In reference to this Bill I have to inform the House that I have received a letter from the Agents, in which they state they have been instructed to agree to Amendments to Clause 43 (Milk Supply) contained in an Instruction to the Committee placed on the Order Paper by the hon. Members for South Somerset and Kent (Ashford). Part XII. of the Bill (Fire Insurance), in regard to which Instructions are down on the Paper, in the names of the hon. Members for Peebles, Tower Hamlets, and the Uxbridge Division, will be dropped altogether. I am perfectly certain that this arrangement will be strictly adhered to, and that, I think, disposes of the Instructions to the Committee. There is another matter with regard to this Bill which it is my duty to bring before the House. The Bill proposes to confer on certain metropolitan boroughs powers which, if acquired at all, ought to be obtained by the councils of those boroughs by their own Act. Although this is a County Council Bill, the Fulham Borough Council and the Camberwell Borough Council are empowered to purchase land for open spaces and to borrow money for that purpose. I believe there is no precedent for granting compulsory powers to local authorities, otherwise than in Acts promoted by the local authorities themselves. The Battersea Borough Council in one case no doubt was allowed to raise money, but it was not granted compulsory powers. I do not wish to oppose the Bill on this ground, but I have felt it my duty to refer to this particular provision. It is for the House to say what course it will take on it.

asked if there was any reason to suppose that the localities affected had agreed to the granting of these powers.

said it might simplify matters if he at once said that what was contentious in this Bill did not spring from the County Council itself, but emanated from the Borough Councils which, from motives of economy, promptitude and dispatch, had asked the London County Council to insert in their General Powers Bill provisions as regards Camberwell and for the purchase of land for open spaces. He could assure the hon. Member for North Islington that any clause in the Bill giving power to a Borough Council had been put in at the request of the Borough Council, and the County Council ought not to be prejudiced in regard to their own part of the Bill. The County Council had authorised him to abandon Part XII. of the Bill, relating to municipal fire insurance. That provision was inserted in the Bill in accordance with a request made at a conference of representatives of the County Council, the City Corporation and the Borough Councils. It had been found that in the last fifteen years the County Council had paid £15,000 in premiums, and had only obtained £1,000 for damage to property. The Borough Councils were suffering in a similar manner, and the London School Board had decided not to insure their property. In consequence of the opposition of insurance societies and other vested interests, the County Council had been compelled to abandon this excellent provision, because they did not wish to jeopardise other important schemes in the Bill, such as the purchase of the Marble-hill Estate, for the preservation of the Richmond-hill view, and the purchase of open spaces. He was also asked by the Council not to oppose the Instruction to be moved by the hon. Member for South Somerset in regard to the milk supply. He hoped the Bill would be read a second time.

was glad that the hon. Member had announced that it was not intended to insist on the fire insurance clause. But he wished to say he had strong reasons for doubting whether the Borough Councils were absolutely in accord on the question of fire insurance. No doubt the clause was the outcome of a meeting at the County Hall, but he was not sure that that gathering was authoritatively representative of the Borough Councils.

wished to know whether the assent of the ratepayers had been obtained in reference to the powers proposed to be conferred on certain Borough Councils. Also would they have power to appear before the Committee upstairs should any of them wish to object to this proposal.

suggested that the Committee before which the Bill would go would be competent to deal with the question, provided somebody had a local standing enabling them to vindicate the principle involved. The House might therefore allow the Bill to be read a second time, reserving its right to deal with the matter at a later date.

said the County Council were willing to accept this Instruction.

On a point of order and procedure, may I ask if it is right that this measure should be brought in as a private Bill, seeing that it repeals or alters the general law with regard to electric lighting, especially the Electric Lighting Acts of 1882 and 1888, which are public Acts?

The object of the Bill is the very contrary to what the hon. Member suggests. It will be seen that local circumstances in London prevent the application within the metropolitan area of the Acts of 1882 and 1888, and the proposal of the Bill is simply to give the local authorities of London powers with regard to electric light undertakings within their areas, such as are possessed by all other local authorities. I think the point of order fails.

I have not had my attention called to this point, but, looking at the preamble of the Bill, there does not appear to me to be any reason why it should not be introduced as a private Bill.

said he hoped that this Bill would be discussed in the same amicable spirit as had been displayed in the case of the two other Bills promoted by the County Council that day. The object of the County Council was to give to London the powers already enjoyed by other local authorities under the Acts of 1882 and 1888, whereby, after a period of forty-two years had expired, they might acquire any electric lighting undertaking existing in their localities. The Act which authorised the purchase of electric supply undertakings by local authorities was inoperative in London, because several companies had been empowered to supply more than one area and to set up generating stations outside the county of London, and there was no power given to local authorities to combine for the purchase of any undertaking or to acquire generating stations outside their own area. This was, no doubt, a very complicated Bill, and if there were any indication that it was not now proposed to discuss it, he would not trouble the House. He certainly thought it was a measure which should be sent upstairs, and counsel heard upon it. But no such indication being forthcoming, he must ask the attention of the House to the provisions which the London County Council were willing to insert in order to get the Bill through. The hon. Member explained the objects of the Bill, and pointed out that the interests of the only company which supplied electricity in bulk would not be affected by the measure. That company had a generating station in Marylebone, and it supplied two districts in the city of Westminster. Provision would be made that the company could only be purchased under the Land Clauses Act, so that the exceptional position which it occupied would be respected. The London County Council had lighting powers in regard to certain parts of London, and they were also the tramway authority in London. In connection with the tramways it might be necessary to have adequate stations in various parts of London. He did not think hon. Gentlemen opposite could object to the main provisions of the Bill. The County Council had undertaken to meet all the objections in regard to the Bill. The Bill itself was the result of a conference between the London County Council, the Corporation of the City, and local authorities, and it embodied the provisions which all these authorities unanimously agreed to. He thought the House would do well to allow the Bill to go to a Committee. The London County Council, which was regarded with suspicion on the other side of the House, was trying to assuage that feeling, and it did not desire to take any independent action whatever in this matter. It only came forward to take the necessary steps to facilitate the securing of rights which all other localities enjoyed with regard to these undertakings. It would only act as an honest broker in the matter. He was able to state that the London County Council would accept a clause agreeing that either the London County Council or any other public authority Parliament might direct should become the purchaser. He really thought that ought to do away with all opposition to the Bill. It proved that the only object was not to secure any advantage for the London County Council, but to secure for London as a whole those advantages with regard to electric undertakings which were given to every other city.

said that if he objected to the Bill only on details, he should be the last to contest the proposal to send it to a Committee upstairs, but his objection was one of principle. This Bill was contrary to the spirit of the London Government Act, the object of which was not merely to create powerful and responsible Councils in the various Boroughs constituted under the Act, but also to produce uniformity of administration throughout the county of London. In 1899, Mr. Stuart, the Member for the Hoxton Division, objected to haphazard transfer, and argued for uniformity—

"As otherwise they would never know what Act was being administered or what power existed in a given district."

Under this Bill it would be possible for the local authority to be the purveyor of electricity in one district and the London County Council in another. Clause 6 of the Bill said—

"If such Local Authorities as aforesaid or any one or more of them shall fail to pass such a resolution as aforesaid before the expiration of the periods specified in Section 5 (2) of this Act, it shall be lawful for, but not obligatory upon, the Council, with the consent of all such Local Authorities, or of the majority of such authorities if more than two, to exercise the power of purchase hereinbefore conferred in all respects as though the Council were a Local Authority within the meaning of the said Acts for a District comprising the whole of the area of supply of such Company."

With regard to Westminster, the power which was proposed to be given to the County Council, with the consent of a mere majority of the Local Authorities, to exercise the power of purchase, would introduce a principle which would seriously affect the position which the City at present enjoyed of being the sole purchasing authority within its own area. Suppose the case of an undertaking of a borough extending over the area of the City, and say two other local authorities, then the County Council with the aid of the other two, probably of much less importance, would be in a position to carry out a purchase against the wish of the City. He understood that that part of the scheme had been abandoned. His next point in moving the rejection of the Bill was that it was unnecessary. There was no reason to suppose that a Provisional Order could not be obtained by two or more Councils combining to apply for it. When the Provisional Order was obtained, the machinery already existing in Section 8 of the London Government Act for carrying out a joint undertaking would come into play. The Bill was bad, because it attempted to go behind the existing law. Clause 3, Section 1, laid down that every generating station shall be purchasable under any Act, whether passed before or after the passing of this Act. In 1898, in the Metropolitan Electric Supply Lighting Act, the Council endeavoured to obtain the insertion of purchase clauses, but the Chairman of the Lords Committee stated that the Committee considered they could not attempt to put a purchase clause in the Bill. In 1898 a Select Committee of Lords and Commons was appointed to consider electrical energy (generating stations and supply), and their Report was to the effect that—

"The Committee think the provisions of the Electric Lighting Act, 1888, enabling the local authority to purchase an undertaking after a term of years, inapplicable, as a general rule, to the case of an undertaker supplying energy in bulk at high voltage, but there may be special cases where it is desirable that the local authorities should have the right to purchase reserved to them. To meet such cases they suggest that the Board of Trade should have power to insert the purchase clause in the Provisional Order, if the Local Authorities concerned, can, in the opinion of the Board, show good cause for such a course."

And the Report went on to say—

"It is to be observed that the exemption from liability to compulsory purchase would not prevent Local Authorities, either alone or in combination with other Local Authorities, from applying for powers to purchase, but each case would have to be judged on its merits, and such conditions imposed as might be thought fit."

Lord Monskwell moved an Amendment that—

"In the case of a company formed wholly or chiefly to supply the county of London, and whose area of supply is not confined to the area of a subsidiary Local Authority within such county, power to purchase should be vested in the London County Council whether the generating station be situate inside or outside the county, the interests of all subsidiary and other Local Authorities being safeguarded."

This Amendment was rejected. What the real intention of the London County Council was in this matter could only be gathered from the evidence given before the Committee by Mr. Benn, who said, in answer to a question put by Lord Carrington, that the London County Council were not the purchasing but the controlling authority. Then Lord Spencer said to him—

"It seems rather singular that you should have powers of control, and yet have no other powers, does it not? It is very singular; it is peculiar to London. Would you advocate that the law should be changed in that respect? Most strongly; that the purchase powers which obtain without question in the provincial cities should be vested in the central authority of London, the County Council. Do you attach great importance to the question of purchase? Very."

Then Mr. Lewis Coward said—

"The proposition I put forward as well worth the consideration of the Committee, is that as regards London, the London County Council, the central authority, the controlling authority, should be the authority in whom the ultimate power of purchase is to be vested,"

It had been said that the Bill had been introduced by the London County Council at the invitation of the Metropolitan Borough Council, on suggestions made at a Conference last year with the representatives of the City of London and of the Metropolitan Boroughs. That statement was misleading, for the London County Council issued the invitation. Now, he might be told that it was agreed in May 1901 that the London County Council should supply in bulk. He desired to point out that the Bill should have been submitted in draft to the various boroughs. There was nothing said in the Conference about the London County Council and two local authorities. The County Council had to show that though proposals were passed by the delegates, the Borough Councils had approved of the action of the delegates, and had approved of the Bill. As a matter of fact, at the Conference of 1896, it was agreed to transfer the power of appointment of inspectors, the provision of testing stations and exercise of powers, as regarded price and energy of the supplying of electricity in a district. The position was briefly this that the Borough authorities had already the right to buy up the electrical lighting, and that right should not be impaired. If the stations were to be purchased at all it should be done by the Local Authorities and not by the London County Council. It had always seemed to him that the London County Council was a Council not a corporation. He had no hostile feeling in this matter against the London County Council. He quite recognised the very hard work its members did for the citizens of London, but he wished that their appetite for work was a little smaller, and that they should not endeavour to sweep up to themselves so many business interests. They had quite enough to do already. In conclusion, he maintained that the real object of this Bill was an endeavour on the part of the London County Council to get themselves constituted as an authority for the supply of electricity, and the provisions purporting to confer additional powers upon the Borough Councils were wholly unnecessary and were merely given as a blind to allot probable opposition of the Borough Councils and if possible to obtain their support.

seconded the Amendment.

