asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether the Bank of Ireland has agreed to make advances to the Guardians of the North Dublin Union, free of interest, in the early part of each year, in consideration of the balances to credit of the Union in the later portion of the year; whether the Bank of Ireland has offered to give the loan now required by the guardians on the same terms as those agreed to by the Hibernian Bank; and, what is the issue of the correspondence between the guardians and the Local Government Board with respect to the resolution of the guardians appointing the Hibernian Bank their treasurer?

The arrangement which has obtained for several years in the North Dublin Union is that the Bank of Ireland charges the Guardians interest on overdrafts, and allows them interest on credit balances. The terms on which the loan for building purposes will be advanced by the Bank of Ireland have yet to be arranged between the Guardians and the Bank. I have already stated what the issue of the correspondence has been—namely, that the Local Government Board have declined to sanction the proposed change in the treasurership of the Union.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, What is the decision of the Irish Local Government Board with respect to certain illegalities and irregularities af- fecting the elections for Poor Law divisions of Magheraclogher, Meenacladdy, and Dunlewey, which have been reported to the Local Government Board by the Rev. James M 'Fadden; and, also, as to claims to vote which have been made by occupiers whose valuation is under £4 per annum, but is higher than their rent, and who are liable to pay Poor Rate on the difference between the rent and the valuation, and are not entitled by Law to deduct the Poor Rate on the amount of such difference from the rent?

The decision of the Local Government Board in this matter cannot be given for some days to come. The correspondence is not yet completed.

asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Whether Mr. John Farrell, Collector of Income Tax at Drogheda, was dismissed by the Local Government Board from the office of Poor Rate Collector, for not having accounted for the rates; and, whether, if the fact be so, Mr. Farrell can retain the collectorship of Income Tax?

Mr. Farrell was compelled to resign his local appointment in 1883. On the other hand, he has an extremely good character as an Income Tax officer, and his conduct to the latest dates was very satisfactory. The attention of the Board of Inland Revenue has been called to the circumstances of the case.

asked the Postmaster Genera], Whether the Post Office authorities intend to make the alterations in the mail service to and from Kinsale which the Town Commissioners have suggested to them?

The day mail to Kinsale is forwarded by the first available train, and the suggestion of the Town Commissioners could only be complied with by establishing a train specially for the Postal Service at a cost out of all proportion to the correspondence to be benefited. I regret, therefore, that it is not practicable to meet the wishes of the Commissioners.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether, as President of the Local Government Board, his attention has been directed to the table of expenditure of Poor Rates for twenty-one years, as printed at page 19 in the last Report of the Board; whether it is a fact that the total expenditure for the year 1883 was £1,326,963, as against £716,523 in 1863, or an increase of £610,440; whether he has observed, at page 9, that the inmates of workhouses have decreased from 206,504 in January 1851 to 49,884 in 1884; whether he has noticed that the cost for maintenance, including out-door relief, and the blind and deaf and dumb in extern hospitals, is £669,382, while the salaries and rations of officers are given at £137,025 and "other expenses" £236,438, as against £96,222 and £105,821 in 1863; whether, as the expenses under the Medical Charities, Burial Grounds, Registration, Sanitary, Contagious Diseases, Superannuation, and National School Teachers Acts are all excluded, he can say what items are included under the head of "other expenses;" what is the cause of the annual increase of establishment charges concurrently with the decrease of population; and, can anything be done to put a stop to it?

The figures given by the hon. Member are correctly quoted; but he has not taken the same years in his comparison of the expenditure with the number of inmates. Under the heading "other expenses" are included all establishment charges other than the salaries and rations of officers, such as expenses for furniture, implements, fuel, light, books, printing, stationery, drugs, medical and surgical appliances, rent, taxes, and so forth. The increase of establishment charges to which the hon. Member alludes is in a large measure due to the increased cost of the rations of officers, of which some idea may be formed from the fact that within the past 20 years the cost of inmates of the workhouse for provisions and officers has increased 40 or 50 per cent. The Local Government Board are not aware that there has been any undue expenditure, and every proposed increase of salary or emoluments is carefuly scrutinized.

asked whether, under the heading "other expenses," any extra charges were made for duties performed by the officers of Poor Law Guardians in connection with other matters?

I have seen a list this day, and my impression is that nothing of the kind is allowed.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether it is true that Sergeant Harvey, Royal Irish Constabulary, attended a meeting of the Cootehill branch of the Irish National League, in the county Roscommon, on Sunday last, and refused to withdraw at the request of the Secretary, Mr. James O'Hara; whether it is true that Sergeant Harvey has used insulting and threatening language to Mr. O'Hara on several occasions; and, whether he will inquire into the truth of the allegations made against Sergeant Harvey?

Sergeant Harvey did not attend the meeting of this branch of the National League on Sunday last. He applied for admission to the meeting on the 12th instant, but was refused, and at once withdrew. I am informed that he has never used insulting or threatening language to Mr. O'Hara.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, If he be now in a position to make a statement in reference to the union of the dispensaries of Galway and Arran Islands?

The Local Government Board have decided that they could not properly impose on Arran Island the serious financial charge entailed by the existence of a separate Dispensary Committee. The separation of the two districts could not affect or benefit the sick poor, as the members of the Committee resident on the principal Island can give orders for medical attendance whether the Committee meets in Arran or in Galway; and while the result of separation would be a very slight financial relief to Galway, it would involve for Arran the very serious addition to the rates of something like 10d. in the pound.

asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether any Treaty exists between this country and Spain by which persons who have absconded there to avoid the consequences of gross fraud or robbery in England can be made amenable to the Law, or the extradition of such persons can be demanded; and, if not, whether Her Majesty's Government could make a friendly representation to that of Spain upon the subject?

An Extradition Treaty between Great Britain and Spain was concluded on the 4th June, 1878, and is at present in force. It contains provisions for the extradition of persons accused of robbery or fraud. The Treaty was laid before Parliament during the year in which it was signed.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether he is aware that the working licensed fishermen of Lough Neagh, upwards of three hundred in number, complain that they have power to elect only four out of twenty-four members of the Board of Conservators of the Coleraine district; whether the total number of licences of all kinds issued annually in that district is not more than about four hundred; what proportion of the funds administered by the Board of Conservators is derived from the licence duty paid by the working fishermen; whether the fishermen represent that some of the Conservators, being themselves the owners of salmon fisheries on the Bann, between Lough Neagh and the sea, are hostile to the industry of the working men who fish the lake, and have caused the institution of regulations which impede and harass the working fishermen to such an extent as to deprive them of the means of subsistence; whether the fishermen claim that Lough Neagh should be constituted a separate district; whether, the voting for elections of members of the present Board being open, the water bailiffs are in the habit of using intimidation to induce the working fishermen to give their votes for certain candidates; whether the fishermen declare that the loss of the lives of four of their body in the Lough, on the 26th November last, was caused by the want of a suitable landing place; and, whether the Inspectors of Irish Fisheries will hold a public inquiry into, and make a report upon, the several complaints in question?

Perhaps the hon. Member will kindly repeat this Question on Monday. It only appeared yesterday, and I have not had time to procure Reports on the subject.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, What is the amount due to the Government from the Corporation of Limerick for extra police; when such debt was incurred; when was judgment recorded against the Corporation for the amount; whether the Corporation continues to resist payment of the demand; whether it is the fact that the Lord Lieutenant, some time since, invited the Corporation to a meeting to discuss a possible compromise or arrangement; whether the Corporation refused to attend such meeting; whether the Government has, for nearly a year past, allowed the matter to rest, and the judgment of the Court in its favour to remain unexecuted; and, whether the Government has enforced, and received payment, from other Irish municipal bodies of similar claims, incurred at the same time, under similar circumstances, under the same Law?

The net amount due by the Limerick Corporation for extra police down to the last presentment made, and exclusive of a sum of nearly £400 due for detachments sent into the city on occasional emergencies, is £1,305 5s. 3d., and the charge has been accruing since October, 1881. The position of the Irish Government in the matter, and their views as to the mode in which payment should be enforced, have been frequently explained, and have undergone no change. It was not until late in last year that the situation was exactly defined, and no opportunity has since offered for obtaining the legislative powers necessary to carry out the proposals of the Government. I trust, however, such an opportunity will soon arise. Other Municipal Bodies have become liable to similar claims; but it has never been necessary for the Government to resort to extreme powers with a view to enforce payment.

asked if the right hon. Gentleman was prepared to state when it was intended to introduce the necessary legislation on the subject?

No, Sir; I cannot say when.

I will repeat the Question this day fortnight.

I beg to ask the senior Member for South Durham (Sir Joseph Pease), Whether he is prepared to state, on behalf of the North Eastern Railway Company, what course they intend to take in regard to their Rates and Charges Bill? Perhaps the hon. Baronet will also be able to explain what course the other eight Railway Companies, who have introduced similar Bills, propose to take.

The North-Eastern Railway Bill was brought in in order to carry out some of the recommendations contained in the Report of the Committee on Railway Rates and Charges, especially those having regard to the classification of goods and the consolidation of those Statutes by which powers are given to the North-Eastern Railway Company to levy tolls. It proposed in the Bill also to settle the terminal question, and to subject the terminals to the control of the Railway Commission, as suggested in the Report of the Committee on Rates and Charges. While modifications of existing tolls were proposed, there was no desire on the part of the North-Eastern Company to ask for powers to increase the gross amount they could levy by the tolls already granted to them by Parliament. The Company never supposed that the provisions of this Bill would be accepted by Parliament as a solution of those difficult questions without the minutest care and criticism. They were perfectly prepared to pass this Bill in review before any of the usual tribunals of Parliament.

I rise to Order. I wish to know whether the hon. Gentleman, in answering a Question as to the course he proposes to take in reference to a particular Bill, is in Order in entering into a lengthened statement of the contents of the Bill, and indirectly arguing in its favour?

As far as the hon. Member has as yet proceeded, I have not observed any argumentative statement, but simply an explanation of what was intended to be done. Of course, any statement of the kind referred to by the noble Lord would be entirely out of Order.

The promoters of this Bill, from the communications they have had with traders using their railways, have no reason to suppose that they could not have been able to arrange with the traders of their own district such modifications as would have made this Bill generally satisfactory to them. Having reference to what has passed in this House from the President of the Board of Trade as to the position of the Government in relation to the Railway Bills, and also to the opposition manifested in the country, directed, perhaps, more to questions not dealt with in these Bills than to the contents of the Bills themselves—

I must ask the hon. Baronet to leave out any controversial matter.

I shall propose either not to take further steps with this Bill, or I shall ask leave of the House at an early date to discharge the Order for the second reading of the North-Eastern Railway Company's Bill; and on that occasion perhaps the House would give me leave, should I think it needful, to make some observations more in detail on the reasons which led to the introduction of the Bills, and for taking the course indicated. The same course, I believe, would be followed as regards the Bills of the other Companies.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether the Government will lay upon the Table, without delay, the Memorandum of the Judge of the Court of Probate upon the provisions of the Supreme Court of Judicature (Ireland) Bill?

I shall be prepared to lay the Memorandum in question on the Table with some other Memoranda relating to the same subject.

asked the Secretary of State for War, Whether the Government intend to consider the claims and grievances of the Indian Military Officers, with a view to the removal of their discontent at the present slowness of promotion?

I am not aware that discontent prevails among the officers of Her Majesty's Indian Forces in respect of promotion. Recently, on the issue by the War Office of a Royal Warrant, giving promotion in the Corps of Royal Engineers to the rank of captain in 11, instead of as heretofore in 12, years, the change was introduced in the Indian Staff Corps, promotion in which is made on the same lines as in the Engineers. I do not know that any further change is now contemplated.

said, that if this matter were again brought before the House, he would ask the Under Secretary if it was not a fact that the promotion of officers was better and quicker now than it ever was in the days of the East India Company?

asked the Surveyor General of Ordnance, Whether any further official reports have been received from the Soudan confirming the statements in the newspapers as to the defective manufacture, and frequent jamming, of the present service Martini-Henry rifle cartridges, and the inefficiency, in many instances, after use, of the bayonets now in possession of the troops; and, if so, whether he has any objection to lay such reports upon the Table; whether, without detriment to the public service, he can state what exertions are being made to substitute, as soon as possible, either by increasing the manufacture at Woolwich, or by contracting with private firms, for the present cartridges now in store in India and elsewhere, the new solid drawn metal cartridge, definitively adopted as the service pattern cartridge of the future; and, whether the new Maxim machine gun has yet been approved, and its manufacture ordered?

Further official Reports regarding the rifle cartridges have just been received; but there has not yet been time to examine them in detail. No Reports have been received as to the alleged inefficiency of the bayonets now in possession of the troops; and I would remind the noble Lord that I made a statement the other day on this point. I can only repeat the statement I made then—that in the opinion of the authorities the bayonets issued to the troops are perfectly serviceable. Supplies of cases for the solid-case cartridges to the full extent required can be obtained without difficulty from the trade; but, in the event of a final decision being taken to adopt the solid-case cartridge for use in practice as well as in the field, steps will at once be taken to alter the plant at Woolwich. The Maxim gun is now under trial, but no pattern has yet been approved.

Are we to understand that the solid-case cartridges are not to be supplied from Woolwich?

What has been done was stated by me the other day. In compliance with Lord Wolseley's urgent request, the solid-case cartridges have been manufactured for the Forces in the field. It has long been known that the solid-case cartridges have advantages over other cartridges.

asked if the hon. Member could say when the troops would be supplied with the new metal cartridges?

No, Sir. And I do not think it is at all desirable to answer Questions regarding the precise details of our military equipment and armament.

asked the Secretary to the Treasury, If Corry Connellan has called for his pension since the debates of last year; and, if not, has it been paid to him, and, if paid, how and where was it paid?

Corry Connellan died three months ago?

asked the Lord Advocate, Whether the occupiers of houses of the yearly value of £4, held without any written title, each occupier paying £1 a-year as rent or ground rent, together with 4s. on account of taxes, will be qualified to be put on the roll of voters under the new Reform Bill?

I consider that the persons referred to, assuming them to be men of full age, will be entitled to be registered and to vote under the new Act. Upon the facts stated in the Question, they appear to me to be qualified as inhabitant occupiers or tenants.

asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether the Despatch from M. de Giers, published in the English newspapers of the 22nd and 23rd, and purporting to be a reply of the Russian Government to Her Majesty's Government, is authentic; and, whether the following or similar passages occur in the Russian Despatch:—

"It is impossible for us not to trace back the cause to the military aspect with which the English Government thought it their duty to invest their boundary commission.

"We cannot pass by the facts that certain Officers in its suite directed the movements of the Afghan troops, and that the loudly proclaimed interview between the Amir and the Viceroy, and its bellicose surroundings, must certainly have contributed to embolden the Afghans to the point of committing such acts of provocation as could not be tolerated by the representatives of Russian Military authorities?"

