asked whether it was in Order to take this Bill at the time for Private Bills? It had been treated as a Public Bill in the Upper House.

The Bill is a Public Bill; but it is customary to take Provisional Order Bills at this time.

said, this Bill was a Bill to confirm Provisional Orders made by the Local Government Board of Ireland relating merely to the method of fixing the water charge between Dublin and the townships upon the basis of population. The Amendment of the Lords related to a distinct and fresh matter—namely, the allowance per head of water. He submitted that this Amendment was not within the scope of the Bill, and should not be considered by this House.

It is within the competence of this House to agree or disagree with what the Lords have inserted. There is nothing on the face of the Amendment to prevent the Lords from inserting it, or of this House from discussing it.

I object to this Amendment being considered without Notice.

No objection can be taken to postpone it.

said, he did not propose to ask the House to give any formal opposition to this Amendment; but he wished to point out to the House that though he understood the Corporation were willing, for the sake of peace, to agree to it, still it imposed a considerable hardship upon the citizens of Dublin. For a number of years past the townships concerned in this Provisional Order had been taking a quantity of water largely in excess of the quantity for which they had contracted, or for which they had paid. They now proposed, or it was now proposed by the Lords, to introduce an Amendment spe- cifying that the townships should not be required to pay for the water which they had got at their own request, and which they had used and not paid for. Of course, some persons had to pay the cost, and the cost must be borne by the citizens of Dublin instead of by those who had benefited by the extra supply. As this legal difficulty had arisen, he supposed it was better to allow the past to take care of itself, and so the Corporation did not object to allowing the Bill not to be retrospective.

said, he wished to move that the House disagree with the Lords in this Amendment under circumstances which he would describe. This Amendment altered the amount of water to be supplied by the Corporation of Dublin to the various townships surrounding the City, without making any provision for an increase in price. The amount of supply was regulated by-solemn bargains, ratified by legislation, entered into between the Dublin Corporation and the townships. The circumstances under which this came before the House, which he would briefly state, were very curious. Tinder the Act of 1861 Dublin had its present supply of water from the Vartry, and the citizens of Dublin paid for that supply 1s. 3 d. on the Government valuation. By various Acts of Parliament the townships—of which the Kingstown Corporation was the one which had been most prominent in opposition to the Corporation of Dublin—were entitled to a supply of 20 gallons per head of the population, the population to be from time to time determined. Unfortunately, when these Acts of Parliament came to be worked, it was found that no provision was made in them for furnishing a legal basis for determining the population, and when litigation was opened it was found legally impossible to work, the clause, because the Census was not made the legal basis for ascertaining the population. Of course, they knew that the population of these places varied, not only from day to day, but from hour to hour; therefore, under existing circumstances, it was impossible to fix the number of people to whom these 20 gallons of water per head per day were to be given. Kingstown paid only 5d. in the pound on the valuation for its supply. The bargain was made in 1869 by Act of Parliament; but in 1874 the Corporation of Dublin, being willing to supply the townships with an excess of water over and above 20 gallons per head on the reasonable terms of their paying for it, a Provisional Order was passed, which was ratified by an Act of Parliament, declaring that it should be lawful for the Dublin Corporation, instead of supplying merely the 20 gallons per head per day which they were obliged by the existing Statutes to give, to allow the Commissioners of the townships to draw water in excess at a price to be fixed, which was, in the case of Kingstown, 3½d. per 1,000 gallons. But there was no legal method of satisfactorily determining what was excess, seeing that there was no legal means of estimating the population. After some time the Corporation of Kingstown resisted the claim for excess water, and an action was brought against them by the Corporation of Dublin in order to recover the price which the township had agreed to pay for that excess. The action, in which he (Mr. Walker) happened to be counsel, failed, and failed naturally, because the population of Kingstown could not be legally ascertained, the Census not having been made, as it ought to have been, the basis for estimating the population. The township took advantage of that, find did not pay for the excess water that, under the Act of 1874, they were obliged to pay for; and on that breakdown appearing in the machinery of the Act, the Dublin Corporation applied to the Local Government Board to amend the Provisional Order of 1874 by furnishing a legal basis by which the population should be ascertained—namely, the Census of 1881, and giving also considerable advantages to the townships, because they proposed that the increment of population in the previous decade should be taken into account, and, further, that in the case of seaside resorts like Kingstown, a further allowance should be made for the summer population. This was a natural and fair course, and one would have imagined that the Kingstown Corporation would have been glad to fall in with it. However, they tried to stop this application to the Local Government Board for this Provisional Order, and brought the matter before the Court of Exchequer and the Court of Appeal, and in each case were beaten. The Local Government Board, after the fullest inquiry, and after hearing all the evidence on both sides, made the Provisional Order which it was the object of the Act of Parliament to confirm. It passed this House, after full inquiry which lasted three days, without opposition, and went up to the House of Lords. Before the Select Committee of the House of Lords the same objection was taken which had been raised before the House of Commons' Committee. A Member of the House of Lords' Committee proposed an Amendment substantially the same as the Amendment now before the House. That Amendment was opposed by the Corporation, and was not accepted. From the Select Committee it was passed to the Committee of the House of Lords itself, where a proposal of precisely the same character as that Amendment was moved and negatived by a majority of 1–20 votes to 19. On the next day, however, it appeared that the matter was again brought forward, and the numbers reversed—21 voting for the Amendment and 19 against it. Under all these circumstances, the matter now came before the House of Commons, and he felt justified in asking it to disagree to the Amendment. The Amendment was not germane to the Provisional Order—which really purported to supply a legal basis for ascertaining what the Census was—it would alter without notice the solemn compact entered into by the townships and the Corporation, and ratified by legislation; and it would impose heavy charges on the Corporation of Dublin by compelling them to supply gratuitously a quantity of water which had cost them a great deal of money. The clause was not germane to the subject-matter of the Bill upon which it had been engrafted. The object of the Bill was to provide a basis for settling the local rates between the townships. It was said in "another place" that the supply to Dublin itself was much larger than that to these townships per head of population; but then they paid a much higher price for it. Those who were acquainted with the subject the best, water engineers, said the reason why Kingstown could not do with the supply of 20 gallons per head per day was because there was much waste in the system of supply. For the reasons he had given he hoped the House would disagree with the Amendment.

said, he did not think the hon. and learned Gentleman had put the case quite fairly to the House; he had rather slurred over the action in regard to the Bill in Committee in "another place." He had spoken as if on the very slightest opposition this clause the House was now debating was rejected; whereas the fact of the matter was that, after several hours' consideration, the Committee were unanimous in opinion that such a clause should be inserted, but, owing to some difficulty betwen counsel as to the terms of the Amendment, the matter was allowed to drop. In the House of Lords the Amendment was rejected by a majority of 1, and on a later stage of the Bill, on the Motion of Lord Fitzgerald, the clause was inserted, being carried on a division by a majority of 2 in a not very full House. It was a matter of no very great expense to the Dublin Corporation, but of great importance to the townships concerned; in these times a full water supply was a matter of great urgency and importance. Everyone must allow that 20 gallons per head to an important and rising township was an exceedingly small supply, and to increase that to 25 gallons seemed to him almost a matter of necessity. He had not had an opportunity of inquiring into the usual supply in large towns; but wherever he had obtained the information he found that the proportion was never less than 30 gallons. In Dublin it was 38 gallons, whereas the Dublin Corporation only proposed to allow to these townships the wretched amount of 20 gallons. It really seemed scarcely worth while for the Corporation to fight this matter of five gallons per head. The townships, however, looked upon it as a matter of great importance; their population was increasing, and their houses increasing in valuation and numbers year by year. When it was said that the citizens of Dublin paid a higher rate, it should also be stated that in 1909 the citizens of Dublin would cease to pay anything at all; whereas the rate now imposed on the townships would attach to them perpetually. It seemed to him the best thing the Corporation could do would be to allow this Amendment to pass; and the next best thing to that would be to allow this Provisional Order to drop altogether, and next year to bring in a full and sufficent Bill settling the basis of water supply for the county.

said, he felt it his duty to advise the House to disagree with the Amendment. The matter had been so fully described by his hon. and learned Friend the late Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Walker) that it was unnecessary for him to go into the facts. He only wished to correct two particulars—one in the statement of the hon. and gallant Member for Dublin County (Colonel King-Harman), and in a small degree one statement by the late Attorney General for Ireland. As a matter of fact, there was no Motion made in Select Committee of the House of Lords on this question. What happened was this. One of the Members of the Committee—the Duke of Marlborough, he believed—being of opinion that the supply might be increased, made a suggestion to that effect; but so much objection was found that the Bill would probably have been withdrawn had the suggestion been adopted, and it was withdrawn; it was not moved in Committee. Then the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel King - Harman) spoke of the miserable allowance of 20 gallons per head; but that was the usual quantity in matters of this kind—25 gallons was quite an exceptional quantity. Further, he had to say that if the House did not reject the clause, the greatest possible confusion would be occasioned. It would necessitate the amendment of no less than eight Acts of Parliament, and interfere with a great number of contracts. The circumstances under which the clause was introduced in "another place" had been detailed by his hon. and learned Friend—how it was rejected by a very narrow majority, whose decision was upset by another narrow majority the next day. He could fully bear out the statement of his hon. and learned Friend as to the great confusion that must ensue if the clause remained, and he joined in asking the House to disagree with the Amendment.

said, he concurred in the view just expressed. Not entering into the controversial matter, it seemed to him the action taken might become a dangerous precedent for tacking on to a Provisional Order, passed through Committee on a very narrow issue, a clause which, if not amounting to a breach of contract, at all events would be a re-opening of all contracts. For that reason, he should vote for disagreeing with the Lords' Amendment.

, in moving that the Bill be row read a second time, said, that the House would remember that early in 1884 a Royal Commission was appointed for the purpose of inquiring into and reporting upon the housing of the poor in the Metropolis and elsewhere; and hon. Members ought to congratulate themselves upon the fact that although a great many thorny questions were raised and separate Reports were presented by several of the Commissioners upon points of detail, upon the main points the Report of the Commissioners had been practically unanimous. At the same time, he was bound to say that they owed a great deal to the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir Charles W. Dilke), the President of the Commission, for the part he took in the matter. This Bill had been drawn with the object of embodying most of the chief recommendations of the Commissioners. Those hon. Members who had taken the trouble to read the Report of the Commissioners, or the evidence upon which that Report was founded, would have seen that there was ample room for improvement in certain cases, and that in many cases there was an absolute necessity for further legislation. He admitted the force of the observation that the great thing was that the existing law should be firmly administered; but he thought that it was equally true that the existing law required material alteration. There were two great evils in the Metropolis—overcrowding and sanitary and structural defects in the houses. It was quite clear that the effect of the present measure would be to do much to meet those evils. With regard to over-crowding, it must be remembered that there was over-crowding of houses within a particular area, as well as over-crowding of persons in particular houses. The condition of things in the worst parts of London had grown in consequence of houses intended for residences of a better class having been split up into different tenements, while, at the same time, they had been hemmed in by houses of a smaller class. It should not be supposed that nothing had been done in the way of checking the evil of overcrowding. Lord Shaftesbury said that, bad as was the condition of London at the present time, it was a paradise compared to what it was 50 years ago. That might be going a long way, but he thought there was some truth in the statement, because a great deal had already been done under the Act which he (Sir R. Assheton Cross) had had the honour of carrying through that House some years ago. He, however, quite agreed that large sums of money had been wasted in carrying that Act into effect, in consequence of the over-valuation of the property taken under it. By the Act of 1882 a good deal had been done to check that extravagant expenditure. He was, however, glad to say that under the Act which bore his name no less than 42 acres of land had been acquired in the Metropolis, upon which houses had been built affording accommodation for 32,000 people. That, at all events, was a step in the right direction, although, of course, as contrasted with the enormous population of this Metropolis, it was a comparatively small one. He fully admitted, however, that the people who were dispossessed of their tenements under that Act were not actually transferred to the new dwellings; nevertheless, the result of the working of the measure had been that those who went to the new dwellings had left room for others elsewhere. What were the causes of the present discreditable state of things with regard to the dwellings of the working classes in London? The first was the great disproportion that existed between the incomes of the working classes and the rents which they were forced to pay in order to live near their work. The principle of supply and demand did not apply in the case of those who had to be at their work at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. Another cause was the great multiplicity of interests that were involved in this class of property, and the difficulty of getting at the real owner of the property. In 1851 Lord Shaftesbury passed an Act which, in his opinion, ought to have done much to check the evil complained of. The object of that Act was to enable Vestries to appoint Commissioners to borrow money on the security of the rates for the erection of dwelling-houses to be managed under bye-laws to be framed by the Commissioners. But, unfortunately, that Act remained a dead letter owing to the smallness of the areas which it had formed. By the first portion of the present Bill it was proposed to extend those areas and to transfer the power of putting the Act into operation from the Vestries to the Metropolitan Board of Works. Another cause why Lord Shaftesbury's Act had been unsuccessful was that it had to be worked by too elaborate a machinery, and that its provisions were rendered almost nugatory by a series of saving clauses and of safeguards. It was now proposed that the present measure should be worked in the City of London by the Commissioners of Sewers, in the Metropolis by the Metropolitan Board of Works, and in the Provinces by the rural Sanitary Authorities. It was proposed to give to the latter authorities the power to build not only large blocks of buildings, but cottages in the country, to which should be attached half-an-acre of garden ground. He thought that this portion of the Bill would effect a great improvement in the existing law, and would conduce to the comfort and health of a great number of people. The real fact was that the difficulty of the over-crowding of houses had been increased by the demolition which had taken place by railways, by street improvements, and by other works. Therefore, when they wanted to build houses for the working classes, the question was, where were they to get the sites? Now, however, an opportunity was about to be afforded of obtaining land on which to erect this class of buildings, owing to the fact that the Prison Commissioners, for purposes of prison dis- cipline, were very anxious to move the great prisons out of London and into the country. The result of such a step would be that there would be large vacant spaces of land available in different parts of London—at Clerken well, Millbank, Coldbath Fields, and Pentonville, which covered a great many acres. As they would be no longer required for prison purposes, they might well be utilized for the purpose of relieving the pressure in other parts of London. In accordance with the recommendations of the Commission, this Bill proposed to empower the Prison Commissioners to dispose of these sites to the Metropolitan Board as trustees, for the purpose of having this class of buildings erected upon them. It was not proposed that the Metropolitan Board should cover the land itself; but the Board might let it for the purpose to the Peabody trustees and bodies of that kind; and, of course, care would be taken to provide the open spaces, board schools, &c, which the population of such large areas would render necessary. There was one provision which was not in the Bill, but which might well have been included in accordance with the recommendation of the Royal Commission—namely, a provision giving the Metropolitan Board power to exchange these sites for sites in other parts of London which were more convenient. The next provision of the Bill was one about which there was some difference of opinion. It provided that the Prison Commissioners should, in fixing the price of these sites, have regard to the purposes for which the land was to be employed. Some of these sites would, if offered for sale to the public, probably be utilized for private residences and shops; and if the price charged was the price which the site would bring in the open market, it would be quite impossible to secure them for the purposes aimed at in this Bill. The price should be fixed at such a figure that those who secured any site might build upon it tenements for the poorer classes without incurring any loss. He did not desire to commit the House to the principle that the State was to contribute to the payment for sites for this purpose. The present was an exceptional case, and these prison sites might be regarded as an unexpected windfall—a Godsend. Nobody ever thought of having them—they came down as it were from the clouds. There was a great difficulty to be confronted for which some remedy must be found, and which would entail very grievous consequences unless provided for; and under these circumstances he hoped the House would, without pledging itself to the principle, yet accept the proposal in the clause. The fact was that the conditions under which the poor lived were deteriorating the standard of bodily strength, and this was getting worse from generation to generation. At the present time the loss of wages from ill-health would amply be sufficient in most cases to secure adequate and satisfactory dwelling accommodation for those who dwelt in dilapidated and unsanitary tenements. Another clause in the Bill dealt with the terms on which the money should be borrowed from the Public Works Loans Commissioners, and provided that if the security offered was ample the rate of interest should be the lowest possible compatible with its entailing no loss. Hitherto the Treasury proceeded on the principle that they must charge a higher rate than would actually pay for each loan, so as to cover losses in respect of other loans. But it would scarcely be fair to apply that principle to loans under this Bill, and it therefore provided that the interest should be the lowest possible that would enable such loans to be made without loss to the Exchequer, the interest in no case, however, to be less than £3 2s. 6d. per cent. This clause was only to be in force until the end of the year 1888, and was inserted so that something definite and practical might be done at once. The 4th clause, he knew, had been objected to, as one which apparently gave powers to the Local Government Board to make orders on Vestries to do certain acts. He thought, however, that the Vestries need not be very much frightened by the clause, inasmuch as it only slightly extended the powers which the Local Government Board already possessed. The Act of 1875 left matters in this unsatisfactory condition—that if the Medical Officer of Health made his Report to the Metropolitan Board of Works, and that Board considered that it was not a matter that required to be dealt with, the Secretary of State had power to appoint a special arbitrator to go and report. But the Secretary of State could not order anything to be done. The Bill proposed to give him power to invoke the assistance of the High Court of Justice to compel the Metropolitan Board to do its duty. He thought there ought to be some authority by which the Metropolitan Board, if it did not do its duty, should be compelled to do it. Dealing next with Clause 12 of the Bill, he said its object was to enable owners and corporations to deal with funds at their disposal, although they might be tied up in trusts, for this particular purpose of benefiting their estates. He did not see any objection to that clause, because it was to the benefit of the estate that they should be able to let free this money. The next clause, which was an important one, was liable to some objection. He thought, however, the building societies had been somewhat misled by the opposition they had organized against Clause 13. In the first place, he might at once say that he thought this clause was a good deal too wide as it at present stood. The Bill was intended to deal with the housing of the working classes and nothing else: therefore, he pro -posed to ask the House to allow the clause to be limited to the houses of the working classes only. Hon. Members might ask how he was to define the working classes, and in reply to that very natural question he might say that he had framed a clause, which he should bring forward on going into Committee, in which he had endeavoured to give that definition. Further, he thought the liability of the landlords should not be so wide as in the present clause; but that it should be limited to the condition of the houses at the time of letting. As to the remedy given to the tenant as expressed in the Preamble—namely, that the tenant of an unfurnished house should have the same remedy as in the case of the tenant of a furnished house, he did not see what objection could be raised. What was the case they had to meet? A number of wretched houses were run up; they were not properly drained or connected with the sewers, and generally they were in a very unsound condition as dwellings. He thought the owners should not be allowed to let such houses. They must soy that the houses should not be let in this condition; but if let in this dilapidated condition the tenant should have a remedy against the landlord. He observed that in connection with this sub- ject Lord Grey had written to The Timesa letter in which he said that they ought to punish those persons for letting houses unfit for human habitation. This, how ever, was not a Criminal Bill; it gave the tenants a civil remedy. But it must be remembered, in discussing Lord Grey's proposition, that if they to stop the letting of every house in this condition, throughout London, he did not know what would become of the people who occupied them at the present moment. He thought that the contention of the noble Earl added strength to his argument on the earlier clause for taking advantage of the prison sites in order to get rid of this evil to a very large extent. He stated the ether day that the Bill would be extended to Ireland, although the 17th clause, as it at present stood, said it should not. This provision was originally put in because the Report of the Irish Commissioners had not been presented to the public at the time the Bill was framed. He was also very wishful that the Bill should apply to Scotland. But in respect to Scotland he must put in these words, "so far as it is applicable," because there were certain clauses which required machinery to put them in operation which did not at present exist in Scotland. That machinery, however, might be created afterwards. In asking the House to give the Bill a second reading he urged hon. Members to reserve some of the disputed points for Committee. The Government would then be able to see how far they could meet the objections which might be raised to the points discussed. His excuse for bringing this Bill into the House at that period of the Session was that it was essential to do so; the need for it was so great that he did not think there was a single Member of the House who sat on the recent Commission who was not convinced that it was high time something was done, and clone promptly. Although the measure was not a very large one, and would not remedy every grievance, for men must, after all, help themselves, it would yet do something in the direction of ameliorating the condition of the people who were living in a state of degradation and poverty; and, at all events, it would show that the Legislature was willing to help the people so far as legislation could effect that object. It was on that ground that he submitted the Bill con- fidently to the favourable consideration of the House. The right hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the second reading of the Bill.

