CLASS II.—SALARIES AND EXPENSES OF PUBLIC DEPARTMENTS.

HC Deb 31 May 1880 vol 252 cc789-848

(1.) £5,364, to complete the sum for the Lord Lieutenant's Household, Ireland.

MR. ARTHUR O'CONNOR

said, that according to the instructions issued by the Treasury, where any officer in any Public Department was receiving additional remuneration beyond his salary in such Department, then his double salary was to appear in the Estimates of both Departments. In the Household of the Lord Lieutenant there were 16 officers, and only one of these appeared on the Estimates as receiving additional remuneration from some other source. He believed, however, that it was the case that more than half of these officers were in receipt of remuneration from the Public Votes under other Estimates. He wished to ask the noble Lord the Secretary to the Treasury, why the rule laid down in the Treasury Circular had been departed from in the present instance?

LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH

said, that he was not aware of any case where what the hon. Member mentioned took place; but he would make inquiries upon the subject.

MR. COURTNEY

said, he should like to know why the Ulster King of Arms received £500 per annum from the Irish Record Office Vote as Keeper of State Papers, in addition to his other emoluments.

LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH

said, he believed the salaries had been fixed a long time since, and could not be altered during the lifetime of the present holder of the office.

Vote agreed to.

(2.) £28,778, to complete the sum for the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Offices.

MR. PARNELL

said, that as the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant was also, he believed, in virtue of his Office, the President of the Local Government Board in Ireland, and in that capacity was charged with the duty of administering the provisions of the Relief Act, which was passed in the last Session of the late Parliament, he thought that perhaps it would be convenient, and it certainly would serve to allay some considerable anxiety in Ireland, if they were to take that opportunity of ascertaining from the right hon. Gentleman, more fully than they had yet been able to do, what precise steps he was taking in view of a promise contained in the Queen's Speech, and also in view of the Circular he had issued. It was probable that a very large strain would be thrown upon the Department of the Local Government Board owing to the charitable relief in Ireland being likely soon to come to an end. He should also like to remind the Committee of the measures which had been taken up to the present time by Parliament in order to meet the great distress which now existed in Ireland—measures which, in his opinion, had proved themselves altogether inadequate to the work in hand. In the last Session of Parliament there were two Acts passed for this purpose; one the Seeds Act, a very useful Act—the effect of which would not be seen until after the harvest; and the other, the Relief of Distress (Ireland) Act, containing, amongst others, the following provisions:—It gave power to the Guardians in the scheduled Unions to grant out-door relief in food and fuel: but up to the present time that provision had not been taken advantage of. Secondly, Boards of Guardians who had elected to borrow sums of money necessary for relief from the Commissioners of Public Works were given authority to borrow them at 3– per cent interest. That provision of the Act had not been much used. Further power was given to the Boards of Guardians under the Act to borrow sums of money necessary to defray the cost of out-door relief allowed under the Act from the Commissioners of Public Works at 3½? per cent interest. So far as he had been able to ascertain, that power had been little used, as Boards of Guardians did not, to any marked extent, up to the present time, give any assistance in the shape of out-door relief. He now came to those portions of the Act which had been used to some extent—namely, the power which was given to the Commissioners of Public Works to advance money to the owners of land and the sanitary authorities at 1 per cent per annum, no interest being levied for the first two years, for the purpose of permanent improvements in land, and for the purpose of works which could be executed by the sanitary authorities under the various Sanitary Acts. Now, he found, on referring to a Return which was obtained on the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, that £1, 184,000 had been applied for, to be distributed under these provisions among the owners of land in the scheduled Unions up to the 20th of March last. Of that amount £354,8i0 only had been sanctioned, and of the amount sanctioned, only £69,955 had been issued to the date he had mentioned. By the same Return it was shown that £141,179 had been applied for, up to the same date, by the sanitary authorities. Of that amount, only £31, 807 had been sanctioned, and the actual amount issued was only £2,569. So that of the amount authorized by the Act of last Session to be lent to the landowners for the relief of distress in Ireland, only about one-eighteenth had yet been issued, and only about one-fourth in round numbers of the loans applied for had been sanctioned. In the case of the sanitary authorities, only one-seventieth of the amount applied for had been issued; but it was true that one-fifth of the amount applied for had been sanctioned. From information that he had collected, which, he thought, would convince many people who doubted the reality of the distress in Ireland of the emergency which now existed, he was enabled to state that about £580,000 had been spent in the different distressed districts in Ireland in the shape of private charity to relieve the distress. Ho found, also, that of the amounts subscribed by the charitable, and now in the hands of the priests, Bishops, and others for the relief of distress, there remained only about £120,000 unexpended. Thus it had been found necessary, in order to keep the people from dying in thousands, to spend in four months in the shape of charity £580,000; there remaining only £120,000 more to last for the next three or four months before the harvest. Those facts supplied material for a very great deal of serious consideration. He had shown, on the one hand, what had yet been done by the Government for the purpose of meet- ing the existing state of affairs in Ireland —he had shown that, up to the present time, only about £100,000 had been issued by the Board of Works for the purpose of affording employment under the Relief Act of last Session in the distressed districts. On the other hand, it had taken £580,000 spent in charitable relief to keep the people alive during the past three or four months. Now, he wanted to know if the machinery under which the loans were issued worked so roughly and so badly as to break down, what was there, then, to prevent hundreds of people from starving during the next three or four months? He would assume that £354,000 had been sanctioned in loans, but not issued by the Board of Works up to the 20th of March, and that that money would be forthcoming very much more quickly than it had hitherto done. But what reason, then, had they to suppose that all that money would reach the people who had been kept alive hitherto, and who had been in receipt of charity since the commencement of the year? He knew, as a matter of fact, that in many of the most distressed districts, where the people had been most largely in the receipt of relief, the smallest sums had been applied for by the local landlords under the Local Act of last Session; and, consequently, the only thing these people would have to fall back upon would be the administration of out-door relief by the Poor Law Boards or the workhouse. What would happen if the people were driven to adopt one of these alternatives? The rates were paid in Unions by people who themselves were in a starving condition —namely, the small farmers and others. The Unions, in fact, were bankrupt; and if a rate were levied for the purpose of supplying out-door relief it was only levying relief for the starving upon the starving. He should be told, perhaps, that money was to be advanced at 3½ per cent to the Unions; but if the Unions were in a bankrupt condition now, what probability was there that they would not be bankrupt when they required the money, and for a long time afterwards? He did not think that a loan would be of any use in remedying that difficulty. The fact still remained that the people upon whom they had to depend to repay the loan were bankrupt and were starving and utterly unable to pay the rates. During the Famine of 1845–6–7 many in- stances were known in which the rates largely exceeded the value of the rateable property in the Unions; and if the people in the Unions were driven bank upon the rates the same thing must happen now as happened then, and the rates would amount to such an enormous sum as would be impossible to pay them. He did think that some little debt was due from England to Ireland in respect to this matter. Rich and prosperous England had contributed less to the distress in Ireland than had Australia. More money had come from Australia than from England, and five times as much had come from Canada and the United States. The exertions of Parliament had been confined up to the present to passing the Act of last Session giving power to the people to borrow their own money—not English money, but the money of the Irish farmers themselves, and in the hands of the Commissioners of the Disestablished Irish Church. That money was to be lent by the Poor Law Board to local landowners and to the sanitary authorities. But supposing this machinery, provided by Parliament for the Irish to borrow their own money, was equal to the purpose, the fact would remain that Parliament had done nothing out of Imperial resources to meet the extraordinary crisis now existing in Ireland. He was sure the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant would wish to do everything he could to prevent the distress. But the right hon. Gentleman must be aware of the wide extent of his responsibility, and must not forget that it had taken £580.000 to keep the people in the West of Ireland alive during the last four months, and that had it not been for the money contributed by nearly all the known world the people of Ireland would have died in thousands, He regretted very much to see the right hon. Gentleman rely too much on the inadequate provisions made in the last Parliament to meet the emergency. The present Government had been given time to consider the matter thoroughly, and to take all the measures necessary to cope successfully with the distress. But had it not been for the charitable relief the people would have already died from starvation, and they were met by the fact that no larger sum than £120,000 or £180,000 now remained in the hands of the charitable committees. In a few weeks that money would be spent, and they would then have nothing between the most extreme distress and the entirely inadequate and bad provision of the Act of last Session. He had thought it right, under those circumstances, to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether the result of his inquiries up to the present time, during the short period that he had been in Office, as to the operation of the Act of last Session, was satisfactory? And, further, Whether he thought it would be an adequate provision to enable these distressed and bankrupt Unions to tide over the rest of the year, by simply empowering them to borrow for the purpose of giving out-door relief; or whether, on the contrary, he did not think that some other measures would be necessary?

MR. W. E. FORSTER

said, he was glad that the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) had made the remarks he had, as it was very desirable that some information should be given to the Committee on this subject He could assure the Committee that steps had been taken, and still further steps would be taken, for tarrying out the Act passed in the early part of this year to prevent destitution in Ireland, and to prevent anything like starvation between this time and next harvest. It was quite true that they could not expect that the large weekly contributions from charitable funds should continue. They had been very large, and the hon. Member was perfectly right in expressing his sense of the great generosity of their fellow-countrymen in Australia and Canada, and of their friends in the United States, in coming forward at such a crisis. The hon. Member seemed to suppose that there were very few Unions in which out-door relief was now given to any extent. So far as ho could make out—and ho had given far more attention to this subject than to anything else, as it was his duty to do in the capacity of President of the Local Government Board—he did not think that that was the case. He might say that he should expect to be informed almost daily from the Inspectors in the districts of the action of the Board of Guardians, so that he might know whether they were giving the necessary assistance in relieving the distress that must arise before the harvest, The hon. Member stated that many ratepayers in those Unions were themselves in a state of great destitution. Undoubtedly that was the case, and it was the case, unhappily, in those Unions in which there was the greatest call for out-door relief. In many of those Unions many of the ratepayers were very little removed from destitution, and in some instances he feared that the ratepayers were the very persons requiring the relief. Knowing that to be the case, he had issued instructions that the Guardians must give out-door relief where required, and the Inspectors of the Local Government Board had strict orders to direct them to do so, and if necessary, in case of their being unprovided with funds, to give them immediately a loan. The hon. Member would see of what use such a direction as that would be. He trusted that by means of that provision they would insure that the destitution of the next few months would be relieved. Another effect of that measure would, he thought, be this—that it would insure that the heavy rate which the hon. Member feared, and which he said took place in the last Famine, would be avoided. During the last Famine the Guardians had no resource but to collect very heavy rates; but the loan plan which he had prepared would avoid the necessity of their adding at once to the burdens of the ratepayers. He should like to tell the Committee the position in which he found matters, and also what steps had been taken to deal with the evil, although for the exact arrangements made ho did not consider himself responsible. If he might criticize in any way the previous arrangements made for relieving the distress, he should say that the loans to the landlords were offered on rather too advantageous terms. That, however, was a past transaction which had been agreed to by the House, and the Government must abide by it. The hon. Member was rather mistaken in supposing that no great use of these loans had been made. It would have been very surprising if they had not been largely used. A grant of money to the landlord for the improvement of his property for which he had paid nothing for two years, and then merely 1 per cent interest for a long time, was too good an offer not to have been largely made use of. So great was the demand for funds, that it would be his duty shortly to bring in a Bill to increase the advance out of the Church Surplus Fund from £750,000 to £1,500,000. The amount applied for by landlords had been £1,201,000. That was a fixed sum, because there was a certain time up to which applications for advances could be made. On the 8th of May, when he was in Dublin, the amount issued was £189,720, and he knew it had been considerably increased since that time. [Mr. PARNELL: To landlords and sanitary authorities.] No, to landlords alone. There had also been an increase in the advances to the sanitary authorities. Wishing to know what the sum actually was, he telegraphed for it yesterday, and he found it was this—the amount presented for at 100 baronial sessions had been £185,000, and the amount sanctioned up to the 15th instant, £86,000. The principle upon which these loans had been dealt with had been this—The Inspector of the Board of Works went down to report whether the works, for which presentments had been made, were of real utility, and the Inspector of the Local Government Board went down to report whether they were works which would give such employment as was really wanted. Whenever these two conditions were complied with, the loan was at once sanctioned; the object in view mainly being to furnish employment between the 1st of June and the beginning of the harvest—the period during which they might expect not only that ordinary employment would fall off, but that the funds of the charitable committees would begin to fail. In some cases—he wished to be quite candid with the Committee—the Inspectors of the Local Government Board had reported that works which the Inspectors of Public Works thought would not be of real utility would be of very considerable advantage as a means of employment. In these cases, the Government had sent the question back to the Inspectors for re-consideration. The Committee, he was sure, would agree with him that really useless works were very little, if any, better than actual grants of money. In view of what actually had been done, he was in hopes that some advantage might, after all, come out of this calamity, and that there would be a considerable increase in the produce of the country through drainage and the various other improvements made. He need hardly say that while attending to these works they did not relax their attention for one moment from the condition of the really destitute. Those who were the most destitute were persons who had no able-bodied member of their family who could work. For these unfortunate people he was intensely anxious that they should do what was necessary, and that was also the feeling of the officers of the Local Government Board. It was only due to the permanent officers of the Local Government Board in Ireland, amongst whom he might especially mention the Under Secretary, Mr. Burke, and Mr. Robinson the Vice President of the Local Government Board, to say that they were as anxious in the matter as he was. It was from them the suggestion came that during the next three or four months out-door relief should be accompanied by a loan. No doubt, hon. Members heard of cases of distress, in which it was supposed the Local Government Board had not been doing their duty. Well, he had examined all such Reports carefully, and he must say that hitherto he had not found one case substantiated. It was a miserable accompaniment of a great distress like this that there should be cases of imposition. Great discrimination, he had no doubt, was exercised by the officers of the Duchess of Marlborough's Fund, which would long be remembered by the Irish people as one that was carefully and wisely and charitably administered, and also of the Mansion House Belief Fund; but he believed the relieving officers of the Board of Guardians were better able to detect imposition than inexperienced men; that, at all events, had been his experience in England. At the same time, they had to guard against the tendency to callousness in the hearts of relieving officers which familiarity with distress was apt to produce. They must take care that real cases of suffering were not passed over. That such care would be taken he was very much encouraged to hope by the tone of the Reports of the Inspectors of the suffering districts. They seemed to him to be the Reports of men who thoroughly felt the responsibility which rested upon them. Perhaps the Committee would allow him to say, in conclusion, that although he anticipated a pressure of distress between the present time and the beginning of harvest, he was very hopeful as to the more distant future. There seemed to be the prospect of a good crop of potatoes, and altogether a better season than they had had for many years past.

