Mr. Speaker, whether the Bill which it is now my duty to introduce is the most important of the legislative proposals which the Government have to make during the course of the present Session I will not say; but undoubtedly it is a measure of great complexity in itself, and which has aroused the largest amount of controversy in the country during the Recess. It will be in the recollection of the House that, towards the end of last Session, in answer, I think, to some question put to me by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy), I expressed, on behalf of the Government, our intention to bring in a Local Government Bill for Ireland. And to my great surprise I found next day that this was regarded as a new departure in the Unionist policy, and that it was supposed I had taken the country by surprise in thus announcing the views of the Government. Sir, the critics of the Government in this matter appear to have forgotten that ever since the formation of the present Parliament, in 1886, and even before that time, the extension of Local Government to every part of the United Kingdom has been a cardinal part of their policy; and so far from there being any novelty in the intentions of the Government in the views expressed by Parliament last Session, it was a mere repetition of what was said over and over again by gentlemen who have every claim to speak on behalf of the Government. The declarations of my noble Friend the Member for Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill) in this matter are probably within the recollection of all. I think that Local Government has figured certainly in more than one Queen's Speech since the year 1886. And in the year 1889 I myself, at that time Chief Secretary for Ireland, expressed on behalf of the Government our intention to bring in a Local Government Bill as soon as we had been able to deal with the question of Land Purchase. I attach no special value to my own utterances on the point. I only wish once for all to dispel the kind of delusion which seems to have seized some minds in relation to this matter. I stated on that occasion that I was in favour of extending Local Government to Ireland, and that I hoped to bring in a Bill for that purpose, and, if necessary, in bringing it in, to follow with regard to Ireland the same prudential maxims that had been applied in dealing with the other countries with a view to meeting their respective needs and necessities. That was a declaration of policy which I made three years ago, and I see no reason to qualify or alter in any way the statements I then made. Now, Sir, some gentlemen appear to think that the course of the Government is not justified, and that no adequate grounds have ever been stated why we should meddle with Local Government in Ireland at all. These are gentlemen with whom, in many respects, I have great sympathy. Most of them belong to the Party of which I am a member. But I never noticed that these gentlemen on the occasion of these various statements which have been made in the Speeches from the Throne, or on other occasions, even thought it was worth while to inform the Government that they dissented from their policy; and, in point of fact, I was not aware of the necessity of that policy ever being questioned until the matter came to the front in the discussions that arose in the course of the autumn. Whether the policy of the Government is justified or not will no doubt depend upon the view taken of the measure which I have now to introduce. But I think it will be admitted by every impartial person that the burden of proof, at all events, lies with the objectors. We have introduced a Local Government Bill for England; we have introduced a Local Government Bill for Scotland; and, if we are not to introduce one for Ireland, it must be because of certain great, specific, and obvious dangers that must attend such a course. Vague generalisations, vague distrust, will hardly, I think, be thought sufficient by this House if we are to abandon a policy which men of all parties, so far as I know, have, broadly speaking, agreed to. No; if we are to abandon our announced policy it must be for cause shown, and shown with definiteness and precision. I will now proceed without further preface to explain the provisions of the Bill, which I trust the House will, in the course of the present Session, pass into law. But in order that they may be understood, I ought, in a very few words—and they shall be very few—to explain to Members who are not intimately acquainted with the existing form of Local Government in Ireland what the system is, because I think all will agree that, in so far as it is possible, we should graft our new and reformed and altered system upon the system which has been in operation with considerable administrative success for now more than a generation. (Opposition cheers.) I gather from the ironical cheer that some hon. Gentlemen doubt the administrative success of the existing system in Ireland. I cannot agree with that. That the Grand Juries may have been guilty of errors of judgment I do not, of course, deny; but I think they have, on the whole, administered the affairs entrusted to them with economy and with parity. (Cries of "No, no!") I think it cannot be fairly denied. But without going into the merits or demerits of the Grand Jury and the other Local Bodies in Ireland, let me, in one word, tell the House what the present system is. We constantly hear it described as the Grand Jury system, from which anybody not acquainted with the actual machinery and work would suppose that it was the Grand Jury that discussed and initiated all the work that was done in reference to county matters in Ireland. Members from Ireland know that is not the case. The initiative in no single matter connected with county administration lies with the Grand Jury; it lies with the Baronial Sessions or the County Sessions. These two bodies, one representing the barony and the other representing the county, make their financial proposals to the Grand Jury. The Grand Jury have the power of rejecting or accepting them; they have not the power of in any way modifying them. The House will see, then, that at present the counties in Ireland are governed by a Baronial Presentment Sessions and a County Presentment Sessions and the Grand Jury representative of the county. There is no such thing in Ireland as the parish for administrative purposes. For ecclesiastical purposes it exists there as it does elsewhere. But the smallest unit in existence for the purpose of county administration is the barony. The baronies, like almost all other units of government of long standing, vary very greatly in size. I think there are about 150 in the whole of Ireland. They vary from a very small population to a very large one—from the size of a few parishes to the size of a moderate county. Now, the Baronial Sessions, as at present constituted, consists of the Magistrates of the county and of certain cesspayers in the barony who are elected by a method extremely complicated—(An Irish MEMBER: "Selected.") I leave the hon. Gentleman to define the difference between election and selection. They are elected or selected, whichever the hon. Gentleman prefers, by a method which I need not describe to the House. It is extremely cumbrous, and, if I may venture to say so, extremely absurd. The Grand Jury are selected practically by the Sheriff of the county, and, broadly speaking, may be said to consist of 23 landholders—considerable landholders—within the county. It is to these gentlemen that the administration of county affairs is entrusted. As the House knows, in dealing with England, we had to deal with a country in which no area at all corresponding with a barony is to be found; and, therefore, it was that my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board had to introduce into his English measure a very long and elaborate set of provisions setting up District Councils, and so difficult and elaborate was the operation found to be, that we have not yet succeeded in obtaining Parliamentary time for carrying out the subordinate part of our general Local Government scheme for England. In Ireland we start in a better position. The baronial unit is there. We propose to retain it, and, therefore, our Bill would not merely be a County Council Bill, but it would be what, in England, would be described as a District Councils Bill also; and it will combine, in one measure, provisions necessary for establishing County Councils, and for establishing also those subordinate Baronial Councils which will correspond more or less accurately with the District Councils which we hope to set up at no distant date in England. We follow the English precedent, in transferring to the County and Baronial Councils which we propose to set up none but administrative duties, and leave wholly untouched the judicial and quasi-judicial duties now entrusted to the Grand Jury. In this we are not merely pursuing what I think is a sound policy, but pursuing the course which the House has already thought fit to adopt both in the case of England and in the case of Scotland. I may parenthetically mention that among these duties which we leave to the Grand Jury are all questions connected with compensation for malicious injuries, or compensation for murdering and maiming under the two Clauses 105 and 139 of the Grand Jury Act. The members of the County Council and of the Baronial Council will be elected for three years. They will all go out of office together, and we propose to follow the Scottish precedent rather than the English precedent in the matter of Aldermen, and not to import into the Irish system the provision which finds a place in the English Act. The Baronial Council has laid upon it, broadly speaking, the duties now performed by the Baronial Presentment Sessions. The County Council will have thrown upon it, broadly speaking, the combined duties of the County Presentment Sessions and of the Grand Jury in relation to administrative affairs. Their chief duties, financially, will no doubt be in connection with the repair, maintenance and construction of roads and highways. But this important difference in the existing system will be introduced: that whereas in Ireland the distinction between main roads and other roads—baronial roads as they are called—is not recognised, we propose in this Bill to recognise it. At present certain roads, called post roads, are maintained at the cost half of the county at large, and half of the barony to which they belong. Other roads are maintained wholly at the cost of the barony. The post road is defined not at all as a main road; but a road along which a mail cart happens to run—a definition which evidently dates from before railroad times, and has no relation to the importance of the roads to be dealt with; or with the propriety of throwing half the cost of its maintenance on the county, or the whole cost on the barony. The County Council will have to decide which are main roads, and which are baronial roads; and as at present the baronial roads will be supported by the barony, the main roads will be supported half by the barony and half out of the rate levied on the country at large. We propose in addition to administrative duties now fulfilled by the Baronial Presentment Sessions, the County, and Grand Jury, to hand over to the County Councils, if they should elect to accept the responsibility, the duties now performed by the Rural Sanitary Authorities. We do not propose to make it obligatory on the County Councils to take over these duties. They may feel that, at all events during the first years of their existence, they have not the administra- tive experience which would justify them in taking over those duties; but if they desired to take them over, we propose that they should take them over. The county, it will be observed, is in some respects far too large an area for the actual administration of sanitary affairs, and in my earlier draft of the Bill I proposed to give these sanitary duties not to the County Council, but to the Baronial Council. But further reflection convinced us that the barony was not a convenient area in all probability for sanitary work; that it differed so profoundly from the existing sanitary areas that the adjustment of existing burdens between the two would be almost impossible; that the Baronial Council would contain members representing the existing Sanitary Authorities, but ought not, of course, to be allowed to vote upon sanitary matters outside the area of the Urban Sanitary Authority within the barony. And for these, and other reasons, we came to the conclusion that the County Council was the proper body to be responsible for the general administration of sanitary matters, but that it should delegate its authority to Local Committees in convenient areas—those Committees being formed out of County Councillors and Baronial Councillors, who, in the opinion of the County Council, most accurately represented the interests of the ratepayers in the sanitary area which they thus delimit. I will, therefore, only add now, with regard to the duties of the County Council and the Baronial Council, that, in addition to the administrative work now performed by the Grand Juries and the various Presentment Sessions, and the duties now performed by the Rural Sanitary Authorities, these County Councils will be required to appoint members of the Board of Governors on the District Lunatic Asylums, in addition to those appointed by the Lord Lieutenant, subject to this provision—that the number of members appointed by the Lord Lieutenant shall in no case exceed the number now appointed by the County Councils. It is, therefore, possible, under this Bill, that the number of representatives appointed by the Lord Lieutenant shall equal, though it is not possible that they shall ever exceed, the number of those appointed by the County Councils. At present, as the House knows, the whole number is appointed by the Lord Lieutenant. The justification for giving the Lord Lieutenant this power to nominate a certain number of Governors to the asylum is that at the present moment the Imperial Exchequer pays one-half the cost of all inmates in these asylums. I have no doubt the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be delighted to hand over the whole affair to the County Councils, if they would also take over the cost.

That is out of our own money.