said he could not understand what had induced the hon. Member to take the line he had done in opposition to this Bill. If the hon. Gentleman had had any doubt as to the relationship between the London County Council and the Borough Councils on this matter, the best way to have tested it was to get into Committee upstairs on the Bill. And he ventured to say that in that event it would be found that the majority of the Borough Councils were in favour of the Bill; and had specifically asked the London County Council to introduce it. The hon. Member had said that he objected to the Bill on principle, as it was contrary to the Local Government Act of 1899, which created the Borough Councils. On the contrary, so far as electric; light was concerned, this Bill was complementary to the Local Government Act of 1899, as would be proved if the Bill were sent to a Committee upstairs. The hon. Member for Westminster said that if this Bill was passed, it would be detrimental to Westminster; but he would point that if Westminster was denied the facilities for purchase given by the Bill, Westminster would be worse off than it would be with the Bill. The intentions of the County Council with regard to the Bill were like the intentions of the bridegroom at the marriage ceremony—strictly honourable. The Council was only acting as the Parliamentary medium for the Borough Councils. The hon. Member said that he would like to see the local authorities of London, as distinct from the County Council, owning their own electric supply. Would the hon. Gentleman state how, in existing circumstances, that could be secured? At present, where the supply area of a Borough Council impinged on another supply area, the Council could only purchase that part within its own jurisdiction, and if the generating station was outside the Council of London, it could not secure its own electric lighting supply at all. That was undesirable in the interests of the Borough Councils, and it was for that reason that the County Council had introduced the Bill. Firstly, the Bill was the result of a conference between the local authorities, in which the City was represented, on May 5th, 1901; and if the Bill had been in existence the City Corporation would have been saved from an unsavoury scandal, to which he would not refer. Secondly, the Bill sought powers to enable the Borough Councils to do in combination what they could each now do separately within their own areas, and in the event of two or more local authorities agreeing to purchase, the County Council was only worked when over-lapping supplies were in existence, and then only by the agreement on the part of the local authorities concerned. The Bill was a very simple one, and would confer a great boon on the Borough Councils. It was not initiated by the County Council, which did not wish to be the electric lighting authority for the whole of London. It only wished to confine itself to its proper work of lighting the bridges, the embankment, and Black-wall Tunnel. He ventured to say that if the Glasgow Corporation sought the modest powers asked for in the Bill they would be granted. "He who runs may read," and it was evident that there was a prejudice against the County Council, which to any reasonable man was inexplicable. If hon. Members had a prejudice against the County Council, let them pitch into him as much as they could, because he represented to some extent the County Council; but let them not deny to the Borough Councils the boon that would be conferred on them by the Bill. He appealed to hon. Members to remember that the Bill was sought for by the Borough Councils through the instrumentality of the County Council, and not to inflict a blow on the Borough Councils in order to satisfy an unreasoning prejudice against the County Council.

said that the hon. Member for Battersea referred to a prejudice, of which he said the County Council was the object. Whether there was any such general prejudice or not he would not undertake to say; but it might be true that there was a certain prejudice against the County Council as the promoter of private Bills, and if it existed it was largly owing to the action of the County Council in bringing in Bills, session after session, which were not altogether of a reasonable character. He wished to state why he objected to the Bill before the House, and why, if his hon. friend went to a division, he would vote against it. It was not necessary for him to enter into the details of the Bill or to argue whether it was desirable to give the local authorities electric lighting powers or whether the County Council should have power to purchase electric lighting undertakings. His objection was of a different character. The question of the purchase of the electric lighting undertakings of London was a very difficult and complicated one, and the Bill before the House appeared to him to deal with that subject in a partial and unsatisfactory manner. Over and above that, the proposals of the Bill could not, to his mind, be described as, in any sense, urgent. The hon. Member for West Islington stated that the object of the Bill was to give London the benefit of the Electric Lighting Acts, from which it was at present excluded; but the hon. Member himself admitted that the power of purchase, with a view to which the Bill was brought in, could not come into effect for another thirty or thirty-one years. In other words, the Bill really looked forward to a period a generation hence.

said that in the event of an electric lighting company consenting to sell, the purchase could be made immediately.

asked if there were any likelihood of that. The proposal to which the hon. Member for Battersea referred was so unimportant that it was not even referred to by the hon. Member who introduced the Bill. The fact was that not one of the provisions of the Bill would have any important effect for thirty years. The hon. Member for West Islington referred to another reason why the Bill was brought in, and that was the necessity for the adjustment of the areas in consequence of the London Government Act. The hon. Member reminded him that the Government had brought in a Bill to deal with that part of the subject, but for that very reason it was unnecessary to pass the Bill now before the House. He would explain why the Government thought it necessary to introduce a Bill dealing with the question of the adjustment of areas, while, on the other hand, they did not consider the proposals of the present Bill urgent. The difficulty which the Government Bill sought to smooth away would increase and become more urgent as years went by, for the reason that the adjustments the Bill referred to were principally adjustments of areas where mains and works did not at present exist; but as years went on those areas would have mains laid down, and when that was done the difficulty would be very much greater than it was at present. That was not so with the proposals of the Bill before the House. The difficulty would not increase as years went on.

said that new companies might be established.

said that no difficulty would arise in that way. He wished to point out that the proposals in the Bill were of a partial character. They had regard fort he convenience of the local authorities and the County Council, but they have no regard for the position of the companies. His own view was that the question of the ultimate destiny of the electric light undertakings of London must be dealt with by a general and public Bill introduced by the Government, and that it could not be dealt with by a Bill promoted by the County Council. He would just point out that there were cases in which the company supplied more than one area, and it might occur that the local authority might desire to purchase the undertaking in only one area, with the result that the company's area would be cut in half. Such a case was not provided for in the Bill. Again, there were cases in which two companies supplied one area. The local authority might buy up the undertaking of one company and let the other severely alone, with the result that there would be a local authority running an electric light undertaking in competition with a private company. That was a situation which the House refused to accept last year. He merely mentioned these matters in order to show how full of difficulty the question was. He would suggest, in respect of this Bill, that the House should not read it a second time now, but should accept his assurance that the Government were fully alive to the fact that sooner or later the problem must be dealt with by legislation, and that it had better be dealt with in a publicthan in a private Bill. He thought it would be very much easier, as the time to purchase approached, to arrive at the best solution of the difficulty. At any rate, the question could not be adequately settled now by a premature and ill-considered private Bill, and therefore, as far as he was concerned, if his right hon. friend went to a division he should vote with him.

said that, although he regretted the action of the President of the Board of Trade in opposing the Bill, he noticed with satisfaction that the right hon. Gentleman had simply stated his own opinion, and had not grounded his opposition on the general policy of the Board of Trade. The settled policy of that Department had always been—no matter what Government might be in office—to encourage, with due regard for private interests and vested rights, the acquisition of electric lighting undertakings by public authorities, and thought it would be a great pity if the House marked a departure from that policy by rejecting the Bill. Everyone who had listened to the debate must have been struck by the extreme complication of the subject. It had been excessively difficult even for those who had some previous knowledge of the subject, to follow the various points raised. Surely, then, this was essentially a matter which should be dealt with by a Commiteee upstairs. The House had no materials before it to enable it to come to a decision. No point had been raised in that debate which would not be a fitting subject for a coommitte, which could take evidence, and which could inquire into the vested interests likely to be affected. This was not a private Bill in the ordinary sense of the word. It had been brought in by the London County Council at the request and with the assent of the majority of the metropolitan boroughs and the local authorities, who certainly ought to have an opportunity of going before a Committee. Again, there were matters of necessity included in the Bill.

Can the right hon. Gentleman point to a single one?

I understand it is the view of the local authorities there are certain things they ought to be able to do at once.

Thirty years hence.

said the local authorities felt that vested interests were being created in electric lighting in their districts every day, which would make it impossible to deal with the matter in the broad way suggested by the President of the Board of Trade—and it was only right that they should have the opportunity of stating their case before a Committee. It might be that the creation of vested interests would tie

said that, speaking on behalf of one of the London boroughs, he would ask the House to allow the Bill to be read the second time. He felt grateful to the President of the Board of Trade that, while expressing his personal views in opposition to the Bill, he had not put pressure upon the supporters of the Government from the party point of view; and, indeed, it was understood that the Government desired to leave the matter to the free judgment of the House. He was not aware of any London borough that was opposed to this Bill. It was said that it was premature, but he happened to have been engaged in an arbitration in which certain boroughs in the East End were proposing to take over electric lighting powers, and this showed that the process embodied in the Bill had already begun. The Bill would facilitate the taking over of such undertakings and would tend to cheapen the cost of electric lighting, and he hoped, therefore, it would not be thrown out simply because there was a well-rooted suspicion of the London County Council. What had the boroughs of London done that their interests should be prejudiced because of that suspicion? Personally, he would be quite content if the Bill was allowed to go forward and to be thoroughly considered by a Committee. It could then, if necessary, be withdrawn and a better Bill introduced next year.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether Lord Kitchener's proclamation of 7th August, 1901, in which it is alleged that the Boers were deprived of any regular military organisation, had the sanction of His Majesty's Ministers, and is this portion of the proclamation still in vigour.

The reply to both Questions is in the affirmative.

Is it the opinion of the Government?

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether General Delarey's farmhouse was burnt down by the English troops; if so, under what General's orders was this done, and did the Government remonstrate with the General.

I have received no information as to the burning of General Delarey's farm.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he can state the composition of the mounted troops under Lord Methuen in the recent engagement.

I have not yet received exact details of the composition of this force.

I will repeat the Question on Monday.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he can state the conditions, if any, under which Lord Methuen has been released.

No, Sir; I have no information except what I have already given to the House.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether any communications took place between the Colonial Office and the civil or military authorities in South Africa with reference to the execution of Commander Scheepers before that execution took place; and, if so, will he lay these communications upon the Table.

No, Sir.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will state in what respect the horses recently offered at Spalding were unsuitable, and whether many were rejected because they were not quite six years old; also, is he aware that a horse whose age was thirty-five years has just been purchased at Colchester for Army purposes; and whether, on the face of the uncertainty prevailing in agricultural districts as to the requirements of the War Office, he will state the maximum and minimum age that will pass inspection, and also publish full information of other conditions insisted upon.

Of the horses offered at Spalding many were under five years old, and therefore too young, some were to big; others were rejected for unsoundness or malformation. The officer concerned advertised his intended visit and stated the ages and sizes of the horses required. No horse thirty-five years old has been purchased for the Army. The animal most suitable for present requirements is the compact weight-carrying cob, age six to nine years, and height 14–2 to 15–1 hands.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that a number of men belonging to the Army Reserve, who were called out in 1899, are now, and have been for some time, on working furlough from the Brigade of Guards and other units, and that these men have been all these months while on working furlough receiving the same pay as those Reservists still detained with the colours; whether he will state what numbers are now on working furlough either from the Brigade of Guards or from other units; and will he explain why, if their services were no longer required with their regiments, this cost to the country was nut saved.

The system of "working furloughs" was instituted during 1900 on the representations of employers of labour that the labour market was depleted by the war and was applied only to those men who would have been working but for the war. Statistics could be obtained of the number of men on such furlough, but they could only be collected by some time and labour. Many of them have been recalled recently, and those fit for South Africa will be despatched there.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been called to the striking off from the list of contractors of a certain firm supplying horse shoe nails, the reason given being that the nails were of unsuitable dimensions, whereas at a trial conducted by representatives of the Director General of Ordnance and the Director General of the Army Veterinary Department, in the presence of the makers, the nails were found to be faultless; and whether the War Office has declined to reinstate the said firm on the list of contractors until a further trial takes place at Aldershot at which no representatives' of the firm will be allowed to be present, the said firm having offered to submit their nails to any test at which they will be allowed to be present.

The firm alluded to was removed from the list for nails because the nails supplied were reported to be too thick and wide in the shanks and too small in the heads. On appeal at the conference mentioned, the nails then submitted were found to be free from the above defects. It was, however, held advisable to have a practical trial of the nails before the firm could be replaced on the list. Such a trial involved the nails being in the horses' feet for a certain period, and it was consequently not possible for the firm to be present throughout that period. An order was placed with the firm last June for this purpose but they have not yet delivered the nails.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether a Volunteer belonging to a mounted infantry company can join the new Yeomanry Reserve while remaining an active member of his corps.

No, Sir.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he can state why a sum of £4,000 was paid to the Imperial Yeomanry Committee in 1900–1901 for surplus clothing stores taken over at cost price, seeing that such articles as felt hats for which Army rates are 3s. 5½d. each were taken over at 8s. 10½d. each.

Will the hon. Member kindly refer to paragraph 44 of the Report of the Controller and Auditor General on the Army Accounts for 1900–1901, on which he has based his Question, and wherein he will find a full answer to it set forth.

I beg to ask the Secretary for War whether he can now place upon the Table a copy of the contract entered into with the Cold Storage Company for the supply of meat for South Africa.

Yes, Sir.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether he will state what gunboats, and tonnage and speed of same, are stationed on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland respectively for the purpose of patrolling the coasts and enforcing the law.

The following gunboats are employed on the coast of Scotland:—

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether he is aware that Edward St. George, who was discharged from the Navy after twenty-one years service, during which he was present at engagements in China and other parts of the Empire, only got a pension of 1s. per day, although entitled to a full pension of 1s. 5d. per day; whether a promise was given that after this man left the prison service, in which he was after leaving the Navy, his case would be further considered; and, seeing that St. George has now been discharged from the prison service and has a large family depending on him, will he have this man's case reconsidered immediately with a view to increasing his pension.

