^* : I beg to inform the House that I have received certain documents with reference to Mr. de Cobain, and I have thought it right, looking to the fact that the conduct of the hon. Gentleman is to come before the House on Thursday next, not to delay communicating them at once to the House. The first communication I shall read is from Mr. Athol J. Dudgeon, acting as solicitor for Mr. de Cobain. He writes—

"July 18, 1891.

"Sir,—Referring to the Order of the House of Commons, requiring the attendance of Mr. E. S. W. de Cobain, Member of Parliament for East Belfast, in the House on the 23rd July inst., I, as the solicitor for Mr. de Cobain, and at his request, beg to hand you herewith a medical certificate as to the state of his health, and a statutory declaration verifying same. For the reasons stated in the declaration, I respectfully ask that proceedings under the Order of the House may be suspended until Mr. de Cobain has been able to return to the United Kingdom and meet the charges made against him.

"I have the honour to be,

"Your obedient servant,

"ATHOL J. DUDGEON.

"The Right Honourable the Speaker of the House of Commons."

With that letter is enclosed the statutory declaration of Mr. Athol J. Dudgeon, as follows:—

"I, Athol Johnson Dudgeon, of Clones, in the County of Monaghan, Ireland, solicitor, do solemnly and sincerely declare as follows:—

"1. I have been consulted by Mr. Edward Samuel Wesley de Cobain, Member of Parliament for East Belfast, in reference to certain charges which have been preferred against him, and in respect of which a warrant has been issued for his arrest.

"2. On the 16th day of July instant I had an interview with the said Edward Samuel Wesley do Cobain, at Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, in reference to the said charges and the Order of the House of Commons directing the said Edward Samuel Wesley de Cobain to be in his place in the House on Thursday, the 23rd day of July instant. He, at such interview, stated that the said charges were wholly without foundation, and were the result of a conspiracy, and that it always had been and still was his intention to return to Ireland to meet the charges, but that ill-health had hitherto and still prevented him doing so, and be assured me that it was his intention, so soon as the state of his health permitted him to do so, to return and take his trial for such charges, and he instructed me to take the necessary steps for his defence to the charges and to retain counsel on his behalf.

"3. On the same 16th day of July instant I was present when the said Edward Samuel Wesley de Cobain was medically examined by Dr. Alfred Carr, who is a physician and surgeon practising in Boulogne aforesaid, and saw him write and sign the certificate now produced to me, and marked D.A., and I beg to refer to such certificate as showing the state of health of the said Edward Samuel Wesley de Cobain. The same certificate was in due course subsequently authenticated by the Deputy Mayor of Boulogne aforesaid, whose signature and seal of office were put thereto in my presence, and such certificate was further duly authenticated at my request at the British Consulate in Boulogne aforesaid, and the signature of the Vice Consul and the seal of the office were put to the document in my presence.

"4. For the reasons stated in the said certificate marked D.A. the said Edward Samuel Wesley de Cobain will be unable to comply with the Order of the House of Commons for his attendance, and I am instructed by him to request that the time for his attendance be extended until he has had an opportunity of taking his trial upon the charges aforesaid.

"5. As solicitor for the said Edward Samuel Wesley de Cobain. I say that if the House of Commons should proceed to pass any Order of expulsion against the said Edward Samuel Wesley de Cobain before he has had an opportunity of taking his trial as aforesaid he will be greatly prejudiced upon such trial, and, in fact, I believe that an Order for expulsion would render it impossible to obtain a fair and impartial trial, as such Order would be regarded as an expression of opinion by the House of Commons that the said Edward Samuel Wesley de Cobain was guilty of the charges preferred against him as aforesaid.

"And I make this solemn declaration, conscientiously believing the same to be true, under and by virtue of the Statutory Declaration Act, 1835.

"ATHOL, J. DUDGEON.

"Declared at the House of Commons the 17th day of July, 1891, before me,

"FREDK. J. PENTON, J.P., Middlesex."

The only remaining document which I have received is the medical certificate, as follows:—

"69, Rue Faidherbe, Boulogne-Sur-Mer,

July 16, 1891.

"I have this day examined Edward S. Wesley do Cobain, M.P. for East Belfast, and find him in the following condition of health:—

"He is suffering from extreme nervous prostration, and it would be very dangerous to incur the risk of any great mental excitement at the present time.

"I should advise a course of medical treatment for the next six weeks, and by that time I hope he may be sufficiently restored in health to allow him to appear in England to answer the charges which are being brought against him.

"At present I cannot sanction his going to England, as I feel that any extra mental worry might have the effect of rendering him quite unfit to defend himself in the unfortunate position in which he is now placed.

"He certainly will not be well enough to appear in his seat in the House of Commons on the 23rd of July, 1891.

"ALFRED CARR, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.

(Officier de Santé de France)."

"Pour légalisation de la signature de M.

Alfred Carr, apposée ci-dessus.

"En l'Hotel de Ville, le 16 Juillet, 1891.

"Le Maire de Boulogne,

M. BRIFFARD, adj."

(Seal.)

"For the legalisation of the signature of the Mayor of Boulogne-sur-Mer.

"R. N. SURPLICE, British Vice-Consul,

Boulogne.

(Stamp.)

(Seal.)

"British Vice-Consulate, Boulogne,

July 17, 1891."

"This is the certificate marked D.A. referred to in the declaration of Athol Johnson Dudgeon, taken before me this 17th day of July, 1891.

"FREDK. J. PENTON, J.P., Middlesex."

This certificate is certified legally by the proper authorities at Boulogne.

I do not think, Mr. Speaker, that the House would desire, upon the communication just laid before it, without having had some time to consider the matter, to come to any decision in regard to these documents one way or the other. I therefore abstain from laying any proposal before the House to-day.

When will the right hon. Gentleman be able to inform the House whether he proposes to proceed on Thursday next?

Of course, I am aware that the matter is urgent, but I think the hon. and learned Member will feel that it requires to be considered. I should be sorry to give any pledge, but I do not think that any time ought to be lost with regard to it.

asked whether an attempt had not been made to combine this Vote with that for the Chief Secretary's Office, whether that attempt had not been abandoned; and whether the House might take it that the two Votes would remain separate in future?

said, that a proposal had been made last year to combine the two Votes in question; that the proposal was abandoned, in consequence of a Report from the Public Accounts Committee and of opinions expressed in the House; and that the House might take it that the proposal would not be renewed.

Vote agreed to.

2. Motion made, and Question proposed,

"That a sum, not exceeding £26,793 (including a Supplementary sum of £322), be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1892, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Offices of the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant in Dublin and London, and Subordinate Departments."

^* : I beg to move the reduction of the salary of the Chief Secretary by the sum of £1,000, and in doing so I wish to assure the Committee that I am not actuated by any personal motives; but that I simply desire to criticise the policy of the right hon. Gentleman. Some credit has been given to the right hon. Gentleman for the relief works which he has inaugurated in the distressed districts of Ireland; but while I am willing to join in giving him credit for what he has done in that direction, I am quite sure that nothing the people have derived from that source will reconcile them to the fact that the power of altering the law in that country is left to the arbitrary will of one person. The right hon. Gentleman has recently seen fit to withdraw some of the extreme provisions of the Crimes Act. Many of them were appalling in their severity, and it would be an immense gratification to the Irish people to see them repealed altogether. Merely laying them aside for a time and continuing full power to revive them at any moment is only, to my mind, calculated to keep alive a bitter feeling of hostility to the Government. I had a good opportunity last autumn of seeing a sample of what the policy of the right hon. Gentleman in Ireland really is, and how he chose to exercise the powers entrusted to him. I refer to the proceedings which occurred at Tipperary. I am aware that they have already been brought to the notice of the House, but as I was in Tipperary at the time, and had not an opportunity of taking part in the Debate, I should like to say a few words now. In doing so, it is not necessary to express an opinion regarding the Plan of Campaign. Whether it was right or wrong to put in. force the Plan of Campaign has nothing whatever to do with the policy of electing to carry on the government of a country with a high hand and resorting to physical force. I went to Tipperary in September last, with many others, to witness the proceedings at the trial of Mr. William O'Brien and Mr. John Dillon. I think there were some 10 or 11 Members of Parliament present. When we reached the station there was a small crowd assembled to meet us, but there was no disturbance of any kind that could attract attention. Yet we hardly entered the street before we were met by an officer of police, who, although there was nothing but cheering heard, in a very excited manner ordered the constabulary to draw their batons. I believe that, but for the presence of several English Members of Parliament, the Irish Members would have fared badly. We congratulated ourselves that all cause for alarm was at an end, but very soon found ourselves very much mistaken. In the course of an hour or two, when we went to the Court House, a scene took place the like of which I hope will never occur again in Ireland. Extraordinary precautions were taken at the Court House to admit only a few persons, and there was a cordon of troops and police drawn up. When I requested admission, Colonel Caddell asked me who I was, and on telling him that I was a Member of Parliament he allowed me to pass. When I and others reached the gate of the Court House we found a number of police officers, who refused to allow any but selected persons to enter. Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Dillon protested, and a disturbance arose, which resulted in the constabulary batoning the people right and left. I know that some stress has been laid upon the fact whether Mr. Harrison held up his hand or not.

Order, order! I must point out to the hon. Member that what he is entering into now will be relevant to the Vote for the Magistrates and police, but is not relevant to the present Vote.

What I wish is to show the Committee what the state of things was which subsequently received the approval of the Chief Secretary. The general feeling at first was that the Government would disavow the action of its officers, but instead of doing so the right hon. Gentleman expressed his full approval. If in England the police had endeavoured to prevent the people from entering a public Court, I believe the people would have asserted their right; and if there had been any collision with the police, the latter would have received all the blame for having attempted to keep them out. Of course, if the Court House had been crowded, and there was no room inside, the case would have been different; but there was abundance of room, and when the people once got inside all went on well. I need not dwell more on Tipperary, but will now refer to a strange occurrence in Dublin on the 13th of October—an outrage on the Metropolitan Police. Its sequel shows the estimation in which the police are held in Ireland. The account of what took place was virtually the same in all the Dublin papers. One of them gives the facts as follows:—

"The evidence was to the effect that between 1 and 2 o'clock that morning Constable 39 C saw the two prisoners coming out of Lower Tyrone Street into Gardiner Street. They were talking loudly, and using profane and obscene language. He cautioned them, and Waters said they were policemen as well as the constable, upon which 39 C said if they were they would have to conduct themselves. When he said this the two prisoners together struck him with their sticks on the head, knocking off his hat. The constable knocked down Waters as be tried to run away. O'Shea, after striking the complainant, ran away, and 39 C did not see him again till he was arrested by another constable. Waters struck him with his fist in the neck, as well as hitting him on the head with his stick, with which be struck the constable on the side of the head, staggering him. He also struck the constable on the shoulder and then got away. O'Shea was stopped by another constable, 85 C, whom be struck twice with a stick, and in the struggle both fell to the ground. 135 C ran to the assistance of the other constable, and as he was stooping over O'Shea that prisoner again hit him with the stick across the head, and the constable then struck O'Shea on the legs with his staff and knocked the stick out of his hand. O'Shea afterwards walked quickly to the station. The evidence of the constable was corroborated by a carman named Horsman. For disorderly conduct the prisoners were fined 10s. or seven days. For assaulting 139 C Waters was sentenced to one month's imprisonment with hard labour; and O'Shea, for the assault on Constable 39 C, was sentenced to one month; for assault on 135 C another month; for assault on 85 C to a third month's imprisonment with hard labour."

If ever there was a case in which the law ought to be evenly put in force, it was this one. And yet we hear that after 10 days the prisoners were liberated by the Lord Lieutenant, the order being as follows:—

"His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant, in pursuance of a Memorial of a highly influential character, has had the case of Constables Waters and O'Shea, of the Royal Irish Constabulary, who were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment before Mr. Chief Justice 0'Donel, Chief Magistrate, on the 13th inst., on a charge of assaulting a Metropolitan police constable, re-investigated, with the result that His Excellency has ordered the release of both constables from custody."

I do not know whether these men are still in the Service or not, but it appears to be a strange thing that constables should be held to be so far above the law in Ireland that, after acting in this manner, they should be set free before their sentences have nearly expired. I am certain that if any civilian had been guilty of similar conduct he would not have been let off a single day's imprisonment. Turning to another matter, I should like to read the notes made by Dr. Moorhead, the Visiting Justice, on the 13th of last September, regarding the treatment of Mr. McEnery in Tullamore Prison. I would ask the Committee to bear in mind that Mr. McEnery was imprisoned for an offence which in this country would not be considered an offence at all. The doctor says—

"Mr. McEnery, who has lost flesh and looks badly, complained generally of the unnecessary barbarity and indecency offered to his person by the officers during the process of searching. He states that he has always afforded every facility to the authorities for searching him within proper limits, but that he has resisted, and will continue to resist, the process of feeling portions of his body which offends alike his modesty and his manhood; and on last Tuesday week, the 2nd inst., having been previously admonished by the chief warder that 'henceforward he would be searched like ordinary criminals, the Governor, the chief warder, Warder M'Cullagh, and another, set on him in his cell, knocked him down, and proceeded to feel his person in an indecent and offensive manner; that there was no rule authorising such treatment, and though willing to afford any reasonable facility that he will resist such treatment to the utmost; and that he as a political prisoner is searched thrice as often as an ordinary prisoner. I think such an indignity as Mr. McEnery complains of to a fellow being, whether in prison or out of prison, is an outrage on our common humanity; and as it is evidently practised on Mr. McEnery out of a cruel piece of red-tapeism, being unauthorised by any prison rule, and wholly unnecessary, calls for immediate interference."

I think there is no justification for treating a gentleman confined for a Press offence in this way. I observed this morning that a Member of this House, in a letter from the Cape, says that white men cannot be hired to work in the diamond mines because searching of the person is necessary; and yet in Ireland a newspaper editor is subjected to the treatment I have described. I have here notes of a great many matters in which people are treated in a very different manner from what they are in Ireland, but I will not trouble the Committee by going through them. I would merely remark that where persuasion would be employed in this country batons would be resorted to in Ireland, and where batons would be used here buckshot would be employed in Ire- land. The policy of the Government in Ireland is being continually held up to approbation in this country by Conservative and Unionist speakers. It appears to me that it has been very far from successful. It is impossible for for any thoughtful man to be satisfied with the state of things in Ireland. There is a complete want of sympathy between the Executive and the representative bodies in the country, and the latter have no power. In the military displays and contests that have recently taken place in this country, there have been volunteers from all parts of the world except Ireland, the reason for the exception being that you cannot have a Volunteer Force in Ireland. If the policy of the right hon. Gentleman had met with that complete success which his friends claim for it he would run candidates at elections whenever there were vacancies. In all countries public feeling is shown by the elections, and yet, notwithstanding all the boasts of the Government supporters, we do not see a single sign that the Government could gain one seat at an election. I regret the total gap there is between the Executive and the mass of the people. We feel that as long as that state of things exists in Ireland there can be any really successful administration of the country. At the next election the Government may be able to put in a few members in consequence of the divisions in the national ranks and in consequence of alterations in the domicile of voters, not because of any real change in the feelings of the people. No cause can be dead or weak which in a few weeks can start a daily paper in opposition to the views of the Government, and can gain elections in the way our Party has done. The material improvement in the condition of the people has not been so great as one would wish it to be, and as it would be under a proper state of things. The effect of the right hon. Gentleman's policy has been to suppress public feeling, and I believe the change for the better that has occurred in the country is not due to the policy of the right hon. Gentleman, but to the inevitable effect of the legislation of late years. I believe also that the more the policy of coercion is abandoned the more will the prosperity of the country increase.