Nine per cent. is Irish money, and 91 per cent. English and Scottish. They would also have to appoint five members on the Governing Body of the county hospitals. They also have to appoint the Coroner for the county, and on the representation of the Baronial Council the City Councils have power to acquire woods and plantations. I ought to say a word upon that provision, which is without analogy in the English or Scottish Acts. Those who have in their minds our Debates last year on the Land Purchase Act will recollect it was pointed out with great force that one result of selling estates to the tenant occupiers is that the woods on these estates are very necessary often not only for the amenity, but also for the climate and shelter of the country in which they exist. These woods are almost invariably destroyed. I expressed myself at the time, and I was quite conscious of the magnitude of the evil; but it appeared to me quite impossible to remedy it till we had a body who could be trusted, and who had the funds to purchase and power to manage the woods. No such body existed, and I had, therefore, to defer to the present occasion introducing a provision which I hope, if it meet the approval of the House, will prove extremely useful as the operation of the Land Purchase Act gradually extends through the country. The next point on which the House will desire information has reference to the boroughs' relations to the counties in which they are situated. There are in Ireland 11 municipal boroughs and two counties of towns —13 in all; and we propose to make these 13 boroughs of counties and towns separate counties for administrative purposes, and for administrative purposes alone. In other words, we propose to hand over to them all the powers which in the county proper we hand over to the County Council. The other urban districts we do not propose to touch. They will be merged in, and be part of, for all county purposes the counties in which they are situated, while they will retain unimpaired all the powers given to them by law. I think that is, though brief, yet an adequate account, broadly speaking, of the duties and construction of the bodies we propose to create.

Which body—the County Council, or the Grand Jury—will have charge of the presentments?

Practically we leave the presentments untouched, as they fall altogether outside the area of county administration. That seems the natural and proper course. So far, I do not think that there will be any broad divergence of opinion upon the main principles of the system of county government I have dealt with. I now come to a more difficult and more controversial matter. I, of course, have never disguised from myself that there are large classes in Ireland and in England who look with great alarm and dread upon any measure of the kind I have suggested. I think it is only due to persons who, whether they be right or wrong, certainly have only the general interest of the community, of which they form members, at heart, if we examine in a perfectly fair and candid spirit the fears they entertain. They are afraid of three things, broadly speaking. They are afraid that the new system will result in financial extravagance and possibly corruption. They are afraid that the majority, in counties, where the majority is also very small and is often divided from the minority by a chasm for which there is no parallel, I am happy to think, with English or Scottish experience—they think that that minority may possibly be oppressed and plundered by the new bodies to be created; and they also think that such bodies may travel beyond the duties for which they were called into existence, and may use powers given to them by this House for the purpose of managing their local affairs in order to carry out other objects which, however excellent in themselves, cannot be described as local. Now, I should like to say a word upon each of these points. I am not at all disposed to deny that there is weight and force in the arguments of those who think that the administration of the new County Councils may possibly, in certain cases, be open to the charge of financial extravagance and reckless expenditure. Consider what the great mass of the constituents of those Councils will be. There are a multitude of extremely small occupiers of land whose total contribution to the County Council very often does not exceed is. or 8d. or even 4d. If you look down, as I have done, the roll of cesspayers in some of the Welsh counties, you will see multitudes who pay sums as small, and even smaller, than those I have mentioned. It is also true, and must not be forgotten, that unhappily the economic history of Ireland has compelled successive Governments, at different times, to start in certain districts public works which would not otherwise have been started, for the purpose of providing employment and relief. The idea of relief works, therefore, is unhappily too familiar to the mind of a numerically very large proportion of the population in some of these Western Districts. The man who pays 8d. or 4d. a year to the county cess, but who on a new road started in his district might expect to earn 8s. or 10s. a week for certain work in the winter months, evidently, though he be a contributor to the County rates, has inadequate motive for economy in their administration. They have only to give notice to the council on any terms whatever to start roads or new works of any sort within reach of their homes, and they will or may gain infinitely more by the starting of such works than they could ever hope to gain by the most economical administration. I think the House will feel that, under these circumstances, it is not only desirable, but absolutely necessary, to take some precaution that capital expenditure shall not be recklessly indulged in. A great many suggestions have been made to carry out that object, and every kind of elaborate plan has been brought under my notice. It has been suggested that the County Council should be divided into an upper and lower house—the upper house representing the larger ratepayers, the lower house re-presenting the smaller. It has been suggested that all the smaller ratepayers of the county cess should be excluded from the franchise. It has been suggested that there should be a larger number of ex-officio members placed upon the County Council, by which the proceedings of that body would be more or less controlled. I reject all these expedients. I think they belong to the character of artificial safeguards, which cannot in the nature of things stand. I also believe that they will be wholly inoperative to carry out the effects for which they were designed. After all, we cannot have a better object lesson in this matter than the case of the Boards of Guardians in Ireland. The Boards of Guardians in Ireland are composed of one half Magistrates and one half of members elected on a plan by which great preponderance is given to the votes of the larger ratepayers. I do not think that anyone acquainted with Irish administration will say that this scheme has succeeded with Boards of Guardians; I cannot conceive it to be any better in the case of County Councils. Therefore I reject unhesitatingly all these plans which have no precedent in England or Scotland, and would be irritating without being effectual, and certainly would not stand against hostile criticism. One exception only, perhaps, I can make, and that is, that in the first County Council elected under this Bill there shall be four ex officio members—the Lieutenant and Sheriff of the County, a nominee of the Grand Jury, a nominee of the County Presentment Sessions, and on the first Baronial Council a nominee of the Baronial Presentment Session. This is, with a slight exception, in strict accordance with the Scotch Bill. This, I believe, will be a convenience to the newly-elected Council, as they will be well acquainted with the business. I do not anticipate from any quarter of the House that the proposal will receive serious criticism. I have told the House the schemes which we will not accept with regard to the constitution of the County Council, and the franchise by which it is to be elected, and the mode by which its proceedings are to be controlled. Let me now explain what are the plans which the Government accepted in these matters. We propose that the franchise for the County Council shall be identical with the franchise for the Baronial Council, and that both shall be identical with the Parliamentary franchise, with this exception, that it will include women and peers. It will exclude persons otherwise qualified to vote at Parliamentary elections who have not paid their county cess, and it will exclude illiterates. That franchise will, of course, be extended to all the municipal towns which we, turn into counties for administrative purposes, with the exception that, as a precedent is set in the cases of Dublin and Belfast, and as the conditions governing urban society differ profoundly from those prevailing in rural societies, we do not propose to depart from the practice which we have already set up in the cases of the two towns I have just mentioned.

What practice?

We do not propose in regard to municipalities to deal with either illiterates, peers, or women.

Do you mean that the new franchise will be the Belfast franchise?

Practically, it will be.

That is not the Parliamentary franchise.

It is not Parliamentary, but it is substantially the Parliamentary franchise.

Belfast has only 8,000 electors.

That is a question I will not argue now. It is our desire to assimilate all the boroughs in Ireland to the franchise in England and Scotland, although, no doubt, some minute differences may have to be set up. So much for the franchise to elect the County Council. It will be noticed that by setting up that franchise we sweep away altogether the whole class of precautions that have been suggested for the protection of minorities and the wealthy ratepayers. Now comes the question, How are we to deal with these difficulties? We think that in Ireland we ought to depart from the precedents set in England and Scotland, and that we ought to have some kind of minority vote. I do not think this House will require to be told that the conditions of Ireland are such that, if you set up single-member constituencies, as you have done in England and Scotland, the minority, whether it be a Protestant minority in the South, or a Catholic minority in the North, will probably have no chance of any representation whatever. Here and there it might be that men of particular political complexion or religious creeds might be gathered together in small communities sufficiently powerful to return one or two members to the County Council. But looking to Ireland as a whole—and I have investigated this question with such care as is in my power—I have not the slightest doubt that if you attempt to elect your Councillors upon the system of single-member constituencies you will commit a most grievous injustice to the minority, and absolutely exclude them from any share or chance of even raising their voices in the Council, which is the body to manage their local affairs. The plan of the Government is to make each barony for baronial purposes a single electoral division. If there are to be ten members for a given barony it will form a single electoral unit, and the members will be elected by minority representation. The county, for county purposes, will be divided into electoral divisions; these divisions will probably not all be of the same size. It would be impossible to frame them so, but we shall form them to be as nearly the same size, and to return somewhere about 15 in each electoral division. We have two sets of elections to deal with—for Baronial Councils and for County Councils. So far as Baronial Councils are concerned, we consider the barony not to be too large an area to be a convenient electoral unit for baronial purposes, and all members of it will be elected in one electoral district. The county, we think, on the other hand, is too large an area for one electoral division, and we propose, therefore, to divide it into electoral divisions, each electoral division returning a number which I will call 15, although, of course, in many cases it must be less, and in some, perhaps, more. The mode of minority election we have put in the Bill is not, in my opinion, the best, but it is the one most familiar to English legislation and practice—that already in force in School Board elections. I do not think it the best; but I do think it is very easily worked and understood, and there are very great advantages in doing a stupid thing which has been done before, instead of doing a Wise thing that has never been done before. I will observe to the House on this subject that the objections which, no doubt, have been felt to the working of the School Board system in England will not, I think, apply to the same extent in Ireland, because, as I am informed—I have no personal experience, but those who have personal experience tell me—that the great difficulty in School Board elections is to get exactly the full value for the votes, which are tolerably equally divided between the two parties. The denominational party may have a right to ten representatives, and the undenominational to six, and the difficulty is so to manage their voting powers as to get exactly their full amount on the Board. That is not the kind of difficulty which will occur in Ireland. What we want to do is to give a minority, even a small one, adequate representation on the County Council; and I think certain rough justice will, on the whole, be done by the scheme which we ask the House to accept. That is the way in which we propose, not to protect minorities, but to give them a voice in the proceedings of the County Council. I am perfectly well aware that if you are a minority, and especially a very small one, it may be impossible merely by argument to deal with those who are acting oppressively. Therefore, I do not now pretend, and I never have pretended, that this giving the minorities a chance of representation is to be regarded as adequate protection of their rights and interests. In order to do that, other provisions have been made, and the first of these provisions is the right of traverse. I will remind the House, or that part of the House not acquainted with the right of traverse, that there is at this moment, by Grand Jury Law, a right of any ratepayer to traverse a presentment before a Judge and jury, and that right I shall propose to preserve. Slight modifications will have to be introduced into it, but it is sufficient to say that the right of traverse is maintained in this Bill. The other safeguard against financial corruption or oppression is one entirely peculiar to this Bill, and has no precedent in existing Irish, or English, or Scotch legislation. We think that it is not absolutely impossible, though we hope and believe the possibility is a remote one, that County Councils might, under certain circumstances, use the powers given by the Bill for the oppression of small minorities. We think it possible, remotely possible—not, I trust, probable—that they may be guilty of wilful and persistent corruption, and we think that it is impossible to look at the history of Ireland in the past without thinking that these dangers, remote though they be, have a reality in Ireland which they have not, never have had, and I venture to say never can have, in either England or Scotland. Hon. Gentlemen may differ from me as to the facts; but if the facts be as I say, and I do not think any impartial investigation into Irish history can deny it—I am not disposed to blame the Irish people for it—it will be admitted that that condition of things has arisen out of historical causes, amongst which we, the people of the United Kingdom, must take our full share of blame. Well, I admit that we have not to look to the history of the past, but at the facts of the present; and if the facts of the present are as I have said, it is clearly necessary to provide machinery in Ireland which we have not found necessary in England or Scotland. The question now arises, What that machinery will be? The House is aware that under the existing law governing Poor Law administration it is in the power of the Local Government Board, in cases of malversation, to dissolve a Board of Guardians, and substitute paid guardians for them. I do not think the Local Government Board is either strong enough or, in other respects, well enough informed, to deal with such bodies as the County Councils and Baronial Councils; and instead of attempting to throw either on the Lord Lieutenant or the Privy Council, or the Local Government Board, the power of dissolving a County Council, we have adopted a plan not open, I think, to the objections which might be urged against all the schemes I have just adverted to. Under the Bill, on application being made by 20 cesspayers of the county to a Judge of Assize for leave to petition for the removal of the Council of the county or barony, on the ground that the Council has been guilty of persistent disobedience to the law, or of corruption, or of malversation, or of oppression, the Judge, if a prima facie case be shown, shall give leave; and when the Petition is presented, the Judges on the rota of Election Petitions are to try it like an Election Petition; and if they find the Council guilty, the Councillors then in office are to be removed, and their places filled up by persons only approved by the Lord Lieutenant. (Laughter.) If I may gather from the uproarious laughter of the right hon. Member for Derby, this is a suggestion which affords him peculiar and unmixed enjoyment. I gather also from signs in the House that it does not meet with universal approval upon the other side of the House, and I refrain at the present moment from arguing our view of the case, which I shall have no difficulty in defending when the proper time comes. These powers given to the Election Petition Judges are certainly not greater than the power they have already, which is practically that of disfranchising a constituency; and these powers are never to be exercised, except in the cases I have specified—of persistent disobedience, corruption, or oppression. Now, of course, it may be open to hon. Gentlemen to say no Irish County Council could ever be guilty of either malversation or oppression, and if they never are guilty, of course the provision in the Bill will remain a dead letter. Supposing the impossible case of malversation is proved, do hon. Gentlemen opposite desire that it should go on unpunished? Do they desire that the powers given to the County Council for certain purposes should be deliberately used by them for the purpose of oppressing the minority?