The facts of the case are not correctly stated in the hon. Member's Question. St. George's service in the Royal Marino Artillery only entitled him to a pension of 1s. a day, and this was awarded him on his discharge in 1879. The additional 5d. mentioned in the Question is the Greenwich Hospital Age Pension, for which the man did not become eligible until sixteen years later. He was informed, as stated, that he would be considered for this award on leaving the prison service, and in accordance with this promise an award was made in his case in January last, to take effect from the beginning of the coming financial year. The award could not, however, be communicated to the man until a day or two ago, as he had changed his residence and left no address behind him.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, having regard to the many shipping casualties which have occurred off the coast south of Ras Asir, Cape Guardafui, will he consider the expediency of taking such steps as may be necessary to secure the erection of a lighthouse on this headland.

His Majesty's Government are at present in communication with the Italian Government in regard to proposals made by the latter for the establishment of a lighthouse on Cape Guardafui; but there seems to be a considerable difference of opinion amongst the British Shipping Companies which are interested as to the advantage of this proposed light.

May I ask whether, if a light is placed on Cape Guardafui, it will do away with the light long contemplated on Socotra?

The two subjects must be considered together.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he can give an approximate date for the settlement of our claim for compensation in the Waima incident; and also will he state the amounts paid to the widows and relatives of the men who were killed, and say what proportion the amounts paid bear to the amounts claimed on their behalf.

The British claim for compensation in the Waima incident is still before the arbitrator, who, under the terms of the Arbitration Convention must give his decision by July 17th next. Lieutenant Liston's family have been awarded from Army funds pensions amounting to £125 a year and gratuities amounting to £237 5s.; also from the Royal Bounty a sum of £100 and from the Colonial Services Vote £350. These latter amounts will be recoverable from any indemnity that may be paid by the French Government. Mrs. Lendy, the mother of Captain Lendy, and Mrs. Wroughton the mother of Lieutenant Wroughton, have each received a sum of £225 from the Colonial Services Vote which will likewise be recoverable from the French indemnity. The mother of Sergeant-Major James Carraher has been allotted a pension of 5s. a week by the Patriotic Fund. The last Question should, I think, not be answered whilst the arbitration is pending.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, by Article I. of the Agreement between Great Britain and Japan, of 30th January, 1902, either of the high contracting parties may independently take action under the Agreement, if, in the judgment of that party alone, its interests are threatened in the manner there described.

There is nothing in the Agreement to prevent either Power from taking such action as it may think necessary in defence of its interests, but Article V. provides that the two Powers will communicate fully and frankly with each other if the interests referred to in the Agreement are in jeopardy.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether, under the Anglo-Japanese Agreement, Japanese subjects are allowed to settle and trade in the Australian Colonies.

No, Sir. The Agreement which has been laid on the Table is in no way concerned with the subject of the hon. Member's Question.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether any negotiations have been proceeding and are now practically concluded between the British and Canadian Governments for a subsidised line of steamers by which the voyage from this country to Canada and vice versâ is expected to be performed in the space of five days; and whether any authoritative announcement on that subject will be made before the Motion for the approval of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company's Mail Contract to Hong Kong is taken.

No, Sir.

I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, seeing that although Foreign Chocolate contains a large proportion of sugar, no extra duty has been charged upon it since the imposition of the sugar tax, which has been made applicable to all other kinds of confectionery, he will consider the question with the view of treating chocolate in the same way as other imported confectionery.

Chocolate, which is a mixture of cocoa, sugar, and flavouring matter, has for long been liable to a specific duty independent of the proportions in which its several constituents may be present, and, since 1853, the rate of that Duty has been 2d. a lb. The Sugar Duty of 4s. 2d. a cwt. on the proportion of sugar in the mixture is held to be merged in the higher specific rate on Chocolate; and, if Chocolate were treated like other confectionery, it would be admitted at a much lower Duty than that at present levied, which I do not think my hon. friend would desire.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Homo Department whether he will refer to the Joint Committee on the Standing Orders relating to the re-housing of the Working Classes, the question of making provision, by Standing Orders, for the re-instatement of members of the tenant farming class, whose farms may be taken in the course of purchasing large areas of moorland by public bodies.

I do not think that it would be desirable to do anything that might extend the scope of the inquiry beyond the limits of the labouring class to which the Standing Orders in question relate.

I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether it is the duty of the clerks to Boards of Guardians, when checking the master's accounts, as required by Article 25 of the General Order, 14th January, 1897, to examine and verify the cash balance in the hands of the master; and, if it is not, whether he will consider the desirability of amending it.

It is the duty of the clerk to the Guardians, under the Article referred to, to examine the master's receipt and payment account, and to ascertain that the balance shown therein is correct. He is not required to call upon the master to produce the amount of any balance, which, according to the account is in his hands, and it does not seem to me that this course is necessary; the master has to account to the district auditor for any such balance. I may add that moneys received by an officer on behalf of the Guardians are required to be forthwith paid over to the treasurer of the Union. If, at any time, too large a balance seems to be remaining in the master's hands, it would be proper that the clerk should call the attention of the Guardians to the matter.

Is it not a fact that the auditors only examine the accounts once a year, and that is the only check on the cash in the master's hands. Would it not be better to have a more frequent check?

I have said that if at any time the balance is too large, it is the duty of the clerk to report the fact to the Guardians.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether, in view of the periodical outbreaks of sheep scab, he will consider the expediency of promptly introducing a measure to secure compulsory dipping of sheep at least once a year, either by general legislation or by giving powers to County Councils to order compulsory dipping within their own areas.

One clipping a year would not meet the difficulty, as the ova would not be destroyed, and a second dipping very soon afterwards would be necessary to destroy the produce of the ova. The difficulties in the way of enforcing the dipping of some fifty millions of sheep twice a year, with a definite interval between the dippings, are obvious. Local authorities have already such large powers for regulating the movement of sheep into, and in, their own districts that they practically can do what my hon. friend suggests by making dipping a condition precedent to movement.

Do I understand the right hon. Gentleman to say that County Councils have powers to order the dipping of sheep within their own areas?

Yes.

But not outside their areas.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he will take steps to compel the local authorities to enforce the sheep scab Order.

If my hon. friend will let me know the particular local authorities of which he complains as not doing their duty in this respect, I will ascertain how far the complaint is justified and take steps to see that the Order is properly carried out.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether, in view of the continued prevalence of glanders, especially in and around the metropolitan area, he can now undertake to promote legislation shortly on the lines suggested by the Departmental Committee of the Board of Agriculture which reported in 1899.

The Departmental Committee itself reported that further investigation of the nature of the disease, even of some of the most elementary facts in connection with it, was necessary before their recommendations could be adopted with any certainty of success. Such an inquiry was instituted in January of last year, and its Report is expected within the next few weeks.

On behalf of the hon. Member for Central Sheffield, I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury if, having regard to the new requirements of the War Office in the matter of attendance at camp every year by all Volunteers, he will have directions issued to all public Departments that extra leave for the purpose, is to be given when at all possible to civil servants who are Volunteers, bearing in mind that this concession is accorded by certain other large employers.

Yes, Sir. The Treasury have assented, subject to the discretion of heads of Departments, to the grant of special leave without civil salary not exceeding a fortnight to civil servants who are Volunteers and who attend special camps for a minimum period of a fortnight.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether the examination usually held in March for female or women clerkships in the Post Office will be held this year; and, if not, how soon afterwards is it arranged to be held.

No examination for women clerkships will be held this month. It cannot at present be stated whether an examination will be held this year, but, if so, it will probably not be earlier than October.

On behalf of the hon. Member for Hythe, I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether any agreement has bean made between the Cape Government and the Eastern Telegraph Group which would have the effect of excluding Marconi's wireless system of telegraphy from being triad and worked in Cape Colony.

The Postmaster General has no knowledge of any such agreement between the Cape Government and the Eastern Telegraph Group.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to a resolution passed by a Convention of Delegates from branches of the Irish Land and Labour Association in the Macroom district, appealing to the Department of Agriculture to extend a portion of its time and attention to the condition of the labouring classes, requesting it to appoint a qualified and responsible officer, whose sole duty would be to look after their interests, and pointing out other directions in which the Department could with advantage encourage and assist the rural labourers; and will he state what concessions will be made by the Department of Agriculture to the representations it has received in this connection.

The hon. Member has forwarded to me a copy of the resolution. I have referred it to the Department, which will consider the suggestions it contains.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Local Government Board have received from the Macroom Rural District Council a statement of the facts regarding the alleged delay in the erection of a labourer's cottage, which was sanctioned about twelve years ago on the lands of a farmer named Hincheon, in the Clonmoyle electoral division; is he aware that this cottage was let out to contract a second time about eighteen months, and the necessary bonds for the execution of the contract entered into; will he state the cause of delay in the erection of the cottage, and what steps the Local Government Board will take to secure its erection.

The, erection of this cottage was originally abandoned by the local authority because the limit of taxation for cottages already built in the electoral division had been reached. Upon the passing of the Local Government Act, 1898, which made the expenses a District charge, the Rural Council accepted a tender for the cottage from a contractor. The Council, however, failed to obtain the consent of the present owners of the land, and no further action has been taken by the Council.

I bog to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the receiver on the estate of Wren and Stokes has compelled the tenants on the townlands of Ballynoneen and Craughdarieg (part of the estate), North Kerry, Listowel Union, to sign agreements as eleven months graziers; and can he state what is the cause of the delay in the sale of this estate.

The fact is not, I am informed, as stated in the first part of the Question. There are no proceedings pending for the sale of the estate, so far as I can ascertain.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the fatal burning accident to a child named Edith Ferne, of Upper Dominick Street, Dublin, and to the fact that medical aid and admission are alleged by the parents to have been refused by the medical residents of the Richmond Hospital, Dublin; whether, seeing that this hospital is in receipt of an annual grant from the Government, he will take such steps as will secure medical aid by the hospital authorities for such cases in future; and whether he will order an inquiry into all the circumstances attending the death of Edith Ferne and the alleged refusal of the authorities of the hospital to give medical aid when called upon to do so.

The Government has no official cognisance of the facts alleged in the first part of the Question, nor does it rest with me to direct an investigation, as suggested. I have, however, referred the matter to the Board of Governors, who have kindly undertaken to investigate the charges against the House Surgeon at a special meeting to be held by them today.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland when the Provisional Order for the erection of cottages in Longford and Granard Unions now some three years pending will be issued.

The Orders in these cases have been issued. I am satisfied that the Local Government Board has done everything in its power to expedite their issue.

Was the Order issued within the last week?

On the 7th of this month.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has yet received a copy of the report of Major Fair on the inquiry into the proposal to dissolve the poor law union of Granard; and, if so, will he lay a copy of the report upon the Table of the House.

I have received the Inspector's report. It would be contrary to the invariable practice to lay these reports, which are of a confidential character, on the Table of the House. No decision will be taken until I have had an opportunity of conferring with the Vice-President of the Local Government Board.

Will the right hon. Gentleman let me see a copy of the report?

I will consider that.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether any restrictions have recently been made limiting the admission of mail-carts and children's carriages to the Royal Botanic Garden, Glasnevin, Dublin; and, if so, what is the object of such regulation.

I am not aware; but I will inquire and let the hon. Member know.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the tenants on the estate of the representatives of John Finlay, in Co. Cavan, entered into an agreement with the owners and receiver of this estate to purchase their holdings through the Irish Land Commission in April, 1897, at eighteen years purchase of the rents then payable, on condition that all the arrears due up to 1st May, 1897, should be discharged by the payment of one half year's rent, and that interest at 4 per cent should be paid on the purchase money in lieu of rent until the sale should be completed; is he aware that the receiver, notwithstanding this agreement, continued to collect the old rents from the tenants by ejectments and Civil Bill process, and the tenants were obliged to bring the receiver's conduct before the Chief Land Commissioner, who decided that the agreements made in 1897 should be carried out, and that the tenants should get credit for all payments made since April, 1897; and, seeing that, notwithstanding this decision, the receiver persists in demanding more money from these tenants than is due, will the Government take any steps to compel this receiver and the solicitors of the owners to fulfil the agreement.

Provisional agreements to sell to the tenants were entered into in February, 1898, the terms of which were substantially as stated. Considerably delay was occasioned in preparing the applications for advances owing to disputes about turbary, and the applications were not signed Until May, 1901. Meanwhile the tenants paid their rent as formerly, but on the understanding that such payments would be credited as interest on the purchase money, which has been done. Civil Bill processes were issued against a few of the tenants who refused to pay any rent, but ultimately they paid on the advice of their solicitor. The Civil Bills were then struck out and no costs charged to the tenants. No ejectment proceedings have been taken against the tenants for many years. The conduct of the receiver was not brought before the Chief Land Commissioner, nor was any order made by him as alleged.

