Yesterday, when this Bill was brought forward for second reading, I felt it my duty to oppose it, because, on reading various provisions contained in it, I found that they were of a somewhat extraordinary character. The size of the Bill itself is bulky; it contains a great number of pages—no less than 100; and the clauses, which are very numerous, comprise many unreasonable provisions. I know that it is unusual for an hon. Member to oppose a Bill which has been brought forward by a Municipality with which he has no connection; but still, when we look into this Bill, and see the large amount of money asked for by this Municipality in order to carry out certain works; I think it is incumbent upon us, before we pass it, to examine the accounts of the Corporation, and see whether the measure is one which ought to be passed by this House. No doubt, this measure contains a great many good provisions; and, probably, if the bad ones were eliminated, the Bill would be of great benefit to the Municipality. The object of the Bill is—

"To enable the Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of the Borough of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis to make a new Pier and new Streets and Street Improvements, to purchase the Undertakings of the Weymouth Consumers Gas Company and the Company of Proprietors of the Weymouth Water Works, and to make further provision for the Improvement and good Government of the Borough; and for other purposes."

Now, with respect to new streets and street improvements, I have nothing whatever to say; but when I come to those provisions of the Bill which deal with the purchase of the Water Works and Gas Works, and propose to hand over those undertakings on payment of a certain sum of money to the Corporation, I think the position of this Municipality requires a little investigation. Now, Sir, the town of Weymouth, according to the Returns of the last Census, has a population of 13,715, and the area of the parish itself is 52 acres, although that of Melcombe Regis, which is combined with it, is 1,548. The poor rates levied in the town amounted, in 1883, to £15,758; but in 1884—and this is the last year for which I have been able to obtain a Eeturn—they amounted to £15,013, showing a considerable falling off. Then, according to these statistics, I think it is only reasonable that we should go into some of the details, and ascertain what amount of money the Corporation of Weymouth have already borrowed, and the amount which they now propose to borrow. I find, in the first place, that they have borrowed a sum of £15,000 for repairing, improving, and maintaining the harbour of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, and also £20,000 for repairing, improving, or rebuilding the outer pier or breakwater of that harbour. They do not say that that money has been repaid. It appears to have been borrowed, and a great portion of it remains, at the present moment, unpaid. By an Act passed in 1854, the Corporation were authorized to construct a pier known as the Pile Pier, and for the use of such pier to levy tolls and rates, on the security of which they borrowed £12,000. In 1859, under an Act called the Weymouth and Melcombe Regis Markets and Pier Amendment Act, the Corporation were further authorized to borrow, on the security of the pier tolls and rates, a further sum of £5,000. Subsequently they borrowed, on the security of the market tolls, a further sum of £10,000. In 1859 they were authorized to borrow, on the security of the market tolls, the sum of £1,500; and I find that they have been authorized to borrow additional sums on the security of the market tolls. They now owe the sum of £10,000 borrowed on that security for the purposes of the harbour, and on the security of the harbour tolls the sum of £21,000, of which £19,925 is still owing, making a total sum of £41,925. The Corporation then appear, with the consent of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, to have borrowed, upon the security of their Corporate estates, for various purposes, a sum of £7,000, of which sum £5,031 is still owing. In 1879, under the provisions of the Weymouth and Melcombe Regis Bridge Act, the Corporation built a bridge, and for that purpose they borrowed, on the security of the bridge tolls, and as a collateral security the borough fund and borough rate, the sum of £6,000, of which £4,600 is still owing. The actual debt of the Corporation at this moment is £57,556. Now, when I inquire into the position of the town and harbour of Weymouth, I find that it is an old yachting station; but that so far as commercial purposes are concerned it does not appear to have improved very much since the time of George III., who brought it into fashion from going there personally in order to enjoy the climate and the good sea-bathing to be found there. I am told that it is still resorted to as a sea-bathing place, and I do not object to any expenditure which may be incurred in street improvements, and for improving the esplanade which is absolutely essential to any locality resorted to for bathing purposes. But what is it that the Corporation of Weymouth propose to do by this Bill? They propose, now, to borrow £40,000 for the harbour, £30,000 for the new pier, £41,300 for the pile pier, £11,000 for street improvements, £10,000 for the markets, and £6,700 for general purposes, although what for they do not state—making a total for the new loan they now require of nearly £139,000. Well, Sir, there was a point yesterday which I had intended to bring before the House, but to-day I will merely advert to it, because I find, on investigation, that I happen to be wrong in my surmise. I have been under the impression that the ratepayers of the town had not been convened together in public meeting in order to give their assent to the Bill for which this application was to be made to Parliament. I find that I was wrong in that matter, and therefore I will not refer to it further. In looking through the provisions of the Bill, I find a clause, on page 12, entitled "Committees of Council." I altogether object to this clause, and should necessity arise, I will take a Division upon it, because I regard it as an extremely improper clause. The clause provides that—

"For the purpose of carrying into effect the provisions of this Act the Council may from time to time appoint committees of their members and may define the duties of each such committee and may delegate to each such committee such of the powers and duties of the Corporation whether as a Municipal Body or as the Urban Sanitary Authority or otherwise as the Council think fit and the acts and proceedings of every such committee within the limits of their delegation shall be deemed the acts and proceedings of the Council and the quorum of any such committee shall be five unless the Council otherwise direct and the Council may from time to time make such regulations as they may think fit with respect to the confirmation of the proceedings of a committee or otherwise and for the guidance of a committee and the Council may from time to time remove any member of a committee and appoint in his stead another member of the Council."

Now, Sir, this delegation of powers from one body to another is distinctly wrong, and yesterday, when I had the opportunity of meeting the very learned Gentleman who acts as your counsel, Sir, I was glad to find that this point had received favourable consideration at the hands of some of the Gentlemen who are in charge of the Bill, and which gave me reason to hope that this clause would either be materially modified or altogether withdrawn. I will pass on now to the provision in regard to the purchase of the Water Works. What is it that they propose to do? They say that—

"The Water Company with the consent of three-fifths of the votes of the Shareholders of that Company present personally or by proxy at any meeting of that Company specially convened for the purpose may sell to the Corporation and the Corporation may purchase the Water Undertaking (including in that expression the undertaking real and personal property choses in action easements rights powers and privileges of the Water Company) for such consideration and on and subject to such terms and conditions as may be agreed on between the Water Company and the Corporation."

Now I strongly object to this clause, because I think that if the Corporation intend to purchase the undertakings of this Water Company with money which is to be borrowed, the sum should be specified and the number of years named over which it is to be spread, in order that we may know whether the Corporation are really making a bargain, or are simply purchasing a white elephant. When I look into the past history of this Water Company I do not find that it appears to have been a very successful undertaking, and therefore I think it is absolutely essential that the amount of the purchase money should be specified in the Bill. There is yet another point. How are we to know that some of the members of the Weymouth Corporation may not be Directors or share- holders of the Water and Gas Company, because I look upon one as practically including the other, although the Gas Works appear to have been doing very much better than the Water Works. If some of these gentlemen should happen to hold a position in both of these Boards as Directors or shareholders, they may be able to perpetrate a job and may endeavour to recoup themselves in a large sum of money by the sale of undertakings which are not worth one-half of the amount they are going to receive. I shall certainly require a full explanation upon these points; and I think that, in the first place, the sum agreed upon as the purchase money should be specified, and whether any members of the Corporation now occupy a position on the Board of Directors, or as shareholders, in either of these Companies. Clause 46 provides that—

"From and after the transfer and subject to the provisions of this Act all the rights powers privileges and authorities of the Water Company under the Waters Acts and under any enactment for the protection of the Water Company or the Water Undertaking including the right to levy demand receive and recover any rates rents and charges which the Water Company may demand receive or take shall he by virtue of this Act transferred to and vested in the Corporation and those Acts and enactments shall be read and have effect as if the Corporation had been therein named instead of the Water Company subject nevertheless and according to the provisions of this Act and to the following exceptions and provisions (namely):—

(1) The provisions of 'The Companies Clauses Consolidation Act 1845' incorporated with the Water Acts shall not apply to the Corporation:

(2) None of the provisions of the Water Acts in any manner relating to the share or loan capital of the Water Company or to any limitation of the amount of profit to be received by them or to the constitution meetings by direction of the Water Company shall apply to the Corporation."

Now, this clause does not specifically state what the Corporation may charge for the water. If the Water Company in the past has not been successful, the Corporation, in order to make the undertaking pay, ought to be entitled to charge more than the amount charged in the past, and it is, therefore, important that we should have some explanations on these points. I pass from the Water Works to the sanitary portion of the Bill. Clause 64 relates to notice to be given to the Corporation of persons suffering from infectious diseases. Before I go into this subject, I may tell the House that upon various points under this head of infectious diseases there appears to be a considerable amount of divergence of opinion among the people of Weymouth themselves and the medical officers of that town. I find, in the first place, a provision that—

"If any such inmate be suffering from any infectious disease the occupier or the person having the charge management or control of such building (or if such occupier or person be prevented by reason of such disease then the person in charge of such inmate) shall so soon as he shall become aware of the existence in any such inmate of any such disease forthwith give notice thereof to the Medical Officer of Health at his office."

I do not object to that, but in sub-head 2 there is a provision which I cannot help regarding as curious, at any rate. The sub-head says—

"If such inmate be not a member of the family of such occupier or person the head of the family (resident in such building) to which such inmate belongs or if there be no such head or if such head be prevented by illness then such inmate (unless prevented by reason of such disease or of youth) shall on becoming aware of the existence in such inmate or in his own person as the case may be of such disease forthwith give notice thereof to such occupier or person."

The hon. Member is not entitled to go through the clauses of the Bill in this manner.

I bow to your decision, Sir, and I will merely draw attention, if you will permit me to do so, to this one clause relating to infectious diseases. The sub-head speaks of the occupier becoming aware of the existence in an inmate of the Home, or in his own person, of an infectious disease. Now, if he becomes aware of the existence of small-pox or cholera in his own person, how can he possibly give notice of the existence of the infectious disease? The medical officer, on becoming aware that any person is suffering from an infectious disease, is required forthwith to give notice; but I do not see how it is important to require the person infected to give that notice himself. Finally, let me call the attention of the House to one provision in this Bill which strikes me as being of the most vital character. Clause 175 provides that—

"A Judge of any Court or a Justice shall not be disqualified from acting in the execution of this Act by reason of his being liable to any rate or other charge thereunder or by reason of his being a member of the Council."

That means that if the Judge or Justice happens to be in any way included in this Gas Company or Corporation he will not be disqualified from pronouncing an opinion on any of the points which may afterwards crop up. I am glad to see, however, that there is a provision in the Bill which is underlined—namely, Clause 55, that matters in difference between the Water Company and the Corporation are to be determined by arbitration.

I cannot but think the hon. Member has taken a very unusual course in opposing the second reading of this Bill, which, as the House must be aware, is a Bill of an entirely private character. He has informed us that he knows nothing of the locality in regard to which the Bill is promoted. Indeed, he informed me himself that he had never the pleasure of being nearer to Weymouth than somewhere off the Bill of Portland. His opposition of the Bill, therefore, cannot have arisen from any desire to benefit the ratepayers of Weymouth, and I rather imagine his real object has been to stave off the discussion which the House desires to enter upon at a later period of the evening.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman is not entitled to attribute motives of that kind to the hon. Member.

I am sorry that I made the remark, and I withdraw it at once. This Bill, which has been introduced by the Corporation of Weymouth, is one similar in character to those which are constantly being projected by Municipal Corporations. It is purely of a local character, and its objects have been stated by the hon. Member. Perhaps he will allow me to supplement his statement by remarking that the Bill also seeks to consolidate the Harbour Trust and the Harbour Pier Trust; to consolidate the Corporation and their Market Trust; to provide for the purchase of the existing Gas and Water Works; to make various street improvements; to provide for the erection of a new pier and the improvemement of the existing pile pier; to carry out certain improvements on the esplanade parks; to borrow money for improvements; to mate bye-laws and purchase lands; and to exercise various powers in regard to infectious diseases, besides granting a municipal stock, by means of which money may be borrowed at a cheaper rate than under present circumstances. If this Bill had received the slightest opposition from the ratepayers of Weymouth, I might have had something to say about it myself, and I should certainly not have been heard here to support the second reading. But the measure has not been introduced in a hurry. First of all, it was under the consideration of the Town Council, where it received the approval of an absolute majority of the Council. After that the resolution of the ratepayers was taken at a public meeting, and a motion was passed in favour of it. Not content with that a poll of the town was taken, and a very large majority of the inhabitants declared themselves to be in favour of the Bill. The Town Council again had a meeting after the Bill had been deposited, and passed a resolution by a large majority approving of the provisions it contains. Having done that, the Corporation obtained the consent of the Local Government Board, of the Treasury, of the War Office, of the Admiralty, and of the Board of Trade to the provisions of the Bill; all these consents being granted subject to certain modifications in various clauses of the Bill. This Bill is absolutely necessary, in the opinion of the ratepayers of Weymouth, for the improvement of the harbour and town. The hon. Member for Mid Cork has pointed out that the amount of money already borrowed is £57,956; but under the Local Government Act the Corporation is allowed to borrow up to two years' rateable value, which would amount to a sum of £130,000. I have no desire to detain the House with any explanation of the provisions of the Bill; but I would point out to the hon. Member for Mid Cork that Bills of this description are not Bills which are usually discussed on the second reading. If he is acquainted with the course of procedure on measures of this kind, he will know that as soon as the Bill has been read a second time it will be handed over to a Committee of this House, by whom every clause and line of the measure will be carefully gone through, and examined with the assistance of the Legal Authori- ties of the House. It will also be carefully investigated by the House of Lords, if it happens to be referred to that House hereafter. I can only hope that the hon. Member, when he becomes more fully acquainted with the facts, will not insist upon opposing the Bill. I may add that the Water Works to which he has referred, instead of being an unmarketable speculation, is most highly remunerative. I hope, under all the circumstances, the hon. Member will allow the Bill to be read a second time.

I quite agree with the hon. and gallant Gentleman who has just sat down that the main objects of this Bill are of an exceedingly laudable nature; but, at the same time, I am afraid there are certain provisions in the measure which are objectionable, and that the attention of the House should be called to them, especially as the Bill is not likely to be opposed upstairs, and the provisions of it will, consequently, not be fully gone into by a Committee. I make no reference to the proposed street improvements, or the works in connection with the harbour and the pier. I assume they are of a desirable character; but I think that some of the points which have been raised by my hon. Friend are entitled to consideration from the officials whose duty it will be to watch the Bill in Committee and to strike out and modify any of the clauses of the measure which may be found to be objectionable. If I understand the provisions of the Bill aright, the Corporation is authorized to treat with the Directors and shareholders of the Water and Gas Companies; even although some of the members of the Corporation may be Directors and shareholders of those Companies themselves. I maintain that that is a provision which ought to be struck out of the Bill. It is a provision which is perfectly indefensible. If negotiations are going on with regard to the price at which these undertakings are to be purchased, I think it would be the duty of gentlemen so situated to resign their position in the Town Council, so as to allow gentlemen who have no interest whatever in the Gas and Water Companies to make an arrangement with the Corporation. I also think it would have been more regular if the Bill had stated the basis upon which the valuation of the undertakings of these two Companies has been made. The Bill gives DO information at all upon that point. The prices at which the works may be purchased may be double what, according to the ordinary rules of valuation, would be considered fair and reasonable. Another awkward fact is, that in the provision which relates to rating for water purposes, if the maximum of rating power be reached which the present Water Company enjoy, there is no power, in case of a deficiency, to pay such deficiency out of any other receipts. Therefore, I think it is possible that the ratepayers may hereafter be called upon to pay a much larger sum than they ought to pay. I think my hon. Friend was justified in calling the attention of the House to the defects of the Bill; and I hope the Chairman of Ways and Means, when the measure comes into Committee, will see that it is in a proper form before it is allowed to pass this House. Having said so much, I think my hon. Friend would do well not to put the House to the trouble of a Division. He has done his duty in calling attention to the subject; and I hope he will not now press his opposition further.

asked the Lord Advocate, Whether his attention has been called to the trials at Hamilton of Peter White, Alexander Tennent, and John Clark on 26th January last, and of Timothy Ward, Andrew M'Cuskar, and James Martin on 27th January, all steel workers, on a charge of mobbing and rioting at Motherwell, on 4th October; whether, in the first trial, the jury, after a very short deliberation, found the three prisoners not guilty, and in the second trial the Procurator Fiscal, after leading evidence, withdrew the charge against all the three prisoners; whether a special defence of alibi was pleaded by Tennent, Clark, M'Cuskar, and Martin, and given effect to by the verdict of the jury; whether Ward was, at the conclusion of the other trial, convicted on a separate charge of assault committed at the same time and place; and, if the above circumstances are correct, whether he will inquire into the circumstances of the case, and take steps for giving some redress to these five innocent men, especially the four who were acquitted on the ground of mistaken identity?

Yes, Sir; my attention has been called to these cases. The statements in the second, third, and fourth paragraphs of my hon. Friend's Question are substantially correct. Upon the evidence laid before the Crown Counsel it was absolutely necessary that the men referred to should be tried. There are no public funds in the hands of the Lord Advocate out of which any payment towards the costs of an accused person could be made; and as I can find no circumstances indicating anything improper in calling upon these men to stand their trial, I do not see any reason to ask for a special Vote of money in their case.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether his attention has been drawn to the following incident at the Con-naught Winter Assizes, held at Sligo, as reported in The Freeman's Journal 23rd December 1886:—

"Mr. John Redington, Sub-Sheriff of the County of Galway, deposed, in reply to Mr. Le Poer Trench, Q.C., 'I have been Sub-Sheriff for the past thirteen years.'

"Will you swear that you were at Saunders' two hours before sunset?—I did not know when the sun set. I did not know there was a section in the Act of Parliament regulating evictions that an eviction could not be carried out two hours before sunset.

"Have you frequently directed men after the legal hour?—I don't know;"

and, what steps he proposes to take in view of the ignorance of the law confessed by this officer?

Any person feeling aggrieved by the action of the Sub-Sheriff has a legal remedy. The Government are not responsible for any neglect of duty on his part. If the ignorance of this Sub-Sheriff has been to the injury of any other person, proceedings can be taken against him.

asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether the Commissioners of Inland Revenue have intimated to the London and North-Western, and other Railway Companies, that they

"cannot, as heretofore, accept the statement portion of the dividend warrant as a voucher in support of a claim for the return of Income Tax, until such statement has been verified by the Secretary of the Company;"

and, if so, what is the object of imposing upon those concerned the additional trouble caused by this change from the long-established practice?

In reply to the hon. Gentleman's Question, I have to say that, though the words he quotes do not appear in any letter which the Inland Revenue authorities can trace, they represent fairly enough the rule which they have laid down. Originally the Railway Companies inserted in the dividend statements the names of the proprietors of the stock; and the Inland Revenue accepted these statements, in support of an application for return of Income Tax, without further verification. The Companies, however, have since 1880, no doubt to save clerical labour, been discontinuing the insertion of the proprietors' names in the dividend statements; so, to avoid these statements being made the foundation of fictitious claims for return of Income Tax by persons not the registered proprietors of the stocks, it has been found necessary, where claims for repayment are made, to require the production of a verification signed by the Secretaries of the Companies. The Companies prefer this to inserting the proprietors' names in all the statements, as they formerly did.

asked the Secretary of State for War, What decision he has arrived at as regards the recommendations of the recent Committee on the Volunteer Force with regard to the increase in the capitation grant, the travelling allowance to ranges, and the premium on complete equipment?

I must ask my hon. Friend, whose interest in the Volunteers is well known, to restrain his impatience for a few days more. The intentions of the Government with reference to the Volunteers and the recommendations of the Committee are explained in my Memorandum accompanying the Army Estimates, which will be circulated very shortly.

asked the Secretary to the Board of Trade, Whether, having regard to the serious loss of life from shipwrecks which have recently occurred on the Glamorganshire coast, between Porthcawl and Nash Point; the Government will provide a coastguard station at Southerndown, with a rocket apparatus, and a system of signals, by which the life-boat station at Porthcawl can be signalled when vessels are seen to be in distress?

The question of placing an additional apparatus on this part of the coast—namely, one between Porthcawl and Nash Point, is one that has received the very careful consideration of the Board of Trade on several occasions, and the Board have been advised that it is unnecessary. The question of establishing a Coastguard station at Southerndown is for the Admiralty and not for the Board of Trade; but the Board are advised that in any case Southerndown would not be a suitable place for a rocket apparatus. I am in communication with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution as to the necessity for signals being placed at Southerndown as a means of signalling to the Porthcawl life-boat,

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, If his attention has been called to the report in the Monaghan Northern Standard, of 12th February, of an address delivered in the Camla Orange Hall, by Lord Rossmore, in which he used the following language respecting the Eight honourable the Member for Mid Lothian:—

"I am afraid I cannot warm to my work like the 'Grand Old Gabbler,' and talking about Mm reminds me of a thought which struck me to-day. You have all heard of the mad dog we have had in our midst lately. You know the misery his presence has caused. Well, I say if a human mad dog is loose, who wilfully and wantonly destroys thousands of people, what ought to he done with him? The man dog ought to he done away with before he infects any more ignorant people with the snapping and snarling of his Home Rule rabies, which rabies, brethren, do so much harm to mankind when bitten by them;"

and, whether, if the report is true, the Government intend to take any action in the matter?

No, Sir.

I do not understand the answer. Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether he communicated with the noble Lord and asked him if the report was correct?

I have answered the Question.

I will put the Question in another form.

asked the Postmaster General, If he is aware that a large number of pre-transfer telegraph clerks, who were induced by "The Telegraphs Act, 1868," to enter the service of the Postmaster General, are now, after more than 20 years, only receiving, as "telegraphists," salaries varying from 33s. to 50s. per week; and, whether it is within his knowledge that immediately an officer of the Post Office, or the Telegraph branch of the Post Office, is officially designated a "clerk" he is at once entitled to the salary and privileges attaching to that title in the office at which he is located; and, if so, whether a pre-transfer clerk, who is a "clerk" to all intents and purposes in the Post Office Service, is entitled to a clerkship of the same value as that in force in the post office were he is stationed; if that is not so, what are the privileges to which the Act of 1868 entitles such pre-transfer clerks?

In reply to the hon. Member, I have to state that of the officers formerly in the service of the Telegraph Companies and now in the service of the Post Office a large number have obtained promotion; while the remainder, though on a scale of wages not exceeding 50 s. a-week, are much better off than they were under the Companies. The officers and clerks transferred to the Post Office were, in the language of the Act transferring them, to

"be deemed to be, to all intents and purposes, officers and clerks in the permanent Civil Service of the Crown, and to be entitled to the same but no other privileges."

The meaning of this I conceive to be simply that, in such matters as tenure of appointment and title to pension, telegraph clerks were to be in the same position as other Civil servants, and certainly not that their salaries were to be regulated otherwise than with special reference to the duties to be discharged.

asked the Postmaster General, If he will be good enough to arrange, for the convenience of hon. Members, that in telegrams sent to them addressed to this House the term "House of Commons" shall be reckoned as one word, and not three, as at present?

This is a matter in which I could not act without the concurrence of the Treasury; and as any alteration of the present rule would affect not only the House of Commons, but, at any rate, many Public Offices, I must take time to consider the question.

asked, whether it would not be easy for the Department to get over the difficulty if the Speaker were formally to enter the registered address of that House?

I believe there would be no objection in the Department if the address of this House were registered as "Commons." At the same time, it will be for the authorities of the House to consider how far that might be generally desirable, having regard to the fact that some delay occurs in the transmission of telegrams in consequence of the additional difficulty of sorting them.

inquired whether, if a telegram were addressed to "Parliament," it would be delivered at the House?

I presume that if the address of the House of Commons were registered as "Parliament," telegrams would be delivered at that address; but it is a question whether the authorities can do that without trenching on the privileges of the other House of Parliament.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether it is a rule of the Commissioners of National Education that first class teachers may be depressed in classification should their schools not maintain a fair standard of proficiency; and, if so, whether first class candidates will be allowed to go forward for promotion upon merely giving notice of their intention?

By a long-established rule all teachers are liable to depression in classification should their schools decline in usefulness and efficiency; and satisfactory school-keeping must be regarded as a necessary condition in allowing teachers to seek promotion in classification.

asked the First Lord of the Admiralty, Whether the applications from Lieu- tenants, Royal Navy, to resign their commissions have been refused, contrary to usual custom in peace time; and, if so, whether it is necessary to have recourse to the enforced service of officers in consequence of the serious incompleteness in the establishment of Lieutenants in the Royal Navy?

It is the case that during the latter part of last year applications from lieutenants, Royal Navy, to resign were, unless under very exceptional circumstances, refused. It was considered necessary to do so in consequence of the dearth of officers at the time; caused principally by insufficient entries of cadets in past years, and partly by the increased complements of lieutenants allowed to ships in commission. This necessity was, however, of a temporary nature, and is passing away. It is by no means intended to retain officers who wish to resign their commissions beyond the time during which it is considered indispensable in the public interests that they should remain. The Admiralty have no wish to retain officers in the Navy against their will.

asked the First Lord of the Admiralty, Whether he has been informed, by very good authority, that the sheers at Pembroke could be completed in six or eight months if the work were carried on with proper energy; and, whether the Aurora's boilers would require to be put in before that time?

It is anticipated that the Aurora's boilers will be ready to be placed on board early in March next. Even if the proposed shipbuilding programme for Pembroke Yard had rendered it advantageous to enter on the expense of erecting new sheers during the ensuing year, it is very doubtful whether they would be ready as early as March next.

asked Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, Is it intended that the trial of the two Walkers for the murder of a policeman and a soldier during the Belfast riots should take place in Belfast; and, if so, what, if any, instructions have been given as to "stand asides"?

Yes, Sir; the case of the two Walkers shall be tried at the next Belfast Assizes. Although the case arose out of the Belfast riots, there is no reason to believe that such a case shall not be fairly and impartially tried there. The only instructions as to "stand asides" that ever have been issued are the instructions which I have already communicated to the House. Of course, these instructions will not be departed from in this case.

