§ MR. DE VEREsaid, he rose to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland to state the intentions of the Government in relation to the Incumbered Estates Court, and especially whether it is intended to make permanent the system for sale of incumbered estates, and to extend the benefit of the system to unincumbered estates. He thought no Irish gentleman who had witnessed the 438 operation of this Act could have any doubt as to the benefits which the country had derived from it, or could doubt that it was unjust and unfair to those who wished to sell unincumbered estates that they should find their market spoilt by the existing system for the sale of incumbered estates.
LORD NAASIn reply to the question of the hon. Member for Limerick, I can only repeat the answer which I gave the other night to another hon. Member—that the question, which is a most important one, is under the consideration of the Government. Either I or my right hon. Friend the Attorney General for Ireland will be prepared, at the earliest possible opportunity after Easter, to say what are the intentions of the Government with respect to the Incumbered Estates Court. As I said the other night, we propose, if possible, to bring in a permanent measure during the present Session; but if we find that we cannot do this, it is our intention to introduce a Bill to continue the court for a year.
§ MR. J. D. FITZGERALD, though not at all desirous to press the Government for any premature decision on the subject of the Incumbered Estates Court, could not help saying that the answer given by the noble Lord was not perfectly satisfactory. The question was one of absorbing interest in Ireland. The powers of the Court expired in July next, and it was subject to another casualty, for if this Session of Parliament should terminate in the interval, the Court would fall to the ground. Now, the institution was one from which Ireland had derived advantages scarcely to be overestimated; and the question put by his hon. Friend, (Mr. De Vere) did not in any way press the Government to state the details of any measure, but only to inform the House what the principle of their policy was to be—namely, whether the system was to be perpetuated and extended so as to include unincumbered estates. In reply the noble Lord simply said, that some time after Easter the Government would state the course they intended to pursue. Now, the subject was one which had occupied the attention of the House year after year, which had been fully canvassed and discussed, and he did not think it was unreasonable even now to ask the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Walpole) to state what the policy of the Government was, if they had resolved on any. The anxiety felt on this question in Ireland was extreme. Apprehensions were enter- 439 tained lest by some casualty this valuable institution should be allowed to perish; and the effect of the communications which reached him almost daily on the subject was, that a continuance Bill would not, under the circumstances, be deemed satisfactory. The view of the late Government was, that the two recommendations of the Committee of 1856, embodied in the first two Resolutions, should be carried out— namely, that the system should be perpetuated and its benefits extended, so that proprietors of unincumbered estates should be able to go into the market and have the advantage of offering to purchasers a statutable title. Had the late Ministry remained in office, it would probably have been his duty to lay on the table of the House a measure to this effect. Great anxiety was felt as to the intentions of the Government on this subject, and not unnaturally, in consequence of the avowed opinions of the present Lord Chancellor and the Attorney General for Ireland, who had both been steady opponents of the Incumbered Estates Court. The former right hon. Gentleman had declared that the system of giving Parliamentary titles was monstrous, unrighteous, and unjust, and that the measure would be ruinous to the Irish landed interest and fatal to the prosperity of the country; and in 1849 he did what he could to prevent the measure from becoming law, and he had since consistently opposed it. He might say the same for the present Attorney General for Ireland, who opposed in Committee two propositions for making the Court permanent and extending its action to unincumbered estates. Under such circumstances —these having been the opinions of the present Irish law officers—the country were doubly anxious to know, what would be the course taken by the Government, He did not seek to ascertain from the Government, so soon after their accession to office, in what shape they proposed to carry out their views in reference to the continuance of the Incumbered Estates Court; but he trusted he should receive from them some more satisfactory statement than that which he had just heard, as to whether it was their intention or not to perpetuate a system from which Ireland had derived so much advantage.
§ MR. VANCEthought the hon. and learned Gentleman might have been satisfied with the answer which had been given by the noble Lord to the question which had 440 been put to him. The hon. and learned Gentleman was aware of the very short time Ministers had occupied their present seats in that House, and must also know that the Attorney General for Ireland—whose opinion on the subject it was necessary to take —had, for the last week or ten days, been engaged in the performance of his professional duties in the south of Ireland, prosecuting certain criminals for very serious offences. The hon. and learned Gentleman was exceedingly anxious to perpetuate the Incumbered Estates Court, and so was he (Mr. Vance); but it would be in the recollection of the House that the hon. and learned Gentleman had himself, not long ago, introduced a Bill to abolish that Court, and transfer its jurisdiction to the Court of Chancery. The hon. and learned Gentleman had also expressed a great desire that unincumbered properties in Ireland should be sold with an indefeasible title, the same as incumbered; but although he had been Attorney General for Ireland for several years, and had promised a measure of the kind, he had never introduced it. Irish Members had long felt anxious respecting this subject, and it certainly was a serious grievance that, whilst properties could be transferred and money borrowed with the utmost ease through the Incumbered Estates Court, gentlemen who had held estates from time immemorial experienced the greatest difficulty in doing either, in consequence of the competition which prevailed. He would merely further observe, that he thought it was going beyond the usual licence of opposition, when a Government had only just taken their places, to ask for the details of a measure of this description, which could not possibly be arranged until the law officers of the Crown had had an opportunity afforded them of meeting and consulting with their colleagues in the Government.