Until the moment arrives for presenting Papers to Parliament, it would not be in the public interest that I should make any statement in regard to documents published in the newspapers which, if they are what they profess to be, are evidently of a confidential character.

Then the noble Lord does not deny that there is a Despatch?

asked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether the Chief Inspector of Revenue in Cyprus has resigned his office; and, whether Her Majesty's Government will withhold their acceptance of his resignation until further inquiry into the recent revenue frauds has taken place?

I am not able to answer the first part of the Question; but as to the second, which is really the most important, I am able to reply that the day before yesterday we telegraphed to the Governor that should there be any question of resignation he should refuse to accept it until he receives further instructions.

asked the First Lord of the Treasury, "Whether, in case ordinary diplomatic negotiations have not or may not prove successful in settling the points in dispute between this Country and Russia, the Government will act on the declaration of the Treaty of Paris of 1856, which expresses the unanimous wish of the Powers who were parties to the Treaty, that States between which any serious misunderstanding may arise should, before appealing to arms, have recourse to the good offices of a friendly Power, as set forth in the Protocol of April 14th 1856?

asked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether, in voting the exceptional amount to be asked for armaments on Monday next, this House may assume that Her Majesty's Government adheres to the following declaration of the 23rd Protocol of the Treaty of Paris:—

"The Plenipotentiaries do not hesitate to express, in the name of their Governments, the wish that States between which any serious misunderstanding may arise should, before appealing to arms, have recourse, as far as circumstances might allow, to the good offices of a friendly Power;"

and, that this House and the Country may rest assured that a proposal will be made to refer any matters in dispute between this Country and Russia to such arbitration, should it so unfortunately happen that an amicable solution of them fails to be arrived at by direct negotiation?

What I have to say in answer this Question is that Her Majesty's Government have never, during the course of the recent or present Correspondence, or in answer to Questions in this House, said anything to the prejudice of the idea which is put forward in these two Questions. But it must be borne in mind that every declaration made in this House in reply to a Question is virtually an announcement or a declaration to the Government of Russia. It does not appear to us convenient or desirable in the public interest that declarations to the Russian Government should be made through the channel of Answers to Questions.

asked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether information has been received from Sir Peter Lumsden, explaining if the advance of an Afghan reconnaissance on 27th March was previous to. or subsequent to, the reconnaissance of the Russians on the same day, and to what point the Afghan reconnaissance was pushed; whether any Report from Captain Yate, with regard to the advice tendered by him to the Afghan Commander on the 29th of March, and referred to in the extract from the Letter of the Afghan Commander to General Komaroff, has been received; whether Copies of the Letter of General Komaroff, which called forth the above Letter, and of the private Letter of General Komaroff to the Afghan Commander, received a few hours before the Russian attack, have been received; whether it is known if any reply was sent by the Afghan Commander to General KomaroS's second letter; and, whether, with reference to Sir Peter Lumsden's statement that the Afghans were induced to extend their defensive position, any subsequent information has been received explaining more clearly the nature of this extension, and if a withdrawal on their part to the positions occupied on the 17th of March constituted the Russian ultimatum alluded to in Sir Peter Lumsden's telegraphic Despatch of 17th April?

also asked whether Her Majesty's Government had received from Sir Peter Lumsden, or from any other source, information of the "incessant irritation" which Sir Peter Lumsden described the Russians as having kept up against the Afghans; and, if so, what action the Government had taken on receipt of that information?

I was about to answer my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) to the effect that, owing to Lord Granville's heavy engagements, I have not been able to hold any communication with him on all the points of this Question; and I would therefore ask my hon. Friend to be kind enough to postpone it until we should have an opportunity to consider it. It is rather a nice matter whether in the end it would be desirable to carry on a detailed discussion of points of this kind with the Russian Government. I quite admit that it is our duty to take care, if, in questions of this kind, as is perfectly possible, any new light is thrown upon any point of the case, or any suggestion made which ought to lead to some extension of any explanation made by us, it would be our duty to advert to it. For the present I should be glad if the hon. Member would postpone his Question; and I must ask for Notice of the Question which has just been put by the hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Onslow).

asked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether the Government are in possession of telegraphic information from Sir Peter Lumsden on the subject of his removal from Gulran to Tirpul, and the circumstances preceding and attending it; if so, whether he will communicate that information to the House?

In general my answer would be that we are not in possession of any full statement at all of the reasons which determined him to remove his camp from Gulran to Tirpul. That was my impression when I heard the Question of the noble Lord yesterday; but I was desirous of refreshing my memory. What we have heard from him is as follows:—On the 6th instant he telegraphed that he had arrived at Tirpul on the previous day, with the loss of some followers in crossing the pass in a hurricane of wind and snow and rain; and subsequently, on the 10th, he reported more fully to the effect that 24 followers, including three Afghan sowars, and eight Persian muleteers, together with many mules and baggage, had perished from the inclemency of the weather. That is all the information we have had, and we can only form our own judgment as to why he look the stop.

asked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether it is a fact that the Russian Forces are now marching on Herat; and, whether Her Majesty's Ministers are taking any steps for the defence of that important position?

With regard to the first Question there is no information, and we have no reason to believe that the Russians are marching on Herat. In regard to the second branch of the Question, I do not suppose the hon. Member desires me to say more than that the subject is receiving the attention of the Government.

I beg to ask the Prime Minister or the noble Lord, Whether Her Majesty's Government have any information as to the French Government having recalled their Consul General from Egypt?

No, Sir; we have no information.

asked the Secretary of State for War, Whether it was true that the Government had offered 25 commissions in the Army to be competed for by graduates of the Military College in Canada; and, if so, whether it was in contemplation to offer similar advantages to candidates from other Colonies who might be properly qualified?

In addition to the four commissions usually granted to that institution, 26 commissions in the Army have this year been offered to duly qualified graduates and cadets of the Royal Military College, Kingston, Canada. The Dominion of Canada is the only Colony which pos- sesses a Military College; but the War Office is also in communication with the Colonial Office on the subject of offering, this year, a limited number of commissions in the Imperial Army to members of the local Military Forces of the Colonies.

I beg to ask the Prime Minister or the noble Lord the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with regard to the positive statements which have appeared in the Press, Whether it is true that the British Government has caused representations, through Mr. Errington, to be made to the Sovereign Pontiff, with a view of influencing His Holiness in the appointment of an Archbishop to the Catholic See of Dublin, other than the capitulary of Archiepiscopal See, contrary to the wishes of the clergy of the diocese?

I must ask the hon. Member to give Notice of that Question.

Does the noble Lord require Notice to answer a Question as to whether the British Government meddles in a matter of internal government like the appointment of an Archbishop of Dublin?

Yes, Sir; I do require Notice.

When the Question of which Notice has been given by my hon. Friend (Mr. Sexton) is put, I beg to give Notice that I shall ask, Whether, when Her Majesty's Government instructed Mr. Errington to interfere, they at the same time caused a copy of Vaticanism and other works of the Prime Minister to be sent to the Holy See?

asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether it was true, as reported, that the French Government had broken off diplomatic relations with Egypt; and, secondly, whether the French Government had offered to release Her Majesty's Government from the unfortunate financial agreement in respect of Egypt to which the House recently gave its assent?

No such information has reached the Foreign Office. Afterwards,

said: The answer I gave to the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition just now was with respect to the information received up to that time. I am sorry to say that within the few minutes that have since elapsed a telegram has been received stating that the French Charge d'Affaires left Cairo this morning. I am not sure of the technical term Charge d'Affaires; but what I understand is, that it means the Representative of the French Government.

Is that communication from Cairo?

It is a telegram from Sir Evelyn Baring. It has been sent down to me, and I have no doubt that it comes from Cairo.

Will the right hon. Gentleman state whether or not there is any other telegram from Sir Evelyn Baring leading up to that one?

No, Sir.

asked whether the noble Lord the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs would now answer his Question as to whether the French Government had broken off diplomatic relations with the Egyptian Government?

The information given by the Prime Minister is all that is in possession of the Foreign Office.

asked if the noble Lord could state under what conditions the French Charge d'Affaires has left Cairo? Had he merely gone on a visit to Alexandria, or was there any diplomatic reason for the step?

There are no details. The actual words received by the Foreign Office have been given to the House.

asked whether it was M. Barrere or his Representative who had left Cairo?

M. Barrere is in Paris sitting on the Suez Canal Commission. It must, therefore, be his Representative.

inquired whether the Government would telegraph to Sir Evelyn Baring to ascertain under what circumstances the French Charge d'Af-faires had left Cairo, in order that the House might know the facts as soon as possible?

I have no doubt that in the ordinary course we shall receive full information, and it will not be necessary to make a special inquiry. I should take the information which I have just given to the House as a proof that the Agents of the British Government will communicate with us with all possible rapidity.

I shall place on the Paper this evening my Amendments to the Redistribution Bill; but I am anxious to take the earliest opportunity of mentioning to the House a difficulty which has arisen with regard to Westminster. I stated in Committee that I thought a fair case had been made out from the opposite side for treating Westminster as an ancient borough, and for assigning to it four Members instead of the three which had been allotted to it by the Bill. I had made inquiries of the Leaders of the Opposition, and had found that it was their opinion that the additional seat required should be taken from some other part of London. I examined which was the least under-represented part of London, and, finding this was the centre of the Tower Hamlets, I suggested to the Committee that the seat must come from thence. I undertook that Sir John Lambert and Sir Francis Sandford should, after local inquiry, advise us as to the division of Westminster into four, and should also advise us as to the re-division of the Tower Hamlets. Their Report will be circulated to-morrow morning, and will contain maps. It yesterday came to my knowledge that the Leaders of the Opposition so greatly disliked the proposed division of Westminster, and so greatly preferred the original division into three, which had been made by myself without the advice of the Boundary Commissioners, as to lead me to doubt whether it will be wise for me to propose to go forward with the changes which I had intended to make. I regard those changes as mutually dependent, and I should be prepared to revert to them should I find a decided change of opinion on the other side of the House.

asked if the right hon. Baronet would amplify his statement by saying which Leaders of the Opposition had informed him of their views—which Leaders wished Westminster to have four Members, and which Leaders wished it to have three? Otherwise, isolated Members of the Party had great difficulty in knowing what course to take.

I must say that the Leader of the Opposition wished for four as against three.

intimated that when the right hon. Baronet proposed to reduce the number of Members for Westminster he should oppose it.

asked whether, when the Amendment was proposed, the right hon. Baronet would take into consideration the feelings and views of the inhabitants of Westminster as well as the opinions of the Leaders of the Opposition?

asked whether the claims of the Tower Hamlets to have seven Members was to be dependent upon an agreement between Her Majesty's Government and the Leaders of the Opposition as to the representation of Westminster?

said, that if Westminster was to have four Members instead of three, the additional seat was to be taken from the Metropolis. He should propose that it should be taken from the Tower Hamlets.

inquired whether it was an open question with the Government whether the additional seat was to be taken from the Metropolis or from some town in the Provinces?

replied that, on former occasions, he had stated that there had been a suggestion made that an additional seat for Westminster might be obtained from other sources besides the Metropolis.

remarked that, as communications appeared to have been going on between the Leader of the Opposition and the Government, he should like to ask the Leader of the Opposition what course he proposed to ask the Party to take on this question?

said, that, as the Mover of the Amendment, he would remind the right hon. Baronet that it was unanimously accepted by the Committee. He wished to ask, if upon Report there was still a strong feeling shown as to the claim of Westminster to have four Members, the right hon. Baronet would adhere to the decision already arrived at by the House?

suggested that a seat might be taken from one of the over-represented counties in Ireland.

observed that Wolverhampton was an over-represented borough from which a seat might be taken.

said, that Wolverhampton was mentioned on a former occasion as one of the boroughs from which a seat might be taken. He would remind the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Cambridge University that the view which met the general concurrence of the House was that the question of dividing Westminster into four districts should be decided on the advice of the Boundary Commissioners.

wished to know whether, in the event of the Tower Hamlets retaining its seven Members, there was to be any fresh scheme of redistribution, or whether the original scheme of the Bill was to be carried out?

said, that, in the event of the Tower Hamlets retaining its full number of Members, the original scheme of division would be carried out, and there would only be a change of name, the separate divisions continuing parts of the borough of the Tower Hamlets.

asked the Leader of the Opposition what the arrangement was with regard to Westminster and the Tower Hamlets?

I can only say that I understood it was the wish of the House to change the number of Members for Westminster from three to four, and I entirely approve of that alteration. That, however, involves a change of the redistribution of the divisions of Westminster. But when the re-arrangement of the borough came to be made the division which was suggested and approved by Sir John Lambert and Sir Francis Sandford appeared to me and to the right hon. Member for Westminster to be an unfortunate division, and one which would not be satisfactory to the people of Westminster; and I certainly intend to support my right hon. Friend the Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith) in his endeavours to obtain a better division for the borough than that proposed by the Schedule.

asked whether the arrangement between Lord Salisbury and the Government was that any arrangement come to by the Boundary Commissioners the Government pledged themselves to carry through the House; and whether, in consequence of that, the Government had refused every' Amendment in the case of Irish divisions, whereas they had consented to a change in the case of Westminster?

replied that the division of London and the Metropolis generally was made by himself, and not by the Boundary Commissioners.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether it is true, as stated, that the Prince of Wales is, on his visit to Derry on Saturday next, to receive an address from the local Orange and apprentice boy parties; whether the Orange address is to be presented by Mr. Robert M'Clintock, who was rebuked by the Lord Chancellor for his participation in an Orange apprentice boy meeting on the 1st of November last, when two Nationalists were shot and badly wounded, and for which one apprentice boy was convicted and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment by Justice Murphy, who described the Orange proceedings as "the wild work in Derry;" whether, on a previous Royal visit, party riots took place, in which the police shot dead three men; whether, under the circumstances, and having regard to the local party feeling, it is deemed desirable that addresses should be received from societies and individuals notorious for violent party displays; whether a demonstration of protest by the Nationalists is to take place; whether, at a meeting of the Royal Reception Committee in Derry, a vote on the subject of the propriety of receiving the Orange Address was taken, when the Committee equally divided, three Presb3'terian Liberal magistrates, one Catholic Liberal magistrate, and one Presbyterian Liberal merchant protesting against the arrangement for receiving the Orange Address as a party affair; whether, some days previously, the Address of the County Derry Liberal Union was refused on the ground that the visit was non-political; and, whether the Government will take steps to prevent possible disastrous consequences on the occasion of the Royal visit to Derry by advising against the reception of the Addresses referred to?

I telegraphed to Ireland this morning, but have not yet received a specific Report with regard to the matters of fact on past occasions referred to in this Question. I understand, however, that no addresses have been received or will be received by His Royal Highness from associations which are in their constitution distinctly political, and no addresses are received which contain any political allusions. The addresses from the Orange Lodge and Apprentice Boys of Derry will not be allowed to be presented as a Party display; and as no partizan character attaches to the addresses, it is hoped that no Party feeling will be evoked which might mar the peaceful character of the reception. It is needless to add that steps will be taken to prevent any disturbance arising from any mistaken conception as to the character of the addresses. The Government are fully alive to the existence of a strong Party feeling in the City of Derry, and to the importance of taking every precaution to prevent disturbance.