Arising out of this Question, can the right hon. and learned Gentleman say whether he gave instructions in writing mentioning the very names of the men who were to be asked to stand aside in the recent political trials in Dublin?

Order, order!

asked the First Commissioner of Works, Whether he will take into consideration the advisability of widening the lower portion of Charing Cross Street between the National Gallery and St. Martin's, either by cutting off an angle of the National Gallery, or removing the steps of St. Martin's, as the road is there reduced, where the traffic is heaviest, from a width of 130 to 45 feet?

Everyone must, I think, agree as to the advisability of widening the lower portion of Charing Cross Street between the National Gallery and St. Martin's Church; and it seems to be obvious that this could be best accomplished by the removal of the steps of the church, which now project into the road at the corner where the traffic must be much heavier than on the western side. I myself believe that such a change might be made without any architectural disfigurement; but I have no authority in the matter. As to cutting off an angle of the National Gallery, if my hon. and gallant Friend means by that pulling down a portion of the building itself, I should feel bound to resist such a proposal. If he means cutting off part of the enclosed space in front of the building, that is a question for the Metropolitan Board of Works, whose property it is.

inquired whether notice would be given to the House before anything was done in regard to the removal of the steps?

I have no authority in the matter. An Act of Parliament would be required.

asked whether the right hon. Gentleman was aware that the question of cutting the steps of St. Martin's Church was brought before that House some years ago; that it was fully debated; and that the scheme was thrown out by a large majority?

There was a Bill before the House and that clause was dropped; but whether there was a strong opposition to it or not I do not know.

asked the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether it is a fact that such a large quantity of mats of one class are made in prisons that the authorities are obliged to sell them continually below the regular list price; and, if so, whether he will take steps to insure mat-weaving in prisons being spread over the whole range of the list, so as to prevent the excessive manufacture of one class of mat; whether, in view of the injury done to employers of free labour by the jobbing of prison labour to certain mat-making firms, the Government will take steps to put an end to the system; and, whether it is a fact that a former official in one of Her Majesty's prisons has had for some years the disposal of the labour of four or more prisons?

It is not a fact that large quantities of mats of one class are made in prisons, nor that the authorities are obliged to sell them continually below the regular list price. The assortment of mats made is the same as that which existed when the Government took over the prisons in 1878, and the mats are sold at approved rates fully equal to those of private makers. The mat-making is spread, as far as possible, over the whole range of the list; and though the demand regulates, to some extent, the quantity of each class of mats supplied, none of the 10 classes are neglected. Considering the rates paid for the labour, it does not appear that any injury is done to the employers of free labour by the jobbing of prison labour to certain mat-makers. Large reductions have, however, been made in the number of prisons where this work is carried on, and efforts are being made further to reduce the number. It is the case that a person who hires labour at four of Her Majesty's prisons was formerly an official attached to the Prison Service; but he left the Service nearly 30 years ago.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether the Board of Commissioners of National Education (Ireland) have yet investigated and reported upon the alleged connection of Mr. James A. Irwin, teacher of Carrick-awilkin (County Armagh) National School, with the Orange Society; and what is the result of the inquiry?

The case is still under investigation.

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether he can furnish any information as to the number of extra police employed at the meeting of the Social Democratic League in Trafalgar Square on the 29th of August, 1886, and of the demonstration at St. Paul's on the 27th of February, and on similar meetings and demonstrations; what was the amount of extra pay granted to the police who were then employed; what was the number of extra hours which such police had to serve; what was the approximate cost to the ratepayers of London, and to the taxpayers of the United Kingdom, of the preparations on the part of the Government to meet any disturbance of law and order on those occasions; and, whether the Government will consider the desirability of taking any steps to prohibit such meetings in the future?

The number of police employed at the meeting of the Social Democratic League on the 29th of August, 1886, was 2,373; at the demonstration at St. Paul's Cathedral on the 27th of February, 1887, 3,094; the City Police especially employed on the latter occasion were 746. The amount of extra pay granted to the Metropolitan Police on these two occasions was in all about £20, the amount of travelling expenses about £120. The approximate cost of the special employment of Metropolitan Police on these occasions was, therefore, about £140. The question of regulating such meetings in the future is now under my consideration.

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether Messrs. Herbert, Brothers and Co., of Bethnal Green Road, E., contract with the Government to do a portion of their clothing; whether most of the work contracted for by that firm is sub-let to a middleman, who has to deposit a sum of £500 as security; whether this middleman again sub-lets the work to a second middleman, who also has to make a deposit as security; whether the work is then distributed amongst the "sweaters," who take the work home and get the work-people to work for low wages and during long hours; whether the places where the work is actually done are unhealthy "dens;" whether the work-hands are compelled to buy tea, coffee, and sugar on the premises under the penalty of a fine of 2s. 6d., or dismissal; whether the said firm employ a large number of foreign Jews on the premises, paying them at a lower rate of wages, on account of their ignorance of the English language; whether he will institute an inquiry; and, whether these circumstances constitute a violation of the Factory and Truck Acts?

The Chief Inspector of Factories has made inquiries into this matter, and he infomrs me that this firm have formerly-contracted for police clothing, but are now engaged in other work. None of the work is sub-let to middlemen, and no deposit of money is made; but recently, owing to want of space, some of the work has been given out to old workmen of the firm, who do the work themselves and employ their own workpeople. The work is done in the ordinary tailors' work-rooms and not in living rooms. Most of the employés are of the Jewish persuasion. The men work long hours; but the women work late only on Thursday, which, I believe, is the regular custom with the Jews. I know nothing of the rate of wages; but I am told that when work is plentiful a good wage is obtainable. The firm supply tea on the premises, which the work-people can purchase at their option. There is no fine or dismissal in the event of their refusing to do so. I do not propose to institute any further inquiry; for, as far as I can ascertain, there is no violation of the Factories or Truck Acts.

asked the Surveyor General of the Ordnance, If he will state the cost of solid-drawn cartridge cases per 1,000; whether these cases are made entirely at Woolwich, or by any private manufacturing firm, other than Muirhead, Latimer, Clark, and Co; and, whether it is not a fact that the solid-drawn cartridge can be used several times for making fresh cartridges, an advantage not possessed by the Boxer cartridge?

The average cost of solid-drawn cases For Martini-Henry cartridges has been £2 7s. per 1,000, and £2 11s. for the Enfield Martini, and they have been made by several firms. No separate solid cases, but only complete cartridges, have been ordered from the particular firm in question. It is a fact that the solid-drawn cartridge case has the advantage over the rolled case that it can be used several times.

asked the Secretary of State for War, Whether, in view of the fact that the English and Scotch Militia battalions are, and have been for some time, supplied with the Martini-Henry rifle, the Militia battalions in Ireland will be similarly supplied this year, instead of being allowed to train, as heretofore, with the obsolete Snider rifle?

The Snider rifles, with which the Irish Militia are now armed, will be exchanged for Martini-Henry rifles as soon as the number in store of the latter arm will justify such a measure; but I fear that the exchange cannot take place in time for the present year's training.

asked the Secretary of State for War, Whether it be true that the field guns attached to No. 8 Battery, 1st Volunteer (Devonshire) Brigade, Western Division Royal Artillery, have been taken away, and are to be replaced by heavy guns, the battery being turned into a garrison battery; whether it is still intended to issue a large number of field guns to Volunteer Artillery; and, whether these guns have been removed against the urgent recommendation of the Officer Commanding Auxiliary Artillery, Western District?

In the mobilization scheme which has been approved for home defence, certain batteries of Volunteer Artillery are allotted as garrison artillery for the large coast fortresses in their neighbourhood. This particular corps is allotted as part of the garrison of Plymouth; and its practice should, therefore, be carried on in forts or fixed batteries. The guns withdrawn will, consequently, not be returned to it. With regard to the general question of Volunteer Artillery, their armament, and their position in the general scheme of national defence, I propose to make a statement in the Memorandum which I shall submit to Parliament with the Army Estimates.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, To state on what grounds was James Maye, of Ardfinan, County Tipperary, refused a licence for a gun by the Sessional Magistrates; whether the gun belonged to Maye's uncle, lately deceased, and was taken up by the police on the death of the owner; whether the police advised Maye to apply for the licence, so that they may restore the gun; and, whether Maye has a licence to carry arms on his farm at Corrin Fermoy, County Cork?

The licensing officer did not consider this a case in which a licence should be issued, and I see no reason to interfere with his discretion.

What did he do with the gun? Was there a confiscation of the gun?

I will inquire about that.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether, at the eviction of James Clery, Ardmoyle, Cashel, County Tipperary, on the 4th instant, an emergency man, named Robert Millet, presented a revolver at a crowd of about 300 people, and placed it at the breasts of a few persons; whether Clery demanded his arrest by the District Inspector Green, who was in charge of the police, and who declined to act except on a warrant; whether Clery and witnesses of the alleged assault went to Colonel Mansergh, the nearest Magistrate, and asked for a warrant for Millet's arrest, and were told by him that he had got no warrant in the house; whether Clery and witnesses then applied to Denis Scully, Petty Sessions Clerk, Cashel, who peremptorily refused a form of warrant, saying, "he would not put any magisstrate in a difficulty;" and, whether he will make inquiries, with a view to facilitate the operation of the law in this and similar cases in the district mentioned?

The alleged assault was not witnessed by any of the police, and the officer in charge declined therefore to make the arrest; but referred the complainants to a magistrate. Colonel Mansergh, to whom they went, was of opinion the case should be dealt with by summons. The Clerk of Petty Sessions merely declined to issue a warrant without directions from a magistrate, and pointed out it was a case for a summons. This view of the case was subsequently supported by the Cashel Bench of Magisstrates, and the Executive sees no cause to interfere.

asked the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether £11,000 of the £13,500 cost of erecting the pier at Carrigaholt, County Clare, were granted by the Piers and Harbours Commissioners, for the express purpose of enabling fishery smacks to come in at all states of the tides; whether, as it has been designed by the Engineers of the Board of Works, it will afford that accommodation; whether the design of the engineers of the Board of Works is to put an elbow or bend on the pier; whether it is the intention of the engineers, or those responsible for the works, to leave the building of this elbow addition to some future time; whether the pier will then be unsuited for the purposes for which it was originally intended; whether representations have been made to the Board of Works by persons in the locality of the necessity and advisability of running out the pier into deep water; whether the Board of Works have declined to accede to these representations, and adhere to their own design; whether, if to admit vessels at all states of the tide (as originally intended) the pier will afterwards be extended into deep water, and the elbow, if erected, must be removed; whether that would entail large outlay which might be avoided by carrying out now the suggestions made to the Board of Works; and, whether there is any objection to lay upon the Table all the correspondence on the subject of this pier, including any recommendations made by the Piers and Harbours Commissioners?

The amount of grant proposed by the Fishery Piers and Harbours Commissioners for the pier at Carriga-holt was £13,500. The pier at present under construction is that sanctioned on the recommendation of those Commissioners, and will run out into a depth at low-water spring tides of eight feet; being the maximum accommodation that can be obtained for the money available for the construction of the pier. To make it suitable for first-class fishing vessels at all stages of the tide, it would be necessary to extend its length so as to have not less than 12 feet in depth at low-water spring tides, but this would cost an additional £12,000, none of which is forthcoming. The design approved for the work has a cant or elbow at the outer end of the pier, and this portion is now being proceeded with. To have merely extended the pier direct without the cant would have left the harbour exposed without reaching deep water, as supposed; the depth at the head of the pier would, in fact, have only been increased by a few inches. The Board of Works, though most anxious to meet the wishes of those interested, have had no means for carrying out any other work than that originally approved and sanctioned. I see no public advantage in laying the correspondence upon the table.

asked the Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works, Whether, in the event of the London Coal and Wine Duties Continuance Bill passing the second reading he will undertake to propose or support Clauses in Committee by which a proportionate share in these Duties will be secured to those districts which are outside the Metropolitan area, but which, nevertheless, now contribute to the Duties?

I beg to ask a further Question, Whether, in ease the efforts of my hon. and gallant Friend to obtain the insertion of such a Clause are unsuccessful, he will undertake to voteagainst the third reading of the Bill?

In reply to my hon. Friend, I beg to say that when the London Coal and Wine Duties Continuance Bill has passed the second reading, and has been referred to a Committee, I, on behalf of the Corporation of London and the Metropolitan Board, will propose, or support, the introduction of a Clause for the application of a portion of the duties to the requirements of districts outside the Metropolis, but within the area of the duties. In regard to the second Question, I beg leave to decline to answer it. If the hon. Gentleman likes to put it on the Paper I will consider whether I will do so or not.

Can the hon. and gallant Gentleman afford any estimate of what proportion of the duties should be paid over to the parishes outside?

I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for doing his best to put me and my Friends into a position of very great difficulty. It strikes me that is a matter for the Committee to decide, and when the Committee has decided it we will accept it.

asked whether there is any arrangement or understanding with the Corporation of the City of London to make any payment jointly towards the expenses of promoting meetings in the Metropolis in support of their Bill for the renewal of the Coal and Wine Dues; or whether the Metropolitan Board itself has supplied, or is supplying, any money for this purpose?

There is no such arrangement or understanding as the hon. Member alludes to; and the Metropolitan Board has not supplied, and is not supplying, any money for the purpose of promoting meetings in support of the Coal and Wine Duties Continuance Bill.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether it is a fact that the Board has declined to accept or recognize the reasons set forth in an unanimous Resolution of the Macroom Board of Guardians on the 29th January for changing the accounts of the union from the National Bank (Limited) to the Munster and Leinster Bank (Limited), and whether the Board are now prepared to sanction such a change; what were the reasons which actuated the Local Government Board in refusing to sanction the change of treasurership; whether it is a fact that the National Bank dishonoured the cheques presented by the union at first, when their overdraft did not exceed £1,493 1s. 5 d., and, secondly, when the overdraft was diminished to £1,077 6s. 7d.; whether such action on the part of the said bank has seriously embarrassed the union for several months, most of the officials and contractors not having been paid for several months; whether several of the contractors have threatened to discontinue supplies; whether the Munster and Leinster Bank offered the union accommodation to the extent of £2,000; and, whether the Local Government Board will see fit to sanction and promote the change of treasurer in the said union?

I understand that most of the statements in this Question are substantially correct; but there seems to have been lately some change in the situation, for it does not appear that the Guardians are now making any representations as to financial difficulties, the treasurer having cashed all cheques presented.

asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, whether he can give, or suggest, any remedy to Mr. W. Bramley, who, before the issue of the decree prohibiting the exportation of horses from Germany, purchased there and paid £3,000 for horses to be exclusively used in England, and who has been prevented by the Ger- man Government from exporting these horses at a great and continuing loss to himself?

I regret very much that there is no remedy for the misfortune on account of which Mr. Bramley is suffering. It is incidental to the precautionary measure of prohibiting the export of horses from Germany.

asked the Secretary to the Board of Trade, Whether Her Majesty's Government, before proceeding with the Merchandize Marks Act (1862) Amendment Bill, will confer with the Governors of the Birmingham Assay Office, seeing that out of 1,156,748 watch cases marked during the last three years, Birmingham marked 651,171, London 409,788, and Chester 95,789?

The Department is not unacquainted with the practice of the different assay offices, including Birmingham and Chester. It is, indeed, particularly indebted to the assay master of the Birmingham office for information recently afforded on matters affecting the assay of watch cases; and it hopes to have the opinion of the Governors of the different assay offices in giving practical effect to any new regulations for the marking of watch cases.

asked the First Lord of the Admiralty, Whether his attention has been called to the circumstances in which a labourer, named Walter Weeks, lost his life while at work in Portsmouth Dockyard on the afternoon of Friday last; whether there are any regulations in force in the Royal Dockyards forbidding men to adjust straps of the kind that this man was adjusting at the time of the accident while the machinery is in motion; whether arrangements could be made for re-adjusting such straps while machinery is in motion without any risk of danger to life; and, if so, whether the Admiralty will consider the advisability of at once carrying out such arrangements; and, what compensation will be made to the widow and children of the deceased Walter Weeks?

I regret to say that Walter Weeks lost his life from becoming entangled among the machinery while adjusting the strap for turning some portion of it. There are no regulations forbidding men to adjust the straps while the machinery is in motion, and it would hardly be practicable to carry them out if they existed. Arrangements for adjusting the straps without risk are, as far as possible, already made, and this is shown by the scarcity of accidents from this cause occurring at the several yards. Any improvements in the existing arrangements which suggest themselves would, as far as possible, be carried out. The compensation that can be made to the widow and children must be governed by the regulations laid down for accident cases. The amount will not be known until the circumstances are fully reported.

asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, If it is true that the Chinese garrisons in Turkestan are being strongly reinforced; and, whether this reinforcement has been carried out in pursuance of an understanding between China and England for the protection of the latter's Eastern Empire?

No information on the subject has reached Her Majesty's Government.

asked the Postmaster General, Whether an application has been made for the establishment of a post office at Whitty's Cross, Blackwater, County Wexford; whether complaints have reached him of the inadequacy of the present postal arrangements of the district; and whe- ther the matter will now be considered by him?

Applications for a post office at Whitty's Cross have at various times been received; but the amount of correspondence to be benefited is found to be far too small to warrant the expenditure involved.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, What were the reasons for the evictions recently carried out by Captain Hamilton on the Brooke Estate, at Coolgreany; if Captain Hamilton's conduct, in acting as Sheriff on the occasion, was legal; if it is a fact that two of the tenants evicted—namely, John O'Neill and William Ford, owed the landlord no rent at all; and, if it is a fact that the landlord was indebted to O'Neill for work done?

I have no information which would enable me to answer the third and fourth paragraphs of this Question. I presume the reason for the evictions was that the tenants had not paid their rents. I am not aware that Captain Hamilton acted as Sheriff, and I do not see how he could have done so.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, If, in view of their extreme historical interest and peculiar artistic value to the Irish people, the Government will have the Challoner Smith Collection of Mezzotint Engravings purchased for the Irish National Gallery?

(who replied) said: Representations have been made to the Treasury by an unofficial Committee in favour of the purchase of this Collection; but the Treasury declined, having no funds available for the purpose.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether it is contemplated to include any fresh territory in the British Protectorate on the Gold Coast; and, if so, to what extent, and on what conditions?

Two additions have recently been made to the Gold Coast Protectorate. 1. The small territory of Krikor, a strip of land about 20 miles by six, lying to the east of the Volta, between Awoonah and Afloo; both of which were already under British protection. It was desirable to accept the offer of Krikor for administrative and fiscal reasons, and the Treaty was ratified by the late Government in June last. 2. On the North-West confines of the Protectorate, adjacent to Gaman, an independent State, the addition of the Kingdom of Sefwhi to the Protectorate was authorized by my Predecessor. The object was to secure the freedom of the roads through it, as they are important trade routes; and the necessity of securing them has been strongly urged on Her Majesty's Government by merchants interested in the Colony. The principal conditions are freedom of trade routes and cessation of slavery. No responsibility is involved of defending the country against any Native aggression.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether the police in the County Waterford have, in some instances, refused to serve notices on jurors issued by the Deputy Sheriff appointed, by Sir Thomas Esmonde prior to the date on which Sir Thomas Esmonde received the communication from the Lords Justices purporting to remove him from the position of High Sheriff; and, if so, on what grounds; and, on what grounds the Irish Government took exception, to the appointment of Mr. L. C. Strange, solicitor, as Sub-Sheriff by Sir Thomas Esmonde, and on what day they decided that such appointment was objectionable?

I am informed that the police did not refuse to serve any notices on jurors issued by the Deputy Sheriff prior to the date of Sir Thomas Esmonde's receiving the communication from the Lords Justices. They would not be justified in serving notices issued by the Deputy Sheriff after that date. Mr. Strange had identified himself with the Plan of Campaign by attending and speaking at meetings, and his appointment was part of the previous conduct of Sir Thomas Esmonde referred to in the letter of the Lord Justices of February 21.

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he has not approved of the appointment of the Sub - Sheriff of Dublin County, who earned an unenviable notoriety in connection with the Tory Party seven years ago?

It is not my duty to approve or disapprove of the appointment of a Sub-Sheriff. The Government can only act with regard to a Sub - Sheriff through the medium of the Sheriff who appoints him.

asked the Postmaster General, Whether his attention has been called to the state of the telegraphic communication between the towns of Wexford and Enniscorthy; whether, under the existing arrangement, all messages from Enniscorthy to Wexford must be transmitted first to Dublin, and thence to Wexford, and vice versâ; whether the result of this system is that it frequently takes less time to send a message between these towns by rail than by telegraph; whether a very considerable telegraphic business is transacted between these towns; and, whether he can now see his way to grant the prayer of the Memorial recently addressed to the Secretary of the General Post Office, Dublin, by the merchants and traders of Enniscorthy, asking for the establishment of direct telegraphic communication between these towns?

My attention has been called to the subject of the hon. Member's Question; and while I am unable to grant the request that direct telegraphic communication should be provided between Wexford and Enniscorthy, because the amount of business between the two towns will not warrant the expense of providing and working a direct wire, I am prepared to expedite the transmission of telegrams by improving the existing means of communication. The daily number of messages is about eight, and the average time of transmission 15 minutes.

(for Admiral MAYNE (Pembroke and Haverfordwest) asked, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Whether he has observed that what appears to be the full text of the instructions to the Intelligence Department of the Navy has been published in the newspapers; and whether this was done with, the sanction of the Board; and, if not, whether he proposes to take any steps to prevent the publication of documents of an evidently confidential character by some person or persons in his Department?

The document in question was confidential, and the information which led to the publication of the instructions to the Intelligence Department constituted a grave breach of trust on the part of someone in the Admiralty. Means were recently adopted which it was hoped would have stopped the supply of information to the public except through the authorized channels. In a large and scattered establishment like the Admiralty reliance must, to a large extent, be placed on the good faith of its staff. It is much to be regretted that this sense of integrity has been found wanting in some one member of the Establishment unknown. The Admiralty will not cease to use every endeavour to prevent the publication of such papers in future.

Can the noble Lord say whether the Admiralty made any investigation as to the previous leaking out of a memorandum on precisely the same subject?

A very careful and elaborate inquiry was made, and I believe the means were ascertained.

Can they be stated without disadvantage to the Public Service?

It became public by means by which a great many other documents have become known—through the waste paper basket.

asked the Secretary of State for War, Whether, since relative rank of the Medical Officers of the Army has been abolished, what rank, if any, they now have in the Army?

A medical officer holds the rank in the Army which his commission confers upon him; and under article 125 a of the Royal Warrant it is provided that, for purposes of precedence, allowances, and widow's pension, medical officers shall rank with combatant officers as there laid down. As a matter of fact, the abolition of the term "relative rank" has not altered the position of medical officers in any respect whatever.

asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with reference to the cessation of diplomatic relations between this country and Venezuela, If he is prepared to state what action has been, or is proposed to be, taken for the protection of British subjects and their property in the latter country; more especially in the disputed territory adjacent to the Colony of British Guiana, now under the administration of the Venezuelan Government?

It is expected that the German Government will consent to undertake the protection of British subjects and their property in Venezuela during the suspension of diplomatic re- lations with this country. The Commander of Her Majesty's Naval Forces on the Station has been instructed to arrange for the protection of the persons and property of British subjects in the disputed territory, which is not under the administration of the Venezuelan Government, as stated in the Question of the hon. Member.

who had on the Paper the following Question—To ask the Postmaster-General, Whether it is the fact that he has several times lately, and, if so, in what particular cases, when a Post-mastership salary of £120 in England or £100 in Scotland or Ireland has been proposed, cut the proposal down and given a salary of £119 or £99 as the case may be; whether, in any and what cases posts have been conferred upon persons connected with or related to himself; and, if so, whether in accordance with or contrary to the recommendations of a Committee of the Heads of Branches in the Post Office; whether such Committee have or had actual knowledge of the work of all the men concerned; and, whether he was himself acquainted with their work?

The hon. Member for the Western Division of Cornwall has sent me Notice that he proposes to defer his Question; but I hope the House will allow me to take the earliest opportunity of replying to it. I have to say, Sir, in reply to the hon. Member's first Question, that on two occasions only in England and one in Scotland, to the best of my knowledge, since I have been in Office, I have reduced the proposed salary of £120 in England or £100 in Scotland to £119 or £99 respectively. There has been no such ease in Ireland in my time. There was, I believe, one recent case in which the salary of an Irish post office was so reduced; but that was done by my Predecessor (Lord Wolverton). In the following cases I have raised the salary to above £120 or £100 respectively—Ambleside, Cullompton, Denbigh, Enfield, Fakenham, Hayle, Keswick, Launceston, Llangollen, Sowerby Bridge; and in Scotland, Jedburgh and Turriff; and in Ireland, Fermoy, Letterkenny, Nenagh, and New- townards, and to these may be added Listowel. As regards the second Question, I have to say that I have in no case conferred any post on any person related to myself; though I can assure the hon. Member that I should not have shrunk from doing so if I had thought such an appointment a proper one in the interests of the Public Service. In one recent case I have promoted to the first class a gentleman whom, together with three or four other deserving clerks, I was requested to supersede by a junior officer. This gentleman belongs, I believe, to a family connected by marriage with another branch of my own; but I have not, and never had, any personal acquaintance with the gentleman in question or with any member of his family. I have no doubt that the Secretary, and those whom he may have consulted, had actual knowledge of the work of the clerks concerned; and I should not have declined to act on their advice if I had not satisfied myself, by inquiry in the Department, that to do so would have been, in my opinion, an act not only unfair to the particular gentleman whom I have promoted, but also injurious to the Public Service, by its discouraging effect on the class to which he belonged.

asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, When the Government intend submitting proposals dealing with mortgages and charges on Irish landed property to the House; whether they will allow payments made in respect of tithe-rent charges, quit rents, and Crown rents, on Irish estates to be reduced in the same proportion as the rentals of such estates have been reduced; and, whether, when Legacy and Succession Duty has been paid within recent years on landed property in Ireland—the value of which property has since been greatly diminished—they will allow the amount of Duty paid in excess of the value to be returned to those who paid it?

