, so that the points he had alluded to and which had not been dealt with, or referred to in the most remote degree might be discussed in a reasonable manner? He had one grievance to call attention to. He did not think the discussion upon it would last a long time; but at the same time it was a practical grievance. He consequently appealed to the Government to arrange that the Report of the Vote might be made the First Order on the day for which it might be fixed, and he would promise that he would not occupy more time than he could possibly avoid.

I do not think I can promise to make this Vote the First Order; but I hope the hon. Member will have a convenient opportunity afforded him of discussing the point he desires to bring forward.

said, the Prime Minister had expressed a desire to be allowed to make a statement in regard to Foreign Affairs, and had suggested that the discussion of the Irish Constabulary Vote should at once be closed, in order that he might be enabled to bring forward that matter, leaving the debate on the Vote to be resumed on the Report. He (Mr. Parnell) should, therefore, defer until the Report the reply he had been desirous of making to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, only saying at the present moment that he regarded that speech as most unsatisfactory. Postponing any further remarks he should have to make until the Report, he supposed the Committee would now go to a Division upon the Vote.

Question put.

The Committee divided :—Ayes 33; Noes 90: Majority 57.—(Div. List, No. 205.)

said, he was not in the House when the Prime Minister expressed his desire that the discussion should close, in order to enable him to make that important announcement upon Foreign Affairs which was expected from him that evening; but, he said, upon hearing of it, that he was willing to agree to the arrangement on the understanding that matters in connection with the Vote were discussed upon Report. It should be understood that a fair opportunity should be afforded for the purpose—he would not say such a good opportunity as they now had, at 6 o'clock in the evening; but an opportunity when a fair discussion could be raised. He ventured to submit that it would be a reasonable arrangement to take the Report stage not later than 11 o'clock or half-past.

made a gesture of assent.

wished to say, without standing in the way of the statement about to be made, that the Chief Secretary had had due Notice of the intention to raise questions in relation to the conduct and treatment of Mr. French. He would not stand between the House and the Prime Minister now. He would only say that the Government must be prepared, on the Report stage, to have these matters fully discussed.

said, he also was anxious to bring forward upon this Vote some questions as to the treatment by the police of persons among his own constituents, and the action of subordinate agents of the police in Queen's County. He would endeavour to do this on Report. He waived his right now in deference to the wish of the Prime Minister, upon the understanding, which, so far as he could gather, had been arrived at, otherwise he should have felt it his duty to go into the question of the treatment by individual constables and sub-constables of persons among his own constituents in Queen's County.

said, he was anxious there should be no misunderstanding on the point. Were they to understand that the Report of this Vote would not be taken later than half-past 11?

said, he intended to answer the hon. Gentleman to that effect. He could not give an absolute pledge as to the exact time; but, as nearly as possible, he would say it should not be later than, say, half-past 11.

said, in reference to another Vote, that for Law Charges and Criminal Prosecutions, the discussion was terminated prematurely on the understanding that matters in relation to it could be raised on Report; but the Report of that Vote was taken on the previous night without any Notice to Irish Members, and while most of them were absent.

said, he regretted that, inadvertently, this was done, and he sent at once to the hon. Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) to express his regret.

Original Question put, and agreed to.

Resolution to be reported.