MR. SYNAN

credited the right hon. Gentleman, as he was sure every hon. Member in that House who was acquainted with his character would do, with the best intentions and with the greatest anxiety to effectually cope with the distress in Ireland. He had no fault to find with the statement which had just been made, though he was doubtful even now whether the measures taken were adequate; but with respect to the Bill of last Session which had been referred to in somewhat deprecatory terms, he desired as one who had a hand in amending it to say a word or two. With respect to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that loans were granted upon too favourable terms to landlords, he begged to remind the Committee that by an Amendment of his in that Bill loans were given not for the benefit of the landlord, but for the benefit of the tenants. That Amendment was to the effect that the tenant should, if he was able to fulfil the necessary conditions as to annual payments, obtain the advantage of the loan himself; and the landlord, therefore, was in no respect a gainer, except, perhaps, in the sense that under certain circumstances his rent was more secure. He thought it right that no misapprehension should exist in this matter. As to the Government measures of last year not being adequate, he had said at the time that they were not so, and had endeavoured to amend the Relief of Distress (Ireland) Bill.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

I did not say that the Act was inadequate. I said that loans for public works or drainage would not meet all the destitution.

MR. SYNAN

said, the right hon. Gentleman misapprehended him. He was not referring to anything the right hon. Gentleman had said, but to the words of his hon. Friend behind him (Mr. Parnell). He had found fault with the Bill, and he found fault with the Act now. The mode of repaying presentment loans appeared to him to be unfair. The money had to be repaid in 15 instalments, twice a-year. It had, therefore, to be all repaid in seven years, whereas the landlords and tenants who had recieved the £750,000 were allowed 35 years to pay. That defect, among others, they had endeavoured to remedy in the Bill, but in vain; and he trusted that the present Government would not enforce the repayment of the presentment loans too severely. He was rather surprised to learn that out of the £750,000 only £189,000 had been actually sanctioned or paid.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

Pardon me! £189,000, in response to applications for £1,200,000. The reason is that the money is paid only as it is required. The hon. Member would not wish it to be idle before being used.

MR. SYNAN

said, the point of his observation was this—only a small proportion of the total fund had yet been lent, and of that money even they did not know the application. Moreover, he understood there were great delays between the applications for loans and the granting of them. Now, they were just entering upon a period of what would probably be acute distress, and it would be important to know how much of the £1,500,000 available from the Church Surplus Fund had been spent up to the present moment; also where and how it had been spent, to be assured that no needless delay in its application would be made. What ho should like to know was the condition of the West of Ireland. Were reproductive works going on there, and, if not, how was it proposed to meet the distress? It would be impossible to meet it by out-door relief, for rates would have to be imposed which the ratepayers would be unable to pay; some of the Unions and electoral divisions of Ireland, in fact, would be made bankrupt. Equally unfortunate results would ensue if recourse was had to any such means of repayment as the labour rate of 1847, which in 14 months amounted to 23s. in the pound. It was, therefore, very important to know where reproductive works existed, and on what terms money was advanced. Unless loans were made at a low percentage, and unless precautions were taken to prevent the pauperization of whole districts, the condition of some of the Western Counties of Ireland in two or three months time would be miserable indeed. He had nothing further to add on the subject of loans, except to impress upon the Government the neces- sity of proportioning those loans as far as possible to the distress, of making them at a low rate, and of doing away with delay as much as possible. There was every prospect of a good crop of potatoes, he was happy to say; but he trusted there was no intention of making the ratepayers pay back the loans of seed potatoes. For whose benefit were those loans intended? They were intended for the cottier tenants, the holders of an acre or less; and if the crops of these poor people were confiscated to pay the loans this year they would be ruined. If, again, the Guardians had to pay, they would require to levy a rate which would fall oppressively upon the small tenants, who formed nearly half of the 050,000 tenants in Ireland. What, then, was to be done? He apprehended that the Government must, for a time, hold its hand in respect to these repayments, and not insist upon the Guardians paying, unless they could plainly see their way to doing so. He knew the Government was anxious to do its duty, and he appealed to them to exercise in this matter the generosity which the unusual circumstances of the case demanded.

COLONEL COLTHURST

said, he would confine himself to inquiring how far the Poor Law had been effective in relieving the distress; and in connection with the point he could corroborate what had been said by the hon. Member for Cork Mr. Parnell), that out-door relief had, practically, not been given at all. In two Unions he had recently visited ho found that not a shilling of out-door relief had been given, although the rates were only 1s. 4d. and 1s. 1d. in the pound. Boards of Guardians, in fact, had such an objection to giving outdoor relief, that they had thrown the whole burden of meeting the exceptional distress upon the two charitable committees, and those committees were perfectly well aware of the fact. Now, if the right of every man to labour or relief had been asserted, as it was in Lancashire in 1864, Poor Law Guardians and the owners of land would have had the greatest inducement to employ the people and diminish the rates—an inducement which could not exist when the system prevailed of allowing private charity to cope with the distress and of considering the action of the Poor Law as merely supplementary. The Boards of Guardians were bodies acquainted with the wants of their localities, and they would know what work should be done; but by putting the matter in the hands of the baronial sessions, the most useful works were thrown out. The reason for that was that the members of the baronial sessions came, perhaps, from distant localities, and knowing that there was no distress in their own districts they would refuse to deal with it where it did exist. As he had said before, he thought that very great evil arose from the want of assimilation between the Poor Laws of England and Ireland. If the Poor Law in Ireland worked as it did in England, he could safely affirm that the distress in Ireland would have been met at once. Two years ago there were signs in the West of Ireland, in Mayo and in Donegal, that very great distress was imminent. The employment in England and Scotland, which annually took some thousands of people away from Ireland, was slack. Most of those people held an acre or more of land, and being excluded from the operation of the Poor Law in Ireland their distress was not taken into account by the Poor Law authorities. Of course, there was no blame to be attached to the Poor Law authorities, for they had no right to take their distress into account. By that means, the signs that a period of great distress was coming on were discredited. No person could read the Circular of the Poor Law Board of last October without being of opinion that adequate means to meet the distress were not made. Had the Poor Law in Ireland been assimilated to that of England, there would have been no difficulty in meeting this distress two years ago. Ho would suggest to the Government that a Continuance Act should be passed, and also that an inquiry should be made as to how far the present Poor Law in Ireland should be assimilated to that of England.

SIR HERVEY BRUCE

said, that as he had the honour to be chairman of the Union in his part of the country, he could state that the attendance of the elected Guardians was very much more frequent than that of the ex-officio Guardians. He did not wish to make any reflections upon the ex-officio Guardians, for as the other Guardians were more numerous it was only likely that their attendance would be greater. It had also been said that the landlords were very glad to take the money offered them upon very advantageous terms, and that that course was preferred to the administration of out-door relief. He wished to state that the elected Guardians had it in their power to give out-door relief to any extent they liked, duly considering the burdens upon the people they represented. An hon. Member had stated, what undoubtedly might be the case, that where the distress was great the small tenants would be prevented from taking out-door relief. But it should not be thought that there was no mercy to poor people, and that the Guardians were not willing to do their duty by giving out-door relief wherever they could in aid of charity. Boards of Guardians naturally had to consider very carefully the circumstances of each case which came before them. He believed that in their part of the United Kingdom, more than in any other, they were liable to be imposed upon by persons seeking relief. One person found that his neighbour was getting relief, and he did not see why he should not do the same. There was a kind of jealousy of one another which was not found to exist in England. Hon. Members who represented Irish constituencies ought not to wash their dirty linen in the British House of Commons. They were free and independent, and he believed a really conscientious people; but, at the same time, he thought that a great deal more than was necessary had been made of the poverty of the country. At least, he was happy to say that such was the case in that part of Ireland from which he came. Of course, he had not such an extensive knowledge of the South and South-West of Ireland as some hon Members had who had spoken on that question. Still he had some experience of Donegal, having lived in it. In that county there was distress, and he thought there would always be distress, because of the number of small tenants and the nature of the climate. He thought the distress that year had been very much exaggerated, and he could not believe that the distress even in Donegal had been so great as had been represented in many places. He was borne out in that opinion by the testimony of many persons who had lived there. So far as the part of Ireland in which he lived was concerned, he could say that that the Guardians were perfectly willing to give out-door relief where they believed that it was required; but they would not go wholesale into the system, but wished to go carefully. In his opinion, no class of persons were more willing than the tenant-farmers, in the districts with which he was acquainted, to give out-door relief. He desired, further, to defend the ex officio Guardians from any wish to make the starving population dependent upon private charity for their support.

MR. MITCHELL HENRY

said, there was some inconvenience in the discussion of this subject upon the particular Vote now before the Committee; but as it was absolutely necessary that at some time or other the discussion should take place, he hoped the Committee would allow him to make a few observations with respect to it. He rose to express his great regret that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had announced his intention to increase the amount of the loans made to landlords. As he understood, about £i,250,000 had already been applied for by the landlords for carrying out works upon their own property at a uniform rate of 1 per cent interest. He believed that the Government now proposed to grant another £250,000 in similar loans.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

said, that the Government had no discretion in the matter, and were pledged to grant the loans to landowners already sanctioned; but he might add that a considerable portion of the loans were to be made to sanitary authorities.

