Mr. Speaker, I very much regret to have to bring under your notice and the notice of the House a personal matter, involving as I think the privileges of Members of this House. I exceedingly regret that I feel myself compelled to do so, because it affects one of our daily London newspapers. I desire to say I have no wish to come into collision with the newspaper Press. I am perfectly willing to be criticised, and I am perfectly willing to be absused by such newspapers as choose to criticise or abuse me, but, Sir, when they make statements concerning Members of this House which are absolutely false, I think it is time for Members to ask for the protection of this House. I simply ask for the same measure of justice to be meted out to me as a Member of the minority of Irish Members as was cheerfully given to the majority the other day when a precisely similar charge was made against them. The newspaper I refer to is The Daily Chronicle. What I desire to call attention to is contained in a descriptive article published in that journal on Tuesday. I regret to say I had not seen it in time to bring it under the notice of the House yesterday, but I did not see it until my attention was called to it by the hon. Member for East Bradford (Mr. W. S. Caine), with whom, though he belongs to a different political Party, my friendship remains unchanged. He advised me to put myself in the hands of my friends, and I did so, and it is because of the advice I received from the Leaders of my own Party that I make the personal explanation I am about to offer. The Daily Chronicle of yesterday says:—

"After the Chief Secretary came an insupportable interval of ' T. W.' Each rasping sentence wound up with the paralytic energy of this tireless mercenary of Unionism."

Now, Sir, I do not object to criticism or abuse; the only thing I ask is that false charges shall not be made. I wish to say emphatically to the House that since I entered Parliament seven years ago I have not received one farthing either from the Unionist Party or any other Party, from any individual or set of individuals for any form of service inside this House or outside of it. I say that when a great newspaper undertakes to publish such a charge as this it ought to be called upon to substantiate it. I am not the man to say that there is nothing to be said for mercenaries, for mercenaries have done good service to this country. As I understand it, however, a mercenary is a man who fights for hire in a cause in which he has no interest. Now I say that neither part of this assertion is true as regards myself. I feel the deepest interest in Irish politics. I may be wrong in my views, and I am in a minority in Ireland, but at all events I believe with all my heart and all my soul in the cause I am fighting for. Therefore I am not a mercenary in that sense, and I repeat that I never received a farthing from political parties or from any person or persons in this country or any other country for services in or outside Parliament of a political character. This statement is made by a great newspaper, but it was not written by the editor of that newspaper. I have the pleasantest relations with many members of the Press in many parts of the country, and I wish to say that I believe the editor of The Daily Chronicle is incapable of penning such a sentence. In other days I knew that gentleman well, and I make no charge against him save that he is personally responsible for the action of his subordinate. It was written by a gentleman who, by the privilege of this House, is allowed access to the Lobby of this House, and I say that makes it all the worse. Having had the opportunity of making this personal explanation, and giving this most categorical denial to the statement contained in that paragraph, I leave myself in the hands of the House, feeling certain that the Prime Minister will mete out the same justice to a political opponent as he has lately meted out, and rightly meted out, to his own supporters.

The first part of my duty after listening to the statement of the hon. Member is a pleasant and easy one. It is to thank him for having had the courtesy to apprise me this morning that it was his intention to raise this question. The second part of my duty, which is the more important, is to make the acknowledgment that the hon. Member has laid before the House a statement perfectly frank and perfectly comprehensive, which will, of course, be received by the entire House with the most absolute credit, and which disposes of every question which could be supposed to lie behind the mere question whether the newspaper to which he has called our attention has or has not gone beyond the limits of privilege. So far, for my own part, I think the matter is perfectly clear. I think the hon. Gentleman has gone to an advanced point of candour in admitting that the word "mercenary" is not absolutely, and under all circumstances a word of condemnation. A mercenary Member of Parliament is undoubtedly different from a mercenary soldier. I do not doubt that the use of the word has been due to a temporary inadvertence, but at the same time, in my opinion, the use of the word, whether it be with reference to a body of Members of this House, or whether it be with reference to a particular Member of this House, is a thing both to be regretted and in the most distinct manner to be condemned. In saying that I believe I am expressing the general sense of the House. I do not know whether we need proceed further in the matter. I remember we had a proceeding in some degree analogous a few days ago, but there is no doubt that the article which we then dealt with was of a considerably more complex character. It dealt with the question in detail, which I do not understand to be the case in the instance before us, and there was likewise, as you, Sir, in the valuable guidance which you gave us from the Chair, pointed out, on that occasion, unhappily, a distinct reference to Parliamentary corruption. Whether we were right or wrong in the course we then took, that reference unquestionably had a dominant influence upon the House. Now, I do not think that if it were moved that this is a Breach of the Privileges of the House, I could vote against such a Motion; but at the same time I bear in mind the advice which we received upon the former occasion at an intermediate stage of the proceedings; and, acting upon the sentiment which I have generally entertained, that unless there is a strong case, or what appears to be a strong case, we should pass these matters by without taking an absolute vote, I am not inclined to make a Motion myself. I think the hon. Member has, with great good taste, and in a most satisfactory manner, disposed of the whole question as regards himself, and I have no doubt the writer of this article will regret the error and the offence into which he has been betrayed. I hope this will be satisfactory to the hon. Member. Under all the circumstances I do not myself feel justified in submitting a Motion to the House.

If I might presume to offer one word by way of counsel to the hon. Member for South Tyrone, it would be that I think he ought himself, or through his political friends, express his sense of the generous manner in which the Prime Minister has treated this question. So far as my advice can be of any service, I would course my hon. Friend to accept the course my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has suggested, and, having received condemnation of the article from the lips of the right hon. Gentleman, not to make any Motion on the subject. I would only suggest to the House in a few words that this is no light matter. The honour of this House as a whole is composed of the honour of every individual Member, and when a few weeks ago several Members of the House had applied to them the epithet "mercenaries," there was condemnation from every side of the House. Although the Prime Minister has said this statement is not made in such very direct terms, I do not think the effect of the charge is mitigated when a Member is pointed out directly by name and then is attacked as a Member of the House, and not in any other capacity, as being a paid mercenary. I think condemnation has gone forth, and I do not believe the House gains much by passing that which is always a purposeless resolution and placing it upon its Journals— namely, that such writing is a gross and serious libel.

May I make a personal explanation r Some mouths ago I asked the permission of the House to make a personal explanation. A few months ago I spoke—

I hope the hon. Gentleman will not now refer to a matter of privilege, or quasi-privilege, which occurred so long ago as two months. No doubt the hon. Gentleman is able to vindicate himself from any charge; it is hardly worth while now to bring it before the House.

I simply asked for the indulgence of the House.

There is no Question before the House.

I simply want to make a personal explanation in regard to myself. The particular instance to which I refer was a charge made two or three months ago, but which has been repeated in one form or another since, and although it has been more difficult to put my finger on it, still I should like to be allowed to explain that I never received a farthing for political speaking or for political work of any kind in the whole course of my life. The statement that I had received payment was made deliberately in a newspaper by the hon. and learned Member for North Louth (Mr. T. M. Healy), in these words:—"That he would not enter into a controversy with an itinerant mercenary like Rentoul." I wrote to the hon. and learned Member, but my letter was returned. I have only to say that the statement is absolutely false.

In the absence of the Leader of the Opposition, I may be allowed to say that, while I think my hon. Friend has exercised a sound discretion in not requesting this matter to be treated as a Breach of Privilege, I gather from what has passed that it will be distinctly understood that this case stands precisely upon the same footing as the other case, which was pronounced to be a Breach of Privilege, that there is no distinction to be drawn, and that we do not refrain from putting a Notice of Motion on the Paper because there is any distinction, but simply because my hon. Friend thinks that his honour has been sufficiently vindicated by what has now taken place. The hon. Gentleman will, no doubt, follow the advice which you gave us on a previous occasion— namely, that, it would be better not to proceed by way of Resolution, unless it was absolutely unavoidable. On that occasion the House, carried away by a not unnatural sentiment, treated the case as a Breach of Privilege. Now, in, colder blood, and looking at this matter as precisely as serious as the other case, I think the House will exercise a wise discretion in following the guidance of the Leader of the House, in whose hands the honour of the House is placed.

You will remember, Sir, that I left myself entirely in the hands of the House. All that I wish to say now is that I thank the Prime Minister very warmly indeed for the generous way in which he has met this question, and I am entirely satisfied with what has passed.

On this Motion I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman what business he proposes to take to-morrow, and what he thinks with regard to the hour at which the House should rise. I believe it would be for the convenience of both sides of the House, and would be in consonance with the wish of the immense majority of hon. Members, if some arrangement could be come to by which our proceedings should terminate at a reasonable hour. I think, at the same time, I may be allowed to make one or two further observations with regard to the necessity, if necessity it is, which has driven the right hon. Gentleman—if he says he has been driven—to lay this proposal before the House. I presume it is in consequence of the course of business during the present week. The business yesterday assumed a most extraordinary course, and I am bound to say that if the right, hon. Gentleman thinks that by meeting at 12 o'clock to-morrow we have reparation for shortening the discussion on the Vote on Account he is entirely mistaken. To meet on Thursday before Easter for such important business as the right hon. Gentleman suggests is unparalleled in the annals of Parliament. We are to meet on the Thursday before Easter to discuss changes in Parliamentary procedure that exceed in magnitude any that have, within my memory, been submitted to Parliament. The notice of business we are to discuss to-morrow goes, I venture to say, beyond anything ever proposed by a Government. It has happened occasionally late in the Session with reference to particular business to ask for such Sittings. But to discuss Motions to take the whole time of the House— leaving to the despotic power of the right hon. Gentleman to select particular Wednesdays—to take all Tuesdays, and that not as has previously happened after a statement of what Bills will be abandoned—to do this is an unparalleled proceeding. But I do not know that it is more extraordinary than the course which the right hon. Gentleman took yesterday upon the Vote on Account. He came in at the end of the Sitting and moved the Closure. I think the right hon. Gentleman will admit that there was a prolonged portion of the afternoon during which he did not appear in the House. Such a step as the right hon. Gentleman took yesterday might entirely neutralise all the privileges of the House as regards discussion. The right hon. Gentleman could not allege that there was any failure on the part of Members in this part of the House to be short in their speeches, and to discuss the matter in a Parliamentary way. But what happened was that a large number of Members on the right hon. Gentleman's own side entered into a very elaborate discussion of one of the earliest Votes, and not only did the Home Secretary speak, but the Lord Advocate also spoke, although it was suggested that it was unnecessary for him to do so, and, in short, Members on the Front Ministerial Bench all but talked out the Vote on Account, so that Members on this side lost entirely the opportunity of raising important questions of which they had given notice. I put it to the right hon. Gentleman—if I may make some such Parliamentary hypothesis as the Chancellor of the Exchequer indulges in occasionally— whether a Government might not encourage in that way Members on their own side to speak, and so get rid of a number of inconvenient speeches from the other side. The right hon. Gentleman will say that the Motion for the closure yesterday was put upon the footing that the exigencies of the Public Service made it absolutely necessary. There was no such absolute necessity. The right hon. Gentleman might have moved that the Debate on the Vote on Account should be continued to-day at 12 o'clock, as we suggested, or the notice yesterday might have been given in a form which would have allowed ample time without closing the Debate at half-past 5. But, instead of doing either of these things, the right hon. Gentleman has set this most dangerous precedent of cutting short the Debate on the Vote on Account, not because of the exigencies of the Public Service, but because he wished to have a particular Bill discussed to-day during the time of our Sitting. The right hon. Gentleman has often told the public that if he once carried Home Rule he would take but a very small part in public affairs. Well, then, is it right now that he should lend his high authority to curtail in this manner the privileges of Parliament, and to change entirely the practice of Parliament? I think the right hon. Gentleman will ultimately regret that when, as he explained, the Report could be taken on Thursday, he followed the extraordinary course yesterday which surprised us all. The right hon. Gentleman will admit that this matter is treated with some seriousness by us on this side of the House, and that the precedent is a most serious one, because a Government may push off the Vote on Account to the last moment and then curtail the Debate on the ground of the exigencies of the Public Service. To ask us on Thursday to give up private Members' privileges on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and at the same time to cut short the Debate on the Vote on Account, are two unprecedented steps. It is impossible that Members should be induced in this way to part with the privileges they have always possessed. What the right hon. Gentleman calls obstruction was not phenomenal this time. The right hon. Gentleman must know that it was far from being equal to what occurred when hon. Members below the Gangway were reducing the system to a science, with an ingenuity and persistence which has become memorable in the annals of Parliament. If there has been anything exceptional, it has not been done by the Opposition, but by that Party in the House by whom the right hon. Gentleman is forcing forward his measures. I must therefore enter my protest against the course which has been taken. I do not know whether there is any advantage in meeting at 12 o'clock to-morrow. Whether I can offer any advice whatever as to what should be done will depend upon the answer that may be given as to the course of business to-morrow, and as to when we are likely to rise. If we are to take the Report on the Vote on Account, and to discuss the extremely unusual proposals which the right hon. Gentleman is to make with respect to the time of the House, that, I think, is all the right hon. Gentleman can possibly expect from the House on the Thursday before Easter. If he should say that when these matters are disposed of he is willing that the House should rise, I should not oppose the Motion. But if we are to sit on discussing other Bills, I do not see why the House should meet at 12 o'clock.

The right hon. Gentleman's speech was perfectly pertinent as regards one-tenth of the matter contained in it. He has put a fair and proper question as to the business to-morrow, and I will answer it. The first business to-morrow will be the Motion for the time of the House, and if the House should be able to dispose of the Report of Supply to-night, we shall then proceed with the Debate on the Employers' Liability Bill. As I am given to understand that hon. Members have made speeches of considerable length on the subject already, I should hope the Debate may be soon disposed of. As to the right hon. Gentleman's speech, if I were disposed to be led into the snare he has laid out for me, he has prepared the ground for a speech of considerable length on my part. But in my opinion the greater part of what he has said is totally and absolutely irrelevant to the Motion before the House. This Motion is the mere fulfilment of a pledge given publicly by me yesterday in the House. I stated publicly that it was a question of the feeling of the House whether it would be more convenient to meet at 3 o'clock in the ordinary course or at 12 o'clock. I pledged myself to make that Motion on one condition—that it should be found agreeable to the general sense of the House, and communications having been made to me through the ordinary channels, I have made this Motion. It is not made for the convenience of Members on this side more than on that, but we came to the conclusion that it would be for the convenience of all Parties in the House that the meeting should be at 12 o'clock. The right hon. Gentleman has scarcely alluded to this question, which is the only question before the House; consequently I am left where I was before I made the Motion, with this fact before me, that the right hon. Gentleman seems to have doubts as to the convenience of meeting at 12 o'clock. If these doubts are spread among other Members after the shilly-shally declaration of the right hon. Gentleman, and if I understand that this Motion is not agreeable, unquestionably I shall consider it my duty to withdraw it. Sooner than the Motion should cause delay in proceeding with the first Bill on the Paper, I at once offer frankly to withdraw it.

If there be any foundation for the charge of shilly-shallying, it most certainly cannot be made against Members on this side of the House. My right hon. Friend stated that, if you will undertake that to-morrow's Sitting shall close at a reasonable time, then it may be for the convenience of the House that it should meet at 12 o'clock. But for all that we know we may be lauded in a discussion at the arbitrary will of the right hon. Gentleman which may carry us through an all-night Sitting. The arbitrary dealings of the Government yesterday would justify hon. Members on this side In any course they might think fit to pursue. The right hon. Gentleman said he was not going to make any attempt whatever to answer what he called the nine-tenths of the speech of my right hon. Friend. I think he exercised a very wise discretion. He would have found it uncommonly difficult to do so. I think the proceedings of yesterday afternoon constituted one of the grossest scandals upon the constitutional privileges of Members of this House. [Laughter.] Yes, Sir, and if the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gladstone was in conversation with Mr. Marjoribanks) will allow me to interrupt that agreeable conversation which he is having—[Cries of "Order! "] I am addressing observations to the right hon. Gentleman, and surely I have a right to ask for his attention, particularly when he challenges my statement.

I rise to Order. Is the right hon. Gentleman, on the Question that the House should meet at 12 instead of 3, entitled to go into any other question than that of the convenience of the arrangement proposed?

The right hon. Gentleman is not entitled to raise any question with regard to what passed yesterday. If it is intended to challenge the action of the Chairman in assenting to, or the action of the House in voting, the closure, that must be done by a Motion after notice. With reference to the Question whether the House shall meet at 12 or 3, that does in one sense open up the question of the business which is to be taken. I imagine that the right hon. Gentleman wishes to refer to the suggestion that the House should rise earlier if it meets at 12 than if it meets at 3. As I have said, no reference can be made to the closure last night. The sole Question is whether 12 o'clock or 3 o'clock is the more convenient.

I need hardly assure you, Mr. Speaker, that I had no intention on this occasion of canvassing the conduct of the Chairman yesterday, I was referring to the action of Her Majesty's Government alone in the course of the proceedings yesterday, and I was simply following the references made by my right hon. Friend and the right hon. Gentleman opposite to those proceedings.

I made none whatever; not a syllable.

I think the right hon. Gentleman is mistaken, and that he did refer to the proceedings of yesterday.

Not a syllable. What did I say?

The right hon. Gentleman said the observations of my right hon. Friend were not legitimate.

If I may be allowed to intervene, it is to say that any reference to the application of the closure would he irregular. When the closure is accepted and voted on, it is the act of the House itself.

I will make no reference to the closure, but I should like to ask you, Sir, whether I am at liberty to canvass the action of the Government yesterday, so far as it relates to the necessity of placing this Motion on the Paper. If I am not in Order in doing that, I shall avail myself of whatever opportunity may arise for making observations upon the conduct of the Government, which I think was a gross scandal, and an outrage upon the privilege of Members.

I beg, Sir, to ask leave to withdraw my Motion.