If I produce documentary proof of my statement that this receiver demanded money, will the right hon. Gentleman take any steps in the matter!

I will carefully consider any communication the hon. Gentleman may make.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether, seeing that the Congested Districts Board refused to purchase the foreshore of the Stoney Estate, near Mallaranny, Co. Mayo, owing to the failure of the owner to produce title, he can state if this title has yet been produced; and, if not, can he say who is the present owner of the foreshore.

Mr. Stoney has not produced to the Board proof of title to seaweed rights on the foreshore. I have no information respecting the ownership of these rights.

As a matter of fact, has his title been rejected by the Board?

I understand he took proceedings against some of the tenants for collecting seaweed, some of whom signed an admission that Mr. Stoney was the owner of the foreshore, but the Board have not accepted that as legal evidence of his title.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieu-tenant of Ireland whether the prosecutions in connection with the recent rioting in Dromore, County Down, will be conducted under the Criminal Law and Procedure Act; and, whether, in view of similar disturbances in the same district on two previous occasions, it is the intention of the Government to establish a police barracks for the protection of life and property in the neighbourhood.

At the request of my right hon. friend, I will reply to this Question. The complete report of the evidence available in the case has not yet reached me. Pending its receipt I am not in a position to answer the first part of the Question. As regards the suggestion that a police barrack should be established in the neighbourhood, that is entirely a matter for consideration by the local responsible Authorities, to whom the suggestion has been referred.

Who are the local responsible Authorities?

The County Inspector and the Magistrates.

I beg to ask Mr. Attorney General for Ireland whether he can state what number of men of the constabulary were allocated to Co. Cavan under the original Constabulary Act; has any change in the number of men been made since the original allocation; and, if so, at what date; how many men of the Royal Irish Constabulary are at present permanently stationed in the county, and how many extra men, and to what districts are these extra men charged.

The records of the Department do not show the strength of the Police Force in each county prior to 1848. In that year the County Cavan Force numbered 400 men. In 1851, the strength of the force was reduced to 300 men. On the occasion of the last triennial redistribution of the force in 1900, the county was assigned a free quota of 219 men, which is the existing Establishment, independently of four men of the Reserve force stationed in Blacklion, a moiety of whose cost is charged to the district. I may add that prior to 1848 one-half of the cost of the entire force of the county was defrayed' from local rates. Since that year counties have been relieved of the charge for normal forces, and it is only in the event of an extra force being sent to the county that a charge is imposed.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will state how many harbours of refuge there are on the seaboard between the mouth of the Foyle and Belfast Lough; how many stations for the life-saving rocket apparatus have been provided; and if it is the intention of the Board of Trade to make adequate provision for life-saving by the installation of such apparatus for the Derry, Belfast, Liver pool, and Glasgow shipping passing along this coast.

In addition to the natural harbour of Lough Larne, which affords perfect security from all winds and sea, there are many anchorages along this coast where vessels can obtain shelter according to the direction of the wide. No Life-Saving Rocket Stations are provided on the coast between Lough Foyle and Belfast Lough. The question of establishing such stations on the coast of counties Londonderry and Antrim has already been brought before the Board of Trade more than once, but the inquiries made show that no sufficient necessity exists for providing Rocket Stations on that part of the coast. There is a life-boat at Port Rush and another at Carrick Fergus, while thirteen of the Coastguard Stations between those two places are supplied with belts and lines for life-saving purposes. From the records of the Department it appears that only two lives were lost on those coasts owing to casualties to vessels during the ten years ended August, 1901.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether the Post Office authorities have received any complaints as to delays of mails, especially cross-channel mails, in Longford recently; has any third mail arrival by train in Longford been arranged for recently; and can he explain why letters arriving from England and Scotland which should be delivered at 10.0 a.m. are only received about 9.30 p.m. by the persons to whom they are addressed.

Inquiry is being made as regards the Mail service to Longford, and an answer shall be sent to the hon. Member as soon as possible.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether, in view of the necessity which exists in Rosscarbery for increased postal facilities, he will give a Return of the revenue derived from parcel postage in that town for the quarter ending 31st of December.

The Postmaster General regrets that the Return asked for by the hon. Member cannot be furnished, as it is not the practice to keep an account of parcels despatched from post offices day by day.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether the plans for the proposed new buildings for the Board of Agriculture in Dublin will be prepared by competition; and, if not, will he state the name of the architect to whom it is proposed to entrust such plans.

I presume that the Question refers to the new Royal College of Science. I do not propose to invite architects to submit plans in competition. The character of the buildings renders such a course almost impossible. No architect has yet been selected, but I hope to be able to announce the selection before the Bill leaves this House.

Will it be an Irish architect?

I am desirous that the work should be entrusted to one.

A Unionist architect, I suppose!

Appoint another German.

Let us have a Nationalist for once.

I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, in view of the poverty of a portion of the clergy, and the consequent need which, prima facie, exists of a revision of episcopal and other ecclesiastical incomes with a view of mitigating the gravity of the evil, he is willing either to move, or to assent to a Motion, for the immediate appointment of a Select Committee of this House to inquire generally into the existing endowments in the Church of England and methods of their more equitable readjustment, and into other schemes for the improvement of the pecuniary condition of the clergy, and to report thereon without delay.

I entirely concur with what the hon. Member says about the poverty of a portion of the clergy, but I cannot at the present time assent to his proposal of a Parliamentary Committee. I may remind him that the work of diminishing this evil is being actively and efficiently carried on by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. If he will look at their last report, he will see that up to the present time 6,000 benefices have been endowed or augmented, and that £800,0000 a year is devoted to that purpose by the Commissioners out their own funds. From private benefactors, a sum of £220,000 a year is also devoted to that purpose; and I am further advised that augmentations of nearly £250,000 are made every year by grants out of the common fund for necessitous cases.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners do not give augmentations to small livings where the population is also small? That is left to Queen Anne's bounty.

I could not enter into a discussion of the work of the Commissioners in answer to a Question, nor am I qualified for the purpose. But I have given the hon. Gentleman a general indication of the work which the Ecclesiastical Commissioners are carrying out.

I rise to call attention to a question of very grave importance, viz., the working of the Irish Congested Districts Board, which consists of ten members in all, and includes two ex officio members, the

† The following is the notice referred to:—" On Civil Service Estimates, to call attention to the case of certain evicted tenants in Ireland; and to move, 'That, in the opinion' of this House, the continued existence in Ireland of a number of families of tenant farmers who have been evicted from their holdings in recent years, and are now without regular homes or settled means of living, is a great evil, and a constant source of ill-feeling and bitterness amongst different classes of the people in certain districts in Ireland, requiring the immediate attention of the Executive Government.' "—

Chief Secretary or Under Secretary, the Land Commissioner, five members to be appointed by His Majesty, and three temporary members also appointed by His Majesty. In the Board, as at first constituted, the Rev. Father Davis, P.P., Baltimore, Co. Cork, seemed to inspire the people of the south—in Cork and Kerry especially—with a belief that from his varied experience and great knowledge they might feel confident of obtaining some substantial results. Dr. O'Donnell, the great and patriotic Bishop of Raphoe, succeeded the good Father Davis, but both were heavily handicapped by the great majority of the Board who were by no means in sympathy with the poor peasant concerned. The right hon. the Member for the Montrose Burghs succeeded Mr. Jackson on the Board, but, after all, it mattered little as he and other friends were in a minority. Next we had later on introduced the Rev. Father O'Hara, P.P., Kilimagh, a host in himself. Emigration schemes to Canada and Manitoba were broached, and in both projects Mr. Tuke and Mr. Horace Plunkett were conspicuous figures. We have had enough of emigration. We have been emigrating and emigrated until the life blood has been almost drained out of us, and those who remain at home are no better off; nay, they are much worse off, because it is the fine young men and young women who have gone away, and the poor old people who are left behind to eke out a miserable existence on their bits of land or to die in the workhouses and fill each turn a pauper's grave. The revenues of the Board are rather restricted, being the interest, I believe, on the million and a half remaining over from the Irish Church Fund, as well as the Irish Reproductive Loan Fund and other funds of a minor character. The programme of the Board appears to be of a large and varied character, if it were only carried out. It comprises: Agricultural development, forestry, breeding of live stock and poultry, sale of seed oats and potatoes, amalgamation of small holdings, migration, emigration, fishing and its appurtenance, weaving and spinning, and other suitable industries. This is a big bill of fare, surely, but after all it has but a small share of reality. Improvements have, no doubt, been made on the original Act by Amending Acts, particularly those of 1899 and 1901. The former made from the Exchequer or some other imperial source a grant of £25,000 annually for the relief of the poor tenant and others in the scheduled districts, while the Act of last session rendered the working of the Act of 1891 more simple. It rendered it more easy to deal with cranky tenants who were not satisfied with the general arrangement, dealing with turbary rights, where no statutory conditions as to rent do not prevail, and it empowered the Board to purchase land for the purpose of migration. Among the Questions on yesterday's Paper I saw one from my hon. friend the Member for East Galway, representing that the people of the townlands of Ballinagurrane, Curraghlahan, Derry-more, Ballinapark and Cahirlishtrain, seventy-five families with an aggregate of 372 persons all told, had a poor-law valuation of £24 13s.—that is, something bordering on £12 for each individual. Yet with such a condition of things before their eyes, the Congested Districts Board have taken no action to ameliorate the lot of those poor people. Now, Sir, I would ask? How do those wretched peasants manage to get along to keep body and soul together, and to pay rent for the little holdings, most of them either mountain or cut out bog? For once in my life I was in that part of the country, and witnessed evidence of misery such as no other part of the country could present. Such a thing as the making of rent off those little holdings was altogether impossible. I learned from a friend who accompanied me that the more youthful portion of the inhabitants there, and in other parts of West Con-naught, go to the north of England in the harvest and come home after a few months, to pay the greedy landlord his rent by their earnings whilst at this side of the water. Some of the poor people around the sea coast go out in the open sea and tear away the seaweed from the rocks to convert it into kelp or use it as manure for their little bits of crag. I saw, here and there, some pieces of cut-out bog with a collection of houses built around on land more elevated, what they call in Irish "graigs," built with an utter disregard of the rules of architecture, whether of the flat-roofed, castellated, or Gothic style—each built in the owner's own style. I went into some of those mansions with my friends, with a careful look-out for my upper story, to see nothing but poverty and misery, yet with fine manly faces on the young men, and young women equally good looking. Well, they say the savage loves his native shore, and then why not those brave peasants love their bogs and mountains, bad and unendurable as they are? Away from those scenes of misery I saw some fine lands, and no houses nor people there, save and except a few here and there, which, I concluded, were the houses of herds. I saw some cattle in the distance, and I then said to myself, "I suppose those are the ranches we have heard so much about." I conversed in Irish with some of the men there, old and young; they spoke their native tongue with grammatical accuracy; the more youthful of them spoke English tolerably well. To come to the latter part of my Amendment, I would say that the confidence of our people in the future working of the Congested Districts Board is not at all enhanced by the appointment of Lord Shaftesbury in the room of Lord De Vesci. If I rightly remember, the right hon. the Chief Secretary for Ireland said that in connection with the appointment was a promise that the noble Lord would visit those parts of Ireland at no distant date. Well, if I am before him at any one of the places, I will recommend the poor people to welcome him, and I will shake a fistful of green rushes under his feet, he being one of our itinerant performers, the sum and substance of whose benefaction will consist in his going around giving a few plausible platitudes on the improvement of our condition, like the "cuckoo" who comes and trolls her song and then moves away to more congenial quarters. We want a Board which will do something substantial for our distressed people, with compulsory powers to purchase the outlying estates; failing that, we will be mindful of the old saw, "Keep pegging away, pegging away." With these few words I beg to move the Amendment which stands in my name.

seconded the Amendment. He said that he regretted that the debate should have taken place in the absence of the hon. Member for East Mayo, who had made the congested districts a study for many years, and whose absence was a distinct loss to the debate, and he regretted also the absence of the hon. Member for South Mayo, which was not, however, voluntary, but due to the action of the Government of Ireland in confining him in prison for a speech he made in Ireland, which prevented him being present to take part in the debate on a subject upon which he was possessed of great knowledge. During the course of the present still young session there had been no less than five or six full-dress Irish debates, which fact would suggest two reflections to Members of both English political Parties. A point of departure in a certain new policy, recommended to the English Liberal Party, was that the Irish question was dead, buried, and surmounted by a gigantic monumental tomb which would for ever prevent its making its appearance again in the light of day and in the minds of living men, but that suggestion was hardly borne out by the fact that in a session not four months old there had been so many Irish debates. The appearance of the House at this moment was not inspiring, and suggested the reflection whether Parliament could not be better employed in discussing great questions of Imperial policy rather than have Irish debates on every alternate night, and whether the Irish Members could not be better employed in building up the ruins of Irish life into something like a healthy state rather than addressing empty Benches in the House of Commons. Many people were tempted to think that, after all, the Irish question was a question of sentiment, passion, and conflict against the Government on one side, and discontent upon the other; but the discontent of Ireland had a solid foundation of great material want and great material wrong. Only this day he read in a financial paper—

"The Census Returns show a decline since 1891 of 53 per cent. in the population, which now stands at 4,456,546 only; in 841 the population numbered 8,196,597. The wheat acreage has declined from 445,775 acres in 1855 to 42,934 acres 1901—a falling away of 90·4 per cent.! Even the potato acreage has diminished in the same period by 35·3 per cent., and another staple department of rural industry—flax—has lost 42·9 per cent of acreage; if the comparison be made with 1870 the loss is nearly 72 per cent."

