It will be to the convenience of the House if the Leader of the House will state what arrangement he proposes for the course of Business next week, especially with respect to Wednesday, and with respect to whether the Criminal Law Amendment (Ireland) Bill will be taken on Friday?

I have endeavoured to inform myself of the feeling of hon. Gentlemen in all parts of the House, and I may state that it would meet the general feeling of the House if the Criminal Law Amendment (Ireland) Bill was not taken during any part of next week. I propose, therefore, if it is the pleasure of the House, that the Government should proceed with the Coal Mines, &c. Regulation Bill in Committee on Wednesday, and I think hon. Gentlemen will recognize the importance of proceeding with the measure. On Monday I shall move that the House adjourn till Wednesday, and that precedence should be given to the Coal Mines, &c. Regulation Bill on that day. I propose to take Supply—the Civil Ser- vice Estimates—in the order in which they stand on the Paper, Class I., and at 10 o'clock to report Progress, in order to get the Coal Mines, &c. Regulation Bill formally into Committee the same evening, so as to allow the Bill to be proceeded with on Wednesday. On Thursday I propose again to proceed with Supply, and such other financial measures as may be necessary, and to move a Morning Sitting for Friday for other Government Business.

In reply to Mr. HENNIKER HEATON (Canterbury),

said, that it might not be in the power of the Government to take the India and China Mail at an early hour on Monday.

Subsequently,

asked, whether the right hon. Gentleman could give the Irish Members any assurance that none of the Irish Estimates would be taken in the course of next week? And he asked this Question in consequence of an observation of the right hon. Gentleman—that he had consulted all quarters of the House before he made his statement, the fact being that he had consulted every section of the House except the Irish Members, and had refused to make the arrangement which the Irish Members asked for.

thought that he was already in possession of the views of hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway opposite from the hon. Member himself. He would undertake that no Irish Vote should be taken in Supply on Monday and Thursday in the absence of the Irish Members.

May I remark, as to the course of Business, that I feel sensible of the great difficulties in which the Leader of the House is involved; and I believe that, taking all things into consideration, if his main object is to give the Irish Members the temporary relief from duty which they desire, he, as far as I am able to judge, has made the best arrangement in his power.

said, he wished to ask the First Lord of the Treasury—as the Chief Secretary was not present—Whether the condition of Ireland was so desperate tha the Lord Lieutenant—according to Th Morning Post of yesterday—had felt himself compelled to take a house in Curzon Street, Mayfair, for the remainder of the season; and, whether arrangements could not be made to protect His Excellency at the present time?

[No reply.]

Am I to understand that the Lord Lieutenant is to be absent from Ireland for the remainder of the season?

[No reply.]

said: I rise for the purpose of asking leave of the House to move the Adjournment of the House, for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance—namely, the recent unjust eviction of 36 families on the estate of Colonel John O'Callaghan, at Bodyke, in County Clare; the numerous evictions now going on elsewhere in Ireland; and the conduct of the police in connection with the carrying out of the said evictions, and at Feakle, on Friday last.

The pleasure of the House not having been signified, Mr. Speaker called on those Members who supported the Motion to rise in their places, and not less than 40 Members having accordingly risen:—

Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding the action of the Conservative Party in leaving the House rather than listen to any statement on a matter which has unquestionably attracted the public attention of this country to a very large extent, not only among Liberals, but amongst Conservatives also, I venture to say, Sir, notwithstanding the remarkable exodus we have just witnessed, that in the course which I have thought it my duty to adopt in this matter I not only have the support of 40 Members in this House, but of a large majority of the public opinion of Eng- land. Sir, I have received myself letters within the last couple of days, signed by Conservatives—persons who called themselves Conservatives—saying that it was most desirable that the charges made against the Constabulary in connection with the recent evictions should be fully investigated, and some decision arrived at upon them as to whether they were true or false. And, Sir, I put upon the Paper to-night a Question to ask the Government whether they would consent to the appointment of a Committee to investigate these charges, and also the evictions which have taken place at Bodyke. Before I enter upon the case which I desire to lay before the House, I wish to draw attention for a few moments to the way in which these matters are treated. Charges were made recently against the Constabulary in reference to certain riots and disturbances which took place in Belfast, and what was the result? The Government of the day in Ireland promptly issued a Commission—not a Special Committee of the House, but a Commission—to inquire into these charges, although it was on record that in the course of these riots a great number of the Constabulary were killed and wounded, and some soldiers also; but notwithstanding these facts—of which there is nothing of the kind in the case of these disturbances in Clare—an inquiry was immediately granted. Another case is that of Cardiff. At the recent General Election in Cardiff charges were made against the English Constabulary of brutal conduct. An inquiry was asked for and promptly and immediately granted. Charges are made in this case, and I shall prove later that they are made not upon the authority of Irishmen at all or alone, but upon the absolutely unanimous authority of all the Pressmen of this country who have visited those districts. On the other side there is absolutely nothing but the unsupported testimony of the people whose conduct is impugned, and yet we are denied an investigation. I should not have thought of consuming any of the time of this House if the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour) had thought fit to offer us some tribunal before which we might lay our case, and before which we might seek to get a fair decision on this matter. But before I enter on the case I wish to direct attention to this remarkable fact. So far from offering any tribunal or opportunity to us of laying the evidence placed at our disposal before a Committee of this House, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary—knowing this Question was coming on—did not think it worth while to come down to answer it, but, on the contrary, plainly and manifestly remained away in order that he might not be compelled to answer the Question at all. What are the propositions I shall endeavour to prove to this House? The first proposition is this—that there has been carried out in the County of Clare the eviction of 36 families in the most cruel, the most unfeeling and brutal fashion that has recently taken place even in Irish evictions. It so happens that I have been intimately acquainted personally with the circumstances and history of these cases for the last nine months. I chanced to be travelling in Clare nine months ago, shortly after the dispute between Colonel O'Callaghan and his tenants had its origin, and these tenants sent a distance of 15 miles to ask me to come to their assistance and afford them the protection of the League or any policy I could suggest to them. It is frequently charged against us in these matters that we are the instigators and causes of these evictions in Ireland, and of the resistance of the tenants; but I solemnly declare, in reference to this dispute, that I had no act, hand, or part in it until I was asked to go a distance of 15 miles at the request of the tenants to meet and offer them my advice. The tenants, the morning after I arrived, came in a great number and laid their case before me. It was a case of the most harsh and atrocious system of rack-renting that I had ever heard of in my wide experience of Irish landlordism. I shall not go into details which I possess of the individual cases on the estate, because I understand that Englishmen in this House who were there have satisfied themselves on these points, have got possession of documents, and will themselves give these particulars to the House. Colonel O'Callaghan came into possession of the estate 50 years ago, and he proceeded to raise the rents of the tenants, step by step, year after year—a rise being put on every second or third year—until the men who spoke to me, with tears in their eyes, declared they were utterly broken down and un- able to carry on. Men who had been paying 15 s. an acre in 1850 were paying 35 s., 38 s., and 40 s., and this had been piled upon them year after year without the expenditure of one single shilling on the land by the landlord, and the landlord in the miserable attempts made in his defence by himself and others has not alleged that he expended one shilling out of his pocket. That has been the character of his treatment, and I leave it to Englishmen who went there and satisfied themselves to go into details and prove the general propositions I lay down. That is the first proposition I have to lay down with reference to this Irish landlord. The second is this—by the universal testimony of the whole of the district and of the neighbours of these tenants a more industrious, hard-working, and honest people do not exist in the County of Clare. I have it from innumerable witnesses that as long as they could manage to pay—and even by borrowing—they continued to pay, and so great was their terror of the landlord that it was not until they were beggared and ruined that they fell back upon methods of resistance such as culminated the other day in these extraordinary affairs. These are the general facts I wish to state with regard to these tenants and with regard to the temper of the landlord and his treatment of his tenants. I will give one instance which I had on the testimony of a great many men who undertook to swear it in affidavits if so required. The rent of Michael Hussey was raised from 15 s. to 40 s. per acre, and when the last rise was put upon it Hussey went to the landlord and said—"Do you want to ruin me entirely?" Colonel O'Callaghan replied in the following words:—"You must pay it or go out, and I will tell you I care no more about turning you on to the roadside than I do about shooting the bird which flies across my path." That language people were prepared to swear to. I wish to say a few words about the present dispute. The tenants of Colonel O'Callaghan had their rents fixed by the Land Courts in 1882. Now, the year 1882 was notoriously a year in which prices rose in Ireland temporarily, and with them the rents were fixed on the basis and expectation that the rise was of a permanent character. Even then these rents were reduced enormously, and we have a number of witnesses who will undertake to swear that Mr. Reed, one of the Sub-Commissioners, in reducing these rents, said he regretted very much that the circumstances of the estate did not leave him a free hand, and that were it not that the estate was under mortgages he would make greater reductions. What the tenants asked was that they should pay a quarter's rent due last November, and receive a further reduction on the judicial rents fixed in 1882 of 25 per cent, and the reduction would have left the rents 30 or 40 per cent over the rents now being fixed by the Judicial Commissioners in the County Clare, and the reduced rents which the tenants offered last year would have been fully 30 per cent, if not 40 per cent, more than all the neighbouring landlords are having fixed in Court. He refused to give a single shilling of a reduction to the tenants, and then they refused to pay and adopted their present attitude. That was the history of the origin of the dispute, and in the course of the winter an English gentleman visited that neighbourhood on one of his many excursions to Ireland for philanthropic purposes. This gentleman, I understand, is exceedingly hostile politically to our views, but he has a wide acquaintance with this affair—I allude to Mr. Tuke. He visited this district in the month of January, and having learned the dispute and made inquiries secretly, without revealing his individuality, he was so horrified by the conduct of the landlord and by the condition of those people, that he came to the parish priest of the district, and offered to put his hand in his pocket and pay £300 to the landlord if he could effect a settlement, and based upon that the parish priest of the district by desperate exertions collected £900, including this £300, which he offered to the landlord, who refused it. That, in my opinion, was an offer which ought never to have been made, for it is monstrous to see Irish landlords in the County Clare rewarded for their infamous and brutal conduct by English gentlemen going over and putting their hands in their pockets. Such was the anxiety of this priest, a most excellent and respected clergyman, Father Murphy, of Tomgraney, that he offered this sum of £900 to the landlord, who refused it. That incident alone ought to show to any fair-minded man, even on the Benches opposite, that there was matter for inquiry and investigation, at least as to the merits and demerits of these evictions. But that is not all. Those hon. Members of this House who took the trouble to study the Cowper Commission will see a certain statement made by General Buller, when giving evidence before that Commission. He said—

"I have just returned from the County Clare, where I was specially sent to induce a landlord to come to reasonable terms with his tenants, and I regret, and fear, I have failed."