Orders of the Day. Evicted Tenants (Ireland) Bill—Second Reading.

May I ask a question?

Mr. Speaker, you have called the Orders of the Day.

The business has commenced.

In rising to move the Second Reading of this Bill—

I rise to a point of Order. I wish, Sir, to ask your judgment on the question whether this is not a Money Bill, and cannot therefore be discussed now. The Bill provides that certain expenses which will be incurred shall be charged upon the Irish Church Surplus. Clauses 6 and 9 particularly raise this point. But the Commissioners as the Bill is framed are bound to make the payments before they can charge any money upon that fund; therefore they must obtain it from some other source, and it therefore seems a necessary inference that that source must be the public funds. It might be said that the difficulty he had raised would apply only to such clauses of the Bill as made a charge on public funds, but it had been laid down by a predecessor of Mr. Speaker that the clauses of a Bill proposing to make a charge on public funds should be printed in italics, & regulation which had not been complied with in this case. For these reasons he urged that the Bill was out of Order.

It is quite true that the 6th clause, as well as the 9th clause of the Bill, provides for charges on the Irish Church Temporalities Fund, but that fund is within the disposal of Parliament already. There is therefore no new charge imposed. Bills imposing charges upon the Irish Church Temporalities Fund have even been brought in in the House of Lords before coming to this House. On November 19th, 1888, I gave a full ruling on the Laud Purchase (Ireland) Bill, which dealt with the whole question of advances for the purchase of land in Ireland, explaining why no preliminary Money Committee was necessary. The Act of 1891 was similarly brought in without a preliminary Committee, and on the consideration of that Bill as amended a clause was inserted, on the Motion of the hon. Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell), which provided for the purchase of their former holdings by evicted tenants. That clause involved a charge upon the Guaranteed Land Stock, but it was not thought necessary to obtain the sanction of a preliminary Committee for it. Because there is a clause in this Bill making a charge on the fund it cannot, I think, be maintained that this is a Money Bill.

congratulated the hon. Member for Preston on having consumed another ten minutes of the time of the House. The point of Order which he had raised had been ruled, he was informed, 40 or 59 times before. He rose for the purpose of moving the Second Reading of the Bill for the reinstatement of the evicted tenants in Ireland. As that was the first occasion on which he had the honour to address the House, and as the Bill was likely to be dealt with in the present Debate by Members of the Irish Party much bettor acquainted with the subject than he could pretend to be, he would not attempt to inflict upon the House a detailed or exhaustive statement, but would confine himself to a general survey of the circumstances which necessitated the introduction of this Bill, and to a brief exposition of the proposals for which he asked the acceptance of the House. To the people of Ireland, and to their Representatives in the House, the subject of the Bill was a matter of the gravest and the most supreme importance; and to those who held in their hands the honour and the fortunes of this empire it could not fail to be a matter for grave and serious consideration. It concerned the peace, the order, and the good government of Ireland, and he would, for that reason, appeal to honourable Members, on both sites of this House, to approach its discussion with minds unbiased by party prejudice. The evicted tenants might be taken under two heads, those that were not, and those that were, made the subject of special inquiry by the Evicted Tenants Commission. From the Report of the Commission it appeared that the total number of applications received from evicted tenants or their representatives on estates other than those specially inquired into by the Commissioners was 2,755. Of the 2,755 evicted farms, 1,298 were represented as occupied by new tenants, 960 as used or cultivated by the landlord, and 497 as derelict. With regard to this class of evicted tenants the Commissioners admitted, in paragraph 3 of their Report, that they merely obtained what information they could from the police as to the present condition of the farms and the former tenants. It was possible the information might not be in all respects reliable, but he saw no reason to think that, for the purposes of the present discussion, it should not be regarded as substantially accurate. The total number of evicted farms, on the 17 estates specially inquired into, was set down at 1,350, of which 15 were represented as occupied by new tenants who made arrangements with the old tenants, 235 as occupied by new tenants without such arrangement, 414 as occupied by the old tenants, 482 as used by the landlord, Land Corporation, or some similar body, and 204 as lying derelict. Deducting from 1,350 the 15 farms occupied by new tenants, with the approval of the old tenants, and the 414 occupied by the old tenants, they had 921 farms in dispute on the estates specially inquired into. These 921, added to the 2,755 farms not specially inquired into, place the total of evicted farms in dispute in Ireland at 3,676. Assuming for a moment that the landlords were ready to receive back the old tenants on the 1,442 farms which the landlords themselves cultivate, and on the 701 derelict farms, the number of farms in dispute would be reduced from 3,676 to 1,533, which was not a large number, although it was in his opinion vastly in excess of the number of farms held by new tenants who are bonâ fide occupiers in the spirit of recent Land Legislation for Ireland. The Bill asked the House to appoint a Commission with power to deal with the cases of these evicted tenants. These proposals would, he believed, meet with opposition. In the debate on the report of the Evicted Tenants Commission, the hon. Member for South Tyrone declared, in his most harrowing and intemperate fashion, that any attempt to give legislative effect to the recommendations of the Commission would be fought inch by inch by himself and the other Orangemen from Ulster who sat in the House as the champions of Irish landlordism. The hon. Member's views on the Irish Land question appeared to be as unsettled as was his allegiance to political parties in this House. The hon. Member would oppose this Bill, and in doing so he would make himself the Champion of Lord Clanricarde, whom he had denounced some time ago as a danger to the public peace and whose compulsory expropriation he had recommended; but if there must be a fight over this Bill, from whatever quarters the attack might come, the party to which he had the honour to belong would be prepared to meet it. They would fight and they would defeat any opposition, from whatever quarter it might come, to the proposals contained in the Bill. They said that the House was responsible for the present condition of the evicted tenantry of Ireland; they said the evicted tenants were the victims of delay in the passing of recent Land Acts, and the victims of a policy of vengeance pursued against them for political purposes by the right hon. Gentleman, the present Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition. He would not enter into details in regard to the system of landlordism in Ireland. That system had been described by the Chief Secretary for Ireland as "a wretched and a monstrous system." The Reports of the Devon Commission in 1843, of the Richmond Commission in 1874, and of the Bessborough Commission in 1880, showed that the epithets used by the right hon. Gentleman were fully justified, and yet every proposal made by the Representatives of Ireland to amend that system had met with opposition in the House. The Bill would be opposed. The cry of confiscation would be raised. They would be told, in the language of the hon. Member for South Tyrone, that the Bill was a proposal to revise the decalogue. The decalogue followed by the landlords of Ireland needed revision. They struck the "not" out of that portion of the decalogue which says "Thou shalt not steal." They confiscated the tenants' improvements. They stole the tenants' property, with the sanction of laws enacted by that House. In his speech on the Irish Land Act of 1881 the late John Bright said:—

"If all that the tenants have done were swept off the soil, and all that the landlords have done were left upon it, the land would be as bare of house and barn, fences and cultivation, as it was in prehistoric times. It would be as bare as an American prairie where the Indian now roams, and where the white man has never trod."

Speaking in this House on the 18th of November, 1888, the Tory Solicitor General for Ireland said:—

"Any one acquainted with Ireland knew that in a large number of eases the interests of the tenant exceeded the interests of the landlord."

And yet hon. Members would get up in the House and talk as if they believed the Irish tenants had no interest in their farms. They talked about the confiscation of the landlords' property. The confiscation of the tenants' property is proceeding in Ireland at the present time. It has not been stopped by recent land legislation for Ireland; if it had been stopped this Bill would not have been now before the House. Even the hon. Member for South Tyrone must admit that large numbers of Irish tenants, pressed down with arrears of rack-rents, had been unable to avail themselves of the benefits of recent land legislation. Speaking in this House on the 21st of March, 1888, the hon. Member said:—

"By not dealing with these arrears the tenants were absolutely deprived of the very legislation passed for their benefit. They were never allowed to go into Court. They were threatened and bullied by the agent before they went in, and these arrears were held over their heads as a whip to prevent their going into Court and getting the fair rent that the House designed and intended for them."

Yet the hon. Gentleman would get up in his place in the House and would oppose the reasonable and moderate demands made on behalf of men who were now evicted from their farms, simply and solely because, in the words of the hon. Gentleman, they

"Were absolutely deprived of the very legislation passed for their benefit."

Even those tenants who were able to go into Court were met with the decision of the Court of Appeal, as in the case of Adams against Dunseath, and found that even the Land Act of 1881 did not effectually stop the confiscation of the tenant's property by the landlord. As Mr. J. G. Barry said at the Cowper Commission, the judges killed the Act. Therefore, he contended it was abundantly clear, even from the public utterances of their bitterest opponents, that the vast majority of those tenants evicted since 1879, whose cases were not specially inquired into by the Commission, were evicted through no fault of theirs, but because they were unable to take advantage of the Land Acts passed for their benefit, or because those Acts were interpreted and administered adversely to the tenants. With regard to the Plan of Campaign tenants, he declared that they were driven into the combination known as the Plan of Campaign by the action of the late Tory Government. If that Government had accepted the Bill introduced in this House by the late Mr. Parnell on the 20th September, 1886, the Plan of Campaign would never have been heard of. Mr. Parnell foresaw the danger approaching. He warned this House of it. On the 21st January, 1886, he drew attention in this House to the fall that had taken place in the prices of agricultural produce, and declared that the judicial rents fixed in the four preceding years could not be met by the tenants. On the 20th of September, 1886, he introduced his Tenants' Relief Bill. The Prime Minister declared that he would never consent to the revision of judicial rents; the Solicitor General for Ireland said it was impossible Mr. Parnell's Bill could be accepted by any responsible Ministry. The same Ministry, in 1887, adopted as their own the proposals made by Mr. Parnell in 1886. In the course of his speech on the 20th September, 1886, Mr. Parnell made use of the following words:—

"I think we have a right to say that the Irish tenants shall not be left defenceless and at the mercy of the landlords during the coming winter."

They were not left defenceless. My hon. Friends, the Members for East Mayo and for Cork City, were not yet imprisoned by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition. [Cheers.] Their representatives in Parliament had been told that their statistics were bogus, and that the tenants were well able to pay their rents. Only one means of preserving themselves from ruin and starvation lay open to the Irish tenants, and to that they had recourse. They entered into an agrarian combination for their own defence. A great deal of hypocritical cant had been talked in this House about the immorality of the Plan of Campaign. It had been referred to as a system of organised embezzlement. It was a pity the landlords of Ireland and the hon. and learned Gentlemen who represented them had been afraid to state their case before the Evicted Tenants Commission. Had they been honest enough to do so it would have been seen on which side was the embezzlement. No great combination ever entered into by men for their own protection, and for the redress of grievances has been wholly immaculate. The Plan of Campaign might not have been wholly immaculate; but it was not the tenants who took part in that combination, nor those who acted as their leaders throughout the struggle, who were to blame. [Cheers.] Whether the Plan of Campaign was criminal or not, it was due to the refusal of the Tory Government to accept, in 1886, the Tenant Relief Bill brought in by Mr. Parnell. The Plan of Campaign was vindicated by the Tory Government in the following year, when the Report of the Cowper Commission showed that the statistics given by the Irish representatives in 1886 wore correct, and when the very proposals rejected in 1886 were embodied in the Irish Laud Bill of 1887. In every case but one in which the Plan of Campaign was adopted, the tenants entered into the combination for the purpose of securing an abatement. It is generally admitted by all parties that the demands made by the tenants were just and reasonable. That some abatement was needed will appear from the collection of facts. The percentage of reductions over the whole of Ireland amounted in the years 1881–5, to 19½4; the percentage in 1885–6, rose to 24½1; and in 1886–7, reached 31½3; the abatements on judicial rents under the Act of 1887 were in many cases almost as high as the abatements asked by the tenants; the percentage abatement on judicial rents fixed in 1881 amounted to 17¾ on the Ponsonby estate; abatements were made by neighbouring landlords, which were, in many cases, more than those asked for by tenants who had combined. Numerous instances, with which I need not trouble the House, will be found in the Minutes of Evidence. Finally the demand for abatement was justified by the low price of stock which prevailed in 1886 and 1887. At Page 457 of the Report would be found a table compiled by Mr. Richard M. Barrington, showing the average price of oxen, heifers, ewes, and wethers at the great fair of Ballinasloe from 1832 to 1893. Now, Sir, I would ask the House to remember that Ballinasloe prices constitute the best gauge of the general prices for stock in Ireland, and I would also ask the House to remember that rent is usually met in Ireland by the sale of stock. Now I will compare the prices for the years 1880 and 1887. In 1880 the prices were, oxen, £18 5s.; heifers, £18 7s. 6d.; ewes, £2 6s. 3d.; and wethers, £3 0s. 3d. The prices in 1887 were, oxen, £11; heifers, £11 13s. 1d.; ewes, £2 1s. 9d.; and wethers, £2 2s. 7d., showing, in 1887, a fall of over 35 per cent. from the prices of 1880. He thought from those facts it must appear to every reasonable mind that the tenants were entitled to reductions, and that as they possessed no other means of obtaining reductions but combination, they were justified in having recourse to combination. Even the then Chief Secretary for Ireland, the right hon. Baronet, the Member for West Bristol, was so impressed with the justice of the claims made by the Clanricarde tenantry and with the harshness of Lord Clanricarde's action, that he intimated to his Lordship that the use of the forces of the Crown in Ireland for eviction purposes—

"Would be retarded by the pressure of other claims, and would, most probably, be postponed to the utmost extent permitted by the law."

And in his charge to the Jury in the case of Joyce against Clanricarde Chief Baron Palles showed clearly what he thought of the struggle between Clanricarde and his tenantry.

"What," he asked, "would have been the result of granting a reasonable reduction? It would have avoided eviction from their little homes. It would have avoided unfortunate and painful prosecutions of those unhappy tenants."

Yet these "unhappy tenants," after eviction from their little homes on this and the other campaign estates, were deliberately shut out from the benefits of the Act of 1887 by eviction and other processes for the sole purpose of making examples of them, and of discrediting! my two hon. Friends the Member for East Mayo and the Member for Cork City. They asked the House then, in no partizan spirit, but with an earnest desire to consult for the peace and good government of Ireland, to enact a measure that will make provision for the reinstatement in their holdings of evicted tenants in Ireland; we ask you i to give us the means to bring to an end a long and a bitter struggle. They proposed that the Land Commission should be constituted an arbiter for the settlement of disputes between landlords and evicted tenants in Ireland. The machinery was ready at hand, and it was, in their opinion, of such a character that it cannot be reasonably objected to on the part of the landlords. Of the farms now in dispute, 701 were derelict, and 1442 are used or cultivated by the landlord or by the Land Corporation, or some similar body. In regard to the derelict farms they said the landlord and the evicted tenant should come to terms; and that in the event of their failing to do so the Commission should have power to make a compulsory arbitration and to reinstate the tenant on such terms as they may think fit. He did not see what reasonable objection the landlords of Ireland or their friends in the House could offer to this proposal. He did not believe the landlords of Ireland would object to it, unless they were driven to do so by those whose action has rendered so many farms in Ireland vacant, namely, by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition and his friends. But even if the landlords of Ireland objected to this proposal, it would still be the duty of the House, in the public interest, to give it legislative effect. The Report said:

"The present condition of these evicted farms, on many of the estates, is deplorable. The land has gone to waste. Fields once cultivated and fairly productive, are now-covered with furze and weeds. Tracts reclaimed by the industry of the tenants from the bog or mountain, are returning to their original condition. The former tenants, with little or no occupation, hang about their old farms, and have never relinquished the hope of reinstatement."

The tenants never would relinquish the hope of reinstatement, until the hope was realised. Where the evicted farms were used by the landlord himself, or by the Land Corporation or some similar body, the procedure would be practically the same as in the case of derelict farms, and we anticipate that settlements would, in all such cases be easily arrived at, as the landlords and the Land Corporation were rather losers than gainers by the occupancy of the evicted farms. They give the landlord, in all cases of settlement under the Act, the option of requiring the evicted tenant to purchase the holding under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Acts; and for the purpose of assisting the tenant to start on fair terms after he has purchased, they propose that the payment of the first instalment of the purchase money may be postponed by the Commission to such a date as may seem just, and which shall be specified in their order. The period of repayment was also left to the decision of the Commission. It would be evident to anyone who took the trouble of reading the Bill that they offered better terms to the landlords than they could ever hope to realise without legislative interference. The enactment of this measure was to them and to the people of Ireland a matter of the most vital importance; and they had taken care, in order to leave no reasonable excuse for opposing, or even for delaying, its enactment to make it, on the whole, a practically non-contentious measure. Accordingly, they offered the landlord better terms than they believed he was entitled to; they made no proposal that new tenants should be disturbed, except with their own consent, even where they were in the enjoyment of property created by the evicted tenants. They made provision for the payment to the landlord of a sum which they would never touch, directly or indirectly, unless this Bill passed into law—namely, a sum not exceeding two years' rent, in respect of arrears due on the evicted farm at the termination of the tenancy and in respect of costs incurred by the landlord in connection with the termination of the tenancy. He did not think he would further detain the House with an analysis of the proposals of this measure. These proposals were, he ventured to say, too clear and too simple to need elucidation. They were to a great extent an embodiment of the recommendations made by the Evicted Tenants Commission. And now he asked the House to accept the measure unanimously, in the interest of peace, in the interest of economy, and because both sides of this House are committed to the principle of reinstatement of the evicted tenantry of Ireland. In the interest of peace, because the continuance of such a state of things as at present prevails in Ireland is dangerous to the peace, to the good order, and the good government of the country:—

"The fact," Fays the Report, "that there has been so little crime since 1880 in the districts in which the evictions have taken place, would seem to be in a great measure clue to the hope entertained by the tenants of restoration to their homes."

