The opposition which this measure has encountered on this side of the House proceeds from two distinct and till lately widely-separated sections of the Liberal Party. The one is led by the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington), who has never, I venture to say, in his many speeches on Irish subjects indicated any sign of a willingness to make large concessions to Ireland in the shape of autonomy, who, so far as I understand him, has never shown that he appreciates the justice of their demand, who has never recognized the fact that any benefit would accrue to Ireland from giving her self-government—whose ideas in regard to the local government of Ireland are of a very rudimentary character, who last year strongly opposed the moderate scheme for a National Council propounded by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain), and who this year by going on to the same platform with Members of the Tory Party, without disclaimer of their policy of coercion, appeared, for the moment, to lend the weight of his great authority to that alternative. The other section is led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, who has for some time past consistently advocated a policy of large concession to the Irish in the direction of self-government, who admits that his scheme for a National Council is now quite inadequate, but who objects to the Government proposal on the score of its method rather than its principle. Last Friday these two important sections of the Liberal Party met together for the first time at Devonshire House, and arrived at an entente cordiale not merely to throw out the Bill if they can, but with respect to the future policy to be offered to Ireland. What that policy is to be the public was not informed. It seems to me that the main body of the Liberals, which lies between those two sections, are entitled to ask and know what is the basis of that agreement, and what is the policy determined on. I do not think the noble Lord is justified in falling back on the old doctrine that he is not to be called on for a policy till he is summoned as a Minister of the Crown. That doctrine sounds very well in the mouth of the Leader of the Opposition; but it does not come well from those who were our allies in the past and who we hope will be our allies in the future. I feel this the more as Lord Salisbury has not been reticent of the policy of the Tory Party. The House is fully acquainted now with that policy. It means a policy of 20 years' coercion. [Cries of "No, no!"] I understood from Lord Salisbury that was his view. ["No, no!"] He says—

"My alternative policy is that the Parliament of England should enable the Government of England to govern Ireland. Apply that recipe honesty, consistently, and resolutely for 20 years, and at the end of that time you find that Ireland will be fit to accept any gifts in the way of local government or the repeal of coercion laws that you may wish to give her."

I think, therefore, I am justified in saying it is intended at the end of 20 years' persistent coercion—[Cries of "No, no!"]—at the end of that period some small modicum of local government might be conceded, and that during that period £100,000,000 are to be spent in the emigration of 1,000,000 of the Irish people in preference to a loan of public money to landlords. That policy, it seems to me, comes down from the time of the Plantation of Ulster. I doubt whether a single Member of the Liberal Party will be found to support such a policy. But in view of this declaration of the Tory policy the noble Lord and my right hon. Friend are bound to tell us what their alternative is. Is the agreement a surrender on the part of the noble Lord or of my right hon. Friend? Opinions differ on this point; but we were told yesterday by an organ of the Liberal Press at Birmingham, which is always well informed and probably inspired, that—"It is not Mr. Chamberlain who has changed his opinion, but Lord Hartington who has come round." We have no right to complain of this, we welcome it. I should be the last person to taunt the noble Lord with any change. He has given so many evidences of his sincerity and patriotism that no one can doubt he has good reason for this change. I think it was Mr. Pitt who said that a man who boasts of the consistency of his opinion for 10 years is a slave to the most idle vanity—and in these days, when events move so fast, we may substitute weeks for years. I have no doubt that the noble Lord perceives that the overwhelming majority of the Liberal Party outside the House is in favour of the principles of this Bill and of giving autonomy for Ireland, and differs only to a small degree as to the details; in face of this unanimity the alternative policy of coercion is practically impossible. Change, and great change, in the direction of autonomy is therefore inevitable. If the noble Lord has, in fact, come round it is a most important element in the present position. It must practically mean that the whole of the Liberal Party in this House is now in favour of a wide policy of autonomy for Ireland. That being so, I think it would be most unfortunate—it would be little short of a calamity to the Party, to Ireland, to the country —if some method could not be devised of affirming that great principle before we proceed further to discuss the details, which might be postponed until the country has had a longer time for consideration. In my belief, when once the principle is affirmed or decided by the bulk of the Liberal Party, the settlement of details will become comparatively easy, difficulties which now seem insuperable will disappear, and agreement will be possible. The noble Lord says that the principle of the measure lies in its details. I dispute that. It appears to me that there never was a measure where it was more important to separate the great principle involved from the method of carrying it into effect. There are some points of detail on which I myself have some difficulty in according fully with the Government; but I am strongly in favour of the principle of the Bill. The principle is clear and distinct; it is that of autonomy for Ireland; that Ireland should have the right to legislate for itself, and administer its own separate affairs, but that Imperial matters and common affairs should be reserved for the Imperial Parliament, and should not be dealt with by the Local Legislature. Everything beyond that remains open, I understand. Whether the Irish Members shall continue to sit in that House as now, whether they shall sit on Imperial questions, whether Ulster shall be treated exceptionally in any way, or what the constitution of the new Irish Legislature shall be, are important points for future consideration; but they are subordinate questions for the moment, and may be postponed with advantage. But until the main principle is settled nothing can be done. I desire, therefore, to say a few words on the main principle, and to point out why I think that justice to Ireland and its highest interests require that we should make this concession. My own views as to the necessity for a change in this direction date from four years ago, when in 1882, not for the first time, I visited Ireland, and had the opportunity of seeing something of the administration, and visited also some of the most disturbed districts when the agrarian movement was at its worst. What I saw then and at other times convinced me that some radical change must be made in the administration and in the relations of the two countries. I determined then that I would never accept a position which would make me the instrument of coercion. I re-read Irish history for the last 100 years by the light of what I had seen, and I came to the conclusion that the Act of Union of 1800, in so far as it destroyed all vestige of Irish autonomy, was the main cause of the chronic discontent of Ireland, and had worked untold mischief in its course of legislation and administration. I purposely make a saving clause in alluding to the Act of Union because I think no one can look back at the relations of the Irish Parliament with the British Parliament between 1782 and 1800 and be satisfied with them. The two Legislatures were co-ordinate and co-equal in authority. There was no provision for the dealing with Imperial questions. There was great danger of serious collision between them on Imperial questions. This had been foreseen by Mr. Fox and Mr. Grattan when they agreed to give independence to the Irish Parliament, and it is clear from their speeches and writings that they intended that some agreement should be come to with respect to Imperial affairs. This, unfortunately, was not done, and the difficulties which arose with respect to the Regency Question and to commercial questions were the main arguments used by Mr. Pitt for the Act of Union. It is clear now that the difficulty might have been provided for in some other way than by the suppression of Irish autonomy. Has, then, the Act of Union in this respect been a failure or a success, and has it tended to cement the real union between the two countries? It is impossible to answer this in any other than one way. I will not expend time in alluding to its effect in wounding—I might say outraging—the national sentiment of Ireland, though this is, perhaps, the most important and most enduring of its effects. I should like, however, to quote a few sentences on this point from one of our greatest living historians who has made a profound study of Irish history, but who has lately shown that he is afraid of following out his own historical deductions—I mean Mr. Lecky. Mr. Lecky, writing 15 years years ago on Ireland, said—

"In no other history can we investigate more fully the evil consequences which must ensue from disregarding that sentiment of nationality which, whether it be wise or foolish, whether it be desirable or the reverse, is at least one of the strongest and most enduring of human passions. This I conceive lies at the root of Irish discontent. It is a question of nationality as truly as in Hungary or in Poland. Special grievances or anomalies may aggravate, but do not cause it, and they become formidable only in so far as they are connected with it."

Never, I venture to think, were truer words written. Unless we appreciate this, unless we are prepared in what we do to appease the national sentiment and to heal the wounds which were inflicted in 1800, we shall not settle the question, and we might as well make no attempt at all. It is this that constitutes the main difference between the measure before us and the treatment recommended by the right hon. Member for Birmingham. It is because my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has touched a chord of sympathy in Ireland, and because this great subject is treated from the point of view of sentiment, that it is likely to be successful; and it is because my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, in the reforms which he has recommended, has not recognized the national sentiment as at the root of discontent in Ireland, that his measures have failed in the past and will, I fear, inevitably fail in the future. The next point I desire to notice is the effect of the suppression of Irish autonomy on the remedial legislation for that country since the Union. The effect of suppressing the self-government of Ireland and relegating all legislation to this Parliament in Westminster has been that Irish questions in ordinary times have been discussed and dealt with from purely English points of view and without regard to Irish traditions or to the views of the majority of the Irish Members or Irish people. The result has been that no remedial measure for Ireland has ever been passed by this Parliament during the 86 years in deference to argument or reason; it has only been when Ireland was a prey to agitation, the scene of outrage, or on the brink of rebellion, that it has been possible for English Ministers to obtain the force sufficient to induce this House to carry reforms for Ireland, and it has then been necessary to appease English opinion by accompanying them with coercive measures to put down the disturbances which had arisen in consequence of the delays in reform, and which alone had made reform possible. There is no exception to be found to this. I defy any hon. Member to point out a single case in which important reforms have been carried for Ireland under any other conditions. I have counted six remedial measures of first-class importance which have been carried during the period I referred to. Catholic Emancipation, the abolition of Church rates, the commutation of tithes, the Disestablishment of the Church, the two Land Acts—they were all treated in the same way, they were all refused to argument or reason, they were denied through long years, and were conceded at last to agitation and outrage and rebellion. The number is sufficient to strike an average; and it may be safely said that 35 or 40 years, as a rule, elapse between the demand of the Irish people and the satisfaction of it; it might be, perhaps, possible to discover how many agrarian outrages and murders are sufficient to rouse English opinion. Let me take, by way of illustration, the first and last of the cases I have referred to. Catholic Emancipation was demanded by Ireland as a whole in 1795. It would have been conceded by the Protestant Parliament of Ireland if Mr. Pitt had not recalled Lord Fitzwilliam and forbidden it. It was not till 1829, when Ireland had passed through years of agitation, when it was on the brink of rebellion, that the Duke of Wellington gave way; and his main motive, as he informed the King, was the fear that there would be a general strike against rent which he was powerless to prevent. But the concession was accompanied by measures which took away all its grace. The 40s. freeholders were disfranchised, the Catholic Association, which had been the main cause of the measure being carried, was suppressed, Mr. O'Connell, the leader of the movement, was treated with the greatest indignity, a coercive measure was passed which suspended all the Constitutional liberties of the country; as a result, Ireland was again exasperated, and the Repeal Movement was commenced, which has practically never subsided since, though it has taken many different forms. Let me take the last of the measures, the Land Act. It was the Repeal Movement which first sowed feelings of distrust and hate between landlord and tenant. It soon became necessary to probe the disease. The Devon Commission appointed by Sir Robert Peel in 1842 proved conclusively the justice of the complaints of the Irish tenants, showed the insecurity of their holdings, and the injustice to which they were frequently subjected. In vain, however, were efforts made to introduce moderate reforms. Successive Ministers tried their hands. The House of Lords stopped all legislation. It was not till 1870 and 1881 that it was possible to carry great reforms in the tenure of land in Ireland; and it is as certain as anything can be that neither of those measures would have been passed if it had not been that the landlords of Ireland were deeply alarmed by the agrarian agitation and feared lest they should by resistance lose everything. I could, if time permitted, show how, in a host of minor measures, the same evil genius has prevented justice being done to the demands of Ireland; how they have been delayed, maimed, or ruined, by the action of this Parliament, and chiefly by the action of the House of Lords. It is absolutely certain that if the Irish Legislature had continued to exist, there is not one of those reforms which I have alluded to which would not have been carried 30 years earlier, in deference to the views of the people, expressed in a Constitutional method, rather than as a concession to violence and outrage. It is my belief that no class will have suffered more than the landlords from the suppression of Irish autonomy. Let me now turn to the administration of the country. The administration has been conducted by English statesmen and English permanent officials sent over from this country and responsible to this Parliament, and not to Irish opinion. The administration consists, for the most part, of a gigantic and costly system of police, and of criminal jurisdiction through the stipendiary magistrates. In four out of every five years since 1800 these statesmen have had to administer coercive laws, investing them with arbitrary powers as great or greater than ever the Bourbons had before the French Revolution—power to arrest and imprison on a lettre de cachet; power to suppress public meeting; power to suspend trial by jury; power to invade private houses at all hours on mere suspicion, and to search for arms or correspondence. As the only crime in Ireland has been agrarian or political, the system of administration has been identified in the minds of the people with the police, and the police have been regarded as a means of enforcing ejectments, and as the main instruments of a system of land tenure which recent legislation has admitted to be unjust. As a result the administration has been entirely separated from the people, and is as remote from them and from their leaders as if the people were in Fiji. It is impossible for any Englishman who has not seen it to understand the isolation in which the English Ministers and English officials who rule Ireland exist; how remote they are from the people they rule. They are surrounded by the instruments of coercion, for whose misdeeds and mistakes they are responsible in Irish opinion, and whom they often dare not overrule for fear of destroying the only means of governing which they have. I doubt whether any Ministers ever used arbitrary powers more carefully, with greater patience, with greater moral and physical courage, than Lord Spencer and my right hon. Friend the Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan); but even under their paternal rule things were done which it was impossible to justify, and which caused the greatest exasperation in Ireland. I conceive that they found it impossible to overrule their subordinates without destroying their authority in face of the tremendous force of the National Party. With the single exception of Lord Melbourne's Government, when there was close alliance with Mr. O'Connell, and when he practically advised and directed the Irish policy, and when Mr. Drummond was Permanent Secretary, there has never been a time in the 86 years since the Union when the Irish administration has been in harmony with Irish opinion. What has been the financial and economic result of this administration? The old system of corruption, by which, before 1800, the English Government endeavoured to maintain its power in Ireland has been continued in another form. The civil administration in Ireland is the most costly and the least effective of any in Europe. No Minister is able to deal with this subject. His life at Dublin would be unendurable if he did. Public opinion in Ireland naturally supports any pull upon the Imperial Exchequer. The police is three time more costly in proportion than the similar force in England and Scotland. Every service is largely in excess of the public requirements. As a result the cost of civil administration is so great that after paying for it out of Irish taxation there remains a balance not sufficient to pay the cost of the Army which supports our system of government there. And it is absolutely certain that Ireland contributes nothing whatever to the Imperial Expenditure, or the maintenance of the Army and Navy which sustains our great Empire, or to the Public Debt; while, on the other hand, it must be admitted that the system of taxation tells heavily on Ireland, and that in proportion to its means Ireland is more heavily taxed than England or Scotland. What a marked contrast there is between Ireland and Scotland. Scotland, with a population of 3,500,000, gives a balance of £5,000,000 after paying for its civil administration, of which a small part only is necessary to maintain the Imperial troops quartered in it. Ireland, with 5,000,000, gives a balance of £2,000,000, which is much less than the cost of maintaining them. Lastly, Sir, let me ask the House to look at the effect of the suppression of Irish autonomy on the social condition of Ireland and the relation of its classes. The effect has been to separate classes in Ireland, to throw the minority there, the landlords and the Protestants, upon English support, to denationalize them, to sectarianize them. Before the Union the Irish Protestants and the Irish landlords were the National Party in Ireland; they headed the movement of the United Irishmen in 1782; they were the most determined opponents to the Union in 1800. It is true that they had a monopoly of political power in the Irish Parliament, but they were quite ready to share it with their Catholic fellow-citizens; they admitted the Catholics to the franchise in 1793; they repealed the penal laws against Catholics; they admitted Catholics to the Professions; they threw open Trinity College to the Catholics 30 years before the English Universities adopted the same course. They founded Maynooth; they would have carried this policy to its legitimate conclusion if Mr. Pitt had permitted them. No human being in those days ever suggested such a calumny on Ireland as that it consisted of two nations. The effect of the Act of Union has been to separate classes more and more; although it is a great exaggeration to speak of Ireland as consisting of two nations, it is true that classes are more separated there now than in almost any part of Europe. It is demonstrable that this is due to the suppression of Irish self-government; and it can only be cured by restoring that self-government. In my opinion, the ills of Ireland can only be cured by reuniting classes, and by compelling them to come to terms under the same Government. I might, if time permitted, glance at the effect of the Union on English institutions and this Parliament; I might show how legislation for England had been postponed for years by the necessity for dealing with Ireland; how Irish questions have been the disturbing elements in English policy, and I make the reservation so far as the autonomy of Ireland is concerned, because, as I have said, I think in looking back to the Irish Parliaments from 1782 to 1800 nobody can admit that her relations to the Imperial Parliament were satisfactory. The two Parliaments in those days were co-ordinate and co-equal, and there was no provision for dealing with Imperial questions. The Irish Parliament had as great a right to deal with Imperial questions at that time as the English Parliament had, and, consequently, there was great danger of collision between the two Legislatures, and, as is well known, there were collisions on important matters, especially in respect of the Regency Bill, and also the enfranchisement of Roman Catholics. But anyone will see who looks at the speeches of Mr. Fox and at the letters of Mr. Grattan that this danger was predicted by those statesmen in 1782, when the independence of the Irish Parliament was admitted, and it was fully intended by them that some agreement should be come to between the two Parliaments in reference to the control of Imperial questions. Unfortunately, no such agreement was come to, and as the result the difficulties I have adverted to did occur, and they formed the principal argument used by Mr. Pitt for bringing about the Union. Looking back, I cannot but think it was a great misfortune that that agreement was not come to, and my belief is that had it been it would not have been necessary, in the view of Mr. Pitt, to bring about the Union, and so to destroy the Irish Legislature. I say, then, that, looking back at the 86 years which have elapsed since the Union, we can come to no other conclusion than that the result has been disastrous from every point of view. It has not caused content between the two countries. In my view it has not really tended to a true union between the two countries; it has not expedited the enactment of remedial measures for Ireland; and, finally, it has had a most unfortunate effect on the relations of classes in Ireland. I understand the object of this measure to be not to repeal the Act of Union, but to reverse its policy in respect of that portion of it which experience has shown to be mischievous in the highest degree to the interests of both countries; to reconstitute an Irish Parliament for the purpose of dealing with purely Irish questions and to control Irish administration, but to do it in such a way as to reserve all Imperial questions and all matters common to the two countries to this Parliament in Westminster. It is said by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bury (Sir Henry James) that this proposal will destroy the supremacy of this Parliament. That is founded on a misconception of the measure. The Imperial Parliament will remain supreme in the same way in which it is now supreme over our Colonial Legislature, which owes its existence to statutory powers; if the 37th clause points out the mode of amending this Act, that is a promise which Parliament will certainly follow, but which will not in strict law be binding, for the same power which passes this law will be able to amend it; it will not be competent for any tribunal to declare any enactment of this Parliament to be ultra vires or unconstitutional. On the other hand, if the Irish Parliament exceeds its powers, it will be competent for a Court of Law to determine this question. Again, the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bury object that the effect will be that there may be different laws for England and Ireland. I admit this; but they have different laws already. There can be no greater difference than the laws which relate to the tenure of land in the two countries. The only object of granting autonomy is to give greater opportunity for adapting laws to the wants of different communities; and the Act of Union has failed because we have attempted to centralize and to insist upon the same laws for Ireland as for England, except where we have been compelled by agitation or outrage to deal exceptionally with Ireland. Again, it is said, are we going to hand over the government of Ireland to men who have shown by their conduct here how little they respect the rights of property or of law and order? The state of the Irish representation the last few years has been the measure of the exasperation of Ireland. Its Members have been sent here as a party of combat, to extract the concession of Home Rule by making English legislation impracticable. To those who take the worst possible view of the Irish Members, I would remind them of the well-known prophecy of Grattan in 1800. He said that Ireland would revenge herself on England for the suppression of its liberties, and the day would come when it would send 100 rebels to the Imperial Parliament to invade our Constitution. I, of course, do not myself wish to apply these words to hon. Members from Ireland. We are not to suppose that the Irish representation will be in the future as it has been in the past. Varied interests will find their expression; it will be impossible for any Leader to dictate to Ireland; new combinations will be formed; the ablest of the men opposite will find careers not now open to them; the sense of a responsibility will be felt by them. The rebels of the Young Ireland Party, who were driven from Ireland by our policy, rose to be able Ministers in our Colonies—like Mr. Gavan Duffy. The rebels in Canada governed Canada when we gave to it an independent Government; and similarly the hon. Members opposite will rise to the occasion presented to them. If we can settle finally the agrarian question, I could predict that Ireland will be profoundly Conservative or very Democratic. Already Mr. Henry George found less support for his views on land ownership in Ireland than in any other part of the United Kingdom. I observed a very able speech directed against him in one of the Irish papers, delivered by the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar). For my part, I have unbounded confidence in the effect of popular self-government, that Ireland farà da se and will administer her own affairs with credit and honour. For my part, I shall be glad to see some scheme by which, without interfering with the main principle of this measure, there could be a certain representation of Irish Members in this House. The subject is a very difficult one. I believe it is better postponed until we have decided the main question. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham proposes to retain the Irish Members in their full number; and he does so for the express purpose of enabling this House to exercise full control over the Irish Legislature, and to act as an appeal. The scheme, I venture to think, an impolitic one. It would not work; it would not have the effect the right hon. Member desires. The Irish Members here would always be able to prevent the review of the Irish Legislature. The scheme, however, aims at reducing the Irish Assembly to the position of a mere Council. It is, in fact, a revival of the National Council scheme under another name. My right hon. Friend will, I think, admit that no one gave him a warmer support for his scheme last year than I did. I did so upon the express understanding that it received the support of the Irish Leaders. It seemed to me then, as it seems now, that it is useless to propound any scheme which does not meet with the hearty support of the Irish Leaders and Irish opinion. Unfortunately, when the scheme came to light, it did not meet with the approval of the Irish Party, and it was repudiated by their Leaders. I venture to think that it is not now more practicable than it was last year. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend now sees that the exigencies of the moment require something stronger. I would advert to his scheme of National Councils simply to point out that there were two features in it which are common to the Bill. The first of them is that in a National Council for Ireland the representation was proposed to be of a double character; he proposed that the National Council should consist of two classes of representatives—one of owners of property, and the other of ratepayers. I recollect well my right hon. Friend saying it was an arrangement he could not propose for local government in England; but, having regard to the difficulties of Ireland, he thought it was not altogether unacceptable.

I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend, but he is now speaking of matters which came within his knowledge in the Cabinet.

Like yourself.

But, unlike myself, he has not received the authority of Her Majesty to disclose them. All I want to say, if I am at liberty to refer to this matter at all, is that the proposals my right hon. Friend describes, so far, at least, as details are concerned, were not my proposals, but were suggested by somebody else.

I should be sorry to infringe the Rule to which my right hon. Friend has alluded; but the proposals which he made were communicated to me not merely in the Cabinet, but by my right hon. Friend outside. They were the subject of numerous conversations; and I do not think my right hon. Friend has been very reticent himself on the subject. In fact, if I recollect rightly, he was the first to announce to the public that proposals of that kind had been made to the late Government.

I am very sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend again; but he was referring, when I first interrupted him, to some proposal for a double representation of property and of persons, and all I wished to say to the House and to him was that that was not my proposal.