What about England? Are we not as good as you?

If there be in the mind of any Member of this House the idea that oppression is possible, it is the bounden duty of this House to provide that it should be remedied; and for my own part, without venturing to foresee what the judgment of the House may be, I say that if you will examine the history of Irish controversy in the last ten years, leaving out its previous record, you will find ample material to show that dangers exist in that country which do not exist in England and Scotland, and the House would be guilty of the gravest dereliction of duty unless it provided ample protection against these evils. There is one other, and, I think, a much more important safeguard. I am disposed to think, especially if a plan like that I have suggested be adopted, no County Council will venture to abuse its powers. That I believe, but I do not believe with the same confidence that it may not indulge in reckless expenditure of the kind I have indicated, in the shape of unnecessary roads and unnecessary works, and I think something should be done to deal with that peculiar peril. Here I follow out the analogy, as nearly as may be, of the Scotch Act. The Scotch Act provides that as the owners of land have an interest in the ultimate incidence of the votes, as great or even greater than the occupier, they should have some share in declaring what capital expenditure, as distinguished from current expenditure, should or should not be permitted. If hon. Gentlemen will make themselves acquainted with the mode of procedure of the Fair Rent Commissioners; if they will look at the schedule which is given to the sub-Commissioners for the purpose of enabling them to fix fair rents, they can see that the amount of county cess is, as it ought to be, an element taken into account in determining fair rent. Fair rents are to be fixed every 15 years, and every 15 years the tenants can throw on the owner of the land the whole of the county cess payable at that date. Therefore, although he is not directly a cesspayer, he is deeply interested in the economical management of county affairs, as far as capital expenditure and loans are concerned. The Scotch Act provides that there shall be seven nominees of what in Scotland are called heritors, seven nominees of Commissioners of Supply, seven of the County Council, and the Sheriff of the County, and that this body shall have control over the capital expenditure and charges of a permanent character. Unfortunately, we have no official in Ireland corresponding to the Scotch Sheriff; I wish we had. But I have not been able to find, or, so far, to create a corresponding personage, and I have put upon this Joint Committee the Sheriff of the County. I am not wholly satisfied with the substitution, but I may be able to devise some expedient more satisfactory to my own mind. The principal question is the construction of the Joint Committee, the consent of which we propose should be obtained to capital expenditure on roads, new offices, in addition to those sanctioned by the Local Government Board, and for all purposes of a similar kind. It is framed, apart from the Sheriff, exactly on the model of the Scotch Act—seven nominees of the Grand Jury, and seven of the County Council. It may not be good enough for Ireland, but it has been found quite good enough for Scotland. It will be only necessary for me to add, in order to explain the provisions of the Bill, that the present secretaries of Grand Juries follow the English and Scotch analogy, being at the service of the Joint Committee, and will also have to act officially to both the County Council and the Joint Committee; will be appointed by the County Council, and will not be dismissible except with the consent of the Joint Committee, and that the rights of existing officers are provided for; and that, of course, the County Council is given, in the appointment of future officers, absolute power both in regard to appointments, applications, and dismissals. There is only one more danger which I have heard adverted to by critics of a Local Government Bill for Ireland. They tell us—these critics that I to—tell us that the County Council can be, and will be, made the centre of some political agitation; that it can be, and will be, used as an instrument not for looking after rates or for dealing with sanitary questions, but to further the particular views of a particular Party in Ireland. Well, Sir, I confess I have exercised my imagination as far as I could to discover how this danger would arise, and I am utterly unable to see it. I do not doubt that the County Councils like other Boards in Ireland, and like Boards in England too, may occasionally pass, and very likely will pass, extremely foolish resolutions; that they will forward these resolutions to the Government of the day; that they will be quoted in this House; and that, whatever weight can be attached to them, and whatever assistance can be drawn from them, will be freely availed of by hon. Gentlemen holding the same opinions as the majority party who are members of the County Council. But I cannot, for the life of me, understand how that can affect, for good or evil, the prospects of any particular measure to be discussed in this House. It may be—I hope it will not be, but it may be—that these County Councils will be elected on political lines. If so, undoubtedly the majority of these County Councils will be of the same complexion as the Parliamentary Representatives of that particular county; but how the voice of the County Councils will add anything to the weight of the elected Member of Parliament I am utterly unable to understand. The elected Member of Parliament is elected to express the political views of his constituents. He does so with an authority which no one can gainsay in this House. But the County Council is elected for entirely different purposes, and this House would look not to it, but to the Members of Parliament, for an expression of the political views of the county itself. I cannot help thinking that those gentlemen who fear that in passing this Bill for Local Government in Ireland we are not passing a measure for Local Government in Ireland, but that we are passing a measure which is to be used as a stepping-stone to something which has nothing to do, which will have nothing to do, with Local Government, are disquieting themselves in vain. I do not believe, whatever dangers or difficulties may attach to the establishment of a system of Local Government in Ireland, that that particular danger is one of them, and I would venture to ask those gentlemen who criticise the Bill from that point of view to argue out in their own minds what is the exact nature of the danger which they fear. If they do, I am convinced they will come to the conclusion that the danger has no existence outside their own imagination. I have explained to the House, I hope with lucidity and at greater length than I had hoped to have done, all the complex principles of this measure.

What about the police?

What about the rates?

What about the Sanitary Authorities?

The Police I do not touch The incidence of rates remains as it is; the Sanitary Authorities are not touched; the Sanitary Committees appointed in the urban sanitary districts are not touched at all. I have nothing, I think, to add to the outline I have given to the House. I hope the House will wait until they see that outline filled in in detail; and hon. Members will wait until they have the Bill in their hands. It is for the most part drawn up on the line of the English and Scotch Bill, and the far greater part they will find in one or other of these Bills, not only the model for the proposals which we have adopted, but also the very words in which they are quoted in the parent measures. I do not know, Sir, that I need say anything upon the general question of Local Government in Ireland. I have been accused of showing a vast indifference to my own proposals, and I have been accused of cynicism in my remarks in regard to them, though I do not know what that accusation means. I have always said upon this subject exactly what I think. I have not pretended, nor do I pretend now, to say that either this Bill, or any other Bill dealing with County Councils, is likely to regenerate Ireland. I do not believe that, under the new bodies, county affairs will in Ireland be administered more economically or more independently; but I do most sincerely think that the exercise of these duties of County Councils are a right which the Irish taxpayer has a claim to, after what has been done in England and Scotland. I also believe that at the first, and in the long run, the effect of a Bill of this kind will be to bring the various classes in Ireland more together—to associate them more for a common object. While I have provided in this Bill for a condition of Irish society, which has little or no parallel out of Ireland, I refuse to believe that that condition is likely to be eternal; and, as time operates upon the wounds that have been seared upon the face of Ireland, I hope—I believe—that we may find the representatives of rich and poor, the landlords and the occupiers, the large cesspayer and the small cesspayer, the Protestant and the Catholic, meeting together as in England and Scotland, and, irrespective of their political differences, working out in common, for their own good, the administration of their own districts. If that be the result of this Bill, it will be a valuable result. I do not pretend to class this measure in importance with other Irish measures of which I have had the conduct, and which this House has passed into law. I do not think it is nearly so important for the administration of justice, for example, as the Criminal Law Procedure Act, nor that it is so important for the amelioration of the condition of the country as the Railway Bill; I do not think that it is of the same importance as measures dealing with the congested districts. I do not think that it will substitute for a bad state of society a good state of society, which I trust, in the long run, the Land Purchase Bill will substitute; but, although I do not class it in importance with any of these measures—for I do not anticipate from it any, so far as Ireland is concerned, of the advantages which she has derived from any of the four Bills to which I have referred—yet the withholding of it from Ireland, after giving it to England and Scotland, would have the effect of giving the people of Ireland ground for the declaration that they are not treated with equal justice; and for that reason I think the effect of it will be, not to widen, but to help to heal, the prejudices which unfortunately exist in Ireland, and for these reasons I urge it earnestly upon the attention of the House.

