HC Deb 05 May 1881 vol 260 cc1872-920

Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment proposed to Question [25th April], "That the Bill be now read a second time."

And which Amendment was, To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "this House, while willing to consider any just measure, founded upon sound principles, that will benefit tenants of land in Ireland, is of opinion that the leading provisions of the Land Law (Ireland) Bill are in the main economically unsound, unjust, and impolitic,"—(Lord Elcho,) —instead thereof.

Question again proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

Debate resumed.

SIR HERVEY BRUCE

said, he rose with some considerable diffidence to offer any remarks upon this important Bill, because, naturally, anyone whose personal interests were supposed to be involved in the question concerned in the Bill must be listened to with some degree of doubt as to whether he was speaking from his own standpoint, or whether he was speaking only for the benefit of the country. In the few observations he was about to make, however, as he did not propose to utterly condemn or to utterly praise the Bill, he hoped he should not be interrupted before coming to the conclusion of the remarks which he wished to make. Before he touched upon the Bill, he should make some remarks upon the Bess-borough Commission. The First Minister of the Crown, in his speech, had not attributed much importance to it, and he (Sir Hervey Bruce) had reason to find fault with the manner in which that Commission was in many respects conducted. He admitted the courtesy of the Commission in sending round to the landlords the reports of the evidence given against them. But their courtesy went no farther. Landlords against whom he knew that in many instances grave, and, as in his own case, false charges had been made, were allowed to remain in ignorance of these charges for three months before the Commission sent the evidence to them; and that, he thought, was hardly fair. He remonstrated with the Commission on that, and when evidence was given against him later on, he received it on a much earlier date. He did not attribute so much importance to that as to think that they should have published all this mass of evidence, which could not be borne out by the facts. He also complained that in the second volume of this evidence—for the first was only a Report—no marginal notes appeared stating that portions of the evidence could be contradicted. This, he thought, was most unfair. It could not be expected that the Commission would put a refutation of those charges in the first volume; but, in the second, it could have been stated that portions of the evidence had been contradicted on authority. But they did nothing of the sort. They published the second documentary volume, and the landlords remained under its stigma for many weeks before the charges which it contained were contradicted. Not only that, but the Commission admitted as evidence the anonymous statements of four individuals who, he was sure, need not have concealed their names from the public. The tenantry of Ireland were not such craven cowards as to be afraid to give evidence, even if it were against the landlords. He was proud to say that not one tenant of his own had given evidence to the Commission; but strangers volunteered with all their heart to do so. He had as independent a tenantry as was to be found in Ireland, yet they declined to listen to the suggestions of hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway (the Home Rulers), or anywhere else. The first who gave evidence against him was a person named Tommy Warnock, well known in that part of the world. He did not live in his (Sir Hervey Bruce's) neighbourhood, and he was a gentleman who, it was to be regretted, had so little to do at home that he had plenty of time abroad. Mr. Warnock not only lectured landlords as to their duty, but tenants also; and if he did not find the latter amenable to his views, and sufficiently angry against landlords, they were told they were a "set of fools." He had latterly attacked the clergy of the district; but, happily, he put himself in the wrong box, for he was told that unless he apologized, there would be an action for libel. He (Sir Hervey Bruce) thought he could have brought a similar action against this man; but he concluded that Warnock was not worth the powder and shot. The next gentleman who gave evidence against him was a Mr. Collison, whose name he never heard before he saw it in the Report, and he did not know where he lived. Nine or ten years ago he (Sir Hervey Bruce) sold a property in the county of Tyrone, as to which Mr. Collison told the Commissioners that his tenants were led blindfolded on the occasion, because they would not be allowed to employ any solicitor but his own, who did the business for both parties. That was utterly false. The very day after he saw this statement, he (Sir Hervey Bruce) went to his solicitor, who showed him the correspondence with the tenants, asking him whether he would be their solicitor in the matter of the sales, and he saw a copy of his answer, which was to the effect that much as he would like to act for them he declined to do so, as it would not be proper for him to act as solicitor for the buyers as well as the seller. Another person named Joseph Smith gave evidence against him. He rather thought Mr. Smith was the Chairman of some Town Commissioners. He never lived on his (Sir Hervey Bruce's) property, and he did not know who he was, nor what he knew of himself (Sir Hervey Bruce); but he gave evidence which very much attracted the attention of tile senior Member for Cork County (Mr. Shaw), who put some very pertinent questions to him. The witness said, in answer to the hon. Member, that a particular property was leased away by a former Bishop of Derry to his relative, Sir Hervey Bruce, who then raised the rents twice before selling the property in the Encumbered Estates Court. That was utterly false. He (Sir Hervey Bruce) was old enough, God knew; but he was represented by this witness as having had property leased to him by a former Bishop (Lord Bristol), who died in 1803, so that he did not know what his age would be now. If statements of that kind were accepted and published against one landlord, it was not unreasonable to suppose there were others who were treated in a similar manner. But what was worse still was the statements of anonymous witnesses. Surely there were plenty of persons who knew the state of Ireland that could have come forward and given evidence, without the Commissioners bolstering up a case by means of persons who were afraid to let the world know what they said. In one instance, an anonymous letter was sent in, against a noble Friend of his and his family, and it was published, though it contained charges which were of the grossest nature, and absolutely and utterly untrue. English Gentlemen could not place much confidence in a Commission which received and published such evidence as that, without giving those attacked an opportunity of repelling the charges, except when it was too late. He denied that there was any truth in the statement, made a few clays ago in an anonymous publication, that he had raised the rents of tenants on the estate which he bought from the Clothworkers' Company from 30 to 80 per cent. With regard to the Bill itself, if he believed that the measure would restore peace and tranquillity to his unhappy country, no matter what harm it might do to himself, he would go most willingly into the Lobby with Ministers in every division, both now and when they got into Committee. But, from the utterances which he heard around him every clay in Ireland, he did not believe that the land was at the bottom of that agitation; on the contrary, it was Communism and a desire to separate his country from England, which would be a most fatal thing for Ireland. The Prime Minister had twice before sent "Messages of Peace," as they were called, to Ireland. He had disestablished the Irish Church—a measure which had not brought much tranquillity to the country; nor had it been of much advantage, except in a sentimental sense, to the adherents of other communions, many of whom would have infinitely preferred the establishment of other religious bodies to the pulling down of an ancient and sacred Institution. ["No!"] He denied that the disestablishment of the Irish Church was a necessary