MR. MITCHELL HENRY

said, that that was what he understood. He regretted that more money was to be advanced to the landlords, but he should be glad to see the works under the baronial sessions pushed on. Nothing had been more unsatisfactory in the history of Ireland than the way in which the baronial sessions had been dealt with. In some instances no loans had been applied for, and no presentment had been made by the sessions. In one case, in respect of to which he had been in correspondence with the Local Government Board, and in which he could get no answer to his communications, what had happened was this. In the Union of Clifden they had the special sessions for the baronial presentments; and a large amount of work was brought forward, and a certain amount was assented to. Some disturbance, however, took place in court, and the presiding magistrate then declined to go on with the business, and not only refused to go on with the business, but assumed the right to cancel all the presentments that had been passed. He believed that that act was entirely illegal; but the result was that a very large district had been thrown entirely upon private charity. It was stated by the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) that £580,000 had been given away in private charity, and that that money came largely from the United States, from Australia, and other British Colonies, and to a certain small extent from England. He wished to express his great regret that England had done so little to help Ireland at this crisis. He might say that England herself had contributed almost nothing to the distress in Ireland; for if it had not been for the exertions of the Mansion House Committee, under the present Lord Mayor of London, he did not think that anything whatever would have been contributed. It was the wish of the Government now to stimulate out-door relief in Ireland. In his opinion, the giving of out-door relief had a most demoralizing effect. He had witnessed with his own eyes, and the same thing had happened in various parts of Ireland, that the recipients of eleemosynary relief were demoralized by the system of giving food and clothing without asking anything in return for it. He would never forgive the Government of the right hon. Gentleman who sat upon the Opposition Benches for its conduct in this respect. The late Government did nothing else than shift the responsibility of the Irish famine from their own shoulders to those of others. They had left behind them a cruel heritage of incapacity on their part for dealing with a great crisis, and they had left behind them seeds of evil in the country which would produce incalcuable injury. They had attempted to meet this crisis by simply depending upon charity, upon the chanty of the whole civilized world, if not of this Kingdom. Would the noble Lord tell him how much of that Charitable Fund of £500,000 came from England? If the amount were £150,000, that was but a small thing in comparison with the whole amount. If the Government decided to continue, as it seemed inclined to do, for the remaining three or four months of the distress, the system of relief without work, then, in his opinion, they would only add to the evil that had already been done. The present Government might rise to the crisis, and they had ample time and opportunity for doing so. He should advise them to send down into the most distressed districts persons of practical experience who, instead of inducing the Guardians to give out-door relief in the shape of charity, could refuse to give the Board of Guardians anything except for the purpose of carrying on reproductive works. Let the Government offer to the Board of Guardians loans at 1 per cent, as they had so lavishly offered the landlords. If they would do that, and take care that the money was properly expended, and the works were judiciously designed, it would then enable them to reap some good out of the evil which had occurred. But there was another aspect to this question. It seemed to him that the Board of Works which had the superintendence of the present distress was utterly inadequate to the purpose. More particularly the engineering staff of the Board was exceedingly limited. He believed it was true that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary had within the last fortnight desired the Board of Works to increase its engineering staff; but, even then, further improvement was requisite. If the Government wished to get some works carried out, and to do some good to the country, and to prevent the people from sinking still further into a state of pauperism, the machinery to do it was ready to their hand. If the Government now in power used the opportunity of remedying the acts of its Predecessors— if they would only adopt the view taken by the Government during the time that the former famine prevailed, he thought they would do much to redress the evil which had occurred. Another thing to be considered was what was the magnitude of this crisis, and what had been done to relieve it? It had been said that the loss to the small farmers in Ireland, by reason of the failure of potatoes, amounted to no less than £5,000,000. At all events, that was the result of the Return upon the subject. They also learnt that the landlords had lost in rent no less a sum than £3,000,000. Who could tell the misery that had been caused in private families by the loss of that sum of £3,000,000? That loss of £3,000,000 was said to have been again to the tenants; but whether it was or was not, would be seen in the future. At all events, it was no gain to them to lose £5,000,000 in potatoes; and what had been done to meet that loss? The right hon. Gentlemen told them that £1,250,000 had been applied for by the landlords, and that loans had been assented to. The Committee must not suppose it was at all likely that all that money would be spent. All that had been issued at present was the first instalment, amounting to about £198,000. There was no proof that the second and third instalments of that £1,250,000 would ever be applied for, even if they would be granted. It was so easy for people to get the first instalment; it was such an easy matter, that almost anybody could get a loan. In the first instance, the Government refused to acknowledge the existence of the crisis at all. Then they made their terms for borrowing so absurdly high, in asking 6 percent, that the months of October, November, and December, when loans could have been usefully applied, slipped away. Then from having been over anxious to recoup the Exchequer they fell into the opposite extreme, and issued loans to landlords at I per cent. Almost everyone applied for a loan, and most of those loans were santioned; but only about £200,000 had yet been issued. He believed that of the £1,250,000 sanctioned, a very considerable proportion would never bear inspection, and that the Board of Works would not pay the future instalments. As a matter of fact, that money would do very little good in the country; but if the Government even now would sanction loans for works carried out on the recommendation of the baronial sessions, they would do something permanently to recoup the outlay. The subject was too extensive a one to go into fully on that occasion; but he did hope the right hon. Gentleman would consider that it was not his duty simply to tread in the footsteps of his Predecessors, but to do much more to weather this crisis. The system of teaching people to look simply for eleemosynary aid was, in his opinion, destructive to the national character, and would be attended with very serious results. It was necessary for the Government to throw away the idea of charity, and to give no more relief except to aged or young persons, who, of course, must be fed; but, with that exception, they should give no more relief except in respect of works. There was no difficulty in the institution of those works, for there were in Ireland several large railway companies who would take the money to make branch lines of railway, if they could get a loan from the Government at a small percentage. Cases had frequently happened, in which he had been in communication with the Government lately in power, of this character; but he need hardly say that they never got the smallest satisfaction from the then Chief Secretary. There were other cases in which the Board of Guardians were perfectly willing, if power were given them, to guarantee the re-payment of the principal money and the interest, but, whenever any communications had taken place with the Government for the purpose of conferring this power upon the Boards of Guardians, they had been unsuccessful. The late Government seemed to be of opinion that nothing should be done that was reproductive and useful, and that their exertions ought to be confined to giving money away by means of charity. He earnestly hoped that the Government would consider this question, and would be of a opinion that a quid pro quo ought to be given for all the money applied in relief of the distress.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

said, that the Government had to relieve distress which would almost certainly continue to exist between the present time and the be ginning of the next harvest. His hon. Friend the Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) had said that they did not rely in Ireland upon these charitable funds, but that engineers should be sent over to commence works of a reproductive character for the purpose of giving emplopment to the people; but were the hon. Member in the position which he (Mr. W. E. Forster) occcupied, he believed the hon. Member would never thing of carrying out that project, because no number of engineers who might go down could start the necessary works in time to prevent the people from starving before the end of the period to which he had alluded, and it would be impossible in the time which the Government had at their disposal to get the works in operation, and to rely upon them solely for the relief of distress where it was most severely felt. The experience of the last famine in Ireland must also be borne in mind, although he did not wish to compare the distress of the present year with that of the Famine of 1847. At that time the principle upon which the relief began was simply payment for labour upon reproductive works. It was found, however, that the relief afforded in that way did not reach the destitute, and that the works would not be reproductive. It was, therefore, found necessary to change from a system of reproductive works to that of relief. He maintained, what he had stated at an earlier part of the evening, that the Government had chiefly to rely upon out-door relief, with as little pressure as possible on the impoverished Guardians and with as much prevention as possible of imposition. He entirely agreed with his hon. Friend that the question of reproductive works in Ireland ought not to be lost sight of, and that there were many cases in which a recurrence of distress in future years might be made much less likely by the encouragement of such works. They might expect, in that case, to hear less about the demoralization of the labourer by receiving relief in place of labour; but it must also be borne in mind that there was demoralization in receiving a loan and not repaying it, for which reason the Government would have to be pretty confident that loans advanced for such a purpose would be repaid. He was obliged to add, however, that he dare not rely merely upon reproductive works to relieve the distress of the next three months.

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE

said, he did not wish to enter into any full discussion of the measures recommended by the late Government. He agreed that the present was not a convenient time for doing so; but he wished to say, with regard to some of the very severe remarks which had been made upon the conduct of the late Government and the measures introduced by them, that he failed to understand what were the precise points upon which complaint had been made. He had listened to complaints of such an extremely diverse and opposite character that he wondered upon what principle it was felt they had gone wrong, and supposed that it might be upon the general principle that the late Government was respon- sible for all the evils that had come upon Ireland during their term of Office. He had heard it stated that it was a very wrong thing to demoralize Ireland by pauperizing the people by giving them relief in a direct form instead of supplying them with labour, and allowing them to earn it for themselves. But that was precisely the principle which the late Government had at the first laid down for themselves. They said, as far as possible we shall endeavonr to meet this distress coming upon the country by means which shall be shorn of those demoralizing gifts to which reference had been made. Then came the question how were they to meet the demands for obtaining labour? It was necessary that some provision should be made; was it to be done by loans for public works, or by loans in some other manner? There were great objections to loans for public works. The hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) had pointed out that this was the right measure, in his opinion, to be adopted; but he (Sir Stafford Northcote) ventured to think it would not be a measure applicable to the great proportion of the distressed districts, and that it would be exposed to very serious inconvenience and danger. The hon. Member had also indicated the kind of works, such as railways, which might be made in various parts of Ireland. That point, too, had been considered by the late Government, who were, of course, anxious to take into consideration the propriety of making railways and other public works. But they had been obliged to ask themselves the question, "What is the use of setting on foot a railway 50 miles distant from that district which you want to relieve?" Again, such works might have the effect of drawing away persons from their other occupations, and they might have had the effect of drawing navvies from England, while they failed to relieve the people in Donegal, Kerry, and other parts of Ireland where the greatest want was experienced. Further, they could not help feeling that if they made advances to a railway company, that company might very naturally say, it is desirable we should get labour on the best terms we can in order to make the best use of the money lent, and in order to make the undertaking pay we must get labour from a distance. He did not say they had formed a right judgment, because they might have been misled into making advances to persons or bodies who were themselves interested in the districts where they desired to give labour, and who would have both an interest in seeing that the people were employed and that the labour was profitably made use of. Therefore, they made offers to landlords who, unfortunately, were themselves impoverished at that time, and not in a position to aid freely in carrying out works of improvement. The hon. Member for Galway had just pointed out that the sum of £3,000,000 had been lost to this class by the failure of rents, which exactly corresponded to the case presented to the late Government that the land lords were not in a position to spend freely on the works in question. They, there fore, came forward with a plan to enable landlords to spend money in their own districts by relaxing the terms upon which the grants would be made. The hon. Member for Galway had said that they had at first proposed to give money at 6 percent, and that when they found they could not obtain that they offered advances at 1 per cent. But that was not a correct statement of the case; they had never offered money at 6 per cent interest, but at 3½ per cent, and there was to be a sinking fund for the re-payment of the money. Undoubtedly, when they made that offer, they hoped the landlords would take up the money and give employment; but they found that they were unable or unwilling to do so, so that that mode of attempting to give employment failed. Then they considered it their duty to make a much more liberal offer in order to induce persons to expend money in the employment of labour, and the hon. Gentleman had rather reflected upon them in saying that those terms were too advantageous. Whether it might have been possible to get loans at rates of interest between 3½ and 1 per cent he was unable to say, because he had had no experience in that respect; but time was pressing, and they therefore made the offer on the terms indicated, which had resulted in applications from persons in different parts of the country who were willing to spend money in the employment of labour. But it was necessary that they should look into various points, and to take care that if this were not to be a demoralizing charity the advances, al- though made on liberal terms, should be made as loans with the intention of repayment, and, further, that such loans were not abused. Again, they had to consider how far the employment of people upon those works might distract them from the important work of cultivating the land. They knew that if offers were made of a different character, the people might go away and neglect that which they ought to do. Then, they had the experience of 1847. They knew that there had been great abuse at that time, and that people had gone off to the public works and neglected the tillage of the land and that it was owing to that fact that the second year's famine had been worse than the first. Then came the result to which the right hon. Gentleman had referred, and which was inevitable—that the works altogether failed, and that they had been compelled to resort to a system absolutely necessary, but demoralizing— that of supplying the people with cooked food. Although, in a complicated matter of that kind, it was impossible to say that mistakes had not been committed, or that some other system might not have resulted more beneficially, he ventured to say that the attention and the whole mind of the late Government had been given to that matter, and that every step taken was with the fullest and most ample consideration, and that there was nothing approaching to negligence in dealing with the case; that they endeavoured as far as possible to keep in view those principles which lay at the root of the question of relief. And he might fairly claim that wherever there was a doubt as to the policy of a particular course, they should solve it by giving the readiest possible relief to the sufferers. He utterly repudiated the reflections which had been passed upon the late Government. They regarded public works, although they might in certain circumstances be useful, as a most dangerous mode of relief, and a thing not to be relied upon. This had been shown by the proceedings of the baronial sessions, which in many cases, being anxious to prevent abuse, had refused to make any presentments, because they believed they could not properly be made, and he thought that the evidence which the right hon. Gentleman had supplied showed that their liberal offers to the landlords had produced applications which had given a considerable amount of assistance. One statement of the right hon. Gentleman he noticed with great satisfaction, which was the larger area of land that had been sowed with potatoes, and these were of a better quality than had been sown for many years. He maintained that this constituted a point of comparison and contrast between the Famine of 1847 and the pressure and distress of the present year, which, as far as it had gone, had shown that the measures taken by the late Government, and continued by the present Government, contrasted not unfavourably with those adopted in times of former distress.

