, in moving an Amendment on the Paper to leave out from line 15 to line 8, in page 92, and insert—

said, that, as far as he was personally concerned, he should prefer that Ireland was treated in the same manner as England. There were, however, one or two cases in which local names were extremely popular in the district interested; and he doubted, therefore, whether he could bind the Committee as to anything like a distinct course in regard to every county.

said, that, in reply to the remarks of the right hon. Baronet, he wished to say that, as far as his memory served him, there was only one case in which there would be anything like a strong feeling in favour of including an alternative name in the division. He was not, however, aware that in that case there was any strong opinion that an alternative name was required; and he was not aware that there were on the Paper any proposals for an alternative name, except in the instance of the county of Galway, where it was proposed to call the divisions by the name of the county instead of Connemara, &c. The divisions of the Irish counties would be few enough to allow the introduction of the compass points; and there was no necessity, therefore, to introduce alternative names. The Commissioners had reported that the general feeling was in favour of the names of the counties; and he believed that the most brief and simple way of naming the divisions was to give the compass points.

said, the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Charles W. Dilke), in the case of the English counties, had made an exception in favour of merged boroughs. He (Mr. Callan) wished to know if the right hon. Gentleman intended, in Ireland, to extinguish the name of any county in favour of a merged borough?

said, he did not; but it was possible that some Representative of a merged borough might desire to retain the name, and he should not stand in the way, if such a proposal were made, after the course the Committee had taken in connection with the English counties.

said, there was a strong opinion among the Irish Members in favour of leaving the county names as they stood in the Bill.

said, he now came to the Amendments he had placed upon the Paper in regard to the constitution of the Armagh Divisions—namely, North Armagh, Mid Armagh, and South Armagh. He would, however, take the discussion upon the first proposal, which was that the North Armagh Division should consist of the "barony of O'Nei-land East, barony of O'Neiland West (except parishes of Armagh, Grange, Kildarton, and Mullaghbrack." He presumed that it would be necessary, in the first instance, to move the omission of the words of the Schedule from line 15 to line 23, inclusive. It must be borne in mind that the county of Armagh was the only three-Membered constituency in Ireland, and he thought the Irish Members had good reason to complain of the fact that the county was to receive an undue number of Representatives when the Committee bore in mind the way in which Dublin was treated. The county of Armagh was to have three Representatives; while the county of Dublin, a much more important constituency, was to be deprived of its proper weight in the House of Commons by receiving only two. The county of Dublin, according to its population, was only 12,000 lower than the county of Armagh, and that was simply because the township of Pembroke had been taken out of it and included in the City of Dublin. If it were included in the county, as it ought to be, unless the other townships were also included in the City of Dublin, the county of Dublin would have a far larger population than the county of Armagh. Therefore, Dublin absolutely suffered not only relatively by the jerrymandering which the constituencies had undergone, but also in a double sense, because the intrusion of the township of Pembroke within the municipal limits of the City of Dublin prevented the county from having a sufficient population to entitle it to three Members. Dublin was, therefore, not only cheated by the way in which the proposed extension of the city had been treated by the Boundary Commissioners, but the county was also deprived of the additional Member it would have been entitled to if the county boundaries had been properly arranged. This was the first of the Ulster counties which had been brought under the notice of the Committee; but what was to be said of the jerrymandering of one county might be said of all, so far as Ireland was concerned. Whatever course had been pursued in regard to any one of them was much the same as had been taken in regard to the rest. By the first scheme which was proposed by the Commissioners for the county of Armagh, the Nationalists would have carried two divisions of the county. He fully admitted that in the original scheme proposed by the Commissioners a slight error had been committed in regard to the population. He referred to that fact because the Amendments he was now proposing were very much in the direction of the original scheme of the Commissioners, and he preferred to revert to that scheme rather than lay himself open to any charge of jerrymandering the county for Nationalist purposes. He had, therefore, simply put down on the Paper the scheme of the Commissioners as already proposed before the minds of the Commissioners were affected by listening to the arguments brought forward by the Tory Representatives. It was an extraordinary circumstance that, with one exception, the scheme of the Bill was the scheme of the Tory Party. He referred to the case of Tiranny, which barony the Commissioners had adopted in favour of the Nationalists; but they had not adopted as much of it as was necessary to prevent the Nationalist votes from being swamped. To use a catch word, there had not been too much jerrymandering, but just jerrymandering enough; and the result of it was to cheat the Nationalists out of two votes. The way in which the matter stood was this—three Members were given; the North of Ulster was, undoubtedly, Conservative; but the South was overwhelmingly Nationalist. The entire question was, therefore, how to arrange the Mid Division of the county so as to throw in a sufficient number of Orangemen from the North, and exclude a sufficient number of Nationalists of the South, the Southern end of the county being, at the present moment, overwhelmingly Nationalist. The Southern Division would be Nationalist under any circumstances; but by the scheme of the Commissioners it was made so prepon-deratingly Nationalist, that they would have a majority of between 5,000 or 6,000 at least. That had been done, as anybody would see, who referred to the statement contained in a Paper issued by the right hon. Baronet, dated March 17th, and prepared by Major Macpher-son, the gentleman who conducted the local inquiry on behalf of the Commissioners. It was somewhat extraordinary that wherever Major Macphorson had gone, with the sole exception of the county of Down, where he had made a small concession to the Nationalists, which, however, they could have done without—wherever Major Macpherson had gone a seat had been taken away from the Nationalists. He was really at a loss to know what promotion Major Macpherson was to get in return for the great services he had rendered to the Tory Party. He presumed that whenever the Tory Party came into Office Major Macpherson would be promoted to, at least, the dignity of a Major General. Hon. Members could read Major Macpherson's own notes, and would know exactly what it was that was proposed by the Tory Party in reference to this constituency. Mr. Peel, a solicitor of Armagh, put forward the Tory scheme, and Mr. Peel was a gentleman who would be a candidate for the representation of the Central Division of Armagh. He was a local Coroner, and Grand Master of an Orange Society. He was a gentleman who, on a recent occasion, had advised the Orangemen to bring in their pockets not only a copy of Sankey's hymns, but a Colt's revolver. Mr. Peel's proposal was opposed by everybody on the popular side; and it was a remarkable fact that the division of the county corresponded with the original scheme of the Commissioners, so far as the barony of Orior was concerned. The Commissioners had now cut that barony into two, and, to suit their own purposes, they had thrown the upper and Orange end of the county into the Central Division in order to make weight. The Committee had heard a good deal about the necessity of adhering to strict geographical lines, and about compactness, and the desirability of maintaining well-marked boundaries; but the moment it suited the purposes of the Tory Party this gentleman had no hesitation whatever in departing from any principle of that kind; and, as a matter of fact, in the Northern Division he had abolished all the old baronies and other well-known boundary lines hitherto adopted for the purpose of compactness; whereas in other cases, when he had been asked to take a similar course, in order to secure compactness, his answer was—"No; I must adhere to the old barony lines." This striking high and low was afterwards resorted to for the purpose of jerrymandering the counties in order to assist the Tory Party. Major Macpherson's excuse for his conduct was certainly a pretty piece of official writing. In the county of Armagh more baronies were broken up than in any other Irish county, and so much was that the case that the Commissioner had found it necessary to say something in his own defence. He, therefore, said that some of the baronies were very irregular in shape, and he considered that an excellent reason for lopping so much off of a Conservative district as it was considered necessary to fill up the Central Division. For instance, the barony of O'Neiland West was included partly in North Armagh and partly in Mid Armagh; and a piece of land, forming a narrow projection something like a wen on a man's head, had been conveniently cut off. In the barony of Pews a piece of land projecting northward was also got rid of, and the land in the barony was distributed between the Mid Armagh and the South Armagh Divisions. Major Macpherson said that he had found it impossible to avoid in any new arrangements the getting rid of the old boundaries. What was the use, then, of the Lord Lieutenant issuing Instructions to the Commissioners to respect the natural boundaries, if the Commissioners were to take a carte blanche, and act upon it just as they pleased, with the notion that whatever satisfied the Tory Party would satisfy the Government, and whatever the Boundary Commissioners agreed to the Government would force through the House of Commons? It virtually amounted to this—"If you say it would be better to have these separations, we (the Government) will use the Front Opposition Bench and the Treasury Bench as the two blades of a pair of scissors, in order to lop off any proposals that may be brought forward against your action." The Commissioners, therefore, went into the operation with a full knowledge that in whatever way they exercised their discretion they would be backed up by the Government, and by the Leaders of the Opposition in the House of Commons. He must say that no previous Commission had ever been sent out to discharge important duties with such an assurance as that. At the very least, when the Government gave the Boundary Commissioners the extraordinary powers possessed by this Commission, the first thing they should have had placed before their minds was the drag of the "rod in pickle" of public opinion. That drag had been entirely removed from them by the knowledge that any agreement come to between the Marquess of Salisbury and the Government would afterwards be ratified in the Act of Parliament; and not only had they that knowledge, but their minds were further affected by the extraordinary intimidatory address of the Marquess of Salisbury, who told the Orangemen, when they complained of the way in which the Bill might operate against them, to be of good cheer, and not to be in the least alarmed, because very much would depend on the spirit in which the Commissioners carried out their Instructions. They had now seen the manner in which the Commissioners had carried out their Instructions. They had taken out this long narrow strip from the barony of O'Neiland West, and this projection from Upper Fews, and by that means they had rendered the division practically impervious to the Nationalists; whereas, as it originally stood, the Nationalists had a fair chance of carrying the county. This gentleman, Major Macpherson, put forward similar excuses for his operations in the barony of Tiranny and the barony of Orior; but all his precious excuses were simply so much "bosh." The evident object of Major Macpherson was to make such a boundary as would give the Tory Party an additional seat. He would like to tell the right hon. Baronet that this was a more serious matter for the peace of the North of Ireland than he seemed to think. There would be more heads broken over these jerrymandering schemes, more lives would ultimately be lost in election fights, and there would be more danger and difficulty in preserving the peace of Ireland, than by any modern invention of Her Majesty's Government. And why? Because in several counties—Donegal, Tyrone, Armagh, and Derry, the constituencies in more than one instance had been so manipulated as to make the balance of Parties pretty nearly equal. Future elections, therefore, would be scenes of the most frightful tumult; passions on each side would be strung up to the highest pitch of intensity; the Orange Lodges would issue their mandates, and the other side would be equally energetic, so that when the election come both Parties would be strung up to an extraordinary pitch of excitement, and it was highly probable that when the two Parties were running neck and neck some most deplorable occurrence would take place. It was much to be regretted that the Government should have placed this blister upon the North of Ireland. He did not complain, in the least degree, of the Tory Party getting their due proportion of seats in Ulster. They were certain to have had that under ordinary circumstances. They would have had their due proportion of seats under the original scheme of the Boundary Commissioners; but now they would have at least three or four seats they would otherwise never have been entitled to. The Catholic population of Armagh amounted to 47 per cent; and to give the Orangemen two seats out of three, under those circumstances, was to give a tremendous preponderance to the Tory Party. No doubt the Tory Party considered themselves extremely clever in having brought about these arrange- ments; but it still remained to be seen which Party in Ulster would be allowed to derive most benefit from them. It was certain that whenever the Nationalists felt themselves aggrieved, they would still be able to sway the balance of power as regarded Liberal and Tory; and they would take good care to use it to the best advantage to themselves, and against the other side, whichever it might be. He had made this protest not with the hope of inducing the Government to assent to the Amendment he proposed to submit. He knew that they had sworn to the Marquess of Salisbury that those divisions should be constituted as they were set forth in the Bill; but he believed that it would be found necessary, in a few years, to pass another Bill for the purpose of arranging those divisions, and the Irish Members, therefore, intended to place their protest against the present measure on record, so that it should not be said that, as far as they were concerned, those divisions had been allowed to go by default. As a matter of fact, Her Majesty's Government had only extended the franchise to one set of people, because their electoral arrangements would be such that it would be quite impossible for the National and popular Party in Ulster to obtain the number of Members they were justly entitled to. The consequence would be that in future they would only have a bogus representation of Ulster opinion in the House of Commons. Perhaps he might be told by the right hon. Baronet that the Tory Party were extremely indignant at some of the divisions recommended by the Commissioners; but he should like to know what they had to be indignant at? He would like to know what they could propose which would make things worse than they were for the Nationalists, or better for themselves? Could they suggest any division of Armagh, or of any other county, which would give them greater advantage than they would obtain under the provisions of the present Bill? He would defy the Tory Party to produce out of any county in Ulster better provisions for themselves than were to be found in the present Bill. They knew very well that the Whig and Tory Party had held a conference in that House. They had met for the purpose of putting pressure upon the Government in order to make the provisions better for themselves; but having met and considered the matter, they found that it was physically impossible to suggest any division of Ulster which would give them a single seat beyond what the present Bill gave them. He would freely make the Tory Party a present of any division of the Province of Ulster which they could make for their own purposes in a better way than the divisions already laid out for them. He could only say that the experience they had now gained of Major Macpherson, and of the other gentlemen upon the Commission who had been appointed to see fair play between the two Parties, completely proved to them that the Catholics and Nationalists of Ireland, and especially in Ulster, could place no reliance whatever on the bona fides of the Government, and that the Commissioners, like the agents appointed under the Land Act, were simply the nominees of the Orange Lodges in Ireland?

said, that, as the hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy), in introducing the case of Armagh, had touched upon the religious question in that county between the Catholics and Protestants, it would be as well that, in answer to the remarks of the hon. and learned Member, he should place the exact figures upon that subject before the Committee. The total population of the county was 157,000, of whom 72,000 were Catholics and 85,000 almost exclusively Protestants. Now, the Northern portion of the county was predominantly Protestant, and the Southern predominantly Catholic. The hon. and learned Member was right in his supposition that that was, to some extent, a matter which had guided the arrangement of the county divisions. It was only natural to find that there would be a majority of Protestants in the Northern Division, and a majority of Catholics in the Southern Division; and no doubt the Committee would expect to find that the numbers were pretty equally divided in the Mid Division. As a matter of fact, there were in the Mid Division 22,000 Catholics, and 21,000 who were exclusively Protestants. He, therefore, did not think that any conclusion could be drawn from the figures in regard to Catholics versus Protestants, to which the hon. and learned Member had referred. There was another point to which it was necessary to refer before he came to the main argument of the hon. and learned Member. The hon. and learned Member had spoken of Armagh being unduly favoured in its number of Members. It would have three Members, and it stood exactly in the middle of the list of counties having three Members, so far as its population was concerned—among those counties being Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Warwickshire, and the East Biding of Yorkshire. Therefore, there was not much in that point. The hon. and learned Member complained that Dublin was only allowed two Members. But there was no special grievance in that respect in Ireland, because throughout the whole country hardships had been inflicted in that way, which were quite as patent as in Ireland. Putting that matter aside, and adverting to the main argument of the hon. and learned Member, this Amendment was to restore the original proposal of the Boundary Commissioners. Of course, it was rather tempting to the Committee, at first sight, to be reminded of the original proposal of the Commissioners; but when that proposal first came out, it was bitterly attacked as having been proposed, to use the words of The Freeman's Journal, "in utter ignorance." To a great extent, he admitted that that was the fact. The map did not show the actual configuration of the country, and, therefore, did not convey the necessary information.

remarked that the original proposal—the only portion attacked—was the scheme for the county of Donegal.