My hon. Friend the Secretary to the Treasury has already answered the third paragraph of this Question, to the effect that the law directs that Legacy and Succession Duty shall be assessed on the value of the property at the time when the event happens which gives rise to a claim for duty. On the first and second paragraphs I can only say that the recommendations of the Royal Commission will be carefully considered by the Government; but I cannot hold out any hopes that mortgages can be dealt with.

asked the First Lord of the Admiralty, Whether his attention has been drawn to the statements in The Broad Arrow and Military Magazine, to the effect that the Belleisle, instead of being only six weeks absent from the Kingstown Station,

"Is ordered to be out of the hands of the Dockyard Authorities by the 24th of May, in order to take part in the great Naval Review of the 20th of that month, and is then to proceed on a cruise that will necessitate her absence from Dublin Bay till August;"

and, whether the absence of the vessel will, therefore, be six months instead of six weeks, as previously stated; and, if so, whether the Belleisle will be replaced during the time on this important Station?

I cannot be answerable for the statements published in The Broad Arrow, and can only repeat that the re-fit of the Belleisle will take six weeks. The annual cruise of the Reserve Squadron usually occupies another six weeks. There is no intention of replacing her with another ship while she is absent from her Station.

asked the First Lord of the Treasury, If it is proposed to incorporate "The Idiots'Act, 1886,"in the Lunacy Laws Consolidation Bill of the present Session?

The subject, as my hon. Friend is aware, has been brought under the attention of the Lord Chancellor by the Lunacy Commissioners, and the matter is now under consideration. It would, however, be premature to arrive at any conclusion on the subject before the Amendment Bill (on which the consolidation depends) has made further progress; and the question is the more important, because the legislation with reference to idiots was deliberately severed from the Bills relating to lunatics in the last Parliament.

asked the First Lord of the Treasury, What steps, if any, have been taken with the view of securing to the inhabitants of Lichfield a direct representation on the Board of Trustees of Lowe's Charity in that city, in accordance with the Resolution of the House passed on the 18th of May in last year?

Lowe's Charity at Lichfield is now regulated by a scheme established by an Order of the Charity Commissioners made on the 26th of March, 1886, which provides for the appointment by the Town Council of Lichfield (as representative Trustees) of five Trustees out of 12. No proceedings are pending before the Commissioners for any variation of that scheme. With regard to the Resolution of the House of the 18th of May, I beg to refer the hon. Baronet to the answer I gave him on the 3rd instant.

asked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether he will take into consideration the question of investing the sum of £1,378,817 19s. of the funds of Greenwich Hospital, now in Three per Cent Annuities, in Australian, New Zealand, or Canadian Government Loans, yielding about 4 per cent, and thus effect a yearly saving of about £13,788 for the benefit of the Greenwich Pensioners?

(A LORD of the ADMIRALTY) (who replied) said: After certain re-investments, which are already sanctioned, have been carried out, the amount of Greenwich Hospital Funds standing in Three per Cent Annuities will only be about £945,000. These funds are public trust money; and it is not deemed advisable to transfer the investment to the Colonial loans mentioned in the Question of my hon. Friend,

who had the following Notice of Motion on the Paper:—

"That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into and report upon certain charges, brought under the notice of this House by Mr. Howell, Member for the North East Division of Bethnal Green, and Mr. Bradlaugh, Member for the Borough of Northampton, alleging improper use and malversation of public funds of the Corporation of London, by or with the consent of members and officials of such Corporation:—That it be an Instruction to the Committee that they do take evidence on oath,"

said: I should like to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, whether he can state what course the Government are going to take with regard to my Motion? I understood he promised to say today.

There will be no opposition on the part of the Government to the Motion which I understand the hon. Member has put on the Paper. I think, however, it would have been better if the hon. Member had set out in his Motion the charges which he proposes to bring against the Corporation; but I assume he is prepared to lay them before the Committee specifically when it meets.

I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he will consent if the Committee as nominated does not include my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bethnal Green and myself, to an Instruction which I shall move, giving my hon. Friend and myself power to call and examine witnesses before the Commission?

It is hardly reasonable that I should be asked to anticipate the course which the Committee of Selection may take. I propose that the Committee of Selection shall take the entire responsibility for the nomination of the Committee; and if the two hon. Members (Mr. Howell and Mr. Bradlaugh) are not named on the Committee, then will be the time for them to make an application to the House.

Then, if the Committee of Selection does not so name us, I give Notice that I shall move such an Instruction to the Committee.

This is not the first time that I have directed the attention of a Committee of this House to the growing charge of the Irish Constabulary. I recollect that shortly after I entered the House, in the year 1881, I opposed this Vote, which has always seemed to me to be a shocking and disgraceful waste of the public money of England. The Irish Constabulary, of late years, has always been maintained on a war footing. I remember on one occasion a declaration being made by the right hon. Gentleman the senior Member for Birmingham (Mr. John Bright) that the opinion he had held for years was that the maintenance of the Irish Constabulary, as a military force, was a standing and lasting disgrace to the English Government. The right hon. Gentleman added that he looked forward confidently to the near approach of a happier time, when this expenditure would be cut down. That speech was delivered five or six years ago. But has the expense of the Irish Constabulary been cut down? Instead of having been diminished in any way, it has been augmented year by year. This year we have already passed Estimates amounting to £1,397,153 for the maintenance of the Constabulary Force of Ireland, and we are now called, upon to vote a further sum of £30,000. The Constabulary of Ireland have legitimate duties to perform which, at the present moment, they entirely neglect. They leave crime altogether undetected and unpunished, in spite of the monstrous sums which are expended on them. Now, I maintain that if the force were not required to perform other duties besides those connected with the detection of murderers and robbers, it could be maintained in a liberal manner and with efficiency at the comparatively low cost of £400,000 a-year. What does that mean? We hear of Ministers leaving the Cabinet because they desire to see economical arrangements effected in the Army and Navy; and here in Ireland—although we are accused of desiring to plunge our arms elbow deep into the pockets of the British taxpayer—we are willing to make you a present of £800,000 a-year. I feel bound to say that if the present policy is continued the cost of the Irish Constabulary will soon reach£l,500,000, or. perhaps, £2,000,000 a-year. What is the reason we are asked to vote this sum of £30,000 additional? Not because we have not already provided for the extra pay and travelling expenses of the Constabulary, because for years we have had to vote heavy sums for those purposes. Indeed, it is the best paid and best eared-for Police Force in the world; but still, when the men are sent out to assist in carrying out evictions, it is necessary to give them a large additional sum per day for extra duties—a sum far larger than any hard-working man in Ireland could hope to obtain from a day's labour. The House has already voted a sum of £62,500 for extra pay and travelling expenses this year, and we are now asked to increase that sum by over £30,000, making in all £93,467, for extra allowances and travelling expenses. A more monstrous waste of the public money was never made. I am afraid that I must trespass at considerable length on the attention of the Committee while I direct the attention of hon. Members to the way in which this money has been squandered in Ireland, not only for utterly useless purposes, but for purposes of the gravest possible mischief—with this result only, that the uselessness of the police in Ireland is made more manifest day by day. As a Police Force they are of no value whatever, and they are chiefly used in parading about the country as if they were a foreign force in the occupation of an enemy's territory; and they have been employed in assisting in evictions and in protecting Government reporters. This Estimate for travelling expenses and extra allowances deals only with three matters—first of all, suppression of public meetings; secondly, the carrying out of evictions; and, thirdly, the protection of reporters sent by the Government to report the words of any man who dares to open his mouth in Ireland. The system has been going on for the last six years without any one rising to explain what good has been done by it. The Government never get a conviction, and they might as well dispense with these police reports altogether. No doubt there is an accumulated number of them; but who, in the name of Heaven, will ever read through them? Hundreds and hundreds of speeches have been reported which would fill that Table if they were piled up together, and they have been reported for no object under the sun. As to the first item in these Estimates, in looking over the detailed list I have certainly been led to believe that the Government have not honestly prepared it. I believe they have been ashamed to come before this Committee and tell us the sum they have lavished in Ireland in carrying out evictions during the last two or three months. If the Committee could only realize the large sums of money that have been spent in these evictions, they would arrive at a conclusion that the time has come when, if the public could know how the money has been spent, they would rise up in rebellion and put a stop to it. There are items here for car-hire, railway fares, and marching money for carrying out the duties described in the sub-head—namely, evictions and suppression of public meetings, and the total amounts to £11,164. I have been told, on very good authority, that the car-hire alone in the eviction of four families on Lord Clanricarde's estate at Woodford came to £1,372. It is told of one man that he went to these evictions with an old and dilapidated car and a broken-down horse which he had borrowed from a neighbour. When he returned from Woodford he was enabled to buy himself a new car and a horse. He appears to have been paid £13 for horse and car - hire to enable him to attend the Woodford evictions. Now, be it remembered that the whole sum in dispute was exactly £50, and the entire rental of the four farms from which the tenants have been evicted came to the enormous sum of £92. For carrying out these evictions the Government have expended £1,372 in one item alone, and the object of the evictions was to turn out the tenants by a man who has since proved himself to be little short of a madman. What has been the result? We are told that it is necessary to do such things and to waste such sums of money in order to maintain law and order in Ireland. Now, let me ask the Government to consider what they have got for this £1,372. They have secured this result—that the whole of the Clanricarde Estate is in a state of revolution against the payment of rent. That which you have done at Woodford has made it impossible for Lord Clanricarde to get a shilling of rent, and he never will get a shilling until he comes down to the terms which the tenants offer so long as this system is going on. The only justification for this monstrous waste of money is that you are going to restore law and order in Ireland. Now, have you made any advance in that direction? The only result you have achieved as yet has been the turning out of four men from their houses. They have not paid the rent, and, instead of making them pay, you have induced 15,000 men to declare that they will refuse to pay their rent until these four men are put back upon their farms. I will tell the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland plainly that not one shilling of rent will be paid on the Clanricarde Estate until he puts these four men back again, and undoes the work which was done in Woodford in August last. The present system, if continued, must inevitably disgrace any Government that is prepared to carry it on. Let me take another instance, and really I think it is only fair that the Committee should see they get value for their money in any case. The second case I had something to do with myself. I refer to the Glenbeigh evictions. I am not going into the details of those evictions, because I think we have heard enough of them in this House; but I wish to point out that, according to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland himself, we are now called upon to vote a sum of £450 for the extra pay and allowances of the police who were employed in carrying out those evictions, and yet there is not a man in England, whether he be Conservative or Liberal, who is not utterly disgusted with the manner in which those evictions were carried out. In order to evict these poor tenants, and burn their houses down, you have now to pay £450 of English money. What have you gained? Have you restored law and order? Have you conciliated the people? There was no combination in this locality against the payment of rent. The members of the Land League did pay their rent, and others paid all they were able to pay. You have spent £450 in evicting these persons, and now the whole of the tenants of the Glenbeigh Estate refuse to pay any more. Therefore, you have only succeeded in ruining the landlord. What has occurred at Ballyferreter? You have there taught them to realize the lesson you have been teaching them for the last 50 years—namely, that where they submit to the law they get no mercy, and that where they resist the law they get justice. An agent was sent down there before the police arrived on the scene, and, before Lord Cork's agent called in the police, he refused to give any better terms to the tenants than one year's rent and the costs. When the police were sent down the people met them armed with such rude weapons as they could collect. They met the police, resisted their progress, and put them to flight. The next day a British gunboat was employed to assist the police. Surely this was a spectacle for gods and men—a British gunboat employed to restore order in these country districts! What did the people do then? When the police came down they faced them as before; they assembled on the mountain, rolled down huge boulders, and the police had to fight their way. In the end the landlord had to accept the tenants' terms. That is the lesson you are teaching the people of Ireland. If they obey the law they get no mercy; but if they will fight the police, the better they fight the more they will get. That is a lesson which the Chief Secretary and the Government are teaching the people of Ireland all over the country, and it is a lesson which I have learned from my childhood upwards. As long as the people have remained quiet they have been exterminated; but when they rise and break the law, and make violent resistance, they get terms. Yet the Government have the audacity to come forward now and ask the people of England to pay £450 for burning down the houses of the poor tenants in Glenbeigh. They are, further, asked to pay £1,500 or £2,000 for this gallant endeavour to give effect to the insanities of Lord Clanricarde. I know that the Government themselves were disgusted with the conduct of Lord Clanricarde. His own agent was so disgusted that he left him; and now you are beginning to see the consequences of refusing to alter the law at the demand of the people of Ireland. The Government are compelled at this moment to place the forces of the Crown at the disposal of a man whom they regard with the utmost abhorrence and disgust, and whom they have endeavoured vainly to control. They feel themselves called upon to place at Lord Clanricarde's disposal as many armed men as he chooses to demand, in order that they may advance into a country where the people refuse to yield, and where nothing can follow but strife. Before I leave this subject I should like to relate a circumstance which will remain in my memory as long as I live. The police who were sent down to Glenbeigh formed into column, and they marched to a remote house, four miles away on the mountain, occupied by a Mrs. Moriarty. The baton men led the van, like a body of skirmishers; then came the police armed with their swords and rifles, with two Emergency crowbar men in the middle, and followed by the representatives of the Press and the peasantry. In that order they marched for four miles along the road-side some 200 strong, and they consumed the entire day, at a probable cost to the country of £40 or £50. And what was the result? When we got to Mrs. Moriarty's house, and the agent went in, it was discovered that this was the case of a joint holding, and that Mrs. Moriarty had offered her rent to the agent, who refused to take it. The agent refused because this woman's brother—who was a joint tenant in the holding—could not pay, and, on inquiry, they declared to me that they honestly believed he had not a shilling in the world. In this case, this body of police were marched for a considerable distance to evict a tenant who had offered payment of the rent. It was the most stupid and irritating exhibition I ever witnessed in my life. I talked to the woman, and I said—"I wonder how people remain in this place at all." She said—"I thought I should be rich here; and so I should have been if two cows had not died on me in the summer." I do not believe for a moment that she was telling an untruth. Two of her cows had died during the summer, and she had only one left. Notwithstanding this, she had offered to pay her rent, and she had brought it in twice, and laid it on the table before the agent. Nevertheless, this large body of police was marched to her holding. She informed me that the money she had tendered in payment of the rent she had obtained from some of her children who are in service. "Oh;" she said, "I cannot pay now as I used to do, because my son left me last year to go to America, and he left me in a hole. But, Sir," she added, "I cannot blame him. I have been robbing him of his wages ever since he was 15 years of age, and I have devoted every shilling to the payment of the rent." This interview with this poor woman will remain impressed on my mind as long as I live. These are the persons the police are employed to evict. Then, I would ask, are we getting the value of our money for evictions of this kind? Is there any Unionist who imagines that we are getting value, and that they will maintain the Union for another six years like those we have just passed through? You are now driving Ireland into anarchy, and there really exists no Government at all. If the Unionists in this House desire to maintain the Union, the sooner they bring in a Bill to stop evictions the better. We are now paying for the suppression of public meetings in Ireland. Meetings have been suppressed without the slightest justification even in the most disturbed times when the greatest excitement has prevailed, but which have not been stained by an act of violence or a single crime. I must confess that every Monday morning I have opened the newspapers with a feeling of dread, expecting to hear that there had been a collision between the Government and the people. I warn the Government that we shall continue to hold these meetings. I defy the Government to put them down, and if bloodshed follows, on their heads be the crime and the shame. Who is it that is breaking the law? We, who desire to give vent to our grievances, or the Government who are endeavouring to suppress liberty of speech and the right of public meeting in Ireland? The Government proclaimed the meeting at Coolgreaney. I have here a copy of the Proclamation signed by a General Officer in Her Majesty's Army—Sir Redvers Buller. We are told that the Government proclaimed that meeting not because any information had been sworn that it was likely to lead to a breach of the peace, but because in their impression, it had a tendency to promote an illegal object, and, therefore, they ought to prevent it. Talk as you may, if such a power is placed in the hands of the Executive the right of public meeting and liberty of speech will be at an end. Is it to be in the power of an Executive acting in the dark in Dublin Castle to proclaim public meetings in Ireland, ad libitum, on the representation of some land agent who goes up the back stairs and says that in his opinion a particular meeting which has been announced to be held is called to support the Plan of Campaign? If this kind of action is to be taken the right of free speech will be at an end in Ireland, and I tell the Government plainly that we will not tamely submit to such a course. We held our meeting last Sunday, although it was proclaimed by the Government, and the Government knew nothing of it until it had been held. We shall continue to do so, and if we are interfered with and blood is shed in consequence let that blood be on the head of the Government who attempt to suppress the right of public meeting. What happened at Coolgreaney? I mention this because it illustrates in a graphic manner the uselessness of employing the police in such a way. We have heard in this House complaint after complaint of the prevalence of undetected crime and outrage in Ireland. Why is that? It is because the police are useless. They can put down meetings in Ireland, and can bâton the people; but they cannot apprehend a murderer or put a stop to moonlighting. What was it that they tried to do at Coolgreaney? The General Officer to whom I have referred attempted to put down the Coolgreaney meeting. Tie declined to be humbugged, and he sent down 200 police and mounted men to scour the country. Well, what happened? We sent out bogus cars; the police rode after them, and then we held our meeting with bands and banners and with 2,000 persons present. It was held within five miles of Coolgreaney; speeches were made at enormous length, and the police did not know a word about the meeting, nor was there any police reporter present, and no report of our speeches was supplied to the Government. Perhaps the consequence was that I gave a freer play to my imagination than I am accustomed to do. After the meeting was over, in driving along the road to Coolgreaney, I passed 200 policemen marching out of Coolgreaney under the pleasing delusion that they had dispersed the meeting. We arrived at Coolgreaney at 5 o'clock, and then we held a meeting on the very spot where it was intended to take place originally. Now, why should the people of this country be asked to pay large sums of money for such tomfoolery as this? The attempt at suppressing that meeting probably cost the country £100, and this is all you got for it. You did not suppress the meeting, and you lost the valuable report which would have been placed in the archives of Dublin Castle by the police reporter, and which the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Holmes) has lost the pleasure of perusing. I am sorry for that, because I have some hopes of converting him even yet. The police found it impossible to suppress this meeting, because there was not even a child of 13 years who would not deceive them, and they could get no more information as to where we were, or what we were doing, than if they had been in France or Germany. They were driving about the country, and every child or woman they questioned sent them on a wrong road. Are these the men who are to constitute a force capable of suppressing murder? How are the Irish Constabulary to put down murder and moonlighting when things have been brought to such a pass in Ireland that it is considered a crime and an act of treachery to be seen talking to a policeman? The result of all these arrangements is, of course, that crime flourishes, and the police are hated; the Estimates grow and grow, and instead of getting any value for the money voted we only find that the country is going from bad to worse. Surely one would suppose that for a sum of £1,400,000 a-year the Government ought to be able to maintain law and order in Ireland. But what is the fact? Hon. Members of this House declare that there is no Government in Ireland at all. A remarkable letter from a noble Lord has recently appeared in the newspapers. He tells us that the Conservative Government, when they came into Office, declared that they would put down agitation in Ireland with a turn of their little finger, and the Government were at once to restore the authority of law and order, and to put an end for ever to the operations of the Plan of Campaign. It is declared that there is no Government at all in Ireland, and you are getting no value whatever for the £1,400,000 a-year you are spending on the Irish police. Now what might happen if you allow the Irish people to manage their own police? The Irish people would "run" them—as they say in America—for £400,000, and for that money they would maintain law and order in a very different fashion from the present. Under the existing system the expenditure must continue to increase, with worse and worse results. Then there is a third expense to which I wish to draw attention—namely, the charge for the protection of police reporters in Ireland. I estimate that during the last six years between £20,000 and £30,000 have been spent in collecting reports of probably 6,000 speeches; and I think it is about time for some Minister to get up and say what purpose, under the sun, he expects to gain by collecting those vast masses of speeches, since during the whole of these six years there has never been an attempt to use the speeches except in two well-known trials—in both of which the Government were signally defeated. If the Government have given up trials, why do they send large bodies of police to protect Government reporters? I have done everything in my power, although it is not always possible to do so, when the Government very prudently and wisely consider it necessary to send a body of armed men to protect their reporters. The people regard them as spies, and they will not allow them to go upon the platform. In every instance, when I have been present, I have invited them upon the platform when the people have allowed me to do so, because I have felt that the situation might otherwise be of a critical and dangerous character. The Government insist that these persons shall have the best place in front of the meeting. The people, however, regard them as spies, and the consequence is that they are compelled by force to thrust themselves into the middle of the meeting. I shall never forget the scene which I witnessed at Lough-rea. The Government, unfortunately, on that occasion did not send a sufficient body of men. They sent down some 20 armed men; but the committee would not allow their reporter to go on the platform, even at my request. The police thereupon insisted upon forcing their way to the front. There were at least 10,000 men assembled, and just before I began to speak somebody struck a constable or shoved him, and the police were immediately called upon to fix bayonets. Now, if one drop of blood had been shed on that occasion, I believe that not one of those policemen would have left that meeting alive, notwithstanding everything I could have done to protect them. If the Government had a really strong reason they might say—"We will run the risk of bloodshed, because what we are doing is necessary." But I do not know what interests the Government have to serve in reporting these speeches. They get full reports of them in the public papers, and their only object can be to have sworn reports for the purpose of trials, of which, however, I should think the Irish Secretary has had enough. Is it good value for money to vote large sums for a purpose which is fraught with the greatest danger to peace and order and a cause of insult and irritation to the people of Ireland? There never was—and the police, I believe, will bear out the statement—at any agrarian meeting the slightest cause for the presence of the police. There is no case on record where the peace has been broken, and none, as far as I know, in which injury has been done to property. I attended a meeting some time ago, to reach which I had to drive over one of the most frightful mountain roads it was ever my lot to travel over for a distance of 20 miles. At least 10,000 people were present, and the authorities, in order to protect their police reporter, were obliged to transport 150 police over that long mountain road at enormous cost, and with great exposure to the men, and all this for the purpose of getting a report of speeches which is never used. I have not the slightest doubt that the expenses to which the Government were put on that day alone amounted to £40. And what have you got for it? Like everything else in connection with the police, the proceedings of the authorities only tend to promote disorder and disaffection. Let the police perform their legitimate duty of detecting and punishing crime. Let them be employed to stop evictions rather than to carry them out. It is a curious thing that when I commenced this agitation last year, in company with my friend (Mr. O'Brien), we thought that under it we could reduce Ireland to order; and it is a curious fact that never in the whole history of the country have we passed through a period of such deep and wide-spread distress with such freedom from disorder and crime. At Christmas the Government commenced to suppress our meetings, and simultaneously with their action crime appeared, and there was an ebullition of lawlessness. As sure as you go on suppressing these meetings so surely will crime increase. I have myself denounced crime, and I have pointed out to the people that their condition will be a great deal better without crime. But it is not by denouncing crime that you will wean the Irish people from crime. Your first effort should be to get into the confidence of the people, and to do so you must convince them that you sympathize with their wrongs. It is not by denouncing crime, but it is by leading the people in better and more wise and more Christian roads that you can bring about an amelioration of their condition. The English people are denouncing crime. They have been doing so for 100 years, and what have they achieved? Nothing at all. You have tried suppression and denunciation of crime, and you have accomplished nothing. A good deal has been said about Boycotting. Well, perhaps I may be permitted to retain the conviction I have long since expressed, that if it comes to be a choice between murder and Boycotting, I prefer Boycotting. That is all I will state about Boycotting. If the Government are determined to pursue their present policy, and imagine that they are going to pacify Ireland and restore law and order by piling up the Police Estimates, they will have to make up their minds for a largely increased expenditure for the purpose. I am told that they have been keeping two constables parading every railway station in Ireland from morning to night, doing nothing except peeping into the railway carriages, in order to ascertain if I was there. I suppose there are not less than 1,000 policemen in Ireland at the present moment who have no business on earth except to peep into every railway train in order to see whether Mr. O'Brien or myself is travelling by it. I warn the Government that it is not by a Crimes' Act or the Constabulary Vote that they will manage to extract rents from the estates which have struck under the Plan of Campaign until you meet the people fairly.

The hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) has spoken, as he always does, with earnestness and ability. I have on this occasion to ask the indulgence of the House, because I am unfortunately suffering from illness; but I will do the best I can to answer the hon. Member, and I do not think my task will be a difficult one. Now, Sir, the hon. Member has commented upon the great cost of the Irish Constabulary, and he has asked us if we suppose that we will restore law and order in Ireland by merely piling up the Constabulary Estimates. The cost of the Constabulary is, I admit, very great; but that cost is a necessary element in the maintenance of law and order in Ireland. [Cries of "No!"] Yes, if law and order are to be maintained according to the modern standard of law and order, and not that standard which the hon. Member has thought fit to follow. But I quite admit that the hon. Member is right in supposing that we do not for a moment conceal our opinion that it is not merely by piling up the Constabulary Estimates that we can maintain law and order. That law and order is not maintained, at the present moment, as we wish; and the hon. Member knows—and the House knows—that as soon as we possibly can we shall apply for greater powers to enable it to be properly maintained. The hon. Member objects to this Vote for extra pay and allowances to the Constabulary by reason, as he says, that they have been incurred in respect of three heads—evictions, the suppression of public meetings, and the protection of police reporters. Sir, in the first place the hon. Member is absolutely incorrect in that statement. By far the greater part of the Vote—something like £20,000 in all—is due to the necessity for dealing by movements of the police with a matter which even the hon. Member and his Friends will admit it was necessary for the Government to deal—namely, the unfortunate riots in Belfast, and other disturbances at Parliamentary elections which occurred at the same time. There is, of course, a margin due to the causes to which the hon. Member refers, because in presenting these Estimates it was necessary to include every item of expenditure. The hon. Member charges us with the unnecessary use of the Police in maintaining the law on the occasion of evictions. Well, Sir, why was that necessary? For what reason, except for the agitation and the incitements used by the hon. Member and his Friends to the tenants not to pay their rents, who would otherwise have paid their rents, and to people to assemble in crowds to obstruct the execution of the law, who would not otherwise have thought of assembling. But for these reasons these things would not have happened. Every effort has been used by the hon. Member and his Friends to stir the people of Ireland to resistance to the law, and to obstruct the authorities in the execution of the law. The hon. Member has said—and his remark was cheered by some hon. Members opposite—that the events which occurred at the evictions are our fault, because we declined to alter the law. Then he went on to refer to a case which conclusively proves that his own argument is incorrect. What did he tell us with respect to Lord Clanriearde and the evictions at Woodford in the autumn? Did he tell us that the great cause of these evictions was the inability of the tenants to pay their rents? No, Sir; he made no such assertion. Did he tell us that when no rent was paid on that property it was due to the inability of the tenant to pay it? Not for a moment; but he did tell us that the refusal to pay rent was due to the disposition on the part of the tenants, which, I say, was fostered and encouraged, if not initiated, by the hon. Member himself and his Friends, to resist the payment of rent until certain evicted tenants were restored to their holdings. What would the passing of the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) last Session have done for such a case as that? Does the hon. Member mean to tell the House that if that Bill had been passed he would have desisted from advising the tenants who could pay their rents not to pay them? I thought we were asked to pass that Bill to relieve those who were unable to pay.