Who was that landlord whom General Buller was sent by the right hon. Baronet the Member for West Bristol (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) to induce to come to terms with his tenants? It was Colonel John O'Callaghan, and he refused to take the advice of the then Chief Secretary for Ireland and of General Buller, and now the British public are to pay the bill, which will be at least £3,000 or £4,000. But not alone that—they had inflicted this abominable cruelty on the people then because Colonel O'Callaghan insisted on the last pound of flesh. What I want to point out—and I do trust, even considering the present temper in England, to make some impression—I defy the Government, and I now defy the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, to produce one single Englishman, Conservative, Liberal Unionist, or Gladstonian Liberal, who has been on the spot and investigated the history of these things who will come back to this House or any public place and declare he believes right is not on our side. We can produce upwards of a dozen Englishmen who have left this country and gone to investigate the circumstances, and I defy the Government to produce a single man who will say that their—the Government's—conductin this case has been justified. Is it not a strong case in favour of my contention that the defence which is made and palmed off on hon. Members of this House by the Irish Government for their proceedings in Ireland at present is a defence which bases its strength on the ignorance of the men to whom they plead? I invite any hon. Member to go down to County Clare, and come back and stand up in his place and tell us what the result of his inquiries has been. I wish to direct attention to a very serious question—that is, the con- duct of the police during the carrying out of these evictions, and also their conduct at the suppressed meetings on Sunday. But I think, in this matter also, we are entitled to get some more consideration from the Government than we have hitherto received. I know perfectly well that a certain section of Englishmen always receive with a grain of salt any statement which comes from the Irish Members, and particularly those who are identified with the Party with which I act. But when you find this condition of things arising, when you find, in a case like that of Bodyke, a number of English Press correspondents from different independent agencies and employers on the spot, when you find them with one voice declare that the police have acted in a brutal and unjustifiable manner, and when you find the other Englishmen, strangers, joining in that declaration, there is absolutely no testimony but that of the police officers whose conduct is impugned opposed to those statements. There cannot exist a doubt in the mind of any hon. Member of this House that had these things occurred in England, Scotland, or Wales, an investigation would necessarily have been demanded by English public opinion; and is it not a deplorable thing, when this very same condition of things arises in Ireland, that we are to be told, as we are told, that no investigation will be granted, and that we shall be put off by information which, I think, it is high time to characterize in its true character? Without being offensive, I say it is nothing more nor less than the conduit pipe to pour into this House falsifications and lying excuses of permanent officials in Dublin Castle. We had the statement the other night—a most valuable statement—from a late Chief Secretary that he frequently discovered the answers sent from Dublin Castle were of such an unsatisfactory character that he was obliged to telegraph again and again before he could get a sufficiently satisfactory answer to enable him to give it in the House, and he stated that the Questions which were put compelling him to make these inquiries had led him in more than one instance to remedy a serious abuse. But here we have a Chief Secretary who remains behind the Speaker's Chair, and an Under Secretary who repeats like a parrot the answers sent him by the officers whose conduct we are complaining of, and there the matter ends. I have collected a certain amount of testimony from the leading newspapers in England, and I shall commence with one which is not prejudiced in our favour. The Times of June 11 (Saturday last) refers thus to the conduct of the police on the previous Friday in carrying out evictions—

"The troops and police, having bivouacked for luncheon, were about to start on the return journey for Fortane when some knots of people collected on the ditches and commenced to hoot and groan at them. The Constabulary were ordered to disperse them, and about 30 men armed with batons sprang over the ditch and pursued the people and bludgeoned them in the most frightful style. Several young constables used filthy expressions to the people, who at the time had not conducted themselves any worse than they did since the evictions commenced; but the police had lost their temper and discipline, as was shown to some of the English spectators of this extraordinary scene."

Now I return to the account of the transaction of Sunday at Feakle. On Sunday an extraordinary scene took place of a much more serious character. A meeting had been proclaimed which was supposed to take place. On Sunday last a large force of police was concentrated in the town to prevent the meeting, but they arrived too late—after the meeting was over. County Inspector Heard, seeing that the people were in a very hostile mood, and that the meeting was over, that there was no duty to perform, and—to use his own words—"in order not to excite the people further," ordered the police to march back to camp. About an hour afterwards some fifty men who came from Scariff, about eight miles distant, arrived—I am quoting from the statement made by Mr. Heard to the correspondent of The Freeman —these men arrived tired and hot—it was a very hot day—and in face of the fact of the strained relations between the people and the police, the officers ordered them to disperse in order to get drink in the public-houses. In face of what had occurred for the last fortnight in that district, these constables were allowed to disband and spread themselves over the village in order to get drink. I say that the officer who was guilty of such conduct as that deserves to be dismissed out of the force to-morrow. If he had any regard for the peace or for the lives of the people, he would have marched the police out of the village, or not have got into it at all, as they had no duty to perform there. In one house the constables got in, and got as much drink as they liked. In two or three other houses they were refused; they forced their way in, and forcibly ejected the people who were there, and helped themselves to drink from the beer barrels without asking the proprietor's permission, and paid for it at their own estimate. So far I have been quoting from the statement of County Inspector Heard. He admits that the men were allowed to disperse for refreshments, and he says that the account given to him by his officer is that when they were dispersed and getting refreshments stones were thrown at the police, and in some instances empty bottles, and then the men charged and cleared the street. But all this statement was hearsay. I now come to the statements of the English correspondents who wrote from the place. Here is an extract from the correspondent of the Press Association. You must remember that the several accounts come from various and independent sources. Before I conclude I shall allude to the statement of the correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette, but I take first the correspondents who are not friendly to us. I take the account of this transaction given by the special correspondent of the Press Association, who is an Englishman, who was specially sent over from London after the evictions had commenced. This special correspondent says—

"The police lost their temper, one officer told them to charge, and staves were freely used. A stone thrown by a child rolled down to where the police were standing, and served as a signal for the renewal of hostilities. Some young men, provoked by this, threw stones, and the police charged, some of them pursuing a man for a quarter of a mile, hitting and kicking him, till at last even the Inspector called them back. So far as I could ascertain, the violence of the police was entirely unwarranted, and can only be explained by the fact of their feeling annoyed at being too late to prevent the meeting."

That account was cut from an English paper and sent to me by a man who signed himself "A Conservative," and asked me to bring this matter under the notice of the House. The theory of the Government appears to be that the representative of The Pall Mall Gazette is not entitled to credence; but I maintain that he is an Englishman, and that he has gone there as a correspondent of the Press, and until the Government bring forward some testimony to contradict his evidence I maintain that he is entitled to credence. I think it a fair and natural request on my part that some tribunal should be set up in order to decide this question, because I think on an examination it will be admitted, if these statements are true, or nearly true, that it is an outrageous and a monstrous thing to allow this condition of things to prevail. And the Question I have risen to put to the House on this particular point is—are you, as Englishmen, going to sit down and rest satisfied with such an answer as I have received up to this, when the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland admits that the only answer he has to give is the answer of the very men whose conduct I have to complain of? Here are a great many more details given in the account of the correspondent of The Pall Mall Gazette —details of a very disgusting and atrocious character—but I shall confine myself to adding one further detail. He says—

"Amongst those who were struck down by the police in Feakle on Sunday was a young boy named Willie Purcell. I went and saw him lying in bed. He is a tall, handsome boy of 14. He was very pale from loss of blood. He cannot identify the brute that struck him, for the all-sufficient reason that he was felled with a blow from behind. He states that he ran off the street through a house into a yard, and that, while quite safe sitting on a wall, he received a blow from behind from a policeman which fractured his skull."

What had this boy done that the police should have pursued him off the street through a house into a yard and knocked him off a wall where he was sitting? I say when a statement of that character is made by an Englishman it ought to be investigated. I pause now from giving further details of the outrages of the police, though I could give a great many more; but I think I have given enough. I cannot conceive any reply which the Government can give to my statement except this—they may say, "These people have open to them the ordinary remedy of the law." I maintain that such an answer is a simple mockery. These poor people have no remedy; and supposing they had a remedy, if they were going to bring an action against the police, where would they get the money to fee the lawyers? The venue would be changed to Dublin, and it would be Christmas before the trial could take place. But, supposing they had a remedy, is that any answer for a responsible Executive Government? Is it a sufficient answer to say—"If the police beat in the people's heads and burst into people's houses, and knocked the people down if they remonstrated—if they knocked about children and beat old women about the heads they had their remedy at law?" Will the law mend the heads and put a stop to such a system in the future? These things have been done over and over again in Ireland; and I say it is an outrage, and I believe that the people of this country will protest against it, if they are allowed to go on without some fair inquiry by a Committee being instituted and an opportunity given to us to lay our evidence before the Committee, so that it may be decided once for all whether our statements and charges are well grounded or not.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—( Mr. Dillon. )

The hon. Member began his speech by complaining that I was not present in my place to give the answer to his Question, which was, in fact, given by the Under Secretary. I must inform the hon. Member that for that answer so given by the Under Secretary I am entirely responsible, it having been framed by him in conjunction with myself, and the fact that he delivered it in no way detracts from or alters my responsibility for it. The hon. Member complained of the answer itself. He said that we ought at once to have granted this Committee to inquire into the truth of the allegations that have been made in this matter; and, certainly much to my surprise, he quoted in support of his demand the case of Belfast as one in which such a Committee of Inquiry was granted. There is, however, no analogy whatever between the two cases. The hon. Member talks as though the Commission granted in the case of Belfast was appointed simply to investigate the conduct of the police, whereas it was appointed in consequence of Belfast having been in a state of riot for some six weeks, and for the purpose of preventing the continuance of a condition of things in that place which was a disgrace to any civilized community. If the hon. Member, therefore, relies upon the case of Belfast as a precedent to be followed in the present case, the Government will certainly not follow it. I must confess that, although I do not think that the hon. Member was ill-advised in bringing forward this Motion for the adjournment of the House upon this question, I do think that he was extremely ill-advised as to the day he brought it forward. There is clearly nothing pressing in this matter. I mean by that, even if all that the hon. Member has said is true, it would confer no immediate benefit upon the people of Ireland that this discussion should begin on Thursday instead of on Monday. I do think that hon. Members below the Gangway opposite will scarcely think I am wrong in taking that view of the matter. The hon. Member—for reasons into which I do not inquire—has chosen one of the five days which have been allocated by the House for the discussion of the Crimes Bill. I should have thought that if the hon. Member had been as anxious for the discussion of the Crimes Bill as he says he is, he would have deferred until Monday the discussion which he has forced upon the House this afternoon. It must have been perfectly clear to the hon. Member, both from the answer which I gave yesterday afternoon, and from the reply of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Under Secretary to-day, that the Government are not yet in possession of that full and detailed information upon this question which it is certainly desirable that we should possess before this matter is discussed in this House. The hon. Member, being aware of that fact, nevertheless forces this discussion upon the House to-day. The officials in Ireland, whose duty it is to make Reports to us, have been so occupied with these proceedings, their time has so been filled up by the painful and protracted labour which has been entailed upon them by what has happened at Bodyke, that it has been perfectly impossible for them to have made these Reports. For my own part, I could not have reconciled it with my functions to press them to do more than to keep me informed by telegram of the course of the proceedings at Bodyke. To expect Colonel Turner, who is in a responsible command, to sit down every night and to send a long despatch of the occurrences of the day would be a proceeding totally and absolutely destructive of any Executive efficiency whatever. [ Cries of "Oh, oh!"] I am perfectly sure that right hon. Gentlemen opposite, were they now in power, would not have pressed Colonel Turner in reference to this matter more than I have done. Dealing, in the first place, with the hon. Member's remarks in reference to the conduct of the police, I must protest against the view laid down by him that a newspaper report is a proper basis on which to found an indictment against Government officials. I venture to say that no Government has ever admitted—

I did not say that. What I said was, that there was a universal concurrence of testimony afforded by a number of newspaper correspondents connected with newspapers of different politics.