The Plan of Campaign prevented agrarian crime. It was the confidence of the people in their leaders, it was their hope of redress, their hope of reinstatement in their little homes, which prevented the use of the revolver and the rifle. All the crime lay with the administration of the right hon. Gentleman, the present Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition. Three men wore shot down in the streets of Mitchelstown; Patrick Larkin was done to death in Kilkenny Gaol; Hanlon was run through the body on the Ponsonby estate; a boy, named Heffernan, was shot down in Tipperary; and the brother of his hon. Friend (Mr. Mandeville) the Member for South Tipperary, was, according to the verdict of the Coroner's Jury, wilfully murdered in Tullamore Gaol. These were some of the holocausts offered up under the administration of the right hon. Gentleman to glorify Coercion and to break the Plan of Campaign, while the victims of the landlord combination stood firm and peaceful, waiting for the message of hope and encouragement which I ask this House to send them over the sea to-night. I say, further, this measure should be adopted in the interests of economy. The Report says:—

"The economic effect of leaving the evicted tenants without the means of a livelihood, and of permitting large tracts of country to lie idle and almost entirely unproductive, cannot be ignored; and the failure to settle this question is injurious alike to the material interests of landowners, tenants, and the community. The heavy charges hitherto incurred in protecting life and property will have to be continued, and unless a remedy can be found, possibly increased."

The total cost of evictions and proceedings in connection with evictions since 1st May, 1879, on the 17 estates specially inquired into, amounts to £115,418 2s. 7d., a sum considerably in excess of the sum we ask to have placed at the disposal of the Land Commission for the purpose of giving effect to the provisions of this Bill; and it should be remembered that this sum represents only a very small part of the costs to the Exchequer and the local rates of the evictions in Ireland for the period mentioned. The total cost of all evictions in Ireland for that period is not given, but I observe from the minutes of evidence that my hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo has estimated the annual cost at £120,000. Would the House refuse £100,000 to stop for ever an annual expenditure of £120,000? He had said that both sides of the House were committed to the principle of this Bill. He did not think there could be any doubt as to the Government side of the House. They ask the Government not only to support this Bill but to secure its immediate enactment. Last year 20 Members of the present Ministry supported the Evicted Tenants Bill introduced by his hon. Friend Mr. O'Kelly. That Bill was a much stronger measure than the one now before the House. According to the hon. Member for South Tyrone it had been said that although Mr. O'Kelly's Bill was lost, the Front Opposition Bench was "bagged." Certainly, if by that expression it was meant to convey that the present Government, then in Opposition, was pledged up to the hilt to support a measure for the reinstatement of the Irish evicted tenants. But they had been pledged to that policy long before the introduction of Mr. O'Kelly's Bill. Some of them, notably the First Commissioner of Works, had taken as high ground in connection with this question as either of his hon. Friends the Member for East Mayo or the Member for Cork. With regard to the Conservative Party in the House, he said they could not consistently oppose this measure. The Leader of the Opposition is committed to the principle of reinstatement both by his land legislation of 1891 and by his statement made in this House that he should wish to see peace restored and the evicted tenants, under certain conditions, reinstated in their ancient homes. The hon. Member for South Hunts (Mr. Smith Barry) committed himself to a similar view on the 2nd January 1891 in language recently quoted by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and he thought, under such circumstances, he might reasonably express the hope that this measure will be accepted without opposition. But if it did meet with opposition, it might be as well to have it distinctly understood that, no matter from what quarter the opposition may come, it would be met by the Irish Party. They regarded the measure as little, if at all, inferior in importance to the Home Rule Bill. The reinstatement of the evicted tenantry was dearer to the Irish Party than their political existence, and, so far as he was personally concerned, he might be permitted to say that he would rather abandon the hope of ever again beholding the shores of Ireland than abandon the hope of helping to secure for the evicted tenantry their reinstatement in their ancient homes.

in seconding the Motion for the Second Reading of the Bill said, the evicted tenants were the result of two causes, they were either the victims of the unjust laud system or of the tardy justice of the land legislation, which arrived too late to protect them against the oppression of rack-renting landlords. The bulk of the evicted tenants, however, were the victims of tardy or insufficient legislation. A proof of this was to be found in the history of the agricultural depression of 1886 and 1887. It was well known that large numbers of tenants were evicted during the first mentioned period at the very time when remedial legislation was passing through the House, and that large numbers of others were evicted after the Bill had passed into law, but before they could avail themselves of its provisions. It had been acknowledged that the decline in prices in 1885 and 1886 was so severe that it was impossible for the tenants to meet even the judicial rents, and the Act passed by the House in 1887 acknowledged that these judicial rents were not fixed on a basis that would enable the tenants to meet bad seasons as well as good ones. The arguments of the Irish Members in favour of a revision of the judicial rents was met by an opposition largely founded on a declaration in a speech by the First Commissioner of Works that wool had risen in price, and on that ground relief was refused, with the result that it became absolutely necessary to start the Plan of Campaign to protect the tenants. It had been said that the Plan of Campaign was not justified by the agricultural depression of the time. He would defy any man to read the evidence given by the tenants before the Mathew Commission, proving by facts and figures their statements, and not to come to the conclusion that the depression which prevailed was grave and serious. ["Hear, hear!"] The hon. Member for South Hants said "Hear, hear!" He wondered was the hon. Member near the Ponsonby estate in the autumn of 1886, when the continuous rainfall ruined what was a magnificent crop of barley, on which the people, on the failure of their receipts from cattle and butter, had hoped to pay their rents. That crop was ruined, and he himself saw the people obliged to sell it for pig feeding at prices which did not cover the cost of carting from the Ponsonby estate to Cork or Midleton, where it was sold. That was what precipitated the crisis on the Ponsonby estate, and not any political exigencies. Any man who studied the agricultural depression of that period, and who contended that the Plan of Campaign was the result of political exigencies, must ignore the patent facts of the time. The proposer of the Bill had given some facts with regard to the cost to the country which these evictions had involved. He would wish to give one or two examples in order to bring the matter more clearly before the House. On the Langford estate, in his own constituency, the annual rental on the evicted farms was £123, and the amount due was £307. The costs incurred came to £295 11s. 8d., and there was at present an annual charge for extra police of £200. But he could give a more striking case. On the Grant estate, also in his own constituency, there were two tenants evicted in 1880. These tenants demanded a reduction of 25 per cent. on the sale of 1879–80, but it was refused, and a large force of police was drafted to the place, and they were evicted, and they had to be supported since by the funds provided by the Irish people. Both these men were evicted for nonpayment of one year's rent, amounting in all to some £74 odd. He found in the Report of the Evicted Tenants Commission that there were three extra police stationed there to watch the grabber who had taken the farms, to his own know-ledge, though there were 10 extra police in the district as compared with the number before 1880. But taking the figures in the Report it meant that £4,000 had been paid by the British taxpayer since the evictions for extra police as a result of the refusal on the part of the landlord to give a reduction of 25 per cent. on a debt of £74. If the cost of all the extra police were counted it would mean a sum of not less than £7,600. On every ground then he would commend the Bill to the House. On the grounds of economy, the restoration of social order in Ireland, and on the grounds of justice and expediency, he would ask the House to send a message of peace to the evicted tenants of Ireland. The Bill would give to the landlords better terms than they had hoped for, and it would at the same time restore the people to the homes for which they were so anxiously longing, and it would restore contentment and social order in Ireland.

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

said, that although he rose to move the rejection of the Bill he quite willingly admitted there was something to be said in its favour. The hon. Gentleman who had last spoken stated that he commended the Bill to the House on the grounds of justice and expediency. A Bill of that sort might be expedient, but yet it might not be just. He was quite willing to admit the measure was expedient but in his opinion it was not just. He would go a little further and say that any measure which proposed to improve the condition or do anything on behalf of the tenant fanners in Ireland, or which tended to bring about a settlement of the laud question in that country, was worthy of the most careful consideration of that House. He regretted that the clause of his hon. Friend the Member for South Tyrone, known as Clause 13 of the Land Purchase Bill, had not been more successful in doing away with this trouble in Ireland. That however, was a voluntary clause, quite different from this Bill, which was not founded on the basis of justice. He believed that anything which tended to settle the land question in Ireland tended to settle the Irish difficulty, and he believed after all that the question in Ireland was not the question they were going to consider after Easter, but the land question, and any measure brought before the House with the idea of removing that difficulty should receive the consideration and attention of that House. Not long ago he met an Irish parish priest, with whom he was personally acquainted, who told him that the agricultural population of that country did not care a fig whether their Parliament sat in Ireland or in Timbuctoo as long as every Irish tenant farmer was made the owner of his holding. What did the present Bill do? It started, to his mind, upon a wrong basis, upon wrong principles, and with wrong people. He himself favoured a general settlement of the question on the lines of compulsory purchase. But this Bill was impracticable. It was unfair to the landlord, and still more unfair to the honest tenant, and most unfair to the Irish Church tenant, whose property was to be brought into requisition under this Bill. The Bill he held to be demoralising in its tendencies, as it placed a premium on dishonesty. The Irish Nationalist Members had no great love for landlords, and if all Irish landlords were like Lord Clanricarde his sympathies would be with hon. Gentlemen. But whether Irish landlords were like Lord Clanricarde or not they were entitled to their due in that House. If that Bill were passed a landlord would be compelled to take back a tenant whom he had found to be a very bad tenant. The Bill was promoted chiefly to get rid of the difficulty of the Plan of Campaign tenants. It was founded upon the Report of the Evicted Tenants Commission, which was a one-sided or, at all events, a one-opinioned Commission, appointed for the purpose of relieving the Chief Secretary from a difficulty, and therefore not one that was likely to carry such weight or authority as it would otherwise have carried. The Bill was unfair to the landlords, because it compelled them to take back bad tenants, men who could have paid their rent, but who had been evicted five or six years ago because they would not pay, and who had been all these years waiting to-be restored. He would not call them loafers, because they had been compelled to loaf about awaiting the results of political agitation. Were these men, who had refused to pay rent in the past, likely, after their experience of the past six years, to make good tenants in the future? In such circumstances was it not unjust and unfair to compel the landlords to take them back as tenants? How did the Bill propose to treat the 1,000 new tenants who had entered into possession of the evicted holdings determined to pay their rent, and who were capable of doing so? They were to be turned out in favour of the dishonest tenants. The hon. Gentlemen who had moved and supported that Bill truly said that the position of the Irish tenant was a precarious one. The tenants in the North of Ireland for years past had found enormous difficulty in paying their rents; but it must be remembered that large numbers of them, notwithstanding the difficulty in which they were placed, had been honest enough to pay their rents, and those honest tenants were to be placed at a disadvantage compared with the dishonest tenants. If such a thing were done as was contemplated by the Bill, it would be nothing more nor less than placing a premium upon dishonesty. Clause 5 did something that had never been done before. Power was to be given to the Land Commission of postponing any instalments they liked, that the evicted tenants were to pay for their holdings, but nothing of the kind was to be done in the case of honest tenants. No, the man who could pay his rent and would not was to get the benefit under this Bill. The State was to find the money to enable the dishonest tenant to purchase his holding, whilst the honest tenant who, through all his difficulties, had paid his rent, and who was longing to purchase his farm, could not obtain facilities for doing so. He declared that Clause 5, under such circumstances, was a mockery to the honest tenant, and another premium on dishonesty in Ireland. It might be said with regard to the new tenant that the Bill contained no provisions for compulsorily turning them out and compelling them to surrender their holdings on which they had expended six years of labour and trouble and money in the expectation that they were to spend the rest of their days there. But indirectly it would turn them out. None knew better than hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway that the new tenants who retained their holdings would be boycotted us land grabbers, their property damaged, and cattle maimed, and that they would eventually be compelled to throw up their tenancies, with the loss of the unseen labour and value they had put into the soil for the last half dozen years. The Bill was, he submitted, most unfair to the Irish Church Tenants who purchased, to whom the measure seemed to be the grossest mockery, for the sixth clause of the Bill proposed to take the Irish Church surplus and devote it to the tenants under this Bill. Thus the money that had been exacted from the Irish Church tenants would be taken from them and given to the dishonest tenants. That was a grievous injustice. The Irish Church tenants were compelled practically by the Irish Church Act to purchase their holdings, and the purchase-money being calculated upon their old rents, they had to pay 24, 25, 26, or even more years' purchase. The State only lent them three-fourths of the purchase-money, and they had to borrow the other fourth, paying as much as 6, 7, and up to 10 per cent. for it in some instances. Notwithstanding the high interest they had to pay to the money-lender, these tenants had still regularly paid their instalments to the State in respect of their purchase-money. These were men who were examples of honesty and who deserved the sympathy and support of the House. They had created by their payments this Irish Church Surplus, and if anybody was entitled to this money, they ought to have it. He hoped some day that the House, if it did not return to them the enormous sum which they had paid, would at all events do something towards lending them the money to pay | off the usurers who had claims upon them. He supposed that as this Bill was promoted by the Irish Members, it would be taken up by the Government. But if what was proposed by the measure was a public necessity, and for the public advantage, then they ought not to go to the pockets of these men who had been so heavily mulcted in the past, like the Church tenants had been. He could quite understand that, as a matter of public policy, the Government would like to settle this matter, and if they came to Parliament and asked the House to vote a sum of money for this purpose that would be a bold and straightforward policy; but to come down on the poor Irish Church tenants and take this money which they had raised in order to give the advantage of it to dishonest tenants was the grossest possible injustice. They were now told that Preambles of Bills were most important. The Preamble of the Irish Church Act of 1869 stated that—

"The said property, or the proceeds thereof (the surplus) should be appropriated mainly to the relief of inevitable calamity and suffering."

Would anyone contend that the costs and arrears incurred in quarrels between landlords and tenants, raised by tenants who would not pay their rent, should be counted as a calamity, to be met by the Irish Church surplus? By Clause 8, where there was a new tenant and where the landlord refused to take back a bad tenant in his place, power was given to the Land Commission, without any restriction whatever to purchase land and sell it to the evicted tenant, in order to get rid of the difficulty. This was another step taken on behalf of the dishonest tenants which would be bitterly resented by honest tenants. Hon. Members below the Gangway were no doubt in a difficulty about these tenants. On their advice the evicted tenants had been led into the Plan of Campaign; but surely hon. Members ought themselves to extricate the people who had followed their advice from the trouble into which they had fallen and not ask that House to do so. The Bill put great compulsion on landlords. If it had been a portion of one great measure for the universal compulsory purchase of land in Ireland he should not have resisted the proposal, because he was of opinion that sooner or later, in order to settle the difficulty, there must be some compulsory system of laud purchase. But it was not so. The Bill had simply been brought in for political expediency, to get rid of a difficulty. It was an entirely retrogade step, for it did not demand, as any future scheme of com- pulsory purchase must demand, that the purchasing tenants must be honest men, who intended to pay the instalments to which they were liable to the State. He was sure the people of the United Kingdom would never find money unless they were convinced the instalments were going to be paid, and anything which went to shake the confidence of the people of the country in land purchase would tend to defeat a compulsory land purchase Bill. They were going after Easter to consider the Home Rule Bill. If the House passed that measure, and the Parliament in Dublin was able to deal with the question of Irish Land were they not by this Bill setting a bad example for future legislation in Ireland? The representatives of Irish tenants would, no doubt, form a large majority in the Irish Parliament, and they would demand that the principles of this Bill, which were grossly unfair to landlords and new tenants, should be carried out to the utmost. Sympathising as he did with the people who had been led away by the advice of hon. Gentlemen opposite, unless the House showed to the tenants of Ireland that honesty was the best policy, they would do the worse act they could for the future history of that country. He begged to move that the Bill be read a second time that day six months.

in seconding the Amendment, said that no condemnation of the Bill could be more satisfactory than a clear exposition of its terms. But before going into these he would like to call attention to the conditions under which the Bill was brought before the House. At an early period of the Session he asked the Chief Secretary whether the Government intended to introduce any legislation to give effect to the recommendations of the Evicted Tenants Commission. The right hon. Gentleman told them that he was not in a position to give a reply to the inquiry. He (Mr. Arnold-Forster) concluded that the right hon. Gentleman had not had time to consult with hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway opposite, otherwise he was sure they would have had some explanation before now of the fact that the measure the Government had not thought fit to introduce was to be brought in by a private Member, and doubtless was to receive the support of the Government. The House was in a singular position. Now, at what was the fag end of a Sitting, when a large number of Members were not in attendance in the House, there was brought in a Bill of the first magnitude, both as to what it proposed to do and the principles it introduced into the Legislature. If they had courage enough to support such a measure why did not the Government bring in the Bill them- selves? And if they had been aware that the measure was to be introduced under existing circumstances why had they not put the House into possession of the knowledge that they themselves possessed? He could not for a moment believe, in view of the fact that a Bill of such magnitude was only produced for examination in its present form on Monday, that it was seriously intended to press it to a Second Reading to-day. He approached this matter from a somewhat impartial point of view, for he did not hold and did not suppose he should overbold a rood of land in England or in Ireland. It could not be said that he approached the question from a landlord's point of view. He desired to discuss the Bill from the point of view of a citizen of the United Kingdom who saw a great principle about to be introduced into our Legislature which had hitherto never found a place in the Statute Book. The Government supported the Bill, and although the opponents of the Government might not be successful in stopping the Second Reading, it was still their duty to make it clear what was the nature of the Bill, and to explain the history of its coming to the House in its present form. Up to the close of the last Parliament the Bill had never been heard of or seriously contemplated by the Executive Government of this country. Mr. O'Kelly, a Member of that Parliament, then introduced a Bill on the subject, and for the first time in history they saw a majority of Members of the then front Opposition Bench endorse the revolutionary proposals contained in Mr. O'Kelly's Bill. He did not wonder that they felt themselves in a very strange position. They had had their hands tied by the unwise declaration of the right hon. Gentleman, the First Commissioner of Works (Mr. Shaw-Lefevre), and felt bound, no doubt, in loyalty to their colleague to stand up for what he had committed them to (though only as an Opposition and not as a Responsible Government). The first stage was when the letter of the Chief Secretary to those who were to take part in the Evicted Tenants Commission to the effect that only evicted tenants who remained in the districts were to have the benefit of the Commission—only those who had defied authority and refused to pay their just debts. What did that mean? It meant that if there was a legal or equitable right to re-instatement, that right would be forfeited by those who had happened to go to Dublin or Belfast or London to try and earn an honest living, but would remain to those who had hung about the holdings and had necessitated the building of police huts on the borders of the holdings. The right hon. Gentleman was forced to give; a direction to the inquiry, and to say that only those persons who had shown themselves by their over-bearing acts to be in disobedience to the law and unwillingly to accept the verdicts of the Courts, would receive the benefit of the inquiry. The spirit of the Chief Secretary's recommendation animated every line of the Bill, but he was glad to find that the measure did not adopt the dishonest recommendation of the Commission—that the landlords should be compelled by statutory enactment, at their own cost, to re-stock farms of their tenants who had been evicted for dishonest refusal to pay their rent.

said there was no such proposal made in the Report of the Commission.

said that if the hon. Member had read the Report—

I have read it.

said the hon. Member must have seen that it was recommended that power should be given to empower the locality to raise on the security of the rates half the money which would be necessary to stock the farms of the persons who were to be put back in their holdings.