, in rising to move—

"That it is inexpedient at this stage of the Session to initiate legislation involving the principle of a National subsidy towards aiding any locality in providing dwellings for the working class in such locality."

said, that in placing this Notice on the Paper he did not wish to prevent useful legislation which would do good to the condition of the poor; but though in one sense he considered this a very small Bill in relation to the magnitude of the evils with which it dealt, yet it was a Bill which incidentally raised one or two important and extensive principles—principles which, in his judgment, were so dangerous that they ought to be considered very carefully, and at a time when the House of Commons was able to consider them fairly. It was, however, almost impossible at this time of the Session for a Bill of this kind to be considered carefully. The attendance of the House was thin, and hon. Members were jaded, while the Business remained practically in the hands of the Government. There had been a misapprehension about the Bill, and about its relation to the Royal Commission, which he thought it his duty to correct, because that misapprehension first found expression in some remarks made in the other House of Parliament by the noble Lord at the head of the Government. The noble Lord said—

"That the Bill had been drawn up with the unanimous consent of the Members of the Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes."

So far from this being the case, the Commissioners were never consulted in any way from first to last as to this Bill in any shape or form. He believed it was true that a consultation had been held between his right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Commission (Sir Charles W. Dilke) and the noble Lord at the head of the Government; but no consultation between two individuals, however distinguished or important, could be treated as the unanimous consent of the Commission. It was evident that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House was under a similar misapprehension, because that evening he spoke of the Bill as being a Bill of the Commission; and it was only when he met with emphatic denials from three Members of the Commission present in the House that that remark was passed over. While he was desirous of passing such laws as would improve the state of things existing among the poorer classes of town and country, they ought to be free to consider this Bill on its merits; and it ought not to be supposed that the Members of the Royal Commission presented the Bill to the House as the outcome of their conclusions, much less of their unanimous conclusions. No one could doubt that there were grave evils connected with the housing of the working classes which demanded a remedy if a suitable and reasonable remedy could be found; but he trusted the Rouse would consider this question in a calmer frame of mind than they did another important social question which had recently been before the House, and which was intimately connected with the housing of the poor. He would not enter into a discussion of the application of the principles of political economy to this question; but there were certain general principles which were thoroughly applicable to the present condition of things, and if, in. the eager pursuit of some philanthropic result, those principles were violated, it was likely that more harm than good would be done. This Bill simply pottered about with a few trumpery little remedies, and he could not help viewing it as it stood with a good deal of suspicion. During the last 20 years a great improvement had taken place in the social condition of the working classes, and in existing circumstances it was not of so much importance to do something as to do the right thing. In dealing with a great question like this he thought it was far better to be willing to wait a few months, or possibly a year, and deal with the question in a thorough way rather than by touching the fringe of the question, and passing a paltry little Bill to give an excuse to those who really did not care much about anything being done to say—"Oh, your housing of the working classes was dealt with in a Bill in the Session of 1885. See how your remedies work, and do not raise the question again." He thought he should have the support of the Home Secretary for the general principle that the true remedies for the evils which existed were those which raised up the self-respect and self-reliance and self-help of the people and their administration in their local communities. The wish of almost every man in the House was to get away from centralization; and he did not believe that they could ever have satisfactory results while there was a weak or a non-representative local government. He was afraid the Home Secretary had not that faith in popular self-government which some of those on I he Liberal Benches had; for when the right hon. Gentleman was last in Office he introduced a measure, shortly before the fall of the Conservative Government, the Water Bill for London, in which he showed a very great distrust of the popular representative government of London, whatever it might be, and created a Water Trust, largely of a nominative and non-representative character. But he (Mr. Lyulph Stanley) declared most emphatically that they would never reform the great towns unless the people of those towns were largely trusted in their administration, and unless they gave the people the greatest power to bring their will to bear upon their Representatives. The Commission had recognized this, and had mentioned reform of the government of London as a condition precedent to the improvement of London. There was another important recommendation of the Commission which was really essential to any reform in these matters. The pressure of the rates was felt very severely by the poorer classes; and the Commission unanimously agreed that at the root of this question lay the question of a fairer incidence of the rates. He quite agreed that the difficulty of acquiring sites was one of the chief difficulties in providing dwellings for the poor; and unless some means could be devised of facilitating the acquisition of sites the question could not be adequately dealt with. The Commission had recommended that vacant land in the neighbourhood of towns should be rated in some relation to its capital value, and not upon what it produced yearly. Nothing would do more to bring the land into the market, and bring down the ground-rents, and so facilitate the acquisition of sites. But while the Bill took no notice of these proposed remedies, he asserted that it encouraged centralization, and especially in Clause 5, If the Local Authority did not agree with the health officer, the Bill made the Central Government the Court of Appeal in London between the health officer and the Municipal Authority, and enabled the Central Authority, if they took the side of the health officer, to order the Local Authority to carry out a scheme which might cost £100,000 or £200,000. In reference to the prison sites, he also remarked that while the Home Secretary attached importance to allocating those sites for the housing of the poor in London, he did not in his speech attach the same importance to parting with them below their real value; and he pointed out the difference made in the Bill between the Cold bath Fields, the Millbank, and the Pentonville sites. Under the Bill two of those sites were to be sold by the Treasury, and the third with the consent of the Middlesex Justices. If the Bill became law the Treasury would be bound to give effect to the recommendation of Parliament on the subject; but the Middlesex Justices were a quasi-private Corporation, not responsible to Parliament, and could do what they pleased in the matter. If political economy was to be violated, he would far rather it should be done in the case of the Cold-bath Fields site than in the case of the other sites, for if there was a pressing need anywhere it was at Coldbath Fields. The Home Secretary had afforded the House no indication of what was the amount of the subsidy which it was asked to give to the people of London. According to evidence given before the Commission, builders could afford to pay about £10,000 per aero for land for working-class dwellings; and if the sites in question were thrown away at that price, the Government might possibly, at some future date, have to purchase and clear land for national purposes in a central situation in London. The State had had to pay enormous sums for sites in the neighbourhood of Millbank for public purposes; and he asked—Were they sure that those sites, when set free from prisons, would not be useful to the State for other purposes? The present enlargement of the National Gallery had been very costly, and there must before long be another enlargement of that institution. Why should not the barracks be removed to Millbank, so as to set free space for the enlargement of the National Gallery? Again, other sites probably would have to be acquired for other public purposes. It was possible that the subsidy to be granted to the Metropolis might amount to as much as £500,000; but supposing that only £200,000 were asked for, would it not be better, while granting such a sum, to consider first of all which were the poorest parts of the country where such assistance was most required? If they now gave that large subsidy to London—the richest City in the world, which already obtained so many advantages at the expense of the State—with what face could they resist democratic pressure from other parts of the country demanding similar subsidies? If this measure were passed, with what face could they hereafter resist the democratic pressure that would be sure to be brought to bear upon them in numberless ways, and for a variety of purposes? If they were to adopt Socialism in any form, let it be local and municipal Socialism, which would be kept in sufficient restraint by the votes of the ratepayers. But if once they introduced State Socialism, there might be no end to the demands that would be made. The cry from every popular constituency would be "Give, give." A far more democratic Parliament than the present one would shortly be in existence, and they ought to be very guarded in the dying hours of the present Parliament of setting up a precedent, which he could not but regard as of the most mischievous kind. Miss Octavia Hill had said that when the State stepped in iii such a case as this to do a little, it paralyzed all private enterprize in that direction. State interference of this kind was full of danger; and if it was said that the value of the gift to London would be but small, then it was not worth while to incur that danger for the purpose of giving a miserable dole of some £50,000 to the working classes of London. The principle of this measure was the exact contrary of that which had been laid down by the Chancellor of the Exchequer at Bristol on Saturday last, when he protested against leading the poor to look to the State for relief from their difficulties. The Home Secretary must be very confiding when he proposed to instruct the Metropolitan Boards of Works with the power to carry out this measure after they had built blocks on the site of Newort Market, and by the side of Gray's Inn Road, so crowded that in a few years they would probably be fever nests as bad as the buildings they had superseded. The right hon. Baronet would have done better had he introduced a Bill which would have provided for the creation of a real Municipality for the Metropolis. Section 13 rather went beyond the recommendations of the Commissioners. It should be limited to the condition of the premises at the time of the letting, and should only render the landlord liable for any damage suffered by reason of his negligence or default. Where tenants were constantly changing it was impossible for the landlord to examine the state of the drains before each new tenant entered into possession; and it would be unfair to make him liable for some defects which was caused by a recent tenant. He hoped that at this period of the Session the Government would not persist with the clause relating to the Government subsidy, since it was raising a very large question for a very small object, there being much opposition to the clause, and the amount of the subsidy being only small. He begged to move the Amendment which stood in his name.

said, the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Lyulph Stanley) had directed the greater part of his speech against a particular clause; but inasmuch as he was not the author of that clause, and only supported it as a compromise, he did not feel called upon to reply in detail to his hon. Friend's observations. The hon. Member certainly had every right to address the House on this question, because there was no Member of the Commis- sion who gave more time and thought to its proceedings. The hon. Member said this was not the Bill of the Royal Commission. That was perfectly true, for the Members of the Commission were never consulted as to the clauses of the Bill. The Report of the Commission was given to the draftsman with those parts of it marked which he was to incorporate into the Bill, and that had been done. The hon. Member had given no illustrations as to the points in which the Bill differed from the Report of the Royal Commission. It might, no doubt, have been desirable that the clause with regard to the prison sites should follow the Report of the Commission more closely; but the Home Secretary, it appeared, was willing to meet his hon. Friend on this point. Sub-section 2 of Clause 5 also differed from the Report of the Commission; but upon this also the Home Secretary had expressed his willingness to make alterations, and he should be quite willing to assist his hon. Friend in making such modification as would make the clause agree with the terms of the Report. His hon. Friend said this was a centralizing Bill. No doubt some clauses might be so characterized; but many other clauses, on the contrary, gave greater powers to the Local Authorities. The hon. Member evidently desired that legislation on this subject should be delayed until after the reform of local government. He did not yield to the hon. Member or anyone in his desire to see the reform of local government in London, in the country, and in other portions of the United Kingdom; but he could not agree that it was desirable to wait until these reforms were carried before dealing with this subject of the housing of the poor and with the subject of public health in the Metropolis, as suggested by the Royal Commission and as attempted in the Bill introduced by Lord Salisbury. The Public Health Act which applied to England did not apply to the Metropolis, and there were in that Act many important principles which it was highly desirable should be extended to the Metropolis. The hon. Member had also spoken of the rating of vacant land. It would, however, be very difficult to carry the principle of rating vacant land without at the same time providing for the rating of vacant houses, against which there were many objections, among others this—that it would discourage building. The hon. Member spoke of the Bill of the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Broadhurst) dealing with leaseholds; but he had to point out that there was very strong opposition in the House and in the country to the change, and it was most undesirable to make the whole of the recommendations of the Royal Commission depend for Parliamentary sanction on the acceptance of the principles of the hon. Member. His hon. Friend went on to speak of the centralizing spirit in which the Bill had been drawn; but he took exception altogether to that statement. He wished now to point out to the House that although there were three Motions directed against the Bill, all three were Committee Motions, rather than Second Reading Motions. Each of those Motions took exception to one clause of the Bill, but they did not attack the Bill as a whole; and none of them constituted, in his opinion, reasons why the House should reject the Bill as a whole. The Motion of the hon. Member for Oldham, and the main drift of his speech in support of it, were directed against Clause 3; the Motion of the hon. and learned Member for Stockport (Mr. Hopwood) was directed against Clause 13, and the Motion of the hon. Member for Brighton (Mr. Hollond) was directed against the 2nd sub-section of Clauses 4 and 5. The hon. Member for Brighton had probably not quite understood the meaning of the 2nd sub-section of Clause 4; but, as some modifications had been promised with respect to Clause 5, he hoped the hon. and learned Member for Stockport would wait until the Committee stage to see what the modifications were, He should like to state to hon. Members who might wish to delay the Bill his own reasons for thinking that the general feeling on both sides of the House was in favour of the passing of the Bill. His hon. Friends put down Motions and made speeches which were directed against particular portions of the Bill; but neither the Motions nor the speeches were likely to attack or touch the great majority of the clauses of the Bill, and there were some provisions of the Bill which seemed to him ought to commend themselves specially to Members who sat on the Opposition side of the House. He thought that the main reasons why they ought to desire that this Bill should pass, even at that late period of the Session, were three. The Bill reversed the principle with regard to the rate of loans for this purpose, established in 1879, in spite of a very strong resistance from his own side of the House. He saw present his right hon. Friend the Member for Beading (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) and his right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain), who used in 1879 exactly the same arguments and almost the same words which had been used by the Home Secretary that evening. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Heading, attacking the proposals of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Iddesleigh, said that he founded his Bill upon the fact of losses on certain loans; but he pointed out to the House that the losses were not on loans of this kind, but losses which had occurred on loans of an improvident kind, and on wholly insufficient security. One reason why they then pointed out, and why they now pointed out, that the rate of interest could be lowered on loans of this description was because only one-half of the money was advanced under the general conditions of the loan, and there had never been a case of failure to return the money, because the buildings formed ample security for the loan thus advanced. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham, in seconding the Motion of his right hon. Friend the Member for Beading, said that the tendency of the change made in 1879 was, to use his phrase, to kill the Artizans' Dwellings Act; and. there could be no doubt that the alterations in the rates of loans had a detrimental effect on the working of that Act. There was no difference of opinion on that point; but the action taken by his right hon. Friends in 1879 had been justified by the evidence and the Report of the Royal Commission. This was the first point on which it was of great importance that this Bill should pass. There was another point which was not mentioned by the hon. Member for Oldham in the course of his speech. It was most desirable that at the earliest possible moment they should take away the power to compel Local Authorities to purchase any property they touched under what were known as the Torrens Acts. There was almost unanimity among; the Royal Com- missioners on this point. He ventured to say that it was very important indeed that they should remove that power of compelling the Local Authorities to purchase which had so greatly hampered the working of those Acts. A third question of importance was the obtaining, for the first time, as regarded England and Scotland, under this Bill, the opportunity of giving Local Authorities power to compulsorily take land for the purpose of cottage gardens. That was an entirely new principle as regarded England, and it was one under this Bill which was not likely to be largely applied; but it was a most interesting experiment. Dealing next with the Bill, the right hon. Gentleman said the first two clauses of the Bill simplified the working of Lord Shaftesbury's Act of 1851, and made it possible for that Act to come into force. If the right hon. Gentleman wished to apply this Bill to Scotland, he suggested that a clause should be inserted making it certain that Lord Shaftesbury's Act of 1851 applied to Scotland. The evidence given before the Royal Commission in Edinburgh left a doubt on the fact as to whether that Act was applicable to Scotland. It had been a dead letter so far as England was concerned; it had never been worked in a single case. It had been applied to Ireland in 1866, and there it had been enforced, which was a remarkable fact, considering that the Local Authorities in Ireland were badly constituted, and that the towns in Ireland were, as a whole, less well-governed than the towns in England. It was probable when they reached the Committee stage the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Jesse Collings) would make an attempt to remove some of the limitations in this clause. He should support those limitations as a compromise to which he had been a party; but he trusted that if the principle was found to work they would be able to get rid of those limitations later on. The hon. Member for Oldham had directed the main portion of his remarks against Clause 3. He (Sir Charles W. Dilke) had already told the House that that clause was not his. At first he voted against the first proposal of the Commission and the whole principle of this clause; but he considered that the present form in which the clause came was a modification of the original proposals to which he was a party. As far as he was concerned, therefore, he should vote for the clause. The defence which occurred to him as the wisest one to make was this—that it was an equitable clause, an assertion of the same principle which an enormous majority in the House of Commons sanctioned against the strong feeling of the Government of the day in the case of the Thames Embankment. In that case the Commissioners of Woods and Forests went to the utmost length which public officials had over gone by fulminating against the majority of the House of Commons, and by publishing in the papers from day to day their reasons why the House of Commons was committing an act of spoliation and plunder. The House of Commons, on that occasion, thought it was necessary, in dealing with what the right hon. Gentleman that evening had called a windfall, to introduce principles more equitable than those strict principles of pounds, shillings, and pence. The hon. Member for Oldham expressed doubt as to interfering with private enterprize; but he must point out to the hon. Member that the whole principle of the Artizans' Dwellings Act of 1875 was, to some extent, an interference with private enterprize. The assistance which was given to the Peabody Trustees was an interference with private enterprize; and they had gone a long way in interfering with private enterprize in dealing with this question. The hon. Member also expressed doubts on the point of exorbitant rents. Witnesses had shown that the peculiar and exceptional circumstances attaching to central districts of London and Liverpool did lead to the exaction of exorbitant rents; and with that evidence before them it was not possible seriously to argue whether rents in certain portions of London and Liverpool were or were not exorbitant. His hon. Friend had extracted a promise that that clause should be made consistent with the Report of the Commission, and should not go beyond the Report. His hon. Friend had quoted the Report, and had stated the objections that were made by the right hon. Member for Ripon (Mr. Goschen) to the proposal of the Bill; but although the right hon. Gentleman would oppose the clause in Committee, and thus give them an opportunity of considering it further, he had not made his objections to that clause a ground for opposing the second reading of the Bill. With regard to the sub-sections of Clauses 4 I and 5, the Home Secretary had shown that the 2nd sub-section of Clause 4 had been misunderstood. It was not a general power given to the Local Government Board to interfere in the way of Torrens's Act for the first time; but it was a very slight extension of the power as to obstructive buildings which they had already had. If the power given under Torrens's Act was an objectionable one, it ought to be repealed. Although no one in the House was more opposed than he was to the principle of centralization, he said they should either sweep away the whole of the provision in that Act, or make it applicable in the way now proposed to obstructive buildings. The sub-section of Clause 5 was a different matter. He agreed with the hon. Member for Oldham that that clause was not properly drawn. In his latest draft of the clause the Government draftsman had not quite followed the Report of the Commission. At pages 34 and 35 of the Report they would find the argument which justified the insertion of that sub-section. It was pointed out in a great mass of evidence that the Metropolis was altogether exceptional in the difficulties which arose between Torrens's Act and Cross's Act. In the whole of the municipal parts of England where those Acts applied, the two sets of Acts were administered by the same Bodies; but in the case of London alone they had two different sets of Authorities administering the two sets of Acts. In the Metropolis Cross's Acts were administered by the Metropolitan Board of Works, and Torrens's Acts by the Vestries. The effect of that was that each Body tried to throw the responsibility on the other. The Officer of Health, who was the officer of the Vestry, reported a scheme under Cross's Acts; that Report was sent to the Metropolitan Board of Works, who in most cases sent it back to the Vestry and said the work ought to be done by a small scheme under Torrens's Acts; and ultimately the whole thing dropped through, and nothing whatever was done. The result was that Torrens's Acts were very little applied, and Cross's Acts had ceased to be applied at all. The question was, whether they should adopt some temporary remedy, or should wait until they had a general system of municipal government for London carried out. He thought it was desirable to adopt some temporary remedy, although no one was more anxious than he was to see a general system of municipal government for London established. The Commission rather desired that the remedy should be applied by the extension of the existing provisions of the law. It was already provided under Cross's Acts that an inquiry should be held by the Home Office; but although those inquiries were held, at the present moment there was no power of calling upon either of the two Local Authorities in London to carry out the scheme. It was the suggestion of the Royal Commission that there ought to be some mode of arbitration between the Vestries and the Metropolitan Board of Works. He thought that the 2nd sub-section of Clause 45 ought to be confined to the Metropolis, and might properly be modified. The hon. Member for Oldham had referred to the letter from Lord Grey which appeared in The Times: and it was desirable to point out that Lord Grey apparently wrote in ignorance of the present state of the law and bye-laws in regard to tenement houses. Lord Grey in that letter recommended a great many of the principles which were already found in the existing law. In the Public Health Act, the Sanitary Act for the Metropolis, and in the corresponding Acts for Scotland and Ireland, there were very large powers given to Local Authorities for dealing with tenement houses. Nothing except the supineness of the Local Authorities prevented the exercise of those powers; and if they said that their hands were tied by the Central Board in respect to the adoption or application of those bye-laws, the present Bill would leave it entirely to the Local Authorities to adopt them. The hon. Member for Oldham did not object to the clause which declared it the duty of the Local Authority to enforce the provisions of the law relating to public health. That provision had not been opposed, and therefore he would say nothing on it except that he had some doubt whether it was wise or not to introduce a provision which looked like a brutum fulmen; but on taking the advice of those who were best acquainted with the working of the laws relating to public health, they all declared that a clause of that kind would do good, and that clause was introduced with their assent. Clause 13 was objected to by Motions that stood on the Paper. It was, he thought, originally suggested by Lord Salisbury; but the evidence adduced before the Committee pointed to its adoption. He admitted the desirability of confining the Bill to the housing of the working classes; but, at the same time, he supported the principle as one which might be included in the general law. As to the application of the Act to Scotland and Ireland, the right hon. Gentleman stated that it was intended that it should apply to those two countries. He would make one suggestion to the right hon. Gentleman in regard to a certain difficulty which might arise in connection with the application of the Act to Scotland. The Burgh Police and Health (Scotland) Bill—a famous Bill as to which a difficulty arose the other night—was a very bulky measure, and it stood in rather a peculiar position. It passed its second reading, and went through a very careful examination by a Select Committee of that House last year, and it had been similarly dealt with by the House of Lords in the present Session. Under those circumstances, he should be glad himself if it were possible to pass that Bill this Session; but if there was opposition to it, of course, that was out of the question. But the Royal Commission, on its Scotch investigation, most strongly recommended the passing of that Bill, and it avoided making other recommendations as to the burghs of Scotland, because they found two facts very strongly marked in regard to them. One was the extreme desire of each Scottish town to adopt bye laws of its own, dealing with its questions in its own way, which they would be able to do under the Burgh Police and Health Bill, keeping their own Acts. The second was that they found the Scotch had a very stubborn dislike to the application to them of any provisions which interfered with private enterprize. As regards the rural districts in Scotland, the Commission strongly recommended a reform of the local government, which was greatly needed. As to the application to Scotland of that portion of the Bill dealing with Lord Shaftesbury's Act, he himself had no doubt. With regard to Ireland, it should be borne in mind that the Labourers (Ireland.) Act went beyond the provisions of this Bill, Of course, this Bill would not form any bar or hindrance to the adoption of an improved system of local government. If he thought that the Bill would in the least degree stand in the way of an improved system of local government in the rural districts of this country, in the Metropolis, and in Scotland and Ireland, he should not give it his support. But he believed it would form no bar to such improvement; but that, on the contrary, its provisions would, in some respects, pave the way and inspire fresh energy in the effort to obtain better local self-government in the rural districts, because they would show the people some of the advantages which might be gained by local government. Though not a large Bill, he did not think it deserved the epithet of "paltry," which his hon. Friend had applied to it; and he could only hope that, though not such a large measure as he could wish, it would, nevertheless, be found not unworthy to grapple with some of the difficulties that surrounded this question.