That does not militate against my general proposition, which is that no Government can accept mere newspaper reports as a basis on which to found an indictment against Government officials, Such a course would render government absolutely impossible. So far as I have been able to see, the newspaper reporters appear to have shown even more than their usual fertility of resource and perfervid imagination in dealing with the proceedings at Bodyke. Let no man, after reading the highly-coloured and glowing accounts of this matter, say that we live in a prosaic age, or in an age when the gift of imagination is not widely distributed. The hon. Member, in making his attack upon the Government officials, permitted himself to use language which, although I believe it is perfectly in Order, does not conduce to the proper conduct of debate. The hon. Member described the Irish officials as a set of lying officials.

What I said was that the Under Secretary made himself habitually the channel of the lying excuses of the Irish officials.

The officials who make use of lying excuses must be lying officials. Those right hon. Gentlemen who are sitting upon the Front Bench opposite, who heard the charge made, and who are probably responsible for the appointment of those officials, must have listened to the statements which have been made with shame. Whom is it that hon. Members are attacking? I presume Colonel Turner?

No; Colonel Turner was not there.

I believe Colonel Turner to be an honourable gentleman.

I am glad to have that expression from the hon. Member. All I can say is that all the statements which have been made by me in this House have been made upon the authority of Colonel Turner, and I can set off against the highly imaginative statements of the newspaper correspondents the statements of a man whom hon. Members opposite themselves know to be an honourable gentleman. The accusation which the hon. Gentleman has made against the police maybe summed up in saying that they exceeded their duty, and treated the crowd with greater severity than the occasion warranted. For reasons which I have before stated to the House, I am not going, and it is impossible for me to go, into details; as regards the specific allegations, I know nothing whatever, for instance, of the policeman who is alleged to have pursued a boy through a house, and, having got him on the other side, knocked him down into a ditch.

More shame for you.

What I do know is that the police, during the course of these evictions at Bodyke, have had to deal with something very like organized revolution, and in the exercise of their duty have been subjected to most barbarous treatment. Whether it was right or wrong that these evictions should take place, undoubtedly the police were only carrying out their undoubted duty. If the evictions ought not to have taken place, it did not rest with the police to stop them; the responsibility rests elsewhere, and these men, who had but to do their duty, were assaulted with boiling water and subjected to every possible insult and outrage; and if it were true, though I do not think it is, that the policemen, who, after all, are but human beings, at last, provoked beyond endurance, did, to some small extent, exceed their duty, though I should greatly regret it, had it taken place, which I do not believe it did, I should feel that some allowance must be made for the position in which they were placed. Then the hon. Gentleman has attacked the general disposition of the forces at Bodyke, but for those dispositions Colonel Turner was responsible. I have the most absolute confidence in the judgment and discretion of that gentleman; and I think that, placed in circumstances of almost unexampled difficulty — circumstances far exceeding in difficulty the Woodford evictions—he has shown a judgment, a temper, a discretion, and an endurance which does the highest credit to his administrative abilities. That is all I shall say on the subject of the police; but before I sit down it will, I think, be necessary for me to say a few words on another question raised by the hon. Gentleman—a wholly different question, and one that ought to be entirely dissociated in every man's mind from the particular episodes to which the hon. Member has made reference. The hon. Member has given an account of the occurrences which he states took place with reference to Colonel O'Callaghan's property, and which make these evictions, in his opinion, a peculiar hardship. It is not my duty, and I do not mean to say one single word in defence of the landlord in this case. If Colonel O'Callaghan had asked my advice, these evictions would probably never have taken place. But while I refrain from saying one word in defence of the conduct he has thought it right to pursue, I must, in fairness to him, remind the House of some circumstances which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, but which he has kept rather in the background, though I do not complain of the candour of his statement. The rents on Colonel O'Callaghan's property may or may not be much too high; they may or may not be rents which every good landlord would think it his first duty to reduce; but beyond all this is the fact that these were judicial rents fixed in 1882. They were fixed at a time since which prices have undoubtedly gone down. But we must assume that the rents were fair rents, and that the Land Commissioners did their duty in fixing those rents at that figure. None would resent more bitterly than hon. Gentlemen opposite any attack on the Land Commission for fixing rents too low. They would say—"You are criticizing the judgment of a Court, and you have no right to do it." They cannot, therefore, complain if we apply the same canon, and say that, whether right or wrong, the rents which the Land Commissioners fixed in 1882 were fair rents, though, as Lord Cowper's Commission reports—a question upon which I express no opinion—they are now 10 to 14 per cent too high that—[Mr. DILLON: Sixty per cent.] The hon. Gentleman says that the rents are 60 per cent too high. That may or may not be true, but if it be true, then, in the opinion of the hon. Gentleman, the Land Commission did not do their duty—a point on which it is not my duty to pronounce an opinion.

We always said so. We always denounced the Land Commission.

The hon. Gentleman never denounced the Commissioners for lowering rents.

I always denounced them — from start to finish. They never did their duty. They were landlord Commissioners. There was only one tenant amongst the 60.

I thought the hon. Gentleman was going to interpose with something a little more relevant to the purpose, or I should not have given way to him. These were judicial rents fixed in 1882. Colonel O'Callaghan, for reasons which seemed to him sufficient, determined to evict his tenants for non-payment of these rents. Does any Gentleman in this House blame the Government for carrying out the law?

,: We blame them for not amending it.

The Government are blamed for not amending the law. Who is it that has prevented this?

What happened last autumn?

As I have had occasion to point out before, it would be highly improper to discuss that.

You asked the question.

The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly aware that the legislation that he thought fit to submit last autumn would not relieve the Irish tenants. But that is not the point. The point is that at this moment we are promoting legislation which would have dealt with it. The right hon. Gentleman is, apparently, perfectly unacquainted with the Government Bill as it now stands. The Bill now in the House of Lords, which I should not be in Order in discussing, would undoubtedly have stopped any hard cases of that kind. Who, then, has stopped us in bringing in that Bill? We have been stopped by hon. Gentlemen opposite, who, for reasons of their own, have thought fit to protract the discussion on the Bill now before the House to such an extraordinary length that the other Bill to which I referred is pushed off to the fag-end of the Session. Whose fault is that?

The House of Lords.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby says the House of Lords. Is he not aware that the Government gave a pledge that the Bill now in the House of Lords should be introduced here before the Criminal Law Amendment Bill left this House? The reason the House of Lords has not done with that Bill is that there never was any chance of hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway letting us finish with the other Bill. Nothing has interposed between the Irish Land Bill and this House but the interminable and useless discussions which hon. Gentlemen opposite have permitted to take place on the Criminal Law Amendment Bill. While I think we ought to amend the law so that no clearly harsh eviction can take place, I must, at the same time, enter my protest against the method of judging actions of that kind which appears to have become fashionable. I do not wish, for a moment, to diminish the sum of the pity which we give to those who are unfortunate in their circumstances, but I confess I sometimes wish that we could be something more equitable in the distribution of that pity. Hon. Gentlemen on that side are deeply moved by what occurred at Bodyke. Let us grant to the full their premisses. Let us grant, for the sake of argument, that Colonel O'Callaghan has acted harshly—let us grant, for argument's sake, that he has used his legal rights in a manner in which no humane man ought to have used them. Would hon. Members opposite have shown the same sentiments of commiseration had the evictions at Bodyke not been attended by circumstances which, in my opinion, reflect little credit either on the tenants or on those who, for political purposes, have urged the tenants on to resistance? I take this opportunity of declaring my opinion that these evictions have been marked by circumstances of a most scandalous character. They have been used for the purpose of political agitation by men who were not ashamed, to rouse the tenants to resistance against the law, when, but for their intervention, no resistance would have been offered. Are there no cases in which legal rights are harshly administered outside of Ireland? Is Ireland the only country where such things take place? Is there a single man who doubts that if he took the trouble to go about this Metropolis, perhaps within a few hundred yards of the place where we are now sitting, he would find cases in plenty where misery was inflicted by the strict execution of legal rights, and misery, perhaps, of a far more deplorable character than at Bodyke? I do not say this as any justification of Colonel O'Callaghan or of others who in Ireland or elsewhere may be tempted to the harsh exercise of any right the law has given them. I allude to this only for the purpose of showing the necessity for the introduction of some more sane and better method of estimating questions of this kind. I wish to direct the attention of hon. Members to the broad questions which underlie these cases. I do not believe any system of law, however perfect, can be devised in which some instances of harsh exercise of right can be avoided. Such instances must occur. It is the duty of the Legislature to do its best to make these harsh cases as few and as rare as possible; but in the interest of every class of the community, in the interest most of all of those who, from one cause or another, specially deserve our pity, I should protest as earnestly as I can against the doctrine that appears to be growing every day that the proper remedy for a law which is in some cases harsh is to break that law. A doctrine of that kind is absolutely subversive of everything that makes civilization possible. It is because I firmly believed that that I determined, not cheerfully indeed, but with a firm resolve, to support Colonel O'Callaghan in these cases of eviction without expressing any opinion myself as to whether his action was morally justified or not. I appeal to those who protest against the scenes that have recently occurred at Bodyke to help the Government in taking the only possible step by which the recurrence of such scenes may be avoided—namely, to press on as fast as they can the grave Business now before the House, and to allow us to come to the consideration of the measure now in "another place," by which I believe and hope we shall effectually prevent the recurrence of such painful incidents for the future.