I certainly understood it was the proposal of my right hon. Friend; but if I am wrong in that I, of course, withdraw my statement. Certainly a proposal that came before me had that peculiar feature; and all I wish to point out is that the measure now before the House has a proposal in it very similar to that I refer to. Before sitting down there is another question to which I wish to refer—I allude to the question of Ulster. My right hon. Friend proposes that Ulster should be excluded from the operation of the Bill. In my opinion, it would not be possible to suggest a more inexpedient arrangement. I do not know what is intended to be meant by Ulster, whether it is the whole of Ulster or only the more Protestant part of it—namely, Antrim and Down. If my right hon. Friend means the whole, I would point out to him that the majority of the people of Ulster are Catholics; at all events, the two religions are so evenly balanced that it would be difficult to determine which is in the majority. No doubt, in a corner of Ulster—namely, in Antrim, and in a portion of Down, and portions of Derry and Armagh, it would be possible to carve out a district in which the Protestants are in the proportion of three to one to the Catholics. If we are to begin with consideration for minorities, why are we to put a minority of the Catholics under Protestants? For my part, I believe that the Protestants of other parts of Ireland would be very little obliged for a proposal of this kind. In my view, the Protestants of Ulster would be a most important element in the Legislature of Ireland. I believe it would be highly contrary to the interests of the Protestants and of the landlords if the Protestants of Ulster were to be excluded from the Irish Legislature, and were to have a separate one of their own. I can scarcely imagine that any proposal of this kind can be submitted in a practicable form. Lastly, I would observe that many of the objections to this measure, many of the fears which have arisen that it will lead to separation and disintegration of the Empire, have their origin in a want of appreciation of the relative position of Ireland to England, and come down to us from a time when she was relatively far stronger in population, wealth, and resources than she now is. At the time of the Union the population of Ireland was one-half that of England, and its wealth about one-seventh. Its population is now one-seventh that of the United Kingdom, and its wealth is certainly not more than 1–24th, possibly even much less. The difference is enormous. I have already shown that it adds nothing to the strength and resources of the Empire. In fact, Ireland never contributed anything appreciable in taxation to the building up of our great Empire; though she has freely given us the blood of her people. The weight of the Empire has fallen on Great Britain. In the words of Burke, spoken in 1785, when Ireland had her independent Legislature, a measure which had Mr. Burke's hearty approval—

"It was Great Britain alone that bore the burdens and weight of the Empire; she alone must pour out the river of wealth necessary for the defence of it. Ireland and other parts might empty their little rivers to swell the tide; they might wield their puny tridents; but the great trident must be grasped by England alone, and dearly it cost her to hold it. Independence of legislation had been granted to Ireland; yet no other independence could Great Britain give her without reversing the order and decree of nature. Ireland could not be separated from England; she could not exist without her; she must for ever remain under the protection of England, her guardian angel."

If that was true in Burke's time, it is far more true now, when the resources of Great Britain are so infinitely greater in proportion to those of Ireland than they ever were before. We can laugh to scorn any suggestion of separation. The strength and superiority of this country are so great that, in my opinion, we can afford to be generous to Ireland. It is my confident belief it is possible to concede to Ireland all she really requires in the direction of local government without imperilling any of the great interests of this country; and in so doing we shall add much to the real union of the two countries, and we shall secure and increase, rather than diminish, the real strength and force of the Empire.

I do not think it is necessary for me to follow the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down into the details of his speech, for it consisted mainly of a hostile criticism of the evil effects which have followed from the Union between Great Britain and Ireland. And as to the best of my belief there has been no more consistent supporter of the Union for the years he has been in Parliament than the right hon. Gentleman himself, his career and his opinions in the past are the most effective reply that can be given to his speech to-day. The right hon. Gentleman complained that the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington) did not divulge the policy he intended to pursue in the event of this Bill being defeated. He asked whether the noble Lord and the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain) had come to an agreement; and, if they had, what was the nature of it? That inquiry has been answered already by the noble Lord, and the experience of political and official life of the right hon. Gentleman might teach him that on a question of this supreme importance it would have been most unwise and imprudent on the part of anyone in the position of the noble Lord to formulate a plan without all the official information which would be at his disposal in the event of his being in Office. And, besides, the noble Lord only followed the example which was set him by the Prime Minister two or three months ago, in certain observations he made in the course of the contest in Mid Lothian. The right hon. Gentleman proceeded to give us the advantage of his own view of the alternative policy of Lord Salisbury, and that he described as a policy of 20 years of persistent coercion. Sir, nothing is easier than to take an isolated passage from a speech, and upon that to put almost any interpretation you please. But Lord Salisbury said—

"My alternative policy is that Parliament should enable the Government of England to govern Ireland honestly, consistently, and resolutely for 20 years."

Then, said the right hon. Gentleman, that of course means coercion. [Cries of "Read on!"] That is precisely what I am going to do. What definition does Lord Salisbury give of coercion? He says that it means nothing but forcing Ireland to abstain—from what? From shooting agents and vivisecting animals, and from breaking the law by outrages and violence. Am I to understand that the right hon. Gentleman approves these things? If he does not, I fail to see in what consists the difference between the views of the right hon. Gentleman and those of Lord Salisbury. Now, Sir, I pass to the consideration of the great question which is before us at this moment. The Secretary of State for War, speaking on behalf of the Government the other night, stated that the Bill which is now before us was the most startling political event in the life of any man among us.

I said the most grave and startling.

The most grave and startling political event in the life of any man among us. I agree in that assertion; I say that it is something more; for most of us still agree, in spite of the definition of the right hon. Gentleman, that it is the most tremendous political experiment that has ever been suggested by an English Minister to Parliament. If that be so, the very first thing we should naturally have expected would be this—that reasons of the gravest and even most overwhelming character would have been offered to us by the Minister for its adoption. But what I find to be chiefly remarkable throughout the whole of these proceedings is this—that from first to last not one solid and substantial reason of this character has been offered to us whatever. Why has this great scheme for the creation of an Irish Parliament been suddenly produced in a manner which all previous declarations of the Prime Minister made it absolutely impossible for anyone to anticipate? I gather, Sir, from the Prime Minister himself that the terrible exigencies of social order in Ireland and the imperative necessity of dealing with that question are in reality the raison d'être of these proposals, the very essence of which is the creation of an Irish Parliament. Nothing could be more emphatic than his language on this point.

"This great change, "he said, "is not proposed on grounds of expediency alone, or in the view of abstract improvement alone; it is proposed in order to meet the first necessity of civilized society. Social order is not broken up; it is undermined, it is sapped; and by general and universal consent it imperatively requires to be dealt with."

Those are the Prime Minister's words, and I must say that a most striking confession they afford of the collapse, the folly, and, to use the words of the President of the Local Government Board last night, the demonstrated and disastrous failure of the whole of his own past policy in Ireland. Now, I admit the duty, I acknowledge the necessity, which rests upon the Government of dealing with this question without delay. But what I wish to point out is this—that the right hon. Gentleman has told us absolutely nothing whatever up till now to warrant the belief either that the want of social order can justly be traced to the rule of the Imperial Parliament, or that the establishment of a new and separate Parliament would do anything to restore it. The right hon. Gentleman having told us nothing, we must look, therefore, elsewhere for the information. Have we any grounds for this belief either in the teaching of history or in the experience of the past? No, Sir; we have none; and I maintain, on the other hand, that exactly the opposite is the case. I will quote an authority on this point, who is a favourite authority of the right hon. Gentleman—namely, the authority of Mr. Froude. He quoted Mr. Froude the other night as to the shortcomings of the Irish landlords. I desire to quote him with reference to social order under a separate Parliament in Ireland. What does he say? Writing of 1786 the following is his description:—

"A country where girls might be ravished, soldiers hamstrung, and statesmen who objected to such proceedings held up as marks for assassins' poignards was unfit for the habitation of human beings."

And then, as if to bring home the accusation, he comes to the capital of the country—to Dublin itself—

"The House of Commons—that is, the Irish House of Commons—had been half-a-dozen times invaded by the mob; a tarring and feathering committee had maintained a reign of terror for six months; the newspapers openly preached assassination, and an Act of Parliament had been necessary to prevent enthusiastic patriots from slicing the tendons of British soldiers who might happen to be straying in the streets."

That is a cheering prospect certainly for that portion of the Imperial Forces which I understand, if the Bill is carried, is still to be located in Dublin, or in other parts of the country. So much, then, for the question of social order; and if it were necessary or desirable to do so, I could support the authority of Mr. Froude by quotations from other historians, whose accuracy is unimpeached, and which would bear out to the letter every word that he has written on the subject. Are there any other grounds on which the Bill of the Government can be supported? What about the material prosperity of the country? Did the material prosperity of Ireland decline, or did it increase, under a separate Parliament in Ireland? Was it greater, or was it less, before or after the Union? I wish to bring these questions to the test of experience and proof. Fortunately, we have some trustworthy data to go upon; and it would not have been difficult for me or anyone to prove that the material prosperity of the country which, during Grattan's Parliament and before the Union upon the whole steadily declined, after the Union and until the Famine steadily increased, and after the Famine and until the recent years of severe agricultural depression continued steadily to do so. But it is not necessary for me, or for anyone to show this, because it has been shown already in the Irish Correspondence laid on the Table of the House, and in the communications presented to the Prime Minister by the Loyal Irish Patriotic Union.

Oh, oh!

Does the hon. Gentleman impugn the accuracy of those statements?

Certainly.

Well, the hon. Member will have an opportunity of speaking in this debate, and of endeavouring to show in what respect they are wrong, which most certainly has not been done at present; they contain a great deal of most interesting and instructive information. They point, in the first place, to the trade and to the commerce of the country as indicated by the exports and imports. They point to the tonnage of ships and shipbuilding, to the consumption of articles of luxury; and in relation to this matter they make a comparison of the position before and after the Union, which shows unmistakably that it was entirely in favour of the Union. Again, they draw attention to the enormous number of Petitions which, during the time of the Irish Parliament, were presented to that Assembly from almost every trade in Ireland complaining of the ruinous depression from which they had begun to suffer; and, at the same time, they pointed to the immense increase in the National Debt during the same period. What is the case after the Union? They show an enormous increase in the savings of the people in the banks, a great increase also in the number of cattle and stock in the country, and a still more marked improvement in the character of the houses and the dwellings of the poor. If the hon. Member who interrupted me is able to contradict the accuracy of these facts, which have been presented in the Irish Correspondence, I hope he will take an early opportunity of doing so before the debate closes. I think it is not too much for me to say that in these circumstances I have every right to believe that there is nothing to be hoped for in the way of gain, and that there is much to be feared in the way of loss, as regards the material prosperity of the country under a Parliament in Ireland which is to be separate from that of England. Sir, I cannot help thinking that the Prime Minister himself must have had the greatest possible difficulty in finding those broad and solid grounds which he himself admitted were absolutely necessary as a justification for his measure; because, when I come to examine those which he did adduce, I am able to find in them absolutely nothing but what I should describe as a purely negative justification of his scheme. As I have shown, social order is the prime motive of the Prime Minister's proposals, and in order to make out his case he proceeded in this way. His argument was to this effect—Agrarian crime has I become almost habitual in Ireland, and your repressive legislation has become as habitual as the crime which it is intended to repress. Your coercion in the past has been a spurious and ineffectual coercion; and it is useless to attempt to conceal, either from yourselves or from the world, that it has failed altogether in the accomplishment of its purpose. True it is, there is another kind of coercion, stern, resolute, and consistent, which would succeed in the accomplishment of its purpose; but it is a coercion which neither England nor Scotland will ever consent to for a moment until every other alternative has been tried and been exhausted; and there is one alternative which has not been tried—namely, the alternative which I propose, and that is, to strip your legislation of the foreign aspect and the foreign garb it wears at present. I take issue with the right hon. Gentleman directly upon these points. I deny that coercion has invariably failed in the past, and I say if it has failed it has been owing to the fault of the right hon. Gentleman and his Colleagues, and the uncertain, ever-changing attitude on their part with regard to the exercise and administration of their repressive legislation. Again, I deny that the only alternative to his scheme is coercion of exceptional and additional severity; and if it was, I say that both Scotland and England would prefer it, as the lesser of two evils, to the proposals which they and we believe would sooner or later lead most inevitably either to separation, or to civil war, or to something like the re-conquest of Ireland before two years were over. Nothing could be more striking or remarkable than the language of one of the Ministers of the Crown on this point. I heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer make a most amusing speech on the introduction of the measure, and as he came to the close of his speech, and anticipating the inquiry whether he had no misgiving as to the Prime Minister's proposals, he admitted that he had; but he added this—"If by any accident our schemes should fail, remember we are 30,000,000 and they are 5,000,000, and we have all the resources of England at our back." I thought at the time that this was not a particularly hopeful prospect for the schemes of the right hon. Gentleman. If there has been failure in the system, the reason of the failure is not very far to seek. When a Minister begins by re-echoing the parrot cry that "force is no remedy" for murder and outrages in Ireland—when a Colleague declares against "anything which would stifle agitation, for fear it should prevent reform," at the very moment when outrages of every sort and kind were occurring every day in Ireland—why, in his hands repressive legislation is, of course, foredoomed to fail. Again, when the Minister makes use of the coercive powers which at last he has asked for, and tardily obtained, to imprison Irish Members by the score on one day, and to make Kilmainham Treaties with them on the next, why repressive legislation in his hands, of course, becomes a farce, Again, when the lesson of his Irish policy to the Irish Leaders, from its first inception down to the present moment, has been to teach them this—that they were dealing with a man whom they knew they could terrify, frighten, and cajole into anything—[Mr. GLADSTONE: Hear, hear!]—the right hon. Gentleman recognizes the truth of the accusation—why, repressive legislation in his hands fails—naturally and necessarily fails—in the accomplishment of its purpose. I do not want to make unnecessarily offensive observations; but the fact is that it is the right hon. Gentleman himself who has always been the obstacle—the insuperable obstacle—to its success. The whole tenour of his policy for years has been to teach the Irish people—aye, and to teach the world—that there is no surrender, no concession which cannot be extorted from him, if only the pressure be sufficiently severe. The proof of it is in the concession of Home Rule after all the declarations he has made against it in the past—the proof of it is to be found in the very Bills now lying on the Table of this House. If the history of Ireland teaches anything at all, it teaches this—that Irish sedition is only formidable and only dangerous to those who are afraid to grapple with it. That is the reason why it has always played such havoc with the right hon. Gentleman and the successive Governments of which he has been the Chief. Get rid of the right hon. Gentleman, and, in my opinion, one-half of your Irish difficulties will begin to disappear at once. The right hon. Gentleman has taunted my noble Friend with having no plan. But that is the plan—the foundation of any plan and every plan—for dealing successfully with the question; and though I do not wish to give offence, I say that is the teaching of all our experience in the past. Twelve months ago, everyone remembers, we were hampered, oppressed—almost overwhelmed—by foreign difficulties and complications in Egypt, in the Soudan, on the Indian Frontier, and elsewhere, of every sort and kind. And what happened then? Why, the right hon. Gentleman shortly after disappeared from the Treasury Bench, as he has done just now—[Mr. GLADSTONE had the moment before left the House]—and almost as if by magic those foreign difficulties and complications began to subside, and almost all of them gradually and steadily terminated. Everybody remembers this, and knows that it is perfectly true; and you may depend upon it that what happened then in the case of the foreign troubles in which we were involved will happen again in the same degree in regard to our Irish troubles and difficulties. With the permission of the House, I wish to say one word more on coercion. The hon. Member for Aberdeen (Mr. Bryce) made an able and striking speech last night. He said—"We are a democracy. A modern democracy is fitted neither by its methods of government nor by its sentiments for any policy of this kind." "A democracy," he said, "loves equality, and it could not bear to think that it was made the means of oppressing the Irish people." Now, I am not enamoured of coercion any more than other pepole; I lament its exercise and I deplore its need; but if by coercion you mean the enforcement of the law, and the granting by Parliament of whatever powers may be necessary to enforce the law in every part of Her Majesty's Dominions, I say we are in the enjoyment of that equality already, and that coercion—although I hold the name itself to be a misnomer altogether—is being practised at this moment in England, in Scotland, in Wales, and in every other civilized community in the world; and I confess I am totally at a loss to discover a reason why Ireland is to be excepted from that general and necessary rule. Moreover, there are two kinds of coercion in Ireland to-day. There is the coercion that is used to enforce and to support, and there is the coercion that is used to frustrate and to thwart the law; there is the lawful coercion of a recognized Government on the one hand, and the lawless coercion of a lawless League upon the other. The hon. Member for Aberdeen said that "a democracy loves freedom." Of course it does. But what kind of freedom does he mean? Freedom to go about one's business, the duties of one's daily life—freedom to fulfil one's legal obligations without injury or molestation, or does he mean freedom to rob, murder, mutilate, and commit every sort of outrage with absolute impunity? I say that to talk this kind of trash about coercion and democracy is the veriest libel upon the common sense and intelligence of the new democracy that ever has proceeded from the mouth of a Member of the House of Commons. Which of these two kinds of coercion, I want to know, most oppresses Ireland at the present time? Is it the coercion of England, or is it not rather the remorseless and despotic domination of a League whose doctrines, in the words of two Ministers, one of whom was on the Treasury Bench not two minutes ago, are the doctrines of treason and assassination? ["No!"] I am quoting the words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. A noble Friend near me reminds me that the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated not very long ago that the National League was "the apostolic succession" of the Land League; and the Prime Minister made use of this observation—"That its edicts were only sanctioned and enforced by the murders which are not denounced." This is the domination, Sir, which has done more injury to Ireland than I can tell—a domination which has disturbed all the relations and has poisoned all the intercourse of society; which has banished capital and confidence, and is destroying every trade; which has rendered freedom of speech, freedom of action, freedom of vote—aye, and even freedom of thought—a thing almost unknown in Ireland to-day, except at the bidding of a priesthood, and except at the bidding of a lawless League. I am not one of those who have ever thought, or who now believe, that the whole Irish population of the South—we know that it is not in the North—is disloyal, or disaffected towards the British Government; nor am I convinced that its true feeling is correctly represented by hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway; and I am persuaded that the day is not far distant when the English Government and the English Parliament that shall have the patriotism and the courage to use all those resources of civilization of which the Prime Minister only boasted, and boasted but in vain, to break up this "vile conspiracy," to lift its shackles from the people's necks, and once and for ever destroy its cruel and tyrannical pretensions, will reap their best and highest reward in the gratitude and devotion of a loyal and converted, because they are a liberated, people. So far I have tried to show the fallacy of the arguments which have been adduced in favour of this scheme; and now, if I glance for a moment at those which can be urged against it, I will endeavour, as far as possible, to avoid travelling over ground which has been occupied before. My cardinal objections to the Bill are two. In the first place, you are about to impose obligations on the Government in Ireland with regard to which you have absolutely no power whatsoever to enforce them except, if it be necessary in the last resort, by the arbitrament of war; and if force is to be used at all, I, for one, would infinitely prefer coercion now to anything in the nature of war, or the reconquest of the country, probably some two years hence. My second cardinal objection is this—that if the Bill does not lead directly to separation, undoubtedly it gives to the Separatist Party an enormous ground of vantage, and a powerful lever for effecting separation in future if they desire it. What I want to know is this—how is this lever going to be used? And you must remember that this question is more than ever important at this moment, since we have been made acquainted with the contemplated alterations in the Bill. You are going to have a separate Parliament in Ireland; and now we are told—it is more than whispered—that, under some circumstances, the whole of the Irish Members are to come back to Westminster as well. Now, just conceive what a weapon you are placing in their hands. If 86 Irish Members, within two months of the meeting of a Parliament elected under the new suffrage, have been able to extort from the Prime Minister and the Government of the day the concession of Home Rule, when they stood unaided and alone, what is there in the world that 86 Irish Members, with a whole Parliament in Dublin behind them, will not be able to obtain? They will be able to dictate especially to the right hon. Gentleman's Government their own terms upon any given subject relating to Ireland that they please. What I want to know from hon. Members representing Ireland is whether this measure is to be regarded as a final settlement of this question, or only as an instalment? Do the Irish Members still adhere to, or have they abandoned all idea of, national independence and separation? Can the Prime Minister give us any assurance upon this point; and, what is infinitely more important, is the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) either willing or able to give us any guarantee upon the subject? It is all very well for the Government to point to what they term a change of tone in the speeches of Irish Members; but we have before us the speeches of the hon. Member for Cork, which he has neither explained nor withdrawn. In these circumstances I should wish to put a question to the hon. Member for Cork; but in his absence for the moment I have no doubt that the question will be repeated to him by some of his followers. I could quote scores of speeches to the same effect; but I will only refer to one which was made only last year in London. He had already, in 1883, on the famous occasion of the testimonial of £40,000—presented to him in Dublin—declared the determination of the Irish Party "to bequeath the great birthright"—not of legislative—I beg the Prime Minister to mark the difference, but "of national—independence to those who came after them." And on the 17th of March last year he is reported to have used these words—

"We can none of us do more than strive for that which may seem attainable to-day; but we ought at the same time to recollect that we should not impede or hamper the march of our nation; that though our programme may be limited and small, it should be such a one as shall not hereafter prevent the fullest realization of the hopes of Ireland."

What is the programme of which he speaks as being so limited and small? Why, I take it to be the scheme which is before us now. What is the meaning of "the fullest realization of the hopes of Ireland hereafter? "Can any human being doubt that they point to that "birthright of national independence," and that severance of the last link between the two countries, of which he had so often spoken before? I therefore wish to ask the hon. Member for Cork whether he adheres to or renounces the opinion and views which he expressed in the Rotunda of Dublin on the occasion to which I refer? If he does, then there may be some grounds for hoping that the sentiment and the tone of Irish Members have undergone a change, such as the right hon. Member for Halifax (Mr. Stansfeld) so unctuously referred to last night. If he does not, then I do not hesitate to say that the Minister who deliberately places this weapon in the hands of the hon. Member for Cork is guilty of betraying the sacred trust which is reposed in him, of maintaining to the utmost of his power the unity of the Empire which he is bound in duty to protect. Again, I say that, whether they want separation and national independence or not, legislative independence is practically impossible without it, and legislative independence is the very minimum of the Irish demands. Is there any Irish Member present who will contradict that statement? The hon. Member for Aberdeen (Mr. Bryce) made a statement upon this point which I wish to notice. He said—

"We have a right in this Parliament to legislate for Ireland, and we shall have that right left; for when the Bill becomes an Act, we shall retain as a matter of right the power of legislation for Ireland for all purposes whatever."