wished to say a word or two upon the clauses of the Bill dealing with sanitation. In his opinion, the clause giving power to a tenant to sue his landlord for damages in the event of sickness arising from the sanitary condition of his—the tenant's—dwelling was a mockery. He was fully persuaded of the importance of promoting improved sanitary conditions in the homos of the working classes, and it was his intention to move certain Amendments in Committee, with the object of extending still further the operation of the Bill in that direction. He thought they ought to make the powers of the Local Authorities compulsory instead, of permissive, that every house should be inspected at least once in two years, and that no owner should be allowed to let a house without a certificate of its sanitary condition. He would especially advocate rendering Sanitary Inspectors independent of the Local Boards as to their appointment and dismissal, and empowering Local Authorities to charge a small fee for the inspection of houses.

observed, that while some clauses of the Bill, if properly worked, would be very beneficial, many contained somewhat objectionable principles. He objected to the centralizing tendency of the Bill, and maintained that it would be much bettor to leave the Local Authorities fully responsible to the ratepayers who elected them with respect to dealing with insanitary houses. The measure was open to the objection that by giving this power to the Central Government the Local Sanitary Authorities might be discouraged from, bringing forward schemes for the improvement of their respective areas. He hoped that the Government would give an assurance to the House that they would make some substantial concession in the way of making the ground landlords of London yield up a portion of that which they had gained by the increased prosperity of the country. He objected strongly to the Central Government applying the national funds for the benefit of a particular class in a particular locality. Such a proposal was dangerous in principle, and was, moreover, one which ought not to be adopted in the last days of a dying Parliament. He should be glad if Clause 3 was either substantially modified or dropped out of the Bill altogether.

said, that one of the reasons why he could have wished that this Bill had not been brought before the House was that it dealt only with the fringe of a great question, and. that it might be made the pretext for not dealing with the question as a whole. He doubted the policy of this "very weak-kneed dose of Socialism," on account of the difficulty which people might experience under it in obtaining the advantages which the Government proposed to give them. If this measure were to be successfully worked, the Government would have to create a new Department, which must conduct the building operations and must fix both the present and the future rent of the tenements. If this were not done, the tenants would be charged the same rack rents as their neighbours, and all the advantages to be derived under this Bill would go into the pockets of those who conducted the building operations. One of the great complaints against the management of the Peabody Fund was that the wrong people got the benefit of it. He believed, with regard to Clause 3, that if the House could have heard the arguments that led up to the passing of that clause by the Royal Commission, it would be far less popular than it appeared to be. He had made a counter proposal to the effect that, if the prisons were removed, the sites should be used as open spaces rather than let out for building purposes. But if this benefit were to be conferred upon the Metropolis, he should like to know what they were going to say to the other constituencies? What were they going to say to the population of Stoke, who, when they heard that the working classes of London had obtained these advantages, would demand that the same favour should be extended to them? Was the Government prepared to make grants of pieces of land on which to build dwellings for the working classes to every borough in the Kingdom? He contended that they should not favour one particular part of the community at the expense of the general community; at the same time, if they extended the proposed system to the community as a whole, he would not have so much to say against it. Clause 3, however, admitted a very important principle—namely, that the unearned increment of the land, belonged to the people. This was a somewhat startling admission on the part of the Head of the present Government, and would be welcomed by all land reformers; and he believed Mr. Henry George, when he read and thoroughly understood the whole import of Clause 3, would claim the Prime Minister as one of his converts, or, at any rate, as one who was going a considerable length towards his own principles with regard to land nationalization. So far as Clause 3 admitted the right of the people to the unearned increment of the land of the nation, he looked upon it as a most important one, and one which he could heartily support and endorse from that point of view. There were many points in the Report of the Royal Commission which had been left untouched by this Bill. There was, for instance, the question of Inspectors. There were Inspectors already; and the question was whether those Inspectors should be a reality or a sham—whether they should attend to the interests of the inhabitants, or to the interests of the Vestrymen, their employers. Any Bill that dealt with the question of the housing of the poor should provide that when Inspectors were appointed there should be some guarantee by certificate or examination that they possessed some kind of fitness for the duties they were called upon to discharge. Clause 13 appeared to have caused considerable alarm to a number of people. A body of gentlemen, representing themselves as a building society federation, had been interviewing the Home Secretary upon the subject; but he would like to ask the Home Secretary whether had he had any communication whatever directly from any building society on this question? There were building societies that existed for the benefit of their members, and others which, he feared, existed merely for speculation; and he ventured to say that there was no building society of the former class which had made any representation whatever against the stringency of Clause 13. The clause was really a protection to building societies, and not an injustice or injury to them. He should watch with very great jealousy any attempt to lessen the strength of that clause. He would not now enter into his reasons for thinking that the clause should rather be strengthened; but he must give the right hon. Gentleman Notice that should any considerable modification be proposed he should have seriously to oppose it. He was sorry to find that one of the recommendations of the Royal Commissioners as to the enfranchisement of leaseholds was not embodied in the Bill. That went to the whole root of the question of overcrowding in the great towns; and as the supplementary Report on that subject had been signed by Cardinal Manning, Mr. Lyulph Stanley, Mr. Samuel Morley, Mr. Torrens, Mr. Godwin, Mr. Collins, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and himself, and was as much a recommendation of the Commission as the majority Report itself, he had looked with the greatest confidence for its inclusion in the Bill. It would be far better for the victims of overcrowding if the present Bill was withdrawn, so that a more thorough and complete measure might be introduced next Session. This Bill dealt with the mere fringe of the question, and to pass it in the dying moments of a Parliament would be a most doubtful proceeding.

said, he believed that if there were not a General Election ahead this Bill would have been postponed till next Session. He had no objection to its passing; it would do no harm, and it would do but little good; but it contained a principle which he valued. He did not believe that such a small Bill could be the final outcome of the labours of the Royal Commission. It was acknowledged that there were ample powers for sanitary purposes conferred by the existing law, and that to carry them out we required rural municipalities and better local government in London; and yet this Bill gave more powers before the agencies were reformed. The right hon. Gentleman said the evil was very great, and that it was time to deal with it; but this Bill did not deal with that evil, and it could only be a settlement for a Session, so that it would be just as well to postpone it. It embodied a proposition signed by the Marquess of Salisbury and another Commissioner; but it ignored propositions that were signed by several Commissioners. The clause which gave a Central Authority power over a Local Authority, and so rendered it possible that a Sanitary Inspector might be independent of the Local Authority, was not calculated to produce good local government. It would lead to the abuse of municipal authority, and it would produce local resentment against compulsion exercised by the Central Authority. One would have thought that one difficulty of this sort would have been sufficient for the Government. They were engaged in a dispute with the Local Authority of Limerick, and that was but a sample of what might be anticipated if in England an attempt were made to coerce Local Authorities by the Central Authority. What he valued in the Bill was the application of the Shaftesbury Act of 1851 to rural districts. He knew it had been a dead letter; but the introduction of it into this Bill was an admission of the principle of the compulsory acquisition of land by the Local Authority. This was a principle for which he had contended for a long time, and which many others wished to see affirmed for other purposes. He did not think the principle would be very effective as it here stood, because the Public Health Act of 1875 was incorporated with the Act which required that any land acquired by the Local Authority should be under the Lands Clauses Act, making it thereby so expensive, and giving the landlord such advantages, that he did not think Local Authorities would be likely to put the law in force. Nevertheless, the principle was affirmed I in one of the clauses of the present Bill. His hon. Friend the Member for Oldham (Mr. Lyulph Stanley) spoke lightly of the state of things as revealed by the Commission. He would, however, ask hon. Members to read the evidence on which this Bill was based, and which showed that misery, degradation, and suffering of a kind, and to an extent that was simply disgraceful, existed in our midst. That was one reason more why this Bill should be postponed to another Session, in order that the public might know the manner in which the great bulk of the people were living. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman that if he passed the Bill this Session, it would be but the prelude to another measure next year, because the working classes and the poorer classes who were subject to the evils which he had been describing would not consent any longer to bear the maximum of all the discomforts of this life and the minimum of all that made life worth living. He did not now say what clauses could be added to the Bill to meet this state of things; but no measure would be satisfactory which did not contain provisions to place the great mass of the people in London and in the country, as far as their dwellings and surroundings were concerned, in altogether a different position from that which they at present occupied. The Commissioners almost agreed that there were two causes of the evils they were considering. First, there was the poverty of the people, who could not afford the rents asked for superior accommodation; and, secondly, there was the cupidity of the owners of the site, who demanded the highest rents from those who wished to build on those sites, and thus rendered dearer the cost of the working man's dwelling. Neither of these points would be touched by the present Bill. He would recommend the right hon. Gentleman to consider a remedy which was discussed by the Royal Commission, and which was embodied in a Memorandum signed by six or eight Members. That remedy—and he believed it to be the only effectual one—was to find some means by which the competition rents in populous districts might be stayed. The evidence showed that the ever increasing price of land making the acquisition of sites more and more difficult was at the bottom of the evil. Yet they did not hear of any suggestion from the Government with regard to that difficulty. It was in the action of Local Municipal Authorities that the real remedy was to be found. The only solution of the difficulty was first to create a real Local Authority of a purely elective character, and then to empower it to acquire the land and the dwellings in all those districts which were scheduled as populous. If the Local Authority acquired them at a fair price, taking everything into consideration, competition rents would be stopped. The Municipal Authority would have no interest, like private individuals, in making a profit out of the degradation and the poverty of the people who were compelled to live in a populous district; or if a profit were made it would belong to the community. He hoped hon. Members would not be frightened by the word "Socialism," which simply meant the interdependence of all classes of society.

, interposing, remarked that if they went into the general question of Socialism they would be a very long time discussing this measure.

went on to say that the action of the Local Authority, as he understood it, simply implied the interdependence of members of society on one another. Would the right hon. Gentleman introduce a clause on the lines of the hon. Member for Stoke's Bill for the Enfranchisement of Leaseholds? That recommendation was signed by 10 out of the 17 Members of the Commission. With regard to the sale of prison sites, he was glad to find recognized the principle, that as the value of land had increased in consequence of the labour of the people, that increase ought to go back in some way to the people. That principle was not only in the Bill, but also in Lord Salisbury's Memorandum, in which he spoke of the sale at a reduced price of these sites as—

"The surrender of an increase caused by that very concentration which it is applied to remedy. It more closely resembles," continues the Memorandum, "the provision of compensation than the offer of a gift."