said, that the Chief Secretary complained that they were driven to trust the untrustworthy statements of newspaper correspondents; but he would endeavour, as far as he was able, to give the Chief Secretary a report of what he himself had seen with his own eyes and heard at the scene of conflict with his own ears. It was the desire of those who made this Motion to obtain information in the most satisfactory way by appointing a Committee which would have power to bring witnesses before it. If the right hon. Gentleman were left to his "ordinary sources of information," he ventured to think that when those were exhausted the Chief Secretary might have a great deal of material but very little truth. Two questions were raised in the Motion before the House. One was the conduct of those to whom the task of effecting these evictions had been committed. On that point he would say but little. It was the more exciting, but, in his opinion, the less important of the two. It had been questioned whether one of the Sheriff's officers had or had not hurled a long crowbar through a hole made in a house, and smile triumphantly at what he had done. There was at that moment in the House an English gentleman, not a Member, who saw that crowbar launched from the man's hand, and he (Mr. Waddy) was standing within three or four feet of the man when he did it. It had also been denied that actual violence had been done to any of the tenants in the course of the evictions. He had in his hand telegraphic repetitions of affidavits sworn in Ireland by responsible men, who saw an old woman of 80, weak but unharmed in a house, and within a few minutes after the men entered that woman was seen by a doctor with bruises on her face which were still visible after a week. He supposed, again, it would be said that was a story by a newspaper correspondent. He wished, however, to agree, as far as he could, with what had been said by the right hon. Gentleman with regard to Colonel Turner and the Constabulary. He was bound to say that while he was on the scene nothing could have been more perfectly good humoured than the conduct of the populace, nothing more perfectly wise and temperate than the conduct of the officers of the soldiers and constabulary; but the great fault of these proceedings was that they had a tendency to stir up angry feelings. Colonel Turner had behaved all through, so far as he was able to see, and so did Inspector Heard, with the greatest moderation and prudence, and, as far as possible, with kindness. But there was another branch of the inquiry which he considered to be of much greater and more permanent importance—namely the state of the law and the circumstances which had called forth the commencement of these proceedings—which rendered it not only possible, but actually a fact, that there was almost civil war in one part of Ireland. That state of things was justified by a Minister of the Crown as being carried on for the purpose of enforcing judicial rents. Now, before he stated the results of his inquiries, he wished to indicate the steps he had taken to arrive at the truth. He did not satisfy himself with the verbal statement of anybody; he did not satisfy himself with the report of any man, woman, or child; he got into the houses before the evictions took place and obtained from the tenants documents to which he thought the House would attach a good deal of importance. He now held in his hand receipts for rents signed by Colonel O'Callaghan, receipts for the amounts received by him in executions and distress, and the Government might see, if they liked, a list of the agreements under which these poor people had been holding. He brought to bear on his task not only whatever ordinary ability he possessed, but the experience gained from professional practice, and he believed that the real facts were these. As soon as Colonel O'Callaghan got the estate he at once mortgaged it very heavily, and then proceeded to raise the rents in every direction, utterly careless whether it was fair and honest or not. The same course was adopted in case, and one, therefore, would illustrate all. In the case of Tuohy it appeared that the rent of the farm in 1850 was about £20. In 1852 it was raised to £25 18 s.; in 1854 to £32 10 s.; in 1855 to £40; in 1858 to £46; in 1864 to £49; and in 1870 to £56 5 s. 6 d. It was a curious fact that all the rents went up about 1870, because legislation was expected on the Land Question, and they found that the rents were then raised far beyond the highest rational point, and bog and moorland, roads and rocks and all, were treated as perfectly good land, and £2 an Irish acre put upon every particle of the estate. Another case was that of a woman named Bridget Nugent, who was about 51 years of age, and had lived on the estate for 26 years. She brought to her husband a dowry of about £200. The original rent of the farm was £30 a-year; but the house was so bad that the tenants, sometimes in stormy weather, went out on the mountain, rather than sleep in it. No repairs were done by the landlord; and this man Nugent—who died 14 years ago—took his wife's money and expended it, together with his own labour, in building a substantial house. The rent was originally £30; but when the house was built it was raised to £83. It was necessary to remember what was the justification pleaded for this conduct, and what was the answer of the Irish Representatives. On the one hand, it was said, and had been repeated by the Irish Secretary a short time ago—"You must remember that those are judicial rents;" but the fact, which they forgot to mention and ignored, was that the judicial rents were fixed upon an already drained and depleted nation. The landlords had already reduced them to despair. They had taken from them all that they had. Nor was that all. It might be an Irish thing to say; but the landlords had taken from them that which they had not. The rent of these people had been paid by their children, who had gone to America or Australia, and the landlords, who cried out loudly against the American dollars that were subscribed to the National League, had not complained of the American dollars going into their own pockets. Well, from November, 1871, £41 10 s. had been extracted every half-year from this poor woman. The judicial rent was fixed at £46 10 s. per annum, and that was based upon the house built by the tenant as well as the land. This was one of the first estates upon which the Land Commissioners had gone, and he believed they were afraid of their own power, and that, hearing how the estate was mortgaged, they wished to leave Colonel O'Callaghan a margin to live upon. Griffith's valuation of the holding in 1883 was only £39, and even that included the house which the woman's husband had built. He held in his hand about 20 promissory notes, which showed how hard the woman had all along been struggling to pay the rent; and he thought of the stories which he half believed before he went to Ireland—that the tenants could pay and would not. On the 3rd of the present month that poor woman was sold out of the house her husband had built with her monoy—where she had brought up her children; and, forsooth, they were told that it was necessary to send a force of police and soldiers to carry out evictions like these, because they were judicial rents! The woman had been cleaned out of every penny she had—she borrowed, and fought, and struggled—and now she was brought to her ruin. Hon. Members might say that was an exceptional case. Unfortunately, it was no such thing. Close by them was a farm under the management of another Nugent, who was in partnership with Hussey. The Poor Law valuation in 1853 was £3 15 s. a-year. The following were the increases of rent:—£7 7 s., £16; in 1857, £20; and in 1869, £21. Griffith's valuation was £14, and the judicial rent was fixed at £16. This also was a case in which there had been an eviction within the last few days. Take the remarkable case of Moloney, of Clomoher. On the 27th of January, 1852, he had a lease giving him that property for £31 14 s. 10 d. per annum, which was a high rent, yet, at the expiration of the lease, the rent was raised to £82 per annum. The man had been defrauded—he could use no milder word — of the difference between £31 14 s. 10 d. and £82. This man, some time after his rent was raised from £31 14 s. 10 d. to £82, was earnestly urged to "preserve the game." There was another feature in the case to which he desired to call attention. Everybody knew what a bad year 1879 was. In that year this unfortunate man, by scraping together all he could, raised part of his rent, and was forgiven £11 for the half-year due in May, 1879. This reduction was marked as temporary in the receipt. Another abatement was subsequently made; but then the times became so bad that it was utterly impossible for the man to pay. The landlord took out a fi. fa. This man could not have continued the payment of this exorbitant rent but for a legacy of £350 which had been left to him, every 1 d. of which went in rent. The house had been built by his own hands, not a stone or stick did the landlord give, and the whole thing was now swept away from him by eviction. This was the state of things which the House was told—in rather a half-hearted way, it was true, and he (Mr. Waddy) was glad of it—was inevitable. It could not be justified, it was said; but it was necessary. And to preserve this state of things the Government were hurrying forward a Bill to stifle the outcry of the victims rather than bringing in a measure to relieve the wrong. Take another case. There was a man of the name of Collings. [An hon. MEMBER: Jesse.] No, no; not that one; this one's name was Teddy. His original rent was 14 guineas. He was over-rented even at that. But his rent was raised to 16 guineas; then to £18; then successively to £22, £27, and £28 12 s. 3 d. This man built his house, and reclaimed four acres of bog. Griffith's valuation was £14 10 s., and the judicial rent was fixed at £16. Yet, after six years paying this exorbitant rent, the man was to be evicted from his house and farm. He had one child—a servant in New York—who had often sent him over money to pay his rent. And at the very time he was evicted he had one daughter dying of consumption, as was certified by the dispensary doctor of the district. This was a state of things which gave a lurid colour to the question, and would, at least, justify some inquiry and bring the Government to a pause in their hot pursuit of an emancipating measure which the Irish people did not want. He (Mr. Waddy) would not weary hon. Members by going through every wretched and wicked detail upon the estate. It would not do for hon. Members to say this was an exceptional estate, and that he had picked it out. He had done nothing of the kind. The evictions were there, and he went to it for that reason. If the evictions had been elsewhere he would have gone elsewhere. The right hon. Gentleman had said that he was not anxious to support Colonel O'Callaghan; but he had worked himself up to do so, and it was necessary that the Chief Secretary should know who he was supporting. Then there was the case of Margaret Macnamara, in the course of whose eviction the Sheriff's officer fell down in a fit. This woman was 81 years of age. She had three or four children, all of whom, of course, were grown men and women. The husband was dead. He had built the house. He (Mr. Waddy) saw that woman hoisted through a hole in the house which her husband had built nearly 50 years ago. After reclaiming the bog these unfortunate tenants had their rent suddenly raised £9. At the same time, two acres of the bog were taken away from them and given to another man, who had his rent raised proportionately. The latter had shown him a drain which he had constructed nearly half-a-mile long. When he had finished the drain the rent was immediately raised. There were one or two Members of the House, including the hon. Member for North Meath (Mr. Mahony), who could confirm his statement. These people had been paying £36 a-year for the estate which they had brought into cultivation, and of which the judicial rent was only £22. All these cases pointed to one moral—the Government were doing nothing to set the matter right. They were making it possible for any other O'Callaghan to do the same thing to-morrow. The landlords having taken all their money, and their credit having been exhausted both at the banks and with the shopkeepers, the boon which the Government proposed to extend to these poor people was universal bankruptcy. And English soldiers were brought to back up such proceedings as those of Bodyke. He would not like to ridicule the men; but was it not a sarcasm on those 100 men of the Welsh Fusiliers to stand by and watch an old woman of 81 and a babe of three years of age dragged out of a house? He did not think that to the names inscribed on their flag—Badajoz, Corunna, Waterloo, and Alma—they would add that of Bodyke. Nothing could be better than the conduct of the people at the beginning; and if they later on stooped to conduct which could not be wholly and strictly justifiable, he was almost inclined to imitate the Chief Secretary and say—"I disapprove of it, but I decide to support it." He was much struck by the remark of one of the peasants to him, when he said—"Don't you think, Sir, that if we had Home Rule we would have had all this altered a good many years ago?" In that question was contained an indication of the importance which attached to this question of eviction. People were now leaving Ireland by thousands, and he heard with indignation a right hon. Gentleman say it was for fear of the Coercion Bill. There was not a particle of foundation in that. It was the system which produced the Bodyke evictions which was driving the people—the backbone of Ireland—away to America. Did the Government desire that the manhood of the country should leave in shiploads? If so, let them press on their Coercion Bill. He had no doubt that any right-minded Englishman, even the Speaker, who was so calm and cool, had he looked on at Bodyke would have felt his blood boil, and would have been filled with indignation. They had heard that the National League ruled Ireland, and in one sense from the bottom of his heart he believed it, for the National League was practically Ireland; and when he suggested to young men whom he saw at Bodyke that they were under the terror of the League, the look of good-humoured scorn that came into their eyes at the suggestion did one's heart good to witness. The priests at Bodyke were doing their best to keep the peace; but he warned the Government to pause in the course they were pursuing—to reconsider their policy of stifling the cry of the victims—for if they did not he greatly feared there was the danger—

"Lest when their latest hope is fled you taste of their despair,

And learn by proof in some wild hour how much the wretched dare."