That statement was received, as hon. Members may very well suppose, with a chilling silence from the Irish Members. I am not at all surprised at that, because the Prime Minister, only a few days before, had said that the Irish Parliament would be practically an independent Parliament. It is quite evident that there is as little unity on the part of the Government with regard to their own Bill as there would be in the Empire if this Bill were to pass. We have heard a good deal lately about Grattan's Parliament. The hon. Member for Aberdeen told us that between 1782 and 1800 we had had two Crowns, two Armies, two Ministries, and that, in fact, Ireland and Great Britain were two distinct countries; while the Prime Minister stated, upon the introduction of the Bill, that Grattan's Parliament was as independent as any Parliament in the wide world. But does not the hon. Member for Aberdeen perceive that it was in consequence of the very circumstances he refers to that the difficulties arose between the two countries which led to union between England and Ireland being established? Unless I am misinformed, the Prime Minister was totally in error in his statement as to Grattan's Parliament; no Bills passed by Grattan's Parliament ever had the force of law until they were returned to Ireland under the Great Seal of England. ["No, no!"] It is a matter of history which is capable of proof. [Mr. SULLIVAN: Not after 1782.] I state it as a fact on which I challenge contradiction; and if the Irish Parliament was, as the Prime Minister had said, as independent as any in the wide world, why was not the Great Seal of Ireland used to certify its Bills instead of the Great Seal of England? But I confront the right hon. Gentleman with an authority not less than his own. In 1834 Sir Robert Peel said this—

"A separate Parliament you may have; an independent Parliament you cannot have; you never had an independent Parliament; you never can have one consistently with the Sovereignty of the British Crown and the connection with the Island of Great Britain."

Now, if Sir Robert Peel and the hon. Member for Aberdeen are right, what becomes of your Bill?—because one of the three conditions you have named as vital to your Bill is this—that it should present the character of being a final and complete settlement of this question; and it is manifestly impossible that any Bill can be a final and complete settlement of the question which does not even grant the minimum of the Irish demands. Again, there is another most important point, which ought to be made plain. I refer to the Prerogative of the Crown in the exercise of the veto. I fail to understand whether the Prerogative of veto is to be absolutely delegated to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to be exercised by him upon the advice of his Irish Ministers, or whether it is to be exercised as it is at present. In either case I see the gravest possible difficulties before you. I will assume for the moment that it is to be exercised as at present. Well, supposing that you carry your two Irish Bills—a supposition which appears to me to be an unlikely one to be realized—and supposing that next year the second one—the Irish Land Bill—is repealed by the Irish Parliament, there is absolutely nothing in this Bill to prevent it. It does not require a very great stretch of imagination to believe that Addresses would be moved and carried in both Houses of Parliament in England praying her to withhold Her Royal Assent from the Irish measure to repeal the Land Act. What is the position in which you place the Crown. If the Sovereign declines, you bring her into conflict with her English Parliament at once. If she complies, then the English and the Irish Parliaments are at two, and the Sovereign is brought into conflict with the Irish Parliament as well. On the other supposition, that the Prerogative is to be exercised by the Lord Lieutenant under the advice and control of the Irish Ministry alone, you part at once with all control over Irish affairs, and there will be nothing to prevent the repeal of the Land Bill, which you yourselves have told us is inseparable from, and vital to, the success of the measure now before us. I do not wish to trespass too long; but there is just one other matter I should like to mention. The real difficulties of Ireland, after all, are agrarian, and not political; and they are to be found in the circumstances of the country, and in the conditions under which the people live. Land-hunger and the absence of all other industries in Ireland lie at the very root of all your Irish troubles at this moment. I have always thought, for many years, until the mistaken policy of the Prime Minister's two Irish Land Bills placed almost insuperable obstacles in the way, that there was, indeed, a wide field for statesmanship in Ireland, in the development of her material prosperity and the improvement of the condition of her people—the consolidation of wretched little farms, too small to provide a decent livelihood or subsistence; the relief of the congested districts, by the migration as well as the emigration of the people, humanely and properly conducted; and the encouragement of manufactures and other industries which were destroyed by the bitterly unjust and selfish commercial policy of England in former days. This is the direction, Sir, in my view, when you talk of plans and a policy for Ireland, in which 20 years ago a wise and patriotic statesman would have endeavoured to proceed. But for all these things the one essential, above all, is capital and credit; and capital and credit by your Bill you are going to banish from the country. There are many other points upon which I should have wished to dwell; but I feel that I have trespassed far too long already. Of two things I am certain—that every other consideration is merged in the danger which lurks within the four corners of this Bill of promoting the separation of Ireland from England; and that, even if we were to pass this Bill to-morrow, it never can become a final settlement of this question. Will the Prime Minister and his Colleagues never learn wisdom from experience? In 1870 you asked us, by the first of your two Land Bills, "to close and to heal up for ever"—those were your own words—"by a manful effort" this great question, which so much affected the happiness of Ireland. Within a few short years, upon the recommendation of a Commission of your own, it was ignominiously repealed. Again, you were warned in 1881—I remember warning you myself—

"That the ink would not be dry which made judicial rent the law throughout the land, before a new and more determined agitation would arise from the ashes of the old one against the intolerable injustice of paying any rent at all."—(3 Hansard [261] 858).

How many months, Sir, had elapsed before that prediction was literally fulfilled by the issue of the "No Rent" Manifesto to the world? And so I make bold to say again to-day. Keep this Bill unaltered if you will to-morrow, and so surely as the sun fulfils its orbit in the heavens, so surely on the morrow of your measure will the cycle of Irish agitation again begin. On every ground then, Mr. Speaker, that can be drawn, from reason, from experience, from judgment, and a knowledge of the facts, we are bound, alike in duty and in honour, to oppose this Bill. And, acting on this certain and this sure belief, there is no sacrifice, no effort we will spare, to compass the destruction—not for to-day or for to-morrow, but for all time to come—of this ill-omened and unhallowed scheme, conceived in darkness and concealment, hatched in secrecy and brought forth in shame, and which we believe will bring no blessing but a curse to Ireland itself, will constitute a danger and a standing menace to this country, which will sap and will impair, and eventually undermine, the very foundations upon which we have been hitherto content to rest the noblest monument of national and human greatness that the world has ever seen, in the Sovereign Parliament and the Sovereign Empire of our Queen.

said, he really did not know which was the grander—the exordium or the peroration of the right hon. Gentleman. It was, no doubt, exceedingly difficult to say anything new on the subject, which had been discussed in the House and out of the House by speakers on platforms throughout the country. The right hon. Gentleman, however, had succeeded in saying something new, for, commenting on what had been said on this side of the House that this was the most startling proposal ever made by an English Minister, the right hon. Gentleman said he would go further and tell the House it was the most tremendous proposal. [Mr. CHAPLIN: I said experiment.] He was sure the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington) would thank the right hon. Gentleman for having made clear to the House and the country what the position of the noble Lord was. Though he did his best, the noble Lord himself did not make his position clear; but the right hon. Gentleman had been kind enough to let the cat out of the bag, and told them that his object and that of his Friends was to get rid of the Prime Minister. They knew perfectly well that for many a year right hon. Gentlemen opposite had endeavoured to get rid of the Prime Minister, and the difference between them was that the Liberals did not intend to get rid of the Prime Minister, but to stand by him. Then the right hon. Gentleman fell foul of the hon. Member for Aberdeen (Mr. Bryce) for stating that a democracy was not fitted for coercion. The right hon. Gentleman had informed them that coercion was simply the enforcement of the law; but, as they understood it on that side of the House, it was the enforcement of the law, not as it was enforced in England, but by exceptional laws with regard to Ireland. He agreed with the hon. Member for Aberdeen that a democracy was not fitted for coercion, because there was no permanent action on the part of a democracy when called to act against a portion of the inhabitants of some other portion of the same Realm. They knew what had occurred during the past Session, how a Coercion Bill was passed in the last Parliament, and they remembered—and he regretted it—how the Gentlemen who then occupied the Treasury Bench, the Liberal Ministry, wished to maintain a portion of that Coercion Bill. What happened? They were turned out of Office upon a surprise vote, and the Representatives of the Conservative Party came into power. They came into power by making a bargain with hon. Members following the lead of the hon. Member for Cork that they would bring in no Coercion Bill. Those who had been twitting the Liberal Ministry because their Coercion Bill was not strong enough, for the sake of acquiring Office made a bargain with the Nationalist Members. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] He defied the denial of that statement. [A laugh.] The noble Lord the Member for Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill) smiled; but he knew perfectly well how that sort of bargain was made. He did not suppose that the noble Lord, or any Member on the Front Bench, or any Member of the Conservative Party in the House went to the Irish Party and said—"You will vote for us against the Ministry, and we promise not to bring in a Coercion Bill." Not a bit of it; but the idea and the knowledge was brought to the minds of the Irish Members that if they did turn out the Government there would not be a Coercion Bill. And, on the other hand, the idea was conveyed to the heads of the Conservative Party that if they did not bring in any Coercion Bill, not only would hon. Gentlemen vote to turn out the Liberals, but they would vote for them at the General Election; and they did vote for them accordingly. As long as they had Parties in that House ready to make such bargains, it was vain to hope that coercion could ever be made permanent with regard to Ireland. For his part, he was delighted that coercion in Ireland was impossible. The right hon. Gentleman had used a most extraordinary argument against the Bill. He said he desired that the Irish Members should remain in the House; but he said they could obtain any further concessions with regard to Ireland that they desired, and the best proof of that was that if they insisted upon anything they were perfectly certain to obtain it. He would remind the right hon. Gentleman that the Bill, as it stood, did not give representation to hon. Members opposite. He should like some Member of the Conservative Party to state whether his objection to the Bill was that it did not give representation to the Irish Members, or that Irish Members ought not to take part in the Business of the House. If the Bill were not passed hon. Members opposite would be able as before to vote on Imperial as well as local measures. How could it be supposed that they would acquire more power over the councils of the nation when they could come there only for Imperial matters, whereas now they could vote on all subjects? The right hon. Gentleman had asked whether the Bill was to be a final one, and whether Ireland would regard the Bill as final, or whether it would consider it a step to national independence and separation? That question the right hon. Gentleman put to some Minister, and asked for an assurance on the point. But how could any Minister give an assurance—for he knew nothing more than the right hon. Gentleman himself? The Prime Minister has expressed his belief that the Bill would be a final settlement, and he could not say any more. The right hon. Gentleman had further charged the hon. Member for Cork with making a specific statement entirely contrary to the idea of this being a final settlement. Surely the right hon. Gentleman knew that when two countries or two parties were almost in a state of war, one side asked a larger concession than it was ready to accept? A little margin must be allowed in these matters. He had no doubt that amongst the utterances of the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) and his Friends could be found exceedingly strong expressions, which he should imagine these hon. Gentlemen would regret. But, supposing they were to apply the same rule to the utterances of the noble Lord (Lord Randolph Churchill) whom he saw opposite. He was perfectly sure that the noble Lord—who as he grew older ripened—would have the grace frankly to admit that he regretted exceedingly above two-thirds of what he had said. They could not pin men down to every word they had said during years of a great struggle like the present. A treaty of peace and amity supposed that they forgot the previous utterances. The hon. Member for Cork, it appeared to him, had already answered the question of the right hon. Gentleman. That hon. Member, in his place in the House, had said that he considered this Bill, with some minor alterations, would be a final settlement of the great issue which had lasted so long between Ireland and England. Probably every Member of that House had the idea in his mind of some modification in the Bill. He did not think that the hon. Member for Cork should be bound by everything that he had said in the heat of this controversy.

said, that he asked the hon. Member for Cork whether he was ready to say that he renounced the opinions he expressed on the occasion of the meeting in 1883?

asked whether the hon. Gentleman was to got up in that House in sackcloth and ashes and solemnly renounce the opinions he had expressed? The hon. Gentleman had stated that he accepted this Bill as a final settlement—and what more could he do? When he said a final settlement, he did not mean that the Irish Members would be unwise if they sought to make minor alterations; but they were ready to take this as a final settlement of the relations which were to subsist between the two countries. The right hon. Gentleman opposite, and many other Gentlemen, had complained of various details of the Bill. The better a Constitution was on paper the worse it was in practice. That might be laid down as an almost universal rule. It was true. France had had dozens of Constitutions. They had all been beautifully made by very wise heads; but they had, every one, failed, because they had been too neat. In England we had a Constitution which was a mass of anomalies and absurdities, and no one would defend it theoretically if its different arrangements were put down on paper; but, on the whole, we found it a very good Constitution, because it suited us. The mistake we had always made was in imagining that what suited us must also suit Ireland. We had endeavoured to force down the throats of the Irish people our system of law, because we considered that it must be good for them as it was good for us. What was one man's meat was another man's poison. The only statesman of eminence who had recognized that was the Prime Minister, who went to the bottom of the evil and endeavoured to remove by the present Bill the grievance of which Ireland complained. He considered that it was a very able mode of dealing with the matter. It was surprising that a scheme should have been found which was satisfactory to the Irish people, and also to the great mass of the Liberal Party in this country. The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Leatham) had sneered at the idea of their looking abroad for any parallel case to that of Ireland; but it seemed to him to be the best thing they could do in the circumstances. He would not refer to Hungary, which had often been cited, but to a country which it might seem singular for a Radical to refer to—namely, Russia. In Russia there were, so to speak, two Irelands—Poland and Finland. In Poland every concession had been refused, and they knew what its state was at that moment. In Finland autonomy had been granted, and Finland, so far from being a cause of trouble to Russia, was most loyal to Russia. That seemed to be a pretty clear proof that by giving local autonomous institutions to a small State connected with a larger one they established a bond of affection, instead of a desire for separation. But England very slowly digested a new idea. When it was first rumoured that the Prime Minister intended to bring in a Home Rule Bill they were told that the right hon. Gentleman would not be able to form a Cabinet. For his own part, however, he never doubted that the right hon. Gentleman would be able to form one. He asked whether the feeling of the country was not entirely in favour of Home Rule? Of course, the Conservatives, and some Liberals, were opposed to it; but he thought if they looked to the expression of public opinion they would find that in the main the Liberal portion of the constituencies were, by a vast majority, in favour of Home Rule. Many were opposed to it, no doubt; but the Prime Minister well defined the position when he said that the privileged classes were on one side while the people were on the other. He presumed that Conservative Gentlemen agreed with the Prime Minister, for they said exactly the same thing—they were always telling us that wealth, rank, and intelligence were on their side. When some pitiable Peer, of whose existence scarcely anybody knew, wrote to the papers an announcement of his conversion to Conservative views, it was said that "everybody was coming over." He saw the other day in The Times, as a proof of how every man of intelligence and position was opposed to the Prime Minister that Lord Wolseley, Lord Tennyson, and Sir Frederick Leighton were opposed to the Bill. Now, was it likely that they on that side of the House were going to give up their opinions on a political question in deference to the opinion of a soldier, or of a Poet Laureate, or of a President of the Royal Academy? He admitted that there were intelligent gentlemen who were opposed to the Bill; but, on the other hand, there were some exceedingly intelligent persons who were in favour of it. Gentlemen who told them—and Heaven knew how often they had told them—that all the intelligence of the country was opposed to the Bill had a very simple way of proving it. They established as a standard of intelligence opposition to the Bill, and therefore it followed as a necessary consequence that every intelligent man was opposed to it. That was a convenient doctrine; but it was, in his opinion, one of the most impudent that had been laid before the House. In all political matters the presumption was against the upper classes being right. A man of the upper class, perhaps, had more education than an artizan; but his mind was entirely warped by belonging to a privileged class. No doubt the superior classes had the money; but he denied that they had greater intelligence on matters of general politics. Experience showed this to be the fact. If they looked back on all the great questions which had been decided in that House, on which side were the superior classes, and on which side were the artizans and the labouring classes? Who were the opponents of the Bill in that House, and what was their policy? In the first place they had the Conservative coming forward with their nolumus leges Angliœ mutari. They learnt from the speech of Lord Salisbury, who had very foolishly broken the silence of his Party, what the alternative policy of the Conservatives was if they were to come into power. Lord Salisbury told them that it was absurd to give free institutions to Ireland any more than to Hottentots, the implication, therefore, being that he put the Irish in the same category with Hottentots. Then they were to have no confidence in Ireland, and they were told that these proposals, however much modified, led them by an appreciable stage nearer separation. According to that there was to be no criticism on the part of the Conservatives as to any question of details. They were told what Lord Salisbury would do. Ireland was to be governed resolutely for 20 years, and then she would be ready for a scheme of local self-government, and a repeal of Coercion Laws. That meant coercion. How could they repeal Coercion Laws if there were none, and none were in existence at the present moment? It was absurd for the Conservatives to deny what the intentions of Lord Salisbury were. When they had come into power they had come down to that House and wanted to stop the discussion on the Address in order to bring in an exceptional Coercion Bill. Lord Salisbury had boldly and plainly said so. But the right hon. Gentleman on the Front Opposition Bench had got up and tried to explain away the meaning of Lord Salisbury's words. They had not the honesty of their own convictions. Lord Salisbury, who, he had always believed, was one of the most honest men of his Party, though he could not agree with his political principles, had stated plainly what his views were, and yet right hon. Gentlemen got up on the Front Opposition Bench and tried to explain away his words. That, however, had not been the only scheme of Lord Salisbury; he had also proposed to emigrate a million or so of the Irish people. He did not think that these men, forced out of their country by unfair coercion, would tend to increase the loyal feeling which now existed in Canada with respect to this country. Then Lord Salisbury had said—"Our policy to-day is the traditional policy of the Conservative Party." That was precisely what it was—and he would ask hon. Gentlemen on that side of the House who were doing their best to bring in a Conservative Government to take to heart the fact that Lord Salisbury did not imagine or say that he was going to pluck the chestnuts out of the fire for any Whig or Radical, and in voting against the Bill they would be voting to give effect to that traditional policy. Why had Lord Salisbury made that speech? Because he had imagined that the Conservative Party were being put aside by Gentlemen on that side of the House—by the Whig-Radical combination. For his own part, he could conceive a certain kind of alliance and community of feeling between the Conservatives and some Whig Gentlemen, and to some extent Lord Salisbury might have supported a Whig Government; but when the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale had given one hand to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham, who had been accused of being an anarchist, a robber, and a spoliator, then Lord Salisbury had thought that he must explain his position to his own Party, or else that they might be under the impression that the Conservative Party was going to aid and abet in that robber and spoliator coming in and having the destinies of the country in his hands. For his own part, speaking as a Radical, he would not mind if a Government of the privileged classes did come in for a little time; he suspected that the Union would not be the only grievance that would be done away with. Well, there were many Gentlemen on that side of the House who were going to vote against the Bill, though he hoped they would get wiser before the division. But who were their Leaders? There were the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington) and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Goschen). He had always admired the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale, and for this reason—that, in spite of the disadvantages of his birth, the noble Lord had always been a fair Liberal. He had never considered the noble Lord a Radical, or even a robust Liberal; but they must remember that the noble Lord had refused to vote for the Amendment of Mr. Jesse Collings, and that he had never himself asserted that he was a strong Liberal or a Radical. The other Leader was the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Edinburgh. Now, would anybody suggest that the right hon. Gentleman was a Liberal? The right hon. Gentleman had not been able to find a single constituency in England to return him. He had to go to Scotland, and get a seat by the aid of the Conservatives of Edinburgh.

Oh, oh!

Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman say that Edinburgh Conservatives did not vote for him?

Not by my advice.

Well, he had some hope of the Conservatives of Edinburgh, if they did not take the right hon. and learned Gentleman's advice. The noble Lord the Member for Rossendale told them that the Bill limited the authority of Parliament. That was simply a truism, not an argument. How could they possibly establish a local domestic Legislature in Ireland without so far limiting the authority of Parliament? But when they were not indulging in truisms these Gentlemen indulged in prognostications, and one of these prognostications was that trade and commerce would disappear in Ireland, and that English capital would also disappear. Now, he would like to know what trade would disappear? The main exports from Ireland were agricultural products, and why should the Irish be such lunatics as to injure their trade in those products? The trade would remain precisely the same as it was. What capital went now from England to Ireland? The only capital that went was in the form of advances on mortgage for the benefit of men who had outrun the constable, and were generally absentees and spent the money in England, whereas the interest went from Ireland to England. Then it was said that the credit of the country would suffer. But the credit of a country depended on whether the Government was good or bad, and the right hon. Member for Edinburgh prognosticated that it would be bad because the upper classes would not join it. But when the upper classes found that the Government was established they would be quick enough to join it; but he confessed if he were an Irishman he would not cry his eyes out if the upper classes did not join the Government. We had had an excess of landlords in this House of Commons, and that was why our Land Laws were a reproach to us in the eyes of Europe. We had an excess of plutocrats. We were now paying £500,000 for the occupation of Egypt, because there were so many money-lenders and their friends in that House. If the Irish lost the presence of landlords and loan mongers, their country would probably soon be in a far better position than was this country now. But to protect the landlords' interests there were the two Orders, who completely obviated the objection of the right hon. Member for Edinburgh. It was absurd to say that the Irish Parliament would be unfit to legislate, when hon. Gentlemen opposite had shown themselves such admirable Parliamentarians in that House. Now, what was the alternative proposed by the Whigs? He had read with great interest the speech of the right hon. Member for Edinburgh, though he skipped some of it because it was rather dull. The right hon. Gentleman prided himself upon being thoroughly a practical man; but his only recommendations were firmness and fairness, and patriotism and principle. Thus the right hon. Gentleman's only alternative was an alliterative jingle. The noble Lord the Member for Rossendale was in despair, and his only hope was that everybody would unite to deal with the question in a proper and legitimate way. We might as well wait for the Millennium. The Prime Minister had rightly said that it was essential to deal with the question in such a way as to satisfy the Irish themselves. Was it to be expected that the noble Lord would ever deal with the question in that spirit? We must either rule with the Irish or over them. But against the Bill were not only the Whigs and Conservatives, there were also some few Radicals. The majority of those who, on the Liberal Benches, were opposed to the Bill, were followers of the noble Lord or of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain), and men who occupied a frontier position between the Whigs and the Radicals. They were not, for the most part, opposed to the principle of Home Rule, but disliked some of the details of the Bill. Well, he disliked some of the details, but would vote for the Bill because it established the principle of a domestic Legislature for Ireland. Among the Radical opponents of the Bill the only one of any eminence was his right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham. His right hon. Friend had always been the object of his special admiration. He liked many of his right hon. Friend's ideas. He liked his ideas about ransom, about a progressive Income Tax, and the compulsory taking of land from the landlords to grant it to those who wanted allotments. But he was surprised to find his right hon. Friend acting the part of a Conservative jackal, and leading men into a Whig cave. He admired his right hon. Friend, but he believed that an essential element of friendship was candour. He would, therefore, be candid to his right hon. Friend. His right hon. Friend had great qualities, but these were somewhat marred by their combination, and by what the French called the "defects of qualities." His right hon. Friend had a most magnificent confidence in himself. As was said of Lord Russell, his right hon. Friend would be perfectly willing to command the Channel Fleet at a minute's notice. The intensity of this quality led his right hon. Friend to believe that nothing was good which was not inaugurated by himself. If anything was proposed by anybody else he was convinced that it was not a sound proposal. He insisted upon its being entirely altered to suit him. There were, undoubtedly, many other great men who possessed this quality. Then his right hon. Friend was sometimes very impulsive, and those who were very impulsive should "look before they leap." His right hon. Friend, however, always "leaped before he looked," without knowing where he was likely to land. He objected to anyone disagreeing with him, but said when anyone else had a proposal that "he could not compromise himself by pursuing an erroneous course." If they looked to his former position as regarded Ireland, they found that when a candidate for Sheffield he had been a Home Ruler, and in favour of the principles of Mr. Butt. During the last Parliament, although a Member of the Coercion Government, he (Mr. Labouchere) never saw him taking part in the debates. He had said himself that he was always opposed to coercion. Before the last Parliament he had a plan of Councils which went too far for some, and not far enough for others. The Irish Members, however, would not assent to it, and so it fell to the ground. But he seemed to love his child, and he was very indignant that anyone should resist his "plan" to settle the whole Irish Question. He seemed struck with horror when he heard that the Prime Minister himself had a plan, and appeared to think that the Prime Minister was poaching on his preserves. His right hon. Friend always reminded him of Moses coming down from Mount Sinai—the House would remember—when he broke the Tables of Stone. He was just as amazed at anyone not accepting his inspired plan as Moses would have been had an Israelite suggested an amendment in the Ten Commandments. He presumed he went into the Cabinet because he was a man of a certain amount of firmness, and he had an idea of being able to convert his Colleagues, who would allow him to settle the whole question. Well, they did not. Then followed his resignation, and then there was another child. Then he insisted on his resignation at once when he saw the Prime Minister's Bill. Then he was very indignant, and after he left the Cabinet modifications were made in the Bill. Why did he not remain there and discuss it? He seemed to think that any other modifications than his own were a species of monstrosity. But he stuck to his second child, gave up the Councils, and took to federation, which was a most extraordinary scheme. According to this scheme the Irish Question was to wait until the Canadians, New Zealanders, and all were asked to join in a scheme of federation. What was his view with regard to Ulster? It was difficult to understand it, for he seemed to be carrying on a sort of flirtation with the Orangemen. He had increased race prejudice and sectarian animosities, which had been the curse of Ireland, and he came within the right hon. and learned Member for Bury's (Sir Henry James's) description of the noble Lord the Member for Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill)—he was half a traitor. What was this Protestant Ulster? The whole thing was a sort of fraud as concerned this Parliament. If they excepted Belfast Ulster was not Protestant, and even including Belfast the majority of Protestants did not amount to more than 10,000. Even the Presbyterians of that Province did not wish to be separated from the rest of Ireland. Ulster returned a majority of Nationalist Members. The Representatives of the Orangemen seemed to consider themselves exponents of the whole of Ulster. But there were only about 60,000 Orangemen in Ulster, and they were mainly congregated in towns. Now, these men were, as far as he could understand, steady, sensible, practical men, law-abiding men; but once a year they were seized with a sort of erotic season. About the commencement of July to the 15th it was dangerous for a Catholic to come in their way. This was called the celebrating of the Boyne. After the 15th they became once more perfectly reasoning human beings. The religion of these Orangemen, however, was the most intolerant religion in the whole world; and in regard to their loyalty the Report of Mr. Hume's Committee showed that these exceedingly loyal men came to the conclusion that Her present Majesty was not sufficient for them, and that they wished to place the destinies of the country in the hands of that most disreputable human being, the Duke of Cumberland. Their principal Representative in that House was the hon. Member for Ballykilbeg. If they judged the intelligence, or the loyalty, or the patriotism of these Orangemen by their chosen Representative they should have an exceedingly poor opinion of them. They were threatening at present to wage war against the British Empire. He believed more arrant humbug did not exist. Did anybody suppose that if this swagger and these boasts were not simply a game of brag that these people would put advertisements in the papers asking for 20,000 Snider rifles, and for men to drill them? That was not what men did. But they might believe what they liked about what these people were doing, whether it were drilling or whether it were not. For his part, he believed exceedingly little of it. In the St. James's Chronicle he found something to the following effect from Ulster:—

