HC Deb 09 February 1881 vol 258 cc438-68

Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment proposed to Question [4th February],"That the Bill be now read a second time."

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

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

Debate resumed.

MR. SEXTON

said, that, on the part of those Irishmen who had sent him to that House, he begged to tender his cordial thanks to the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen) for the speech with which he had enlightened the debate. If the hon. Member never spoke another word on behalf of the Irish people, that speech would entitle him to their lasting gratitude. The hon. and learned Member for Midhurst (Sir Henry Holland) objected last night to the comparison which had been drawn by an hon. Member, of the circumstances which had attended the lives of the Neapolitan Poerio and of Michael Davitt. He (Mr. Sexton) thought the comparison was amply justified. It was well known that Michael Davitt in his prison life had been subjected to indignities and ill-treatment which he could not describe as other than unspeakable. He thought there had been an extraordinary want of strength in the arguments advanced in support of the second reading during this debate. The hon. and learned Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Rodwell) had stated that in times past measures of this character had succeeded in repressing crime and restoring peace, and had referred to the Coercion Act of 1833 as an example. After the passing of that Act crime in Ireland steadily increased until 1835, when the Commutation of Tithes Act, which was of a remedial character, was passed. It was a measure of the kind which the Irish Members were endeavouring in vain to induce the Government to pass instead of continuing in their old policy of coercion. The failure of coercive measures and the success of remedial measures were exemplified also by succeeding years. In 1843 the Arms Act was passed, in 1847 the Crime and Outrage Act, and in 1848 the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. Under the influence of the Acts, the classes of crime against which they were directed steadily increased up to 1850-1, at which time the forced emigration of the people and the growth of a now system arrested the progress of crime. Certain hon. Members supporting the Government sitting on the Liberal Benches had expressed their desire for radical reforms in Ireland; but signified their intention of supporting the Coercion Bill, for no other appreciable reason than that the Prime Minister asked for support. He wished he could see a little more independence in these Members, who, although actuated by a sincere desire to benefit Ireland, did not exercise fully their own judgment. The present was the most drastic Coercion Bill that had ever been introduced, inasmuch as it was retrospective, and was intended to remain in force for 18 months, during which trial by jury would be suspended. Moreover, it placed the liberties of a whole nation at the mercy of one man, and treated an ancient, intellectual, and civilized people, with its great and ancient historical traditions, as if they were the in habitants of some wretched Crown Colony. If Irish Members were not allowed freedom of speech on this sub- ject, he should like to know what business they had there, and what had become of the independent functions of Members of that House? He could not conceal from himself the fruitlessness of his endeavouring to argue this question, which had already been decided by a foregone conclusion which no words of his could alter. Nevertheless, he felt bound to state the case of the Irish people to the best of his ability, forced on by an irresistible sense that nothing could absolve him from the discharge of the duty he had taken upon himself when he became a Member of Parliament. What should he say of the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland? However distinguished a lawyer that right hon. and learned Gentleman might be, in spite of a certain recent failure, to which he need not more particularly allude, he had, at a late stage in this debate, delivered a speech which was altogether wanting in those calm, well-balanced, and discriminating characteristics which would be expected to mark the observations of a statesman. He protested against this grave question being treated as though it were a matter of criminal inquiry, in which individual outrages were to be dwelt upon as proofs of the guilt of a whole nation; and he contended that it should not be determined by looking microscopically at small and isolated facts. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had said that it had been asserted that this was a measure intended to interfere with the liberties of the Irish people. For his part, he regarded it as one not calculated to interfere with, but to destroy, Irish liberty. Whatever might have been his original opinion with regard to this measure, he had been convinced by the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman that it would inflict a fatal injury upon the liberties of the Irish people if these despotic powers were to be placed in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant, of whom the right hon. and learned Gentleman was the public Legal Adviser. Turning to the action of the Land League, he asserted with confidence that the essential principle of that Association was not to interfere with the liberty of any man in Ireland. (So far from inciting to violence, the Land League had, over and over again, interfered in remote districts for the purpose of preventing ignorant peasants being forced to join their body. The Land League had no desire to resort to force in any case, because they felt that the mass of sympathy which they had in the hearts of the Irish people was sufficient to carry them on to victory in the legal and Constitutional course they had marked out for themselves in spite of coercion. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had referred to the counties of Galway and Mayo as being those in which the organization of the Land League was the most complete, and in which there had occurred, in consequence, the greatest number of agrarian outrages. But was the right hon. and learned Gentleman justified in assuming that there was the slightest connection between the organization of the Land League and the existence of agrarian outrages? It might be true that the Land League was well organized in Galway and Mayo; but was it not true that these were the two counties in which distress acutely prevailed? Was it not true that in those counties the greatest number of small farmers were found dragging out a miserable existence, and that the landlords were, in the largest number, most harshly and cruelly exercising the rights confided to them by law? Was it not, therefore, most uncandid, most unfair, and misleading on the part of the right hon. and learned Gentleman to endeavour to associate the existence of outrage with the fact that the Land League was specially well organized in Galway and Mayo? The existence of outrages could be clearly and undeniably ascribed to the nature of the relations between landlord and tenant in the country, and to the notorious fact that the condition of the bulk of the small cottiers and small tenants in these counties was in itself amply sufficient, if there never existed a branch of the Land League, to account for the prevalence of outrages. The sufferings of the people, and the repeated attempts made by the landlords in those counties to extract a higher rent than they were equitably entitled to, were in themselves a reason why the Land League should establish a larger number of branches there than elsewhere—in fact, the people had solicited the protection of the Land League. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had said that the system of intimidation which existed in Ireland affected not merely the landlords, but every relation of life. He maintained that the present state of things in Ireland was not due to intimidation; but was caused by the universal social sense of equity, that revolted against an iniquitous law, and had determined that that law should be altered. If the present condition of Ireland were really due to intimidation, it would have prevailed over parts only of the country, and would not have penetrated into its very blood and marrow. Furthermore, the Attorney General said that no distinction would be made between rent and other debts. He desired to vindicate the Land League in this respect. All the Land Leaguers had vigorously protested against any attempt to extend the action of the organization to any debts except those for rent; and the humblest and most unlettered man perfectly well understood the gulf of moral difference that lay between a demand for an exorbitant rent and a demand for an ordinary debt. If the demoralization to which the Attorney General had alluded was likely to extend to all sorts of debts, he asked how it was that almost every commercial Corporation of Ireland had petitioned against the proposed Coercion Bill? He confidently and proudly assured the House that the great mass of the Irish shopkeepers knew that any delay in the payment of debts at the present time arose, not from any corrupt unwillingness to discharge moral obligations, but from sheer incapacity. These shopkeepers joined with the people in asking the Government to lay aside coercive measures, and proceed as rapidly as might be to pass such remedial measures as would enable the tenants of Ireland to put in their pockets such a fair share of the profits of their labour as would enable them to pay their debts, and as would re-construct on a sound basis the dislocated condition of the country. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had fallen into a ridiculous error when he dealt with the system of "Boycotting." That system had never formed a part of the unwritten law of the Irish Land League, and no man had ever been subjected to it who had not made himself personally obnoxious in a particular locality. Boycotting was an excrescence which had developed itself on the body of the League, and over it the League could exercise but little con- trol. Control had, however, been exercised over it when feasible. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland asked—"What, in the absence of coercion, would become of the victims of the Land League in the interval that must elapse before a Land Bill could pass?" In answer, he had to say that no Coercion Act which could be devised would restrain the passions of excited and ignorant men, who must have plenty of opportunities of committing secret crimes. The best way to deal with the diseased social condition of Ireland would be to remove from the minds of the discontented the reason for discontent. Part of the argument of the right hon. Gentleman was based on his statement that juries in Ireland would not convict. But was it true that juries would not convict? In the course of the past year 215 cases of an agrarian character were brought before juries, and in 83 a conviction was obtained; so that verdicts of guilty were found in 40 per cent of the agrarian crimes brought before juries. The proportion of convictions in England in ordinary times did not exceed 40 percent.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