said, he yielded to no one in his respect for Colonel Turner, whom he believed to be an honourable and humane man, and he was certain that every Irish Member shared in that opinion; but it was strange that a General in command, whose campaign finished at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, had been unable to furnish the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland with the information the Government liked. Perhaps there was another reason. Possibly Colonel Turner did not care to send the details of a campaign which he detested in his heart, and which not only he, but every one of the Constabulary and military officers acting with him detested. If the Government needed an independent witness—an English witness, uninfluenced by Press interests—he (Mr. Lawson) was ready to come forward, and to join with his hon. and learned Friend the Member for the Brigg Division of Lincolnshire (Mr. Waddy) in testifying to the need of an immediate inquiry into the state of things which had given occasion for the use of language at Bodyke which no one deprecated more strongly than he did. If they might judge from one sample of information given early in the evening, he should not attach too much importance, if he were Chief Secretary for Ireland, to the "usual channels of information." It had been denied in that House that the Constabulary had acted as Sheriff's bailiffs. On the first day he was at the evictions at Bodyke he saw the police enter the house of the Widow Macnamara simply because the bailiffs were afraid to go first. Everyone at the eviction on that day was of the opinion that the police were doing the bailiffs' work. He did not see the slightest sign of an act of violence such as had been alleged, although subsequently, on his return home, he had occasion to condemn language spoken at a meeting in Bodyke at part of which he was present; but, while he condemned that language, he condemned with fifty times more vehemence the wanton and wicked conduct and management which gave rise to the language, and which, in some measure, furnished its excuse and palliation. He would wish that his hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) had confined his Resolution to the carrying out of the evictions, and not include in it the conduct of the police on the first days of the evictions. The police appeared to be on the best of terms with the people, and they smoked and chatted together. It was said that 95 per cent of the police were Catholics. Of their political opinion nothing was known; but it would be difficult to find a finer or more intelligent body of men than the Royal Irish Constabulary. Like jurymen and politicians, they were only men, and at a certain point of exasperation did wrong things. The blame, he considered, rested not upon them, but on their paymasters—those who sent them to execute laws justly odious to the population, with which these men had much in common. With regard to Colonel O'Callaghan, he was not going to attack him personally; but who knew how far a combination of landlords in Ireland might be pressing him forward? A cousin of Colonel O'Callaghan was reported to have said that, as a relation, he would not advise him to go on; but, as a landlord, he advised him to do so. That was the general feeling. There was a combination of landowners and land agents, thus rendering possible a state of things which every man in that House must deplore. It was against the system and not the person they protested that night; it was the person and not the system the Chief Secretary denounced. Let them take the first of the series of cases given by Father Murphy, who had shown his desire for a peaceful settlement of all these matters. This was the case of Mrs. Nugent. On her holding the Government valuation was £39. The rent when she came into possession in 1850 was £30. The rent, before fixed in the Land Courts, was £83, and the judicial rent was £46 10 s. For years tenants had been paying rents grossly and exorbitantly unfair, and money had gone into the pockets of landlords which could never come back. It had not come out of the soil, which was almost valueless, but from the hard-earned wages of those who migrated to other parts of Ireland or emigrated to the United States of America, [Mr. T. D. SULLIVAN: American dollars.] In these hard times land in such places as Bodyke was not capable of bearing rent in many cases, and where it was it was only where some wretched piece of bog had been reclaimed by the skill of the tenants. Every bit of land near Bodyke and Ennis — where he went with the valuer of the Land Commission sitting there—had been rendered valuable because it had been drained by the tenants and made valuable by their industry and energy. Houses there, as over almost all Ireland, had been built by the tenants, and out of these holdings and houses the wretched people were being cast, even to the number of 100 a-day. He asked the House to bear in mind the circumstances of the present situation, and to remember the evictions that were going on all over Ireland. There could be only one result—the state of Ireland would go on from bad to worse. He had come back from the country a sad pessimist. He feared they would have the inevitable return for all the wrongs now being done, and what was going on justified the words uttered years ago by the right hon. Gentleman the senior Member for Birmingham (Mr. John Bright)—"Ireland alone is the land of evictions." It was said that the Land Question stood first in the eyes of the Irish peasant. If that were so, he knew perfectly well that the only machinery which would render such events as had recently occurred impossible—would be to give over the settlement of the social condition of the country to those who knew the elements with which they had to deal, who understood the conditions of the problem, and who had the confidence of the people with whom they would be called upon to act.

said, he rose to deal principally with the evictions elsewhere than at Bodyke, though he desired to say a few words in reference to the recent occurrences at Bodyke. Having visited the locality he was in a position to bear out nearly everything said by his hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Waddy) and his hon. Friend (Mr. Lawson). With regard to the conduct of the police at Bodyke recently, he could not bear any testimony either one way or the other; but when he was at Bodyke the police and the military appeared to be on not unfriendly terms with the people. The Constabulary appeared to sympathize with the victims in the eviction campaign, and the military did so even to a still greater degree. If the scenes of which they had heard in the newspapers had occurred, scenes in which great violence had been used by the police against the tenantry, he could quite believe it. It was almost a certain outcome of the mode and manner in which the whole campaign had been conducted for the last few years on the estate of Colonel O'Callaghan. He re- gretted very much that the tenants having resisted the campaign was the reason why public attention had been directed to the case. This country could not be brought to look at the evils, the oppression, and the tyranny that took place in Ireland, unless the people adopted violent courses. He regretted that extremity, and, therefore, he hoped to be allowed to give some evidence as to other evictions besides those at Bodyke, as he regarded it as a scandal to this country that it was only in the cases where the tenantry were driven to active resistance that their grievances were attended to, or attempted to be understood. The tenants at Bodyke had been rack-rented for a long period. In 1879, the frightful year of depression in Ireland, something very like a no-rent manifesto was issued by the parish priest, arrears of rent accumulated, and in 1881 Colonel O'Callaghan brought a force of constabulary into the district, and then took place what was known in the neighbourhood as the "Battle of Bodyke." There was firing on both sides, and one life was sacrificed. The reason why there was so little bloodshed was that Father Murphy threw himself between the opposing lines of fire. There were rumours also that the people throughout the district were armed, and he believed that were it not for the efforts of the clergy and the local branch of the National League the people would have shown much more resistance to the campaign of eviction. From all that he saw and heard he believed that the leaders of the people had used their best endeavours to prevent anything like bloodshed or violence by the spectators of those frightful scenes. He knew that Mr. Davitt had recommended those who were about to be evicted to defend their homes, and he considered that the language used by Mr. Davitt had done not a little to prejudice the case of those who were in favour of Home Rule in Ireland, as well as in some manner to prejudice the case now before the House; but he (Mr. A. Pease) could not wonder at the feelings or the words of Mr. Davitt. He was certain that if hon. Members opposite were to go to that estate and other parts of Ireland, and see the work that was carried on in the name of law and order, they would not so constantly uphold repressive measures, but endeavour to alleviate the horrible wrongs which the people were suffering all over the West of Ireland at the present moment. In order to substantiate the statement of his hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Waddy), he (Mr. A. Pease) would like to refer hon. Members to the table of judicial rents, as given in the June Return, 1882, with regard to the reductions of rent upon this estate; and he would like to point out that, under the column for observations, there were most telling particulars of the manner in which rents on the estate had from time to time been raised as the tenants improved their holdings. It did not matter where hon. Members turned to in the return of Colonel O'Callaghan's rents. Take the first two or three cases on the page he had opened at. The first was Ellen Wall, whose rent before 1853 was £9 13 s. 6 d.; in 1853, £12 10 s.; in 1857, £14; in 1860, £15 9 s.; and in 1867, £24. The next was the case of Michael Callaghan, whose rent in 1854 was £2, and in 1864 £3 3 s., afterwards raised to £4. The third case was that of Patrick Keiffe, whose rent in 1850 was £13 10 s.; in 1855, £15; in 1857, £19; and in 1867 £30, and so on. One might go through nearly the whole list of tenants on this estate demonstrating by Government Returns a persistent and continuous process of raising the rents of those unfortunate tenants. In this case of Bodyke there were 87 tenants on the estate, and of these he understood that 53 were connected with the Plan of Campaign; but he could learn from no source that the balance between 57 and 83 had undue pressure brought to bear upon them to join in the combination. He did not know the particulars of the 57 tenants who had joined the Plan of Campaign, There might have been some amongst them who could have paid the rent demanded. Of that he could not speak; but he was absolutely convinced, as hon. Members opposite would be if they saw the labours of those people on their holdings, that the land could not produce even anything like the rent which was now being exacted by the landlord with the help of the military forces of this country. With the permission of the House he would read some answers given, he believed, by Sir Redvers Buller, before the Cowper Commission, and he felt convinced that Sir Redvers Buller was alluding to this very case of Bodyke in his answers to the following questions:—

"The President: The judicial rents, although they might have been fair at the time, cannot be paid now?—Sir Redvers Buller; I cannot say. The judicial rents were fixed wholesale, and fixed in a very summary, general way, mostly by percentages. I have been lately in the County of Clare—in fact, I have just come from Clare, where I have been endeavouring to prevent disturbances by inducing the landlord to give reduction. I have not succeeded, and I do not know that I shall; but in that case I am informed by his neighbours and relations that some of the judicial rents are too high. They were very easily fixed, and there are allowances even now on the same sort of land which appear to me to be much larger.

"Then you mean to say that you would desire further machinery to still further reduce rents?—Not to reduce the rents, but to inquire into the condition of tenants before proceeding to eviction."

The Government had no desire to introduce any machinery of that kind at Bridport. There were from 300 to 350 members of the Constabulary and 100 men of the Welsh Fusiliers, and what had taken place had not only brought about a state of bitterness between the tenants and the landlord, but had filled the minds of the people with resentment against the authorities. He did not like to take up any longer the time of the House by referring to the conduct of other landlords in the County Clare. He had been at Westport, in the neighbourhood of those islands against which an expedition was now being sent on board Her Majesty's Ship Banterer. One of those islands was Clare Island, and when he had been in that neighbourhood the tenants there were under notice of eviction. One scandalous thing about this matter was that the agent of that property was also the Sheriff, and for every eviction carried out on Clare Island one guinea went into his pocket. He would now turn his attention to Lord Sligo's estate. Lord Sligo, who owned 114,000 acres in that district, was an absentee, and drew from £20,000 to £25,000 a-year from that property. Lord Sligo had been drawing that immense sum out of that impoverished district since 1845, and now he, too, was evicting the tenants. In this case the landlord was a man who had not given any reduction to his tenants; no employment on his estate or in the town of Westport, which belonged to him; he had never spent one shilling on the property, and had shown no mercy or consideration to his tenantry. Lord Sligo, he believed, was the same man who, some years ago, evicted 2,000 families on his estate in Mayo, and pulled down the houses. He (Mr. A. Pease) never saw such a dreadful state of things in any country as the aspect of that estate. It was covered with villages and houses, every house being unroofed except those of a few herdsmen. You could drive for miles through that property and see hundreds of unroofed cabins, in which at one time dwelt the miserable people who had reclaimed those holdings and built the houses, but who were turned out. Many of them died from starvation, thousands of them went into the workhouse, while many more went to America. He found on Lord Lucan's estate that there had been a persistent and continuous eviction of tenants. In two months, in the parish of Lecanvey alone, 140 of the pick of the residents had left the country and gone to America. When he asked the reason he was told—"Oh, it is the evictions." Some of the people seemed to think little of them; they had got so used to oppression and tyranny. Twelve of the tenants who had just been evicted had paid rents up to the last gale of £4 an acre for land, which in the North of England would fetch only 2 s. 6 d., or, at the most, 5 s. an acre. Lord Lucan was also carrying out evictions on the Island of Innisturk. Out of 24 tenants 21 had been, or were about to be, evicted. It was here that Lord Lucan had formerly evicted 160 families, destroying all the houses on the island except two. He found, also, that in the neighbourhood of Westport evictions were being carried out by Sir Roger Palmer, who, as far as he (Mr. A. Pease) could gather, gave no abatement, no consideration, no assistance to his tenants, and, being an absentee, drew an enormous income out of the country. Here, close together, were three landlords who drew not only all the wealth of the district, much of which also came from America and other parts of the world to help the people, but they also took money which was given to the tenants by charitable persons in England, and notably in Manchester. He passed through other large properties, upon which he found evictions going on. Respecting one estate, he was assured by a Resident Magistrate that it belonged to one of the best landlords in Ireland. The reason given for this opinion was that last year, out of an income of £10,000, he had spent £6,000 in building a park wall. This was considered an act of great generosity on the part of a landlord towards his tenants, but not a penny had been spent upon the tenants, or for the improvement of their condition. But what the people were grateful for was that temporary employment had been given to them by the building of the park wall. When at Listowel he found wholesale convictions going on in the neighbourhood, principally on Lord Ormathwaite's estate, and here the price of butter had fallen from £5 and £6 per firkin to £2, and butter was in that district the main support of the farmers; and yet, notwithstanding that great drop in price, the poor farmers were shown no consideration, or, if any, very little. Indeed, it was a most touching thing—it was the most touching of anything connected with these evictions—to see whole villages as well as isolated houses unroofed, and yet the people making no resistance. The people had submitted patiently, or, at all events, without any overt resistance, to treatment which, if attempted towards the people of any other part of the United Kingdom, would have brought about a revolution. At Kilrush several landlords, including Colonel Vandeleur, was carrying out evictions, and on other estates, such as those owned by Mr. Winn, Mrs. Wood Martin, Mr. Ponsonby, Mr. Massy, Colonel Foster, Lord Annesley, Lord Kenmare, and many others, the same thing was going on; and all seemed to be anxious to make use of the time at their disposal whilst the present Government was in power. They felt that whilst they were under the shadow of a Coercion Government they might act as they liked, without much danger of the Parliament or the country calling them to account, or compelling them to hold their hands in their barbarous work. He had no doubt that, generally speaking, the tenantry in the West of Ireland would be much better off as the slaves than they were as the tenants of the landlords. As slaves there would be more mutual dependence and identity of interest, and they would receive kinder treatment than was dealt out to them as tenants. Under the present condition of things they received no consideration whatever. They were ground down without mercy by the landlord, or by the English Insurance Companies, who had acquired the landlords' interests. The land system of Ireland was, in fact, a scandal such as no other country had ever seen; and he was very anxious, if possible, to induce the Government to alter their intentions towards those wretched people, and to take some steps to modify the tyranny which was now being exercised towards them. He had been on board a steamer from Kilrush to Limerick which was crowded with emigrants, who in nearly every case said they were leaving their country on account of evictions or high rents. One coastguardsman who had been in the Navy said the country was not worth living in, owing to the state of things, due, as he declared, to high rents and coercion, and he was going to Portsmouth to try to get on board a man-of-war again. All people in Ireland, except those whose interests were bound up with those of the landlords, would tell you the same tale of evictions, of high rents, and the prospects of disturbance when the Coercion Bill was carried. It was the very pick of the people who were being driven out of the country. He would not object to seeing voluntary emigration, but it was pitiable indeed to see people forced to emigrate under circumstances which produced in them feelings of intense hatred for the British Government. In one day at Killarney 240 families left for the United States of America, and on another day 120 persons for the same destination. He had been on board a steam boat with some of those people, and it would make an Englishman blush to hear the tones of scorn in which they spoke of this country when he asked why they did not go to Canada. He made many inquiries, and he found the general explanation was the high rents and evictions. Under certain circumstances he should not object to the people emigrating; but it was very sad, indeed, to see them rushing away from the country with the most intense hatred of England burning in their hearts. The people of Ireland looked upon the Government of England as responsible for all the tyranny from which they suffered, not only at the present time, but for generations past, and he was sorry to say that the conduct of the present Government was calculated rather to strengthen than to dissipate the feeling. In conclusion, he ventured to express a hope that hon. Members opposite would go to the West of Ireland and use their own eyes and ears, and learn for themselves the sad state of the country. If they did that, he was sure they would come back to that House with a different state of feeling from that which they now exhibited night after night in their places.