measure, nor was it desired by the Roman Catholics. He would have had no objection to other religious communities receiving endowments from the State, for he would regard that as a statesmanlike measure. Then they had the Land Act of 1870. Had that Act conferred any great benefit on any class? He had conversed with many tenants who wished to stay in the country, and he found that they bitterly regretted its passing; they said it had conferred no real benefits on them, that they would rather have remained as they were, trusting to the landlords, who, as a general rule, had treated them better than they had been treated under the Act of 1870. He, did not, therefore, see that the Bill of 1881 would make matters much better. It would not make the discontented content, nor render them more loyal to England. The expropriation of the landlords would not make the Irish people either more peace- able or more prosperous. The Prime Minister's statements were at variance with those made by the Chief Secretary for Ireland in introducing the Bill, for the former acquitted the landlords of having acted unjustly; but the latter did not. The Prime Minister had in his speech clothed the Bill in the garb of mercy to the Irish landlords; but when they came to see the measure in its naked simplicity the pleasing illusion was rudely dispelled. The Bill bristled with penalties, complications, uncertainties, and the prospect of endless litigation. Statesmen, like ladies, were privileged to change their minds; so he would not make any quotations to show that right hon. Gentlemen on both sides had changed their opinions. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law) appeared, from his remarks, to have a tremendous regard for mud cabins, and to be strongly opposed to consolidation; but for the life of him he (Sir Hervey Bruce) could not see anything comfortable or blessed in a mud cabin. Again, the Prime Minister was rather pleased that there should be consolidation, for without it there would be no improvement effected in the condition of the Irish people. It was all very well to bring in Bills to the the hands of landlords; but that would not in the least help the unfortunate people who lived on patches of ground that were utterly unfit to provide bread for them and their families, or even for single men without anybody depending on them. There must be consolidation; and as to mud cabins, in his opinion, they were not even fit for pigs, much less for human beings, and it had been his object, during the time he had administered his estate, that the tenants should be provided with suitable dwellings, instead of the mud cabins which the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposite so much admired. In introducing the Bill, the Prime Minister attempted to draw an analogy between it and the Act for emancipating negro slaves. Possibly, there was some degree of analogy; but the Irish tenants, he was happy to say, were not slaves. And there was also this difference, that whereas in the Act emancipating the slaves compensation was given, here there was no compensation. Only one class was to be benefited by the Bill. The Irish landlord was supposed to lose another considerable portion of his estate; the tenant was to derive some benefit by it, of which he (Sir Hervey Bruce) was doubtful; and the labourers were to be left out in the cold. But he hoped the day would come when the Government would see fit to bring the labourers within the scope of their benevolent legislation. The Prime Minister had said that there was nothing easier than to find the value of the tenant's interest, by discovering the price which it would obtain in the market. Now, there was no more fallacious test than that. A large farm would not command the same price as a miserable little holding, for which a man anxious to obtain land would give far more than it was really worth. No man in Ireland left his holding, unless he was obliged to do it; but yet the hunger for land was so great that a little bit of land run out to the last degree brought a bigger price than a larger farm, although in a better condition. The Prime Minister had made allusion to Donegal and Mayo; but although Donegal was not in the condition of other parts of the country, it was not in a very comfortable state, and yet it was one of the tenant right counties. He (Sir Hervey Bruce) spoke from personal knowledge, and not from hearsay. The right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland had said that there was no such thing as free contract. Well, the Bill would prevent the landlord from making a reasonable bargain with his tenant; but it encouraged free contract in every other direction, and, as a consequence, the man who came into possession through land hunger was beggared. Some of the landlords had gone beyond what was reasonable; but why were they to curse the whole class, and bring many respectable tenants into unpleasant conditions, because some had done wrong? With regard to free contract, he asked why were they to abolish it as between the tenant and the landlord, whose interest it was to do fairly by the tenant, declaring that the land-lord shall make no arrangement with the tenant, and leave it free to everybody else—to the money-lender, to the man coming in, and to others—to come to what terms they pleased with the tenant, much to the injury of the latter? Coming to the Bill itself, he would first deal with free sale. This free sale simply amounted to a system of sending money out of the, country. The prosperous, careful, industrious farmer did not want it, for he did not leave the country; but the idle, the drunken, or the extravagant tenant did, for by it he got a preposterous sum for his interest, which he was enabled to carry away to a foreign country, or one of the Colonies. Many of the better class of tenants, although they did not like to speak out plainly about this free sale, knowing agitators made such a point of it, who wished to improve and consolidate their farms, hated free sale. They said it was the curse of the country, and prevented them improving their farms as they wished to do. He did not think landlords ought to hamper their tenants too much in free sale; but if the Bill was to allow the land of Ireland, whenever an idle or is contented man thought proper, to be put up to sale, the country would be thrown back a century and a-half. As for fair rent, he had no objection to it in the least, and if it would pacify the country, he would approve of the naming of the rent being taken out of the hands of the landlords; and that none the less, because it would prevent the possibility of any agitators saying that the landlords were putting on an undue rent. But he objected strongly to the constitution of the Court. He objected to the Court of First Instance. If he read the 37th section correctly, one Assistant Commissioner could name the rent to be paid all over Ireland. He thought the appointment of the Land Commissioners should not be placed entirely in the hands of the Government, but that the Judge who was to be selected from one of the Superior Courts ought to be chosen by the Judges themselves. The Government should appoint one Commissioner, and the Houses of Parliament the other. With respect to fixity of tenure, whatever remarks it was open to on social and economic grounds, he should have no objection to it if it would tend to pacify the country. No landlord, unless he was blind to his own interest, would wish to remove a tenant who farmed the land properly and paid a reasonable rent. It was practically fixity of tenure in that part of Ireland with which he was associated. He had no faith in the clauses providing for the establishment of a peasant proprietary; his own experience was most decisive against the system. But if it would give satisfaction to the country, he had no objection to the experiment being tried. In his part of the country, however, the condition of the holdings showed him that the land held by peasant proprietorship was the most wretched in the country. But he approved cordially the sections providing for the payment of a fee-farm rent, and he thought greater facilities ought to have been provided to enable ordinary rents to be commuted into fee-farm rents, and more liberal advances promised for that purpose. With regard to the emigration clauses in the Bill, he thought that instead of doing good they would do harm, inducing the labouring class