Does the right hon. Gentleman mean that the Orange Lodges and the Apprentice Boys Association are not political organizations?

I am neither an Orangeman nor an Apprentice Boy; but they utterly deny that they have any political meaning, and that is the general understanding.

, in rising to move an Amendment, to leave out the first part of the clause down to the word "not," in line 22, for the purpose of inserting—

"The forms contained in the First Schedule to this Act, or forms to the like effect, may be used for the purposes of the Parliamentary Registration Acts in substitution for the corresponding forms used for the same purposes before the passing of this Act."

said, that the object of the Amendment was to alter the manner in which the forms for carrying into effect the Parliamentary Registration Acts were to be prescribed, in consequence of the decision which had been come to by the Committee upstairs in connection with the English Bill. There were two ways of settling the forms in regard to registration; one by Order in Council, and the other under the authority of the Act which would require the forms themselves to be embodied in the Act. The Committee upon the English Bill had resolved that it would be better to prescribe the forms in a Schedule attached to the Bill; and as this clause in the Irish Act gave power to the Lord Lieutenant in Council to prescribe the forms, the object of the Amendment was to omit that power, and to substitute a Schedule in which the forms required for the purposes of Parliamentary registration would be set out.

said, he thought the Amendment showed how unfairly the Irish Members had been treated in having been allowed no representation whatever upon the English Committee. If there was one subject which was highly technical and complicated, it was the question of registration in Ireland; and he would point out to the Government that, in the forms proposed to be included in. the Schedule, there were a series of gross mistakes. The forms themselves were only laid on the Table yesterday, and hon. Members had not had very much time to look into them; but in the short time which had been allowed he had been able to detect very extraordinary errors. He did not propose to discuss the Schedule now; but he simply desired to point out that the best mode of promoting the despatch of Business would be to pass the Schedules, when they had gone through the clauses, with little or no debate; and then, when they had the Bill reprinted, for the Government to give a week or 10 days for consideration, and, if necessary, re-commit the Bill in respect of the Schedules. No questions of policy would arise upon them; but they involved matters of technical detail which could not be agreed to hurriedly. He certainly did not think it would be fair to Ireland to allow English forms, shaped by English lawyers, without a single Irish Member being on the Committee, and in which he could already discover several blunders, to be accepted, as they stood, for Ireland. For instance, the 1st Schedule related to the precept of the Clerk of the Peace, and of the Clerk of the Union, and towards the end of No. 2 appeared these words, as a ground of objection—

"Firstly, if such person shall not have been rated in the then last rate made for the relief of the poor as the occupier of the same lands, tenements, or hereditaments, in such copy of register mentioned of a net annual value of twelve pounds or upwards."

There were several mistakes in that passage. One had reference to the rating, because under certain circumstances, by the provisions of the Franchise Bill, a man need not be rated at all; and he (Mr. Healy) had an Amendment to provide for such a state of things. The Government might say that that was the law at present; but the object of his Amendment was to make the law fully declared, and he saw no reason for the insertion of this extraordinary clause about being rated in the last rate made for the relief of the poor. It was quite clear to his mind that the words about rating should not occur in this Bill; because, if they were going to have household franchise, there was no necessity whatever to be rated in order to have the vote, and he did not understand that that was the opinion held by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland. Then, again, he might point out in No. 3, headed "the supplementary list of ten pounds rated occupiers," it appeared to him that after the work "register," and in all subsequent precepts of the same character, it would be necessary to insert the words "or objected to therein." The paragraph would then read in this way—

"You are also to make out, and, together with such copy of register for the said polling district or division of the said polling district, transmit to me a supplemental list [Form 11] of every male person of full age not appearing already on such copy of register who shall be rated in the last rate made for the relief of the poor or objected to therein."

There clearly ought to be such a Proviso, and it should run all through these forms. In some of the later precepts he proposed to insert Amendments; and, therefore, he was not in a position to agree generally to these forms. He wished to know from the hon. and learned Solicitor General, or the Chief Secretary for Ireland, whether, if he agreed to the forms as they now stood, when the Bill was ready for Report, it would be recommitted in respect of the forms? In the first place, however, he would ask the Chairman whether, if the Committee accepted the right hon. Gentleman's Amendment, and thereby agreed to accept the forms in the Schedule of the Bill, they would be afterwards debarred from amending the Schedules? That was to say, that by agreeing to the Amendment they would accept the proposal to insert the forms in the Schedule, but only subject to amendment.

The hon. and learned Member asks whether, if the Committee accept the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman, they would be debarred from subsequently amending the Schedules? No; I think not.

said, that he had read the Schedules himself with great attention, both yesterday and this morning, and he had sent them to Ireland, in order that they might be considered by those who were better acquainted with the Registration Law than he was himself. As had been stated by the hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy), the questions involved in these Schedules were of a very technical character. He would assume that they must have been prepared by the Law Officers of Ireland, with the assistance of others who were acquainted with the matter; and he would be glad if the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland would say whether they had been prepared merely with a view of applying the new Reform. Bill to the existing Registration Law, and to permit the registration to take place this year, as soon as possible after the passing of the Bill? Was that the object with which these Schedules had been prepared? Assuming that he received an affirmative answer to that question, he would suggest that, if this stage of the Bill was passed with these Schedules in it, after very little discussion, there should be a distinct understanding that they would not be debarred from using any information which might come, either from Ireland, or from their own examination of the Schedules, and that on the Report stage their right of criticism, revision, and, amendment would be preserved.

said, he could assure his right hon. and learned Friend opposite (Mr. Gibson) that the Schedules had been prepared with the single object of bringing upon the Register the different persons who were entitled to vote as £10-rated occupiers, and for the household and service suffrages. There was no other object whatever in preparing these Schedules, and he had himself intended to suggest that it would be desirable, after the Schedules had been adopted, that time should be given, in order that they might be thoroughly examined, because, originally, the Bill was framed in another way; and, therefore, it was only reasonable that such time should be allowed, and that either on the Report, or in some other way, the Schedules should be fully considered. It was not necessary that he should answer the objections to some of the forms which had been made by the hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy); because there would be an opportunity afforded for discussing them. He would be glad if, when his right hon. and learned Friend received information, he would point out to him (the Solicitor General for Ireland) any point which would assist in carrying out the object of the Bill—namely, to bring upon the Register any person who was entitled to be upon it.

said, that nothing would be more inconvenient than to alter the Schedules on the stage of the Report, when it would not be possible to answer all the questions which might be raised on minute matters of detail. What occurred to his mind was this—that the body of the Bill should be settled, and then that the question of the Schedules should be adjourned for a few days, until they could make up their minds with regard to them. That would be the most sensible course to adopt, in order that the Schedules should be made as intelligible as possible. He thought it would be impossible to alter them satisfactorily with the Speaker in the Chair, and that they would never be able to get to the end of them. He would, therefore, suggest that they should go through the Bill now, and set the Schedules apart for another day. It could not be a matter on which there would be any great difference of opinion; and, with regard to the English Bill, it had been considered that day in the most friendly spirit.

said, it was only reasonable that considerable time should be given for an examination of these complicated Schedules; and he quite agreed that it would be desirable to stop the Bill when they got to the Schedules.

said, he thought there ought to be some communication with gentlemen who were interested in the question of Irish registration. Therefore, it was advisable to go through the Schedules, in some sort of conference, in order to see how far they agreed, or what points of difference arose. From his own experience, in dealing with the English Registration Bill, he knew the difficulties that might arise, and he thought it was necessary that there should be some communication of that kind.

said, he would be very glad to adopt that suggestion.

said, he would say a word to confirm what had fallen from the hon. Member for East Sussex (Mr. Gregory). He was quite sure they would never get these forms satisfactorily settled, except by having a conference of that kind either by the appointment of a Select Committee, or in some other way, by means of which Members, who bad actual experience of Irish registration, might meet together and settle the forms. The English forms had been settled in a very short time, and without the slightest difference of opinion.

said, the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland (Mr. Walker) had intimated that he thought some reasonable time ought to be given to the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) for the purpose of obtaining advice from Ireland in regard to these Schedules. and the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland subsequently stated that he thought considerable time should be given. Now, he (Mr. Parnell) was of opinion, with regard to this matter, that it was most desirable the Bill should proceed with all reasonable speed, and that it should not be behind the English or the Scotch Bill. The conduct of the Government had been, he thought, in this matter, very negligent. He agreed with his hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Healy) that, in the first instance, the Bill should have been printed long before it was printed; but the Irish officials did not seem to be able to make up their minds for a long time as to what the provisions of the Bill were to be. Secondly, the Bill was not printed until long after the English Bill was printed, and no Committee was moved for the purpose of considering it, as in the case of the English Bill. Ireland was not even given a Member on the English Committee; in fact, it was represented to the Irish Members that it was not necessary for them to have a Member on the English Committee, as the Bill entirely concerned the English registration. They now found that a vast mass of matters had been imported into the Irish Bill by the English Committee. The consequence of all this was that an excuse for delay was afforded to the Front Opposition Bench, and their Friends in that House, and it would be necessary for the Irish Members to raise a very serious question. If some considerable time, according to the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, was to elapse before the Bill was again taken up, and before anything was again to be done, the other measures might come on before it. The Redistribution Bill might come on on Report and upon the third reading, and this Bill might be altogether left behind. He should regard such a circumstance as most disastrous; because it might afford an excuse for the House of Lords to object to any additions which might be made to the Bill by the House of Commons, and, in fact, to repeat the course which they had several times adopted in years past. He, therefore, wished to have a clear understanding. He desired to know, in the first place, whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) considered it necessary that the Bill should here-committed; and, secondly, whether the Government considered it necessary that the Bill should be re-committed in, reference to the Schedules? If not, whether they were of opinion that the Report stage would be sufficient for the examination of the Schedules; and, if so, at what date they proposed to take the consideration of the Report? Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Dublin University consider that Wednesday next would be appropriate for the Report stage, and that it would afford him sufficient time for making inquiries? If it were fixed for any later date, and any considerable time was occupied in inquiry, the result would be a great and dangerous delay in the reprinting of the Bill. He, therefore, thought it his duty to ask for some further understanding from the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland and the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland as to the delay which would take place.

said, the Government had only two objects in regard to the Bill, one of which was to get it passed as quickly as possible, which, for reasons other than those which had been mentioned by the hon. Member (Mr. Panel, was of great importance to the country. That was, therefore, the first object; but it was further desirable that those who were interested in the matter should not be deprived of a reasonable opportunity for considering the provisions of the Bill. The hon. Member for the City of Cork had spoken as if the Government had allowed the English Committee to frame part of the Irish Bill. Nothing of the kind had been done. The Committee on the English Bill upstairs did not frame this Bill; but they decided that the forms, instead of being fixed by Orders in Council, should be embodied in the Bill itself, in Schedules attached to it; and it was felt desirable that the same thing should be done for Ireland as was done for England. Therefore, the Government had added to the Bill, which was originally a small and simple Bill, these rather cumbrous Schedules. He admitted that they did contain a good deal of complicated material; but he did not think that any thorny matters were involved. Still, as the Schedules were complicated, it was only reasonable that time should be given for their consideration. The hon. Member complained that a proposal had been made which involved a loss of time before the re-committal of the Bill, and suggested that the Schedules should be considered and reported. They were quite ready to adopt that suggestion; but the complaint which was made was not unreasonable—namely, that matters of this sort would not be so well discussed in the House as in a Committee. Personally, he (Mr. Campbell-Bannerman) was willing to take either course—either to re-commit the Bill in regard to the Schedules; or to stop the progress of the Bill, in order to get the Schedules discussed consistent with a reasonable opportunity of obtaining the opinion of persons interested in the question. He could not say now to what day it would be necessary to adjourn the Bill; but he could assure the hon. Member it would be the earliest day they could get.

said, he would point out that the delay had been suggested by the hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy). He (Mr. Gibson) had not suggested it himself. He had only said that with 25 pages of Schedules it was only reasonable to give time for examining them.

said, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland maintained that the English Committee had not been allowed to draft the Bill. He (Mr. Sexton) contended, on the other hand, that they had, in point of fact, drafted a very vital part of it, because it appeared that the forms inserted in it were to be those which were considered suitable for use in England.

said, the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) was under a misapprehension. All the English Committee decided was that the forms in regard to the English Bill should be inserted in the Schedule, and not fixed by Order in Council; but they did not prescribe what the forms were to be. There were two courses open—either to insert the forms in Schedules attached to the Bill, or to settle them by Order in Council. As the first course had been adopted in the ease of the English Bill, it was considered desirable to pursue the same course in regard to the Irish Bill.

said, that, at any rate, the principle of the infusion of the Irish forms in the Bill was decided by the English Committee. It was to be regretted that no Irish Member had been upon the Committee, and hon. Members who had been engaged in other Committees upstairs had not, as yet, had an opportunity of perusing the forms. Those forms extended over aconsiderable number of pages; but they were told that they contained nothing upon which there was likely to be a difference of opinion, and, therefore, might be dealt with at any time with very little legal help. He thought the proposal of his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) was a fair and proper one, and that it would be very easy, on the Report, with the Speaker in the Chair, to settle and discuss the question. He wished to understand whether or not the Government consented to the suggestion of his hon. Friend—that they should discuss the Schedules on the Report of the Bill, and that they should take the Report on Wednesday? The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had said that the House had two objects—first, to pass the Bill; and, secondly, to afford a reasonable time for the examination of the Schedules. He (Mr. Sexton) thought the examination might be completed in a very short space of time, and he was most unwilling that the progress of the Bill should be unnecessarily delayed. He thought they were all agreed as to the necessity of passing the Bill as quickly as possible; and, personally, he should be disposed to insist, as far as he could, on the Bill being allowed to hold its place in the relative progress of the three Bills which it now occupied, and that it should not be allowed to fall behind either the English or Scotch Bill. At present, it was in front of the three Bills, and it ought to be allowed to retain that position. It could not be forgotten that on two previous occasions the will of the House of Commons had been overborne by the House of Lords, who had twice thrown out an Irish Registration Bill passed by the Lower House. The Irish Members, therefore, required some security and guarantee as to the date on which the Irish measure would be sent to the House of Lords, so that they should be able to know what the decision of that House was before the other Bills were sent up. If the Irish and Scotch Bills were submitted before a definite verdict were obtained with regard to the Irish Bill, the Irish Members might find themselves in a hopeless position, and the Government would be unable to take any definite action. The House of Lords might even throw out the Bill, as they had done on former occasions. Therefore, the pivot on which the whole question turned was this—that the Irish Bill should retain its present place in the order of procedure, and, if it was at all practicable, that it should be the first Bill to be sent up to the House of Lords. He also wished to know how Clause 2 was intended to operate if this Amendment were inserted? It provided that—

"The forms contained in the First Schedule to this Act, or forms to the like effect, may he used for the purposes of: the Parliamentary Registration Acts in substitution for the corresponding forms used for the same purposes before the passing of this Act."