MR. SHAW

said, he did not rise to discuss or formally censure the action of the late Government, especially as they were on the wrong side of the Table. Had they been in occupation of the Treasury Bench, he should very likely have had a good deal to say about them. Those who lived in Ireland, and saw famine impending, had felt it their duty to lay the case prominently before the late Government. In doing so, they did not ask for anything like charity; but from Irish Members of Parliament, from Corporations in Ireland, and from the Catholic Bishops the strongest representations had been made as to the need of employment for the purposes of relief. There was an unanimous cry not for charity, but for some kind of employment for the people. From his own experience he could state that such was the feeling of the people themselves. There was nothing which, looking forward to last winter, they dreaded more than charity of a demoralizing kind. For three months the Government had given no answer whatever. At the very time that the arrangements for public works would necessarily have to be made, why was there such a small sum applied to drainage" purposes? The winter passed when drainage should have been initiated. He believed the late Government, on the whole, and especially the Members of it in that House, had been anxious to do the best they could, and they did do as much as could be expected of Gentlemen who knew nothing at all about Ireland. As long as Ireland was governed from England by Gentlemen who knew nothing about Ireland so long would the Government be throwing away money, and doing acts in which they meant well, but which would produce no result for the permanent benefit of Ireland. An answer, however, had been received from the late Government, for the then Prime Minister went to a City banquet and blew the trumpet of English charity. He had not taken a statesman-like view of the impending famine in Ireland, and his Government, although they jumbled about for a few weeks, had acted in an imperfect manner. During the last Parliament Irish Members had gone into all this question of reproductive works and the employment of labour, and had moved Resolutions; but they got very little by doing so. He asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland what ho was going to do for the next three months? If the Government would expend £1,500,000 from the Church Fund, he believed it might be utilized for some great national purpose; but that would not be done. A harbour here, or tramway there, would require a special Act of Parliament; but ho said bring in a Bill over-riding special Acts of Parliament: at any rate, let earth works be made for railways. He knew places where the county would guarantee money, but where the work would not be undertaken if they had to obtain an Act of Parliament. It would seem that there was some want of harmony between the different Boards in Ireland. In a Poor Law Union, of which he was a Guardian, they resolved to do some work of an important character; but the Local Government Board said—"We will not let you do it; you must do it by a sub-contract." The county surveyor, whom the grand jury and the ratepayers were perfectly willing to trust, was not allowed to do the work without a sub-contract, and the Union were now looking at the work and could not move a step, while plenty of people were wanting employment. The Local Government Board had also absolutely told them that they were not to employ any men at more than 7s. 6d. a-week, while every farmer was paying 7s. or 8s. a-week to men near towns, and giving them bounties and places for gardens. The Chief Secretary for Ireland said that that was not his Department, but was in the Department of the Treasury; but the manner in which the Treasury and other Departments played at cross purposes, when work was to be done, was most extraordinary. He had been written to last year by a gentleman who was now in the House, asking him if he could make any suggestions, and he had replied that 'if the gentleman would come up with 50"boys,"they would meet in Dublin, go to the Board of Works, and clear it out. They would then sit there for six months with half-a-dozen clerks and some engineers, and there would soon cease to be anything like distress in Ireland. He entreated the Chief Secretary for Ireland, who was a man of business, to go to Ireland, and not to mind Mr. Bourke, or anyone else, who was so swathed in red tape that ho could not move in any direction. Let the Government give the general Bill which he (Mr. Shaw) had suggested for an advance of £600,000 or £700,000, and they might depend on it the distress would be banished from many districts.

MR. GIBSON

said, he deeply regretted that the matter should have been discussed in a Party spirit. This had been introduced somewhat by the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry), and, if possible, rather more by the hon. Member for the County of Cork (Mr. Shaw). He could not understand why the hon. Member for the County of Cork, who was entitled to be heard with respect, thought it worth while and necessary to introduce his observations by a very strong, and, as it appeared to him (Mr. Gibson), uncalled-for attack upon the measures taken by the late Government. The duty of the Government was not to interfere, either too soon or too late, in matters of this kind. It was necessary, above all things, not to demoralize the people by interfering too soon, and to avoid the terrible responsibility of delaying interference too long. In criticizing the conduct of the late Government in that respect, it should not be forgotten that no single death could be attributed to the recent distress in Ireland, and that in no single workhouse in Ireland had the accommodation been entirely exhausted. These were broad facts which should not be forgotten when this question was under consideration. The hon. Member for the County of Cork, when ho passed away from his Party attack, proceeded to deal with one or two points of practical importance and general interest. The Act of Parliament, the details of which the hon. Member had probably forgotten, was passed at the instance of the late Government. If the hon. Member would consider the instructions given by the late Government to the Local Government Board, he would find that such instructions, upon which he had commented with great severity—instructions which compelled the presentment sessions to proceed by contract and upon fixed prices—was based upon broad and obvious questions and grounds of public policy. There was nothing, however, to prevent the present Government from revoking modifying, or altering any of the provisions so made. But, pending such alterations, he ventured to ask every man of common sense whether such restrictions were not perfectly reasonable and prudent?

MR. PARNELL

asked whether a similar restriction was imposed upon the landlords in regard to loans made to them?

MR. GIBSON

said, he should conduct his argument as his own discretion suggested. His intention was to deal with certain points which had been raised, and the extremely logical mind of the hon. Member for Cork County must show him how wrong it would be to depart from those topics. He thought that the late Government acted wisely and rightly in dealing with the particular subject-matter under discussion in the way they did, and in prescribing that the works authorized by extraordinary presentment sessions should be conducted on a basis of contract. If, however, the present Government thought the restriction ought to be removed, there was nothing to prevent them from making a proposal of the kind, and he should not oppose a hostile or Party comment to any such proposal. Then with regard to the rate of wages paid to men employed on the works presented at these sessions, he could not admit that the Government would have been justified in adopting a rate of payment which would have brought them into conflict with the ordinary employers of labour in any particular locality. The adoption of such a course would not have been to afford any relief to distress, but to squander public money. The late Government decided upon the course which they adopted after carefully considering the responsibility which was placed upon them in the crisis that oc- curred; but it was perfectly open to the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland to alter or modify the plan then adopted, in view of a new consideration of what would be assumed to be new facts. The hon. Member for Galway County (Mr. Mitchell Henry) had made remarks even more uncharitable than those of the hon. Member for Cork City, seeing the despondent condition at the present moment of the Party recently in power. Although there were three Funds which had collected large sums for the relief of the existing distress, the hon. Member had expressed a hope that charity would cease. This struck ordinary men as a very strong observation, requiring a very strong defence; yet, after saying this, the hon. Member proceeded to commit himself.

MR. MITCHELL HENRY

complained that he had been misunderstood. What he really said was that he hoped the distribution of charity would cease, unless it was accompanied by a quid pro quo in the shape of reproductive works.

MR. GIBSON

said, he saw no difference between his own statement and the hon. Member's explanation, if in future there was to be no distribution of charity unless there was to be a quid pro quo in the shape of reproductive labour. The hon. Member did not condescend to the vulgarity of detail; that was left to the practical common sense of the Member for the County of Cork, who fell back upon his old friends the earth works. He would remind the hon. Member of the words used by the right hon. Gentleman near him (Sir Stafford North-cote) on the subject of great responsibility attaching to the sanctioning of anything in the nature of so-called reproductive works. If such works were to be undertaken, they should be undertaken for the benefit of the persons whom it was desired to relieve; and if employment was to be given, how was it to be decided as to whom the employment should be offered to? If railway works were suggested, as indeed they had been suggested, by the hon. Member for Cork County, how were they to exclude the people who were responsible for the construction of the railways from employing those workmen who knew most about the particular class of work-people who might be drawn from England, or from the Northern or other parts of Ireland, who were not greatly distressed? They must remember the vast difficulty met with, but not overcome, in the unfortunate Famine years of 1846 and 1848, when relief works, which were called reproductive, competed with the ordinary works of the country, and drew workmen away from such works. It would, he believed, be found on inquiry that the late Government took the wisest course, and that the soundest justification for such course was to be found in its success. At the same time, he admitted that they would have been censurable if they had not acted in a cautious and tentative manner. They commenced in the first instance with the moderate offers contained in the Circular of the 22nd of November, 1879, and there were Papers before Parliament showing that for months before that time the Local Government Board in Ireland had been in the closest and most immediate communication with the Government in Dublin and London, and had been making a close, anxious, and earnest investigation of the entire position of the country. That Circular of the 22nd of November was availed of to the extent of many thousands of pounds, though not to an extent sufficient to cope with the whole of the distress which existed. Then, oppressed with a keen, earnest, and painful sense of responsibility, the late Government in January last found it necessary to issue a further Circular, the offer contained in which had been also availed of to a very large extent—an extent which he hoped would be sufficient to grapple with a great deal of the existing distress. They had, however, heard from the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland that he deemed some further measures necessary; and he was sure that all classes of Members in the House would consider such measures, when brought before them, with a most anxious desire to make them as complete as possible, with a view to settling this unfortunate and difficult question of distress in Ireland.

MR. O'SHAUGHNESSY

said, it was perfectly plain to anyone that, in the view of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, the chief brunt of the distress in Ireland for the next three or four months must fall upon the out-door relief system. A great deal of money had been advanced already, and a great deal more would have to be advanced for the purpose of drainage and for public works; but, notwithstanding all these things, the right hon. Gentleman said that it was on out-door relief that the burden of the next four months must fall; and that the necessities of that period were likely to exceed the period of necessity through which they had passed. What followed from this? They were called upon to spend more money in the next four months, and that money was to come out of the pockets of the ratepayers. This suggested very serious consideration, for he believed it would result in many families who were now beyond the necessity for relief being at no very remote period brought within such necessity by reason of the heavier rates which they would be called upon to pay. He saw no reason why the Boards of Guardians should not be allowed to raise the funds required for this out-door relief by loans.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

said, that, in every such case, the Boards of Guardians would have the power referred to by the hon. and learned Member.