to emigrate, and not the small holders, whose removal from their wretched holdings would be desirable; but other provisions of the Bill held out inducements to them to remain on the land, and placed barriers on their removal, so he saw no likelihood of practical utility from the emigration clauses. He objected, too, to the jurisdiction in the matter of the Civil Bill Courts, as it would probably make different ruling in different counties, though there could be no objection personally to the County Court Judges. One of the greatest evils which would result from the Bill would be the opportunity which would be given to the usurers. Since the Act of 1870, tenants had been far more in the hands of usurers than before. The landlords used to protect their tenants against the importunities of the former; but, at the present time, they could not do so. Now, the usurer held the tenant's farm, and was the man who benefited under the Act of 1870 to benefit by the Bill of 1881, and injure the tenants more than all the landlords for many a long day? He had mentioned the faults of commission in the Bill, and he would next advert to its sins of omission. One of these was the total absence from the Bill of any provision on behalf of the labourers, who were hardly dealt with, and who, most of all, needed legislation. Another was that there was no compensation for the injured classes. The tenants were the only persons proposed to be benefited by the Bill. The last omission was the absence of a remedy for the evil of the removal from England and Scotland of Irish paupers to their own country. It frequently happened that persons who had lived 40 or 50 years in England were sent back to their own country in circumstances of great hardship, and too often only to die. That evil he himself had attempted to deal with in his Poor Removal Bill, which he had reason to believe was to be opposed by the Government. In conclusion, he must say he feared the Bill would not remove the real evils of Ireland. He felt strongly and had spoken warmly in the interests of his native country, on whose behalf he longed to see really beneficial and remedial legislation. He could not approve the Bill as it stood; but he trusted that moderate counsels would prevail in all parts of the House, and that Her Majesty's Government would allow it to be so re-modelled in Committee as to come as near as a Bill of the kind could to those immutable principles of which they had heard more than they had seen; so that, under fairer auspices and with some degree of unanimity, it might be sent to "another place," where, alas! the voice of the great Leader who had so long been their counsellor and guide would be heard no more—of him who, by courage and patience in adversity, wisdom and moderation in prosperity, had won for himself a world-wide reputation, and, what was dearer to him by far, the imperishable gratitude of his Sovereign, whom he served so faithfully and well, and of all her loyal subjects.

MR. O'CONNOR POWER

said, there were several statements made by the hon. Baronet the Member for Coleraine (Sir Hervey Bruce) which he did not wish to recall; but, as representing a county (Mayo) which had been most intimately associated with the land agitation, he wished to say a few words upon the grave accusations which the hon. Baronet had brought against the majority of the tenant farmers of Ireland, the Irish people generally, and, he supposed, with special force against the county which he (Mr. O'Connor Power) had the honour to represent. The hon. Gentleman could arrive at no hope of peace being the immediate result of the passage of this measure; and the reason he gave was, that he was convinced that the masses of the people in Ireland had abandoned themselves to the theories of Communism, and that no legislation of this character consequently could have any effect in promoting their tranquillity. Since the land agitation started in Ireland, many people had undertaken to speak the sentiments of the Irish people, and many had undertaken to represent the views of the people of Mayo. He (Mr. O'Connor Power) thought that he might, without much diffidence, undertake to speak their sentiments there that night; and he as their constitutionally-elected Representative said, with as much emphasis as was proper on the occasion, that he repudiated, on the part of the people of Mayo, any sympathy whatever with the theory or principle of Communism. He understood the feelings of the people of the country of Ireland, and he was quite prepared to acknowledge that in the progress of the agitation language might have been used by individuals now and again smarting under a sense of wrong and oppression, which, taken closely and literally, might give some colour to the accusation which had been levelled against them; but they must judge of a people, not by outbursts of popular agitation, but by what they affirmed on calm deliberation. He was opposed to Communism, because it destroyed individuality, and would repress energy by leading men to look to the State for support. He trusted, therefore, that whatever impression might have been made by certain expressions emanating from individuals here and there, such wholesale accusations as that were not to receive the assent of the House of Commons. The hon. Baronet made another complaint, which he (Mr. O'Connor Power) supposed was addressed to Her Majesty's Government, against the Bessborough Commission—that they had not afforded the landlords of Ireland an opportunity of rebutting the accusations made against them in time. Now, it seemed to him (Mr. O'Connor Power) that the first duty of the Commission was to take evidence from the persons aggrieved by the existing land system, and when they had concluded the taking of that evidence and had it in an intelligible form, he was not aware that they delayed its publication, or hesitated to take the rebutting evidence, and publish that too. They had entered upon that duty upon very short notice; and he was bound to say, though he was not prepared to assent to all their conclusions, that they had discharged their duties with every ability and remarkable in. dustry, and that they deserved very great thanks from those interested in the solution of this question. He was glad, however, to say he could quite endorse all that the hon. Baronet had said as to the spirit in which all parties should come to the consideration of the Bill. He thought that, in the long run, that Party in the House would best promote its own political interests that exhibited, on that occasion, magnanimity and generosity in the treatment of a question which would be just as difficult to the Predecessors of Her Majesty's Government, or to the Representatives of the Irish Party if they sat upon the Government Benches, and were called upon to grapple it. Shortly after the introduction of the Bill, he attended a county meeting in Mayo, where it had been freely distributed, called for the purpose of considering its provisions. The meeting was held under circumstances where admission was feasible to all. The people of Mayo passed the following resolution at the meeting:— That while we re-affirm our convictions that the only final solution of the Land Question is to be found in legislation enabling the cultivators to become the owners of their own farms, we recommend our Parliamentary Representatives to support the second reading of the Land Bill, and to make strenuous efforts, after its getting into Committee, so to improve its provisions that in its passage through Parliament it may become a measure of real protection to the tenant farmers of Ireland. He (Mr. O'Connor Power) thought the interpretation he was entitled to put upon the resolution was this—that as the Representative of the county he would be justified in voting for the second reading of the Bill. He was not, however, authorized to interpret the resolution as a declaration that the proposal of the Government as it stood could possibly constitute a solution of the Irish Land Question. He hoped he should be able to show, before he sat down, that the Bill needed considerable amendment in Committee before it could at all claim to be anything like a settlement of the great agrarian difficulty in Ireland. He should like to ask, in the first place, what was the policy of the Bill? He presumed that the policy of the Bill was founded upon the necessity of improving the condition of the agricultural population