Mr. Speaker, I believe, Sir, that I am acting in conformity with the general wish of the House, and perhaps with the convenience of the House, in asking leave to make a statement, which consists of information material to the public interests. I shall not occupy the House for any great length of time, nor shall I aim at minute and exact particularity in the statement; but will endeavour to convey to the House, as well as I can, the salient and principal points of that which has taken place, in such a way as to give a clear idea, and in substance an accurate idea, with regard to the whole matter. Sir, it is my duty, in the first place, to state, with much concern, to the House that which has already crept abroad in the shape of public rumour, that the Conference met to-day at 12 o'clock, and that it has failed to attain the object for which it was called together—namely, that of adoping, by European authority, a plan for the adjustment of the financial difficulties of Egypt. There were three principal subjects in relation to Egyptian Finance which were brought before the Conference—(1) the prospective charges of the administration of Egypt; (2) the present necessity of a loan to meet the immediate wants of Egypt; and (3) the prospective Revenue of Egypt, and its means of meeting the charges. As regards the prospective charges upon the Revenue of Egypt—namely, the sums necessary, upon a reasonable estimate, for the purpose of defraying the ex- penses of government in that country, I am glad to say—and it is an important result of the Conference, having regard to what may happen—that there is no difference of opinion expressed among the different Powers. Next, with regard to the present necessity of a loan to meet the demands upon the Egyptian Treasury, I may say, in substance, that there was no difference of opinion expressed. The amount of that loan—speaking in round numbers—would have been £8,000,000 if it had covered the whole of those demands; but there was another form in which the case might have been dealt with, under which the loan made would have been for certain purposes only, not including the indemnities for the proceedings of incendiarism at Alexandria. If those indemnities were excluded, and they were paid for directly by an addition to the Egyptian Debt, and not by raising cash for the purpose, then the loan would have been about £4,250,000 in round numbers. Those are the three great points of finance to which I wish to direct the attention of the House. With respect, Sir, to our purposes in the Conference, they have been briefly these. In the first place, to secure a provision, moderate but adequate, and substantially fixed, for the necessary charges of the administration of Egypt, which, under whatever arrangement that can be made, must, from the nature of the case, be a first charge upon the revenues of every country; secondly, we could not make ourselves parties to any plan the execution of which would be incompatible with just and mild, though firm, government in Egypt. Of course, I am quite certain that no Power in the Conference would advisedly have proposed a plan that would be incompatible with those aims. But we, having certain views as to the amount of money that could be levied in Egypt consistently with their attainment, had for an essential principle of our conduct to adhere to those views, and not to be led into the adoption of any propositions which, in our opinion, would have been attended with results savouring of injustice and oppression. The third object that we had in view was to secure for the Bondholders, who are creditors of Egypt, upon a stable footing, all that which it is possible they can really in the long run receive—namely, their divi- dends, subject to no other diminution than such as the absolute necessities and primary wants of the Government of the country may entail upon them. Lastly, Sir, I have no scruple to state to the House that although I have no such proposal to make now, yet had it been part of the price of a really stable and complete arrangement for securing the financial equilibrium in Egypt, we should then have been prepared, as the House will see when the Protocols are laid before it, to ask Parliament to make use, to a moderate extent, of the credit of this country for the purpose of assisting to bring about so desirable a consummation. Sir, these were our objects. In the hope of meeting the various and serious difficulties of the case which have grown out of the difference in Estimates between the Government of France and the British Government as to the prospective revenues of Egypt, we have successively submitted several plans to the Conference. The whole of these will be presented in the Papers that are immediately to be placed in the hands of Members; but I will now only state so much as is necessary to explain the final issue—points upon which the respective views have been found mutually irreconcilable. The Representatives of France and England, as I have said, differed irreconcilably in their estimate, not of charge, but of receipt. The Representatives of France absolutely refused any diminution of the dividends payable under the Law of Liquidation. The Representatives of England declared and held themselves unable to accept any plan that did not make certain provision for the necessary charges of administration, which are in their nature first charges upon the Revenue. Well, Sir, only when great authorities—and both France and England are countries in which what may be called financial science is considerably developed—when great authorities differ upon a matter of this kind, a prospective matter, it is time alone that can ultimately decide between them. A great responsibility is incurred on the one side and on the other; and it is quite evident that the party which is right ought to gain its end. When we found the existence of this serious difficulty, the question that came before was this—was it possible to devise a plan under which, if we were right, the charges of Government would be sufficiently provided for, and under which, if France were right, the full dividends would be received by the Bondholders? The matter was considered by us with a view to obtaining a plan of that character; and what was done can, I think, be explained to the House as a form that is not otherwise than simple. I can explain it by stating simply the order of charges upon the Egyptian Revenue. We submitted a plan—and this is the plan to which I wish particularly to call the attention of the House, as connected with the final issue—we submitted a plan in which the charges on the Egyptian Revenue were stated in the following order:—1n the first place, we proposed that there should be a pre-preference Debt of £8,000,000.

Before any administrative charges?

Yes; before any administrative charges. The noble Lord is perhaps not aware that under the Law of Liquidation already special provision is made independently of charges for administration, and we were desirous of confirming this arrangement so far as we safely could, and no further. The plan, therefore, was this. In the first place, there was a pre-preference Debt of £8,000,000; that might have been £8,000,000 raised in cash in order to meet the indemnity claims, and to meet all other claims which are now pressing on the Government of Egppt; or it might have been a loan contracted for £4,500,000 in cash, and the issue of pre-preference Bonds for the remaining £3.500,000.

At what rate of interest?