MR. O'SHAUGHNESSY

would like to know whether, when there was an instruction conveyed to a Board of Guardians to give out-door relief, it would be accompanied by an offer of a loan to enable them to meet it? There were many cases in which out-door relief had been given in large amounts, to which the offer of the right hon. Gentleman did not apply, because such relief had not been given in pursuance of an order from the Local Government Board, but spontaneously. It seemed hard that such Boards of Guardians should be placed at a disadvantage as compared with other Boards which simply carried out orders received from head-quarters. He trusted that the right hon. Gentleman would not be slow to give the orders for the distribution of additional out-door relief, and that measures would be taken to prevent the main burthen of relieving the distress in the next four months from falling on the backs of the ratepayers. He knew three or four parishes in which the occupiers had made no applications for loans to improve their lands, but where the Guardians had felt bound to give exceptional out-door relief, a course which had entailed simple ruin upon the poorer ratepayers in the district, a ruin which would extend to ratepayers of a higher grade if the Guardians were not promptly enabled to raise money on loan. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would seriously consider the advisability of affording relief to those Guardians of the Poor who had already raised the scale of out-door relief from a sense of duty, and without pressure from the authorities. He thought his hon. Friend the Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) had been hardly treated in having it imputed to him that he wished to see all charitable relief stopped. As he understood his hon. Friend, all he said was that, in future, the Government would take such steps as might obviate the necessity for such relief by employing the people in the development of the natural resources of the country. Something had been said about the duty of the Imperial Parliament as far as Ireland was concerned, and he, for one, thought that the Parliament owed something more to his country than a loan out of a Fund which was the property of Ireland, to be repaid at a future time. The history of the distresses through which the country had passed showed that their roots lay in the bad laws of the country, under which many thousands of acres of land lay waste which might be turned to profitable account as providing food for the people. The tenants were deterred from improving their holdings because they had not a fair tenure of the land, and in this patent fact lay the root of the distress. The late Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who was no Horne.Kuler, or even Liberal, but a staunch Conservative, had said, speaking only a few days ago, that it would be the dawning of a better day when ameliorative measures were passed for Ireland. It was indeed in the power of Parliament, by making better laws, to mitigate and ameliorate the existing distress, and to prevent similar visitations in the future. He would ask Her Majesty's Government to do for Ireland what the Governments of other countries wore doing at the present moment. The Congress of the United States was voting a sum of money for the relief of Irish distress; and the Dominion Parliament of Canada was taking a similar course. He could not think that the Imperial Parliament would consent to be behind the Governments of America and Canada in this respect, especially in view of the fact that it was directly answerable for the state of things which existed. He was not, in saying this, making any appeal to the Imperial Parliament, but was setting forth what he thought to be simply a just and fair demand; for he could not think it was a justifiable on any grounds that, in this country recourse should be had for the relief of Irish distress to funds which were intended for other and entirely different purposes.

MR. FINIGAN

said, that in the last Session, when the Government expressed readiness to grant facilities for the making of reproductive works, he brought forward the case of the Clare Castle Harbour, which, in his view, might be made into a serviceable harbour, by the expenditure of a moderate sum of money, but had been allowed to sink into disuse, although the harbour at one time produced an income of some £3,000 from dues. As he understood, in July last, there was a readiness to made an advance of £2,000, as representing the surplus income which the Irish Board of Works had derived from the harbour. Well, October came, and nothing further was done. He again called the attention of the Government to the matter and impressed upon them the necessity of advancing a sum of £2,000 or £3,000 to be expended among a very small industrial community, and in a very poor centre of Ireland. The Government expressed its desire to do something, and said the matter should have their anxious consideration. They did the same in January; but, from the first time, they expressed their willingness to do something for Ireland in return for what Ireland had done for them. He believed that no surveyor had ever been sent down, and the promise to do something for Clare Castle Harbour still remained unfulfilled. He pointed out the matter now to the right hon. Gentleman the now Chief Secretary for Ire- land, in the hope that his serious con- sideration would be given to Clare Castle Harbour, and that he would be able to see his way towards giving some prac-tical proof of his sympathy for the people of Ireland by commencing in reality the construction of reproductive works. He agreed with his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Limerick (Mr. O'Shaughnessy), that until Ireland had the complete control of her own local affairs, the House of Commons would find itself unable to deal with a contented and pacified Ireland.

MAJOR NOLAN

said, he was afraid, from some of the remarks which had been made in the course of the discussion by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, that the right hon. Gentleman viewed the situation very much from the standpoint of the Local Government Board in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman had professed a great anxiety to assist the poor by putting in force a system of out-door relief in preference to a system of baronial public works. He was afraid the real reason why outdoor relief was preferred by the official world in Ireland was that they thought they could control the Poor Law Unions more directly and more in accordance with their own will than they could the Boards that would have to pass the baronial works. Now, he thought that if this was intended to indicate a policy of throwing over the baronial public works and of establishing in their place a large system of out-door relief, the carrying into effect of such a policy would create serious and evil results in Ireland. He was ready to allow that the action of the Public Board of Works might really succeed in putting a stop to the carrying out of public works, and, indeed, as far as he was able to make out, the action of the public authority had been successfully exerted in doing this already. But, nevertheless, he was of opinion that it would be a much more difficult task to establish a system of out-door relief. There was a great deal of feeling against out-door relief in Ireland, and he was quite satisfied, from what he knew of the wishes of the people, that the Government would never succeed in establishing such a system. All that they would succeed in doing would be, under the authority of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, to stop the public works. They would entirely fail in substituting out-door relief, and the result would inevitably be that—especially in the West of Ireland—there would be great suffering and distress. He thought he would be justified in saying that the Hoard of Works in Ireland and the Local Government Board, between them, had succeeded in stopping the execution of public works in Ireland to a very remarkable extent. From the figures given by the Chief Secretary for Ire- land, it seemed that the baronial sessions had passed £185,000 for public works— that was to say, that they had agreed to £185,000 worth of public works being executed. The baronial sessions were not rash people and could not be accused of recklessly spending too much money, or of throwing money away for the sake of relieving those who were in distress. On the contrary, the opposite charge might be preferred against them— namely, that they were far too economical and had an objection against doing more public works than they could help, or, indeed, of studying the general interests of the country. The Chief Secretary for Ireland told them that although £l85.000had been passed by the baronial sessions for public works, the sum had been cut down to £86,000, and that public works to the extent of £86,000 only had been authorized. Prom all that he (Major Nolan) heard from local sources, he feared the Chief Secretary for Ireland was right, and that a very-large amount of these public works had been cut down, and would not be put into execution. He knew from sources entirely independent of the right hon. Gentleman that the works had been cut down. A barony was, in reality, a large Union, and there was a large barony in the county of Galway, in regard to which he believed that works to the extent of £160 only had been passed by the Dublin Board. The result was that the public works in the locality in question would not keep the poor people of the barony in employment for a week or 10 days. There were several other places from which the same complaint proceeded. He held in his hand a letter which he had received only that evening, in the course of the debate, and some statements contained in it had made considerable impression on his mind. It was a letter that was certainly not meant to be read in the House of Commons, and it was written by the Bishop of Clonfert, than whom no man knew the country better. The writer said—"We are now coming to a crucial month. I find that intense distress exists among the labourers and the small tenants."[Mr. W. E. PORSTER asked what was the locality referred to in the letter?] It was Loughrea; the Bishop dated from Loughkee, and spoke of the locality. Alluding to another place, the writer said there were no works going on there of any kind, and the people of the district would be considerably demoralized if the Public Board in Dublin did not change their policy and insist upon public works being established in the district of Loughrea and in various other localities. The Chief Secretary for Ireland told them now that £86,000 of public works had been passed; but he (Major Nolan) did not believe that even works to that amount would be executed. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the late Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Gibson) strongly impressed upon the Chief Secretary for Ireland the desirability of having all public works executed by contract. That was, no doubt, a good general principle if they could carry it out; but when they were dealing with a famine, or a period of great scarcity, they would find that it would be impossible to carry it out. He believed the regulations which had been made in regard to contract would have considerable effect in stopping the execution of the £86,000 worth of works which had been authorized. They had already interfered, to his own knowledge, with some of these public works. And the reason was this—a very great many conditions had been imposed by the late Government upon the execution of the works. One was that not more than £300 should be granted for any work, and another was that every work should be finished before a fresh grant was made. It was stipulated that the baronal sessions should not order any portion of work to be done, but must complete and finish it entirely. In many cases it became impossible to fulfil these conditions, and, consequently, the works were not undertaken. Having now passed certain works, he hoped that Her Majesty's Government would give the assistance required from them, and enable the works already commenced to be completed. The secretary of the grand jury might call an extraordinary meeting of the baronial sessions, and, with the consent of the authorities in Dublin, might allow the works already commenced and not completed to be continued under the directions of the county surveyor. If that were not done there would be great delay. It involved a considerable waste of time to get the baronial sessions together, and unless the course he suggested were adopted a number of the public works already passed must inevitably be postponed. And this was not the only difficulty about executing this £86,000 of works. There was another matter in addition to the condition that all the works undertaken must be completely executed—namely, not more than a limited sum should be devoted to any one given work. Many very small contractors had contracted to execute work, men with limited means and resources. One of them told him that he could not execute the work he had undertaken to carry out for the money. Of course, ho (Major Nolan) told the man that it was all his own fault; but he believed there was a certain amout of truth in the assertion that many of these works had been undertaken for less than would be necessary to execute them. He had received both a letter and a telegram informing him that in certain cases contracts had been entered into at too low a rate, because the persons tendering believed that no penalties could be enforced against them if the work was not carried out. The result was, that other and more substantial contractors were driven out of the field and deterred from competing, and there was no remedy against such a state of things. Neither the Government nor the baronial sessions could do anything in the matter, although it was evident that if the work was not done the people would be reduced to a state of semi-starvation. This was one of the difficulties which the Board in Dublin and the Chief Secretary for Ireland had to contend with; it was for them to see that the works were executed, although in many many cases they had been commenced without being completed. The contractors believed that there was no power to compel them to be executed, and the result was that in more than one case the contracts had not been carried out. The remedy he would suggest would be a very simple one, although up to the present time he had no indication of its adoption. It was to require the country surveyor to execute the works where the contractor failed to fulfil his contract. He did not see that any harm would follow from such a course. The baronial sessions would have to pay for it, and in carrying out the contracts the labourers would be employed upon the work who could not be employed in any other way. He was altogether in favour of the system of contracts himself; but he knew perfectly well that work of this nature could not be done entirely by contract. He had told the Committee what was taking place at the present moment, and there was every reason to believe that a number of the authorized works would not be executed at all unless some settled power were given in regard to contracts. 80 much for the baronial works. In regard to the money advanced, he confessed that he did not understand the figures which had been given by the Chief Secretary for Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman said that £183,000 had been advanced, and that altogether £1,200,000 was to be granted to landlords for improvements. The right hon. Gentleman was to bring in a Bill for £1,200,000, or some such sum. Now, he (Major Nolan) believed that all the improvements were to be executed by the month of August; and did the right hon. Gentleman believe that works or improvements to the extent of £1,000,000 would be carried out by the landlords between the present time and the month of August? He believed that one of the conditions of the advance was that the work was to be done by a definite time.

MR. PARNELL

said, his hon. and gallant Friend was mistaken. The landlords were to have as much time as they pleased. The restrictions as to time related only to the sanitary works.