of Ireland, and he thought no one could doubt the urgent need of such improvement. He had heard of writers and public men who had paid flying visits to Ireland say a good deal about Irish prosperity. He believed it was true that Dublin had increased in prosperity in recent years; but he was bound to say it had been very much at the expense of the smaller tenants in Ireland. Consequently, when they went outside Dublin, they saw villages disappearing and towns decaying very rapidly, and hundreds of thousands of the working population in a condition of great poverty and misery, toiling all day for that which would not procure the necessaries of life. His estimate of the Bill had been framed upon the principle of ascertaining how far, in its present shape, it was likely to realize the objects which its framers had in view. In one part, it favoured the creation of a peasant proprietary; but it recognized that the transference of the ownership of the soil from one class to another must be a gradual operation; and, knowing that that operation must be gradual, the framers said there must be something done to mitigate the severity of the system as it stood. Subsequently, in the very forefront of the Bill, they found provisions dealing with the relations between landlord and tenant. He ventured to think that, notwithstanding the declared intentions of the Government, the principle of free sale was hampered by vexatious restrictions, which would in many cases make free sale very difficult, if not entirely impossible. Another theory was that the best thing they could do for the social and political condition of Ireland—it was also said the industrial condition—was to effect a wider and Letter distribution of land. But the earlier provisions of the Bill did not show that its framers were anxious to bring about such a result. Take the clause with respect to free sale, for instance, it said that a tenant might sell his tenancy for the best price, but subject to certain conditions, and that, except with the consent of the landlord, the sale should be made to one person only. But why to one person only? Why should not the tenant of a 200-acre farm have the right to disposing to more than one? He granted that there was a dual interest concerned, that of the landlord and the tenant; but it was admitted that the conflicting interests of landlord and tenant, especially in the matter of rent, could not be settled except by the Court. Thus there was pri- marily an interference with the landlord as to the price he was to obtain for his land. They interfered by the agency of the Court. And he (Mr. O'Connor Power) did not see why the Court should not also determine whether the rights of the tenancy should not be sold to 20 persons instead of one. Liberal and generous as were the proposals referring to a peasant proprietary, he feared the operation of the clauses would be so gradual that 100 years might elapse before they were of any advantage. He should, therefore, be very glad if the Government could see their way to alter that portion of the Bill so as to enable a tenant, with the consent of the Court, to sell his tenancy to more than one person without prejudice to the interests of the landlord. The same remark applied to the devolution of tenancies. It was much to be deplored, when they had been preparing for so many years to legislate on this great subject, that they should not realize all the possibilities of the question as now presented to them. In the early provisions of the Bill, there was an opportunity of distributing land advantageously, and of spreading the population by enabling large farmers to sell their interest in lands; and it was a pity that such an opportunity should have been lost sight of by the Government. He would be glad to see an alteration in the Bill in these respects, particularly in regard to the devolution of the tenancies. When a tenant sold his interest, he generally sold it to a stranger, in whom he had no following interest. But if the man was the tenant of a large farm, and was the happy owner of a large family, for the members of whom he was anxious to make provision out of his rights to the land, it was deplorable that he should not be able to do so, except with the consent of the landlord. And it was cruel, either by agitation or by Ministerial speeches, or by the introduction of a Bill of the kind under notice, to raise expectations in the minds of the people of Ireland which were not likely to be fulfilled by the machinery now proposed to carry it out. He thought the devolution should not be limited to one person, unwisely as it was, seeing that in many cases a farm might be fairly broken up and sold to a number of small tenants. But objection had been taken to the provision of security of tenure. It could not be too clearly pointed out that the Bill did not provide for what was popularly called and known in Ireland as fixity of tenure. It provided no fixity of tenure beyond a limit of 15 years. Even that security was conditional on the ground that the tenants should not sub-divide or sub-let without the consent of the landlord. On that point, he submitted that on many large estates the principle of sub-division might be advantageously introduced. On the other hand, he would not deny that, in other cases, the principle of consolidation urged by the hon. Baronet the Member for Coleraine (Sir Hervey Bruce) might not be introduced with equal advantage. It could not be too soon or too emphatically asserted that there were in the West and South of Ireland tens of thousands of tenant farmers who were living upon wretched patches of land which would not, under any circumstances, afford them a comfortable livelihood; so that, while he would advocate sub-division in the one case, he advocated consolidation in the other. Then, again, the landlord's right of resumption would interfere very much with the security of the tenant in his holding. The landlord might resume, for any one of three reasons—for the good of the holding, for the good of the estate, or for the good of the labourers on the estate. These reasons were all dangerously vague. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law) considered fair rent one of the most important provisions of the Bill. Looking to the constitution of the Court which was to determine what was a fair rent, he (Mr. O'Connor Power) admitted that the legal element should be strongly represented; and he should have no objection to the Judge of the County Court forming part of it; but he hoped the Government would re-consider the question, so as to associate with him either two professional valuers, or laymen who might be expected to have some knowledge of agriculture and some knowledge of the districts with which they would have to deal. He could speak, in the heartiest terms of commendation, of the spirit in which the clauses providing for the creation of peasant proprietorship had been framed, and he wished he could add that those provisions were likely to produce at an early period the results which they were aimed to produce. He did not see why the whole purchase money should not be advanced to the tenants; but it had taken 10 or 12 years to show that it was one thing to have a grand object in view, and another to provide proper machinery for carrying that object into effect. There still seemed to be a little half-heartedness in the clauses for the creation of a peasant proprietary. The provision that sales might be negotiated by the Commission, upon the application of landlord and tenant, was a decided step in advance of the Act of 1870. If the Land Commission were constituted of men who understood their work, who were willing to pull off their coats to it, and who would look for lands to purchase on advantageous terms, considerable progress might be made. But he (Mr. O'Connor Power) was strongly of opinion that it would be necessary, in the first place, to lend the whole of the purchase money to the tenants; and, secondly, to proceed where a smaller number than half the tenants were willing to purchase. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had said that he looked to the clauses for the reclamation of waste lands as the means, to a great extent, of remedying the evil of over-population in certain parts of Ireland. He (Mr. O'Connor Power) feared the expectations of the right hon. Gentleman were doomed to disappointment. The clauses as to reclamation he looked upon as utterly worthless. If anything was to be done in that direction, provisions of a more sweeping character would be necessary. The right hon. Gentleman, speaking of Mayo, said what a good thing it would be if the poorer classes of that county could be made to avail themselves of the emigration clauses and get out of their misery. Now, he (Mr. O'Connor Power) admitted that the poorer tenant farmers of Mayo might be better off in Canada or the United States; but Ireland would not be better off for being deprived of that portion of her population. He heartily echoed the remark of the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. P. J. Smyth) that Ireland could well support double her population if the land were properly managed and developed. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland seemed to think that there was not land enough in Mayo to give the population profitable employment. But Mr. Brett, the County Surveyor of Wicklow, and formerly County Surveyor of Mayo, stated that in one portion of Mayo there were 232,888 acres of waste land which could be profitably reclaimed. Mr. Brett also said that there were several improving landlords who had profitably reclaimed land in that county. The people of the South and West of Ireland could not be persuaded to go to Canada or elsewhere; they were too much wedded to Ireland, though they would not so cling to a farm of three or four acres as to refuse one of 20 if given in some other part of their native land. In addressing the House just now he was labouring under one embarrassment, and that was that, to his great regret, the noble Lord opposite (Lord John Manners), who had given Notice of an Amendment, had not stated in what way he proposed to develop the industrial resources of Ireland. As the Conservative Party had a strong prejudice against interfering in the relations between landlord and tenant, and as their past policy had been one of oppression and coercion towards Ireland, they were bound to have some policy which would recommend them to the Irish people. A great deal also remained to be done by the House for developing the resources of Ireland. His (Mr. O'Connor Power's) claim on that score was based on the fact that the industrial resources of Ireland had in times past been interfered with by Act of Parliament for so long a period that her most flourishing manufactures had been destroyed. But he could assure the noble Lord that in no case would a proposal of that kind exempt Parliament, and, through it, the Irish Members, from the duty and the necessity of dealing with the relations of landlord and tenant. An industrial scheme, which might, perhaps, take a quarter of a century to come to maturity, would not save a tenant from eviction, or enrich a man who could not pay his rent. He hoped, however, that the noble Lord would soon have an opportunity of explaining his views. Before dismissing the subject of the reclamation of waste lands, he wished to point out that the provisions of the Bill were likely to be inoperative, because they did not charge anyone with the duty of reclamation. It was the business of a Commission to negotiate the purchase of estates; but if the Government were in earnest on this question of waste lands, why should not they authorize the Commission to purchase, or even to expropriate them? He might say emphatically that he was in favour of the expropriation of the waste lands of Ireland. Every landlord owning any portion of these waste lands who declined to utilize his resources should be told by the Commission that if he was not prepared to cultivate his land the Commission would purchase it at a fair price. At present many tracts of land were useless which, in the hands either of peasant farmers or of the Commission, would in time become capable of supporting a large portion of the Irish tenant population. It was calculated that there were 4,000,000 acres of waste land in Ireland, and 3,000,000 of semi-waste; and if to the latter about one-third of the wholly waste lands were added, there would be a total of rather more than 4,000,000 acres which might be reclaimed. According to the English practice of employing hired labour, that land would never be reclaimed; but that was not the plan on which he should propose to proceed. The Commission ought to take the preliminary steps, and then send in men from the more populous parts, and keep them afloat by lending them enough money for their necessary expenses. That scheme, if carefully carried into effect, would obviate the extreme danger of occasion al bad harvests. He thought the Bill was also defective in another respect, in so far as it took no serious notice—indeed, no notice at all, as far as he could gather—of the estates of corporate bodies. The estates of corporate bodies in Ireland—the London Companies' estates, and others—were managed in a way which he knew had given rise to considerable complaint on the part of the tenant farmers. It had been said that corporate bodies were without consciences, and once land was within their hands, it could not very easily be got out again. In the cases where land was in the possession of these corporate bodies, there was no room for that mutual development between landlord and tenant which was desirable. He would, therefore, strongly urge that the Commission should be empowered to buy up these estates of the corporate bodies, and also the estates of the absentees, which were grievously mismanaged. Of course, many of the absentee estates of Ireland were the best managed, which arose from the fact that the owners were wealthy landlords in England; but it might be urged, on the other hand, that many of the absentee estates were very badly managed, to which fact was to be attributed a great deal of the discontent which prevailed among the tenantry. Among the contributions to the discussion on the Land Bill, with which the country had been favoured, he would direct special attention to the resolutions arrived at by the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland. He regretted that the Prime Minister, in his letter to the Archbishop of Armagh, seemed, for the moment, at all events, to dispose of those resolutions in a somewhat off-hand manner. But the Catholic hierarchy had adopted a very prudent course, and, after taking the opinions of eminent lawyers, had given in a list of 18 Amendments, embodying their views on the subject; and, in his (Mr. O'Connor Power's) opinion, many of those Amendments might have been advantageously adopted by the Government without "altering the character of the measure." The Prime Minister had declared in his letter to the Archbishop of Armagh that Amendments could be accepted from no quarter which would alter the character of the Bill; but, of course, it was difficult to know what interpretation to place upon that statement of the Prime Minister. He (Mr. O'Connor Power) hoped they would receive before long some intimation as to how far certain Amendments in contemplation would alter the character of the Bill. He had in view some moderate Amendments himself, which he hoped the Prime Minister would not regard as having that effect. One recommendation of the Bishops, as to the constitution of the proposed Court, was, he thought, a valuable one—namely, that the electors should elect two Commissioners with the County Court Judge. The Prime Minister seemed to give colour in the speech with which he introduced the Bill to the general fallacy as to the "scarcity of Irish land." There was no real scarcity of land. In an economic sense, he (Mr. O'Connor Power) would say again, as he had often said before, that the land of Ireland, properly managed, would support double the population it now had. The right hon. Gentleman had also referred to the "lack of the, habit of self-government" in Ireland, as a difficulty in the way of legislation of the kind; but was there any country in which there was a habit of self-government without the practice of self-government? The historical circumstances of Ireland showed that the habit of self-government must necessarily be of slow growth. Once Ireland was given a fair chance in the matter, they would exhibit as much aptitude for self-government as the Scotch or English. He hoped the Bill, so far from being modified, would be strengthened; and that the Government would not give in to the forebodings and prophecies of the opponents of the Bill. To build up a system which depended upon the