It was to be done by loan and not by the land-lord.

said that the incidence of taxation in many parts of Ireland was such that three-fourths of these payments would fall upon the landlords, so that the landlords would be compelled to reinstate the tenants at their own cost. This was a Plan of Campaign Bill and nothing else. The hon. Member opposite had spoken of 4,000 or 5,000 cases of eviction. He (Mr. Arnold-Forster) hoped hon. Members would not imagine that that was all the evictions since the period when the Bill was to take effect. Many thousands of evictions had taken place during the 14 years from 1878, in which the evicted tenants were quite as fully entitled to have the benefit of this act as those who applied to the Commission which sat in Dublin the other day. He saw nothing to prevent any one of these evicted tenants insisting on being reinstated. What he wished the House to understand was, that it was not for these tenants that the Bill was proposed. The measure was to benefit a small selected body of tenants—selected, he presumed, with the approval of the right hon. Gentleman, the Chief Secretary. If the principle of the proposal were adopted, it would establish a revolution in the Statute Law. Some twelve years ago a Bill was brought in which entirely revolutionized the condition of agricultural tenancies in Ireland. Agreements between landlords and tenants were sot aside—a strong step in itself—and the Legislature thought it its duty to substitute for the voided contracts statutory contracts, to which were attached certain conditions. There were remedies given in case these contracts wore violated; the only cases in which evictions were permitted were specified, and it was provided, that when these conditions were infringed, the landlords had a statutory right to exercise their privilege of eviction when they had obtained the judgment of a competent Court that they were entitled to do so. Going a step further, some of the persons who had obtained judicial rents failed to comply with the conditions on which Parliament said they should retain their tenancies, and in pursuance of statutory direction, the landlords put their powers into force. They went to the properly constituted courts, and by the proper legal process, obtained judgment against the persons who were in default. What then happened? There was then set on foot a conspiracy, the object of which was to prevent the landlords from availing themselves of the statutory remedy Parliament had put into their hands. Parliament having forced upon them a new condition of things, and having prescribed for them the contract, the remedy, and the Court in which that remedy should be given, the landlords were met by organised conspiracy, which said "You shall not exercise the remedy that the law has given you." They found themselves face to face with the fact that on the one hand there was compliance with the intentions of Parliament and compliance with the Statute Law, and on the other hand there was an open infraction of both the Civil and the Criminal Law, and in this state of things they were asked, on the authority not only of hon. Gentlemen opposite, but of the Executive Government, to give their sanction to the breaking of all these undertakings and contracts made by the Imperial Parliament, and to set the seal of their approval on infractions of both Civil and Criminal Law, not in the interests of a vast body of evicted tenants, but of a selected number who happened to be political adherents and supporters of the Party opposite. They wore told that Section 13 of the Land Act of the last Parliament had something to do with this case. It had nothing whatever to do with it. The provision of the Act of last year and the present case had the difference of black and white between them. It might be said that for the sake of peace and quietness, and tranquility of the country they were willing to allow landlords and, tenants to take advantage beyond the appointed time of the statutes in existence affecting the two parties, but what was asked in the present Bill was, that landlords should be compelled, not to make agreements, but to accept agreements made for them in respect to men who year by year had been guilty of every act of persecution and dishonesty against them to the knowledge of all mankind. The Bill was merely brought before the House because Nationalist Members had given pledges to some of their adherents that they would see them harmless through acts of gross dishonesty. They had failed to keep these pledges, and now they came to the House to get them out of their difficulty. The evicted tenants had been perfectly aware of what they were doing, and he, for one, could not take the view that the tenants were deserving of the commiseration of the House. There was a disease sometimes called "kleptomania," but experience showed that that disease was better treated in gaol than in a hospital or asylum. These people were told distinctly:—" Rob your landlords, and we will hold you harmless. Refuse to pay your debt, and it will not be enforced." They believed that, and he did not know that they were so foolish for so doing, knowing, as they did, the power of hon. Gentlemen opposite in enforcing their decrees in their own part of the country. They were told:—" Put half the money you owe into a purse, and you will never be made to pay the other half." That was the promise made to these men, but it turned out that the promise could not be fulfilled, and these persons were evicted under the Statute Law. The House was told that it ought to sympathise with these men, but he submitted that it was unfair and unreasonable to ask them to waste their sympathy on men who had made a miscalculation as to an act of dishonesty. Should it go forth to the world that the Executive were prepared to establish a precedent of this sort? Surely it would be a blow to all Statute Law. The House was not asked to help a vast body of evicted tenants, but to raise one section of the community above the law, to select for reward men who stood branded before the country for their dishonest actions. Every honest, prudent, and loyal man would be left,' out, and the House was invited to say not only "We will put these fraudulent men back on the same footing as the honest and loyal," but "We will go out of our way to give them privileges, because, if they are fraudulent and dishonest, they are supporters of the Nationalist party." He contended that this would be one of the most grievous mistakes that could be committed by the Executive Government. On these grounds he seconded the rejection of the Bill.

had only a few words to say in regard to the two speeches which had just been delivered. He must say he had listened with some amusement to the statement of the hon. Gentleman who had just resumed his seat as to his impartial attitude in this debate—amusement, inasmuch as the hon. Member, he believed, was one of the joint authors of the mass of discredited accusations known as Parnellism and Crime.

said he had had absolutely nothing to Co with that production.

said that if the hon. Member declared that he was not one of the authors ofParnellism and Crime he (Mr. Clancy) was bound by every rule of courtesy to withdraw his statement. He was glad to find that the hon. Member was rather ashamed of Parnellism and Crime.

said he had made no such statement as that he was ashamed of the articles referred to. He had not qualified his statement at all. The hon. Member had made an assertion, and he (Mr. Arnold Forster) had said that it was incorrect.

said he had not stated that the hon. Member had said he was ashamed of Parnellism and Crime, but that was the inference which he (Mr. Clancy) drew from the hon. Member's observations. At any rate, if the hon. Member was not one of the joint authors of Parnellism and Crime, he was a very active circulator of the charges and allegations contained in it. In the future he hoped that the hon. Member would cease writing fresh letters to The Times, or circulating old ones. In regard to the matter of the hon. Member's speech, it seemed to him (Mr. Clancy) that the reason the hon. Member was not favourable to the Bill was because he desired to keep a sore open in Ireland for the purpose of forcing on a scheme of compulsory and wholesale expropriation at a future date—no doubt as an alternative to Home Rule. He (Mr. Clancy) would not enter into the question of the policy of the Plan of Campaign, regarding that matter as absolutely decided. The hon. Member called the Plan of Campaign tenants dishonest, but he (Mr. Clancy), for his part, called them honest and brave tenants. The hon. Member talked of the landlords having been defrauded of their rents, he (Mr. Clancy) maintained that they had simply been deprived of rights which they had never had any claim to exercise. The hon. Member used vituperative epithets against the Irish tenants, and a case must be weak indeed which had to be bolstered up in that manner. One remark made by the hon. Bart (Sir T. Lea), and repeated by the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, was, that it was proposed to give better terms to the Plan of Campaign tenants and to evicted tenants than to other tenants in Ireland. Well, for his part, he (Mr. Clancy) was not inclined to dispute that proposition. In his view these tenants deserved to get better terms than anybody else, for it was they who had fought the battle for the rest of the tenantry in Ireland. It had only been the loyal, the honest, the rent paying, the church going tenants of the North of Ireland who had gone on paying their rack rents, getting into debt, defrauding their families, and at the same time taking every advantage of the concessions wrung from this Parliament by the tenants who were described as dishonest. If, therefore, he preferred one set of tenants above another, it was the set which the hon. Member had described as fraudulent, but whom he (Mr. Clancy) regarded as having bravely and honestly proved their patriotism. As a matter of fact, this Bill, or some such measure, was bound to pass into law to cure the social diseases which existed in Ireland. The argument as to whether the Plan of Campaign was moral or immoral, or whether the men who had taken part in it were fraudulent and dishonest or not, was beside the question. The thing had to be settled. There were a certain number of tenants out of their homes in Ireland, and to go on keeping them out of their homes would be a standing danger to peace and order in Ireland— peace and order which, under Home Rule, the Irish Members hoped to preserve better than the Parliament of England had ever preserved it. In order to get rid of this social sore, it was necessary that some Bill like the present should be passed, whether or not Home Rule was secured. Even if the Bill for the Better Government of Ireland were rejected, he was inclined to think that one of the first measures the Front Opposition Bench, with its recent revolutionary proclivities, would pass, would be one based on the principles of the Redemption of Rent Act of 1891. The Bill before the House carried out the proposals contained in the Bill of Mr. O.'Kelly last year, and in two or three sentences he would state the differences between the two measures. They seemed to him to be three-fold. The Bill of last year proposed that the tenant should claim to buy, and that, if the landlord refused to sell, the tenant should be reinstated, with the right to have a fair rent fixed. The present Bill proposed that tenants must claim to be reinstated as tenants, but that the landlord should have the option of allowing them to buy. That proposal, which was the main proposal in the Bill, it was unnecessary to point out to an intelligent assembly, could involve no injustice to anybody whatsoever. Who would be robbed by the transaction? The landlord would not be robbed, because, in case he sold his land, he got the price which was fixed by an impartial tribunal—perhaps he ought not to say "impartial," because at the present moment the Laud Commission in Ireland could not be said to be in any sense a tenants' commission. If the landlord chose to take back his former tenant as a tenant, he would be in the same position as any other landlord Ireland, in who had to submit, under the Act of 1881, to the fixing of a fair rent on his land. Nor was the planter robbed under the Bill. The second change in the Bill from that of Mr. O'Kelly was this— Mr. O'Kelly's Bill proposed no money clause. The reason was, that Mr. O'Kelly and his friends intended that the money should come out of the Imperial Exchequer rather than out of any Irish funds. They thought that the calamities the hon. Gentleman opposite had referred to did not come within the principle of the Irish Church Act. If they had thought it expedient to apply the Irish Church surplus to such a case as this, they would have had no scruples, but they said that this calamity in Ireland was brought about by the action of the House. The promoters of the Bill of last year said that it was the act of the Imperial Government; they maintained that it was the result of imperial policy, and they therefore held that the Imperial Exchequer should pay the cost of wiping it out; but it being necessary to propose a Money Clause, they thought that, as private Members, according to constitutional usage, they would be unable to make that proposal. They fully intended, however, to raise the question, and to propose it if they could, and to compensate thereby any planters who were removed who had a substantial interest in their holdings. This Bill proposed to give compensation. The planter, therefore, was not injured. Then was the State injured or wronged? Even under the proposal of last year the State would not have been robbed, because, as the figures in the Report of the last Commission showed, it cost more to keep open the sore in Ireland than it would cost to compensate all the planters. There could be no question at all under the present Bill as to whether the State would be robbed. Some hon. Gentlemen who were not acquainted with the nature of the Irish Church Surplus might fancy that this was British money. The hon. Member who had just sat down, remarked that they (the Irish Members) were determined to give charity to the Irish tenants. But this Irish Church surplus, in the first place, was Irish money. It was as much the money of the tenants who had been evicted in Ireland as it was of those still in possession. It was the property of the Irish people as a whole, and he believed that the Irish people would not object to have even the whole of the remainder of the surplus devoted to the relief of the bravo and patriotic men to whom he had alluded. The third change was rather a larger departure from the principle of the Bill of last year than the two changes he had already mentioned. They proposed last year that in every case the evicted tenants should be reinstated, either as purchasers or tenants, and that the planters in possession should be made to make way for them on receiving proper compensation for any substantial interest they might have. The present Bill did not propose to compulsorily reinstate them in cases where the planters had a substantial interest in the holdings and refused to go out even for compensation. The proposal of the Bill was, that in that case the Land Commission should find land elsewhere for the evicted tenants. Frankly speaking, he preferred the proposal of the Bill of last year. In his opinion, so long as a single evicted tenant in Ireland was kept out of his own ancestral home, there would be a certain sense of irritation throughout the country. The result, he feared, would be that there would be some disorder, and possibly some crime in Ireland. However, he was not one of those who were unreasonable, and if there was a general concurrence with the proposal to buy land in other parts of Ireland for the evicted tenants, he would not stand in the way of the carrying out of that scheme. After all, he thought it would be better that the Irish tenants should be put into some holdings, if not their original ones, than that they should be kept on the roadside as they were now. At any rate, the matter was not one vital to the principle of the Bill; it was rather one of those details which could be settled in Committee. If he had an opportunity of doing so, he should propose an Amendment in Committee which would have the effect of restoring all the tenants in Ireland to the land they had occupied for generations. In the course of the discussion which took place recently on this question, he heard some ironical cheering at references made to the idea of the Government adopting a proposal of this character. He hoped, however, that the Government would have the courage to declare that they were not ashamed to adopt the principle of this Bill. He would point out that the principle of the measure was not new; it already had a place on the Statute Book of the Realm. The last Government, in 1891, passed an Act called the Redemption of Land (Ireland) Act, which justified every single proposal contained either in the present Bill or in that of Mr. O'Kelly. One of the reasons why he himself preferred the Bill of Mr. O'Kelly to the present measure was, that the former was, to a large extent, an actual transcript of the Redemption of Land (Ireland) Act. That Act applied to long leaseholds and free farms. The provision was that these two classes of tenants should have the power of going into Court and claiming to buy their holdings. That plan was adopted in Mr. O'Kelly's Bill, and he preferred that Bill to the measure now before the House. If, however, the present Bill, which went substantially on the lines of Mr. O'Kelly's Bill, was likely to meet with more general favour than the former measure, he was prepared heartily to accept it. He thought the Government would have nothing to be ashamed of or to fear in avowing that they deliberately adopted the principle of the Bill, as that principle was already to be found on the Statute Book, and had already found favour with a landlord minority. He could not understand how the Tory Party, and especially the Leader of the Opposition, could oppose the principle of the Bill. After the Reduction of Rent Act of 1891, all argument against the Bill was taken out of that right hon. Gentleman's mouth, because, if it was just to apply the principle to the long leaseholders of Ireland, it was equally just and expedient to apply it to other cases. He hoped the prospects of the Bill were better than he and those who acted with him had, up to that time, thought them. Since the refusal of the Government to have an Autumn Session, and to pass an Evicted Tenants' Bill during such a Session, he had felt there was grave doubt whether any legislation on the subject could be accomplished within the limits of the present Session. All he would say was that the question required to be settled. The evicted tenants had waited nine or 10 months in confident expectation that something would be done for them. He hoped they would not be disappointed, but that before the Session was over something practical would have been done towards restoring them to their holdings. This would have to be done at some time, and he was certain that if the present Government remained in office they would be found applying their energies to the solution of the question. He invited the Government to be courageous in avowing their adhesion to the principle of the measure, and to be firm in exacting the time that was necessary to pass it into law.

said this was a very far-reaching and remarkable Bill, and it had been introduced to the House in a very remarkable manner. It was only printed on Monday last, and was circulated in a revised form, with, he believed, one word altered, yesterday, so that it had been impossible for his friends on the other side of the Irish Channel to obtain a copy up to yesterday.