That is the proportion of apprehensions to of-fences

MR.SEXTON

No; not at all. It was the proportion of convictions to trials. He, therefore, said that Irish juries, in this time of trouble, had discharged their duties as thoroughly as English juries discharged theirs in ordinary times. And with respect to ordinary crime. The Bessborough Land Commission in their Report said that if they were right in maintaining that grievances existed for which the present law provided no remedy, justice required that the remedy should be provided; and they expressed the opinion that even an incomplete measure of justice would succeed for a time in stilling the most violent agitation. In consonance with this view, he would now say to the Government, apply the axe to the root of Irish landlordism, and not to the liberties of the Irish people. He was very much surprised that the Chief Secretary for Ireland had not taken the trouble to correct a very grave error in one of his former discourses. The error to which he referred was the statement that the proportion of arrests to the total number of agrarian crimes in Ireland was only 16 per cent. The real proportion of arrests to offences was 23 per cent, and in connection with so grave a question as the present one a difference of 7 per cent was a serious difference. The right hon. Gentleman, in order to convince the House that Ireland was in a condition calling for coercion, had compared the crimes of 1880 with the crimes committed in 1847 and 1809. He denied that any just comparison could be made between the crimes committed in these different periods. The crime of 1880 was distinctively agrarian, while the crime committed in 1847 was connected with an excitement, not of an agrarian, but of a social character. It was also misleading to compare 1880 with 1869, for in 1869 there was no such distress and consequent public excitement as characterized 1880; the Government in 1869 had not themselves condemned the operation of the agrarian law in Ireland, neither had they made an abortive attempt to bring relief to the tenants. But in 1880 all these circumstances occurred to excite the people to an unparalleled degree. There was, however, a period which formed a true analogy with 1880. That was the period of the tithe agitation. Then Ireland was convulsed by a movement for popular rights, such as that which engaged it at present. It was then engaged in a struggle to get rid of an impost that was not so bad as in 1880. They wore then striving to get rid of a burden imposed by the Irish Church to the extent of £750,000. Now they were trying to get rid of an exorbitant rental amounting to £6,000,000 or £7,000,000 per annum; but, turning to the crime of the period, and the speeches of Mr. Stanley in this House, and of Earl Grey in the House of Lords, he found that in the year 1832, in one county alone, there were 32 murders, while in another county there were 60 murders, and in the whole of Ireland there were 172 murders directly connected with the tithe movement. Last year, however, the Returns showed a record of only 8 murders, 5 of which alone could reasonably be considered agrarian. Altogether, 9,000 crimes of the first degree of gravity were committed in connection with the tithe agitation; yet Earl Grey waited for two years, through 1831 and 1832, before asking Parliament to pass coercive measures. The present Government, how- ever, who would almost sneer at the Liberalism of Lord Grey as an effete form of Whiggery, founding their demands upon Returns showing only about one-eighth of the amount of crime committed during the tithe agitation, wished to resort to a measure of coercion more drastic, offensive, and insulting to the self-respect of the Irish people than that proposed by Lord Grey in a far worse condition of things. The last speech of the right hon. Gentleman was expressed in an apologetic tone. He said it was a small enactment, all contained in one clause.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

I was misreported. What I meant to say, and what I think I said, was, that the Bill was a short enactment.