At such rate of interest as it could be raised at in the market. We proposed pre-preference obligations in order that the money might be raised on the most economical terms. The second charge on the Egyptian Revenue was to be the dividends on other Debts, minus a deduction of ½ per cent—a deduction which we had originally proposed—and so we proposed to leave the Debts in their position of preference and anterior to the administrative charges, but minus a deduction of ½ per cent. The third charge was the administrative expense of the Government at a fixed amount, which I may state in round numbers at £5,250,000 in all. It is well to say that I speak of the Egyptian pound; but there is no great difference between that and the pound sterling. There is a good deal of detail in this, of course; but I will not trouble the House with it—it will only bewilder their attention. The fourth charge on the Revenue, after the administrative expenses, was to be the ,½ per cent, making up the full dividend on the Debt now due to the Bondholders, and some other items of Debt I need not now more particularly mention. Then, fifthly, there was a provision for the disposal of the surplus, if surplus there should exist. In this way, as we considered, both the objects were gained. If we were right, the expenses of the Government would have been perfectly provided for; and if the French calculations were right, besides providing for the expenses of the Government, there would have been sufficient provision for the payment of full dividends to the Bondholders. We proposed this as a permanent arrangement; but rather than have seen the Conference fail, we should have been prepared to accept this plan for a period of three years only, to be followed by a re-assembling of the Conference, as that would have given a sufficient time for testing its operation, and showing which calculations were most entitled to reliance. Well, to-day—and only this day—the French Representatives presented their final proposals, to which I will call the attention of the House, and the House will kindly compare them with the proposals of the British Government, which I have just described. According to the French proposals, there were certain classes constituting an order, in which charges were imposed upon Egyptian Revenue. In the first class there was set the new loan of which I have spoken, and what is known as the "Privilege Debt" I have not mentioned "Privilege Debt" before, because we did not make an essential distinction between the two kinds of Debt; but the French, in their proposals, made that distinction—consequently, for the first I introduce the term "Privilege Debt." Well, that was the first charge on the Egyptian Revenue; the second charge was to be the other, and principally the Unified Debt. On this the full dividends were to be paid before any of the other charges of administration were satisfied. The third order of charge upon the Re- venue was to be the expenditure necessarily connected with the administration; to which the French Plenipotentiary added a fourth, a provision to which, I believe, he attached greater importance and value than we did—that is to say, that after paying all the dividends in that diminution, and after paying all the administrative charges, the surplus Revenue should be freely at the disposal of the Egyptian Government. But, apart from the surplus, it was necessary—and we undoubtedly deemed it preeminently necessary—to consider the provision to be made for the case of deficit. I forgot to state to the House at the beginning that our estimate of the Egyptian Revenue was made with all the aid we could obtain, and all the care we could apply to it, and it shows a deficit of between £300,000 and £400,000 a-year; whereas the French are more sanguine in their estimate by a sum of between £600,000 and £700,000. The difference between our plan and the French plan which we are now scrutinizing was that we made provision for a deficit, if it should occur, and it was this. In the case of a deficit, it was to be considered and provided for by joint consultation between the Egyptian Government and the Commission of the Caisse. I may say that the constitution of the Caisse according to the proposal of the French would, we understand, have been altered, and, instead of consisting of the Representatives of four Powers, it would have consisted of the Representatives of seven Powers—namely, the whole of those Powers who met together in the Conference. The Egyptian Government and the Commission of the Caisse were, as I have said, to devise the measures necessary to meet the deficit; but if these measures involved an infringement on the full dividends, in that case it was provided—firstly, that the Caisse could not act except by a unanimous vote; and, secondly, in the event of any difference among the members of the Caisse, the matter was to be referred—as to supplying the deficit—to the seven Powers, Representatives of which were then assembled in Conference, and who, unhappily, have not been able to deal with the question of Egyptian Finance. To this plan I am bound to say, without requiring a very long time for any minute investigation, we took decided objection. As we conceived, the fatal objections were two. Certainly, in the first place, it would have meant, if there be any truth in our computation of Egyptian finance—it would have meant financial confusion in Egypt. For, Sir, upon the existence of a deficit what would have happened? This would have happened. The Egyptian accounts of Revenue and Expenditure are not made up—nor are those of any other Eastern country—to a certaiu day, as are the accounts of England on the 31st of March. They must be gathered together a long time, and after much inquiry, in order to constitute anything like a real exhibition of Revenue and Expenditure. That having been performed, they were to be referred to the Commission of the Caisse with the Egyptian Government. But the Commission of the Caisse was necessarily, and by its own composition, a hostile tribunal. It would have been their business to examine every minute particular, to see what arrears there were in the collection of Revenue—to see whether it was possible to gather in that Revenue, and institute most elaborate inquiries, requiring an indefinite time; and then there would be the condition that if any single Power objected, no result could be obtained. And the final provision was that there should be a reference to the seven Powers of Europe. It was, in our view, pretty plain that the Powers of Europe, if they had instructed their Representatives upon the Caisse to object to supplying the deficit by deductions from the dividends, would simply repeat their objections when their Representatives met again in Conference. But, Sir, besides the financial objection, we took another objection to this plan, which was quite fatal to it in our eyes—it was the position assigned by this plan to the Commission of the National Debt, or the Commission of the Caisse. There has been in this and, perhaps, in other countries a belief that it was part of our plan to re-create the Dual Control in a form yet more stringent, more savouring of dominion over Egyptian affairs. That was never any part of our plan; but I am bound to say that, in our deliberate conviction, it must been the inevitable consequence of the adoption of the French proposals, and I will take the liberty of stating our objections to it in some words used today by Lord Granville at the Confer- ence, and which will appear upon the Protocol—