Mr. Speaker, the right hon. Gentleman had no reason whatever to apologise to the House for the manner in which he has introduced the Bill. The Bill could not have been presented to the House with greater clearness, with more lucidity, or with more admirable frankness. It is the first time that any Minister, in any country, has prefaced the introduction of a Bill for extending Local Government with an avowed preference for a Coercion Act. Now, I confess that I am disappointed in the Bill. Our position—the position of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian and the rest of us—has practically been from the very first to welcome any measure pointing in a liberal conciliatory direction towards the people of Ireland without compromising or abandoning our own firm opinion, which is, that reform of county and administrative bodies is hopelessly insufficient to meet either the constitutional demands or the social requirements of Ireland. And our opinion further is, that, unless your plan of reformation is constructed on an almost unattainable scale, it will not lessen, but that it will increase the difficulties of better government in Ireland. Though we hold these opinions, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian, in a very early stage in the existence of the present Parliament, expressly admitted that the Government might be expected to bring in a Bill of this kind. I now, to-night, admit that the Government have a full right to ask us, at this stage, at any rate, to examine their proposals as they stand, and on their merits, with a view for the special objects and ends which they have set out for themselves in framing that measure, and independently of the value of this measure as an alternative policy to Home Rule. We admit the truth of that. The Government have a right, in the first instance, to invite us to discuss that measure from their own starting-point—namely, that it is not desirable, in their judgment, to trust the people of Ireland with a central elective authority; but that it is desirable, and that it is safe to entrust local representative bodies—this I take to be the first principle—to entrust local representative bodies with the same powers as has been conferred upon local representative bodies in England. (Hear, hear!) The right hon. Gentleman assents I see to that. Has he carried that principle out? I will examine it in a moment. I may observe that the right hon. Gentleman's remonstrances as to surprise being felt that the Government should bring in a Bill of this kind does not concern us, because they were remonstrances addressed to his own followers, and to his followers upon this side of the House. I think his remonstrances were unreasonable. It is an unreasonable thing for a Government, whose Chief has just denounced a people, as representing, by their majority, the most backward and least civilised portion of the community—it is rather an extraordinary thing that the same Government should bring forward a measure for performing the operation proposed in this Bill. It is an extraordinary thing too that Local Government should be taken as the legitimate crowning of an edifice, whose foundations are laid in coercion, and in exceptionally repressive legislation. The two orders of architecture are indeed widely different, the order of the foundation and the order of the column itself are widely different, and I do not see how they can be reconciled, the one with the other. This is not the time for those perplexing debates, and I have no desire to pursue them in the presence of a policy which could only be sound on the condition that all the things that have been stated from those Benches opposite for the last six years about the condition of Ireland are unsound and untrue. The question that we have to ask ourselves in examining the proposals of the Government are of an entirely different kind. We have to ask ourselves, taking their own starting-point, whether the Bill is a Bill constructed on the lines of English and Scotch Local Government; we have to ask ourselves whether it fulfils the only object for which local representative bodies were created in England and Scotland, and the only object for which they can be desired in Ireland; we have to ask ourselves whether it does fulfil, or is likely to fulfil, the objects of local self-government, or whether it does confer local self-government substantially in any sense that makes it worth anything; or whether it is not likely to produce administrative confusion, and increase local disorganization in Ireland? I admit the reasonableness of the right hon. Gentleman's claim, that we should not pass judgment until we have seen the Bill in print. I accept that, and I do not propose to enter into any details except one or two remarks of the right hon. Gentleman in regard to the measure that has been laid before the House. We have been able, thanks to the very lucid way in which the right hon. Gentleman laid down the lines of his proposal, to disentangle the main principle upon which the Bill has been constructed; and that is all, at this stage, that is necessary for the House to do, or that it usually does. We, on this occasion, have no intention of resisting formally the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman for bringing in this Bill. But let there be no mistake; this Bill is a less liberal Bill, it is a more reactionary Bill, than the Bill brought before the House in the year 1879 by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Thanet. I have recollection of the provisions of it, and I believe gentlemen from Ireland, who remember it better, perhaps, than I do, will bear me out in saying that this Bill is a less liberal Bill than that of 1879. I will not go over the various provisions which the right hon. Gentleman laid before the House, except in the case of two matters upon which he relies, which I think are worthy of the consideration of the House, and which I believe are the substance of the Bill. He relies, first, on the cumulative vote, which I think the most broken reed any minority trembling for its privileges could be made to rely upon. It is undoubtedly the opinion of those who favour minority representation that it is the most cumbrous and the least satisfactory, and that it will be found to be no protection at all. But the second point, as to the safeguards, is the real pith of the Bill. It is incredible that a Minister—considering every principle laid down by the spokesman of the Government at the beginning of this Parliament, that Local Government should be extended to Ireland equally with England and Scotland—should bring forward a proposal now, that the Judge of Assize, sitting, I presume, like an Election Judge, without a jury, should try these charges of malversation, or of corruption, or of oppression, and that if these charges are made, then the Judge should proceed to try the County Council.

Two Judges.

One Judge or two, it makes no difference; we are to try the County Council in the dock, and are to declare if, in the opinion of a Judge, they are guilty or not guilty. He does not deny that the Judges are to decide upon the question of guilt; to decide upon the charge of malversation; on the question of corruption, on the question of oppression. But I would point out that, under the Act which throws upon Judges the duty of trying election cases,the corruption is expressly and carefully defined. But now, what is oppression? What is to be in the mind of the Judge when the County Council is put into the dock on a charge of oppression? Is it defined in the Bill? It is, I suppose, not defined in the Bill. Is the definition of oppression in the Bill, or does the definition of it only lie in the bosom of the Judge?

Why not?

The right hon. Gentleman asks why not. Why, all the privileges and all the freedom of Englishmen depend upon Statute and not upon the definition of a Judge. Is the Judge to constitute a new crime? Oppression is surely a new crime. In the Coercion Act, of which the right hon. Gentleman is very proud, in that Act he created new crime; but in this Bill new crimes are to be created and pressed home, not to an individual, but to elected bodies of gentlemen. I think that is so monstrous a proposal that I am quite sincere in saying that I am disappointed in the Bill. We knew there would be artificial safeguards which we should have to protest against; that the friends of the right hon. Gentleman in Ulster would seek for them, but I think he might have found some safeguard which would not have affronted every principle of his Bill. The right hon. Gentleman says it is necessary to give this measure to Ireland because you have given a measure to England and Scotland. I should like to see the right hon. Gentleman consenting to introduce into a Bill, which would be supposed to satisfy the English and Scotch people, a proposal which would place the English and Scotch County Councils in the dock for a Judge of Assize to try them, and give his opinion of oppression. This proposal shows that he distrusts the Irish people, who are to be treated, as this Bill implies, as debased Helots, which we are responsible for having made them. All I can say is this, that I should like nothing better than that you should dissolve on this question; yes, as soon as you like. Go to the English counties and tell them you have brought in a Bill for Ireland, nominally a Bill to give equality and similarity of institutions between England and Ireland, which is to expose their elected County Councils to being tried by the Judges of the land, who are to say whether they are guilty or not. From that point of view I am not disappointed. If I had cared more for Party interests than I care for good government in Ireland, I should not have been disappointed; but I repeat it, the country, depend upon it, will see through this monstrous imposture. It will see that a measure brought in containing such a provision as that is a mockery of the House of Commons, is a falsification of your pledges, and is a just ground for new and fresh irritation in Ireland.

Mr. Redmond (Loud cries of "Mr. McCarthy.") Mr Redmond rose first. (Cries of "No. Mr. McCarthy rose first.) I think Mr. Redmond did rise first, and I call upon him.

I did not see the hon. Member for Derry City rise in his place, and I assure the House that in taking the opportunity that thus early has been given to me of saying two or three words at once upon this Bill, I mean no personal disrespect to him, and I can assure the House also, that I will not stand between the House and, no doubt, the anxiety of hon. Members for a moment. The right hon. Gentleman who has just resumed his seat has stated to the House that he would not upon this occasion enter a formal vote against the Bill. For my part, I hope the earliest opportunity will be taken for enabling Members representing Irish constituencies of protesting by their votes against a sham and an insult, which they recognise in the Bill as it has been sketched by the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury. This Bill, I venture to assert, will not receive the sympathy or the support of any section of the people of Ireland. I do not believe that even those hon. Gentlemen representing Orange constituencies in this House, for whose feelings such elaborate precautions have been taken by the Government, will be able to declare themselves in favour of this Bill; while every man who represents any section of the Irish people who claim to be Nationalist will feel it their duty to offer to it a strenuous opposition. For myself, I may be permitted to say that I came into this House this evening with a perfectly open mind upon this subject. I had not a very high expectation as to what the Government would propose, but for my part I was prepared if they introduced a good Bill to give that Bill a hearty support through all its stages in this House. But they have intro- duced a measure which makes it impossible, as I believe, for any Irishman with any self-respect whatever to give it anything except the most strenuous opposition. In itself I say the Bill is a sham—not only is the Bill in itself a sham, but in the manner also in which it was proposed by the right hon. Gentleman. The Bill is an insult to the Irish people. The right hon. Gentleman commenced his speech by reminding the House and the country that this was, forsooth, no new departure of the Tory Party to introduce Local Government in Ireland. He reminded the House that the policy of the Tory Party was a policy of coercion, if you like, but a policy of creating for Ireland similar institutions with England. They have passed for Ireland whole-hearted, thoroughgoing, perpetual Coercion Acts, and when they take up what professes to be the supplementary part of their policy they have produced a measure which is absolutely beneath contempt. I thought at one part of the speech of the First Lord of the Treasury that the Bill was introduced with a view to an early Dissolution; but before he sat down I changed my opinion, because I did not conceive that any body of Ministers could be guilty of the imbecility of going to the country with such a proposal as the Bill proposed by the right hon. Gentleman. What, in a sentence, are the provisions of this Bill? The Grand Juries—which as a system have been denounced by almost every party in the State; which undoubtedly are indefensible in principle—the Grand Juries are to remain existence, for the discharge of those very duties which, above all others, they have fulfilled in the most unsatisfactory way to the Irish people. The objections which have been held to the working of the Grand Juries have not been confined to objections as to the building of a bridge or the management of a little road in the country. Our objections to the working of the Grand Juries have been in those very duties which are still to be left to them. They have exercised their duties partially, for they have been influenced by political and other improper motives in discharging those duties, and those are the very duties which, under the provisions of this Bill, are left to them still to perform. They are to have the right of granting compensation for malicious injuries, they are to have the right of passing imperative presentments—as I am reminded, the most important part of the duties which at present remain with them. Not only that, but they are actually to exercise the practical right of veto upon every single penny to be expended in the shape of any capital expenditure in the county; because the House has grasped the fact that these County Councils are not to have the power of expending one single penny upon capital expenditure in Ireland without the consent of a Committee, and that Committee is to be made up of seven Members nominated by the Grand Jury, and a casting vote to the Sheriff of the County; and though the right hon. Gentleman says his mind is open as to who should discharge the duty given to the Sheriff, still the fact remains that it is his intention to put over the County Councils to expend money for this purpose a Committee, the majority of whom will be nominated by the Grand Jury, which we say should be totally abolished. Then there are the limitations put upon the Councils. In every Council there are to be seven ex officio members whose franchise is to be limited, and limited in a way which, as an Irishman, I felt humiliated on hearing proposed in this House. Some hon. Members might imagine because of the controversy that has been going on in Ireland, and from statements made from platforms in Ireland, that some of those who share the views I hold upon Irish political questions would be in favour of legislation directed against the illiterate voters in that country. For my part, I utterly disclaim anything of the sort. I look forward to the near approach of the day when the illiterate voters will be removed, but by the march of education among the poorer classes; and I say that where you have no provision dealing with the illiterate voters in the measure of Local Government which Parliament has given to England, it is an insult to put it in a measure which you propose to give us in Ireland, which is needed there no more than it is needed here. To the fact that the Bill is still to retain the traverse, I have no objection; if it stood alone few men would be inclined to quarrel with it. Then the Bill contains one of the most extraordinary proposals that I ever heard made to this House, namely, a proposal for investigation—a couple of Judges would have the right of dissolving these Councils. The right hon. Gentleman, in making his speech, said he took the scheme of the minority voting in the School Boards in England, but when he saw that, on its merits, he could not defend that scheme, he, forsooth, said, "It is better to take a scheme which you know to be stupid, but which is in existence, than to take a scheme which you know is good and wise, but which has not been put on trial." But when he conies to deal with the most essential portion of his proposals, namely, the one by which he proposes to dissolve the County Councils, does he propose a scheme for dissolving County Councils which has been tried in this country, or in any country on the face of the earth? Nothing of the kind. He proposes a brand new scheme, that, forsooth, a couple of Judges should take to themselves the right of dissolving these County Councils, and thus deprive the people of their right of franchise. I did not rise for the purpose of going into the details of this Bill. I only rose for the purpose of expressing at once, without a moment's delay, what my feeling is with reference to the proposals in the measure; and my feeling is, that these proposals are a mockery to the Irish people, and, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle said, a violation of the pledges of the right hon. Gentleman and his friends, when they pledged themselves that while they were giving coercion to Ireland on the one hand, they were giving to Ireland similar free institutions with England, and that, in addition to these proposals, constitute an insult to the Irish people, which, for my part, I shall do my best at every stage of this Bill to resent by my voice and my vote.