They saw the Report of the Commission long ago.

said that as this was a private Member's Bill, one had naturally imagined that it would contain the views of private Members who were unacquainted with the Report of the Commission. The Bill was read a first time on the 1st of February, and it was not until many weeks later that the Report of the Commission was presented to Members. Either the Bill was. a dummy and bogus Bill when introduced, or else hon. Members below the Gangway had been in collusion with the Commissioners, and possibly with the Government, and the Bill was the outcome of an arrangement between them. He wanted to know whose Bill it was. Was it the Bill of the Gentlemen whose names appeared on the back of it, or was it the Bill of Sir James Mathew's Commission, or of the Government? It was evident that it was Sir James Mathew's Bill, as it was based upon the Report of that distinguished Gentleman's Commission. The House must take it that the recommendations of the Commission were based on the evidence given before the Commission. What was the evidence? It was notoriously one-sided evidence. It was the evidence chiefly of evicted tenants and of clergymen of the Catholic Church who had been mixed up with the Plan of Campaign and with hon. Members sitting below the Gangway. No evidence at all was given on the other side. No landlord appeared, and none of the tenants on the Plan of Campaign estates who had stuck to the landlords and paid their rents went before the Commission. Mr. Edward Phillips, a tenant of his own, was anxious to give evidence, and wrote to the Commission offering to do so; but the Commissioners declined to hear what he had to say. The evidence taken was not given upon oath and was not sifted by means of cross-exami- nation. When Mr. Dudgeon, who had been agent for one estate, appeared, he informed the Commission that two of the witnesses previously called had been convicted at Manchester of boycotting, and had been sent to prison by an English Judge. The President was exceedingly astonished to hear this, and said he wished very much he had had the information at the time when the men were before the Commission. There was no doubt that similar information might have been given with regard to numbers of witnesses who appeared before the Commission. Since the evidence had been published, the landlords whose cases had been brought before the Commission, had answered it in detail, and, had time permitted, he could have shown how the testimony given in regard to the Ponsonby estate and Lord Landsdowne's estate had been cut to ribbons. Although the tenants' evidence was not given on oath, it had been answered by means of statutory declarations. Evidence had been given with regard to his (Mr. Smith-Barry's) estate in Tipperary. The Rev. Canon Cahill did all he could to persuade the Commissioners that the contest on the Tipperary estate was partly caused by a demand for a reduction of rent, because there was discontent on the part of the tenants with regard to the management of the estate and the rents levied upon it. The statements of the rev. gentlemen, however, were so contradicted by notorious facts, and even by facts elicited by the Commissioners themselves, that they had entirely thrown him overboard. They had reported that no question of rent was involved, and virtually that they did not concur in the view which the rev. Canon took. Then there was Mr. O'Brien Dalton, a leading member of the Tenants' Defence Committee, to whose statements he (Mr. Smith-Barry) had absolute answers on oath by himself and his agent. There was also the evidence of some of the evicted tenants, who posed not only as martyrs, but as patriots. Amongst them were Mr. John McCarthy and Mr. John Burke, who, as a matter of fact, were still indebted to him in a considerable sum of money for rent. He had put them into the Bankruptcy Court, and they had been ordered by the Commis- sioners in Bankruptcy to appear before the Court. However, they were much too sharp to give evidence on oath in substantiation of the statements they had made before Sir James Mathew, and they had consequently ever since been evading the warrants issued against them. At the present moment they were in hiding, and he believed they had fled the country. Well, this was the sort of evidence upon which the recommendations embodied in the Bill, now before the House, had been based. He wanted to know why he was to be compelled to take back on his property men who had wilfully and deliberately, at the instigation of hon. Members below the Gangway and their friends, declined to pay him their rent, who had forced him to evict them, and who had left their holdings on his hands. Before they took action against him they sent a deputation to him in London, and he warned the tenants, through that deputation, in calm but perfectly clear language, that if they entered into any such conspiracy they would have to bear the consequences. They did enter into the conspiracy notwithstanding. Later on, before the great majority of the agricultural tenants were evicted, and when there was still time for them to redeem their holdings, he determined that they should be again warned. With that view he wrote to the Archbishop of Cashel—with whom he had a very interesting correspondence —explaining that those men would be running great risks if they left their holdings, and that if they finally did so it would be to their loss and his gain. Nevertheless these men left their holdings in his hands, and he was perfectly ready and most anxious to keep them. His own property was surrendered back to him by their fault in spite of every warning. He was now occupying, cultivating, and working those lands to his own profit, and why was he to be forced under such a Bill as this to take back as tenants men who had wilfully thrown themselves out and who had shown themselves entirely unworthy of trust or confidence. On the point of the value of the evidence given before the Commission, he wished to refer to the Lansdowne Luggacurran estate. The hon. Member for South Kerry, who was one of the evicted tenants, gave lengthened evidence, in which he described the rents as too high on account of the condition of agriculture, and said that the tenants were obliged to enter the Plan of Campaign. But it was a curious thing that at a meeting of the Irish National League in Dublin in 1887 the hon. Member was reported to have said that the tenants on this estate differed from most of the other tenants, inasmuch as they were able to pay their rents, showing that their inability to do so was not the cause of their joining the Plan. He ventured to say that if Lord Lansdowne, or any one acting for him, had appeared before the Commission, and had been allowed to cross-examine the hon. Member, the value of his evidence as to the unsatisfactory condition of the tenants would have been destroyed.

If I had been put on oath and been cross-examined I should have sworn that to my own certain knowledge the rents of that estate were paid out of capital.

said if the evidence in each of these cases was thoroughly sifted, the recommendations of the Commission would be made valueless. The hon. Member who seconded the Motion said that the allowances made on the Ponsonby estate were insufficient, that the tenants were in a bad financial condition, and that if proper allowances had been made the Plan of Campaign would not have been adopted on the estate. But all the details in regard to this estate, including this point, had been pretty well threshed out, and he himself had answered the point two or three times in the last Parliament. Only 27 tenants went into Court during the five years following the passing of the Land Act of 1881, the average reduction made in their rent being 11 per cent., while 18 had judicial rents fixed by agreement out of Court at an average reduction of 12⅞ per cent. The arrears due up to the year 1879–80 wore wiped out during that trying winter, and of the arrears which accumulated after that date £1,625 were wiped out under the Arrears Act of 1882. In 1885 an abatement of 20 per cent. on non-judicial and 10 per cent. on judicial rents was allowed by Mr. Ponsonby. In October, 1886, when the rents due the previous March were called for, the same abatement was offered. A meeting was, however, held, and attended by Mr. Lane, who was formerly Member for East Cork, and the hon. Member for Mid Cork, at which it was determined to demand reductions of not less than 35 and 25 per cent. on non-judicial and judicial rents respectively. That this demand was exorbitant was clearly proved by the fact that the average reduction made by the Courts in cases where Mr. Ponsonby's rents had been revised by them was only 11 9/10 per cent., and that the reduction decreed by the Land Commission in 1887 on judicial rents, as affecting the Ponsonby estate, averaged only 11½ per cent. Those figures showed that the allowances offered by Mr. Ponsonby were eminently fair and reasonable. The evidence given in the Ponsonby case was simply a rehash of the old statements that had again and again been brought before Parliament during the past few years, that had been again and again refuted, and which were now yet again refuted under statutory declaration made by persons concerned in the Ponsonby estates who had cognizance of all the facts, and chiefly by Mr. Ponsonby himself and Mr. Brunker. He wished in this connection to direct the attention of the House to the value of unsworn evidence given by men of the class of the Ponsonby tenants in the South of Ireland. Anybody who understood anything of legal proceedings or of the Law Courts in the South of Ireland, or who had dealings with the peasant class there, knew that the stories that were told required the most searching investigation before any reliance could be placed on them. The men told one story to the landlord and another to the priest, and it was always exceedingly difficult to got at the real facts. For instance, it was stated that a man named Smiddy, who was one of those who signed a memorial to the Evicted Tenants Commission, had said that he had been forced to sign an agreement to purchase on the Ponsonby estate.

I rise to order. I wish to know whether on the Second Reading of the Bill the hon. Member can not only go into the details of the evidence given before the Commission, but can discuss what might have been said before the Commission if certain persons who did not appear before it had attended and given evidence.

On the same point may I ask, whether, on a Bill which depends entirely on the Report of the Commission, it is not competent for the hon. Member to discuss the evidence given before that Commission.

That is exactly the answer I should have given. The hon. Member is perfectly in order in referring to the evidence upon which the Commission were induced to draw up their Report.

continuing, said that the landlord's solicitors, having heard that one purchaser, and one only— the man Smiddy—was dissatisfied with the terms of purchase, wrote to him on arch 16, 1892, and Smiddy sent a letter in reply, in which he stated that, regarding the agreement he had signed for the purchase of the farm he held on the Ponsonby estate,

"He was still satisfied with the conditions of the agreement, and that he approved of the terms contained therein."

He also expressed a hope that the matter would be arranged as soon as possible, as he had a large number of cattle, and it was very expensive putting them out to grass. Yet that was the man who had signed a memorial to the Commission stating that he signed his agreement under duress. What was the value of such evidence? A man named John Lynch gave evidence before the Commission, and when he came back a gentleman who had tried to make terms between him and Mr. Ponsonby asked him how it was that he could have made such statements? He replied—

"Surely you will not blame me when I tell you that they paid me 8s. a day, took me to all the shows in Dublin, and restored me my pension of £10 a month."

That was the way in which evidence was manufactured. Was that House to give John Lynch and his friends advantages which law-abiding tenants throughout the country did not possess? In 1889, when his own name came very prominently forward in connection with the estate, Mr. Ponsonby issued a circular, and if the tenants availed themselves of the terms of purchase contained in it, they would have obtained reductions of rent to the amount of 32 per cent. and 24 per cent. respectively, and they would have been the absolute owners of their farms at the end of 49 years, and £21,800 in arrears would have been remitted. Why did they not accept these terms? Because hon. Members below the Gangway would not let them. Canon Keller stated in his evidence that though the judicial tenants demanded abatements of 25 per cent. they would be satisfied with 20 per cent., and if it were so, presumably the non-judicial tenants who demanded 35 per cent. would have been satisfied with 30 per cent. If, therefore, the tenants had accepted the offers of purchase contained in the circular, they would on payment of one year's rent have obtained a greater reduction in their annual payments, than would have satisfied them when they adopted the Plan of Campaign. But these terms they were not allowed to accept. Why were they out now? It was for the political purposes of hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway. He felt that he was detaining the House too long. Mr. Ponsonby afterwards made other offers under Section 13, a great many of which had been availed of, and more would have been availed of if the same kind of influence as he had described had not been brought to bear.

The Land Commission refused to ratify the terms.

Nothing of the sort. There were 104 signed agreements, 68 of which were sanctioned almost immediately; in 35 cases the agreements were not sanctioned.

The Land Commission refused to sanction because the price was too high, and the security was insufficient.

said he supposed hon. Gentlemen thought men who by their acts had been made insolvent were to be reinstated without their being any security. In 35 cases the Land Commission said that the price was too high, not that the price was too high for the laud, but in considering the amount they would have to advance they took into account not so much the value of the land as the solvency of the tenant, and his power to pay his instalments. Mr. Ponsonby told the Land Commissioners that although he considered the price he asked for the land was a fair price, he was prepared to take a smaller sum for the sake of peace and quiet. That was more than hon. Members below the Gangway had ever offered to do. Whose fault was it that the tenants had been evicted? He knew quite well that the majority of them were sorry for ever having entered the Plan of Campaign. The Prime Minister made a statement in Manchester, as Members below the Gangway had done in many places, that it was the fault of the Tory Government, who declined to accept Mr. Parnell's Bill, that these men had been driven into the Plan of Campaign. But they had got the statement of the hon. Member for Waterford (Mr. J. Redmond), backed by the hon. Member for the Harbour Division of Dublin (Mr. Harrington), to the contrary effect. He had got quotations from the speeches of both hon. Members, taken from The Independent and The Freeman's Journal. The Member for Waterford said that it was far more a political than an agrarian movement; and the Member for the Harbour Division of Dublin, who claimed to be the author of the Plan, at a meeting at Kingstown, endorsed the statement of the hon. Member for Waterford. Which knew better whether it was a political movement — the Member for the Harbour Division (the author of the Plan of Campaign) or the Prime Minister? It was fortunate that they had got that admission from the hon. Members that it was not an agrarian movement, and that it had been a political movement all the time, and that it was started in order to make impossible the Government of Ireland by the present Leader of the Opposition. He would like to go carefully through the clauses of the Bill, but he felt it was scarcely necessary, because he objected upon every principle of honesty and expediency to putting back arbitrarily and compulsorily, as the Bill proposed, men who had joined the Plan of Campaign for a political purpose, who had declined to avail themselves of all the great advantages which the legislation passed by that House during the last 10 or 12 years had given them, and who had played their game and at the end found themselves losers. A majority of them at present were men of notorious impecuniosity; otherwise why were they to have more favourable terms than ordinary tenants? He objected also to the Bill because it was a monstrous and outrageous thing that men who had proved themselves dishonest, or who had failed in their business, should be put back again compulsorily. The Bill seemed to be founded on the fact that a clause was introduced into the Land Purchase Act of the present Leader of the Opposition. But that was an entirely different thing. It was purely an optional clause. It barred the cases in which farms had been let to others, it guarded the men who were called "planters," and, moreover, the operation of the clause was strictly limited to six months in order that settlements might be come to quickly. He would not, for want of time, go further into the details of the proposed measure. He objected to the Bill on principle, and on the ground that a largo sum of money was to be taken from the Church Temporalities Fund, in order that these thoroughly undeserving persons known as the evicted tenants might be put back. He wanted to know why the money required for this purpose should not be found by hon. Gentlemen who got these people into the mess. Where were the Paris Funds? Last autumn Nationalist Members went about the country declaring in their speeches that the evicted tenants were a claim on the Irish nation. In August, 1892, the hon. Member for East Mayo, speaking at a Federation meeting in Dublin, assorted the claim on the Irish nation of those evicted tenants, who, he said, left their homes at the call of duty. Then let those hon. Gentlemen find the funds. The hon. Member for Waterford, speaking on August 22nd, 1892, said that the Paris Funds should be used to reinstate the evicted tenants in cases where settlements could be arrived at, and also to support those tenants in whose cases no fair settlement could be obtained. Why, then, was the House now to be asked to sanction the payment of the money out of the Church Temporalities Fund when hon. Gentlemen had got the Paris Funds?

We have not got them.

The hon. Member for North Louth himself, in a speech dealing with the Paris Funds, asked how could they urge the claims of the evicted tenants in the House of Commons when it could be retorted that Mr. Harrington and Mr. Redmond would not give a shilling out of the £40,000 in Paris to aid the tenants. He objected to the Bill, because it was an attempt to put back a class of unworthy men; because, as the right hon. Gentleman opposite had him- self said, it was not advocated at the time the Commission was started; and because it was nothing short of an act of plunder and confiscation. The reasons given by the Irish Landowners' Convention for objecting to the proceedings of the Commission were also strong grounds for opposing this Bill. Those reasons were, that the findings were based on onesided evidence which the Commissioners refused to submit to the test of cross-examination; that they totally ignored the landlords' right of ownership by proposing the compulsory restoration of the evicted tenants; that they ignored the past history and character and solvency of the tenants, and made no effort to recoup the landlords for the losses they had sustained in obtaining possession of their land; and they offered special advantages to tenants who had refused to fulfil their contracts; and that they were intended to help the promoters and advocates of the Plan of Campaign out of a difficulty. Upon all the grounds which he had stated he was opposed to the present Bill.

I have listened to the speech of the hon. Member who has just sat down with very sincere and unfeigned disappointment. I had hoped that he, with his great knowledge of this question, considering the line that he has on previous occasions taken upon this very subject, and considering his authority and influence with the landlords of Ireland, I had hoped that he, at least, would have let some sentence fall that would guide this House in its deliberations upon what he admits to be a most serious and difficult subject. Instead of that, what has the hon. Member done? The greater portion of his speech, if it meant anything, meant that he and his friends made a great mistake when they refused to go and give evidence before the Commission. The hon. Member said, "We could have torn the evidence to pieces! I should have liked," he added, "to catechise some rev. gentlemen who gave evidence." Why did he not do so?

Time was against me. I did not want to detain the House.

I mean why did he and his friends not go before the Commission and give their evidence? Then the House would have the advantage, which, when I advised the Lord Lieutenant to issue that Commission, I hoped the House would have the advantage of—namely, the advantage of being in possession of the full case. The contribution made by the hon. Member is, with all respect to him, of no value whatever in the issue we now have to decide. Granting that most of the evidence that he adduced would stand the test of cross-examination, which I do not profess to deny, granting that, how does it affect the question that there is a great difficulty before us, a difficulty which has been recognised by nobody more strongly than by the hon. Member himself? He has not a word to tell us, not a hint to drop, as to how far, if any way at all, he will go with the promoters of this Bill. I, myself, do not accept all the provisions of this Bill, but I feel if one of the right hon. Gentlemen opposite were in my place next year or this year—the moment he is in my place he will have to consider the question; and why I am disappointed with the speech of the hon. Member is, that he has shed no light whatever on the real difficulty which any Administration in Ireland would have to encounter. The hon. Member used one or two phrases —I do not like to pin any Gentleman to phrases—but he said, talking of his own property—

"It is my own, I am dealing with my own land, and dealing with it to my profit and satisfaction."

I do not like to press that too much, but I would remind the hon. Member that it is language of this kind and the principles which that language describes which have brought about all the mischief in Ireland. I do not compare the hon. Member with the nobleman, with regard to whom I have not used any particularly bad language; I do not compare the hon. Member with Lord Clanricarde, but I say this—that Lord Clanricarde is only the reductio ad ahsurdum of the principle of the hon. Member. I want to recall to the House and to the hon. Member the extra- ordinarily different language that he used in 1891. When his own friends were in office, and when they were trying— though, unfortunately, they did not take adequate steps—to solve the difficulty which this Bill is an attempt to get rid of, did the hon. Member then use the kind of language that he has used to night about the proposals to restore the evicted tenants? I agree with him that the proposals of Section 13 were optional proposals, and therefore stand upon a different footing from the proposals in the Bill now before the House. But that is not the point. The hon. Member this afternoon has used language which indicates that these evicted tenants are a set of vagabonds who ought not to be restored to their former holdings. Did he say so in 1891? He said—

"I have no wish, myself, to shut the door upon any of these men who are now living outside their farms, no doubt very largely through their own fault, but still more largely through the fault of those who have lured them on to destruction. I think it possible that very recent events may lead the House to think that I am not disposed to deal harshly with those who have been in opposition to me; if a clause can be drawn which will enable the Commissioners to restore the evicted tenants on certain conditions, and provided security were given, I certainly should be very sorry to say that I should set my face against the reinstatement of such men."

What has the hon. Member done this afternoon except, from the first sentence to the last, but set his face against the reinstatement of those men?

There is no security in this Bill at all.

