§ LORD ELCHOsaid, he would beg to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Whether it is true that by the 59th section of the Act 23 & 24 Vic. c. 154, commonly called Mr. Card well's Act, tenants, in all ejectments in Ireland, are in the enjoyment of a jurisdiction in equity in the Quarter Sessions Courts, which, in such cases, deal with landlords in strict law only, and not in equity; and, whether tenants in England or Scotland are in this respect, at the present time, as favourably placed as the Irish occupier?
§ MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUEsaid, that in answering his noble Friend, he must go a little beyond his Question, which referred only to a single section of the Act (23 & 24 Vict.), otherwise the inference the House would draw from the Question and the answer to it would be totally inaccurate. It was true that the section of the Act to which the noble Lord alluded enabled, not all tenants ejected, but tenants ejected in Ireland by the County Courts, to plead an equitable defence, and so to be protected from the enormous expense of a suit in the Superior Courts; but it was also true that the same Act conferred most important and special powers on the landlord, because by another section the Irish landlord was enabled to bring an ejectment for non-payment of rent on equitable grounds, from which he would be debarred in this country. And, what was much more important, an Irish landlord, under the same Act, was able to eject a tenant from year to year for non-payment of rent without notice to quit or power of re-entry—powers totally unknown to the landlords in this country.