I do not think that I ever heard in this House a Bill introduced under the same conditions, or a Motion made for the Second Reading of a Bill with the same results, as the Bill just introduced by the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury. The speech of the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury was one prolonged apology for introducing the measure at all. He evidently came "to bury Cæsar, not to praise him." Not one single word of genuine praise came from the right hon. Gentleman about the measure he was introducing. At one time he apologised to his own followers; at another time he turned to us and made an apology to us. To his own followers he said—"It may be a very strong measure; you may think it very daring on our part; but you see we must do something with these people over the way." And then he turned to us and said— "I admit that this is a very ridiculous measure, but one has to do something, and it is better to have a stupid thing that has been done before, than thing that has never been done before." Exactly. But you have now introduced a stupid thing that was never tried before, and I venture to say that never will be tried in this case or in any other. This, then, is the measure which is to win and wean the Irish people from all their wild desire for Home Rule. This is the measure which was promised to us long ago by the noble Lord the Member for South Paddington. I wonder what he thinks of it. This is the sort of measure which was to make us settle down composedly for ever more under the Tory and Coercionist Government, and return thanks to the powers above who gave us such beneficent masters. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle well said that this Bill is a monstrous imposture. It is also a very miserable and pitiable farce. I was disposed towards compassion for the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury when labouring with these absurdities which are called clauses in the Bill; the checks and balances, and the ingenious artifices—or rather, I should say, not ingenious, but very clumsy artifices which seemed to be giving things with one hand while taking them away with the other. But one can understand the position of the right hon. Gentleman. He was like the captain of a vessel who at the one time has to fight an enemy and to try to keep down a mutiny below the hatches. I could not make anything of this Bill under conditions such as these. I do not propose to go into the details of this Bill. It seems to be all details. I can get no gleam or spark of meaning anywhere, except that it is a Bill based on the principle of "Oh, my prophetic soul, my uncle!"—the principle that the Irish people are like the Hottentots. We are to be regarded as below any other nation that pretends to be civilised in our right to civilisation. As regards one clause, the right hon. Gentleman asked us indignantly, with a sort of sneer in his voice, "If the thing is good enough for Scotland, is it not good enough for you?" But that particular clause was forced by the Tories upon the Scotch Members, and I say that what was merely forced on the reluctant Scotch Members is not good enough for Irish Members. I do not propose to follow the arguments that have been presented to the House by the right hon. Gentleman in support of the Bill; but I consider provisions have been introduced into this Bill which were unknown to any Statute whatever in this country before. It has been worked on the principle of coercion, and begins by putting a brand on the Irish people, so that even a measure of local self-government for them must be fortified round by new clauses, new schemes, new crimes invented for the purpose, and new means of punishment. I do not care whether the right hon. Gentleman's Bill is allowed to go through its first reading or not. I care little whether it is opposed in the beginning, or whether it is opposed in the end. My own feeling is that we ought to have nothing whatever to do with it; that we ought to express that feeling in the beginning, and reject the unclean thing. If I might venture to give the right hon. Gentleman one piece of advice, the piece of advice which I, for one, should like to give him, would be this—"Take your Bill, and put it in the fire."

I do not imagine that there will be in the minds of the cesspayers of Ireland any deep reflection of the very deep indignation exhibited on the Benches opposite, because I conceive that when the cesspayers of Ireland examine the provisions of this Bill, they will see what in reality the right hon. Gentleman proposes to do by the Bill. The Bill proposes to give a non-elected and non-elective body a complete and absolute control over the fiscal arrangements of the country. ("No!") Yes; that is what the cesspayers of Ireland have long desired to obtain, and they do not look on the establishment of County Councils as the perpetration of any deep political design. All they wish to have is the management of the county affairs in their own hands, and I believe, so far as I could gather from the clear and explicit statement of the First Lord of the Treasury, the Bill—which I believe to be a broad and generous Bill—will completely fulfil the expectations of the majority of the body of cesspayers of Ireland, whether great or small. I do not believe that there exists in any body of cesspayers in Ireland any great prospect or belief in seeing their affairs handed over to County Councils which would have unrestrained and unlimited powers of dealing with the finances of the county; and, therefore, I think that the provisions which the right hon. Gentleman has indicated and placed in the Bill to prevent extravagant and illegitimate expenditure on the part of the County Councils will be as heartily received by the small cesspayers as by the larger cesspayers in Ireland. I should like to reserve to myself full liberty upon one or two of the clauses connected especially with the franchise, and I think, the areas from which the Baronial and County Councils are to be selected; but, generally speaking, I desire—and I think I am expressing the opinion of all my hon. Friends who sit on this side of the House—to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman most heartily upon the measure which he has so successfully introduced.

I confess I speak on this occasion with some difficulty. I have not made any secret outside—and I see no reason why I should make any secret inside—this House that the constituency that I represent is not unanimously in favour of any scheme of local self-government. At all events, I have gone to my constituents, and in every part of the constituency I have told them what my views were. Now, I have listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman to-night, and I have not the slightest desire to go into the details of the measure which he has outlined. But there are one or two points upon which I should like to express my opinion at once. First of all, as regards the duties that are to be imposed upon these Councils, I do not think that any fair objection can be taken to the scheme. The duties of the new Councils will be practically the same in character as the duties of the English and Scotch Councils. The fiscal function of the Grand Jury as distinguished from their judicial or quasi-judicial functions will be vested in these elected bodies. Now that is all the Government promised to do, and I do not think that the country will be deceived by the boisterous merriment of the Front Opposition Bench and of hon. Members below the Gangway when they come to examine in cold print the actual facts of the case. The next thing I should like to deal with are the proposed checks and safeguards outlined by the right hon. Gentleman. One would think, to hear the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle, that they had never been a party to a Bill introduced by a Member of this House, that proposed checks and safeguards on an Irish Bill. I want to know what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian did when he was setting up a Governing Body in Ireland—or proposed to set up. Why, it is a matter of fact that he hedged that Bill round with safeguards of every description, and actually created two Orders in the Legislative Body he proposes to set up. I now come to the question of the franchise. Nobody can deny that here, again, the country will see to-morrow that the basis of the franchise is solid and sound. The basis of the franchise is that every cesspayer shall have a vote. Nothing could be wider, nothing more democratic, than that. But the right hon. Gentleman by his Bill is guilty, says the hon. Gentleman the Member for Waterford, of one great sin—he has disfranchised the illiterate voter. I deny, taking the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, that he has done anything of the kind. What the right hon. Gentleman proposes to do, as I understand, is not to disfranchise anybody, but to withdraw the privilege that the law confers upon ignorance in this country. It is very easy in this country to laugh about the illiterate voter. They are not a considerable factor in either English or Scotch elections; but when they come up to a fourth of a total constituency, or more than a fourth, they then become a factor; and I say it is not any hardship to compel the illiterate voter to do the same as any other voter—that he must know what he is to do. And in view of recent elections in Ireland, and in view of the fact that priests were to be found as personating agents in the polling booths superintending the voting of these illiterates, I say the right hon. Gentleman has acted wisely in putting that clause into his Bill, and I hope he will stick to it. I now come to the question of the cumulative vote as distinguished from the franchise itself, and I confess candidly that I have some little doubts about that. I have some doubts about the minority vote at all, and I tell the House candidly why I have doubts. It will very probably be useful, but if the right hon. Gentleman's intention is to protect or to help Protestant minorities to representation in the South and West of Ireland, in almost every case in that part of the country these minorities are so slender that I hardly think any plan of cumulative voting will secure them representation. I admit that it will work better in the North, and I think it will do good in the North, because there the Catholic minorities are substantial, and I believe by this plan they will get representation, which I hold to be a good thing, on these Boards in the North. There are counties in Ireland where they would probably have no representation but for this; and, whilst I do not think this will be of much aid to Protestant minorities in the South and West, I believe it will be a great help to substantial Catholic minorities in the North, and I believe that it is worthy of consideration on that account alone. But I am convinced of this, that of all plans of minority voting this is the least harmful and the easiest understood. The hon. Member for Waterford (Mr. J. E. Redmond) waxed very eloquent about the County Council being hedged in with regard to capital expenditure. What was the promise of the hon. and learned Member for Longford (Mr. T. Healy) last year? I remember his promise perfectly.

I stick to it.

His promise across the floor of the House was:—"If you introduce a Bill founded on the lines of the English or the Scottish Bills then I will support it." But this clause about capital expenditure which the hon. and learned Member for Waterford derides is absolutely founded on the Scottish precedent, and, I take it, is almost word for word. The hon. and learned Member's promise was not to support a Bill which would receive the support of the hon. and learned Member for Dumfries (Mr. R. T. Reid), but such a Bill as was embodied in the Scottish Act.

No, no.