That may be, and if the hon. Member came down to the House and complained of the Bill as being deficient in certain particulars, as being wrong in principle in some particulars, that is what I would expect; but remembering, as I did, the speeches of the hon. Member in 1891, and knowing, as I do, that the hon. Member has every interest in seeing this question settled, I am disappointed that he should have come down this afternoon and made a speech which is nothing but setting his face against reinstatement. I must trouble the House with one or two more sentences of the hon. Member. Two days later, in June, 1891, he said, referring to Section 13—

"I think it will open a very fair and proper door to evicted tenants to enable them to get back into their holdings by purchasing them under this Act. It opens a very much wider door than does the proposal of the hon. Member for West Belfast (now the hon. Member for North Kerry), for his only applies to men who have taken evicted farms, whereas the clause would bring about a settlement in the case of derelict and unoccupied farms."

This is a Bill in principle for reinstating tenants of derelict and unoccupied farms. Would anybody have supposed to-day that the hon. Member had at heart the reinstatement of men in derelict and unoccupied farms? The main object of the Bill is to do exactly what in 1891 he congratulated the hon. Member for South Tyrone on trying to do more successfully than another. He talks of this as being a nefarious way of taking money out of the Church Temporalities Fund. Yes; but Section 13 proposed to make specially favourable terms for these men. On whoso responsibility? Not on that of the Irish Church Temporalities Fund, but of the British taxpayer. The right hon. Gentleman, my predecessor in the office of Chief Secretary, shakes his head. My proposition is that Section 13 gave specially favoured treatment to these evicted tenants.

How?

I will tell you. It gave them specially favoured treatment, because the effect and the object of Section 13 was to put these men back into positions of which they had deprived themselves; to put them on the footing of tenants in possession.

It only restored them to the position of other tenants.

But, it was giving them a special favour.

No.

Clause 13 was passed; but, unfortunately, it was inoperative, and failed to obtain the object of those who framed it and passed it. The hon. Member who moved the rejection of this Bill did so in a speech of very great moderation, and I observe that my hon. Friend was very careful not to lay down any broad grounds of objection to the principle of reinstatement. The hon. Baronet took the very narrow ground—for I think it was a narrow ground—that the money required for the purposes of this Bill was to come out of the Church Temporalities Fund. The hon. Member who seconded the Motion indulged in rather more angry language, but I propose to return to the lower key of the hon. Member who moved the rejection of the Bill. I will not follow any speaker who has indulged in recriminations, and in that vein I cannot follow the hon. Member who has just sat down. I am not going to say anything now about the Evicted Tenants Commission, because already we have had one long evening's Debate on it.

Not with regard to the evidence.

Does the right hon. Gentleman get up to tell me that this is a proper occasion for me to go into the evidence?

Certainly.

The right hon. Gentleman knows it is impossible to do so at 10 minutes to 5 o'clock. I will not detain the House at any great length, for very few minutes are needed, in expressing the views which I have both on my own behalf and on behalf of the other Members of the Government. There are, I have said, points in this Bill to which I take some exception. I wish to press upon the House that the foundation of the Bill, as I read it, is the erection of an arbitrating tribunal for settling these disputes between landlords and tenants. Well, von may say in answer to that that the hon. Member for South Hunts wants to do what he likes with his own. He may say he will not have people arbitrating, and that it is a monstrous thing to have a Statute coming between him and his tenants for the disposal of his laud, and telling him what terms he shall make to those who take that land.

Hear, hear.

The hon. and learned Gentleman says "Hear, hear." Then the hon. and learned Gentleman is overthrowing the whole fabric of the laud system in Ireland as it now exists. The intervention of a Court comes between landlords and tenants in Ireland at every turn.

These were not tenants.

I am not saying so. My proposition is that you cannot argue against this proposal on the ground that it sets up an arbitrating tribunal, because the whole system of relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland since the Act of 1881 rests upon the decision of an arbitrating compulsory tribunal. Parliament may have been right or wrong in deciding that fair rents should be fixed by the Courts— but there is nothing new in a proposal of this kind, and, therefore, it is idle to say that a compulsory arbitrating tribunal is a monstrous invasion of private rights or of the principles hitherto accepted in public policy. It is neither the one or the other. Do not think it is the Liberal Government alone who have taken this view of arbitrary interference between landlord and tenant and between gentlemen doing as they like with their own. The late Chancellor of the Exchequer was a Member of the Government which in 1887 went a step, which I admit and which I have always thought was a necessary stop, but which went a great deal further than the Act of 1881, which provided for fixed judicial rents, for it re-revised those revised rents. Then how idle it is to object to compulsory arbitration when you have such cases as the Land Act of 1881, the Land Act of 1887, and the Redemption of Rent Act of 1891. The present Bill created a compulsory arbitrating tribunal in that respect. It does not go further than the principles which have been already recognised in this House. The way in which I should like to describe the foundation of the Bill is that it is an extension, a large extension I quite agree, but an extension of that principle of equity of redemption which, I think, first appeared in a Bill of 1860, which gave equity of redemption for six months. The same principle was recognised in the Arrears Act of 1882, in order to> effect the settlement of disputes, and enable tenants who were evicted to raise money on payment of one year's arrears, and giving power to the Land Commission to extend the period of redemption. There was further power given of equity of redemption under Clause 13. There you have it in effect, not technically. I, for one, can find nothing in previous legislation indicating an invincible repugnance to the creation of a compulsory arbitrating tribunal. I am bound to say I am inclined to differ from the proposal in the Bill that the Land Commission is to be this tribunal. I think that the promoters of the Bill are in error. I believe, first of all, the Land Commission has got at least as much to do as it can well do; and, secondly, I think it would not be desirable to mix up the Land Commission, which ought to be a tribunal above all suspicion, with cases of this kind. Therefore, when this Bill gets into Committee I shall propose that it should not be the Land Commission, but a Special Commission—I mean an official Commission—who shall take those matters into consideration. I now come to a more fundamental point in the Bill, in which I am not at one with its promoters. This Bill gives the Land Commission, or whatever other body may be appointed, no discretion or option in reinstatement. They make it compulsory on the Commissioners to reinstate any tenant who cannot settle with his landlord. I regard that as a proposal open to many objections, and I think that the Commissioners ought to have the power of discriminating or exercising a discretionary power in deciding whether an evicted tenant should be reinstated or not. I think there ought to be a discretion and an option. In one of the sections is a provision enabling the Land Commission to postpone instalments. I view that not with any fundamental repugnance to the principle, but I view it with misgivings, because I believe it would tend to throw out of gear the working of the Laud Purchase Act of 1891. I for one have no desire or wish to stop the working of that Act. On the contrary I desire, in common with those who know most about Ireland, and -who care most about Ireland, that a real solution should be arrived at. I agree with policy of purchase, but I am afraid the tendency of the provision of which I am now speaking would be to throw the working of that very important Act out of gear. But these are all points on which I had hoped to be strengthened by so important a speaker as the hon. Gentleman who preceded me, because they seem to me the points which would lead to the end which we all desire, and which, I believe, the promoters of the Bill desire—namely, an equitable arrangement. The fourth point upon which I entertain some doubts is the proposal that those settlers who have not got what is called a substantial interest should be compulsorily expropriated though with compensation for disturbance. I think that would be found a very difficult thing to do. It would be a very difficult thing for the Commissioners to draw a distinction between a substantial interest and an interest not substantial. And I see also other objections. I am perfectly sure from the information that I have been able to collect for the last seven or eight months, as well as from the evidence which came out before Sir James Mathew's Commission, that there will be little difficulty in carrying out voluntary negotiations with those settlers whose interests are what is called not substantial. I except one further point, which is what is called a Treasury point. I doubt whether Clause 9 on the whole is rightly drawn. I myself would be most reluctant to see any invasion of the capital fund. I hate all invasions of capital funds, especially in Ireland, where they need all the capital funds they can get, and, therefore, I think this clause ought to have been drawn in such a form as to take borrowing powers, guaranteed, if you like, by the Church Temporalities Fund, but not touching the corpus of the fund itself. I do not know that I need say any more. These points I have raised are Committee points, but most important points, two of them of extreme importance, but still points that I believe we might come to an agreement on in Committee, and therefore what I propose to do, and what Her Majesty's Government authorise me to invite the House to do, is to read the Bill a second time. After the Second Beading of the Home Rule Bill, which, of course, must be the first work for the Government to take in hand, realizing how important it is to arrive at some settlement of this question, we will do the best we can to promote the further stages of the Bill. The hon. Gentlemen who bring in the Bill know the position of the Government; they know the difficulties of the Government. No doubt I had hoped in the first instance, as I have already stated, when I advised the issue of the Mathew Commission that the Irish landlords would for once see their real interest, and I hope even now, before we came to the Committee stage of this Bill, they will see that the proposals may be modified in such a way as to give them all that they are entitled to, and perhaps even more than many of them expect, because I consider the terms of the Bill really tolerably liberal. I believe if they will take that course we may arrive at a settlement in which their friends are as much interested as we are. It is their interest to get the question out of the way, and the earlier they expect their return to power the more willing must they be to help us to get the question out of the way. But however that may be, we shall persevere in the course I have indicated. The Bill as it stands contains some proposals to which we cannot assent, but we do assent to the fundamental principle of the Bill, realising the enormous importance of the objects which, the Bill aims at, and we will do the best we can to promote its becoming law at the earliest possible moment. Mr. GOSCHEN and Mr. SEXTON rose together, but the former gave way.

said he only wished to say one word. He wished to thank the right hon. Gentleman for the promise he had given in regard to the further stages of the Bill, and to say that in his judgment the points the right hon. Gentleman had spoken about were points that could be dealt with in Committee. He had also to say this. He told the House upon his responsibility that he thought, in a matter of infinite concern to the cause of social order in Ireland, the sense of the House should be obtained on this Bill to-day, and if the Opposition, having already made three Speeches, desired to make any further comments on the Bill, they invited them now to put forward the speaker who they intended should close the Debate.

I may have been misunderstood. My right hon. Friends near me say that my statement is capable of being misunderstood—that we have promised to take up the Bill the moment the Second Beading of the Home Rule Bill is passed. [An hon. MEMBER: You said that.] If I said that I certainly did not mean to say it. I said hon. Gentlemen opposite who introduced the Bill would realise the difficulties of the Government, and what I intended to say was, that as far as those difficulties would allow us, we would go on with the Bill.

The hon. Member for North Kerry, who rose just now, threatens us, as I understand, with social disorder in Ireland unless we pass this Bill to-day, after a discussion lasting only three hours. [Mr. SEXTON: Four and a half.] We do not look to the hon. Member for the maintenance of social order in Ireland. If such threats are to be made at all, they ought to have been uttered by the Chief Secretary, who is responsible for order in Ireland. Though we understand that the Government desire to govern Ireland according to Irish ideas, I do not think they will accept the Irish idea which has just been put forward by the hon. Member. [Interruption.] Hon. Gentlemen, I trust, will not interrupt me. This is, by the admission of all in this House, a matter of the greatest importance, and I am bound to state my views upon it. We are threatened——

said he could not allow the right hon. Gentleman again and again to associate him with any threat. He presumed, however, that those who had taken the trouble to bring the Bill forward and prepare it were entitled, in no sense of threatening, but as a warning of what they feared, to say that if the House did not decide on the principle of the Bill, it might produce an unfortunate effect.

I thought the hon. Member said that in view of those dangers we ought not to postpone the decision to-day. But how is it, if the matter is so extremely urgent, that only after three or four hours' Debate, without the land-lords or parties represented in Ireland having the opportunity of studying the Bill—I say, how is it that this matter, if it so deeply concerns social order in Ireland, has not been brought forward by the Chief Secretary for Ireland? I do not know what the feeling of other Members in this House will be. I am perfectly untouched by the suggestion, though it is not a threat, of the hon. Member. How do we stand now in regard to this Bill? Is this an essentially Wednesday Debate? It might be an essentially Wednesday Debate, on which hon. Members might fairly ask that the judgment of the House should be taken, if the Bill were to share the fate of those brought forward on most Wednesdays and take its chance; but the speech of the Chief Secretary for Ireland shows that the Government adopt this measure. They suggest Amendments, but they adopt this Bill, as I understand, and are most anxious to find time, and promise time, if they can, to pass it. Well, I say that puts the matter on a totally different footing. It ceases to be simply an academic Wednesday discussion. It is a matter of vital importance to various interests in Ireland. It affects the tenants, no doubt, but it also vitally affects the interests of the landlords, and, to my mind, it also affects more—it affects the future of rent-paying in Ireland altogether. For my part, I say that I believe this Bill may be looked upon as a kind of no-rent manifesto. I do not know whether hon. Members drew the Bill in this respect on purpose, but, as a matter of fact, in future the present tenants will stand in precisely the same position as the tenants who have been already evicted. While the Chief Secretary lends the police force to assist in evicting tenants, those tenants would be able to appeal to the Commission he proposed to appoint, and be re-instated by that Commission compulsorily. Is that a provision that ought to be passed without discussion? Has ever such a provision been put into an Act of Parliament before? Does it not justify me entirely in saying that if this Bill passes it means the death blow of rent altogether. Hon. Members may say that they will put that right in Committee. [Mr. SEXTON: Yes.] But would they put it right? [Mr. SEXTON: Yes.] Then, in any future Plan of Campaign tenants are not to be put on the same footing as the past have been; then, in future anyone who is evicted is to face the perils of the law, while these tenants are to be restored at the expense of the Irish Church Fund. These tenants are to be restored, it is said, but in future they are not to be restored. I ask in the interests of social order, and in those interests to which reference has been made several times to-day, what is the effect going to be, apart from evictions, upon the fulfillment of contracts in Ireland generally? The hon. Member who commenced this Debate said it was in the interests of the landlords that this Bill should be passed, and he seemed to consider that it was simply a question between landlord and tenant, and that the future effects of a policy of this kind might be entirely ignored; but I ask, what generally is going to be the effect upon the fulfillment of contracts in the future? This is the question the right hon. gentleman opposite did not deal with in a single point. What is going to be the effect in Ireland generally if it is known that everybody evicted since 1879, without distinction, without drawing any line whatever, is to be compulsorily reinstated?

I said the Commission, in my view, should have a discretion and option.

Well, I will come to that point. The right hon. Gentleman at five o'clock starts three entirely new principles with regard to this Bill. He thinks that he is to have the privilege at five o'clock of stating in what respects the Government are prepared to modify this Bill. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman will join in the view that the discussion of these principles on the Second Reading ought to be denied to everybody except himself. How many have had an opportunity of speaking upon this important Bill? The importance of this Bill the right hon. Gentleman himself insists upon. I would wish to emphasise what I have said with regard to the general payment of rent. As the Bill is drawn,, I understand that all the evicted tenants are to be restored. If the right hon. gentleman proposes a total revolution in the Bill, let the Government bring in a Bill on their own responsibility. It is a totally different Bill which is proposed by the right hon. Gentleman. It is a different tribunal, it is not to be compulsory, there are other distinctions, it is a totally different Bill, and all the Government proposes to do, it seems to me, is to take advantage of the Wednesday sitting to get the Second Reading of this Bill, and then practically to bring in a totally different Bill. It will be modified so in Committee that it will be a totally different Bill. Is that fair treatment of the House of Commons? I ask whether it is a proper method to deal with a matter of such supreme importance? The right hon. Gentleman has made suggestions which give a totally different character to the Bill. [Mr. SEXTON: On Committee points.] Is it a Committee point whether all the tenants or only a certain portion of them are to be restored. The hon. Gentleman who introduced the Bill said he would not show himself in Ireland again until all the evicted tenants were restored. [Mr. P. M'HUGH: I did not say anything of the sort.] The hon. Member said he would rather not go back if the Bill was not passed. [Mr. M'HUGH: I never said anything of the kind.] The hon. Gentleman spoke of his return to Ireland under the conditions of this Bill passing. But the change suggested by the Chief Secretary is a total and entire change in the Bill, and does not carry out for one moment the pledges of hon. Gentlemen from Ireland. Are we not to know, when a Bill of this kind is to be passed, who are the tenants to be affected by it? We should be giving a vote entirely in the dark if we were to vote on this Bill in face of the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman. I ask another question. The right hon. Gentleman has taunted us with passing compulsory legislation. There is no doubt that some of the legislation we passed was compulsory. But that legislation was as regards long leaseholders. The whole of that class were treated alike; they had broken no contracts, they had fulfilled all their duties, there was no premium on the non-payment of rent. The right hon. Gentleman does not deal with any of those broad questions. The right hon. Gentleman was not pleased with an interjection I made with regard to the evidence of the Commission. Now we want to know, do the Government consider that this Bill is based upon the evidence? If so, why do not they and hon. Members below the Gangway attempt to make out their case? They have not brought forward the evidence which has been paid for by the taxpayers. What has the right hon. Gentleman spent all this money upon? Why has the right hon. Gentleman had this Commission if, when we are asked to legislate on the subject, neither he nor his friends quote the evidence? When we attempt to bring up that evidence, hon. Gentlemen who now seem to be qualified to be Speakers in a College Green Parliament by always rising to Order and endeavouring to assist Mr. Speaker in his duties, ask whether we are in Order in alluding to that evidence. Are we not justified in examining that evidence to see how far it bears out the vicious proposals which the right hon. Gentleman has made? Then the right hon. Gentleman not unnaturally spoke of the inroad that this proposal, as it stands, might make upon the Irish Church fund. [Interruption below the Gangway.] I think the Chief Secretary is bound to listen to these observations. There is no hurry. Looking to the facts I have mentioned I do not believe it will be proposed by the right hon. Gentleman that this debate should now be brought to a close. [Cries of "Divide."] I have stated my opinion. The right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Bench will be able to judge whether they think that the Irish who are interested in this matter have had a proper opportunity of considering this Bill. It was printed on Saturday, it did not reach Ireland until Monday or Tuesday, it has been impossible to place oneself in communication with Irish interests upon the subject, and, to my certain knowledge, there are a considerable number of Gentlemen closely connected with Ireland who still desire to speak upon the subject; I will add this, that I think that upon the present occasion at all events the main points in the evidence should be touched upon. We ought to be allowed to examine the evidence. I will not do so now, but I entirely reserve my right to examine the evidence in order to show how imperfectly the Commission fulfilled their duty of obtaining information upon the whole case. I have got to deal with the question of the finance of this Bill, I have got to deal with the question of the persons who will be interested by the Bill, and we have to deal with the evidence before the Commission. With regard to the finance of the Bill, the right hon. Gentleman is not prepared, as I understand, to put it upon the Church Fund, upon the capital side of the Church Fund. He is perfectly right. I believe the Irish Church Fund now bears as great a burden as it can possibly bear from the charges which have already been put upon it. Well, what is the alternative? Is the British taxpayer to pay?. If you have a voluntary arrangement, and if the Commission has a certain amount of discretion as to whether or not they will admit the tenants, then I think the risk will not be great; but if they are to have no discretion, if the insolvent and bad tenants are to be admitted, then I say the British taxpayer will be asked to bear a burden which will be too heavy to put upon him, looking to the fact that it is simply the reward in many cases of the refusal to pay rents. The right hon. Gentleman asserted that under the voluntary arrangement a preference was given to those who had been acting under the Plan of Campaign. There was no such preference; no differential treatment was given. There was not made the preposterous demand to the House of Commons—