Motion made, and Question proposed, 'That Item A, Salaries, be reduced by £1,000, part of the Salary of the Chief Secretary."

I do not suppose the right hon. Gentleman expects to get this Vote with the same absence of discussion as marked its passage 12 months ago, when the Debate came prematurely to a close by what was then the most inexplicable conduct of the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell). I believe there is this year an increase of £341 in the Vote, but I suppose we are expected to discuss not so much the details of the Vote as questions of policy and administration. One of the most obvious considerations in connection with the Vote is the success or nonsuccess of the right hon. Gentleman's policy of coercion in Ireland. According to announcements in the Dublin Gazette, certain sections of the Crimes Act have been repealed in certain districts of Ireland; but no one, except one or two trained lawyers in Dublin Castle, exactly knows what sections of the Act are in force and what sections are in abeyance in many parts of the country. An Irish public man is compelled to consult an experienced lawyer before he can ascertain what are his rights as a citizen. In spite of the announcements in the Dublin Gazette, the Crimes Act, in all its clauses, still operates in Ireland for all practical purposes. The repealed sections can be re-imposed at will, and the Lord Lieutenant has the power of making their operation retrospective. To say that the Act is repealed at all is, therefore, a transparent sham and humbug, and it is only intended for the purpose of rounding periods and pointing passages in the Chief Secretary's perorations. If the Chief Secretary thinks he can nobble a political opponent more expeditiously by Section 3, which relates to special juries, all he has to do is to get the Lord Lieutenant to proclaim that Section 3 is in operation in a particular district. The same is to be said about changing the place of trial, by means of which power one of the most horrible parodies of justice ever seen was enacted at Maryborough, when a special jury was packed by a man who has since been rewarded with political office for packing it. If the Government fall foul of their political opponents in Ireland, or if agrarian agitation for fair rents becomes rife, they can bring the Act back upon us by re-imposing various sections. What then becomes of the flourish of trumpets all over the country about the repeal of the Coercion Act? I contend that the Act cannot be said to be repealed if you can not only re-enact it but make it retrospective. Since this Vote was last under consideration punishments of a month's imprisonment with hard labour have been inflicted. The right hon. Gentleman made a certain promise in this House when the Coercion Act was going through, and that promise—although we on this side treated it as an honourable promise—he has failed to keep. Men have had preferred against them charges of boycotting, the evidence on which did not disclose a single act of intimidation. For such conduct as was alleged they could not have been punished by the law of England, yet Magistrates have sent them to gaol in Ireland for a month's hard labour, and have refused to increase the sentence so that an appeal might be lodged. On the question of appeal, when this House was discussing his Bill the right hon. Gentleman said, "We propose to give an appeal in every case." That is recorded on the Journals of this House, and it is one of the least creditable actions of the right hon. Gentleman that he has never had the manliness either to fulfil his undertaking or to explain why an appeal has not been granted in every case. In the Tipperary prosecutions which were directed against some of my friends who are still in prison, it is not very difficult to prove that Mr. Shannon was purposely appointed to conduct the trials. The right hon. Gentleman, as he said in one of his fits of generosity, took the entire responsibility for the appointment. He said there that Mr. Shannon, who had only been appointed a Resident Magistrate in 1888, was sent to Tipperary in order that the executive and the judicial functions might be separated. It came out, however, upon the clearest evidence, that Mr. Shannon had been performing executive functions up to the eve of the trial. He had been in command of police and had ordered them to baton my hon. Colleague and his friends; he had presided over a Court of secret inquiry arising out of the very occurrences which led up to the prosecutions at Tipperary, and in such circumstances I contend that it was only a travesty of justice to appoint Mr. Shannon to try the prisoners. I think the right hon. Gentleman at Newcastle denied that Mr. Shannon had had anything to do with incidents which had any bearing on the trial. That trial, it will be remembered, was in connection with proceedings arising out of the struggle between Smith-Barry and his tenants. I find that at a meeting held sometime before the trial Mr. Shannon acted as the deputy of Colonel Caddell, for a sergeant of police in his evidence said he was at a meeting at Limerick Junction on the 25th May. There were 1,300 or 1,400 persons present, and the crowd was perfectly peaceable and orderly. While the people were proceeding to Tipperary the wagonette in which Mr. O'Brien and his friends were riding was stopped by Mr. Shannon who was in command of the police, and at whose instance the constables drew their batons. Now, the speeches delivered on that occasion were put in evidence against the defendants in the course of the Tipperary trials. Yet, on the showing of the police themselves—despite the demands of the Chief Secretary—Mr. Shannon was on that occasion acting as an executive officer in charge of the police. Therefore, I say it was a grave and scandalous abuse that he should have been called upon to try the defendants. Again, at a meeting held in the town of Tipperary itself Mr. Shannon was in charge of the police and came into personal collision with one of my hon. Friends. Mr. Dillon complained of having been pursued by a body of 40 policemen headed by Mr. Shannon, who, in his presence, ordered a baton charge against a small crowd of defenceless persons—Mr. Sheehy and Father Humphrey both made a like complaint. There is, in fact, abundant evidence that Mr. Shannon had acted in an executive capacity on matters connected with this trial. We know, too, that throughout the trials the defendants were constantly shadowed by the police. I think, however, that the worst feature of the case was the unfair manner in which the Chief Secretary prejudged the merits of the case in his speech at Newcastle before the trials were heard. If ever there was a clear case of contempt of Court, that was one on the part of the right hon. Gentleman; it was a palpable wink to his subordinates how to act, and, of course, it had the effect of prejudicing the defendants, as might have been expected. But a striking proof of the character of some of these prosecutions and of the police evidence on which they are based, is the fact that when certain trials were abandoned before the Resident Magistrates, and taken before a Judge and a jury, impartially chosen at Cork, all the prisoners were discharged except two, about whom the jury disagreed. It would be impossible for these things to occur in any other country, for they would provoke a torrent of indignation against the executive. The administration of justice in Ireland is a story of juggling, and the Tipperary trials will take an infamous place in the records of the right hon. Gentleman's administration. I desire next to refer to the prosecution and persecution of the press in Ireland. The prosecutions seem to have been dropped to a large extent for a time, although the Nationalist Press has not changed its course of action, and is still doing what it has done during the past four years. The persecution of the press, however, has been pursued with great animosity and with almost incredible meanness. Advertisements have been persistently withheld by the Public Authorities from newspapers of adverse political opinions, and an instance of that very recently occurred in Cork, when a Conservative newspaper had withheld from it advertisements because it had not supported the policy of the right hon. Gentleman. The withholding of the advertisements was vigorously condemned by the leading Nationalists of Cork. This case proves that the Local Government Board in Ireland, though a large and important public body, are not above the meanness of boycotting papers. The Chief Secretary is the President of that Board, and he must share the responsibility of such conduct.

Order, order! The hon. Member must know that a great part of his speech is irrelevant to the Vote under discussion.

I was referring to the Chief Secretary as President of the Local Government Board.

Any criticism of the conduct of the President of the Local Government Board must be made on the Vote for the Local Government Board of Ireland.

Very well, Sir, I will defer that portion of my remarks. What I mainly wish to do is to deny the statement which is frequently made by the right hon. Gentleman and his supporters, that the Coercion Act has been a success. Ireland is in an unfortunate position. If outrages cease and the country is peaceable, we are told it is the result of the working of the Coercion Act, while, on the other band, if the country is disorderly and discontented we are told a Coercion Act is necessary. So that whichever way Ireland turns, the necessity of coercion is obvious to hon. Members opposite. But in cherishing this belief in coercion the Chief Secretary is living in a fool's paradise, and is laying up a store of trouble and difficulty for his successor. What has produced the present pacification of the country is not coercion, but the effects of the agrarian legislation during the last eight or ten years, the rise of prices enabling the farmers to pay their rent with less difficulty than before, and last, but not least, the feeling of hope among the people that the struggle is drawing to a close and that they will soon have the right to govern themselves in a rational manner. These are the things which have produced the pacification of Ireland, and it is not the result of coercion.

I will not go into the merits of the Tipperary case, as I was not there, and do not exactly understand all the details connected with it. I understand, however, that the subject was brought forward at the Eccles election, and created such a sensation that telegrams were sent Mr. Shannon to ask whether he had used the words attributed to him. Mr. Shannon telegraphed back that he did not use those words, but his statement carried no weight among the independent electors of Eccles, because he did not deny that he used words equivalent to those attributed to him. Not only do our people disapprove of the policy of the right hon. Gentleman, but the independent electors of this country repudiate it. The Government are in the habit of pluming themselves on the material improvement that has taken place in Ireland. It is a strange commentary on the claim that Ireland has so much improved that Her Majesty's Government have to spend such a large amount of money in Ireland. I cannot understand how the Chief Secretary was furnished with some of his statistics respecting Donegal. I understood him to say that unless the priests were brought to a state of semi-starvation he could not believe that much poverty existed in Donegal. I understood the right hon. Gentleman also to say that when the people subscribed a large sum as votive offerings to the priests there was no necessity to give assistance to the people.

I never said anything of the kind. The hon. Member is entirely misrepresenting me.

I doubt very much whether I am misrepresenting the right hon. Gentleman; I will look up what he said. I adroit that there has been increase in the prosperity of most parts of Ireland, but the Government of the Queen is not in the least responsible for that. Within the last few years, as is evident from the Joint Stock and Savings Banks and Railway Returns, there has been a great increase of trade in Great Britain, and Ireland naturally got a slight backwash of the wave of prosperity. The increased prosperity Ireland has experienced cannot be compared with that which has taken place in Great Britain. The Government is a Government of false pretences so far as Ireland is concerned, because in resisting the policy of the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian they laid before the constituencies a policy of even laws for all parts of the United Kingdom, and they pledged themselves on a thousand platforms to simultaneous reforms for Ireland as for Great Britain. But those promises have not been kept. The Government have brought in a Coercion Bill for Ireland which is not to extend to any part of Great Britain, and a Local Government Act for England and Scotland which is not to extend to Ireland. To make the inconsistency of the Government more conspicuous, they not only refuse to keep the pledges they give to the people of this country, but they have by a recent Act hypothecated the taxes of the people of Ireland, without giving them the opportunity of saying aye or nay, respecting the expenditure of those taxes. We maintain that the Coercion Act is not aimed at crimes and criminals in the ordinary acceptation of the phrase, but is aimed at political opponents and political organisations, and that its main object is not to put down crime, but to break up combinations among the Irish peasantry—combinations which the right hon. Gentleman's policy has necessitated. The statistics of any country would, I think, prove that when the Conservative Party abandoned coercion in 1885, there was far more real crime in Ireland than was the case a couple of years afterwards. The Government administers affairs in the interests of the landlords, and their whole policy has been based on a desire to facilitate the collection of impossible rents and to coerce any tenants who enter into combinations to protect their interests. Some most remarkable evidence was given by one of the chief Pachas—one of the resident Magistrates—at Manchester at the trial of O'Brien v. Salisbury. He was one of the chief Government officials in my part of the country—Captain Slack. He was asked about the condition of County Tipperary, and he said it was most peaceful and satisfactory before the foundation of the Land League. He was questioned as to its condition in the 10 years after the foundation of the Land League, and said it was then most turbulent. Pressed by Counsel, he had to admit that in the 10 years following the foundation of the Land League there was not a single agrarian murder in the whole of Tipperary, whilst in the 10 previous years there were 28 murders or attempts to murder. Counsel then asked the witness—

"Do you then consider that 28 murders in 10 years is a satisfactory condition, and that those 10 years compare favourably with the condition of Tipperary 10 years later?"

The reply was—

"Yes, but in the 10 years before the foundation of the Land League there was no general combination among the tenants of Tipperary."

The meaning was clear—that in his eyes, as well as in the eyes of the right hon. Gentleman, the great sin the people commit is in joining these combinations. If you have murders galore and no combination the condition of things is satisfactory, whereas if you have no murders and much combination it is unsatisfactory. I am bound to say that Captain Slack's replies have been considered so unsatisfactory by the Government that he has been sent up to the Botany Bay of the North of Ireland. If we want to know how the Government have broken their pledges to Ireland we need not go beyond the words delivered by the noble Lord the Member for Paddington in this House. Two years ago when an hon. Friend of mine brought forward a Local Government Bill for Ireland, and the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary said it was not the intention of the Government to extend to Ireland any of the provisions of self-government, the noble Lord the Member for Paddington (Lord R. Churchill) said the Government had pledged themselves to extend to Ireland at the earliest opportunity the same amount of local liberty as was given to England, and added that this was the only platform on which the repeal of the Union could be resisted. I am not really very much surprised at the conduct of the Government in this matter, because one of their chief characteristics both in Ireland and England has been distrust of the people. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary tries to make it appear by various assertions in his speeches that we have equal laws in Ireland with those in England. That is not so. Some of the laws in Ireland are more honoured in the breach than the observance, and I hope the Irish people will continue to honour them in the breach. This talk about law and order is mere cant. Take the case of the unfortunate man Canover, who was tried some time ago. Four different juries were empanelled. From one of them 42 men were ordered to stand aside and from another 47 were not allowed to serve. It is humiliating to Irish Catholics to be told to stand aside, as if they were unfit to discharge their duty as jurors; but it is adding insult to injury to be told to stand aside by men of the character of George Bolton. I am not going into the career of that man. The first Debate I listened to in this House was the Maamtrasna Debate in 1884, and in the course of it the present Solicitor General (Sir E Clarke) declared that the word of George Bolton was not much better than the word of the informers whose evidence we were then canvassing. I have no doubt the hon. and learned Gentleman continues to hold the same opinion, but I may remind him that the Government to which he belongs still retains George Bolton in its service With regard to the revival of trade, I would remind the Chief Secretary that one of his ardent supporters, Mr. Lecky, says with regard to the prosperity of any country that the first condition of prosperity is the harmony of the Government with the character and wishes, of the people. My hon. Friend who preceded me alluded to the breach of faith of which the Chief Secretary was guilty in obtaining the sanction of the House to his Coercion Act by promising an appeal from the decisions of his Removable Magistrates. The right hon. Gentleman has departed from that pledge in the most flagrant way. But I think his intimation to his subordinates was an even greater insult to the Irish people. Shortly after the passing of his Coercion Act many of the Resident Magistrates did give sentences from which there was an appeal, and in most of those cases appeals were made. The right hon. Gentleman delivered a speech in Birmingham in which he alluded to the inconvenience of these appeals. He did not tell the Resident Magistrates directly not to give sentences which could be (appealed against, but those gentlemen took their cue from the right hon. Gentleman's speech, and gave sentences from which there was no appeal whatever. It Waterford we have a County Court Judge who enjoys the respect of the people. He is not one of those who condone crime, but one who metes out proper punishment to every criminal Though at times I might think some of his sentences severe, he is respected, and never a word is uttered against his uprightness. It is a notorious fact that in every case that came before Judge Waters, the decisions of the Resident Magistrates were re versed. The Resident Magistrates then adopted the course of sentencing men to two or three short terms of imprisonment for the same offence, or they returned men for trial before special juries, and had the venue changed. Such conduct as that brings the law into disrespect. I alluded last year to the system of shadowing, with which the right hon. Gentleman's name is connected.