I remember the promise given distinctly across the floor of the House. I do not pretend to fix him to every word or idea in the Bill; but when a clause such as this, to control the expenditure, comes up to be discussed, and you find it in the Scottish Act, I say hon. Members below the Gangway are barred by the promise of the hon. and learned Member for Longford from at least deriding it. I now come to the last part of the Bill that I care to discuss on the Motion for its First Reading, and I admit at once that I think the Government will find themselves in the greatest difficulty in regard to it—namely, the provisions with regard to suppressing County Councils where it might be deemed necessary to suppress them. But, I think, the House at all events, instead of going off into merriment or exploding in passion at such a proposal as that, ought to look the facts in the face as they exist in Ireland. What have we been told? We have been told by hon. Members below the Gangway that every one of these bodies will be captured—that is the phrase—captured and worked for political purposes. I am not saying that they will not; I am not saying that they ought not to be. At all events, there is fair warning given authoritatively by the hon. Member for North East Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien), that everyone of these bodies, that every public and popular institution of the country would be captured for ulterior purposes. I start with that, and I say the House is bound to take cognizance of a threat of that kind. Will the House take the analogy of the Board of Guardians? They are also public and popular institutions.

Partly.

Well, they are the only popularly elected body in the country.

What about the ex officios?

I am aware of the ex officios, but I say the Board of Guardians are the only analogous Boards that you can consider, because they are the only Boards of the kind in the country. I want to ask, and especially do I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bridgeton' Division of Glasgow (Sir G. Trevelyan), how many Boards did he suppress? These Gentlemen go off in merriment and in explosions of indignation at the idea of suppressing a public body, when they themselves have suppressed them times without number and said nothing about it. (Unionist Cheers and Laughter.) Did the right hon. Gentleman believe that they ought to be suppressed? He must have done so, or he would not have suppressed them, and if he believes that public Boards in Ireland were capable of doing things for which he judges suppression a necessary punishment, I say that the Government is bound in this Bill to act in the same way. I do not object to the power of suppression. I object to the method. I think that is cumbrous. I think it is very faulty, and I do not think I shall be able to support it, and I tell the Government that candidly. But as to the neccessity for some power of appeal in cases of malversation I have not the slightest doubt that that is necessary, and I hope, whilst that clause will not be passed, that some power will be retained which will be capable of pulling those Boards up when occasion arises. The past history of the country shows that occasion has arisen, and if it has arisen in the past we have no right to act on the supposition that it will not arise in the future. I do not know that I ought to say more save in regard to one subject. I think the hon. Member for West Belfast (Mr. Sexton) showed his hand just a little too plainly during the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury. He interrupted the right hon. Gentleman to know what he proposed to do in regard to imperative presentments. I say that is just showing his hand a little too soon.

What is my hand?

Order, order!

I say these are subjects of which we have had some experience already. They involve presentments for extra police, and we know what happened in the city of Limerick.

No, no! They do not.

They involve, I maintain, the presentments for extra police. These are imperative presentments. I say we have had some experience in the past with the Limerick Corporation in that matter, and I think the Government have acted rightly in simply transferring the fiscal functions of the Grand Jury and retaining in their hands their judicial and quasi-judicial functions.

May I be allowed to say, with reference to the hon. Gentleman's remarks that I showed my hand, that I merely asked for information that the right hon. Gentleman omitted to give, and there is no reason why the County Councils more than the Grand Jury should have these presentments, seeing that the Judge of Assize can make an order.

At all events, I am exceedingly glad that that power has not been transferred to the County Councils. It is partly a judicial function, and I hope it will be retained by the Grand Jury. It is much too soon to discuss the clauses of this Bill in detail, and all I can say now is that I am prepared to vote for the First Reading of this Bill if there be a division; and whilst I reserve to myself full liberty on the clauses of the Bill, I believe there is in the measure the foundation for a good system of Local Government for Ireland

I think the speech of the hon. Gentleman the Member for South Tyrone suffered somewhat from the fact that he was not able to have it written out beforehand, and that if he had seen the Bill yesterday, or even this morning, he would have made rather a better hand of it. The hon. Member challenges me with regard to an expression which I used last year with reference to the system of Local Government. Everything I said last year I fully and fairly stand by. The whole bent of my mind—my whole practice and desire in this House for 12 years—has been, whenever I saw a Bill introduced of which any good whatever could be made, if I could possibly do so without sacrifice of principle, to try and make the best I possibly could of that measure. But as to this Bill, a more contemptible Bill, a Bill more impossible for us to accept, without loss of self-respect, I have never known to be introduced. The hon. Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell) mentioned the Scotch Act, and said that one of the provisions which was taken exception to, that which is called, I think, the Joint Committee Provision, is to be found in the Scotch Act. Very good; but are not the rates in Scotland divided? The landlord in Scotland pays half the county rates, and that being so, it is very legitimate that the landlord should have representation. But is that so with us? The hon. Member for South Tyrone is a Scotchman, and tries to palm this off on the ignorance of the House, when he knows very well that in Scotland the occupier only pays half the county rate, and in Ireland he pays the whole of it, and that, therefore, while in point of form, no doubt, it may seem a matter of equality to embody the same system in regard to both countries, in practice and in fact there is a gross inequality and the grossest injustice. I go through this Bill from start to finish, and from the crown of its head to the sole of its foot, and I find no goodness or soundness in it. My only regret is this, that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Morley) stated that his Party would not divide against it on the First Reading. For my part I can only say that I shall be delighted if the Opposition, whether it be Liberal or Nationalist, divides against this Bill. I was glad, indeed, to hear the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Waterford (Mr. J. E. Redmond). I am glad he took the line he did; but, at the same time, without laying the blame upon any Party, I mournfully reflect that the true inwardness of the Government was shown by the Solicitor General for England (Sir E. Clarke) in a speech to his constituents a few months ago, when he pointed out that there was now a division in the Irish ranks, and when he declared that he believed that the Bill of the Government would be an easy Bill to pass, because, said he, "A large section of the Irish Members will be in favour of it." I believe that the Government thought they had Ireland at their feet, and that owing to the dissension which prevails in our country, anything could be forced down our throats. But I think the First Lord of the Treasury and his Party will find before very much later that this Bill will be rather a tougher job for him to pass into law than even a Coercion Act. I can well understand the Government insisting that a particular clause must be passed in the interest of law and order when it was a Coercion Bill they had to deal with, on the plea that society was crumbling to its foundation, and that it was necessary to appoint two Removables to deal with the matter—that there was some Parliamentary necessity for proceeding to the Closure. But when you have a Bill running into all the crevices and interstices of county life in Ireland, extending to at least 100 clauses, dealing with the question of the powers of the old Grand Juries as regards malicious injuries, as well as the powers of the new body which you now propose to constitute, I can only say that I believe this Bill is dead and buried almost before it is born. Of course, there is one thing to be said. The Government may be serious in passing the Bill; but if they are, I, who have always respected the intellect of the First Lord of the Treasury, can only say that he has fallen very much in my estimation. I cannot conceive that any man of the astuteness of the First Lord of the Treasury—except he believed he would capture some wing of the Irish Party—would expect that this Bill had the smallest chance of passing into law. If he has no hope, what is the good of this Bill? As a dissolving Bill it is absolutely worthless to Her Majesty's Government. You cannot recommend it to English constituencies; you cannot recommend it to the Scottish. The Irish constituencies would not have it. I think the shadow of the Birmingham Congress—where the previous question was moved—will so prevail in the Tory Party that they will give the Bill very cold support on their platforms when the Dissolution is sprung upon them. Therefore, I say, from either point of view, whether as a stalking horse for the Dissolution, or as an effective measure which can be passed through this House, the Bill is an absolute failure, and has died upon the lips of its author. Therefore, for us to make any criticism as to its provisions at this stage would be an absolute mistake. English Members, who know nothing whatever about the matter, will no doubt talk eloquently with respect to the Grand Jury proposal. Now, let me inform hon. Gentlemen on the Tory Benches that there is no subject more difficult to understand than the subject of the Irish Grand Jury law, and when the Member for South Tyrone talked about "imperative presentments," I venture to think he did not know what they were. A great grievance is the grievance as to "malicious injuries." The right hon. Gentleman, with half the astuteness he sometimes displays, gave us the instance that the Grand Jury would still be allowed to retain the power of malicious injury in cases of maiming and murdering. Will the House believe that until four years ago it was not even discovered that the Grand Jurors, except under the Coercion Acts, had that power, and they now only have that power in the case of any policeman injured in a riot, and in the case of a witness who may have given evidence for the Crown; so that the power as regards maiming and murdering is non-existent except in the most special cases. And, furthermore, in the very place where that power is needed more than anywhere else, the City of Belfast, where the Catholics were mowed down in 1886, and where policemen were shot and killed, that power does not exist at all. The widow of a constable, a most respectable woman with a helpless family, because that power does not exist, was left penniless until a grant was given from Her Majesty's Government. What is the power of the Grand Jury as regards malicious injury? They have this power, and a more mischievous power was never placed in the hands of irresponsible men, who do not pay one penny from their pockets. A haystack is burned. It is always the haystack of a land grabber. It is forgotten that the very fact that if the man came before a landlords' body and said that he was a land grabber, that is the very thing to get compensation at twice the ordinary rate of pay. There was the case of Mrs. Lucas—tried at Cork Assizes four years ago. She was the wife of a Grand Juror, the wife of a Magistrate of the County of Cork, and she was tried for arson—for pouring paraffin on the curtains, with her own babes in a cradle in the upper room. She got compensation from the Grand Jury for malicious injuries, on the ground that she was boycotted, and her husband himself was one of the Grand Jury. If there ever was a provision which worked injustice it is this provision with regard to malicious injury. When we wish for county reform in Ireland, and when we desire Grand Jury reform, which would get rid of this odious malicious injury system, which has worked so much injustice in the past, I would not give sixpence for a Bill which did not deal with this question. I shall be told by some gentlemen opposite that this presentment can be traversed. Yes, it can be traversed before a Judge of Assize, one of the gentlemen who are to have the power of destroying these new County Boards. It may be traversed by cumbrous machinery. All the Judges, with two exceptions, I think, refused common juries in these cases. Who are the best judges, from the landlords' point of view, whether this Bill is a good one or not? The Irish landlords. And the Irish landlords assume, as a matter of course, by resolution of their Committee, that the Government would deal with this question of malicious injuries. Did the Landlords' Committee, or at any rate as many of the landlords who have intelligence, propose to deal with the subject? Did they imagine it would be left to the Grand Jury to continue to have this power? Then the Irish landlords are more extreme than the First Lord of the Treasury. They passed a resolution taking away from the Grand Jurors the power of malicious injuries, and they proposed to place it on the County Court Judge. So that, in the confession of the landlords themselves, the Government are taking a retrograde, and even a reactionary step. The other day the Member for South Tyrone had 300 bogus voters in his constituency. They were all allowed to go on, because the revising barrister refused to grant the objections, and the revising barrister got 100 guineas for doing that duty for the Member for South Tyrone. The Member for South Tyrone got him made a County Court Judge with £1,200 a year. For my own part, bad as the proposal of Her Majesty's Government is, I should regard the proposal of the Irish Landlords' Committee as far better than that which is in this Bill. It may be that the Government have made this Bill so bad as it is for the purpose of having Amendments made to it in Committee. They propose something awfully bad—so bad, that anything will be an improvement on it. Then when you propose something decent the Government will say, "Let us split the difference," and they give us something betwixt and between. That may be the idea working in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman. If it is, I will say the whole Bill will want a new lock, a new stock, and a new barrel. I cannot conceive any portion of it which commends itself to the judgment of any section of Irish Members in the House. The mere fact of refusing to deal with malicious injuries, alone is a serious defect. To talk about other questions, the question of the franchise or the question of the cumulative vote, would, I think, be almost useless at the present moment. The only thing I wish to say is, I hope English Members will be instructed by the unanimity with which both sides of the Irish Party desire to preserve the illiterate vote. I saw in a pamphlet, sent out in England recently, the statement that the priests were at Cork in front of the booth with the crucifix. I never yet saw a priest with a crucifix anywhere outside his chapel. Therefore, so far as we are concerned, if you put in these illiterate voters in the interest of either section of the Irish Party both equally repudiate them. Certainly the last to make any proposition with regard to the illiterates should be the Conservative Party. You kept them in ignorance. You put the same price on the head of a schoolmaster as on the head of a wolf. You refused to allow us to deal with our schools, our schoolmasters, or with regard to the whole question of education, except upon some English plan. No doubt it suits the superfine English gentleman who has robbed the Church of this country, and given his children education at the expense of the poor, because, after all, the monasteries taught the poor, which you did not do in the Universities. You get your education at the expense of the poor in Oxford and Cambridge, but turn up your nose at some of us who have hardly got any school education. Whatever state of things prevail in Ireland is your handiwork. If an Irishman is ignorant and uncivilised—if, to use a famous phrase of the uncle of the First Lord of the Treasury, he is an Hottentot—for all these things he has to thank you and your Parliament. It is admirably instructive as to the true inwardness of the Tory Party in this latter end of the nineteenth century that, after having endured your rule for seven centuries, you now propose to punish the men you have robbed and kept ignorant for their crimes.