As the Amendment stood, the forms now provided in the Schedule were to be the forms adopted without any power of alteration. He wished to know if those forms were to be always permanently used?

said, he would suggest that after the words "Parliamentary Registration Acts," in the Amendment, the words "and this Act" should be inserted, or it might be held that the forms inserted in the Schedule did not apply to the last Registration Act. He presumed it was the object of the Government to carry out the provisions, not only of the previous Registration Acts, but also of the Act now being passed. He would propose an Amendment to that effect for the purpose of eliciting the opinion of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor-General for Ireland.

said, this Act would be cited as "The Registration Act, 1885," and, therefore, it seemed to him that it would come under the description of "Parliamentary Registration Acts" proposed to be inserted in the clause.

said that the object of the Irish Members was an intelligible one—namely, that by whatever means it might be obtained, whether by recommitting the Schedules, or not recommitting them, but taking them upon the Report stage, the Bill should not be unduly delayed in finding its way to the House of Lords. They insisted upon having some security upon that point. They knew that the House of Lords would destroy their chances, if they possibly could. They had already proved their malice twice, and he did not wish to give them another chance. He complained strongly that the Government had not brought in the English and Irish Bills together. He had asked the question over and over again, but had never got a satisfactory answer. They had received a pledge, two years ago, from the Prime Minister, which had not yet been redeemed, and they had no promise that it would be redeemed. What he wished to know was, whether, now the Bill had been brought in, it would not be left to the mercy of the House of Lords to play what pranks they pleased with it, at the instigation of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson), who had moved a number of Amendments without caring whether they were accepted here, but confiding in his Friends in the other House to adopt them? Therefore, the Irish Members would have no guarantee whatever that anything the right hon. and learned Gentleman proposed would not be ultimately carried, and he wanted to know what the position of the Bill would be with regard to leaving the House?

said, there was every intention on the part of the Government to carry on the three Bills pari passu. They were all required for the same purpose, and there was no intention of unduly delaying them.

asked when the Report would be taken?

said, he was unable to say at present, and he would point out to the hon. and learned Member that he himself had originally proposed that there should be delay. The Government were anxious to proceed expeditiously with the Bill, consistently with a fair discussion of it. Some hon. Gentlemen suggested that it should be discussed on the Report; but, in dealing with technical matters of this kind, a conversation would be better than a formal discussion; therefore, personally, he should prefer to have it in Committee. It would not cause the Bill more delay than the other course.

said, the Committee had now been engaged for some time in discussing what day should be fixed for the Report instead of considering the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. It certainly appeared to him (Mr. Lewis) that, instead of making progress with the Bill, they were really going backward.

said, that he was not prepared to rule that the discussion was out of Order, because it was intended that the subject to which the matter referred should be considered on the Report.

said, he imagined that the Amendment now before the Committee was the one which he had moved.

said, that Amendment would not be in Order yet, because the Committee had not yet decided to leave out the words proposed to be omitted by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland.

said, that, before they arrived at the conclusion of the conversation, it was necessary to know how the Schedules were to be disposed of, and at what time they would be taken. At present, the English Bill had only been read a second time; and in the case of the Scotch Bill, the Speaker had simply been got out of the Chair. What he wished to know was, when the Chief Secretary for Ireland said that the Irish Bill was to proceed pari passu with the other Bills, whether they were to continue to occupy the position they now occupied; and, whether the initiative of progress would rest with the Irish Bill as at the present moment?

said, that, in considering the important Business yet to be disposed of in connection with the electoral system, it was impossible to give an absolute pledge of precedence, especially as it would be necessary to consult the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General, the right hon. Baronet the President of the Local Government Board, and several other Members of the Government who had taken an active part in the proceedings. His (Mr. Trevelyan's) experience of Registration Bills led him to desire to see them sent up to the House of Lords as early as possible. He would promise, on the part of the Government, that they would see that in this matter the Irish Registration Bill should not be left behindhand. He hoped that hon. Members would accept that promise.

said, he believed that he would now be in Order in moving his Amendment—namely, to insert, after the words "Registration Acts," the words "and this Act." If the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland (Mr. Walker) would look at that part of the clause which they had just struck out, he would see that the words were "the Parliamentary Registration Acts and this Act." He thought that, on reconsideration, the hon. and learned Gentleman would see that his (Mr. Warton's) Amendment was necessary.

said, that he had no objection to accept the Amendment; but he did not think that it was absolutely necessary.

said, he would call attention to the words "as near thereto as circumstances may require," in line 25, which were made to apply to the form prescribed in connection with the registration of Parliamentary voters. He wished to know what they meant?

thought there was a little ambiguity in the words, but he did not think they would do any harm.

remarked, that in Ireland, on one occasion, a number of processes had been rendered void, because the County Court Judge held that the words should have been "County of Cork" instead of "Cork County." What he was afraid of was that the Revising Barristers might rule all the objections on the Tory side to be in order because they were "as near thereto as the circumstances required;" while, on the other hand, they would rule out all the objections on the other side because they were "as near thereto as the circumstances required." He thought it would be better to secure literal accuracy in the words used in the clause.

said, the Committee had not yet reached the words at which this question arose.

, in moving, as an Amendment, in page 1, line 24, to omit the words "so prescribed," for the purpose of inserting "the forms in the said Schedule contained," said, that he partly adopted in this proposition an Amendment which had been placed on the Paper by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. It was quite clear that the words "so prescribed" must be left out, because they were simply an echo or trace of what had already been omitted.

said, he would admit that there would be some difficulty in striking out the words "or as near thereto as circumstances may require." He was only afraid that by keeping them in, if ever the other side made a mistake, they would get the benefit of it; whereas the National Party, if they made a mistake, would receive no benefit. He thought it would be far better, however, to have the forms in the Act described accurately, and therefore he would move his Amendment. He would also ask the Government if they had made any provision for the supply of these forms, and how the forms themselves were to be procured?

said, he was afraid if they were to adopt the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member opposite (Mr. Healy), it would tell much more against him than he supposed, because if there was the slightest variation from the form an objection would hold good. As to the question of the forms to be supplied under the provisions of the Registration Act, printed forms would be supplied. But with regard to the Amendment, he thought it was extremely undesirable that the franchise of any man should be endangered by the omission of a single word, or a letter, in a mere form, because there happened to be a clause prescribing that all the forms contained in a Schedule of an Act of Parliament must be literally followed.

said, he would not press the Amendment.

asked the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland to answer the question, whether forms would be procurable at a cheap rate?

was understood to say that there would be a Schedule of rates.

said, he had to ask the Committee to agree to the Amendment he had placed on the Paper, proposing to omit the clause entirely from the Bill. The clause provided that—

"Medical or surgical assistance, or the giving of medicine under any Act relating to Medical Charities in Ireland, should not he deemed to constitute relief under the Acts for the more effectual relief of the Destitute Poor in Ireland within the meaning of the Representation of the People Acts."

Now, he thought hon. Members would see from that recital that that provision of the Bill purported to make a very grave and serious change in the laws relating to the representation of the people, not only in respect of Ireland, but also in respect of other parts of the "United Kingdom. He held that it would be obviously contrary to common sense to make such a change in the Representation of the People Act, as that it should be enacted that persons receiving indoor relief should be permitted to exercise the franchise, as it would be equally foreign to the considerations which were usually supposed to prevail in these matters, to permit those who were in receipt of outdoor relief to exercise this franchise. But this was a proposal on the part of the Government to obviate that reasonable restriction, and to enact that, notwithstanding the past and present practice under the existing law, the franchise should be exercised by those who deliberately appealed to public medical aid. He repeated that this was a clause which, if it were retained in the Bill, would constitute a very serious innovation of the existing law. A few evenings ago, the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) had stated to the Prime Minister that his object was to insure that the Registration of Voters Ireland Act should work an absolute assimilation of the law as administered in England and Scotland. ["No, no!"] He could assure the hon. Member below the Gangway that the words used by the hon. Member for the City of Cork were "absolute assimilation." He contended, however, that there was no such provision nor anything like such a provision as that provided for in this clause in the law of England; and although he always spoke with great diffidence of the law of Scotland, he believed he was correct in saying that there was no similar provision in the law of Scotland either. But the Committee would understand that it was a very serious thing, with reference to Ireland, to propose to introduce an alteration in the law not known in Scotland, and not proposed to be introduced in the case of England. Why, he asked, should this change be made against the corresponding laws in England and Scotland; on what foundation did it rest; on what argument of justice or common sense, or on what plea of a sounder administration of electoral law could it be defended? He ventured to think if the principle of this clause were enacted in the Bill that it might result in fast-and-loose play of the gravest possible character in respect of the administration of the Poor Law in Ireland. He reminded the Committee that if it were introduced as a proposition sanctioned by Act of Parliament, that the recipient of dispensary relief should be qualified to vote, it would be but a step further in the same direction to say that the recipient of outdoor relief should be qualified to exercise the franchise, and the whole system of the Poor Law of the country would be exposed to attacks, which he ventured to think would lead to serious consequences. Further, he did not think that the exceptional enactment of the principle of the clause would add to the self-respect of the voters in Ireland; on the contrary, he believed it would lead to the impairing of that independence of character and status which the country had a right to expect in. those who were permitted to exercise the franchise and return Members to Parliament for the administration of its affairs. He remembered a leading Member of that House pointing out, in a great discussion which took place on one of the Reform Bills, that one of the most serious and grave dangers that would have to be guarded against in the future would be a lax administration of the Poor Law under the new system; and he (Mr. Gibson) could but think that such a provision as this would, particularly if it were enacted exceptionally for Ireland, amount to the introduction of a laxity of the gravest kind. Medical assistance in Ireland was intended to be given to those who could not pay for it themselves—that was to say, to those persons who were really in need of it, and could not procure it. Although it was desirable that those who required medical relief should have it, yet he must point out that the dispensing of medical relief in Ireland was a practice which, in many cases, had been the cause of scandal and abuse; and doctors had been summoned by what were called "red tickets," or "scarlet runners," to assist those who could very well pay for themselves. And if it were found that in an Act of Parliament, it was permitted, sanctioned, or encouraged that persons should receive dispensary relief and still retain their right to the franchise without any qualification whatever, it must lead to the extension of an abuse which pressed already very hardly on the Medical Profession in Ireland, inasmuch as it would appear to have received the sanction of Parliament. The arguments relating to this question lay within a narrow compass, and they were so obvious that he did not think he should be justified in pressing them at greater length upon the Committee, or in occupying further time in the consideration of the subject; but if any arguments should be used, or any statements made, which rendered it necessary that he should re-enter the discussion, he reserved to himself freedom to say a few more words in support of the Amendment which he now begged to move.

said, they were accustomed to these arguments from the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson). They always listened to him with great respect, and. saw in him the apologist and champion of the Poor Law in Ireland. But they had the right hon. and learned Gentleman telling them to-night that the Dispensary Poor Law had been greatly abused. Well, he (Mr. Sexton) was ready to admit that he had seen some allegations to the effect that the dispensary regulations had been called into operation under questionable circumstances; but his own experience was, that those allegations related only to a very minute proportion of the cases in which medical aid was dispensed. Moreover, the details of dispensing medical relief under the Poor Law was as completely under the supervision of the Local Government Board as the details of any other Department; and the Local Government Board was composed of persons so vigilant—excessively so sometimes—and of persons whose conduct was so closely watched in that House, that he ventured to say no suggestion deserving attention at their hands would be passed over, and that if there had been any accidental abuse of the provisions of the Poor Law in this respect the Local Government Board would have taken good care to check it before that time. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had certainly perplexed him in the course of his speech with the argument that that House ought to strike out this clause in order to preserve the independence of character and status of those who voted. But whether men were independent or not, they were not in the habit of going to a doctor of their own choice; they did not go to the dispensary for pleasure or recreation. If a man went to a doctor, no matter the class to which he might belong, he went to him because he was ill; and, therefore, he did not see how the independence of character of the persons concerned could be brought into this question at all. He said that this independence of character and status for which the right hon. and learned Gentleman was so anxious could be maintained, even though poverty might compel the individual to accept the aid of a dispensing doctor. If a man were able to pay for the medical assistance which he received for nothing, there was, of course, an abuse which ought to be corrected; but, looking at the matter from the other point of view, if the individual were unable to pay the doctor for the medical aid that was necessary for him or his family, the requirements of humanity and civilized life demanded that the aid of the doctor should be given to him or his family free. And if that necessity were met, how could anyone contend that a man should be deprived in consequence of the first right of citizenship, because he had not preserved his independence of character and status? He supposed, as it would seem from the argument of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, that a man's independence was to be measured by the length of his pocket; but he (Mr. Sexton) declined to accept that view of the case, and he repeated that a man's status might be perfectly independent, even if his poverty deprived him of the necessities of life. Let the Committee consider the great disproportion that existed between the fees exacted by medical men in Ireland and the incomes of the poor class of men in that country. The right hon. and learned Gentleman in the course of his remarks had delivered himself of a curious fact when he spoke of the absolute assimilation of the law in respect of the three countries, England, Scotland, and Ireland, which he stated the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) intended to bring about. [Mr. GIBSON: I quoted the report in The Times.'] He (Mr. Sexton) cared not for the report in The Times; he asked who was the writer of that report? Was he a sworn shorthand writer? He had heard his hon. Friend often speak of assimilation of the law; but he bad never heard him reach the superlative term of "absolute assimilation." There could be no such thing as absolute assimilation of laws; because the first necessity of law was that it should conform itself to the circumstances of the country in which it had to operate, and as no one would say that the circumstances of England and Ireland were similar, there could be no absolute assimilation of law in respect of them—it would be impossible to apply an absolutely similar principle to the people of the two countries at largo. The people of England, as compared with those of Ireland, were better able to live and pay the doctor; and the existence of medical aid societies was a recognized fact in England. In dealing with the poor, the doctor's fee in England was almost nominal; but, so far as he was aware, the Irish doctors as a class were not in the habit, except under compulsion of the "red ticket," of discharging any medical function for their fellow-creatures unless on payment of a guinea. Now, what, he asked, was the use of expecting poor people in Ireland to pay a guinea, half-a-guinea, or even half-a-crown, for any medical attention received from a private practitioner? The thing was an impossibility; and if they could not pay, why should it be suggested that they should be shut out from the exercise of the franchise? Here was a classification of the agricultural holdings in Ireland. The number of holdings of one acre and under was 49,000; of from three to five acres, 53,000; of from five to seven acres, 59,000; and of from seven to 15 acres, 39,000. There were in Ireland more than 200,000 holdings of between one acre and 15, occupied by families who were drawing their living from them, after satisfying the landlord by paying rent and taxes. Now, he asked if any Member of the House would have the hardihood to go to the Table and say that the income of any one of those holders of farms was such as to allow them to pay a single guinea to the doctor in the course of a year? The whole scale of medical fees in Ireland must be reduced, unless it was to remain outside the means of the population to pay for medical relief: and he challenged anyone to show in the case of the poor people of Ireland, and in face of the incomes they derived from the cultivation of their holdings, why, being unable to pay the medical fees at present demanded by the Profession, they should in addition to that have the penalty inflicted upon them of not being allowed to vote. They contributed to the rates; and that being so, they had a right to expect and to receive something in return. However, the Government had inserted a clause in the Bill which he considered to be perfectly just in principle; it would have been a mockery to do otherwise, and the only construction he could put upon the argument of the right hon. and learned Gentleman was that, while endeavouring to exclude the class of persons in question, he hoped that the object of the recent extension of the franchise might be defeated by a side-wind.