I do not complain that the responsibility has been placed upon me, though I am sorry to intervene and to come into collision with any hon. Member, and still more with any large section of the House. But I am bound to consider the circumstances of the Debate. The Debate has lasted exactly four hours and a quarter, and since the speeches of the hon. Gentlemen who introduced the Bill and the Amendment only four speeches have been delivered. The Debate has appeared to open up, in my opinion, a question of great difficulty and great complication. In these circumstances I have come to the conclusion, giving the best weight I can to both sides, that the Debate should be adjourned.

said he did not know what the opinion of hon. Members on that side of the House was as to discussing at that most inappropriate and inconvenient stage questions which had always, in past years, been discussed with the Chairman in the Chair, and under circumstances in which they could properly debate matters of detail and business of this kind. He confessed that although there were many urgent and important matters he was anxious to raise upon that Vote and only spoke for some ten minutes yesterday, he utterly declined to avail himself now of what was a wholly illusory opportunity. The Government knew very well that in offering Members an opportunity of discussing this Vote of £4,500,000 with the Speaker in the Chair, and on Report of Supply, was offering them what was of no use whatever. It was utterly impossible that any proper or adequate discussion could take place on a Vote of this kind with the Speaker in the Chair. This was the Report stage of a Vote of £4,000,000, voted away in four hours the previous day, and in view of such facts the very name of "Report" was an absurdity. Only one-tenth of the whole money comprised in the Vote, the report of which was brought forward, was discussed at all. He should like to know whose fault was that. The object of the Government was twofold. In the first place they wished to prevent any discussion on that Vote, and, in the second place, by putting it down at so late a date, they wished to drive off and shorten the Easter holidays so that during the brief recess there could be no discussion of the Home Rule Bill. To a certain extent they had effected their purpose. Although Easter was this year unusually early, the Vote on Account had been put down this year at a later period than at any time during the last ten years. Again, the Vote on Account had generally been discussed for three days. [Cries of" No! "] He had looked up the matter, and what he was stating was a fact. But not only had the Government put it off till the last day possible, but they had then chosen the shortest day possible, which was the afternoon of the shortest day available, and what did they do then? They put up Members on their own side to ask as many questions and as many supplementary questions as possible, and, at the beginning of the Sitting, wasted as much public time as they possibly could. When they did get to the Vote, what happened? Private Members on the opposite side made motion after motion, each accompanied by long speeches, and one, two, and even three Ministers replied one after the other, occupying two-thirds of the time available. The Government were not even satisfied with that, but the Prime Minister himself wasted at least a quarter of an hour which might otherwise have been devoted to discussion, and with that tyrannical spirit which he was exhibiting—which made one begin to wonder whether it was of any use Parliament sitting at all— and with the subservient creatures he had at his back— [Cries of "Order!"]

I rise to Order, Sir. I wish to know whether the hon. Gentleman is entitled to call Members sitting on thus side "subservient creatures"? [Cries of "Name" and "Withdraw "]

I was at the moment occupied in conversation with an hon. Member at the Chair, and did not hear the expression to which the right hon. Gentleman refers. Had I heard it I should certainly have called the hon. Member to Order. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the expression, an expression which ought not to be applied to any section or Party in this House.

would willingly withdraw the expression. He thought, however, he was entitled to say this— The right hon. Gentleman would admit that at any rate he had got very obedient followers; and the right hon. Gentleman would not deny that he deprived the House of at least a quarter of an hour of the short time at his disposal by getting up to move the Closure. That was a wholly unnecessary waste of time. He wished to speak with perfect respect of what happened the previous day, but it struck him the Prime Minister was using this great weapon of the Closure to a certain extent in a way in which it was never used before. His impression of the Closure was that it was a weapon which was only to be brought into play when a matter had been fully and fairly discussed, and for the first time, so far as he remembered, the reason alleged for putting on the Closure was not that the matter had been sufficiently discussed, but on the ground of the urgency of public business. If that was the case, what would happen? It was only necessary for the Government to get into one or two such muddles as they had been getting into day after day this Session,. to drive public business, as it were, into a corner, and then get out of the difficulty and take advantage of their own mistakes by putting on the Closure. He began by saying he would have nothing to do with any Motion on that Report, and he believed a good many Members on that side were of the same opinion. They were determined they would have no part or share in scamping public business; they would be no parties to this political jerry-building. The proper course was to refuse to discuss this matter on Report at all, and Jet the country realise the position into which the Government have driven the House of Commons by taking away from it the only legitimate opportunity on which it could discuss the large expenditure on this Vote on Account. He would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman, looking to the fact that he had deprived the House of the legitimate opportunity for discussing these Votes, what he proposed to do with Supply in future. Was he going to take a further Vote on Account, or would he undertake what was only fair and proper, considering the way in which he had dealt with this Vote on Account—and this would give him one more opportunity of redeeming his character for political fair play—would he undertake, if he were allowed to get the Report on the Vote that night, to put down after Easter the ordinary Votes of Supply at such a time that the House would be able to discuss them at proper length and with the proper opportunities which had been afforded in past years.

There was one thing wanting in the speech of the hon. Member who has just sat down, and that was historical accuracy. As he has made the assertion that what took place yesterday was absolutely a novel proceeding, and that the House has been in the habit of discussing the expenditure of the year on the Vote of Account, I must tell the House the exact dates and the time that has been occupied, not during the last two or three years, but in order to prevent any confusion, and to give the hon. Gentleman the benefit of as large an average as possible, I will go back 12 years. In 1881 the Vote on Account occupied part of one day. In 1882 it occupied part of One night, and that was after midnight; in 1883 it occupied part of one night, and that was after midnight; in 1884 it occupied part of one night, and that was after midnight; in 1885 it occupied part of one night, and that was after midnight; and in 1886 it occupied part of one night, and that was after midnight. Now, Sir, I come to, perhaps, what the hon. Gentleman may think a more constitutional period in the reign of the late Government, and I will read what happened in 1887. At that time the House was occupied in a very serious and embittered and angry controversy with reference to the passing of a Coercion Bill, and in those excited times the Vote on Account occupied one whole night—a whole night, but only one night in 1887. In 1888, when the late Government was in power, it occupied one night. But on the former part of that evening the Navy Vote was taken, and a large sum of money, amounting to £3,000,000 was voted for the Navy, and then the Vote on Account was taken of £3,600,000, and the House will be surprised to hear, after having been told of this outrage on the constitution which was committed yesterday, that the Closure was moved on that occasion in 1888, on the Vote of Account, and the Vote passed that same evening. It was reported the next day, and the Report was closed on that evening in one Sitting, after the Leader of the House had intimated that he would be obliged to move the Closure if the Vote was not reported. In 1889, which, of course, is the instance and illustration of the three nights, it is true that the Vote on Account occupied three nights, but these three nights were devoted to the Parnell Commission, the conduct of the Law Officers of the Crown, and the whole question of the forgeries made by Pigott against Mr. Parnell. It occupied, I admit, three nights in 1889. In 1890 the Vote on Account occupied one night again, and the Report stage commenced at 10.20 on the following night and closed at 11.30. In 1891, when it was for £3,900,000, it occupied one night, and the Report stage from 5.15 to 6 o'clock on the following night. In 1892, last year, the discussion on the Vote commenced at 5 minutes past 8, and on the first night a very Constitutional and highly-respected Member on the other side of the House—one who would be the last man to lend himself to obstruction on the one hand, or to arbitrary repression on the other, moved the Closure at 11 o'clock. The Chairman declined to put the Question, and left the Chair at 12. The next day there was a Morning Sitting, and the then Leader of the House, pointing out the absolute financial necessity of the Vote being taken, proposed that the subject should, if necessary, have precedence at the Evening Sitting, a proposal which was very much resisted. In the course of that Debate the then Chairman of Committees, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin (Mr. Courtney) made the following very pertinent remarks:—

"It has been laid down over and over again that the first Vote on Account is a Vote which ought to give rise to no discussion, except on matters of pressing importance. It is evident that the Vote must he got, and unless it be an urgent matter which cannot be postponed, discussion on several subjects is rather an abuse of power than a proper use of it."

Now, Sir, the whole Morning Sitting up to then being on a discussion to determine whether the Vote on Account should have precedence at the Evening Sitting, at 5 o'clock the right hon. Gentleman, who is now the Leader of the Opposition, got the Resolution passed. The House resumed the discussion of the Vote on Account at the Evening Sitting. The Closure was moved at 11.55, and the Vote obtained, therefore there is no shadow of pretence for saying that this is the first time the Closure has been moved, and no shadow of pretence for saying that there has been a uniform period of three days for discussing this Vote on Account. There has been nothing of the sort, and what is still more, Mr. Speaker, this is a most dangerous precedent which is being set up of discussing the Estimates twice over in the same year. We discussed yesterday matters—I do not say they were not of great importance—but matters which belong to the regular discussion of the regular Estimates of the year. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square (Mr. Goschen), has left the House, or I would like to have reminded him that in 1888 he, together with the right hon. Gentleman opposite, who was then Secretary to the Treasury, sat upon a Committee which was appointed to consider the whole question of our procedure in Supply. That Committee was presided over by the Duke of Devonshire, and in the Draft Report which he drew up for that Committee it was recommended that no discussion should be applied upon the first Vote on Account, but that the discussion should be confined simply to the necessity of the Vote and the time for which it should be granted. The Committee did not agree with the noble Duke in that finding, but in the minority which voted with him approving of that recommendation was the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the then Secretary to the Treasury, and two Members on this Bench, including myself, together with another Gentleman of authority in financial matters, whose name I forget for the moment.

May I remind the right hon. Gentleman that that was the very point I attempted to raise the previous day as to the necessity of the Vote on Account, but I was prevented.

I am simply giving an illustration of the attitude the late Chancellor of the Exchequer took up. He agreed with the Duke of Devonshire in proposing to the House—the Committee did not accept it—that the first Vote on Account should be automatic, and what we did agree upon was to recommend the House to deal in some way or other with this question of the time consumed on these Votes in Supply. It is quite necessary all these questions should be discussed, and, so far as the Government are concerned, they will be willing to give every opportunity for full discussion this year, and bring on the Estimates as soon as they can. But it is not necessary that these questions should be discussed first on the Supplemental Estimates; then on the first Vote on Account; then on the second Vote on Account; and then when the Estimates themselves are brought forward, and as a matter of fact generally the same question over and over again. I have risen mainly for the purpose of showing that the hon. Member is inaccurrate in saying that the procedure yesterday was a novel one, and I also rose for the purpose of giving a direct contradiction to the right hon. Gentleman opposite, who, at an earlier period of the day, said this was an outrage on the Constitution, that outrage having been committed by his Leader 12 months ago.

Having been deprived of the legitimate opportunity of discussing various matters which it was desired to discuss on the Vote on Account, it is undesirable to attempt to do so now on the Report, especially after the speech of the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman has been good enough to give us a number of cases in which he says the Vote on Account has been voted in periods as short as the time in which it was voted yesterday, and on two occasions he also says that the closure was moved. Nobody ever denied it. It entirely depends on the circumstances under which it was done, and I venture to assert that the circumstances under which it was done yesterday are without precedent altogether, in spite of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman. May I be allowed to remind the House of what did actually occur? The Prime Minister was pressed over and over again by the Leader of the Opposition and by various Members sitting on this Front Bench, to take the Vote on Account at a time when various matters of importance could be discussed. But in spite of everything that was pressed upon the right hon. Gentleman he absolutely declined to depart from the intention which he had announced, and that was to take the Vote on Account upon the Morning Sitting on Tuesday. [Mr. W. E. GLADSTONE: Nothing of the sort.] I beg pardon. I can go to the Library, and I think I can get the words of the right hon. Gentleman, and he will find that I am accurate. The day came and the discussion occurred. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer came into the House, as far as I remember, about 5 o'clock, and he made an appeal to the House to allow the Vote to be taken on the ground that it was absolutely necessary. But what did the right hon. Gentleman say? He stated that the Report stage of the Vote would not be subjected to any limitation of time, whether taken on Wednesday or Thursday. It was perfectly obvious, therefore, from what the right hon. Gentleman said, that the Report stage could have been taken to-morrow without interfering with those exigencies of business. Well, Sir, that being so, I asked the right hon. Gentleman if, under the circumstances, he found himself in great difficulties if the Vote was not concluded yesterday, whether, having refused all the appeals made to him from this side of the House, and the Govern- ment themselves being alone to blame for any difficulties they might find themselves placed in, I suggested to him that he should do this: Inasmuch as he had taken the first place upon last Wednesday for the Appropriation Bill, and inasmuch as the Government had announced their intention of taking all the Wednesdays after Easter for their own purposes, they might pursue a similar course to-day, and by putting down a notice yesterday, they could have taken the Vote on Account in Committee to-day without any interference, so far as I am acquainted, with the regular practice of the House, and all the objections which had been raised by hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House to their proceedings would then have been obviated. That was the course we proposed. What was the reply? They would do nothing of the kind. Why would they not do it? We know why now. It was because Her Majesty's Government were seeking to help a measure in which they are greatly interested—promoted by the Irish Members—in passing into law during the present Session without giving a day to it of their own; therefore, rather than do anything that would interefere with the passage of the Evicted Tenants Bill, they were perfectly ready—by what I still consider was most arbitrary action on their part after all the appeals made to them to move the closure—upon a sum amounting to £3,600,000, without allowing a single word to be said upon it by any Member on this side of the House. And when the President of the Local Government Board talks of the number and variety of small matters which were discussed yesterday on the Vote on Account, in terms of something like reproach, I beg to remind him that three-fourths of the time was consumed by gentlemen on the other side of the House; and if there be blame at all from the use that was made of the time, that blame lies upon them and not upon gentlemen on this side of the House. I do not want to interrupt any further the business of the House or occupy its time, but I felt bound, in duty to myself and gentlemen on this side of the House, to make the statement I have done, and I absolutely renew the protest I made at an earlier part of the proceedings.

would venture to supplement one date in the statement of the President of the Local Government Board. He would refer the right hon. Gentleman to the 21st March, 1892, when the Report stage was taken, and when there was a Division, which showed that there was a regular debate, followed by a division of the House.

said the Report on the occasion the hon. Baronet referred to came on for debate at 20 minutes to 9 and finished at 11.

said that what his hon. Friend, the Member for Preston stated, was substantially correct as regards the years 1892 and 1890, in which a part of three days were occupied by the House on the Vote on Account. Three days were to that extent devoted to the Vote on Account in 1892, and three days were devoted to it in 1890. As to what the right hon. Gentleman said with regard to only important questions being brought forward on the Report of the Vote on Account, he ventured to remind the right hon. Gentleman that he had intended yesterday to move that the Vote on Account should be taken for one instead of for two months. The Chairman ruled out of order. He did not question the ruling, but he wanted to point out that in consequence of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister moving the Closure he had been precluded from raising the question at all. He also wished to point out that in recent years the Vote on Account had always been brought forward at an earlier period than it had been. In 1892 the latest date on which the Vote on Account was dealt with was March 21st, in 1891 it was March 17th, in 1890 it was March 21st, and in 1889 March 25th. Therefore bringing in of the Vote as late as March 27th was a very exceptional and abnormal proceeding. According to ancient practice Votes on Account were taken without discussion, but of late years Governments had so crowded the Session with their own business that they had cut off private Members from the chance of discussing the Estimates in a full and proper manner. Therefore it had become more and more necessary, for private Members were now compelled to discuss the Vote on Account if they desired to discharge their duty to their Constituents, when the energies of Members were fresh, and there was an opportunity of securing a full House. Of late years the Estimates had been brought on at the end of the Session—in the dog days; scores of votes, involving millions of money, being rushed through in a single evening without discussion. This was more than ever likely to happen this year. With so many important Bills before the House, they would only reach effective Supply late in the year, when proper discussion would be impossible. Their only chance to obtain a discussion of certain important subjects in which they were interested, was to bring them on the Vote on Account now, before Easter; but that had been rendered impossible by the action of the Government.

said he had taken no part in the discussion on the Vote on Account yesterday. There were several questions upon which he had desired to address the House, but he had concluded that he would have an opportunity of doing it on a later stage of the Vote. He regarded the question raised by the hon. Baronet, who had last spoken, as one of great importance. What were the facts of the case so far as the present Session was concerned? Hon. Members had been dragooned into passing this Vote on Account for two months. They knew that when the two months had expired they would have arrived at the end of May, when the House would be occupied with the Home Rule Bill in Committee. There would then be another Vote on Account submitted to them, and the same process would be gone through—they would be told that it was necessary for the Public Service that the money should be voted, and the Closure would be again applied. In addition to his Home Rule Bill—the Prime Minister would propose the Dis- establishment of the Scotch Church, and the Disestablishment of the Welsh Church, and he was going to pass what he called the Local Veto Bill—a measure which would affect a large trade, and hundreds of millions worth of property. These Bills would have all to go through Committee, and in addition, the right hon. Gentleman, the Prime Minister, was going to pass one of the largest Local Government Bills they had seen in the present generation. Under the circumstances it was absurd to suppose that they would be able to discuss the Estimates even if they sat there until next Christmas. It was, therefore, obvious that they were justified in raising discussions on the Vote on Account. If the supply of this country was conducted in a decent manner, the Vote on Account might be taken without discussion, but the Government seemed to be afraid that inconvenient subjects would be discussed, and they used their best endeavour to burke them. He had noticed that tendency on the Supplementary Estimates. The Chancellor of the Exchequer made every possible effort to prevent the discussion of inconvenient questions. Members had, however, secured a fair amount of discussion, and he ventured to say that in spite of the Closure, and the system of tyranny practised by the Government, they would discuss the Estimates adequately, whether the Government liked it or not.

said he desired to call attention to a matter of special interest to his constituents. In consequence of the Closure being moved, he was unable to call attention to the subject on the previous day. He hoped he would not be considered an obstructive. He felt that while he owed loyalty to the Government, he also owed loyalty to his constituents. In the course of a reply to a question, the Secretary for Scotland had said that having advanced lately £3,000 for roads in Inverness-shire, he thought that money was sufficient to meet present wants. But the right hon. Gentleman did not explain that this £3,000 was part of a grant given by Parliament some time ago for relief works in the Highlands,, and therefore had no particular reference to the present distress in the country. In consequence of the bad harvest, the severe winter, and the low prices of stocks, the people were unable to buy seed for their ground. They appealed for assistance, and he submitted that if the Government could spend tens of thousands of pounds on Central Africa to put down slavery and assist Christian missionaries, charity should begin at home, even it did not end there. This was a case of urgency, and he hoped the Chancellor of the Exchequer would promise a small grant. Probably £400 or £500 would be all that was required. He hoped it would not be necessary to put the House to the inconvenience of a division; but if the right hon. Gentleman, the Secretary for Scotland, could not see his way to promise something, he (Dr. Macgregor) would be compelled to move the reduction of his salary by £100. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would meet the case in a charitable and proper spirit, and if Christianity was not played out, let them cultivate and exercise one of its leading principles— do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you.

said he proposed to move a reduction of £100 in reference to the road tax in Ceylon.

pointed out that a Motion for reduction had already been moved by the hon. Member for Inverness-shire. [ Cries of "No, no."]