MR.SEXTON

, continuing, observed, that this was the most extraordinary excuse ever made by a responsible Minister for striking at the liberties of a people. They could as effectually dispose of a man by shooting him at the heart as by killing him by inches. The celerity with which the action was accomplished was no excuse for its enormity. The right hon. Gentleman said that this Bill would only deal with offences which were already punishable by law; but the Bill proposed to punish anybody who was guilty of inciting to intimidation. That was extremely flexible language; and after the speech of the Attorney General last night he viewed the future of Ireland with great alarm. If a public speaker advised tenants not to pay full rents, the Attorney General would hold that that speaker was intimidating tenants who wanted to pay their full rents. They all knew that some tenants were mean and cowardly enough to evade the payment of rent by professing terror of the Land League. There were rogues who would be only too glad of any excuse. These were a class of men who discredited every popular movement. Again, if a public speaker gave the essential advice not to take farms from which tenants had been unjustly evicted he would be brought within the purview of the Bill. He said that the advice was essential, because the Irish landlord was an uncontrollable despot; and if his despotism was ever to be put an end to, it could only be by the united determination not to keep up a system of artificial and exorbitant rents. But if any speaker gave that advice, the Irish Privy Council and the Attorney General would say he was intimidating. If this Bill meant anything, it meant to strike them dumb—it meant to forbid them to advise the people to take the necessary measures of organization; and although the Chief Secretary had said that the Bill was not intended to apply to public meetings, it must be remembered that public meetings could not go on without public speakers; and if a speaker gave such advice as he had indicated, the Attorney General would console himself for his defeat in the Four Courts by putting into effective operation, under this Bill, the maxims he was unable to impress on an Irish jury. That was a mean and cowardly way of accomplishing the objects of the Government. Let them, if they would, pass a law abolishing the Irish Land League. Ah! but they could not do that. The Land League was impregnably legal. Its action lay within the inviolable domain of personal freedom. What it recommended the farmers, every individual had a right to do; and what an individual had a right to do, a whole community had a right to do. That which the Government were afraid or ashamed to attack with the means which the law placed at their disposal they had attacked under cover of this Coercion Bill. The right hon. Gentleman complained that his language about the power wielded by "dissolute ruffians" had been greatly misapprehended. But for this the right hon. Gentleman had no one to blame but himself, his language having been that of studied vagueness. He was so anxious to convince the intelligence of the House that the Land League and all connected with it were incriminated by recent proceedings with Ireland, and he so mixed up the lights and shades of the picture, that it was impossible to say to whom he was referring and to whom he was not. For instance, the right hon. Gentleman had spoken of ruffians hired by committees. Well, he knew of no committees except those of the Land League. He had as wide an experience as any man in Ireland; and, while it was not necessary for him or any other man to defend either the Irish people or the Irish Catholic clergy against any attacks made by so eminent a moralist as the Chief Secretary, still, he felt bound to say that the clergy of Ireland, who, in the majority of oases, were connected with the Land League, were a body of men who, for uprightness and for purity of life, for self-sacrifice and for self-denial, could bear comparison with any clergy in the world; and the constitution of the branches of the Land League in Ireland was made up in the towns of the most independent and honourable men of the merchant class; while in the counties they were made up of the best type of the Irish farmer. And when he spoke of the best type of the Irish farmer, he spoke of a type which possessed qualities of high-mindedness and devotion to principle which could not be exceeded by any class of people in the world. The right hon. Gentleman ought surely to have taken great care to let the public understand that he did not connect the meetings of the Land League and its branches with this hiring of dissolute ruffians. As a matter of fact, the Land League had great and good reason to do all in their power to prevent outrages; for they not only had the same horror of those mean and cowardly acts as other men, but knew that the landlords would seize upon the commission of outrages as a pretext for coercion, as a pretext for delay to remedial measures, and as a pretext to wreck the great popular movement going on in the country. The right hon. Gentleman also said that it might not unfrequently happen that the most powerful man in the district was some contemptible, dissolute blackguard, who enforced the unwritten law of the Land League. He (Mr. Sexton) confessed that this unwritten law was something that struck him with amazement. He could not understand what was meant by the unwritten law which the hon. Member for the City of Cork had drawn up. If it was drawn up it was not an unwritten law. The rules of the Land League, if they were referred to, wore published all over the country; and these dramatic references to unwritten law which had been indulged in by the Chief Secretary could serve no other purpose than that of enlightening ignorant public opinion in England. There was no connection between those who committed outrage and the Land League; and it was most unfair and unjust of the Chief Secretary to endeavour to connect the Land League with the perpetration of crime in Ireland. He repelled that charge in language as strong as the Forms of Parliament would permit. Whoever the ruffians might be that either perpetrated or incited to outrage, they were not within the ranks of the Land League. If so, it was without the knowledge of the Land League; they were traitors to the principles of the League, which had used its influence against crime, first, by teaching the people the sufficiency of peaceful Constitutional action; and, secondly, by directly appealing to them not to commit crime. Those portions of the Bill which provided for the arrest of persons suspected of treasonable practices appeared to him to have been inserted for the purpose of eking out a miserable, inadequate case, and of paving the way for the successful passing of the measure by exciting the minds of the English people. The appearance of the proclamation which had been posted up here and there in the country did not constitute a sufficient reason for the introduction of the Treason Clause into this Bill. They all knew that there was no treasonable organization in existence; and even if it did exist, and if its members wished to take advantage of the present crisis to further their designs, they would not go upon the housetops to proclaim their intentions. That proclamation, instead of being the emanation of the Fenians, who generally conducted their business in a prudent manner, was the emanation of some enemy of agrarian reform, or of some person who wished to excite the minds of the Irish people at the present crisis, and, by urging the Government to adopt coercion, to bring Ireland into a condition which might be favourable for the application of a secret policy. He should not dwell further upon the miserable Blue Book Re-turns which had been laid before the House. He had read them through and through, and he wished other hon. Gentlemen did the same. The House would find itself in this unparalleled condition if, as the Government stated, they proceeded with this measure upon the crime of December. They would find themselves in a position in which no Legislative Assembly ever found itself before, legislating upon the crime of December without the Returns for December being before them, especially in view of the fact that former Returns had been damaged, disproved, and destroyed. They now found themselves legislating upon crime for the month of December without knowing whether the Return for the month was like the Return for all the other months; whether it was half composed of those absurd and idle threatening letters; and whether the remainder of the outrages was made up of the heterogeneous mass of cocks of hay with the tops knocked off, gates taken off their hinges, panes of glass broken, and several things which were scarcely worth the attention of a police court magistrate, much less of a Legislative Assembly considering whether it would take away the liberties of a nation. He would only say of those Returns that they did not, in the slightest degree, bear out the ingenious and highly fanciful theory of the right hon. Gentleman that outrages proceeded upon a settled plan of progress with letters of intimidation. He hoped, on a future day, the conscience of the right hon. Gentleman would rebuke him for an observation he made—namely, that if there were so few murders it was be-cause they were not necessary. That was a hard and undeserved statement to make against a law-abiding people. There was no evidence whatever that the murders which, unfortunately, had been committed arose out of any organized movement. In three out of the eight they sprang out of purely private quarrels; and, surely, five murders in a period of suffering and excitement could not warrant such a black imputation upon the character of a whole people. It would be describing the outrages which had occurred more accurately than they had been described by the Chief Secretary, if he were to speak of them as "a fortuitous concurrence of atoms;" and he would point out that in 95 cases out of 100 in which threatening letters had been sent, they had not led to the commission of any offence so serious even as the unhinging of a gate. Now, as to the arrests which would be made under the Bill, they were told that the reasonableness of the suspicion upon which anyone was to be arrested might be challenged upon the floor of the House. Well, even if he was to assume that the Representatives who were in sympathy with the people of Ireland were to retain their full rights of speech in that House—even if he was to take it for granted that these Irish Members could, in the future, continue to be Members of that Assembly in any practical sense of the terra; he would ask what materials would be afforded them for challenging that suspicion, and what facilities for debate? The Chief Secretary said he would lay upon the Table of the House a statement of the grounds expressed in the warrant of the Lord Lieutenant for the arrests. Why, those grounds would only be that the Lord Lieutenant reasonably suspected somebody or other of committing or inciting to crime; and when a man was arrested and placed in gaol on suspicion, if hon. Members attempted to challenge that suspicion on the strength of such material, they would find that they engaged