§ MR. TOTTENHAMasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether it is the case that a surveyor from the Ordnance Survey Office in Dublin, acting under the directions of Colonel Martin, R.E., proceeded to the estate of Colonel Simpson in the county Roscommon in March last, for the purpose of mapping certain lands for which a Landed Estates Court title was being sought; whether this surveyor and his assistant were attacked by a mob, their maps taken from them, and their escape effected with difficulty; whether this resistance to a Government official is in any way connected with a settlement of rent; whether the proceedings in the Landed Estates Court are still in abeyance pending the completion of the maps and survey; whether it is the case that the surveyor has applied for police protection; and, whether the constabulary authorities have informed him that a force of forty men will be necessary, and are about to furnish him with that escort?
§ MR. W. E. FORSTER,in reply, said, that on the 24th of March last a surveyor and a bailiff, whilst proceeding to make a survey on the lands in question, were met by a number of women and children—eight or ten of them—who took their maps from them, and destroyed them. It was not considered, however, that this resistance had any 1364 connection with the payment of rent' as it was understood that the tenants had no objection to the survey being made when the pending proceedings as to title were determined. He (Mr. W. E. Forster) was not sware that the proceedings in the Landed Estates Court were in abeyance in consequence of the occurrence; and he was informed that no application had been made by the surveyor for police protection, and the Constabulary did not at present know where he was. The people who made the attack seemed to have been under the impression that until the title was cleared up nothing ought to be done upon the land.