I did not gather that the hon. Gentleman did move a reduction.

What I said was that unless the right hon. Gentleman saw his way to meet my views, I would do so.

Then the hon. Member did not move?

No; but I will do so now.

Oh, no.

said he was glad to be able in this way to reply at once to the speech of his hon. Friend. The Government had got their eye fixed very carefully upon the state of things in the Highlands. They had Reports constantly sent from the Board of Supervision as to whether any special relief was wanted, and they were advised by the Board of Supervision that the very worst form in which relief could be given was the eleemosynary form of direct relief, and that the best form in which it could be given was in the shape of the employment of labour on works of public utility. In consequence, the Scottish Office had applied to the Treasury, and the Treasury had granted not £400 or £500, but £10,000 towards making roads and pathways in the Highlands. Of that how much had been given to Inverness-shire? Not £400 or £500, but £3,000. The local representatives, the County Council, were surely the persons who knew best the wants of the district, and so little did the County Council think it was necessary to make a very special grant to the Western Islands, that they actually proposed to take £500 or £600 out of the £3,000 and give that sum to the eastern districts in which there was no distress whatever. But he, as Secretary for Scotland, remembering the object with which the money had been given by the Treasury, reversed their decision and gave the whole of the £3,000 to the Western Islands. Now, this money was very much more than what was wanted to meet the present distress. The same thing was done in Ross-shire and the Lews, and he had just had a letter from the Lews from a private person of great authority, in which he said that an army of labourers were employed, and all able-bodied men were earning good wages. That was a very much better form in which to give public money than in what he called an eleemosynary grant in direct relief. None the less would the Government carefully watch how things went, and if during the next month or six weeks—the most trying time in districts like the west of Ireland and the west of Scotland— other measures were required to be taken, though he did not believe they would be required, they would be taken at once, and all the quicker for what his hon. Friend had brought before the House that evening.

said he wished to call attention to the Road Tax in Ceylon, and to move a reduction in the Vote of £100. This tax was a heavy burden upon the poor Cingalese labourers, and he trusted that the present Government would not be behind hand in relieving these people, especially in view of the tax that the late Government had relieved them of— the Paddy Tax. This charge had really become a Poll Tax upon the inhabitants of Ceylon, and amounting as it did to 1½ rupees, or the equivalent of 3s. English money, it pressed very hardly on the poor labourers, many of whom earned no more than 50 or 60 rupees a year. If it was not paid, the labourers were served with warrants to perform a certain amount of labour, and in default they could be committed to prison for a month, where they were placed amongst the worst kind of criminals. The warrants were levied by the Chairman of the Road Committees on the mere ipse dixit of his sub-officer. No evidence was adduced when the cases were gone into, and there was no appeal. Such a state of things called for the interference of the Government. Another injustice was that these warrants were kept hanging over the heads of the people. At the present moment it was said there were 80,000 warrants hanging over the heads of the labourers in Ceylon, and as in some cases two warrants might be out against one man, it might be taken that there were some 60,000 labourers affected. The evil effects of putting these poor people in prison was shown by the fact that whereas from 1878 to 1885 the number of defaulters sent to prison was only half the number of criminals there, from 1886 to 1891 the number of criminals had increased to double the number of defaulters. This showed that the defaulters by being obliged to associate with the criminal class had become in a great degree identified with that class. He would like to ask the Government to abolish the tax, or at any rate to make imprisonment for default impossible. Under ordinary circumstances in Ceylon, no one could be sent to prison for debt under a liability of 200 rupees, but in the case of this tax a defaulter should be sent to prison for a debt of l½ rupees. He trusted that in future evidence would be taken before warrants were made out, and that it would not lie with the Chairman of the Road Committees to get these people sent to prison. He moved to reduce the Vote by the sum of £100.

did not think there was any urgent necessity for bringing this subject forward on the Vote on Account. The tax had been in existence for a great many years, and the question was not so urgent that it could not wait for discussion until the ordinary Estimates were under discussion. He was not there to defend the tax, which had very great drawbacks in connection with it. It was in the nature of a Poll Tax or compulsory labour in a large number of cases, and no doubt when default was made, sentence of imprisonment was passed on some who never ought to go to prison at all. His hon. Friend would agree, however, that in the present state of finances in Ceylon, and in view of the abolition of the Paddy Tax a year or two ago, the Ceylon finances would not admit of the remission of the tax at the present moment. The Secretary of State had had in view the great inequali- ties which existed in regard to the tax, and had already instructed the Governor in regard to the matter, who had reported to the Colonial Office with the view of improving and lightening the tax. He hoped the hon. Gentleman would be content with the assurance that the Government had already amended the tax in some particulars, that they desired to make it fairer and weigh with less force on the poorer population, and that they desired, if possible, in the future to abolish it, so that the differences and injustices the hon. Gentleman complained of might disappear. He hoped the hon. Member would rest content with that assurance.

said that what had just occurred was an illustration of the extreme difficulty under which the Members of the Opposition laboured in discussing the Vote on Account. He agreed with the doctrine laid down by the present President of the Local Government Board that on a Vote on Account they ought only to discuss matters that were urgent or the period of time the Vote was to cover. Certainly to his personal knowledge there were gentlemen on the Opposition side of the House who had had urgent questions to bring forward, He himself had wished to bring under the notice of the House a question of new expenditure, and the hon. Baronet, the Member for the Kingston Division of Surrey (Sir R. Temple), had a most important question.

rose to Order. He wished to know if the question raised by the hon. Member for Manchester had been disposed of?

The discussion must be confined to the Ceylon Road Tax.

said he had been pointing out that the hon. Baronet had desired to call attention to a subject which the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board considered a proper subject for debate on the Vote on Account, namely, the period of time for which the Vote should be taken. What he wished to point out was that these legitimate subjects for discussion, and more specially the hon. baronet, had been absolutely excluded from all possibility of bringing those subjects under the consideration of the Committee of Supply because hon. Members on the Government side of the House, and Ministers, had carried on the discussion during the whole of the afternoon on subjects like the conditions of the natives of Ceylon which might just as well have been brought on when the Vote came on in Committee of Supply. He would ask whether it would be possible to have some rules laid down for the discussions upon a Vote on Account which would permit legitimate subjects being raised and would prevent them from being excluded by illegitimate questions crowding in. The Vote on Account was closured on Tuesday against legitimate subjects that ought to have been discussed, and the whole time of the Committee was taken up by discussions which could well have taken place in ordinary Committee of Supply.

I wish to express my concurrence to some extent with the right hon. Gentleman in the remarks he has just made. I regret extremely that legitimate objects should have been shut out of the discussion. I admit that before I proposed the Closure a quarter of an hour remained for discussion, and it was possible, though not very probable, that at the end of that time the Committee might have arrived at a decision. Still it was obvious that in that time the door could not have been opened for much of the legitimate discussions to which the right hon. Gentleman refers. I hope some public utility may result from this discussion in the future treatment of the first Vote on Account which it is absolutely necessary to take in the interest of the Public Service.

said that if the House had been content to pass this Vote on Account without debate he should have been perfectly satisfied with the decision, but inasmuch as questions had been raised, and as the Parliamentary ship was already pretty well over laden and there might not be much opportunity on the Estimates of raising important questions, there were two points relating to the household of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to which he would take the present opportunity of drawing attention. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland at an early period of the Session announced a great change in the government of the asylums in Ireland. So far as he was concerned he concurred——

The hon. Gentleman was entirely within his right, and the discretion as to the exercise of that right must rest with himself; but I would submit to the hon. Member for his consideration that the only Member of the Government who can satisfactorily deal with the question he proposes to raise is the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant. My right hon. Friend, having been detained by his Parliamentary duties a long time away from Ireland, has felt himself compelled to return to there and to withdraw from the House. I do not complain of the spirit of the hon. Member's remarks.

The right hon. Gentleman has given a perfectly satisfactory reason why I should not proceed with my remarks.

said other Members as well as hon. Gentlemen opposite had the interests of their constituents to look after. A committee of inquiry was appointed by the Presi- dent of the Board of Trade, which seriously affected the interests of his constituents, the sailors at the estuary of the Thames and on the shores of the North Sea. All he wished to say was, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would extend his benevolent considerations to the recommendations of that Committee, so far as they affected his constituents. There was another question he desired to call attention to as an agricultural Member. He saw there was a sum of £8,000 down for the Board of Agriculture, but for himself he failed to see what that Board had done during the last eight months to justify its existence in any way. It was true the President of the Board of Agriculture had prohibited the importation of cattle about 8 months ago. He (Major Rasch) thought the right hon. Gentleman had done right. But beyond this the people of Essex wanted a great deal from the Board of Agriculture, and all the Government offered them was a Committee of Inquiry. That meant that the agricultural interest was to be kept quiet until after the next General Election by the offer of a Committee of Inquiry. They had had some experience of the usefulness of these inquiries in the case of the Committee which sat to consider the condition of the hop industry. Nothing whatever had resulted from that inquiry. The subject of the incidence of tithe, the labelling of foreign meat, or the incidence of local taxation, might well form the subjects of inquiry, but as a result they should have something more from the Government than the sympathetic reference to agriculture which was contained in the Queen's Speech.

said that there were matters connected with the Highlands of Scotland of a serious character which required immediate attention. People were starving in the Lews, but the Secretary for Scotland preferred to take his information from private sources rather than from representative ones. He (Mr. Weir) had his information from the representatives of the people in the district. A District Committee met two or three days ago at Stornoway, and they reported that there was a serious amount of distress prevailing in the island. The Secretary for Scotland said he could not give direct assistance in the form of corn and potato seed. Were they then to let the people die of starvation? Whether either a Liberal or a Conservative Government was in power, he (Mr. Weir) thought it his duty to bring such a matter before the House. He was as anxious as any that the great measures now before them should be pressed forward, but he thought they should look after hearth and home first. The right hon. Gentleman (the Secretary for Scotland) said that he must be guided by the Board of Supervision, but his (Mr. Weir's) experience was that that was an arrogant, idle, and useless body, who knew nothing about the work it had to do, and the sooner it was wiped out of existence the better. An hon. Member for an English constituency (Mr. Snape), who, like several other Liberal and Radical Members, ignored the Highland constituencies, found fault with him for putting certain questions. He was sorry to put questions in the House, but what alternative had he? He had never received a straightforward answer to any questions he had asked the Board of Supervision. He might inform the Secretary for Scotland that the medical officer of health for his constituency was now, and had been for the last two months, enjoying himself in Egypt. Why was he not in Ross and Cromarty? He was not at all surprised that the right hon. Gentleman sought to draw a veil over the dark doings of the Board of Supervision. He commended the right hon. Gentleman for standing by that Board, but he would commend him far more if he swept that Board out of existence. Farther, during the summer months, the same county medical officer spent his time at Strathpeffer, making fees out of the aristocratic persons who visited the Spa. He was sorry the Secretary for Scotland encouraged that system, and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would see for the future that the county medical officers in Scotland confined themselves to the public duties for which they were paid. He moved to reduce the Vote by £500 in respect of the salaries for the Board of Supervision.

The hon. Gentleman cannot do that.

said he thought his hon. Friend was entitled to an answer from the President of the Board of Agriculture as to when the Committee on Agriculture was going to be appointed. He thought the Government had treated the House rather badly and agriculture very badly in having taken no notice of the subject of agricultural depression since the mere mention of it in the Queen's Speech.

I assure the hon. Gentleman that I did not intend any discourtesy, but was only waiting to see the course of the Debate before I replied. I must remind the hon. Gentleman that the duties of the Board of Agriculture are very wide, and involve the consideration of many subjects. For instance, during the last few months, there have been two outbreaks of foot and mouth disease, one in London and the other near Hastings, and, as it is of the highest importance that this disease should be suppressed, I think that the efforts which have been successfully made by the Board to suppress it, justify to a large extent the expenditure to which reference has been made. I must remind the hon. Gentleman that the Board of Agriculture is composed of ordinary beings and is not endowed with superhuman powers. If it has carried out the great objects for which it was appointed, and supervised the great interest over which it is placed, I submit it has done its duty. When the Government proposed the appointment of a Committee they did so for reasons which I had the honour of explaining to the House during the debate on the Address. We felt that no direct legislative proposal which would prove a remedy for agricultural distress had been submitted to the Government either in the House or outside the House. In this I think the late President of the Board of Agriculture will agree with me because he has himself stated that the policy of his friends in this House ought to be to force on the Government a Committee of enquiry into certain specific objects only. The reason why that Committee has not come into being is very obvious to the House. If its appointment had not been opposed the Committee would now have been sitting for some time, and would probably have made some reports of service to the Agricultural interest. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Chaplin), however, acting of course within his legitimate rights, met the proposal with an Amendment tantamount to a direct negative, it being his opinion that the appointment of the proposed Committee would be of no service to agriculture. I myself believe that the proposal, had it been accepted, would have led to good results, and can only regret that the Government has not been allowed to proceed with appointment of the Committee.

This is not of course the occasion for entering into a discussion on Agriculture, and I should not have said a word on the subject but for the direct challenge which has been thrown out by the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. He has made an inaccurate statement as to the course I have taken. He says that when notice was given on the Motion for the appointment of a Committee, I met it with a direct negative. I did nothing of the kind. I thought the inquiry proposed by the Government was unwise, as it would be not only useless but possibly injurious to agriculture, inasmuch as its effect would be to postpone any remedial measures for an indefinite time. What I asked the House by my amendment to say was, that, while anxious to consider specific proposals for the relief of agricultural depression, we declined to embark on a general and exhaustive inquiry into the nature and causes of the distress, when such nature and causes were manifest already, thereby postponing any measures of relief for an indefinite time. Can any hon. Member dispute the terms of that amendment? Are not the causes of agricultural depression manifest already? Of course they are. I object altogether to a long inquiry into those causes, more particularly because the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he spoke on the question, went out of his way to say that one of the first things the Committee would have to inquire into, was why none of the recommendations of the Committee of 1836 had been carried out. Another reason why I opposed the inquiry was because we were informed by the Government that it was to be based upon the precedent of 1836. That is one of the most unfortunate precedents that could possibly have been advanced as a solution for agricultural depression. The President of the Board of Agriculture and the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not seem to be aware that although the Committee appointed in 1836 took a great deal of evidence, it failed to make any recommendations whatever, in fact it never reported at all. Under these circumstances, can anybody say that, in the interests of agriculture, I have taken any other course but a wise, a just, and a proper course in refusing to be a party to an inquiry of that kind. In my opinion, the inquiry would have been nothing but a farce and a snare, and it would have resulted in no good whatever. I adhere to the terms of the Resolution I have put upon the Paper, and I am perfectly prepared—(" Divide, divide.") If we, on this side, attempt to say a single word on behalf of agriculture in the House, we are always met by interruptions from the other side. It was not my fault that I rose to speak. My conduct was directly challenged by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Agriculture, and I do not see that I have done anything but justify the course I have taken. If the Government has any proposals to make we shall be very glad to hear them and consider them. I am not responsible for the business of the House. The Government could have at any moment brought on a discussion on the question of agriculture. Had they deemed it desirable that their scheme should be carried out, I shall certainly not throw any impediment in the way of a proper inquiry into specific proposals for the relief of agriculture. On the contrary, I will give all the assistance in my power, but I will not be a party to any vague and broad and general inquiry into causes which are perfectly manifest.