said, that very little turned upon the precise application of the words he had referred to; but he would remind the Committee that in the case of the original schemes of the Boundary Commissioners in England there was hardly an instance in which they had been rigidly adhered to. In some cases they had created as much feeling as appeared to have been produced in Ireland. For instance, the other night the hon. Member for Perthshire (Sir Donald Currie) made a somewhat plaintive appeal in regard to the division of Perthshire, on the ground that the manner in which the county had been divided would jeopardize the interests of the Liberal Party. But that was not the real matter for the Committee to consider, although similar objections had been put forward in connection with Cornwall and other places, as well as Perthshire, and large additions had been made to the original scheme of the Commissioners. The case of Staffordshire, also, was a very strong case; and there were others in which the original schemes had been subjected to what some persons considered an improvement, whereas, in the opinion of others, they had been rendered worse. The question of Armagh turned entirely upon the constitution of the Mid Division of the county, and upon whether Tanderagee should be included. If any hon. Member would look at the map, he would see that the proposed Mid Armagh Division was a much more natural and simple-looking division than the division originally proposed. It commended itself more to the eye; and he was also informed, by the proceedings at the local inquiry, that the Commissioners, having the map before them, came to an impartial conclusion. To have turned Tanderagee into the Eastern Division would have been a very artificial arrangement. The Commissioners, in their original scheme, were, no doubt, guided by some Return in reference to population, to which the hon. and learned Member had fairly and frankly referred, but which turned out to be erroneous. There was an important mistake made, the result of which was to give a discrepancy in the population of the Northern Division, so that it became necessary to include part of the district in the Mid Division. That had been done by transferring certain parishes, both from the North and South, to the Mid Division. No doubt, the Conservative Party, when before the Commissioners, applied for certain things to be done which had been done; but there were other things for which they asked which had not been conceded: and, among other things, they urged that the district of O'Neiland should be put in the Southern Division. They further wanted to transfer two other districts to the Mid Division, which the Commissioners also refused. The Commissioners were of opinion that the amended scheme, besides being larger in population, provided in a better way for the pursuits of the population; but the equalization of the population was certainly the main reason why it was put forward. Throughout Ireland the Commissioners had endeavoured to make the county divisions equal, as far as possible, in respect of population. They certainly would have been charged with unfairness in their distribution of the population if they had not endeavoured to make each division as equal in population as possible. In England the Commissioners had endeavoured to accomplish the same object; and, no doubt, in some cases, where they had tried to equalize the population, there had been strong opposition on the part of hon. Members to the proposals put forward. He might instance the county of Cambridge in reference to the Isle of Ely, and also Lincolnshire.

said, there was no parallel between those cases and that of Armagh.

said, the population of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire was very similar in its pursuits to that of Armagh. The Commissioners had endeavoured to pay deference to local sentiment; and, for all the reasons he had mentioned, he did not think it was desirable to disturb the arrangement as set forth in the Bill.

said, there was one point in connection with this subject on which he desired to express his opinion. The hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) took upon himself to assume that the whole of the Catholic population of Armagh would vote for the Nationalist Party, and that a large proportion of the members of other denominations would also vote for them. Now, he begged to repudiate in the strongest terms that idea of the hon. and learned Member. He believed that there was amongst the Catholic population of Ireland a very large body of loyal men, thoroughly devoted to the Union with this country, and thoroughly devoted to law and order. He wanted the Committee to understand, speaking with knowledge on the subject, that there was not the slightest ground for supposing that the Roman Catholics would go with the Party represented by the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) and by the hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy)—the Party which was seeking for separation from this country.

said, he would only observe, with reference to the remarks of the hon. and gallant Member who had just spoken, that the interests of political Parties and the unity desired by some hon. Gentlemen in respect of different parts of the Empire was not likely to be served by attempts to cheat any section of the people. Political unity could be best preserved by showing the people of all grades that they were fairly treated by that House, and that no question of creed would be permitted to exclude them from their just share in the politics of the nation. He held that the scheme of the Bill in the present case did not do that; it excluded them from their fair share of political influence. The hon. and gallant Gentleman who had just spoken had come to the conclusion that the Catholics in Ireland would vote in a solid mass as against the Nationalists, who, he implied, would not have a single Catholic vote behind them. The hon. and gallant Gentleman had had some experience—he made the remark in no invidious sense—but he would suggest to the hon. and gallant Gentleman that his political expulsion from the county of Sligo in 1880 was due to the fact that he had not a solid majority behind him. [Colonel KING-HARMAN: I had the Protestant vote behind me.] The Protestant vote was broken up into two portions. His (Mr. Sexton's) view of the question of creed in reference to the county of Armagh was that the National Party would have behind them a solid Catholic vote—and not only that, but also that of an intelligent section of the Protestants in Ireland. The right hon. Baronet (Sir Charles W. Dilke) had spoken of the Mid Armagh Division, and had described the division now proposed as being more symmetrical than that which appeared in the first scheme of the Commissioners. He (Mr. Sexton) said that the first scheme had this recommendation—that it observed the instruction to have regard to the boundaries of Unions in existing areas. The original scheme of the Commissioners for the County of Armagh proposed to preserve the integrity of the barony boundaries—the North Division was composed of three baronies, with four parishes taken out; the Mid Division of several baronies, with five parishes added; and the Southern Division of three baronies, with one parish taken out. Therefore, the scheme should be acceptable from the point of view of those who wished to save expense in the revision of the electoral rolls, and who wished to give the public the convenience of well-known areas. But the final scheme of the Commissioners which the Government sought to press upon them was very different in character, and went against the instruction as to well-known areas. The list before him showed that the North Division was composed of one-half of a barony and part of another; in the case of the second division, not only were baronies cut up, but there was a string of names in one barony so long and complicated that it would be folly to endeavour to convoy to the Committee by any reference to those complicated areas any idea of the merits or demerits of the scheme adopted by the Commissioners. The right hon. Baronet had referred to the question of creed, and said that in the Mid Division of Armagh there were 23,000 Catholics and 28,000 Protestants there. He (Mr. Sexton) should not mention the name of Catholic or Protestant in this debate, because he held that future political action in Ireland would not be governed or found to be materially influenced by any difference of creed. The plea taken up by the Tory Party was that Protestants, as such, were entitled to have separate representation in Ireland, and he emphasized that plea, which he (Mr. Sexton) rejected, as having no reference to the question. The Commissioners found there would be no use in jerrymandering the Northern Division of Armagh, where the Catholic majority was 20,000, or the Southern Division, where the Catholic majority was 12,000. Now, in the Mid Division the Catholics and Protestants under the original scheme were about equally divided, and there was a chance at first that the Nationalists would have what the Americans called "a fair show" in that division without running to extremes. The right hon. Baronet said that when the first scheme was devised the Commissioners had no local knowledge. But he hold, on the contrary, that the first scheme of the Commissioners was more suited than their final scheme to the natural features of the county, because by the final scheme they had taken from Mid Armagh a great part of the barony of Lower Fews, and by so doing they had not only violated the instruction which directed them to have regard to the boundaries of well-known areas, but had also overlapped the great natural boundary of the division, and thrown the electors of Fews into a division with which they had no kind of interest. What was the result? The Commissioners, by disregarding the practical considerations which ought to have guided them, had produced a district which contained 25,000 Catholics and 28,000 Protestants; and they had done it by a treble operation. It was all nonsense to tell them that the Commissioners had made that change out of any regard for their Instructions. No question as to the pursuits of the people arose in reference to the county of Armagh, except in a part of the Northern Division. There were some small manufactories in Newry and in the Northern Division; but they were of so trifling a character as to be unworthy of observation. The pursuits of the people were for all practical purposes agricultural, and the fraction of them engaged in manufactures of any kind outside the town of Newry was so small as not to be appreciable, and such as certainly did not entitle them to consideration on an occasion like the present. Now, what was the character of the treble operation he had referred to? First, half of the barony of Lower Fews had been put away from the Mid Division. That was to say, the Catholic people of Lower Fews were not allowed to remain in the division of Mid Armagh, where they would have produced that equality of population which, in their opinion, would have given them a fair chance at an election. Therefore they were cut off from the Mid Division, not because there was any difference in the pursuits of the two portions of the barony—not because any considerations of boundary made it necessary, and not because the arrangement was dictated by the natural features of the country—for the pursuits of the people were identical—the boundaries had to be broken to meet the exigencies of the scheme, and for the same reason mountains had been overleaped. What were the other alterations to be made? Two districts of opposite composition were taken—the one from the South, the other from the North—and thrown into the Mid Division of Armagh. Thus, where the Catholics had a chance they were cut off from their natural division of the county. And when he saw that one alteration threw out a large body of the Catholic people, and that the other brought in two Protestant populations—when he saw that the Catholics had been brought down to 25,000, and the Protestants left in a majority of 28,000—then, he said, it was apparent that Major Macpherson, in spite of the plausible plea in his Report, was influenced by no other motive than that of gratifying the desire of the agents of the landlord class who appeared before him, to give to them not only the North but also the Mid Division of the county of Armagh. The hon. and learned Gentleman who opened this debate invited the Committee to consider what would be the political effect of this at the next General Election. Well, the people of Armagh would probably remember then the two schemes of the Commissioners, and that the first scheme was not an unfair one—the scheme which the Commissioners drew while they were impartial, when they were in Dublin and consulted the maps of the county, and the barony boundaries, and the Census Returns, and before they came to consider the question of creeds; and the Catholic people would remember what occurred when the Commissioners went down to the county—that an Orange attorney, a Grand Master of an Orange Lodge, who would himself be a candidate at the next election in Armagh, appeared before the Commissioners and dictated to them a scheme the essential parts of which they accepted. The Catholic people would remember that at the dictation of this Orange attorney a great body of Catholic electors were thrown out of the division with which their rights and their interests were connected. The whole effect and purpose of this elaborate farce called an inquiry was simply to throw dust into the eyes of the people. He was convinced that its result would be the production of feelings destructive of the harmony which ought to exist amongst people of different creeds; that the change made from the original scheme of the Commissioners which Irish Members desired to maintain would not have the effect which the Government intended, and that the Nationalist Party at the next General Election would be able to say to them that they had tried to be dishonest and failed.

said, the right hon. Baronet (Sir Charles W. Dilke), in his argument against the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy), had stated that the Catholic voters in South Armagh outnumbered the Protestant voters as largely as the Protestant voters in the North Division of the county. But the case was the very reverse of what he had stated, and it followed that a serious injustice would be done to the people of the county of Armagh. The Amendment of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Monaghan was one which, in his judgment, ought to commend itself to the Committee, because it simplified the scheme of the Commissioners. In the scheme of the Commissioners which had been submitted to Parliament and adopted by the Government a number of divisions were proposed with boundaries never before known outside the localities. They proposed to divide localities and towns; and under this scheme it would be a most perplexing and difficult thing for persons resident in the county of Armagh to know in which division of the county they would be registered as voters. He observed that in the North Division of Armagh it was proposed to divide six parishes and about 20 towns, a course which he thought would be most inconvenient and perplexing in its effect. He contended that the Amendment of his hon. and learned Friend would be infinitely superior to the scheme of the Commissioners which the Government had adopted, inasmuch as it proposed to adhere to the old boundaries known in the county for hundreds of years. Again, his hon. and learned Friend's scheme, as against that of the Government in respect of the Northern Division, was much more advantageous, because the scheme of the Commissioners was more complex in respect of North Armagh than South Armagh. The Commissioners had adopted baronial lines only in two instances, whereas they proposed to divide parishes and town-lands in 50 cases at least. Now, his hon. and learned Friend proposed to follow the baronial lines all through, except in one instance. He felt confident that if the right hon. Gentleman the Postmaster General (Mr. Shaw Lefevre), or whichever Member of the Government remained in charge of the Bill, would consider the remarks he had made, and compare the relative merits of the two schemes, he would be forced to admit that the scheme of his hon. and learned Friend had advantages which were apparent. He could not understand how it was that the Commissioners had departed so very much from the original scheme which they put forward, and which was almost identical with the scheme now proposed. He did not intend to make any remarks upon the relative strength of population in the three divisions; but he would appeal to the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill from a geographical stand-point, and say, that whatever the result might be this scheme of the Commissioners was bad in itself, and ought not, therefore, to be accepted by the Committee.

admitted that hon. Gentlemen had argued the case very quietly and fairly, though the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton), warming to the subject, had said that by the scheme of the Commissioners an injustice was done which would be remembered by the electors of Armagh for generations to come. He thought, however, that the arguments with which the hon. Member supported that view would hardly have produced that amount of lasting indignation in the minds of the inhabitants of Armagh. The hon. Gentleman had said that in one of the divisions of Armagh the Protestants—he (Mr. Trevelyan) was bound to use that division of the population as it had been used throughout—had an overwhelming majority, that in another division the Catholics had an overwhelming majority, and that the balance of Parties was in the Central Division. He said, also, that two additions were made by the Commissioners in their revised scheme to the Central Division, both of them consisting of an infusion of Pro- testants, and that there was one deduction from the division which was notoriously one of the Catholic population. The hon. Member spoke of the three operations as being all equally unacceptable from his point of view; but the hon. Member himself must allow that it was necessary to make an addition to Mid Armagh. The Commissioners had, in their original scheme, made an incorrect calculation to the extent of 6,000—the population of Mid Armagh was short by 6,000, and the population of North Armagh was excessive by 6,000. In order to bring up the population of Mid Armagh to its proper level it was evidently necessary to take the excess population from North Armagh. The hon. Member could not deny that, and that at once accounted for the great effusions of Protestants to which the hon. Member objected. That brought them to the question of the inclusion of Kildarton on the one hand, and the exclusion of Lower Fews on the other. The hon. Member for Ennis (Mr. Kenny), speaking of the North and South Divisions, had said that there was a considerable majority of Protestants in the one and of Catholics in the other; and, speaking of the third division, he had said Protestants and Catholics were in about equal proportion. The statement of the hon. Gentleman must not be taken too literally, because the proportion of Catholics to Protestants in the South was as two to one, whereas in the North the proportion of Protestants to Catholics was as 12 to 5. As to the inclusion of Kildarton in Mid Armagh, it must be borne in mind that the Commissioners were governed by two things—they were governed to a certain extent by the wishes of the population, and to a very much greater extent by the pursuits of the people. On that point they spoke very decidedly. They stated that the Northern Division included considerable industrial towns, and that in the central part of the county there were considerable though smaller industrial populations. In their description of Mid Armagh they stated that there were many flax mills, and that the district they had included in the North was more identical with the pursuits of the Northern than the Southern part of the county. The Southern part of the county, they said, was entirely agricultural. The determination of the Com- missioners was suggested by the pursuits of the population. Now, as to the indignation which this arrangement would create in Armagh or elsewhere, he must say he thought the inhabitants of Armagh would admit, when they came to consider the matter coolly, that the general result of the arrangement would be to give fair and proportional representation to the county, though a slight advantage might be given to the Protestants. Turning from the question of population, he thought that anyone who looked at the map would acknowledge that no county was more naturally and sensibly divided than Armagh. North Armagh consisted of the genuine Northern part of the county; Mid Armagh was the middle of the county, and South Armagh was not only the Southern part of the county, but it was the Southern part of the county which, from its physical appearance, bore the marks of being homogeneous. He had studied very carefully the statistics of the relative populations—Catholic and Protestant—in the different counties of Ireland; and he was certainly very much struck by the manner in which the probable electoral advantages would be distributed between those counties. He believed that result had been attained by the Commissioners following the admirably clear and perfectly impartial Instructions which were laid down in their charter of appointment. He was satisfied that any slight advantage which the Protestants might have obtained in Armagh would be compensated for in other counties; and he could "not but believe that the expressions of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) about the action of the Commissioners would, on the whole, be found to be as exaggerated as the counter charges brought against Catholics in other divisions.

said, the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Trevelyan) had referred to counter charges. Who brought them?

said, he referred to other counties in which complaints were made.

said, that, unfortunately for the contention of the right hon. Gentleman, the only case in which it was proposed to change a division of Ulster was that of Fermanagh. The noble Viscount the Member for Fermanagh (Viscount Crichton) was the only person. of distinction in the Conservative Party who proposed to make a change in a division. The hon. Baronet the Member for Coleraine (Sir Hervey Bruce) attempted to get another Member for Derry; but that was another matter. The noble Viscount was the only person who had any fault to find with any division in Ulster. But in Fermanagh there were 55 per cent of Catholics; therefore the noble Viscount's proposal was absurd. When the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Trevelyan) attempted to ride off on the pretence that some of the Tory Party objected to this scheme, he could not have examined the Amendments which had been put upon the Paper. The right hon. Gentleman said that the divisions had been arrived at because the Commissioners followed the admirable, clear, and impartial Instructions of the Lord Lieutenant. Why, the complaint of the Irish Members was that the Commissioners had not followed the Lord Lieutenant's Instructions; and in no county were there more glaring or more bare-faced instances of a disregard of those Instructions than in Armagh. One of the Instructions of His Excellency was—

"Subject to this important rule, each division shall be as compact as possible with respect to geographical position, and shall be based upon well-known existing areas such as baronies, townlands," &c.

