HC Deb 04 March 1881 vol 259 cc335-66

[THIRD NIGHT.]

Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment proposed to Question [2nd March], "That the Bill be now read a second time."

And which Amendment was, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."—(Mr. Justin M' Carthy.)

Question again proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."

Debate resumed.

MR. PARNELL

Sir, I take this opportunity of expressing my belief that the course which Her Majesty's Government has adopted in introducing and pressing to a conclusion coercive legislation for Ireland is one which will have lasting and permanent effects of a kind very different from that which they anticipate. I cannot imagine anything that the most ardent Nationalist could do to make the breach wider between England and Ireland, and to conduce eventually to the disruption of the Union between the two countries, worse than the course the Government has undertaken in forcing coercive legislation upon our country. And it is not alone the fact that you have introduced and persevered in this legislation, but it is the tone which has been adopted by every prominent Minister upon the Treasury Bench. The tone and the manner and the proceedings which we have witnessed in this House from day to day and from night to night make it very evident that you have done more to create and preserve a chasm between England and Ireland than the exertion of all the American Fenians from New York to San Francisco. I think it is an unlucky thing that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland should have had the carrying out of these measures of coercion. That right hon. Member is slow to move, and when he went to Ireland he went as a Radical; and, as Member for a prominent Radical constituency, it was supposed that he would have carried some of his Radical traditions with him; but there were not wanting among the permanent officials in the Chief Secretary's office at Dublin Castle men who openly boasted that, great Radical as he was, three months would not elapse before he became the veriest Tory of the whole lot. But whatever may be his faults—and I will not lay undue stress upon them—certainly the change we have seen in the hands into which the carrying out of this coercive legislation has now fallen has not been a very happy one. As little wanting in the way of conciliation as is the right hon. Gentleman, certainly the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department has not been an improvement upon him. We have seen, on three previous occasions, that the right hon. Gentleman is not very tolerant of Irish Members; but he has certainly reserved for the carrying out of this Bill an exhibition of temper that the most resolute of its opponents never expected to have seen from him. With all the skill of a practised orator he has seized upon words which were spoken by my hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), and he has not been ashamed to twist those words, and to hold up my hon. Friend in this House as an assassin, and a person who wishes to incite to assassination. If you ever again have to carry a Coercion Bill for Ireland, I would at least recommend you to do it with some other instruments and some other Minister than the right hon. Gentleman. I would recommend you to apply to the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright), who throughout these proceedings has certainly not shown the same virulent animosity against Ireland that has distinguished one or two of the other Ministers. We heard a character given to Mr. John Devoy by the right hon. Gentleman. We were informed that that gentleman had sent a threatening cablegram to the right hon. Gentleman, threatening to stamp upon him. I was surprised when I heard of this intelligence, and I at once cabled from Paris to Mr. Devoy to know whether there was any truth in the statement, and I received back a message next day to say there was no truth in the information that he had sent any cablegram threatening the right hon. Gentleman, but had simply used the same words which the right hon. Gentleman had used in this House against the Fenian Society; and if the right hon. Gentleman is entitled to say in this House that he will stamp upon the Fenian Society like a nest of vipers, surely the Fenian Brotherhood are entitled to say in return that they will, if they can, stamp, not on the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, but upon his Government. But the right hon. Gentleman was not satisfied with perverting and misrepresenting the meaning of the cablegram which he received from Mr. Devoy, but he tried to fix an additional stigma on the character of that gentleman. He spoke of him as a convict. But this is not the first time for Irishmen who have sacrificed their all for what they believed to be the good of their country, and have cheerfully faced the horrible punishment of penal servitude for their opinions, to be stigmatized in this House as convicts. But look at the contrast between the right hon. Gentleman and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. That right hon. Gentleman, in speaking of another convict, once a Member of this House, the late Mr. John Martin, my Predecessor in the Representation of Meath, did not speak of him as a convict, although Mr. John Martin had been committed and sentenced to transportation for the same crime of treason-felony as Mr. Devoy. That Gentleman, coming up to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, asked to shake hands with him, saying that although he (Mr. John Martin) knew he was the enemy of his country, the right hon. Gentleman had never said an insulting thing about Ireland. You cannot say that of the Secretary of State for the Home Department. You cannot change the nature of the man; but if he would have imitated the high character of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, he might perhaps have facilitated matters, instead of having avowedly gone out of his way to insult and traduce absent men, and thus might have prevented the widening of the chasm between England and Ireland, which must inevitably result from every occasion such as this. But not satisfied with misrepresenting Mr. John Devoy, he very ingeniously connects together two passages in a speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary, in which my hon. Friend advises the people going to meetings to march thither, and a subsequent passage in which he advises every man who has a rifle to keep it in his house, and then suggests from it that my hon. Friend advises the Irish people to go out at night firing into people's houses. [Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT assented.] The right hon. Gentleman nods his head. He did, then, misrepresent my hon. Friend. I know it is very hard for an Irish Member to put himself right in this House; but I do not believe that hon. Gentlemen, even in this House, will believe that my hon. Friend would do such a thing. Now, Sir, I pass from the Secretary of State for the Home Department with this word. He throws doubt upon the courage of the Irish people; but I leave him with the remark that it is not always those who go about flinging charges of cowardice at others who are themselves the bravest. The Land League has been represented as akin to Fenianism. That I deny. I have the greatest respect for many Fenians. I have the greatest respect for men who announce themselves publicly to be Fenians—who believe in the separation of England from Ireland by physical force, and who do not look to Constitutional agitation. And although I do not believe that they are right, I say the Ministry of to-day are doing their best to prove that those men are right; they are doing their best to thrust men like myself, the hon. Member for Tipperary, and many others, outside the lines of the Constitution. We shall not oblige them. But though I have this respect for those men, I have never been able to see that a physical force policy was practicable or possible to adopt, either in Ireland or out of it, as regards the relations between the two countries; therefore, I have always avoided connection with it. There are organizations of the kind in America; but the bulk of our money has not come from them, simply because they have their own organizations to support. They may have sent us money, as individuals; but I deny that there is any connection, either open or secret, between the two organizations. We have been represented as advising the assassination of landlords; but I cannot help thinking that an unhappy passage in my hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary's speech has been seized on by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, and has been twisted to suit his purpose. I regret exceedingly that my hon. Friend should so have committed himself by those words, as he undoubtedly did. Knowing, as I do, his natural disposition, and how his mind shrinks and revolts from any recourse to physical force, he could not contemplate injuring the smallest creature, much less one of his fellow-creatures, without the greatest repugnance. I can well understand how, in the heat of the moment, he was led into the announcement which he made yesterday, that if he were an evicted tenant he would fire on his evictors, and defend his homestead. But I believe that my hon. Friend meant that he would do it openly. I believe he meant that he would not shoot from behind a hedge, but that he would fire at his evictors face to face, and shoot them if he could, and be shot in return if he could not. Although that is not a possible, a wise, or a judicious policy; although a recourse to such method should not be recommended; and although I myself could not, for a moment, tolerate such language, I should say there was nothing like cowardice in that. There was nothing mean or dishonourable in