said, as a general rule, hon. Members on those Benches were glad to listen to the speeches of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) on Irish affairs, because he had knowledge of the subjects on which he usually addressed the House; but, in the present case, he (Colonel Nolan) believed the right hon. and learned Gentleman knew very little of the subject practically. He was an eminent barrister, and he had lived long in Dublin; but there was nothing, or very little, in common between the people of that city and those of the districts of Ireland principally concerned in this question. The right hon. and learned Gentleman, moreover, was a statesman a good deal drawn upon by the Conservative Party, and who was in the habit of attending and speaking at large meetings in England; but he (Colonel Nolan) did not think that he knew much of the so-called "scarlet runners" in Ireland. He (Colonel Nolan) had given away many of those tickets in his capacity of secretary to one society and chairman of another, and he ventured to think that he represented the feelings of the people on the subject as well as any man in Ireland. He knew that the Boards of Guardians held strong views on this point. If the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman were adopted by the Government, and the clause under notice struck out of the Bill, it was believed that the Franchise Act. so far as an enormous number of the people of Ireland were concerned, would be a farce. With regard to the refusal of medical men in Irelend to take less than the fee of a guinea from the very poorest men, it was felt that this was something that must be changed—and it must be changed either by the general consent of the Medical Profession in Ireland, or else by action on the part of the Government. He wished to point out, however, with regard to the fees exacted by medical men in Ireland, that although they received £1 for their assistance they saw or attended the individual three or four times for that amount. But were they to enact that because a man could not pay £1 for medical aid when he or his child, for instance, were ill, he should be deprived of his right to vote? He (Colonel Nolan) could assure the right hon. and learned Gentleman that it was not solely a question of "scarlet runners" that was involved here. Even if a person in employment who might be considered tolerably well off were ill, he was expected to go to the dispensary in the nearest town for advice and medicine; and it was absurd to say that unless people in that position paid a guinea to the doctor they should lose their vote. Then there was another argument in favour of retaining this clause in the Bill. The country was talking of war, and were they to say to officers in the Army and Navy that they would be disqualified because they received gratuitous medical advice. Everyone knew that they had gratuitous medical advice; and did the right hon. Gentleman mean to say that those officers lost their independence of status and character when they went to the surgeon of their regiment or ship? The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that the people in Ireland would lose their independence if they did not pay for medical relief. But he (Colonel Nolan) said that every one of the men who paid £6 or £7 rent for the land they farmed did pay for it. They paid for it in the shape of poor rates to the extent of 5s. or 6s. a-year; and if any of them only drew to that extent for medical aid, he contended that they were independent men. And the right hon. and learned Gentleman would shut out a man who got five or six shillings' worth of advice, although he paid a large sum for poor-rate. Since he (Colonel Nolan) was a child, the old system of medical relief for the poor had been superseded by the present dispensary system. That system had been established in Ireland, and the people had been trained up to it. But for that system, medical aid clubs might have been established in Ireland; but they had not grown up there, and it would take 40 or 50 years to build them up. But the right hon. and learned Gentleman would say to the people—"Because you have not established these clubs, you shall be shut out from the franchise altogether." If the Amend- ment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman were adopted, the most frightful confusion would be created; clerks of Unions and apothecaries would have to be summoned before the Revising Barristers to say whether they had given tickets and medicine or not; people would be called upon to produce their books and documents to satisfy the requirements of the Act; and all that, he need not say, would cause an enormous amount of trouble. Speaking with regard to his own county of Galway, if the clause which the Amendment proposed to strike out were retained, he did not believe there would throughout the county be two contested cases before the Revising Barrister; whereas if the Amendment were adopted, it would be very easy to have 20,000 such cases. If this clause was not passed, the Committee would be upsetting the whole Poor Law system in Ireland, and they would go a long way towards reversing the principle on which the Franchise Bill rested.

said, he thought his right hon. and learned Friend who moved the Amendment before the Committee was under a total misapprehension as to the operation and scope of the Medical Act in Ireland. That Act, before the passing of the Medical Charities' Act, constituted the system of relief in Ireland. It provided for dispensary districts administered by subscribers, and the present law was simply engrafted upon it and adapted to it. The Committee would find that in the Act the words "poor persons" were most carefully used, and that the words "persons in receipt of Poor Law relief" were as carefully avoided; and he would point out that the reason why this was done was simply this—that not only were the circumstances of the great mass of the people in Ireland totally different from those of the great mass of the people in England, but that the Poor Laws of the two countries were likewise different. The number of people who could receive outdoor relief and medical relief in England was much larger, in proportion to the rest of the population, than it was in Ireland; and not only were laws in Ireland much more restricted than in England, but the administration of them was more restrictive. When the present law was made, the Guardians were left to decide whether individuals came within the meaning of the words "poor persons" or not. Not only was there a different practice in respect of some Unions, but it was easy to see that John Smith, for instance, might be a poor man in the eyes of people in his neighbourhood, while he would not be considered to be so by persons who lived a few miles off. If, therefore, they were to disqualify persons who received medical aid free, Parliament would not only be doing a respectable class of persons a great injustice by excluding a large number of them from the exercise of the franchise, which right had been just conferred upon them, but it would lead to inextricable confusion in view of the varying rules and practice prevailing in the different Unions of Ireland. How it could ever have entered into the mind of his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for the University of Dublin to make the proposal that was now before the Committee, he (Colonel Colthurst) was unable to conceive; and he could only suggest that he had never thoroughly considered the Medical Charities Act, what it was intended to do, and what it had done in Ireland.

said, it would appear, from the views expressed by the hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Colonel Nolan), that he thought that the acceptance of medical relief almost amounted to a qualification for the exercise of the franchise. That was a sufficiently startling proposition; but when the hon. and gallant Member proceeded to argue that because officers in the Army and Navy were entitled by the Regulations of those Services to medical advice they also ought to be disqualified—why, he (Mr. Brodrick) thought the hon. and gallant Member might have gone the length of proposing to disfranchise convicts in gaol, who also received medical relief; and it would do to talk about at election time quite as well. He thought the question of equality as between the two countries was worthy of consideration; and if any inequality should exist in that respect hereafter, it would surely be greatly to the disadvantage of the hard-working English labourers who had been admitted to the franchise, who had subscribed, and were subscribing, considerable sums of money to societies in order to avoid placing themselves in the position of having to apply for free medi- cal assistance. When the Irish labourers did the same thing, that would be about the period when it would be desirable to give this class of people in Ireland the vote; and Parliament would avoid doing what he and others on the Opposition side of the House had protested against all along—namely, the giving to a class of voters, the equal of which did not exist in England, the entire preponderance of the Irish franchise, a preponderance which was pointed out, when the Franchise Bill was under discussion, to be as large as 458,000 in 760,000. The houses of these men were under £1 valuation. It would be an exceedingly good thing if, by the absence of this clause, every one of these men were cut off from the franchise; and it was upon that ground, and largely in the hope that a considerable number of the constituents of the hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Colonel Nolan), or those who would be the constituents of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, would be prevented from outvoting the intelligent classes of the community—those who had a stake in the country—that he (Mr. Brodrick) would vote against the inclusion of this clause. He hoped the Government intended to listen to reason. The hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) pathetically appealed to the Government not to allow this Bill to be dealt with adversely by another Chamber owing to its being sent up so late. If the hon. and learned Gentleman really felt the force of his own appeal, he would support him (Mr. Brodrick) in objecting to the inclusion in the Bill of provisions which no Chamber was likely to consider proper or right. It was exceedingly likely that the House of Commons would see the Bill again if they sent it up to the House of Lords containing such a monstrous and unequal provision as that which was now included in it. If the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Campbell-Bannerman) retained this clause in the Bill, it would be very desirable, when the proper time came, to change the name of the measure from "The Registration of Voters (Ireland) Bill" to "The Registration of Voters and Paupers Enfranchisement (Ireland) Bill." Before he sat down he wished to say that it was perfectly well understood, during the progress of the Franchise Bill last year, that even the Prime Minister most strongly objected to leaving Ireland out of the Bill, on the ground that, although he did not profess the class of voters was the same as in England, he thought that there should be absolute equality of franchise. If that rule were to be observed on this occasion, the Government could not fail to strike out this clause. If, on the other hand, they retained the clause, it was a breach of the most positive statement of intention on the part of the Government. He hoped that the Government would see fit to exclude this clause from the Bill.

said, he was not quite so ferociously virtuous as the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Brodrick). No doubt, it was a very attractive and general principle, and one that he (Mr. Gorst) had always supported in the House of Commons—that England and Ireland should be treated exactly alike, in all matters of principle, at all events. In England it was the law that persons who were in receipt of parochial relief, in which medical relief was included, were not entitled to enjoy the franchise; but he understood from the admirable speech delivered by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the County Cork (Colonel Colthurst) that in Ireland the administration of medical relief was entirely separate from the ordinary administration of poor relief. It, therefore, seemed that in England and Ireland the receipt of medical relief did not stand on the same footing. If a person received medical relief in England, he received ordinary parish relief, because parish medical relief was dispensed in England exactly in the same way, and under precisely the same conditions, as common parish relief. There was no doubt that in the incidence of the franchise in England, this fact had led to great abuse; indeed, he had heard great complaints made that the power of dispensing medical relief had been used by unscrupulous politicians in English parishes for the purpose of disfranchisement. He remembered well a ease in which a doctor, who was paid by the parish for attending the accouchement of the women of the lower classes, attended indiscriminately the wives of voters upon both sides of politics; but he put down on his list only those who belonged to the Party to which he was opposed, thereby disfranchising all the husbands: whereas the husbands of the women on his own side of politics retained their votes. This showed in itself how the dispensation of medical relief was abused. Of course, there were cases in which a man might be driven into the receipt of medical relief whether he pleased or not; and, therefore, it was clear that this was a kind of relief that could be abused, and could be used for political purposes. If it was possible, even in England, to separate the receipt of medical relief from the receipt of ordinary poor relief, he should be much inclined to support such a separation; but in England it was not possible, whereas in Ireland it was. It appeared that in Ireland, owing to Act of Parliament, the administration of medical relief was separated entirely from the ordinary distribution of public charity. Now, he would like to call the attention of the Committee to the way in which the English poor, in a precisely analogous case—that was in the case of the receipt, not of medical relief, but of educational relief—were treated. Where an English labouring man was not able to pay the school fees for the attendance of his own children at school, he was entitled to go to the Guardians, and from the Guardians to obtain out of the Poor Law funds the amount of the fees to be paid for the education of his children. Now, that was a case of the receipt of public money, receipt in a certain aspect of Poor Law relief, but it was receipt of a kind of relief which was not the ordinary poor relief; it was not connected with the administration of the ordinary Poor Law relief. A man was bound by law to send his children to school, and to pay certain fees; educational relief, therefore, was not at all the same thing as relief in the shape of food and clothes. Under these circumstances, was a poor English labourer disfranchised? No, because, by the Elementary Education Act, it was specifically provided that the parents who were unable, by reason of their poverty, to pay the fees of their children in public elementary schools, could apply to the Guardians, and the Guardians, being satisfied with the inability of the parents to pay the fees, should make such and such grants, and then it was expressly enacted—

"That the parents shall not, by reason of any payment made under this section, be deprived of any franchise right or privilege, or be subjected to any disability or any disqualification."

He was entirely with the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) in treating the poor in Ireland exactly as they treated the poor in England; and finding that they did not disfranchise the poor in England who obtained, by reason of their poverty, additional relief, he was inclined to vote against the disfranchisement of the poor of Ireland who, by reason of their poverty, received medical relief.

said, he did not believe the Medical Profession in Ireland had any desire whatever to stand in the way of the enlargement of the franchise. This clause, however, raised a difficulty of long standing, and one which it was to be regretted had not hitherto been dealt with. It was to be regretted that Her Majesty's Government had not condescended to take the advice of one or two persons thoroughly acquainted with this matter, because, if they had done so, the difficulty might easily have been removed. It could not be properly said, or said with a shadow of truth, that the Irish people had not received very generous assistance, under all circumstances, from the Medical Profession. The people themselves were the first to recognize that fact. The remuneration of the medical men was not at all adequate to the amount of assistance they rendered in very many cases. The real difficulty in the case arose from the system of "red tickets." That system had been made for a series of years an engine of oppression and extortion upon the Medical Profession. Unfortunately, in many instances, persons of the farming class considered that, in times of prosperity, they were entitled to enforce the gratuitous attendance of the doctor just as they did in times of adversity. The habit of receiving gratuitous medical relief grew upon the people, and they remained under the impression that they were always entitled to receive that relief, no matter how great their prosperity might be. As an instance of the "red ticket" system being used, as he had said, as an engine of oppression, he might tell the Committee that if a medical man was disliked in his district, the expression had become common—"We will soon red-ticket him out of the place." "Red tickets" were very easily given; there was no sort of control with, regard to the issuing of them; everyone liked to be generous in that which cost him nothing, and the small shopkeeper was always ready, on the slightest pretence, to tell a customer—"Oh, I will send the doctor to you." It often happened that doctors were sent many miles to attend the most trumpery cases. Of his (Dr. Lyons') own knowledge, he knew of a case in which a patient living at a considerable distance expressed a great desire to see anew "iron horse" the doctor had got A "red ticket" was issued to the applicant, and the doctor—who used a bicycle, his salary not enabling him to keep a horse—was sent seven miles, with the result that he saw the so-called patient standing at the door, who, the a and there, frankly stated the circumstances under which the "red ticket" had been issued. The system of "red tickets" was one he had always looked forward to devising some means, with the consent of the House, of remedying. There was no in suparable difficulty in the matter. The clerk of the Union and the relieving officer had full knowledge of the circumstances and financial position of all persons in their districts, and nothing would be easier than to classify those at all times entitled to gratuitous relief, and those whose position enabled them to pay a fixed moderate charge. He thought that in times of prosperity the well-to-do people of Ireland should be obliged to pay a fair amount for medical assistance; and he asked the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant (Mr. Campbell-Bannerman) whether he could not, on this occasion, give some pledge that he would, on an early day, take steps to prevent the abuse he (Dr. Lyons) had indicated?