In the original scheme regard was had to well-known existing areas; but in the scheme adopted parishes and town-lands had been split up. Armagh afforded a very gross case. In some eases where jerrymandering had been resorted to something like decency had been observed; but there were more gross cases of splitting up baronies and even parishes in Armagh than in any other county in Ireland. It would have been bad enough if the Commissioners had split up baronies; but they had not been content with that, for they had split up parishes, a thing which had only been done in one other county—namely, Tyrone. If that was such a fine and delicate matter, he would like to know why it was, if Mid Armagh was short originally, it was now 2,000 plus—the population of Mid Armagh was now 2,000 more than that of South Armagh, and 1,000 more than that of North Armagh? It was this 2,000 which made all the difference; for there were in the district exactly 2,000 more Protestants than Catholics. The arrangement was so beautiful that it was to be admired. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Trevelyan) had said the Commissioners had had regard to the pursuits of the population. The Irish Members did not believe it. The right hon. Gentleman made his remarks, of course, in good faith; but he had had nothing to do with the arrangement of the divisions. He (Mr. Healy) could understand the Government saying—"We appointed as Commissioners men of character and of the greatest ability; we entrusted them with plenary powers; and we promised the Marquess of Salisbury we would stick to everything they did. "That was the defence one Minister had made. But another Minister had said that in the arrangement of the boundaries the Commissioners had had regard to the pursuits of the population, while a third Minister had said—"Oh, this barony had too much, and this had too little." It was appalling to think the Irish Members had been treated in this manner, night after night, under the pretence of fairness. When the Government insisted upon adding hypocrisy to their other sins, it was a little more than he and his hon. Friends could stand. Reference had been made by an hon. and gallant Gentleman above the Gangway that the Party led by the hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) relied on the Catholics, but could not rely on the Protestants. Why, he (Mr. Healy) would not be in the House if he had not received many Protestant votes. The Catholics of Monaghan did not command a majority on the electoral roll when he was elected; but he was elected by a majority of 365 votes. It was nonsense to talk about religious denominations. It was like the Pyrenees—it no longer divided the people, and the Government would find that out before long. The Government had made two populations, one having a very narrow majority; they had thrown such a bone of contention into Ulster by this jerrymandering scheme that at the next General Election they would be required, in all probability, to incur an outlay of £100,000 for extra police. All the Orangemen were armed, and Party riots and tumults would occur. By this scheme a virulent poison was put into the bowels of Ulster; and at every General Election until the Nationalists got the upper hand, as they would, there would be disorders and tumults. Every one of the Ulster counties, one after another, would drop into the National phalanx. The fact that in the next Parliament there would be 85 Nationalists returned would be a great magnet to the people of Ulster. They would not care to be left out in the cold, and therefore they would flock to the one fold. He trusted the Government would see the propriety of making the arrangements in County Armagh provisional until it was seen which Party got the upper hand. If it was seen that the Nationalists gained the ascendancy let them have the advantage; if the Tories gained that position let them have the advantage. He and his hon. Friends objected to have their baronies and parishes—Lower and Upper Orior, Lower and Upper Fews, and O'Neiland West—split up contrary altogether to the Instructions of the Lord Lieutenant. Finally, let him point out to the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Trevelyan), who had said that in the original scheme there was in one division an overplus of 6,000, that the Nationalist Party proposed a scheme which would have equalized the population without touching the baronies to the same extent as the Commissioners had done; and it was a very remarkable thing that the Commissioners, in their Report to Parliament, omitted all reference to that scheme. It was scarcely fair to the Nationalists. The pledge was obtained from the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Sir Charles W. Dilke) that he would present a Paper showing the reasons why the Commissioners made alterations in the original schemes respecting the counties of Armagh, Donegal, Kerry, and Tyrone, and the City of Dublin. It was very strange that in that Paper there was no mention of the fact that a scheme which would have equalized the population without cutting up the baronies was laid before the Commissioners by the Nationalists.

said, the hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) seemed rather to call upon someone on the Conservative Benches to enter into this debate. He (Mr. Plunket) did not wish to enter into the discussion in a more heated or controversial spirit than was absolutely necessary. The hon. and learned Member had challenged the Opposition why they did not put down Amendments in the same proportion that he and his hon. Friends had done. There was one very good reason to be given for it; and that was that in order to give the Amendment which the hon. and learned Member had put down, in this instance, a colour of support, the hon. and learned Member had been obliged, with all his great ability and ingenuity, to have recourse to the most extraordinary series of arguments he (Mr. Plunket) ever heard. Amongst other things the hon. and learned Gentleman had said there was a meeting of "Whigs and Tories, and they tried to invent some more favourable scheme; but they had to give up the task as impossible. There might have been such a meeting; but he could assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that that was the first time he had heard of it. Well, what was another ground on which the hon. and learned Gentleman objected to the Commissioners' scheme? He said it was a violent attempt to produce something like equality in the various parts of Ulster, and that if they succeeded in doing that they would pour a most deadly poison into the bowels of the Province. He (Mr. Plunket) did not understand what was the alternative the hon. and learned Gentleman suggested, because it was perfectly plain that if they were not to equalize, as far as they could, the Protestant and Catholic populations, they must give preponderance to one or the other. If they were to give preponderance, to which Party ought it to be given? He should say to that Party which was, on the whole, in a majority. According to the reasoning of the hon. and learned Member, it was the duty of the Commissioners to give the preponderance to the Protestants, who were in a very considerable majority in the county. He did not think that argument, if the effect he had stated were given to it, would be exceedingly satisfactory to most of the hon. Member's Friends. The fact of the matter was that there was a very plain and good reason given by the Commissioners for what they had done, a reason not resting on any question of equalizing the Protestant or Catholic populations. The Commissioners reported—

"In this particular instance we have been obliged to depart from the ordinary process of going by boundaries of baronies and parishes, because in this particular county some of the baronies are very irregular in shape, and parishes in a great many cases overlap the boundaries, so we must fall back on the town-land areas to a considerable extent, so as to get the divisions as compact as possible, and containing populations as nearly equal and as similar in pursuits as possible."

They went on to say that in each of the three divisions they had succeeded in making the boundaries compact. He submitted that the Commissioners had not founded their decision on any such ground as that of giving preponderance to one Party or the other; and therefore the Committee were bound to support the conclusion arrived at.

said, it was quite unnecessary for the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Plunket) to explain why his Party had not put down Amendments to the proposals of the Commissioners. The Tory Party had got all they could expect to get, therefore there was no reason why the right hon. and learned Gentleman should elaborately explain why that Party had not proposed to amend the scheme. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had suggested that as the Protestants were in a considerable majority in Armagh they ought to have two seats, and that the Catholics ought to be content with the one seat which remained. But wherever the Catholics had an overwhelming majority the same argument did not apply in the view of the Tory Party. No matter how small, how numerically trivial, the Protestant minority in any place might be, it was argued that they ought to have a Member. The argument which was considered very good by the co-religionists of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, when applied to the counties of Ulster, was considered by them worthless when it was applied to other counties of Ireland. After all, the Protestants had only a slight majority in Armagh—there were 72,000 Catholics and something over 80,000 Protestants. He thought the right hon. and learned Gentleman would agree with him that it would have been more absolutely fair, and more in accordance with the principles of equity, if his coreligionists—the Catholics—had had an equal chance in the Mid Division of the county. It was not fair that such a division should have been artificially procured as to give one creed a dominance, especially when the members of the two creeds in the division were ordinarily equal. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Trevelyan) had greatly simplified the case. He had argued the matter with a frankness which the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Sir Charles W. Dilke) might be inclined to call excessive. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy had said that it was necessary to equalize the population, and to have regard to the pursuits of the people, and had pleaded those two facts in justification of the scheme now before the Committee. What did he say to the arrangement of his (Mr. Sexton's) hon. and learned Friend? It was true that the middle division would have 6,000 less of a population than the upper division in the scheme of the Commissioners. Why, then, in order to adjust the balance, had they started by taking a number out of the middle division? An easy way to adjust the balance of population would have been to take 3,000 people out of the Northern Division, there being a difference of 6,000 between the Northern and the middle. But that would not have answered the purpose. It was necessary to take a great number of Catholics, and he, therefore, said that in the alleged pursuit of equality of population the Commissioners had been guilty of a manifest absurdity, for in order to increase the population of a division they had taken a large population out of it. He challenged contradiction when he said that such manufactures as there were in Armagh did not exist in the Northern Division and in Newry. Except in Newry, the North Armagh manufactures did not exist in any part of the county. North Armagh was a manufacturing division, and Mid Armagh was agricultural. The principle of the identity of pursuits of the population had been flagrantly outraged. The Government took a large body of artizans out of the only artizan division of the county, and threw them in amongst the farmers, with whom they had no community of interest, and in like manner they took farmers from agricultural districts and threw them amongst artizans.

said, he was glad to have the opportunity of taking part in the discussion, as he possessed an intimate local knowledge of the county of Armagh, and, moreover, had the advantage of having been present at the boundary inquiry held by Major Macpherson. When the original boundary scheme for the county was issued, it was generally considered a very fair one. It divided only one barony, O'Neiland West—which from its large size would have to be intersected, and very slightly another. The Commissioners stated that the population of the Northern Division would be 55,083, of the Mid Division 51,166, and of the Southern Division 51,033. However, at the inquiry it was announced that the Commissioners had made a serious error in stating these figures, and that they ought to have been for North Armagh 56,233, for Mid Armagh 49,966, and for South Armagh 51,033. There would, therefore, have been a difference of 6,267 between the highest and lowest division, and it became necessary to make some alteration in the scheme. At the inquiry he (Mr. Small) had proposed an alteration to equalize the population, which would have necessitated the transfer of parts of two parishes only—the transfer of the part of Loughgall which lay in the barony of O'Neiland West and had a population of 3,302, from North Armagh to Mid Armagh, and the transfer of the part of Mullaghbrack, in the same barony, with a population of 1,339, from Mid Armagh to South Armagh. These changes would not have divided any baronies beyond those intersected in the original scheme, and they would have left the populations of the three divisions as follows:—North Armagh 52,931, 'Mid Armagh 51,929, and South Armagh 52,372. The Conservatives proposed an utterly absurd scheme, which would have intersected no less than six baronies out of a total of eight. Now, what had the Boundary Commissioners done in the revised scheme, for the division of the county? They had divided four baronies and seven parishes. In dividing two of those parishes they had adhered to barony lines which already intersected those parishes; but in dividing the remaining five they had not done that, but had actually divided the parishes by town- lands, and that although some of those parishes laid in two baronies. They had joined together parts of the county which had no connection, either legal, business, or social, with each other, and people who had no interests in common. As regarded the question of equality of population, the plan which he (Mr. Small) put forward at the inquiry would have left a difference of 1,002 people between the highest and lowest division, the Commissioners left a difference of 2,213. Then, as to compactness, the Commissioners had framed the Mid Division so that a line drawn due North and North through it at a certain point would be about 15 miles long; but a line due North and South, a couple of miles east of that point, would be only about four miles long. It might be considered that Lurgan and Portadown would be the principal political centres in the North Division, Armagh City in the Mid Division, and Newry in the South Division; yet the Commissioners had put into the South Division some places which were about three and a-half miles from Armagh and 12 miles from Newry. The parish of Lisnadil seemed to have been particularly hardly treated. It laid in two baronies, and had now been so cut and carved that it was almost impossible to know, at first sight, in which division any townland was. In one case the Commissioners had transferred the four townlands of Cashel, Foley, Segahan, and Ballymacnabb from Mid to South Armagh. They were very near to Armagh City in the Armagh Union, and Armagh was their market town. It was rather curious that in three of those there was not a single Protestant householder, and in the fourth very few. He presented some days ago a Petition, which he understood was signed by every householder in the four town-lands, protesting against the change. The Commissioners at first put the entire barony of Lower Orior into the Southern Division. Now, they had put into the Middle Division that very considerable portion of the barony which was comprised in the parishes of Kilmore and Ballymore. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy (Mr. Trevelyan) had said that the Commissioners stated that the Tanderagee district, which consisted of Kilmore and Ballymore, was connected with the North of the county. Then, why did they not put it into the Northern Division? Along the Eastern side of the county and through this district there ran, from North to South, the Great Northern Railway, which gave the people facilities of direct access to Lurgan and Portadown in the North, and to Newry in the South. Anyone from the district desiring to go to the City of Armagh had to make a considerable detour by rail, or else to drive by road across the entire county. The Commissioners had taken this district from the South, with which it had some connection and direct intercourse. They had not added it to the North, with which it had also some connection and direct intercourse; but they had added it to the Middle Division, with which it had not any connection or intercourse whatever. He (Mr. Small) had presented Petitions from almost every parish in the county which was affected by the alterations in the boundaries, complaining of them. He was not aware that any Petitions had been presented on the opposite side. In fact, arguments to insert in any such Petitions could not have been found. He did not see any Ulster Members present who would oppose the Amendment of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy); and he hoped the right hon. Baronet in charge of the Bill would accept it.