landlords, would be, for the future of Ireland, like placing the pyramid on its wrong end, which would in time topple over. He trusted no efforts would be made to prevent the enlightened opinion of Parliament doing a complete act of justice to the people of Ireland. Having considered the provisions of the Bill very carefully himself, he felt it his duty, as an Irish Representative interested in the peace and tranquillity, as well as in the prosperity, of his country, to support the second reading of the Bill. That declaration, however, was not to be taken as affirming the proposition that the Bill in its present shape could be accepted by the tenant farmers of Ireland as a solution of the question. It would be a great pity if, after all the agony and excitement of the agitation through which hon. Members had passed in recent years, they allowed this Bill to escape from their hands without making it a complete measure of justice. It had been said by the right hon. Gentleman the First Commissioner of Works (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) that the Bill was a great measure. He (Mr. O'Connor Power) admitted that it was a great and a large measure; and he was not at all hopeful, if they lost the opportunity which the Bill presented of dealing completely with the Land Question, that any fair opportunity would soon be presented to them of approaching that branch of the question. Again, it must be borne in mind that English Business was considerably in arrears, in consequence of the necessity under which the Government had been in devoting its attention to Ireland. He did not look forward to the time when English Business would not be in arrears, as long as the present arrange- ment was carried out; and, therefore, he did not wish the Bill to escape until it was made a measure which would really be a great instrument in promoting the tranquillity of his country. He would close as he began, by saying all parties were interested in the settlement of the great Land Question. Certainly, the Government were interested, because they could not hope, even with the extraordinary powers of the Coercion Bill, to maintain order in Ireland until the question was settled. The landlords of Ireland, who were represented there by the Conservative Party, could not hope to secure punctual payment of a fair rent until it was settled; and the Irish Members, even with the powerful aid of the Land League, could not secure to the tenant farmers of Ireland the undisturbed enjoyment of the fruit of their labour, until the question was settled, inasmuch as the sanction of law was the only permanent security for the possession of property and the security of right. He was anxious, also, that when they appealed to the tenant farmers of Ireland and preached the doctrine of peace and tranquillity, they should be able to refer to the measure as one that had secured their rights and had stamped with the sanction of the law their claim to live on their own farms and in their own homes in peace and security. LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE said, he thought every hon. Member must have listened with the greatest admiration to the apposite and patriotic speech—in the best sense of that term—that had just been delivered by his hon. Friend the Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power), who throughout these long and difficult controversies had always endeavoured to rise superior to the passions of the hour, and who had thus set a great and noble example to his countrymen. Hon. Members approached the question under a disadvantage, inasmuch as they had not yet heard the speech of his noble Friend the Member for North Leicestershire (Lord John Manners) in support of the Amendment of which he had given Notice. His noble Friend by his Amendment announced that the idea of the Conservative Party was that we might leave the welfare of Ireland to be promoted by great measures for the material development of the wealth of the country; but he (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) must say it was not the first time that in great crises in public affairs the Leaders of the Conservative Party had come forward and announced that they were going to solve the question by bringing forward a comprehensive plan for that purpose. He remembered that his noble Friend the Member for Liverpool (Viscount Sandon) stated, during the height of the Eastern Question, that that question was going to be solved by the introduction of steam ploughs into Asia Minor by a Conservative Government. The steam ploughs had not yet been introduced there, and he wanted to know whether the Amendment of his noble Friend (Lord John Manners) was an announcement on the part of the Conservative Party that the steam ploughs they intended to send to Asia Minor were to be sent to Galway instead? The views of the Party opposite were, unfortunately, vague. This discussion included a "No surrender" speech by the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho); but he (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) did not hear one practical suggestion in it. He should like to know what the noble Lord proposed to do, for surely he could not deny that an Irish Land Question existed; and it was certainly the duty of any Government that might be in Office to attempt to settle it. This opinion he (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) gave all the more unreservedly, because he did not profess to believe that there were not many things in the Bill which, to say the least, required the most careful consideration. Neither did he profess to be at all enamoured of some of the schemes which had been put forward in regard to the rights of property in Ireland. If some of those schemes were adopted by the House, the unfortunate landlords would have to say, in South African phraseology, that they possessed a suzerainty over their estates. Travellers were shown in the City of Prague the horse of Prince Wallenstein. The head, the legs, the body, and the tail of the horse were restored, and travellers were informed that all the rest was the original animal. If some of this scheme were adopted, a future traveller in Ireland might be told—"This is the estate of Mr. So-and-so. The ownership has been altered, the occupation taken away, the reversion impaired; but all the rest is the original estate consolidated." He would now proceed to examine the scheme actually before the House. He was bound to say that many points had been brought forward in the course of the debate to which no satisfactory answer had yet been given by the Ministers in charge of the Bill. He alluded more particularly to the celebrated 7th clause. Now, as regarded that clause, he had never been able to see why the Government should not have been content with the definition of fair rent adopted as satisfactory and calculated to meet all requirements by that eminent Irish lawyer and patriot, the late Mr. Butt, and accepted after his decease by his Successor in charge of his Land Bill, the late Mr. M`Carthy Downing—a Gentleman who had also a profound acquaintance with the subject, second to that of no man in Ireland. Upon that Gentleman's lamented death, also, the same definition was taken up by the present hon. Member for Cork County (Mr. Shaw). Mr. Butt's definition of fair rent had already been read to the House; and, as hon. Members were no doubt aware, it was free from the objectionable rider to Clause 7, which had been so much criticized. Was it probable, he would ask, that a man like Mr. Butt—a lawyer and a political economist—would year after year have introduced into his Bill, and obtained for it the support of the Home Rule Party, a definition of fair rent which was not satisfactory? The hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. Litton), who had a large acquaintance with the question, introduced a Bill last year, and he had adopted substantially a similar definition, and it was exceedingly improbable that he would have fallen into so inconceivable a trap as not to present to the House a definition of fair rent sufficient for all practical purposes. Those were questions to which he should be glad to have an answer from the Government. Passing now to the landlord's right of pre-emption—as to which he would say, in answer to a challenge thrown down in the debate, that he did not like the idea of hanging up the future tenant between heaven and earth, like Mahomet's coffin, and he should therefore not be afraid to give the tenant, in certain circumstances, the right of buying out the landlord—he looked upon it with disfavour, and he was not at all sanguine of its success in clearing estates of complicated titles. He would ask how it could be desirable that the landlord, after buying out one tenant, should, after a certain lapse of time, have a second tenant upon his hands enjoying three-fourths of the rights possessed by the first, all of any value, in fact, except that of appealing to the Court? If the landlord was to be allowed to buy out a tenant, the purchase ought, in his opinion, to have its natural effects—effects which, by the way, the present Ministers proposed to give under the Land Act of 1870. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law) said the justification of the Bill was that Irish tenants could not contract. That proposition he (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) would not dispute; but how came the right hon. and learned Gentleman to contradict himself at the end of his speech, and say that the Irish tenants were perfectly able to take care of themselves? Then he noticed that there was a great inconsistency in the speeches of the Prime Minister, and of the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. W. E. Forster), and the First Commissioner of Works (Mr. Shaw Lefevre). The Chief Secretary for Ireland argued in favour of general free sale; and, no doubt, the Bill conferred that, because in the Bill he (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) found none of those limitations which the speech of the Prime Minister led them to suppose it contained. The Chief Secretary for Ireland, while supporting general free sale, did not attempt to show that there was anything to prevent the danger of free sale eating into the fair rent. But the argument of the First Commissioner of Works on the point was totally at variance with that either of the Chief Secretary for Ireland or the Prime Minister, for he said it was a matter of universal experience that the value of the tenants' interest and fair rents rose together. That position was rather inconsistent with those previously taken, and it would be desirable to know what the Ministry actually thought on the matter. His (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice's) own experience was that free sale was an excellent thing. It had worked well in Ulster, and he had seen it work well in many parts of Kerry also. But what he wished especially to dwell on was the fact that the House had not yet been put in possession of the exact views of the Government on the subject, or what, in their opinion, was likely to be the economic effect of introducing free sale. In a properous season, as the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) had stated, fair rents and free sale might, perhaps, go on rising together; but the danger was that when a bad season came, the tenant who had had to borrow money to purchase his holding might find that he could not get a fair interest for that money, and might be, in consequence, tempted to join in an agitation for reducing the fair rent fixed upon. That was what the landlords were afraid of. There were three points, which although, no doubt, points of detail, he wished to press on the attention of the Government. It had always hitherto, he might add, been the practice in discussing the Irish Land Question to distinguish clearly between large and small holdings. He was, he believed, right in saying that Mr. Butt, in his first Bill, fixed a limit in regard to the value beyond which a holding should not be included. In the present Bill, however, for the first time, the same rights were indiscriminately extended to every holding in Ireland. It was true that at £150 value and upwards the tenant could contract himself out of the provisions of the Bill; but the House should remember that, under its operation, the landlord would have nothing to offer the tenant to induce him to contract himself out of it, and he did not think any Irish tenant would be such a fool as to contract himself out of the good position given him by law without obtaining any equivalent. The clause dealing with the point might, therefore, as well be struck out of the Bill, for it would be a mere stalking-horse. But, apart from that, he wished to point out to the Government that the large tenant farmers did not stand in the same position as the tenants of small holdings. With regard to the small tenants of Ireland, the House could hardly go too far. No class in the country had throughout a long period of years suffered so severely. They had been driven up to the lone mountains of the South and West by the tide of English conquest. Proud as he was of being the descendant of a Cromwellian settler himself, he should be the last man in that House to close his eyes to the great sufferings in the past of the Irish people in the West and South. If they in the year 1881 could do anything to bridge over that great historic chasm which had divided Ireland into two peoples, let them in the name of Heaven do it. Let them not fight over details, but let them be just and generous—just to the tenant and landlord alike. He would tell his hon. Friends that it was not the way to introduce peace and goodwill in Ireland to leave even the landlord, belonging, as he did, to a small and unjustly abused class, with a rankling sense of wrong. The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell), whose views were of great value on this question, said that the claim of the small Irish tenant did not rest solely on economic grounds, but on history and tradition; but that the large farmer was comparatively a newcomer, who was a creature of pure contract, with claims resting on purely economic grounds. He would next ask the Government, whether the distinction between present tenants and future tenants was one that could be supported? If it were, a new class of tenants would be created in Ireland, and the titles to land would consequently be confused. They must either do what the Bess-borough Commission told them to do—namely, treat the present and future tenants alike—or they must do what The O'Conor Don in his minority Report proposed—namely, confine the Bill to the present tenants. Before concluding, he wished to refer to one aspect of this question, which to him was nearest and dearest of all. He wished to say a word or two on behalf of that much-abused goddess, political economy. From his hon. Friend the Member for Southwark (Mr. Thorold Rogers) he had expected to hear something in favour of that science; but, as far as he could make out from the speech of the hon. Member, he seized half a brick and hurled it at political economy. He had great respect for the opinion of his hon. Friend; but he must absolutely decline to accept what he said with regard to the connection of political economy with this Bill. If the House accepted the Bill, it must make up its mind to accept it as an exception to all the laws and rules of political economy. His hon. Friend had written a pamphlet, in which he proposed that the rents of the small tenants should be fixed now and for ever; but that was very different from the proposal of the Bill, that there should be a rent Court always existing and always interfering between landlord and tenant, which, he (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) maintained, was a distinct violation of political economy. It was true, as had been said by the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. C. Russell), that the late Professor Caird argued that certain propositions of political economy might be brought forward in defence of a Bill of this kind; but he contented himself with saying that it might be done, and failed to show that it could be done. Coming to the question of the institution of a Land Court, he (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) would urge the House not to conceal from itself that the powers which the Bill would give to such a Court were terrible and gigantic. They might be necessary, but they were enormous. Looking at the question from the point of view of the future prosperity and welfare of Ireland, he expressed astonishment that the Representatives of Irish constituencies should select that moment, when, according to their own view, a new era of prosperity, self-government, and independence was beginning for Ireland, to say that