in fighting a shadow. The Chief Secretary—of whom the landlords would be very glad to make use until they could find somebody more to their taste—and the Law Officers of the Crown would be enabled by the Bill to embarrass, impede, dislocate, debilitate, in fact, he might say annihilate, the Land League; for it would be impossible for any member of it to make a speech without rendering himself liable to arrest. When they considered into whose hands the operation of the Act would fall, however they might desire to limit that power, they would see that a determined and universal effort would be made by the magistrates and the police to apply that power to the members of the Land League. To take the county of Sligo, there was not a single one of the magistrates in that county who was not either a landlord or a land agent, and who did not regard the local officers of the Land League as a kind of social plague. With regard to the police, the ease and comfort and promotion of every policeman, from the sub-constable to the county inspector, depended upon the countenance and favour of the local magistrates. The magistrates would desire, above all things, to throw into gaol the efficient members of the Land League, in order that they might be able to collect their rents; and, therefore, when the magistrates communicated to the police a strong desire that reasonable suspicion should be directed towards a certain quarter, the police would not be very slow to apply what was given to them, and would not be slow—in the language of the Bill—to suspect the efficient members of the Land League of committing or inciting to acts of outrage. The Royal Land Commissioners, in their Report, recommended that every tenant in Ireland should be declared the proprietor of his improvements for the last 85 years; and now the landlords of Ireland, being aware that the Government were probably about to pass a Land Act on the basis of that Report—to put the tenants, as the Commissioners said, in a position differing very little from that of proprietors of the soil, would, led and encouraged and incited by the passing of this Coercion Act, effect wholesale clearances of their tenants, and wholesale confiscations of the improvements of the tenants before the new Act could clothe them with those legal powers which would place them in the possession of their own property. The Chief Secretary, immersed in the multifarious duties of his Office, would be unable to exercise an efficient supervision over the magistracy, and would be obliged, in conformity with the traditions of the official mind, to accept, as a general rule, the Reports which reached him from the various parts of Ireland. He would, in the next place, turn to the speech of the Prime Minister, who based his argument as to the necessity for coercion on the difference between the number of committals and convictions in the case of agrarian as compared with non-agrarian crime. Now, in dealing with that argument, he would point out that there wore agrarian crimes, such as the lighting of incendiary fires, the houghing of cattle, and the sending of threatening letters, which, from their very nature, it was almost impossible to detect; and it was, therefore, no fault of the jury system that their perpetrators were not identified and punished. Three-fourths of the total of the agrarian crime on which the Government relied was of that character; while non-agrarian crimes were, for the most part, of a nature which rendered detection comparatively easy. But, notwithstanding that fact, he failed to see that the police had been much more successful in regard to the detection of ordinary than of agrarian crime. He found, for example, that out of 330 cases of incendiary fires which were non-agrarian, there had been only 41 arrests; out of 124 cases of cutting and maiming cattle, also non-agrarian, only 8 arrests; out of 427 cases of sending threatening letters, non-agrarian, only 14 arrests; while the number of convictions were, out of the 330 cases, 8; and of the 124 cases, 4; there not having been a single conviction in Ireland last year out of the 427 cases of sending threatening letters. It was, indeed, beyond doubt that the police had failed as completely, and more so, in dealing with a certain class of non-agrarian crimes than in securing the arrest or conviction of the perpetrators of agrarian offences. As to the land meetings, which the Prime Minister said had always been followed by an increase in the number of outrages in the districts in which they were held, he maintained that it would be a thing unparalleled, inexplicable, and mysterious that that should be the result in the case of men who in their speeches counselled peace and order for the sake of religion and morality. The truth of the matter, however, was that the distress which prevailed in Connaught, in Clare, in Cork, and in Kerry led the people there to appeal more frequently than elsewhere to the Land League for help, and that a larger number of meetings was, consequently, held in those localities than in other parts of Ireland. He would also point out that in 1879 in Cork, where no meetings were held, there were 15 cases of agrarian crime; in Kildare, where there were also no meetings, 12; and in Louth, 8. There were 16 counties, with the names of which he need not trouble the House, in which nearly half the number of meetings held by the League took place; and yet the average of crime was, he found, less in those than in counties in which there had been no meetings. But there was one other fact which conclusively established the fallacy of the contention of the Prime Minister, and that was that two-thirds of the total agrarian crime was committed within what might be called the zone of distress in the West of Ireland. It was clear from the condition of things in the most miserable portion of Ireland that crime arose, not from the Land League meetings, but in spite of them. Another matter which was only imperfectly understood in that House was that athre at of eviction, in many cases, drove men to desperate acts quite as much as an eviction itself. From the Parliamentary Papers it ap- peared that on the 31st of August there were 374 unexecuted decrees of eviction in Ireland, and at the November Sessions there were 926 more, which showed 1,200 unexecuted decrees of eviction in the hands of the sheriffs in Ireland. If the landlords had executed only 100 of these, the people of Ireland had to thank the Land League for it—the Land League, which had forced the Government to bring in a measure of Land Reform, for which, without the Land League, the people of Ireland might have had to wait for a generation. He asked the Chief Secretary to consider the fact that there were 1,200 writs of eviction hanging over their heads—those writs which the Prime Minister said were equal to sentences of death. They were sufficient to account for the great excess of crime in the December quarter, for it was in that quarter that the plea of destitution came — that threefold want of food, fuel, and clothes. But there were other reasons also. Crime was not necessarily the immediate consequence of eviction. A tenant evicted in March or April might find work, during the summer. It would be in the winter months that he would first feel the pinch of distress, and be tempted into unlawful courses; and it would be then, too, owing to the length and the darkness of the nights, that the greatest facilities for crime would present themselves. He would illustrate the evils too often attendant upon evictions by referring to a distressing case of which he had just heard. It was that of a poor, industrious woman, with eight children, who had been deserted by her husband. She had regularly paid her rent; but her landlord —a noble Lord and a gallant officer—desiring to recover the best portion of her land, involved the poor woman in the difficulties of litigation; and the result was that she, with her eight children, was evicted. In the night the wretched family crept back to their home. The result was that the woman was sent to gaol, and ultimately became a raving maniac, and the house was burnt down by the orders of the bailiff of the estate. As for the children, five of whom were girls, they would have been subjected to the degradation of the workhouse, had not Michael Davitt, on behalf of the Land League, sent £10 for their immediate needs. That case seemed to him admirably to epitomize the working of British rule in Ireland. The legal oppressor bore an unstained name before the world, the victim was helpless, and the man who intervened to mitigate the harshness of the law became himself the object of the law's vengeance. If the law had failed in Ireland, it was not be-cause of the Land League movement, but because of the inherent secrecy and the peculiar circumstances of agrarian crime, and the impossibility of identifying criminals. In conclusion, he said he had attempted to grapple with facts which might be disposed of with an epigram or a sneer from the Treasury Benches. He believed that the inevitable effect of the passing of this Bill would be to convulse society generally throughout Ireland. It would arm the despotic classes—who had never used their power wisely, who had never shown they possessed judgment or reason, who were unable either to conciliate or subdue—with an unlimited power to inflict private wrong and public oppression, a power which would be quickly used to deprive thousands of the tenantry of those rights of property in the soil which were to be conferred on them by a Land Bill. It was a shameful thing that a great Legislature, on the eve of passing remedial measures, should say to the landlords—"Make the best use of the time you can; turn out all the tenants you can; confiscate their improvements; put yourself in the position to claim higher rents. We give you a period of unrestricted despotism to allow you to take advantage of the slowness with which we are passing our remedial measures." He believed that the passing of the remedial measures themselves would be delayed by the course the Government was taking. If they had brought in the remedial measures first, the Tories in the House, and the great bulk of the Members of the other House, would have given thorn a more rapid passage in the belief that the Coercion Bills were to follow; but coercion having been placed first, they would get all they wanted, and would offer to the Land Bill an opposition so strenuous that the time that would elapse before it passed into law would be sufficient to enable the landlords to inflict unspeakable hardships upon their tenants. He feared that the effect of this unfortunate Bill, introduced by a reversal of an intelligent and statesmanlike policy, would be to retard, perhaps for years, the return of the suffering community of Ireland to a state of order, tranquillity, and peace. There was a bitter aphorism that "he who would not he ruled by the rudder would be ruled by the rock." The Government refused to he steered in their Irish policy by the true rudder of the judgment of the Irish people. Panic and prejudice were the helmsmen of their ship; and he prophesied that before long that ship, the ship of their Government, would be shattered to pieces on the rock of an outraged people's indignation.