said, that, having spent a considerable portion of the time on the spot while the evictions at Bodyke were in progress, he had an opportunity of judging exactly of what took place there during the course of those proceedings.

Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members being found present,

, resuming, said, the Chief Secretary for Ireland objected to the action of the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) in bringing on that Motion for the Adjournment of the House at so early a date; but his hon. Friend had, in the course of that week, repeatedly addressed questions to those in that House who were responsible for the conduct of Irish affairs, and there had been time enough at the disposal of the Government to obtain sufficiently full information from Ireland on that subject if they had wished to do so. The Chief Secretary for Ireland had expressed his unwillingness to subject Colonel Turner to the ordeal of writing long despatches to him on that question every evening, considering the arduous nature of the duties in which he was recently engaged. Now, the evictions commenced about 9 o'clock in the morning and terminated at 3 in the afternoon, and Colonel Turner was encamped within two miles of the telegraph office, and could have communicated by wire with the authorities of Dublin Castle, and thence to London, either on the afternoon of the day on which he was engaged in those evictions, or else on Saturday week, or on Thursday last, two days on which no evictions were carried out, and when Colonel Turner, the police, and the soldiers enjoyed absolute rest. In the course of his speech the Chief Secretary referred to the newspaper reports, and spoke of them as being highly coloured. During nine days of these evictions he was present as a spectator, and he was able to say that the accounts which appeared in the newspapers describing the scene at the evictions were in no sense exaggerated or highly coloured, but were substantially accurate descriptions of what occurred. The Chief Secretary for Ireland had thrown the cause of these evictions on to the landlord, which considerably relieved him (Mr. M. J. Kenny), and he was further relieved by the powerful and effective speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Waddy). The strong point of the Chief Secretary's argument seemed to be that the rents on this property were judicial rents. But, in opposition to this view, he desired to point out that those judicial rents were fixed several years ago, and since that time it had become extremely difficult for the tenants to pay them. Lord Cowper's Commission had shown that those rents were at least 14 per cent higher than if fixed now. It had also to be remembered that for 32 years previous to the fixing of those judicial rents the tenants on this estate had been subjected to a gigantic system of rack-renting; that everything they earned and got from their friends in America was taken from them in the shape of these excessive rents; and that the Land Act practically reached the poor tenants when they had become ruined men. The hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Waddy) had produced a promissory note as far back as 1878, showing that even then, when times were comparatively prosperous, Mrs. Nugent was forced to borrow money to pay her rent, and almost all the old tenants were practically in the same position, and, despite the Land Act, they had never been able to regain their ground. The Chief Secretary had accused them of preventing the Government amending the Land Law; but one portion of the Government proposal would simply mean this—they could do with a piece of paper what it now took the crowbars and the axes of the Emergency men to do, and he objected to anything which made eviction easier in Ireland than it was at the present time. The Chief Secretary also accused some of them with advising the tenants to resist the enforcement of the law. He (Mr. M. J. Kenny) had no hesitation in saying he did advise them to resist the enforcement of the law, but it was a law which even the Chief Secretary in his speech condemned; and he would say this—that on every occasion on which he happened to be brought into contact with the tenants of any estate who were fighting a battle like that he would advise those men to resist exactly as the tenants at Bodyke had resisted, and, if necessary, he would take part in helping them to resist. For the past nine months the houses of these unfortunate tenants had been in a state of siege; they had not enjoyed a good night's rest for the past six months while these ejectments were hanging over their heads; the whole country was in a state of siege, and all this was due to the conduct of the landlord. Father Murphy, owing to the generosity of an English gentleman, who proffered him £300 for the purpose, begged of the landlord to effect a settlement for £900; but that offer, which was the best Colonel O'Callaghan would ever get, was refused by him, although, at the same time, these tenants were holding themselves liable and responsible for a full year's rent on next September. The Under Secretary for Ireland, a day or two ago, stated, in reply to a Question, that during these evictions a crowbar was not thrown by an Emergency man, but that it slipped from the man's hand. Well, he (Mr. M. J. Kenny) saw that Emergency man, and could identify him, and unquestionably he threw the crowbar, and repeated the operation at the next house, looking round and winking and laughing at his friends after he had done so. In proof that these crowbars were thrown, they had two of them in their possession, one being at Dublin and the other in safe custody at Bodyke. One was a light instrument, whilst the other was an enormous crowbar with a steel point, and this was flung at the head of a tenant who was defending his house, and narrowly escaped striking him. The second statement denied was the assault on Mrs. Wall. He was standing exactly opposite this house during the eviction, and although he could not see the assault, he saw the policemen and Emergency men rush in, and the inmates were then assaulted. Mrs. Wall was a tottering old lady 80 years of age—she was unable to walk without a stick; she had this stick in her hand when the policemen entered, and one of them snatched it from her hand and struck her on the head with it. He held in his hand affidavits from Dr. Dunworthy and Mrs. Wall, which left no doubt that the poor old lady had been violently assaulted. There were seven policemen who distinguished themselves by being the first to attack every house, which they broke into before the Emergency men. The crowds outside throughout these evictions were extremely peaceable, but the police, with batons in their hands, repeatedly charged them, and during the clearance of the land Mr. Davitt, himself, and the clergymen had to place themselves in a line between the police and the people to prevent the latter from being bludgeoned; and in one instance where he stepped in to prevent a constable from batoning a man the latter turned savagely on him and threatened to strike him on the head, athreat, however, which he did not carry out. The police at Feakle, also, under District Inspector Siddell and another officer, acted in a brutal manner without having the slightest justification for doing so. The whole circumstances, in short, served to illustrate the unreliability of the reports of the police in relation to such occurrences. When accusations were made against the police the answers were practically the answers of the police, and were, therefore, exparte statements. What they now wanted was an independent tribunal to inquire into the truth or falsehood of the charges they brought, and they would continue to make that demand until such time as they had succeeded in effecting an alteration of the manner in which evictions were being carried out in Ireland. The men at Bodyke had done everything in their power to meet their obligations, and when they had failed to pay the rack-rents they were cruelly evicted. The case of O'Halloran was a hard one; but he admired the manner in which that family defended their house, and he hoped every other Irish tenant would act in identically the same manner under similar circumstances. The Chief Secretary for Ireland, of course, drew a picture of the hardships being suffered by evicted tenants in London. He would like to see a London tenant who built his own house and had been evicted. He thought they would see a general uprising of the people against transactions of that kind. He saw an interesting letter to-day in The Times from Mr. Clifford Lloyd, their old friend, in which he criticized the officers engaged in these outrages. He did not altogether agree with Mr. Clifford Lloyd, and he thought it would have been more decent on his part, if, instead of writing to The Times, he had sent a respectful letter to the Chief Secretary for Ireland, asking to be re-appointed. The Chief Secretary for Ireland complained that they made political capital out of the case. Of course they made political capital out of it, and they would continue to make political capital out of it until they made it impossible for them to evict a single tenant in Ireland. There was a remarkable consensus of opinion among the correspondents of the London newspapers, irrespective of their politics, as to the violent conduct of the police. The Reports which Colonel Turner sent to the Under Secretary were supplied by the local inspectors. One of these inspectors had incited the people to acts of violence in order to afford an excuse for the police bludgeoning the mob. The law had done its worst in this matter, and no doubt many men would be sent to gaol. When they came out of prison, however, they would continue to fight against landlordism, and before many years had run he believed that the landlords would be brought upon their knees. If the Party opposite desired to place property upon a more secure footing, they must not play into the hands of a small number of men who altogether disregarded the welfare of the people of Ireland.