the announcement my hon. Friend made, nor did he invite anybody else to imitate his example. But if my hon. Friend had been Professor Blackie, if he had used the words which Professor Blackie used a short time ago in addressing a public meeting in Scotland, then, indeed, he would have incurred the imputation which the right hon. Gentleman endeavoured to attach to him. Professor Blackie, the other day, during a lecture delivered at the Literary Institute, Edinburgh, said that, at the time the Covenanters were reduced to desperation, Scotland was in the same state that Ireland is in now. There was no protection from the law, just as there is no protection from the law in Ireland; just as there is no protection from the law for the property of the Irish tenants, and nothing for the tenants themselves but starvation and death, which the Prime Minister last year said were threatened against 11,000 of the men, women, and children of Ireland. [Mr. GLADSTONE dissented.] If it was not a sentence of death by starvation, I do not see what else it was to be. Professor Blackie said—"We will declare war, partly open, and partly, it may be, by assassination." Then he referred to the case of shooting landlords in Ireland, and said he did not defend the war of Parnell, or those who shot landlords from behind a hedge; but he did say, in the same spirit as Sharp was pulled out of his carriage and murdered by the Covenanters, "Serve him right!" He firmly and completely sympathized with the murderers. It was the rude refuge of nature, and if the law was not the ministry of the God of Righteousness, but of the devil of lawlessness, he wanted to know why it should be called assassination because it took "a rude course to do what the law could not do." If my hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary went over to Ireland and said what Professor Blackie said, he would be laid by the heels by the Chief Secretary for Ireland under the recent Coercion Act, and locked up in prison. But my hon. Friend has not used any language of that kind; but the language he used has been deliberately twisted and perverted by the Secretary of State for the Home Department for the purpose of blinding and misleading hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway. We have been told that the state of society in Ireland is desperate, and that the Government must have this Bill to disarm the people. I tell you that you will not prevent a single murder by this Bill. You will scarcely deprive a single one of the mauvais sujets, and the village scoundrels, referred to by the Chief Secretary for Ireland in a former debate, of the power of shooting his landlord if he desires. You will not get at one of the Fenian guns, if there are any Fenian guns in Ireland. No; but you will get at the shot-guns of the farmers, who have bought a few of them. I may remark that the Government have not produced any statistics showing the number of such arms; but they were afraid, I suppose, that if they did so, the number was so small, that this House would scout their Bill. You will just take the arms from the farmers, who have bought old fowling-pieces for the purpose of shooting hares and rabbits under the Ground Game Bill. You will take from them the power of carrying out the law, which the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir William Harcourt) ostentatiously announced would be applied to both England and Scotland and Ireland. It will also enable every policeman, every magistrate in Ireland, to seize anybody, man, woman, or child, in the day-time or the night-time, on the high road or anywhere else, except in their own houses, where they can find them, and it will enable them to search their persons. There is a Liberal programme for you! We have heard that the Government quite believe in the Irish magistrates and the police, and they give them the power to search every man, woman, and child in Ireland if they please. But what are the facts with regard to the state of Ireland? So far from homicides or murders having increased, they are actually below the average. In 1880, the number of homicides and murders is actually below the average of the last 10 years. In 1845, there were 139 homicides and murders; in 1880, there were only 69. The average during the last 10 years, from 1870 to 1879, was 82, or 13 more than the number of homicides and murders for the last year. In 1845, there were 540 assaults; in 1880, only half that number. During last year the average was 287. The assaults with injury to life in 1880 were 245. The average during the last 10 years was 255—far above the number of last year. The offences of firing at the person in 1845 were 138; last year they were only 79. In the case of firing into dwellings—in 1845 there were 134, last year there were only 98, and so on. But there is a point which has been very much lost sight of during the debates on these questions. It is a point I had intended to bring before the House on the second reading of the Bill that has since become law; but, with the permission of the House, I shall venture to allude to it now. It is the proportion of evictions to crimes. The Prime Minister told us that crime dogged the steps of the land meetings, and he thought to create a great case against the Land League on that account. I tell the Prime Minister back, that crime dogs the footsteps of the evictors, and if you want to put a stop to crime, you must put a stop to eviction. You will not succeed by this Bill in protecting landlords who violate every feeling of justice and mercy. You will not prevent outraged tenants from shooting their landlords. The Bill will increase the number of murders and outrages in Ireland, and it will also increase, as unhappily we have already seen too evidently, the number of evictions. In the county of Antrim I find there were 13 evictions only, and only 15 crimes. In the County Cork, 222 evictions and 290 crimes, or rather more than one crime for every eviction. In Wicklow I find there were 33 evictions and 23 crimes. In Leitrim, 83 evictions and 102 crimes. I have got a list of all the Irish counties here, and shall be happy to place them at the disposal of any hon. Member who desires to see it. By these Returns I am able to show that in every case in every county in Ireland the crime is in direct proportion to the number of evictions. For instance, we have in Mayo 106 evictions and 343 crimes. We have in Tipperary 77 evictions and 106 crimes. Wherever the evictions are few, the crimes are few; and if it has been necessary to hold Land League meetings, it is because Land League meetings have been held where evictions have been most numerous. Wherever we heard that the landlords were trampling upon the tenants, there we decided to hold our meetings; and the crimes would have taken place, whether we held our meetings or not. Now, a great deal has been said about Land League Courts, with a view to support the contention that the ordinary law of the land has been over-ridden. Sir, I regret exceedingly—as I regret many incidents in this Land League struggle—I regret exceedingly the institution of these Land League Courts. They were instituted in certain counties—Clare, for instance—which were very little under the control of the Central Executive of the Land League in Dublin; but immediately we heard that their proceedings were objectionable to the Government—and it is very right that they should be objectionable to the Government, as they were to us, because many of their proceedings were farcical in the extreme—but directly our attention was called to the holding of these Courts, we issued directions that they should cease. But upon what ground do you say the ordinary law of the land has been over-ridden? It is only the ordinary law of the land so far as it is used for the maintenance of injustice. But the law of the land as regards ordinary purposes is supported better in Ireland, according to the admission of the Chief Secretary for Ireland himself, than it is in England and Scotland. The number of convictions in the aggregate for general offences is greater than in England or Scotland; and it is only where a tenant is unjustly evicted from his holding, it is only where an agrarian offence is committed in consequence of this unjust eviction, that the public opinion which I once called the unwritten law of the land—a phrase that has been made so much use of—it is only where this occurs that the public opinion of the neighbourhood comes to the rescue—and, undoubtedly, it does defeat the administration of the law. I admit that; and I say it is right that public opinion, legitimately expressed, not by violence, or by agrarian crime, should be entitled to defeat the ordinary law of the land under those circumstances, and that the Government should not be allowed, under cover, to come to the rescue of the landlords, and, by force and intimidation, attempt to put down the public opinion of the country. But would any man in his senses, except a Liberal Government driven to that course by the Party they have ousted from Office—would any man in his senses refuse to listen to such teaching? If there is injustice, it follows that the people will resist injustice. You cannot prevent them; and if you want to have your law obeyed, surely the proper way is to make that law just first. You have put the cart before the horse. You have entered upon a policy of repression and intimidation in order to secure obedience to law which the Prime Minister confessed last year compelled him to acknowledge that it inflicted injustice upon a suffering people. Instead of bringing forward your measures of conciliation, you have brought forward your measures of repression; and you may, perhaps, in the course of a few weeks, be up to your elbows in the blood of innocent persons in your attempt to uphold an infamous and unjust territorial system. Reference