That comes under the Police Vote.

If it is out of order I shall not pursue the subject, although I think the system will not commend itself to the opinion of any upright or honest man. The right hon. Gentleman has stated in previous Debates that his police have not gone round with people in order to get refusals by shopkeepers to serve them.

Order, order!

If you think, Sir, that these matters will be properly discussed on the Police Vote I shall not deal with them now. The right hon. Gentleman has complained of the way in which he says his opponents have left the proper Parliamentary arena, and have descended to hard swearing. I think it comes badly from the right hon. Gentleman to make any such complaint of the Irish people. In former years we have had to contend against different Chief Secretaries and Lord Lieutenants, but I think this is the first time we have had to contend with a gentleman who seems to glory in the sufferings he has caused, and who makes those sufferings the subject of jests and jeers. The right hon. Gentleman says that the verdict of history will be that he has carried out the law fairly in Ireland, but I venture to say that it will be that he has carried out the law in a spirit unfair to the majority of the Irish people. He will have done much to sap the foundations of law and order, and to convince the people that British law as administered by the Government in Ireland is a scandal and a mockery, and is a law which is administered by partisan tribunals against the poor and in favour of the rich.

^* (6.3.) : If I may judge from the character of the Debate, I do not think the salary of the Chief Secretary is in much danger. I venture to say that if we had a verbatim report of the speeches which have been made it would be difficult to find anything which should affect the Chief Secretary's salary. We have heard a great deal about coercion, at a time when coercion has actually ceased to exist. It is an extraordinary time, therefore, at which to denounce the Chief Secretary's action in connection with the Coercion Act, which, so far as the greater part of Ireland is concerned, is practically repealed. The hon. Member for Waterford declares that so long as the power remains its effect is most galling. The hon. Member talked about loss of liberty. I know of no loss of liberty during the past year. I know a great deal of liberty which has been protected by the action of the Chief Secretary—action which has been denounced here to-night. If there is one place more than another which I should have thought hon. Members would hesitate in naming, it is Tipperary. If there is one place where the law of liberty has been established, it is there. If hon. Members take the trouble to read the letters of the victims, published in the newspapers, they will see whether real liberty has been found. It is satisfactory to note that every speaker has admitted the enormous improvement in the condition of Ireland. They have admitted that agrarian crime has diminished, that trade has increased, and that emigration has gone down, and pauperism decreased. I do not place all these results to the credit of the Chief Secretary; but surely they are not to be pleaded against him. The worst symptom that has appeared in the condition of Ireland during the past week is that the five great banking corporations of that country have held their meetings, and besides carrying large balances to reserve, have paid dividends of 10 per cent. The country is in a deplorable condition, surely, which can show such a state of affairs as that. I observed also with something like satisfaction that Mr. Smith-Barry held a rent audit the other day, and that the people went to his office to pay their rents, and some of them before the time fixed for payment. I do not say whether or not the enormous improvement in the state of Ireland is due to the Chief Secretary, but, at any rate, it is due to the steady administration of the law; and, at all events, we can honestly and fairly rejoice in it. I should like some information as to one part of his policy, and that is concerning the relief works. I have heard that in certain parts of Ireland these relief works have certainly not been an unmixed benefit, as they have led the people to neglect the Spring work, on which their future depends.

Order, order! There is a special Vote for the relief of distress.

Will we be able to discuss the past administration of the relief works?

I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that he has got £60,000, which I presume is a portion of the road-making fund.

The Vote in Class VII. admits of full discussion of past and present action in these matters.

^* : I will withdraw for the present, Sir, and resume the discussion on the other Vote.

We have heard from the hon. Member for South Tyrone that there is an improvement in the condition of Ireland; but I think the hon. Member may also be congratulated on an improvement in himself, for seldom has he delivered a speech with so little bitterness and so little animus against the Irish people. I hope he will continue the improvement. To the Chief Secretary I personally have no objection, but as Member for West Clare I have to complain of him in his official capacity. For the last five years I have never been able to obtain from him any concession for Clare, but we have obtained from him coercion in sufficiency, and more. He has made Clare the principal sphere of his policy of coercion; he has trampled Clare under foot in every form and fashion. Officially, he has countenanced outrage in the County Clare. A few days ago I asked the Chief Secretary for a sum of money to put up a small pier at Red Gap, which the Lord Lieutenant had promised. I have telegrams and letters this morning to the effect that the project was approved by the Lord Lieutenant, but the Chief Secretary has no money for County Clare. He had no money to clear the Fergus River when he was asked for it, and he had no money for distress in Clare during last winter, not even for this miserable road-making to which the hon. Member for South Tyrone has referred. I know that he had many Memorials from Boards of Guardians and public meetings during the time of distress, in all parts of Clare, but he had no money. But as I have said, he made us a gift of coercion. He had plenty of gifts of that sort for Clare, though at the same time he had plenty of money for other parts of the country. He countenanced evictions— those cruel evictions such as we had on the Vandeleur Estate. The Chief Secretary let loose the full force of his coercion there. He gave us Resident Magistrates—Cecil Roche, for instance, that self-willed, coarse, and tyrannical official. {Laughter.] Hon. Members opposite laugh because they do not know. They laugh at the unknown. The hon. Member for South Tyrone saw me on the Vandeleur Estate, and I think I was about as inoffensive a man as any in the whole place. I am not particularly obnoxious; but when a poor man's roof was pulled down about his head, and he was dragged forth bleeding, I went, as the Member for Clare, and shook hands with him. And Cecil Roche ordered me off the land, and set a policeman—a low policeman—to drag me—me the Member for the county, and who had done nothing—off the land. [Laughter.] You sit there laughing, but I say you are heartless Members of Parliament. The Chief Secretary had no money for Clare, but he had £60,000 for the military police, with whom he flooded County Clare. I heard Colonel Turner say to two policemen that they were to fire from the window if anything more was thrown. The hon. Member for South Tyrone will bear me out, for he said "This is a bad business!" Yet the Chief Secretary, if he did not say I lied, refused to believe what I said. I have attended dozens of meetings, and sometimes I have been scarcely able to restrain myself at the conduct of the police. I do not wonder at the young men of the country rising against coercion. I recollect on the 8th April, 1887, going to the railway station with Mr. Davitt, who was leaving Ennis for Limerick. Of course, the people raised a cheer for Davitt. Captain Walsh was in command of the police, and he ordered them to clear the platform with their batons. Can you expect Irishmen to submit to such conduct? Are they not entitled, as men, to seek redress? While I deplore it, I can hardly blame the people seeking a wild revenge for such injustice. The Chief Secretary has espoused the cause of Hannah Connell and Mrs. Moroney as against respectable people. I do not wish to say anything bitter against the right hon. Gentleman personally, but his policy is a miserable one. He prosecuted 20 respectable shopkeepers in one of the towns of my own constituency because they would not sell whisky to the police, and in one case because a shopkeeper would not sell a shoe-lace to Mrs. Connell's man. It turned out that the man must have been sent for the purpose of establishing a case, because it was ascertained that the man had no money. There were 20 summonses, and I hold them as an heirloom of the right hon. Gentleman's régime. Then the right hon. Gentleman prosecuted and imprisoned the Rev. Father Gilligan for an alleged speech delivered in the middle of the River Shannon. [Laughter.] Yes, he was compelled to speak from a boat, and an eavesdropper of the Government pretended that he heard the rev. Father's word, though it could only possibly be that he heard the voice. If there is goodness anywhere, it will be found in the clergy—I mean the clergy of any Church—and Father Gilligan is one of the most honest of men. Yet for an alleged speech he was imprisoned for months and months. Again, the Chief Secretary will recollect the storm he raised against himself by his attack upon the Rev. Father Dinan when he insulted him, and other priests by the score. If coercion could produce order and affection for the administration of the right hon. Gentleman Clare ought to be the most orderly and affectionate of counties. But I regret to say it is not so. And if there is any benefit felt in Ireland, it is due to general causes—to rain and sun, which fall on all alike—rather than to that rule of the Chief Secretary, which the hon. Member for South Tyrone speaks of as benignant. Clare is still proclaimed! It is the most dissatisfied and troubled of counties in Ireland. And it should be dissatisfied. It is no wonder that it is, after the severity of the right hon. Gentleman's administration; and dissatisfaction will prevail in Clare so long as this course is pursued, and so long as there are irregularities on the part of the Magistrates and the Executive. I ask the Chief Secretary to restrain his severity in the County of Clare, and to try another method of government; I ask him to adopt the policy of conciliation. He has sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind; for five years he has sown coercion, and has reaped crime and outrage. Whatever he does, he cannot have anything worse than crime and outrage. Let him, then, repeal the Crimes Act, and try a kindlier plan of government. I ask him to try a policy of conciliation; I ask him to remove the ban of coercion from the County Clare, and he will then see whether his new policy will not be rewarded. I could almost guarantee that if he adopts the policy of true statesmanship in Clare, if he pursues a new and conciliatory method of government, avoiding everything that is likely to irritate the people, he will find good results following. But if he refuses to adopt that course, then the people of Clare will not be conciliated, and I do not say that they are wrong in not being conciliated.

The hon. Member for Clare, in speaking of coercion, is only following the heavy lead of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir W. Harcourt), who, so long as he acts as leader of the Liberal Party, continues to use the word "coercion" at various public meetings. No doubt worthy men like the hon. Member for Clare think that they are doing their duty; but the word "coercion" has no right at all to be applied to anything that has been done in connection with Irish questions during the whole of this Parliament. If there has been coercion it has been coercion such as we have all to submit to, namely, coercion in favour of right against wrong. As regards conciliation, no one has pursued a more conciliatory policy than the Chief Secretary. As I said a short time since, Ireland is pacificated at last. [Laughter.] One or two Irish Members rise against the statement, of course. We know it as a fact. The Chief Secretary, at all events, has shown his readiness to do all he can to release districts from disabilities—even though some of us thought him rash, which only evidences that he knew far better than us what ought to be done. I accepted what he proposed, and would do so again. I am, glad to find I was wrong, and that he was right. I am sure if my hon. Friends opposite would cease to agitate, and get their friends the priests to cease to agitate, they would not hear coercion spoken of at all. But there is the coercion exercised by agitators in the form of intimidation and boycotting—the coercion of men and women who have been compelled to leave their comfortable holdings to go to a new district, with the loss of their livings and almost their lives. Then they have written to the papers saying that so-and-so was promised them, and it has come out that they have been threatened that if they wrote such letters they would be made to smart for it. That sort of thing, we can all see, is very wrong. I am sorry the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby and hon. Gentlemen opposite continue to fiddle away on the "coercion" string. No doubt it was a useful word in its time, but it is played out. The hon. Member for South Tyrone has done wonderful service in exploding it. He is really a typical Irishman— [laughter] —an Irishman of such recognised ability as to be worth double the average Irishman in this House. It has been observed that the hon. Member for South Tyrone has improved lately. There never was any need for much improvement. Of all the men we have reason to be proud of because of their good services the hon. Member for South Tyrone is certainly one. If he makes a speech on the Irish question it is twice as well worth reading as the speech of any hon. Member. It is said that the labourer is worthy of his hire, but all I can say is that you cannot get such a man as the Chief Secretary by payment. What he has done is worthy all the honour that can be conferred upon him. The Chief Secretary is a good deal better than every man on the other side put together. He is a deal too good for you, because you do not know how to treasure him when you have got him. Hundreds of times I have seen him rise with amiability to meet gross insults; in fact, he is twice or three times too good for the island he rules over. But if Ireland does not appreciate him as she ought to do, we will take him for England and make him leader of the House. We shall then have a Chief Secretary good enough for the purpose, though not half as good as our friend, while the leader of the House would deal with Scotch, Irish, English, and Welsh questions. In that way we would have two Chief Secretaries, or at least a Secretary and a half. Under the circumstances, we are joyfully glad to vote the salary of the Chief Secretary, though I hope we will never have to vote it again. I hope that our friend, who is not able to lead us at present, and who has the affection of both sides of the House, will be promoted to another and a better place. [Laughter.] I am not speaking in the sense of our religious friends opposite. I mean by better place, one more suitable to his amiability and calm temperament. I say he has earned it. And I should like to see in his place the Chief Secretary for Ireland; for I know that if any of you put yourselves forward to say that which you ought not to say, he will be able to give a very good account of you, and we shall be delighted to help him. Whereas up to the present time we have all had to be amiable, instead of following the lead of a man like the Chief Secretary, under whose lead we should be less amiable, and, I have no doubt, should find it our duty to say stronger things. All praise is due to the statesman of whom I am now speaking for what he has done in Ireland, and I say we have had no success in the House for many, many years like the success which he has had, and there has been no success in dealing with Ireland like the success which he has achieved.

I am sure we have all enjoyed very much the confession of the Conservative statesman who has just sat down, and we are only sorry on this side of the House that we do not hear more often the Member for Boston. We wish there were more like him on that side of the House. I would suggest myself that when the translation takes place which will make room for the Chief Secretary in a position for which I do not think he is at all unfit, I would suggest that the proper Chief Secretary for Ireland would be the hon. Member for Boston.

I would not accept any office of the kind.

I can assure the hon. Member for Boston that had I known that is what he was going to say, I would not have given way to him. Sir, we have heard to-night some praise of the Chief Secretary, and I am not at all concerned to deny that, after the five years' liberal education which he has received, he is greatly improved. He is a very different man, indeed, from the officer who first began his raw and prentice hand upon us in the year 1883. And it is a remarkable thing that this fact was noticed last year by one of the gentlemen whom he still ungraciously detains in Galway Gaol until the very last day of his imprisonment—Mr. W. O'Brien, who, speaking on this Vote last year, said—

"I think nobody can have failed to notice a certain change of demeanour on the part of the Chief Secretary towards Irish Members. The right hon. Gentleman seems lately to have developed some spirit of courtesy, and even blandishment, towards some, at least, of the criminal conspirators sitting on these Benches."