"We do not think that powers of this magnitude should be in any case intrusted to the Commission of the Caisse. We have already proposed to give to that body by the Anglo-French Agreement powers of check and investigation as great as we can justify; but the present proposal is fundamentally different. The additional powers proposed by the French Plenipotentiary would, in our judgment, confer on the Commissioners of the Caisse a mastery over the Government and the affairs of Egypt; and to this we can on no account consent."

Well, Sir, I have now explained, I think, pretty well the manner in which it has come about that irreconcileable difficulties prevented the Conference from arriving at a conclusion; but there are other certain results which have been achieved by the Conference. Amid this wreck of good intentions and much intelligent labour on all sides, it is a great thing that the Powers should be agreed as to the necessary charge upon the Egyptian Government, and substantially as to the loan needful to be contracted in the present exigency; and I must say it is also a great advantage that there should be a total dissipation and destruction of the idea which has prevailed in this country that we should ever have proposed to constitute what, in our view, was an International Control similar in kind to that of the Dual Control, or, as I think in this case, one involving evils considerably beyond it. The view which we take of Egyptian finance was supported in the Conference by Italy and by Turkey; but France, as I have said, was unable to bring her opinions into harmony with ours; and Russia, Germany, and Austria, in those circumstances of difference between England and France, declined to give any opinion. The end of it is, therefore, that the Conference, not having arrived at any result, according to the mode of procedure adopted on some other occasion, has been adjourned without any date being fixed for its reassembling. I have now, Sir, substantially concluded what I have to state to the House. Of course, this failure—this complete failure—of the effort made by us for the satisfactory adjustment of Egyptian Finance, through the action of the United Powers, will entail upon us very serious consideration of the position and of the measures which will be necessary. I need hardly say that I am not about to enter upon these measures without safe and trust-worthy conclusions, which cannot be arrived at by the Goverment without further consideration and the lapse of some time. My remaining business is to say that the Protocols will be presented at the very earliest moment, and to explain when that earliest moment will be. The House is aware that it is absolutely necessary to submit draft Protocols to the Plenipotentiaries who have taken part in the Conference. I do not think that will entail any serious delay. My noble Friend the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs will be able to state, in case of need, what has been done. In consequence of Monday being Bank Holiday, there will be some difficulty; but we have endeavoured to confront that difficulty, and to secure rapid progress in the preparation of the Papers on that day. A large number of copies—120, I believe—will be ready on Monday afternoon.

Without translation.

Yes, without translation; but I hope they will be a sufficient number for practical purposes, and on Tuesday it is hoped that the Papers will be generally distributed.

Will they be ready at the meeting of the House on Monday?

Yes. I understand that the Papers on Monday will be ready for the meeting of the House. Well, Sir, there is one other question which will naturally be asked—What is the position of the Anglo-French Agreement? I always told the House that the Anglo-French Agreement was entirely dependent upon the arrival at a substantial result by the Conference; and the consequence is that that Agreement is now in abeyance, and is without any binding effect and force as regards either Power. I must not, however, shrink from saying that Her Majesty's Government continue to value the provisions of that Agreement; and, moreover—although, unfortunately, a difference has arisen upon a matter of computation, with regard to which a difference may most innocently occur—we continue most highly to appreciate the spirit of friendship and conciliation, and far-sighted wisdom which, as we think, was shown by the French Government in negotiating the provisions of that Agreement. I thank the House for the attention with which it has listened to this statement. A full one it could not be. Still, I believe that in outline it is a true and correct one; and if there is any desire to put any question in regard to it, we will endeavour to answer it with the indulgence of the House.