has been made to trades' unions, and we have been told that if the Land League was like the trades' unions, there would be no objection to the Land League; but, somehow or other, it appears that whenever political movements are started at first, they are always subject to the same kind of criticism which we have to meet now. They are always told that they are aiders and abettors of assassination. The Prime Minister made a bid to the trades' unions of England when he said they never supported assassination. We never said that they did; and we say also that the Land League never supported assassination. [Mr. GLADSTONE: Illegality.] Well, illegality. We do not say that trades' unions ever did support illegality; and we also say that the Land League never did support illegality. The only illegality that the Land League ever supported is in the advice given to tenants to break their yearly contracts. These contracts are not real contracts. Not one tenant in a hundred knows that he has entered into such a contract. They are a legal fiction, and they have been condemned by the Report of your own Royal Commission, which declared that freedom of contract does not exist in Ireland. But what has been said about trades' unions? Mr. William Overend, Mr. Thomas Irwin Barstow, and Mr. George Chance, the Assistant Commissioners reporting to the Royal Commission some years ago, said in reference to trades' unions— Rattening has always been done with the knowledge of the union, and very commonly by direction of the secretary. In Sheffield no less than 12 out of 60 trades' unions prompted or encouraged outrage. Ham-stringing animals, firing and injuring dwellings, injuries to machinery, &c., have frequently occurred. The complicity of the union, so far from being denied, has been admitted in public court, and £200 has been paid out of their funds to the perpetrators. That is not my statement—I do not believe it is true. I do not say it is true. I read it to you as the statement of Commissioners appointed for the purpose of inquiring into the matter. In the Report of the Royal Commissioners—and I have given you the names of the gentlemen who were their assistants—I presume they have made this statement after full and accurate inquiry, and on examination of witnesses on the spot, a thing that you have not done before you ventured upon blackening the character of the Irish National Land League. These are not statements hurriedly made in the course of debate without anything to support them but the ingenuity of right hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench. They are carefully and deliberately made, and notwithstanding that the Prime Minister tells us, as he is undoubtedly right in telling us, that trades' unions had no recourse to illegality. I am also entitled to say on my side, wait for 10 years, and we shall find the Prime Minister doing the Land League justice, and stating in his place in the House that the Land League never had recourse to illegality. Where would be the Land Question was it not for the Irish National Land League? If the members of it were now to be hunted like vermin out of their own country, where would the Land Question be? I had the honour of sitting in his House during the last Parliament, and I watched from time to time the late hon. and learned Member for the City of Limerick (Mr. Butt) bringing forward his Land Bill with all the skill and genius which so eminently distinguished him. I also watched the majority of the right hon. Gentlemen who now sit on that (the Treasury) Bench, and who are now about to bring forward a Bill of the very same cha- racter, go into the Lobbies against it. One right hon. Gentleman only of the whole line shakes his head—it is the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council (Mr. Mundella), and he certainly does form the exception—with one or two other very honourable exceptions. I wish to give him the full credit of the prescience and foresight which he exhibited on that occasion, which certainly should have entitled him to a higher post than the Office he holds. Now, Sir, what said Earl Granville about trades' unions, an English statesman who is alive and flourishing, and a Member of this present Liberal Government, who traduces the Land League? Lord Granville said, at the beginning of this Session— Take the case of 'Swing.' Swing destroyed an enormous amount of agricultural property. …. The question of the rent of farms was also involved, and it took this country four years to put down 'Swing' completely. Then there is another case, that of the Rebecca riots, which began in 1839, in consequence of an alleged grievance, though perfectly legal—that of levying tolls at turnpike gates—and the disturbances were renewed still more remarkably at the beginning of 1843. What happened then? There was destruction of property and a perfect defiance of the law, and it was impossible to obtain necessary evidence. One toll-keeper was murdered; and the jury were so intimidated that, against all the facts of the case, they returned a verdict of acquittal."—[3 Hansard, cclvii. 30.] That was to say, the jury returned a verdict contrary to common sense; the very thing juries are accused of in Ireland at the present moment. The noble Lord went on to say— This state of things, which extended itself to the questions of workhouses, justices' clerks' fees, tithes, and rent complained of as exorbitant, was put an end to after four years by a complete concession with regard to the original alleged grievance."—[Ibid.] What a prospect for the Government! The noble Lord continued— Take another case—the outrages at Sheffield, which might have been described in stronger language than that used by Sir William Smith and Chief Justice Bush in 1832, or than that which has just been used by three Judges in reference to Ireland. You had then every sort of iniquity. You had explosions; you had compounds thrown into houses with the intention of destroying houses, property, and life, of destroying the property of the workmen as well as the employers."—[Ibid.] We have not got so far as this yet in Ireland. In spite of the dark insinua- tions of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, at that time, according to the noble Earl— You could not get evidence; you could not trust your jury. The most atrocious cases were acquitted; and in other instances, juries—I suppose they were manufacturers—insisted, contrary to the direction of the Judges, in bringing in verdicts of guilty, and free pardons had to be given. The result was that the perpetrators of these outrages escaped, and the law was altered in favour of trades' unions."—[Ibid.] Here is one Minister in the House of Lords attributing crime and outrage to trades' unionism, while another Minister in the House of Commons—the distinguished Minister at the head of Her Majesty's Government—says trades' unionism has never been guilty of any such acts. O'Connell's agitation, Sir, was condemned in the same way. He was called the instigator to assassination, and all the other beautiful epithets that have been showered on us. It happened, unfortunately, that he was an old man. He was an old man, and so the Government, by imprisonment, soon broke him down. But I am happy to say that the men who are engaged in the present movement are young; and after this 18 months' suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act is over, we shall be in as good a position as we were before to resume our work, and to press it to an issue—that is, as we see it at present. Of course, I do not know what your intentions are with respect to the Land Bill. So it has always been, Mr. Speaker, that a political action in every country in its inception is denounced, and accused of horrible crimes by the classes against whom that agitation is directed. That is so everywhere. But it is far more easy in the case of Ireland to create a false impression of a respectable movement than it would be with a respectable movement in your own country. When hon. Gentlemen remember how their own legal trades' unions have been traduced at a time when public opinion could see what was going on; when they reflect how much more easy it is to traduce and vilify an agitation in Ireland; how very much more difficult it is for the public opinion of the Irish people to assert itself; how very much more difficult it is for us to bring the truth home to your minds, in the face of gagging Rules, the imposition of the clôture, and the other Continental devices which have been introduced in this House, you will think and pause a little before you take for granted everything that is told you with regard to the Irish National Land League and Irish agitators. But, at least, if you refuse to do so, I do not think that we—I do not think that the Irish people—will, in the long run, be the sufferers. If you think the Irish people will be the sufferers, you make a mistake; because it is important that you should maintain the link between the two countries. It is of importance to you to conciliate the feelings of the Irish people; it is of importance that your Government should not be known to history, and remembered in Ireland, as the Coercion Government; it is of importance that the Irish people should not bear your rule in mind as a rule of petty tyranny and police, a rule of magisterial oppression, as a rule of suspicion, and not of law. It is of importance, from your point of view, that this should be so. It is not from ours. The more you tyrannize—the more you trifle with the Irish people—the stronger will burn the spirit of nationality, the more they will free themselves from the yoke which renders such things possible. We may have our day—our short day—of persecution. I believe the public opinion of the people of England will, at some day or other, do justice to our motives, even if they do not approve of our course.