What I said was, that I did not advise tenants to pay who were unable to pay without ruinously depriving themselves of what they required as the means of working their farms.

I think the hon. Member is not absolutely accurate in his recollection. I very much wish it were possible for hon. Members of this House to inquire carefully into this particular case at Woodford, for it cannot have been true to say of the tenants on that property to whom the hon. Members have referred that they were in that position. Beyond that it has never been alleged that these four persons, in whose evictions so large a sum was expended, declined to settle with the landlord, or his agent, because of their inability to pay. It was solely on account of a combination to set the law at defiance in that part of Ireland. I am bound to admit that the combination has brought that part of Ireland into a condition which is a disgrace to the civilization of the United Kingdom. The hon. Member refers to the large sum of £1,200 which is included in the Estimate for police protection on that occasion in respect of the Woodford Estate. That sum appears to me to be exorbitant to the last degree. The matter happened a few days after the assumption of Office by the present Government, and one of the first things I did was to inquire into the circumstances under which this large expenditure had been incurred, and to take steps which, I feel sure, will reduce similar expenditure in the future; but whatever expenditure has been incurred in such matters must be incurred rather than that the law should be defied. The hon. Member has also referred to the case of the Glenbeigh Estate, and also to the case of the Ballyferreter tenants; and anyone who has read or studied the statements which have been published with reference to the condition of the tenants on the Glenbeigh Estate—and that, unfortunately, is the condition of many tenants in that part of Ireland—would suppose that those evictions would have been stopped, or even delayed, by the passing of the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork. This question has already been discussed pretty fully in the House this Session, and I think it has been conclusively shown that such a supposition is altogether unfounded. I have again to say that the contention of the hon. Member that all this expenditure is due to the refusal of the House to alter the law as proposed by the hon. Member for Cork is absolutely baseless. Of course, I should not be in Order in discussing that proposal now; but I may say that if it had been adopted it would have put money into the hands of many men in Ireland who were able to pay their full rents to their landlords, and many of whom have since paid them, as the tenants in England and Scotland have done. The hon. Member went on to the second head of his indictment—the suppression of public meetings. The hon. Member charged us with having broken the law in order to suppress freedom of speech. According to the argument of the hon. Member, the Committee might be led to suppose that it is an every-day thing for Her Majesty's Government to prohibit public meetings in Ireland. [An hon. MEMBER: So it is.] Now, how many meetings does the House suppose have been actually prohibited during the last four months? Just eight only, four of which were on Sunday. That is a specimen of the facts from Ireland that are adduced here. We have not proclaimed meetings ad libitum. We do not claim, and we never have claimed, to possess any right whatever, as suggested below the Gangway, to put a stop to public meetings in Ireland. But we know very well that, as the law stands, we are bound to see whether there is anything about the meeting, either in its object or in its probable effect, which will justify the Government in taking special measures with regard to it. Now, Sir, what are the facts with regard to these meetings? The first meeting prohibited was one called at Sligo directly for the purpose of intimidating jurors in a forthcoming trial. That meeting was prevented; but Mr. O'Brien visited Sligo, and pursued a course which he has followed on other occasions. It has been a favourite pastime with the hon. Gentleman and some of his Friends, when a meeting has been prohibited, to make excursions, sometimes in cars, sometimes on horseback, sometimes by train, and sometimes aquatic excursions, in order to hold meetings, not in the places where they have been prohibited, but wherever they can get a score of people on whom they may come unexpectedly, and to whom they address themselves in the absence of the police; and these meetings are, more or less, accurately reported in the Press the next day. With regard to the case of Sligo, I remember seeing a glowing account in The Freeman's Journal of the way in which the Proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant had been evaded, and it might be supposed that everything which was prohibited had been done. The fact was that Mr. O'Brien and one or two others slipped out of the back-yard in the middle of the night and drove on a car n distance of 15 miles, and then, getting a few persons together next morning, they delivered certain speeches which were more or less accurately reported on the following day. Another meeting was prohibited which was called ostensibly for the same object—the intimidation of jurors. The meeting supposed to be held was, I believe, a bogus meeting; no attempt was ever made to hold it. Two other meetings were prohibited—one at Loughrea and the other at Rosslea. Both of those meetings were called a day or two before the time which the Sheriff had fixed to carry out certain evictions. Informations were sworn that if those meetings were held the result would certainly be incitement to resistance to the execution of the law. That, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, was a sufficient reason for the prohibition of the meeting. Another of these meetings did take place, like the meeting at Sligo, by the hon. Member and his Friends holding it in some unexpected place; but none has been held in the place where it had been proclaimed. Other meetings have been summoned—like that at Coolgreaney, to which the hon. Member has referred—by a placard giving the information that it was intended to hold a meeting to promote the Irish National cause. Well, Sir, the Irish National cause may be promoted in various ways, according to the views of hon. Members who call themselves the Irish National Party. It has been promoted in past times by weapons which. I do not for a moment charge hon. Members opposite with using, but which have been very vividly pourtrayed in this House by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt). It has been promoted by misguided men by means of dynamite, assassination, and things of that kind. It has also been attempted to be promoted by Constitutional agitation such as that used by the late Mr. Butt, and against which I have not a word to say. Nor would I have any word to say against hon. Members below the Gangway opposite if all their agitation had been Constitutional agitation. Again, it has been attempted to be promoted by the Plan of Campaign, or, in other words, by an organized system of robbery.

Mr. Courtney, inasmuch as I am one of those who conducted the Plan of Campaign, I ask you whether the right hon. Baronet is in Order in alluding to it as an organized system of robbery?

The right hon. Baronet has not imputed to the hon. Member that he has organized robbery.

I am surprised at the interruption of the hon. Member, because I understand that a jury in Dublin recently disagreed in a certain case that was before it, some of the members of that jury having declined to believe the hon. Member's own statement that he was concerned in the Plan of Campaign. Sir, that is my description of the Plan of Campaign, whoever may have been concerned in it, and I am bound to say that when the Plan of Campaign has been adopted on an estate the Government have a very difficult task before them in deciding on the course to pursue with reference to meetings called on that estate for the promotion of the Plan of Campaign. Now, what was the case in reference to the Coolgreaney meeting? There was an estate of no large extent where there was no pretence that the rents were exorbitant; where the relations of landlord and tenant had been excellent for years, and were admitted to be so on the part of those who spoke on behalf of the tenants themselves. The landlord not long ago appointed an agent who was obnoxious to the hon. Member and his Friends. The Plan of Campaign was consequently adopted on that estate; the tenants declined to pay their rents, except on a certain reduction fixed by themselves; auctions of their stock were held, and all the means of the Plan of Campaign for defeating the just rights of the landlord were adopted, and then last Sunday a meeting was held, nominally to promote the National cause in Ireland, but really to force the tenants to adhere to the Plan of Campaign. I was asked a Question to-day upon the subject, and I think some hon. Members received with doubt my statement as to forcing the tenants to adhere to the Plan of Campaign. I should be very sorry to attach too much credence to anything that may appear in the newspapers on this subject; but I did see a statement in a newspaper that in the course of certain evictions, as to which I was asked a Question this evening, on that estate the wife of one of the tenants actually had a purse in her hand, which she held out to the agent, offering him the rent; but the local priest, who took a leading part in promoting the Plan of Campaign, pulled the purse out of her hand, and prevented her from paying her rent. This meeting was called last Sunday for forcing the Plan of Campaign upon those tenants. It was called at a time when evictions were pending on that property. It was, in the opinion of the Government—an opinion based on sworn information—calculated to lead to resistance to the enforcement of the law. The Government proclaimed the meeting. Again, the hon. Member and his Friends, by the system I have described, of driving about the country to places four, five, and eight miles off, contrived to address a few small assemblies. [Cries of "Oh! "] Yes; and of course Members present at the meetings were greatly exaggerated the next day. The hon. Member stated that a meeting was held at Coolgreaney. That was not so.

The right hon. Gentleman must excuse me. I was present and spoke at that meeting.

That was not so.

I rise to Order, Mr. Courtney.

Order, order! Sir Michael Hicks-Beach will explain.

I do not mean to question the word of the hon. Member; but what happened was this. A platform had been erected in a certain part of the town, where a meeting was announced to be held. No meeting was held there; but in the evening a few persons—among them, possibly, the hon. Member—did attempt to make speeches in another part of the town.

It was in the centre of the town.

But they were at once dispersed by the police; and that was the result of the Coolgreaney meeting. Sir, I do not mean to say, or for a moment to ask the Committee to consider, that the state of affairs which I have described is a satisfactory state of affairs; very much the contrary. All I have to say with regard to it is this—that believing, as we do, that the meetings to which I have alluded, and which, I may again remind the Committee, have only, in all, been eight in number, were held for purposes that would lead to breaches of the law, we deemed it our duty to prohibit their being held, and to do our best to enforce that prohibition. The hon. Member says that we have failed in this matter. Well, Sir, I admit that if we had powers which would enable us, not to interfere so much with those meetings, but to bring to justice the persons who use meetings of this kind to incite people to breaches of the law, then we should deal with the matter more efficiently than we are at present able to do. The hon. Member says—"Give us the police, and we will maintain law and order in Ireland at a cost of £400,000, instead of £1,350,000." How will they maintain law and order? [An hon. MEMBER: By putting a stop to jury packing.] Will they do it by abolishing property in Ireland? It is our duty, and the duty of any Government in this country, to maintain law and order in Ireland as it has always been interpreted in this House of Commons; and when the hon. Member asks me, in the third count of his indictment, why we sent police to protect the Government reporters at these meetings that were held, and why those reporters are sent, I will tell him that it is—as he has himself admitted to have some tangible evidence of the speeches made on those occasions—in order to use that evidence for the purpose of prosecution if required. The hon. Member says—" What is the good of this? You will never be able to get a conviction." But, Sir, we intend to ask this House to make such changes in the law as will make it possible to get a conviction where an offence has been committed. [Cries of "Right or Wrong!"] No; not right or wrong. I will venture to say that anybody who watches the course of the Assizes at present going on in Ireland—anybody who watches them fairly, who sees the way in which, from day to day, courses involving no political issues, courses involving nothing but ordinary crime, are dealt with by juries in more than one county in Ireland—will be bound to admit, if he considers it fairly, that a change in the law is not required to secure a conviction, whether right or wrong, but that a change is required to secure that justice shall be done. I am afraid I cannot ask the Committee to listen to me longer. I have said that I am speaking under very great difficulties. I only wish, in conclusion, to protest as strongly as I can against the doctrine of resistance to the law, which has been preached to-night by the hon. Member—"If you will not alter the law as we choose, then we will not obey it." That is the doctrine which the hon. Member has preached in this House to-night.

I rise to say, Sir, that I preached no such doctrine. I said that if the Government break the law in prohibiting public meetings, we will hold the meetings in spite of them.

Then the hon. Member says the Government have broken the law; but he has made no attempt whatever to prove that. That was attempted to be proved in the Debate upon the Address, initiated by the hon. Member for Cork; but the House declined, by a large majority, to accept the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman sitting on the Front Opposition Bench; and those sitting behind them, although they supported the Amendment, never charged the Government with having broken the law. If the hon. Member and his Friends think that we have broken the law, let them bring this matter before the House, and specify how and where and in what manner we have done so. I maintain that we have, in fact, been careful to avoid straining it, and hare never interfered with a public meeting except where there was something illegal in its purpose or in its objects, or when there was reason to apprehend a breach of the law. Again, I say if the speech of the hon. Member is not an incitement to resist the law, if it be not altered as he may desire it, then I do not know what principle underlies it, or what its effect may be on the country. I leave it to the judgment of this House and of the country. I believe it is only an additional proof of the absolute necessity which exists that, if order is to be restored in Ireland, further powers must be conferred upon the Executive.

The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach), in the concluding observations he addressed to the House, has given to his followers and the country at large an assurance that at all events, if it be possible, he will without delay recur to the policy with which we are already very familiar in Ireland. It is quite evident, from the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, that to such an extent as he can obtain powers from this House he is determined to make it hot for the Irish Party in future. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman, however, that with the granting of powers to him by this House his difficulties will by no means cease. He is going to enter upon a policy which has been tried before and has failed; and I can tell him that no Predecessor of his occupying the position of Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant ever yet engaged in the task with less cause to cry out than the right hon. Gentleman himself. I should have thought that with the knowledge he has of the country and the information he relies on as part and parcel of that knowledge, and which he has obtained from the police in regard to the suppression of public meetings in Ireland, he must have been aware that he was in no degree superior to those of his Predecessors who have tried the same policy and have failed in their endeavours to carry it out. The right hon. Gentleman has spoken of the Plan of Campaign as "organized robbery." I should like to know how the right hon. Gentleman would wish us to apply the same term to the policy which he himself has been carrying out in Ireland during the last three or four months? What is the difference in the Plan of Campaign as it affects the landlords and the policy of pressure—always, of course, within the law—which the right hon. Gentleman has been actively carrying out with the assistance of his subordinates in the Irish Office. Many instances might be cited of the pressure which has been brought to bear upon the landlords. Captain Plunkett, one of the subordinates of the right hon. Gentleman, frankly confesses that he has brought such pressure to bear even in cases where he was wholly unacquainted with the circumstances of the tenant and the justice of the landlord's demand. Surely that is a policy to which this expression of "organized robbery" may be applied with much more force and truth than anything that has been carried out in the Plan of Campaign. The right hon. Gentleman has wasted a good deal of the time of the House in an endeavour to show that the difficulties in Glenbeigh would not have been met by the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell). But what would have been met by it if that Bill had been accepted is this—the Plan of Campaign would have been unnecessary, and all the difficulties for which the right hon. Gentleman appeals to the House to extend him their sympathy, all the troubles which have occurred, and all this useless expenditure of public money would have been obviated. I maintain that it would have been much wiser, even to the Irish landlords themselves, to have accepted the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork than to bring the unfortunate pressure of the Government to bear upon them and bring about the Plan of Campaign. I do not admit the right of the right hon. Gentleman to lecture us as to our policy. I say that we admire good laws as much as he does, much as he desires to see the law maintained and respected; but it is our interest and that of the people we represent to see that the law is just and equitable. We do not complain that Her Majesty's Government should call in the assistance of the police in carrying out evictions in Ireland if their only desire is to use them for the prevention of disturbance, where disturbances are likely to take place; but what we do complain of is that the Government maintain in Ireland at an enormous expense a police force which is practically an army of occupation, and that they maintain it for the single purpose only of protecting the landlords in their unjust exactions upon the Irish tenants. The right hon. Gentleman has referred to the case of the evicted tenants on the estate of Lord Clanricarde at Woodford, and he has said that since resistance was organized the whole of that district of country has become lawless. Now, long before there was this resistance in Woodford the district was in a state of lawlessness and disorder far greater than that which has characterized it since. Long before the Plan of Compaign was thought of lawlessness was created by Lord Clanricarde, who has never seen one of his tenants, who has refused them a site for a church or a school, and who has steadily refused to extend to them a hand of sympathy. I must congratulate Her Majesty's Government that it was to enforce the rights of Lord Clanricarde that they first exercised the powers they were invested with when they took charge of the Government of Ireland. I think we have a right to complain that all this expenditure of the public money should have been had recourse to by the Government solely for the purpose of assisting the Irish landlords in carrying out their unjust exactions upon the Irish tenants. The right hon. Gentleman has admitted that in order to evict four families on the estate of Lord Clanricarde it has cost the country a sum of £1,372. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary confessed in his Bristol speech that he was doing all he could to bring pressure—of course within the law—but, nevertheless, to bring pressure to bear upon the Irish landlords; but the very moment the same kind of pressure is brought to bear upon them by those who have much greater interests in the country than he can have, he has nothing for them but prosecution and imprisonment. Recently the Government made the most shameful effort ever made by an Irish Government to pack a jury, and to place in the box those who were the sworn enemies of my hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon), whom it was my high privilege to defend on his trial; the Government in the most shameful manner pressed these men into the box, and endeavoured to extort from them a verdict of guilty against my hon. Friend. The right hon. Gentleman, so far from being ashamed of that policy or regretting it in the least degree, has the coolness to stand up in this House this evening and defend it.

The remarks of the hon. Member are altogether out of Order. He must connect his observations with the Vote for the Irish Constabulary.

I was merely endeavouring to reply to the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman. However, I will obey your ruling, and I will not pursue that line of argument further. Now, Sir, it is not with the employment of the police for the maintenance of law and order in Ireland that we have any fault to find. It is not for the just exercise of any powers conferred on the Irish Executive that we have any quarrel whatsoever. What we complain of is this—that the whole system of police and the whole of the jury system in Ireland is administered for one class and one interest, to the detriment of every other class and interest. No doubt we have had decisions of Judges in Ireland in support of the system, and frequent imprisonments for contempt of Court; but the whole policy of the Irish Executive has been to bolster up this one class and interest, even at the risk of sacrificing the lives of the unfortunate people. The right hon. Gentleman has referred to the evictions at Glenbeigh. With the history of those evictions the House is familiar. No doubt the Sheriff had a right to demand all the assistance that was necessary to enable him to discharge his duty; but what I complain of is that the Irish Constabulary should have been placed at his disposal for the purpose of enabling him to level and burn down the houses of the Irish peasantry. How can you expect the people of Ireland to respect the law so long as the officers of the law are employed and paid for such purposes as that? The right hon. Gentleman has said that during the recent agitation all the meetings that were suppressed in four months were only eight. I fail to see why the right hon. Gentleman should take a period of four months. What we complain of is that the Government, not during a period of four months, but now, are entering on a policy of the indiscriminate suppression of public meetings, and that a mere suspicion in the mind of an official of Dublin Castle, who possesses no acquaintance with the locality concerned, that a meeting may be used for an unlawful purpose is quite sufficient to deprive the people of their right of public meeting. If the police reporters are as useful a machinery as the right hon. Gentleman thinks they are, would it not be better to allow the meetings to go on, to assure himself that they were used for promoting illegal objects and purposes, and then to put the law in force. With regard to the meeting at Sligo, I observed that the right hon. Gentleman carefully passed over altogether the suppression of that meeting. There was a Proclamation by the authorities prohibiting a meeting which was proposed to be held on a Sunday. At night some of the townspeople convened a meeting within doors, and as the people were entering they were set upon by the police and knocked down with bâtons. We deny that the meeting at Sligo was convened for the purpose of intimidating the jurors; but we assert that it was called for the purpose of protesting against a packed jury panel. The Chief Secretary has threatened us with coercion. That threat has no terror for me. It is our duty to protect the rights of the people, and we shall continue, within the law if we can, but without the law if necessary, to maintain those rights.

The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland has said that he will do all he can to preserve law and order in Ireland according to his standard. That is, I suppose, according to the English standard. There is a different standard among us in Ireland, because we believe that law and order can be in the truest sense maintained in Ireland by abolishing the system of landlordism which has been so great a disgrace to the country. I believe we are satisfied that law and order can never be permanently secured in Ireland by any other means; and our conception of law and order is, I think, infinitely higher, truer, and deeper than that of the right hon. Gentleman. It is rather to be regretted that we have not all the particulars of this Vote set down in the Estimates. Why should we not have exactly, in black and white, how much money has been spent in suppressing meetings; how much in putting down riots; and how much more in election disturbances. Why have we not the items clearly given under the various sub-heads. I think it is most objectionable and most unreasonable that the Committee should be asked to vote a sum of £30,000, with no specific account of the purposes to which the money has been applied. Then, again, the right hon. Gentleman has spoken of the presence of police reporters at public meetings. In going about England I have found no argument more potent in showing the difference in the way in which we are governed in Ireland, and the way in which you are governed in England, than the mere mention of the facts connected with the Government reporters, and by drawing attention to the circumstance that the Constabulary are employed in force to guard them, with the sole object of enabling the Government to pounce down on hon. Members of this House afterwards, and prosecuting them for the words they may use. Such a fact as that is a sufficient proof of the disgraceful way in which the people of Ireland are governed. I have sometimes thought it might be the duty of the Representatives of Irish constituencies to protest solemnly, openly and publicly, at such meetings against this system, whatever the consequences might be. I am sure they would be supported by the mass of the people of this country, who would never tolerate, for a day, the system which has been adopted in Ireland. Then, again, in regard to the suppression of meetings, the hon. Member for the Harbour Division of Dublin (Mr. T. C. Harrington) has pointed out the misleading character of the argument of the right hon. Gentleman on that point. The right hon. Gentleman has said that only eight meetings have been suppressed in four months. That may be so; but our complaint is this. At the beginning of the four months the Government themselves were bringing pressure—within the law—to bear upon the landlords, and therefore they were not likely to suppress any public meetings. Our objection is that meetings are now being suppressed, and that a different policy altogether is being pursued. It is no answer to our complaint to tell us that only eight meetings have been suppressed in four months. The right hon. Gentleman threatens us with what he intends to do when an alteration of the law, which he hopes to make, shall have been brought about. I am glad that the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) has brought out the right hon. Gentleman's purpose in its true character. We now know that, if he can effect it, trial by jury in Ireland is to be abolished. We know what he has foreshadowed; but I think he has very much mistaken the character of those who have been engaged in this agitation, and who have devoted their days and nights to an effort to defend the rights of the Irish tenants from the exactions of cruel landlords. They have not been afraid to face imprisonment, and they would face it again to-morrow if they believed it to be necessary for the protection of the poor people who have been entrusted to their care. The right hon. Gentleman is very much mistaken, and curiously misreads history, if he thinks that anything he can do will terrorize my hon. Friends. They will continue to go on as they have done. There is only one thing the Government can do which would change all this, and restore order, peace, and goodwill in Ireland, and that is, not a policy of oppression, but a policy of conciliation. Adopt a policy of conciliation, and all this expenditure for extra pay and allowances to the police, so far as it is used in suppressing public meetings, employing Government reporters, and attempting to crush popular movements in Ireland, will be absolutely unnecessary and will cease. The result of all this will be certain. The Irish people are determined to be free. They are determined to associate freedom of speech and action, and should the attempts to suppress it for a time be successful, there will always arise a new set of politicians from the ashes of the present to continue the struggle as long as it may be necessary to secure the independence and self - government of Ireland.

I have been much surprised to hear it said to-night that the first duty of Government was the protection of the rights of property, and I think the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland must have read his political economy backwards; because I have always understood that the first duty of Government is the protection of the rights and lives of the people. My hon. Friend the Member for one of the Divisions of Mayo (Mr. Dillon) took part in the defence of the people, because the Government are wielding the rights of the Crown against the people. We are not sent here to protect the rights of the Crown; we are sent to this House to protect the rights of the people. The Crown may pass away, but the rights of the people stand for ever; the rights of the people and the lives of the people cannot be dissociated. This Constabulary Force is only kept up for the purpose of maintaining the rights of property, as it is called; in Ireland it is maintained for the assistance of the landlords, but the burden of it is thrown upon the occupiers. You say that these latter have no stake in the country; but if a man has no stake in the country he has no property to defend, and he ought not to be called upon to support this Police Force. I understand that the people of England pay half the cost of the police in Ireland. [An hon. MEMBER: The whole.] If they pay the whole, so much the worse for them. I am glad to hear that, however, because the Police Force is not for the benefit of the people of Ireland. It is not subject to any municipal authority. As I understand, the Lord Mayor of Dublin has not the power to remove a single policeman who might refuse to obey his orders. I say that the people of Ireland should have control of the force for the preservation of order, and it is because they have not that power that in Ireland so much disorder exists. To speak of men armed with rifles and swords as a civil force is a waste of words; it is a military force, and we do not require it. In London I have never seen a policeman with a sword at his side and a bayonet in his hand; but you will, in Ireland, see two policemen armed with rifles and bayonets at the side of every man who is sent to prison; and it is the same in the case of women; the police have their 20 rounds of ammunition, rifle, swords, and bayonets. As I have said, although the people of England are good enough to pay for this Police Force, we are willing to pay for a Police Force ourselves; but it must be a civil and not a military force.

I must point out to the hon. Gentleman that it is not in Order to discuss the general question of police in Ireland. The hon. Member must confine himself to the specific items under discussion.

This Vote of £30,000 includes travelling expenses and other charges connected with matters that have recently come under our notice in Ireland. As one who has taken some part in. this movement, I am able to say that those who were associated with me have given as little cause for these extra police as possible. The sum expended in my district was altogether unnecessary; if the authorities at the Castle move their rifles and bayonets from one part of Ireland to another, I must say that I have no connection with it. We have no control over the Police Force, and therefore I contend that we ought not to be called upon to pay for this.

The hon. Gentleman is again entering on the general question, and it is my duty to tell him that he is out of Order in so doing.

We have here, in addition to the original Estimate, the sum of £11,160 asked for. I say that this sum would be altogether unnecessary if the police in Ireland were subject to municipal authority, and if the statements of the Representatives of the people in this House received the attention which they deserve from the Ministers of the Crown. We submit that this Vote is altogether unnecessary, inasmuch as the vast number of Constabulary men taken from one place to another in Ireland would not be required if the control of the force were in the hands of the municipalities. It is so in this country, and in all civilized countries; but it is not so in Ireland, because the Police Force there is used against the people, and they ought not to be called on to pay for it. I thank the Committee for the patience with which they have listened to the observations which I have felt it my duty to make on this Vote.