Those words of Lord Salisbury had a far wider application than was given them in the Bill, and he should like to see them applied in a really efficient measure to some of the great estates of the Kingdom. Then the Bill did not deal with the evil as it existed in the rural districts, where on large estates cottages had been pulled down year after year, so that the accommodation for labourers was reduced both in quantity and kind. The Bill, in fact, did not go nearly far enough, and he would suggest to the Government that it should be read a second time, so as to affirm its principle; but it was simply ridiculous to attempt dealing with a great but imperfect measure like the present at the fag-end of the Session. He therefore hoped that, without further waste of time, it might be relegated to the new Parliament, and re-introduced in a considerably improved form.

said, the Bill embodied some of the more important recommendations of the Report of the Royal Commission. It was not intended to carryall the recommendations into effect, and which could scarcely be done in a single measure; but he thought the last speaker's proposal was not characterized by even the shadow of Christian charity, for it contained in pronounced form the suggestion that the misery and vice which the Bill in some, though it might be an inadequate, degree, was designed to remedy, should be allowed to continue till another Session and till more drastic remedies could be applied. He hoped the House would read the Bill a second time, and at once consider it in Committee.

said, he wished to express his sense of the importance of the great service which had been rendered to the country by the Royal Commission, and especially by his right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Commission, who presided so ably over its investigations. In the course of his experience he did not think there had been a Royal Commission which, during so short a time, had covered such a great extent of ground. It appeared to him to have conducted the inquiry with enormous labour, and it had completed its work in a much shorter time than it was originally possible to expect. It might be that they were not able to give full effect to the recommendations of the Royal Commission; but he thought it would be unfortunate if the Session should close without giving effect to some, at least, of those recommendations. He could not, therefore, support any Amendment which would have the effect of defeating the Bill. There were some parts of the Bill which he could not altogether approve; but there were many parts of it on which all were agreed. The clause was an important one, which enabled Local Authorities in rural districts to purchase land with the view of building cottages where it was proved to the satisfaction of the Central Authority, which he believed would be the Local Government Board, that the cottages were insufficient or altogether inappropriate to the number of persons who lived in them. He thought that was a most valuable clause; but he regretted that the duties and the rights of the Local Authorities in this connection were not more clearly stated in the Bill. It was only by implication that this power was conferred on Local Authorities. He could not but think that in a Bill of this kind it was important that a main object of this kind should be clearly stated, so that the Local Authorities, in reading the Bill, should be enabled clearly to understand the provision and perceive its object. He did not know whether it was too late to make an Amendment in this respect; but he would suggest to the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill whether it would not be well in the 1st clause to lay down clearly and in unmistakable language the right and the duty of the Local Authorities to act in this direction. Another clause with which he most heartily agreed was that dealing with the provision in the Torrens's Acts relating to the compulsory purchase by Local Authorities of condemned buildings. He thought that provision had been the cause of the Torrens's Acts being of comparatively little effect, and the repeal of that provision was important. He approved strongly of Clause 6, which reverted to the original Act of 1875, in regard to the rates of interest charged by the State in the case of Local Authorities. In 1879 he and his right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham sat through nearly a whole night for the purpose of obstructing the proposal of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer to charge a higher rate of interest. He pointed out then that the proposal of the Government of that day would have the effect of killing the Artizans' Dwellings Act, and he did his best to hinder that provision passing into law. He was gratified to find that the Royal Commission had taken his view of the matter. There was one respect in which the Bill appeared to him to be deficient. There was no provision for carrying out the recommendation of the Royal Commission, with reference to the limitation of compensation to be given under the Artizans' Dwellings Act. He did not find in the Bill any effect given to the recommendation of the Commissioners that where a tenement house was occupied by several persons compensation in respect of it should not be in respect of the number of persons, but that it should have reference to the number of persons who ought properly to be lodged in the house. That was an alteration in the law recommended by the Royal Commission, and he did not find any corresponding clause in the Bill. This, however, was a matter which he presumed would stand over to a future day, and perhaps by next year they might have further experience of the Act of 1882, which had not yet been fully tried, and with further experience it might be possible to go further in this direction. The compensation which had been awarded in respect of sites cleared under the operation of that Act had been excessive, and this had tended seriously to reduce the operation of the Act. He had some objection to Clause 13. He did not wish to pronounce dogmatically upon it. In principle he was rather in favour of that which was laid down in the clause, if it could be applied in such a way as not to cause great alarm. At the same time, it had created so much alarm among the owners of house property that he believed it would be desirable to postpone legislation on that part of the subject till next year. Another clause which he would also recommend the right hon. Gentleman to deal with in the same way was that as to the prison sites. There, again, he did not venture to speak dogmatically; there was much to be said on both sides; but the principle about to be adopted was an extremely novel one, and it might carry them much further than the particular cases now under consideration. In many parts of the country there was Crown property. The proposal made seven or eight years ago with reference to the Thames Embankment had been alluded to. There the property belonged to the Woods and Forests, and the principle adopted in that case was that the Crown in respect of property of that kind was justified in taking into account certain interests of the public, and in dealing with its property as private owners did. But it must be recollected that there was a large amount of Crown property throughout the country, and, therefore, that argument might carry them much further and lead to results of considerable importance. He would also remark that they were entirely without information as to the value of the property now proposed to be dealt with. Were the sites of Millbank and the other prisons really valuable sites or were they not? He had heard different opinions on that point. He had heard that Millbank was an extremely valuable site; that it would sell for a very large sum of money; and, if the principle proposed to be applied by the Bill were adopted, it might be that the difference between the selling value of the land and that for which it would be sold for the purposes of that Bill would probably be not less than £300,000 or £400,000. If that was the case, what they practically now asked to do was to give a subvention to the Metropolis of a sum to that amount. He could not but think that that was a very novel principle, and that it might give rise to claims on the part of other towns to be dealt with in the same way. On the other hand, if the value of the property was a small one, and the difference between the value of the site in the open market and the price to be obtained for it as a site for working class dwellings would not be considerable, the question might not be a very serious one. If that were the case, why could not the Metropolitan Board of Works—one of the most wealthy Local Authorities in the Kingdom—buy the property and give the full value far it, and not raise a question of that importance? All, however, that he said on the point at present was that it was one on which there was so much difference of opinion that he thought it would be well if the right hon. Gentleman would postpone that very contentious question till next Session. In conclusion, although the harvest at present might not be a largo one, he hoped they might be allowed to gather it; but, as there were other questions not dealt within that Bill which must come under the consideration of the Legislature at an early period, they might, he thought, leave to that period some of the contentious matter to which he had referred.

said, that the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down agreed with the Mover of the Amendment in advising them to relegate at least one contentious question till next Session. The hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. Lyulph Stanley) was anxious that they should not discuss the question of the housing of the poor until they had determined—first, the whole question of local burdens; secondly, what hon. Gentlemen called the land question; thirdly, the question of local government; and, fourthly, the question of leasehold tenure in towns. Was it to be seriously supposed that next Session would be a Session in which they would have a large amount of leisure to discuss those questions? He was quite prepared to leave to the next Parliament everything which it could most properly discuss; but if they could, by common agreement on both sides, do something material—he did not say how much—to improve the dwellings of the working classes, was it common sense to defer it until the whole catalogue of gigantic problems which the hon. Member for Oldham had desired them to discuss had been finally disposed of by the new Parliament? The hon. Member for Oldham seemed to think that everything would be put right if they only had a good system of local self-government. Now, he was as anxious for local self-government as the hon. Member; but let them constitute their Local Governing Bodies how they pleased, they would not always be ready to carry out the duties which Parliament desired to impose on them. The hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Broadhurst) thought the remedy for the existing evil was a good Leasehold Bill. Now, individually, he had a prejudice in favour of houses being built in towns on a tenure substantially equal to a freehold site. In Scotland, and in parts of Lancashire, that had been an habitual practice; but when he was told that overcrowding, insanitary dwellings, and all the other great social diseases with which that Bill was intended to cope, had their origin in the fact that a large part of the Metropolis was held under leases from ground landlords, he reminded the House that those evils existed in towns in this country and in other countries where the question of leases never arose, and, among other places, in Edinburgh, in Glasgow, in Paris, in Berlin, and in New York. The clause of this Bill dealing with prison sites had excited more controversy of a general kind than any other provision in it. The hon. Member for Stoke asked how they could justify handing over to that Metropolis a large grant of public property unless they were equally prepared to hand over to other local bodies and other towns grants of a like character? The hon. Member, in fact, said that he objected to handing over the unearned increment of rent to the ratepayers of the Metropolis. But, having said that, he went on to say that he did, after all, approve of the clause to a certain extent, because it recognized the principle that the unearned increment belonged to the people. Both those arguments could not be sound, and, therefore, it was for the hon. Member to choose between them. But, as a matter of fact, the introduction of the question of unearned increment into the treatment of this question was utterly irrelevant, and Mr. George's theories, whatever might be their value, had no relation to the Bill. He would not go into a justification of the clause in detail; but he would urge in particular this argument—that London was the place where most injury had been done to the working classes by displacements carried out under Act of Parliament, and London was also the one town in the United Kingdom where the greatest injury had been done to the working classes by compelling them to migrate. There was something, therefore, not altogether unfair in asking Parliament to partially undo the wrong Parliament itself had inflicted. Moreover, Pentonville was a national prison, and it occupied a site which practically threw much too great a burden on the taxpayers, and, therefore, the passing of this clause might be regarded as paying off what the country owed to London. These were the pleas on which he would recommend the House to accept the clause, which, at the same time, he frankly admitted was open in some points of view to severe criticism. The hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Jesse Collings) complained that the Bill did nothing whatever to diminish the pressure of rents. He altogether denied that. In the first place, the very clause he had been discussing had as its sole justification the fact that it would diminish the pressure of rents. It was grossly unfair to the framers of the Bill to say that nothing was done to diminish, to a certain extent, at all events, the pressure of rents upon those who were compelled to dwell in the neighbourhood of their work. He earnestly impressed upon the House the desirability of as soon as possible discussing the Bill in Committee. Most of the objections that had been taken to the Bill might, he thought, have been taken in Committee; and it would be a thousand pities, after the Royal Commission had reported, and a Bill had been introduced in the main in accordance with that Report, if the House were to spend any more time discussing the second reading at a period of the Session when time was doubly and trebly valuable.

said, it was difficult to know whether the Bill was really the Bill of the Royal Commission or not. More Members of the Commission had spoken against the Bill than had spoken in favour of it; but, at the same time, the Bill certainly did carry out some of the recommendations of the Commission. He thought it was very necessary to get the provisions this Bill did give them. For the rest he was perfectly satisfied to wait until the next Election was over. As to the question of the unearned increment on these prison sites, it had always been the custom of Railway Companies to select the sites of the houses of working men for the purpose of laying out their lines, and to turn working men out without any sort of compensation, and the unearned increment of the prison sites was not a very large return for all that. Under the present law, where a man let an unfurnished house he was not liable for injury to health caused by bad sanitary arrangements; but that was not the ease where the house was furnished. He entirely approved the proposal in the Bill that the owner of the house should be liable in such a case whether the house was furnished or unfurnished. He should have been glad to have seen several other of the recommendations of the Royal Commission embodied in the Bill; but inasmuch as the Bill, as far as it went, did advance the question a little, he should give it his hearty support. He would only add that he thought the result of the investigation by the Royal Commission had in many respects imperatively demonstrated the necessity that existed in London for a Central Municipal Authority.

said, he hoped that the Bill would be read a second time; but he wished to give the Home Secretary one word of advice. Nothing was more dangerous than to overload a lifeboat, no matter what were the motives which prompted such a course. This Bill was a lifeboat, and he urged the right hon. Gentleman not to consent to the addition of any more clauses to it, as its very existence would thereby be imperilled. For himself, he would be glad if the Government could, consistently with their sense of duty, omit one or two clauses to which opposition had been offered. He desired to point out that the Royal Commissioners had steadily refused to enter into the general subject of London Government, and had confined their attention strictly to the question before them—namely, the better housing of the working classes of London. They in no way recommended that the unearned increment of the land should be given to the people, and they had not sought to deal with theoretical questions of the kind. This measure, therefore, must not be supposed to be intended as a first step towards the nationalization of the land, or towards creating a new Municipality for London. As to the proposal with respect to prison sites, of which he was the author, so far as the Commission was concerned, he should be delighted even if a brick was never laid on the sites. If there was one thing which the Metropolis required more than houses it was breathing ground for the people who had been crowded together by the action of Parliament, and he rejoiced at the prospect of those sinks of iniquity, the prisons affected by the Bill, being removed from among the people, and their sites appropriated either as open spaces or for the purpose of building dwellings for the working-classes. In this matter it was neither practicable nor equitable to deal with London like an ordinary town. London was the centre of the population and the industry of the Kingdom; it was annually attracting thousands of fresh inhabitants, and it was incumbent upon Parliament to deal with that which had become the greatest capital of the greatest Empire in the world on specific grounds and principles.

said, that he had an appeal to make to the House. He trusted that they would now consent to read the Bill a second time, inasmuch as he intended to propose several Amendments in Committee to-morrow, the nature of which he would make known to the House on the Motion that the Speaker leave the Chair, and which he thought would meet many of the objections that had been made to the measure. They were very near the end of the Session, and there was still other Business to be got through. Hon. Members would have ample opportunity of discussing the measure to-morrow on the Motion for going into Committee.

said, that after the appeal of the right hon. Gentleman he would not press his right to address the House upon the measure.

desired to state that, as a Member of the Commission, he did not object to the Bill. He was not of opinion that it would, do much good, although it could not do much harm. He certainly thought that the enormous evil of the condition of the poor in large towns could not be dealt with by a Bill of such a kind.

said, that he should not oppose the Bill being read a second time on the understanding that a debate could be raised on the Motion to go into Committee.

, in moving that Mr. Speaker do leave the Chair, said, that the Government had undertaken, before the House went into Committee, to state the names of the Commissioners who would be appointed under it. The Government were anxious, inasmuch as the Bill dealt with the interests of both landlords and tenants, that the two Commissioners to be appointed under it should be, as far as possible, representative of the interests of those two parties. The question of who the Commissioners should be to whom the administration of the Bill should be intrusted had been a matter of earnest consideration on the part of Her Majesty's Government. After the most mature consideration, they were now in a position to submit to the House the names of two gentleman whose past career and acquaintance with the subject, as well as the knowledge which hon. Members possessed of them, would, he thought, entitle their choice to the approval of the House. Mr. John George M'Carthy was for many years a Member of that House. When the Land Act of 1881 came into operation he was appointed a Sub-Commissioner, and from that time up to the present he had been engaged in carrying out the Land Act of 1881. Though it was difficult to say that any gentleman had given entire satisfaction in the carrying out of that important measure, yet it would be admitted by everyone that Mr. M'Carthy, as far as it was possible to do so, had carried out the measure in a spirit of fairness and equity to all parties concerned. While he was justified in saying that Mr. M'Carthy's sympathies were with the tenants, yet he was sure that in carrying out this legislation he would do nothing that was not just. The second Commissioner it was proposed to appoint was Mr. Stamslaus Lynch, who had been a Registrar of the Landed Estates Court for many years, and in that position had had great experience in the transfer of properties. He was sure that his experience in that particular would be of great importance in carrying out the Act. Furthermore, for the last two or three years, Mr. Lynch had devoted himself to the question of the creation of a peasant proprietary, and had written upon that subject. Speaking for himself and for his Colleagues, they were of opinion that if the House adopted these names there would be no danger that the Act would not be carried out with efficiency, fairness, and equity.