MR. MITCHELL HENRY

thought the speech of the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Parnell), on his return from Paris, or from where nobody exactly knew, showed that he was, in some degree, sensible of the ruin which he had brought upon his country. The hon. Member seemed to suppose that language was not to bear its ordinary meaning, but that when it had produced in the minds of those to whom it was addressed its legitimate results, if those results were inconvenient, the language itself was to be explained away in a non-natural sense, an idea insulting the common sense of all those who chose to think for themselves. The hon. Member had for many months past deluded the Irish people by leading them to believe that the English House of Commons had determined to enslave them, and to prevent any amelioration of their condition as regarded the Land Laws. He had now repudiated the notion which, on repeated occasions, he inculcated on thousands of peasants, that they were to seek for relief from the laws which kept them in thraldom by physical force. ["Never, never!"] The hon. Gentleman had commenced at Liverpool by speaking of the 100,000 swords which were to flash in the face of the people of this country; while the hon, Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), who was more candid and less careful, had repeatedly informed the Irish peasants that their duty was to march in military array and to purchase rifles and revolvers, to be used for purposes which he boldly pointed out last night. ["No, no!"] Could hon. Members, he would ask, justify the use of the language in which they taught the uneducated peasantry of Ireland, and reconcile themselves to repudiating in that House the natural meaning of their words? The hon. Member for the City of Cork, only the other day at Clara, told the Irish people that they were to commit one of the most hateful and spiteful acts that could enter into the mind of man, to lay the land which labour and the bounty of God had made fit for pasturage useless for the purpose for which nature and art had made it useful. What was the result of that teaching? When the hon. Member found that it would bring himself and others within the purview of the Criminal Law, he hastened to repudiate it. But the advice had been followed. There were two Questions upon the Paper that very day, but which had not been asked, with reference to peasants having taken the advice of the hon. Member, and ploughed up land to the extent of 40 ploughs. It was useless to expect that that advice, given openly to the peasants of Ireland, could be done away with by a letter in the newspapers, which many of them, probably, never saw. This should be a warning to the hon. Member, to think before he gave such hateful advice to men who, unfortunately, believed in his teaching. The hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) had talked of another and more successful Hartmann for Ireland than there had been in Russia; and one of the lieutenants of the Land League, Mr. Matthew Harris, had said that if the landlords were shot down like partridges or rabbits, he would not be one who would say "No." [Mr. PARNELL: He withdrew it afterwards.] Could the hon. Member himself withdraw his advice about ploughing up the land? He (Mr. Mitchell Henry) would ask those hon. embers who traduced him, and others who felt that they had a conscience to restrain, to remember that they had maintained in that House, in the face of the revulsion of feeling which had been produced in the minds of hon. Members by the language of those opposite, that there were real grievances of the Irish people which ought to be redressed. He rose to inform the House that the operations of the Land League and the advice given by its Leaders met with almost universal condemnation in Ireland, from North to South, East to West.

An hon. MEMBER

In Galway?

MR. MITCHELL HENRY

Yes, in Galway.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

Certainly not.