, interrupting the hon. Gentleman (Dr. Lyons), asked whether it was in Order for an hon. Gentleman in the House, who was supposed to be addressing the Chair, to speak to himself?

said, the hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of Dublin (Dr. Lyons) had not condescended to tell the Committee who were the one or two persons whom the Government ought to have consulted on this matter; but, if he was right in assuming that the hon. Member was one of those persons, he (Mr. Charles Russell) was exceedingly glad that the Govern- ment had not consulted him. He thought it would be a source of great injustice in Ireland if this clause were not retained in the Bill. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) mixed up with the question of the retention of this clause, and so did the hon. Member for the City of Dublin (Dr. Lyons), the question of the possible abuse of the system of giving white or red tickets. There might be the abuse indicated; but that was not the question before the Committee; that was a matter which could be redressed, and ought to be redressed, by the action of the Local Government Board, to whom application could be made, if any hon. Members would put them in possession of the facts. Dismissing the question altogether of the supposed abuse in the distribution of medical relief, upon the general question he had only one word to say. His hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the county of Cork (Colonel Colthurst) and the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) had made this matter very clear. His hon. and gallant Friend near him (Colonel Colthurst), who understood the actual working of the system well, and who therefore was entitled to speak on the matter, had pointed out how the system worked, and the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst) had made it clear to the Committee that the relief was such that it was not in truth considered by the people of Ireland as parochial relief. He was sure that no one who knew the feeling of Ireland would suppose that the person who received outdoor relief in Ireland, or parochial relief inside the Union, was regarded at all in the same category as the small farmer who, in the case of necessity, applied to the medical officer to put down disease, which was not only a matter of relief to a particular individual, but also a matter of great concern to the public generally. He could not but think that a great deal of the argument that had been addressed to the Committee, although it had not been disclosed, was really dictated by the kind of feeling which was obviously in the mind of the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Surrey (Mr Brodrick), who, in truth, wanted by this side-wind to undo, to some extent, the effect of the Franchise Bill itself.

said, there was one aspect of this question on which he should like to address a few words to the Committee. It was perfectly clear from the debate that this was really not merely a question of registration, but a question of the extension of the franchise in Ireland. It had been argued by the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) that without this clause the extension of the franchise in Ireland, which had been already assented to by Parliament, would be largely inoperative. That being so, the question naturally occurred why this matter was not dealt with by Her Majesty's Government in the Franchise Bill, rather than in the Registration Bill, and whether it was reasonable or not to ask the House of Commons, after the question of the franchise had been settled by common agreement, that this question should be re-opened, so far as it affected Ireland, by the clause that was now before the Committee? Now, Her Majesty's Government had themselves, in previous debates during this Session, adopted the principle that it was not right to reopen the question of the franchise, because, when Amendments upon that point were moved by various Members in the Committee on the Redistribution Bill, the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board (Sir Charles W. Dilke), while admitting in more than one instance his own sympathy with the Amendments proposed, declared the Amendments could not be considered, as the question was already settled. He (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) suggested, a fortiori, that it ought not to be re-opened by a Registration Bill which purported to be merely a measure for enacting such alterations in the law as might be necessary to carry out the Franchise Act which had been already passed, and the Redistribution Bill which was now passing through the House of Commons. But it was contended that the circumstances of the Medical Charities Act in Ireland and the Poor Law system of England were so essentially different, that if the alterations now proposed were made in the Irish law, they would be no precedent for any-similar change in the English law. No one in the House could speak with more knowledge on the subject than the hon. and gallant Member for the county of Cork (Colonel Colthurst), and he (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) admitted what the hon. and gallant Gentleman had said with regard to the different administration of the Medical Charities Act in Ireland, and the system of Poor Law medical relief in England. No doubt, in Ireland the medical charities were not administered by officials of the Poor Law. It was a separate system altogether, and therefore it had come, as the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell) had said, to be looked upon by not a few of the population of Ireland as really no system of Poor Law relief at all. Well, that was the strongest testimony that could be given by any hon. Member to the truth of the facts alluded to by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson), and subsequently dwelt upon by the hon. Member for the City of Dublin (Dr. Lyons)—namely, that there was considerable abuse in the administration of the Medical Charities Act in Ireland. It was admitted by high authorities that abuse of the system did exist. [Mr. HEALY: What is the supervising authority?] The authority supervising was unquestionably the Local Government Board; but when persons who were legally appointed to administer the system, and those who came under it, looked upon it from the point of view of the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk, he (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) did not think it would be possible for the supervising authority to check the abuse. He did not agree with the hon. and gallant Member for the county of Cork as to the essential difference between the Irish and English systems. The essence of both of them was that they consisted of relief paid from public sources—paid by the ratepayers—whether it was administered by those who were intrusted with the administration of medical relief, or by the Poor Law Guardians; and in his humble opinion, if Parliament agreed to this change in the law with respect to Ireland, it was striking a very dangerous blow at the whole electoral law of the United Kingdom, which made the receipt of relief a disqualification for the franchise. It had been urged by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Chatham, that the arguments which had been used should not preclude the adoption of the clause, for the reason that the administration of medical relief in England could not be so separated from the administration of other relief as to leave the acceptance of other relief a disqualification, while the acceptance of medical relief remained no disqualification. He (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) did not wish to put his opinion on a question of law against that of the hon. and learned Member; but he could not help thinking that it would be almost as easy to repeal the law in England which made the acceptance of medical relief a disqualification as to repeal the law which applied to Ireland. It was a matter of great social interest whether the acceptance of relief under the Poor Law system in England, or under the Medical Authorities in Ireland, should be felt by those who received it to be of the nature of relief from public sources, or should be looked upon from the point of view suggested by the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell). Any hon. Member who had watched the progress of Poor Law outdoor relief in Ireland for the last 15 or 2') years, would know that this idea of relief—being in the nature of a charity rather than a relief from public sources—was not without conderable danger in Ireland. It was a great danger in England, too. On looking at a late Report of the Irish Local Government Board, he had seen that the amount expended in outdoor relief in Ireland had doubled during the last 10 years, whilst the expenditure on medical charities had increased 20 per cent during that period. He thought that if the disqualification for the exercise of the franchise was a bar to anyone who could really do without it from seeking for relief of this kind, it was a good thing from a social point of view to retain that; but, at any rate, he did not think that a change should be made in the law without the whole system of disqualification for the franchise being seriously considered by Parliament. He believed that it would be generally admitted by the Government and the House that the acceptance of what was called medical relief was not consistent with that independent frame of mind on the part of the voter to which the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) had alluded in his speech. He thought it ought to be a disqualification for the franchise; and, therefore, he very much regretted that Her Majesty's Government should have felt it necessary to raise this important question, and propose this important change, in this Bill, which, he ventured to submit, had no proper connection with the subject. If Her Majesty's Government intended to effect this alteration in the law, the question should be raised directly, and on its own merits, and not brought forward in a measure of this sort.

said, he would first allude to the speech of the hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of Dublin (Dr. Lyons). He knew several dispensary doctors in Ireland, and was aware that they occasionally had patients who paid them; but he could repudiate that they were willing to purchase immunity from the grievances they had to complain of by the disfranchisement of a large portion of their fellow-countrymen. He believed no body of men could be more surprised or indignant than they would be on finding their case mixed up with the question of the disfranchisement of their fellow-countrymen. He was convinced that they would endure ten times more rather than lend their sanction to the efforts of the hon. Member, or of anybody else, to bring about the disfranchisement of a large portion of the Irish people. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) would say this to the Committee generally—namely, that there was no proposition which could come before them in connection with this Bill, or any other Bill this Session, which could more clearly test the legislative capacity of this Assembly and its legislative grasp and its statesmanship than its method of dealing with this question. This was one question which would show the people of Ireland whether or not there was an awakening intelligence in this House as to the manner in which Irish questions should be dealt with. For what did the arguments against this clause all mean? The hon. Member for West Surrey (Mr. Brodrick) deserved the gratitude of Irish Members and of the Committee generally. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) agreed with the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell) that the hon. Member for West Surrey was the one speaker on this occasion who had given the real reasons of the Party to which he belonged for the attitude they bad taken up. The real reason—and let the Committee face it and know of this hostility—was not a desire to raise the social status of the Irish citizen, but to keep down that social status by depriving the people of a voice in the destinies of their own country. The real reason had been stated by the hon. Member he had mentioned, who had been candid enough to say that, if he could have his way, 50 years would elapse before the mass of the Irish people would have any voice in the control of their own affairs.

I said I hoped it would be long before those persons in receipt of medical relief in Ireland were admitted to the franchise.

Yes; but the hon. Member had connected that with a statement that the persons holding small portions of land in Ireland were unfit to exercise the franchise. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) put the two statements together, and interpreted them by saying that the hon. Member's opposition to this proposal was based on a desire to deprive the poorer classes of the Irish people of any voice in the control of their own affairs. The right hon. Gentleman—a late Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach)—had disclaimed all hostility to the measure; but the right hon. Gentleman would be inconsistent with his whole career if he did not offer most vigorous hostility to everything like Irish reform. What were his arguments? He proposed to go round all the arguments of the hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst); but he was careful to overlook the most pregnant of those arguments. The hon. and learned Member for Chatham had pointed out that a large number of the people of this country were receiving what was practically out-door relief by having their children educated in the Board schools, although no one proposed to make that a bar to their exercising the franchise. Nothing could be more fallacious or more absurd than to suppose that things called by the same name in England and Ireland meant the same thing in the two countries. They found this fallacy existing in connection with almost every proposal which had ever been made in the interests of Ireland. With regard to land- lordism, a mistake of that kind had been made. The landlord of Ireland and the landlord of England were so totally different that they might almost be called by different names. So was it also with this system of medical relief. In England there was a variable scale of all doctors' fees. The hon. Member for the City of Dublin said that nothing could be more mythical than the supposition that a guinea was given as a fee in all cases to a doctor in Ireland; but, in spite of that observation, he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) maintained that every medical man in Ireland who would accept anything less than the ordinary fee of a guinea would be "Boycotted" by the rest of his Profession. What was the case in England? Why, if they went into the poor parts of London, they would find open dispensaries where a bottle of medicine and advice was given for the small sum of 6d. Anyone acquainted with the relations existing between medical men and their patients in this country would know that it was possible to get medical assistance in England at a price infinitely below that charged by the doctors in Ireland. Some people said—"Why do not the Irish form clubs for medical assistance?" The answer was that there was not that system of social education among the Irish people to enable them to do it which existed in England. [Mr. BRODRICK: Hear, hear!] The hon. Member cheered that observation. He had found fault very much with these poor people for being paupers, and had said that because they held small portions of land they should be deprived of the Parliamentary franchise; but he had not observed that the hon. Member had accompanied that observation with any reproach to the landlords, who were content to take a considerable amount in the shape of rack rent from these poor people. In England they had this system of clubs, and of opening practically free dispensaries, and they had a variable scale of medical fees; and they compared a system of that kind with the system prevailing in Ireland, which required a medical man to charge no less than a guinea under penalty of being "Boycotted" by the rest of his Profession. He should be very much surprised if the majority of the English Conservative Party followed the lead of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) on this occasion. The right hon. Baronet, an ex-Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, had asked why this had not been brought on in the Franchise Bill? Well, it would be more convenient if right hon. Gentlemen in the responsible position of the right hon. Baronet would pay a little more attention to the history of questions like this. If he had paid a little more attention to that history he would know that the proposal was made in the Franchise Bill, and was ruled out of Order, and as not germane to the Bill, by the Chairman. That was the reason why the clause was brought forward in the present measure. Finally, he (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) must altogether object to what he might almost tall the hypocritical plea—that this clause was opposed because of a desire to improve the social status of the Irish people. He had said before that the object was to keep the status of the Irish people as low as possible by depriving them of any voice in the control of their own affairs. He would go further, and say that this Bill, if passed in an unamended form, while producing an apparent equality in regard to the franchise between the people of Ireland and the people of England, would be an absolute mockery and a delusion when accompanied by the disfranchisement of so many voters.

said, they bad had two separate estimates of the value of this clause; the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) had said—and he (Mr. Campbell-Bannerman) was disposed to agree with him—that it lay in a very small compass indeed. But the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) had taken a much higher ground, and had told them that this was a supreme test of the legislative grasp of the House of Commons, and of its statesmanship. He (Mr. Campbell-Bannerman) did not deny that that was one aspect of the case for which there was something to be said, though it was his experience in the House of Commons that the words statesmanship and statesmanlike were always applied to that particular line of conduct which the hon. Gentleman speaking at the time happened to prefer. He himself did not profess to have an accurate criterion as to the conduct of any Member of the House; but, to come to the point, it seemed to him that they ought to consider what was the rationale of the disfranchisement of those who might seek to obtain medical relief in Ireland, if it were not because they were supposed to be in a position of dependence. A man who received parish relief in an ordinary sense—and there was no indoor or outdoor pauper, as no doubt all would agree, who was in a position of independence—could not be admitted to the franchise. It would be against public polity to admit him; but then came the question, was the kind of relief they were now discussing of such a nature as to interfere with the independence of the person who received it? The Government had come to the conclusion that it was not; otherwise, of course, this clause would not have appeared in the Bill. The system in Ireland bad been sufficiently explained to the House to-night, and whatever might be the merits or demerits of that system about which they had heard so much, it appeared to him nothing to do with the question before the Committee; and this, at all events, was certain—that, if any accusation was brought against the present system in Ireland, it was this—that persons of too high a class of the community took advantage of the system; and therefore, from that point of view, it was not so liable to the imputation of interfering with the voter's independence as it would be in other cases. It was said, indeed, that the system was bad; but if it was so bad, this, at any rate, was not the way to improve it. If it was a bad system, injurious to the community and so forth, then, in the name of reason, let them set about reforming it; but do not let them try to reform it by a side-wind in this way by imposing the penalty of disfranchisement upon those who were obliged to take advantage of it. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Gloucestershire (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) had spoken of this as introducing a change in the law. (He Mr. Campbell-Bannerman) did not know that that point had been taken up; but it was a very open question whether it was a change in the law at all; it was rather, in the view of many competent and qualified persons, a declaration of what the law now was. If that question had not been raised, he was not disposed to raise it himself; but, even if it were a change in the law, he should not be averse to it on that account. What was the object of the opposition to this clause? The hon. Member for West Surrey (Mr. Brodrick) had, with most captivating frankness, told them a good deal upon that point. He (Mr. Campbell-Bannerman) could admire and appreciate the consistency of the hon. Member, because he believed he was himself opposed to the extension of the franchise to a lower class of voters in Ireland; and, therefore, he was willing to take advantage of any means which could keep them out of it. But the House of Commons could not take that line at all. All of them who were willing and consenting parties to the Bill passed at the end of last year surely could not now by this subterfuge—because it was nothing less—disfranchise those to whom it had been understood to be one of the objects of the Bill to give a vote. On the other hand, the object might be—and he could appreciate the motives of those who acted under that contention—to bring pressure to bear upon the people in order to prevent what seemed to him to be an abuse of the present system. That, he maintained, was a thing not to be done in this particular way. If it were to be done, let the Local Government Board see to it, and if they were unable to do what was necessary, then let the Legislature be resorted to. Do not let them in this roundabout way use the electoral arrangement of the country for the purpose of effecting this object. He did not think it was necessary to go into the matter any further. As the right hon. Gentleman opposite had said, the matter lay in a very small compass, it had been now well discussed, and he trusted that they might be allowed to take a division upon it.