The extreme gravity of the statement which we have just listened to I am sure will be appreciated by the House, and I should be very unwilling to make any comment at this moment on what we have heard. We have been promised information supplementary to that which the Prime Minister has given; but what I wish particularly to inquire is this: We are now approaching the end of the Session; is it intended by the Government to make any proposals to Parliament in the residue of the present Session? We must remember that the Conference was invited to meet on account of what the Government considered the very serious and urgent condition of Egyptian finance. It was hoped by the Government that the result of the meeting of that Conference would be the adoption of a plan which would meet the difficulties which they described as urgent and immediate. Well, unfortunately, the Conference has failed to devise a plan, and what we wish to know is this: How does the Government propose to deal, or will they tell us very soon, if not now, how they propose to deal with those difficulties which the Conference was called together to deal with, and which it has failed to deal with? Or are we to suppose that the House is to separate without any proposal being made on the subject?

I think I may say without doubt that we have no proposal of the kind to make to Parliament. I was, perhaps, not sufficiently full in my statement. I said we should have asked Parliament for the use of British credit if a substantial arrangement could have been adopted; I ought to have added that, as no substantial arrangement had been adopted, we do not intend to make any proposal, any request to Parliament for the use of its credit, or any other proposal.

Are we to get no further information as to the state of Egyptian financial affairs?

I stated before that we had already begun to take the matter into consideration, and shall endeavour to probe to the bottom the question in order to ascertain what would be our duty in this very difficult and complex state of things. This will necessarily require some time, but we shall proceed without any loss of time that can be possibly avoided.

Before any plan is adopted will it be submitted to Parliament?

Of course, before anything is done to commit this country to pecuniary liability Parliament must be consulted; but I cannot bind myself as to the measures to be adopted by the Government of Egypt.

I beg to give Notice that on Monday I will ask the right hon. Gentlemen whether he can name a day on which he expects to make a proposal on this subject?

No, Sir; I certainly cannot.

I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether we are to understand that Parliament is to separate without our being afforded any opportunity of discussing the policy of the Government in Egypt?

We naturally wait for a request. I presume that anyone who had been listening to this statement of mine would have understood that we would be prepared to discuss the matter; but we await the request.

I would like to put a question to the right hon. Gentleman with reference to negotiations, which we can see have not had any result.

The hon. Member is not in Order in discussing the subject; there is no Question before the House.

Then I will ask the Prime Minister whether he can tell the House what is the estimate of the total liabilities of the Egyptian Government; what is the estimate of the annual income which the Egyptian Government has laid before the Conference; and what is the order of precedence in the claims, apart from administration, upon Egypt?

As regards figures, I have decidedly avoided them; but the hon. Gentleman when he sees the Papers on Monday will find there the fullest statements on the subject, and I do not think he will have any reason to complain of lack of information. As to the order of the charges, he will find that stated very clearly, both as proposed by the English and as proposed by the French Government.

The right hon. Gentleman stated his estimate of the cost of administration was quite £5,250,000; but he did not state, on the part of the Government, what were the probable receipts. In fact, he stated one side of the account and not the other.

The material point I sought to state was the difference between the French and English estimates. With regard to the figures of the case, they belong to the statement; but they hardly belong to a statement such as I have just made.

I think it is quite impossible that the House could be satisfied to rise for the Prorogation without some more certain knowledge of the intentions of the Government. I propose, therefore, on Monday to ask the right hon. Gentleman if he can give us a day for the discussion of the subject? He might be able to tell me now, by giving us, say, Thursday next.

I will give an answer on Monday. I would like to consult with my Colleagues first.

I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman, whether it is the fixed intention of the Government to allow Parliament to separate without any statement as to what the Government intend to do towards settling the financial difficulties of Egypt?

I think that the House will perceive how difficult it would be for us to do so. An extraordinary state of things has arisen in a foreign country, situate at a great distance from us. I do not think it would be wise, or that—seeing that the period before the Prorogation is only 10 days—we could possibly give any such information within that time.

rose to Order, and asked the Speaker, as a point of Order, whether, after the Order for Supply had been set up and had been discharged by the Chairman reporting certain Votes, it was competent for a Member of the Goverment to move that the House should resolve itself into Committee of Supply? He did not think that in the whole history of Parliament such a precedent had been established.

asked whether, in the circumstances, the Resolution passed yesterday extending to Saturdays the Standing Order as to Mondays and Thursdays was now applicable; and, whether Supply not now being the First Order, Motions could be discussed on the Question that the Speaker leave the Chair?