So that the Member for Boston is not so very much in advance of the time in what he said. I am not concerned to deny the continuance of that improvement. But, unfortunately, when in the course of human events the Chief Secretary obtains his promotion, we on this side will have to begin again on some "new shaved beggar" as Daniel O'Connell used to say—one as ignorant of his functions, or of Ireland, as the Chief Secretary was in 1887. Then, after some four or five years of him—if the Conservatives should then be in office—the then Chief Secretary will receive the same encomiums from the same Conservative Member for Boston, for the splendid firmness with which he has dealt with Ireland, and for the fact of his having reduced the country to an absolute state of peace. Why, really Mr. Courtney, we should be spared speeches of this kind, if the hon. Gentleman read the back volumes of Hansard. Take the course of every Chief Secretary since the Act of Union, and you will find that there have been addressed to him all sorts of encomiums like that you have heard to-night. But so far as we Irish Members are concerned, all we have to note is that, while you are praising the Chief Secretary in this House, the population is steadily diminishing by about a million a decade. The true test of administration or statesmanship in Ireland is not to be found in the praises of the Chief Secretary, but in the absolute and concrete fact that in each of the five years during which he has been in office, the population of Ireland has decreased by something like 100,000. The people have quitted the country, quitted the rule which we are told brings down so much blessing in its train. Really, I think that in the course of the administration of the right hon. Gentleman there is no more remarkable fact than that while he is boasting of being able to take off the coercive fetters in which Ireland has been bound, he continues to keep in gaol two gentlemen whose presence in this House, it will not be denied, would contribute a large amount of knowledge and experience of Irish affairs, and whose retention in an Irish prison is the greatest stigma that can be cast on the so-called success of the right hon. Gentleman's administration. The sentences of those two gentlemen will expire on the 31st of July, and we have now arrived at the 20th, and yet so much does the right hon. Gentleman distrust the class and character of his own administration that he thinks it necessary to keep these hon. Members in gaol until they have undergone the very last days of their term of imprisonment. But not only has the right hon. Gentleman been wasting in this unparalleled manner the success of his administration, but he has been engaged in a still more small-minded proceeding, namely, by insisting on levying the amount of the recognisances which were forfeited eight or nine months ago, notwithstanding that in the end the defendants frankly rendered themselves up to justice. The hon. Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell) has stated that coercion has disappeared in Ireland.

^* : I said "almost."

Let us assume for a moment that it is so, although I deny the statement. What does it prove? It proves simply what the Irish Members have always maintained, namely, that the policy of coercion is hateful and unpalatable to the English people, and that there is a desire on the part of the English people at large to get rid of this coercive system, and that one of the greatest factors in the Conservative programme is the belief that they have abandoned this system. In point of fact, the Conservative Party at the present moment believe that the best card they can play to the masses of the English people is that on which they say they have abandoned coercion. But speaking as one who has had experience in regard to the existing Coercion Act, I assert most unhesitatingly that no change whatever has taken place in the method of its administration by the right hon. Gentleman. There is no difference now, either in the quality or the amount of liberty allowed to the Irish people as compared with with what it was 12 months or two years ago. All that is wanted is that the right hon. Gentleman should at any moment insert a notice in the Dublin Gazette in order that he may resort to or revive the powers under which the Irish people have suffered during the past three or four years, so that absolutely nothing has been gained to the liberties of the Irish people. The existence of that Act is a perpetual menace to those liberties. The Act is retrospective, and consequently the tyrannical power still exists and may at any time be exercised. Further, let me ask in what way has the Government reduced its means or power of action? Has any portion of the army been disbanded? Have the Government made the slightest reduction in their legal equipment? What has become of the Resident Magistrates? Have any of them been turned out of office? No. I once asked the right hon. Gentleman why Mr. Cecil Roche had given up a position as Sub-Commissioner under the Land Act, for which he received £1,000 a year, and has accepted re-employment as a Resident Magistrate, for which he only got £650 or £700 a year. "Oh," said the right hon. Gentleman, "it is because, I presume, he prefers a more durable appointment at a smaller salary." Therefore I assume that the extraordinary system administered by the Resident Magistrates is to be permanently continued, although we are told that the need for it has been got rid of. If, as I assert, the Government have found it impossible to dispense with the Resident Magistrates, it is useless and absurd for them to tell us they have abandoned coercion in Ireland. I now come to another question. We were told in former years that the National League was a thing of the past and had ceased to be a national organisation. But what, I ask, has become of the proclamations issued by the Government in the different counties where the League prevailed? In the town of Tipperary it is a fact that the League was disbanded at the moment the organisation was threatened, and yet that town has been placed under the ban of the Government to such an extent that if any hon. Member from this side of the House should walk through the streets of Tipperary he is followed, dogged, and watched by the police just the same as when the League was in existence. What, I ask, is the real source of whatever disorder may exist in Ireland? It is generally admitted that one of the greatest dangers to the peace of Ireland is the existence of a large body of evicted tenants, and the only places where the right hon. Gentleman has not taken off his proclamation are those in which the Plan of Campaign tenants remain in an evicted condition. I certainly did expect that we should have heard from the right hon. Gentleman that something like an effort has been made to restore these evicted tenants to their homes. Many of these people are in a most pitiable condition. Take the case of the Clanricarde estate. No Englishman can have the least conception of the state of things existing on that property. There is more law and order and peace in Mashonaland or any other African colony containing a population of hostile savages than there is on the Clanricarde estate at the present moment. There you have the landlord's agent making raids on the cattle of the people just as if they belonged to a hostile tribe. There you have the people wakened by the sound of trumpets and the tramp of armed soldiers moving about in the interests of a landlord whom the Chief Secretary himself does not attempt to defend. How do the Government propose to remedy such a state of things? It is not for me to say what the Government intend to do. There is the Amendment proposed by the hon. Member for South Tyrone, dealing with the evicted tenants. When that Amendment was proposed I expressed my belief that, so far from being in the interests of the evicted tenants, it was all the other way, because it conceded nothing whatever to the evicted tenants that they did not possess before, whilst it enabled the landlord for the first time to make terms with their men before they were reinstated in their holdings, whereas formerly he had first to reinstate them. However, there is the Amendment; what will be its operation? Will it do anything with men like Lord Clanricarde, and to restore peace and harmony on the Clanricarde estate? That particular landlord stands in a different position from almost any other, because he has entirely neglected the first duties of a civilised landlord. It would be treated as absurd in this country for a man to own an estate, say in Armenia, and to allow it to be overridden by Kurds, whilst he remained here simply drawing his money from that estate, not caring sixpence what became of the people. It is absurd to say you would contemplate such a state of things with anything like complacency, or that you would do anything but reprobate the conduct of a landlord who divorced his sympathies entirely from his tenants, having no care as to what might become of them. I therefore say the Government have a duty in this matter to discharge altogether irrespective of the origin of the disputes. It is no answer to say to the general body of the Irish people "You brought this upon yourselves." Whether they made mistakes or not is not for me to discuss. They are men of Irish blood, of our own race, and Irishmen cannot but regard with feelings of the deepest anxiety and pain the fact that there are distributed over various counties some 2,000 or 3,000 homeless people with little resources except those they derive from the generosity and benevolence of their countrymen. It is no man's interest that they should be allowed to remain in their present position; on the contrary, the fact that they are told that they no longer have anything to hope from the continuance of agitation—as the hon. Member for South Tyrone probably would tell them—is to fill them with despair, and constitute a distinct menace to the public peace. Therefore, I do hope that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary is in a conciliatory mood, and will see, so far as in him lies, that something is done to amend this unfortunate position of affairs. I am bound to say—to do the right hon. Gentleman justice—that I have noticed in him a change of temper recently with regard to some of the phases of the Irish question. I congratulate him upon his concession to the long leaseholders, which I think was a wise and statesmanlike action on his part, and I am only sorry that he was not disposed to make his Bill a little wider, so as to include other classes of tenants. If, as I think is the case, his tour through the West and South of Ireland for the first time showed him the miserable and unhappy condition of the tenantry, and if he has for the first time begun to have something like an insight into the modes of life and habits of the people, and their necessities, I should hope that he would, in spite of any feeling of pride, and without allowing any feeling that he might be charged with inconsistency, to restrain him, go on a little further and endeavour, by such pressure as he can bring to bear on landlords such as Lord Clanricarde, to do something to restore these tenants to their holdings. I may be told that the right hon. Gentleman does not know what to do. I confess I should know what to do if I were in his position. He will say he must carry out the law. Well, there is law and law, and there are different methods of carrying out the law. We have seen that that is so in Ireland to a considerable extent. I think I should be disposed to say to Lord Clanricarde and men like him, "In Ireland the police are nearly 12,000 in number, and the amount allowed by Parliament for their maintenance is strictly limited by the Estimates." I should say that if all landlords required the police assistance they did, it would be impossible to police the entire country. I think that the use of arguments of that kind, and the carrying out of such arguments to a logical conclusion, would have the effect of reducing people, even of the mental calibre of Lord Clanricarde, to something like sense. I think that Lord Clanricarde is probably the worst of the entire crop; but with regard to the others, who are not in so bad a position, whose conduct is not nearly so bad as that of Lord Clanricarde, I would use to them an argument which it is not difficult to evolve from the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman himself. He said the other day that it did not enter into the mind of anyone to conceive a more preposterous idea than that the House would ever at any time of its future life advance one fraction more than —33,000,000 to buy out the landlords. I would say to men like Mr. Ponsonby, Lord Massereene, Mr. Smith-Barry, and Lord Lansdowne, "Here is —33,000,000. Are you going to get a share of it? Here are evicted tenants lying out in the cold. It is absurd to suppose that this Parliament will ever again vote money that will enable you to get rid of the undoubted burden that exists at this moment on your estates." And I would say, "It is the duty of the Government, where large police and military expenditure is thrown upon the State because of evictions and the continuance of boycotted farms, to try and reduce that expenditure by bringing due pressure to bear on the landlords." I will tell the Committee what I heard the other day in regard to the estate of Coolgraney. It seems that Mr. Brook has taken two or three planters on the estate, and he has put a lot of cattle there. And what are the police doing? Why, I hear they are engaged in preventing Mr. Brook's planters from stealing his cows. That shows the amount of confidence reposed by Mr. Brook in his planters. The Government absolutely have to protect the estate from them. The Chief Secretary may during the Recess devote his time in the most profitable manner to pressing on these landlords remonstrances or suggestions of the nature I have indicated, and, if so, he will have done something on which he may congratulate himself. I never thought I should live to see the day when, with regard to a man upon whose head so many vials of wrath have been poured out, an Irish Member occupying a responsible position would have been able to go down to the West of Ireland and shower blessings upon his enemy. That is a remarkable advance on which the right hon. Gentleman may congratulate himself. He may also congratulate himself on the fact that at the present moment a considerable fraction of the Irish representation is in absolute harmony with the Orange Party. They have taken up every cry which has made Orangeism odious in the minds of a large section of the Irish people. The right hon. Gentleman may even boast that, as the result of his working of the Coercion Act, an Irish Nationalist editor, who was nine months in Tullamore Gaol, is now, since the Carlow election, so convinced of the unfitness of his countrymen to govern themselves that he declares, not in any qualified way, but in bold set terms, that Home Rule is Rome Rule! Now, I think that is a tremendous fact for the right hon. Gentleman to congratulate himself on. He will be able to point to that as the result purely of his administration. The right hon. Gentleman tried to break the spirit of the Irish Party by coercion, and he failed; he tried to break up the Irish Party by the Special Commission, and that failed; and he must have come to the conclusion now that there are Courts more potent even than Coercion Courts; and, that being so, the right hon. Gentleman is entitled to all the credit. We know very well that the taking off of the proclamation of the Irish counties is entirely due to the firm administration of the right hon. Gentleman. When we have a good harvest in Ireland we know it does not come from the Almighty, but from the Conservative Government. The surplus in the Irish banks, and the like, all come from the Conservative Administration. I do not know what line the right hon. Gentleman intends to take in regard to the future. Last year I asked the right hon. Gentleman whether he intended to bring in a Bill for the Local Government of Ireland. It was promised in the Queen's Speech of that year, and I believe it was also promised in the Speech at the commencement of this Session. I think I am entitled to know whether the excuse that the Irish people have given themselves over to a prelate conspiracy will stand good in 1892. It is now only five years since the noble Lord the present explorer of Mashonaland promised us simultaneity and—I forget all the other words—oh, spontaneity, in connection with the Local Government of Ireland. We have waited—I will not say patiently—for five years, and we see nothing like an approach to the keeping of that promise. On the contrary, we are told we are to have a new Redistribution Bill, and a, Bill to deprive illiterates of their votes, and another Bill to prevent priests from being Irishmen, as I understand. The suggestion is that when a gentleman receives Holy Orders he is thereby debarred for all future time from taking any interest in the affairs of his country. Of course, we cannot expect from a Tory Government a satisfactory measure of Local Government. The Chief Secretary may, by means of such a measure, be able to satisfy a fraction of the Irish people. I am far from denying the possibility. But I and my friends will resist, whatever position others may take up, upon as full a measure of local government as England and Scotland have received, and we shall not hesitate, by reason of any junction that may take place between the Orangemen and certain persons on this side of the House, to reject any Bill that is less than was offered to England and Scotland. In conclusion, I will only say that the right hon. Gentleman has now had considerable experience in dealing with Irish affairs; he is a much wiser man than he was when he entered office; he is a somewhat older man, although his wisdom has come largely from the experience of his office, to which he has very closely and patiently devoted himself. I challenge him to declare in the face of Great Britain that he has effected the alteration of one jot or one tittle of the principles of patriotism and Irish nationality which the Irish people have always maintained. So far from weaning the people of Ireland from the paths of nationality and inducing them to accept anything less than they were willing to accept in 1886, as a whole the Irish people stand to-day exactly where they stood then. There may be, perhaps, a little confusion of Parties, owing to the misfortune which has occurred in their ranks, but as a whole, after five years of unparalleled coercion and "firmness of administration," they stand more determined in the assertion of their rights and liberties then at any previous period of their history.

The Debate as to the Vote for the Chief Secretary has been an interesting one, and very different in tone and temper from those which we have witnessed in past years; and as one of the consequences there are few points with which it is necessary that I should trouble the Committee. It is usual on the occasion of the taking of the Chief Secretary's Vote, that such specific matters should be brought before the attention of the Committee as call for explanation from the Chief Secretary. Few such points have been brought to the notice of the Committee to-night. Hon. Members have rather contented themselves with dealing generally with the past policy of the Government. They have abstained from bringing forward specific and particular accusations which require to be rebutted by the Chief Secretary in defending himself from criticism. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for North Longford, however, has put before me one or two points in regard to which some reply is necessary. The hon. and learned Member has drawn attention to the undoubted "fact that it is upon the Plan of Campaign Estates, and upon those estates almost alone, that threatening disorder now exists, and he has suggested that I, acting for the Government, should come forward and give advice to Lord Clanricarde, and possibly others, though he did not name them, which might end in a peaceful and speedy settlement of the disputes which have so long, unhappily, existed on those estates. It is perfectly true that if those who were concerned on either side in the controversy between landlords and tenants in Ireland had been willing to ask my advice, and to take it, there were cases in which much trouble might have been spared, and much suffering might have been prevented. But there is no use in offering advice to those who are unwilling to take it. I would have been very glad to proffer advice to some of the leaders of the Plan of Campaign—local and others—if I had thought such advice would have been of the slightest interest to them. I knew it would not, and I have never wasted my time or theirs by suggesting they should adopt a different course. In the same way, unless I had some ground for believing Lord Clanricarde would thank me for interfering in his private affairs, I did not think any public object would have been attained. The hon. and learned Gentleman has said that if he bad been Chief Secretary he would have ceased to protect the persons on Lord Clanricarde's Estate, who are now under police protection. What would have been the result of that policy? That a certain number of persons who now pursue their avocations—I will not say in comfort, but at all events in peace—would be murdered. I have no ground for believing that the assassination of two or three persons would have the slightest influence upon the tactics pursued by Lord Clanricarde, and I therefore do not think it would have been consistent with my duty to become an accomplice in the murder of these persons, especially if it would not have effected the further object the hon. and learned Gentleman desires. Then the hon. and learned Gentleman says, "How can you possibly boast that your policy has met with success when you have to keep up the same number of Resident Magistrates as you have always had?" I believe it was about 1884 that the number of Resident Magistrates reached its maximum, and I think it will be found that in addition to the 72, the normal or permanent number, Lord Spencer had no less than 10 additional Resident Magistrates for the purpose of carrying out the policy of the Administration of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian. During the tenure of office, which has been surveyed by so many speakers, the number of Resident Magistrates has been steadily diminished, and we have now for the first time for some years reduced the number of these Magistrates to the normal number. I think that is a satisfactory result; and in regard to the 72 Magistrates, I say neither do I contemplate diminishing the number, nor do I think any Government will contemplate diminishing it.