And the article concluded with the words—

"Surely it is time for Irishmen who have their country's welfare really at heart to find better food for their political activities than the windy rhetoric and race-hatred which is all their present representatives offer them."

He could not accept that as being the correct representation of the mode in which they met their combatants, but he quoted the figures to impress upon the House the fact, so constantly forgotten, that in Ireland, after all the benefits derived from the British connection of the last 100 years, they had a nation in ruin. That general condition of Ireland was aggravated when it came to the Congested Districts Board, because they had every evil which belonged to Ireland generally aggravated by a number of circumstances which did not affect other parts of the country. The hon. Gentleman who had proposed the Amendment had alluded to the fact that Connaught was the refuge into which Cromwell drove the population after he had devastated and re-settled many other parts. That produced congestion, but, evil as was the effect of his work, the Cromwell of the olden days, the Cromwell of the Ironsides, was far less destructive in his methods than the Cromwells of the present day. Connaught was more terribly devastated by famine and plague than any other provinces, and yet the landlords of that province, instead of acting as any other landlords in any other country would have done in a spirit of sympathy, took advantage of hunger and disease to clear the population, whom they sent off wholesale all over the world, and thousands of them died in consequence. What happened in 1847? In the halcyon days when they had no Irish Party to interfere, 120,000 people were sent out of the single county of Gal-way at the will of one foreigner—he did not desire to mention the nationality to which he belonged. [An HON. MEMBER: He was a Scotchman.] There were good and bad Scotchmen. This man, by the caprice of his own will, cleared a whole county, and sent the people to seek refuge in another land. This process had gone on since the days of Cromwell, diminishing the population, and the wretched congestion of Connaught had been aggravated by bad laws and bad landlords. The extraordinary result which this system had produced was that side by side with this unparalleled condition, large tracts of excellent fertile land were lying idle with no population upon them, while the barren land wasovercrowded. He would give the House one or two examples. There was one estate of 350 acres in one parish of the congested districts with only one tenant. There was another tract of 460 acres with ninety-five tenants. Take the question of grazing. There was an estate in one of the districts of the Westport Union of 50,000 acres in the hands of one man, and side by side with that there was another parish where there were 600 families occupying 6,000 acres. That was a state of things which no civilised Government ought to permit. With regard to the condition of the people on small holdings, his hon. friend had touched lightly upon some of its features, but the main feature was that the labour in which these people were engaged was the hardest and the meanest paid labour, and in some cases it was most perilous. When men and women had to go out into the sea to pick up little bits of seaweed for food, they had almost got to the last depths of human labour, except the kind of labour some people had to endure in chemical and gas works in England. He very much regretted the absence of the hon. Member for South Mayo, because one of the most striking passages in his speech was that in which he described the budget of a farmer in the congested districts. He would quote upon this point a passage from Hansard in the speech of the hon. Member for South Mayo. He said—

"I take the case of an average £4 holder, who is supposed to be much better off than a £2 or £3 holder, and I can defy contradiction when I say that the receipts of such a man for a year amount to as follows:—Butter, £4; cattle, £5; pigs, £5; sheep, £2; eggs and poultry, £2 10s; making a total of £18 10s. What is his expenditure? Rent, £4; taxes, £1 2s 6d; clothing, £6; meal and flour, £8; groceries, £3 7s 6d; sundries, £3; young pigs, £1; or a total of £26 10s—without saying anything about a small saving for old age. This is equivalent to a deficit of £8, which must be found elsewhere in order to live."

That brought him to another dark picture. They had all met in this country the harvestman from Ireland with his small bundle tied up in a red handkerchief. As a boy he remembered the harvesting season in Ireland. The Irish harvestman would go to the station, get into a cattle truck, and travel to Dublin, and upon the deck of some boat would manage to get over to England or Scotland. He would live on the plainest and the coarsest fare, and wear the plainest clothes, and after very hard labour, perhaps he would manage to bring back about £10. In his thrift and his self-sacrifice, by hard labour for small wages, and in his constant thought for the welfare of his wife and children at home, he claimed that the Irish peasant was one of the noblest examples in the country. But what became of that £10? It did not go to his wife and children, but it went to Lord Sligo, Lord Clanricarde, or Lord de Freyne. It went to alien landlords who never spent a single penny upon improving the condition of the people of Ireland. His hon. friend gave the case of a poor young girl of sixteen years of age leaving her home in the West of Ireland and going to a town in Scotland, after tramping the roads night after night and enduring great hardships. To appreciate this, they had to know the Irish feeling of family affection and association. They had to consider the high regard the Irish had for the safety and purity of their women, and the horror they had of sending them amid the struggles and temptations of great cities, in order to understand the depth of pathos behind a story like that. This problem was on some sides one of the most hopeless that ever engaged the attention of statesmen, and on another side he regarded it as one of the most hopeful. He did not know any problem which, when faced in a generous spirit, gave richer and prompter results. In illustration of this, he mentioned what had been done at Baltimore, in Ireland. He visited that town some years ago, and met one of the most truly great men whom he had ever had the pleasure of meeting—Father Davies, the parish priest of Baltimore. Father Davies had under his charge Cape Clear Island, which was eminently a congested district, and the kind of place they were dealing with. It was a place which, for generation after generation, was in the condition of many of the congested districts today—a condition of chronic hunger, deepening into periodical famine. One fine day the Baroness Burdett-Coutts had her attention brought to the condition of the island by the late Father Leader. She advanced money, which was spent in buying boats. The money was repaid. One of the most gratifying and hopeful features of this business was the punctuality with which the Irish people had met all the advances made to them for the improvement of their condition. The result was that now it was a place with the best fishing boats in the world for the purpose for which they were used. Baltimore was at present one of the fishing centres of the three kingdoms, with a prosperous, thriving, and contented population. That showed what could be done. It was sometimes said that the Irish people were wanting in gratitude, but there never was a greater calumny against any nation. If the hon. and gallant Member for Yarmouth said so, he would not take any notice of it, nor did he wish to show any want of personal respect when he said that that gentleman was one of the incursions from England who had not added to the felicity or good feeling of the people of Ireland. The people of Cape Clear Island were full of gratitude to the illustrious lady who set them, up, and that was strong proof of what the Irish people were capable of. To illustrate the extraordinary condition of discipline and order into which the population had been brought by good management, he would repeat a joke of Father Davies. There was a ferry boat running between Cape Clear Island and the mainland. He asked how the ferry boat was kept up. Father Davies said it was kept up by a tax of 5s. which was contributed by each house in Cape Clear—a tax voluntary, but backed up by the thunders of the Church. Referring to what had been done on the Dillon Estate, the hon. Member said that formerly it was one of the most wretched estates in Ireland, where the people were in a state of chronic semi-starvation such as he had described in connection with other places. Now it was the centre of thriving industry and prosperity. The expenditure of a small sum of money had been enough to transform the whole face of this estate. Cattle used to live in the same rooms with the families. This practice was quickly disappearing; roads were being made, land was being drained, and a new world of hope and prosperity had been opened to the people. The Irish Members raised this question again and again because it was a bitter and sad problem. It was one, however, which could be easily dealt with, because it was not large, and they raised it because they entertained the belief that it was in the power of the Government of Ireland to deal with the problem in such a way as for ever to remove it from the sorrows and wrongs of Ireland. His philosophy was that we were all very much the creatures of our environments—mere puppets on the wave of time and circumstance. Starting with that as his philosophy, he wanted the people in those districts to grow up in cleanly, prosperous, and secure homes. That was what he wanted the Chief Secretary to help them to do. The Irish problem faced them wherever they went. It faced no man more directly than himself, because he was the Member for what, after all, was an Irish town in the midst of an English city. He did not look for the time when emigration from Ireland would altogether cease. Young men and women must seek larger opportunities under more favourable conditions, but let the emigrants be a different kind from those sent out in past generations. Let them, when they landed on the shores of England, Scotland or America, start the battle of life, not already beaten and baffled, and with all the recollection of sorrow behind them, but educated, thrifty, and cleanly, and coming from substantial and prosperous homes. That was the new Ireland which the hon. Member for South Tyrone was endeavouring to create. Let them face the problem, and a new Ireland would come forth, in which there would be a prosperous and happy people.

So much has been said on this subject, and so eloquently, that very little remains for me to do. This has been an annual discussion for some years; now it has become not only a weekly, but almost a nightly, question in this House. And why is that? As I said in the course of the debate on the Address in reply to the King's Speech, the Government have brought this trouble on their own shoulders. My hon. friend the Member for Scotland Division spoke of the clearances in Co. Galway in 1847, but there was no comparison between these and those effected in Co. Mayo. When this House voted £1,750,000 to the Irish landlords for the purpose of improving their estates, the landlords tumbled over one another to get a share of that money, but never to the day of their death, did they do their duty to the unfortunate tenants. They said to these tenants, "Now that the land is clear and the bogs drained, you will have to walk out unless you pay four times your old rent." That is the curse which this House has brought on the small tenants in Ireland. In 1839 a captain in the Royal Navy was sent over to superintend relief works, and his report to the Chancellor of the Exchequer was that a recurrence of these seasons of distress had become almost periodical. They must, I fear, be necessarily expected so long as the present condition of the poor continues. But the present condition of these wretched tenants was far worse than it was in 1839. In the latter year the tenants had a share of the good land as well as of the bad; but now they have only the bad land, consisting of bogs and rocks and boulders. There are grass lands 100,000 acres in extent in the Westport Union, with only bullocks roving over them. Has this House any conception of the number of people over whom this agitation has been raised? The population of the congested districts is half a million; but I maintain that the whole Province of Connaught is congested and there are over 700,000 of a population. What are the conditions of these people? The hon. Member for South Tyrone can describe it in better and more graphic language than I can. There is not in one of these congested districts of the whole Province of Connaught a man who holds a little plot of land larger than from three to five acres. And what is the sort of land? The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary said at Dover, in one of those ebullitions of after - dinner oratory for which he is so remarkable, that he divided the agricultural land of Ireland into great grazing farms, which are very good for fattening cattle for the English market; and small stripes or patches of land for the smaller tenants, which are quite as essential to the agricultural development of Ireland as the big grazing farms. That may do foran afternoon audience at Dover, but it will not bring much comfort to the unfortunate people of Connaught. If the right hon. Gentleman were put on one of these patches in Connaught and asked to bring up a calf upon it, he would find that he could hardly bring up a rat upon it. The holdings are simply scraped out from the rock or squeezed out of the bog. I had Questions on the Paper about the persecutions to which these poor people are subjected in the neighbourhood of Mallaranny, Co. Mayo. They had to go for seven or eight miles out on the seashore to tear up the seaweed which it has pleased Almighty God to grow there, and after that to carry it a mile and a half more inland on their backs—fir these little plots are not all situated in one spot. We have hoard of the squeezed sponge, e.g., the Colonial Secretary compared Mr. Kruger to a squeezed sponge, but if any one wants to see a squeezed farm let him go to County Mayo, County Donegal, or County Kerry, and look at the pieces of bog land worked by these unfortunate people. Not only have they to go from three to seven miles along the seashore or out to sea to collect the seaweed, but they have to bring sand on their hacks to try and dry up the bog land. That is what I call a squeezed farm. How do these people live? Last year 27,234 of these people, boys and girls, came across to England and Scotland for six months, in order to earn as much money as would keep the pot boiling for the rest of the year, and to pay a rent to the landlord. They carried back to Ireland £6205,616, and will it be believed when I say—I am simply quoting the words of the Land Commission—every penny of that sum went into the pockets of the landlords; and if they had not done so into the workhouse they had to go. I have seen these poor people going away with their stick across their shoulder and a bundle hanging thereon containing all their possessions. His hon. friend told a pathetic story of one of those poor girls from Achill, and that applied equally to the 27,234 persons from Connaught. A young girl, aged sixteen, told her story to the Inspector of the Agricultural Department. She and her friend left Achill, and fortunately did not meet the same fate as a number of others did five or six years ago, when the fishing boats which were taking them to the steamer at Westport were upset, and twenty or thirty persons were drowned, and their bodies now lay in a heap under the sod in Achill Island. That might be a laughing matter for the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Antrim—

said he was not laughing; he was hardly listening to the hon. Gentleman.