said, if, when the Division Bells rang, Members of the House were to be called upon to give their vote on the dispute between Colonel O'Callaghan and his tenants, there would be a prospect of something like unanimity in the verdict. Colonel O'Callaghan was the type of all that was worst in Irish landlordism. There was no worse case of rent-raising and confiscation of the interests of tenants than could be found on his estate. The hon. Member for St. Pancras (Mr. Lawson) said he was one of a combination of landlords urging on this extreme action; but he (Mr. T. W. Russell) had reason to know that many landlords had done their best to prevent Colonel O'Callaghan from carrying out these evictions. ["Oh, oh!"] He knew it to be a fact that Colonel O'Callaghan had taken his course in spite of the entreaties of the best of Irish landlords. Now, admitting all this—and anyone who knew anything about Bodyke and this case must admit it—he asked any hon. Member, what had the Executive Government in Ireland to do with it? Colonel O'Callaghan got his legal decrees from a competent Court. He proceeded to execute these decrees, and no hon. Member could stand up and say that the Executive Government would have been justified in refusing him the force necessary to execute those legal decrees. All that could be said about Bodyke constituted the most excellent reason for stopping the chatter that for four months had continued on the Address, on the Closure Resolution, and on the Crimes Bill, and for enabling the House to take up, and, if necessary, improve a Bill that was in "another place," and which, if carried, would put a stop to these evictions. Hon. Members representing Ireland on that side of the House had done that which they considered to be their duty in opposing the Crimes Bill, and he was endeavouring to do his in protesting strenuously against their conduct. In the name of the tenant farmers whom he represented in that House, he (Mr. T. W. Russell) protested against the action of those hon. Members to whom he had referred, because it tended to delay, and had, in fact, delayed, the passing of a measure which, even if it did not already give, might be made to give, to the tenant farmers that protection which they ought to have. There was one clause in it. [An hon. MEMBER: The Bankruptcy Clause.] No, not the Bankruptcy Clause, but another. It would not be in Order that he should then discuss the provisions of a measure which was still in "another place;" but he might say that in the Bill to which he was referring there was one clause which would prevent a repetition of the scenes which he was sorry to say had occurred in the course of the Bodyke evictions. What did the Resolution of the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) mean? The hon. Member proposed to inquire into these evictions, and into the conduct of the police with respect to them. What good, he (Mr. T. W. Russell) should like to know, could come of an inquiry into these evictions? The poor people had already been evicted from their farms, and were now out of their houses, and it really seemed to him to be only a sort of Job's comfort to offer them an inquiry into the evictions after they had been accomplished. What that House should, in his opinion, do was to prevent similar evictions for the future. Well, but no inquiry could further that. Then they were told that the conduct of the police was to be inquired into; but he (Mr. T. W. Russell) was very cautious, after the experience he had had of charges against the police, of believing everything that he heard alleged against them. They were told that they were to listen to the statements of three English Gentlemen with respect to the conduct of the police. Well, he had listened to the statements of three hon. Gentlemen, representing English constituencies, who were present at these evictions—

said, that these English Members were not present during the time to which the charges which had been made against the police had reference.

Let the House listen and attend to the testimony which these three Members, representing English constituencies, had borne to the conduct of the Royal Irish Constabulary at Bodyke. It was the nearest parallel to the case of Balaam he had overheard of. These three English Gentlemen were expected to bless, and lo! they had altogether cursed the hon. Member for East Mayo. They had answered the Resolution of the hon. Member for East Mayo, and the case by which it was supported; for every one of these Gentlemen had borne the most explicit testimony to the fairness and good temper of the police and the military while they were present at these Bodyke evictions. But they were told to read the newspapers. Well, he (Mr. T. W. Russell) knew something about newspaper work, and how it was done. He would ask hon. Members near him if they would assure him (Mr. T. W. Russell) that the man who wrote the report of the Feakle disturbance for the newspapers was actually present at them.

I can assure the hon. Member that he was on the spot.

said, that as often as not reports of these cases were conveyed to newspaper men by men who were not newspaper reporters. He recollected that some little time ago all sorts and descriptions of charges were brought against the conduct of the police in Belfast. They had statements from an hon. Member (Mr. De Cobain), who represented one part of that borough, as to the alleged brutal conduct of the police towards the citizens of that town. But let the House remember that, when these charges against the police were brought forward before the Royal Commission presided over by Mr. Justice Day, they were found to be absolutely groundless; and he very much regretted that he himself had, by the statements made to him, been misled into making any charges against the police. That made him say that he was exceedingly chary of believing these reports against the police, except they were borne out and supported by evidence that was absolutely incontrovertible. He must say at once that he had not heard any evidence of that sort adduced against the police that night. He had, it was true, heard of an Emergency man thrusting a crowbar into a house, and he had also heard a statement as to the police thrusting their bayonets into the walls of houses; but the only charge of a definite character that he heard of was against Emergency men, and not against members of the Police Force.

said, that in the course of his speech he had accused the police of assaulting an old woman of 80 years of age. This charge was supported by the evidence of the local doctor.

said, that the local doctor, so far as he understood, made no charge against the members of the Police Force; but what were the facts? It was stated that the walls of the house had fallen in, and he (Mr. T. W. Russell) thought it much more likely that the old woman was injured by the falling débris than that she was struck by the police. Considering that the old woman was 80 years of age, it was almost impossible and well-nigh incredible that a member of a force to whose character such high testimony had been borne that night would have been guilty of such a cowardly and ruffianly attack. Who had given the information to the Government on which they relied, and which had been road out to the House that night? A gentleman of the highest character, and admitted to be honourable in all the relations of life—he meant Colonel Turner. It so happened that Colonel Turner agreed with hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway in politics, and that, he supposed, was why he was recognized by them as a man so respectable and altogether honourable as he had been described that night. It was certainly the first time that he had ever heard a magistrate lauded by those hon. Gentlemen. Well, this Colonel Turner was the conduit pipe through which all the information had reached the Government, and he put his testimony against the testimony—if it could be called such—which they heard against the police that night. The House could, if it were desirous to do so, stop such scenes as had occurred in the course of these Bodyke evictions. A most solemn responsibility, in his opinion, rested upon them, and a responsibility which they could never discharge if they continued to spend 10 days on the Address, 15 days on a Rule of Procedure, and he knew not how many days on six clauses of another Bill. In conclusion, he desired to say that in the name and on behalf of the tenant farmers whom he represented, and in whose name he had a right to speak, he begged that House to give up the idle chatter which was now going on with regard to crime in Ireland, and face with seriousness and earnestness the real work of the Government and of the Session—though they were now approaching July—the amendment of the Irish Land Laws?

said, he was always glad to hear the hon. Member who had just sat down speaking in that House, because he seldom brought any strength or assistance to the cause he advocated. As a general rule, the hon. Member showed clearly the rabid and intolerant spirit of the small minority he represented in resisting the demand of the Irish people. The hon. Member had given the most conclusive reason why some action should be taken by the Executive Government to interfere with the present deplorable state of things which was going on on many estates in Ireland as well as on the estates at Bodyke. Nothing could be more hollow or more insincere than the talk indulged in by the hon. Gentleman and men like him, who complained of the time wasted in that House by the discussion of the Irish Coercion Bill. Who was responsible for placing the Irish Coercion Bill before the Bill which they professed to think would remove the grievances which they acknowledged existed? He might retort upon the hon. Member and say that he and those who acted with him on the Liberal side of the House in supporting the present Government were the real obstructors of remedial legislation. The Executive could press forward their Land Bill with urgency if they liked, if they believed it to be a remedy for the present grievances, instead of wasting time with a useless measure, and they could take care that if these evictions were to take place that they were carried out with as little provocation to the people as was absolutely necessary. The whole strength of their case was that these Bodyke incidents were only part of a number of incidents which were taking place all over Ireland. It was with strange feelings that Irish Members, day after day, listened in the House to the arrangements made for the gorgeous ceremonials in Westminster Abbey. One hon. Member had to-night asked whether on the day of the Jubilee evictions were to be suspended in Ireland, and he was told that that could not be done; and also that the Bodyke evictions had stopped. It was not only possible, but it was very probable, that while they were, with stately pageant in London, celebrating the Jubilee of the Queen, in Ireland they would be celebrating the Jubilee by sending their red coats to turn out upon the roadside miserable and half-famished subjects of the Queen, who were guilty of no wrong and no injustice, but who had the curse and misfortune of being Irishmen living in their own land. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland complained that it was unfair to raise that discussion that night, because he had not full information on the subject. He would seriously and solemnly ask the House what better use public money could be put to than in using the telegraph and other means for the purpose of obtaining information of desperate incidents of this character? He had never heard an excuse which sounded more insulting to the House. The right hon. Gentleman said that the police were only fulfilling their duty in what they did, and the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down referred to the fact that the three Englishmen who had spoken of the evictions bore testimony to the fact that the police did not overstep their duties. Those three Englishmen, however, only saw the commencement of the proceedings, and it was after they left that the ill-feeling sprang up and the villainous conduct on the part of the police took place. He could not conceive how a Government, in face of the serious accusations that had been made, could refuse to institute an inquiry into the conduct of the police. Their refusal to do so would still further complicate matters in Ireland, and would still further endanger the public peace, and, he feared, precipitate scenes of violence at evictions, which were in a few days to take place in other districts in Ireland. He had always counselled the Irish people, and the people at these evictions, even in the face of terrible provocation, not to outstep the law or give way to violence, because he believed that the moment they were guilty of illegal conduct and acted with violence, that moment they began to play into the hands of their enemies, and he conceived that the Party which at the present moment had the most to gain by scenes of violence in Ireland was the Party represented on the Front Bench, and supported on the Opposition side of the House by the Liberal Unionists. But he must candidly state that while he would always raise his voice to prevent any action which would give strength to their enemies in the struggle, at the same time he felt bound solemnly to say that he did not believe that any influence would be strong enough to preserve the public peace if scenes like those enacted at Bodyke were repeated and persisted in; and he said it was the duty of the Government, without losing one single hour, to take some action to free Ireland from scenes which in the end would, without doubt, result in violence and bloodshed. If the Government did not do this, he believed that every honest man in this country and in Ireland would draw this inference alone from their conduct—that they desired scenes of violence and bloodshed in order to justify their conduct; and he hoped that the English people, recognizing that that was their motive, would make their opinion clear that that ob- ject was a nefarious one which deserved the condemnation of every patriotic man, whether Conservative or Liberal.

I think, Sir, it must be generally felt upon the Benches opposite that this debate leaves the Government in an extremely unsatisfactory position, a position that ought to be as unsatisfactory to themselves and to hon. Gentlemen on the other side as it is to anyone on this side of the House. The Chief Secretary to-night excused himself from entering into any discussion on the conduct of the police, on the ground that he could not possess full information as to what the actual course of proceedings at the Bodyke evictions had been. All I can say upon that point is, that we had in our time experience of far heavier charges being made against the police in the case of the Belfast riots. Surely the right hon. Gentleman cannot deny that the transactions at Belfast were far more serious in the tax they laid upon the attention of the Executive officers than the proceedings at Bodyke? We received Reports not only every 24 hours, but I venture to assure the House that there was scarcely an hour in which we did not have very full information as to the actual course of proceedings in Belfast.

I never denied that we had daily Reports. What I said was, that we could not expect the Executive officers to write long despatches every evening.

No; but the right hon. Gentleman should be good enough to remember that this discussion arises upon occurrences which took place last Sunday. We are now at Thursday; and does the right hon. Gentleman really mean to say that the time of Colonel Turner and the Executive officers is so absorbed by their work of evictions, which is usually stopped at 3 in the afternoon, that between the Sunday and the Thursday he is not able to obtain from them full and true information? I should have thought he would have taken steps to have got that information in the interests of the police and the officers themselves. I, for my part, am glad to hear from hon. Gentlemen who were present, and from others, that the conduct of the Constabulary was good. I, myself, have experienced what it is to have to defend the police against unjust attacks, and I should always be glad of good evidence as to the good conduct of the Constabulary. But in the interests of the police themselves, when the right hon. Gentleman saw important charges against them in the London newspapers, it was his duty to have got by this time full information as to the points now charged against them.

I am extremely unwilling to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman; but I have full information from the officers on the spot that the conduct of the police has been exemplary, though I have not yet a detailed account of particular charges such as those which were made by the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) against a policeman of pursuing a boy into a house, and knocking him down.