My hon. and learned Friend who has just sat down rather objected I think to the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle, that we should not vote against the First Reading of this Bill. Now, I have one argument to address to my hon. and learned Friend which I think will have some weight. If we did not vote for the First Reading of this Bill, this Bill would never be printed. Now, our object should be to give the largest circulation that we possibly can to this Bill. I think we ought to have cheap editions of it; that the Liberal vans throughout the counties of England should be stocked with this Bill, that they should enable the illiterates of the rural districts—those people who are not fit for county government as we have heard so often—to form a true opinion of what the Government think county government ought to be in this country. Therefore, Sir, for my part, I should be disposed to take, at all events, the preliminary measure, which would enable the people of England to understand two things—first of all, the point of view from which Her Majesty's Government approach the treatment of the self-government of Ireland—treatment which, as a Gentleman below the Gangway said, amounts to this, that a more insulting Bill to the people of Ireland, more insulting in its provisions and in the manner in which it was presented, cannot be imagined. Why, it professes to be a great remedial measure for Ireland!

No, no!

I know you say it is not a self-government Bill, but it ought to be; it is the basis of all reconciliation between the English and Irish people; and I was going to say that it is not the provisions of this Bill alone, but it is the point of view and the tone of the right hon. Gentleman in presenting it which shows us what his conception is of the relations between England and Ireland, when he says that the Bill for the establishment of local self-government in Ireland is a trifling Bill compared with a Coercion Bill, or a Bill for the making of light railways in Ireland. Well, I shall not, at all events, vote against the First Reading of this Bill, because I wish it to be published throughout the length and breadth of the land. Sir, if there is anybody who should desire to intercept this Bill, it should be the gentlemen who sat behind the right hon. Gentleman. Why does not he, after what I think he has seen of the opinion in this House, get some other noble Lord to perform the friendly office which was performed to this measure at the great Conservative meeting at Birmingham? Why, those delegates had a great deal more common sense than the Cabinet they were called upon to support. Why does he not get some friendly Member on these benches to move "the Previous Question," so as to relieve him of his own Bill? He might save them from the disaster which was contemplated at Birmingham. Sir, we cannot forget that this is a Birmingham Bill. The stamp of Birmingham liberalism it on its face. But where are its supporters? What has become of the Liberal Unionists Brigade? Why are they not here to "help the lame dog over the stile"? Talk of running away! He, the hon. Member for Bordesley (Mr. Jesse Collings), slunk out after them. But I must do this justice to the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury, that in this judgment of Solomon he did not speak with the language of the true mother of the Bill. No, Sir, the mother of this Bill sat at the end of this Bench. I saw in his countenance how much he felt for the imminent fate of his infant. I would venture seriously to ask the right hon. Gentleman after we have paid him the decent compliment of reading his Bill a first time, guided very much by the considerations to which I have alluded, whether it is worth his while to waste this Session upon such a Bill as this? He has got a colleague, sitting next but one to him, who can tell him something about compensation, and what happened to the Compensation Bill. But, Sir, the Compensation Bill was a joke compared to this Bill; I should say that this is the worse joke of the two. I have a high opinion of the intelligence of the right hon. Gentleman. Does he really think it is worth while wasting the time of the House of Commons with a Bill which it is using the mildest language to call an absurdity? Nobody can conceive seriously that a Government can propose for the acceptance of the House of Commons such a measure as this. It is not necessary to refer to any other clause than the notable clause of the trial of the County Council, solvuntur risu tabulœ. If the right hon. Gentleman will only take a sensible view of this matter I am perfectly willing to say to him tu missus abibis. But the trial of the County Council—may I be there to see it; it will be a spectacle such as, I think, has never been witnessed. When the two Judges have retired and have pronounced the County Council guilty, and the culprits are removed from the dock, then the Lord Lieutenant will produce a new County Council. Do you call that a Government that can produce to the ridicule of mankind such a measure as this as fulfilling the great offices of self government in this country? Well, now, Sir, I venture to speak only in the interests of Public Business, and I would entreat the right hon. Gentleman to have some compassion upon the House of Commons. You may carry a joke too far. It is all very well for one night. The right hon. Gentleman has afforded us excellent sport for a few hours before dinner, and we are very grateful to him; but if this farce is to be continued, if the time of the House is to be wasted on such rubbish as this, I think the sooner you send us to our constituents the better, because, depend upon it, they will not waste many weeks in forming a judgment upon this measure and disposing of it. Therefore I would really recommend the right hon. Gentleman to take his First Reading, and then to assure us that we shall hear no more of this Bill, and then go on with some business which is fitting for men of common sense.

I have naturally listened with interest, I may say with entertainment, and possibly with profit, to the short conversational Debate which has occurred on the First Reading of this Bill, and I have noticed I think in the speeches of all the hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who have attacked this measure a partipris—a pre-arrangement of opposition, which I think indicates that they had made up their minds how they were going to receive it long before our proposals were made to the House. I did not begin early enough to take notes of the speeches to have anything like a complete catalogue of the various contumelious epithets which have been heaped upon our proposal. One hon. Member described the Bill as "contemptible,"; another as "an insult"; a third as "a sham"; a fourth as "wrong from the crown of its head to the sole of its foot" another as "a monstrous imposture." An Irish Member who knows a great deal about these things said that it would take as long to pass as the Coercion Act, and the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down threatened us with the same kind of opposition which he led with such brilliant courage against the Licensing Bill of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The hon. and learned Member for Longford seems to think that this Bill is of extraordinary character—that it must have been bronght in by arrangement with one of the wings of the Irish Party.

I did not say anything of the kind.

That violent and eccentric hypothesis has been advanced by the hon. and learned Gentleman to account for such a measure being produced. The hon. Gentleman said we wanted to capture one of the wings of the Irish Party.

I never said anything of the kind. I said the right hon. Gentleman must have hoped to do so, for a colleague of his own (the Solicitor General for England) indicated that in a speech of his.