I should not have taken part in this discussion, but for an extraordinary remark of the hon. Member who has just sat down. He informed the House that the English people bear the whole cost of the Constabulary in Ireland. I would remind the Committee that the question has been, before this House of the Limerick Corporation refusing to pay the sum at which they have been assessed on this account.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman is out of Order in referring to that circumstance in connection with the Vote before the Committee.

I think it is unfair on the part of the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Blane) to say that the police in Ireland are used simply and solely for the protection of the rich in Ireland and the rights of property. The Constabulary in Ireland, during the last six years, have had very serious and laborious work to do in protecting the lives, not only of landlords, but of the tenant farmers who have been subject to the direst persecution. For all that, they have not been able to protect the lives of such unfortunate men as we read were the other day shot at and left bleeding to death.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman is pursuing a general argument not proper to the Question before the Committee. He must confine his remarks to the specific Question of the Vote and the subjects connected with it.

I apologize, Mr. Courtney, for straying from the immediate Question, and will say no more than that it is unfair to allege that the police in Ireland have been employed solely for the protection of landlords in Ireland.

This Vote is not, as the hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite asserts, intended to pay for the protection of the lives of the humbler class, but for the carrying out of evictions and putting down meetings, and these expenses would not be necessary if the landlords had fixed the rents at a reasonable rate. I say that it is not fair that the people of England and Ireland should have to pay an extra sum for police in order to enable landlords to impose rents which the Commissioners have declared to be 60 per cent above what they ought to be; and I do not think it is a fair representation to say that the police to any great extent are required to protect the lives of tenant farmers in Ireland.

The hon. Member must confine his observations to the sum asked for, and the objects for which it is required.

I was under the impression that this sum was asked for the extra expense of police attending meetings in Ireland. I regret that I have been out of Order, and shall not, of course, continue my remarks any further than to repeat my belief that if the landlords had treated their tenants fairly, this extra sum for police would not have been required.

While the hon. Member who introduced this Motion was speaking, I made a calculation with reference to the work of the police in Ireland. I find that, allowing to the Sheriff 250 working days in the year, you have, according to the Vote presented to-night, 1,150 policemen in Ireland continually engaged in the work of these evictions. These men get 3s. 6d. a day for extra work in connection with evictions and riots. What is the duty of these policemen? I was born in Ireland, and I have had reason frequently to watch with interest some of the actions and evolutions of Irish policemen. Their work has been justly described, in ordinary times, as "just getting the lime of the barrack wall on their coats and going in to brush it off again." That is the ordinary employment of a policeman in Ireland. You maintain him in idleness, and when you put upon him a duty which is to him ordinary recreative exercise you pay him 3s. 6d. extra a-day. More than that, you provide cars for them when they go to evictions. Why, Sir, it is jollity to them to go to evictions. I have been to many such scenes, and what have I seen? I have seen these policemen in long cars, and have heard them, when coming back from an eviction, singing in chorus, "Wait till the clouds roll by." It seems to me that these policemen were, in a great measure, carrying out the spirited policy of Her Majesty's Government, who are going on with a discussion in this House which will be of no value, and who apparently are waiting until the clouds pass over. It is to me absurd to have in Ireland a force which exists only for the special purpose of this work. I say it is manifestly unfair that you should give them 3s. 6d. a-day and their expenses besides. The police do not perform a single civil work in Ireland, except this work of collecting rents for the landlords. Will any hon. Gentleman who has visited Ireland during the last few months, while this charge has been accumulating, say that in a single instance he has seen policemen performing the ordinary functions which a policeman in England performs? No; the proper work of the police is neglected in Ireland, and we are told that the police are there because the rights of property must be maintained. You should lay the venue properly, and say where the rights of property really lie. Let it not be the property of a dominant faction, but let it be the property of the people, and then I will say let the rights of property be maintained. It may interest this House very much, and particularly hon. Members opposite, who will, of course, vote against any reduction of this Vote which may be moved on these Benches, to know what sort of duties the police in Ireland have been performing for the last two months which have occasioned this Vote. I saw this duty myself; I saw it being performed about a month ago. I went into the Glenbeigh district when the evictions were being carried out there; I went into that lonely and barren valley, where the people were being evicted from the homes which their families had occupied for generations; I saw the smoke curling and rising from that valley. On that day there were five cabins of the evicted people of the district smouldering, and 135 policemen paid by the taxation of the nation—paid by that mysterious person called the British taxpayer, who is so generous to us—135 policemen were present to protect the man who was burning the roof-trees of the people over their heads. You quarrel with our words in this House; but with these naked walls and these figures before us, it is hard to speak calmly of the grievances of our people. I should not object when an officer of the law, who is sent on a mission of the law, is protected by police, and even, if necessary, by a military force; I should not object to the Sheriff having a force of policemen, and I should not object to their being paid extra wages, or to the extra expense of cars for their conveyance; but I do object that the work of the Sheriff, which is done at the expense of the nation—at the expense of the British people, who are not aware of what it is—should be prolonged for three weeks, in order that it may furnish a hideous spectacle to a disgusted world. [Laughter.] I do not envy the feelings of the man who can laugh at the scenes I have feebly depicted. I shall now give a further instance of the misuse of the police force in Ireland, and I shall use it to back up our appeal for the reduction of this Vote. At one of the first evictions, I wanted to test the question as to whether or not the police force were present to protect the officers of the law in their duty; I approached the Resident Magistrate, and drew attention to the facts; I said—"That old man is evicted; his widowed daughter and grandchild are out; the law has been enforced, the Sheriff has done his work, and will you take the responsibility of keeping that large force of police idle here, while merely the vindictiveness of the land agent is carried out?" In a few courteous words I was told to mind my own business. He told me that, not because it was a pleasure to him, for he was as disgusted with the work as I was; he was disgusted that a Resident Magistrate, with two officers of Constabulary and 135 men, should stand there till the cabin which had held this old man of 85, his widowed daughter and grandchild, and which had sheltered three generations of his family, was in ruins, in order to satisfy this craving for the respect of law and order in Ireland. The Sheriff was disgusted with this work, and, when he had concluded it, he insisted on going home; but the work of the land agent had not been completed. There were 135 policemen there; yet, when the Sheriff asked for a force to protect him on his way home, he could not get it. Ostensibly, you bring out the police force to protect the Sheriff; but here is the test of that profession, and the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary can examine it, and ascertain the truth in the matter. The Sheriff asked for a police force to protect him on his way home; he could not get that force. He put the question to the test, and walked off on his way home. What happened? Only four policemen were sent to protect him, but 135 men were retained to protect the vindictive agent; and when the Sheriff was a few fields off, the danger of letting him go away thus was seen, and one of the Constabulary officers, who probably got 10s. 6d. a-day extra, whistles to his men, orders them to stand, and, to my own knowledge, the Sheriff was kept practically under arrest until the agent had completed his work. Is not that a misuse of the money which this House is voting away for extra police in Ireland? It was recently laid down by high authority that that officer carries Her Majesty's commands, and, therefore, he should be protected. In this case the Sheriff, who carried the decrees of Her Majesty's Court, and who was in that glen Her Majesty's representative, was allowed to go away with an insufficient force for his protection; and then practically detained under arrest, and made to act the subaltern part to a man who was only carrying out private vengeance. This is a misuse of the money we are ked to vote to-night; nay, more, I really believe that if, as I think we might reasonably claim and expect that English Members would, at least, sit in this House and hear what we have to say, and weigh our words thoroughly in their minds, as they weigh the words uttered on every other subject but this one of the government of Ireland—if the people of England could hear what we say, I believe that not one penny of this Vote would ever be passed by this Parliament. Now, Sir, there is more to complain of; the police in Ireland are taught that their jolliest and gayest time is the time of the misery and the trouble and the travail of our people. For what is called eviction duty an Irish policeman, as I have said, gets 3s. 66. a-day extra. As there is no danger to his life or limb, will anyone tell me that the 135 men of stalwart build were in any danger in that glen? I doubt that there were as many men, women, and children there as policemen. Naturally enough, the constable that is called to eviction duty looks forward to it with joyful anticipation. I was at an eviction in the county of Limerick, within the last few months, and saw one constable getting 3s. 6d. for the amusement of evicting his own father. Such is the way in which you misuse the force, demoralize what would be a noble force and a credit to the country, if you utilized them properly. Such is the way in which you misuse the force, that the men look with joyous anticipations to evictions, and to any other disturbances. They incur no danger; but they get a day's outing, all expenses paid, and 3s. 6d. a-day for pocket money. Now, Sir, this sort of training for the police begets only a feeling that might naturally be supposed to be begat in human beings; because even the Irish police are human. I was a witness of a disgraceful exhibition of bravery on the part of these Irish policemen to whom we are expected to pay 3s. 6d. a-day for their work in Glen-beigh. For three weeks these policemen were maintained there; for three weeks they were engaged upon work which I maintain, could have been carried out by the Sheriff in two days, at a commensurately less expense, if you would not associate with it the work of the vindictive policy for which you—Her Majesty's Government—are mainly responsible. These policemen were coming home from some evictions; there was a river to cross; naturally enough, the people of the country did not look with any affectionate regard upon the force that was carrying out evictions in their midst, and several young boys ran into the stream and tumbled off the stepping stones, so as to have a little jolly revenge, and make the constables walk through the river. I do not think that any Englishman has the self-conscious dignity of an Irish policeman. I do not think that if as great disrespect had been shown to any Member of Her Majesty's Government, or even to a Royal person, any more indignant feelings could have been excited than were excited in these constables by the fact that they had to wet their ankles in the stream. What happened? Why, the few of us who were favoured spectators got a safe passage across; and the policemen were so chagrined at this, and at their having to walk through the stream, that they, without any other provocation, pushed into the crowd of little girls and boys who were standing on the brink of the river, and, shouting and laughing, punched and pummelled them unmercifully, leaving one young girl almost dead. It is for such services that you ask the Committee for this Vote. But it is not by pounds we measure the importance of this Vote; but by the bitter feelings you have engrafted in our nature by these acts, which you have asked us here to-night to pay for. You allow your police in Ireland to do this shameful work for months together, and then you ask us to pay for it. Was there ever such a satire of civilized government? We have been told that this expenditure was not all incurred within the last few months, and not all incurred in connection with evictions. We are told that it was incurred in expenses consequent upon the Irish Elections. Why, what were the expenses connected with the Irish Elections? In the county, one division of which I have the honour to represent, we went in a four-in-hand, and no one opposed us; and why, because we thoroughly represent the feelings of the people in that demand the denial of which occasions this Vote. There practically was, at the last Election, no opposition. There were a comparatively few contests in any part of Ireland, and therefore there could have been but a very insignificant portion of this money expended on the Elections. But then, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland puts in another plea, and that is that some money was expended in connection with the Belfast riots. I really think that the right hon. Gentleman would do well not to open his lips on that subject. Members of Her Majesty's present Administration ought to speak with a conscious blush of the Belfast riots, knowing well that prominent Members of their Party had, in the first instance, fomented those riots. We, in Ireland, do not want sectarian quarrels. We who have lived in the South of Ireland, where we Catholics are in the vast majority, have no differences with our political opponents. If they were asked whether they suffered any inconvenience by the conduct we pursued, I am quite confident they would answer, No. The disturbances in Belfast were undoubtedly fomented by Englishmen in order that you might have an excuse for reverting to the old policy of coercion. The object of interested parties was to keep the Catholics and the Protestants at daggers drawn, and, naturally, there were fights and quarrels and disturbances. But how did you act towards them? Large bodies of these police, whose pay we are asked here to-night to vote, were drafted into the district; but they were not allowed to quell the riots. The magistrates of the district, who were all notorious partizans, practically bound the hands of the policemen, just as practically, in fact, as if they took the handcuffs out of their pockets and put them upon the wrists of the men. The magistrates kept the policemen there as idle spectators of the disorder which continued for weeks disgracing that thriving and beautiful city, which would be a credit to our country if disorder were not continually fomented by interested parties inside and out. These are some of the duties in which the police have been engaged for the last few months, and it is for these duties we are asked to pay. When the Royal Commission, appointed to inquire into the origin of the Belfast riots, made certain recommendations affecting the police force in Ireland, and affecting their re-constitution, did Her Majesty's Government proceed to act? What have we foreshadowed in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland? Does he act on the recommendation of the Commission, which shows how disorder and disturbances can be averted in that city in the future? Did they act on the recommendation of Her Majesty's Commission, which has shown what are the causes of the employment of these police in Ireland in the last few months? Oh, no, they do not; but to a full House tonight, and to interested spectators in a distinguished quarter of the House, Her Majesty's Minister makes a brave boast that there must be more coercion of unarmed and defenceless people, more bayonetting, more drastic law in order to force law and order down the throats of the Irish people. In the presence of Her Majesty's Minister, and in the presence of this country, and in the presence of a hostile Parliament we, in the name of our people, defy you. We do not defy law and order; we want law; but we want law based on the will of the people as it should be in every civilized land. We want that order that arises naturally from the loyal obedience to that law. That is the law and order we want, and believe me, if you proceed in the line I have indicated, you will not want 14,000 armed policemen in Ireland to maintain law and order. If you will permit me, Sir, I will illustrate, by the comparison of the small number of policemen required to maintain the peace in a large district in England, what will be the normal condition of Ireland in what I hope will be the near future, if you will only meet the views half-way which we put forward. Let not hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite always believe that in every word we utter we are actuated by one political impulse. Of course, I should never have them forget that there is one sentiment always pervading our minds and actions; but let them not believe that we pervert our minds on account of our opinion. What did the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary say here to-night? He made certain observations with regard to meetings which were instantly contradicted by an hon. Friend of mine. Now, I want to say to the right hon. Gentleman that, to my own knowledge, many statements that he has to make on this question, and this extra police question, are as remote from the truth as the darker regions are from heaven. I make no personal reflection upon the right hon. Gentleman, or with the person with whom he is in immediate communication, but his information has to come through such a succession of filters that every particle of truth is taken out of the honest statement which should be made in this House. The right hon. Gentleman answered a Question put to him the other evening by an Irish Member about which I knew nothing, but which affected my constituency. It is pertinent to this matter, and that is the reason why I mention it. It concerns a man named Patrick Ferriter, who was sentenced to two months' imprisonment for having at a meeting I addressed, and which was presided over by the Ven. Canon O'Sullivan, called out to the Government reporter—"Take that down, Stringer." This matter was referred to here tonight. I was very much interested by the reference which was made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) to the position which these policemen on extra duty occupy in the crowd at Irish meetings. I presume the right hon. Gentleman has great experience of public meetings; and therefore I would appeal to him that in future when he has to send a Government reporter to a public meeting in Ireland he should not provide him with the very best spot in the crowd. He might order that the policemen should take a stand near the platform on the right or the left. I tell the right hon. Gentleman that if his intention is to maintain law and order in Ireland, and if the inten- tion of the Government in sending Government reporters to our meetings be to cause us to mollify and tone down our speeches in a manner which will conduce to the fulfilment of his idea of law and order, he goes the very wrong way about it. What is it to any man who believes that even if he be not wholly free he is at least born to the inheritance of freedom—what are the feelings of such a man when he goes to a platform to address thousands of enthusiastic people, and the first spectacle presented to him is a crowd of 50 or 60 policemen, armed with bayonets, surrounding a man with a notebook, who has instructions to take down the words addressed to the people and send them to the archives of Dublin Castle? Do you hope to make our speeches any milder? Do you think we put a tooth in what we are going to say on account of such proceedings on your part? We Irishmen, whom you have never had the courage to taunt with cowardice, are we likely to do anything of the kind? I say deliberately that many a man addressing a public meeting—and I appeal to my hon. Friends who sit around me to say whether it is not their experience—that many a man addressing a public meeting is carried away by excitement to use stronger, far stronger, words than he would have used if the large police force had not been sent to the meeting. I do not pretend to have suffered much in that way myself. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary (Mr. Matthews) quoted the other night some words which he attributed to me; but I felt it my duty to deny having used them. I wish, however, to say that what I have said at public meetings in the presence of policemen and Government reporters, I say here in this House. I say that your whole system of employing a policeman, not merely on extra duty is the result of a mistaken and vitiated policy; a policy that is wrecking and corrupting your administration in Ireland, and that that is the reason you find such difficulty in governing the country and in grappling with the Plan of Campaign or any other policy we pursue. I ask any hon. Gentleman on the Treasury Bench who may address the Committee in the course the evening to say where in Kerry was the Plan of Campaign adopted. I have no knowledge of its being adopted at all in Kerry, though it may have been adopted during the last few months. I have heard something of its possible adoption in the quieter parts of Kerry; but I ask the Government, Is the Plan of Campaign the cause of the disturbances and the cause of the disorder which take place in Ireland? Is the Plan of Campaign the cause of disturbance in Kerry? No; it is not. But I will tell you what is the cause, and it is that, from the year 1880 to the present time, you have evicted in Kerry 14,000 human beings, a greater record than that of any province in Ireland. You commenced your eviction work before there were any agitators there. For a long time the agitators have feebly tried to cope with you in inciting the people to engage in lawful and organized resistance to your atrocities. The agitators have been powerless there, because you got a long start of them. Now you have to maintain in Kerry an abnormal force of policemen whom we are asked to pay. Generally speaking, you maintain them in idleness—they only muster in force when any one of the local landlords want to evict the people, or any London mortgagee wants to burn down the dwellings. Now, what is the soothing prospect the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland holds out to us? It is that, in the near future, there is to be more coercion for Ireland; that the police force is to be augmented; that each jolly policeman, besides his 3s. 6d. a-day, is to have 2s. 6d. a day. I suppose that the ordinary jaunting-cars will be considered beneath the dignity of the Irish policemen in future, and that they will desire that they should be sent on eviction duty in barouches and the like. It is a disgrace to us, it is a scandal to the Parliament of England, that you should be spending vast sums of money upon the police force in Ireland, while millions of people are crying out for food. I think Her Majesty's Government would do well to in some way or other qualify the speech which was addressed to us to-night. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Holmes) would do much for his Government if he were to stand up in his place and promise that something should be done towards ascertaining what are the grievances of the people, what are their wants and wishes, and what are the means by which the use of this extraordinary expenditure can be prevented. I am glad to see that many hon. Gentlemen have visited Ireland during the last few months; indeed, Her Majesty's Government would do well if, instead of holding a Cabinet Council during the Easter Recess in Downing Street, they were to hold one in Glenbeigh or in Woodford. They would then have a chance of ascertaining the requirements of the people in respect of whose eviction this Vote is mainly asked. In conclusion, I will only ask that it shall not be said in taunt of us—"Shall we throw the government of Ireland into the hands of the Nationalist Members?" We do not want the government of Ireland; we do not want the sweets of Office; but we want you to understand what are the real desires of the people; we want you to have the courage to endeavour to construct some scheme of government which shall satisfy the people of our country. The people, when their grievances are removed, and their wants are satisfied, and their wishes are met in a fair and legitimate spirit, will seek out from every class, and creed, and position in the country men capable and willing, and with leisure, to perform the functions of representative government in that country.

I object to every item in this Vote, and I think that if the people of this country understood what we are voting the money for, my objection would be one that would be endorsed by every right-thinking man in Great Britain. This Vote shows an increase of £30,000 upon the original Estimate which the Government, no doubt, thought sufficient when they prepared it. I dare say when reckoning up the original Estimate, they were not at all niggardly, but allowed themselves a pretty freehand. I should have expected a little more information as to the reason why this extra expense was incurred than what is published in the details I find on the face of the Estimates. The only additional information we have received, however, was the information we got from the right hon. gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, that these expenses, according to these details, were incurred, for the maintenance of law and order in Ireland. Sir, I am sick of hearing those remarks "law and order." They are pronounced with a judicial air on the Treasury Bench, and given to us in such a manner as though the whole question is, I will not say included, but not even opened. To tell us that "law and order" is enough to justify anything, is to assume that our intelligence is very slight indeed, or that our moral perceptions are remarkably blunt. "Law and order" forsooth! There is no place where there has been more law or order, and more absolute maintenance of it, than on board slave ships. You have absolute order on the deck, you have law and order in the hold where the human chattels are ranged in order and ticketed off. Proper law and order should be worthy of respect. Your law should be founded on justice, and your order should be the outcome of just law. But will anyone for a moment assert that the law in Ireland is just? Will anyone assert that the law—particularly the law as between the landlords and tenants in Ireland—is just? The whole means of living, so far as the tenants are concerned, are in the hands of people subject to caprice—a small class who have used their caprices for the purpose of the destruction of the people, and for the purpose of filling their own pockets, without the slightest regard to honesty. We are to maintain "law and order" by putting down the Plan of Campaign. This Plan of Campaign is declared to be an organized robbery, and the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary went as far as a gentleman of his courteous disposition could go, in insinuating that some of the Gentlemen below the Gangway on this side of the House were more guilty than anyone else in being participators in "organized robbery." People who use figurative language do not always mean what they say by it. On their part, it is rather an expression of feeling than any attempt to give utterance to a fact. But we do not hear anything like "organized robbery" applied to the landlords who for years have been drawing 50, 60 and 70 per cent over and above what the Courts of the country have now decreed to be a fair and proper rent. That was "organized robbery" if you like, and it was the worst sort of organized robbery. A man who comes and forcibly robs me in the street, or who, by sleight of hand, robs me of my watch, is a robber, no doubt; but he is not so bad a robber as the man who robs me under the colour of the law, and through the agency of the administrators of the law. That is a man who outrages my feelings, who outrages justice much more. Such robbery is almost the common course of things; and it is very clear that he is a robber who in Ireland is the greatest enemy to society. He is a greater enemy to law and order than any "moonlighter" or anyone else, even the common footpad. When they talk of "organized robbery" they should look back. Why, a Judge on the Bench in Ireland described the rents in that country as felonious rents, putting it in the strongest manner possible. He said the rents were levied under a law made by the landlords, exercised by the landlords, enforced by the landlords for their own benefit. Oh! but it is said the tenants came to an agreement amongst themselves to say what is a fair rent. We never hear that argument allowed; but when the landlords took it upon themselves to say what is a fair rent, no one said them nay. If an argument is good it should be good both ways. It is an unfortunate thing when the tenants have to take upon themselves to say what is a fair rent, no doubt, and then venture to enforce their views. No doubt, that is a very unfortunate thing; but why did they do it? They did it because the landlords, in years past, ever since the system of raising rents commenced in Ireland, said what should be their rent. There was nothing at all said about fairness then. The rent was as much an imposition as that levied from the Israelites by the Egyptians; and I maintain that the Irish have as much right to refuse this imposition of the landlords as the Israelites had to refuse payment of the imposition to the Egyptians. Well, these are the arguments in support of this expenditure that we are asked to allow. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland says the Courts of the land have decided that this Plan of Campaign is illegal—I am not going to argue the question of the Plan of Campaign further than to say that it was introduced by the Chief Secretary—but he forgot what the highest Judge but one in Ireland—the Chief Baron of the Exchequer—said about himself in Sligo. This Judge said that, if he had the right hon. Gentleman before him, he would give him precisely the same treatment as he was meting out to the Woodford rioters. He said the right hon. Gentleman's own conduct was altogether illegal. It may have been extra-judicial of him to do that; but he certainly gave that opinion with regard to the right hon. Gentleman's interference with the discretion of the landlords in enforcing their rents in the way they wanted to do. There is another remark I would commend to the attention of the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman says enforcing the law is the only thing that policemen are employed for, and they are the special conservators of law and order in Ireland. Well, as the law stands in Ireland, every man who is evicted has six months to redeem his holding; and during those six months he has a legal right in the house he has built, and the landlord has no right, even under a warrant, to turn him out. I should like to know if it was in the enforcement of the law that 150 policemen were sent to Glenbeigh, to stand there and see the houses burnt down? It could not be, becanse, as I say, the tenants have six months' right of redemption. There was no law in it. Riots is one of the things which the police are paid for attending. I should like to know if the police deserve this extra pay, in consequence of the way they enforced the law in connection with the recent Belfast riots? For three months riot was allowed to run loose in Belfast and other parts of Ulster, but principally in Belfast. Some of the police got killed, and, though they are an armed military force, they were content to stand by while they were ill-treated in this way while the riots were proceeding, and without using their arms even to defend themselves. Of course, to stand by as lookers-on while bloodshed was rife on the streets by day and night was upholding law and order! The people of England have heard a great deal about these riots during the sitting of the Royal Commissioners, who had shown very clearly that this police force in Ireland that is paid in this way, so far as Belfast is concerned, is inefficient, and that a few parish constables would be able to do more than was done by the hundreds of police in Belfast that stood idle while the riots were going on. Then, as to Elections, I should like to know why the police were employed about Elections in Ireland. There were neither riots nor disturbances at the Irish Elections, and yet the police are imposed upon the towns where elections are going on, and kept there for two or three days perfectly useless. No doubt, in times before the Ballot was the law of the land, it was pretty necessary to have a body of police in the streets during the elections—not only police, but troops also were employed. In England the law of the land prohibited such a thing as that; but, in Ireland, it was the general custom. Magna Charta and all the customs of this country notwithstanding, troops were present at all the elections. And there was not the slightest need for their assistance. Elections all over Ireland are perfectly peaceable and quiet; and I should like to ask how many of these items in this Vote have been spent in other towns except the two where riot existed for months together—namely, Belfast and Londonderry. Then the police were sent to meetings. Why were they sent to meetings? They were sent to meetings in their real character. We have 14,000 police in Ireland, and though they are called a police force, they are a police force no more than were the Royal Marines, who were sent over there some four months ago. The body is as much armed like a police force as were the Royal Marines. The fact of the matter is, it is a drilled, organized and disciplined army. It is all very well to call it police, and to say that it is intended to capture criminals, but we are told every day that it is absolutely inefficient for the capture of criminals, and it must be so, seeing that it is prohibited by its rules from holding intercourse with civilians. They are kept off from all communication with the people, and its object is simply to make away all public opinion and to intimidate the people of Ireland. Intimidation is the whole object of its being. It is sent to public meetings for the purpose of intimidation. After what the hon. Gentleman who has preceded me has said, I need not, however, say much about that; but I have attended myself plenty of public meetings in Ireland, and have never seen a disturbance or anything that called for the interference of the police. At every meeting in Ireland according to its extent you find a body of policemen varying from 20 to 100 strong standing with their rifles in the town. Why? People in England do not understand that kind of thing; for neither police nor military attend public meetings in this country. The English people would be most astonished if a meeting were called to discuss say, Municipal Reform or Manhood Suffrage, or even to propagate Socialism, and they were to see 100 or 150 soldiers marching upon them with ball cartridge in their pouches and sword-bayonets by their sides. The people of England had too much regard for liberty of public meeting and liberty of speech to stand such a system of intimidation for one moment; and, yet, this is the kind of use we are told these police have been put to, in order to rack the taxpayers of England and Great Britain generally, of the sum of £19,800 over and above the estimate for the financial year. Put an end to that. Meetings are peaceable in Ireland. They do not need the interference of the police, nor do they want the presence of police reporters. It is said that it is only to protect those reporters who are sent to make reports to Dublin Castle, that the police are allowed to attend; but it will not be necessary to send protection for the reporters, if those gentlemen go to the meetings and give no offence. But it seems that they are accustomed to go as the police do, for the purpose of insulting the people and defying public opinion. They go as the representatives of the dominant class, which is determined to keep the people down, which holds the rod over every assembly in Ireland, and only permits freedom of speech as a boon and not as a right; so that both the reporters who are supposed to be protected and the police who are supposed to protect them are both an outrage upon that free speech which is granted to the English people by the law of the land. Then I come to head F—Travelling expenses. We know that if policemen are employed in England for extra duty, they do not get extra pay. If a policeman has to go and attend a meeting during an election or anything else, he gets his extra expenses but not this 3s. 6d. they get in Ireland. Irish policemen must have cars and marching money. It is just like the expense of marching a military force through a hostile country, which it really is. It is a hostile country—hostile to the existence of such a force as that, knowing perfectly well that the object of that force is either to outrage public sentiment, or suppress it. That is the reason the police are accommodated with cars when having to go a few miles in Ireland, and that they are allowed marching money to the extent of £11,060. It is quite as well that the people of England should know what they are paying this money for. It is just as well that they should know that it is not for police duty that they are paying, or for the suppression of crime; for, as I say, these men are absolutely useless for the suppression of crime. It is not for the detection of criminals, for as far as I know, or as far as it is explained to us, I am not aware that there is a single penny charged here for catching a criminal. The charge is made simply for the sake of creating a small reign of terror, for suppressing the opinions of the people, and for telling them—"You are under a rule which you must submit to, whether you like it or not, and which will follow you into all the relations of life, and watch every word spoken by you, or on your behalf; and if you make yourselves too restive under this restraint, we are prepared with another Coercion Act for you." That was the effect of the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland; and I dare say he will be as good as his word. I dare say if this extra Vote is granted, as no doubt it will be, it will be an additional incentive to stimulate the police when they are wanted for the execution of this new Coercion Act. But I tell the right hon. Gentleman this new Coercion Act will be quite as useless as any of the 86 which have preceded it, and that it will do as little to change Irish public opinion, or reconcile it to the existing state of things; and it will do as little to remedy the real grievance we feel, which lies in our being supposed to enjoy Constitutional Government, when in reality we are under a despotism the worst in Europe. I am sorry to have trespassed so long on the attention of the House; but I think it necessary that these Votes should be ventilated fairly, and that the people of England should be made thoroughly acquainted with what they are spending this money for. I believe that when they are acquainted with that, they will do what we want them very much to do—namely, put a stop to the spending of money that does not carry out the purpose it is supposed to be spent for, but is used for an entirely different object.