said, the discussion had spread over a very considerable amount of space in point of time, and also a very considerable amount of space in the way of argument. As to the influences which were supposed to have been brought to bear upon the Boundary Commissioners, and also as to what ought to be the decision of the Committee, he thought himself that it was rather unfortunate—indeed, that it was very unfortunate—that the Committee should be called upon to decide a question of this sort on the ground of the religious Parties who were affected by the boundaries of the particular divisions. But, at the same time, he thought it was legitimate, for the opponents of the scheme as it now stood, to endeavour to find out some reason why the Boundary Commissioners had changed the plans so very much from those originally supplied to them as the provisional proposition upon which to base their inquiry. He wished to say this— that he bad had an opportunity of seeing the boundaries, not of very many counties in Ireland, but of some of them, and that he thought the original plans were superior in point of impartiality and sound judgment to the boundaries which were ultimately decided upon. He said that because he thought the reason was that the parties who drew up the plans originally were the Ordnance Survey officers, who had practical and great personal knowledge of the maps of those places—and not only of the maps, but also of the natural configuration of the land. They knew what the real boundaries ought to be very much better than anyone could who simply took their view's from the plan of the Surveys, such as hon. Members were obliged to do, by means of the information supplied them for their guidance. He believed the great complaint in connection with the decision the Boundary Commissioners had come to in connection with this county of Armagh was that they entirely ignored the written Instructions given to them by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The Instructions of the Lord Lieutenant were that so far as possible the Boundary Commissioners should conform to the local boundaries, baronial parishes, and town lands. They had not the power to divide the town lands, but they bad the power to divide other districts. He must say that the right hon, Baronet the President of the Local Government Board (Sir Charles W. Dilke) had seemed to him to very much undervalue the importance of a barony in Ireland as a local description of a particular district, and for this reason. They knew that in Ireland a barony was a local area, which was especially used for taxation purposes by the Grand Juries—for laying on the taxation in respect to new roads, new bridges, and so forth. Nothing was more common than to lay a particular rate upon a particular barony, and in other places to levy it on the county at largo. So that, in point of fact, the baronies were important areas in connection with the taxation of Ireland and in connection with the local county government of Ireland as it at present existed. More than that, they had bodies of local taxpayers in Ireland who met together in the baronies to decide upon certain local repairs to be effected, and which were afterwards au- thorized by the Grand Juries. Those baronies were much more important areas than the right hon. Baronet and the Government seemed to think them, or that Major Macpherson had seemed to think them. As a matter of fact, Major Macpherson seemed to know very little about the wishes of the Irish people in the counties. The Instructions of the Lord Lieutenant had been so flagrantly set at defiance in this instance that they had good reason to ask why the Boundary Commissioners had so acted. The only explanation they could arrive at was that Major Macpherson had adopted the course he pursued in order to favour one particular party at the expense of another. If the boundaries had been impartially drawn up, nobody would have known anything about the question of religion—certainly the Boundary Commissioners would have known nothing about it, and would not have taken it into account. As had been shown by the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Small), in some places districts had been put in, and in other places taken out—place after place had been treated in that way in the county of Armagh—so as to reverse the effect of the original scheme. In districts where, if the original scheme had been adopted, there would have been a substantial majority of Catholics, alterations had been made, the result of which would be to give a substantial majority of non-Catholics. If it had not been that the Commissioners had investigated the religious opinions of the inhabitants, instead of acting altogether impartially, the result would have been much more favourable to the Nationalist Party. He did not himself value to a very enormous extent the difference between non-Catholics and Catholics, because they knew very well, as had been proved in the county of Monaghan by the fact that a large number of non-Catholics must have voted for the hon. and learned Member who at present sat for that county (Mr. Healy), that the Nationalist Party would get the votes of non-Catholics almost as readily as they got those of Catholics. What they had seen taking place at the Monaghan Election, no doubt would occur in other places. With regard to the hon. and gallant Gentleman who represented County Dublin (Colonel King-Harman), he now posed as anti-Catholic, anti-Home Ruler, and anti-Nationalist; but he (Mr. Biggar) could remember the time when the hon. and gallant Gentleman was elected as a Home Ruler. He remembered that at the first great political meeting he (Mr. Biggar) had ever attended, the hon. and gallant Member was one of the leading speakers of the Nationalist Party. As to Irish land, he (Mr. Biggar) certainly held a very strong opinion that it would be extremely difficult to bring up a non-Catholic tenant farmer to vote against an Irish Nationalist, seeing the advantage he had to get from his support of the Nationalist Party compared with what was likely to result from his support of one or the other of the English Parties. But, be those things as they might, the fact still remained that the question of religion had been taken into account in the county of Armagh, and alterations had been made in the original scheme which should not have been made. The hon. Member for Wexford was the Coroner for one of the districts of the county, and he knew a great deal that the Committee was not acquainted with in regard to those particular transactions. He (Mr. Biggar) thought the Committee should be guided by such Gentlemen, for they had good opportunities of forming accurate opinions, and were well possessed of every local knowledge. He thought that they should agree to the proposal of the hon. and learned Member for Monaghan, and show that the Committee was guided by strict rules of impartiality, and not by the principles which had evidently actuated Major Macpherson, and which had influenced him in his decisions when dealing with the county of Armagh.

said, that in line 14 he wished to move to omit the word "The."

said, that if he might be allowed, before that Question was put, he should like to protest against what took place that morning. Some hon. Members would, no doubt, remember the circumstances, which were these. After a great many hon. Gentlemen had left the House, particularly among the Tories and Liberals, that part of the Schedule affecting Antrim, and particu- larly those divisions in which the Conservative Members were most interested, had been considered. Liberal and Conservative Members, to whose absence he was referring, had gone away under the impression that the Committee would not proceed beyond the Scotch part of the Schedule, and that County Antrim, therefore, would not be considered. He wished to elicit now some sort of promise, pledge, or assurance from the Government that they would consult the wishes of those Members before Report as to the naming of the divisions. He did not know what names would be preferred by those hon. Members who, as he said, were most interested in the county of Antrim; at any rate, he did not wish that their silence should give consent to what had taken place that morning in their absence. He understood that some of those hon. Members were horrified that morning when they were informed as to what had taken place at the late Sitting some hours previously. The hon. Members for Carrickfergus (Mr. Greer) and Lisburn (Sir Richard Wallace) had been especially disgusted when they understood that the case of their county had been brought on, when they had been told that the Committee would not proceed beyond the Scotch part of the Schedule

said, that if any answer to the censure now uttered by the hon. and learned Member upon the Government for proceeding with the Irish part of the Bill last night were necessary, it would be found in the condition of the Committee at that moment. Notwithstanding that full Notice had been given of the part of the Schedule which was to be considered, there was not a single Irish Tory or Whig Member present to object to the alterations. Though Notice had been given for a fortnight, there was not a single Irish Tory or Whig Member present, showing that those hon. Gentlemen had given it up as a bad game.

said, that perhaps he might say, to ease the mind of the hon. and learned Member, that he (Mr. Healy) had taken the trouble to consult two hon. Members—namely, the hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Tipperary (Mr. J. O'Connor), who was also a Cork man, and a third, he himself (Mr. Healy)— being a Cork man—had carefully considered the question. The result of their meeting and consultation had been the Amendments that were put on the Paper. He thought the hon. and learned Gentleman might feel perfectly sure that all scruples in the case had been met.

said, he did not complain of that; but what he complained of was that the recommendations of the Commissioners in regard to Conservative districts had been extinguished in the absence of Conservative Members.

said, he had answered the hon. and learned Gentleman on that point yesterday.

said, the right hon. Baronet's answer had simply been that he had declared that he had privately intimated that it was his intention to proceed with the Schedule so far as it affected the county of Antrim. But the right hon. Baronet's public announcement had been that he should proceed with the Schedule until that part affecting Scotland had been disposed of. The private announcement was given after the public announcement.

said, that he had said what had taken place between himself and the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Plunket).

again rose.

I must point out to the hon. and learned Member that he is entirely out of Order in the course he is adopting. He has addressed the Committee three times, although there is really no Question before it.

said, he wished to move, on page 94, line 4, to leave out "Youghal," and insert "South-East Cork." He admitted that there was extreme difficulty in dealing with the divisions of Cork. The county consisted of seven divisions, and any hon. Member who had taken the trouble to examine the map would see that it was only after most mature consideration that the subject could be satisfactorily dealt with. A meeting of the Irish Party had been hold upon the subject, and they had come to the conclusion that it was impossible to deal with the matter in any other way than that proposed in the Amendment.

said, he should have suggested a transposition. The most Eastern part of Cork was in Youghal; therefore he should be inclined to call Youghal "East," and Bandon "South-East Cork." He would suggest that the hon. and learned Member should put down his Amendment for Report.

said, it was quite immaterial to the Irish Members how that was done; but if the right hon. Baronet would consider the advisability of doing as was proposed, they would be satisfied. The right hon. Gentleman would, no doubt, see the reasonableness of the proposition.

said, that if the matter were discussed, it must be on a formal Motion. As yet the hon. and learned Member had not moved anything.

We will discuss the matter privately.

said, in moving the Amendment standing in his name, he wished to take the same course as he had taken in the case of the county of Armagh. He should confine himself to moving the omission of lines 5 to 10, inclusive, which embraced the names of the baronies and parishes which the Government proposed to include in the Northern Division of the county of Donegal, and it was upon that part of the Schedule that he would take the discussion. He regretted that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (M\r. Plunket) was not in his place; but he would be extremely well represented during the discussion by the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton), who, of course, took a deep interest in everything concerning the county of Donegal. He had to consider the way in which the Commissioners had dealt with constituencies in which Catholics were in the majority as compared with places in which they were in the minority. For his own part he was in favour of the fullest and fairest representation of all parties and all religions in the county; he thought the more fully they were represented the better it would be for the general interest. But a moment or two ago, on his Amendment in connection with Armagh, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Plunket) said that as the Protestants were in a large majority in Armagh, surely it was only fair that they should have two seats out of the three that were given to the county, and that argument would have been admirable if a similar course were pursued in counties in which Catholics were in the majority. But let the Committee observe the way in which the Government dealt with the Irish counties. In every county in which Catholics were in the minority no representation had been given to them whatever except in the two instances where it could not be avoided—that was to say, in the county of Down, which had four Members, and in the county of Armagh, which had three. In the county of Antrim, where there were 55,000 Catholics, who were clearly entitled to a seat, there would be no Catholic representation at all; in Belfast, where the Catholics were in similar proportion, there would be no Catholic representation; and in Derry—the most shameful case of all—there would be neither Catholic nor Nationalist representation. In Donegal and Tyrone the most shameful jerrymandering had been resorted to for the representation of the minority. They had heard a good deal from the noble Lord the other night, upon the debate about Liverpool, of the proposal to give special representation to Catholics—he"greatly deprecated the severing of the interest of Catholics from that of Protestants.", He (Mr. Healy) would remind the noble Lord of that now that they had come to discuss the case of Donegal. And what had the Commissioners done there? They had departed from all rules— geographical and common sense—as well as the Instructions of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, for the purpose of securing Protestant representation in one of the divisions of the county. He should not complain of that at all; he should rejoice to have his Protestant fellow-countrymen receive the fullest amount of representation in that House, provided the same rule were applied to Catholics. But there was no representation for them in Antrim, Belfast, and Derry, and only one out of three in Armagh. In Tyrone the Government had given two Representatives to the minority, although the Catholics were 75 per cent of the population, and, accepting the correction of the noble Lord, they were endeavouring to give the minority representation in the county of Donegal, where the Catholics were 76 per cent of the population. But why was that rule entirely departed from by the Government when they came to deal with Catholic minorities? Why was the Protestant minority in Donegal to be represented at the expense of everything in the shape of logic and common sense, and in spite of the Instructions of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland? The Instructions of Earl Spencer had been trampled under foot by the Commissioners wherever it was necessary to do it in order to give the Whigs or Tories a Member. The barony of Kilmacrenan, as was well known, fulfilled all the conditions entitling it to a Member, and in the first scheme of the Commissioners it was to have a Member allotted to it. He maintained that this barony was, on the showing of the Commissioners themselves, entitled to a Member. Why, then, was that barony not allowed to stand as the Commissioners placed it? Because, if Kilmacrenan were not split up, it would be impossible to have the two Raphoes together, and the Government considered it far more important to meet Tory prejudice in Donegal, than to follow the Instructions of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The barony of Kilmacrenan, as he had shown, was, by the first scheme of the Commissioners, to get a Member, as it was entitled to do; but the Commissioners went down to Donegal and met the noble Lord, or his representatives if he was not there in person, and the noble Lord's brother, who hoped to be Member for the constituency, and the representatives of the rest of the family; those gentlemen got at the Commissioners, they made their representations, and the barony of Kilmacrenan was now split up, and the two Raphoes, hitherto separated, were now united—the Government had crossed Lough Swilly in order to divide the Inishowens; they split up Kilmacrenan and united the two Raphoes, for the purpose of giving the Tories a Member. Under what pretences had that been done? The right hon. Baronet would, no doubt, say that there was an extreme similarity of pursuits on both sides of the lough, and Irish-speaking people also on both sides. He had taken the trouble to ascertain exactly how the matter stood. The Government had taken three parishes out of Kilmacrenan and put them with Inishowen, under the pretence that the people of those places were all fishermen. But the fact was that had they been left where they were they would have been united to an Irish-speaking and a fishing population, because more fishing was done there and more Irish spoken. So the Government had violated their own Instructions, and had taken out of Kilmacrenan the three parishes of Clandavaddog, Killygaran, and Tullyfern, and classed them with Inishowen, because the people were supposed to be fishermen. But he had ascertained that there were no fishermen and no fish to be caught in them but salmon, and his informant said that Killygaran was agricultural with the exception of two or three spots, and that Clandavaddog was more agricultural still. There were 631 families in Clandavaddog, not one of which fished; in Killygaran there were 474 families, of which 63 fished; and in Tullyfern there were 1,126 families, of whom 112 lived by fishing. Therefore, it was absurd to go to the pursuit of fishing as a reason for splitting up those parishes. If the Government had taken firm ground and said—"Wo are ready to give the Tories a seat in Donegal on general principles, "he could have understood the position they took up in regard to that county. But the right hon. Baronet said—"All the people live by fishing, and are Irish-speaking, and therefore we cross over a distance of three miles to unite them with people of the same language and pursuits." But he had shown that that was not the case, and therefore he said that to unite them with the people on the other side of Lough Swilly would be about equivalent to uniting the people of Kingstown with those of Holyhead—there would be just as much similarity of pursuits and interest in the two cases. He repeated that he could understand the Government saying that they would give the Tories a seat in the county; but this peddling fallacy about an Irish-speaking and fishing population would not bear a moment's investigation. Then, as to crossing the lough. When Irish Members proposed that the lake in County Down should be crossed where it was only half-a-mile wide, and there was a half-penny ferry, they were snubbed and laughed at for the notion of people crossing that half-mile of water; but when it was a question of crossing Lough Swilly with its four miles of sea and a ferry that was, so to speak, only crossed once in 1,000 years, so far as the pursuits of the people were concerned, why then in the eyes of the Government the Swilly was a bagatelle, a cypher, a mere drop of water. He did not know why if the Government wanted to swindle the Irish people they should not do so openly, and not add hypocrisy to their acts. They gave a seat to the Tories, who were not entitled to it; while the Nationalists of Antrim, Belfast, Derry, Central Armagh, and Tyrone were not getting the full share of representation to which they were entitled. As he had said before, the combinations of the Government should have the word "partiality" stamped upon them, and so long as the name of Donegal remained so long would its divisions be remembered with contempt for the Government who sanctioned them.