MAJOR NOLAN

believed that it would amount very much to the same thing. It appeared that a sum of only £183,000 had been advanced or spent up to the present time by the landlords, and the amount remaining to be spent was £1,000,000. This sum of £1,000,000 either had reference to works of improvements which were supposed to be carried out in the course of the next three months; or if the Chief Secretary for Ireland was conscious that the money for which he was about to bring in a Bill was not to be spent in the next three months, then the work to which it was intended to apply could hardly be called a relief work. It certainly was not a relief work to enable them to tide over the time of harvest. Out of the £1,000,000, he did not believe that more than £200,000 would be spent in the course of the next three months. The state of the country, then, was this. Owing to the great charity of America and Australia, and to a lesser degree to that of England, the people of Ireland had been enabled to live through the sowing time. This was to no inconsiderable extent owing to the late Government having taken a precaution for which they were entitled to the fullest credit—namely, to their having allowed the Seeds Bill to pass. In consequence of the passing of that Bill, the people of Ireland had been enabled to sow their land; and now what they wanted to do was to tide over the next three months without becoming demoralized. If the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland would see that the baronial works were executed and spread properly over the country, he would materially aid in the good work. At present, in some districts they were doing too much, while in others they were almost doing nothing at all. It was the duty of Her Majesty's Government to see that the proper amount of public works was undertaken, and that it was spread evenly over the country. But, above everything, it was their duty to pass the necessary works at once, and see that they were executed. By that means they would be able to tide over the crisis without demoralizing the people. If, on the other hand, they attempted to enforce the system of giving out-door relief in Ireland, he warned the right hon. Gentleman that he would have every man's hand against him. The Boards of Guardians were altogether opposed to the system of out-door relief. The system and its results differed very materially in Ireland from what they were in England. In England the money did not fall upon the parish, but was spread over the whole Union; whereas, in Ireland, the out-door relief was altogether distinct from the in-door relief. The in-door relief was charged to the whole Union, but the out-door relief was paid exclusively by the electoral divisions in which it was administered. The consequence was that the local divisions, where there were the most people and the largest number of small tenants, felt the pressure most heavily. The effect of resorting to a system of out-door relief would be, in the first place, to pauperize the smaller districts, and in the next to make the Boards of Guardians extremely unwilling indeed to administer out-door relief. He believed if the right hon. Gentleman resorted to a system of out-door relief, he would have to throw all his energy into it before he would succeed in forcing it upon the Unions. Even if the right hon. Gentleman did succeed in forcing it upon the Unions, he (Major Nolan) believed that it would work exceedingly badly and unsatisfactorily, and that its only result would be to demoralize the people who were supplied with relief under it. On the other hand, if the right hon. Gentleman trusted chiefly to public works, and showed the same energy in extending them and carrying them out that he appeared to have shown in cutting them down, he would secure the satisfactory progress of the good work which he professed to have at heart.

MR. WARTON

(who rose with Mr. W. E. FORSTER) said, he would only interpose for a moment between the right hon. Gentleman and the Committee; indeed, he had only one word to say—he simply wished to remind the Committee that they had now been engaged for two hours and 23 minutes in discussing this Vote, and had not yet passed it.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

said, the knowledge and experience he had formed of the work carried on by the Local Government Board in Ireland was altogether opposed to the conclusions arrived at by the hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Major Nolan). The Board seemed to be very anxious to avoid the granting of out-door relief as much as possible, and they had endeavoured to avoid it by substituting employment in its place. The Inspectors employed by the Board were most anxious to encourage useful public works and works of improvement, and it certainly appeared to him to be a very natural desire. The hon. and gallant Gentleman had made two or three suggestions in the course of his remarks; one was that the Government should compel the baronies to make presentments. He thought the Committee would at once see that it was almost impossible to do that. They could not compel people to enter into engagements by which they would be under an obligation to repay money. They must necessarily wait until the baronial sessions made the application themselves.

MAJOR NOLAN

wished to remind the right hon. Gentleman that the Government took this course in the case of the Poor Law Board. They forced the people to ask for money there.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

admitted that the Poor Law Board had a discretionary power, under certain circumstances, of compelling certain things to be done in cases of destitution, and, no doubt, they could compel the Guardians in any district to relieve destitutes. But it was not possible to compel a district to borrow money—which the suggestion of the hon. and gallant Member amounted to in this instance—for the performance of work which the district authorities did not deem to be necessary, and which they thought ought not to be undertaken. If the Government were to make such a proposal, he thought the hon. and gallant Gentleman would see that there would be such an outcry as neither he nor any other Irish Secretary nor any Government would be able to resist. It was altogether impossible to adopt the principle of forcing people to borrow money for the execution of these works. Then the hon. and gallant Gentleman seemed to be of opinion that every application for advances in connection with public works should be granted. Whenever the Board of Works considered that an application made to them was well founded they conceded it; but in some cases, though to a small extent, there was reason to fear presentments had been made for works which were only undertaken for the benefit of the people who were to be employed in carrying them out. There was, to some extent, a check upon the execution of unnecessary works; but the whole question in its details was one of extreme difficulty. The hon. and gallant Member had made several suggestions which he (Mr. W. E. Forster) wished to consider, and one of great value—namely, that where an application had been made, no practical difficulty or delay should be allowed to prevent the work being proceeded with. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman would favour him with a note in writing, showing how that could be done, together with the other points to which he had directed attention, he should feel obliged, and would endeavour to obtain a few hints from the suggestions which had been made. If they were put down in writing, he would be able to see how far they could be carried out in executing these works during the next two or three months. It must not be supposed, however, that the works that were sanctioned were the only works that had been applied for. As he had stated earlier in the evening, the Board of Works Inspectors had, in some instances, pointed out that the works proposed to be undertaken were not required, and in such cases the application had been sent back for re-consideration. The application alluded to by the hon. Member opposite was one which the Board had considered since he (Mr. W. E. Forster) was in Ireland. He had considered most of the applications personally when he was there, and he and the authorities there were struck by the large difference between the amount applied for and the amount sanctioned. He only mentioned the circumstance in order to show that the Local Government Board, for whom ho was responsible, were anxious to get as many of these works commenced as they could.

Major NOLAN and Mr. BIGGAR

rose together. The CHAIRMAN called upon Mr. BIGGAR. but

MAJOR NOLAN

said, he only wished to say a word by way of explanation. He had made no charge whatever against the Local Government Board. It was one of the misfortunes of the situation that they did not know who to blame.

THE CHAIRMAN

Order, order! Unless the hon. and gallant Member has an explanation to offer, I call upon Mr. Biggar.

MR. BIGGAR

was of opinion that the Committee were entitled to have some more definite information from the right hon. Gentleman as to the loans which it was proposed to grant to the landlords for improving their estates. As he understood the matter, it was proposed to lend a very much larger sum than had been lent hitherto to the landlords for works that they were bound to do. He regarded it as a simple means of supplying out-door relief to a few landlords who chose to undertake the drainage of their land, not for the purpose of improving the cultivation for the tenant, but for improving the grass lands, and thus tend to perpetuate the present vicious system that existed in Ireland. He thought that it would be better if the right hon. Gentleman declined to entertain such an idea at all. If he wished to lend money to the landlords for the improvement of their land, let him do so; but let him take care that any money that was lent for the purpose of relief should be used and expended in the course of the next few months. In point of fact, he was disposed to think that the time within which the landlord should be bound to spend the money should be even more rapid than in the case of the sanitary authorities and the presentment sessions, because the work done by the sanitary authorities and the presentment sessions was for the public benefit, while these improvements on the part of the landlords were simply improvements for the benefit of the individual who undertook them, and were of no real advantage to the people except so far as the money paid in wages was concerned. He was not aware how much money the Government proposed to lend to the landlords in Ireland in these improvements at I per cent. He regarded the system of making large advances to the landlords as vicious and preposterous. It was, moreover, thoroughly dishonest, and ought never to have received the sanction of Parliament. Reference had been made by the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) and by the hon. and gallant Member for Galway County (Major Nolan) to the charity which was involved in the distribution of this money in Ireland. His own opinion was that this system of charity, however well intended, involved a very vicious principle, because there was not the slightest doubt that the money, although distributed in a highly scientific way, was granted to the parties who applied for it by a Central Board in Dublin who had no direct means of obtaining evidence as to the circumstances and requirements of the locality for which the application was made, and were, consequently, unable to say whether the money was really required. At the same time, it was impossible for the authorities who granted the money to know whether the persons who applied for it made their application in honesty and fairness. A few weeks ago he was in the county of Roscommon, and he saw some tenants who had made an application for advances, but had not received them. Their land was surrounded by the land of a pretty large proprietor, whose brother was chairman and agent of the Relief Committee, and these poor people assured him that the agent was in the habit of getting large grants for the tenants of his brother, and of granting comparatively small sums only to other people, notwithstanding the fact that they were evidently in a state of the most abject poverty—in point of fact, some of them had to pawn their clothing in order to keep themselves from starvation. That was the way in which the Government advances were administered. He was satisfied, from what he had seen, of the unfairness with which this system of relief had been carried out. The landlord in question granted the money to his tenants, and then received it back again in payment of rent to himself; so that the money might as well, in the first instance, have gone directly into the pockets of the landlords rather than be granted ostensibly for the support and relief of the poor. He fully concurred with his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Galway (Major Nolan) that the administration of out-door relief would be a most inconvenient way of providing relief.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

said, he wished it to be distinctly understood that it was not in the slightest degree the intention of the Government, nor did they possess the power, to allow further applications to be made by landlords. When he came into Office he found that a certain sum had been granted for the landlords by the late Government, and that applications had been received amounting to £1,200,000. With respect to these applications and to the sums that had been issued, he wished it to be understood that the Government were pledged to carry out the terms of the recent Bill by the action of their Predecessors. But there was no intention of continuing to make those grants and to entertain new applications. In that state of affairs, he perfectly agreed with the remarks of the hon. Member who had stated that they had but a choice of evils before them; they had to consider how little harm they could do in giving relief, bearing in mind the one great duty they had to perform—namely, to see that the people did not die. He believed that the duty he had to perform was a hard one, inasmuch as, while relieving that distress, he had to see that the relief did not take the form of demoralization in the case of out-door relief, or of the demoralization, which was little less objectionable than the other, which resulted from works being badly organized. The policy he had attempted to adopt was entirely supported by his Colleagues and by the officials in Dublin. It was, first, to make the distribution of relief as little demoralizing as possible; and next, to push on all the work they were able to do, according to their present powers. That, he was aware, left another question still open; but it was one, which was not of so much importance at the moment, but rather for future consideration and action—namely, how far the resources of the country could be developed with advantage. During the next two or three months he should try to get all the baronial works into play. They had a most interesting, and to him profitable, discussion about the state of Ireland; but it might be useful for them to recollect that they had several other Votes before them to consider.

MR. O'SULLIVAN

said, he did not intend to detain the Committee any length of time. He thought it would be admitted on all hands that, during the last two or three months, baronial sessions had been held and contracts entered into. Those two or three months had expired, and no works were being carried on. He wished to know if there was any intention whatever to carry them out? He heard the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland say that the Local Government Board was anxious to carry out works and to give employment. He could tell them that the Board of Guardians of which he was chairman had passed several resolutions, entreating the Local Government Board to institute some works, as their workhouse was quite full. If these works were not carried out, their workhouse would remain quite full. The money which had been forthcoming from charitable sources was well nigh spent. They had the two worst months before them, and little or no employment to offer. He impressed upon the Government the absolute necessity there was that works should be commenced at once, and that the contracts which had been entered into some three months since should be carried out. He should like to hear from the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. E. Forster) that he had determined to insist that the works should be carried out where the contracts had been entered into. He was well assured that there would be a vast amount of starva- tion, were it not for the assistance of charity.

MR. VILLIERS-STUART

said, that he could not agree with the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) as to the futility of the loans to landlords for the purpose of giving employment. He was one of the landlords that took up a loan for that purpose, and ho would give the Committee the benefit of his experience on the subject. The loan that he took up enabled him to employ over 200 heads of families, and he had been able to keep them out of the workhouse between two and three months. He had no hesitation in saying that, as far as he was concerned, the facilities given by the Government for borrowing on easy terms were productive of the greatest benefit. He had made it a rule to pay the men at a rate slightly lower than that given by the farmers; for, if he had given them a higher rate, it would have placed the farmers at a disadvantage. Moreover, whenever a farmer required a certain number of men, he only had to point out what men he wished to have, and they were bound immediately to leave the relief works and place themselves in the service of the farmer for as long a time as he required them. He therefore said, unhesitatingly, that the system of loans to landlords was a step in the right direction, and a system which had been of considerable benefit. He could not agree with the hon. Member for Galway that the terms on which these loans were advanced were too easy. It had been laid out principally in reclaiming wasteland, and the money had been obtained for that purpose at the rate of 3½ per cent, including repayment of principal. The land when reclaimed would not be worth more than 10s. per acre per annum, and it cost at that reduced rate of loan to reclaim about £18. Therefore, it was scarcely remunerative even at that low rate; but it answered very well for the purpose of relieving distress, as well as of bringing permanently into cultivation much waste land. With reference to the baronial presentment sessions, he agreed with what had fallen from the hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Major Nolan) in the course of the debate— namely, that the period of repayment was too short, for it imposed too onerous terms on the ratepayers, requiring them to repay the loans in 15 years, and thus imposing an annual charge of 7½ per cent. He was himself the chairman of a Board of Guardians, and was intimately acquainted with the circumstances of the ratepayers, and he knew that in many Unions they would be unable to repay in the time prescribed. He did not believe that they could bear any additional burden on the rates. In his own district they had been unable to collect the rates which had already accrued. He ventured to make these few remarks on the points that had been raised, because he should be sorry that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. W. E. Forster) should suppose that the loans to landlords produced no good effects in alleviating distress. He begged to assure him that the system was one which had not altogether failed.