said, it would, no doubt, be the desire of the Government, or of whatever Government happened to be in Office when the Bill was carried into effect, to carry it out, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman said, with efficiency, fairness, and equity. He wished to take that opportunity, which would probably be the last he should have before the Bill passed into law, of stating some misgivings he felt as to the soundness of the principle upon which the measure was based. He was well aware that the Bill was brought before the House with the assent of the leading statesmen on both sides of the House, and he was also aware that the part of a Cassandra was not a gracious nor a popular one either on the stage or off of it; but he could not help expressing his doubts and misgivings, after the experience he had obtained, as to whether the Bill would achieve the objects which it had in view, and, if it did achieve them, whether they would not be purchased at too dear a price. The principles on which the Bill was based appeared to him to be fraught with novelty. Almost for the first time they were called upon to sanction a measure by which it was proposed to invest the money of the taxpayers of the United Kingdom in loans to tenants in Ireland in order to enable them to purchase their farms on easy terms. He quite agreed that that principle had, to a certain extent, been acted upon in what were known as the Bright Clauses of the Land Act of 1881. But he would point out a very material distinction between those clauses and the present Bill. In the Act of 1881, and in previous Acts by which Parliament authorized advances to be made to the tenants out of the Church Surplus, for the purpose of enabling them to purchase their holdings, it was always provided that one-fourth should be paid down by the tenant in the first instance. In this Bill that provision had been altogether omitted. The proposal contained in the Bill was that nothing whatever was to be paid by the tenant, and that no security was to be taken from the tenant if he desired to purchase. He was not called upon to pay a single 1d.; but, on the contrary, a great, and, in his opinion, too great, a benefit was intended to be conferred upon the tenant in the shape of lowering the annual sum he would have to pay either in the way of rent or instalments of rent, and a large bonus was given to him in the future. It was quite true that the Bill proposed only to advance a sum of £5,000,000, and it might be said that that sum, as compared with the Expenditure of the country, was so trifling as to be a mere fleabite. This, however, was not a question of the advance of £5,000,000, but an experiment intended to be tried for the purpose of converting the ownership of land in Ireland into a peasant proprietary. If the Bill succeeded, and the landlords and tenants of Ireland availed themselves of the facilities given by the Bill, it would not be a question of £5,000,000, but the country would be called upon to advance £25,000,000, £50,000,000, or, it might be, £100,000,000, in order to enable the scheme which the Bill presented to the House to be carried out. He asked the House to consider what was the security offered for the large advances which the House was going to sanction out of the money of the taxpayers of the whole of the United Kingdom? They were told that the Bill provided that the Government should have the security of the land—a security of much the same kind as the landlord now had for his rent—and that there was a provision in the Bill by which one-fifth of the purchase money might be retained by the Land Commission. He ventured to say, however, that that security was absolutely illusory, because it was only permissive, because only one-fifth was to be retained; and, even if it were retained, it had to be given up as soon as the tenant had paid one-fifth of the purchase money, instead of being retained until the tenant had paid the whole of the purchase money, by which means something in the shape of real security would be given. As soon, however, as the tenant had paid the amount equal to one-fifth of the purchase money, the sum retained as security would be returned. So that this security was altogether illusory, and useless for the repayment of the whole of the advances which the State was asked to make. Then they were told that they had the security of the land itself; but that depended upon two factors—the first of which was the ability and willingness of the tenant to pay; and the second, and the most important, factor was the ability and willingness of the Government to enforce its powers as a secured creditor, He would ask the House to consider what would be the position of the tenant if the scheme contemplated by the Bill were carried into effect. The Bill provided that the tenant should pay an annuity calculated at 4 per cent on the purchase money, and extending over a period of 49 years. In that time it was calculated that he would have to pay the purchase money with 3 per cent interest; but the amount of interest was immaterial. He was told, and he believed it was generally accepted, that land sold for about 20 years' purchase; and if it sold at anything less than 25 years' purchase on the rent, the annuity which the tenant would pay would be less than the rent he was at present paying. Let him take the case of a tenancy in regard to which the rent was £50 a-year. At 20 years' purchase the purchase money would be £1,000. At 4 per cent interest, payable for 49 years, he would pay to the estate an annuity of £40 a-year, or, in other words, 20 per cent less than he would pay in the shape of rent, and at the end of 49 years the land would become his own, so that the position of the tenant would be much better by purchasing the land and being converted from a tenant into a proprietor. He would pay 20 per cent less than he was now paying in the shape of rent, and he would leave his successors in the possession of the land after 49 years. No wonder that the Bill had been called a generous Bill. Few proposals had ever been brought before Parliament of a more generous character. What they proposed to do was to make an immediate and most valuable present to the tenants of land in Ireland; but they made that present at the expense of the taxpayers of the United Kingdom. ["No!"] Yes; it was the taxpayers of the United Kingdom who were to advance this sum of £5,000,000 out of the Consolidated Fund for the purpose of enabling the tenants to become the owners of land on these easy terms. Did the House think that it would stop there, or that the demand would be confined to Ireland? Was it not certain that a demand would be made in that House to apply the same principle in other parts of the United Kingdom, the inhabitants of which were, in fact and in truth, called upon to contribute to the large sum which, if the Bill became a success, would require to be advanced out of the Consolidated Fund? If this money were an ordinary advance to be repaid, it might be said that the Consolidated Fund was in the position of the money lender who advanced his money and got a return of his capital with interest; but he had already pointed out that the only security the State would have was a security which would depend upon the ability and the willingness of the tenant to pay, and what he thought was much more important—namely, the ability and willingness of the State to enforce payment of the annuity. He would ask what would be the position of the State in respect of a tenant who purchased under the Act? Every lawyer and every hon. Member of that House knew that the State would be in the position of a mortgagee; and they understood the difference between the position of a mortgagee and of a landlord who let his land to a tenant at a rent. They could not expect the peasantry of Ireland to realize the difference between the position of the landlord who received £40 and the landlord who received £50 a-year; and inevitably the State would become, in substance and in fact, for a period of 49 years, as regarded those tenants who accepted these terms, in the position of landlord of the land in Ireland, and all the unpopularity and all the odium which attached to the position of a landlord in Ireland would henceforth attach to the State, and with accumulating force, because the State would have to bear the additional unpopularity which attached to the State when it demanded money. Many people thought, and it was generally believed, he was sorry to say, in this country, that the State was to be what had been described as a universal provider; and if the State attempted, in hard times, to enforce the payment of annuities, it would incur all the odium of a landlord demanding his rent, and, in addition, the odium of the State enforcing payment of money upon people who found it very difficult to pay. All he asked the House to consider was what the position of the State would be if they had another period of scarcity and of famine such as those which had from time to time visited Ireland when they had bad seasons and the crops had failed, and it became most difficult for the tenant to pay his rent. What would be the position of the Government then? How were they to enforce payment of these annuities? Would they propose to enforce it by eviction or by sale? If they enforced the payment of the instalments by the legal remedies of sale or eviction, were they going to enforce it at the point of the bayonet, or how were they going to enforce it? He ventured to predict that if times like those which they had passed through should, unhappily, pass over Ireland again, it would be difficult, nay, almost impossible, for the Government, with the best intentions in the world, to enforce regular payment when it was refused, and if the refusal became anything like universal it would be impossible to enforce the payment of annuities, which would represent the principal and interest of the advances. He would not say what power this would give to the agitator. The agitator against the legal rights of the landlord had made out a strong case, and the agitator against the legal rights of the landlord had aroused the passions of the people. But what a field there would be for the agitator when these annual payments—whether rents or annuities were perfectly immaterial—were to be paid, not to landlords or to individuals, but to the State! He looked forward with the greatest misgiving to the ability of the State to enforce these payments; and although, of course, on paper they would have a legal right to enforce them by eviction or sale of the holding, he ventured to anticipate that, notwithstanding the approval which the Bill had received from both sides of the House, there would be the greatest difficulty on the part of the State hero after in enforcing payment of the annuity representing the principal and the interest of the advances. He was told that there was no doubt the tenant purchasing under the provisions of this Bill would pay his instalments of principal and interest. He said, with the utmost sincerity, that he hoped and desired that it might be so. Nothing would give him greater pleasure than to find that the misgiving and doubt which he could not help feeling as to the expediency of the Bill, and as to the precedents set by its provisions, were falsified. If the Bill became a success, and it were a means of establishing, with justice to all parties, and with justice to the State, which meant the people of the United Kingdom generally, a peasant proprietary in Ireland, and that peasant proprietary became a guarantee for order and good government in that country, nothing would give him greater pleasure than to find that the misgivings he entertained were falsified. He confessed that he should have liked the experiment to be tried which had been indicated, he believed, by the hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. T. A. Dickson)—namely, that of the establishment of a National Land Bank. He was told that it was the practice of the Irish tenants to invest their savings in the Irish banks, and if the deposits could be utilized for the purpose of adding to the public fund which it was intended to apply in this way, he believed that most valuable results would be secured, and for two reasons—first, the Irish people themselves would provide the money by which it was proposed to transfer the land in Ireland from the present holders to a peasant proprietary; and, in the next place, the savings of the Irish people would be invested in loans to the tenants for the purpose of enabling them to purchase their holdings. Consequently, every person who became a depositor or a borrower in such a bank as had been suggested, the funds of which were to be applied for this purpose, would be interested in maintaining the stability of the system, and in taking care that the instalments represented by the annuity were paid with reasonable regularity. He would have had much greater confidence in the success of the proposals intended to be carried out by the Bill if some scheme of that kind had been attached to the measure, than he had in a proposal to advance money out of the Consolidated Fund to the tenants in return for an annuity. He was well aware that in all probability the Bill would be carried into law with such Amendments as might be made in it in Committee, and he was well aware that the doubts and misgivings he had felt it his duty to express, in his place in Parliament, as to the soundness of the principle on which the Bill was based, and the probability of its success, would be nothing more than an ineffectual protest. He could only tope and desire—and he did so from the bottom of his heart—that the Bill might turn out to be all that the promoters of it wished, and that his misgivings might be altogether falsified—that the tenants would pay the annuities and instalments they would have to pay with reasonable regularity, and that the Bill would be the means of establishing an order of things in Ireland which would tend to the prosperity of the country.

said, that it had not been his intention to have obtruded himself upon the Committee; but after the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Christchurch(Mr. Horace Davey), and knowing, as he (Mr. Sinclair) did, that anything which came from such a quarter would receive not only great attention in that Committee, but also from the nation at large, he thought it was desirable to notice one or two points which, in his opinion, deserved attention at the hands of hon. Members before a measure of this kind passed into law. The hon. and learned Member had referred to the question of the security that was proposed to be given in one-fifth of the purchase money being retained in the hands of the Government until at least that proportion had been paid by the tenant, and the hon. and learned Gentleman had said that that was the only security which existed, given on account or behalf of the purchaser. That, however, was not exactly the case, at least, in the North of Ireland, because the tenant right that existed on the Northern farms was of very great value. In some cases, as was mentioned in the House on the second reading of the Bill, the tenant right amounted to more than the value of the fee simple, and that security, if he understood the provisions of the Bill aright, would remain in the hands of the Government until the entire amount of the advance was repaid. That, he thought, was a very fair and a very effectual security; and it would remain in the hands of the nation, in order that the public might be secured as to any money advanced with a view of carrying into effect the attempt now being made to institute a peasant proprietary in Ireland. Very little had been said during the debate as to the desirability and necessity of the creation of a peasant proprietary. It seemed to be conceded in all parts of the Committee that that was a most desirable thing to do, and he, therefore, would not detain hon. Members by entering into that part of the question; but he would accept, as an axiom agreed in by both sides, that it was a desirable thing to attain, if it could be attained in a right and proper manner. The Bill had been spoken of as a generous Bill, and there was no doubt that, to some extent, it was so; but it must be remembered that Ireland required generous treatment at the hands of England, and that this Bill was only an attempt to do some little good for the evil which had been done in the past. It was one of the efforts England was trying to make at the present time in order to undo some of the harm which, by bad government and bad legislation, she had inflicted in the past on that country. It must be remembered that, in order to be a success, the advantages of the Bill, and the method by which it was intend to benefit the tenant, must be brought home to the tenant—that was to say, to those whose labour had in the past been the means of creating the value of the land which now existed. It was not the landlord who had done that; but it had been by the hard work of the tenant that the value of the land had increased in the past and would increase in the future. He would not dwell upon the circumstance that the cultivation of the land in England was quite different from that adopted in Ireland. In Ireland the improvement of the land was entirely effected by the tenant, and that fact alone rendered any comparison between the two countries perfectly impossible. It was altogether impossible for the English tenants to put forward claims of the same character as those which the tenants in Ireland could put forward, He thought he was fairly entitled to ask, at that stage, for some information as to the way in which the sum of £5,000,000, to be advanced under the present Bill, was to be expended. Was it to be looked upon as a matter of political economy? He admitted that the Bill sinned, to some extent, against the doctrines of political economy; but he understood that it was intended to be an advantage, not so much from the point of view of political economy, as from a national point of view. It was thought by means of this kind that something could be done to settle some of the questions that were troubling Ireland, and it was with a view of enabling a step to be made in the direction of securing peace, order, and prosperity in that country that the Bill had been introduced by Her Majesty's Government, and acceded to by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee. But there was no doubt that the advances which might be given would be very different in different localities; for instance, the security for the advance would be very much greater in the North of Ireland than it would be in the South. He thought, therefore, that he might fairly ask if the Government were going to make the priority of advance depend to any extent upon the security offered; or were they going to make the advances all over the country in the order in which the applications were made, looking upon them as a matter of State policy, without regard to the fact whether the security upon which the advances were made was great or small, the main point being to settle, as far as the Bill could, the greater security which would thus be provided for the future government of Ireland? Then, also, he should like to hear something from those who represented the Government on the subject of what were called the glebe tenants—those who had purchased under the Irish Church Act. It was well known by hon. Members that, under that Act, very considerable inducements had been held out to the tenants to purchase the land that they were in possession of, and a large number of them had taken advantage of those inducements. But the terms of purchase were by no means so advantageous as those which were proposed in the present measure. He (Mr. Sinclair) did not think it had ever been suggested from any quarter that any reduction should be made as to the principal sum paid for the farms originally purchased under the Irish Church Act. The sale had been effected long ago, and the purchase, at the time it was made, was considered to be a bargain, and it was then thought that no change was likely to be made in the terms under which land in Ireland might hereafter be obtained. He ventured to think that those who had purchased at that time, and whose terms of repayment were onerous as far as the interest was concerned, would have a fair claim to consideration under an Act such as this. It might be perfectly true that it was not an absolute case of justice requiring that change to be brought about; but it was one of those cases where it might truly be said that considerations of leniency ought to weigh with the Government in determining their course of action. Some remarks had been made by the hon. and learned Member for Christchurch in which reference was made to the Schedule connected with the Land Act. The hon. and learned Member had pointed out that the essence of this Bill was the payment of an annuity at the rate of £4 per annum upon a capital sum of £100, comprising both interest and principal, for a period of 49 years. He (Mr. Sinclair) thought that a considerable amount of misconception was likely to remain, so long as that Schedule was allowed to remain in its present shape, the principal and interest being included in one sum. Perhaps, for convenience, it was desirable that the payment should be so arranged; but he thought that the Schedule should be amended to this extent—that the interest and principal of each year should be separately and distinctly stated. As long as it was represented in one sum only, it would be looked upon as rent; but if it were divided, as he thought it ought to be divided, the tenant would better understand what it was he was paying, and any misconception would be avoided. In conclusion, he would thank the Committee for the courtesy with which they had listened to him on the first occasion upon which he had felt it necessary to address them.

said, he did not propose to follow the arguments of hon. Members who had spoken in the debate. He could understand that the hon. Member for Antrim (Mr. Sinclair), who spoke for the first time, should be desirous to express his sentiments. But he must make an appeal to hon. Members generally. He could not but think that almost all those who had an immediate interest in the Bill had already spoken on the second reading; and if they wished that the measure should pass they ought to remember that time was pressing, and that unless they got into Committee at once and made progress with the Bill its passage might be endangered. He was quite sure that, instead of making speeches at this stage, hon. Members could not do better than reserve any observations they might wish to make for the clauses of the Bill in Committee, and to make those observations as short as possible.

said, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman spoke of those who had an immediate interest in the Bill. He did not admit that that immediate interest was confined to Irish Members. It was not an Irish Bill at all. The British taxpayer had an immediate interest in the Bill as well. He had listened with great pleasure to the warning which had been given by his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Horace Davey). He thought, however, that his hon. and learned Friend had made one mistake when he said that the Bill was supported by statesmen on both sides of the House. It should be remembered that a statesman of the very greatest experience in the other House (Earl Spencer) had given a most serious and solemn warning as to the danger of the Bill; and another right hon. Gentleman who was a great authority upon the subject—the right hon. Member for Reading (Mr. Shaw Lefevre)—had done the same thing in that House. It could not be said, therefore, with justice that statesmen on both sides of the House were in favour of the Bill, and he hoped the House would take warning before going further. One thing was admitted—namely, that it was a Bill for the relief of landlords. ["No!"] At any rate, it was a Bill to open the land market as it was called The tenants of Ireland, by the Liberal Administration of the past, had got almost all they could desire; and this was a Bill to enable the landlords of Ireland to sell their estates for sums which they could not otherwise expect to obtain. It was a Bill for the State purchase of the land of Ireland, and for rendering the land of that country saleable under more favourable terms. He hoped hon. Members would not be blind to the matter, and that they would not ignore the fact that it was a Bill to enable the State to purchase the land of Ireland from the landlords. It was merely the thin end of the wedge. If they passed a Bill for £.5,000,000 now they would have a demand by-and-by for £20,000,000, £50,000,000, £10(1,000,000, aye, and for £200,000,000. Although by reading this Bill a second time they were only pledging themselves to an advance of £5,000,000, these consequences would follow. Personally, he would not oppose the Bill if he was assured that this was to be merely an experiment, and that the credit of Parliament was to be pledged for £5,000,000 and no more. He was only afraid that in Committee pressure would be put upon the Government from so many sides that they would be induced to give way. There had been extreme anxiety on the part of the Irish Members to know who the Land Commissioners under the Bill were to be. No doubt a great deal depended upon that. If they had liberal Land Commissioners who would not take a petty peddling view, but a liberal view of matters, and would not be too strict about the security, things would go on to the satisfaction of the Irish Representatives. He admitted that the security in the North of Ireland was fair in a financial point of view; but from a political point of view it was a very shaky security indeed. But, be that as it might, he desired to point out that such high authorities as Earl Spencer and the right hon. Member for Reading (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) had distinctly warned the House as to the probable operation of the Bill. As he had stated, he had no objection to expend£5,000,000 of the money of the British taxpayers in an experiment. He knew that the Imperial Parliament often voted £5,000,000, if not more, with a light heart for wars; and if in this case it ended in conferring advantages upon Ireland he should not complain. He had had a Notice clown upon the Paper upon the second reading of the Bill, but had refrained from moving it. He had, however, been anxious to say these few words; and if the Government stood to their colours, and thought the security for the £5,000,000 was a fair and reasonable one, he had no desire to oppose the Bill. What he was anxious for was that the matter should be treated not entirely as an Irish question only; I and he wished to add his voice to the warning which had been given by his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Horace Davey). There were Irish Representatives in all parts of the House; and with no half-past 12 o'clock Rule in force, with Irishmen on that side of the House, Irishmen on the other, and Irishmen below the Gangway, he was afraid that such pressure might be put upon the Government that they might find it prudent to yield, and in that way all sorts of objectionable provisions might be put into the Bill, the evil effect of which it might not be easy to obviate at the fag-end of the Session. He therefore thought the House ought to know that, in going into Committee upon the Bill, the liability of the taxpayers would be limited to the £5,000,000 now proposed to be advanced, and that the British taxpayer would not be pledged beyond the four corners of the Bill.

said, he was afraid there was no use in opposing the Bill at that stage, especially when it had not only the support of the Government, but that of the Chiefs of the Opposition and of the Leaders of the Irish Party; but it was a pity that a Bill of this great importance, which raised such large questions, should come on for discussion in so thin a House at the end of the Session. The hon. Member for Antrim (Mr. Sinclair) alleged the Bill to be contrary to the principles of economy. He (Mr. Bryce) did not oppose it because it was opposed to sound principles of political economy, or on the ground pointed out by the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell) that it was an imposition upon the British taxpayer, but because he believed that it involved great political dangers because it would make Great Britain the mortgagee of the land of Ireland. Nothing could be more calculated to aggravate the difficulties which existed between the two countries. Nobody was more anxious than he was to see a peasant proprietary established in Ireland, and nobody would be more glad to see that done by a local Irish Parliament. But if they were to spend English money for such a purpose it would be better to part with the money as a gift rather than as a loan. In the past the great evil had been that in Ireland there was a sense of exasperation against landlords, and particularly against absentee landlords; and the Bill was going to make the English Government the absentee landlord of the land of Ireland. Nothing could be more calculated to raise up future difficulties, to increase exasperation, and to prevent the bringing about of pacific and friendly relations between the two countries than a Bill of this kind. A possible mitigation was that in the next Session of Parliament they would create a large and liberal system of local government for Ireland, giving large powers, and that they would transfer this fund from the Imperial Exchequer to the Irish local bodies. That would, perhaps, be the best remedy for the danger which the House was now incurring.