said, that his family took a great interest in the divisions of this county, and he and other members of it were present and heard what took place when the Commissioners came to inquire into the wants of the locality in question. The hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) had stated what at first sight seemed to be a great objection to the scheme with reference to Donegal—namely, that certain parishes had been cut up; and he had particularly referred to the case of one barony which seemed to have a population which, in respect of numbers, entitled it to one Member. He (Lord George Hamilton) felt sure that if the hon. and learned Member had been sent down to Donegal as one of the Commissioners, he would have arrived at the very same decision as that arrived at by the Commissioners. He agreed that there were alterations in the schemes of the Commissioners. In this case he believed they took the Ordnance map and marked out the districts where they were contiguous one to the other; but when they got to the mountainous parishes they found there were insuperable difficulties in the way, and that some places apparently contiguous had little or no means of communication. In the case of Raphoe they proposed to cut the barony in two and join the two districts with Inishowen. Under the other arrangement the connection would have been by railway, and persons passing from one part to another would have had to pass through two or three counties; that was to say, they would have to go by the railway which started from Donegal to Tyrone and Fermanagh. Now, there was an unanimous objection to that in the locality, and it was proposed to associate the barony as appeared in the Schedule. Now, the objection raised to that was that there was an arm of the sea between the parishes. Mr. Dogherty argued the ease of the Nationalist Party with great ability; but he not only asserted, but brought witnesses to prove, that the sea was the only means of communication in that part of Donegal, and that the arm of the sea did not constitute any objection to the connection proposed. Later on, when it was proposed to connect certain districts in the Northern Division with those on the East side of Lough Swilly, the Nationalist Party changed their front, and said that the lough constituted an insuperable obstacle. Of course, no one could take that as a reasonable objection. Now the hon. and learned Member had not moved the substitution of the original scheme of the Commissioners for that which was embodied in the Bill, but he proposed to substitute the scheme put forward by the Nationalists for the revised scheme of the Commissioners. The county of Donegal was a very remarkable county; there being an inner and an outer Donegal, as everyone would know who had passed any time there. The outer Donegal was inhabited chiefly by Roman Catholics, many of whom spoke nothing but Irish; it was a poor district; the farms were very small, the people very poor, and a considerable proportion of them were occupied in fishing pursuits. But the inner Donegal was quite distinct and separate in its character from the outer Donegal; there were better farms there than in any other part of the country, the people were Protestants, and were quite distinct from the neighbouring population of the county. Therefore, if ever there was a case in which the single-Member principle ought to be applied it was in respect of this portion of Donegal. He thought the Commissioners in every single instance had tried to assimilate as far as they could the population of each county, but there had been immense difficulties in the way of doing so. Now, the Commissioners in their desire to equalize had, as far as they could, preserved existing boundaries. But they had in the case of the two Raphoes added two towns which most resembled them in respect of pursuits and numbers of population. The Commissioners had undoubtedly split up a barony; but on the Nationalists' own showing it was immaterial how those baronies were cut up, because the interests and political opinions of the people were almost identical in every case, and that, as a matter of fact, the boundaries were more artificial than natural. Therefore, he was convinced that any impartial man would have arrived at the same result in this case as that in the revised scheme of the Commissioners. But the hon. and learned Member proposed to substitute for that the Nationalist scheme, which was the association of the barony of Raphoe South with the barony of Boylagh. But Boylagh was probably one of the most Roman Catholic districts in the North of Ireland, and the effect of adding to its population that of the two Raphoes would be at once to submerge the Protestants. The baronies were neither geographically nor socially connected. There was a high range of hills between the Raphoes and Boylagh. But this scheme of the Nationalists had been practically put out of court by a speech made by Mr. Patrick Gallagher, one of the most prominent supporters of the hon. and learned Member, and who had been the representative of a certain district at the National Convention in the days of the Land League. Mr. Gallagher spoke to the effect that the question they had to consider was, what was best for the Nationalist Party; that they wanted to promote the cause; that they did not care a two penny ticket if they could jerrymander the district, and that they wanted to join South Raphoe to Boylagh. That was the report in a Conservative organ, and he might mention that while the other papers reported the proceedings there was no report of Mr. Patrick Gallagher's speech. The scheme of Mr. Gallagher was to dissect or cut up one Protestant barony and tack it on to the Catholic baronies of the county with which it had no connection. Now, so far as Donegal was concerned, he contended that the scheme of the Commissioners was a perfectly fair one. The Nationalist Party had 75 per cent of the population, and certainly they would carry 75 per cent of the representation of the county. He thought it very doubtful that the Loyalist Party would carry Raphoe; but still, whatever the result might be, the object was to give the minority a chance of representation, and this scheme gave them that chance. The hon. and learned Gentleman showed great skill in putting forward all these instances in which he thought his friends were unrepresented; but he had omitted to mention all those cases in which the Loyalists would get no representation at all. It was probable that in all the other three divisions the Loyalists would have no representation. In Armagh, the Party which the hon. Gentleman represented would have a majority of three to one, and therefore he thought he had rather weakened his case by bringing this charge of jerrymandering and unfair treatment against the Government. Whatever the Commissioners did, the hon. and learned Gentleman and his Friends tried to make out some charge of unfair play against them. But the hon. and learned Member himself, a shrewd politician, showed that he hardly believed those charges. The hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), speaking of the Bill, had said that the result of the alterations in the schemes as to the North of Ireland would be that the political Parties opposed to him would retain 23 out of 33 seats; but the hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) said now that the Nationalists would hold 83 out of the 103 seats. [Mr. HEALY: I said 83 in Ireland and two or three in England.] He thought he had shown that this scheme with regard to Donegal was adopted by the Commissioners on its merits; he did not believe that any other scheme was practicable; and he was quite sure that to substitute for a scheme which had been considered by a judicial body, a scheme declared by one of its most prominent supporters to be a jerrymandering scheme, was a proposal to which the Committee would never consent.

said, there was very little for him to add. The real contest in Donegal had turned upon whether Boylagh and Raphoe should be thrown together or kept separate. The argument of the noble Lord (Lord George Hamilton) on this subject was a very strong one. Boylagh was admittedly a very poor district, whereas Raphoe was a wealthy district. Boylagh was a district of 160,000 acres, but its rateable value was only £10,000; Raphoe, however, had an acreage of 223,000, and a rate able value of £100,000, 10 times the wealth of Boylagh. he (Sir Charles W. Dilke) was not one of those who believed in distinctions being made with regard to the pursuits of the population; but it was part of the agreement which was made between the Leaders of the two Parties that divisions should proceed on that principle, and therefore he found himself bound to support such distinctions. If regard was had to the pursuits of the population the divisions which had been drawn in the case of Boylagh and Raphoe was a good one. Now, great objection had been raised to the Northern Division of Donegal, on the ground that it was crossed by a lough. Mr. White, the Boundary Commissioner, held the local inquiry, and, in the Report he had laid before Parliament, he stated that he did not attach any serious importance to the fact; and he (Sir Charles W. Dilke) was bound to say, after the most careful examination he had been able to give the matter, that the difficulty of this lough had been greatly exaggerated. In County Down there was a lough which was crossed, and it was much wider than the lough crossed in Donegal. He was sorry that they were obliged, in dealing with these Irish cases, to refer to questions of religion; but as reference to such questions had been made during the debate, it was just as well he should mention the result of the Religious Census in Donegal. The Catholic population of Donegal was 127,000, and the Protestant 47,000. The Roman Catholic population was in a considerable majority in all the divisions, as the divisions had been set out by the Commissioners; and, therefore, if it was true, as stated, that the Nationalist Party were likely to command all the Catholic votes, that Party would win all the seats in County Donegal. Even in the division in which they had some doubt of carrying the seat there were upwards of 31,000 Catholics and 20,000 and odd Protestants. He was bound to say that those who had published in Nationalist newspapers forecasts of the results of the elections in County Donegal, and also those who had made speeches on the subject, had estimated that all the four seats would be carried by the Nationalist Party. The Catholic Bishop, who took a very active part in the inquiry, and who was the first to take exception to the Commissioners' scheme, had said the Nationalists would carry all the four seats in that county, although, as had been pointed out, the Protestants were more than one-fourth of the population. ["No, no!"] Well, there were 76 per cent of Catholics. There was this security that fairness was done as between religion and religion—namely, that the Commissioner who held the inquiry was himself a Catholic, and that the Chairman of the Commission, to whom the matter was referred in London, was also a Catholic. That being the case, he hardly thought that any unfairness would be done to those who belonged to the Catholic religion. He was sorry that questions of religion were raised in this matter; he certainly was not the first to raise them.

said, he could not agree with any man on any subject more heartily than he agreed with the right hon. Baronet (Sir Charles W. Dilke) in the concluding part of his speech. It was not only disagreeable, but painful in the extreme, whenever he (Mr. Sexton) had, in arguing political questions, to refer to religious differences. He could not conceive why religion ought to prevent men who were born in the same country from acting together. But if the right hon. Baronet did not begin the reference to the differences of creed in Ireland, he (Mr. Sexton) could plead that neither did the Members of the Irish popular Party. [Sir CHARLES W. DILKE: I did not say you did.] The reference was begun by the landlord party in the North of Ireland when they raised the cry that the Protestant creed would not have adequate representation under the Bill. The landlord party, it appeared, would not be satisfied unless representation was given to the Protestant population proportionate to their numbers, without regard as to whether the Protestants did or did not live in one part of the county. He did not see any other way in which the claims of the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton) could be met than by placing the Protestants of a county in one division, and thus assuring them of a Representative. The right hon. Baronet (Sir Charles W. Dilke) amused him very much when he said that the Commissioner who held the inquiry in Donegal was a Catholic, and when he seemed to infer from that fact that any decision arrived at by that gentleman would be or ought to be satisfactory to Catholics. There was nothing more familiar to those acquainted with Ireland than that a Government having the power of the purse and the power of administration in any country could get men to do just what they pleased. He need simply remind the Committee that when the Government found it necessary to attack and insult and defame and injure the Catholic priesthood in Ireland, it was a Catholic Judge, the late Mr. Justice Keogh, who did so. Now, the Commissioners had admitted that they had made certain errors; but they endeavoured to make a point against the Nationalist Party by saying that, whilst they were in favour of uniting in South Donegal two baronies which had an area of the sea between them, in North Donegal they disapproved of a similar state of things. Now, the Bay of Donegal did not run to any considerable extent into South Donegal, or, at least, when it ceased to be a broad inlet it became exceedingly narrow and threw no difficulty in the way of communication. The Bay of Donegal, in respect to width, was not to be compared with Lough Swilly. Lough Swilly ran into the very heart of County Donegal, as far as the town of Letterkenny, and it attained a width of no less than four miles at one part of it. In point of fact, he was assured by a gentleman who well knew the county of Donegal, that there was no communication between the western and eastern sides of the lough. Touching the question of similarity of pursuits, he might say that there was really a fishing industry in South Donegal. He saw by the last Report of the Inspectors of Fisheries that in and around the town of Donegal there were about 1,000 men and boys engaged in the fisheries; so that if there was any force to be attached to the argument that Donegal Bay had a dividing influence, it was more than compensated for by the fact that the fishing industry was very large. The case was entirely different in Lough Swilly. The noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton) made a point at the expense of Mr. Patrick Gallagher, who was reported by a Tory gentleman to have said he did not care for the Instructions of the Government; all he wanted was to jerrymander the division. He (Mr. Sexton) was not aware that Mr. Patrick Gallagher made the observations attributed to him; but, assuming that he did, it appeared to him that Mr. Patrick Gallagher was exceedingly frank. He (Mr. Sexton) did not suppose that any Nationalist in Ireland had any other desire than that the Nationalists should return as many Members as it was possible for them to do; and, on the other hand, he did not suppose that the noble Lord (Lord George Hamilton), or any of his hon. Friends, desired that the number of Tory seats should be diminished if any possible means could secure the retention of the present number. The only difference between the noble Lord and Mr. Patrick Gallagher was that Mr. Patrick Gallagher said what he meant, and the noble Lord abstained from going through that operation. What was the argument of the noble Lord? He stated that one-fourth of the people of Donegal were of the Protestant creed. He (Mr. Sexton) had just pointed out to the right hon. Baronet the President of the Local Government Board (Sir Charles W. Dilke) that they were not. The Catholics of Donegal numbered 157,000, and the Protestants 47,000. It followed there would have to be 4,000 more Protestants in the county to give them one-fourth of the population, and thus entitle them to one seat. But wherever the Catholics were massed together in such numbers as to entitle them to return a Member the Commissioners divided them here and divided them there, even to throwing them over a range of mountains; in fact, everything that was possible was done in order to procure a division in which the natural predominance of the Catholics should be neutralized. What was done in Donegal? The Protestants were nowhere in sufficient numbers to entitle them to a Member; but the Commissioners took the barony in which they existed in the greatest numbers, and disregarding all the conditions of compactness, pursuits of the population, and well-known areas, they sent out scouts in every direction and took in from every quarter of the county such districts as contained large bodies of Protestants in order to swell the total number in the given division. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board, in speaking of the creeds in the barony of Raphoe, showed that ignorance of Irish affairs which made it exceedingly difficult to discuss such affairs in the House of Commons. The right hon. Baronet said that the Catholics in Raphoe numbered 31,000, and the Protestants upwards of 20,000. He (Mr. Sexton) thought the figures were incorrect; but, assuming them to be correct, the right hon. Baronet drew from them an unjustifiable inference. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that the political power of the Catholics of Raphoe would be according to those numbers. That was altogether contrary to the fact. The Catholics in Raphoe occupied the position of domestic and farm servants. The land was held by Protestant farmers, who were the inheritors of the policy of plantation, and the descendants of the planters in Ulster. Many of the Catholics were the servant boys and girls whose parents lived in other counties in Ulster; in fact, a very great part of the 30,000 Catholics in that district was made up of those who occupied the position of servants who had not votes. The 30,000 Catholics, therefore, would not exercise political power at all proportionate to their number. The 20,000 Protestants inhabiting the homesteads of the division would count among them a greater number of Parliamentary voters than the 30,000 Catholics, who were accurately described as "hewers of wood and drawers of water." If there was any county in Ireland the natural configuration of which dictated the divisions for Parliamentary purposes, it was the county of Donegal. Let them glance at North Donegal. The premonitory of Inishowen was separated by Lough Swilly from the rest of the county. It contained within 10,000 of the number of people necessary to form a Parliamentary division itself, and the Commissioners in their first scheme thought it a reasonable and sensible course to regard Inishowen, shut off as it was from the rest of the county, as the basis of the unit, adding to it a part of the barony of Raphoe to bring the population up to the required number. Then with regard to Kilmacrenan. That was a barony which contained the precise number of people to entitle it to a Member. It was a division formed by nature on the western side of Lough Swilly. It was separated from the district of Inishowen by Lough Swilly, and from Boylagh in the South by an almost impassable range of mountains. In the South the baronies of Tirhugh and Banagh were separated from the rest of the county by mountains. Thus there were three natural divisions—Inishowen, Kilmacrenan, and the baronies of Tirhugh and Banagh. It was plain that the Commissioners should have accepted the divisions which Nature had made for them, and then to have added a fourth division in the shape of the baronies of Boylagh and Raphoe. Both of those baronies were agricultural. There was certainly in Raphoe a small flax industry, but agriculture was the chief industry; Boylagh was purely agricultural. The noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton) made a great deal of the range of mountains which he said ran between Boylagh and Baphoe. There was a range of mountains there, but it was a range which had passes through it. Between Boylagh and Kilmacrenan, however, there was an impassible range of mountains; no one ever passed over it except occasionally at one remote point where there was a footroad. There was no practical thoroughfare between the baronies of Boylagh and Kilmacrenan, which the Commissioners had put in one division; so that when the noble Lord spoke of a range of mountains as a very good reason for shutting off a division which had many Catholics in it, he should boar in mind that there was a bigger range of mountains separating Boylagh and Kilmacrenan baronies, which the Commissioners had linked together. Instead of taking the divisions formed by Nature, the Commissioners started with the barony of Raphoe, making that the unit. The barony of Baphoe was the ground of the old plantation of Ulster. It was divided between the people of the imported and favourite creed, and the Catholics were driven to the outskirts of the mountains of Inishowen and Kilmacrenan. The Commissioners had added to the barony of Baphoe those parts of the baronies of Inishowen and Kilmacrenan which contained the Protestant population. They had actually pursued in 1885 the policy of the old plantation of 200 years ago; they had shut off the Catholic population, and had taken into the barony of Baphoe all those parts of other baronies where a majority of Protestants could be found, without having any regard to the well-known boundaries of baronies, or the natural configuration of the country. To such an extent had the Commissioners carried out that policy that the chief town of Kilmacrenan was actually taken away from that barony and added to the barony of Raphoe. The inhabitants of Boylagh knew as little of Kilmacrenan as they knew of the most distant parts of Ireland. Mr."White, the learned Commissioner, in endeavouring to account for the union of places upon both sides of Lough Swilly, had delivered himself of a very extraordinary argument. Mr. White said he did not place any serious importance to the fact that Lough Swilly ran in through the Northern Division; that fact was counterbalanced by the consideration that the riparian inhabitants on both sides were of a homogeneous class. He (Mr. Sexton) might say, in passing, that he had always understood that riparian inhabitants were persons living on the side of a river. Lough Swilly was not a river, but an arm of the sea, four or five miles wide. Now, was it a fact that there was any intercourse between the inhabitants of both shores of Lough Swilly? The fact was this—that Lough Swilly formed as absolute a division between Kilmacrenan and Inishowen as the Atlantic Ocean formed between Ireland and America. Lough Swilly was four miles wide, it was an inlet of the sea, even visited by storms, and the only means of safe transit across it was one ferry. They were told that the people had to cross Lough Swilly because they had fishing occupations. Now, some of the parishes which had been cut off from Kilmacrenan and added to Inishowen were parishes not bordering on the lough at all; they were parishes in which there were no fish, and consequently where there were no fishermen. And with reference to the parishes beside the lake, he said that the fishing industry was more active upon the western side than upon the eastern side. And if the fishing industry were to be considered at all, it would be better served by allowing the inhabitants to go over to the western side of the lough. Again, it was true that the people along the shores of the lough spoke the Irish language; but they spoke the English language also, and therefore there was no peculiarity established in that regard. The fact was, that in the barony of Kilmacrenan and along the shore there was a considerable number of people who spoke the Irish language alone. Therefore, if there was any force in the argument of the Commissioners with regard to uniting the Irish-speaking populations of this part of the county, it was a force which told against their own decision. Now, when they found officials driven to such extremes as these in order to find a colourable reason for a scandalous division of the county, he thought it was time to say that all argument was at an end. The more he looked at the question, the more clear it appeared to him that the Commissioners, who had at first made a tolerably honest scheme, and who only departed from it when they found there was perfect unity with regard to it, had violated every one of the Instructions given them by the Government—the Instructions as to compactness of boundary and similarity of pursuits—and that, in order to justify their scheme, they set up an illusive argument as to the identity of pursuits of the people which had no foundation. The county of Donegal was agricultural; there was no independent industry, and no extensive fishing population, the number of those who fished being only about 3,000. The argument of identity of pursuits had, therefore, no application to Donegal except in the Southern Division, where, perhaps, the main part of the fishing industry, slight as it was, would be found. No; the Commissioners started from the areas in which English Kings, 200 years ago, founded Colonies for the benefit of Pro- testants, and they cast out from the divisions the Catholics, and added to them as many Protestants as they could. They scorned the Instructions given to them by the Government, and they exerted themselves to form a scheme which would enable a member of the house of Hamilton to find a seat for the county. That was the object they had in view. But he did not believe that a member of that family would sit for Donegal, because the people at the next General Election would have learnt that their interest did not lie in returning a Tory to Parliament. Finally, he said that, for the purpose of preventing a political result in Donegal which both they and the Government desired to avoid, the Commissioners had violated all the Instructions distinctly laid down for their guidance in respect of this Bill.