Of course that is fair enough.

I have specific information as to the conduct of the police.

Well, Sir, if the right hon. Gentleman had that information, it would, I conceive, have saved a great deal of time, and a great deal of friction, and a great deal of misgiving, I believe, on the part of some of his followers sitting behind him, if he had favoured the House with it; because we are all interested—even hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway will some day be interested—in the character of the Royal Irish Constabulary. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that this discussion was irrelevantly and improperly introduced into the midst of more important debates on the Crimes Bill. After listening carefully to this debate, I submit that no debate which could have been raised would have been more germane to the Crimes Bill. I am very much mistaken if the evidence which has been brought before the House by English Members to-night does not have a very salutary effect on the judgment which the constituencies will by-and-bye pronounce. The right hon. Gentleman himself did not pretend for a moment to defend the conduct of Colonel O'Callaghan; and the hon. Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell) has, in the most emphatic and point blank manner, denounced the conduct of that gentleman. I pronounce no opinion upon his conduct, for I know nothing of him except what I have heard; but this I do say, that the Crimes Bill is a Bill for maintaining the Colonel O'Callaghans of Ireland. That is why this debate is not irrelevant. The right hon. Gentleman reproached us with preventing this House from dealing with such cases as that of Colonel O'Callaghan, and with such evictions as those at Bodyke, by remedial legislation, and he made what I think, upon reflection, he will himself admit to be a most extraordinary statement. The right hon. Gentleman asked us how we, by anything we have suggested, could have relieved such cases as those at Bodyke? The right hon. Gentleman says that the proper way of giving relief to such cases as those at Bodyke is by pushing on the Bill which is now in "another place." [Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: Hear, hear!] Sir, I should be out of Order if I were to discuss that Bill at any length, but perhaps I may be permitted to devote as many sentences to it as the right hon. Gentleman did. I wish the right hon. Gentleman could have spoken again in this debate; but as he cannot, perhaps some other right hon. Gentleman near him will address the House. How are we in this House responsible for noble Lords in "another place" fixing the Report of the Land Bill for so late a date as July 1? Then there is another point. Which Bill does he mean? I ask this question, because they have already had in "another place" practically two Bills, and there is a common idea that when the 1st of July comes such changes will have been introduced as will make it practically a third Bill. I will only urge one point which bears on the present discussion, and that is that the one provision in that Bill which provides for the revision of rent outside of bankruptcy was, on Monday night last, thrown over by Her Majesty's Government. Why has the remedial legislation against such proceedings as those which we are now considering been delayed? We know very well what the reason is that remedial legislation has been delayed. It is not delayed because we are considering the Crimes Bill here, but because Her Majesty's Government find great difficulty in regard to the Bill for the relief, nominally, of the Irish tenants in coming to terms with their friends the Irish landlords. So much for that charge. I confess I am amazed that the hon. Member for South Tyrone should give the name of "chatter" to a discussion on such a measure as the Crimes Bill; but there appear to be hon. Members who have no sympathy for anything outside their own Party views.

I did not refer to the Crimes Bill only, but to the delay on the Address, to the delay on the Procedure Resolution, as well as to the delay on the Crimes Bill.

The hon. Member refers to the delay on the Address. I remember in detail the proceedings on the Address, and I venture to say that most part of the debate on the Address was devoted to pressing upon the House an issue which, if the House had appreciated it, would have prevented the necessity for discussing the Bodyke evictions to-night. The main part of the debate on the Address was devoted to pressing on the House the necessity of dealing with the question of the land. The hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) moved an Amendment which was largely debated, and what was the object of that Amendment? The point of it was that it was above all things necessary to deal with the question of the land, with a view to preventing harsh and unjust evictions. Now, Sir, the right hon. Gentleman himself has not denied to-night, has never denied, and will not deny that these evictions which he is necessarily—the law being what it is—engaged in using force to carry out, are harsh and unjust evictions. I wonder why the right hon. Gentleman has not taken the same course that was taken by his Predecessor, the right hon. Member for West Bristol (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach), who told us that he had exerted his influence to prevent the Irish landlords from using their legal rights harshly. I regret that we do not hear the same language from the present Chief Secretary. I do not for a moment say that the humanity of the right hon. Gentleman is one whit less active than that of anybody else; but he has such a conception of his position as to place before all the other objects for which Government exists, the one object of driving the discontent of Irish tenants beneath the surface, without the least regard to the greater ends of government. The light hon. Gentleman to-night said that he wished to recall the sentiment of the country to sane and sober methods. He said there were scenes here quite as hideous as the sufferings of the people of Bodyke. He said and said truly—I do not deny it for a moment—that we have within a few hundred yards of the Chamber where we are now sitting, cases of misery, of horror, and of suffering on the part of little children and women and innocent persons of all kinds, as grievous and as heartrending as the sufferings of the people at Bodyke. But the right hon. Gentleman forgets, I think, the great central facts of these miseries in Ireland. What goes on within a few hundred yards of this House is, indeed, well calculated to excite our pity. What we have heard to-night, in the admirable speech of the hon. and learned Member for the Brigg Division of Lincolnshire (Mr. Waddy), and that of the hon. Member for Mid Tyrone (Mr. M. J. Kenny), moves in us not only feelings of pity—though it moves that—but even on the Benches opposite it moves feelings of indignant reprobation and anger. Miseries in London and in other great cities are due to a vast variety of causes; but they are not due, as far as I know, to causes which the Legislature could, and admits that it ought to, prevent. You cannot find for me a case in London like the case of the Widow Nugent—I think that is her name. This is what constitutes the peculiarity of Irish wrongs and Irish grievances—that you have there a gross moral wrong. In the case of the widow Nugent, the husband built a house out of her money. He strove, year after year, to meet what everyone in this House admits to be an excessive, an exorbitant, and a monstrous rent. And then, after these exactions have been endured for years, their little house is taken from them, and they are turned out on to the roadside. That is what constitutes the wrong of the Irish tenant. I have often been taken to task for saying that the Irish land system is one of the most monstrous in the history of mankind. Have we not all heard good evidence to-night that at least on the Bodyke property no system could be more monstrous or more calculated to arouse the indignation of every honest man, no matter to what Party he belongs? I submit, then, that the analogy with which the right hon. Gentleman endeavoured to soften the edge of this story is an analogy which will not bear to be dwelt upon. The right hon. Gentleman forgets—at any rate, he leaves out of sight—the position which we on this side of the House have taken up since this Parliament met. We said that unless something was done to deal with the Land Question, and to stay evictions, and unless something was done promptly, disorders would inevitably arise in Ireland. The disorders which have begun at Bodyke, and which are very likely to extend elsewhere, are a proof that what we said then was said with a just and an accurate appreciation of what was likely to happen. What did we say at the beginning of this Session? We said—"You are proceeding in an inverted order. You are going to bring in your Coercion Bill first, and your remedial Bill afterwards." And we urged and entreated you to bring in a remedial Bill first, and then, if you thought fit, your Coercion Bill. The whole course of the debate to-night has shown that we are absolutely right. [ A laugh. ] In spite of that laugh, I will appeal to hon. Members generally to ask themselves whether the state of things, both in this country and in Ireland, would not have been better if the Government had taken our advice instead of following their own devices, and had brought in first the remedial Bill, which, in some shape or other, is to come down to us at some time or other? Then, if you found that your remedial legislation had not stayed disorder, you might have brought in any other measure you liked. I submit that the course of this discussion has shown beyond dispute that you are now bringing in a Coercion Bill to deal with offences which your own neglect of remedial legislation is rapidly provoking, and which it will still further provoke, and with which your coercion is powerless and will be powerless to deal.

The right hon. Gentleman has explained what for many hours seemed doubtful to us—namely, the meaning of the Motion made to-night. He has stated that this debate is extremely germane to the Crimes Bill. I take the liberty of interpreting that to mean this—that the whole of the House, including the friends, allies, and followers of the right hon. Gentleman, were sick to death of the dreary iteration which has marked the debate on the Crimes Bill, that the House, their own followers, and the country were so weary and exhausted by the tiresome repetition and incessant iteration of the old arguments which have marked this debate that it was sought to introduce some novelty by the sensation of to-night; and accordingly, by a pre-arranged plan, the hon. and learned Member for the Brigg Division of Lincolnshire (Mr. Waddy) comes down with his receipts and his leases, and the hon. Member for West St. Pancras (Mr. Lawson) comes down also with documents collected from Ireland, and the hon. Member for York (Mr. A. E. Pease) comes down with a prolonged account of a long tour in Ireland. This is an elaborately revised scheme for throwing a little novelty into the debate on the Crimes Bill, of which we have got so insufferably weary. And what does the debate come to? The hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) naturally, properly, and logically made it the head and front of his argument in support of this Motion that the police had misconducted themselves in connection with the Bodyke evictions. It would have been too intolerable a proposition to submit to the House of Commons that our debates upon a subject of vital, momentous, and, if you please, disreputable policy—I mean the policy of amending the Criminal Law, in order to make it more swift and efficient—should be interrupted in order to discuss whether Colonel O'Callaghan was a harsh or a good landlord, whether he has dealt fairly or usuriously with his tenants, and whether his rents have been properly or improperly raised. It would have been too ludicrous to interrupt our debates upon such a subject; and therefore the hon. Member for East Mayo properly, logically, and legitimately put his Motion as a Motion of urgent public importance—that, I believe, is the Parliamentary slang. [ Cries of "Oh!" and "Withdraw!"] That is why we were to have English witnesses called.

I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. and learned Gentleman; but he has emphasized a statement which was the reverse of the truth. The notice I handed to you, Sir, called direct attention to the unjust evictions of 36 families. That is the forefront of the Motion.

No doubt that is the chronological order, but it is not the order of importance. The hon. Member for East Mayo is far too good a judge of Parliamentary tactics—I say so with all possible respect—to commit the blunder and fall into the trap into which the hon. and learned Member for the Brigg Division fell in confining his speech to a narrative of the woes of the widow Bridget O'Brien. Do not suppose that I am speaking disrespectfully, or without sympathy. I am coming to that subject in a moment. But what I say is, that no Member of this House would have ventured to say that the improper treatment of his tenants by Colonel O'Callaghan was a proper reason for interrupting the debate on the Crimes Bill. The hon. Member for East Mayo's argument is that it is the Executive who are supporting by force an unjust landlord; that the police have by improper means supported this man. For that the English witnesses were called, and appeared in the shape of the hon. Members for York and West St. Pancras.

The English witnesses I called were eye-witnesses, whose statements appeared in the Press of this country. The three Members who have spoken were not the eye-witnesses I referred to.

Then the witnesses who have been called did not appear. I was going to speak of these witnesses, and to state that their evidence is destructive of the argument of the hon. Member for East Mayo so far as their argument was an attack upon the police. The hon. and learned Member for the Brigg Division was not so effusive as the other two hon. Members in his praise of the conduct of the Constabulary. The other two hon. Members described the conduct of the police, in terms by no means exaggerated, as praiseworthy. They were Catholics, and friendly to the people. The hon. Member for York strongly praised the conduct of the police.

May I be allowed to say—

Mr. MATTHEWS continued standing. [ Cries from the Opposition of "Pease!"]

If the right hon. and learned Gentleman does not give way he is in possession of the House.

He is afraid to hear the truth.