MR. MITCHELL HENRY

Yes, by every man who wished to advance the cause of law and order, and who advised the tenants to trust to Constitutional agitation to obtain the redress of their grievances. The Irish Bishops had condemned the Land League. Only the other day one of the most respected Bishops in Ireland, the Bishop of Sligo, issued a pastoral in which he told all those connected with the Land League, who had given immoral advice to the people, that they had pursued a course which was fraught with danger to both body and soul. As the House was well aware, there were numbers of tenants who wished to pay their rents, and who were able to pay them, but who were not allowed to do so, simply in consequence of the advice of hon. Members opposite, who, having succeeded by their machinations and pestilent agitation in reducing the country to its present condition, had the face—some of them had the face—to come to the House and repudiate, if not the very words which they used, yet the natural meaning of their own expressions. Although Parliament was most unwilling to have recourse to coercive measures, why was it, he would ask, that instead of such measures the reform of the Land Laws was not at that moment under discussion? [Mr. CALLAN: Because the Bill is not ready.] He (Mr. Mitchell Henry) believed that when Parliament adjourned it was well understood that not only the Liberal Party, but many Tory Members, were desirous that the Land Question should be settled on the basis of justice and equity. But the hon. Member for the City of Cork, and other hon. Members, had gone through Ireland with the deliberate purpose of preventing the too-confiding people from believing these promises. When the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), who, if an amiable, was undoubtedly a very dangerous man, told the House that his advice to the Irish people was to make use of revolvers and firearms, and suggested the purchase of arms for the purpose of defying the law, they found another hon. Member (Mr. Parnell) coming there to-day and telling them that his hon. Friend's words, which were not uttered in the heat of debate, were not what they intended to be. The hon. Member for Tipperary himself, however, shook his head and refused to accept the explanation. [Mr. DILLON: I never did anything of the kind.] The hon. Member, he repeated, refused to accept the excuses made for him. In conclusion, he must be allowed to state that although the unfortunate peasants in Ireland had been deluded, they were a people not prone to do ill, and he appealed to the House not to relax its generous efforts in their behalf. He appealed also to the Prime Minister to make the earliest use of the renewed strength which they all rejoiced to believe had been given to him by stating the intentions of the Government. If those were equal to the intentions expressed by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster at Birmingham, they would prove a panacea for the woes of Ireland, and would do away with the necessity for all Coercion Acts. They would, as he believed, convert the peasants into the firm defenders of Constitutional Government, and would give to them a shield which would always preserve them from the machinations of evil men.

MR. A. M. SULLIVAN

said, the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) had not, from his first sentence to his last, said one word on the merits or demerits of the Bill before the House. The lion. Member had, no doubt, reached the summit of his ambition in having, for the first time in his Parliamentary career, won the plaudits of the House generally, although not, unfortunately, those of his fellow-Representatives for Ireland. The hon. Member had taken advantage of the Bill, and had made a speech not to the Speaker in the Chair, or to that House, but against the real Representatives of Ireland, because he had in his pocket the declared wish of his constituents that he should resign his seat. Since this question arose, there had been several public meetings held in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, and at each of them a resolution had been passed, calling upon him to retire. [Mr. MITCHELL HENRY: I have never received a single requisition.] The hon. Member, who had such a tender conscience, could not find it in his heart and conscience to respond to those invitations; but he had just delivered a discursive speech which had been received with plaudits by those who were wont to walk out of the House when the hon. Member rose to speak. The hon. Member had treated the House to a horrifying story of expressions made use of by one of the traversers at the Dublin trials, to the effect that he would see landlords shot like rabbits without interfering; but although he was cognizant of the surrounding circumstances, and knew the inferences the House would draw from his references, he deliberately suppressed the material part of it—that, namely, which showed the words to have been used in a perfectly innocent manner. What was the truth of the matter?

MR. SPEAKER

requested the hon. Member to confine himself to the Question.

MR. A. M. SULLIVAN

submitted that a certain statement having been used as an argument in support of the Bill, he was entitled to show that that statement was false. If the traverser alluded to had really expressed the sentiments ascribed to him, it would be a powerful argument in favour of the Bill; but he (Mr. Sullivan) would give the explanation. The man in question was Matthew Harris, one of the traversers in the recent State trials at Dublin, and, as was admitted by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law), who had a finer sense of honour than the hon. Member for Galway possessed, the words were intended by him merely to refer to the fact that at the time of the dreadful misdeeds of the Ribbonmen, he had visited the haunts of those evil-doers to prevail upon them to alter their course. He had incurred great peril by these visits. The expression he had made use of was that he regretted the wasted nights he had spent, and said he "would have interfered no more if he saw the landlords shot down like rabbits." By that he meant that it was useless for him to risk his life by such actions, and he would leave the criminals to be dealt with by the authorities, instead of constituting himself a special policeman. Yet the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) knowing this, had misrepresented the expressions of the traverser before that House in the endeavour to shed discredit upon the Irish Party. He had intended that the words he had spoken the other night should be the last against this misguided policy of the Government; but he could not allow misrepresentations of the kind they had listened to to go unchallenged. There were those in Ireland who loved law and order, but who were opposed to coercion, in spite of the hon. Gentleman's assertion to the contrary. For instance, he had received a letter from one of the most respected of the Catholic Prelates of Ireland thanking him and his Colleagues for having opposed the Coercion Act. He would remind the Government that there were abundant precedents for Arms Bills in Ireland; but he challenged the records in Dublin Castle to show any instance where agrarian crime had been hindered by the want of a weapon wherewith to commit it. By stripping Ireland of its arms, while training the youth of England to the use of arms, they were showing an inclination to hold Ireland as a conqueror. What better test could there be of the contentment of the people over whom England ruled than that they should be allowed the liberty which was claimed in the Bill of Rights? He knew that the Bill would be eluded, and that it was powerless to prevent harm. He said, on the faith of letters in his own possession, and from many years' experience, that the one section of Irishmen who would be gratified by this legislation were the irreconcilables and conspirators who had mocked at the Irish Members, and derided them for attempting to keep the people within the lines of Constitutional methods. They had warned the Irish Members that the Government would at last show them only the bared sword and the iron hand of power. It had been the dream and the hope of the Irish Members that that Liberal Government would have pursued the right path in dealing with Ireland; but that hope was now dissipated. The Irish Members had now to face consequences far worse than anyone had ever predicted, for no one would have dared to prophecy that the ancient Forms of Parliament would have been broken and trampled under foot for the purpose of gagging the Irish Members who were struggling for the liberties of their country. Never since the days of De Montfort had a minority to struggle with an odds so terrible. He had also to complain that the coercion debate, in any case likely to inflame feeling in his country, had been made additionally hateful by the tone of right hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench. Knowing that there were a few of his (Mr. Sullivan's) Colleagues who were of peculiar views and temper and feeling, they had angled for the intemperate expressions of his Friends, and had played for the passions of some impulsive young Irishmen on those Benches, in order that the expressions of some individual sitting there might be turned to the Ministerial account, and hurled at men whose pain at hearing such language was far more sincere than the simulated feeling of the Treasury Bench. They had succeeded in their purpose, and some of the Irish Members stood in a cruel position. They were denounced in the House by Ministers and in their own country by infuriated men who had been lashed into despair by English misgovernment. But there were men there who objected, and naturally, to being held up as the aiders and abettors of the hateful doctrines of the assassin and the midnight marauder. After the passage of that Bill, he did not see how he and his Friends could go to their countrymen and ask them to have faith any longer in the Government. There was a Land Bill coming; but they dared not discuss it. They only knew of it that it was promised. They could only allude to it incidentally; but the Prime Minister told them it would be introduced when there was an hour on which it could be done in the midst of the crowd of legislation. The night before there was an hour to spare; but it was not a question of urgency that was brought on, while in 10 sentences the Prime Minister could have told his message which was to bring peace and succour to the Irish people. But no, the people must be first whipped, and Ireland had to take her punishment, and to wait as long as the Prime Minister pleased for his beneficent Land Bill. He was sure that the Bill before the House would put an engine of oppression in the hands of the landlords and the police, from which violence and bloodshed might reasonably be expected. He only trusted that the powers of search for arms would be very rarely used. Intercommunication with America and Ireland had had an influence on the peasants of Ireland which he begged them to remember; and he believed any attempt to use the powers of personal search and stoppage on the highway which the Bill gave would lead to scenes which the Government might use as a justification of the measure, but which every Irishman who loved his country would deplore, seeing that it wrecked all hope for the improvement and regeneration of his country. He admitted that the Government had some provocation. The outrages which did happen were all too many for him. He heartily deplored them; but he denied that they offered warrant of justification for stripping his countrymen of every protection of Constitutional liberty. He was sorry to see the Prime Minister should feel it necessary to be in his place after circumstances which none regretted more than himself and his combatant Colleagues, giving his countenance to a Bill which discredited his noble impulses, his generous professions, and which was out of accord and harmony with a life which was known to all as signalized by its love of liberty all over the world. He could only protest once more, and say with confidence that when the Prime Minister came to survey his life, with all its vicissitudes and crowning honours, amongst the passages he would most keenly regret would be the present chapter of his experience in regard to Ireland.