said, it was difficult to understand why, if the Commissioners had kept in view the conformation of the County Down, they should have given to the four divisions the designations which appeared on the Schedule. He thought it would be more correct to call the 2nd Division the North-West Division, or it should be called the West Down Division; that No. 3 should be called the East Down, and No. 4 the South Down Division; and, therefore, he would move to leave out the word "The" from line 4.

said, at the inquiry a large body of evidence was given before the Commissioners to show that the inhabitants of Upper Ards were much more closely connected with the people of No. 3 Division than they were with Lower Ardo and Castlereagh Upper. The proposed arrangement of the Government was most inconvenient, and the suggestion he made would render more equal the populations of the different divisions of the county—that was to say, that the entire of Upper Ards, with the exception of one parish, should be joined to the 3rd Division.

said, that the proposal of the hon. Member appeared to be one of the proposals made at the inquiry, respecting which the Commissioners reported to the effect that there was no ground in favour of it. It had not been shown that there was any advantage in the arrangement proposed; and, in view of the Report, he could not agree to the Amendment.

said, that the proposal of his hon. Friend was in no sense a political one, and, therefore, he thought that the right hon. Baronet would do well to consider the matter. The Party to which he belonged had got all they could extract out of County Down; that was to say, they had one seat— namely, for the Lower Division; and they would have had that in any case, even if the Commissioners had not changed their original plan. He did not think that the right hon. Baronet quite appreciated the local feeling in regard to Lower Ards. He found that at the time there was only one individual who opposed the plan put forward by his hon. Friend; and the fact that the Tory Party had shown no opposition whatever with regard to the change now proposed was a proof that the Tory Party were better served in County Down than anywhere else in Ireland. Their representative, Mr. Finigan, was a gentleman who possessed a good deal of the suaviter in modo, and he remained perfectly silent throughout the proceedings, and, as he had said before, only one gentleman opposed the arrangement suggested. He did not agree with the right hon. Baronet that it would have the effect of un-shaping the entire county. If he looked at the map he would see that it was not so. On the other hand, the feeling at Upper Ards was very strongly opposed to the Government proposal; the inhabitants had to go to Downpatrick on business connected with the Police, Poor Law, and County Court, as they were in the Downpatrick Union, and, therefore, they found it hard to be divorced from the district with which they were fa- miliar. He hoped the right hon. Baronet would reconsider this reasonable proposal of his hon. Friend. He would point out also that the entire population of Lower Ards were engaged in market-gardening, and only went to Belfast with their goods; whereas he had shown that the people of Upper Ards all went to Downpatrick, and, therefore, there was no connection between them. As a politician, he assured the right hon. Baronet that the Nationalists could not gain anything by this proposal.

said, he was disposed to agree with the finding of the Commissioners in this case unless some stronger arguments were forthcoming than those yet brought forward. He accepted the statement of the hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) that there was no political object underlying the Amendment; but, as the matter now stood, he should certainly vote in favour of the conclusion arrived at by the Commissioners, which appeared to offer the most satisfactory mode of settlement.

said, he should support the Amendment of his hon. Friend, on the ground that they would probably have a Government Bill in a short time dealing with local matters; and he thought it desirable that the centres of localities should be, as far as possible, the centres of the Poor Law Unions.

said, that whatever were the arguments which he and his hon. Friends brought forward, they received no consideration from the Government. The opinions of the Commissioners, who spent half-an-hour in these places, were more important in the eyes of the Government than the opinions of Irish Members who had been in them all their lives; the Commissioners went down by one train and returned by another, and their opinion was regarded by the Government as final. If they had had the County Government Bill, it would have dealt with the county in the way his hon. Friend proposed; but this scheme of the Commissioners absolutely wrenched the people asunder, so far as concerned the natural boundaries, and he was really surprised that the right hon. Baronet was unwilling to give Irish Members satisfaction on this matter. Under the circumstances, be thought they were justified in dividing the Committee, although, whatever they might do, he knew that they could get nothing whatever from the Government in respect of these arrangements.

said, the Amendment before the Committee would have the effect of making the population of the division equal, and generally of covering the main points on which the Government had instructed the Commissioners. He thought the right hon. Baronet would admit that the Amendment of his hon. Friend had much to recommend it in the fact that it was not due to any political motive. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Plunket) had recommended his hon. Friend not to go to a division, but to raise the question again on the Report.

said, the proposal was of a kind that would affect a good many counties besides County Down, and he would suggest that the right hon. Baronet (Sir Charles W. Dilke) should consider the matter between now and the Report, and endeavour to arrange the different parts of the divisions in a more orderly manner.

said, he should be glad to do what was suggested, if that were thought the best way; but he did not think it would matter whether they took that course or dealt with the question at once. He was quite willing to allow the alteration now proposed, and as the Committee had already agreed to make certain alterations in regard to this county, perhaps it would be better to take the Amendments in order, and deal with them now.

said, as he understood the right hon. Gentleman did not offer any opposition to his proposal to alter the order in which parts of the divisions were placed in the Schedule, he would ask the Chairman to put his Amendment.

I do not object.

said, line 16 came next, and he supposed the hon. Member (Mr. Small) would propose to leave out the figure 3 in that line.

wished to call the attention of the right hon. Baronet (Sir Charles W. Dilke) to the fact that, in all the divisions of the Schedule, there were dashes running on the paragraphs, which was a mere printer's mode of setting out the lines. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he would not have those dashes omitted?

Yes, Sir.

desired to call the hon. Member's attention to the fact that the proposed alteration of the title of the 1st Division of County 'Dublin might tend to create confusion as between the divisions of Dublin City and Dublin County.

said, it would be in the recollection of the right hon. Baronet that at a previous stage of the Bill he had proposed to amend the divisions of the City of Dublin, as recommended by the Commissioners and as fixed in the Schedule defining the borough divisions, by calling them after the historic sites or areas of the city, and one of the reasons he then gave was that he was desirous of preventing confusion, and of having the points of the compass inserted as the titles of the county divisions.

said, they had the advantage of the presence of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the County of Dublin (Colonel King-Har-man); perhaps he would favour the Committee with his views on this proposal?

said, he had not the slightest objection to it.

said, he had now to move the next Amendment. He desired to express the extremely strong objections felt by himself and his hon. Friends to the division of the county of Dublin proposed by the final scheme of the Boundary Commissioners. This was another case in which they were obliged to appeal from the Commissioners to the Commissioners themselves. The first scheme proposed by the Commissioners was just as satisfactory to the public as the second scheme was faulty and objectionable. In other cases, it could be alleged that the Boundary Commissioners had discharged their duties in the most thorough manner, although they had not very much time for consideration; and it might also be said of them that, in preparing their first schemes, they had to deal with matters with which they were not perhaps very well acquainted, and that, therefore, they fell into certain errors, which they were obliged to correct when they were called upon to frame their final schemes. But with regard to the county of Dublin, he had no hesitation in saying that the Commissioners had had plenty of time to consider their original scheme, and that two of the Commissioners permananently resided in Dublin, and were therefore dealing with a county and a population with the circumstances and pursuits of which they were perfectly well acquainted. The first scheme the Commissioners had presented met with the complete approval of the Representatives of the National Party, as expressed at the public inquiry; but he had to note, as a very extraordinary fact, that whenever the Representatives of the National Party in Ireland offered any objection to a particular scheme, the points objected to were sure to be upheld against them; while, on the other hand, whenever the Representatives of that Party agreed to the general features of a scheme framed by the Boundary Commissioners and declared it a satisfactory one, the chances were that the scheme was sure to be so altered as to render it unsatisfactory in almost all those respects wherein it had received their approval. He wished to point out that the first scheme of the Commissioners in relation to the division of Dublin County was a convenient one, and one which satisfied the Instructions given by the Government for th.9 guidance of the Commissioners. For instance, it fully satisfied the Instruction that they should have regard to the principle of equality of population, because in the Northern Division of the county of Dublin—the Malahide Division—the population was put down as 73,100, while the population of the Southern Division was estimated at 72,400; so that the Commissioners had divided a county with a population of 145,500 into two divisions so equally that the disparity between the two was only 700. This result was accepted as a satisfactory discharge of the obligations imposed on the Commissioners by the Instructions of the Government that they were to have due regard to equality of population. He had next to inquire whether the first scheme suggested by the Commissioners satisfied the Instructions they had received with regard to compactness of area and with respect to the preservation, as far as possible, of well-known existing boundaries? The map which he then held in his hand offered a view of the four divisions of the county as recommended by the Commissioners before their scheme had come under the influence of the agents of the Tory Party. A glance at that map would suffice to show that in the first division the Commissioners proposed to take four baronies also to the North of the city, and to add to them five parishes to the North of the city, and form them into the Northern Division of the county, the Southern Division being formed of the whole of the remaining area. Under that scheme the county was divided into two nearly equal parts; the baronial boundaries were respected and preserved intact with the exception only of five parishes, and in the fixing of these equal areas security was taken in regard to the future increase of population; for it was obvious that when large equal areas were included in divisions the fluctuations of populalation would in all probability be equalized, not only with regard to the present time but in time to come. The first of the Commissioners' schemes having been one of so satisfactory a character in regard to equality of population and compactness of areas, it might be asked how had it come to pass that the Commissioners had been induced to alter the scheme? The alteration they had made was one which might have been satisfactory to the Commissioners themselves, but it certainly failed to satisfy the people. He was sure the Committee would be puzzled to imagine any reason why the Commissioners, having formulated a scheme such as he had just described, should afterwards have departed from their original plan in so fundamental and objectionable a manner. Upon this point he should like to quote a few expressions of public opinion in reference to the second scheme of the Commissioners. The Kingstown branch of the National Association had characterized the proposal of the Government as a flagrant departure from the Instructions they had given to the Commissioners, and as an attempt to deprive the National Party of their legitimate share of the representation. The Rathmines branch of the Association had described the proposed division under the second scheme as most absurd and unfair, and a palpable concession to the Conservative minority. Other branches of the Association had characterized the scheme as utterly at variance with every principle of justice, as well as with the Instructions given by the Government, and had asserted that the Commissioners had in the most degrading manner abrogated their functions. The Committee had already had the opportunity of seeing that the two divisions of the county as proposed by the first of the Commissioners' schemes were equal. Let them now glance at the divisions recommended by the Commissioners in their second scheme. One of those divisions was formed from a small segment of the county, which in point of area was only 1–20th of the whole, while the other division contained the remaining 19–20ths of the county area. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Trevelyan) seemed to think that examples of a similar kind could be found elsewhere; but he (Mr. Sexton) should be very glad if the right hon. Gentleman would point out to him a single instance in which, where there were only two divisions, one of them occupied an area of 19–20ths, while the other contained only the remaining 1–20th. The solicitor to the Emergency Association had appeared before the Commissioners at Rathmines. He had represented that Rathmines was an urban district, and ought not to be thrown into the county.

asked who was the solicitor referred to?

said, the solicitors to the Emergency Association were Messrs. Dudgeon and Emerson.

asked who was the counsel?

replied, that the counsel was Mr. John Gibson. Their objection to the first scheme, which had been shown to be so rational and convenient, was that part of Rathmines was taken into the North of the county of Dublin, and that it was an urban district and ought to be formed into an urban division. He should not greatly object to the inclusion of Rathmines in an urban division, if it could be shown that that object could be really effected, or that that purpose was really hold in view by those who advanced the plea. But it was a very strange fact that while the Commissioners of Rathmines refused to have the place attached to the City of Dublin and strove to show that it was of a rural character, they also urged that it was an urban district. When they wanted to utilize all the Tory votes it was an urban district; but when they wanted to escape the taxes of the city it was a rural district. It was true that in the Southern Division of the county of Dublin the townships of Blackrock, Kingstown, Killiney, and Bray were included, and the villaholders of Black-rock were to be found in the same division with the quarrymen and farmers of Tallaght. That was not an urban district at all. It included a large proportion of the agricultural population, and it shut out the urban population of all the seaboard towns from Balbriggan in the North down to the City of Dublin. The whole arrangement of this scheme rested upon a sham and a pretence. The Commissioners had acted on the suggestion of the Marquess of Salisbury that they should divide the counties in a spirit favourable to the Tory Party. They had taken three or four townships chiefly inhabited by persons who were supposed to have Tory predilections and proclivities, and had thrown them into one division, and all the rest into another. The divisions were different in point of area, in regard to boundary, and in regard to the probable increase of population; and the Commissioners had entitled themselves to be branded with the imputation of gross partiality. He asked the Committee to assent to the first scheme of the Commissioners, which would still include a great portion of the urban population, which would have regard to the baronial baronies, and which would give an equal population. He could not imagine what argument could be advanced against it.