In reply to the Questions of the two hon. Members, I must state that I consider that the interruption which has taken place to the ordinary course of Business was by reason of an extraordinary counsel with the House itself. ["No, no!" from the Conservatives and Irish Members. ] The interruption took place with the permission of the House; and I have no hesitation in saying that I shall observe both the spirit and letter of the Motion agreed to by the House on Friday—that on the Question of the House going into Committee of Supply on Saturday, the Speaker shall immediately leave the Chair. I do not see anything in the interruption which has taken place to prevent the House from being in precisely the same position in which it was when it met to-day at 12 o'clock. Under these circumstances, I consider it my duty to leave the Chair without any Question being raised upon it.

, with reference to the observation of the Speaker that the interruption of the Business was in consequence of the wish of the House, pointed out that the agreement come to was that the statement of the Prime Minister should be made on the Report of Supply, which should be moved at a certain hour if possible. He thought the Government had taken an unfair advantage of the House in the course that had been pursued to-night.

replied, that yesterday, when the suggestion was made that the statement should be made on Report, he entirely disapproved of it, because it seemed to him a most violent method of proceeding; but he reserved in his mind what would be the best and least violent method of obtaining the object the noble Lord had in view.

said, the Motion of the Secretary to the Treasury was a complete and flagrant departure from all the traditions of the House, and it was not justified by a single precedent. Supply had never been suspended except when the Speaker had been called in because disorder had arisen. Most of the Irish Members had gone away, believing that the Order with reference to Supply had been concluded. The Government could see that the Irish Benches were almost completely empty, as they thought Progress had been reported. Now, to ask them to resume the debate when the House was full of English and Scotch Members, and there were only very few Irish Members, was absolutely unfair. [Interruption, and cries of "Order!" from the Ministerial Benches.]

Order! Order! Order!

complained of the interruption, and said that not one single argument had been advanced from the Treasury Bench in support of such an extraordinary step, and he desired to enter his protest against it.

said, there was no necessity for the Motion just made by the Secretary to the Treasury. [Several MEMBERS: He has made it.] According to the Speaker's ruling he had simply taken the Chair for an important communication to be made by the Prime Minister, and Committee of Supply should be resumed without a Question being put.

I believe the hon. Gentleman is perfectly correct, and that I might have left the Chair immediately after the statement of the Prime Minister. But the Secretary to the Treasury having made the Motion, I was, of course, bound to put it. As I said before, I consider that the course of Business has been interrupted that a statement might be made on a matter of national concern; and the House ought to be placed in the same position that it was before the interruption occurred.

said, the Chairman of Committees had reported to the Speaker the Resolution agreed to in Committee. Therefore, the First Order of the day had terminated. The Second Order was Report of Supply; and before the Motion of the Secretary to the Treasury could be put it was absolutely necessary to go through the Orders of the Day, of which there were 40. It would be setting a precedent which hon. Members opposite would some day bitterly regret if this Motion were agreed to.

The Chairman could not leave the Chair without reporting to me the proceedings of the Committee. The House had made no Order as to the time at which the Committee should sit again. It may properly proceed as if there had been no interruption. The Question is "That this House do immediately resolve itself into Committee of Supply."

asked, as a point of Order, whether he could not move, as an Amendment to the Question, that the House should resolve itself into Committee on Monday next?

Yes; on the question of time, there may be an Amendment.

asked why the Prime Minister had asked them to close the Vote for Irish Constabulary purposes except to make a statement——

ruled the hon. Member out of Order.

In order to place myself in Order, I will move, as an Amendment, that this House do resolve itself into Committee of Supply on Monday next. There is nothing so dangerous as setting a precedent of this kind, which on some future occasion may be used by the Government for their own purposes. If Irish Members, and I myself, had supposed that the Government would pursue this unprecedented course, we should certainly have done all in our power to oppose the Prime Minister's proposition. The Government has, by means of a protest, obtained a Vote of £1,500,000 on an abbreviated discussion—and a Vote which they would, in all probability, not have obtained until 12 o'clock at night. I do not believe that there is a more jealous guardian of the rights of Members of the House of Commons than the Prime Minister; and if he will only shake himself free from the evil influences of the Secretary to the Treasury—who apparently recoils from no proceeding, whatever may be its character—and appear in the character of Leader of the House, instead of Leader of the Ministry, he would assent to this course of procedure. If, however, he should persist in this Motion, I do not think he will do much good, for there is nothing that will create more strenuous opposition.

Amendment proposed to leave out the word "immediately," in order to insert the words "upon Monday next,"— (Lord Randolph Churchill,) —instead thereof.

Question proposed, "That the word 'immediately' stand part of the Question."