said, he would like to ask whether the Government had con- sidered the question of providing polling districts, and whether they would consider the necessity of providing also additional Revision Courts? In the case of the county of Dublin last year, they had offered, if necessary, to pass an Act to enable the Lord Lieutenant to make additional provision for the county of Dublin. Now they would be having a tremendous number of new voters coming in. and it would be perfectly impossible to have them properly attended to unless there were an additional number of Revision Courts. He believed the Lord Lieutenant had power in some cases, with the consent of the Privy Council, to appoint additional Revision Courts; but there was great difficulty in getting the consent, and, unless pledges were given that money which was available would be used for this purpose in Ireland, they would be placed in an unfortunate position in regard to this subject. They had provided for additional Revising Barristers, and, that being so, there was no reason for their not providing that they should do the work in one district and then in another.

said, there was sufficient power under the Act of 1873.

said, he wished to point out that they had now arrived at a new state of things, owing to the large increase that was being made in the constituency. He wished, therefore, to ask whether the Lord Lieutenant would reconsider the entire question, and whether also the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland would give the matter his attention It was important in a large number of cases, in which the number of voters upon the lists would be enormously increased, that a sufficient number of Revision Courts should be provided—say, one Court for every 1,000 voters—so as to render them easily accessible to the new voters.

said, he thought the Government ought so to arrange that the voters should, if possible, be able to attend Revision Courts within seven miles of their own residences. Although he himself represented the smallest county in Ireland (Louth), he found that in the Southern Division of that county voters would have to walk a distance of 17 miles for the purpose of maintaining their right to be upon the Register. If it was necessary, under the old system, that the electors should have polling-places within four miles of their residences, he did not see why, under the new Act, which so largely increased the number of electors, it should not be necessary to have Revision Courts within a distance of certainly not more than seven miles. Unless some such suggestion were carried out, and some pledge given on the part of the Government to the Representatives of the Irish people that the labourers should not be compelled to walk a distance of 17 miles for the purpose of maintaining their rights, in the face of some three penny objection, a large number of voters would be subjected to very considerable hardship. As far as the Lord Lieutenant was concerned, they had very little hope of obtaining what they required from that authority. Attention had been drawn in that House time after time to the injustice perpetrated under the existing system; and they certainly had a right now to ask the Government to consent to such an enlargement of the number of the Revision Courts in Ireland that the agricultural labourers, who would now be placed on the Electoral Roll, should not be compelled to walk enormous distances in order to maintain their right to vote. It would be a great scandal if such a thing were permitted, for if men had to walk a distance of 17 miles one day, they would hardly be in a condition to do any work the next. He thought, therefore, that something more was required than the mere assertion of the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland that the matter was one in which sufficient power was given to the Lord Lieutenant under the existing law. The Act referred to had been in operation for 11 years, and during all that time the Lord Lieutenant had had ample opportunities of considering the matter; but in no single instance, as far as he (Mr. Callan) was aware, with the exception of the county of Dublin, had the Lord Lieutenant increased the number of Revision Courts.

Yes; in the county of Monaghan.

said, Monaghan was another exception.

It was for the benefit of the Tories.

said, his hon. and learned Friend was right. What was done in Monaghan was on behalf of the Tories, and no such enlargement was ever made in any other part of Ireland than those mentioned. Under the Act of Parliament, the Revising Barristers would receive £100 additional salary for holding their Revision Courts, and they were only called upon to sit an average of two days in the 12 months. They could not, therefore, complain if they were inconvenienced to some extent by holding additional Courts; and certainly it was they, and not the electors, who, if anyone, ought to be inconvenienced.

said, he would remind the Committee that they were now considering line 25 of the clause, which proposed to revise certain Acts referred to in the Schedule. It should be remembered that the Ballot Act gave a Revision Court to every polling or Petty Sessional district—he was not quite sure which—and what he wished to suggest was that they should revert back to what had been done at the time of the passing of the Ballot Act, that they should repeal the clause which had repealed the section of that Act dealing with the Revision Courts, and having regard to the tremendous number of electors which would now be thrown upon the Register, that they should enact that the Revising Barristers should hold Revision Courts in every Petty Sessional district, which, he believed, had been the case under the Ballot Act. He would urge that this suggestion should be adopted, and made applicable to the 1st Schedule of the Bill. He thought also that line 25 of the clause required amendment by putting in the number of the Schedule. There would be a series of Schedules in the Bill, and line 25 had reference to what would be the first of those Schedules, all of which, he suggested, ought to be numbered or defined by letters of the alphabet.

said, he assured the Committee that the Act of 1873 gave ample power for the appointment by the Lord Lieutenant of any Revision Courts that might be thought necessary. With regard to what had been said about the Ballot Act, he thought the hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) was under a misapprehension, and that the section he had referred to gave power to appoint Revision Courts in all the polling districts.

thought there had been some confusion with regard to the operation of the Ballot Act. Under that Act there was power to increase the polling districts. These districts were fixed at the Quarter Sessions. The revision of the registration was also a matter belonging to Quarter Sessions. The question that now arose was whether, in consequence of the increased number of voters who would be placed upon the Register, they would have sufficient facilities afforded them for maintaining their rights as electors under the revision provided at Quarter Sessions. He did not think they would be sufficient, and was of opinion that further provision ought to be made under the 4th clause of the Bill, and not by an Amendment relating to polling districts, which would have nothing to do with the revision of registration. The revision of votes at Quarter Sessions was one thing and the fixing of polling places at Quarter Sessions was another. Under the Ballot Act the polling places were increased to such an extent that every polling place was brought to within four or five miles of the electors' residences; but the revision of the Register was not similarly dealt with, and he thought that some provision ought to be made under the Bill—by which the number of voters in Ireland was almost doubled—for an increase in the number of Revision Courts. He thought the matter was one with which the Government ought to deal. The hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) seemed to think that the Ballot Act had provided for what was needed; but this was not so. The Ballot Act merely left the question of revision where it was, at Quarter Sessions, and the only way to increase the facilities for revision was by an Amendment of this Bill increasing the number of Revision Courts.

said, the hon. Member for Limerick (Mr. Syrian) laboured under a great mistake in attaching to the Quarter Sessions both the revision and the polling. It might have been so in the olden time, when the hon. Member first came into Parliament; but, at the present day, the registration and polling questions were settled at separate Sessions altogether, and wholly apart from the Quarter Sessions. Each of these matters was deal with at separate Sessions.

said, his hon. Friend the Member for Louth (Mr. Callan), while technically correct, was essentially wrong.

said, the main point at issue was whether there was any reason why the electors should be under the necessity of walking a great many miles for the purpose of attending the Revision Courts. In a county like that which be represented (Galway), where there was no contest at all about registration, he did not see why the Government should be put to the expense of appointing a number of additional Revision Courts. In cases where, as in Galway, under ordinary circumstances, there would be no fighting at all, it would be a farce and a ridiculous expenditure to institute a number of new Courts. His own experience was that the calling over the Roll at Quarter Sessions was a thing that only occupied five minutes or so, and the matter was settled. But in cases where large additions of voters were made to the Register, where, for instance, there might be a supplementary list of 4,000, 5,000, or 6,000, and where every Liberal objected to every Conservative, and every Conservative to every Liberal, and any voter who happened to keep his own counsel on political subjects was objected to by both Parties, it became a totally different matter. In those cases he considered that a multiplication of the Revision Courts would be found necessary, and he hoped that means would be taken to provide the requisite facilities.

said, that, to his own knowledge, there were cases in which electors would have to walk a distance of 15, 16, and even 17 miles to get to the nearest Revision Courts. He was in the recollection of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Galway (Colonel Nolan), and of other hon. Members, when he stated that in many counties in Ireland several thousands of notices of objection were served upon electors on both sides at every revision; and unless a sufficient number of Revision Courts was provided, it would be next to impossible for the voters to be able to attend them and maintain their rights.

said, he agreed with the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland (Mr. Walker) that there was ample jurisdic- tion at present for the appointment of Revision Courts, to be held at such times and places in the course of the year as the Lord Lieutenant might deem fit. The Act of 1877 gave the power of holding Quarter Sessions more often than those already fixed; but he had no doubt that the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland would look into the matter and satisfy himself as to the existence of the necessary powers, as it was obvious that if sufficient power did not exist for the provision of the requisite number of Revision Courts some further provision ought to be made for the purpose of insuring that result.

said, the Ballot Act of 1872 provided certain machinery for the appointment of new polling districts, and that Act was amended by the Act of 1873, which latter Act also provided machinery for the appointment of Revision Courts. The two things were perfectly distinct.

said, he quite agreed that the 3rd section of the Act of 1873, which amended the Ballot Act of 1872, gave the Lord Lieutenant power to provide Revision Courts where necessary; but what he complained of was that this power was never exercised by the Lord Lieutenant. In the case of Lublin it was only after a tremendous struggle that the Lord Lieutenant was induced to give some additional Revision Courts, and he gave them with a most meagre hand. The greatest possible pressure had to be brought to bear on that occasion; several Memorials were sent to the Lord Lieutenant on the subject, and the result was that he did not give half the Courts that were wanted. When, however, the Tories found that they had not a sufficient number of Revision Courts in Monaghan, and the magistrates sent up an application for additional Courts, the county being formerly a Tory county, they were able to get what they wanted. Why, he asked, did not the Government undertake to deal with this matter? There ought to be some hard-and-fast line laid down for the appointment of a certain number of persons to hold Revision Courts, or the Lord Lieutenant should be compelled to give a Revision Court for every 1,000 electors. As the matter at present stood, the section of the Act of Parliament which gave the existing power said the Lord Lieutenant might by Order in Council appoint Revision Courts, and so forth. He (Mr. Healy) would not say that there ought to be a Court in every Petty Sessional district; but he thought there ought to be one in every town of any size—say, with a population of 2,000, or having Town Commissioners. Revision Courts ought to be held in all such places—at any rate for the present year. He would not carry his proposition beyond this—It was proposed to appoint a greater number of Revising Barristers, and to take other additional means to provide for the registration necessitated by the Franchise Act; and he thought, therefore, the Government ought to be anxious to see that the new law was properly, fairly, and efficiently carried out in every respect.

said, the circumstances connected with the present legislation would necessarily require a much larger scheme of revision than would be requisite in ordinary years; and he would promise, on behalf of the Government, that the matter should be carefully considered in the spirit indicated by the last observations of the hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy).

said, he was afraid the hon. and learned Member for Monaghan did not go far enough. That hon. and learned Gentleman would be content with having a Revision Court in each town where there were Town Commissioners; but, if this recommendation were adopted, it would leave a large number of small towns that had not Town Commissioners without any means of revision at all. In his own county (Louth) there were only two Courts, which, he contended, were not enough. There ought to be one at least in each barony, which would give five instead of two Revision Courts to the county.

said, he wished to know, before the clause was agreed to, whether the Government did not think it necessary to indicate the Schedules referred to in the Bill by numbers or initials?

said, he was afraid they could hardly amend the Bill in that way at the present moment; but he would consider what it would be best to do on Report.

said, it was the opinion of the Government that the Local Government Board was the best qualified body to secure a reasonable and not too high a remuneration being paid to those public servants for the performance of these duties.

thought that if there were need for the intervention of the Local Government Board, or some other sufficient authority, for the purpose of seeing justice done between the clerks and collectors of Unions and the ratepayers, this was the case in which it had arisen. He had to remind the Committee of an instance he had brought before the House on the second reading of the Bill, only two days ago. He had then informed the House that the Athy Board of Guardians had proposed to appoint certain gentlemen who were secretaries of the National League for the purpose of making out the list of voters in the various Unions. This proposal was brought before the Board without any previous notice; and although the attention of the Guardians was called to this fact, and they were asked to postpone the matter in order that due notice might be given, they had declined to do so, but had there and then, on the spot, appointed as fit and proper persons to make out the new lists seven gentlemen whose special qualification was that they were secretaries to the National League. At the next meeting it was proposed to fix their remuneration. Now, if this sort of thing were to be tolerated elsewhere in Ireland, it would be easy to imagine what sort of a remuneration would be given. One particular class of persons they would remunerate handsomely, while another class would hardly be remunerated at all. With respect to the Amendment before the Committee, he regarded it as utterly unintelligible and unworkable, and, moreover, wanting in point of definition. It was an essential matter, in which the independence of a Government Board was necessary, to see fair play between the ratepayers and the officers. In England it was a different matter; the business of making out the lists lay with the overseers, who were not entitled to receive anything but their expenses. No doubt they could remunerate any sub-official for manual labour; but the "bills" referred to on these occasions were not bills for remuneration, for he believed, as a matter of law, they were not entitled to remuneration. But they were allowed expenses, which were audited in the public accounts, the overseer, however, giving his services just as the Sheriff did in other matters, without receiving remuneration. He hoped the Government would be firm in holding to their clause.

said, it was but a trivial opposition which had been offered to the Amendment. Though the terms of the Amendment were not perhaps those a cultured lawyer would use, still the object was quite clear; it was to take away from the central body the power of fixing the remuneration of clerks and others concerned in the business of registration, giving that power in each Union to the Board of Guardians; and he thought the Board of Guardians would be a more fitting body to fix the remuneration than the Local Government Board in Dublin. In the first place, the Board of Guardians would provide the money; and generally, unless some incapacity could be shown, the people who had to provide the money for the discharge of a public duty ought, through their representatives, to be allowed to say the extent to which their money should be expended. The Local Government Board had not that knowledge of what would be the work under the new franchise to enable them to fix a scale with adequate speed. If the clause were agreed upon in its present form, and the Bill in due course was sent up to the House of Lords, where, after a time, it might pass and ultimately receive the Royal Assent, then, and not till then, the Local Government Board set about fixing the scale of remuneration. This would be productive of something very like disaster to the public interest. The demand on the time of the public rate collectors would be overpowering; and if they were left in doubt for a month or six weeks as to what remuneration they would receive for their extra duty, they would go about that duty in a careless apathetic manner, instead of with that energy the public interest required. He took it to be a prime requisite that the collectors should know immediately or very soon how much they were to get; and if the Government accepted the Amendment allowing the Boards of Guardians to fix the amount of remuneration, the Boards would at once, from their knowledge of local circumstances, knowing the number of people to be put upon the Register, the extent of work from each collector, their knowledge of the rate-producing Returns and their funds in hand, take a full view of all the elements of the case, and fix a fair scale of remuneration. If, on the other hand, out of an obstinate desire to leave all power in the hands of a central body, taking it out of the hands of Boards having only a limited representation, if the Government persevered in that, then the result would be that nothing definite would be known for weeks to come as to the amount of remuneration to collectors, and necessarily the effect would be that collectors would not interest themselves as they ought; they would know you could not really recover penalties, though they were in the Act; and thousands or tens of thousands of people entitled to be on the Electoral Boll would have their names omitted.