MR. T. FRY

said, as a young Member of the House, he wished to explain the reasons influencing his vote at this important crisis. The House was asked to vote for this measure because the Government thought it was absolutely necessary for the maintenance of law and order in Ireland. If he voted with the Government on this occasion, he should do so with the greatest reluctance and pain. If hon. Members on the Ministerial side had been asked to accompany a Conservative Government into the Lobby in support of a measure like this, they probably would, almost to a man, have refused to do so. It was in consequence of their confidence in those who now occupied the Treasury Bench that they supported the Bill. If it were painful for them to vote for this Bill, how much more so must it be to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who had spent their long lives in furthering measures which had for their noble object the freedom of the people in all parts of the world, and especially measures which were for the good and benefit of the people of Ireland? When, however, they saw two such friends of liberty ready to support the measure, he thought Liberal Members might follow their example on account of the confidence they had in the Government. At the same time, he hoped that in Committee the Government would agree to abandon the retrospective action of the Bill, and to accept the Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill), limiting the operation of the Bill to one year. He was certain that if hon. Members for the North of England had told their constituents that they were going to accompany the Conservative Members into the Lobby in support of this Bill, the result of some of the elections would have been very different. His view of coercion was that of Grattan, who, in 1787, speaking in the Irish Parliament against the Coercion Bill of Fitzgibbon, said— Ireland needed coercion, it was true; but it was the coercion of tenderness, the coercion of justice, the coercion which should appeal to the generous, warm, and noble temperament of the Irish people. Much as he deplored that the Government could not see its way to bring in the Land Bill before the one under discussion, he trusted that when it did appear it might be of such a character that he should vote for it with as great pleasure as he should vote that night with regret.

MR. LALOR

said, that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition (Sir Stafford Northcote), in saying that the Government could not buy off Irish agitation, and must postpone remedial legislation, reminded him of a cartoon which recently appeared in a comic paper, representing the Prime Minister as a doctor holding up the bottle of physic to a boy representing Ireland, and tolling him that he could not have any sugar—or remedial measures—until he had swallowed the physic. England had often given Ireland doses of physic; but remedial measures did not often accompany them. He did not wish to detain the House long. He merely rose to protest against this cruel, unjust, and mischievous measure. In his opinion, it was the most unjust Bill which had been brought in against Ireland during the last 50 years, even by a Whig Government. Tyrannical powers were to be used on the mere suspicion of policemen, and in accordance with the wishes of despotic landlords and their agents. Her Majesty's Government had admitted that the number of murders committed in Ireland was proportionately less than the number in any other part of the Queen's Dominions. As for incendiary fires, he might remark that burnings in Ireland were not unfrequently caused by owners themselves, in view of getting compensation. Moreover, at times when incendiary fires were of frequent occurrence in England, coercion was not applied to this country. There were miscreants in Ireland whose interest it was to support the existing land system. Indeed, he believed that many of the crimes in Ireland were committed, if not by the landlords directly, by their agents and the hangers-on of the rent offices. He did not assert that Ireland was free from crime, or ask that criminals should be exempt from punishment; but he deprecated the passing of a law which would punish innocent men, and shed everlasting discredit and disgrace upon its promoters.