said, he had no intention to detain the House, nor would he repeat any of the arguments which he had used a few nights ago; but he wished to take that opportunity of noticing the charges of inconsistency which had been brought against him by the First Commissioner of Works (Mr. Plunket) in answer to his speech, which he ventured to think had its origin in the controversies of some years ago, the memories of which he had hoped had passed away. He altogether disclaimed the charge of inconsistency brought against him by the right hon. and learned Gentleman. Wherever he had written or spoken upon this subject he had always spoken in the same language which he used the other night. In the Committee in 1878, and later in an article in The Nineteenth Century, in commenting upon the question, he had used the same language. Although most anxious to assist operations for the creation of a peasant proprietary, he had pointed out the danger of offering terms which would amount to a bribe to tenants to become owners on terms of such a nature that they would pay less in the shape of interest and instalments of the principal than they would otherwise pay in the shape of rent. He had always pointed out that two classes of tenants could not co-exist, the one paying rent for ever, and the other paying less than their previous rent for a limited term of years. That was an element of considerable danger, greater to the landlords than to any other class in the country. For his part, he fully recognized the very grave difficulties in which the landlords were placed at that moment by the unsaleable condition of the land they owned. Yet he believed that in their interests it would be wiser for them, for the present, to submit to these hardships rather than enter into a transaction like that now before the House, by which they offered such great inducements to the tenants to become owners, and such conditions as would be fraught with future danger. He looked upon the Bill, however, as a tentative measure, and as one limited to the advance of the sum of £5,000,000. Regarding it in that light, and reserving the important question which it raised for future discussion, he should not oppose it, and he would not detain the House longer on this question.

said, he would suggest to the Committee that as this Bill contained so much legal matter it would be better to leave it in charge of his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland.

said, that he had an Amendment to propose in this clause in line 11; but he would postpone it until after the Amendment of the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) had been disposed of.

said, there was no doubt that- if the Government acceded to the Amendment of the hon. Member, and to the consequential Amendments, the object of the Bill would probably be facilitated. If the vendor on the one hand, and the intending purchaser on the other, were the only persons to be considered there might be no objection to the proposal; but it must be borne in mind that there was a third interest of great importance in the matter, and that the State had also to be considered, and he thought it? would be wholly impossible for any responsible Minister of the Crown to submit to Parliament a proposition that £5,000,000 should be advanced for the purpose of enabling tenants to purchase their holdings unless Parliament was satisfied that adequate security was given for the repayment of the money. Although from 1870 down to the present time various propositions had been made to enable tenants to purchase their holdings, in every instance the proposition had carried with it terms which would enable something like adequate security to be given. The Act of 1870 only enabled two-thirds of the purchase money to be advanced. The Act of 1881 increased the proportion from two-thirds to three-fourths, and in the Bill introduced last year by the right hon. Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan) there was another form of security proposed to be given to the State—namely, the security of a local guarantee. It would be impossible to expect that the present Bill would be carried through Parliament unless there was an adequate guarantee for the money which it was proposed to advance. The hon. Member had suggested that the holding itself would be a sufficient guarantee provided that the purchase money was on a reasonable basis, inasmuch as it would consist not merely of the landlord's interest to be sold, but likewise of the interest of the tenant previously existing in the holding. It was true that the rules governing tenant right in Ireland set the ordinary law, and even the doctrines of political economy, at defiance; but experience taught them that the value of an estate was not increased by the double interest—that was, by adding the price of the tenant right to the value of the fee simple. Therefore, when they looked at the guarantee which a holding gave, they must regard it simply as the value of the holding in the possession of the landlord at the present time. That might appear to be a startling proposition; but it was undoubtedly a true one—namely, that the owner of land in his own hands would receive but a very small sum more than he would receive for the interest that he could sell under the provisions of the Bill. Would a guarantee regarded simply as the value of a holding in the possession of the landlord at the present time be a sufficient security? He agreed with the hon. Member that under ordinary circumstances it would be; but, at the same time, they must bear in mind that if every care was taken to make the price a fair and equitable one in the year in which the contract was entered into, the state of agriculture and other things might change in the course of a year or two, and then it might be impossible to realize that price. In such a case the State must look to some guarantee similar to that which was imposed by this Bill. The framers of the Bill believed that the variation in value would never be greater than one-fifth, and, therefore, that figure had been named; but beyond that point he thought it would be impossible for them to go. The hon. Member had asked how this guarantee was to be worked out. He thought he could satisfy the Committee that it could be worked out in a fair and reasonable way, and he asked the attention of the Committee while he offered an explanation. Any person might give the guarantee; but in almost every case it must come from the vendor—namely, the landlord, who must be prepared to allow one-fifth of the purchase money to remain in the hands of the Land Commissioners until a sum equal to that one-fifth was paid up by the tenant.

asked whether he did that by selling his estate?

said, he would come to that point presently. Under ordinary circumstances, the person from whom the guarantee would come would be the landlord himself; and he must be prepared, before he and the tenant agreed to take advantage of this Bill, to allow that fifth to remain in the hands of the Land Commissioners. But it must be borne in mind that during that time the money would not be lying without its return to the landlord, to whom interest on it at the rate of 3 per cent would be payable. Moreover, the one-fifth deposited in the hands of the Land Commissioners was a security on which the landlord could raise money, as he could in the case of any other security in land; and, no doubt, he would be able to negotiate that security in the open market, and realize its fair value. In case of default, the first thing the Land Commission had to do under this Bill was to realize, as far as possible, the sum due to the State by the sale of the holding. The amount could not be declared irrecoverable until efforts had been made to recover it, and by the terms of this clause the Commissioners were bound to put in force the ordinary powers of mortgagees for the purpose of realizing. If those powers were put in force, and the result was to realize the entire amount due, there would be no necessity to resort to the deposit; but if the amount fell short, as it might do, under certain circumstances, recourse would be had to the deposits. The hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) had called attention to the 3rd clause, by which, under certain circumstances, power was given to the Land: Commissioners to retain the guarantee deposit until a sum equal to the deposit had been repaid. At any time during the period for which the Land Commissioners were authorized to retain the guarantee deposit any sum due in respect of an advance secured by a guarantee deposit might be declared to be an irrecoverable debt. In that case the Land Commission might apply the guarantee deposit in discharge or reduction of such an irrecoverable debt. The meaning of that was that when the Land Commission sold for the purpose of realizing the amount that was due the purchaser would naturally demand a free discharge, and for this purpose it would be necessary to declare the deposit forfeited. That appeared to him to be just and fair. The hon. Member stated that it would have a tendency to raise the price above what would be fair and just, and he had instanced an estate which, in an ordinary case, would be sold for £1,000, being sold for £1,250. There might be something in that argument if the landlord were to fix the price at which the estate was to be sold. But that was not so. The price must be negotiated, in the first place, between the landlord and tenant—the vendor and purchaser—and then, if the two parties agreed, there was a third party which must also give its consent, and that was the Land Commission. Therefore, there was not the least danger of supposing that the estate would fetch more than the price it would fetch in the open market. The hon. Member had asked him what the consequences would be if the Land Commission purchased an entire estate from the owner for the purpose of re-selling to the tenants. It appeared to him that the Land Commission would never be justified in purchasing an entire estate unless they were perfectly certain that the greater number of the tenants were ready to purchase their holdings. If that were so the Land Commission would then make terms, and they would undoubtedly say—"If you sell to us, one of the terms of the contract must be that you will allow one-fifth of the purchase money to remain in our hands." Under no other circumstances would they be in a position to deal with the matter. It was quite clear that from first to last the tender must come from the landlord; and, that being the case, it would make no difference whether the Land Commission purchased the entire estate or not, and then endeavoured to negotiate with the tenants. It was wholly impossible for the Government to abandon their contention that the amount advanced must be ultimately paid in full, and it must be borne in mind that the State was taking this exceptional step for the benefit not only of the landlord, but of the tenant.

said, it was very material to consider under what circumstances the land would be sold—whether the entire estate was purchased or not. It struck him, on consideration, that the clause would only operate where the entire purchase money was advanced by the State, and where the landlord was willing and able to sell. He thought that reasonably followed. The entire purchase money could only be advanced where a guarantee existed. He could not agree with what had fallen from his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland with regard to the deposit by the landlord in cases where the Land Commission bought the estate. There was no provision in the Bill for that purpose, and he did not see how they could leave that matter to the mercy of the Commissioners. It would only be where the landlord was a solvent seller that the question of the deposit of one-fifth could arise; and, further, it could only arise where he was willing. Now, he could not be willing unless he was able, and in every case where property was encumbered fully, of course, he was not able, because it was the property of another person, and, therefore, he could not be said to be willing. Therefore, it was only in the case of a solvent estate that this could happen. The result was that they could only deal with cases where the landlord was both willing and able to do it; and the only case where he would do it was when the market was in that condition that he would sell, even if at a loss. He thought the clause could only work in the case of a landlord willing to sustain a loss, and, except in that case, he feared that it would have very little operation indeed.

said, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland had spoken of the possibility of the deposit of the landlord being a security on which he could raise money. But he ventured to doubt that he would be able to make use of that, for who would lend money for a moment on a security which, owing to the tenant not paying up his instalments, might be snapped up by the Commissioners at any moment?

said, that in his judgment this provision was utterly illusory, and instead of doing good either for the tenants, the State, or the landlord, it would do them a distinct mischief. Furthermore, he considered that by fixing the amount of loans by the limit of £5,000,000 the Government would thereby restrict the sale of land to the most undeserving class of persons. The Government wanted to do something to settle the Irish Land Question, and yet by this provision they were going to confine the operation of the Bill to rich graziers, large farmers, and people who did not deserve it. Those were the people whom the Government wanted to content, because, as a matter of fact, they were the only class who could get the one-fifth; the other class were practically excluded from purchasing the land. The Commissioners would be bound to have regard to the character of the purchasers; and when an estate was to be sold, out of the numerous applicants to purchase the Land Commissioners would be obliged to sell to the most eligible persons—that was to say, to those who could give the best security. Therefore, he said that the Government would exclude from the healing operation of the Bill the very class that it was desirable to include. As the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) had pointed out, if this one-fifth guarantee were insisted on by the State, they would compel the tenant to raise money from a bank at a high rate, and that would compel him to offer a lower price than the landlord would take. The clause, therefore, offered no advantage to the landlord. It was no advantage to the State, because it would not settle the Irish Land Question, and it was, for the reasons shown, of no advantage to the tenant. The clause, therefore, would do them all a distinct mischief by preventing the Bill working in a satisfactory manner. For those reasons he hoped the Amendment would be pressed on the Committee.

said, he could, of course, understand the reason for providing in the Bill for this guarantee; but, at the same time, he thought there was great force in the suggestions of hon. Members below the Gangway, that it would impede the operation of the Act, because the landlord would endeavour to recoup himself for whatever burden was in this way imposed upon him. The right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland had given as a reason for requiring the security of this deposit that the value of the fee simple would not be increased from the point of view of security by taking into account the tenant's interest in the land. He did not profess to put himself in opposition to the great authority of the right hon. and learned Gentleman on this subject; but he had always been under the impression that land in hand in Ireland fetched a very high price, because it included both the landlord's interest and the tenant's interest. He remembered that a good deal of evidence had been given before the Committee which considered the Land Question on this subject, and that it was pointed out that land unburdened with a tenant often fetched as much as 40 years' purchase of the assumed value. Then, if that were the case, the security offered by annexing the tenant right to the fee of the land would not be less than the security of two separate interests—namely, the tenant's interest and the fee of the land; and in that view he thought there was no necessity for this guarantee security as between the State and the tenant purchaser. The danger was not as regarded individual tenants, but as regarded a movement on the part of the tenants generally. For his part, he should be disposed to recommend that the guarantee security should be abandoned; but he would couple the suggestion with the recommendation that the term within which the instalments were to be made should be reduced. He did not know whether that would meet the views of hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway. He did not propose that the rate of interest should, be increased, but only that the term of repayment should be shortened. Looking at the question broadly, he thought that the effect of the clause would be to increase the sum which the landlord would demand from the tenant-purchaser; and although it was true that the Land Commissioners would be in the position of arbitrators between landlord and tenant, yet if the landlord and tenant were to agree to certain terms, he did not see how the Land Commissioners could refuse to allow the transaction to proceed upon such terms.

said, the Amendment of the hon. Member for Sligo was a very serious one, and as such should be considered very carefully by the Committee before it was agreed to. It evidently went to the root of the whole scheme as it was drawn. He had listened to the speech of his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland, which appeared to him to be absolutely conclusive on the question. It had been assumed from the first that it was not possible for the State, in its attempt to create a peasant proprietary in Ireland, to advance the purchase money of the land without security of some hind or other. He was, therefore, somewhat surprised to hear the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Reading (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) recommending that the Government should give up all the security proposed in the Bill by way of guarantee. That which really wrecked the Bill of the late Government was that their required a guarantee that it was impossible to provide. The present Government, however, had substituted in this Bill another guarantee for a definite purpose, and at that period of the Session it seemed to him to be a perfectly illusory and wild idea to recommend to the public opinion of the country, which had been strained far enough already, a scheme which would be a departure from all precedents and theories formerly propounded—that was to say, to ask the taxpayers of the country to advance the whole of the purchase money without having any guarantee whatever. He must put it in fairness to the right hon. Gentleman opposite to say why he did not suggest the propriety and safety last year, when the Bill of the late Government was before the House, of advancing all the money without guarantee or security when the adoption of such a course would have cleared away all the difficulty so far as hon. Members from Ireland were concerned. He did not think it necessary for him to press that argument further. As to calculating the exact proportion of the value of the tenant right, and the value of the landlord's interest, and how much each should bear to the whole value of the land, he must say that the calculation was one which it would be almost impossible to make. Hon. Gentlemen from the North of Ireland would know that nothing varied in that part of Ireland so much as the value of the tenant right in respect of land. He submitted that it was not a fair way of viewing this proposal of the Government to say that this requirement, that every landlord should leave one-fifth of the purchase money in the hands of the State, was put into the Bill for the purpose of making the market high and inducing the tenant to offer a price that he could not afford to pay. If they were to safeguard the interests of the State there must be a margin somewhere, and he thought that the Government had hit upon a plan which afforded that margin, which would enable the Land Commissioners with safety to the State to give neither more nor less than a fair price to the landlord; and he was sure that there was no Party in that House which would wish to see the landlord robbed of any part of the fair price of his land, fie believed that there was great truth and force in what had been stated in an Irish nowspaper—namely, that there was not the least fear that the tenants in Ireland would give more than a fair price for the land Therefore, before the Committee throw out this part of the clause, he thought they ought very carefully to consider the matter, because if by any chance division it was left out it would effect an entire change in the scheme of the Bill, and plunge the whole question again in extreme difficulty before the country.

said, he believed that if the words proposed by the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) were agreed to the Bill would prove illusory and unworkable. He did not propose that the Land Commissioners should advance all the money, or even three-fourths of it on application, but that the question whether they should advance three-fourths or one-half should be left to their discretion. He thought it should be left to them to make such an advance as they thought would be covered by the fee-simple and the tenant right. He knew a case in which it would be safer to advance the whole sum than the half of it. In the county of Antrim recently there were cases in which the relative prices had been as follows:—Fee-simple 18 years, tenant right 39 years; fee-simple 21 years, tenant right 45 years; and fee-simple 29 years' purchase, tenant right 49 years' purchase. Was there anyone who would say that in making advances to the tenant, when the value of the tenant right was equal to, and in some cases double the value of, the fee-simple, that there was any risk whatever? He said—"Donot advance the whole, or even three-fourths of the money, but trust to the Commissioners, who were responsible to the Treasury." If the Bill was to work it could only be made to work by giving ample discretion to the Commissioners, who would be under the control of the Treasury, and who would take care that not more than the proper sum was advanced. This Bill was by all regarded as an experiment, and the amount advanced could not exceed the £5,000,000 named in the clause. When that was exhausted Parliament would be applied to for another £5,000,000 or £10,000,000; but in the meantime they would have had experience of the working of the Act. It appeared to him that they were continuing in this Bill the mistakes made in former Acts, the Purchase Clauses of which had turned out to be failures. When they had this splendid opportunity of testing this question, and creating peasant proprietorship in Ireland, he asked if the Government would not make a bold experiment and leave the question of advancing three-fourths or the whole of the purchase money to the discretion of the Commissioners whom they had appointod?