said he was glad the right hon. Gentleman was not listening to him. The poor girl landed at Paisley, went to Dumfries, and then to Perth, a distance of 150 miles, under the direction of a ganger. Sometimes they slept in small, dark places, sometimes in barns, and sometimes out in the open. He would put it to the Chief Secretary and the Attorney General, how would they like their sister or their daughter travelling aboutnightand day under the direction of a man who probably knew no God, and on whom the virtue of those girls depended? How would they like their sister or their daughter to be exposed for six months to such temptation? What must be the anxiety of the poor mother in Achill, with no one to comfort her, and nothing to solace her except the roar of the sea. She had no music except the never ceasing thud of the little cows chewing the cud in her little cabin. What must be her feelings, who had brought her daughter up from the cradle to childhood, and who had watched her playing with the little cattle which occupied the same one-roomed cabin. The agony of that poor woman, who had gone through the mill herself, must have been equivalent to the agony of the damned. It was the duty of the Government to come to the assistance of those unfortunate people, to lift them off their miserable conditions, and place them in a happier and more reliable position for the future.

said it was not his intention to weary the House with any further details of the conditions of life in many parts of Ireland. The pictures which had been presented to the House were true, and he hoped that his hon. friends would be listened to in a sympathetic spirit, and that the case they put before the House would be treated on the merits. The Congested Districts Board was established about ten years ago, to look after poor districts in Ireland, and he was prepared to admit that excellent work had been done by the Board in many parts of Ireland. It was true that the mariner in which the Board was elected was not that which should obtain at the beginning of the twentieth century, but still, where good work was done he was prepared to admit it. No one could now pass through the Dillon Estate without being struck by the change wrought there by the action of the Board. Again, Clare Island, whore the people were almost on the verge of starvation and unable to pay their rents, had been changed into a comparative paradise. In Donegal, a great impetus had been given to the fishing and other industries by the sympathetic support which has been given by the Board, and, of course, they knew that that support was given because Donegal was represented on the Board by a man who knew the local needs of the people, who lived among them, who sympathised with them, and who, day after day, was thinking out in his own mind schemes by which the people could be raised from poverty to something like prosperity. Again, Baltimore, which not very long ago was a comparatively poor and unimportant town in the south of Ireland, had been, through the untiring energies of a rev, gentleman who at that time sat on the Board, raised to a position of importance. That brought him to the important question which he wished to discuss, and he hoped the Chief Secretary would consider it worthy of his consideration. He wished to direct the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to the treatment which two counties, Cork and Kerry, had received in recent years from the Board. Last night they were told that districts where there was agitation, and whore the United Irish League had power, would not be taken into consideration in connection with remedial in measures. He wished just to compare the manner in which Kerry and Mayo had been treated. Kerry at the present moment was comparatively quiet, and they all knew what an enviable reputation Mayo had. The limit of the issue of Land Stock was £262,000, and, whereas not a penny of it was spent in Kerry to improve farms, the amount spent in purchasing and improving farms in Mayo was £260,000. He did not intend to plead in begging terms for his constituents; but he thought that fact proved that it was not alone the justice of the case that determined action on the part of the Congested Districts Board. There were two things which compelled the attention of the Board; one was agitation and the other a local representative on the Board. Mayo was ably represented on the Board by Father O'Hara, and it was to his untiring energy, aided, of course, by the other members of the Board, that many of the people of Mayo were in a happier position than formerly. When he heard there was a vacancy on the Board, he asked the Chief Secretary whether, considering that a large part of Kerry was congested, the enormous rates which the people had to pay for public works and the manner in which it had been neglected by the Board, it would not be possible to appoint some person with local knowledge. He did not even ask that a Nationalist should be appointed. Now they were told that a man from Belfast had been elected. He did not know whether he was a good or a bad man—ho trusted he was a good man—but he did enter his most emphatic protest against the system of appointing men to the Board to look after the interests of districts about which they knew nothing. A Return was granted to him last year, to which he was sure that the attention of the Chief Secretary must have been directed. From that Return it appeared that the total amount paid by Kerry for guarantees of railways and harbours amounted to the enormous sum of £1 3,000. The population in 1901 was 165,000, so that really the whole county might be regarded as coming within the condition of things which made up a congested district. This was a county governed by the old grand jury system, which represented only the landlord classes, and many of the works for which Kerry had to pay were not such as to give an adequate return for the money which they had spent. He hoped that the Chief Secretary, having S appointed a man who had no local knowledge, would insist upon that man; spending some time in acquiring such I knowledge as would ensure Kerry getting some share of the money expended by the Congested Districts Board. When he compared what was done for Donegal and Mayo with what was done for Kerry, he came to the conclusion that Kerry suffered solely because it had no member on the Board to voice its demands. The Report testified to the excellent work done by the parish Committees, and he suggested that some attempt should be made to start these Committees in the congested parts of Kerry. He desired to draw attention to the fact that the constituency which he represented was almost entirely on the coast, and that people were to some extent dependent on the fishing industry, and he asked whether it would be possible for a sum to be expended by the Congested Districts Board to build an ice house for the assistance of that industry. He noticed from the report that the Congested Districts Board had provided in other parts three ice hulks, and had made provision in another town for the erection of an ice house. He trusted the southern counties would receive the attention of the right hon. Gentleman, and that districts which had been neglected in the past would be dealt with, and that more energy would be displayed in carrying out the useful work which the Board undoubtedly did.

said that the Irish Members did not approach the Congested Districts Board in their criticisms of it in any hostile spirit Wherever it had brought its powers into operation it had, on the whole, given considerable satisfaction to the people of the districts which it served. They complained not so much of what the Board did, but that it did not do more; that what it had done for some portions of the country it had not done for other portions which were admittedly congested and which had been settled by law to be congested districts. In former debates it had been admitted that work such as the Congested Districts Board carried on should not be carried on with undue haste. That argument was a fair one to apply a few years ago. The most important work which the Board had done was taking the people out of those districts where they had been existing on small holdings from which no living could be obtained, and placing them upon the rich grazing lands from which in the past they had been driven. When this work was started by the Congested Districts Board it was regarded as a mere experiment. The Board commenced with the purchase of the Clare Island Estate and the purchase of the French Estate. The experiment had now been given a fair trial both by the public and the Congested Districts Board, and the result was to justify the further extension of that work. These people on Clare Island had been lifted out of the direst poverty and had been put into a comparatively prosperous condition. They had met every obligation which they had incurred to the Congested Districts Board in a manner which redounded to their credit. With regard to the French Estate, it was within his knowledge that before the Congested Districts Board operated on that estate, the people found it so difficult to live that they were dependent on the goodwill of the shopkeepers in the neighbouring towns to supply them with food, while they paid their high rents, lest they should be driven from their homes. These people had not only paid what they owed to the Congested Districts Board, but were now able to pay cash to the shopkeepers for their small requirements. Those two estates were the first of the migratory experiments entered into by the Congested Districts Board, and it was admitted on all sides that the result justified far greater operations in the same direction. That these operations were not proceeded with to a greater extent was doubtless owing to the limited means at the disposal of the Congested Districts Board, but that could be altered, and the main object of the Amendment was to endeavour to influence the Executive and the Congested Districts Board to push forward with greater energy the work which was admitted in Ireland to be of a most beneficent character. He complained of the utter neglect by the Board of districts which had been settled by law to be congested; little or nothing had been done in the County of Roscommon, one of the divisions of which he represented. A large part of the Ballinasloe Union, he was informed, had never been visited by any one connected with the Congested Districts Board, and so far as the work of the Board was concerned, the district might as well be situated in the rich grazing County of Meath. The grave discontent in the Frenchpark district was largely, if not solely, due to the fact that the Board had failed to do anything, or to hold out hope of anything being done, of a like nature to that which had been carried out in other portions of the country. If any place in the whole of Ireland, or, in fact, in the world, required treatment such as it was in the power of the Board to apply, it was the property in the hands of Lord De Freyne. The tenants on that estate were to a large extent composed of the class so pathetically described by the hon. Member for the Scotland Division, who, in order to pay their rent, had to come over to this country under such horrible conditions to earn a necessary few pounds. The Chief Secretary, in the course of his peregrinations, had visited that estate, and he would not deny that it was a fair field for the operations of the Board. The people on the estate waited hopefully and anxiously to see if the Board would extend to them a helping hand. At last, driven to desperation, being told that all the money available for purchase was locked up in the Dillon Estate, and that considerable time must elapse before it would be released, the people banded themselves together, with the result that there was the discontent and disaffection of which some hon. Members complained, and in consequence of which the Coercion Act had been put into force. Was it a fair answer to these people, when at last their patience was exhausted and they made complaints—perhaps in a way of which the right hon. Gentleman or the law did not approve—that because they had ceased to be patient and were endeavouring to make, their voices heard amongst their countrymen in England and America in order to obtain assistance, they would be put at the bottom of the list, and be dealt with last of all. He begged the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues to give up that policy; it was bound to end in failure, and the Board would have to recognise the necessity of going to the assistance of the people. His third complaint was with regard to the appointments to the Board. A few days previously they had been somewhat astonished by the announcement that a vacancy on the Board had been filled by the appointment of the Earl of Shaftesbury. That nobleman might, for aught they knew, be a very estimable man, and after he had served his apprenticeship, a very efficient member of the Board, but at present what on earth did he know about these, congested districts? Was he acquainted with the conditions of misery under which these poor people had to live? When such appointments were made the person" appointed should be men living in the district, acquainted with the conditions and habits of the people, and full of sympathy with their feelings and aspirations. Withoutknowing anything about the Earl of Shaftesbury, he greatly doubted whether he had the knowledge and experience which were essential for work of the character he had to perform. He made no complaint whatever of the manner in which the Board did its work; the grievance was that the Board, having been satisfied with the results of their experiments in the matter of migration, had not gone much further, and made greater progress with the work, and that other places, certainly as congested, were neglected—a circumstance which, he believed, was largely due to the fact that some members of the Beard were entirely unacquainted with the nature of the work they had to do and the people they were supposed to benefit. He asked that in future, vacancies should be filled by men living in the district who desired to assist the people with their knowledge and experience. If that were done, there was little doubt that the complaints of neglect and want of progress would soon disappear, and the beneficent work it was in the power of the Board to do would be so extended that the blessings now confined to a limited few of the people would be enjoyed by a much greater number.

thought they had just reason to complain of the slow progress made by the Congested District Board, and also of the dilatoriness of that body in disposing of holdings already in their possession. It was not surprising that in the last twelve months there had been many protests against the extreme slowness of the Board in striking, for the benefit of the peoplet those holdings, which they had acquired for that purpose; and a further matter of surprise was that the Board had allowed many holdings in Co. Mayo, which could easily have been acquired, to pass into the hands of graziers. At the present rate of progress, Members now in the House would not see the Board get beyond the merest fringe of this great question. A few months ago, a very large farm in South Mayo was thrown into the market. It had been stocked for a number of years by a very successful grazier, and it was surrendered by him because of his inability to make it pay. That farm had become historic by reason of the controversies which had raged around it during the last twelve months. Dr. Crean gave up that farm because he was unable to make it pay, and also because of representations made to him by the local clergy that the farm would be purchased by the Congested Districts Board for the benefit of the people. The immediate district had been, for the last seven or eight years, schedule as a congested district, and if the congestion was to be relieved at all, it could be only by this farm being acquired and divided among the people concerned. But, instead of offering to purchase that farm the moment it was in the market, the Board made no sign, and did not attempt to relieve the congestion which they themselves had recognised for years past. The farm was in the market for eight or nine months, and then a grazier from North Mayo became the owner of it—not that he expected to succeed where Dr. Crean had failed, but simply because, as he said, if he could only gain temporary possession, the Congested Districts Board, by-and-bye, when they got up out of their sleep, would compensate him to induce him to give up possession. Many other similar instances could be given. After citing other instances, the hon. Member declared that it was a sham and a mockery for the Board to go on scheduling districts as congested, and then allow the farms which could relieve that congestion to pass, without making any attempt to purchase them, into the possession of a miserable ring of graziers. As to the delay in disposing of farms when once the Board had acquired them, in 1898 the Board purchased a farm outside Clanmorris, and it took four years to strike it into fourteen small holdings. In the ninth report of the Board it was stated that by the autumn this farm would be disposed, of and a migration scheme carried out. But the tenth report came out. The farm had been in possession for four years, but up to the present not one of the holdings had been disposed of. If it took four years to strike fourteen small holdings, how long would it take to relieve the congestion all over the province? Another practice against which he desired to protest was that of allowing the Land Commission to advance money to graziers in congested districts. If that practice was allowed to go on, the net result would be to confirm the districts in their congestion. He was of opinion that if the right of pre-emption were given to the Board in connection with land in congested districts, it would put an end to many of the abuses which at present afforded just and reasonable grounds of complaint to those immediately concerned. He hoped the next time the Chief Secretary visited Mayo he would go over the district he had in mind. The whole of it was given over to graziers, and it was an economic phenomenon how the towns situated in the heart of those vast rolling plains were able to live. Comment had been made on the recent appointment to the vacancy on the Board. Who was this Lord Shaftesbury? He hoped that Lord Shaftesbury would justify his appointment. They could not hope that the Chief Secretary would have appointed a representative of the tenants, but he would have preferred the appointment of Sir David Harrel. He hoped the Chief Secretary would give them some assurance that the estates now in the possession of the Congested Districts Board would soon be apportioned amongst the tenants. The Chief Secretary must recognise the hunger there was for land in Ireland, for not long ago he had no less than 400 applications for holdings from one vicinity. If the problem of the congested districts was to be solved, three things were necessary. Connaught must be scheduled as a congested district; a larger income must be given to the Congested Districts Board to meet the larger necessity which would follow on the scheduling of Connaught; and the House must get over its prejudice against granting compulsory powers to a Board, the majority of whose members were drawn from the Party opposite.