MR. NELSON

, with the permission of the House, desired to call attention to a resolution unanimously passed by the Guardians of the Claremorris Union, on the 10th of February, protesting against coercive legislation. He had no objection to the division being taken without delay, and would rather not waste a moment of time; but he had, at least, a right to express his solemn conviction that England could not govern Ireland. The sooner the House came to that conclusion the better it would be for the peace and welfare of the two Islands. They might rule Ireland, but they could not pacify her. A distinguished lawyer once said in an Irish Court that the people who did not make their own laws were a nation of slaves. Irishmen in that House were not making their own laws; but they were determined that they would make their own laws, which law was the unanimous expression of the minds of the people, and the expression of a majority of the people. Ireland was not making her own laws. Ireland was not governing herself. He could not, as a reader of history, understand what were the impassable barriers which prevented the people of Ireland from once again meeting together in their own capital and making their own laws. If the people of Ireland were polled tomorrow it would be found that the great majority would oppose coercion in any form. He wished that the Leader of the Opposition (Sir Stafford Northcote) was now in his place that he (Mr. Nelson) might refer to some arguments which the right hon. Baronet had put forward last night with all the simulated favour which was common to all men who were a little doubtful of their own moral position. Amongst other things, the right hon. Baronet uttered the axiom that agitation demoralized. Now, he said that there never was a boon or a blessing obtained for humanity that was not obtained by agitation. He heard it said the other evening that they all paid their debts reluctantly. He assented to that idea, and said they were especially reluctant to pay a debt when their consciences told them that that debt was an unjust one—a debt which, though it was legal, was one which was produced by brute force. During last year he visited the homes of many of the distressed families in Ireland. He found them living upon Indian meal, supplied by the charity of Australia, of America, or it might even possibly be China. If he were asked to say whether those people should sell their meal in order to pay the landlords, or use the meal for the purpose of feeding their famished children, he should not hesitate a moment as to the advice he should give. He should tell them—"Feed your family first, and if anything remains give it to the landlords." As to the expression "landlord" they would have to examine that in Dublin. They would have to tell the world that the relations between landlord and tenant were analogous to the relations between the owners of a plantation and the men, women, and children which he purchased. They would be able to prove in an Irish Parliament that the relation in which the landlord stood to the land was immoral. His complaint was, that the land system in Ireland was unjust. For the last 700 years there had been two classes of outrages in Ireland. The outrages of one class had always been patronized by England, whilst the outrages of the other had always been held to be treasonable, felonious, disloyal, and turbulent. The hon. Member for Belfast (Mr. Ewart) stated the other night that this Coercion Bill was necessary for the maintenance of law and order. He knew Belfast longer and better than the hon. Member, and he had seen the furniture dragged out of the house of the Catholic tenant and burned opposite the door, whilst the peace-preserving magistrate walked past smiling at the joke. They wanted to put an end to that condition of desperate hatred which had been generated by English rule. He did not see why they could not agree with Britannia, with her well-developed figure. The Irish people were taunted with being poor; but they had been made so by England crushing her commerce. England had destroyed the Irish manufactures, and taken away the only source from which the Irish father could feed his children; and now England talked to them patronizingly. He had no fancy for a prison, and thought if he wore placed in one he should be like Mr. Davitt, and complain that the air was not warm enough; but he would say that the measures which, for the last 50 years, had been passed in London for the government of Ireland had only tended to produce heart burnings. The outrages on human industry came from the laws, and the only relic in Ireland of English ascendancy was the landlords. He expected that the landlords would soon have to submit to a new arrangement. The title by which the men obtained the land would have to be examined; and also whether they had fulfilled the conditions under which they obtained it. James I. took possession of land in Ulster to which he had no more title than he had to the salmon in Lough Neagh, and gave estates to men on conditions that had often been ignored. Indeed, many of the grants were resumed for that very reason by Charles I., and were bought by London City Companies when the Monarch was in difficulties. How could the possession of Irish land by City Companies be justified?

MR. SPEAKER

I must remind the hon. Member that the Land Bill is not now before the House.

MR. NELSON

, continuing, said, he had stated some time ago that he would submit like a lamb to the authority of the Chair; and he was prepared to do that now. He was too much in earnest to joke; but he would say that the titles to land in the North of Ireland were bad, and when Parliament talked of forcing the Irish, he thought they would be able, perhaps, to show that they were only seeking to force the landlords to give back their leases and to fulfil their conditions, or they would do what the landlords themselves wore very fond of doing, give them notice to quit. In that House he found a difficulty in speaking his full mind, and he only wished it would be possible to relegate the Irish Members to Dublin. If that were done, Englishmen might, perhaps, be able, in the words of the poet Gray, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling- land, And read their history in a nation's eyes.