SIR JOSEPH M'KENNA

said, he would recall to the recollection of hon. Members the remark of the late Mr. Butt, that the Irish Members were doing good service to their country and to the Government in making known the amount of disaffection in Ireland, and now he Sir Joseph M'Kenna) would say that, notwithstanding the existence of a cer- tain amount of disaffection, which, he supposed, could not be denied, the measures taken by the Government might well have been less stringent, and might have been accompanied by, at least, a sketch of the intended Land Bill. In his opinion, it was a monstrous error on the part of the Government to introduce Coercion Bills before having formulated and explained to that House and the country their views upon the Land Question. If the Government had done that, there would have been no need of anything more than some police regulations. He contended that the suspension of the liberties of the people for 18 months and the passing of that Bill for five years were indefensible. At the present time, however, arguments would be of no avail, and he would, therefore, content himself with voting against the Bill at every stage; not on account of any sympathy with the violent speakers of the Land League, but simply because it went too far in the direction of severity, and, in his opinion, was to be continued in force for too long a time. He should attempt to mitigate the operation of some of the clauses when they got into Committee.

THE O'DONOGHUE

said, it was easy for the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) to say that the Irish people were deluded; but it was absurd for the hon. Member to take upon himself to say that he was a better judge of what the interests of Ireland were than the Irish people themselves. The best answer that could be made to the arguments of the hon. Member was to be found in the fact that, at the present time, he could not offer himself in any part of Ireland for election with any chance of success. It was also news to learn from the hon. Gentleman that the Irish Hierarchy were opposed to the Land League. To the best of his (the O'Donoghue's) belief, almost without exception the Catholic Hierarchy were in favour of the objects of the Land League, as enumerated by the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). The Secretary of State for the Home Department had, in his heavy way, and in laboured rhodomontade, given the country to understand that it was in danger of universal slaughter and general combustion; but that he was at his post, making heroic efforts to save it.