said, the case of the county of Dublin had been raised on more than one occasion. It was said that what was proposed for that county did not follow any of the precedents, and he had been asked by the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken to produce precedents. The hon. Gentleman had now narrowed his question to the case of counties with two Members; but even when thus narrowed, there were other cases very similar to this. One was the case of the area around Newcastle, where the division was extremely small. That was a very striking case to which no objection had been taken. Other cases were those of Perth and Renfrew, where the Liberal Party had raised just the same objection as was raised here. The coun- ties of Perth and Renfrew were counties with two Members, divided into one very large and one very small division—the small, a populous division; the large, a rural division. In the present case there was a very dense population in one part of the county, and a thin population elsewhere. Of course, the Commissioners had endeavoured to put the dense population together and the scattered population together, and if he had been the Commissioners, acting under the Instructions which were given to them, he should have taken the very same course. The question was whether, given that course, the Commissioners had acted rightly, and there might be more doubt about that, owing to the fact that there were urban districts not included in the small division, but included in the agricultural division. But that objection applied more to the first scheme of the Commissioners than to the present one. If it was an objection to the scheme, it had been greatly diminished indeed, if not removed, by the later changes in the scheme. If the Commissioners had tried to make the urban division contain the whole of the urban population, they would have made a district in the form of a ring right round Dublin. He was not going to argue that they might not have taken that course. It had been taken, in the case of the Bootle Divisions, right round Liverpool; but it had not been very successful, so far as local feeling went, and there had been considerable opposition to that narrow strip around the town. He was not sure whether it was not wise to adopt a more concentrated form. He thought the Commissioners had interpreted their Instructions rightly in forming one very small and one very large division in the county of Dublin, and with less certainty he imagined that they were probably right in forming the divisions in this particular way; but, as to that, he should not like to speak positively.

said, that when the Commissioners were sitting, there was a very strong feeling, and all the parties interested were in favour of some scheme like that now adopted by the Commissioners. He himself had representations from people representing all classes—not merely his own Party, but others—in favour of the scheme. There was not a doubt that when the scheme was first proposed by the Commissioners on going to Dublin, it was one which startled a great many persons, for it brought together a great many people who were thoroughly inharmonious, and who could not have established any concert at all. But, by the present arrangement, it was evidently intended that the agricultural population should be left to itself, and the urban population to itself. He thought the Commissioners had acted with discretion. He certainly did feel that the Metropolitan county ought to have had an addition to its representation—he should have liked to have seen it with a third Member. But taking things as they were, he thought no better apportionment of the population could have been made; and he trusted the Government would adhere to the last scheme of the Commissioners.

said, he did not care a straw about this division one way or the other. He was only sorry that the Tory Party had been played upon with such false hopes, for they would not carry either division—they would not come within a mile of it. His only regret was that the Government were giving them double votes—one in the City of Dublin, where they carried on business, and one in the country where they lived. But they might jerrymander as much as they pleased—they could not carry the county of Dublin if they jerrymandered ten times worse than they had done. It was a sad thing that the Committee should now be taking almost its last look at Gentlemen, the Tory Members for the county of Dublin, who had so distinguished themselves in Church and State. Their complaint about the Dublin boundaries was that a resident in Rathmines, which was part of the city, was technically in the county, and thereby acquired a double vote because he carried on business in the city. He did not think it was a proper thing that those people should have this advantage, for they had no superior claims, and were not entitled to more consideration than anybody else. They were just ordinary mortals like other people, and it was hardly fair to imbue them with this tremendous political preponderance. Although the right hon. Baronet the President of the Local Government Board had declared that it was not unusual to pick out bits of urban population and form them into separate divisions, so far as Ireland was concerned, this was the only case in the entire country in which it had been done. On reference to the English maps, it would be found that the case of Tyneside showed no parity whatever. He knew the Tyneside Division perhaps better than the right hon. Baronet. But Northumberland possessed 10 Members for the county, and that entirely destroyed the possibility of jerrymandering the divisions in the way which had been done here, for it became absolutely necessary to pick out the suburban districts from the rest. But the case of Dublin was quite different. There were these little bits of villa areas which had been treated by themselves without any necessity or excuse whatever, and this was the only case in the whole country in which the thing had been done. How had it been done? He knew the hon. Member for Dublin County (Mr. Ion Hamilton) was at the county inquiry; but was he at the city inquiry? [Mr. ION HAMILTON dissented.] The hon. Gentleman was not present, so he (Mr. Healy) would ask his attention and that of the right hon. Baronet to what occurred. At the inquiry for the county of Dublin, where he (Mr. Healy) represented the National Party, there was not one word about this present proposal; but next day, when they were holding the inquiry into the case, not of the county, but of the city, a very distinguished and able lawyer—Mr. Jackson—representing the Emergency people, came in and hold up a map, and said to the Commissioners—"I was too late yesterday. I did not get my map prepared in time."(He Mr. Healy) would not pledge himself to the exact excuse made, but it was some excuse of that kind. Mr. Jackson went on—"Would you kindly look at this map?" Everybody in Court roared, it seemed so extraordinary a proposal. But that was the proposal of the Government. No chance was even given for debating it, and he thought it was most unfair that it should have been adopted by the Commissioners. It was not a fair thing to propose that scheme on a day when nobody knew that it would come on, and to adopt it without discussion. It was never supposed that the city inquiry would take up the county scheme; and when the map was handed in, nobody ever dreamed that it would receive any attention—the thing seemed so idiotic.

said, that was the first time he had heard of the circumstances described by the hon. and learned Gentleman.

said, everything had occurred just as he had stated it; and he asked, when Mr. Jackson handed in the scheme—"Is that the scheme of the Emergency Association?" In other words, he made a joke of it, for he did not think for a moment that it could be adopted. But the Government had adopted it; and by so doing they had put another nail into the coffin of ascendancy in Ireland, because those things always impressed the minds of the people better than anything else. The Government were playing the game of the Nationalists—they could not do it better—for they were making the people believe that they could have no fair play on any subject whatsoever. Let the Government appoint a Commission on any subject whatever, and the Nationalists were bound to get no show upon it. The loss of three seats was a small matter compared with the fact which would be fixed on the hearts of the people who were to be crucified under these divisions—that, so far as the Government could manage it, they had been cheated of their rights. This was a matter of very great importance to have fixed upon the minds of the people; and he was sure that every man in the Kingstown Division would believe that he was being unjustly treated—every man in the Northern Division would believe that he had been juggled. He congratulated the Government on the way in which they had played into the hands of the Nationalists. The loss of three or four seats was a small matter when compared with the hatred and contempt which would be stored up in the minds of the people of Ireland by their conduct on the Seats Bill.

wished for some explanation of a curious and remarkable fact. How in the world had it happened that the Tory propositions in every borough, whenever they had made any proposal to amend the original scheme of the Commissioners, had been adopted? How had it happened that the moment the Tory and Orange Party placed before the Commissioners their arguments, schemes, and facts, the Commissioners were converted, and all that was proposed was done? If that had happened in only one 'or two cases it might be supposed that it was the superior merits of the Tory scheme that went home to the hearts of the Commissioners; but when it was found that the same thing had happened all along the line the matter really required an explanation. The simple facts, which were patent to every man who looked calmly at them, were these—that the first schemes of the Commissioners were made and drawn up irrespective of Party considerations, because the Commissioners did not know the lines and locations of the political Parties in Ireland. But no sooner were they informed by the agents of the Tory Party than they gave way to them. He had heard no defence to that, and he wished hon. Members would take the trouble to look at a map of the county of Dublin, and at the original and the present scheme of the Commissioners, and they would find that there was nothing elsewhere to compare with the jerrymandering which had been going on in that county. The first proposal made a somewhat equal division of the county, which was apparent on the face of the map; but no sooner did the Tory gentlemen go before the Commissioners and open their eyes and show where the Party advantage lay than the whole scheme was withdrawn, and another one forming a little Tory preserve in a corner of the county was constructed. That was manifestly unfair; and not only there, but all over Ireland, North and South, had the Commissioners yielded to the Tory representations, except in those parts where the Tories had nothing whatever to represent, because their case was hopeless. Wherever they could, by any trick or stratagem, add to the advantage of the Tories they had done so. They had gone North, South, East, and West to pick up bits and scraps of territory wherever it would suit the purposes of the Tory Party, and had yielded to the representations made to them in this unfair, irregular, and improper manner. He had heard the Tory Party jocosely spoken of as the stupid Party; but in this matter they had shown themselves a very wide-awake Party indeed. No doubt it was very right and proper on their part so to do; but what right had the Commissioners or the Government to play into the hands of those gentlemen, and to make them- selves political partizans? They had a certain line of instructions; but they evaded them and did not abide by them, and they had strained everything in order to concede all that those Tory gentlemen could possibly demand. There was only one instance in Ireland in which they had not conceded everything that the Orange and Tory Party asked for. But the whole of this debate was a sham. What was the use of argument? All that the Nationalist Party could do was to mate a protest. As to any effect upon this Committee, they did not expect to produce any. The Committee were nominally free to do as they liked, but practically the whole thing had been settled—the bargain had been made, and he and his Friends were only talking to the empty air, because freedom of discussion in this instance was only a sham and a farce. Nothing was to be bad from it except the gratification of showing that they understood the game, and complained of it to the people of Ireland, who also understood the whole matter, and who would, at the General Election, show their appreciation of the scandalous way in which they had been treated.

said, he thought it only fair, after what had been said by the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down about this being an attempt to play into the hands of the Tories and Orangemen, that be should say a word or two upon that charge. He could speak of one gentleman who took a principal part in this inquiry—Mr. Piers White, one of the most distinguished Queen's Counsel at present at the Irish Bar, a Roman Catholic in religion, and a gentleman who had been all his life a decided Liberal in politics. [Several hon. MEMBEES: No, no!] He begged pardon of hon. Members who denied that statement. He was sorry to say that his public life bad been much longer than that of some of them; and he could state of his own knowledge that Mr. Piers White had always been a decided Liberal in politics as well as a Roman Catholic. Therefore, he said that, so far as he was concerned, it was absurd to charge against him any connection with the Orange Tory faction. He had lived at Kingstown all his life, and knew every inch of the district as well as he knew the interior of that House, and be would state to the Committee what was really the condition of the problem. It was perfectly true that if they looked at the map of the county as it had been left by the decision of the Commissioners, they would see that the Kingstown Division, or, as it was to be called in the future, the (Southern Division of the county, was contained within very narrow limits. That was true. It was the South-Eastern corner of the county. It contained a population of 72,000, and the division, so far as the rest of the county was concerned, was exactly equal; but it was almost impossible for the Commissioners to avoid making one a very small division and the other a large one. It would have been impossible to avoid some such division as that which had been chosen. Why was it that the Commissioners had chosen this particular way of producing the inequality of population? It was because they were instructed, rightly or wrongly, to have regard to the pursuits of the people. All those who lived in the South-Eastern District had the same pursuits. [Mr. SEXTON: What are they?] A certain number of them were professional men, some were landlords, and some were merchants. At any rate, they were all of the same avenue of life, so to speak. With regard to the rest of the county, it had a much more rural population. He knew there would be some voters in the South-Eastern District who would be what they might call thoroughly agricultural people—rural people, in the ordinary sense—just as in Youghal or Balbriggan they would have a certain number of urban residents. It was obvious to everyone who knew the county that, in the course the Commissioners had adopted, they had done their best to carry out their Instructions. It was true that the Balbriggan District was much larger and much more sparsely populated. He should not have thought it necessary to intrude in the debate if it had not been for the charge of partisanship advanced against the Commissioners, which, so far as the gentleman of whom he had been speaking was concerned, was as baseless as it could be.

said, that he must say he failed to see the applicability of the remarks of the right hon. and learned Gentleman who had just sat down with reference to one of these Commissioners. After all, what did the statement of the right hon. and learned Gentleman amount to? He told them that Mr. Piers White was an intimate friend of his own. That was, no doubt, a testimony to the character of Mr. White; but it did not affect the question at all. Then the right hon. and learned Gentleman told them that Mr. Piers White was a Roman Catholic and a Liberal. How, in the name of goodness, did that contravene the contention of the Irish Members? Their contention was that this jerrymandering had been carried on with the consent of the Liberal Government as a part of a bargain which they had made with the Tories. [A laugh.] The right hon. and learned Gentleman laughed. It was easy to do that; but no one knew better than he did what the full extent of that bargain between the two great English Parties really was. No one knew better than he that a large part of that bargain was based upon a certain arrangement being made in Ireland, so as to facilitate the return of Tory Members in certain cases where, if the rules of fairness had been observed, those Members would have had no chance. So that the fact of Mr. Piers White being a Liberal in no way exonerated him from the blame which the Irish Members justly attached to him for carrying on a policy of conceding what he could to the demands of the Liberal Party. The excuse which had been repeatedly put forward for the Commissioners, that they had made their division in order to keep together as far as possible those engaged in the same pursuits, did not, to his mind, apply to this case at all. It was absurd to talk of one of those divisions, the smaller one, as being in an urban part of the county, and the other being in an agricultural part. The Northern Division was not an agricultural division. As had been pointed out, it included a number of suburban districts, such as Malahide, Swords, and Skerries, to the North of Lublin. That was no more agricultural in reality than the Southern District. This was almost the first time that he (Mr. J. Redmond) had taken part in any of these discussions. He had listened most attentively to almost all of them, and had certainly brought to bear upon the subject a thoroughly impartial mind. He had been impressed night after night, more and more, with the conviction that these Commissioners had acted unfairly in forming these divisions in Ireland, and that they had acted unfairly with deliberation. He agreed with what had fallen from the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) when he said that after all, though the Nationalists might lose some seats through this jerrymandering, they would yet have substantial consolation in the knowledge that the more such jerrymandering went on, and the more instances were recorded of the influence upon popular representation of the English Government in Ireland, the stronger would the National cause become, and the more inevitable would be the failure of that power which had been from the very commencement, and which was that day in Ireland, founded on injustice and trickery.

said, that what the hon. Gentleman had just said showed the tone that had been adopted by hon. Members below the Gangway. The hon. Member presumed upon a geographical ignorance on the part of English Members when he tried to impress upon them that a large population had been included in the Northern Division. The hon. Member said that the Balbriggan Division was not a rural constituency at all, and that it included such important places as Skerries and Swords. Well, he (Colonel King-Harman) should like to ask how many people were included in that way? Those places were nothing but wretched villages, as the hon. Member well knew——

said, he mentioned other instances. He did not mention those two alone.

said, that Malahide was the other—a town which in the summer season contained a certain population who went down for the sea-bathing. At other times the place could hardly be called a town at all, certainly not a town of any importance. With regard to other towns which had been mentioned in the course of the debate, they could be easily disposed of. The first Amendment moved as to County Dublin constituency was moved by the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton), who preferred that the name "North Dublin" should be used instead of Balbriggan, and yet he wished to see a part of the county included in the Southern Division.

said, he had never made any attempt of that kind at all.