We have been listening to a very interesting debate, and I think the House may congratulate itself upon the fact that everyone who has taken part in it has avoided, as far as possible, attacking those who hold different opinions. As I doubt my own capacity to traverse all the ground covered by the last speaker without, perhaps, bringing into this debate some of the elements which have been so happily absent, I shall not go into great detail upon the matters which the hon. Member has put forward this evening. The hon. Member has complained that we have lost many chances of acquiring land in Ireland. I do not mean to take up in detail the opportunities that we have missed. The general statement is that we have been remiss in buying land which would have been very useful for relieving the congestion. I think the House knows by now that I, at any rate, and all my colleagues on the Congested Districts Board, believe that a vast amount remains to be done in order to relieve the congested districts in many parts of Ireland. I hold that that work cannot be done if you deal with one estate by itself, and do not take time by the forelock, and unless untenanted land which may be offered by-and-bye is acquired as occasion offers. Without attempting to offer a very elaborate defence, I must say that the experimental stage has necessarily been a long one. I do not think the Board is to be attacked for having been slack or wanting in diligence. If we go into past history we shall find that this work is a very novel experiment, which was only started some ten years ago. When a body is entrusted with such wide discretionary powers, touching public and private interests at certain points, it is, I think, right and proper to go slowly. But it is not the Board that goes slowly; it is the House that goes slowly. In the Act which constituted the Congested Districts Board there was no money provided, and other Amendments to fifteen or sixteen Acts of Parliament were necessary before you could proceed. Consequently, we had at first to discover exactly where the existing law hampered us in our work. Let me now pass to the other main point in the hon. Member for North Mayo's speech, namely, the charge that we have been guilty of dilatoriness in disposing of the estates we have bought. Precisely there, also, we have had to make change after change in the law, and even now our powers are not adequate in order to deal with this state of things. As a good deal of advice has been offered to me this afternoon, perhaps I, in my turn, may be allowed to offer a little advice. Taking advantage of the happy environment in which we are privileged to live, move, and act today, I say that if hon. Members would preach to the Irish tenants sometimes that each man cannot have everything to which he is entitled, or which he thinks himself entitled to, and at the same time secure a general settlement affecting 300 or 400 people, it might have a beneficial effect. Last year the Government gave further powers to the Board, and until we got those powers we could not proceed with the work satisfactorily.

Why did you not get those powers long ago?

I am avoiding as far as I can controversial points. I know that a good deal of criticism may quite justifiably be levelled at those who rushed round the country, but still it is better to rush round the country than not to see it at all. I have been in Ireland on many occasions; I have made five or six visits to the congested districts, and I mean to continue my practice of visiting them. I assure the House that I have learned something at every visit which I have made. I hope I shall have the pleasure of saying something more upon this point when I bring in a Land Bill which I hope in a very few days to introduce. I am afraid that if I were to enter into detail upon this point now I might weary the House; and not only this, but I am afraid that I should be inviting some other hon. Members to make speeches upon contentious points. The hon. Member for South Roscommon has made a most temperate speech, which did not appear to be hostile at all; and I can conceive no greater compliment to our policy than that nobody complained of what we did, but only complained of us not doing more things at the same time. I have a less sanguine view of the possibilities of this life than the hon. Member, but even he admitts that it is necessary to proceed slowly during the experimental stage. I will venture to give some figures to show that the Board has been expanding its work very rapidly since we have had the power to do so. We expended on purchases of estates in 1892–93, £7,600; 1893–94, £349; 1894–95, £5,118; 1895–96, £4,520; 1896–97, £5,545; 1897–98, £14,145; 1898–99, £11,495; 1899–1900, £304,532, including the purchase of the Dillon estate; and last year, £31,242.

What was the price paid for the Dillon estate?

The price was £290,000, in round numbers. The fact that the owners of the Dillon estate, who had not resided on it for forty or fifty years, were prepared to take £290,000, for it does not raise any presumption that another landlord in different circumstances ought to be expected to take mechanically the same price for that same kind of estate. I think that in all these eases an effort should be made by both parties to deal, instead of starting the matter by laying down some definite condition and then assuming that it is a victory to impose that condition and a defeat not to succeed in doing so No one could buy a horse in that manner. [Nationalist cheers.] I am afraid I do not understand my own joke.

It is a very poor joke if it is intended to treat the buying and selling of land as a commodity like the buying and selling of a horse.

I admit it is not exactly the same, but what I meant to imply was that in the sale of a horse there was generally a certain amount of give and take, and if hon. Members will allow me to say so, I think it would be greatly to the advantage of all parties if there were more of this kind of thing in regard to the buying and selling of land. A man will accept a comparatively small price for a thing on which he sets no store. I wish to point out that if a man sets no store on an article he will very often part with it for something less than the intrinsic value; but when you go to another person who sets great store on the same article, it is always necessary that he should be granted some inducement to part with it. These really are my two main excuses for our failure to purchase a great number of estates. We have purchased twenty-nine up to March of last year, and recently, also, we have purchased several. The difference as to price is always a difficulty in a matter of this kind, and the question of turbary prevents us from disposing of that which we have already acquired, but the Board will make every effort (o succeed on both these points, as I hope at no very distant date to explain. In fact, I trust when I introduce the Land Bill in a few days I may be able to deal at greater length with some aspects of this question. The hon. Member for South Roscommon complains that we have neglected Roscommon, but I cannot say that in regard to land purchase, because in the case of that county the Board had exhausted the whole of their credit for the year.

That was, of course, in the case of the Dillon estate only.

That is so, and under the Act passed last year we are again in a position to purchase property in that county. The hon. Member referred to a matter which we debated last night, and I would rather rest on what was said then and not re-open the controversy. He alluded to the phrase which I used—" at the bottom of the list "—and asked what that meant. It means precisely what I said last night, and I think the words I used were quite intelligible. The hon. Member for East Limerick, who initiated this debate, said, in reply, I understand, to something that occurred in the debate last night, that we were not entitled to gratitude for the sum placed at the disposal of the Congested Districts Board. I quite agree with that. The bulk of the money is assessed on the Irish Church Surplus Fund. A part of it, indeed, is a Parliamentary grant, but, of course, not a grant in excess of Ireland's fair share, on the lowest computation, of the general advantages to be drawn from the Imperial Exchequer. No one has ever contended that this allocation of money is in any sense an eleemosynary work on the part of the State. It is practical work in order to build up conditions which require to be built up in Ireland, and I cannot conceive of any object to which money could be more properly applied. The hon. Member criticised some of the work of the Board with respect to the supply of cattle. I can assure him that the cattle, and especially the black cattle, introduced are appreciated in a great part of the west of Ireland, and persons who have bred these cattle find that they can dispose of them to advantage in the market. The hon. Member did not overdraw the picture of poverty in the West of Ireland. I wish that people in this country did realise the condition of things there. When I was making a tour in that district I entered a small cabin at one place, and after a few words, which ended in a most pleasant and cordial welcome on the part of the hostess, she explained that she had locked some of her things away in a separate compartment, because she thought I was a sheriffs officer. I visited a small cabin in winch two families were living. The first apartment was only 11 feet by 7 feet, and the daylight shone through a cranny in the wall. In the next apartment there were eleven people living, with a cow, a donkey, and a pig. There were a spinning wheel and a loom, and a large cradle, all in this same cottage, and the walls admitted the light through numerous crannies. I am perfectly certain that that is a worse state of affairs than exists in the slums of our big cities. There is something to be said on the other side, I know; but I call that a condition of life which ought to be remedied, and I personally shall never cease to bring it before the country, in this House or out of it, on proper occasions. I consider it outside party politics altogether, and in all matters of controversy in connection with this subject I think we should never hear the shallow talk that we are seeking to conciliate the irreconcilables or kill Home Rule by kindness. The hon. Gentleman the Member for West Kerry criticised the recent appointment to the Congested Districts Board of Lord Shaftesbury. I take the whole responsibility for that appointment. I made it after very grave reflection. I consider that each new appointment that has to be made to the Board is a matter which any Chief Secretary should consider very carefully. It has been said by one Member that he should have preferred the appointment of Sir David Harrel. I did at one time hope to do that, but it was found that that appointment could not be made without legislation, and Sir David Harrel himself was one of the many people who recommended me to appoint Lord Shaftesbury. The hon. Member for West Kerry said that we should have obtained some one who really lived in the south of Ireland, and I am told that we ought not to appoint a landlords' representative. Now let me take up the point in regard to the landlords' representative. I ask hon. Members to reflect that the vacancy was created by the very severe illness of Lord de Vesci, an illness from which, I regret to say, that noble Lord can hardly hope completely to recover; and there was something to be said, in my opinion, for appointing a landlord to a landlord's place on the Board. When the Board was instituted it was supposed to be not elective, but representative of all parties. I think our proceedings might have been open to criticism, which would otherwise be avoided if we had had no representative of the landlords upon it. But Lord Shaftesbury was not put on the Board as the representative of the landlords. The hon. Member for West Kerry said he was an Earl who would know very little of the poor people whom he had to look after, and as long as he does not know Lord Shaftesbury he is entitled to say that. Perhaps, however, the hon. Member may be reminded by the name that his grandfather was an Earl who did look after the poor, and Lord Shaftesbury himself, although he has taken some part in public life, and has made an eloquent speech in the House of Lords, is not disposed to enter into partisan politics. He wishes to devote himself to the life followed by his grandfather. He was for some time in doubt as to where that might best be done, but he felt that, being a representative of a family to which large grants of land were made in Ireland in former years, he owed a duty to that country, and he therefore came to me and asked, whether there was any way in which I could enable him to discharge the obligations placed upon him in virtue of those great grants made to his ancestors. Lord Shaftesbury is the representative of Lord Chichester. I ought not perhaps to go further into this matter. I have gone into it so far because I think it one of importance. There is no salary attached to the appointment at all. The work is done for love, and it is work to which this new recruit intends to devote the whole of his energies and a great part of his time. He has undertaken to attend all the meetings of the Board whether in England or in Ireland, and he will make a special study of all that concerns Co. Kerry. I must refer last, but certainly not least, to the very eloquent speech of the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool. He said that the appearance of the House of Commons was not inspiriting. The House was not crowded when the hon. Member rose, but it filled when he went on, and those who listened to his speech were interested in it a great deal. I cannot, however, fairly attribute the absence of hon. Members to any prejudice on their part against Ireland as Ireland. Has the hon. Member ever looked in at the Scottish debate? On the other hand, I have noticed that Irish debates, even if they begin with an empty House, generally end by securing a full one. Hon. Members from Ireland may not always convince us, but they always give us a good deal to think about when they speak. I do not propose at this hour to go into the version some hon. Members have given us of the history of the problem. We are always told that Cromwell drove the population into the West of Ireland. Some have doubted whether that was the whole truth. He certainly drove a great many of the Catholic gentry, but it is not so clear that large portions of the people were driven unto the West of Ireland. The hon. Member spoke of the landlords of the past who had cleared their estates; but he forgot to mention those other Irish landlords on whose estates the people are, or were living in contentment. In dealing with this question you cannot approach the men whose estates were never cleared in a spirit almost of hostility and vindictiveness, because someone else in another part of the country had cleared his estate. When listening to the hon. Member, I thought of the De Freyne Estate, the rents of which were reduced in 1852; and so far from evicting their tenants, the owners of that estate assisted their tenants immediately after the famine. That, I think, should be remembered. The question of the migratory labourers has been referred to. The number of those labourers is not now so great as to make any one despair of dealing with the problem. There are only 20,000 migratory labourers now, whereas formerly they numbered 40,000. But even if these migratory labourers paid no rent at all, or did not pay the £2 or £4 a year to which their rent now amounts, they would still be migratory labourers, they would still be living in a congested district, and without rent and landlord they would subdivide their land, and thus increase the congestion. In dealing with this problem patience was required on all sides as well as earnest work. The hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool touched also on the fishing question. Father Davies, to whose work in co-operation with the Baroness Burdett-Coutts the hon. Gentleman referred, was a great pioneer in the development of Irish fisheries. He had had the privilege of meeting not one but several Irish priests in the West of Ireland who were imitating the late Father Davies in living lives of splendid devotion. Some of them, residing in islands such as Clare Island, had often to go miles over the sea, or over the mountains, in order to give the consolation of religion or advice in material affairs. These men are heroes as well as saints, and are entitled to greater thanks than any members of the Congested Districts Board for the success which has attended many of their efforts. Look at the change which has been effected in the Arran Islands, off Galway. It is not ten years since no rent or rates were paid on that island, and the Government had alternately to despatch a gunboat to collect rents and an Inspector to start relief works. Owing to the co-operation of all classes living there, and, in a certain measure, to the work of the Board, the people of the islands are now making from £6,000 to £8,000 a year by fishing. Indeed, not content with reaping the harvests of their own seas, some of them go to the North Sea and compete successfully with the fishermen of Scotland and the Isle of Man. How absurd it is to say that the Irish lack initiative or courage when they have the opportunity, and how untrue it is to say that they are not good business men! None of these men are in arrears with their instalments for boats and gear, representing about £600. I think the success which has attended that experiment in the Arran Islands should, if possible, be spread elsewhere along the western coast. In conclusion, I trust that in future we may be allowed to address ourselves more often to what, in my opinion, is the paramount problem of the Irish question and the one which demands constant attention at our hands.