When the right hon. Gentleman speaks of the normal number, does he refer to the normal number since 1881?

Resident Magistrates were first appointed in 1824, but the number has varied from time to time. Seventy-two is recognised as the normal number. Then the hon. and learned Gentleman complains that the Lord Lieutenant has not been asked to exercise the prerogative of mercy with regard to Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien by shortening the term of their imprisonment. The hon. and learned Member must see there is no reasonable ground for that action, because those gentlemen would have served their time long ago had they not gone to America. Others associated with them in the trial and in the sentences have served their full term; and, under these circumstances, there does not appear any ground for interfering with the ordinary course of law. The hon. Member who opened the Debate recalled the attention of the Committee to the case in which two Dublin policemen were assaulted by two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary. The offenders were brought before a Dublin Magistrate and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. They petitioned the Lord Lieutenant, and His Excellency, after consultation with the Magistrate, commuted the sentence to a fine. I do not think there is anything in the case which requires me to further notice it, or which need exercise the mind of the hon. Gentleman who brought the question before the Committee. I do not propose to attempt any valuation or estimate of the success of the Irish administration during the term I have been Chief Secretary; but no one can deny that the state of Ireland, whether it is from the point of view of the prevalence of crime or of material prosperity, has very greatly improved in the last four years. It would be quite superfluous if I were to attempt to apportion the credit for that state of things to the various causes which may have, and no doubt have, contributed to it. Certainly I do not think anyone can accuse me of either in or out of the House boasting that the present state of affairs is due to my administration. I have never attempted to exaggerate any change for the better; but when the hon. and learned Gentleman asks what we have to show for our five years' administration, he will admit we have something to show in the way of public works and the relief of distress. While we may not have succeeded in altering the opinion of any man in Ireland with regard to the Local Government of that country, we have shown there are advantages to be derived from the government of Ireland by an Imperial Parliament—advantages it would be difficult to convince the Irish people, or any impartial audience, could be derived in anything like the same degree or the same measure from a Parliament sitting on College Green, and commanding the resources, and those resources alone, which a Parliament in College Green would command. The hon. and learned Gentleman has accused the Government of having played with the question of Local Government. I would remind the hon. and learned Member and others that Ireland, to put it moderately, has had at least her full share of the time of Parliament during the last five years. The hon. and learned Gentleman will no doubt think that the time of Parliament would have been much better occupied in passing a Local Government Bill than in passing the Crimes Act. But, putting that Act out of account, I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman will admit that the Land Act of 1887, the Ashbourne Act of 1888, the Land Bill of this Session, the Light Railways Act, and other measures too numerous to specify, have really employed not only Ireland's fair share, but a great deal more than Ireland's fair share, of the time of Parliament. With regard to the next Session, I certainly hope we shall be able to bring forward a measure for Irish Local Government, though it seems from the remarks of hon. Gentlemen opposite that nothing we can do as to the government of Ireland will satisfy any Irishman. I do not know whether I gathered that if we do bring in a Local Government Bill based, broadly speaking, on the same principles as those which have governed us in framing similar measures for England and Scotland, we are to count on the support of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for North Longford. [Mr. T. M. HEALY: Certainly.] I hope the time will not be too long delayed before the hon. and learned Gentleman is able to practically show us the value of the support he has just now promised.

^* (7.40.) : In reference to some remarks of the hon. Member for South Tyrone, I desire to say there is no constituency in Ireland so free, on the whole, from crime as my own, and yet in that constituency there have been within the last two months prosecutions without any justifiable ground. As a matter of fact, the Crimes Act is still, to all intents and purposes, as much in operation in Ireland now as it ever has been. The withdrawal of the Proclamations was not intended for the benefit of Ireland, but for the benefit of Tory platform orators in England. It is true that active prosecutions under the Coercion Act are fewer than before. We find a reason for that not in the fact that the Coercion Act has been repealed or that the Chief Secretary's policy has been changed, but in the fact that there are circumstances which make the hostility to the right hon. Gentleman's policy less active than formerly. So soon as our internal dissensions are healed—and I trust it will not be long before practical unanimity has been secured—the Coercion Act will be ready to prevent active opposition to the Chief Secretary's rule in Ireland. The hon. Member for South Tyrone talked of the general prosperity in Ireland, which he attributed in a large measure to the Chief Secretary's administration; but, strange to say, he went on to state that though the wages paid on relief works were what he described truly as a miserable pittance—from 7s. to 12s. a week—there had been such a rush of the people to the relief works that the ordinary crops had been neglected. If that was true, it only showed that the people felt that their rents were such that they could not cultivate their farms and reap as their reward so large a sum as 7s. a week. There could not be a stronger commentary upon the remarks of the hon. Member for South Tyrone than such a state of things. If the Chief Secretary had wished to meet the distress in the West of Ireland, these statements show that he had better have reduced the rents in the parts of Ireland affected. These rents are no longer sacred. By the Act of 1887 the Government have reduced rents fixed in the earlier years of the Land Act. But the reductions ended with the spring—with the May gale of 1890. It would have been wiser, instead of spending large sums of Imperial money, to have reduced rents in these cases, to have shown the people there was something for them to earn on their own farms in the usual course of industry in the district. The Chief Secretary has made one omission from his speech. He was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for North Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy) to give some hint or suggestion to his friends and supporters in Ireland, to the hon. Member for South Hunts, and Lord Clanricarde, that it was his wish—going no further than that—that they should restore their evicted tenants. There is a clause inserted in the Land Purchase Bill which will enable these tenants to be restored, but that clause depends for its efficacy upon the action of the landlords. Against the will of the landlord evicted tenants cannot be restored to their holdings. If anything is to be done under that clause it must be by a change of intention on the part of landlords, and whence is the inspiration of that change to come if not from the Chief Secretary himself? The Chief Secretary says he does not like to give advice that may be declined, and he quoted, as a parallel case, advice to those who promoted the Plan of Campaign; but surely the right hon. Gentleman must admit the distinction between advice given to his political friends and to his political opponents? When my hon. Friends (Mr. Dillon and Mr. W. O'Brien) were being prosecuted and imprisoned under the coercion law they were not amenable to advice from the right hon. Gentleman. But landlords like the hon. Member for South Hunts and Lord Clanricarde occupy a very different position. Without breaking the law, by "pressure within the law," the Chief Secretary could reduce the income of Lord Clanricarde to less than nil. Lord Clanricarde knows that but for the Chief Secretary's support he would have received much less than he has received in recent years in rents from Ireland. Surely that is a slight difference in position? It is not a very extravagant thing when my hon. Friend asks the right hon. Gentleman to express a wish in this House that those who support him in Ireland, those who have been relying on his support, should restore their evicted tenants to their holdings. It is but for the right hon. Gentleman to express that wish; he has almost supreme power to direct the forces of the Crown, and I hope that we may have some expression of opinion in this direction.

As I moved the reduction of the Vote, I may be allowed to add a few words before we go to a Division. The speech from the Chief Secretary was of a conciliatory character; but notwithstanding the result, to which he points, we still cannot regard his policy in Ireland as having been other than disastrous. The present truce in Ireland is partly due to the fact that the Coercion Act has not been enforced as heretofore; and if the right hon. Gentleman had continued as he began, the opposition to his policy would be as vigorous as ever. Of course, the legislation of the last 10 years, initiated by the last Government and continued by the present Government, has had effect; it would be strange if it had not, and there is also the hope of the advent of another Party to power. The causes that have conduced to the present state of quiet in Ireland lie quite outside the policy of the Government. Just as in France, under the third Napoleon, there was for a time the appearance of prosperity and contentment, so there is in Ireland; but still the causes of discontent exist; they are dormant, but they have not been removed. In a paper read before the Statistical Society, the Registrar General has dealt with the present progress in Ireland; and anyone who looks at the question, and compares the state of things in Ireland as compared with England and Scotland in the last decade, must recognise that there is little real progress. There is a decline in population in Ireland, and, therefore, a distribution of wealth over a smaller number. The remarks of the Registrar General on the decline of the birth-rate give cause for serious reflection. The young people marry and emigrate, and their children are born out of Ireland, and this is anything but a satisfactory state of things to contemplate. There is, happily, a decrease in crime, but this is due to other influences than those of the Coercion Act. It would be a dangerous idea to encourage, that the decrease in crime is due to a decline in the desire of the people for more free and liberal institutions. It is because we still believe that the policy of the right hon. Gentleman has retarded, not assisted, the progress of peace and prosperity in Ireland that we renew our protest by moving the reduction of the Vote.

^* (8.0.) : The Chief Secretary has congratulated himself to-night, and I think not altogether without reason, on the fact that in this Debate we have not heard any allegation that might affect his conduct personally, apart from his conduct generally, as a Member of the Government. Now, viewing the fact that a great part of the Session was taken up by the right hon. Gentleman in his official and sometimes in his personal capacity in piloting through the House what the Government consider the chief legislative work of the Session, and considering the fact that I reluctantly considered it my duty to take some part in the discussions upon that Bill, I think the right hon. Gentleman will himself expect that I should take the opportunity afforded by this Vote to say something in reference to his action, and to his absenting himself on certain occasions during the Debates upon the Land Purchase Bill.

The hon. Member would be entirely out of order in taking that course.

^* : I do not quite understand, Sir. Does your ruling preclude me from discussing the conduct of the right hon. Gentleman in the House on the Committee stage of the Land Bill?

Yes; certainly.

^* : In that case my remarks will be cut very short. I had trusted to this opportunity presented by the discussion of the Vote for the salary of his office to mention such facts as that the right hon. Gentleman absented himself from the House on important occasions when I had just risen and announced that I was about to controvert his arguments. However, Sir, if your ruling is so, stringent as to prevent my doing this on this Vote I do not know with my limited experience if I shall be able to find another opportunity. I will only now in very general terms make one statement. The right hon. Gentleman complained of my making too many speeches, but he himself was the causer inasmuch as he refused to make a reply—

Order, order!

^* : I am not going into details; I only wish to say that the right hon. Gentleman has at last discovered that the points which I pressed on the Committee have proved to be points of real importance. Through his colleagues the right hon. Gentleman has admitted the fact, and has introduced in another place, changes which, if he had considered them as I suggested them in this House, would have saved the time of the Committee to a very great degree.

I was not present when this Debate originated, but I understand that my hon. Friend has made a Motion for a reduction of the Vote. We are precluded from dealing with many subjects we could wish to raise in reference to the action of the Chief Secretary; but I think it would have been a great mistake if this Vote had been allowed to pass unchallenged, for that would have amounted to an admission on our part that coercion has to some extent, at any rate, succeeded, whereas we all know that it has not succeeded in one atom, jot, tittle, or iota. It is not due to the action of the Coercion Act that things are not in Ireland exactly where they were when the right hon. Gentleman started in 1886. It has signally failed all along the line. We have had from the hon. Member for South Tyrone a speech not quite in his usual style, and with less of that gall and bitterness he usually contrives to introduce into debate upon Irish questions and at the expense of Irish interests. The hon. Member for Boston (Mr. Atkinson) is mistaken in taking the hon. Member for South Tyrone as a typical Irishman, for, as I thought everybody knew, the hon. Gentleman is half a Manxman. However, as I have said, coercion has signally failed in Ireland. The hon. Member for South Tyrone gave us a statement in reference to Irish banks, and of their deposits having increased in recent years.

^* : What I said was that in the last fortnight banks had paid dividends of 10 per cent., and I said that was a symptom of prosperity.

From time to time the hon. Member favours us with these statements, but they indicate little more than that among certain classes there has been an increase in deposits. I can certainly say, and that on good authority— of medical men among others in Dublin, Cork, and Galway—that there is little money in circulation. Let anybody who knows Ireland, and remembers what Dublin and Cork were 10 years ago, go there to-day and see what a change for the worse has taken place! There is not the amount of money in circulation as of old. You see large shops shut up all over the place, and all in consequence of the Chief Secretary's misgovernment. If the Government want to see the success of their coercion in Ireland, let them go down to the quays at Queenstown in April, May, and the beginning of June, and see the thousands of stalwart young men and young women who are driven away from their country by your beautiful Administration. These are plain facts that you should face and understand, and you should not allow yourselves to be led away by the glamour which the hon. Member for South Tyrone on one side and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Boston on the other throw on the subject. On every hand we hear the same tale. Take every one of the Boards of which the Chief Secretary is an ex officio member. Take the Local Government Board—

Order, order!

I will not go into the matter, but the Chief Secretary is the head of the Department in Ireland, and is, therefore, responsible for its shortcomings and misdemeanours.

Order, order!