I was astonished to hear the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Sir Michael nicks-Beach) this evening. He was put up to initiate and advocate the policy of the Government; but he said, in the course of his observations, that the Constabulary Vote was necessary to the maintenance of law and order in Ireland. Now what we complain of is, that the additional cost on this Constabulary Vote has been largely incurred through sending police where they were not necessary, and where there was not any possibility, nor any probability, of any breach of law and order. I attended, Sir, very many National League meetings in Ireland lately, and I must say I never found any necessity for policemen, more than a constable or two, it might be, to prevent an excess of drunkenness. I attended one in the Southern Division of Fermanagh about two months ago, one of the most loyal portions of the country; but, in spite of the loyalty of the district, at the meeting to which I refer, we had a large cohort of police. They did not come for the purpose of protecting the police reporter, because he was our mutual friend, Jeremiah Stringer, and we invited him to the platform and treated him as a gentleman. So that it could not be to protect him that they came. A short time after I went to another meeting, in County Cavan, in the constituency of one of my hon. Friends here—a meeting held in the town of Glengiolen, which the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. John Dillon) referred to to-day. We drove through the country—a very barren country indeed—and when we arrived at Glengiolen, we had an exceedingly large meeting. There was a large force of Constabulary there to receive us, although, as far as anyone could see, there was no necessity at all for it. But when we arrived there, the whole of one side of the road, for probably a quarter of a-mile, was covered with cars. I asked, "Why did all these come here; what are they for?"—and the reply given to me was, that they were cars used for conveying the Constabulary to the Glengiolen meeting. Well, I never attended a larger meeting, and I never in my life saw a more peaceable crowd. The Constabulary, so far from being at all necessary, did not absolutely put in an appearance in force; for, as I say, we invited the Government reporter to the platform, by me, and instead of the Constabulary putting in an appearance, they assembled behind the next hill to that upon which the meeting was held. So that at those meetings that I have attended there were large bodies of Constabulary, and, as a matter of course, very large expense was incurred, and a large addition must have been made to this Vote for taking the police to these meetings. There was, as I have said, no necessity for them whatever. They did not, on the last occasion, even put in an appearance at the meeting, for the reporter was treated in a very proper manner, and allowed to go on to the platform and take all the notes that were necessary; and, so far as I have attended meetings in the North of Ireland—either Land League or National League meetings—I have never seen any necessity for a single constable whatever—that is to say, I have never seen the necessity for Constabulary except at those meetings where the men who talk about law and order either came to them or said they would come to them and break them up. I have been to several meetings, and I have heard clergymen and others on the platforms instructing the people in this fashion—I have heard it a score of times—"Neither take offence nor give offence, and do not do anything that will cause the Constabulary to resist you or to interfere with you in any way whatever." So that I maintain that this additional Constabulary Vote has been incurred where there has been no necessity whatever in sending policemen to meetings of the most peaceable and quiet and orderly character that you could have any conception of. In point of fact, I attended the Socialistic meeting at St. Paul's the other Sunday, and I assure the House that it was a much more rowdy place than any Land League or National League meeting that I ever attended. And yet there were no bayonets nor rifles there. There were constables present; but they were in their ordinary dress, and they certainly did not interfere with and rush the people about as they would have been inclined to do if it had been a National League meeting in Ireland. In England, the relations between the people and the police and the people and the Government, are altogether different from the relations between the people and the police and the Government in Ireland. But, assuming that the police are necessary at evictions, we maintain that the police were sent to these evictions in undue numbers, therefore unduly increasing the cost of this Constabulary Vote. I recollect seeing a party in the town of Enniskillen—a party of Military and Constabulary collected for the purpose of carrying out an eviction in the neighbourhood. The force seemed more like an army than a Civil Force sent to do police duty. We had the Military there with their officers, and the Constabulary with their officers. We saw them all get upon cars. I do not think they ever get about without cars in that part of the country. Then the men were there with their superior officers, and the Resident Magistrate; and we all know that the conveying of police upon cars increases the cost of their operations very materially. We know that the sending of Resident Magistrates, not one but two and sometimes three with these armies, increases the cost of car hire, and that large extra pay has to be given to the men and officers. These eviction cases have increased the charge under this Vote to an undue extent, and admitting, for the sake of argument, that it is necessary to send a number of police to eviction cases, I say that the Government send too many, and that in proportion as they send undue numbers, so have they increased the cost, and this Police Vote has been swelled to the enormous extent that we now find it. But the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland said the police has to be used. He said the police had to be increased and used in various fashions to prevent the tenants being forced to join the Plan of Campaign. To that I entirely demur. The tenants were never forced to join the Plan of Campaign. It was a voluntary act on their part. I told them myself that the question rested with themselves and not with us. I told them I did not desire to press them to adopt the Plan of Campaign. I told them by no means let them adopt the Plan of Campaign if their landlords had treated them fairly, and had made any fair overtures to them whatever, so I consider the statement of the right hon. Gentleman in declaring that the police had to be used for that purpose, and as a matter of course paid for the purpose of preventing tenants from being forced to join the Plan of Campaign is, to say the least of it, incorrect. I should not have time now to debate the question which the Chief Secretary for Ireland has raised in—to use his own phrase, speaking of "organized robbery." I assure him when I hear an official of his ability and what I consider his kindliness and geniality of disposition, making such a statement as that, I am induced to think that he does it more to irritate the Members of this Party, and to irritate the people of Ireland than anything else. It is that fact of hearing an official of his standing, who, on the whole, receives a fair amount of money himself and does not do anything for nothing—he is open to the accusation at any rate that was brought of old, that he does not serve the Lord for naught—it is hearing him talking about "organized robbery" which makes one almost boil with rage, only that it is contrary as a matter of course to the usages and traditions of this House for anyone to get enraged and angry on any question whatever. But if to appropriate the improvements and earnings of the Irish tenantry from time to time as I have known the landlords do in Ireland, be not robbery, I do not know what robbery is. Organized robbery of the grossest form, and legalized robbery into the bargain, has been committed by these landlords. The Plan of Campaign is not for the purpose of robbery. It is only for the purpose of endeavouring to get justice and fair play, and on the very same lines on which the right hon. Gentleman himself goes in Ireland. But the right hon. Gentleman took the kindly cases, and the cases that submitted to treatment; and we do but take the cases that would not so submit to treatment. Some of them, however, ultimately did submit to treatment, and we expect more of them to do so. The right hon. Gentleman said he did not wish to stop meetings in Ireland promiscuously; that he only used his Constabulary Force to suppress eight meetings, Well, he could not have suppressed these eight meetings without these Constabulary, and the Constabulary that he sent there were sent at a great cost and expense; and I say that that item, whatever it amounts to for the Constabulary who suppressed these meetings, was unduly and improperly incurred and ought not to be paid. As a pure matter of business, there was no necessity for suppressing any meeting; and if he suppressed a meeting at an expense of £100, the eight meetings would bring the cost up to £800 or nearly £1,000, and that of itself was unduly expended and should not be put in this Vote. But I do not know what right he had to suppress eight meetings. He seemed to make very little of suppressing eight meetings; but I make a great deal of it. I think it is an un-Constitutional and illegal exercise of his power eight times told, and I do not think that the Government were authorized, under any circumstances, in suppressing not eight, but even one of these meetings. He said also that he should not have a word to say against Irish Members, nor, I suppose, against Irish meetings either, if they had acted in what he considered a Constitutional manner. Well, Sir, I thank the right hon. Gentleman for nothing. It is no compliment for him to say say to us that he would not have a word to say to the Irish Members nor to the Irish people; and that he would not have had to draft police into the localities if they had acted just as he had expected them to act, or thought they would have acted. But I cannot say, after all, that either the Chief Secretary for Ireland, or the Attorney General for Ireland, or the Solicitor General for Ireland, would have been so pleased if the people had acted as they say now they would have liked them to act. We hear lawyers from time to time, denouncing Acts of Parliament and other things; while all the time they are making handfuls of money out of the very things they are denouncing. I cannot therefore say that the Chief Secretary for Ireland or those other officials would be so very well pleased if the Irish people just went on the very lines they choose to say they would like them to go on. There would not be so much for them to do, and there would not be such high fees for them to reap. If the Irish tenants and the Irish Party are to go on the lines that the right hon. Gentleman says he wishes them to go on, what would the Irish tenants have got from him or from the Government? We have again and again come to this House in what the right hon. Gentleman calls a Constitutional manner, and it has been almost impossible to obtain from Members of this House what we consider the rights of Irishmen. The rights of the Irish tenant, no matter how clearly or fully you prove the necessity of the case—and the rights of the Irish tenant have been pressed over and over again upon the attention of Parliament—have never been listened to until quite recently. We have had lately during the Premiership of the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) the impossibility of obtaining justice for Ireland, especially the tenant farmers. We have had another illustration in the rejection of the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell)—another illustration of the impossibility of obtaining justice or fair play for the Irish tenants through certain states of feeling in this House. So that we could not have obtained as much as we have obtained, had we maintained that docile position that the Chief Secretary for Ireland indicated that we ought to have done. But the Chief Secretary for Ireland also stated that the Government did not strain the law in Ireland. Well, if there is one impression that has taken hold of the Irish people more than another, it is that the law of Ireland has not only been strained, but is being strained now, and always has been strained against the tenant farmer and the democracy of that country. We consider that the Government has strained the law in every possible fashion. It has strained the law irrespective of what the Chief Secretary for Ireland said to-night. We believe he has strained it in proclaiming our meetings, when the Government has taken what is called the sworn affidavits of some person or other who apprehended danger. I remember a meeting at Brookborough in Fermanagh as to which it was sworn on affidavit by a clergyman in the midst of his parishioners, who chiefly attended the meeting, that there was no more fear or danger of a riot than there is at present on the empty Benches of this House; and yet that meeting was suppressed. It was not a meeting in the West of Ireland composed of people that the North of Ireland look upon as all barbarians; but it was in the midst of a loyal Pro- testant population who believe in law and order as denned by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and in the Queen, and in other things of that sort as necessary not only to right living in this world but also to secure them a safe passage to the other. But we also believe that the Government has strained the law in striking jury panels. They have strained the law in that respect, not only in striking the panels, but in endeavouring to pack them.

That subject is in no way connected with this additional Vote.

Of course I bow to your decision, Sir. I have the greatest possible respect for your authority in the Chair, but I thought that following the Chief Secretary for Ireland I had a right to reply to the observations he has made in relation to the straining of the law. I am only explaining, but as you, Sir, have decided that I cannot refer to this question of the striking of jury panels, I will turn aside from that course. The right hon. Gentleman said he wanted additional powers to bring persons to justice. As a matter of course, in getting additional powers we all assume he is likely to increase and consolidate and conserve the Constabulary Force of the country. He said he wanted these additional powers, and very likely he would get them, to bring to justice those who had broken the law. Well, our ideas are different from the right hon. Gentleman's. We think that his idea of law is not justice. We think that in the administration of the law, and by introducing the Constabulary as he has done in many cases, that the administration of the law in Ireland has not been just: and if he seeks for further powers in that direction, I think that the Government might as well abolish juries altogether in Ireland and the ordinary administration of what they call law, and try our people by drum-head court martial, or something else of that sort, and let the Executive declare the guilt of people without any trial whatever. Having thus endeavoured to show that there was no necessity for the employment of the great number of police who have been employed owing to the National movement, in suppressing National meetings for the maintenance of the Plan of Campaign; and having en- deavoured to criticize the statement of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, I have much pleasure in resisting the additional Vote that is now sought to be imposed upon us.

I should consider myself a very poor type of Irishman if I did not carry out the wishes of my constituents, who have sent me here to protest as strongly as I can against these Supplementary Votes. It appears that this Vote of £19,800 is for the subsistence of policemen while attending riots, elections, and meetings. I think it cannot be said that the Government are at all bashful when they come to the House and ask us to Vote a Supplementary sum for the purposes of policemen attending at riofs. Within the last 12 months there have been very few riots in Ireland. The only riots which occurred in Ireland that were worthy of the name, were those at Belfast; and I point out that they were largely, I may say almost entirely, instigated by a speech made in Belfast by the late mouthpiece of the Government, the noble Lord the Member for South Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill). It was that speech which led to those monstrous riots, and necessitated the sending of an enormous body of policemen to Belfast and their maintenance there for a period of many weeks; and we cannot regard the Government as wanting in assurance in asking for a Supplementary Estimate under this head. It is only a few weeks ago that I attended a meeting of my constituents in South Armagh; it was called for the distinct purpose of considering their position with regard to the payment of rent, and it was not a meeting at which any disturbance occurred or was likely to occur. Nevertheless, a large detachment of police were sent there, and they came with rifles, batons, and cutlasses, so that anyone would have supposed, on looking at them, that he was in some other country than Great Britain—a country, for instance, recently annexed from the Hottentots. I protest, and that strongly, against the expenses which are incurred in sending policemen to quiet meetings throughout Ireland. It is a monstrous state of things to have a Government reporter placed upon your platform, his car hire and hotel expenses being paid by the people of Great Britain—a man sent there for no other purpose than, so far as I can see, to pick a quarrel with those who represent the majority of the people of Ireland, for I hold that we, the Nationalist Party, represent the majority of the people there. I say there is no reason for the police being sent to such meetings, and there is no call for the enormous force of police now in Ireland. Not that I object to the policeman; I believe that an Irish policeman will make as good a Constitutional policeman, under self-government, as an ex-Constitutional policeman under the existing Government. I repeat that there is no reason for the unnecessary expenditure incurred in the course of the year for the hire of cars, railway fares, and for the marching money of these policemen; and I am glad to be here to lodge my protest in behalf of my constituents against this monstrous state of affairs. There was a meeting in another division of the county which I have the honour to represent. I refer to the meeting at Rosslea. What happened with regard to that? The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland—acting, I have no doubt, on the misrepresentations of some of his followers in the county—telegraphed that it was necessary to proclaim this meeting, and, if necessary, disperse it by force. The right hon. Gentleman thereby deprived the people of the Constitutional right of expressing their views as to their inability to pay the rents which were then falling due. The people, outraged at this, betook themselves to different quarters of the district, and organized and held not only one but several meetings. Thus the right hon. Gentleman was completely baulked in his effort to prevent the people assembling; while he put the people of Great Britain and Ireland to considerable expense which he might have saved them, and which a little forethought, under a Constitutional form of Government, undoubtedly would have saved them. I protest strongly against this Vote for a police force which is regarded with justice in Ireland as a force that is not there as guardian of the peace—not as a force which should look after the interests and welfare of the people—but as the persecutors of the peasantry and the rent extractors of the landlords. I am glad to tell the Chief Secretary for Ireland that if he persists in sending his policemen down to that portion of Fermanagh which I have the honour to represent, he will find that the Nationalists of Fermanagh will be there as ready to do battle against his acts as they would be in Tipperary.

I rise to enter the strongest protest I can against the expenditure of money on what I consider tyrannical and unconstitutional purposes connected with the Irish Constabulary. I do not use those words lightly and without having considered their full meaning and import. The Government come before us with a great flourish of trumpets and a good deal of thumping of the war drum, to announce their intention of bringing in a measure of coercion for Ireland, and although they do not tell us what that measure is to be, it will be a very drastic one if it is to prove more effective than the Coercion Acts we are familiar with. But there is one factor which has not been taken into consideration, and that is that the British taxpayers are alive to what is going on in Ireland; they understand by the action which many of us are taking in the country that they are being taxed to an enormous and unnecessary extent in order to bolster up this wretched Government of Coercion, and in order to give landlords the satisfaction of exterminating the unfortunate tenantry of Ireland. Now, as sure as another Coercion Act is rushed through this House under the new process of fettering free speech which the Government are engaged in forcing on us, you will find—and I am speaking with some knowledge of the feeling of the country—that the country will not tolerate the suppression of free speech at public meetings and every other element of freedom in Ireland, for the mere pleasure of putting exaggerated sums upon the Votes for the purpose of maintaining a system of tyranny which they repudiate and loathe, and which would not be tolerated in this country. I have seen something of the action of the police in Ireland. I will not trench upon the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon), in which he referred to the espionage system for which the Constabulary system is, to a great extent, maintained; but I must say that I know something of that, because no sooner did I set foot in Ireland and was seen in company with the hon. Member for East Mayo, or Mr. O'Brien, than I found that the police were on my track. What perplexed me was that they did not try to arrest me, because I certainly went farther than some of those hon. Members who have been put on their trial. I rose, however, to place before the Committee some instances of what appear to me cases of wanton ruffianism on the part of the police. I will take the case of Glenbeigh. I am not going into the details connected with the evictions there beyond saying this. I will repeat what I have once before said, that during those terrible scenes of suffering I have seen the police behave with remarkable humanity; but I have also seen the police there and elsewhere behave with exaggerated activity against helpless women and children. I say that, when you find the police deliberately and without provocation hustling women and children and beating them down with their batons and the butts of their rifles, their action deserves and requires the strongest condemnation on the part of the Government. Then there was the case of 23 unfortunate persons who were illegally taken to Tralee Gaol, and who were met by a brass band and a general rejoicing, when the police rushed in upon the unfortunate people, broke one man's head, and otherwise behaved in what I call a most lawless and tyrannical way. I comment upon this, because these things on the part of the police do not happen in this country. It is not long since a similar incident occurred at Torquay, where some Salvationists were sent to gaol. When they came out they were met with a brass band, and there was a general rejoicing; but I have not heard that the police rushed in and broke the heads of the unfortunate people. Why do we tolerate things which take place daily in Ireland, and which would not be tolerated for one moment in this country? The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland has given us a long yarn about the woman who held out her purse with sovereigns in it, who would have paid her rent were it not for an execrable priest who prevented her doing it; but, when challenged, he refused to give us his authority. I think it would have only been candid on his part to have given us that other story of a priest, which everyone knows to be perfectly true— namely, where a bloody encounter between the police and the tenants of Lord Cork and Orrery was prevented by the loyal, judicious, and patriotic action of a priest who effected a settlement between the agent and the tenants. I want this Committee and the country to understand that those unfortunate people, against whom Her Majesty's troops, gunboats, and armed police were sent, have been living practically upon seaweed and otherwise in the greatest state of destitution; while, for a number of years, Lord Cork and Orrery has been enjoying huge sums which have come out of the pockets of the taxpayers of this country—in the first place, on account of the sinecure of the Mastership of Her Majesty's Buckhounds; and, secondly, on account of his position as Master of Her Majesty's Horse, to which he was appointed last year at a salary of £2,500 a-year by the late Liberal Government. I say that this noble Lord is in receipt of public money, and that he ought to have more sense of humanity than to try to force to the ground and exterminate his unfortunate tenantry, whom he knows to be starving.

The hon. Member is entirely out of Order. He must direct his observations to the charge for the Constabulary Force provided for by the Vote before the Committee.

I submit to your ruling, Mr. Courtney, and shall not pursue that subject any further. I shall, I hope, be quite in Order in illustrating my general argument as to the conduct of the police force, upon which I base my great objection to this money being voted, by a case which has recently come under my notice from the same part of the country. It is, I think, only right that public attention should be aroused to the enormity of the facts which I propose to bring before the Committee. Here is the case of a gentleman whom I know personally. Mr. Ferriter was present at a meeting which I addressed—he is not an unknown man. He occupies the position of relieving officer, or collector of rates; and I find that within the last week or two he has been summoned before the Resident Magistrate, on the ground that, at a public meeting at Dingle, he cried out "Hervey Duff" before the police, thereby exciting the people, and called upon to show cause why he should not find securities for his good behaviour in future.

Order, order! I fail to see how that case applies to the Vote before the Committee.

I refer to it to show what was the action of the police in this matter—how they trumped up a charge against Mr. Ferriter which I venture to describe as one of the most infamous I have ever heard of.

It is not sufficient to point to improper conduct on the part of the police, it must be connected with the sum asked for in this Supplementary Estimate.

I understand that the police were present, engaged on special duty, for which we are now asked to vote this extra pay. The police were standing, in my presence, around the Government note-taker, and it was by those police who were engaged on this special service—namely, protecting the Government note-taker, that this gentleman was brought before the Resident Magistrate and thrown into prison because he could not find bail.

I am afraid I must rule that to be entirely outside this Vote.

Then, I will not pursue the subject further. I will just mention briefly another case which occurred in the neigh bourhood where I was. I believe I shall not be out of Order in doing so, because on that occasion the police were engaged in the service for which we are voting this money. Half a-dozen men were talking together in the house of a man named McNulty, and the police, who were under the impression that he had been illegally receiving money under the Plan of Campaign, rushed in and seized him. I refer to this in order to bring home to the mind of the Committee the extraordinary proceedings which are constantly taking place in Ireland by the action of the men for whom we are asked to vote special allowances. I will endeavour to keep myself within the limits of Order, by turning to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach). In the first place, the right hon. Gentleman explained that the cost of the Constabulary was necessary in order to secure law and order. Now, I venture to say that that is begging the question. We say it is not neces- sary. The question is, whether the Government are not pursuing an entirely wrong method for securing law and order in Ireland. It was made most clear by the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) that the action and policy pursued by the Government in relation to the police has a greater tendency to irritate and provoke conflict between the people and the constituted Authorities—a more direct tendency to bring law and order into contempt than anything that can possibly be devised. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to look back to the dark history of the Tory times in our own country—to the times of Lord Castlereagh; to the time when these same methods of coercion were practised by Tories in our country. The experience of those times proves the uselessness of the policy they are now pursuing in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman pursued, in some detail, the argument in respect to the estate of Lord Clanricarde, and asked us to believe that the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) would not have assisted the tenants on that estate. He asked us to believe that the tenants on that estate were perfectly able to pay, but were prevented, by a combination, from making any payment whatever. If I am not out of Order in criticizing the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman about the difficulty on the Clanricarde estate, I should like to remind him of what is the real fact about the nonpayment of rent by the tenants there. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the whole difficulty arose from the compulsory rack-renting of the tenants in past times, because they defeated the land agent of Lord Clanricarde at a political election in 1872? Is he aware of the amount of the fines they have been subjected to because they ventured to show a spirit of independence? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in the case of 10 or 12 tenants an annual fine, amounting in all to about £119, has been placed upon thorn because they voted against Lord Claniicarde's nominee? It may be the case, as the right hon. Gentleman said, that there were some of the tenants who could pay the rent, but refused to do so; but he should recollect that if there were some who, in combination with others, refused to pay, it was because there was a far greater number of poorer tenants who could not pay under any circumstances; and who knew that it was only by standing shoulder to shoulder, as everyone in the country has a right to do, that they could get any protection.

I appeal to you, Mr. Courtney, to say whether the hon. Member is in Order?