Sir, after the speech of my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland, which in our opinion thoroughly met the case put forward by the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton), it will be necessary for me to detain the Committee but a very short time. I am bound to say that Her Majesty's Government look upon this guarantee deposit as a matter of supreme importance to the Bill, and that we have proposed it in place of the guarantee proposed by the late Government. We do not think in justice to the British taxpayers—and in that name I would include the taxpayers of Ireland as well as of the other parts of the United Kingdom—that we ought to advance the whole value of the holding without some guarantee. That guarantee we have endeavoured to take in a form which appears to us to offer the least possible hindrance to the carrying out of this plan. We have proposed that for no long term of years a sum equal to one-fifth of the purchase money of the holding should remain in the hands of the Commissioners on condition that the depositor shall receive 3 per cent interest, as much as he would get in the Funds, and with as great security; and at the end of the term, if the instalments are paid up, he will be entitled to the amount deposited. It is all very well to talk about the double security which the Government would have in the fee-simple and tenant right. That, no doubt, would be the case with such holdings as the hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. T. A. Dickson) has spoken of; but, as my right hon. and learned Friend has shown by the last Report of the Land Commission, it is perfectly clear that there are holdings in Ireland to which the Act would, undoubtedly, apply in which there would be no such double security—because the value has so deteriorated that there would be no tenant right, for even the fee-simple has been deteriorated by the neglect of the tenant. We have been told that the Land Commissioners would guard the interest of the Treasury in this matter, and consequently the taxpayers of the country. But, Sir, we cannot consent to leave it to thorn. We think there ought to be in this case, as Parliament has always before required a margin of security beyond the value of the holding at the time of purchase, not only to make up for the deterioration I have alluded to, but also for the bad seasons which may occur. I have heard from many hon. Gentlemen connected with Ireland that this is a very liberal proposal. I think that an hon. Gentleman opposite spoke of it as a great bribe; but I can tell the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Beading (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) that it is more liberal than anything which he, as a Member of the late Government, over ventured to propose, and yet he now comes down and asks us to omit the chief security of the Bill. I venture to say that we must adhere to this proposal of a guarantee deposit; and if hon. Members want the Bill to pass this Session, and be, as I hope it may be, an experiment of great value and importance to Ireland, I must ask them to leave this provision in the Bill. We think it of the greatest importance, and at the same time a reasonable proposal, as between the taxpayers of the United Kingdom and those whom the Bill is intended to benefit.

said, he hoped the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) would not persist with his Amendment. Of course, as a landlord, he would rather receive the whole amount of the purchase money than four-fifths of it, still he could not shut his eyes to the fact that if the Amendment were carried the Bill would be shipwrecked to the detriment of peasant proprietorship in Ireland.

said, he was glad to perceive that Her Majesty's Government intended to stand to their guns in this matter. He agreed with the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken that if the Amendment were accepted the whole structure of the Bill would go. He said that they ought to take such security as a prudent banker would require.

could not see the great liberality of the Bill. The Bill of the late Government proposed to advance three-fourths of the money—that was 15–20ths. This Bill proposed to advance 16–20ths, 1–20th more, and for that 20th a guarantee was to be taken from the Church Fund, which amounted to £750,000—a guarantee of £750,000 for £250,000.

thought that after the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer it would be prudent for the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) not to press his Amendment to a division. After all, it was the Government who were responsible for this Bill; and if, in spite of warnings and forebodings, the Bill was found not to work satisfactorily on account of the Government insisting upon this guarantee, the blame could not fall upon the hon. Member for Sligo. In fact, the Attorney General for Ireland himself, and the First Commissioner of Works (Mr. Plunket), had acknowledged that the effect of the clause would be really what they (the Irish Members) said. He (Mr. Plunket) put it that the effect would be to secure to the landlords what he called a fair price, which they would not otherwise get. The Irish Members, however, thought the effect of it would be to compel the tenant to pay an excessive price without giving the landlord any corresponding advantage. The conclusion was the same—namely, to enhance the price. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer said the landlord would remain out of his money for a short time; the Chief Secretary said 10 years. There was no doubt about that. As a matter of fact, it would be 15-years or 16 years that he would have to remain out of his money, because it w7ould take that period to repay that part of the advance. The fifth would be paid in a shorter term. It was acknowledged that this Bill was a Bill to relieve the deadlock caused by the impoverished landlords who were attempting to sell their estates in the Landed Estates Court. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer said the landlord had security for one-fifth; but it was not security which an impoverished landlord wanted—it was the use of the money. It was not in the form of a comfortable security he wanted it, even though the Government would pay 3 per cent on it—he did not want the one-fifth locked up in this way. He wished to settle his debts and utilize what there might be over to the best possible advantage, perhaps in some business. If the Government were to issue for that fifth a bond with coupons attached to it, which the landlord could take into market and sell, then he could understand its being a really available security; but if it were to be merely a contract to pay 3 percent per annum, it was quits useless to the impoverished landlord, and he would be inclined to seek a larger payment in cash. The result would be not to increase the security of the Government, but to diminish it, because it would place an excessive payment upon the tenant and tend to embarrass him. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that the Government were exceedingly liberal in this Bill; but if hon. Members came to examine the matter, far from being convinced by what the last speaker had said as to what a banker would ask for an advance, they would find that the Government really were asking something very near what a usurer would ask as a margin upon an advance. They proposed an advance under this Bill really not of £5,000,000, but of £4,000,000. Thus one of the £5,000,000 they said they were going to advance they were going to retain. As a security for the rest they sought one-fifth of the purchase money, which would amount to £1,000,000, and the Church Surplus—three-fourths of £1,000,000—so that for an advance of £4,000,000 they sought a security of £1,750,000, or nearly 50 per cent. Hon. Members would bear him out in saying that any banker or Insurance Company would be content with a very much less margin than that. So far from being remarkable for their liberality in this matter, the Government were asking more than an ordinary banker would ask. If the hon. Member for Sligo would withdraw the Amendment, perhaps the Government would be content with this security, and would not press for more. They would have abundance of security. The Treasury need not give the money if they were not satisfied, and the Land Commission need not give it if they were not satisfied. He (Mr. Gray) would urge on his hon. Friend, after the announcement of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, not to press this particular Motion to a division.

said, he wished to say a word or two on what he believed would be the practical working out of this clause. It had been pointed out very clearly by the Attorney General for Ireland that prior to coining before the Land Commissioners there must be an agreement, in the first instance, as to the question of this security, because it must be provided by someone—either by the landlord or by the tenant. If the landlord was to provide the security, he would naturally want a larger price than the tenant would otherwise be willing to pay; on the other hand, if the tenant provided it, he would look for compensation in purchasing at a lower price; therefore its provision would be a matter of arrangement between the landlord and the tenant—between the buyer and the seller. He hoped the Amendment would be withdrawn by the hon. Member. He did not think the Government could go before the country and put this Bill before the taxpayers not only of Ireland, but also of England and Scotland, unless they retained the security of the fifth.

said, he wished to make one or two observations on this matter. He could not accept the arguments of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, although convenience, perhaps, drove him to a conclusion contrary to that which his judgment approved of. With regard to the tenant's interest, according to a Paper read before the Statistical Society, it was shown that even in Clare and Mayo the tenant right was as great—and in some cases greater—than the landlord interest; and that showed that in regard to any advance limited to the landlord's interest a margin of security was left which was not only reasonable, but ample. As to the British taxpayer, all he could say was that if the Government had taken the advice of the Irish Members that individual would have been much more safe, for the Land Purchase Commissioners would have been compelled to take care that the purchase money was fair, and not excessive. He (Mr. Sexton) must say that with the landlord induced by the retention of his money to run up the price of his land, and the Purchase Commissioners induced by having one-fifth on their hands to consent to the running up of the price, they would have burdensome instalments necessary. However, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was responsible for the Bill. The Irish Members had pointed out a much safer way; but he did not feel that he was in a position to resist very strongly the statement made by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whoso position reminded him very much of a successful movement made by himself (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) not very long ago against Gentlemen occupying the place he and his Colleagues now filled. If the right hon. Gentleman would assure him that the Government would not insist on the inconvenient overlapping of security which would be involved in the guarantee deposit and the Church Surplus Fund, and would be content with the guarantee deposit superadded to the value of the land, he (Mr. Sexton) would withdraw his Amendment.

I cannot, after the way the hon. Gentleman has met me, delay the Committee by dwelling upon the matter any further. I think I owe it to him and to the Committee to say that, having fully considered this question, I do not think it necessary for us to insist upon the remainder of the Church Surplus as an additional guarantee.

said, he now wished to move his second Amendment—namely, to leave out Sub-section (b). With regard to his third Amendment he wished to say——

Before the hon. Member brings forward any argument in favour of his third Amendment, I must inform him that I shall not be able to put it. he wishes to substitute £20,000,000 for the sum of £5,000,000; but the Committee has already sanctioned the sum of £5,000,000.

said, he wished to move an Amendment at the end of Sub-section (a) as follows:—

"Provided no advance shall be made under this Act to any one tenant of more than £3,000."

It appeared to him there ought to be some limit to the amount advanced, and he thought £3,000 would be a fair sum. The object of the Bill was to create peasant proprietors in the ordinary sense of the term, and he did not think it should be extended to large graziers.

I quite agree with the principle of this Amendment. I do not think it is desirable that sales to large graziers should be made under this Act; but, at the same time, I am not prepared to say that the precise limit proposed by the right hon. Gentleman is the right one. I should like to take the opinion of the Treasury on the matter, and then, if necessary, the clause can be amended on Report.

said, he would suggest that the Land Commissioners should make rules to the effect that they would not give more than a prescribed sum without the assent of the Treasury, Parliament having had in view the granting of only small sums to a certain class of small tenants. That would obviate the necessity of putting any amount in the Bill.

said, he was under the impression that the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) had an Amendment lower down tending to restrict the operation of the Bill to holdings not altogether pastoral in their character, with the exception of those on which the tenant was resident. He, at any rate, thought that was the tenour of the Amendment the hon. Member contemplated moving lower down. He was not sure that the object of the right hon. Gentleman who proposed the present Amendment would not be more completely met by such an Amendment as that than by providing the restriction of a specific sum. Probably the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) allowing the Commissioners to make rules in regard to this matter would be even better than this. He wished to point out that in the case of the great grazing farms, as a rule, the tenants were not resident upon them. No doubt, the wording of the clause would require some consideration, so as not to leave out some who might require to avail themselves of the Act. There was no objection to extending the Bill to tenants of pasture lands, even if a higher price than £3,000 were to be paid, provided the tenants were resident,

I understood these words were to be withdrawn.

No; amended on Report.

If that is so I will say no more; but I have strong reasons to urge why this Amendment should not be adopted.

I understand that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer agrees in principle to the Amendment, but that he doubts whether £3,000 is the right sum to fix. I understood him to say he will reconsider the matter between now and the Report.

Yes; that was what I intended. I understood the principle of the Amendment to be practically what was stated by the hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Gray)—namely, that it is not desirable that tenants of great tracts of grazing land should purchase that land under this Bill; but, of course, a resident tenant of a holding of considerable size would very properly come under the provisions of this Bill as well as the tenant of a small holding. I will promise to look into the matter.

I am inclined to go a little farther than the right hon. Gentleman. I do not think that large sums should be advanced to tenants, whether resident or not. It seems to me that the main object of this Bill is to create peasant proprietors, and not to advance money to large holders.

said, there would be no harm in letting the thing stand over now in order that the Government could consider it between this and Report.

said, he now wished to move a sub-section which he had not been able to put upon the Paper, but to which the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) attached great importance. He wished to propose at the end of the words just added to the Bill the following:—

"No advance shall be made under this Act to a tenant of any land wholly or partly pastoral on which the tenant does not reside."

The policy of this Bill was to make persons residing upon small holdings pro- prietors of those holdings. He begged to move these words as a sub-section.

said, he wished to point out that if those words were introduced they might injure deserving tenants by preventing them from getting the benefit of the Bill. The Committee would bear in mind that the Land Commission would inquire into each individual case; and he had no doubt that the Commissioners would never allow money to be advanced to a tenant who had a large holding, but did not reside upon it. If this Amendment were passed what would be the consequence? Why, there were a large number of farmers of agricultural land who had adjoining to such land small farms which they used for pastoral purposes. If they made application under the Bill to purchase the agricultural land, it would be very hard if they were deprived of the power of purchasing the pastoral land. If the Amendment were carried it would injure the very class the Bill was promoted to benefit.

said, he thought the objection of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland was a very strong one, and he (Colonel Nolan) himself had put it to his hon. Friend before he had got up. He thought the difficulty, however, could be met if an addition were made to the Amendment as follows:—

"Unless the holding is under the value of £30, and in the vicinity of the residence of the tenant."

That would meet the whole argument of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, and would give all the benefit that the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) wished to bring about. He acknowledged the force of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's objection; and if the Amendment went without some qualification he should see it accepted with much regret.

said, that he thought, on the whole, it would be much more convenient that this matter should be considered when the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman below him (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) was brought up. He would, therefore, withdraw the Amendment, that it might be brought up on Report.

said, that with regard to the statement of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland, that the Land Commission would carefully investigate these cases, he wished to express the opinion that the Commissioners would be compelled to make an advance if they were satisfied with the security. There was nothing in the Act to direct the Land Commissioners to investigate what the object of the purchasing tenant was.

said, it was of great importance to discourage what were known in Ireland as dairy farms—that was to say, cases in which a farmer lived himself upon one farm and put dairymen upon others, charging them an enormous rent and employing no people. The object of the proposed Amendment was of great importance, and he hoped the Government would be able to carry it out.

said, he had an Amendment on the Paper to increase the sum under the Bill from £5,000,000 to £20,000,000.

This Amendment proposes an excess of the sum authorized by the Committee, and therefore it cannot be put.

said, that when the Money Resolution was put he had desired to raise this discussion then; but he had been told that it would be open for him, if he altered the amount in the Bill, to alter the Resolution afterwards.

I will not state the words of the Resolution which authorizes a sum of money, not exceeding £5,000,000, to be advanced under the Act. The words are "not exceeding," It is clear, therefore, that the hon. Member would not be in Order in moving his Amendment.

Will it be open to me to move to leave out the sub-section, without proposing to amend its wording, so that no money at all be granted?

I hope the hon. Member will not do that, for if he does, and carries his Amendment, it would be impossible for us to carry out the Bill.

said, that if the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer said it would be impossible to work the Bill if this Amendment were adopted there was no more to be said on the matter. He was sorry that the Government had not seen their way to putting a larger amount in the Bill, because, anxious as he was to see the Bill work properly, he was afraid it was not possible for it to do so with the limited sum which was to be advanced under it.

said, that as the Act of 1881 was passed it contained an Instruction to the Land Commissioners to make Rules; and perhaps the Government would consider whether, by Circular or in some other way, they could not express to the Commissioners their view as to the class of persons to whom those advances should be made, and also as to the manner in which those advances should be made. Supposing what happened in the case of the Act of 1881 should happen in respect of this Act? Supposing there should be a rush of applications from one particular quarter of the country? the Sub-Commissioners might give out the whole £5,000,000 to that district, other tenants who would have been glad enough to avail themselves of the privileges of the Bill, but who had been slower to find out the benefits of the Act, being unable to obtain advances. His own opinion was that the Act should not be put in operation for three or four months—that no advance should be made until the people who were to be benefited knew exactly what the benefits of the Bill would be, and that the Land Commissioners, when the applications came in, should be able to make a choice. Those matters were matters which should be regulated by the good sense of the gentlemen who would have to administer the Act. He would ask for an expression of opinion from the Government upon this question. He thought it would be very unfortunate if this Bill were administered in the sense of first come first served.

desired an explanation of this clause, by which it was provided—

"That any person willing to secure the repayment of an advance made by the Land Commission to a tenant who is purchasing his holding either from the Land Commission or from the landlord of such holding may deposit with the Land Commission such sum, as a guarantee deposit, not being less than one-fifth of the advance, as may be agreed on between him and the Land Commission."

He could not understand the value of that provision. He thought that the security demanded by the Land Commission ought to be in ell cases one-fifth of the sum. He would move formally to leave out the word "such" in line 10 and insert "a."

said, that the clause had been drawn upon the lines of similar clauses in former Acts. There would be a minimum or certain margin beyond which the Land Commission could not go. Under certain circumstances it could be conceived that one-fifth would not be a sufficient guarantee.

said, in that case the whole position of the guarantee was entirely altered, because the Land Commission would have power to demand, on behalf of the Treasury, a guarantee of a totally different character from that which hon. Gentlemen were led to suppose. The Committee had gone on the understanding that one-fifth of the whole sum was to be deposited, and if a larger sum was to be demanded it would be almost impossible to come to any terms at all. He believed that this increase of the guarantee would greatly complicate the operation of the Bill. He did not know what the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland meant by the expression "in former Acts." He thought he must take the sense of the Committee upon this question. ["Oh, oh!"] He was quite certain that the effect of the clause was not thoroughly understood by hon. Gentlemen opposite; and, personally, he was inclined to take the sense of the Committee.

believed it would be found that these words would have little operation. He thought it was a pity, however, not to provide in this clause for some other form of guarantee. A landlord might be perfectly in a position to give a guarantee, even to the extent of one-fifth of the purchase, in some other form than a deposit of money; for instance, there might be a deposit of securities, or it was conceivable that a bank might be established for the purpose of guaranteeing such advances, at least it was conceivable that the landlord might be able and willing—it might suit him better—to give some other form of guarantee equally good and acceptable to the Government as that contemplated by the clause. By this clause they shut the Government out from taking any other form of guarantee. A man might have India Four per Cents or Consols which he was prepared to deposit; but, owing to the drafting of this clause, the Land Commission would not be able to accept such security. He thought it would be well for the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland to consider whether, if the landlord was ready and willing to give some other guarantee equal in amount and in security to that contemplated by the clause, the Land Commissioners should not be able to accept it. It was quite possible to understand that in many cases it would not be convenient to the landlord to make the deposit in cash.

said that the clause had been very carefully drafted, and the Government were not disposed to alter it in the way suggested.

said, they were led to believe that in all probability the Land Commissioners would not require more than one-fifth of the advance guaranteed; but experience showed that the Commissioners had acted in a different manner. He would much have preferred his hon. Friend to have proposed to leave out the word "less," and insert "more," so that where the security was good as much as one-fifth need not be required. If his hon. Friend went to a division, however, he should support the Amendment.

said, the provision in the 4th paragraph was that—

"The Land Commission shall retain the guarantee deposit until a sum equal to the deposit has been repaid, and shall then pay over the guarantee deposit to the person entitled thereto."

He would like to know what that meant? Lot them take the case of a man who bought his farm for £1,000. £200 was deposited. The tenant would pay £40 a-year, and therefore in five years would pay £200, a sum equal to the deposit. Would the landlord be entitled to get his deposit at the end of live years? By the next paragraph it was provided that—

"If at any time during the period for which the Land Commission are authorized to retain the guarantee deposit any sum due to the Land Commission in respect of an advance secured by a guarantee deposit under this Act is declared by them, by order, to be an irrecoverable debt, the Land Commission may apply the guarantee deposit in discharge or reduction or such irrecoverable debt."

He thought it ought to be clearly defined what the Land Commission must do before they declared the debt to be irrecoverable. Would they proceed in the Civil Bill Court for the instalments, or would they sell the interest to the whole amount? Finally, it was provided that—

"It shall be lawful for the Land Commission, by order, to declare that the interest in the holding of the person liable to pay such sum shall be charged in favour of the person entitled to the guarantee deposit with the amount of the guarantee deposit."