Well, the same thing may be said as to the right hon. Gentleman's tenure of office as the head of the Fishery Board. I will deal with these points in extenso later on. I now only mention them in passing. Not long ago I requested the right hon. Gentleman to carry out some works in a district near Macroom, and he answered that he would consider the matter; but what took place? Some of the right hon. Gentleman's officers went down to the poor district that lies between Ballybourney and. Inchageela, where the people live in wretched dwellings and are always, even in the best period of the year, in a miserable condition. I am sure that everybody going amongst these people would agree that something should be done for them. Unless something is done for them they will again suffer this year in the acute way they did last winter. We find that wherever the right hon. Gentleman went in the course of his Irish tour, and wherever the people bowed down to him there money was spent; but the same state of things exists as existed three years ago, when people were taken up again and again, and got a couple of months' imprisonment for saying "Boo for Balfour." I should not have got anything for Inchageela had it not been for the fact that four women waved their aprons and cheered the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman likes to pay in kind. The people cheered, and he paid for the cheer, and I am glad of it, and I hope we shall get more assistance in the same way. But what has the right hon. Gentleman done for Ireland as a whole? He has worked innumerable evils for her, from which she will not be able to recover for many a long day. The spirit of officialism in Ireland to-day is worse than in Russia. [Laughter.] Hon. Members may laugh; but before they do so I invite them to go into some of the districts in Ireland where policemen and other creatures of the right hon. Gentleman are put at the head of affairs, and to all intents and purposes serve the purpose of the BashiBazouks under the Turks or the military police under the Russian Government. I say that during the right hon. Gentleman's administration the Judiciary and the Magistracy have changed. I remember the time when the Resident Magistrates were gentlemen and were looked up to by the people, but now what sort of men have we? Such men as Colonel Caddell, who has been placed over a Registry Office, because he wanted a permanent place, and because he showed himself fitted for it by giving an Irish Member the lie direct. I say that in every way Her Majesty's government in Ireland has borne Dead Sea fruit. The government of Ireland for years to come will not recover from the baneful influence of the present Chief Secretary. The noble relative of the right hon. Gentleman, who in 1886 declared that the Irish people were worse than Hottentots, asserted that if he had sway in Ireland he would reduce it to a perfect state of calm. Well, has he succeeded in obliterating moonlighting in Kerry? I say he has not. But I say, further, that the Government do not try to root out criminal conspiracies, but spend their every effort in the vain attempt to put down legal combinations which would not be interfered with in this or any other civilised country save Ireland. The Chief Secretary, by the present horrible system of coercion, strikes at the freedom and the privileges of the subject, and very frequently shirks the issue when he has to do with criminals. We know that the Irish police have forged calumnies of boycotted persons, and we know that they have been backed up by the Resident Magistrates and the Dublin Castle officials, who want to make hay while the sun shines. While the Conservative Government are in power, they want to make as much money as they can, knowing that when the sunlight of liberty and justice illumines our dear island all these men and their claims will melt away. I think that in a little time we shall be able to see the signs of dawning prosperity in Ireland. The most significant cause of the improved state of things in Ireland at present has been overlooked. It is this. Ireland sees the wane of Toryism and the downfall of officialism, and believes in the promises made by the English democracy. She knows that ere long the present system of Government will be swept away. Her people have been able—and I say, thank God for it!—to put up with the reproaches and insults of the Head of the Government, who calls them Hottentots—although in 1891 he gives them what a Liberal Government was ruined for trying to give in 1885. The Irish people believe in the justice of their cause, and trust to the good faith of the English democracy, and that has had the effect of clearing away many of the clouds that have lowered over our country. Another thing which has done good has been the successful strikes which have lately taken place. I would just refer to one other point. We can all remember how hon. Members opposite who talk so much about law and order used to receive the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian whenever it was mentioned in their Tory Clubs and other places of resort. They used to say he ought to be shot and that sort of thing; in fact, everything in the shape of violent language that can be conceived was considered by Tory gentlemen to be only too good for the right hon. Gentleman. Now, however, most of those gentlemen seem to have learned a little wisdom and to display a little more sense than at the time I refer to. Within the past three years they have materially modified their mode of dealing with the Irish people, and now it is no longer necessary for our Irish aristocracy, or would-be aristocrats, to cultivate an English accent, because it will not do to speak with an Irish brogue. The Irish landlords are beginning to see the necessity of doing something for themselves, instead of trusting, as heretofore, to be bolstered up by Government grants or other kinds of adventitious support. The right hon. Gentleman will see, if he will only look into the matter and will judge for himself, that Irish landlords who in 1886–7 would have thought it a degradation to put their sons to a trade, are now beginning to understand the necessity of cultivating trade, and for once in their lives are putting their sons to work. I am disposed to think that the Chief Secretary at the termination of his fourth or fifth year of office begins to understand that what comes from our side of the House is absolutely true and correct; and I am glad to see the right hon. Gentleman treating the Irish Members with some consideration, and giving them really polite and courteous replies when questions are addressed to him. I am delighted to see the great advance that has been made in the House of Commons in this direction, even although it has taken place at the eleventh hour. I trust that when the twelfth hour comes we shall be able to count among the permanent friends of Ireland the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, who has already come so far on the road to conciliation. I hope that before long he will take a longer and bolder step; and that although he has made mistakes which he will, perhaps, confess in his management of the affairs of Ireland, I nevertheless look forward with hope to the day when there will be a complete and thorough re-organisation of Irish administration—such a re-organisation as even our Tory adversaries are beginning to admit can only take place when Ireland obtains the right to manage her own affairs. (8.38.)

I do not wish to detain the Committee more than a few moments, but there are a few observations of the right hon. Gentleman that require comment. The Chief Secretary remarked upon a difference between this Debate and Debates in former years in the absence of specific cases of complaint against his action, but there have been some specific instances, such as that referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Waterford, and he failed to reply to a definite and specific charge I brought forward. I stated that in his speech at Newcastle in September last the right hon. Gentleman prejudged and prejudiced the case of certain parties in a case before the Courts then pending. It was a case to be heard before Tipperary Magistrates, in which the police were summoned for assault. The right hon. Gentleman asserted, in effect, the innocence of the police, and, by implication, asserted that the civilians, including some Members of Parliament, were really the persons open to censure. I gave a quotation from the right hon. Gentleman's speech, and I think that is a definite and distinct allegation against his administration, and against himself personally. The right hon. Gentleman has rather jeered at the observation of my hon. Friend, that he has not done what he might have done in influencing landlords towards justice and fair-play to their tenants; that he has not used his influence in restraint of what amounts to a policy of extermination. Without any violation of the law, by the exercise of pressure within the law, he might have checked the policy of extermination pursued by Lord Clanricarde. Upon the Police Vote we shall have an opportunity of calling attention to this more particularly. It was within the power of the Chief Secretary to have represented that large bodies of police could not be withdrawn from their other duties to assist in carrying out evictions. So long as there remain a large body of tenants evicted from their holdings, it is hopeless to expect that social order will be established on a durable basis. I do not say that the right hon. Gentleman has boasted of the success of his coercive policy, but his followers and supporters do proclaim on every possible occasion the success of his courageous, able, and statesmanlike administration. We traverse all these statements, and can show that the diminution of crime and the restoration of order have been due to other and totally different causes than his friends put forward. I do not accuse the right hon. Gentleman of boasting, but his Party boast that his policy has been a success. As a matter of fact, since 1887, where the reign of coercion has been most rigorous, where it has been carried out with the utmost brutality on the part of the police, and the most unscrupulous partiality on the part of Resident Magistrates, there it has most signally failed. For election purposes the policy has been partially repealed, but virtually there has been no repeal. According to a legal fiction, and by notice in the Dublin Gazette you may unproclaim certain districts under certain sections of the Act, but it is merely a legal fiction, for coercion still hangs over the country, and can be re-imposed by a single action of the Lord Lieutenant. The right hon. Gentleman may relieve all Ireland from the Act; but if he only keeps it in operation in a small district such as "Ireland's Eye," then, by the change of venue and special juries, cases from all Ireland may be sent to be tried there. The whole thing is a legal fiction intended to delude as it has deluded, such as the hon. Member for Boston (Mr. Atkinson). The right hon. Gentleman says the Government are not to be blamed because they have not carried out the promise of Local Government, contained in the Queen's Speech of 1886 and the celebrated speech of the then leader of the House (Lord Randolph Churchill), and he says the time of the House has been occupied with other Irish measures, with light railways and land purchase. That may be so, but the Government took Office pledged to Local Government for Ireland—not to land purchase and light railways, but to Local Government on lines similar to the measures passed for England and Scotland. I join in saying that the Irish Members would welcome a measure for Local Government for Ire- land framed on the lines of the measures passed for England and Scotland, but nothing less will satisfy us. We will not be put off with a shadow, and any insufficient or circumscribed measure it will be our duty to resist.

(9.27.) The Committee divided:— Ayes 56; Noes 96.—(Div. List, No. 365.)

Original Question again proposed.

I desire to call attention to one point, which is seldom made the subject of comment in these Debates. I think the Vote of£2,000 for the salary of the Under Secretary ought not to pass without challenge. The gentleman who now occupies this post was very good at first, and was against landlordism, but he has gradually fallen under the deadening influence of Dublin Castle, and has lent himself more and more to nasty ways and methods. If I had any desire to deal with this matter in a strong way I should certainly move to reduce the Estimate by the Vote for the Under Secretary, but I do not think any practical object would be gained by attacking an individual who may have been led astray—as many people, even Members of Parliament, like the hon. Member for South Tyrone, have been led astray under the sway of the Chief Secretary. But in regard to another item, that for the Inspectors of Lunatic Asylums, there is a particular definite point to which I wish to call attention—one accentuated not merely by people of the same pursuasion as ours, but by Conservatives, Liberals, and Liberal Unionists. One and all have condemned the present system as administered by Dublin Castle in connection with this matter. In connection with the lunatic asylums of the country, you have a number of Governors chosen directly by the Lord Lieutenant, in certain cases with the assent of the localities. But these gentlemen, being sent to carry on the business of these particular Boards, have no power whatsoever of dealing with the construction of fresh buildings which it may be thought necessary to provide to meet the wants and requirements of these unfortunate people. I remember, not so long ago, when I happened to be up in rather a remote part of our island, near Ballina, taking up a Conservative paper. I certainly was convinced by it—and I am not easily convinced by any Tory paper—that this Department is extremely unfairly and very badly administered. This conviction was brought home to my mind in consequence of the remarks I read in this newspaper calling attention to the way they were being treated in County Mayo by the Dublin Castle officials. It appears that they remonstrated, and that what they wanted to get done they could not get done, and that on every occasion when they wanted anything done an official had to travel down from Dublin Castle to do it. That alone would tend to swell the item under sub-head "E" for travelling expenses of the Inspectors, and so forth. It does appear rather ridiculous that when you have a number of gentlemen—I do not say the best you could get, for, as a matter of fact, all these Governors in Ireland are drawn mainly from the landed aristocracy of the various counties by the authorities at Dublin Castle—on these Boards you ought to let them deal with the requirements of the patients. A great friend of my own, Mr. Alderman O'Brien, of Cork, who was selected by the Council of the City of Cork again and again as a proper gentleman to represent the city on the Asylums Board, again and again was rejected simply because he happened to be a Nationalist. He was rejected, and yet members of the Board are gathered from the most obscure points, and against the wish of the city are placed on the Board simply because they happen to have Tory proclivities. That is not fair, and will not tend to the satisfactory working of these institutions. But I would point out that even on a Board so constituted, on which we have no representation there is no power to deal with buildings, Poor Dr. Nugent, who was recently an Inspector, discussed this very point with me. He said it appeared very absurd that the Government could not trust any Board. As a matter of fact, I think that in most localities properly elected people, who have the best interests of the local population at heart, might very reasonably be trusted to see that these unfortunate lunatics suffer no risk. I ask the Chief Secretary point blank whether something cannot be done to give the Boards of Governors some share in the dealing with local wants and requirements? Again, I ask how it comes to pass that you allow so many of these afflicted people to pass their lives in badly-appointed quarters? There is a vast difference between the treatment of the insane in the workhouses in Ireland and in the properly constituted asylums. In every respect it is better than the insane should be treated in the regular asylums; and in the hope that the Committee will obtain some satisfactory reply upon the question of lunacy administration from the Chief Secretary, I beg to move the reduction of the Vote by the sum of £1,000.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Item D, Salaries of Inspectors of Lunatic Asylums, &c. be reduced by £1,000."— (Dr. Tanner.)

^* : There is one point on which I am in agreement with the hon. Member for Mid Cork, and that relates to the necessity of the Boards of Governors having more control. I have just come from the North of Ireland, where I found this question was exciting great interest. One of the Boards of the Northern Asylums wished to purchase land and enlarge their premises, but the whole thing had to be done by the Board of Control in Dublin. The land was acquired; but the people who sold it, finding the Government were the purchasers, put a much higher price on it than they otherwise would have done. I am much more afraid of Public Boards starving the interests of local asylums and workhouses than I am of their extravagance. I should be glad if the Chief Secretary would look into the question of the powers of the Board of Control, on the one hand, and of the Local Governors on the other.

The same kind of grievance exists in my district of Cork. The local Governors are not chosen on any proper franchise, but the Lord Lieutenant has a large power of selection, and surely the gentlemen chosen might be trusted to exercise dis- crimination in regard to the affairs of the asylum. Things are going from bad to worse, for the local Governors are being generally deprived of their power. In the case of the Cork District Lunatic Asylum, the Board of Control sent down an Inspector, who certified for a large expenditure without the slightest consultation with the Board of Governors. That certainly strikes a blow at the principle of Local Government. I trust the Chief Secretary will give his immediate attention to the subject, and be able to devise some means by which the Local Bodies will have some voice in the management of the asylums.

The matter is one of very great importance, and I think I may claim to have done much to improve the condition of affairs. As to local control, the existing system cannot be modified, or modified permanently, without statutory power; but I have done my best, outside statutory authorisation, to induce localities to suggest to the Lord Lieutenant for appointment persons whom they think may fairly represent the localities. But there is a much more important question than that, namely, lunacy administration from a medical point of view. Ireland is scandalously behind England and Scotland in lunacy administration, and I appointed a Commission to investigate the whole question, and two Reports have been laid on the Table of the House to which I strongly invite the attention of hon. Members. In consequence of the recommendations of that Commission I have done almost all I can in the absence of legislation. Legislation is earnestly required, and I hope to be able to introduce it very soon. The Board of Control has been remodelled; and though it may be that in one or two instances it has exercised its authority in the manner hon. Gentlemen and those locally concerned in lunacy administration may think objectionable, I remind them that lunacy is a subject which must be in the main under the control or under the close supervision of the Central Government which contributes so largely to the support of lunatics. I quite agree that as much discretion as possible should be left to local representatives. This, however, is a large question to go into now, but I assure the Committee it is receiving our serious attention.

I do not at all controvert the position that the Central Body should have a large share in the control of lunacy matters, but my complaint is that they assume all the control.

I hope the right hon. Gentleman will consider whether the Boards of Governors cannot be made more representative than they are at present. It is true that the Central Government contribute largely to the support of lunatics, but at the same time a certain amount of the county rate goes to the support of asylums; but notwithstanding this, the ratepayers have no representation whatsoever on the Boards of Governors. Until quite recently we did not know what went on at the meetings of the Governors. Formerly the meetings were held in private, but now the Press is admitted to some of them, and we know, to some extent, what goes on.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

(10.2.) Original Question again proposed.

There is a point I wish to raise in connection with the Irish Fisheries, and that is the threatened destruction or serious injury of the herring, hake, and mackerel fishing in the South of Ireland. I have asked a question on the subject, and the substance of the Chief Secretary's reply was that at present the Government have no power to interfere. The matter is very urgent, and I think there may possibly be some means found by which the Inspector of Fisheries can deal with the grievance of which I complain. The deep sea fishing from Youghal to Baltimore and along the south west coast is roughly divided into seasons; first of all, there is the mackerel, then the hake, and then the herring fishing. Latterly Scotch and Manx boats have come there to fish, and it has been proved beyond all doubt that these boats in fishing before a cer- tain date in June catch immense numbers of immature mackerel and hake. Of course, they are destroyed. Experienced fishermen on the south coast, and Sir Thomas Brady, are of opinion that if the practice is pursued for any length of time it will lead to the extinction of the mackerel and hake fishings. I am not acquainted with International Law, but I am convinced that where there is a will there is a way. If the Government will not, or cannot, do anything, I should like to know whether I should be prosecuted under the Criminal Law Procedure Act if I went down to Kin-sale and advised the fishermen to boycott and refuse supplies to those men who indulge in this wholesale destruction of fish? It is impossible that the inhabitants can stand tamely by and see strangers destroying with impunity the fishing which is the principal source of their revenue.