MR. O'DONNELL

said, he had listened with great pleasure to the remarks and kindly assurances which fell from the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. There could be no doubt, he feared, that they were approaching the severest period of distress throughout Ireland. He was told that in a leading article of The Freeman's Journal there was a summary containing statements of the ease of the most painful kind. The Mansion House Committee had large and almost unrivalled opportunities for fully sounding the condition of the distress throughout the country. That Committee was the centre of 800 local committees, and had something like 800,000 people on its books in the various localities in the country. At the end of a fortnight from then all the means at its disposal would be exhausted; there would, consequently, be an immense amount of destitution, and those 800,000 people would be thrown upon the resources of another organization, which, indeed, in one respect was political as well as charitable—he referred to the Land League Organization. Hon. Gentlemen might say that the efforts of that League had been of the most feeble nature; but there could be no doubt that, in its charitable aspect, the relief administered by it had been simply indispensable. And he believed that the funds of that League, in consequence of the success with which the sources of charity in America had been tapped, almost entirely through the energetic and patriotic exertions of his distinguished Colleague the hon. Mem- ber for Cork (Mr. Parnell), were not likely to run dry as soon as would those of the Mansion House Committee. But his hon. Friend had said that even those funds would probably soon become exhausted, and he could well conceive why that should be, because, with all the sympathy of the Irish in America, still they could not but feel that the evil of the Irish agrarian system was that which was really the cause, and the permanent cause, of agrarian misery. The Irish in America naturally recommended measures being carried which should remove the political evils, and thus destroy the existing social misery. Considering the difficult task which must fall upon the Government he could not but think that it was eminently desirable that they should utilize promptly those means, extensive and extremely well-informed, of the relief organization of the Land League, spread out as they were all over the country. He thought it would be great economy of organization if, before the Relief Committees came to an end, the Government could come forward in some way, and enter into some arrangement, by which that immense system of relief could be utilized, under the general direction and powerful assistance of the responsible Administration. He felt convinced that, considering the severity of the distress that threatened the country, it would be a great loss, not only to the country, but to the Government, if those immense systems of relief which had been initiated privately should collapse simultaneously with the collapse of their resources. It was a question of permanent interest to the country, and required to be taken into the careful consideration of the Government. He was happy to find that, for the purpose of giving encouragement to the development of Irish Fisheries, the present Chief Secretary for Ireland had exerted himself to loosen the strings of the Treasury purse; but it was reported that he had experienced considerable difficulty in overcoming the economic disposition of that Department in dealing with the subject. He believed, however, that it would be universally admitted by the Irish Representatives that in the case of the Irish Fisheries the British Administration of Ireland had been altogether too economical; and the result had been, as generally happened when economy was pushed too far, that administrative miserliness had led to a greater outlay of public money and a waste of the public resources in the long run. On many miles of the Irish coast line, where there was now a starving population which would soon engage more completely the attention of the Government, there might have been a comfortable people but for the unstatesman like parsimony of which he complained. The Irish Fisheries were being allowed to tumble in all directions to decay. He did not exactly know whether the Board of Works were the principal delinquents in the matter, although it was, no doubt, the habit in Ireland to lay similar offences to the charge of that body. But while he thought that one branch of British Administration deserved its own share of blame, he was disposed to regard the head-quarters of that Administration, which was the political parent of so many evils, as being still more open to censure. But be that as it might, the Fishery piers in Ireland required wholesale repair, while at least 100 localities stood in need of new piers. As to the policy which had caused the Irish Fisheries to be neglected, no one, he felt sure, would denounce it more strongly than the permanent officials of the Treasury Board. They were well aware that the supervision necessary to enable the fishermen to conduct their business in the most profitable way was entirely wanting, especially on the West and South Coasts of Ireland. He himself, as Member for Dungarvan, had occasion not long ago to complain of the deplorable results to the fishermen in the neighbourhood of that town, which had been occasioned by the state of things to which he had called the attention of the Committee; and the Treasury, upon inquiry, found, to their surprise, that no means of supervision were provided, or of giving effect to the ordinary bye-laws which had been laid down by the Fishery Board. The same story was told by the fishermen of Youghal and Kinsale, and, indeed, he believed by those of every other part of the country. It was all very well, ho might add, to talk about the evils of protection; but there was a great difference, he could not help thinking, between it and that wise encouragement which a patriotic Government owed to those industries, which only required to be fairly aided and protected in order to become great industries and sources of wealth and comfort to large populations. He had risen for the purpose of impressing- on the mind of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. W. E. Forster), who, since his accession to Office, had shown so good a disposition towards Ireland, those two points—the expediency, if possible, of utilizing the enormous business organizations both of the Mansion House Fund Committee and any other Relief Committees which might be disposed to work hand-in-hand with the Government. There was not, he believed, a public body in Ireland who would not cordially respond to any offer which might be made by the Government, provided only that they displayed a due apprehension of what was demanded by the situation. The second point which he wished to impress on the right hon. Gentleman was the necessity of bringing the influence which he possessed more and more to bear on the Treasury officials for the purpose of inducing them to extend a liberal and generous encouragement to the Fisheries of Ireland.

MR. PARNELL

said, he wished, before the Vote was agreed to, to put to the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. E. Forster) one or two questions, in the hope of eliciting what were his views on a very important and interesting subject. For his own part, he was very much indebted to the right hon. Gentleman for the trouble which he had taken in explaining to the Committee the position of affairs in Ireland, and the evident anxiety which he had shown to cope, as far as lay in his power, with the very difficult state of things which had been left to him as a damnosa hereditas by his Predecessors in Office. Having heard what was the plan of the right hon. Gentleman, he was prepared to suggest one of his own which would, he thought, perhaps go further in the direction of relieving the distress in Ireland immediately than almost any other which could be proposed, and which had never yet been tried in any attempts which had been made to meet the spread of famine in that country. The right hon. Gentleman had clearly shown that it was useless to expect that the money which was lent to the landlords in Ireland could be applied with sufficient rapidity effectually to relieve the distress which prevailed, and had stated that the only means of assistance to which recourse could be had was out-door relief, with the exception of charity. Now, by the Act of last Session, the Guardians of the Poor were empowered to borrow from the Local Government Board sums of money for the purposes of relief at the annual rate of 3½ per cent interest. The money so raised would be used for out-door relief—a most unsatisfactory mode of employing it, as everybody would admit, and if it could possibly be avoided a great object would be gained. What, in the circumstances, he would suggest was that the Government should give power to the Poor Law Boards, when application was made to them for out-door relief by able-bodied labourers who could work, to lend money to the occupiers of land in Ireland, provided that money was expended in giving employment to able-bodied applicants for out-door relief. He did not, of course, pretend to shape the scheme completely, or to indicate too precisely the details of the mode in which it should be carried into effect. But that it could be satisfactorily carried into effect he had very little doubt, and with the result that the money which was now spent on out-door relief would be expended in improving the internal resources of Ireland in a very marked degree, and in away which was very much needed. Nearly every occupier in that country had in his possession bits of land attached to his holding which, for instance, required to be drained, while there was often on his farm an entire absence of necessary buildings. As matters now stood, the landlord had no sufficient inducement to put himself to the trouble of borrowing money for the purpose of making those improvements; but if the money which it was proposed to use for the purpose of out-door relief were advanced to the occupier of land on the same terms as it was lent to the landlord, provided that the occupier consented to repay it to the Boards of Guardians in instalments as they became due, a great amount of good might be done. The instalments, he might add, could be secured on the rates of the whole electoral division; but before a rate was levied on the whole of the district, the Board of Guardians would, if his proposal were adopted, be entitled to obtain in the shape of a rate repayment from the occupier of the land of the money which they had lent to him. To such a proposal he could see no valid objection, for the repayment of the loan, instead of being rendered more unlikely, would be more likely than at present, because he money would be used for the purposes of improvement, instead of being, to a great extent, thrown away in providing outdoor relief. The security of the State would not, under the operation of such a scheme, be diminished in the slightest degree, because it would still have the security of the rateable property in the different Unions; while the experiment would, he contended, be productive, in all probability, of great advantage to the occupiers of land in Ireland. It might be urged as an objection to the plan that the whole of the rate ought not to be thrown on the tenant, and on that point his mind was not entirely made up; but, so far as he had been able to examine it, it did not appear to him that there would be any hardship in placing the whole of the rate for the improvement of a tenant's holding by himself upon that tenant; because, under the Land Act of 1870, the very fact of his having borrowed money from the Poor Law Boards to make improvements would be evidence of title to him, and would prevent the landlord from being able to confiscate his property in those improvements at any future time. If the Local Government Board would at once issue an Order giving effect to his suggestion, trusting to Parliament to indemnify them afterwards, the result, in his opinion, would be that a great deal of money which it was now proposed to spend uselessly on out-door relief—in a way which was most humiliating and demoralizing—would be expended in giving useful employment which would be productive of great ultimate advantage to the country.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

said, it was rather difficult for him to give a detailed answer to the remarks which had been made by the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Parnell); but he could assure him that the suggestion which he had made should receive from him the most careful consideration. He was, however, afraid 1hat there would be no time to give it effect; for the great pressure of the distress would, he hoped, be over before the experiment could be fairly tried. The 1st of June had all but arrived, and the accounts which he received from Ireland led him to hope that there would be not only a good but an unusually early potato harvest. He could not, of course, say what might happen; but, if there should he again a bad harvest, he could honestly assure the hon. Gentleman that he would be prepared thoroughly to consider his suggestion, although he much doubted, taking into account the shortness of the time for carrying it into effect, whether it would be of any great practical value. In reply to the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell), who desired to see the Local Government Board in Ireland make use of the organization of the Mansion House Fund Committee and the other Relief Committees, he had to state that when in Dublin he had received a deputation from the Mansion House Committee, and that, at the suggestion of the officers of the Local Government Board, he had expressed their wish to be on terms of the closest communication with the various committees, and it was especially suggested that relief out of charitable funds should be given to poor tenants who might feel a great reluctance to apply for out-door relief. He mentioned that merely to show that the Local Government Board were really willing and anxious to keep up those committees, and he believed it would continue to do so. The hon. Gentleman had also made some observations with respect to Fishery piers, and it was quite true that some of those piers were out of repair; but for that the counties were responsible, for the piers were handed over to their charge as well as the bridges. The Government were quite aware, however, how great an evil it was not to have those piers repaired, and they would try to provide some practical remedy for the state of things of which the hon. Gentleman complained. In the Bill which would soon be introduced a clause dealing with the subject would be found. In answer to the hon. and learned Member for the county of Limerick (Mr. O'Shaughnessy), he might observe that he was exceedingly anxious that all the applications which were sanctioned by the baronial sessions should be proceeded with as soon as possible.