I desire only to correct the view taken by the noble Lord, who said this is the most dangerous precedent of which any Government can avail itself. The noble Lord said I availed myself of a pretext to make a statement to the House. What the noble Lord called a pretext is the fact that the House itself, represented by many Gentlemen who spoke, by the silence of all the rest—and, most of all, represented by the noble Lord himself—expressed a very strong desire yesterday that, for the convenience of the House, a statement should be made to-day, and not on Monday, with regard to Egyptian affairs.

On the Report of Supply. [ Cries of "Order!"]

I only wish to observe that the noble Lord's statements as to a pretext having been resorted to are really idle; because what the Government have done they have done in obedience to the impulsion of the House, and without any dissentient voice. [ Cries of "Without Notice!"] There should, therefore, be no fear of the misuse by the Government of such a precedent for the future for Government purposes. The noble Lord said he wished to have the statement made upon Report; but recollecting that Report of Supply was a recital of the Votes passed by Committee, I considered that that proposal would be the most inconvenient way that could be devised of dealing with the subject. When the House meets upon a Saturday at the close of the Session, it usually sits in Supply to a late hour, and sometimes until Sunday morning; and it was considered by the noble Lord that after disposing of Supply, perhaps at 11 o'clock, an hour before Sunday, we should take this question of the Egyptian Conference. To make the statement at that time on Report of Supply would be most inconvenient to hon. Members, besides which the usual means of publicity will have been completely paralysed until Monday morning. It appears to me that for the House to hear the statement at 6 o'clock was convenient, and that the postponement to 10 or 11 o'clock would have been very inconvenient indeed. I hope that, under these circumstances, and considering the origin of this affair, which was entirely the impulsion of the House itself, and was not suggested by the Government—I hope we may not be prevented from proceeding with Supply. It was well understood, or should have been understood, there was no intention of taking any Irish Votes; and there could not be a more lamentable exhibition, not for the Government, or the Opposition, but for the whole House, than a continual wrangle on this subject.

said, he thought the right hon. Gentleman had missed the point they endeavoured to bring out, which was that if they were able to interrupt proceedings of Supply in this way, why was it considered necessary to pass the Constabulary Vote? Why were not the proceedings in Committee merely suspended in order to enable the statement of the Prime Minister to be made, instead of Members being given to understand by their agreeing to a Vote that Supply would be closed for the day?

asked whether the House would have consented to report Progress if it had been thought that the unprecedented proceeding would be resorted to of setting up Supply again? The fact that Irish Votes were not to be taken did not reconcile the Irish Members at all to this strange and new and startling innovation, which followed so curiously upon the inadvertence of yesterday, for which the Secretary to the Treasury was responsible. He desired only straight-forward conduct on the part of the Go- vernment, and should certainly resist such an innovation as they proposed.

I am sorry to see the difficulty which has arisen in this matter. I must admit that the circumstances are peculiar; but I think it would be well for the Government to consider how far they are likely to advance Public Business by pressing the Motion. It was generally understood that the Irish Votes were fixed for to-day, and that that would be the only Business; but yesterday, in consequence of the position in which it was known that the Conference stood, the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill) asked whether it would not be possible on Report of Supply for a Minister to make a statement with regard to the Conference. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, I understand, raised an objection to that course of proceeding, stating that it would not be convenient, on Report of Supply, to make such a statement. That objection, however, was overruled; and I certainly understood that Report of Supply would be taken at some period between 6 and 8 o'clock, and that the statement would then be made, provided the Government were in a position to do so. I myself was certainly under the impression that the Prime Minister's statement would be made at the conclusion of Supply. Under the circumstances, and seeing the feeling of the House, I would venture to put it to the Government whether they would be consulting the convenience of the House by the course they propose; and whether, if they persist in it, they will gain any advantage?