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

THE O'DONOGHUE

, resuming, said, the aim of the right hon. Gentleman, no doubt, was, at any cost, and at any sacrifice of those principles which English statesmen used to hold dear, to poison the mind of the public with charges against the Irish Members. Parliamentary usage would not permit him to stigmatize the statements of the right hon. Gentleman as they deserved, and he could not go beyond saying that they were absolutely without foundation. Some of the Irish Members seemed to regret that the right hon. Gentleman had charge of the Bill; but the fact was one to rejoice over. He (the O'Donoghue) preferred the right hon. Gentleman to any other Minister in this matter. The right hon. Gentleman was the faithful exponent of the majority of the House, especially of the Whigs, in their views as to Ireland. He preferred the gross and palpable exaggeration of the right hon. Gentleman, his coarse clap-trap, his defiant way of waving his pockethand-kerchief, to the ambiguous phrases of the Prime Minister, the mixture of spite and maudlin sympathy of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, or the incoherent eloquence of the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington). The noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill) spoke of the valiant Home Secretary as trampling on the Irish Members. The Irish Members were not aware that they had been subjected to any feat of the kind. The truth was that when the Irish Members were flagging, the venomous attacks of the right hon. Gentleman roused them, and they returned to the charge with renewed vigour. But the right hon. Gentleman flattered the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) at the expense of the hon. Member for the City of Cork. He could not see what was to be gained by indulgence in that transparent "gammon." No one could be so silly as to suppose that either of his hon. Friends was in the least influenced by the opinion entertained of him by the Secretary of State for the Home Department or any of his Colleagues. The Irish people looked on the performance of the right hon. Gentleman in this particular with the most complete ridicule. The right hon. Gentleman had trailed his coat before the Conservative Opposition; but, seeing the feeling he aroused, he at once changed his tone to one of the most abject obsequiousness. The noble Lord the Member for Woodstock deprecated the conduct of the Secretary of State for the Home Department in triumphing over the Irish Members. He was not aware of the grounds the right hon. Gentleman had for exultation. The hon. Member for the City of Cork had done all that it was possible to do with his present following. They never thought they could thwart and defeat the schemes of the Government, and nothing had happened that they did not anticipate. He believed that the tyrannical course the Government had taken in pushing through the coercion measure would have the effect of bringing public opinion to bear upon the questions; and the Irish people would be willing to do and to dare more than they had ever done or dared before. Like all latter-day coercionists, the right hon. Gentleman based his case upon the Charges of the Judges. It was very well known—he (the O'Donoghue) predicted it long ago—that the Judges were preparing the way for coercion. With regard to those delivered some months ago at Assizes in the South and West of Ireland by Mr. Justice Fitzgerald and Mr. Baron Dowse, they clearly established the fact that some, at least, of the Irish Judges were in collusion with the Government to lay the necessary basis for the introduction of the Coercion and Arms Bills. But the Government, notwithstanding that judicial aid, had not been able to show any real or substantial foundation for their proposal and in part completed legislation. The operation of the Arms Bill, therefore, would prove purely vexatious. To justify the measure it should be shown that there was a large quantity of arms in Ireland; and also that there was a large importation going on; but the Government had not shown those things; and, on the other hand, it appeared that an insignificant number of outrages had been committed by means of firearms. It was impossible to connect threatening letters with the possession of arms, and it had been shown that in only three instances out of 1,500 had threatening letters been followed by a resort to firearms. Of the Charges of the Judges, that of Mr. Justice Fitzgerald was the only one in which it was stated directly that there were large quantities of arms in the possession of the people. He (the O'Donoghue) thought the learned Judge was led into exaggeration from his excessive zeal to furnish the Government with a groundwork for their coercive policy. He was far from attributing to the learned Judge any wilful mis-statement; but he thought it likely that he was misled by documents set before him, and that his imagination supplied any deficiencies there were in the Returns. The learned Judge stated that every farmer's son, and every farmer's boy, in the Province of Munster, possessed either a rifle or a revolver. Speaking with an intimate knowledge of the county of Kerry, he (the O'Donoghue) ventured to say that those words did not apply to that county, and he believed their inapplicability to the other counties in Munster could be proved also. The House ought to see that this Bill would be perfectly useless. Those who had arms would conceal them where they would not be found by the emissaries of the Government. From the passing of the Arms Act of 1843, it appeared that there were many then, as now, who believed that arms might be held by the people without indicating any intention to rebel. The passing of the Act was opposed by Mr. Hume, who said that it was the privilege of freemen to carry arms, and that it was degrading to freemen to be deprived of them; by Mr. Shiel who said that Englishmen would not endure an Arms Act; and by Lord Brougham, who said that such an Act was repugnant and hostile to the principles of British liberty, and that he hoped the people would sweep away the Government by whom such a sacrilege on the Constitution was perpetrated. He was a member of the Land League, and he thoroughly approved of its policy; and if the Secretary of State for the Home Department attempted to tell him that, because he did belong to the Land League and agreed in its policy, he favoured assassination, he would be compelled to tell the right hon. Gentleman that he was deliberately stating what was false. The House should not lose sight of what was passing in Ireland. The landlords of Ireland were endeavouring to rob the Irish people by ex- torting rack-rents. Her Majesty's Government brought out police and military, and they said to the farmer—"If you don't give the landlords what they want, we will shoot you." He did not hesitate to say that the Government had dealt in that way with an unarmed people, and were threatening them with murder. The Irish people had used their Constitutional rights in vain, because the House had trampled upon those rights; and if the Irish people had arms, and used them in defence of their homes, the man who charged them with murder for so doing would be held by the whole civilized world to have lied. The Irish people had been advised to resort to the means sanctioned by God, and those means only; and they had been advised to struggle on and trust in God and the justice of their cause for the overthrow of a tyranny which he had no hesitation in saying it would be impious to consider as destined long to endure.

MR. BIGGAR

said, with reference to the speech of the hon. Member for Galway County (Mr. Mitchell Henry)—he could not call him his hon. Friend after to-night—he did not think the hon. Member was capable of acting in the manner he did. From former experience he thought the hon. Gentleman had some wish to support the cause of the Irish people; but after the exhibition they had that evening, he came to the conclusion that the hon. Member had made up his mind to retire from Irish politics, for undoubtedly he could never think of representing an Irish constituency again. He hoped, in future, the hon. Gentleman would abstain from attempting to speak on behalf of the people of Ireland, for their opinion was diametrically opposed to that of the hon. Member. He denied the hon. Member's first charge that the country had been ruined by the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell); and with regard to the second it was notorious that the intention of the Government was to enslave the Irish people, for they had been busily engaged in that operation for the last six weeks; in fact, they had been trying to do little else ever since the Session began. He must deny that the Land League had counselled physical violence; and as an illustration of the falsehood of that charge, he would say the meetings of the Land League had been always presided over by Roman Catholic priests, who would not tolerate any such counsels if they were given. For his own part, notwithstanding the hon. Gentleman and the accusations which had been made, he could state with perfect truth that he had never uttered a single word at any of the many meetings which he had attended in Ireland recommending a resort to acts of violence. With reference to the speech of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, in reply to that of the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), he (Mr. Biggar) had listened to that speech, and he understood the hon. Gentleman's meaning to be that though he advised the Irish people to procure rifles, he did not advise them to use them, for he would advise nothing which was beyond his own power to do. As to the allegations of the right hon. Gentleman that the Land League was allied with the Fenians, he was aware that the great proportion of the members of the Land League had no more to do with Fenianism than the right hon. Gentleman himself. Whether the Fenians had anything to do with the Land League or not he was not aware, for they gave him no information on the subject. The hon. Member for the County of Galway, in the course of his speech, referred to the opinion of the clergy, and urged that it was in opposition to the views of the Irish Party; but he could assure the House that the very large proportion of the Bishops and also the clergy in Ireland were in favour of the Land League. He had himself received a complimentary letter upon the subject from one of the Bishops, praising the efforts which had recently been made in connection with the Coercion Act which has just been passed. If the Bishops and clergy held such an opinion of those with whom they lived, any statement in contradiction of it was not entitled to any very great weight. An unfair construction had been placed upon the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary, inasmuch as throughout he expressed himself in opposition to civil war. ["Oh, oh!"] His hon. Friend said distinctly he was sorry he was unable to recommend it, and surely that was a very different thing to telling the people to adopt it. The Secretary of State for the Home Department, in his speech, had attempted to produce prejudices against the Irish people, but which would not bear the light of a clear and calm judgment. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the liberty of England; but the fact was that the liberty of England was the worst in the whole civilized world. The people of England talked a great deal about it, but knew very little of it in reality. There was liberty of speech and freedom of action as long as people did not become troublesome; but as soon as their conduct was annoying, a Coercion Bill was brought in to imprison them. The mode of speech adopted by the right hon. Gentleman should not have been used by a Minister of the Crown, who should exercise somewhat of a judicial mind, without being influenced by the prejudices of persons outside. Instead of such a result, however, the House had been compelled to listen to cases of exaggeration and heated contentions. It had been said that the Bill was not levelled at the liberty of the Irish people; but unless that was so, he could not see what it was levelled at. It was wrong to interfere with the right of any farmer to shoot sparrows and rooks. He had never shot himself, and never expected to do so; if he attempted it, he was afraid he would shoot himself. The Irish farmers, therefore, had a right to object to the Bill; and, in fact, the measure would have the effect of annoying persons who were perfectly innocent of offences without touching persons who should be controlled by it. The hon. Member proceeded to quote from the Blue Book, at considerable length, the particulars of various outrages which had occurred in the county of Cavan.