The hon. and gallant Admiral is really a little too hasty. I had just finished the point I was upon, and I only wish to add that it appears to me—no matter what the decision may be of the Irish Judges who pronounce their obiter dicta with all the appearance of infallible judgment—that the Plan of Campaign is justifiable. The right hon. Gentleman said also, at the conclusion of his speech, that hon. Members from Ire-land who say they can maintain law and order under a system of Home Government, and with a Constabulary which would cost only £400,000, could only do so by abolishing property. I join issue with the right hon. Gentleman on that ground. It is not the hon. Members from Ireland who wish to abolish property. It is perfectly inaccurate to say that they or the tenants on any estate in Ireland desire to rob the landlords of their property. I have seen something of the condition of these estates and the condition of the tenants; and from inquiries I have made I can say, by the feelings evinced by the tenants in the most poverty-stricken districts, that there is not the slightest shadow of dishonesty on their part, or the slightest desire to say that the land belongs to them, and that they will not pay rent. They are willing to pay rent; but they are not willing to go on starving by inches in order to put in the pockets of the landlords rent which it is perfectly well known to political economists the land can never produce. There is another point which I wish to bring before the notice of the Committee with reference to the action of the Constabulary as affecting this Vote. It is the lawless policy of the right hon. Gentleman and his allies in permitting and sanctioning, in spite of all protests and representations, the employment of the police at evictions for purposes which I hold to be perfectly illegal. The legal remedy of the landlord is to regain possession of his holding. I challenge the Government to prove that the landlord has any further right in the case of eviction than to have the holding which he desires to recover handed over to him by the Sheriff. But what has been done is more than that. At those evictions which my hon. Friend the Member for North Meath (Mr. Mahony) and I attended in Glenbeigh, we challenged the Sheriff to withdraw, and he did withdraw. But the Sheriff was actually impeded and obstructed, and prevented from going to other holdings to perform his duty there, because the whole body of police were wanted to stay and protect the incendiary agent. I challenge hon. Members to show a single Act under which landlords can require that the forces of the Crown can be kept from their proper duty of protecting the Sheriff in order to protect a landlord's agent in his work of incendiarism and demolition. I have not, at any rate, been able to find such a law. I admit that if the legal remedy of the landlord were to burn and demolish the houses on his estate, that he might then require the assistance of the police; but it is not within the functions of the police to stand by to protect the agent, and their action in this case has been altogether illegal and lawless. Well, Sir, I want to know how you can expect poor people in Ireland to have any respect for law and order when you have such an example of lawlessness set them by Her Majesty's Government. I ask the right hon. Gentleman under what Act it is that he has proclaimed meetings in Ireland? Has he proclaimed them on the information of persons who know nothing about the matter; or, if they do know anything, indulge in prognostications of mischief which, as far as my experience goes, are never fulfilled? As it appears to me, Her Majesty's Government, when last in Office, deliberately refused to continue the Crimes Act, and as I have been unable to find any other Act enabling them to put down meetings, except that Act which has expired, I am forced to the conclusion that their conduct is illegal and un-Constitutional. And yet we are told by those Gentlemen on this side of the House, who pretend to be Liberals, though they are supporting the Tory Government all the time—these so-called Unionists—that there is but one law for England and Ireland, and that Ireland enjoys equal laws with England. It was their constant cry during the last Election that Ireland was to be treated on the same lines as England. I ask again would it be possible to proclaim meetings in this country as you are doing every day in Ireland? Would it be possible to do anyone of these things that I have been placing before the Committee? If not, how idle it is to talk about the laws of England and Ireland being equal, or about there being any similarity between the administration of law and justice in the two countries. We are promised a new Coercion Bill, and I can only say that, so far as I am concerned, and so far as I know anything at all about the feeling of the country, the English people will not tolerate any longer the voting of these enormous sums of money, for they understand what it means to-day. They will not vote these sums of money for the perpetuation of this miserable, effete, coercive policy of the Government of Ireland. It is because that is my conviction—a conviction I have arrived at not by hearsay, but by mixing amongst the people of England—that, on behalf of the taxpayers of this country, as one of their Representatives, I protest against this extra police Vote.

I rise to protest against this extraordinary increase in the Vote for the Irish Constabulary, for the simple reason that, in my opinion, the expenditure on police in Ireland has been extravagant and unnecessary. I would trouble the Committee to examine how this Vote has been calculated. It is entered here as extra pay; but I do not see why the amount has been placed on the record as we find it. We are to vote the Estimate without knowing the exact figures which are to be put down under each head; for instance, the amount which is to be put down under the head of "evictions." I say it is voting in the dark—although to say the truth, however we vote this evening we shall be voting in a fog. There is one item here I think ought to be paid, that is the item for police in connection with the riots in Belfast. But though I consider that the expenses incurred in consequence of those riots should be paid, I would not impose the whole of the charge upon the National Exchequer. I think a part of it should be borne by the Members of the Government. I think that, as a peace offering and to meet the equity of the case, they should ton-tribute one-half the expense of restor- ing and maintaining order in that city. We hear a great deal indeed about restoring law and order in Ireland; but nothing has been said by any Member of the Government, with regard to the usual orderly condition of Irish towns. We have not heard it stated, for instance, that the metropolis of Ireland was without police for a period of nearly a-week, and that during that time there was neither murder nor robbery there. And yet Ireland is the country that is said to be in such a dreadful state that it requires this large amount of extra money to be spent upon the maintenance of law and order. I would ask the Committee to consider the tremendous extravagance of the different departments of the Constabulary in Ireland. There is one point which has not been touched upon during the whole of this discussion this evening, and it is an expenditure which I am sure, if properly estimated, would be found to amount to £200,000 or £300,000; and that is the appointment of men, nominees of the landlords of Ireland, to cadetships in the Royal Irish Constabulary.

I am reluctant to interfere with a new Member; but I would point out to him that he must direct his criticism to the special sum asked for in this Vote and the services supplied by that sum.

Then, Sir, I would say that this money is expended unnecessarily, and I will give an instance in proof of my assertion. The duties of the police generally—at least in country towns, where no rents have to be exacted—are these:—To get up at 8 o'clock in the morning, to breakfast at 9, dine at 2, take tea at 7, and retire to bed at 10; except one or two, who may be allowed to go through the town at 12 when their very delicate constitutions call them to rest. I may say that in the Division that I have the honour to represent—namely, South Sligo—I appointed as my election agent a gentleman who had received most brutal treatment at the hands of the police. In that part of the country, the Representatives of the people are not allowed to address the people. I wonder would such a thing be permitted in England for a moment? What has happened in Sligo would not be allowed to happen in any other country which has any form of what is called a Constitution. But in Ireland we have a Government which, though Constitutional in name, is no more—to use an American expression—than a one-horse Government. With these few words, and thanking the Committee for having listened to me, I wish to urge upon hon. Members the desirability of rejecting this Vote.

I should like to ask some of the Gentlemen on the Front Bench opposite how they propose to distribute this large sum added to the original charge for last year's expenses? I believe that if we put the tax upon the proper parties we should put it upon the landlords. It is the landlords who have been the cause of the Government and the Committee to-night spending so much time talking over this large sum of money. They it is who have been the means of bringing this charge upon the British taxpayers. Why is it that the British taxpayers stand these payments to policemen in Ireland? We do not want these men; we are prepared ourselves to pay for a regular Police Force to do police duty. We are prepared to maintain a Police Force in Ireland similar to that which we meet with in England. When I first came to London I thought I had never been in a place in the whole course of my life where there was so much liberty. ["Hear, hear!"] Yes, I think Englishmen have a right to be proud of that; but when I go to Ireland I find a very different state of things prevailing. Last Sunday I was passing up by St. Paul's, where I saw a large demonstration of people. It was composed of that class of people called Socialists. Now, I believe in London you have something like 9,000 Socialists, who are now hungering for bread, while you are giving the money of the British taxpayer to maintain a Force of Constabulary to collect the rents of the Irish landlords. I think it high time that the people of England, Scotland, and Wales struck against voting money for the purposes for which the Government ask us to give them this Vote to-night. With regard to a portion of these charges, I should like the Committee to say that it should be placed on the shoulders of the landlords on account of the number of emergency men they have employed through the country. We are asked to pay for a force to do the dirty work of the landlords after they have pulled down the miserable houses of their tenants. Now, Sir, I think that we should be given information with regard to the Belfast riots by the hon. Gentlemen opposite who have been returned by constituencies in the North of Ireland. They have displayed considerable courage on former occasions; and surely they are now in a position to state how much of the money we are now asked to vote was spent in consequence of the riots in the town of Belfast, that great centre of loyalty, where every man is free, and loyalty reigns supreme. I am very glad to see that a large number of English gentlemen and Representatives of English constituencies have visited Ireland within the last 12 months; because I am satisfied that by so doing they have gained more information with regard to the policy of the present Government, and the general misrule observed in Ireland, than they ever could gain by listening to Irish Members here, although they speak nothing but the simple truth. [Laughter.] I wish many more of the English people, and those English Representatives who laugh at what I say, would come over to Ireland, and witness for themselves the tyrannical manner in which people are treated; I wish they would visit the district of Gweedore, a district I visited not long ago. I was there, I am sorry to say, at the time of some evictions, and saw 40 or 50 poor tenants driven out of their houses, and their doors closed against them—closed, not with locks, because there are no locks on the doors in that poor district—but closed against them by means of barricades. A large portion of the money they were now asked to grant was expended upon the force engaged in the eviction of these tenants. I saw many tenants who were forced out of their houses by the police lying in the ditches with nothing but straws and sticks to cover them. [Laughter.] Hon. Gentlemen laugh, but if they will go over to Ireland they will learn what straws and sticks mean. It is said that the people evicted are farmers, but I know what farmers are. These are people who occupy little farms, but who never earn in Ireland the landlord's rent; some of them have to go to Scotland, some to them to America, and some to England in harvest time to earn the rent, and when harvest time is over the landlord's representative comes round the estate with a thousand or two policemen to collect the hard earnings of these people. The present state of things is very lamentable, and I am surprised that the British taxpayers, seeing that their manufacturing industries at home are declining, and that there is a general depression, do not strike against being called upon to pay these large and exorbitant sums for Irish police. But, Mr. Courtney, there is another aspect to this case—although this money is spent upon policemen, the policemen are in some cases very badly treated. They are very often put into inferior lodgings, and called upon to incur immense expense; wherever there is an eviction it is certain that all the cars and carts that can be obtained will be obtained for the conveyance of the policemen and their ammunition and baggage. I cannot help thinking that by this Vote the Government are really trying to manufacture evictions. It is a most grievous thing that the Government should lend a large force of police for the protection of landlords and the plundering of tenants. If we had the control of the police force in Ireland, we should certainly put them to their proper business—namely, the protection of the general public, their arms being the ordinary batons, and not have them perambulating the country armed with swords and bayonets. I claim that under a Home Rule Government, not under the Government of the present Chief Secretary (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) and the right hon. Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Holmes) and Dublin Castle—we could manage the affairs of Ireland, with one fifth part of the present police force we could govern Ireland in a very nice manner, something like the way in which things are managed here; but London seems to be under the control of the people; whereas we are in Ireland under the control of the blood-suckers of the people. [Laughter.] Some Gentlemen on the front Government Bench know very well what I mean. To take the police from their real duties is not calculated to make us loyal, even if we were inclined to be disloyal. Well, Mr. Courtney, with regard to the Irish police force, I am sorry to say that it is not the rank and file, the farmers' sons in the police, who get those largo sums of money. I do not know whether any portion of the Secret Service money goes to the officers of the police.

The hon. Gentleman's remarks are very discursive; he must confine himself to the special sums asked for in this Vote, and the service covered by these sums.

I abide by your ruling, Mr. Courtney, but I believe that this large sum of £30,965 goes principally to the officers who are mostly the sons of worn out landlords. [Laughter.] I do not mean worn-out by old age, but by debauchery. Now, I should like to know how long will the British taxpayers stand the present form of Government in Ireland. At present there are a great many Socialists in Ireland. The present system makes Socialists.

The hon. Gentleman must confine himself to the subject under discussion.

What I mean is this, that this £30,965 should be given, not to the policemen in Ireland, but to a party that requires it a great deal more. I venture to say that the magistrates of Ireland are very much to be blamed for this large expenditure. The Government appoint magistrates because they are thoroughly Party men, and these men are, in great measure, responsible for the extravagance of this expenditure. I do not think that the wisdom of English thinking men, and the shrewd judgment of Scotchmen, and, indeed, of Welshmen—and the latter are nearly as badly off as ourselves—will stand this much longer. The time is fast approaching when there will be an alteration. I cannot help thinking that if a true and fair issue had been put before the country at the last Election, this expenditure would not have been asked for to-night, because a Government is in power that, by rights, should not be in power. It is simply on this account that I wish to make my voice heard here to-night; and to let the British taxpayers know the cause and reason why so large a sum as £30,965 is dragged from their resources. I want to show, as an Irish Representative, that it really is unfair for the Government to come down to this House and to ask them to sanction the squandering of the money of the British taxpayers in this manner.

Mr. Courtney, the fact that there has already been voted for Police Services in Ireland no less a sum than nearly £1,500,000, and that we are now asked to vote a further sum of £30,965, invests the debate of this evening with considerable interest; and I think that interest has been very largely enhanced by the speech which has been made by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach). For my part, I should not have delayed the Committee by interposing in this discussion for one instant, were it not for the speech which the right hon. Gentleman has thought fit to make; and in the few remarks which I propose to offer to the Committee I will endeavour to deal with some of the statements which the right hon. Gentleman has made. Sir, he started out with a statement which, of course, nobody will be disposed to deny—namely, that the maintenance of a Police Force in Ireland is absolutely essential. No one disputes that for a moment. No one disputes that it is essential that law and order should be maintained in Ireland. [Ministerial cheers.] I am glad to gain an approving cheer from that quarter of the House. But the right hon. Gentleman went on to say that the kind of law and order which he desired to maintain in Ireland was law and order according to his standard. [Cheers.] The cheer is not so loud. I would like to ask whether the right hon. Gentleman's own Supporters are of opinion that he has maintained law and order according to his own standard in Ireland? Why, Sir, the whole speech of the right hon. Gentleman's to-night was a confession of absolute failure and incompetency to govern the country. The law and order which the right hon. Gentleman desires he has failed to maintain, and yet we are asked for this large increase in the Police Vote. The right hon. Gentleman's own Supporters are my witnesses. Only to-day I was reading in the columns of a paper, which I think: the right hon. Gentleman has quoted from time to time, although he is remarkably shy in acknowledging his authority—The Dublin Daily Express—only this morning I was reading an article in that journal denouncing the present Government because they have not maintained law and order in Ireland; and the right hon. Gentleman acknowledges as much when he winds up his speech by saying that it will be necessary to ask for further powers. My point is this, that this large and exorbitant amount of money for police services is money practically thrown away, because it has not effected any good purposes towards maintaining law and order; but, on the contrary, has led to the disturbance of law and order very frequently in Ireland. It is true there has been during the winter months of this year a remarkable absence of serious crime in Ireland; but does the right hon. Gentleman contend, for a moment, that that is the result of the action of his police, or of his government? Allusion has already been made to this point by my hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon), who initiated this discussion. My hon. Friend alluded to a point which I would beg permission to emphasize, and which is most significant—namely, that you cannot for the past 50 years put your finger upon any period of similar agricultural distress in Ireland which was less stained by agrarian crime than the winter months up to last Christmas. The right hon. Gentleman (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) thought proper to speak of the Plan of Campaign, which was admittedly organized by the hon. Member for East Mayo and others, as a system of organized robbery. Well, the right hon. Gentleman used to be distinguished in this House by the courtesy with which he conducted discussions. I am sorry to observe that his experience at the Irish Office has so severely tried his temper, that he has forgotten those courtesies which have always regulated his action and speech in this House up to the present time. Sir, it is the Plan of Campaign, and not the police, which has preserved Ireland from months of bloodshed and crime. ["Oh, oh!"] I assert that where the police have failed, the Plan of Campaign has proved itself a bulwark of the public peace. I do not want, if I can possibly avoid it, to stray from the subject. I recognize the fairness of your rulings, Mr. Courtney, and I desire to speak within those rulings; but I would like to point out, as this matter has been raised by the right hon. Gentleman, that in those parts of Ireland where the Plan of Campaign has been at work, notably on estates like that of Lord Dillon, there has been an utter absence of agrarian crime; and that crime has appeared where public meetings have been suppressed, where the Plan of Campaign has not been put into operation, and where the right hon. Gentleman has had a free hand for his firm and resolute government. An allusion was made by the right hon. Gentleman to the evictions which have been taking place. The chief part of this Vote is asked for the expenses of policemen at these evictions; and the right hon. Gentleman went, to some extent, into the merits of these evictions, and in regard to these particular instances I claim a right of answering him. He alluded to the evictions on Lord Clanricarde's estate, and he asked us, did we venture to deny that some of the tenants on this estate could pay the rents but had refused? The right hon. Gentleman ought, in the first place, to have answered the challenge which my hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo gave him. He ought to have answered specifically the question—Was Lord Clanricarde's estate one of those estates to which the Government applied that "pressure within the law" of which we have heard so much, and was that one of the estates on which they failed? Because, if it was one of the estates, if Lord Clanricarde was one of the landlords whom the Government attempted, by their pressure, to induce to make reductions, and they failed in their object; with what a face does he come to this House and charge us, as if it were a crime, with, forsooth, simply carrying on a course of action which he himself initiated! On this point of the tenant, in case of eviction, being able to pay the rent and refusing to do so, a very significant piece of evidence has been given within the last few days. What does your own Commission say? It was remarked that the very first thing that this Unionist Government did was to show the very greatest ignorance of the state of facts in Ireland. They disputed the deductions of my hon. Friend the Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) when he introduced his Tenants' Relief Bill. They disputed that there had been such a fall in prices of agricultural produce in Ireland as to make the full payment of judicial rents impossible. They appointed a tribunal of their own. Their own tribunal has given us a verdict against them. Their own tribunal has laid down that prices have fallen at least 18½ per cent, and that in consequence the payment of judicial rents has become impossible; and it is relying upon that fact, to which the Commission bears testimony, that the tenants upon the Clanricarde estate, and those who have been supporting them, have entered into this movement. I pass, now, to another point—namely, that of the action of the Government in the suppression, or the attempted suppression, of public meeting. Now, Mr. Courtney, my first contention is that the action of the Government in the attempted suppression of meetings in Ireland—for which attempted suppression a portion of this Vote is asked—is illegal. I maintain that the Government have no legal warrant for the action that they have taken. Sir, it is laid down by great authorities—by Coke, for instance—that a Proclamation is a very respectable thing when it is founded upon Statute. I should like to know upon what Statute the right hon. Gentleman's Government has proceeded in the cases where they have attempted to suppress public meetings in Ireland. No doubt, meetings may be illegal, and persons taking part in them may be guilty of illegal acts, for which they can be punished. Any persons so taking part can be brought to justice, and meetings, if they are illegal, can be dispersed; but I maintain that there is no power vested in a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, or in the Home Secretary in this country, either by Statute or Common Law, which, empowers either of them to prevent a meeting assembling, simply because they have reason to believe, from one source or another, that the meeting, if it assembles, will be an illegal meeting. Sir, I hold in my hand a Constitutional authority that was quoted often in the debate upon the Home Rule Bill—I mean Mr. Dicey's "Law of the Constitution." Mr. Dicey says that just because men may come where they like and say what they please, and have a right to hold meetings for the discussion of political and other topics, it is not, of course, meant that persons may so exercise that right of meeting as to break the law; and he adds that if a meeting is illegal, the persons taking part in it will be exposed to all the con- sequences. [An bon. MEMBER: Certainly.] The hon. Member does not comprehend my point. Perhaps, Mr. Courtney, the fog is thicker upon the Ministerial Benches than upon those upon which we sit. Mr. Dicey argues that if a meeting is illegal, a person taking part in it will be exposed to all the consequences in the way of having the meeting broken up and being arrested and prosecuted. My point is that if these meetings had been illegal, your proper course would have been to disperse them and to prosecute the men taking part in them; and that you have legally no power to send a force into a town and say—We will not allow such and such a meeting to assemble at all. What was the course of action taken by the Government? They issued Proclamations, in which they said that informations having been sworn and submitted by certain individuals that these individuals believed that a meeting about to take place will be an illegal one, therefore we prohibit the assembling of that meeting. Now, I will invite attention to this point. My first criticism of that portion of the Vote which is asked for police services in the preventing of these meetings assembling is, that that action on the part of the Government is absolutely illegal. Mr. Dicey says, further on, supposing, in England, that the Home Secretary thinks it is undesirable, for one reason or another, that a meeting should take place, and serves formal notice on every member that the meeting must not take place, this notice is so much waste paper; and he goes on to say that the whole principle upon which the Law of Public Meeting is based is that the function of the Government is not the prevention but the punishment of illegal acts. I find that, in Paterson's book on the Liberty of the Press and Free Speech, it is stated that there is—

"No prohibition on account of the subject-matter of the meeting except for blasphemy or sedition, to which may be added"—

That's not—

I have heard that the hon. and gallant Gentleman is an authority on military matters, and his authority on those subjects may be very great, although I have also heard that he is only a feather-bed soldier; but I think he can scarcely be taken as an authority upon questions of law. I am simply quoting authorities on the question of public meeting, which enjoy the respect of everybody except the hon. and gallant Gentleman—

"To which may be added that any assembly becoming riotous or unlawful in the sense of pursuing unlawful conduct, there is a mode of summary treatment."