It is stated that 300 London Volunteers and 100 officers are going to give up their occupations, and without pay are determined to come over as soon as possible to join the Orangemen."

Could there be greater stuff? They were told that Lord Wolseley was going over. But he was going to do nothing of the kind. These unfortunate men were buoyed up by these cock-and-bull stories. Would their Representatives think the House would be such idiots as to believe these absurd statements? But it was the same sort of swagger and boast that prevailed when the right hon. Gentleman introduced his Bill for the Disestablishment of the Irish Church. The Orangemen were then going to resist—they were in arms. Did any single man fight? Not one. They accepted what they considered the destruction of the Church of the country like lambs. He would ask his right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham whether he was going to propose the separation of all Ulster, or only part of it? In parts there was a Catholic majority; in parts the population was mixed. If the right hon. Gentleman was going to apply his proposal to the whole of Ulster, could anything more atrocious be conceived than a large Catholic Body being subject to the rule of such gentlemen as the Orange Body sent over here? As a matter of fact, the Catholics of Ireland were far less intolerant than the Orangemen. The Leader of the Party was a Protestant; the National movement had done away with all species of religious intolerance. He admitted that there was a good deal in favour of the Irish Representatives remaining at Westminster. Although hon. Gentlemen opposite, he believed, were acting in perfect good faith, he very much doubted whether their successors or the Irish nation would for a long time frankly and fairly assent to their exclusion from the Imperial Parliament. But to a very great extent that had already been conceded by the Prime Minister; and, as the right hon. Gentleman had stated, he had no fundamental objection to the Irish Members being at Westminster to discuss Imperial matters. There was reason to hope he would be able to elaborate some such scheme. The right hon. Gentleman had a perfect right to say to the right hon. Member for West Birmingham—"Tell me your plan;" and he hoped that before this debate was over they would have the plan. A heavy responsibility would lie upon hon. Members on that side who were in favour of the principle of the Bill, and who voted against it. The issue was entirely with them, and he asked them seriously to consider whether they would not be doing more harm than good to the Radical cause, and whether they would not be aiding and abetting the Conservatives, by voting against this Bill? They were going admittedly against the wishes of those who sent them there. [Cries of "No!" and "Yes!"] Let any Gentleman in the House who thought that his Liberal constituents were with him go boldly down and meet them. Even the National Federation, the creation of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, had, by an immense majority, voted for the Bill. Suppose the Bill were defeated; what would be the effect of the Dissolution? Those Gentlemen knew they would not get in again by the Liberal vote; they would have to appeal to the Tory vote. It was a scandal to the Liberal Party. Could anyone imagine anyone occupying a more contemptible position than a Gentleman sitting on the Liberal side, and yet having been sent there by Conservatives? He must either be untrue to his own Party, or untrue to those who elected him. He did not believe, however, the arrangements with the Tories would hold water. In regard to one or two of the chief Liberal seceders it would; but in most cases some wicked local Conservative would insist on standing, and they would lose the pleasure of the presence in that House of the small fry of the Cave. Now, The Times had started almost a crusade against the Bill, and from The Times' point of view The Times was perfectly right. The Times wrote some time ago, in regard to this Bill—"Mr. Gladstone's plan is invented for personal ends for a personal crisis." In entertaining such views of the Prime Minister and such views of this plan The Times was right to oppose the Bill. The Times was wild with elation at the meeting held at Devonshire House, when the right hon. Member for West Birmingham joined the Whig Party. The Times said that in the Commons there were six men—Lord Hartington, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Goschen, Mr. Trevelyan, Sir Henry James, and Mr. Courtney—who would compare favourably in point of ability and experience with any six men who might be selected out of the present Cabinet. Very likely. And in the Lords The Times said there were four or five Peers of Cabinet rank available for a Union Ministry, including Lord Selborne and the Duke of Argyll. Only fancy the right hon. Member for West Birmingham and the Duke of Argyll in the same Cabinet! The Times added that the minor administrative posts could be readily filled up. That meant that if Members were faithful to the Devonshire House alliance, a good many of them would be provided for on the Treasury Bench. Any doubts there might be of the continuance of the Hartington Cabinet were to disappear when once they became dispensers of patronage. What a contemptible thing. Some would be in the Cabinet; some would find little places on the Treasury Bench; in other words, if Members conducted themselves well, they would be paid for it. But would such a marvellous Cabinet be likely to last for very long? It was stated that the right hon. Member for West Birmingham had said there was substantial agreement between him and the noble Marquess as to the policy to be pursued; but that seemed to be denied. It appeared to be a substantial agreement to turn out the present Government, and to wait for circumstances to turn up to their advantage. If they had a plan, why did not they say so? At present they appeared to differ as widely as did the Prime Minister and Lord Salisbury. He believed in the honesty of these seceders; some were conscientiously opposed to the principle of the Bill, and some to details. The latter, at least, ought to consider whether it was not possible to come to some arrangement before they voted against the Bill. The Members of a Party ought not to wash their dirty linen in public, but ought to come to some agreement, as they had done hundreds of times before. If these Gentlemen would consider their position and the great services of the Prime Minister to the country and to the House, they would see that they owed it to themselves, to their constituents, to their Party, and to the Prime Minister to exhaust every means of coming to an understanding before destroying the Government, depriving the Prime Minister of power. He suggested that the Bill should be read a second time, and then withdrawn. ["No, no!"] He did not think hon. Gentlemen opposite would accuse Mm of being desirous that the Bill should be withdrawn; but what he was anxious to secure was the passing of the measure, and if it were found that they were unable to do that in consequence of the obstinacy or prejudice of a certain number of Gentlemen who were fully prepared to accept the principle of the Bill, and yet vote against it, he said the Irish Party gained more by accepting that arrangement. Irish Members would do well, as a matter of strategy, to acquiesce in that arrangement, because the defeat of the Bill meant a Dissolution, and no one could say at the present moment what would be the decision of the constituencies. On two occasions confident anticipations had been falsified. He should like to carry the second reading of the Bill as the recognition of the principle of a domestic Legislature for Ireland. Every day the country was more and more realizing the fact that Ireland must have a domestic Legislature. If through Liberal dissensions the Conservatives came in, they would have an instalment of Lord Salisbury's 20 years of traditional Tory policy. No doubt the Home Rule Members would do their best to resist that, and they would be assisted; but still, a bird in the hand was worth any number of birds in the bush. The Bill could be passed as a recognition of its main principle, and it would be infinitely the best to pass it as a Resolution. It was all very to fight it out; but they might be beaten. For his own part, speaking honestly, he believed the course he recommended would be the best for Ireland and for the country. But if there were a Dissolution, he believed the country, when it realized that the only alternative was Lord Salisbury's traditional policy of the Tory Party, would declare for the Bill, which carried out the traditional policy of the Liberal Party.

said, he had noticed from the opening of that debate that a great appeal had been made to hon. Members not to treat the subject before the House as a Party question. He had also noticed that the appeal came chiefly from the Tory Members of the House, and he believed in so saying that they were all the time simply playing their own Tory game. As soon as it was thought that all the birds that could be snared were snared the piping of that tune came to an end. As soon as it was thought that all the birds had been gathered into the net, the Head of the Tory Party announced to those little birds that there was no grain for them, and that the spoils of Office in the good time coming would not be for them, but for the Tory Party. He wondered what the seceders from the Liberal Party thought when they heard that announcement. He had no doubt it gave some of them a very bad quarter of an hour indeed. He wished that this question should be considered not only irrespective of Party considerations, but also of personal considerations, irrespective of personal spite, jealousy, spleen, or ambition; but he did not think that the question had been so treated in the House. With reference to the speech of Lord Salisbury, he thought that the noble Lord had spoken a little too soon. The noble Lord proposed an alternative plan to that which was before the House. They had heard in the earlier stages of the debate about a judicious mixture. They always understood that the so-called "judicious mixture" was a mixture of sweet and bitter—a mixture of concession and coercion; but the judicious mixture of Lord Salisbury was entirely different. It was a mixture of coercion and emigration; it was all bitter and no sweet. It was a judicious mixture of Kilmainham and Manitoba. The noble Lord justified all that by saying that he had no confidence in the good faith of the Irish Members, or the good faith of the Irish people. He wished to remind him and the House of Commons of an historical fact for which no Member of that House to-day was personally responsible—namely, that in all the arrangements and the Treaties made between Ireland and England, Ireland kept faith and England broke it. It was English Kings, English Princes, and English Parliaments that broke faith with the Irish nation, and not the Irish nation that broke faith with them. In the time of Charles I. the Irish people were harried, persecuted, and robbed by the Government of England for the profit of that Monarch. Negotiations were entered into by the Irish Parliament whereby, on consideration of their paying into the coffers of the King £120,000 within three years, they would get what were called certain graces. The Irish Parliament paid the first instalment of the money, and the English King put the money into his pocket and refused the graces. Who broke faith, he should like to ask, in this case? Then, again, with regard to the Treaty of Limerick. This was a Treaty made at the close of a long war which had been stiffly fought out on both sides. This Treaty guaranteed, among other things, freedom of worship for the Irish Catholics; and if it had been kept the great trouble which followed would not have occurred, and the long enmity which was bred thereby would never have come into existence. The ink on the Treaty was scarcely dry when it was violated by the King and the Parliament of England; and subsequent to that the Irish people suffered from a horrible and dreary series of penal laws and confiscations. The Treaty had hardly been concluded when into the mouth of the Shannon came reinforcements from France, which would have enabled the Irish Leaders to carry on the war, if they had been base enough to break the Treaty which they had signed. Then, the Act of Union was a violation of the solemn Treaty, entered into between the two Parliaments, whereby it was stated that the independence of the Irish Parliament was settled and ascertained for ever, and was at no time to be questioned. Then, again, one of the understandings connected with the Act of Union was that Catholic Emancipation was immediately to follow it. Catholic Emancipation was withheld for 29 years, which might seem a brief period in the history of ages; but 29 years of oppression, suffering, and persecution was a long period for those who had to endure it. He claimed, therefore, that the Irish were faith-keepers, and the taunt could not be thrown in their face that they were faith-breakers, least of all by an English Nobleman. The whole history of Ireland showed that it was Ireland kept its bargains, and that it was England that broke them. Lord Salisbury said that the Irish Representatives would not only say anything, but that they would swear anything. He charged them, not only with being liars and perjurers, but with sympathizing with all those criminal and evil doings which had occurred in their unfortunate country. But if they were such a class of men as that, why were they to be retained at Westminster for the protection of Imperial interests? They were charged with being the implacable enemies of the Empire, the irreconcilable enemies of England. If that were so, here it was, with their hands upon the springs of Imperial power, that they could, if such was their desire, on many and important and critical questions, do injury to the interests of this country and of the Empire. But were they, after all, irreconcilable enemies of England and of the British Empire? There had been, no doubt, among the Irish people hatred of British power, disaffection, disloyalty—if they would—rebellion. But he would ask hon. Members, now that they had come to give more attention than ever before to Irish history and Irish affairs, whether they were surprised that such a state of things had existed? Did they gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles? Out of oppression could they have love, affection, loyalty, devotion? Give the Irish reason to be loyal. Aye, give them even a fair excuse for being loyal. It would be hoping against hope that there could be an enthusiastic feeling of loyalty in Ireland until the arrangements between the two countries were so constituted that the Irish people could, with honour to themselves, turn their hearts to the country with which they were connected, and the institutions under which they were to live. He denied that the Irish people were implacable haters of England and of English institutions, and in saying so he was only using language which had been used over and over again by the most trusted Irish Leaders, by men who enjoyed the confidence of the Irish people, and who had suffered for the Irish cause. John Martin, who was concerned in the '48 movement, who was transported to Australia, and lived there for some years in exile, but who was afterwards Member for the county of Meath, and who had enjoyed the affection and admiration of all who knew his personal character, used these words—

"Clearly it is quite possible for Irishmen to live happily, prosperously, and honourably under the English Crown, and in connection with the English nation. Witness Canada, Australia, and the Colonies generally. The only condition required is self-government and Constitutional freedom. With Home Rule, and the National and Constitutional freedom which Home Rule would bestow on us, we might live for ages in friendly connection with our British neighbours, giving and receiving benefits from the connection."

These words were true at that time; they were true to-day; and to the same effect spoke Daniel O'Connell, Isaac Butt, and every other Leader of the Irish people each in his own time. He (Mr. T. D. Sullivan) sincerely believed that under such a measure as was proposed by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister the mass of the Irish people would be content; that ill-feeling against this country would abate; and that good feeling would grow up. They were told that that was a measure almost of separation, and that it would inevitably lead to separation; but those who said so failed to explain how, and he challenged any man to show how it could be done. He wished to know how separation was to be brought about between England and Ireland? Under the conditions of the Bill Ireland was to have no Army, no Navy; Customs and Excise were to be in the hands of the English Parliament; and he would have supposed that with such a state of things separation would be impossible, especially if the "Loyal minority" were to remain, though by that time they would probably have in Ireland a Loyal majority. If they desired, therefore, to have separation, they would have to face the Loyal Party, backed by the whole power of the British Empire. How was it to be done? Lord Bramwell, in a letter to The Times the other day, implied that that was a separatist measure, and one that would lead to separation; then by a hop, skip, and jump he went on to say—"Suppose separation effected, England would have a hostile State by its side." Well, they might, of course, suppose anything they liked; they might suppose that the cow jumped over the moon; but they could not reasonably suppose any such thing as a separation being effected under the terms and arrangements of that Bill. Moreover, the Loyal minority must have very little faith in their own virtue of constancy, because for Ireland to make the slightest progress towards separation it would be necessary that she should have a united people; and were the Loyalists all going to turn disloyal? But it was said that in the eyes of foreign nations the unity of the Empire would be impaired and its strength diminished by the passing of that measure. Well, what a spectacle to foreign nations was presented by the events of the last 86 years, during which these three United Kingdoms, as they were called, had been almost at each other's throats. They were told that at present a law which was not the law of the Parliament of the United Kingdom was more respected and obeyed than the law made by that authority. What a charming evidence that was to foreign nations of the unity of the Empire! The world could see not only that the Irish people were not united in heart and feeling with the Government of England, not only that the Representatives of Ireland were returned to the House for the one purpose of working out the liberation of their own country, but that all over the habitable globe the Irish race were in sympathy with the aspirations of their kindred at home, and contributed generously towards sustaining the Nationalist movement and carrying it to a successful issue. Again, it was alleged that the Protestant minority could not be left to what were called the tender mercies of their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, on account of the religious bigotry and intolerance of the latter. That was a base, a cruel, and an ungrateful calumny upon the Irish people, for there was not in the whole world a people with less taste for religious persecution than the Catholic people of Ireland. He could quote from a speech of the late Mr. John Martin, to whom he had already referred, and who was himself a Protestant Nationalist, in which he said that in his long political life he

"had never read a word written, or heard a word spoken, by any of the Irish Nationalists intimating a purpose to deprive persons of English descent or persons of any religion prevailing in England of their property or of equal rights as Irish citizens. In a self-governing country, and in the times in which we live, there was neither the inclination nor practically the power in any sect to wrong and persecute."

It was amazing to bear addresses by hon. Members from the North of Ireland expressing at one time these foolish fears and terrors and at the next moment a lot of ridiculous braggadocio. In an Irish Parliament the Protestants would have their share, and more than their share, of influence, place, and power; and it was only natural and a matter of plain policy, to say nothing of principle, that the Catholics should desire their Protestant countrymen to take their fair position in an Irish Parliament. Why, then, should these chimerical visions of persecution, oppression, and robbery be conjured up against them? Mr. Isaac Butt had also characterized the apprehensions of danger to Protestant liberty from an Irish Parliament as not only absurd, but as unworthy of men who were strong enough to protect themselves with their own right arms against oppression. Mr. O'Connell declared that he would rather take an Irish Protestant Parliament back again, and take the penal laws with them, than have Ireland without a native Parliament. That was no chance expression of O'Connell's, but one deliberately made and published. When there was a Protestant Parliament in Ireland it protected Irish rights, fostered Irish industry, developed Irish trade and commerce, and its liberalizing spirit was increasing every day. O'Connell presented a Petition with the signatures of 80,000 Roman Catholics in favour of the removal of the Dissenters' disabilities, and he had worked hard in this cause. On one occasion, before the Dublin Corporation, he said—

"This hand drew up a Petition in favour of the freedom of Protestant Dissenters in England. It was twice approved of by the private committee of the Roman Catholic Association, twice by the Association itself. It was afterwards carried unanimously at an aggregate meeting of Catholics in Clarendon Street chapel, where its adoption was proposed by a Carmelite friar. It was presented to Parliament with several thousand signatures, and within a few weeks after its presentation they were liberated."

Let the Protestant Dissenters of England not forget that O'Connell took an effective part in securing their liberation. He would also point out that when the Irish Protestant Church was disestablished there was not a single demonstration of triumph in Ireland that could be offensive to the ascendancy class, which then got its knockdown blow. There was no jeer or insult or vaunting over those who had thus been defeated. Nothing was done that could give offence to the Protestants. Were those the signs of an intolerant people? On the contrary, they were the signs of a fair-minded and kindly people who strove hard for justice, who did not want for themselves any ascendancy over their Protestant fellow-countrymen, but who desired to form with them a united and prosperous Irish nation. It was said that Ulster would not have this measure; but the word "Ulster" was being used most fraudulently by many persons. Under cover of this word it was attempted to convey the false impression to the English mind that the people of Ulster were practically all Protestants and Anti-Nationalists; but in five of the nine counties of Ulster the Roman Catholics preponderated, and Ulster, as a whole, had returned a majority of Nationalist Members to the present Parliament. If hon. Members looked into this point they would perceive the imposture of talking as if Ulster was united in opposition to Home Rule. It was said that "Ulster would arm" and resist. The Orangemen of Ulster said so themselves; but exactly the same sort of trash was talked by them when it was proposed to disestablish the Irish Church. He would verify this fact with a few quotations. At a meeting held in the Chapter Room of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, on the 31st of March, 1869, the senior Member for Dublin University (Mr. Plunket) said—

"We will appeal to our brother Protestants in England and Scotland and Wales in this last awful hour of our fortunes. We will call upon them not to allow these provisions to be made law to hamper our organization."

Now they must look for the thunder—

"And not to drive us again to that old kind of material and physical resistance which accompanied the first protesting of our forefathers three centuries ago, which accompanied the second protest in this Kingdom by our forefathers 200 years ago, which accompanied the glorious struggle for liberty and Protestantism of our predecessors, and was a protest in act and word which they were willing to seal with their blood in martyrdom and battle, if need be, to protest against the oppression and the slavery of a system which they could not, and should not, and which their descendants never will, submit to."

He was glad to see that the hon. Member, the "last awful hour" of whose fortunes had come many years ago, nothing the worse for it, but still smiling and radiant. At another demonstration on June 17, 1869, in Tyrone, the chairman of the meeting, a D.G.M. of the Orange Lodge—for all Orangemen were either grand or demi-grand—said that—

"They would be all ready at the roll of the drum to strike a blow for their country with their Minie rifles, as were their fathers before them."