MR. SPEAKER

said, the hon. Member was treating the subject in a most tedious manner. In fact, he was almost trifling with the House. The hon. Member must address himself to the Question before the House.

MR. BIGGAR

said, he would do so. The charge in one case in the county of Cavan was that a shot was fired into a House, but it did not appear that any injury was done. Indeed, all the cases reported from the county of Cavan seemed to be of a very slight and trivial character.

MR. O'SHAUGHNESSY

said, there was little to add to the speech of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). He (Mr. O'Shaughnessy) supposed there must be some reason for the course now taken, and that the Bill was not introduced because it was necessary for the preservation of the peace in Ireland, but merely because it was needed to conciliate the support of the Conservative Party, or because the promised Land Bill was not ready. He should be glad to see a Bill passed which would restrict the use of firearms all over the Three Kingdoms; but he objected to that penal legislation, applicable only to one portion of the United Kingdom. Although the Government had not formally abandoned their intention of bringing in the Bill, the language of the Chief Secretary for Ireland on the first Coercion Bill pointed to its postponement, at least for the present, to the Land Bill, and that showed that the Ministry had no well-defined belief in its necessity. It was no settled conviction long entertained that led the Secretary of State for the Home Department to adopt the strong language he used. It was plain that Ministers were too ready to inflict penal legislation on Ireland without regard to its actual necessity. What was most to be regretted, apart from the injustice of the Bill, was that it postponed remedial legislation. The country could not afford to wait much longer for Land Reform. Evictions were threatened in large numbers, trade was reduced to a standstill, and discontent was growing more general and deep-seated every day. But the people would be firm and patient. Their cause was so just, the sympathies of the bulk of English people and the Continental nations were so strong in their favour, that they must be near the prospect of some redress. Words had been spoken by the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) which were not meant as a deliberate advice to the people of Ireland; but as the hon. Gentleman, through his honesty, enjoyed, in a very high degree, the confidence of the country, what he had said would be carefully weighed by them. He (Mr. O'Shaughnessy) was certain the hon. Member would never have used such words if he had not been irritated and exasperated by the harsh and injudicious language of the right hon. Gentleman. He was sure that if the hon. Member found himself in such a position as he supposed under the temptation to shed blood he would not yield to it. He trusted sincerely that when Irishmen road those words, they would remember the good advice which the hon. Member had given to them on other occasions, when he was not exasperated by cruel language such as had been used against him. The hon. Member for Tipperary had often during the agitation protested against the shedding of human blood. He had been listened to with respect, and he (Mr. O'Shaughnessy) believed his advice had prevented much crime. He trusted Irishmen would continue to follow the advice the Member for Tipperary had given them at many public meetings, and abstain from all violence and bloodshed. It was perfectly useless to do more than to protest against such coercive legislation, and he only rose for the purpose of entering his protest against the Bill.

MR. CALLAN

said, he did not regret the language used by the Secretary of State for the Home Department in introducing the Bill, because that master of quips and jibes had exposed the policy of the Government in all its naked deformity.

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

MR. CALLAN

, resuming, said, he was sorry the right hon. Gentleman had seen fit to support the Bill in language of such acrimony and exasperation towards Ireland. They were told by the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) that the Bill had been brought about by the Irish Members. He (Mr. Callan) did not think the House attached much value to the remarks of the hon. Member, who, from Manchester to Woodstock and thence to Galway, had boxed the political compass, and deserted all in turn. It was not surprising that the hon. Member had now proved true to his character by deserting the Irish Members. As to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, he seemed to have the instinct of domination when Irish interests were at stake. He (Mr. Callan) could not conceive a Bill more in keeping with the saturnine character of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Chief Legal Adviser of the Government (Mr. Law); and he perfectly agreed with those speakers who had endeavoured to show that the Bill was far more stringent than the Peace Preservation Act of 1875. Under that Act a person who might be sum- marily convicted was entitled to appeal. That power was not given under the Bill. He was not surprised that Conservative Members had supported the Bill, for it would serve as a sort of Game Preservation Act, and would save them keepers. Further than that, there was a clause to the effect that the person appointed to grant licences to have and to carry arms should be bound to grant a licence to any occupier of one or more agricultural holdings who produced a certificate from two justices of the peace. The inference to be drawn from the omission of that clause from the Bill was that the Government would not give power to the local magistrates to make such recommendation, and that everything was to be left to the stipendiary, non-resident Government magistrates. At that time the county in which he (Mr. Callan) resided was proclaimed, and, at the same period, he belonged to a Volunteer corps in England. He believed he was a member of the "Devil's Own."

MR. SPEAKER

I am at a loss to see the connection of the hon. Member's observations with the Question before the House.

MR. CALLAN

said, he had intended to show that he, at the time of which he was speaking, attended when about 100 of these applications were made. He found that they were heard privately in the magistrate's room, and not in open Court, and every application made by a Roman Catholic was refused. He (Mr. Callan) supposed that he should not be described even by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland as a "dissolute ruffian." He made an application himself, and he was asked "Who recommends you?" He replied that he required no recommendation, because he was allowed to carry arms in England as a Volunteer, and he held that it would have been a humiliation to have asked for one. He was endeavouring to show the injury which would be inflicted upon the well-to-do farmers in Ireland by the carrying of the Bill. It was a much more stringent Act than that of 1875, and he thought some good reason ought to be shown for departing from the precedent of that time. He should also have some assurance that crime prevailed to more than ordinary extent before an Act of such a character was passed. He hoped that the Bill would be discussed in Committee at such length as to greatly improve it; and that course would have the advantage of giving the Prime Minister every opportunity to consider his Land Bill, the details of which were at present somewhat shadowy.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 144; Noes 37: Majority 107.—(Div. List, No. 108.)

Main Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 145; Noes 34: Majority 111.—(Div. List, No. 109.)

Bill read a second time, and committed for Monday next.

MR. B. T. WILLIAMS

informed the Speaker that he had by mistake got into the wrong Lobby on the last division.