My point is, even if these meetings had been unlawful, which I deny—but even granting that—the Government acted illegally in attempting to prevent those meetings; their only legal course would have been, supposing the meetings to have assembled, to have dispersed them and to have prosecuted those persons who had taken part in them. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland made two or three selections, by way of proving that the meetings were unlawful. The first example that he gave was the case of the Sligo meeting. I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman was not ashamed to mention the name of Sligo. What was the Sligo meeting called for? It was to consider the question of a certain jury panel—a perfectly legal purpose—and that jury panel, when it was submitted to the test of examination by the Court, was quashed. I maintain that that meeting was not illegal, that it was a meeting called for a laudable and for a lawful purpose; and I say it is monstrous to state that a panel which the Judge quashed on the grounds of its illegality, could not be a fair question to be debated at a public meeting of the county where the illegal panel was struck. Then there was the meeting which was held at Coolgreaney, about which the right hon. Gentleman is certainly under some misapprehension. I wish to speak upon a point which, no doubt, will interest him. I hope he will not think I am using an offensive phrase—["No, no!"]—I try never to usesuch, though, perhaps, Members who interrupt have less consideration for me—when I say that I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman is fooled to the top of his bent by his sub-officials in Ireland. Mr. Courtney, I took part in the proceedings at Coolgreaney, and the account which the right hon. Gentleman has given, I can assure him, is ludicrously inaccurate. He spoke about Mr. Dillon and myself driving about the country, and calling and holding hole and-corner meetings at long distances from the places where the proclaimed meeting was expected to be held. Now, I am perfectly acquainted with all the proceedings in this locality—as a matter of fact, I come from that part of the country myself, and I think it may be presumed that I am intimately acquainted with the geography of the district. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that five public meetings were held within a radius of three miles from the place, although mounted police patrolled the roads with instructions to gallop after any people whom they saw going in any direction. I can say—and I say so after a very large experience of public meetings—that there were at least 2,000 or 3,000 people present; there were to my own knowledge four brass bands, and there were a number of large banners carried by the people, some of whom came so far as from the town of Wex-ford—about 30 miles distant—in a special train, accompanied with a band playing and banners waving. How the police were completely ignorant of that meeting I can not make out; and how the right hon. Gentleman is able to assert that these meetings were composed of only a score or so of people, I am unable to understand. From whence came his information? There were no members of the Royal Irish Constabulary present. How, then, did the statements come to his knowledge? I trust that the right hon. Gentleman will believe me when I say that, as a matter of fact, the meeting at Coolgreaney was one of the largest meetings I ever addressed in the county of Wexford for many a day. When the right hon. Gentleman, in the course of his speech, said that the Coolgreaney meeting being proclaimed was not held, I told him that it was held, and that I myself made a speech at it. The right hon. Gentleman replied to me—"That is not the case." I retort now by saying "That it is the case." At Coolgreaney, about 5 o'clock in the evening, several cars full of persons, headed by a mounted escort, drove into the town. As we entered two large bodies of police were coming out, thinking we had no intention of holding the meetings. On this occasion, as has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon), some of the constables in the ranks turned round and laughed at us; but their laugh was more at the Government than at us. We went into the town, and there we found a small body of policemen unarmed. We drove past them, and there—in the very public street—we held a meeting, with the hon. Member for the County Dublin in the chair, at which he, a clergyman, myself, and other persons spoke. After the meeting was finished, we walked along the street, and met half-a-dozen policemen coming up, who were exerting themselves in hustling the people; and, had it not been for the exertions of my hon. Friend the Member for Dublin County, these five or six policemen might have probably met with very rough handling from the crowd. Having stated these facts at, perhaps, unwarrantable length, I trust the right hon. Gentleman will do himself the justice to inquire into this matter. He has been misinformed; he has been inaccurately misled by an absurd story. Somebody is responsible for that, and I ask him to trace the responsibility. Another point with reference to this Coolgreaney meeting which was mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman was, that the object of that meeting was illegal; and he went on to enforce his statement by evidence which was to the effect that the Plan of Campaign was wrongfully adopted on the estate there; and that the landlord had always lived on good terms with his tenants until the hon. Member for East Mayo stirred up the people, and put the Plan of Campaign in operation against him. The right hon. Gentleman stated that the hon. Member for East Mayo had been induced to take that action in consequence of the appointment of an obnoxious agent. Does not the right hon. Gentleman know that Captain Hamilton, the agent of this property, was appointed to his position three years ago? Does he know any of the facts about the rents on this property, or the simple fact that the average of the rents on the property is 30 per cent above the valuation? Now, the average rent of every neighbouring estate is in or about the valuation; and the people of this property only asked for a reduction down to the valuation. I have in my hand some startling figures about two or three neighbouring estates. I find in the Return of the Land Commission for September and October in the county of Wicklow—Coolgreanoy being on the borders of Wicklow and Wexford—that on the property of Mrs. Bookey the old rent in one case was £40, the valualion£32, and the new judicial rent £21. Again, I find old rent £60, valuation £52, and new rent £43. On the property adjoining—the property of the Earl of Meath—I see the old rent is £7 10s., the valuation £8 5s., and the new rent £5 10s. On the property of Fitzwilliam Dick, adjoining, I read—old rent £400, valuation £248, and new rent £200. In the face of facts like these, I ask this Committee not to believe that the rents on the Coolgreaney estate are fair rents. They are exorbitant and impossible rents. I hope, accordingly, that nobody will pay the smallest attention to the anonymous story which the right hon. Gentleman told us about the tenant's wife with the purse. If he wants to make a point of that story, he needs to give his authority. He said that it was taken from the newspapers; and if it was taken from any fair-minded newspaper in Ireland, he would be only too delighted to give his authority. But it was evidently taken from The Daily Express, or some paper of that character, or, perhaps, some similar publication to that which the other day the right hon. and learned Home Secretary quoted, and afterwards repudiated—a publication of the so-called Irish Loyal and Patriotic League. I think it is an unworthy thing that the right hon. Gentleman refused to quote his inspiration. It was unworthy of him to bolster up his case with statements of an anonymous character, and that more especially because it is quite untrue that the hon. Member for East Mayo had anything to do with the starting the Plan of Campaign on the Coolgreaney estate. My hon. Friend never heard that the Plan was to be adopted until a deputation of the tenants came to him, and begged that somebody might be sent there to assist them. It was altogether the spontaneous action of the tenants on the estate; and I say that the conduct of the police in interfering with the meeting which was held for the purpose of exposing the rack-rents on the estate, was illegal and unconstitutional, and should not be sanctioned by a Vote of money in this House. I need not express the gratification with which I learn of the difficulties under which the right hon. Gentleman acknowledges that he is suffering in defending his action in this matter. An hon. Friend tells me that the right hon. Gentleman alludes to a physical difficulty. I had not that in my mind just now: I merely referred to the political difficulties that he must experience in endeavouring to support the policy of the Government, which is un-Constitutional and utterly ineffective. I am glad the country is beginning to realize what is the result of the attempt to rule Ireland by a firm and resolute Unionist government. We have had six months of it, and now, in addition to the ordinary sum of £1,500,000, we are asked to vote £30,000 more for the Irish Constabulary to enable them to carry out this government. The Government is proving, day by day, their utter incapacity to understand the Irish Question. It is running the most enormous risks, and the further it goes on in the course it has laid down the greater will be the difficulties to be faced. To anyone who has read the history of Ireland, it is quite evident that the course of action on which the Government are entering can have only one ending—namely, the suppression of free speech, and the imprisonment of Members of this House and other popular leaders, and the meeting, face to face, of the people deprived of the weapon of open discussion, and without Members of this House being able to restrain them. [Laughter.] Hon. Gentlemen who have never read a line of Irish history may laugh; but so sure as the sun will rise to-morrow, they will laugh very differently this day six months if the policy of the Government is carried out. The right hon. Gentleman sees that because his police and his government are ineffective, notwithstanding the enormous amount of money spent, he will have to come to this House and ask for further powers—further powers for what? To suppress crime? Why, the right hon. Gentleman knows that there has been within the past 50 years no single period of similar agrarian distress in Ireland when there has been less crime. He surely will not attempt to deny that statement; for it is a statement made publicly by the noble Lord the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer (Lord Randolph Churchill), when it suited his Party to say that Ireland was peaceful and tranquil. Why, then, are these new powers asked to suppress crime? They are not needed, and the Government knows that. Ah! they ask for these powers—and the right hon. Gentleman admitted the fact—in order to obtain convictions. But what convictions have the Government failed to obtain? The only notable case where convictions were not obtained was the case in Omagh, in the County Tyrone, where certain Orangemen were put on their trial for murder before a "Daniel come to judgment," in the shape of Judge Lawson, who actually told the jury that it was their duty to convict, and if they did not convict that they would violate their oaths. This was the solitary case where the Government failed to convict, unless their failure to convict my hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo the other day in Dublin is meant. And as regards this case, there is not a man on the Benches of the House who does not know that the imprisonment of my hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo is not the way to pacify Ireland or to maintain the public peace and order in that country. I am not sorry for the difficulties which beset the Government, and I know quite well that the road on which they have entered will land them in fresh difficulties. I think that the sooner they bring in their Coercion Bill, the sooner will come the crisis, which, when it does come, will open the eyes of the English people to the failure of the Government to rule our country; and to the impossibility of this or any other Government attempting to rule Ireland without paying regard to the sentiments and aspirations of the people. Then room will be made for a Government which prefers to base its rule upon conciliation, and upon the golden link of affection, instead of depending upon bayonets and bullets. ["Oh, oh!"] I repeat, upon the golden link of affection. You Gentlemen Opposite are having your innings. Try your bayonets and bullets, and we will see what the result shall be.

As the Members of the Committee have heard the opinion of the Irish Members, I should like, if they would allow me, to make a few remarks from the point of view of an English County Member. In this matter, I must confess it seems to me that the amount which was voted in the ordinary Estimates was a quite sufficient sum to keep down the people of Ireland. I under stand that this Vote is divided into throe portions. One portion was employed in suppressing the riots at Belfast; another was employed in sending police forces to attend meetings of the tenants; and the remaining portion was expended in efforts to collect the rents of the landlords of Ireland. I say that if this money—this enormous sum—must be expended in Ireland—that if, besides, it is just and right to expend it in Ireland, the Irish people themselves ought to pay for the expenditure. The people of Belfast ought to pay for the rioting expenses in Belfast; and if the landlords of Ireland have so managed their affairs that they are obliged to employ English bayonets in the collecting of their rents, the landlords themselves ought to pay for the employment of these bayonets. I also say that if it appears to the people of England, Scotland and Wales, that the people of Ireland are so rebellious against their Rulers that they must be kept down, and that bayonets and policemen must be sent, then the Irish people ought to pay for all this; for if they are guilty, the whole sum ought to be borne by them, and not thrown on the people of the United Kingdom. But I believe that, if we took the right way to govern Ireland, about £400,000 would be a sufficient amount for the police in Ireland. I believe the statements which have been made by the Representatives of the Irish people in this House, and that, if the country was ruled properly and fairly, very few soldiers or policemen would be required to enforce the law.

I think it is time that more than one Member in the House representing English constituencies should desire to say a few words in sympathy with the Irish Party. We are asked tonight to vote what I may call an extra-additional sum for the force of extra police in Ireland. Now, we on this side of the House find some difficulty in speaking upon this subject, because we are met with a plentiful lack of argument from hon. Gentlemen sitting on the opposite Benches. We have heard to-night from the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) a series of facts which have not been disputed, and which cannot be disputed, because they are true; and these facts, not being contradicted, tell a sad tale of the manner in which this money has been disposed of. There are two arguments usually brought forward by hon. Gentlemen opposite in this Committee upon the question of Supply when Irish matters are being dealt with. The one is, that the money has already been spent, and that therefore it is not right to embarrass the Government. That, however, is the old and stale argument which all persons who desire this great Empire to be economically administered will at once dismiss from their minds. The other argument is, that this money has been disposed of in the maintenance of law and of order. Sir, we have heard in what manner law and order has been maintained. I would ask any candid Member in this House whether we in England should stand for one moment the application of money to such purposes as these. Should we, I ask, spend any money on the suppression of public meetings? Should we stand and allow the maintenance of law by the means of soldiers, of bayonets, and of an armed police force. We should do no such thing. I venture to think that on the very last occasion in English history, at Manchester, in 1819, when English swords were used to break up public meetings, the feeling in this country was so unanimous, strong, and overwhelming that, from that day to this, no deliberate and organized attempt has been made to suppress the freedom of speech. I say that the measure we mete out for ourselves we should mete out for our fellow-citizens in Ireland. And yet it was said that the maintenance of law and order was involved in the suppression of freedom of speech and in the extortion, by the bayonet, of rents which the Government itself had declared to be unfair? When the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) brought in his Bill to deal with the question of Irish rents in the last Session, the argument was used in rejecting that Bill by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, that the facts which the hon. Member for Cork had adduced in supporting his Bill, though not denied, had not been fully or satisfactorily proved. These facts have now been proved by a Commission of the Government's own choice. It can no longer be said that these facts, which were known to the hon. Member for Cork, are not definitely known to the Government. What is the result of the Report of that Commission selected to order by the Government? It is this— that the money has been spent in the exaction of rents which the Report of the Commission showed were unfair, and should not be exacted. I ask, were law and order synonymous with the exaction of rents which a Commission had reported to be unfair? I say, that in order that law should be respected in any country, it should be consonant with justice. I ask whether, under the prostituted name of law, any greater or more substantial injustice has ever been inflicted? It is for these reasons, on behalf of an English constituency, that with voice and with vote I shall oppose this Vote for extra Constabulary in Ireland.

We have passed a few hours in discussing this Vote from a very general point of view; but the bearings of the question of the Police Vote apply generally to the state of law and order in Ireland. I will detain the attention of the Committee for a few moments—I shall not be long—while I bring before it a specific case in which these extra police were engaged in a disturbance, and in dispersing a meeting that was perfectly legal in its objects and quite peaceable in its demeanour. Sir, at Cork, on December 1st of last year, a meeting took place in the streets of that city, which had for its object the expression of the opinion of the citizens of Cork of the scandalous state of things that existed in connection with the holding of the Munster Assizes in that city. Now, Sir, the object of this meeting was stated by myself a few days before at a meeting which I then addressed. For some time the citizens of Cork had to complain that at the Munster Winter Assizes which were held year after year in their city, they were called from their daily avocations in order to perform the duty of jurors at those Assizes. The Government know very well the reason why they held the Assizes annually at Cork. It was because, by a judicious packing of the juries, year after year, they were enabled to get convictions which seemed to be so desired by the Government in the present day. Well, Sir, the obsequiousness of the selected jurors of Cork was gaining for that city a most unenviable notoriety. The merchants of the city protested—and protested in vain—against their city being made the means by which the Government were able to carry out what I must style their iniquitous intention. The character of the city was spoken of all over the country. The trade of the city was being damaged, and the commercial men of Cork, who visited other towns throughout the country, began to be insulted and sent out of the houses of the shopkeepers because of the unenviable character that the city of Cork had obtained, owing to the manner in which these obsequious jurors obeyed the dictates of the Crown Prosecutor. Well, as I say, I addressed a meeting of the city, and I said that if we had held the meeting which was to have taken place on the Sunday previous it would have been suppressed, just as the Sligo meeting was suppressed. Why did they hold the Sligo meeting, and why had we intended holding a meeting in Cork? It was to insist that trial by jury in Ireland—that precious gem of the British Constitution—should get fair play. That was the object of the meeting about which I wish to inform the Committee. I believe, Sir, that for a meeting to be suppressed, it must be an unlawful one, or some people must have something to fear from the outcome of it. I believe, also, that it is necessary for a meeting to be unlawful, that it should threaten a breach of the peace. It will be my duty to show that the object of the meeting to which I am going to refer was perfectly lawful; that the mode in which it was carried, out did not threaten a breach of the peace, and that no one had anything to fear. The meeting was suppressed in the most flagrant and most outrageous manner. It was held on the occasion of the trial in the city of a man who is now famous in Ireland—namely, Tim Hurley. This trial was held on December 1st, and I wish to call the attention of the Committee to a meeting which was held the day before, a meeting of the most prominent citizens of Cork. The meeting was held in compliance with an influentially signed requisition, and was presided over by Mr. Alderman O'Brien, the Mayor-elect of the city. It was attended by many Members of this House and by many influential people amongst the merchants and traders of the city. At that meeting the following resolution was passed:—

"That we, the Catholic jurors of Cork, in public meeting assembled, emphatically protest against the custom of the Crown officials at the Cork Assizes in ordering Catholic jurors to stand by after answering to their names in obedience to their summonses, and in view of the approaching Assizes we hereby determine to protest openly against this indignity inflicted on Catholic men in the event of the Law Officers attempting to repeat or perpetuate this insulting treatment."

It was not alone in Cork that the Catholics had reason to complain of this system of packing juries. [Cries of "Question!"] I am endeavouring to show the necessity there was for this meeting and the lawful character of the assembly which was scattered by these extra police for whom we are asked to vote pay and rewards. I think it is absolutely necessary that I should prove the lawful character of this meeting to justify me in proposing, as I intend to propose, the reduction of this Vote by the sum of £1,000. A short time before that certain Catholic jurors in the county of Sligo in like manner met and protested against their Catholic fellow-countrymen being told to "stand by" by the Crown Officials. Therefore, it is that I and my hon. Colleagues the Member for Mid Cork (Dr. Tanner), with other Members of this House who dwell in that city, took the opportunity of the assizes in Cork to protest, in the strongest manner, against this system of jury packing. And now I will proceed to relate what took place on the famous occasion to which I am drawing the attention of the Committee. The meeting assembled outside the Court House. The assizes had not then been opened. The Grand Jury had not been sworn. There was no reason why we should not hold the meeting. There was every reason why we should consider it our duty, bearing all the facts in mind, to protest against the system of jury packing. The meeting took place, and I proceeded to address it in the following manner—

"We assembled the other day to demand justice, and we are assembled to-night to demand justice—to demand what the British Constitution itself concedes, to demand that justice will not be denied or delayed through anyone. Justice has been polluted at its source. It has been polluted within the four walls of that building (pointing to the Court House)."

While I was proceeding in that fashion, a slight disturbance appeared to take place in the crowd, and having inquired into the nature of the disturbance, I found that some persons were objecting to the presence of the Government re- porter. I appealed to the people, and asked them not to interfere with Mr. Agnew, which was the reporter's name. I told the people to allow him to come on the car from which I was addressing the meeting, and they reluctantly did so. I said—

"I want the Government reporter to listen to me; I want the Government to hear what Dr. Tanner and myself have to say to you."

I was allowed to proceed no further, because, at this stage of the proceedings, the police came into this peaceable meeting, which was convened for a lawful purpose, and which was being conducted in a lawful and law-abiding manner—they came in, and I will relate what followed—

"Almost at the same moment, District-Inspector Milling arrived, with as large a detachment of his braves as could be drawn off their beats at short notice. Upwards of 100 police were present."

That was found not to be the fact, for there were only 30 or 40 police there. I remained standing on the steps of the car, when I was approached by Inspector Milling. He having spoken to me, I asked for his authority. He said he had no authority, and he immediately gave orders to the police who were with him to break up and disperse the meeting. Now, Sir, I will trouble the Committee by reading a few lines from The Cork Herald of that date, in order to enlighten the Committee as to the brutal manner in which the crowd was broken up—

"The crowd was taken completely by surprise, and it is not to be wondered at that, unarmed as they were, the bayonets and batons of the police ruffians were effectual in scattering them on all sides. The conduct of these men, to whom it has been the custom to attribute at least a small measure of sympathy for their fellow-countrymen, though continuing under their dark tunic, was cruel in the extreme. They slashed and cut on all sides in a most indiscriminate fashion, as if they took delight in inflicting injury on unoffending people."

This description goes on to point out that the gleam of steel was observable—

"For the police did not disperse the meeting with batons only. Some of them used their batons, but others drew their swords and inflicted wounds of a most desperate character on the heads and the other parts of the bodies of the people. Their bayonets, too, were not idle, one unfortunate young man having got a thrust in the head, for which he was treated at the Infirmary. Their savagery passed all bounds, and the less the people seemed inclined for resistance, the more inclined the police seemed to he to attack them."

I came in for a good deal of the battering myself. I went up to Mr. Milling, and asked him if he had authority to disperse the meeting, and he made me no reply. I pressed him for his authority, and the only answer I received was to be set upon by his brutal policemen, and only that I put my hands over my head, I would not be here to-night to tell the story. I was thrown to the ground, and kicked by these policemen. But, Sir, I will not depend alone on the statement of this newspaper I have quoted, for the description of this terrible onslaught on the part of the police. I will give you the description of a bystander. He says—

"If there had been any notice given of the proceedings it would have been perhaps a modification of the offence, but there was no intimation given. Even when the crowd had entirely dispersed, any stray on-looker who presented himself within view was pounced on by several constables and beaten. I saw one man come to the Court-house on the eastern side, when four constables uttering loud curses set on him. 'Damn you, go on the wind,' said one, and the man was felled by a blow from a baton. He rose to his feet and rushed down St. George's Street, followed by three other policemen with drawn sabres. The reporters who were engaged in the peaceful performance of their duty were beaten. I was beaten myself with batons across the shoulders."

I will not depend even on this witness who signs himself "Spectator;" but I will give an account of the occurrence from the mouth of an Englishman—a commercial traveller who witnessed the affair from the beginning almost to the end. This gentleman voluntarily came into Court, so outraged was he in every generous English feeling. He voluntarily, as I say, came into Court, and delivered his evidence in the following fashion:—Frank Edward Martin, a commercial traveller, deposed in answer to Mr. Adams—

"I am an Englishman, and I arrived in Cork on the 1st December for commercial purposes. I followed the crowd to the Court-house, where some one commenced to address the people. I saw nothing at the time more than ordinary in a crowd in the street."

He was asked whether the crowd was such a one as would be expected to create terror and alarm, and he answered in the negative, although he said that there certainly was a slight jostling, but he said that in a minute he saw drawn bayonets and truncheons coming on the heads of the people. The people, he went on to say, then ran away, and he himself executed a strategic movement to the rear. He declared that he saw no act to cause the police to charge, and that before they charged they gave no warning, that he heard, of their intention to do so. When asked if he should have heard the warning if one had been given, he replied that he must have heard it if it had been given, as he had heard the word of command given in England. This witness was a gentleman who had no connection with the city, beyond calling at houses of business there. He went out in the evening, probably to get a little fresh air, he was attracted to the Court-house by the crowd, and saw this wanton and brutal attack on the people by the police. He came to the Court to give evidence without being asked, and tendered his evidence in the fashion I have just described. I am sure that will go far towards convincing hon. Gentlemen opposite of the truth of the statement that I make that this meeting was most wantonly and brutally disturbed. I was about to trouble the House with other statements that would also go far with the House—the statements of hon. Members of this House—but I will not do so. I will trouble the House only with one statement, that of the hon. Gentleman the Member for East Cork. In an interview with a newspaper reporter, he said—

"While I was interviewing Milling, I saw the police make another rush at Mr. O'Connor and his friends. I saw Mr. O'Connor struck again by a policeman. Dr. Tanner caught the policeman who struck Mr. O'Connor, and said he would get his number. The man tried to get away from Dr. Tanner, and without a single word of warning or the smallest justification, a policeman gave Dr. Tanner two blows on the head, the second of which felled him to the ground."

He goes on to say—

"I went and raised Dr. Tanner from the ground, and found him bleeding from the head. The blood poured down his face. I never saw such ruffianism displayed by a policeman."

[Laughter.] I dare say this is very amusing to hon. tender-hearted Gentlemen—gallant Gentlemen—on the other side of the House, to find that two Members of this House, Representatives of the people—[Laughter]—yes, Representatives of the people, who have a better right to claim that title than those who got into their present posi- tions by very narrow majorities, and by the circulation very often of statements that were not strictly in accordance with the truth. Well, such was the meeting, such were its objects, and such was the manner in which it was disturbed. And what was the sequel to this disturbance of that meeting? Why, the hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Cork (Dr. Tanner) brought a charge against District Inspector Milling for assault—an unprovoked and unwarrantable assault, and a flagrant attack on the rights of the people. The case was brought into Court, it was laid bare in all its phases; it was investigated for a day or two, and what was the result? Why, that this man, this officer of police, who, according to his own statement in the Court, was in plain clothes and not on duty, and had no authority to disperse the meeting, was committed by the Cork bench of magistrates for trial. The Grand Jury, however, failed to send up a true Bill, and he is still unprosecuted. He has not yet been made amenable to the law that he has broken, though a prima facie case has been made out against him, and he has been returned for trial by the magistrates. What transpired on that investigation? Why that all the statements that I have made were proved to be true, not only on the sworn evidence of our witnesses, but also on the sworn evidence of the police themselves, who went into Court, and were obliged to admit the truth of every allegation that was made against them. Well, another case was brought on for investigation soon afterwards. A similar case was tried before a bench of magistrates. District Inspector Milling brought a charge against the hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Cork (Dr. Tanner) and myself. What was the result of that case? Why, a bench of magistrates—a different one to that which adjudicated on the other case—actually refused to have information sworn against the hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Cork and myself. Here you have two benches of magistrates. The one bench send District Inspector Milling forward for trial, and the other actually refuse to have information sworn against us. This proves the truth of our contention that a lawful meeting, carried out in a law-abiding manner, was broken up most illegally and brutally by the very policemen for whom we are now asked to Vote extra pay and rewards. I need not, I think, trouble the Committee by reading the evidence of District Inspector Milling himself, where he swore that he was in plain clothes, that he was not on duty that night, and that he had merely gathered up the beats that he could find, and proceeded to the meeting and dispersed it in an illegal manner. I may add for the information of the Committee, that he admitted, in cross-examination, that the Government reporter did not seem to be in danger. He admitted that I had taken him out of any apparent danger, that he was in the car with me, side by side with me, and that the crowd was not crushing him. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland to-night spoke about the intimidation of jurors. The object of our meeting was to protest against the intimidation of jurors. The jurors of Cork, those of them who were of a sufficiently independent mind to be kept out of the jury box, were told to "stand by," and those who were put into the box were bull-dozed by Mr. O'Brien, and intimidated by every Judge who came to Cork. It was to protest against this state of things that we held our meeting. We wished to save the character of our city, that was being run down in consequence of proceedings like this. What has been the result of our agitation? Why that there was scarcely any fault to be found with the jury arrangements at the last Assizes. It was this, that even the Solicitor General for Ireland himself, except in two cases that occurred before my eyes, did not dare to have a jury in the box. It was this, that those who were brought to Cork from all parts of Munster, and even from Con-naught, to be tried at the Winter Assizes got something like fair play. I will give an instance in which a young gentleman got something like fair play.

The hon. Gentleman is now travelling entirely beyond the Vote.

Well, I will leave that subject, Sir. I merely wished to point out the result of the agitation. The agitation has been amply justified, and I was about to prove it to the Committee, and to point out how erroneous it was for the police to interfere in the matter. However, I will merely say, as I have already pointed out, that our meeting was perfectly lawful. The mode in which we conducted it could not be found fault with by any reasonable person. My hon. Friend the Member for Wexford (Mr. Redmond) pointed out by quoting the most reliable authority that can be referred to, that we had the right of public meeting. We were unquestionably within our right. We hold, Sir, and I believe that the English people are very strong on that point, that public meeting is the bulwark of the British Constitution, and that fair trial by jury is one of its gems. We hold that in exercising our right of public meeting and that in protesting that trial by jury should get fair play in Ireland, we were perfectly within our right. In doing this—in so protesting—we were interfered with by the police and their officers, or rather, by what is known as police, but which I would prefer to stigmatize simply as "organized ruffianism." We were interfered with by that organized system in the exercise of our undoubted right. In consequence of this interference with our right I intend to move the reduction of this Vote by £1,000. This is a specific charge that I bring against the police authorities in Ireland and against the Government; and, in order to emphasize my protest against the manner in which the right of public meeting in Ireland is interfered with; in order to enter my protest against the manner in which hon. Members in this House have been outraged in the performance of what they conceive to be their duty, I beg to move that this Vote be reduced by the sum of £1,000—the expenses of the police force in Cork.

I should like, Sir, to say a few words on the Amendment, now that the hon. Gentleman has attacked, not the Government, but the police authorities of Cork. The hon. Gentleman has stated the case very plainly to the Committee. He has stated that he and his Friends took the opportunity of an approaching trial of a well-known character in the South of Ireland (Tim Hurley), at the assizes to be held on the following day, to summon a public meeting, the evening before, at the Courthouse, as the hon. Member said, to "influence" the Cork jurors. Now, what he calls "influence" I should call "intimidate." That, and nothing else, was the object of the meeting, and that being so, the divisional magistrates and the police authorities in Cork were absolutely right in the step that they took in discharge of their duty. Naturally, meetings cannot be dispersed without the use of some force; and I dare say some persons got a few knocks with batons, and it served them perfectly right.

I rise to Order, Mr. Courtney. I did not summon the meeting at all; nor did I try to influence the jurors. We merely went to meet Tim Hurley.

Order, order! The lion. Gentleman will have an opportunity of replying.

The hon. Gentleman has told the Committee so already; and, as to not influencing jurors, why, in every word he uttered he admitted that that was his object. He spoke of what he was pleased to call the unpopularity which he thought jurors had obtained in every case in Ireland. He spoke of how Cork merchants found themselves interfered with in their dealings on account of that unpopularity. I should say they have been Boycotted simply because the jurors in Cork gave verdicts according to their oaths. It was the object of the hon. Member (Mr. J. O'Connor), as he has told the Committee, to interfere with the action of the jurors in County Cork. Now, Sir, I consider that the meeting was properly dispersed by the police. I do not believe a word of the stories of the excessive violence of the police. I believe the police did their duty and nothing more; and I warn the hon. Member, and others who act in the same way in Ireland, that if something worse than raps of batons result from such proceedings on their part they are the people who will have to take the responsibility. [Cries of "Go and lead the police, then!" and "That is your policy!"]

That is a threat.

It is a threat to murder.

Order, order!

Well, Sir, it is no threat.

It is a threat to murder. [A pause.]

Order, order! I must ask the hon. Member for Liverpool to withdraw that expression.

I do not know what observation. The only observation I made was that "That is a threat."

I meant the hon. Member who said "That is a threat to murder."

I did not make use of any such expression. [Cries of" Healy!"]

The hon. Member for North Longford, then. [Cries of "Withdraw!"]

Do not do anything of the kind.

rising together,

On a point of Order, Mr. Courtney, I wish to ask you, Sir, whether you derived your information with regard to the hon. Member for North Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy) from your own hearing and knowledge, or from the information, of hon. Members below the Gangway on the Conservative side of the House?