Then, as now, they talked a great deal about the battle of the Boyne, and about arming themselves for another battle of the kind. Their talk about the battle of the Boyne was as great a fraud as their talk about Ulster. They take the whole credit of it to themselves. Why, the Irish Protestants at the battle of the Boyne formed only one-eighth of King William's Army, and as an Irishman he was almost ashamed to say that they were the least effective portion of it. Those terrible people, who were ready to fight the battle of the Boyne over and over again, were descendants of the only portion of William's Army which was routed; they were routed by the Irish Horse, and it required King William himself to rally them. The strength of King William's Army lay in the seasoned and trained troops that he had gathered from every part of Europe, and in the fact that it had a brilliant general at its head. The House would thus see that hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway took honours that did not belong to them. Then, how had the loyalty of the Ulster Orangemen been displayed? When there was a talk of disestablishing the Irish Church there was a threat that 20,000 Ulster Orangemen would hold a meeting in Hyde Park, and the only difficulty they were told in the matter was the fact that the Great Northern Railway could not find transport for them. A Protestant clergyman on the 26th of July, 1861, in a letter to The Daily Express, Dublin, recommended a deputation of the "rank, wealth, and intelligence," of Ireland to proceed to London, walking on foot through the streets, and demand admittance to the Queen's Palace in order to impress upon Her Majesty that in assenting to any measure for carrying out that proposal she would be violating her Coronation Oath—thus making out that Her Majesty would be a perjurer if she ratified an Act of Parliament. This was the language which was held by the Loyal minority of Ulster. But that was not enough to show their loyalty. This Loyal minority threatened to invade the House of Commons. He gathered from what occurred that some of their orators did not receive as patient a hearing in that House as they wished, or as the Orange Party in Ireland thought they ought to receive. The present Members of the Irish Party were not in the House then, so they could not be held responsible for what occurred at that time. The way the Ulster Representatives were treated in that House gave rise to great resentment over the way, and one of their spokesmen—the Rev. Leslie Carter—thus referred to the House of Commons—

"The Orangemen will not allow Gladstone and his crew to trample down the Protestants. They would appeal to the House of Commons to listen to the voice of Ulster. Only a Channel rolled between them."

What a fortunate escape for the British House of Commons that the Channel did roll between them and those desperate men! Their spokesman continued that—

"The Protestants of the North would march to the House of Commons, and compel their enemies to be silent whilst their Representatives were speaking."

He supposed that it would come to that by-and-bye. One of the orators of the North on this subject actually blossomed into verse. Here are some of the lines—he knew not whence they came—this orator had used—

"Our bosoms we'll bare to the glowing strife,

Our vows are recorded on high,

To prevail in the cause that is dearer than life,

Or crushed in its ruins to die."

At the time of the Disestablishment of the Irish Church even harder things were said of the Prime Minister than were said of him now. For example, one reverend gentleman called him nothing less than Maher-shalal-hash-baz. And when called upon to give the meaning of the appellation, he referred his interrogators to Isaiah, chapter 8. But a very belligerent spirit was evinced in that House at the present time by Representatives who were not ashamed to incite to civil strife. One of these Representatives always reminded him (Mr. T. D. Sullivan), when he rose to speak, of the Scriptural description of the war-horse. He referred to the Representative of North Armagh (Major Saunderson). "His neck is clothed with thunder, the glare of his nostrils is terrible, and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shoutings." He thought some excuse might be urged for some of the Orangemen who used the language to which they were now accustomed—men who were brought up in an atmosphere of suspicion and hate of their Catholic fellow-countrymen. He was amazed at the extent to which their minds dwelt upon the history of the past of strife and bloodshed. He was sure that, as far as one of those hon. Members was concerned, his dreams at night were of King William; that he imagined himself mounted on a great white horse, with his sword in hand, charging by the side of King William at the battle of the Boyne, smiting the unfortunate Papists hip and thigh. But, whatever excuse could be made for such silly speeches as they had heard from some of the Ulster Members, there were many men in this country, and in this Parliament, aiding and abetting that evil work, who had not the same excuse. No such excuse could be offered on behalf of the lively right hon. Gentleman (Lord Randolph Churchill), who, only a few weeks ago, was doing his best to educate the Tory Party up to Home Rule, but who, with the agility of a squirrel, had hopped off that branch of the tree on to another. Nor could any such excuse be urged for a cold-blooded and calculating English politician (Mr. J. Chamberlain), whom nobody suspected of being moved by religious passion, and who, though deeply committed to the principle of Home Rule, had not scrupled to give encouragement to the men who were doing their best to re-kindle the baneful fires of religious animosity in Ireland. But after all that was said and written, it was certain that the majority of hon. Members of that House agreed in the belief that something must be done for Ireland, and that the present order, or rather disorder, of things should no longer be allowed to continue. That being the general feeling, why not, he would say, in the words of the late Lord Beaconsfield, "do the thing handsomely?" Let them pass a large and generous measure which would win the hearts of the Irish people, remembering that if they should fail to win those hearts any measures which they might pass in London for the better government of Ireland would be of small avail. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) some time ago said, with reference to his scheme for National Councils—

"The notion was a very good notion. …. But it has, at the present moment, one fatal defect—if hon. Members opposite (referring to the Home Rule Members) were at any time disposed to give it their consideration they are no longer willing to do so; they reject it; and, under those circumstances, Heaven forefend that any English Party or statesman should attempt to impose that benefit upon them."—(3 Hansard, [304] 1203.)

If that was a good reason for abandoning the idea of National Councils, was it not an equally good reason for abandoning the newer project that the right hon. Gentleman had brought forward? This more recent idea of his had the same fatal defect; it was not accepted by the Irish Members, and would not be accepted by the Irish people. The measure of the Prime Minister, on the other hand, had the crowning merit of being regarded as satisfactory by the Irish race throughout the world. If that were so, he would ask hon. Members why discard it? It would not injure them, and would satisfy the Irish people. It would give peace, happiness, and quiet to Ireland. Why, therefore, could they not vote for a measure fraught with such happy promise? England had done many things of which her sons were proud. She had won victories by sea and land; but the passing of this measure would be a nobler victory than any won for her amid the thunder of her guns; and the record of it would form, not only one of the proudest chapters in her history, but one of the brightest chapters in the history of the human race. It would constitute a noble lesson to strong nations, and would leave a mark upon the sands of time which, in after years, some forlorn and trampled people seeing, would take heart again. To the winning of such a glorious victory over vain pride, over prejudice, over ancient hate, and long-continued injustice, the Representatives of Ireland now invited the Parliament and the people of England.

said, he sincerely agreed with the last speaker in the hope that they would not bring into this important question, which was a purely political one, any of the old religious animosities amongst the people of Ireland, or draw comparisons between the loyalty of Protestants and Catholics. He believed there was just as much loyalty to be found among the Catholics of Ireland, as such, as among the Protestants, and he trusted that this question would not be discredited by the exhibition of religious animosity. He went a long way with the hon. Member in his account of the wrongs of Ireland. It was not necessary for any man who felt that this Bill degraded Ireland as much as it weakened the Empire to forget the long claims which Ireland must have upon the sympathies of any Englishman who had road one single page in the many dark chapters in the history of Ireland. He would go further and say, without disagreeing with his hon. Friends around him, that the Parliament of Ireland was a sham Parliament from beginning to end, with the exception of a very few years, and that the Executive of Ireland was almost entirely English at a time when the Executive meant more and the Parliament less. He acknowledged that upon English shoulders must rest much of the responsibility for the evils from which Ireland had suffered. Moreover, a great many of those wrongs remained to the present day. One of the grossest wrongs which the people of Ireland had suffered was in connection with land; for we had crushed out the industries of Ireland, and had thereby thrown the people upon the land as their sole means of existence. He did not want to forget these things; and though we had tried in recent years to redress some of the wrongs from which the Irish people had suffered, yet something, perhaps, even worse had sprung up. Ireland had become the shuttlecock of English contending Parties. English Parties had indeed treated that unhappy country as if they were playing at a game of beggar-my-neighbour, both Parties making bids for Irish votes. He would go even further than that, and admit that long after the wrongs to which he referred—long after the memories even of the wrongs had died out—those wrongs left their mark upon the people, upon the descendants of the people who suffered them. But it might be said—"Why, if you admit all these things, do you not accept the solution of the difficulty which is offered to the country by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister?" He would tell them why. Because the present condition of Ireland, and the present feelings entertained by the people, were the result of the growth of time, and he held that it was impossible to cure the evil by means of one hazardous experiment. They could not hope to instil at once into the minds of the people of Ireland the political qualities and capacities necessary for self-government, when they had not given them the means and the opportuities for political education. Could they expect the people of a country in which the first elements of civilization were wanting—[Cries of "Oh, oh!"]—those were the words of the Prime Minister himself—he asked, could they expect such a people to enter at once successfully into the work of self-government? And, he asked, could they expect it at a time when the Land League was exercising a tyranny over people more cruel than ever King Theebaw exercised over the people of Burmah? It had been said that the democracy of England had now come into power, and would do justice. He was sure the democracy would do justice; but he denied that it was a time to cast aside Ireland. If the Bill was as just to Ireland as he believed it to be unjust, and if it satisfied their sentimental fancies, or what he believed were the material wants and necessities of Ireland, instead of degrading and impoverishing the country, as he believed it would do, he should still refuse to support it, because Ireland contained a population of only 5,000,000 out of the 300,000,000 which made up the British Empire, and he considered that the great bulk of the Empire was entitled to the first consideration. The people of this country—and he could speak especially for the working men of Lancashire—were beginning to see the immense importance of the great Imperial federation; but the unity of the Empire was not the question at all. It was the unity of the United Kingdom—the heart and centre of the Empire—that was at stake, and it was a union of which Ireland should be proud to be a member. He believed the Irishmen outside Ireland had, perhaps, done more to win the British Empire, to raise it to its present great position, and to people it, than even the English or the Scotch, and at the present moment were, perhaps, doing more to govern it. There were special reasons why Ireland should still remain side by side with England, a portion of the governing body of the Empire. One great reason was that all the Irishmen in the Empire did not reside within the limits of these Islands. Looking to the vast number of Irish centres in our Colonies, supposing the Irish Members were driven from that House, he doubted whether the Irish in the Colonies would be content to be governed by a Parliament from which the mother land was excluded. Even if the Irish in the Colonies were willing to recognize such a Parliament, he wanted to know whether the consequences would be such as to increase the number of Loyalists in our Colonies? The Prime Minister could not stop with Ireland, because this Home Rule was a solvent of almost universal application. The Prime Minister intimated his readiness to grant self-government to England, Scotland, and Wales; but to be consistent that must be followed out with regard to every country town and village. As to Scotland and Wales, he held that they had greater claims to self-government than Ireland, because Scotland had been more of an independent nation than ever Ireland was, and Wales retained its language, a great mark of national sentiment, whereas the language of Ireland was dying out every day. If Scotland and Wales had as great or greater claims than Ireland to Home Rule, and if it were claimed and conceded, a further burden of taxation must fall upon poor unfortunate England. If Scotland were to choose to claim such a Bill as this, the taxation of Scotland would be £2,500,000 less than at present; and the result would be that the whole taxation necessary to bear the burden of the Empire would fall upon England, and England alone, with the exception of a fixed amount paid by Scotland and by Ireland. This was not a state of things that England would be able to bear. Then they were told that the Bill would not lead to separation from England. He ventured to say that the very degradation that the Bill imposed upon Ireland would tend to bring about this separation. [Cheers from the Irish Members.] Well, he had heard the cheers from the Irish Members with no surprise. They cheered the statement, showing that they believed what he had said. The tone of hon. Members had lately changed in the House. No longer did they hear the snorting of the war-horse when hon. Members below the Gangway addressed the House. Now it was with "bated breath and whispering humbleness." Either hon. Members were over-acting their part, or they were too meek entirely. He wanted to know what were the present national aspirations of the Irish Members? Their tone before the General Election was very different to what it was now. He wanted to know whether, if they were to have an Irish Parliament of their own, they had been commissioned by their constituents to accept a measure like the present, with all its qualifications? They had been told that the last link between the two countries was the Crown. He would like to ask if it was not a fact that the hon. Member (Mr. T. D. Sullivan), who now presided at the Mansion House in Dublin, caused a rag with a crownless harp to wave over his official residence? Therefore, it would seem from this that the last link of the Crown had disappeared already. [Mr. T. D. SULLIVAN: I will explain to the hon. Gentleman if he will permit me.] The Bill before the House would allow Ireland to sink from being a Sister Country into the position of a tributary and vassal State. He, for one, would not allow, if he could help it, Ireland to sink from the position she held side by side with the people of England and Scotland, and to put on the old Parliamentary clothes which England had already discarded, in the shape of property qualifications for Members with taxation without representation. If the Irish Members did not represent the people of Ireland on the question of nationality, did they represent them on the question of the land, which he believed to be at the bottom of the whole of this matter? If they did not represent them on the Land Question they did not represent them on any question at all. He believed that the people of Ireland were bribed to vote for hon. Members below the Gangway by promises with regard to the land, and would they accept this Bill, which provided for the payment of a tribute to a foreign State? Anyone who had watched the current of public opinion in Ireland before the General Election must have seen that the question of the land was placed before that of nationality; and, indeed, his own opinion was that the question of the land was behind the whole difficulty in Ireland. Again, he wanted to know whether, if they represented neither a nationality nor the land, they represented that combination of different interests—the priesthood, for instance—and were commissioned to accept a Bill which said that never, under any circumstances whatever, should the Roman Catholic religion be endowed in Ireland? [Cheers.] They might cheer now, but that was not what they told their constituents at the General Election. Then, with regard to finance, what a degraded position would Ireland find herself in with three-fourths of her Revenue collected and paid to a Foreign State, with a Receiver General to receive the money, as the people were not to be trusted, just as a similar officer was appointed to receive the taxes of the Egyptian people. But not only was there to be a Receiver General, but there were to be two sets of Judges, because the Irish people could not be trusted to deal with the Revenues when collected. The hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), in, perhaps, the only speech in which he declared to having a policy at all, told the people of Ireland that he should be prepared to protect their native industries; but the Bill now before the House would not enable him to do that, because the taxes would be levied by the English Parliament, and thus the hon. Member and his Friends would be left with a grievance. The Bill would be full of grievances, and new grievances, too, that would suit the American paymaster; for the more grievances there were in Ireland the more reason and ground would there be to agitate for the final separation of the two countries. He maintained that the degradation imposed upon Ireland by this Bill, accepted as it was by the men who sat below the Gangway on totally different terms from anything they mentioned before the General Election, was a degradation which neither the people of Scotland or Wales would accept, nor did he believe that the Irish Members themselves, nor the Irish people, would accept the measure, if there was one spark of manhood among them. At present they derived every possible advantage from being connected with a free country. For these reasons, he did not believe the Bill would be permanent, and a termination of the contest. The Prime Minister was not himself, until recently, in favour of the principle of his own Bill. It would be found that by its provisions the Prime Minister was placing the people of Ireland in a garden, every tree of which was laden with forbidden fruit, and he was placing them in a garden where there was a man tempting them on to that very separation which, at the present moment, he was accustomed to deprecate. Twice in the course of his speech on!moving the second reading the Prime Minister distinctly said it was only at this moment that he was not in favour of repeal. Was not that placing a strong temptation in the way of separation before the Irish people? Besides, there was in this garden a tree of knowledge which would be more fatal to the Irish people than if they had continued their connection with the English Parliament, or than anything which was done even in the worst days of English oppression. They had learnt lessons already from Mr. Gladstone's policy in dealing with Ireland. The hon. Member for the City of Cork, in 1881, had stated that the Prime Minister would yield to the people of the Transvaal what they demanded, and that he would eat his own words. Well, that turned out to be the fact very soon afterwards, as the hon. Member for Cork had predicted. Then the Prime Minister told them that the Irish would not put up with English rule because our laws came to them in a foreign garb; but that was an argument which must fall to the ground at once when looked into. It was a most remarkable fact that, with the exception of agrarian crime, Ireland was more free from law-breaking than, perhaps, any other nation. The crime, apart from agrarian crime, committed in Ireland, was a great deal less than that committed by the Irish who lived outside Ireland. More than that, an Irishman was more amenable to English law than were either the Scotchman or the Englishman. Since the death of Lord Palmerston, an Irishman who knew his country and how to deal with his countrymen, after Mr. Disraeli had out-generalled the present Prime Minister with the English democracy, the Prime Minister had turned to the Irish democracy. In spite of his 50 years of public service, the Prime Minister had come as a novice to Irish affairs 20 years ago, and he had been less in sympathy with Ireland than with any other portion of the Three Kingdoms. Why was it that Scotland was contented, while Ireland was not? Scotland had had no more advantages given to her than Ireland had had. Some 20 years ago Ireland was becoming more and more contented. But though the Prime Minister came upon the scene at that time, he had hardly given his attention to the subject of the treatment of Ireland at all. He ought to have been the best man to deal with the matter, for he had more opportunities than any other man to make himself acquainted with the subject. He lived near to Ireland, but it seemed as if all his experience had been gathered from the Irish officials. If the Irish people had been governed as the Scotch had been governed, by their own people, the complaints that had been made would never have been put forward. When in Scotland the Prime Minister dwelt upon his connection with Scotland, in England he was a full-blooded Englishman, and when in Wales he spoke of his connection with that country; but he had never heard a speech of the Prime Minister in which he had said that he had any connection with Ireland. It would be possible for the Prime Minister to leave his home in Wales and go over to Ireland to learn the real state of affairs in that country. If Irish affairs had been managed by Irishmen, and Scotch affairs had been managed by Scotchmen, the present state of the country would be much more satisfactory than it was. The hon. Member for Glasgow, who formerly represented an Irish constituency (Mr. Mitchell Henry), had stated that within his recollection Irish Members had never been consulted on Irish legislation. The Prime Minister's main argument for the Bill was itself an insult to Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman was not willing that Irish Members should sit in that House, because there was not enough ability in the country to furnish Representatives to two Parliaments. Why had the hon. Member for Cork not disclosed what his scheme was? The present Bill, which was really a break-up of the Empire, was one of the many so-called "messages of peace" to Ireland, and would, like its predecessors, end in war, as it would hand over the government of Ireland to men who would allow no peace to subsist either between the rich or the poor in that country. Why should not the House try to satisfy Ireland as they had satisfied Scotland? Any measure which degraded Ireland as this did could not be a measure of peace to that country. He contended that this was no measure of peace that they were sending to the Irish people. Then again, they had been told that if the Bill did not pass there would be an appeal to the people. The very complaint made against the promoters of the Bill was that, when they had a legitimate occasion to explain Home Rule, they let the opportunity pass. Even more, they led the people of England, to whom they now threatened to appeal, to form an entirely opposite opinion as to what their policy was to be. He was not afraid of going before the people of Ireland; he would not be afraid to tell the people of England that the democracy just admitted to the franchise had been cajoled and deceived at the Elections by the Leaders of the Liberal Party. He was perfectly willing to go before the people and meet the cry of "Vote for Gladstone and a £50,000,000 loan"—a loan that would probably reach £150,000,000; go to the people and speak to them in plain English, without hair-splitting equivocation and empty-sounding words, such as "autonomy and coercion," meant not to enlighten, but to deceive the people they pretended to trust. Let the people know that the coercion intended was not coercion to protect the loyal and the law-abiding, but coercion by those who had defied the law, who had plundered the rich, but who were the greatest enemies the poor of Ireland ever had; coercion by men who smashed into cottages and did dark deeds under the doubtful light of the moon. Let the Government go before the people of England, and tell them they had entrusted with votes the men who had arrived at political age, and come into the heritage their fathers won for them—tell these men that they were so cowardly and unjust that they were not fitted to govern the people of Ireland. For his own part, he did not believe that the English and Scotch democracy were so unjust that they could not be trusted to deal fair and equal justice to Ireland, and every part of the United Kingdom; and if coercion were required to enforce the law they would apply it to any part of the Kingdom. What the democracy wanted was that Ireland should be bound to England and Scotland by equal laws. Let the facts be put before the democracy of England, and he had no fear of the result. If justice was to be invoked, explain that justice was interpreted as a reward for those men who had broken the laws, not justice that meant allowing fair play to honest and industrious men who minded their own business and did their daily duty—the men who were the only mainstay of law and order in any nation.

In answer to the statement of the hon. Member for Preston (Mr. Hanbury), I am free from the difficulty which some hon. Members feel, that they are called upon to deal with a question which they did not explain to their constituencies during the Election. Both at the General Election and at my reelection I stated that the time had arrived when we must give a large measure of Home Rule to Ireland, and I was returned to this House with a distinct understanding that I would promote it. The hon. Member for Preston challenges Scotchmen to explain how they can support this Bill. As a Scotchman who fully admits the vast benefits which his country has derived from the Union, I can readily explain why I have come to the conclusion that Ireland should be separately treated. Scotland preserved by the Union all the institutions which were peculiarly national. Her own system of law and Courts of Justice were maintained. Her much-cherished Presbyterian form of worship was made the State form of faith. Her parochial schools and her four democratic Universities, so unlike those of England, were included in the Articles of the Union, And in spite of it, or rather by it, Scotland is as much a nation now as when the Union Act was passed. Every attempt to weaken her distinct nationality has been indignantly repelled. I am old enough to recollect how profoundly Scotland was agitated when the Royal Arms were altered, and when the Lion of Scotland was removed from the dexter to the sinister side of the shield. How different was the Union of Ireland with Great Britain! That was carried against the wish of the entire people. This House received Petitions against it signed by 707,000 persons; while only 3,000 could be got to petition in its favour. And when it was effected, by the unworthy means which every person knows, the English Government proceeded to Anglicize Ireland by centralized bureaucratic government. An ascendant Protestant Church had long existed, and had been in conflict with the Catholic faith professed by the great bulk of the people. Our policy of Protestant ascendancy prevented the recognition of nationality, so that the centralized Government necessarily proceeded on English ideas. Fox protested against this, but he was unheeded. His words are warnings to us still—

"I would have the Irish Government regulated by Irish notions and Irish prejudices; and I am convinced that the more she is under Irish Government, the more she will be bound to English interests."

Alas! we were deaf to these wise words; and, though we have in good faith tried to govern Ireland according to our English ideas, we have failed to Anglicize the country, and now her suppressed nationality is the main spring of our troubles. Disorder and discontent existed before the Union; since then disloyalty has been added. The disorders generally arose from agrarian causes. The discontent was mainly due to our abominable fiscal and penal laws, which crushed Irish trade and commerce, and prevented Irish Catholics from the exercise of civil and religious liberties. But, in spite of this discontent, disloyalty to England did not appear till towards the close of last century. When Ireland was denuded of troops by the wars in which England was so frequently engaged, the Irish Parliaments voted men and money in her aid, and the people took no advantage of her weakness. In the Scotch Rebellions of 1715 and 1745, in the long war ending 1763, Ireland was conspicuously loyal. In 1759, when France made such great preparations for a descent on Ireland, the Roman Catholics aided the English Government, and the City of Cork was especially loyal. The Volunteer movement had a political purpose to secure Parliamentary Government for Ireland, and was as much supported by Protestants as by Catholics. But it was not disloyal to England. When Grattan, backed by the Volunteers, moved an independent Parliament in 1782, his words were thoroughly loyal to the connection with England. He then said—

"The Crown is one link, the Constitution another. You can get a King anywhere; but England is the only country with whom you can participate a free Constitution."

These words were not disloyal. Disloyalty became pronounced towards the end of the century, when Fitzgibbon and Beresford persuaded the King to recall Lord Fitzwilliam, and break Pitt's promises to the Catholics. The dragon's teeth were sown in the Rebellion of 1798. Ever since 1800, either open and defiant rebellions, or veiled insurrections, have sprung up every few years, with the same regularity as epidemics of small-pox. They have been easily suppressed, and we have learned by experience that Ireland can be kept down by force. Fox knew that in 1797; but he thought the game not worth the candle then, and it certainly is not worth it now. Fox said what many of us think in our hearts at the present hour—

"I am not afraid, but I would rather see Ireland totally separated than kept in obedience by force."