The fishing the hon. Gentleman complains of takes place outside the three mile limit; in fact, it occurs about 20 miles from the shore. [Mr. FLYNN: About 12 miles.] The Government, therefore, have no more control over the sea in which the fishing occurs than they have over the seas on the coast of South America or of China. It is part of the ocean highway, which is common to all nations of the earth. We could pass a Municipal Act which would prevent any English or Scotch or Manx boat fishing there, but it would be quite impossible to pass an Act which would prevent any French boat fishing there. The result would be to leave the field entirely open to foreigners. The evil is a grave one, and is receiving attention.

I venture to say that if the state of affairs my hon. Friend complains of existed on the French coast there would be a pretty kettle of fish. The French fishermen would not put up with any of that sort of nonsense. Would the right hon. Gentleman in his wisdom advise us to boycott the outsiders who are destroying the Irish fisheries? If the Government have no power, the people must protect themselves. To make a municipal law calling upon the Scotch and Manx fishermen to discontinue this injurious practice would certainly be a step in the right direction. Then we should be able, with the assistance of a little boycotting, to drive off the French fishermen from our coasts, and our fishing interests would be safeguarded. I hope it will not be necessary for us to take a Division. It is really a matter of life and death almost to our Irish fishermen. The takes of fish on the banks from Cork Harbour to Cape Clear are the means of livelihood for a large seaboard population. If the right hon Gentleman will introduce some municipal regulation—it strikes me as a novel phrase as applied to sea pursuits—I am perfectly certain we shall be able to safeguard what ought to be a thriving, improving, prosperous industry.

I have been assured that the injury is not done by French or by any foreign fishermen, but by British subjects, who would be amenable to such a municipal rule as the right hon Gentleman has spoken of. There is another matter to which I wish to draw attention—

Before we leave this point, and in the hope of obtaining something further from the right hon. Gentleman, I beg to move a reduction of the Vote under this head of £1,000.

(10.20.) Motion made, and Question put, "That Item G, Salaries of Inspectors of Irish Fisheries, be reduced by £1,000."— (Dr. Tanner.)

The Committee divided:—Ayes 72; Noes 117.—(Div. List, No. 366.)

Original Question again proposed.

Before we take the Vote there is a matter to which I wish to direct attention in connection with the Fishery Board. As the right hon. Gentleman is aware, two years ago an Act was passed regulating steam trawling on the coast of Ireland, and this is a matter which much concerns the South of Ireland. Three years ago an Act was passed prohibiting steam trawling within the three-mile limit on the coast of Scotland. Steam trawling there had done so much harm to the fishing that Parliament was forced to interfere. But the result is, that the trawlers thus prohibited from pursuing their calling on the Scotch coast have, in some instances, turned their attention to the Irish coasts, and there is reason to suppose they will do so in increasing numbers. Now, if they did harm on the Scotch coast, equally they may be expected to do harm on the Irish coast. The Act introduced for Ireland two years ago allows steam trawling on the Irish coasts, giving the Fishery Board power to prohibit it in districts where they see fit to do so. The view I took at the time was that the Act should be prohibitory, and that the Board should only allow it in exceptional instances. I did not, however, press my opposition, for it might have prevented the passage of the Bill. I remember my dear old friend Mr. Biggar wanted to kill the Bill, for he thought it utterly bad. We thought that inasmuch as the capital and influence were on the side of the proprietors of steam trawlers, it would be more fair to cast on them the onus of proof that steam trawling on any part of the coast would do no injury to the fishing generally. However, the Bill did not pass in that form, and steam trawling is allowed everywhere, unless the Inspectors prohibit it. I would ask the Chief Secretary to call the special attention of the Inspectors to the importance of this matter and to the harm which steam trawling has done on the Scotch coast. In my own constituency I have assisted in calling the attention of inspectors to this, and after local inquiry they have prohibited steam trawling in certain districts, and I have no doubt they would be willing to take the same course in other districts if cause were shown, but they have much to do, and this may escape attention unless it is specially pressed upon their notice.

I do not think the hon. Gentleman need be under any apprehension as to any large amount of steam trawling on the Irish coast. If there had been any intention on the part of those interested in steam trawling to transfer their operations to Ireland from Scotland they would be there now, but I understand that there are but five steam trawlers on the whole coast. Whenever complaints are made of steam trawling, the Inspectors give careful attention to the matter, with the result that in almost every case steam trawling has been prohibited within the three-mile limit. On pages 25 and 26 of the Annual Report of the Commissioners the hon. Gentleman will see what has been done in the past year. The attention of the Inspectors is fully drawn to the subject, and I have not the slightest doubt that they will continue to keep a watchful eye upon it.

The Report of the Scotch Commissioners shows the great progress made in Scotch fisheries during recent years, and these Reports contain much valuable information. The Chief Secretary, who happens to be a Scotchman, will recognise this, and I hope the same rules and regulations which have been so advantageous to Scotch fishermen may be applied to Ireland.

^* : It is within my personal knowledge that on certain parts of the west coast the Inspectors pay the greatest attention to this matter. There is steam trawling and steam trawling, and most of the steam trawling is confined to depths local boats cannot reach.

There is a matter to which I desire to refer—the control exercised by the Board over lunatic asylums in County Carlow—

That item has been passed by.

There is a point in connection with the Veterinary Department which I really think deserves a little attention. There are two Travelling Inspectors, each receiving £300 a year. One of these gentlemen, I find, is a retired commander in the Royal Navy, as such receiving £350 a year. Now, here is a good, or bad, example of the kind of jobbery that is carried on under the ægis of Dublin Castle. I do not think you could find an appointment more calculated to raise ridicule upon the Department, and expose the way in which these appointments are made to various positions. Why should a retired commander of the Royal Navy be appointed to the Veterinary Department? I could understand it if the gentleman had served in the Horse Marines. In order to get some explanation on the subject, I beg to move to reduce the Vote by £300. This ex-nautical Veterinary Inspector draws from the country £650 a year, but I do not think that we are called upon to agree to this pitchforking of Castle favourites into these positions. The other evening we had a long discussion, initiated by the hon. Member for the Partick Division (Mr. J. P. Smith) on the shipment of cattle from Ireland to the Clyde, and the hon. Member made grave complaints of the manner in which the cattle are treated. I think this is pertinent to that subject, and the hon. Member should be interested in the appointment of these Inspectors. I know that in relation to the cattle trade from Cork and Waterford to Bristol and Milford you find that members of the Constabulary are employed as Inspectors, and they are well paid for their duties. When we have such loud encomiums on the loyalty and devotion of the Royal Irish Constabulary we cannot forget they are well paid for their shouting, but I think if these perquisites were withdrawn their enthusiasm would somewhat cool. I suppose such items as these scattered through the Estimates make up an addition of £300,000 or £400,000 to the Constabulary Vote. No wonder there is an anxiety among these supporters of the Government that Her Majesty's present advisers should continue in Office. I admit that some of these men do their work as Inspectors very well, but, on the other hand, I must condemn the system that makes the appointments so largely from the ranks of the Constabulary. But to elicit some information about this distinguished naval veteran, I move the reduction.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Item K, Salaries of the Veterinary Department, be reduced by £300."— (Dr. Tanner.)

I think we ought to have some explanation why this retired naval officer received the appointment, when I am sure there are many competent men who have qualified themselves for the position by special study. From the ranks of the profession surely a properly qualified Inspector could be found, one who is not in receipt of a pension from the country. If this officer were appointed to inspect ricketty vessels and ships which carry horses and cattle I could understand why they should select a naval officer; but even then I do not think the Chief Secretary would find it impossible to get sufficient aid in the Veterinary Department itself to carry out such inspection. It is too bad that, unless special necessity exists for it, a man who has retired from the Navy on a pension, should receive £350 a year from the Veterinary Department, ousting an official of that Department from the position. I think that in these matters the cobbler ought to stick to his last, and that a naval officer should not be appointed when it is possible to get a veterinary officer.

I am not surprised at the observations of my hon Friends, but I would ask the hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Cork (Dr. Tanner) not to press the matter to a Division. No doubt it is a matter that deserves severe criticism, that for a civil appointment of this kind connected with the Veterinary Department you should select a retired naval officer. Such a person would naturally know more about ships and guns than about horseflesh. To discharge the duties properly we ought to have a man who understands horses and cattle and their diseases, and their condition after long periods of travel; therefore, I think it is a class of appointment that ought not to be given to a naval officer. However, as the point is rather a small one, I think my hon. Friend would do well to withdraw his Amendment.

I want to know who this gentleman is? I would explain that my Amendment is intended as a protest against the practice of pitchforking into lucrative positions persons who can bring family influence to bear upon Members of the Government. I protest against a man, simply because he has influential acquaintances—some noble Lord who may directly or indirectly know the Chief Secretary, or his cousin or his aunt, or something of that sort—being pitchforked into a position of this sort. These people always go with the same cry, "You know you have reduced our rents and have given all we had to the terrible Home Rulers. Will you not give us this little trifle—only a travelling inspectorship?" I have spared the Chief Secretary's blushes on other Votes, but will the Chief Secretary tell the Committee something about this efficient Conservative Horse Marine who has been made Veterinary Inspector?

All I can say is that I know nothing about the gentleman except that I have reason to believe that he does his work efficiently. The appointment was not mine.

I would ask whether this officer has qualified by examination as a veterinary surgeon? It is possible that, although a naval officer, he may have studied in some Veterinary College; and if he has qualified himself, no doubt it would be fair on the part of the Government to appoint him. I should like to know from the right hon. Gentleman whether this gentleman has passed an examination?

There are some Veterinary Inspectors, but this gentleman is a Travelling Inspector.

What does he do?

Under the Act of 1878 he has to deal with Orders in Council relating to the transit of animals—to see that the transit is properly carried out, and that the provisions with regard to the export of cattle are duly observed.

I think we ought to have a little more information on this matter. It is important that we should know whether this gentleman's duties lie entirely in connection with the inspection of vessels. I am under the impression that the duty of the Inspector is to examine pigs and cattle, and so on; and it seems to me that the burden of proof rests on the Chief Secretary. He ought to be able in defending this appointment to show that this gentleman's duties lie considerably in the direction of the sea. I can quite understand that this gentleman will be better able to inspect the shipping of cattle and horses and the arrangements for their comfort on board ship than a purely veterinary officer, but I certainly think that promotion should go from the Department, and that there are many veterinary officers in Dublin who could fill this post, and who could very easily get up a knowledge of cattle arrangements in ships. If you stick everybody who wants —350 a year into a post of this sort, the policy is open to very serious objection. The right hon. Gentleman has not said one word as to whether this Inspector is qualified for the work.

I would point out that the appointment was made long before the present Government came into Office. Apparently, the sole charge which hon. Members opposite have to bring against this gentleman is that he is a gallant naval officer. There is no pretence that he is incompetent; no ground for supposing that Lord Spencer committed a job in appointing him. In any case, this appointment is a legacy from a previous Administration. Hon. Members opposite would make a Government responsible for every appointment made by preceding Governments. I decline to accept such responsibility. Of all hon. Members in the Committee, I should have thought that the hon. and gallant Member would have been the last to suggest that a gentleman, who has served his country in the combatant forces, is an incompetent official.

The right hon. Gentleman has imparted an undue amount of warmth to this discussion. I said nothing about the fact of this gentleman being a naval officer unfitting him for this post. The question I asked was whether he had passed any qualifying examination in a Veterinary College. I specially said, or implied, that a naval man who had passed this examination might be a very good officer for the post. I know nothing about this gentleman, and was laying no trap for the Chief Secretary. I rather thought the Inspector had passed an examination, because I have known men pass such examinations late in life. What I asked of the right hon. Gentleman was that he should show that this gentleman who has spent most of his time amongst shipping qualified himself for the post of Veterinary Inspector. He has not shown that. All he has said is that he was bound to take over the appointment made by his predecessor. No doubt that is so, but I think I have a right to ask for an answer to my question. If the right hon. Gentleman defends this appointment he is bound to show that the qualifications of this gentleman fit him for the post; that he has not been appointed to it simply because he was a naval officer. I think that, seeing the right hon. Gentleman has now been in office five years, he ought to have found out if this was a suitable appointment. The Veterinary Department is one of extreme importance to Ireland, and I have no hesitation in saying that any want of knowledge on the part of its officers might easily cause a loss of £1,000,000 sterling in one year. If an idea crept into the heads of the farmers of England or of the great buyers of Irish cattle that those cattle were peculiarly liable to disease, the price would at once fall at least £2 a head, and the appointment of presumably inefficient Inspectors would certainly give rise to such a suspicion. I believe that in the past the Department has been very successful in stamping out disease. No doubt it has had to adopt very despotic measures, but I should always back them up in that. I believe that it is only in the County of Dublin that there is now any special liability to cattle disease; but as long as the Chief Secretary chooses to keep in office gentlemen who have not passed through the Veterinary Colleges, I cannot say that the Department is wholly free from the imputation brought against it by the hon. Member for Mid Cork. I am sorry to say that the Chief Secretary has treated this matter with extreme levity, seeing that it is one of vital importance to Ireland; for any neglect in the appointment of qualified Inspectors is not only dangerous, but may be fatal to the cattle trade of Ireland. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us if this naval officer has any special qualifications for the work?

The right hon. Gentleman said just now this officer was appointed by Lord Spencer, and immediately afterwards he said he could not be held responsible for appointments made 40 years ago. Surely, when dealing with a matter of this kind he ought to be a little more accurate in his statements. When he rises to defend a Member of the classes—a gentleman who, having served his country for a time and secured a pension, supplements his income by taking one of these appointments—he ought to be careful about his dates. We know very well that Lord Spencer was not responsible for appointments made 40 years ago. I have no intention of dividing the Committee on this matter however; I am content with the discussion which has been raised, but I am surprised that the hon. Member for the Partick Division of Lanarkshire has taken no part in it. The other evening he initiated a Debate on the cruelties of the cattle-carrying trade. Now, surely the duties of Inspectors are closely connected with that subject, and if inefficient men are pitchforked into the office lamentable results may follow. The hon. Member, in a speech of an hour and a half's duration, described the suffering of these poor creatures on board cattle steamers. He has had nothing to say to-day, and I always find in connection with speeches made by celebrated humanitarians that immediately they get a chance of enforcing their views by reducing the salaries of Ministers they promptly shirk the issue.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Original Question put, and agreed to.

3. —1,496, to complete the sum for Charitable Donations and Bequests Office, Ireland.