SIR PATRICK O'BRIEN

said, he had listened to the hon. Member who had just spoken with pleasure. If he mistook not, the hon. Gentleman was a descendant of one of James the First's planters. He (Sir Patrick O'Brien) was not a descendant of one of those planters; but he was there to endeavour to create amongst, not only all religious, but all classes in Ireland, a community of interest and a community of sentiment. If it were not instinctive in him, he had been in the House long enough to acquire an antipathy to coercion of any free nation. In his opinion, a case had not been made out for this special measure; and he would, therefore, give it his opposition. In saying that he spkoe his own honest conviction, altogether uninfluenced by public clamour. In 1866 a large conspiracy arose in Ireland. Men met on the public highway and maintained that the authority of the Queen should no longer exist, that a Republic should be proclaimed, and that their doctrine alone should prevail. On that occasion Her Majesty's Government came down to the House and asked for the power to preserve the people by arresting the leaders of what he considered a mad organization. He was not one of the six who voted against that Motion. He did not play the patriotic part in that House on that occasion. He had the courage of his opinions, and in voting for the measure he considered he was discharging his duty in endeavouring to preserve his uninstructed fellow-countrymen from the dangerous measures which could only bring them to destruction. In 1871, when they had another Coercion Bill, he was not impelled by the same motives, and he opposed the Bill. He believed that if he was right in opposing the Coercion Bill of 1871, he was thoroughly justified in opposing the Coercion Bill of 1881. He was not here to assert that outrages did not exist in Ireland; but he did disagree with those Gentlemen who said that a system of outrage was universal. So far as the Province of Leinster, with which he was connected, was concerned, that statement was utterly untrue; and the county which he had the honour to represent had never been the centre of outrages. Why did he not support the Government Bill? Because he was not willing that every honest and quiet man in the country should be subjected to its provisions from the misconduct of men in Mayo, in Galway, in Kerry, and in parts of the county of Cork. He did not wish to dissever himself from his countrymen. When looking upon the effect of the Act, they had a right to recollect what would be its influence upon each individual member of society. He was not prepared to submit to arrest, or to the pains and penalties of crime, in consequence of the misconduct of the people, in the crimes to which he had alluded. Ireland had many grievances, and it had been his incessant work since he entered Parliament to bring about their remedy. He would, indeed, be an antediluvian Member who could rise in the House of Commons and say there were no grievances in connection with the tenure of land. He would have those grievances remedied, and remedied with all due diligence; and in the interim he would pass a Summary Jurisdiction Act. He would not give disturbers of the peace the opportunity of playing the martyr, but would shoot them through their pockets by moans of fines and summary jurisdiction. He remembered an old couplet well known in the County Clare which was apropos of his position— Death throw his dart at Bindon's heart, But how was he astounded When from the part as with a start he weapon quite rebounded. 'Ho! ho!' quoth Death, and drew his breath, 'My slaughtering arm you mock at; But here's a blow shall lay you low, 'And smote him through the pocket. Had that course been taken there would be no posing as martyrs; and hon. Friends of his, who, no doubt, rivalled Madame Sevigne in epistolary and Gibbon in historical writing, would have lost their chance of delivering in that House Demosthenic orations. If a man were fined on Monday for what he had done on Saturday night, he would not go away with that radiant expression which ought to characterize an Irish countenance. He should not forgive himself if, after his long connection with public affairs in Ireland, he did not say a word for those to whom his country owed so much, the officials—["Oh, oh!"] —yes, the Irish officials; but he admitted that the system of appointing the local magistracy in Ireland could not be defended. It was wrong that the appointments to the magistracy should be virtually in the hands of the Lords Lieutenant of counties, whether Whig or Tory. But many of the Lord Chan- cellors in Ireland were most to blame in the matter. It must be admitted, however, that it was not always easy to get proper persons for the magistracy in Ireland. It might occur that some hon. Gentlemen opposite might desire certain persons to be included in the Commission of the Peace, to whom Voltaire's lines might apply— Les loups vout desoler la terre Nos bergers semblent entre nous Un peu d'accord aver les loups. That was not his desire; he wished a thorough reform of the local magistracy, but not in that direction. It might be unpopular to say so; but, to his knowledge, the resident magistrates in Ire-land, as a body, had done their duty ably, honestly, and efficiently. Failing a sufficient supply of magistrates elsewhere, it was the duty of the Government to appoint in greater numbers resident magistrates who could be called to account in that House for their actions. He had, therefore, no fear of the resident magistrates. He felt bound to defend the police from the charges which had been made against them; and, in his opinion, the idea of turning the 14,000 men who composed the Constabulary force into an A or B Division was ridiculous. He would not have them turned into an army of spies for the sake of creating debate in that House. He regretted that an hon. Member should have used some strong language with regard to Mr. Justice Fitzgerald. That Judge was a credit, not only to Ireland, but to the Three Kingdoms. Men of the highest position in the Legal Profession in this country spoke of Mr. Justice Fitzgerald as an ornament to the Bench, and not only as a humane and careful Judge, but as an honourable and high-minded gentleman. There was not a man in Ireland who knew Mr. Justice Fitzgerald who would not bear him out in saying that such was his deserved reputation. As for himself, he had promised to advocate a particular system of Land Reform, and that he was prepared to do. He believed those who followed a different course were acting in a way that was injurious to the country; and if he were to lose his seat for what he did he would say what a great man, Pope Hildebrand, had said—"I have loved justice and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile." The hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton), had made a quotation from a philosopher with whom, no doubt, he was intimately acquainted, Epicurus, when he described the outrages in Ireland as a "fortuitous concourse of atoms." But, however that might be, he was not prepared to accept the views of the hon. Gentleman on many other points. Perhaps he (Sir Patrick O'Brien), as an atom, might be permitted to say of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, that though he had associated himself now with a measure which might properly be called one of coercion, he should not forget how the right hon. Gentleman had suffered and worked in the cause of his country. It would require many other acts in addition to what he had done on this occasion to make him forget the right hon. Gentleman's services to his country; and no matter what might be said in that House, whether by hon. Members from the North of England, Ireland, or Scotland, the services the right hon. Gentleman had rendered to Ireland would ever rest deep in the hearts of the Irish people.

MR. BYRNE

said, he wished to place on record his strong and determined opposition to this measure of coercion for Ireland. This country owed a great deal to Ireland for past neglect. Being without manufactures, and having no encouragement for its fisheries, the competition for land in Ireland was not only keen, but had the effect of raising rack-rents sometimes to impossible rents. The greed for land made the people agree to pay higher rents than their cooler judgment told them the land was worth. Assuming, for argument sake, that the landlords were just and generous, they were not in a position to do justice to their tenants, because, being tied up and encumbered, they were not free agents, and could not give the same length of leases and the same encouragement to tenants as landlords in England could. It was, therefore, clearly the duty of Parliament to amend that state of things. As for emigration, at best it was a desperate remedy. He had himself witnessed scenes which were perfectly heartrending of people driven from their native land. He had more than once in the docks of Liverpool, and elsewhere, seen emigrants take with them, as their most precious possession, some of the soil of their country; and when asked why they did so, they would say it was to put in the coffin with them when they were dead. They also took with them bitter memories of the injustice served out to them in their own land. The Government said that the first and most immediate cure for the ills of Ireland was coercion, and promised that remedial measures would follow. Coercion was likely to be realized; but he had strong doubts of the Government being able to pass remedial measures. Coercion would bring into play one whose occupation for some time past had been gone—the informer. The Bill applied to any person being in Ireland, and there was no occasion to prove his crime. It was only necessary' that he should be "reasonably suspected." He ventured to say that some proof ought to be offered which would satisfy the resident magistrate or the Chairman of Quarter Sessions that the person was not lightly suspected. This measure would place the lives and the liberties of the people in the hands of the common informer. They had experience in Ireland of men being taken from their families, simply because they were suspected by some informer or petty official. The police were not the best qualified persons to detect crime. He contended that agrarian crime in Ireland had been greatly exaggerated. What Ireland wanted was, not coercion, but remedial measures promptly brought forward and wisely administered. He, therefore, asked the Government to minimize coercion, and to bring in a comprehensive Land Bill in a kindly and conciliatory spirit.