said, he hoped the Amendment of the hon. Member for Waterford (Mr. B. Power) would not be accepted. He thought it most undesirable to throw upon Boards of Guardians, among whom in Ireland, as was well known, strong Party feeling existed, delicate work of this kind in connection with the registration of voters; and that rate collectors and clerks of Unions should be solely dependent on Boards of Guardians. He did not think the latter wanted any such power, and he knew that rate collectors and clerks of Unions wished to have the scale of remuneration fixed by the Local Government Board; and he also believed that rate collectors knew already that they were to be paid for the work, and he believed they would enter, and were entering, on the work with pleasure. Hitherto they had done the work and were paid nothing, and it would be most undesirable to accept an Amendment, the result of which would probably be great inequality in the scale of payment throughout the Unions in Ireland, some Unions paying highly, others paying very little. He thought a fixed scale, such as was the case in preparing the jury lists, should be arranged by the Local Government Board, and then collectors would know how they were to be paid.

said, he was surprised at the grounds upon which the hon. Member (Mr. T. A. Dickson) objected to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Waterford (Mr. E. Power). The hon. Member spoke of irregularity in payments; he was surprised that an hon. Gentleman should hand himself over to the interest of a narrow class to the detriment of the constituency he represented. He stated that it was undesirable that Boards of Guardians should have the power of fixing the remuneration, and he said rate collectors were paid nothing for the work now. But then, when they proposed to collect the rates in certain parishes, they were well aware of the duty that would devolve upon them in connection with Revision Sessions; and therefore, in making their estimate for what they would do the collection, they took into consideration the duty of preparing the Electoral Roll. He said the Board of Guardians did not wish for the power; but he would ask the hon. Member, was there any Petition from any Board of Guardians asking the House not to impose this duty upon them? Was there any Resolution expressive of the wish that the Local Government Board should take this power from them? He (Mr. Callan) stated, with all the authority that attached to the Representative of a large county, that the Boards of Guardians did not wish to have the power of fixing the remuneration; but he would ask the hon. Member to state in the House, could he point to a single vote of any Board of Guardians in Ireland expressing directly, indirectly, or by implication, any such wish? He knew the hon. Member had been entrusted with a number of letters from officials of the Poor Law Board; but he had yet to learn that the hon. Member had representations from Boards of Guardians, in Tyrone or elsewhere, suggesting that any Board wished to have this power taken from them. If so, then perhaps the hon. Member would avail himself the opportunity, and give the name of any Board of Guardians, to substantiate his assertion he had ventured to make in opposition to the Amendment.

said, from his own knowledge he was certain that Boards of Guardians did not wish this work cast upon them.

said, he accepted that explanation. The hon. Member's expression was "Boards of Guardians did not wish it." But to turn to the objections of the hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Lewis). First, he must say the clause contained that to which Irish Members for years had objected—the levying of taxation without representation. One of the great objections to the Grand Jury Laws was that they gave the power of levying rates without the representation of the ratepayers; and so this Bill would withhold representation from the ratepayers, while imposing taxation. Some two years since, there was a Bill before the House, and referred to a Select Committee on which he (Mr. Callan) sat, a Bill in reference to the superannuation of Poor Law officers; and what substantially killed that Bill in Committee so effectually that the Government did not bring forward the question now was the demand by Mr. Robinson, Chief Commissioner and representative of the Local Government Board, that the Board should have the power of fixing the retiring allowances of Poor Law officers, overriding the authority of the elected Guardians, and now there was the attempt made by the Government, undercover of this Bill, to take away from the Poor Law Guardians the power of fixing the remuneration of those officers. The hon. Member for Londonderry said the Amendment was an attempt to give power to Boards of Guardians such as they had never had; but the hon. Member, though representing an Irish constituency, could not have read the Irish Poor Law Act, or he would know that under the existing law power of fixing salaries was given to the Poor Law Guardians. Every item of expense, however, was audited by the Government auditor, and unless this official sanctioned the expenditure, he surcharged the unfortunate Guardians who signed the cheque. Nothing could be paid that was not approved by the Government auditor. He(Mr. Callan) certainty strongly supported the Amendment for many reasons, and was surprised that it was resisted by the President of the Local Government Board, who he believed had never attended a Board meeting on a single occasion; or if he had done so, he (Mr. Callan) would be glad to be corrected. On the other hand, let the right hon. Gentleman bring forward any single instance of neglect by Boards of Guardians of the duty that fell upon officials under the existing Registration Act. If such could be shown, there might be some reason for introducing this clause into the Bill. Until a sufficient reason was shown, he certainly thought Irish Members were bound to support the hon. Member for Waterford. The Local Government Board of Ireland—in fact, the Irish Executive—knewthat in the near future there would be some extension of local self-government, and so they wished to absorb and gather to themselves all the power they possibly could, so as to leave County Boards, when appointed, as little as possible to control. He was most anxious that Poor Law collectors and clerks of Unions should be properly remunerated for the work imposed upon them; and unless a case could be made out showing the incapacity or disinclination of Boards of Guardians to fix the scale, he should support the Amendment of the hon. Member for Waterford.

said, he rose to offer a suggestion. He was in favour of the principle that those responsible for raising the rates should have the ordering of their distribution; and, certainly. he was not in favour of putting all control over the remuneration in the hands of the Local Government Board; but he thought there were certain possible difficulties that, in dealing with particular work of this kind, might create some inconvenience. It was desirable there should be remuneration provided for these officers for work done, and it should also be provided that there should be some uniformity of payment, some system, so that one set of Guardians should not proceed on one principle, and others upon a principle totally different. It seemed to him the power of the Local Government Board, in reference to the appointment of officers, suggested an analogy which might be followed in the present case. The clerks and collectors were appointed by the Guardians, but in each case subject to the approval of the Local Government Board; and he would suggest that, in the present case —of course, the language of the clause would require alteration—the action of the Guardians should be subject to the approval of the Local Government Board. That would bring matters into exact analogy with the power of the Local Government Board at present, and would effect something like an uniformity of payment all over the country. An hon. Friend near him said the Board of Guardians gave no remuneration; but that point was answered by the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Callan). Undoubtedly. the collectors knew of the conditions when they accepted office; they knew the character of the work expected from them. So much for the general question; but he took the opportunity of asking the Chief Secretary for Ireland a question upon another point. This clause provided for the remuneration of a new set of officers under new circumstances; but he did not know whether representations had been made to the right hon. Gentleman, as they had been to himself and other hon. Members, in relation to the case of those who had performed corresponding work, or a great part of it, in relation to boroughs now disfranchised—whether these officers had a fair claim for compensation? He knew that in some instances the remuneration of clerks and county officials had been fixed in consideration of work done in connection with revision when they accepted office. He did not know that this was strictly germane to the present discussion; but he desired to mention it.

said, as to the last question of the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Charles Russell), he did not think it arose under this clause; but. as a matter of fact, representations had been made by town clerks of boroughs about to be merged, but he could not say the claim could be allowed—they must follow the fate of their brethren elsewhere; he was al- most sure it never had been done. As to the new proposal of his hon. and learned Friend, as he said before, he was very much in the hands of the; Committee. He preferred himself the Bill as it stood. He could assure hon. Members—though, perhaps, they would not accept that assurance as worth much—that the Local Government Board were not so gluttonous of authority that they desired to assume a duty of this sort; but the Government thought they were an independent body, to whom might be entrusted the interests that had to be considered. Next to that, to provide for the payment of clerks of Unions by the Boards of Guardians, subject to the approval and control of the Local Government Board, would, perhaps, be better than leaving them absolutely at the mercy of the Guardians, who were often—he did not wish to say anything against them, but in matters of this sort, touching politics, were apt to be swayed by political Party feelings. If he found a strong expression of opinion in favour of the compromise, he should not be disposed to stand out against it; but still he would prefer to leave the clause as it was.

said, he did not understand the tone of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. A Minister of the Crown came there, and threw his discretion on the floor of the House for any Member to pick up, abandoning that reasonable independence he was bound to assume as Minister of the Crown. ["Oh, oh!"] He (Mr. Gibson) expressed his opinion as it presented itself to his mind on this as on other questions; but he passed to the suggestion of the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell), which, of course, was ingenious, as would be expected. But did it hold water? Would it not be open to this broad objection of a substantial kind—that the Local Government Board, as the Bill stood, was the central body to lay down the rule for the whole of the Boards of Guardians in Ireland?—that was clear and authoritative, speaking from a neutral standpoint, and laying down a rule for the guidance of all Ireland. But supposing the suggestion of the hon. and learned Member adopted, then Boards of Guardians—it might be several sets of them in the same county—would have very different standpoints. One Board would have a very different standard from another Board; and the Local Government Board, instead of laying down one scale, might have to consider and adjust from 40 to 80 scales for the whole of Ireland. Suppose from the North of Ireland—he did not know whether they were more liberal there than in the South—but suppose the Local Government Board found that in the North or the West, or elsewhere, there was one scale laid down for the payment of clerks and collectors of Unions—a high scale, which, with modification, the Local Government Board approved—and then suppose from another part of Ireland an entirely different scale was presented for exactly the same work, what would the Local Government Board do? Were they to drop the rate agreed on to the lower scale, or were they to raise the lower scale to the figure agreed upon? They must level up or level down, and if that was the way the Amendment would work, would it not be doing the very same thing the Bill would do as it stood? What would be gained by the proposed alteration? As he understood the right hon. Gentleman, he declared to stand by the clauses of the Bill.

said, what he stated was that there were two ways of providing payment—by the Local Government Board and by the Guardians. He pointed out the pros and cons, and, of the two, thought the method proposed in the Bill was the best.

said, he understood, however, that the right hon. Gentleman, in his original speech, stated he was then prepared to remain of the opinion of those who approved of the Bill, and to stand by the clauses as drawn; and he rather reprobated the statement from the Opposition Benches, that the way in which he presented his views was weak kneed. It was rather surprising, then, just now, to find the right hon. hon. Gentleman had lapsed into a moral position that beggared all description. He was unaware what course would betaken now by the right hon. Gentleman; he had left the Committee in that atmosphere of doubt hon. Gentlemen were so familiar with in relation to greater questions than an Irish Registration Bill. If there was a division, he should certainly support the wisdom that suggested the original draft of the Bill; and he a waited with curiosity and painful suspense to know what would be the ultimate action of the Irish Executive. Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; Committee counted, and 40 Members being found present,

said, that when a Minister went out of his way, as the Chief Secretary to the Lord lieutenant had done, to say that he would pay some little attention to the opinions of private Members, he was doing a rather good thing in departing from the usual fashion of Ministers, and ought to be encouraged. The point at issue was who should settle how much should be paid to those clerks and collectors; and it seemed to him that both sides had proved their case. One side said the Poor Law Guardians should settle it, and the other that the Local Government Board should do so. But one party proved that the Local Government Board was a very bad authority, and the other that the Guardians were a bad authority; and, so far as he was concerned, he thought both parties were right. The Guardians were a bad authority because they might be on one side or the other in politics, and, therefore, there would be no uniformity over the country. The fact was that the question was not local, but Imperial; and it was a bad thing to leave it to local bodies to settle how much should be paid for what really was an Imperial work. The Guardians might say—"We do not care how the list of voters is cut down; they can cut it down to nothing at all if they like." Then the people who argued that the Local Government Board was an equally bad authority were quite right, because it was unreasonable that, the Guardians having to pay the money, the Local Government Board should settle the amount. Speaking generally, he thought it was a very wrong thing to extract this money from the Guardians at all. It was making the localities pay for Imperial purposes; and so strongly did he object to the proposal, that, on a future occasion, he should have to move an Amendment on the point. Whether the Boards of Guardians settled the salaries or the Local Government Board, both systems, it had been proved, would give rise to great inconvenience. The money should be taken from the Imperial taxes. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell) had proposed a compromise about as good as they could adopt, to the effect that the Guardians should settle the money in the first place, and that the Local Government Board should have some power of revision. That was a practical way to carry out the scheme—an excellent compromise for getting out of the difficulty. Very often the Boards of Guardians would be anxious to over-pay the collectors and clerks, or, at any rate, to increase their salaries unduly, and then the Local Government Board would come in and say that too much was being paid, and cut down the salaries. He knew cases in which the Guardians fixed salaries at much too high a figure, and where the Local Government Board had to cut them down. The Guardians had to give reasons for fixing salaries so high; but, as he had said, the real difficulty was as to who should pay this money. No matter who fixed the salary, the sting of the thing would remain; the payment was the real sting. If they went to a division, he should support the hon. Member for Waterford (Mr. E. Power), more because the hon. Member had moved the Amendment than anything else. As a matter of fact, he did not think his constituents cared one halfpenny about the whole matter.

said, he rose for the purpose of saying a word which he thought should be said by someone. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, in dealing with the Amendment, in the first instance, had pointed out what must be obvious to everyone who considered the matter at all—namely, that it involved no very grave principle on which the fate of a Government might depend, and that it was not a matter which should excite any very great heat in the breast of hon. Members. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary objected to have it said that he had a preference personally for a particular course; he would be quite willing to defer to the general view of hon. Members representing Ireland who were interested in the clause. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) thereupon thought himself justified, forsooth, in getting up and condemning what he called the weak-kneed, and what the hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Lewis) called the flabby, expressions of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary. He (Mr. Charles Russell), however, thought the Irish Members ought to be extremely grateful to the Chief Secretary for doing that which it was the obvious duty of every Minister to do, whatever Department he represented, in consulting, as far as he could, those who were especially interested in the question. The question was asked—What would be the result of this Amendment if carried? Why, the result of it would be this. One Board of Guardians might fix one scale of remuneration, while another Board of Guardians might fix another, although practically the amount of work to be done by the officers of the Boards would be almost the same. The Local Government Board would have, and ought to have, regard to the local expression of opinion of those who had to raise the money, but that they should not be absolutely bound by that expression of opinion in case they found it taking the form of giving extravagant remuneration for a small amount of work. The practical result would be that a uniform scale would be arrived at, as would be the case under the Bill as it stood, with this difference, that the influence of the local bodies would practically prevail. As the clause stood, it would appear that hereafter the Local Government Board would have no influence in the subject, whereas in the other case effect would be given to local opinion.