There are great historians now living, and at least one English Judge, humane men, and personal friends of many of us, who write history as if they believed that a diluted Cromwellian system is best fitted for the government of Ireland. Not literally of course; not by the massacre of whole towns, or by the deportation of rebels to the Plantations, but by a firm enforcement of exceptional laws, and by the rigorous punishment of evil-doers. Even among ourselves there are men who are not ashamed to say that force is the best government for Ireland, and that suspensions of the Habeas Corpus, Crimes Acts, even martial law, are legitimate means of governing Ireland. They forget the warning of Milton—

"Who overcomes by force,

By force hath overcome but half his foe."

A wise physician does not use violent remedies to cure disease. He tries to discover the origin of bad humours in the body, and he applies alteratives to the constitution, for he has learned by experience that even if he apply the red-hot cautery to a sore, it will break out in other parts of the body. Government by force is a comprehensible policy if consistently and rigorously applied. The great Tory physician, the Marquess of Salisbury, has given what he calls the true recipe for governing Ireland. The dose is certainly a powerful one, for he states it to be 20 years of strong government, followed by ameliorative medicines of local government, and dropping of the Coercion Acts. But if, as thus enunciated by the Marquess of Salisbury, force applied by a firm and consistent Government, backed by Coercion Laws, be the true policy for governing Ireland under the Union, each one of our ameliorative Acts has been a mistake, for it has weakened our powers of applying force with effect. A policy of force was much more easy of application when there was a dominant Protestant Church, or when Catholics laboured under civil and religious disabilities. The Disestablishment of the Church and the bestowal of equal rights on the Catholics have served the righteous cause of justice, but have lessened your powers to govern by force. Coercion was more easy when the Protestant rulers formed the educated, and the Catholics formed the ignorant class. When I first visited Ireland in 1842, though there were 500,000 children at school, the survival of the Penal Code was still seen in a residue of the population of 4,000,000 of people who could neither read nor write, and of 1,500,000 who could read but not write. Now you have a population through which education is much more diffused. They can and do read their national papers, and they are less easily than formerly governed by force. Our recent Acts—the extension of the franchise, the vote by ballot, the redistribution of seats, the new relations established between landlords and tenants, are all measures which have lessened your power of governing Ireland by force. You may by conquest overrun a country and suppress its liberties if your power be sufficient; but who ever heard of a free country, acting on a Constitutional basis, contemplating the possibility of governing an enfranchised nation by force? Parliament, no doubt, acted from the highest motives and the deepest convictions when it gave these increased liberties to the people of Ireland, and it is not now likely that it will ever consent to suppress the liberties thus freely given. But their exercise is inconsistent with continued government by coercion or exceptional laws, and no doubt the late Government felt this when it determined not to re-enact them. All our measures of amelioration have been gigantic mistakes if for the future there is to be no policy except that of force for the government of Ireland. You deny that such is your intention; but what alternatives have been suggested in our debates that have a chance of meeting a demand for Home Rule? My right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain) at one time thought that National Councils might suffice; but he has abandoned that opinion. O'Connell suggested the same idea in 1843; but the great Liberator found no encouragement then, and it is no use suggesting it now. The right hon. Member for West Birmingham admits that himself. My right hon. Friend the Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan) is in favour of local government, not in 20 years like the Marquess of Salisbury, but immediately. This sort of dignified vestrydom is the beginning and end of his concession to the national demands of Ireland, because he declines to trust to the Irish people an Executive, as he thinks law and order should be the duty of English government. I admit that there is an anomaly in offering Parliamentary government to a people who have not been trained by good local institutions to govern themselves. We were fully warned at the time of the Union that the extension of local government was a corollary of that Act; but the warning was unheeded. Lord Clare, whom hon. Gentlemen opposite are fond of quoting, in his famous speech on the Union, used these words—

"If you do not qualify the mass of your people for the employment of sober liberty, you will never teach them to appreciate the blessings of it."

But the Union was followed by centralized government, and the people were not taught to govern themselves. Another Irish statesman, Grattan, who knew the people better than Fitzgibbon, used words with the same meaning—

"You can only combat the wild spirit of democratic liberty by the regular spirit of organized liberty, such as may be found in a limited Monarchy and a free Parliament."

Eighty-six years have passed, and we are not one inch forward in the good government of Ireland. No doubt many grievances have been removed, but the political hatred of the Irish for our centralized form of English government is as keen as ever. Even the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington) denounces our system of Castle government. Can anyone say that it has largely benefited the social condition of the Irish people? There is no doubt that they are better clad and better housed; but I hesitate to say that they are, on the whole, better fed than they were when the potato blight struck the country in 1846. But then there were 8,295,000 people in Ireland, and there are now only 5,000,000. A Government cannot point to such depopulation as an evidence of good government. At that time I became intimately acquainted with the state of Ireland, because my distinguished friend Sir Robert Peel, then Prime Minister, sent me over to correspond with him as to the probable effects of the coming famine. What ought the English Government to have done after that terrible event and consequent depopulation? We ought in consequence of that famine to have done our best to reform the Land Laws, and to teach the lessened population how to increase the products of the soil. For it is true now, as it was then, that farming is the staple industry of Ireland. But if you look all round, and not to exceptional districts, the state of the agriculture of Ireland is in a melancholy condition. No doubt the pressure of foreign competition has acted upon Ireland as it has done upon Great Britain, and has forced large tracts of arable land to be converted into pasture, and by this change live stock has largely increased. The right hon. Member for the Sleaford Division of Lincolnshire (Mr. Chaplin) boasts of this increase as evidence of agricultural prosperity in Ireland. But, after balancing the loss of corn crops by the increase of live stock, the result is that the production of food in Ireland is so much less that 2,000,000 of people less could be fed by the products of the soil than was the case 30 years ago. The change of crops has also taken place in Great Britain; but the aggregate food of the people has been maintained. It is a noticeable fact that, while the produce of food per acre of all kinds of crops in Great Britain is not deteriorating, the produce of land for every crop except hay in Ireland is falling in an alarming way. In 1845, and for many years before the Famine, the average produce of potatoes in Ireland was between six and seven tons per acre, and that is the average produce in Great Britain at the present day. But in Ireland it has fallen to 3¼ tons per acre, or less than one-half. In other crops the same melancholy reduction of produce has occurred. Thus, though turnips are more freely grown in Ireland than formerly, the average produce per acre is only 12½ tons, while in Great Britain it is 15 tons. In Ireland mangold produces 13¼ tons per acre; in Great Britain 18 tons. Cabbage, flax, and other kinds of produce show the same deteriorating condition. Cattle alone show an increase—a steady increase—for about 15 years, and now it is stationary. Sheep have declined largely; but so they have in this country. The hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) was quite right in saying that the export of live stock to this country, though it brings back much needed money to Ireland, is not a permanent source of prosperity to the nation. For they carry with them much of the material value of the soil which can only be compensated by a large import of foreign manure. But this import, in the case of Ireland, is ridiculously small. The deduction from these facts is that the staple industry of Ireland is in an unsound condition, and that the disturbed condition of the people under our government has failed to maintain prosperity in the staple industry of the country. Let us turn to the state of manufactures in Ireland. For a time we did terrible damage to their rising manufactures, which we ruthlessly stamped out by cruel protective laws in favour of England, and by prohibition of exports to foreign parts. When these laws were repealed, manufactures rose again by leaps and bounds; and the hon. Member for East Mayo graphically described how prosperous Ireland became under Grattan's Parliament. But he was wrong in ascribing their rapid extinction entirely to the Act of Union of 1800. There was a much more potent cause than this at work. Steam engines applied to cotton and woollen manufactures were introduced at the end of the century, and handloom weavers had to give way all over the Kingdom. But there was this difference. The men and children employed in these industries in Great Britain were gradually absorbed into the factories which rapidly arose by new capital invested. But in Ireland the Union did not promote peace and tranquillity, and capital refused to go to Ireland. The growth of manufactures is, however, most important to draw off pressure upon land, and they are necessary factors for the prosperity of a nation. We are responsible for the good government of Ireland; but we have failed to produce peace and contentment among the people, and industrial capital will not embark on a sea of political troubles. Yet even in Ireland there is capital in abundance if there were security for its investment. There is nothing in the insular position of Ireland, or in the industrial habits of the people, to prevent Ireland from becoming a manufacturing nation, except that England cannot govern it, and fails to preserve public tranquillity. Ireland naturally has advantages which Switzerland, Holland, and Norway do not possess, and yet they are active manufacturing countries. The coal fields of Ireland are not large, but still 200,000,000 tons are available, while not above 1,000 men are employed in winning it. She has abundant iron ore, though it is not close to the coal. Switzerland has neither the one or the other, and is separated by mountain barriers from countries which supply these essentials of industry. Ireland is indented by the sea, and is close to the coal fields of Scotland and Wales, and coal is cheaper in all its parts than it is in London and its surrounding industrial towns. But in most parts of Ireland, except the North, manufactures are miserably represented. Switzerland, in spite of complete absence of raw material, meets us in every market of the world; Ireland, in three out of four of her Provinces, is content to rest on the produce of her soil. For Switzerland has a contented population governing itself by freely elected Executives, while Ireland chafes at our English rule, and refuses to be tranquil under it. We have failed by our system of government to give that contentment to the population which is necessary to give prosperity to agriculture, or other forms of productive industry. Why has our education, founded in 1833, not produced better results? That system was a mixed one, the schools being for all creeds, and has been generously supported by large annual Votes from Parliament. But it failed to secure the hearty confidence and co-operation of the Roman Catholics. And what does the last Census indicate as the result? That still 41 per cent of the people of Ireland above five years of age cannot read and write. In the Province of Connaught more than one-half, or 53 per cent, are in this state of lamentable ignorance. The State is only justified in spending so much money on education on the ground that it forms good productive citizens, and keeps men out of the prison and the workhouse. That has been the result of 16 years' national education in England; has it produced a like result by 53 years' experience in Ireland? Compare the prisons in the two countries, not as regards crime, for that, until recent years, used to be less in Ireland than in England, but as regards the education of prisoners. In England only 3·3 per cent of the male and 4½ per cent of the female prisoners read and write well. In Ireland no less than 51½ per cent, or more than one-half of the male prisoners, and 31½ per cent of the females are thus well educated. In England education fits men to keep out of prison. In Ireland it seems to fit men to go into prison. In the cotton factories of Lancashire there are 250,000 Irish operatives, but there is not one Irish employer of labour. This is not the case in the United States, or in our Colonies, where we find Irishmen, especially those of the second generation, among the most skilled workmen, rising not only to responsible positions, but also constantly among the inventors who take out patents for improvements in industries. The fact is, our system of education in Ireland, based on our English ideas, has hitherto been a literary education in which neither the hand nor eye is trained. The Christian Brothers in these schools have been doing something in this direction, and thus pupils are more fitted for domestic manufactures. Cottage employments like those which in recent years have been so largely founded in the Grand Duchy of Baden, and which have emptied their workhouses and prisons, are especially adapted for Ireland, for they create a population which is readily absorbed into factories when these arise. If we let the Irish manage their own education in their own way, we may rest assured that a future generation of Irish will not be mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, but will take that position in labour which they do in America and in our Australian and other Colonies. In all branches of Irish education we have failed by insisting upon imposing English ideas. In higher education we have failed as dismally as we have in regard to the elementary schools, for we have insisted that Roman Catholics should be educated on a mixed system in the Colleges. This we did in spite of ample warning. Fitzgibbon, when Member for Dublin University in Grattan's Parliament, recommended that Roman Catholics should be educated in diocesan schools, and then pass into Trinity College under their own Divinity Professors. The Provost of Trinity, Hely Hutchinson, coincided with these views. But the English Government, as usual, ignored Catholic wishes, and gave them mixed Colleges as they had given them mixed schools, and the Roman Catholic hierarchy became hostile to the higher as they were to the lower education. Then the Conservative Government, answering again in English accents to the demand for a Teaching Catholic University, accorded a sort of Chinese Examining Board which they called the Royal University. In all these duties of Government, whether to promote agriculture, manufactures, or education, Englishmen have wished to act wisely and liberally. They have failed because they have never touched the heart of the Irish people, never sympathized with them, never understood them. And we may well comprehend how an historian like Alison, who had no sympathy with the Irish, should sum up the results of our rule in these melancholy words—

"Conquest has failed in producing submission, severity in enforcing tranquillity, indulgence in awaking gratitude."

And yet many hon. Members on both sides of the House wish to go on with the dreary treadmill of our English system of government! You have before you the significant fact that five-sixths of the Representatives of Ireland desire a domestic Government of the Irish by the Irish. You have the important fact, minimize it as you will, that the whole hierarchy of priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church, although they long stood outside the political agitation for Home Rule, have now joined it. Yet you declare that the demand is not national. The Conservatives have among them a small but able number of Irish Members who support this denial. They represent faithfully the opinions of that minority which has long approved and supported the English rule. They have aided England for centuries to rule or misrule Ireland. But now a large section of the Liberal Party have lost faith in their political sagacity, and a responsible Government has brought forward a plan for governing Ireland by a majority representing the wishes of the largest portion of the people. Yet there are scarcely expressions strong enough, at least outside this House, to denounce our convictions as insincere, and our project for its absurdity and enormity. Have Irishmen no talent for Parliamentary Government? Imperfect as were their Parliaments under Poyning's Law, and absurd as was Grattan's Parliament, if viewed as a true representation of the people, still the names of Grattan and Flood, Fitzgibbon, Plunket, and Curran show that Irish Parliaments can produce great Parliamentarians. Without going back to the many distinguished Irishmen in the last 100 years who have aided in our debates, we know that the National Party opposite are skilled in debate and in Parliamentary tactics. It is true that they have displeased this House by obstructive tactics. Personally, I can have no motive for lessening the severity of your judgment upon their Parliamentary tactics, for they made life a burden to me, when it was my duty, as Deputy Speaker and Chairman, to support Order in debate. But still we must all admit that their tactics were worked well and with a set purpose. They were not new, for they were precisely the same as those used with such effect in the Irish Parliament of 1771, when every question was debated for hours after midnight. Members who can use Parliamentary Forms and Procedure with such effect to prevent legislation which they hate will readily adapt themselves to promote legislation which they love. No one asserts that if you give Ireland a Parliament and an Executive Government there will be no mistakes in its working. Probably there will be as many errors—there can scarcely be more—in the new system of government as those committed by the English Executive in its long connection with Ireland. But responsibility in the exercise of power is a marvellous improver of government, when under the open criticism of the people. Errors in government by the Irish will be more readily forgiven than in government by the English. Many in this House consider it madness to send to the new Parliament in Ireland men who have set up a Government ruled by an Association instead of by the Executive of the Queen. Well, we have had to do like things in other parts of the Empire before, and they resulted in singular success. The Provinces of Canada were excited into actual open rebellion by a party of men who assumed to themselves the title of the "United Empire Loyalists," a title of evil omen that some Ulster men seem to desire to revive. The rebel Papineau, a Catholic in the Lower Province, was condemned to death, and a Presbyterian—Lyon Mackenzie—in the Upper Province had the temerity to offer a reward of £500 for the body of the Governor General. Both these men headed open rebellion; but both men soon afterwards became trusted Members of the Legislature, and helped to bring peace and contentment to Canada under a Government trusted by the people. The Nationalists have not yet been driven to open rebellion; and if you trust those in whom the people have trust you are not likely to be disappointed. I understand the opposition to this Bill by the Conservative Party opposite. They wish to keep the Act of Union as it is, and believe that they can govern Ireland on its present system by a firm enforcement of the law. Yet what is the existing form of Union which they so dearly love? Does it consist in the strength of our United Parliament? No doubt that was formed by a very solemn Act; but it was not one whit more solemn or binding than the Acts of 1782 and 1783, by which Grattan's Parliament was created, and which was declared to be for ever inviolable. In what consists the inherent strength of this United Parliament? It contains 86 Irish Members banded together to obtain a domestic Legislature for Ireland, and determined, till they do so, to use their power in order to thwart all useful legislation for Great Britain. Truly, you cannot call the existing Parliament a strong and united Legislature, when you have an Irish garrison in your citadel with the avowed purpose of forcing it to capitulate. But perhaps the strength of the Union rests in the extra-Parliamentary support which you find in Ireland. If that exist, it is strange that 25,000 soldiers and 12,000 armed constables are required to keep up the courage of the supporters of the Union in Ireland. A true Union between different parts of the Kingdom should rest in the love and sentiment of its different peoples. But in Ireland political hatred to the Government of England embitters those genial and kindly feelings which the Irish have in an eminent degree. And because we try to preserve the Union on this basis you tell us, not in this House, because we are here to defend ourselves, but in excited meetings outside, that we are traitors to the Empire and desire separation. You say now that there are two nations in Ireland. They certainly did not exist last century, when Protestant Irish Parliaments existed. To their honour, they then tried to obtain equal rights for the Catholics and freedom of trade for the whole country. In the Volunteer movement, were not the Ulster Protestants conspicuous in the support of the claims for national autonomy? When the Act of Union was passed there were not more than 3,000 men in all Ireland who could be got to sign Petitions for the destruction of this autonomy. And now there are two nations. What a libel upon the Act of Union is this disintegration into two nations! If this libel on the Union be true that there are two nations in Ireland, I fear we must add a third nation which must be taken into account—the Greater Ireland beyond the seas. It has been my lot in recent years to make frequent visits to the United States. I know the passionate feeling which prevails among Irishmen to obtain Home Rule for their country. You who deny nationality for Ireland should go to America and see for yourselves the patriotism which exists there, and the many sacrifices which are made to win for Ireland a Government by the Irish. And those mistaken, rather than wicked, men who talk of armed resistance in Ulster will better think of the third nation of Greater Ireland, that could easily be drawn into violent measures. We who in our hearts and conscience believe that autonomy for Ireland will produce peace and contentment to all parts of it, and will promote the unity of the Empire, are stigmatized as traitors to the United Kingdom. Not, I believe, by any of our Colleagues on this side of the House, for though a few of them differ from us in wishing to preserve the Act of Union, they admit that our motive is to secure a greater unity by acting on the hearts and sympathies of the Irish. We believe that these are stronger bands of Union than any which you can devise by Acts of Parliament; and if you remove the causes of political hatred which prevail, you add to the unity and prosperity of our great Empire. I believe that the Irish themselves would adapt to such a Union the words of a song well known in another land—

"The union of seas—the union of lands—

The union of States none can sever;

The union of hearts, the union of hands,

And the Flag of the Union for ever."

Let me turn to the opponents of the Bill on this side of the House—and they are many—who do not share the opinion of the Conservative Leader that repressive government must be continued in Ireland for 20 years to fit her for ameliorative measures. They desire to introduce reforms in domestic government quickly, and in that they are more in accord with us than with the Conservatives. Yet, strangely enough, they intend to go into the same Lobby to enable the Tories to reject this Bill, both on its leading principle and in its details. That principle is plain and simple, and to it every detail is subordinate. It is that, as England has failed to govern Ireland—well, we must allow Ireland to be governed by the Irish in all that relates to her domestic affairs. The noble Marquess the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington) is not far from accepting that principle, for he has denounced the English Government of the Castle, and is prepared to alter it fundamentally. We do not yet know his plan; but it certainly cannot be that he abandons centralized English Government for a decentralized English Government. He must, therefore, share with us in some sense or other the view that the Irish are to govern themselves, though, probably, not by a Statutory Parliament. Well, he may have 20 or 30 Members who join with him in the belief that local government will still suffice under an Executive which is not to be the Castle, but some better form of government; and, no doubt, his well-known talents will enable him to invent some form of government that will be altogether subordinate to the Imperial Parliament. But this is not the motive which will carry many Radicals into the Lobby with him. Some of them object to this Bill because they think that it is not based on the true spirit of democracy. They detest the high property qualifications given for the election of the first Order, and they dislike the inclusion of Peers into that Order. They especially abominate, as my right hon. Friend the Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan) does, the buying out of the landlords with English money, while the noble Marquess the Member for Rossendale thinks that a necessary corollary of this Bill if it passes. Some dislike the Bill because Irish Members are excluded from this House; others because we have yielded and intend to keep them for certain purposes. There is every probability that if, instead of a Bill such as this, a Resolution affirming the principle of Home Rule for Ireland were offered to the House, not 30 Members would go into the Lobby from this side of the House against it. In their dislike to the Bill many Members of the most divergent opinions cohere, just as wet sand coheres under pressure. But when this is dried by the hot breath of the constituencies, this coherent mass will fall into its constituent grains, and there will be no Party left of consistence and coherence except the Tory Party, with its declared policy of suppressing the National League and governing Ireland by force. Has that Party realized the strength of democratic feeling not only in Ireland, but in Great Britain? When a Democracy has supreme power they put down riots and disorder, more rigorously than a Monarchy—as witness the draft riots in New York during their National War, or the recent Socialist outbreaks at Chicago. But the Tory Party will find by experience that the democratic constituencies of this country will not allow them to govern an enfranchised nation by force. The Government have offered their plan based on autonomy for Ireland, and they stand on the principle contained in it. I do not disguise the great difficulties of our task. There are mixed races in Ireland, and differences of faith embittered by centuries of strife and wrong-doing. But these difficulties have existed in other countries, and have been overcome. They were once as great in Scotland. They have been greater in Holland and in Switzerland. They have not been small in Germany. I believe that conferring automony on Ireland, so far from repealing the Union between Great Britain and Ireland, will cement that Union by making the material interests and sentiments of the two countries identical. You know that Burke has the kernel of truth in many of his speeches and writings. I end my speech, if you will allow me, by a short extract from his letter to Pery—

"You are now beginning to have a country. I am persuaded, when that thing called a country is once formed in Ireland, quite other things will be done than were done, whilst the zeal of men turned to the safety of a Party, and whilst they thought its interest provided for by the distress and destruction of everything else."