4. Motion made, and Question proposed,

"That a sum, not exceeding —103,912, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1892, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Local Government Board in Ireland, including various Grants in Aid of Local Taxation."

I see in this Vote there is an item of £74,000 for Medical Officers, &c. The custom in Ireland is for dispensary medical officers' salaries to be paid half by the rates and half by the Government. That in itself is a very fair arrangement, but the blot on the system is this: that the ratepayers have to pay the whole of the pension granted on retirement. The result is that, at the present time, the Boards of Guardians will not retire any medical officer so long as he is fit for the work at all, because they have to pay the whole of his pension. I think that some system should be adopted under which the State might contribute a certain portion of these pensions. If the Chief Secretary will take the question into his consideration and introduce some scheme of that sort, he will be effecting a very valuable change. Of course, it would be necessary to give the State a voice in the question of allowing an officer to retire, but I do not think the Guardians would object to it. The position of a dispensary officer in Ireland at the present time is a pretty good one. Only two faults can be found with it. One is that people who can afford to pay often employ the officer under the dispensary system. That, perhaps, is partly his own fault for charging such high fees. The second blot is, of course, that of retiring pensions, which I have already explained. But to return to the fault which arises from the charging of unduly high fees. We know that medical etiquette in Ireland is very strong, but I think the Local Government Board might help to break down the practice of charging £1 fees, and secure the introduction of a system by which medical officers should attend paying patients for fees of 2s. 6d. or 5s. I believe that would be a great advantage to the medical profession of Ireland. I know that in the last four or five years a practice of charging lower fees has been slowly growing up; but I believe that if the Local Government Board took it in hand, the dispensary officers would gladly fall in with it.

I think that the action of the Local Government Board with regard to labourers' cottages in Ireland has been on the whole satisfactory, but, unfortunately, a system has grown up among the authorities of discouraging the Inspectors should they report in favour of supplying such cottages. It must be remembered that, these Inspectors are not naturally on the side of the people; and when they report on the necessity for these cottages, they do so because they have investigated the subject on the spot, and have realised what is necessary, in spite of the objections of landlords. I am afraid the mischief is done at the Privy Council, and I think the Board ought to take more active steps in the matter on receiving Reports from their Inspectors. I have endeavoured two or three times on this Vote to put some "stiffening" into the backs of these Inspectors, to let them see that the Nationalist Party will support them in their very moderate action. I think that it is a very hard thing that while they are endeavouring to do their best they should be snubbed by the Lord Chancellor and the Judges. Yet it is often the case; they recommend the building of 100 cottages; the Local Government Board authorities cut the number down to 30, and finally the Privy Council issue an order for the erection of 10. This is not at all creditable to those right hon. Gentlemen who compose the Privy Council. At the same time, I think that the Local Government Board do not proceed on the best lines with regard to Boards of Guardians. In none of the Ulster counties is there a single labourer's cottage, with the exception of Cavan, the only county where the Nationalists are in command. In the County of Antrim, the richest county, there is not a single labourer's cottage, and the same may be said with regard to the Counties of Down, Monaghan, and Derry. This is a most discreditable state of things. I often wonder that the Orange Party do not insist upon something more being done for the labourers than has been done in the past. There is a reason, but it is not understood by the people. In my opinion, the reason is to be found in the fact that a £30 valuation is a necessary qualification for a Guardian. That means often that a man must occupy a farm of £50 rental. That is a big farm, and how can you expect such a man to be very keen in the interests of the labourers? That qualification ought to be reduced, and then we should get men on the Boards who have the interests of the labourers more at heart. You do not now insist on a special qualification for Members of Parliament or of Town Councils, and why should it not be abolished in the case of Boards of Guardians? Some months ago I read that the Local Government Board had withdrawn from the Boyle Union the sum allocated to it out of Ireland's share of the licensing grant. I wish to know what has been done with that amount? Was it paid back into the Treasury, or is it kept in the pockets of the Local Government Board? I remember the attitude of the Orange Party when the question of the distribution of this money was under consideration. We wanted that it should be spent for labourers' cottages; but the Conservative Party said that if that principle were laid down, the districts in which they have control would get none of it. We Nationalists thereupon gave in, at the same time expressing a hope that more cottages would be erected in Orange districts. What has been the result? The dog-in-the-manger policy of the Ulstermen has prevailed, and the money has not been used. I say the Orange Party have no business to bury their talents in the sand; if they will not make use of this money, let us have it to spend in the South, West, and East of Ireland. It is a great defect in the government of Ireland that we should have to wait till late in the Session for information on these matters. Ireland ought to be treated like a foreign country, and Blue Books published in regard to its affairs, as is done with regard to Madagascar and Burma, and I think we have a right to complain of the way in which the licensing grant has been distributed. As to Local Government, I would suggest the Government should obtain the opinions of Nationalist Members by circulating an outline of so much of their scheme as need not be kept secret. The Irish Members will support the Government in any measure of Local Government brought in if it is a good one. The subject is one in which they take a deep interest; and if the Government are anxious for local institutions to be established in Ireland in a really constitutional manner, I am sure they will not find much objection from the Irish Benches. It is not likely that the exigencies of the Liberal or any other Party will induce us to offer blind opposition to a good measure simply because it is proposed by a Conservative Government. That is all gammon. We shall not do anything of the kind. If the Government bring in a good Bill, and one which we can approve, we shall not care a straw about the exigencies of Party politics. I think we are entitled to ask the Government now to revise the system under which the Probate Grant is distributed. I should like also to see our Poor Law system reformed. At present the country is studded over with an enormous number of poor houses, some of which are of little use; and I should like to see a scheme whereby, with the consent of the people, some of the Union districts were suppressed and merged into others. I know great difficulty would arise from conflict of interests—the interests of various officials and of contractors—but a Central Authority would have great advantage in dealing with these matters, and would be able to reform a system which is now cumbrous, expensive, and highly unsatisfactory. Finally, I want to know what is the Board of Control? That Board is imposing on the County of Carlow and part of Kildare an expenditure of £48,500 in connection with the lunatic asylum, and the managers of that institution, together with the Grand Jury, are protesting against a system which deprives them of all control over the expenditure. They are asking for an alteration of the law securing to them some control. May I ask for an explanation of this action on the part of the Board of Control?

The question of lunacy has been engaging the attention of the Irish Government, and I appointed, a year or two ago, a strong though small Commission to look into the question. Its investigations disclosed a most scandalous system of administration. I hope to be able to introduce the necessary alterations of the law, which must be carried into effect before a real reform can be made in the Irish administration on this point. One of my first acts, on the Report of the Commission, was to appoint a Board of Control. That was done under existing statutory powers, but the system had somehow fallen into desuetude. Such a Board is necessary, for sometimes an increase of accommodation is necessary in the interests of the lunatics, and then the Board can order it to be provided. I will, however, consider whether it is not possible to provide some appeal in the case in which the Board of Control decides that further accommodation must be provided. The question requires the most careful attention. As to the Labourers' Act, very little money has, no doubt, been used in Ulster for this purpose. It is a very serious matter to deal with the question raised by the hon. Member as to the desirability of lowering the qualification for Guardians. I would point out that to have allocated the licensing grant solely for the erection of labourers' cottages would have been to devote cash contributed by the whole of the community to an object which would benefit only a small section. I will not pronounce an opinion as to the desirability of lowering the guardianship qualification, but I will suggest that it would be bad policy to lower the qualification merely for the purpose of enabling the Guardians to better administer one particular Act with which they have to deal. The Poor Law administration is one of the most important in the country. It goes to the root of the agrarian life of the district, and any change in it should be adopted with extreme caution. I will re-consider the question as to the distribution of the fund allocated last year. Of course, it is easy to raise objections to any system of allocation on the basis of population, expenditure, or valuation. The unused portion of the grant amounts, roughly, to £15,000. This has been placed to the credit of the Local Government Board, and the money will be issued under the powers given by the Statute to those Boards of Guardians entitled to receive it for labourers' cottages.

How about the Boyle Union? I gather that the Local Government Board, seeing the Guardians were not prepared to use that money, have withdrawn it from them. Have they lost it altogether, or can they get it in another year, when they have a scheme ready?

I do not think the Guardians lose the money by not employing it in a given year. It remains to their account to be used when they have fully matured their schemes. As to the action of the Privy Council with reference to labourers' cottages, I think that the House will not consent to those Acts being left to the administration of the Local Authorities. Land might be taken without the consent of the owner, and there must be some authority of a judicial, if not of a legislative, character which will have the power of giving consent for the compulsory powers to be put in operation. Dealing with the suggested contribution by the State towards the pensions of medical officers, a question as to which was raised by the hon. and gallant Member for Galway, I think that hon. Members must feel that it is a very large change which has been suggested, and it would be necessary, first of all, to obtain the consent of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is not a change which could be confined to Ireland. The question is a large one, and, if the money is forthcoming, a very good object would be served in carrying out the suggestion, but it would be rash in me to give any pledge in the absence of the direct sanction of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The hon. and gallant Member also suggested that the Local Government Board should interfere with a view to reducing the fees now charged by medical officers to paying patients. No doubt it is very desirable that the high fee of £1 should not be maintained, but for the Local Government Board to lay down any rules affecting the charges of dispensary officers might cause considerable injustice in districts where there are medical practitioners not in the public service. I think, however, the remarks of the hon. and gallant Member may serve a good purpose, and that the force of them will be appreciated by the profession in Ireland.

I think it will be generally admitted that the Poor Law administration of Ireland is scandalously behind that which obtains in England. I think there is hardly any portion of the work of the Local Government Board which is properly done. It would be a very good thing if the general Inspectors in Ireland could be sent over to England to learn something of the administration of the Poor Law in England. The unions and infirmaries in Ireland are conducted very laxly, and the officials from top to bottom perform their duties in a very perfunctory manner. Their chief object is to draw their salaries. An intelligent administration would so conduct matters as to endeavour, at any rate, to save the children, but the system in Ireland leads to the multiplication of hereditary paupers. Once inside the poor house, and all hope must be abandoned. I have known cases where the only playground for the children is the quarter inhabited by idiot women. Then, it is evident that classification is not properly attended to. I should like to see some of the English Inspectors visit Ireland and thoroughly overhaul the work of the Irish Inspectors. Another matter of complaint is that the medicines supplied to the poor cannot be of proper quality, because of the prices paid for them by the Guardians, and many of the dispensaries are so affected by damp that the drugs are not fit to use. I have raised this question before, and I should like to know whether any inquiries have been made as to it during the past year?

^* (11.56.) : I believe the Vote includes a sum for the payment of the Special Inspector in connection with the Seed Potatoes Act.

That is a special Estimate.

^* : Then, Sir, I will defer my remarks on that point. But I believe that some of the ordinary Inspectors of the Board were employed by the Local Government Board to inquire into the exceptional distress, and I have to complain that their work was done in a very perfunctory manner. The Inspector sent to Cavan did not go to the Guardians or to the ministers of any denomination, at any rate in the town of Cavan; they merely went to the Relieving Officers, who are not in the least qualified to give information with regard to exceptional distress. The man in the occupation of land who was the victim of exceptional distress does not come under the operation of the ordinary Poor Law, and, therefore, the Relieving Officer would know nothing about him. This conduct of applying only to the Relieving Officer or to the police illustrates in a significant way the policy of the Inspectors. They are almost always men who have been jobbed into their places without any regard for their qualifications for the post. They are appointed because they belong to a certain clique, and not having any actual knowledge of Local Government, they get through their work as quickly as they can without regard to efficiency. In some other parts of the Division the Inspectors did not inquire as closely as they ought into the cases of the distress. I may mention that though attention was called to the relief of distress in County Cavan in the month of December, the Chief Secretary did not admit the need for any relief until the end of the month of May, when some relief works were started.

I desire to support the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for North Longford with regard to these Provisional Orders. There exists the greatest possible necessity to strengthen the hands of the Local Government Board Inspectors when they go before the Privy Council. It is a most disheartening thing for a Board of Guardians to go to a great deal of trouble and expense, and then to find that 50 or 60 per cent. of the cottages approved of by the Inspector are absolutely rejected by the Privy Council on grounds the most flimsy. The Inspector may cite the evidence, but he can make no stand against the Privy Council, and tacitly accepts the decision of these men, the bulk of whom are antagonistic to the working of the Act. If the Government mean to carry out the Act it is their duty to see that the Inspector, when he goes before the Privy Council, makes a stand for the rights of these poor and oppressed people. When the Inspectors were going round during the earlier periods of the distress the person they never called upon was the Roman Catholic priest or curate. In a few cases they called on the elected Guardian of the district; they invariably called at the police barracks, and occasionally they visited the Relieving Officer. Government Inspectors engaged in this so-called mission of mercy and relief visited districts in and around Kerry, and few people knew of their presence. The priest knew nothing about the visit, and the Poor Law Guardian knew nothing about it. In certain districts it was almost impossible to find whether the Local Government Board Inspector ever left his hotel door. This shows that there is great need of overhauling the whole system of Local Government Board inspection. Now, upon this Vote I desire to refer to the action taken in regard to certain Nationalist newspapers. The Local Government Board have not been above the practice of boycotting newspapers because of their advocacy of Nationalist opinions. Some time ago I protested against the boycotting of the Tory newspaper in the City of Cork, but what are we to say of a powerful Government Department which pursues a policy of that kind. It was necessary that the Board should issue advertisements concerning a graveyard in the Youghal Union. There were three newspapers there. Two were Nationalist and the third Tory. The latter paper, which had but a small circulation, was singled out for the order for the advertisement. The proprietors of the two Nationalist papers protested by letter to the Local Government Board, but no heed was paid to their protest. The editor of the Carlow Nationalist had complained to the Board that while his paper had five times the circulation of the local Conservative organ, the Board's advertisements had been withheld from him and given to his rival. The Board replied that—

"You are under a misapprehension in supposing that the advocacy of particular political opinions is any reason for giving or withholding Government advertisements. If advertisements were withheld from the Nationalist and Leinster Times it was solely because that paper continued to violate the law."

What was the violation of the law? It was the insistance on the part of the proprietor to publish reports of National League meetings. The Government by their action in this matter are setting a very dangerous example to political parties in Ireland and to public and local representative bodies.

I desire to direct the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to the mode in which the Medical Department is administered. In the Union to which I belong we have had a considerable amount of difficulty in relation to the medicine contract. I can bear testimony to the dampness of the dispensary destroying the medicines. The medicines are bad originally, but they get worse by being kept in damp dispensaries. We have had a long contention in relation to the medicines. We consulted the county analyst in Dublin, and he reported that the medicines were not sound. In many cases there was a large percentage of adulteration. It is scarcely to be wondered at that the medicines are adulterated, because some of the contractors take the contracts at prices which cannot pay. After all, I consider the Local Government Board are not so much to blame as the Guardians who take the contracts. I believe in coercing the Guardians upon a point so vital to the interests of the poor, the quality of the medicines supplied to them. There should be some standard of quality established, and the Local Government Board ought to insist upon the Guardians purchasing the best possible goods. What are the medical Inspectors for, if they do not see that the best medicines are obtained and kept in proper places?