said, he did not say that the hon. Member had made any attempt in the matter; but he had moved that Balbriggan should be called North Dublin, and the hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) had complained that townships included in the North should be included in the South Dublin Division. It was impossible to separate the language of one hon. Member from that of the other. Then the hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. T. D. Sullivan), in common with other hon. Members, spoke a great deal about the Orange Tory Party. They had spoken about the collapse of the Government, and of the surrender of the Government to the Tory Party. It was said that these demands were made by the Orange Tory Party, and no one but the Orange Tory Party, whoever those unfortunate people were, had anything to do with it, and that a shrinking and. trembling English Government had had to give in to that Party. The remarks to which he was referring were equally correct with the statement which he was sure was not made with an intention to mislead the Committee, but which would mislead the Committee—namely, that a certain scheme had been put forward by the solicitor to the Emergency Committee. Hon. Members would lead the Committee to imagine that this Emergency Committee was a body of men banded together for the suppression of all Ireland; and certain hon. Members below the Gangway especially would have it thought that those people had employed some diabolic firebrand for the purpose of blowing from the breach certain gentlemen, and misleading the Commissioners, and bringing in some dreadful scheme. But it happened that the Emergency Committee had nothing whatever to do with the county of Dublin as a political body, and nothing whatever to do with any of the schemes which had been put before the Commission. He was absent from Ireland at the time, but he believed it was a fact that the solicitors to the Emergency Committee did instruct, on behalf of certain ratepayers who were not in any way connected with the Committee, and who, to the best of his belief, were not subscribers to the Committee, and never had been—did instruct Mr. Jackson to bring in a certain scheme; but the fact that he happened to be a solicitor to the Emergency Committee was taken hold of by hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway, and the scheme was put before the Committee as being that of the Emergency Committee, whereas that Committee had had nothing whatever to do with it. That was an instance of the manner in which hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway strove by innuendo to mislead the Committee as to what was being done by the Orange Tory Party and the Emergency Committee—Gentlemen who did not happen to agree with him (Colonel King-Harman) in politics. He did not think that the statements of those hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway deserved much reply, because their statements were not arguments. He merely wished to point out that their innuendoes about the Orange Tory Party were a sort of bluster, to give the Committee a wrong idea, to impress upon the Committee that the Commissioners had either been Orange Tories themselves, or fools enough to be misled or coerced by them. He knew something about the solicitors to the Emergency Committee, and he was aware that they had submitted a scheme totally different from the one propounded by Mr. Jackson, and who would have brought before the Commissioners a scheme to which he (Colonel King-Harman) could have consented. [Mr. HEALY: What was it?] It was one that would not have improved his (Colonel King-Harman's) position in the county of Dublin.

said, that he did not think that, under all the circumstances, even the indignation of the hon. and gallant Gentleman who had just sat down would have supported his position in the county of Dublin very materially. That position was so strong and so unassailable at present that it did not require that to strengthen it. He took it that if any doubt existed in the minds of the Committee as to the connection between the Orange Tory Party and the scheme which was put forward by Mr. Jackson, solicitor to the Emergency Committee, and adopted by the Commissioners, that the speech of the hon. and gallant Member had completely set all doubt in that respect at rest.

I never saw the scheme in my life until now.

The hon. and gallant Member has satisfied us on that head, and has told us what the scheme is.

I did not.

What do you know about it?

He told us that an original scheme had been propounded.

I rise to explain. What I said was, that I knew, as a matter of fact, what the scheme propounded by the two gentlemen, the solicitors to the Emergency Committee, happened to be. Whether they propounded that scheme or not before the Commissioners I cannot say. I do not know whether that was the original scheme, and I never saw it before two days ago.

That was what I said.

You said the original scheme.

That is now one of the amended schemes that they adopted on further consideration.

No.

said, that the hon. and gallant Member acknowledged that they were the same people; but his contention was that their two capacities had no connection whatever. He (Mr. Gray) took it that innuendo was not required under any circumstances, and that assertion must take the place of innuendo. He was satisfied that those hon. Gentlemen who had listened to the speech of the hon. and gallant Member had had all the doubts in their minds now set at rest. The senior Member for the county of Dublin (Mr. Ion Hamilton) in his speech had said that he was sorry that three Members had not been given to the county of Dublin; and he (Mr. Gray) quite agreed with the hon. Member that in view of the population very nearly approaching to the number which would have secured three seats in the scheme, and in view of the character of the Metropolitan county, that three Members might very well have been given to it. But what was the nature of the scheme as it stood? The real effect of it was to give to the county only one Member. The arrangement which had now been adopted for the Southern Division—what was called the Kingstown Division—he did not know what its ultimate name would be—did not look like a division of the county at all. It was simply a group of boroughs. The Committee had decided that they would not adopt the system of grouping boroughs, the Government having said that their experience of it led them to conclude that it was not desirable. The Committee were of opinion that it was an arrangement they should not attempt to adopt; but in the present case they had grouped certain boroughs under the name of a county constituency, and given to Dublin County one Member. No one could contend for a moment that the Kingstown Division, with Blackrock and Rathmines included in it—no one could conclude that the legitimate and proper name for such a division could be other than "Kingstown," "Black-rock," or "Rathmines." It was not a county division at all. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Plunket) had said that, in order to comply with the requirements of the directions given to the Commissioners to secure equal population, it was almost impossible to adopt any scheme but that which was now before the Committee. Well, how was it that the Commissioners had, as a matter of fact, adopted a totally different scheme? Remember, they were not promulgating a scheme of their own. They said that the original scheme of the Commissioners was the better of the two—namely, the scheme which divided the county—he did not say into absolutely equal divisions, but into practically equal divisions. It would have given two constituencies to the county of Dublin. What the hon. and gallant Gentleman thought was out of the question in regard to forming two equal divisions was actually done until this solicitor—whether he was a Tory solicitor or a solicitor for the hon. and gallant Gentleman did not matter—came in with his pet scheme. When this pet scheme was brought forward the Commissioners adopted it right off. He (Mr. Gray) felt the hopelessness of arguing this question. They all knew, of course, that the Government were not going to modify the scheme in any way; but let them, at any rate, have the effects of it put plainly before the Committee. What it would really do was this—No matter what the political character of hon. Gentlemen who were returned to that House for the Kingstown Division might be, he would not in any sense be a County Member. He would be a Metropolitan Member. This division, with its large number of inhabitants, would, to all intents and purposes, have a single County Member representing it. If the Government had intended to do that it would have been better to have made this division the borough of Kingstown. He could then have understood what it meant. If it had been proposed to associate a Member with Kingstown—Kingstown having certain townships added to it to bring the population up to the required number—everything would have been above-board; but if that had been done it would have then been impossible to resist the claim of Dublin County for another Member. He thought the scheme of the Government was objectionable, and that if the Committee were left to form a free decision upon the matter, they would be likely to go back to the original scheme of the Commissioners. He would urge all who could possibly do so to protest against the proposal of the Government. It was only necessary to glance at the matter to see its absurdity; and it only required the slightest knowledge of the neighbourhood and of the character of the constituency to convince anyone that what he (Mr. Gray) stated was really a fact. The Government had practically manufactured a borough constituency out of one corner of Dublin County; and anyone who had the slightest knowledge of the neighbourhood could see that the scheme practically left only one County Member for Dublin.

said, he was sure, from the character of the speech they had heard from the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the county of Dublin (Colonel King-Harman), it would be easily understood with what joy they all welcomed his coming amongst them in that House. The hon. and gallant Member had spoken with a certain amount of heat. In fact, to say that he had spoken was to imply that he had spoken with a certain amount of heat. With regard to the statement made as to the Emergency men, the hon. and gallant Member had thought it necessary to repudiate it very warmly. Surely the hon. and gallant Member represented the whole of the Irish people on this matter. He (Mr. O'Connor) had listened with great interest to the speech of the senior Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Plunket); and he was sure no better case could be made out for the proposal of the Commissioners than had been made out in that speech. The case was a bad one; but to his mind it had been made out by the right hon. and learned Gentleman as well as it was possible to make it out. What did the case amount to? The right hon. and learned Gentleman had said that the people in this Kingstown Division were all of similar pursuits. Well, the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton), who had rather a Socratic method of dealing with fallacies, had interjected a question to the right hon. and learned Gentleman as to what were the similarities of pursuit, and the right hon. and learned Gentleman had said—"Oh, some are professional men, some are landlords, and some are merchants." Well, he (Mr. O'Connor) had yet to learn that in Ireland persons who belonged to the trading classes were persons in a similar class of life to the landed aristocracy. He knew that in England nothing would be more resented by the county families than the insinuation that they belonged to the same class as the unfortunate wretches who got their; living by trade. If a clear distinction between the county gentry and tradespeople had been distinctly kept in England, a fortiori it had been maintained with much greater clearness in Ireland, where the landed aristocracy had such a high regard for the privileges of caste. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had meant, no doubt, that there were large classes of persons who had their business or occupation in other parts of the county, and went out to Kingstown for private residence. But let thorn examine that statement for a moment. He knew very well that it was a habit of very many people in Dublin who pursued their trades in the city to spend their nights outside the city. In fact, when an unfortunate person like himself went over to Dublin, the first thing he noticed was the facility which the people of Dublin enjoyed for getting out of the smoke and turmoil of the city, by paying a small fare and taking a short railway journey to the sea or into the country. He would call the attention of those familiar with the county of Dublin, or that part immediately adjacent to Dublin, to the fact that Kingstown was only one of many places outside Dublin which the citizens resorted to for their residences. Some went to Clontarf, some to Drumcondra, some to Howth. In fact, Kingstown, Blackrock, and Bray were only some three, with a dozen or score of health and seaside and country resorts, to which the citizens of Dublin were accustomed to go for their residences. Another argument of the right hon. and learned Gentleman was that the populations of the two divisions were closely alike in numbers. So they were. In the Balbriggan Division there were 72,992, while in the Kingstown Division there were 72,636. No doubt, as far as the equalization of the population was concerned, the present scheme was as good a one as could be devised; but the right hon. and learned Gentleman forgot to inform the Committee of the most important fact that the original scheme of the Boundary Commissioners approached as nearly as this final scheme of theirs to that desirable and necessary equalization of population. The fact that the Boundary Commissioners themselves put forward the original scheme showed that they thought that an equalization of population was fairly reached. He had not the exact numbers by him at the present moment; but his hon. Friend the Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) informed him that the difference between the populations of the two districts in the original scheme was only 700. The difference in the population in the present scheme was 354; in other words the two schemes were alike in this—that the Boundary Commissioners were able to reach a degree of equalization in population which was unparalleled in any of the divisions of any other county in any of the three countries. Now, wherein did the old scheme differ from the new one? His hon. Friend the Member for County Carlow (Mr. Gray), whose acquaintance with County Dublin was not surpassed by any Member of the Committee, had pointed out the very important fact that the scheme with which they were now dealing was one not for giving two county Members to the county of Dublin, but practically one for the enfranchisement of the town of Kingstown. The enfranchisement of Kingstown might or might not be a desirable proposal; if the proposal were put to the Committee the Committee would deal with it on its merits, and he had no doubt hon. Members sitting above the Gangway would find many good reasons in favour of it. But it was not exactly the enfranchisement of Kingstown that had been secured by this scheme, because Rathmines had been torn from the bosom of the city to which it belonged, and had been, so to speak, pitchforked to Kingstown. Rathmines had a greater population than Kingstown, and therefore the present scheme might fairly be described as one for the enfranchisement of the town of Kingstown, which might be called Rathmines-cum-Kingstown. That, again, he maintained was a proposition which could have been fairly discussed on its merits. Some of them would have objected to the ugliness of the name, and some of them would say that Rathmines, which to all intents and purposes belonged to Dublin, should not be separated from that city, and be hung on to another town which was seven miles distant. The present proposal was one for the enfranchisement of a constituency which he would call Rathmines-cum-Kingstown; in other words it was a proposal for the grouping of boroughs of different character, a system to which all the Members of the Government concerned in this Bill had declared their inveterate hostility. In one of the first speeches which the President of the Local Government Board (Sir Charles W. Dilke) made upon the Bill, the right hon. Gentleman declared that the Government were distinctly unfavourable to the principle of grouping of boroughs; he said that the plan had been tried in former Redistribution Bills, and it had not been very successful in its results, and that while the Government might be disposed under the stress of circumstances to permit existing groups to remain, they had no intention whatever to make additions to that anomalous and unsatisfactory state of things. When the right hon. Gentleman said that he had not the case of County Dublin in his mind, he could scarcely have contemplated being called upon at a later period of the Bill to stand up and defend a scheme which really amounted to a grouping of different boroughs in one constituency. No doubt, he (Mr. O'Connor) and his hon. Friends were speaking against a foregone conclusion; but they might console themselves with the reflection that they had obtained a moral victory.

said, that this was a matter in which the Tory Party were quite as much interested as he and his hon. Friends. He asked the right hon. Gentleman the Postmaster General (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) to consider for a moment the figures in this case. Armagh, as he had said, was the only constituency in Ireland which was to have three Members. In 1841, Armagh had a population of 231,000; in 1861, 180,000; in 1871, 179,000; and in 1881, 160,000—a sinking population, all the time. What was the case with regard to Dublin? In 1841, Dublin County had a population of 140,000; in 1861, 155,000; in 1871, 158,000; and in 1881, 170,000—arising population all the time. Now, that was a very important fact; and he asked the Government whether, as the Armagh population was always falling and it had three Representatives, and the Dublin population was always rising and it had only two Members, he and his hon. Friends were not entitled to some reconsideration of the matter? Of course, if the Bill passed in its present cast-iron form they would be unable to get redress when the population of one county very much exceeded that of the other. The Tories were interested in this matter, for he imagined that out of the three Members they would certainly be entitled to one, whereas out of the two Members they would not get one. When the Irish Land Act was under consideration the Government were willing to accept a proposal that at the end of seven years a Commission should issue for the purpose of taking facts into consideration as to the continuance of the Land Commission; and he thought it would be well on Report, if the Government were unable to do so now, to consider whether a Commission should issue in live or six years' time to re-adjust the relative representation of the counties of Armagh and Dublin. This was not a small matter. The population of the Metropolitan county in any country would always rise, whereas a rustic population like that of Armagh would in Ireland be found to decrease. There was more emigration from Ulster than from any other Province in Ireland. The population of County Dublin had increased 30 or 40 per cent in the same number of years. Now, if this Bill was to last for 20 or 30 years, the population of County Dublin would in all probability by the end of that time have reached 250,000. The population of Armagh, however, would have sunk to perhaps 120,000 or 130,000; and still, by reason of the fact that there was no adjustable principle in the Bill, Armagh would have three Members and Dublin would only have two. An additional reason why a reconsideration in this matter should take place was that Dublin City had been very badly treated. He would be quite content to leave it to the Lord Lieutenant to say that when Armagh had sank to a lower population than Dublin a Commission should issue to adjust the representation. This was not a matter upon which there could be any political feeling, because he had no doubt that in course of time the Nationalists would be able to win two of the three seats in Armagh. Catholics were gradually gaining the North of Ireland, and in a short time they would equal, if not exceed, the Protestants. Anyone who knew the North of Ireland knew that in certain counties when there was a farm for sale a Catholic always stepped in and bought it, while the emigration amongst Protestants was a higher percentage. In consequence of that there would, in course of time, be a much larger Catholic population than there was now. He hoped the Postmaster General would be able to see his way to provide that in a given time there should be a reconsideration of the representation allotted to the counties of Armagh and Dublin.

said, that the question of a third Member for County Dublin had been discussed several times.