I only propose to occupy the attention of the House for a few minutes. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary has done tonight what he has done on many occasions since he took office—he has made a speech sympathetic in tone, and admitting the perfect case to which the Irish Members desire to call attention; but, like all his former speeches, it had a lame and impotent conclusion. The right hon. Gentleman commented favourably on the tone of the debate and complimented the Irish Members for speaking in such moderate terms. In view of the character of the subject—than which there is none more likely to arouse strong and bitter feeling—the House will recognise that our case has been put with temperance before the House. It is interesting in passing to note that my two hon. colleagues who were specially picked out for compliment for the moderation of their tone—the Member for North Mayo and the Member for South Eos-common—are the two Gentlemen who have just been released from the gaol of the right hon. Gentleman. What a burlesque that is on Irish government! My two hon. friends, convicted as common criminals in the common police court, although the right hon. Gentlemen had said that he would not deal with political opponents except by political methods, come here to the House of Commons the day after they are released and the House does not resent that. Nay, the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Ireland falls upon their necks and lavishes upon them the most extravagant compliments for their good sense and moderation in tone. I only mention that in passing as another illustration of what a burlesque the whole system of government in Ireland is. I said that the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary was sympathetic Undoubtedly it was; and I am convinced that the right hon. Gentleman by his visits to the West of Ireland has learned a great deal, and I am quite certain he is sincere in the picture he has put before the House of the sordid misery and wretchedness of the people in that part of Ireland, which is a perfect disgrace to the government of Ireland, which has tolerated it so long. The right hon. Gentleman has admitted all that with an eloquence not to be equalled on these Benches, but what I complain of is that, having proved our case, he concluded without holding out any real hope of amelioration. The right hon. Gentleman has told us that the Congested Districts Board is an experiment. Yes, but it is an experiment eleven years old. And yet, in the face of that fact, the Chief Secretary admits the gravity of the case, and says that his policy is still to go slowly. If the right hon. Gentleman pursues that rate of progress which has marked the past eleven years, no man living this day can hope to see the time when there will be any real appreciable change in the state of things, which admittedly is a disgrace to humanity and civilisation. What do we ask? We ask for some declaration of policy to show that he admits the gravity of the case, and that he and the Government are going to deal with it boldly. He, however, practically says that they are afraid to deal with it except in the most gingerly way. The last Bill was passed in the strain of the session, and under circumstances that rendered it impossible to give it proper discussion. The right hon. Gentleman clearly foreshadowed last year, in the corresponding debate to this, that great discrimination would be required to deal with the case. He said that he had no fault to find with the discussion that had taken place, because it had given him points to think upon. But what hope has he given us tonight? I noticed that in connection with the projected Land Bill, he suggested that he is going to deal with the Congested Districts Board by way of enlarging their powers and giving them more money. But if he is really going to do that, why does he not tell us so frankly? One of the strangest things in political history is that an English Minister in preparing a Bill will consult everybody in regard to its provisions except the people most concerned. Surely the natural thing, and the rational thing, would be to take advice, to seek information and assistance from those people who are elected representatives of the men whose miserable lot he deplores, and whose situation he hopes to ameliorate. But, knowing everything of the country, the last persons to be consulted on these matters are the people's representatives. The eighty Nationalist Members do not know—I doubt if any Irish Members know; I think I should be safe in saying that the 104 Irish Members in this House know absolutely nothing of what the provisions of this Land Bill are to be, or whether it is to deal with this congestion or not, with the exception, of course, of the Attorney General. Is not that a very absurd system, and does it not condemn the whole system? When you introduce a Bill for the benefit of Ireland, the people you exclude from consultation and knowledge of the subject are the representatives of Ireland. I wish the right hon. Gentleman had been more explicit, and instead of darkly hinting at the possibility that he would deal with some of these subjects, I wish he had said boldly that it was his intention to grapple with the real evil of the present state of things. If he had told us that, we should not want him to let out the secret of his Land Bill at all. But he could have let us know in general terms that he did propose to ask for increased powers for the Congested Districts Board, and to ask for additional money, and that he did intend to ask for machinery which would enable this experimental Act of the past eleven years to be turned into a working arrangement, with a Department properly equipped to settle the question. If he had said that, we would have been perfectly satisfied with his speech, which was sympathetic in tone, and which was in substance an, admission of our case. He has not done so. He has left this question, as he has left scores of other questions since he came to the Irish Office, admitting our case and offering no solution whatever. From that point of view, his speech will be read with disappointment in Ireland, and at the end of his term of office he will have to reproach himself with having done nothing practical to remedy the state of things which he has admitted is a disgrace almost to humanity, and, therefore, to the rich and powerful English Government which permits it to continue. (8.8.)

said he desired to allude to the reply of the Chief Secretary to the case which had been put forward. The right hon. Gentleman had, as usual, made a very eloquent speech; in fact, in listening to its pathetic description of the existing poverty, one might almost have supposed it was a speech delivered from an Irish platform rather than by the right hon. Gentleman, who was to take severe measures in regard to Ireland. The fault he had to find was that, while the right hon. Gentleman made eloquent speeches—apparently brimful of feeling and good intention—no result appeared in the shape of legislation. If there was one direction more than another in which the right hon. Gentleman had a chance of putting his good intentions into practice, it was in connection with the Congested Districts Board. That was admittedly a matter which did not create bitter Party feeling; it was rather a social and economic question. The hands of the right hon. Gentleman were, therefore, to a great extent free from those difficulties which surrounded him with regard to other and more thorny aspects of the Irish question. But in spite of these sympathetic addresses, the policy of the Congested Districts Board apparently was to pursue the same old jog-trot, and the only reply of the right hon. Gentleman was to bid the people to be patient. If there was a people on the face of God's earth who had exhibited patience, it was the Irish people. They had been tried in so many ways, and so many difficulties had been put in the way of their rising in the scale of prosperity, or improving their social position, that it was little short of mockery to preach to them the virtue of patience. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman was well-intentioned, but a certain warm quarter was said to be paved with good intentions. Intention was not the only thing necessary; the right hon. Gentleman must be earnest, and put before himself firmly and fixedly the bringing in of legislation to give effect to his good intentions. The claim put forward by the Irish Parliamentary Party was that the whole of Connaught should be settled as a congested district. Connaught presented this extraordinary feature above two of the adjoining provinces, namely, that side by side, right through the whole of that province, they found the most barren, unproductive, and unfertile soil which ever the eyes of man rested upon; while within a few miles was to be found the rich soil of the valleys and the most suitable rich pastures for the flocks and herds of the wealthy. On the unfertile and unproductive soil human beings eked out a miserable existence, whilst the fertile plains adjoining were given up to the bullock of the rich landowner. Consequently, the Nationalist party were merely endeavouring to rectify a state of things which was a disgrace to civilisation, and which this House had power to remedy if it only had the will. The Congested Districts Board had power to purchase considerable portions of land out of the grants made to it by Parliament. For instance, they could spend in the county of Leitrim £65,979, and there was not a single penny spent there. In Sligo there was a limit set down for the purchase of land amounting to £55,938, and not a single penny was spent there by this Board for the purchase of land. In the county of Donegal the limit was £200,363, and if there was one county in the whole of Ireland which presented a crying case for the application of this money to purchasing land for the tenants, it was Donegal; and yet the Board had only spent £200,942, or less than one-hundredth part of the spending power which the Board possessed When they complained of this, the right hon. Gentleman said there were difficulties about the bogs. If the right hon. Gentleman took a statesmanlike view of the question, and recognised this as the broad question for the settlement of a standing grievance, he was sure that he would receive the co-operation of the Nationalist Party, and then all the difficulties would pass away like snow before the sun, and the terrible condition of the peasants, described so eloquently by the right hon. Gentleman, would not be constantly recurring in Ireland. He had an intimate knowledge of the state of large portions of the counties of Connaught, Mayo, and Roscommon, and he had travelled through North, East, and South Mayo, and he had no hesitation in saying that in those districts there was plenty of room for something to be done to improve the condition of the people. In those districts one might drive for forty miles in a straight line almost without meeting a single human being. That storm-swept district was practically uninhabited except for an odd hut on the roadside where the occupants dragged out a bare existence. If some of the money which was now being spent so freely in South Africa, and to which Irishmen were compelled to contribute, was devoted to Ireland and applied to the draining of those vast wastes and plantations, and the placing of the people upon the land on reasonable terms, it would not be long before the unhappy state of that country would be completely changed. If those lands were in possession of the Netherlands Government or the Belgian Government, who were now spending huge sums of money building large dykes to keep back the sea, those paternal Governments would spare no effort whatever to make the lands he had alluded to in Ireland suitable for habitation, upon which the people could live under circumstances of decency and common comfort. All this question came down' to the one solid fact which never could be put aside, and that was that the Government, as it existed at present in Ireland, took no notice of the representatives of the people, and proceeded on its own lines utterly regardless of the effects of the policy pursued. There were many other districts which were deserving of the attention of the right hon Gentlemen. In Roscommon the funds available under the Act of Parliament were exhausted, and the population in that county were obliged to live on the bad land and on the bogs and swamps, because the fertile land had passed into the hands of huge graziers. In the years 1846 and 1847 three shiploads of tenants were sent from Roscommon to America, and of those three ships only one reached the other side of the Atlantic. The whole of one district had been entirely given up to the grazier, while close at hand, on the bogs and swamps, a large population were trying to drag out a miserable existence between the hills and the Shannon. What happened on the plains of the Boyne in 1846 and 1847? Large numbers of the population were shipped to America, and those vast plains were devoted to grazing, whilst on the other side thousands of people were living up on small patches of land. He did not think that Irish Members were making an unreasonable demand when they asked that the operations of the Congested Districts Board ought to be immediately extended. As yet they had received nothing beyond the platitudes which had been addressed to the House in eloquent and sympathetic tones by the Chief Secretary, and the Government had not given them any earnest of the smallest character to indicate that they intended to deal with this question in a practical spirit. Was it to be wondered at that hon. Members from Ireland complained of this policy of procrastination and delay? If the right hon. Gentleman confined his policy to making eloquent speeches on the one hand and dabbling in coercion on the other, he would find that his term of office would not be characterised by any grateful recollections on the part of the Irish Parliamentary Party or the Irish people. He would go much further in regard to the settlement of the congested districts. He spoke only for himself, and perhaps he spoke from the selfish standpoint of one who wished to benefit his own constituency if occasion arose. He thought the question of the congested districts should be dealt with as a broad question entirely apart from provincial considerations. There were, throughout Ireland, many instances besides those which had been alluded to that could be cited as requiring the attention of the Congested Districts Board. There were districts in Co. Cavan quite as congested as those even in the furthest parts of Co. Mayo. In Co. Longford, which he represented, there were large masses of population living on barren bogs and on the mountain sides, whilst vast areas of land were given up to the wants of dumb animals rather than to the wants of man. He would strongly appeal for consideration of this question on the broadest lines. He suggested that the right hon. Gentleman, in any proposals he would make in the forthcoming Land Bill, should deal with it on a broad fixed principle.