MR. MITCHELL HENRY

pointed out that the question relative to the Irish Fishery piers had been considered last Session at a meeting of the Irish Party, and had been brought under the notice of the House by the hon. Member for Cork, on which occasion occurred a phenomenon with which former Irish Members were by no means unfamiliar. They were thoroughly beaten, and he found that the right hon. Gentlemen who now occupied the Treasury Bench had voted against them. [Mr. W. E. FORSTER: I did not.] He was glad to hear that the right hon. Gentleman had not voted against them; but he was bound to say that the present occupants of the Treasury Bench almost invariably joined the late Government in opposing the wishes of the Irish Members as to the mode of relieving the distress of Ireland.

MR. BIGGAR

urged upon the Government the expediency of providing means by which the money which was advanced to the landlords in Ireland should be spent in a way which would be likely to be permanently beneficial to the country.

MR. ARTHUR O'CONNOR

wished to point out an instance which seemed to show the manner in which the recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee were invariably set aside. He referred to the case of the Private Secretary to the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, who, besides receiving a salary of £300 a-year in that capacity, as well as his salary as a second-class clerk in the Colonial Office in London, drew a further allowance of £120 a-year on account of the expense to which he was put by being obliged to live in London and Lublin alternately. Unfortunately, the Public Accounts Committee were not yet in a position to report to the House with regard to details of that kind; and it was, therefore, impossible to say whether anything had been done to obviate the objections which had been taken last year to the charges under the Vote.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

said, his Private Secretary had no place in the Colonial Office. He was a gentleman of great experience in the Irish Office.

Vote agreed to.

(3.) £1,539, to complete the sum for the Charitable Donations and Bequests, Ireland.

(4.) £98,3 13, to complete the sum for the Local Government Board, Ireland.

MR. P. MARTIN

pointed out that under the Vote a grant was given in aid of schoolmasters and schoolmistresses in workhouses, and asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland, whether he would take into his consideration the expediency of extending similar assistance to the schoolmasters and schoolmistresses in industrial schools, who, being deprived of the result fees which were given in every other class of school under the control of the National Board of Education were, he said, miserably underpaid?

Vote agreed to.

(5.) Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £22,959, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1881, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of Public Works in Ireland.

MR. ARTHUR O'CONNOR

understood the hon. Member for Galway had said that in December, 1878, the late Chief Secretary for Ireland had said that a sketch for the re-organization of the Board of Works in Ireland was then under the consideration of the Treasury. He wished to ask the present Chief Secretary for Ireland why the scheme had not been carried out?

LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH

said, if he was not mistaken, his hon. Friend opposite the Member for West Essex (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson) had been on the point of introducing a Bill on that subject during the last Parliament. He assured the hon. Member that the subject had occupied his attention from the first time of his entering upon Office; but it was perfectly impossible that during the short period that had elapsed the Government could have dealt with the matter in any effectual manner. He hoped they would be shortly able to state their plans with regard to the re-organization of the Office m question.

MR. P. MARTIN

said, that in the present state of Ireland the question of facilitating the grant of loans by the Board of Works was of too much importance to admit of delay. If the Department was effectually worked, and the mode of obtaining loans simplified, the distress which unfortunately now so widely prevailed would have been relieved. In many places landowners and others were deterred from availing themselves of the powers Parliament intended to vest in the Board in consequence of the great delay and expense incident to their applications. The grievance was one of long standing. So far back as 1871, as the hon. Member for Galway had reminded the House more than once, a Committee had reported against the Irish Board of Works. That Report, however, had been treated with thorough neglect. The late Government had thought fit to appoint a Departmental Commission which, two years ago, reported fully to the House; but no effect had been given to their recommendations or suggestions. More than once complaint had been made by the hon. Member for Galway, who sat as a Member of the Departmental Committee, and more than a year ago, in an elaborate speech, which would be found in Hansard, called the attention of the House to the utter breakdown of the system under which public works were conducted and loans given by the Board. Fair promises were then made; but nothing had been done. Under these circumstances, he trusted the Government would now give something more in the way of explanation than the stereotyped answer that they had not time to take the matter into consideration. This was a grievance which, although it had remained up to the present time unredressed, had been deeply felt in Ireland. He held that if the Board of Works had been in working order a large amount of the distress which now existed would have been obviated. It was a misapprehension to imagine it was alone on the seaboard or West of Ireland that distress prevailed. It had been severely felt throughout the whole of Ireland, and had the Board been in order a great deal of the suffering in the inland counties would have been remedied by the making of loans, and the consequent stimulation of industry. On such an important matter, he did not think that the Irish Members should be contented with a mere statement that the subject was under consideration; and he trusted that they might have some farther intimation, either from the Secretary to the Treasury or from the Chief Secretary for Ireland, explaining the views which the Government entertained upon the subject; otherwise, he should be obliged to move the reduction of the Vote.

SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSON

admitted that the hon. Member had fairly stated the case with regard to that Department; and he was prepared to say that the late Government would have been seriously to blame if, after the promises made, they had not brought the subject before the House, as they eon-templated doing. But he did not think that the hon. Member was right in saying that the present Government had had time to consider the question, looking at the rerent change which had taken place; and he reminded the Committee that the subject had been, moreover, very seriously complicated by the fact that at the time when the late Government contemplated a re-organization of the Board the question of dealing with the loans under the new Bill came into operation. Under those circumstances, they were unable to disturb the then existing machinery, upon which they had to rely at a time of great emergency. He believed hon. Members would admit that he had intended to submit to the House, if possible, a Bill which would carry out the recommendations of the Departmental Committee; and he admitted that it would have been a great advantage if the House possessed a more direct contact with the work of the Board of Works, in the shape of someone who could speak for its action. He had merely shadowed forth what was really an additional difficulty in effecting a change of that kind; but even had they been in continuous Office they would have hesitated to disturb the only machinery upon which they could rely for dealing with the questions arising in consequence of the distress in Ireland. He appealed to the Committee to believe that, whatever had been the intentions of the late Government, if the present Government proposed next Session to alter the Board, he should be pleased to do everything he could to assist in carrying out alterations which he believed to be necessary, not as the result of any maladministration, but because the Board had work thrust upon them at a time when their staff was insufficient, and consequently paralyzed their actions.

MAJOR NOLAN

said, he thought it desirable that a Return should be presented of all the works passed by the baronial sessions in Galway, both those contracted for, and those in progress, as well as those refused to be passed by the Board of Works, in order that they might know what works were being-executed.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

said, he fully intended to make a fresh Return as speedily as possible of the condition in which the land, sanitary, and baronial loans were, as well as what had been applied for, and what had been sanctioned. He did not know, however, that he could give, in every case, the grounds on which each application was refused or accepted. As regarded what had been said by the hon. Member for Kilkenny (Mr. Martin), he thought the hon. Member would see that it was only an honest reply to say that the Government would consider the matter. The hon. Member had asked for his views upon that difficult subject, and had received them. During the two or three weeks in which they had held Office, the Government had had to consider, almost hourly, the actual measures to be taken for immediate necessities; and, under those circumstances, it would not have been possible to go into the best mode of re-organizing the Office of the Board of Works in Ireland. Their position was that, like many manufacturers, though they possessed machinery which a good many people said ought to be changed, they had also a very heavy order book, and could not find the time to complete the orders before them.

MR. FINIGAN

said, he wished to point out one of the many anomalies which abounded in Ireland in matters under the care of the Board of Works. On page 156 he observed that the architect received a salary of £300 per annum; but in addition to that sum, he found, by a foot-note, that he also received a pension of £300 per annum from the Irish Poor Law Board. He ventured to think that if the officer in question was a pensioner of the Poor Law Board he must be a somewhat worthless fellow; but, at any rate, he thought that if he was pensioned by one body he ought not to be the servant of another. Therefore, he must object to the Vote, unless some satisfactory promise was given that this pensioner should not appear as the architect for the Board of Works next year.

SIR ANDREW LUSK

said, he wished to remind the Committee that this Vote had been discussed for many years, and that the hon. Baronet the Member for West Essex (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson) had said that the Office ought to be reformed and put into a better condition than it was at present. He had also said that the Office was in a bad state as regarded its machinery. It was, therefore, very painful that this state of things should continue from year to year, and that nothing should be done to remedy it.

MR. FINIGAN

said, under the circumstances to which he had referred, he begged to move that the Vote be reduced by the sum of £300.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £22,659, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1881, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of Public Works in Ireland."—(Mr. Finigan.)

LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH

said, without being able to speak from, full information, it was his impression that the Poor Law Board had not an architect in their employment, and that the item objected to by the hon. Member was for the pension given to him upon his retirement. There was not the smallest reason for supposing that the gentleman referred to was incompetent.

MR. FINIGAN

said, that after the explanation of the noble Lord he begged leave to withdraw his Amendment.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Original Question put, and agreed to.

(6.) Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £4,440, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1881, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Public Record Office in Ireland and of the Keeper of State Papers in Dublin.

MR. FINIGAN

said, he found that the Estimates were full of such anomalies as he had already alluded to, and to which he again felt it his duty to call the attention of the Committee. Ho had given way upon the last Vote; but he could not do so in the present instance, unless he received some definite promise that they would be done away with. He found that the salary of the Keeper of State Papers in Ireland was £500 per annum, and, as he perceived by the foot-note, he also received £750 per annum as Ulster King of Arms from the Vote for the Household of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Many of these offices were of an anomalous character in the administration of Irish affairs; and he, therefore, moved that the Vote be reduced by the sum of £500.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £3.940, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1831, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Public Record Office in Ireland, and of the Keeper of State Papers in Dublin."—(Mr. Finigan.)

DR. LYONS

said, he believed that the Vote represented a not inadequate remuneration for the valuable services rendered by the officer in charge of the State Papers, which had been placed in the most admirable order, and formed a series of the most important and valuable records of Irish administration. The amount of work involved in the care, examination, and comparison of those Papers in connection with official purposes, as well as for the public use. was very great; and he was quite satisfied that if the hon. Member could visit the office in Dublin he would be surprised to find how large a number of Papers were now classified and made available for public purposes. There was no Department in Ireland which could more thoroughly satisfy the national aspirations and those of all true Irishmen than that important series of Papers, which had been brought into a state of perfect order and arrangement from one of absolute ruin. They were of the greatest value to the future history of Ireland, and to abolish the office would be an act which the hon. Member would himself deeply regret. He did not think it necessary to impress further upon the Committee the importance of this office, and would do no more than express a hope that the hon. Member would withdraw his Motion for the reduction of the Vote.

MR. FINIGAN

said, he had some knowledge of the office in question, and could quite confirm all the hon. Member (Dr. Lyons) had said with regard to the condition and importance of the State Papers, which he regarded as an invaluable record of national history, and ho only wished that every other Department in the Government of Ireland was in the same satisfactory condition. But when he considered this Vote he saw that there was also a Deputy Keeper who received £800 per annum, as well as an Assistant Deputy Keeper with a salary of £584. Again, there was the Ulster King of Arms and other relics of feudalism, for which he objected to pay. He did not know what was meant by the King of Arms, although he was aware that if he went to Ireland he would not be allowed to bear arms at all. However, he thought that the sooner they got rid of all that paraphernalia, and all the other devices for imposing upon the credulity of the unfortunate people, the better it would be for Ireland and for this country.

MR. MITCHELL HENRY

thought it was all very well to cut down salaries where there was any real grievance to be redressed; but, in the present instance, that was not the case, and if the hon. Member went to a division he should feel it is duty to vote against the Amendment.

LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH

said, that Sir Bernard Burke held a patent office, to which he had been appointed in 1857, and that if it were abolished he must receive compensation. Under the present arrangement he had abandoned the fees, and that transaction was very profitable to the Exchequer. He believed that the office would be abolished at the next vacancy.

MR. FINIGAN

said, that although he could not admit that the apology offered by the Government was any justification of the anomalies to which he had referred he would ask permission to withdraw his Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL

asked if he was right in understanding the noble Lord to say that on the occasion of the next vacancy the office of Ulster King of Arms would be abolished.

LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH

said, that he had been rightly understood by the noble Lord.

Original Question put, and agreed, to.

7.; £11,968, to complete the sum for the Registrar General's Office, Ireland.

(8.) £1(5,927, to complete the sum for the Valuation and Boundary Survey, Ireland.