SIR H.DRUMMOND WOLFF

wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant whether the Government had considered the possibility of applying the provisions of this Bill to persons reasonably suspected of punishable offences who might be subjects of a foreign State? In l848 there was a long Correspondence between Lord Palmerston, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and the Minister of the United States with reference to two persons named Ryan and Bergen, subjects of the United States, who had been arrested. It had always been a maxim of International Law that while the municipal law was paramount in the country itself, a sovereign State whose subjects had been arrested under that municipal law had a right to see that justice was administered, and that the trial was properly gone through; and if any American citizens were arrested under this Act, no doubt the United States would insist on a public trial. In the case of Ryan and Bergen the technicality was avoided by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland giving them up. We ourselves had, on several occasions, resented the arbitrary arrests of British subjects in foreign countries. He recollected two or three cases of that kind. In 1848 and subsequent years, when British subjects were arrested in Austria and Italy, the Representatives of this country invariably insisted that they should be tried before they could be detained. There was, therefore, considerable risk of a collision with foreign Governments if, under the operation of this Bill, their subjects were arbitrarily arrested. In 1848, to obviate this difficulty, an Alien Act was passed, which enacted that if any persons were reasonably suspected of opposition to the law of the country they could be expelled at once, and on refusing to go could be imprisoned. He thought it would be wise for Her Majesty's Government, before this Bill was read a third time, to seriously consider this question, so that in their desire to assert the reign of law in Ireland they should not bring this country into collision with any of Her Majesty's Allies.

SIR JOSEPH M'KENNA

said, he did not think that a good case had been made out for the second reading of this Bill. He admitted, however, that, although the proved amount of crime in Ireland had been greatly minimized, that still there remained a sufficient amount of crime undisputed to call for the most serious and grave consideration. At the same time he should vote against this Bill, as he thought the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act was likely to prevent people from calling for the proper remedial legislation. He hoped, therefore, that the Government would now promptly proceed with their promised land legislation.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

The hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton), in a certainly able speech, said that we were proceeding with this Bill with feverish haste and break-neck speed. His description is one which it is difficult to understand considering the time that this discussion has already taken. I am so far open to his charge that I am desirous not to delay the House from the division which I hope will take place in a few minutes. It is, however, due to the discussion that I should make one or two remarks. The hon. Member for Sligo stated that he wondered I had not apologized for the incorrectness of my estimate of apprehensions, compared with outrages—that, instead of being 16 per cent, the proportion was about 23 per cent. Since he made that statement, I have looked at the report of my speech, and also at the Returns. There must have been a mistake, and very likely it is my own mistake. I wish to state that the real proportion of apprehensions to agrarian outrages—including threatening letters—is 11½ per cent, and excluding them, 22½ per cent. I am sure I was glad to hear from the hon. Member that according to his statement, and according to his wish and intention, the objects of the Land League were so innocent as he described; but I can only trust that the future will more clearly prove that than has the past. The hon. Member made an allusion to "Boycotting," and said that the Land League had never recommended "Boycotting." That statement was hardly consistent with the general clearness and ability and candour of the hon. Gentleman's remarks. It is quite true that the word "Boycotting" is not introduced into any of the rules; but the notorious speech of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) at Ennis, which really sketched out the action of the Land League for the succeeding months, described "Boycotting" as clearly as it could be. What we have to deal with is the stopping of outrages. It is not so much a question as to the action of the Land League as it is how we can stop that intimidation which undoubtedly prevails in Ireland. I do not know that I need say more than that I feel, after the speeches that have been made, that there remains in the mind of an enormous majority of this House, and of the country generally, a conviction that the more they have looked into the subject, the more clearly they are convinced that there has been, and that there is, a system of intimidation prevailing in Ireland—that that system of intimidation is made possible by outrages which the ordinary law cannot prevent; that the result is that the ordinary law has been, and is, paralyzed, and that the law of the Land League has been made supreme. The hon. Member for Sligo said I had no right to speak of the unwritten law. I was not the person who invented the term "unwritten law." It was invented by the chief leader of the Land League, and has been used often by his friends. The object of the Bill is to prevent the perpetration of these outrages. For that purpose we are obliged to take the power of detaining men for a time not exceeding' 18 months. If we knew of any other way in which wo could stop this intimidation, and stop these outrages, we would adopt it. We know of no other way. Though we are aware that in doing this we are interfering with a much-valued Constitutional right, yet we remain still of the opinion—and I believe we shall be supported by the country, as we are by Parliament—that we have no other course to adopt, if we are to fulfil our present duty of protecting person and property. The hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Byrne) said he hoped we would minimize coercion as much as possible and promptly bring in a good Land Bill. That is our object. Our object will be to use the powers contained in this Bill as little as possible. I think the prospects of a good Land Bill are better than they over wore before. I entirely and absolutely disbelieve that there is in the country, or in any part of the country, or in any place—even in that "other place" which has been so often alluded to—any intention or wish not to give a thoroughly good Land Bill, which will be a searching, comprehensive reform of the state of things in Ireland. The hon. Member for Youghal (Sir Joseph M'Kenna) has made a most extraordinary argument against the Bill. He said that in stopping crime you will take away the wish to have a good Land Reform. I do not think that argument will have any weight or influence whatever. What we ask the House for is to let us maintain peace, liberty, and order in Ireland. Let us get this necessary measure passed as fast as we possibly can, and then let us, with that anxiety and determination to succeed which the subject demands, see if we cannot improve the conditions of landlord and tenant in Ireland, so that the reasons why Coercion Bills have so often been found necessary may for ever be removed.

Question put.

The House divided: —Ayes 359; Noes 56: Majority 303. — (Div. List, No. 29.)

Main Question put, and agreed to.

Bill read a second time, and committed for To-morrow.