said, if there was any intention of continuing the contest upon this question, it would be unseemly to further prolong it. He wished the House, however, to be under no misapprehension. Some hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House seemed to think the Government intended to take the House by surprise. [Cheers.] That was entirely unfounded—there was no such intention. He believed there was no man in the House who did not know the whole afternoon the course which would be taken. ["No, no!"] He should have supposed that it would have been known from the ordinary sources of information. It was quite understood that the Con- stabulary Vote, which had been discussed for six hours and a quarter, would be taken first, and when that was disposed of the Government hoped they should be allowed to make progress with other Votes in Supply. [An hon. MEMBER: It was not disposed of; it was interrupted.] He had patiently listened to the hon. Member, and he hoped he should be now allowed to speak for a few minutes without interruption. It was suggested, during the discussion as to the order of Business, that it would be for the convenience of the House if the Prime Minister were to make a statement with regard to the Conference; and it was thought that it would also be for the convenience of Members if the statement were made about 6 o'clock. It was now made a complaint that the statement was made by some false pretence. ["Hear, hear!"] Hon. Members should not easily charge others with false pretence; but it was becoming a habit to use language of that kind, which was most offensive and unfounded. They might some day be sitting on the Ministerial Benches themselves, when they would be extremely indignant if similar charges were made against them. What was intended was to give effect to the discussion on the Constabulary Vote, and as the interruption in the Business occurred it was thought it would be a convenient time to take the Vote. There was no desire to curtail the discussion on the Constabulary Vote. ["Oh, oh!"] So thoroughly was that-understood that the Prime Minister came to an agreement with the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) that the discussion of this matter should be postponed till the Report, which would be brought on at a reasonable hour. How, then, could it be said that on false pretences the Government endeavoured to curtail discussion? He reminded the House that it was the desire of hon. Members that the Session should be brought to a close as soon as possible; and he hoped, under all the circumstances, they might be allowed to proceed with the consideration of some of the English Votes.

said, the right hon. and learned Gentleman had complained of the use of strong language; but it was, he believed, at a Saturday Sitting that the proceeding occurred to which the historic phrase "a dirty trick" had been applied by the right hon. and learned Gentleman. Perhaps his own proceedings that day would deserve the phrase as well. If any strong language had been used, it had been elicited and more than excused by the conduct of hon. Gentlemen opposite. When hon. Members from Ireland rose, and in the most respectful manner called the Speaker's attention to questions of Order, they were assailed with the cry of "Name!" That form of interruption was one of the most odious and insulting that could be used towards an hon. Member; and if there was any person who ought to be named it was the person who cried "Name, name!" He himself brought no charge of deliberate unfairness on the part of the Government; but the fact still remained that hon. Members on these Benches had been taken completely by surprise. He warned the Government that they should resist them in this proposal as long as the Forms of the House permitted, and that not one minute of time would be gained by an attempt on the part of the Government to trample on the traditions of the House.

said, there had been no intention of over-reaching or misleading the House. What had been intended to be done was to move to report Progress, and on that Motion to make the statement in regard to the Conference. The Prime Minister was about to make that Motion; but the Chairman had left the Chair before his right hon. Friend could get up. That was the whole basis on which the charge of unfairness rested. The Chairman having left the Chair, and the statement having been made, he had moved that the House immediately resolve itself into Committee of Supply. Six hours were given to the Constabulary Vote, and the discussion appeared to have been exhausted; but as some hon. Members got up and said they had other observations to make, it was agreed that the Report of the Vote should be taken at half-past 11. In the circumstances, however, there did not seem to be any prospect of making progress in Supply; and, therefore, he should withdraw the Motion, thus allowing the Business of the evening to come to an end.

said, that if they adopted the proposal of the Secretary to the Treasury they would establish the precedent against which they protested. One of the most dis- tinguished men that ever adorned that Chair, Mr. Speaker Onslow, said on a memorable occasion that the Forms and Rules of the House were an indispensable protection of the minority, and that it was the duty of every Speaker and Chairman for the time being to enforce those Rules and Forms for their protection. One of the best established Rules of the House was, "That the Orders of the Day be disposed of in the order in which they stand on the Paper." The first Order that day was Supply; the second was Report. Supply having been brought to an end, Report ought to be next taken.

said, now that the Government had yielded what they had been contending for he hoped this discussion would not be prolonged. They would take no further Votes in Supply, but would proceed to the Report. They would accept the proposal that on Monday the House should resolve itself into Committee of Supply.

said, he was prepared to withdraw his Amendment, on condition that the Secretary to the Treasury withdrew his Motion.

said, it was necessary to make an Order as to Supply for Monday.

Question put, and negatived.

Question, "That the words 'upon Monday next' be there inserted," put, and agreed to.

Committee upon Monday next.

Resolution to be reported upon Monday next.

moved that the Report be postponed until Monday, as a protest against the manner in which the Vote had been taken in Committee by the Secretary to the Treasury.

Amendment proposed, to leave out from the word "That," to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "the Debate on the Further Consideration of the Resolution be adjourned,"— (Mr. Warton,) —instead thereof.

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

The House divided :—Ayes 36; Noes 4: Majority 32.—(Div. List, No. 206.)

Main Question put, and agreed to.

Subsequent Resolutions agreed to.

Postponed Resolutions to be considered upon Monday next.

As a personal explanation, Mr. Speaker, I wish to say that I voted in the minority, because I thought I was voting that the Report be not adjourned.

House adjourned at a quarter after Eight o'clock till Monday next.