But if the Land Commission had sold the holding, it appeared to him they would charge the incoming purchaser with the deposit. He thought all these points required some explanation.

said that, as regarded the first point, the intention of the Government was that the deposit money should not be returned until one-fifth of the sum advanced had been paid. To make this quite clear, it would probably be necessary to make an Amendment on Report. As to the second point to which the hon. Member Mr. Sexton) had called attention, his (the Attorney General for Ireland's) belief was, when this and the other clauses of the Bill were carefully examined, their provisions would be found ample. It would be found that by one of the clauses the duty was imposed on the Land Commission to make use of the power of sale. By a sale they were to seek to realize the amount of the debt due. If the Land Commission declared the deposit forfeited there would be a charge on the holding to the amount of the deposit.

understood that if the Land Commission did not resort to a sale of the holding they would make the debt a charge on the holding. Would the Government have any objection to say, in line 33—

"It shall be lawful for the Land Commission in a case where they do not resort to the power to sell the holding?

said, if the hon. Gentleman would allow him to consider the matter he might introduce words to make the intention perfectly clear. He thought the words the hon. Gentleman had mentioned, or some such words, were desirable in order to clear up any ambiguity.

proposed to insert, after the word "Act," in line 5—

"Or to be made under 'The Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870,' or 'The Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1831,'"

and also in respect to the advances to be made to tenants under Part II. of "The Tramways and Public Companies (Ireland) Act, 1883." The object of this Amendment was that the advances made in 1870 and 1881, and also those made to public Companies, should be made on the most favourable terms.

proposed to add after "tenant," in page 3, line 31—

"(e.) Where any tenant has before the passing of this Act become the purchaser of his holding from the Church Commissioners, under the provisions of 'The Irish Church Act, 1869,' or any Act or Acts amending the same, he shall be entitled to obtain the benefit of this Act upon the terms hereinafter mentioned;

"In case any such tenant shall elect to obtain the benefit of this Act, the Land Commission shall, on the application of such purchaser, ascertain by certificate under their seal the principal sum due by him after all payments, and the sum so due shall be repayable by an annuity of the term and amount mentioned in sub-section (a). This provision shall apply, notwithstanding that such advance or any part thereof may be secured by mortgage;

"(f.) Where any annuities are, at the time of the passing of this Act, payable by tenants who have purchased their holdings under 'The Landlord and Tenant Act, 1870,' or under 'The Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1881,' in respect to advances made to them for that purpose, the Land Commission shall, on the application of such purchaser, ascertain, by certificate under their seal, the principal sum due after all payments, and the sum so due shall be repayable by an annuity of the term and amount mentioned in sub-section (a.);

"(g.) Where any tenant shall, before the passing of this Act, have entered into a contract for the purchase of his holding, "which provides for the payment of his purchase money by instalments, or by an annuity, to secure principal and interest, he shall be at liberty, if he thinks fit, subject to the provisions of the last preceding section, to have the purchase money repayable by an annuity of the term and amount provided by this Act, instead of in the manner provided by such contract, and, if any question of dispute shall arise as to such contract, or annuity, or purchase-money, it shall be decided by the Land Commission."

The hon. Gentleman said, his object in moving this Amendment was to bring within the scope of the Act tenants who purchased their holdings under the Church Act of 1869, and under the Land Act of 1870, and under the Land Act of 1881, that all these purchasers might now have the benefit this Bill conferred of the reduced interest, and of the extension of time. He was very glad to see that since his Amendments had appeared on the Paper the Government had, to some extent, adopted one of them, the one relating to the Church tenants, and that those tenants were to have the advantage of this Bill. But he pointed out that the tenants who purchased under the Land Acts of 1870 and 1881 were in exactly the same position, and it would be unfair to require those tenants to continue to pay the present rate of interest, and to repay the money advanced in the time now specified. He earnestly hoped the Govern- ment would take into their consideration the case, not only of the Church tenants who purchased under the Irish Church Act of 1869, but the case of all those tenants who purchased under the subsequent Land Acts. He trusted that the Government would, on this question, take a broad view, and endeavour to place all the purchasing tenants exactly in the same position as regarded interest, and as regarded the period of repayment. It would be a very disastrous thing if the tenants who had already purchased were not placed upon an equality with the tenants who would purchase under this Act, for it would undoubtedly give rise in Ireland to dissatisfaction and heartburning. He trusted that the Government would see their way to extend the consideration they proposed to bestow on the Church tenants to the tenants who purchased under the Land Acts of 1870 and 1881.

hoped a concession would not be made in this matter; he did not think the request of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Tyrone (Mr. T. A. Dickson) could be complied with without exhausting some portion of the £5,000,000 voted in order to give effect to the Bill. He hoped the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Holmes) would not accept the proposition of his hon. Friend without considering what its effect would be upon the sum voted for the purposes of the Act.

said, it was quite clear that the effect of adopting the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Tyrone would be that the greater portion of the £5,000,000 which the Government proposed to advance for the purposes of this Act would be consumed in paying the debts of persons who had entered into contracts years ago, and who ought to be bound by the obligations they then entered into. A certain number of men undertook years ago to buy the fee-simple of their holdings, and at the present time the greater portion of the purchase money had been paid off. The tenants who would purchase their holdings under this Bill when it became law had all these years been paying rent which had been absolutely lost to them, and the hon. Gen- tleman the Member for Tyrone would by his proposal deprive those people as much as he possibly could of the benefits of this Act for the purpose of relieving those who, years ago, with their eyes open, entered into contracts which he (Mr. Kenny) thought it was the duty of Parliament to compel them to carry out.

said, that the Committee would perhaps allow him to say a few words on this question, because, as hon. Members were aware, the matter was brought before him a few days ago by the hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. T. A. Dickson) and other Members from Ireland. It appeared to him that the glebe tenants stood on a different footing to other purchasers. They purchased at comparatively high rates, because they purchased under circumstances which almost amounted to compulsion. It was necessary that the glebe should be sold, and had they declined to pay the price required they were liable to be outbid by outsiders; therefore it did seem to him, looking at all the circumstances, that the Government might fairly agree to a reduction of the rate of interest, and to an extension of the term of years with regard to the future payments due from the glebe tenants who purchased under the Irish Church Act. But there was great force in the remark made by the hon. Member for Ennis (Mr. Kenny) that the purchasers under the Acts of 1870 and 1881 had made contracts of their own free will. He (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) did not wish to dwell upon the fact that they were few in number. He thought it would be doing more than they ought to do, at any rate in this Bill, if they extended the relief beyond that suggested in the Amendment which had been placed on the Paper by his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland.

said, he quite felt the fairness of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, so far as his proposal went, although it did not go so far as that of the hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. T. A. Dickson). The Amendment of the latter, however, did not propose to make any large concession to those tenants, but merely to reduce the rate of interest, and increase the time for the repayment of the money proportionately. The question was this. The glebe tenants in the Northern part of Ireland who purchased under the Irish Church Act, no doubt, bought at a high rate, and their interest was to be reduced from 4 per cent to 3⅛; but those who bought a year later under the Landlord and Tenant Act, 1870, also bought at a high rate. They paid 3½ per cent, and he could see no reason why that should not also be reduced to 3⅛, and the period of years for repayment extended. The whole question between them was only one of figuring, and he could see no reason why the 1870 tenants should not also receive some concession. It appeared to him to be most unreasonable that there should be in Ireland two different classes of tenants, one class paying 3⅛ per cent, and the other 3½ per cent. He hoped, therefore, that the Amendment would be agreed to.

hoped the Government would reconsider this matter simply as a matter of fairness to the tenants. It was very important that a provision should not be carried under which one tenant who purchased at the higher rate had to pay 3½, per cent, while another who purchased at a lower rate had only to pay 3⅛. He could understand that the tenant who felt himself at a disadvantage compared with his neighbour would be induced by that very feeling to enlist in any agitation which tended to place them on an equal footing. If the Act were to work harmoniously it should contain no provision of a deterrent character, and the tenant would certainly not have purchased by now if he was led to believe from the experience of past years that by waiting a little longer he could get better terms. He thought that those who bought in 1870 at the higher rate of interest were entitled to be placed on the same footing as the other tenants.

said, he thought there was a great deal of force in what had been said by the hon. Member for Donegal (Mr. Lea). It was true that these tenants were in one particular district, and, for his part, he was perfectly well satisfied with the arrangement as it was. As he understood it, however, the policy of the measure was one of equal dealing. He could not agree that there would be any considerable need for all of this £5,000,000 if they included these tenants, although there certainly would have been if they had accepted his Amendment. However, he was disposed to join with the hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. T. A. Dickson), and to ask that those tenants should be allowed the lower rate of interest and the same term of years as those under the Irish Church Act. It could not make any serious inroad into the £5,000,000, and would simply resolve itself into a question of Treasury finance. He thought he saw the material for a compromise in this matter. Of course, he believed that there had been farms bought under the Act of 1881, and that the sales had been effected under threat of distress, and things of that sort. Landlords could still put a price on the turf, and do a great many things to make the tenants pay the higher rate; and, therefore, he could understand that under the Act of 1881 there might have been farms bought at the high rate. He thought, however, that persons who bought in the face of the agitation that was going on almost deserved the bad bargains they had made. They had subjected themselves to any demand the landlord liked to make, and they might, therefore, be left out in this concession. At the same time, there was little difference between the tenants who had bought in 1869 and those who had bought under the Act of 1870; and, therefore, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer would consent to include the tenants who bought under the Acts of those years. The right hon. Gentleman would be doing a graceful and a considerate act if he allowed them this concession.

said, that when he authorized his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland to place this clause on the Paper he did so on the understanding that it would be accepted by those hon. Gentlemen who came to him the other-day to express their views on the subject. He was bound to say that after the speeches of hon. Members, and the Amendment which had been moved, he doubted whether he ought not to suggest to his right hon. Friend to withdraw the clause altogether and avoid dealing with the matter in the Bill. The Amendments which were suggested appeared to him to re-open the whole question of the position of various classes of purchasing tenants in a manner which was most unjustifiable. He felt that he must con- fine the clause to purchasers under the Irish Church Act.

said, that in the interview to which the right hon. Gentleman had referred he would remember that he had pressed the claims of those who had purchased under the Act of 1870. Indeed, he had always done so. Notice to quit had never been pressed on the tenants in 1870, and yet those tenants now found themselves in a much worse position than they would have been if they had waited until the present year. He did not propose to touch this £5,000,000. All he asked was that the terms of the Treasury should be reduced from 4 per cent to 3⅛ per cent, which would be the interest under the present Bill. A compromise on this question was absolutely necessary; and seeing that the Bill was going quietly through the House, and as he knew the necessity for the Amendment in regard to the tenants of 1870, he must press his proposal.

felt it was necessary to say that upon a far more important point than this he had withdrawn an Amendment of his upon an intimation from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that it might interfere with the progress of the Bill. Under those circumstances, and after what had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman in regard to this point, he could not support the Amendment of the hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. Dickson).

said, he begged to move in page 3, line 40, after "advance," to insert—

"Where any holdings in a town or village or other holdings not agricultural in their character form part of an estate for the sale of which the Land Commission may have contracted, or for the purchase of which or (in the opinion of the Land Commission) a sufficient part of which the tenants or (in the opinion of the Land Commission) a sufficient number thereof shall have entered into agreements with their landlord, then if the Land Commission (due regard being had to the proportion which such holdings, non- agricultural, bear in extent and value to the rest of the estate) should consider it expedient that this provision should apply, the like agreements and purchases, either by the Land Commission or the tenants, may be made in respect of such non-agricultural holdings or any of them, and the like advances under this Act may be made for the purchase of such non- I agricultural holdings, or any of them, as if the same were agricultural holdings; and this Act shall be deemed in all respects to apply thereto."

The object of this clause was to meet a case which had often happened before, and which might frequently happen in the future. The clause would, of course, only deal with those holdings which were in the town or village which formed part of the estate which was being sold under the Act. It would be to the advantage both of the tenant and the landlord that this provision should be inserted in the Bill. They would neither of them have any responsibility in the matter at all, for the question whether the purchase should be made or not would rest upon the responsibility of the Land Commissioners.

said, he was sorry to interrupt the hon. and learned Gentleman; but he had an Amendment which came in before his—in line 35, after the word "estate," to insert the words—

"Providing that the Commissioners shall not buy an estate unless they are satisfied that a majority of the tenants, four-fifths in number, have agreed to purchase their holdings."

Now, unless there was a provision securing that at least a certain proportion of tenants should have agreed to purchase before the Land Commission offered to purchase the estate, it might operate very harshly against the tenant. He apologized for bringing on the matter in the middle of the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman; but he would have been ruled out of Order if he had not brought it up now, for he could not see where else in the clause it would come in. What he desired to effect was that the Commissioners should not i be able, if they purchased an estate, to sell to outsiders, over the heads of the tenants, who would be enabled under this Bill to borrow one-half of the purchase money. He wished to prevent the land falling into the hands of land speculators, and with the purpose of effecting that object he desired that the Commissioners should be satisfied beforehand that a substantial proportion of the tenants on the estate wove willing to buy their holdings. He proposed four-fifths; but of course that was an outside proportion.

said, he proposed to add words at the end of the first paragraph of Clause 7, which provided that—

"Where the Land Commission have purchased an estate, they may sell any parcels which they do not sell to the tenants thereof in such manner as they think fit."

to enact that the parcels disposed of in that manner should not be more than one-tenth of the entire estate. His hon. Friend proposed one-fifth; but he thought that one-tenth would be quite enough. This was a Bill to provide facilities for the sale of land to the occupying tenants; but this was a proposal to give a new lease to the landlords. He could not consent to such a proposal for a moment. If the Land Commission were once induced to buy the estate, there would be no limit to the portion they might sell to speculators who would be tempted by the offer of an advance of a portion of the purchase money. He therefore thought it would be proper to provide that only a certain fraction of the estate should be disposed of in that manner.

said, he had no objection, if it were considered more convenient, to withdraw the Amendment until Clause 7 was reached. He thought it was necessary to give some such power to the Land Commission, or one peasant proprietor might prevent the purchase of an entire estate. His only desire was to assist the Land Commission in overcoming a difficulty of that kind, so that they might not find themselves checkmated by a few unreasonable tenants. All he wanted to secure was that if there were a desire to effect the purchase of the estate by the Land Commission, it should come from a substantial portion of the tenants, and that the Commission should not have facilities for purchasing the estate for the mere purpose of re-selling it to land speculators.

said, the Amendment of the hon. Member provided that four-fifths of the tenants must agree before the Land Commission could purchase. He thought that was too high a portion to require, and would tend to make the Bill entirely inoperative. The proportion ought certainly not to be more than two-thirds, and he would strongly advise the hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Gray) not to press the Amendment, but to leave the matter to the discretion of the Commissioners. He was satisfied that four-fifths would defeat the object of the Bill.

said, he had hoped to obtain some expression of opinion on the part of the Government; but if it were considered more convenient to raise the question on Clause 7 he had no objection to do so. He should certainly have to raise the question again.

moved, in page 3, line 40, after "advance," to insert—

"Where any holdings in a town or village or other holdings not agricultural in their character form part of an estate for the sale of which the Land. Commission may have contracted, or for the purchase of which or (in the opinion of the Land Commission) a sufficient part of which the tenants or (in the opinion of the Land Commission) a sufficient number thereof shall have entered into agreements with their landlord, then if the Land Commission (due regard being had to the proportion which such holdings, non-agricultural, bear in extent and value to the rest of the estate) should consider it expedient that this provision should apply, the like agreements and purchases, either by the Land Commission or the tenants, may be made in respect of such non-agricultural holding's or any of them, and the like advances under this Act may be made for the purchase of such non-agricultural holdings, or any of them, as if the same were agricultural holdings; and this Act shall be deemed in all respects to apply thereto."

The hon. and learned Gentleman said, the object of the Amendment was to enable the Land Commission to deal with the whole of an estate, and not confine their operations to agricultural holdings.

said, the Amendment contained a proposition of a startling character. The Acts of 1870 and 1881 were confined strictly to agri- cultural holdings; but it was now proposed by his hon. and learned Friend to advance to the tenant of a house having no land in connection with it five-sixths of the purchase money, in order to enable him to purchase the tenement. It appeared to him that the Amendment was an innovation altogether. They had been told again and again that landed property in Ireland stood in a peculiar position so far as the holders of land were concerned; but he was not aware that the holders of houses in Ireland differed from the holders of similar property in the rest of the United Kingdom. He was quite aware that his hon. and learned Friend had stated that the object of the Amendment was to enable the Land Commission to value the whole of an estate and re-sell it where it so happened that property had been purchased by the Commissioners, part of which was situated in a town. But he did not think the Commission would be justified in purchasing house property for any purpose whatever, and he did not think that Parliament ought to give them the power.

said, he would take the case of the London Companies who were now about to sell their estates in the county of Londonderry. Those estates comprised a number of small villages and a good deal of house property, which was held in conjunction with the land. It would, he thought, be very hard to shut out the village tenants upon the estates of the London Companies from the benefits of this Act; and he was afraid that the Amendment would prejudicially affect a considerable amount of property all over the North of Ireland. He thought that the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for the County of Londonderry (Mr. Walker) was absolutely necessary. He knew that the London Companies would be placed in a difficult position if they could only sell part of their property, and were obliged to retain all their village property.

said, the amount of the advance was limited to a sum of £5,000,000, and it would be most unjustifiable to use it in the purchase of villages in the North of Ireland.

said that, before the clause was passed, he wished the Attorney General to explain what the guaranteed deposits were. Was it intended that one-fifth of the value of the whole estate should remain in the hands of the Land Commission; and, if so, for how long?

said, it must be obvious to hon. Members that a very considerable amount of power must be left in the hands of the Land Commission; and it would be necessary to make arrangements with the greater part of the tenants previous to the purchase of an estate for the purpose of selling it to the tenants. Unless there were previous arrangements, and the Land Commission purchased an estate which was defined as a large tract of land, it was necessary that the owner must allow one-fifth of the purchase money to remain as a guaranteed deposit. If some small portion of the estate were not sold by reason of the tenant occupying a portion of it not being disposed to buy, the one-fifth of the guaranteed deposit of the purchase money of land not sold would be returned to the original landlord. The administration of the Act must, however, be left, to a considerable extent, in the hands of the Land Commission; and it was impossible to frame a clause which could meet every contingency that might arise.

said, it was a matter of considerable importance to express, in some way, what the guaranteed deposit was to be. Clause 3 enacted that—

"Any person willing to secure the repayment of an advance made by the Land Commission to a tenant who is purchasing his holding either from the Land Commission or from the landlord of such holding may deposit with the Land Commission such sum, as a guarantee deposit, not being less than one-fifth of the advance, as may be agreed on between him and the Land Commission."

It was not made manifest anywhere who the person was to be—whether the landlord, the tenant, or any other person.

said, he had no desire to leave it in doubt as to who the money was to collie from. It might come from the landlord, the tenant, or a third person; but he thought the only person it was likely to come from was the landlord. It would certainly not be the tenant who would pay the deposit; and the person who would advance it would, as a rule, be the landlord.

asked the Attorney General for Ireland to explain what was the object of the clause?