Well, Sir, I am sorry to say I had no more subtle or sinister designs in bringing forward this Bill than those which I have explained in my speech. I endeavoured, without colouring the matter one way or other, to explain to the House the advantages that would be derived by Ireland from local government, and I do not for a moment pretend that more than those advantages would follow from this or from any other Local Government Bill. It was not I who said that this would settle the Irish question, or that any other conceivable Bill would settle the Irish question. It was not I who said or pretended that it would bring into harmony those parties who have so long disturbed Irish politics. These are sentiments put into my mouth by hon. Gentlemen opposite, and which derive no colour whatever from anything I have said before. I want the House and the country to understand in a word what is the character of the Bill that has been so treated. The Bill agrees with the English and the Scotch Bills in handing over the management of county government to Councillors elected by an absolutely democratic vote, if that is the word; a vote not differing essentially from the vote by which Members of this House are returned. It agrees with the Scotch Bill in handing over to the County Councils so elected management of sanitary affairs as well as the management of roads, asylums, and other matters of that kind. The County Councils and the Baronial Councils elected by this wide suffrage have absolute control over the ordinary management of their ordinary affairs. The only limit put upon them with regard to the works they shall undertake is a limit which has already been imposed in Scotland, and which, so far as I know, has never been described as either rendering the Scotch system inefficacious or unjust, or Scotchmen who have adopted it either slaves or Hottentots. So far as the broad divisions of the Bill are concerned, they are taken from the measure you have already passed for England and Scotland. I admit there is one clause dealing with the power of suspending the County Councils—not treating them criminally, as the right hon. Gentleman, without the slightest warrant, chose to suppose. There is a provision by which, after judicial inquiry by a tribunal which has been thought strong enough to decide whether a Member shall sit in this House, and to determine whether constituencies shall return a Member to this House; before that tribunal we have proposed, and we think we are right in proposing, that cases of corruption, malversation, and oppression should be tried. In what sense is that an insult to the Irish people? In what sense is that a limit to the true powers of the County Councils in Ireland? Will it be maintained by any human being that a County Council, not guilty of oppression or malversation, or corruption, will be found by two Irish elected Judges to be unworthy of continuing in office? It will not be so found. No man believes for one moment that the verdict of a tribunal like that would be an unjust verdict. Therefore, the only possibility of the prophecy in which the right hon. Gentleman indulged of the County Council standing before such a Judge, and hearing his unfavourable opinion of their conduct, must depend upon the fact that in the judgment of the right hon. Gentleman County Councils in Ireland will be guilty of malversation and corruption. Except in that event the clause in the Bill would have, and ought to have, no operation. In that event, who will deny that we are bound to find some method by which lathes like this can be dealt with? I wish the House, and I wish the country, to judge from this Debate what amount of sincerity there is in the cry sent up by hon. Gentlemen for Local Government in Ireland. Those cries are branded from the first with the stamp of insincerity by the speeches we have heard. The Member for Longford said it was not worth while discussing this Bill, which did not alter the existing law with regard to compensation for malicious injuries. What was that to do with Local Government in Ireland? (An hon. MEMBER: Why do you give it to the Grand Juries?) We do not alter the law. Because we bring in a Bill to deal with County Government in Ireland, and in addition did not also happen to deal with the reform of the Grand Jury Law relating to compensation for malicious injuries, therefore these lovers of Local Government, these people who desire that the ordinary ratepayers should have complete management of their own affairs, will not look at the Bill. They say it is contemptible, it is ridiculous, it is a sham. Is it not certain that a man who can deliberately reject a Bill, which, on the widest possible franchise, does give complete control to counties of their affairs, such as is given in Scotland, and who rejects that Bill because it does not go outside the province of Local Government and deal with the perfectly alien question of malicious injuries, is perfectly indifferent to Local Government? The right hon. Gentleman opposite advised me to drop this Bill at once, and tells me that they are going to offer a kind of obstructive opposition, such as has been offered by them on previous occasions, and that the whole Session will be wasted if we deal with this question at all. Are they going to pose about the country as the friends of Local Government? This Bill, at all events, gives to the Irish ratepayer what he has never had—complete power to manage his own affairs. If you reject, as you say you are going to reject, this Bill; if you render it impossible, as you say you will make it impossible, for us to pass this Bill, you will postpone indefinitely the privileges which the Government propose to give to the Irish ratepayers and taxpayers, as they have already given them to the people of England and Scotland. But if you think you are going to reap political advantage by going about the country denouncing us for having introduced a clause in this Bill by which a County Council in Ireland which oppresses is not to be allowed to exist any longer—if you think you are going to make political capital out of the statement that we have dared to introduce a clause in this measure by which the weak and the poor are to be protected from the numerous and the strong, I think you will make nothing, of that. There is not a platform, in this country, nor an audience in this country, before whom I could not go bearing in my hand instances in which popular bodies in Ireland have already shown what, under circumstances and under some temptation, they are capable of. I ask the English people whether we should not be acting criminally towards the minority in Ireland if we did not extend some protection to them? In the meanwhile, I can only take note of the declarations that have been made. I interpret those declarations as a distinct statement on the part both of the official Leaders of the Opposition and of those who repre- sent both sections of the Nationalist Party below the Gangway, that they mean to use every Party weapon they can command to prevent this Bill becoming law. I take note that the only reason they do that is because we introduce machinery to stop corruption and oppression, and I draw from it the inference that it is not freedom and not Local Government they care for, but the desire to make something out of the County Councils. They desire and expect to be able if this provision is not introduced into the Bill to use the powers of the Council either for corruption or for oppression, and for carrying on the cause of the Party of which they are the representatives.

The insulting observations of the right hon. Gentleman are very simply and very shortly dealt with by asking him if the provisions were so salutary why were they not applied to England and to Scotland? The right hon. Gentleman finds that the Irish Members of all sections are opposed to this Bill. The reason is a very simple one. It is because this Bill is drawn on the assumption that for some reason or another Irishmen are inferior to Englishmen and Scotchmen. So long as the right hon. Gentleman and hon. Members in this House mean to legislate for Ireland on the assumption that Ireland is inferior to England and Scotland in any respect, so long will their measures meet with every opposition that it is possible for Irish Members to give them.

I want to know why it is that the hon. Members for North Armagh and North Down are not present during this discussion? The only explanation of this extraordinary event is that they are engaged in organising the poor and the weak in Ulster against the oppression which would be possible under this Bill.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North Armagh is suffering from influenza.

I am very sorry to hear that. The right hon. Gentleman tells us that these provisions are inserted in the Bill, because the Irish people have shown that they have been guilty of a corruption which English and Scotch people have not been guilty of. Have we never heard of the Metropolitan Board of Works? In the Capital City of the Kingdom—a city which is the hotbed of Toryism—you had a spectacle of corruption which you have never seen equalled in the poorest Board of Guardians in Ireland. You talk of political corruption! The man whom hon. Members opposite wish to be styled Lord Mayor of Belfast, who was to have been the entertainer of the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury on his visit to that town, is a member of a firm of contractors, and his partner tenders for contracts under the Corporation of Belfast. He says he has some arrangement with his partner by which the profits do not go into the Lord Mayor's pocket. But neither the Corporations of Dublin or Cork, or any other city in Ireland, would have given contracts to the partner of their Chief Magistrate. That is the one case of declared open and scandalous misconduct which you can find any traces of in the Local Government of Ireland. I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether this provision is specially inserted in order to prevent the Lord Mayor of Belfast from giving contracts to his partner? Then, what about the poor and the weak? We used to hear of the wealth and intelligence of our opponents, of their strong right arms, which were going to resist any measure of Home Rule for Ireland. Your party in Ireland, on behalf of whom you have refused for the last six years to give even the rudimentary rights of citizens to the vast mass of the people of Ireland, are, after all, so poor and weak that you have to invent a scheme of checks and balances and safeguards, different to anything that has ever been seen in any other Local Government Bill. The people of Ireland are fit for Local Government, but they are not fit for the Local Government proposed by the right hon. Gentleman. They do not see the wisdom of setting up an elaborate sham. We do not take exception to any provision which is to put down corruption and oppression, but we do take exception to the monstrous proposal to give the Judges the right to punish the County Councils of Ireland because they opposed the Conservative Party. We shall offer to this Bill the most decided and determined opposition; and as the Bill must be a complicated one, and as the statutes dealing with Local Government are numerous, it will be possible for us to oppose this Bill in a way which may exceedingly embarrass Her Majesty's Government. There will be no difficulty in drawing Amendments which would occupy no small part of the time of this Session; and if my hon. Friends sitting around me are of the same opinion I think the Government will hesitate to press on this measure in the face of the opposition which it will encounter.

I decline to express any opinion on the Bill till I have seen it. I rise mainly in consequence of the indignation, real or assumed, expressed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby and other speakers. One would suppose that the Members for Derby and Newcastle had never heard of local governing bodies being controlled by the Courts of Law. I know of no Local Government, either past or present, which is not directly subjected to the control of the Courts of Law. It is the common practice for applications to be made to the Court of Queen's Bench to keep Justices within their proper jurisdiction, and to get them to discharge their duty; and when they fail to discharge their duty you can get a mandamus to compel them to do so. If after this they do not discharge their duty, they would be adjudged by the Court to be guilty of contempt of Court. We need not go into ancient history. We have had a recent instance in which the London County Council had to obey a mandamus of the Queen's Bench on a question of licensing. What hon. Gentlemen opposite seem to have lost sight of is this fact—that you must make the local governing authorities subject to the control of the executive, or of the Imperial Government. If that is not done, then Local Government ceases to be Subordinate Government. There is nothing new in this, except that the new tribunal proposed is to have the power of dissolving County Councils. In principle it is the same, for the local governing bodies are subject to the control of Her Majesty's Superior Courts.

I have observed that whenever a Tory Bill is brought in you always have a Tory lawyer to swear it is part of the Constitution. Let me tell the hon. and learned Gentleman that he may talk as he pleases, but he must realise himself that the Liberals would never consent that an elective representative assembly should be subordinate to any judicial tribunal in this country. The judicial tribunals are subordinate to all local bodies that have rights to legislate. But I do not rise to reply to the hon. and learned Gentleman. I rise to express my sympathy with the First Lord of the Treasury. I think he has been most cruelly treated by hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House. They have not considered the difficulty of his position. The right hon. Gentleman found himself between a certain Personage and the deep sea. Why has not the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham manifested his interest in the Bill? The right hon. Gentleman has for years demanded and insisted that the pledge of the noble Lord the Member for Paddington should be fulfilled, and that some sort of local government for Ireland should be brought in by the present Ministry. The First Lord of the Treasury had to submit to this. He knew he could call himself the Leader of the House, but he had a master, and the master was sitting here. The hon. Gentleman writhed under the supremacy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, but they were obliged to accept it, because if they did not they knew they would no longer have a majority in the House. Here is the right hon. Gentleman in this position, and I am sorry to see the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby and others trampling him under foot. The right hon. Gentleman has had to satisfy two different parties. He had to satisfy the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham by bringing in a Local Government Bill, and he had to satisfy Gentlemen behind him by bringing in a sham Local Government Bill. I never saw a more pitiable position of a Leader of the House. He was on his knees not to the Opposition, but to hon. Gentlemen behind him, with one after another of what he was pleased to call safeguards. He looked disparagingly round to see if there was no cheer, and if there was not sufficient, then he would give another safeguard; and, showing that the Bill was a humbug and a sham, the right hon. Gentleman would have gone on putting in safeguards if his friends had desired it. I must call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham to his position. He has been called by the Member for Derby the mother of this Bill. The right hon. Gentleman complained that my right hon. Friend had not stated his views with regard to this Bill. We know that this Bill is the child of the right hon. Gentleman, and I should like to hear this eminent former Radical explain his views on the different clauses of the Bill. Let him tell us what he approves of and what he disapproves of, because I never know what the Government are going to do until I hear the words of the right hon. Gentleman. Why are we to be tormented, I ask the First Lord of the Treasury, by these sham Bills? Why not take the advice, which is exceedingly well meant, and send us back to our constituents? Either you have a majority in the country or you have not. If you have not, you have no business here. If you have, you will come back with redoubled force. It is too ridiculous to waste time on a Bill like this, or on any Local Government Bill, with regard to Ireland, considering that the great issue which must be submitted to the country is, whether there is to be Home Rule or not, and in the event of the country deciding that there was to be Home Rule, we shall be wasting our time, for it will be for the Irish Parliament, not for us, to decide what are to be the provisions of Local Government in the different counties.

Sir, I am induced to say a few words on this stage of the Debate by the appeal of the hon. Member for Northampton. I think it exceedingly undesirable that credulous people should take for truth what the hon. Member has just said. The hon. Member is entirely mistaken in saying that I have insisted, either in public or in private, upon the introduction of a Local Government Bill for Ireland. I took note in the early part of this Parliament of the intention of the Government to introduce such a Bill. I have approved of that intention, and I have counted upon its fulfilment, but I have never insisted upon anything. The hon. Member does me altogether too much credit in imagining that I am in any way responsible for the clauses of this Bill. I understand in the course of my absence from the House for five minutes my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Derby took the opportunity of making an attack upon me, which I am assured was in his very best and latest Whitechapel style. I am told that my right hon. Friend complained that I had slunk out of the House for fear apparently of the onslaught which he was about to make upon me.