Sir, the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down began his remarks by referring to the very great success which Scotland has had during its connection with England; but I could not help calling to mind, while he was praising the system under which Scotland has flourished, that he was, in the last Parliament, most earnest and persistent in resisting the desire we have to increase our own powers of self-government. My right hon. Friend said that that was because he was quite satisfied with what we already possessed. I do think it is a little inconsistent on the part of the right hon. Gentleman to advocate this principle now, seeing that he was most persistent in resisting what we were asking for and fighting for in this House at the time I refer to without any success whatever. The words which the right hon. Gentleman then used appear to me to have been almost as prejudiced as those with which he commenced his speech this evening, because he expressed the opinion that the great majority of the Members of this House were agreed as to the substance of the Bill, and that it was only about its details that there was any dispute amongst the Liberal Party. I am one of those who think that the Liberal Party did not find its principles for the first time on the 8th of April last; and although we have had several references to Fox and Grey, as well as other statesmen of rather early date, I know that my hon. and right hon. Friends on these Benches and in other parts of the House have been absolutely unable to find out a single Liberal statesman who has held Office in this country since the Union became an accomplished fact and has been in favour of a Repeal of the Union. We are taunted, I know, with being Liberal dissentients, and with deserting our Party; but I think, on the contrary, that the Liberal Party and the country owes a debt of gratitude to the noble Marquess the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington), who was not afraid, in rather difficult circumstances, to stick to his guns, and to show that he had some faith in Liberal principles, and that it was not a right and proper state of things that the Liberal Party should hold one creed up to the time when they took Office, and then, turning their back upon all the principles they had professed, go in for Home Rule in Ireland. Sir, there has been an entire break in the traditions of the Liberal Party. It is not necessary to go back to Pox and Grey, for they lived in very different times and under very different conditions from the present. One hundred years ago Charles Fox was the favourite of the Manchester manufacturers, because he stood up against Pitt in favour of high duties and Protection; and Lord Grey, just as much as any other Liberal statesman, was opposed to the Repeal of the Union after it had become an accomplished fact. That section of the Liberal Party which has seceded from Liberal principles in supporting this Bill is not merely departing from the traditions of one section of the House; they are departing from principles once common to early Liberals and early Radicals, with whom there had never been any question as to the Repeal of the Union; and the same may be said of Gentlemen who represented the Conservative or Tory Party. These hon. Gentlemen have not only gone back on the traditions of the Liberal Party; they have gone back on the traditions of the British nation. They have taken a line which, up to the 8th of April last, was absolutely new; and I ask them once more to cite a single instance of a statesman in this House having, up to that date, pronounced in favour of the Repeal of the Union. I remember that the hon. Gentleman opposite the Member for one of the Divisions of Liverpool, the President of the National League in Great Britain (Mr. T. P. O'Connor), made a speech on a former occasion; his language was prophetic, but certainly interesting; and he said that in four or five days the Prime Minister would make his speech, and that by the time the right hon. Gentleman sat down the Repeal of the Union would be an accomplished fact, and that not all the powers of earth could bring it back to life again. I quite agree with hon. Gentlemen who say that there is a great difference in the tone of hon. Members sitting below the Gangway opposite; but I think that, although their tone has changed, their demands have not been changed at all; and for that I respect them. They are now demanding the same thing as they did all through the last Parliament—the same policy of a separate Parliament and a separate Government for Ireland; and that is the policy which we have denounced in this House and throughout the country. It is not on a question of details that hon. Members around me are opposed to the Bill; it is that we object to the policy of setting up a separate Parliament and a separate Executive for Ireland. To say that the question is one of details, I think, is really unfair and illusive; and when we are asked by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen here and there to vote for the second reading, and are told that we shall only be doing this, that, or the other, I reply that we vote on the second reading of the Bill as we have it; we know what it is, and how it has been advocated through the country during the Recess by official persons, and with very little success on the whole. What they have been advocating is not this or that portion of the Bill, but the Bill as a whole. In answer to the challenge of the right hon. Gentleman below me that there are few Members on the Liberal side of the House who are against the principle of the Bill, I say that there are very few persons in this House, or even outside it, except those of the official class, who can say much for the scheme as a whole. I look to that part of the House where the Prime Minister might be expected to find his strongest support, and I find that there this scheme is objected to by three out of four of the Members who sit there. ["No, no!"] I have read the speeches delivered on this question throughout the country, and I have not seen the Land Purchase Bill advocated in the speech of any Radical Member, and that is inseparably connected with the present measure; and when I come to consider the other portion of the scheme—the Home Rule portion—supported by some hon. Members sitting in that part of the House, I cannot but call to mind the elaborate provisions introduced for the purpose of providing that if it should become an Act it cannot be altered or repealed without the consent of the Representatives from Ireland. But this policy upon which we are invited to enter is a policy which affects Great Britain as well as Ireland; and I say that Members representing Great Britain ought to be consulted, and that we ought to attach weight to their opinions as well as to the opinion of the Members from Ireland. British Members, by an immense majority, would decide in favour of maintaining the Union; and I say that, considering the way the matter has been brought before us and before the country, it would be an outrage on the rights of British electors if the Union were repealed without the consent of the Representatives of the people of Great Britain. Of course, we know that the special point of keeping Irish Members in this House is considered a matter of the greatest importance; and feeling strongly, as I do, that the supremacy of the Parliament at Westminster should be preserved, I yield to none in wishing that that representation may be continued. But that would be introducing a provision which would make this a new Bill. I do not complain of Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench for not at once undertaking to make this change; I think it right that they should have declined to commit themselves to a provision of the kind, because, as I have said, it would make the measure a new one. If we were to take the Bill plus the 103 Irish Members, we should be making an absurdity of the whole thing; and if that had been proposed in the first instance, I can, for my own part, hardly believe that the Bill would have received a first reading in this House. But that question is important, because, as has been pointed out, especially by the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain), that the admission of the Irish Members is the sign and mark of the retention of Imperial supremacy on the part of this House. I know that my hon. Friend the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Bryce) contended the other night that the supremacy of the British Parliament, in which there would not be a single Irish Representative, with reference to the future was maintained; but he could only arrive at that conclusion by saying that Clauses 24, 37, and 39 of the Bill were nothing more than honourable obligations, and that they had not the force and weight of law. Well, but these are the clauses on which the independence of the future Irish Parliament is to rest. I can only say that we are not arguing the point before the Judges; all we want is to make it plain as to whether the British Parliament shall be supreme and the Irish Parliament subordinate. Then we say it is not to argue upon the exact meaning of words as they stand, but that words ought to be introduced into the Bill to make the matter absolutely clear. There are many points from which this Bill may be looked at—there is the religious point of view, the landowning point of view, and the trading point of view; but I, for my part, and a large number with me, regard it mainly from a national point of view. Important as are these essential interests, the great questions for us to consider are whether we are to remain as one nation in the face of Europe and of the world, and whether we are to stand together like one nation in the face of a hostile and dangerous attack? I know that some Irish Members will say that Ireland will be nothing but a source of weakness to Great Britain. I do not believe that. I know that we have had trouble, and I know that we may have it again; but, after all, Irishmen have shared many dangers with us, and I am convinced will do so again. I believe much in the policy of those statesmen who have tried to unite, and not to separate, the two peoples; who tried to redress grievances, but abating not one jot in their determination to maintain the unity of the Kingdom as a whole. That is the view which we have all held; but here a new departure is made, and I think hon. and right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Benches should come forward and show reason for the change. There are no reasons now in favour of it which were not equally good reasons two months ago; yet when some led the country to expect that the Prime Minister was about to adopt a policy of separate government in Ireland they were denounced, as I myself was, for supposing that the Prime Minister would adopt an impossible policy which no statesman in his senses would think of following. Finally, I say that we, and those who think with us on this question, are endeavouring to preserve that policy to which we Liberals have been attached. Let us not change it without seeing some reason for it; let us maintain this nation intact, and when the time comes for others to take over the government of the country, let it be one that presents to the world a united front.

At this early hour of the morning I must ask the House to grant me their indulgence for a few minutes that I may bring before them a question of some importance. I say a question of some importance, because some Members of the House may not be aware that the Charities and Endowed Schools of Great Britain, taken as a whole, have an income sufficient to defray the expenses of the entire education of the country. I particularly wish to draw the attention of the House for a moment to the Charities in the City of Lichfield. I have here a Blue Book—a Report of the Charity Commissioners of some 64 years ago. At that time there were 61 Charities in the City of Lichfield, and since then the circumstances connected with the Charities have very little altered. Only the other day Lowe's Charity, one of the richest of these Charities, came before the Commissioners for a new scheme; and the Charity Commissioners, in their wisdom, introduced a scheme which I, as the Representative of the Lichfield Division of Staffordshire, at the urgent request of the working classes of Lichfield, resisted, because it did not provide for the election by the ratepayers of that city of a certain number of representative Governors. I asked Her Majesty's Commissioners to go so far as to grant that one-half of the Governors or Trustees, or whatever they are called, should be elected directly by the ratepayers, who are interested in this Charity. The Charity Commissioners declined to accede to my request. They proposed that of the 12 Trustees seven—the majority—should be co-optative, thus continuing the rotten system of self-election, a system which is certainly not fit for this century; and that the other five, whom the Commissioners were pleased to call representative Trustees, should be elected by the Town Council. Now, I put it to hon. Mmbers of this House whether the Town Councils of small places like Lichfield are not differently constituted to the Town Councils of large places like Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool? The Town Councils of small places are composed practically of the same people who manage the Charities, or, at any rate, of the friends of the Trustees or Governors of the Charities existing in the towns. What is the consequence? Why, that you have one clique electing another, and a continuance of abuses. I will turn for a moment to some of these abuses, which are reported in the Blue Book to which I have already referred. On page 398 it is shown that the Trustees of the Conduit Lands, one of the richest Charities in England, spent, in five years, £103 upon dinners and other expenses of meetings of the Trustees. The Trustees of the Charities of the Biddulphs

"distribute amongst the poor of the City of Lichfield £5 yearly upon Good Friday and Christmas Eve, by equal portions;"

But the money is distributed in a public-house, and by the landlord of that public-house. One £40 is missing. This is a Parliamentary Report, and therefore the language is Parliamentary in the extreme. The Commissioners euphoniously say—

"We can discover no further trace of the £40 given by the elder Simon Biddulph for loans."

We next come to Hinton's Charity. For three years no payments were made to the poor, and three parcels of land are reported as lost. I suppose the land was merged in the adjoining property; at all events, it was lost to the Charity. Then we come to Mousley's Charity. The Funds passed into the hands of the Town Clerk and the Corporation, and the interest paid was at the rate of £3 6s. 8d. per cent without security. In the case of Elias Ashmole's Charity, no distribution of funds took place for 13 years; and in another case—Luke Robinson's Charity—the funds were only given to one pet parish, when they should have been distributed all over the City. In the case of Caldwell's Gift, the property—namely £40—has disappeared. In the case of Minor's Gift, 10s. was to be paid yearly for a sermon to be yearly preached on St. Thomas's Day in St. Mary's Church, Lichfield; but the money is not now paid. In respect to Marshall's Charity, the one acre and a-half of arable land lying in Boley, near Filham's Ditch, the rent of which was to be distributed amongst the poor of Lichfield, "is now unknown." Then we come to Simpson's Charity.

"The money is generally given away about the month of March, so many charities being dispensed at Christmas that it has been thought advisable to distribute this at a later period."

Why the money should not be distributed at Christmas, when, as a rule, distress is greater than at any other time of the year, I cannot understand. I have had considerable correspondence with the Charity Commissioners in regard to Lowe's Charity, and I presented to the Commissioners a large Petition signed by 309 of the poor inhabitants and working men of the City of Lichfield in favour of the future Governors being elected by the ratepayers. But the Commissioners declined to accede to my request. The Charity needs reform. The accounts have been audited by the Trustees themselves; and it was found that, while there was great distress in the City during the winter just past, there was no less a sum than £443 in the hands of the Clerk to the Trustees, who is very closely connected with the office of a solicitor. The money was really at the disposal of the partner of one of the Trustees, and no interest was paid upon it. Now, what the people of the City of Lichfield claim is, that they shall have the power in the future of electing their own Representatives, or, at least, a majority of them. That is the principle which I wish the House to affirm upon this occasion. It is no new principle, because some eight years ago it was adopted in the case of an endowed school in the parish of Stamfordham, Northumberland. I have considerable property in that parish, and I took an interest in the school. When I began to interest myself in the Institution there were only three boys in it. I need not say there had been Chancery suits, because I do not know any Charity in England—I can only speak for England—in the records of which you will not find one or two Chancery suits—in fact, a large portion of most Charities has been eaten up by expensive litigations. After three years' labour in going from office to office, I was able to get up a scheme for the school at Stamfordham, and in that scheme the Charity Commissioners urged very strongly that one-half of the Trustees should be appointed by the Vestry. After very considerable remonstrance on my part I got that part of the scheme altered, and I succeeded in getting half the Trustees elected directly by the ratepayers. Moreover, the eight co-optative Governors were only to be elected for seven years. What has been the consequence? They did me the honour to elect me as Chairman; but I declined the honour, because I thought it would be better that the people should manage the school of their own village by the best men they could get in the immediate neighbourhood. A new school-house has been built, the average attendance is now between 60 and 70 instead of three, and all the original co-optative members have ceased to exist, I am sorry to say, some by death, and some, like myself, by retirement. How have they supplied the places of these co-optative members? Why, the elected members have caused their own elected members to become co-optative members, so that practically the whole management of the school is in the hands of the ratepayers. The co-optative members are only elected for seven years; there is no jobbery; there is a good school; the people take an interest in the property, and there is no reason to complain in any way of the management of the school. Now, Sir, I ask the House to do something to popularize the Charities in the City of Lichfield. There were originally 61 Charities in the City; but some of them have become absorbed or merged in other property, and the money has been made away with. Long leases have been granted in some cases, though I must give the Charity Commissioners credit for having now done away with the lease-for-lives' system. Mark me, although the whole of the City of Lichfield is interspersed with little plots of land belonging to Charities, I have not been able to find one plot let in allotments to the working people. The property is let generally at high rent, very frequently to connections of the Trustees. At this hour of the morning I will not detain the House longer. I only wish to take this opportunity of thanking the Charity Commissioners for the courtesy they exhibited in their correspondence. The direct issue is that the Commissioners are determined, as I believe, to adhere, in the case of Lowe's Charity, to that old and rotten system of co-optative Trustees and Governors electing themselves in the future, and of not allowing any direct representative to come from the ratepayers. The question is whether the ratepayers, for whose benefit this Charity has been left, shall have the charge of its management. Do you think for one moment that the money of many of these Charities would have been lost if the ratepayers had had the power of electing their own Trustees to watch the property? I beg to move—

"That, in the opinion of this House, every Scheme of the Charity Commissioners ought to provide for the majority of the Trustees or Managers being directly elected by the ratepayers in the locality to which the Charity extends."

Mr. Speaker, I beg to second the Motion. I myself have had, during the last two or three years, a good deal of experience of the dissatisfaction that exists, especially in the rural districts, with the mode in which the Trustees of these Charities do their work. Only to-day I put to the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Lyon Playfair) a Question bearing on the same subject as the principle involved in this Motion. In Inkberrow, in the county of Worcester, we have a difficulty of this kind in regard to the Charities, on which I had hoped to get some information from the right hon. Gentleman. During the last three or four years the belief of the agricultural labourers of the county has been that the Trustees of these Charities have done their utmost to prevent the Allotments Extension Act being put into force; and their constant appeal has been not that these Charities should be taken wholly out of the hands of the present Trustees, but that the people should have some voice in the management of the Charities. That, I think, is a reasonable request, with which this House ought to have strong sympathy. If we are to place the agricultural labourers and people in general in a right position in reference to these Charities, we ought to give them some power in the management of the Charities. This question affects many towns besides Lichfield. In Birmingham we have a very rich endowment—the Grammar School. The practice of the Town Council appointing a certain number of the Trustees has been in force some years, and works well. It may not work so well in smaller towns, such as Lichfield; but the question I wish more especially to press on the attention of the House is not a question which refers to towns, but one which refers to rural districts. During the late Election it was my lot to speak in more than one county constituency in which the Trustees of Charities were taking an active part in the electoral campaign. I know that in more than one case the agricultural population were told that if they did not vote in a certain way the Christmas doles they were in the habit of receiving might not be forthcoming. This kind of intimidation is unworthy of anyone occupying the position of a public Trustee, and is a mean advantage to take of the agricultural labourers. But the agricultural population are awakening now to the knowledge that these Charities are their own property, and that they are only held in trust by these Trustees appointed by the Charity Commissioners. They feel strongly on this matter. When I have attended meetings in favour of an extension of the allotment system, I have found their minds imbued with so strong a suspicion of the way in which these Charities are managed, that one of the greatest difficulties is to get them to believe that these Trusts are ever managed honestly and well. Many Charities are managed honestly and well; but the agricultural mind is imbued with a very strong suspicion as to the management. Can we wonder at it, when there are many instances in which whole Charities have disappeared; other instances in which the money has been misapplied; and other instances in which Charity lands existed a few years ago, but have now become absorbed by some mysterious process, and are no longer a benefit to the labouring poor? The suspicion of which I have spoken rankles in the minds of the people; and I believe it would be wise on the part of this House to pass some Resolution such as this. The election of a certain number of representative men would restore the confidence of the population in the rural districts in the management of these Charity Trusts.

I was not aware of this Motion coming on to-night, or I should have obtained information from the Charity Commissioners. I am one of the Commissioners, but my duties prevent me attending the meetings of the Commission. I must point out to the hon. Baronet that his object will not at all be obtained by this Resolution; his object is to defeat Lowe's Charity Scheme; but his Motion will not act on Lowe's Charity at all. The Motion is couched in such large terms that I am sure he is thinking of other Charities besides Lowe's. "In the opinion of this House every Scheme of the Charity Commissioners" ought to be framed in the way he suggests. That will refer to education schemes, and to many educational schemes such a provision is quite unsuitable. The desire is to get men of technical knowledge—men of particular knowledge—elected upon schemes for education. I do not think, therefore, for education, at all events, the Resolution the hon. Baronet proposes will, in the slightest degree, effect the purpose he has in view. If the hon. Baronet will allow the debate to be adjourned I will take care to find out all about Lowe's Charity, and see how far his views can be met. I can assure him that this Motion itself will not, in the least, meet this particular case.

I hope the hon. Member will not allow this debate to be adjourned. There is no matter upon which the agricultural population feel more keenly than upon this question; and I may say that it is one which is regarded as of the utmost importance in the constituency which I have the honour to represent. It is thought that these Charities should be managed by those whom they are intended to benefit, and should not be dealt with in the interest of the landowners. I can quote an instance in which a Charity has been left to a certain school in a parish; and the parson, who is the landowner of the whole of the parish, is one of the Trustees of the Charity. The Charity is £100 a-year, and practically you are paying that £100 a-year into the parson's pocket. If this money had not been left there would have been school rates or something else of that sort to be paid; and, the parson being the landowner of the whole parish, he would have had to pay it. You might as well give him the Charity to put in his own pocket. In point of fact, I think it is a swindle upon the poor people of the parish that these educational endowments should be dealt with so as to benefit the landowner. I think that this is a matter which ought to be pushed to a division, and we shall then see who are the men who are ready to stand by the labourers and who have their interests at heart.

I have had good opportunities for many years past of examining the schemes of the Charity Commissioners; and it seems to me as though they were anxious to give power to anybody and everybody rather than those best suited to exercise it. Some of their schemes are of the most fantastic character; and the management of them has been left in the hands of those who are least interested in undertaking them. Another thing which I have noticed in connection with these schemes is that the Trustee Boards have, in many cases, been so constituted that a large majority of the Trustees belong to one particular Party, or to one particular religious denomination; and I am obliged to say that that particular political Party has been the Conservative Party, and the religious denomination has been the Church of England. For my part, I am in favour of trusting to the representative principle in this matter. I think it would be very much better to trust the people than to place power in the hands of those who have no real interest in the administration of the Charities, and who are certainly not the best qualified to administer them. I would remind the House that in the Act which deals with these questions in Scotland there is a clause the principle of which is identical with the principle for which my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Sir John Swinburne) is contending to-night. That clause renders it essential that a portion of the Trustees who are to be appointed under the Act shall be appointed by the Borough Boards of Scotland. I hope also that the time is soon coming when we shall have something like decentralization in regard to the Charity Commissioners, and when power will be given to the Local Authorities to construct these schemes, instead of their being entrusted to a body of men in London. I consider that with all their wisdom, and with all their good intentions, the Charity Commissioners must be unable to frame schemes which are good for all the particular places interested. I hope that we shall soon give a larger measure of power to Local Authorities; and in respect of these Charities I hope it will lead to this—that instead of the reformation of the Charities being the tardy process it is at present, we shall be able carefully, and in good time, to reconstruct the whole of the charitable schemes of the country, and to do it in such a way as to meet the wants of the people to a far greater extent than they had been met during the last 50 years.

I hope that the hon. Member will press this question to a division. As my hon. Friend has stated, it is not a new question in this House, and it is not a new question in one part of the Kingdom. We know a good deal about it in Scotland; and I would point out that this Motion which the hon. Baronet has put upon the Paper contains the very identical principle which we contended for on behalf of Scotland in the last Parliament. We contended, when the Scotch Act was before the House, for a clause which should take the form of the Motion now put forward by the hon. Baronet, and that clause was put into the Bill; but when the measure went up to "another place" it was considerably altered, and eventually passed in a much weaker form. Therefore, I think that in future, whenever this question is brought forward, it will be considered of the greatest importance that this principle should be once more affirmed, and that on this occasion the bulk of the independent Members will support the hon. Baronet in a division upon the matter.

I do not know how far hon. Members are aware that there is a Committee sitting upstairs engaged in investigating the whole of this subject; but it appears to me that it would be a bad precedent to establish to appoint a Committee one day, and then, almost directly after having done so, to pass a Resolution in this House practically deciding the whole question. I am of opinion, also, that this matter cannot be properly discussed at this hour. It is now a quarter past 1 o'clock in the morning, and I do not think that so important a question as this can be satisfactorily dealt with at such an hour, and in the absence of so many Members. I venture to say, moreover, that if the hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite (Captain Verney) had a seat on the Committee upstairs he would not have made use of the observations he did in regard to the Commissioners. I do not believe that anybody who knows anything about these cases can describe them as being "fantastic schemes." I have known something of these schemes from the commencement of the Committee, and I venture to say that the term "fantastic" is the very worst that can be applied to them. They have ever shown an increasing desire to have regard to local requirements, and an anxiety to give effect to the wants and desires of every district interested. The system proposed in this Motion will be an entirely novel system in this country—a system which has never yet been brought into operation, and which, if it is brought into operation, will not be founded on the Report of any Committee or Commission, will not be supported by evidence of any kind, but will be a complete revolution in our educational system carried by an unexpected vote in this House at half-past 1 o'clock in the morning. I do not believe that there was ever a Committee of this House which was stronger or better attended than the Committee which is inquiring into this matter; and I do not think that the House will be acting in that judicial spirit, and with that desire to act fairly, which is looked forward to in all our Parliamentary proceedings, if it consents to pass this Motion. For my part, I believe that the action of the Charity Commission was justified by the Report of the Committee which sat last year. I confess that I have heard from some friends of mine that there are some grounds of complaint in regard to some of these Charities in reference to allotments; but I believe that the fault in those cases does not lie with the Commissioners, but with the people living in the districts concerned. I am sure, however, that more weight ought to be attached to the Report of last year's Committee, which was made after careful investigation, than to the opinions of hon. Members who, however sincere, have not had the same practical acquaintance with the facts of the case. What we have to do is to have regard to the present administration of the Charities, and not to what took place in 1832. At present the Charity Commissioners cannot deal with any Charity unless they are moved to do so, and the question of whether their powers ought to be enlarged has often been spoken of. It has been said that their powers ought to be enlarged; but that matter is not before the House at the present moment. It is a different question, and, therefore, I will not now go into it. What I would urge upon the hon. Baronet opposite (Sir John Swinburne) is this—that, having regard to the fact that these matters are being inquired into upstairs, a Motion so large and sweeping in its character as this ought not to be pressed at this hour of the morning.