§ MR. WALPOLEsaid, it was rather unusual, and certainly not very convenient, on the Motion for the adjournment of the House, to raise questions with regard to the particular nature and character of Bills which Government might or might not introduce, and as to what was the course they intended to take on those Bills, before the Government had had an opportunity of stating their views respecting them, and laying them upon the table of the House. With reference to the question which had been put by the hon. Gentleman opposite, he should have thought that, after it had 441 been answered by his noble Friend, it was unnecessary to carry the discussion further. He might, however, in reply to the observations of the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposite, be permitted to state that the Act of Parliament under the operation of which the Incumbered Estates Court now existed continued the existence of that court not only to the month of July next, hut till the end of the next ensuing Session of Parliament. But even if that were not the case, the hon. and learned Gentleman must be perfectly aware, both from the statement of his noble Friend (Lord Naas) that evening, as well as from what had passed upon a former occasion, that the Government had no intention whatever to allow the present Act to expire; but they did not feel themselves to be in a position, in the absence of the Attorney General, to lay before the House the exact nature of the measure in reference to the Incumbered Estates Court which they would be prepared to introduce. With regard to this Commission he wished the hon. and learned Gentleman to recollect that in 1856 there had been a great controversy on the subject; and that then the hon. and learned Gentleman made a proposition with reference to it totally different from that which he that evening appeared to advocate, inasmuch as he had sought to hand over its jurisdiction to several Vice Chancellors—a scheme against which the House of Commons had completely set its face. A Committee, indeed, had reported against that portion of the measure which the hon. and learned Gentleman had submitted to their notice, and had recommended the adoption of certain propositions entirely distinct from it in principle. The hon. and learned Gentleman had gone on to state that the present Lord Chancellor of Ireland had been the steady opponent of the Incumbered Estates Court Act, and had alluded in proof of that charge to the original introduction of a Bill upon the subject; leaving altogether out of consideration the circumstance that his (Mr. Walpole's) right hon. and learned Friend had placed his name upon the back of a Bill which had been introduced by the present Attorney General for Ireland, and the object of which was to establish a permanent system of Parliamentary titles to land. It was, under these circumstances, scarcely necessary, he trusted, to offer the House any further assurance that there was no danger that the system which had 442 been set on foot by the Incumbered Estates Court Bill would, under the auspices of Her Majesty's present advisers, be abolished, or that the Government would be found unwilling to extend the principle of granting a Parliamentary title to property which happened to be unincumbered. For his own part, he might observe that, having been a member of the Commission which had been appointed to investigate that important question in connection with property in England, and having subscribed his name to a Report recommending the extension of the principle of statutable title to England, he should he as anxious—perhaps more so—as any hon. Member in that House, if such a measure could be carried into effect, either in the sister country or in this, to advocate its introduction.
MR. ELLICEquite concurred with the right hon. Gentleman opposite in thinking such discussions as that in which they were engaged extremely inconvenient. He might nevertheless be allowed to remark that he, as a member of the Commission of 1856, had felt it to be his duty to dissent from the views of his right hon. and learned Friend below him (Mr. FitzGerald), who desired to abolish the Incumbered Estates Court altogether, and, in conjunction with his right hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Sir James Graham), to object to the extension of the system of statutable title to unincumbered estates in Ireland, upon the ground that in taking that course they would be likely to interfere with the arrangements of another Commission which was engaged in dealing with that important question in relation to property in this as well as in the sister country.
§ MR. J. D. FITZGERALDexplained that the Bill of 1856 was designed to carry out the recommendation of a Commission of which the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, the Master of the Rolls, the Solicitor General, himself, and others were members, to perpetuate the system of the Incumbered Estates Court, but to annex it to the Court of Chancery.
§ MR. SLANEYexpressed his gratification at finding that it, was in contemplation to extend to England the system of granting Parliamentary titles to property.