I would point out to the hon. Baronet (Sir John Swinburne) who has moved this Resolution that there are a great many Members who are interested in this question absent on this occasion; indeed, I may say that very few of those now in the House ever expected so important a matter as this, which does involve very serious considerations, to come on at such a late hour. Now, what are the facts of the case? It has been the custom in all the schemes in connection with Endowed Charities to provide in different ways for the election of Trustees. In some cases the Trustees are elected by the Governing Bodies, while others are sometimes appointed by special persons having an interest in the Trust. The proposal of my hon. Friend is this—that in every case of a Trust, and whether or not for any particular purpose, the majority of the Trustees shall be chosen by election by the ratepayers. That is to say, that there shall be an election taken part in by the whole body of the electors of the district interested in the case of every Trust. The rule has been hitherto, and I believe it has been applied to the majority of Trusts, that a proportion of the Trustees shall be elected by the Local Authorities, and that has always been supposed to raise the local question; but my hon. Friend proposes to do away with this altogether. Well, that is a strong proposition to lay down as an absolute rule, and to ask the House to adopt it at 1 o'clock in the morning; and, therefore, I will appeal to the hon. Baronet not to press his Motion at this hour in the morning. Surely so large a proposal as this ought not to be adopted at half-past 1 o'clock in the morning. There is a stronger reason—namely, that this very question has been referred to a Select Committee upstairs, which is sitting at this moment. That Committee is inquiring into these Endowed Charities, and the question we are now discussing, I am told, is under the consideration of the Committee. The hon. Baronet actually proposes that we should take a division on a subject which is referred, as I say, to a Select Committee—a very strong Committee—sitting upstairs He would say to that Committee—"We will take the matter of these Trusts out of your hands, notwithstanding that we have referred it to you, and we will lay down such-and-such a doctrine." I venture to say that that would be a proceeding unexampled in the history of our dealings in these matters. Let me remind the hon. Gentleman of the question underlying this. Take a majority of, say, seven Trustees who would be elected by popular election. In order to keep up that number, most probably it would be necessary for an election to take place every year, because you may take it for granted that, having seven gentlemen filling these offices, one vacancy will occur, on an average, every 12 months. And does the hon. Member reflect upon what the cost of these elections is? We have had a Return showing the expense to the ratepayers of local elections carried on in the ordinary way, and from that Return it would be safe to say that in a small town the expense would be £200 or £300. Every 1d. of that would come out of the funds of the Charity. I do trust the hon. Baronet will not press his Motion to a division, but will postpone it in order to allow time for consultation with those interested.

After what has just fallen from the right hon. Gentleman, I should like to say that there is no doubt the passing of a Resolution of this kind after a full debate would have great weight with the country, but that a Resolution of the House, whichever way it might go, passed without debate would have no effect, practically, either in the country or elsewhere. I am not going to follow hon. Gentlemen in the argument as to whether the proposition before us is right or wrong; but I would say that, at this time of night, in the middle of such a debate as we are engaged in, and looking at the state of the Benches, it is impossible for the House to come to a Resolution which would have any effect. Therefore, with all sincerity, I would say to the hon. Baronet who has brought the question forward that he should introduce it at a time when it could be fairly discussed, in a full House—for it is a subject that deserves discussion, and which I am sure will receive it. I cannot omit to refer to the other circumstance, that this very question is being considered upstairs at this moment. For this House to pass a Resolution on the subject whilst the Committee is sitting, and before it has reported, would be looked upon by everyone who is familiar with the Forms of the House as a most extraordinary thing, and as coming to a conclusion without sufficient knowledge and information. Of course, on this matter I am only expressing my own opinion, and not that of right hon. Gentlemen opposite. [Sir JOHN SWINBURNE dissented.] The hon. Baronet shakes his head, but I think I have a right to put this proposition before the House. I believe it is one that will be accepted by the country.

I do not concur in what the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary said, that Town Councils are not to be trusted with the conduct of these schools. Town Councils are the elected representatives of the people, and as elected representatives I believe they are, at any rate in most cases, the most competent authorities to entrust with the management of the schools. I speak on this subject with some knowledge of one school—the Grammar School in Birmingham—to which the Town Council appoints eight representatives out of a total number of 21. The result of the addition of representative Governors on that Board has been to infuse considerable energy into the management with the best results. I simply rose to support the Motion as a declaration in favour of the representative principle. I believe that to be the sound principle on which all these Charities and public Institutions are to be carried on; and it is looking on the Resolution in that light that I venture to recommend it to the support of the House. I should like to say that this is not a Bill. The Government at this time are asking us to vote on a question of supreme importance, and they will take the vote not as committing the House to all the particulars of the measure, but simply as a declaration of principle. That being the case on a matter of great Constitutional importance, surely on a minor matter such as this we need not quarrel too much as to the terms of the Resolution. It would be distinctly understood in the country, as in the House, simply as the affirmation of a principle; and that principle I take to be a sound one, and one it is the duty of the House to recognize, and put in force on every occasion when the opportunity arises.

In reply to hon. Members, I would say that the Motion has been on the Orders of the Day for six weeks, and that, therefore, it cannot possibly have taken Her Majesty's Government by surprise. This evening, when the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister asked the House to give way for the Irish debate, I distinctly rose in my place, and requested the Government to give me all the facilities they could for this Motion of mine to come on at an early hour. I think that will be in the recollection of the House. Then I have been asked to postpone this Motion, because there is a Committee sitting upon the subject upstairs—because there is an inquiry going on. Why, Sir, there has been an inquiry going on about these things for 64 years, having commenced in 1822. I take a practical view of these matters. I have a practical knowledge of them, acquired by eight years' experience, having had under my own eye an Endowed School managed by a majority of Trustees or Governors—call them what you like—elected by the ratepayers directly. We have heard from the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary something about the enormous expense of these elections. He says they cost hundreds of pounds. Well, in the case to which I refer, the elections take place once every one or two years, and they cost the Trustees nothing. They hold their meetings in the school-house. I agree with my hon. Friend on my right the Member for North Birmingham (Mr. Kenrick) that in such places as Manchester, Birmingham, and Liverpool, Town Councils are excellent Institutions for the nomination of Governors in such Municipalities; but when you get to small towns and villages—and even the residence of a Bishop does not necessarily render a town a very large or important place—the case is different. I want to put myself right. The Committee sitting upstairs has been mentioned more than once. I have been in constant communication with the Chief Charity Commissioner upstairs, and I have begged him to postpone the carrying out of the Lowe's Charity Scheme, seeing that we are at issue as to the system of election to be adopted. I desire the Trustees to be elected by the ratepayers. This Gentleman declines to agree to my proposal; he carries his point and his scheme. The House may not be aware of the fact, nor was I until within the last few days; but it is not necessary for the scheme of a Charity to be placed upon the Table of this House. If it is an Endowed School the scheme has to lie upon the Table of the House 30 days; but that is not the case with other Charities. What happens in this case? Let us look on it from a practical point of view. Lowe's Scheme has only been passed 14 days or three weeks; the Charity Commissioners are already, under this new scheme, selling a piece of land in the middle of the town, where a garden is wanted for allotments, against the wish of the working classes. They have written to me to say that they have had the land valued. I do not know whether it is proposed to sell it at its full value, or at less than its value; but the land is being sold against the wish of the working classes for whom the Charity was left. What I want in this matter is Home Rule; that Charity property shall be watched from day to day by those to whom it belongs. The Trustees and Governors in this case are to be elected for life. In the case of the Charity with which I became connected eight years ago, and which has been working so admirably, the Trustees are only elected for seven years. Under these circumstances, I feel compelled to divide the House.

I desire to put before the House a consideration which may weigh with it in the decision it may give. The Motion of the hon. Baronet appears to be based upon the idea that all points that can come within the jurisdiction of the Charity Commissioners must be in their character essentially local. ["No, no!"] Well, I will read the Resolution, or that part of it which is essential. The hon. Baronet asks us to affirm that in the opinion of this House—

"Every Scheme of the Charity Commissioners ought to provide for the majority of the Trustees or Managers being directly elected by the ratepayers in the locality to which the Charity extends."

Take the case of the Institution for the benefit of the Orphans of Seamen. That is not a local Charity. It is a Charity for the benefit of a class, and I apprehend that the Resolution proposed for the acceptance of the House in that case would be altogether out of place. That is by no means a rare state of things, nor is it rare to find cases where Charities have a strong local element, and, at the same time, also a strong non-local character. It would be absurd to insist upon a majority of the Trustees of a Charity being local, because that Charity may have local characteristics. Take a case like Sherborne School. Suppose the Commissioners are going to form a scheme for that school, and the majority of the Trustees are to be withdrawn from the narrow radius of Sherborne and the vicinity. The school is a public school, open to all Her Majesty's subjects who like to send their children there. ["Divide!"] Hon. Gentlemen say "Divide!" Are they not beginning to see that the Resolution proposed to the House is one which they cannot pass without agreeing to that which is not sense? The Resolution is one which should not be acted upon, and which the hon. Baronet would be the last man in the world to wish to have acted upon. The hon. Member opposite has mentioned that he has had great experience as to the Endowed Schools Department of the Charity Commissioners' work, and has found considerable fault with the Charity Commissioners. A Committee is sitting upstairs to inquire into complaints made against the administration of the Charity Commissioners with respect to Endowed Schools; and I would put it to the hon. Gentleman that he would be doing better by coming up to that Committee to substantiate the complaints he has made, than by merely standing up in this House and making a wide and general and vague case. ["Oh, oh!"] He certainly said there were a great many cases, but he did not give us any particulars. It would be better, I say, to go to the Committee upstairs, than to indulge in general declamation against the Charity Commissioners.

I quite agree with the object the hon. Baronet has in view, and when the right time comes, and we are able to deal practically with the question, I will go with him with all my heart. Many Members in the House know that I have fought the question on the lines the hon. Gentleman proposes; but there is some regard to be paid to the fact that there is a Committee now sitting upstairs to inquire into the matter. I, too, am a Member of that Committee. It is submitted that it would be impossible for a general Resolution of this kind to cover many of the schemes which would be effected by it if it were passed—that it would be inappropriate to many of them. But the weightiest point is that we have not in the districts where these Charities exist Representative Bodies into whose hands the management of these matters could be committed. The hon. Gentleman has just called attention to a Charity in a district where the annual election of Trustees would cost £300. It is all very well to say that elections ought to be conducted more economically; but, as a matter of fact, wherever they do take place we know that they are very expensive. I think this point will be met by the decision of the Committee; but, whatever their decision may be, I think that by waiting for that decision we shall be much better able to deal with this question as a whole.

While I agree entirely with the principle that is involved in this Resolution, I rise to support the view that has been taken by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford (Mr. Illingworth). I, for one, agree with my hon. Friend in pressing the view that we should not vote for this Resolution at this time. I hope the time is not far distant when we shall have a system of local government in this country under which the Charities of the country can be put. Charities would then be dealt with locally. But I think that, under the circumstances described by my hon. Friend, it would be, on the whole, a mistake for us to vote for this Resolution at this time. It seems to me I shall best consult the views of those who are divided in opinion on this matter by moving the adjournment of the debate.

I would make one more appeal to the hon. Baronet not to put the Government in the position of opposing the principle of the Motion that is brought forward. Speaking for myself entirely—though, perhaps, I might say the same thing on behalf of the Government also—I may say there are two or three schemes I have had to deal with myself to which it would be impossible to apply this Motion.

As a point, of Order, I would draw attention to the fact that the Question before the House is the adjournment of the debate.

The hon. Member is not in Order in discussing the Main Question. The Question is the adjournment of the debate.

As one not opposed to the spirit of the Resolution, I ask the hon. Baronet for myself—as a private Member—not to press the Resolution to a division.

rose.

I rise to a point of Order. I wish to ask you, Sir, whether, as you had already put the Question that "the Ayes have it," the hon. Gentleman has a right to continue the debate? Is it competent for any hon. Gentleman to speak on the general question after the Question has been put?

If I had completed putting the Question, and had declared that the Ayes or the Noes had it, it would be too late for any hon. Member to continue the debate upon the general question. But all that I had said was—"Those who are of that opinion say 'aye,' and those who are of the contrary opinion say 'no;'" and it was not then too late for the hon. Member to interpose.

At this late hour I do not propose to detain the House. I rise simply for the purpose of appealing to the hon. Baronet, in view of the fact that he has just obtained a majority on the Motion for Adjournment, which is a very significant intimation of the feeling of the House, he should consent now to withdraw the Motion, and not press it to a division. The hon. Baronet is aware that a Select Committee is now sitting upstairs which is engaged in the consideration of the whole matter. He wishes to lay down in his Resolution a principle as to which I will say nothing—that the majority of the Trustees or Managers of every Charity should be elected by ratepayers locally interested in the scheme. But there are Charities in regard to which that principle could not be adhered to. There are Charities concerned with particular localities; other Charities concerning particular classes of persons. Take the case of a Charity like Christ's Hospital. If the proposal of the hon. Baronet were accepted, any scheme drawn up for the regulation of Christ's Hospital would require that the majority of the Trustees or Managers of the Hospital should be elected by the ratepayers of Christ Church, Newgate. A more preposterous conclusion could not be arrived at. In some cases these Charities concern particular localities, in others particular professions, in others different kinds of education, and in others different families. If the hon. Baronet desires to grapple with the whole subject he must draw up a much wider Resolution. But the more important point is that we already have a Select Committee upstairs considering the whole matter; and I certainly think that to pass a Resolution of this sort at 10 minutes to 2 o'clock in the morning upon a question which has already been referred to a Committee selected from your own Body, with instructions to report to the House upon it, is most inexpedient. I trust that the hon. Baronet will be satisfied with the victory he has just gained upon the Motion for Adjournment of the House, which, no doubt, is highly significant, and cannot be lost sight of; and that he will now be prepared to study the dignity of the House and the position which it already occupies in regard to the question. In my opinion, he may lose much, and can gain nothing, by persisting with the Resolution.

I do not attach much value to the argument of the hon. Member as to the dignity of the House. The hon. Member is very fond of referring to the dignity of the House. Only the other day he informed us that it would be contrary to the dignity of the House not to consent to the confiscation of a common on Hayling Island; and now he tells us that it is against the dignity of the House that we should stand up for the rights of the poor. I strongly support this Resolution; and I would ask my hon. Friend the Member for the Lichfield Division of Staffordshire (Sir John Swinburne) not to give way. I do so for this reason—that if we pass the Resolution we shall strengthen the hands of the Committee sitting upstairs. Although my experience of this House has not been very long, I know very well, from what has taken place in former Parliaments, that the passing of an abstract Resolution such as this very often produces a most salutary moral effect. I am perfectly certain that the Committee now sitting upstairs would be stirred up by it to do its duty, especially if the Resolution is passed by a majority equal to that which just refused to allow the debate to be adjourned. I do not think the case of Christ's Hospital was a very good one for the Chairman of Committees to cite; because everyone knows that, if ever there was a case in which the poor have been robbed of their rights, it is that of Christ's Hospital. The course which has been pursued by the Trustees in reference to Christ's Hospital has certainty not been such as to entitle them to the confidence of the public. We have heard of instances in which noble Lords have been pitch forked into the Charity Commission in order to find comfortable berths for them, and without the slightest regard for their fitness to discharge the duties. It is most desirable, I think, that there should be the utmost publicity in regard to these schemes; but at the present moment, under the present system, it is impossible to find out what is going on. That being the condition under which these schemes are concocted, I can well understand why objections should be raised to them, and serious complaints made on the part of the localities which are interested in them.

Sir, I rise to move the second reading of this Bill; and before doing so I wish to make a short explanation of its principles. The object of the Bill is to rectify what, in my opinion, is a most gross injustice that is operating in Scotland. As hon. Members from Scotland know the tenure of land in Scotland is peculiar. If the heir succeeds to property he is entitled to pay the superior one year's feu duty; but if any person other than the heir succeeds he has to pay the superior a year's rent. Previous to 1874 the heir would enter, and the superior would only be entitled to one year's feu duty; but owing to an expression in the Act it has been held that the Trustees may enter, and in consequence of their entry they are obliged to pay an entire year's rent. I may illustrate this by referring to the case of a gentleman who used to be a Member of this House. Property had been left to trustees in pursuance of a family arrangement, and the gentleman I speak of said that, if this Act had not been passed, as heir he would have been entitled to pay a feu duty of £2, but that, the Act having been passed, his Trustees had been obliged to pay, or might be obliged to pay, a year's rent, amounting to several thousand pounds, and that when the property passes to the next heir the year's rental will again have to be paid. Now, this could not have been the intention of the Act; and some of the Scotch Judges most concerned in its passing are of that opinion. The Act provided expressly that nothing contained in it should alter any relations between the superior and the vassals. But it was held that such was the effect of the Act, and it is in order to rectify that anomaly that this Bill is introduced. It has been objected that the Bill, in its present form, will not effect that object. We are most anxious that any form of drafting may be adopted that will accomplish the end in view. I may mention that before Easter, when the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Lord Advocate expressed some intention of looking into the matter to see whether he could arrange to carry out the intention of the Bill, I willingly postponed it, and would with equal willingness have withdrawn it, if I could have perceived the slightest intention to take the matter in hand. I understand that the right hon. and learned Gentleman holds that, prior to the passing of the Act of 1874, superiors had the right to these casualties, although they could not enforce it. Well, as a matter of fact, they never have enforced it; there are no cases recorded in which the right was enforced. Under the circumstances, whatever may be the theoretical view of the case, we are in equity bound to say that a gross injustice, such as I have described, ought not to be allowed to be effected by the wording of the Act of 1874, and for that reason I bring forward this Bill.

Sir, this is a Bill which professes to effect an alteration in the law, which would bring back to their previous state and condition matters that have been arranged by the Act of 1874. It is a moot point among lawyers whether there has been any increment of the rights of superiors caused by the Act of 1874; and the hon. Gentleman the Member for the College Division of Glasgow is, perhaps, aware that one of the Judges has asserted that there is no addition to the rights of superior caused by that Act. But my objection is that the Bill, which consists of two clauses, is such as to provide no effective remedy whatever; it merely asserts that the Act of 1874 is to add nothing to the rights of superiors. The defect of the Bill appears to me to be that it contains one general proposition and leaves the Courts of Law to work out what is merely an expression of hope or abstract idea with regard to the future. It is not sufficient to say there is something which needs a remedy without stating what the remedy is to be. I do not see anything in the Bill scientific or practical to remedy the evil which is in itself doubtful. At the same time, I am bound to say that in the case of Trusts a difficulty has been created which ought not to have arisen, and if the hon. Gentleman confines his efforts to such specific case, he will then be keeping in the region of practical measures. At present I do not think he is within those limits, and for that reason I do not think the House will do well to assent to the second reading of the Bill. I do not think the measure would confer the smallest benefit upon any but persons of the Profession to which I have the honour to belong, inasmuch as it will, in my opinion, create other difficulties and a fresh crop of problems which it will be most difficult to settle.

Sir, I am not going to enter into the details of this subject, which I must say is a highly technical one. But I agree that, while it is doubtful whether the Conveyancing Act of 1874 produces any alteration or not in the right of superiors, I am rather inclined to think that it has produced a practical alteration which has operated hardly in some cases. There is no doubt that there have been some exceptionally hard cases. I had hoped to be able to place my views with regard to the subject in the form of a Bill providing machinery that would carry them into effect—because I entirely agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman who has just spoken, that the Bill as it stands is absolutely useless in that respect, and I doubt whether it would have any effect at all. The Bill declares that a highly technical Statute shall have in a certain respect no more effect than if it had never been passed. Although I sympathize with the object of my hon. Friend, and have told him that I have been into the matter, and that one of the Legal Bodies has reported on it, I think that we might, with advantage, assent to a further postponment. If we find, as I think we have found, that there are two points which require to be dealt with, one relating to the cases where there are Trustees and the other where there are no Trustees—points which are perfectly distinct—I do not think we can do otherwise than deal with them in a specific Bill. But I hope my hon. Friend will not press this matter now, after the indication I have already given of my hope to put it before the House in an appropriate form.

I suggest to the hon. Member for Glasgow the consideration that he would not be promoting the end he has in view by pressing this Bill now. I think it a very significant fact that while we have on the back of the Bill the names of Gentlemen who are not lawyers, we have also the names of two hon. and learned Gentlemen—Members for Glasgow—neither of whom has thought proper to stand up here and defend it. At that I am not at all surprised, and I am sure that no one acquainted with the Act of 1874 will be in the least surprised at it. After what has been said by the Lord Advocate, I trust that the matter will not be pressed. With the main clause of the Bill I confess that I cannot agree, and we cannot possibly agree to the second reading of the measure in its present shape.

Sir, I think that an altogether undue amount of criticism has been levelled at this Bill. So far from its being unintelligible, I regard the Bill as intelligible in every respect. I must say that I cannot understand the last clause, which I think should be struck out, as being inconsistent with the spirit of the earlier Act, although it makes not the smallest difference so far as the principle of the Bill is concerned. The Bill is to give statutory effect to the opinion expressed by Earl Cairns and Lord Blackburn in the House of Lords in the case in which the very point dealt with in this Bill arose. It is a very important one. The Act provides that superiors are not to be entitled to casualties sooner than they would have been under the old state of the law, the intention being to prevent superiors receiving larger sums than would have been paid under the old practice—a practice which, according to the opinion of certain Judges, was neither "dishonest nor deserving of reprobation." Now, the Act of 1874 omitted to provide, contrary to the intention of Parliament, that the superior should not have larger casualties than he had under the old law. Well, Sir, this Bill provides, almost in the very words which both Earl Cairns and Lord Blackburn used, that the lacuna in the Act of 1874 should be filled up; it provides that, from and after the passing of this Act, nothing contained in the Conveyancing Act of 1874 shall operate so as to give to superiors a right to any other or larger casualties than they could have exacted if the Act had not been passed; in other words, it enacts that the intention of the Act is not to give the superior the right to larger casualties than there would have been under the old law. The point is a very simple one, and the Bill does no more than make the words of the Judges, used in the case I have referred to, law. I think the object of the Bill is a good one, and shall cordially support the Motion of my hon. Friend.

Sir, I have listened attentively to the arguments used by hon. and learned Gentlemen against the Bill, and in favour of postponement, but I feel it my duty to divide the House on the present Motion. I cannot consent to further delay now, because the Bill in its present form was before the House last Session—12 months ago.

Sir, I presume that the passing of this Instruction does not bind the House to the principle contained in it?

It is only an Instruction to enable the Committee to deal with the clause of the Act of 1875.

Sir, I rise to protest against the Committee stage of the Bill being taken now. I contend that it is a Bill involving matter of too important a character to be taken at this late hour. I have no reason to complain of the manner in which I have been met hitherto with regard to the Bill, but, on the contrary, acknowledge the courtesy which I have received. On the Motion for the second reading I made several suggestions, almost the whole of which were accepted by the hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill. But the clause which it is now proposed to introduce is one which has been the subject of much discussion, and therefore I feel it my duty to protest against the Motion of the hon. Gentleman opposite.

Sir, I would point out that there is no intention to go into the details of the Bill, and that the Committee stage is simply proposed to be taken pro formâ.