Irishmen were incapable of making their own contracts. Nobody would expect from him a defence of the Land League, far from it; but he believed that, in the same manner as the Agricultural Labourers' Union in England did good work by teaching the labourers to look their employers in the face, and make their own contracts, the Land League—had done this good work—it had taught the small tenant farmers that by combining together they could secure for themselves freedom of contract; and if they would only combine peaceably and lawfully, and refrain from outrages such as those which had latterly disgraced the country, the Land League, so far from having done harm, would have done the best thing that had been done in Ireland for years. It was a pity they could not learn the lesson without violating order and committing outrages. As regarded freedom of contract, he believed the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland was right in saying that the tenant farmers in many parts of Ireland were incapable of taking care of themselves; but if there was one class more incapable at the present time of taking care of itself in that respect than another it was that unfortunate and much-abused class, the Irish landlords. He did not wish to be understood as saying anything disagreeable or hostile to the Bill when he said that he should have been glad if the Government had decided to make the peasant proprietary part of the measure the strongest part of it. He wished that had been put in the front of the battle. He believed the economic conditions of Ireland were such that if a scheme had been set on foot for capitalizing the large sums of money recklessly paid for farms, they would be able, without robbing the landlords of a single farthing, easily to establish a very large number of small proprietors. Mr. Senior, a high authority on such subjects, had said that a country without a peasant proprietary, but with capital, could get on, and that a country in the reverse condition could get on; but that a country that had neither a peasant proprietary nor capital, was a country that was essentially unsound. And that was the state of Ireland now. The establishment of a cottier or peasant proprietary was the first step towards the political salvation of a country; but he regretted that the Government had not based their scheme upon the distinction between the large farmers on the one hand and the small occupiers on the other. Some scheme of that kind would, in his opinion, have been less offensive and complicated, and far better than the Chinese puzzle which the Government had placed before them. Having spent a full month in the study of the Bill, he was all the more alarmed at its complexity. Its effect would be to make the village attorney and the village solicitor the lords and masters of Ireland. There were really two schemes in the Bill, and these were parallel the one to the other—he alluded to the scheme known as the "three F's," and next to the scheme as to compensation. These were constantly cropping up; and in the result, while the tenant on the one hand would go to the village lawyer—should go—for if the Bill were put into his hands he could in no wise understand it, and ask which of the provisions of the Bill would be most likely to benefit him, the landlord, on the other hand, would go to his lawyer and ask which of these provisions he could bring to bear upon the tenant. He confessed that he could not conceal from himself that not merely with regard to the Irish Land Question, but in Ireland, speaking generally, they were in the presence of a tremendous crisis. They were on the brink of events the magnitude of which it would be folly to underrate. They must not imagine that after dealing with this Irish Land Question, they could go to sleep saying—"Thank God, we are done with Ireland!" He saw articles every day in English newspapers on the subject, and he often wrung his hands in despair when he read them. When they had settled the Land Question, even if they could do so on the lines of the present Bill, it would assume more portentous proportions, and they should make up their minds to deal in a thoroughly satistory manner with many other questions which would arise. One effect of the Bill would be to enormously weaken the influence of the "English garrison" in Ireland; but when they had done so, they must look forward to something that would supply its place. He hoped the result would be that the people of Ireland would become prosperous and contented, and that sentiments of gratitude and affection towards England would be widely entertained by them. That was the hope and expectation with which statesmen had proposed the repeal of Irish disabilities; but they ought not to be blind to the fact that those hopes and expectations had been disappointed. The anti-English feeling in Ireland was strong, and it was, moreover, as strong now as it had been at any time in the course of the present century. ["Oh, oh!"] An hon. Member near him dissented from this proposition, and he hoped the hon. Gentleman was right; but it was impossible to conceal from themselves that there was a great deal to be said on both sides of the question, and that the question with which Parliament had to deal was both important and portentous. He might be told that he was that most disagreeable of persons—a prophet who prophesied disagreeable things. This was, perhaps, true; but he sincerely hoped that his prophecies would be falsified, and that every fear which possessed him might turn out to be founded in error. He hoped that in the days to come Ireland might be free, great, and prosperous; and he should hold the same view if his family, which had been for 200 years in Ireland, had at once to sever its connection with the country. At the same time, he had thought that he could not better express the love which he bore to the country than by frankly expressing the feelings which animated him in reference to this particular question. Although he gave the utmost credit to Her Majesty's Government for the immense pains and trouble which they had taken with the Bill, and although he was convinced it was their earnest desire to do everything which was right and just for Ireland, he, nevertheless, felt that they were debating under the shadow of a tremendous crisis, and great dangers coming on; and that it required the utmost patriotism and the utmost good sense on the part of every Member of the House of Commons, if those dangers were to be prevented from becoming so great as to shake and impair, and even destroy, that which he, at least, believed had been of untold advantage to the people of both England and Ireland—he meant the Union which connected the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland.

LORD JOHN MANNERS

I do not propose to follow the powerful and argumentative speech of the noble Lord who has just sat down (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice); but I do not think that anyone who has listened to the speech of the noble Lord, would have believed that he was a supporter of the second reading of the Bill, had he not told us so in his opening sentences. In the very eloquent peroration of the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. P. J. Smyth) the other night, this Bill was described as a solemn temple of union and concord; but I look in vain for signs of that union and concord, whether I cast my eyes across the Channel or watch what is transpiring in the House. I would ask, in the first place, whether Ireland was in a better or worse position before the Coercion Act was passed than she is at this moment? Are there fewer murders? Are there fewer murders? Are there fewer outrages of any kind at this moment than there were six months ago? I believe that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland is unable to answer the question in the negative. This Bill has now been for nearly a month under the consideration of the people of Ireland, and, so far as we know, the only result has been the proclamation of the Capital, the arrest and imprisonment of the Colleague (Mr. Dillon) of the hon. Member (Mr. P. J. Smyth), who spoke with so much elo- quence the other night; and a Vote of Censure impending over the heads of the Government, to be proposed by an hon. Member below the Gangway (Mr. Justin M'Carthy). Well, Sir, what I wish to ask is what is the real evil we have to meet, and to which Parliament should apply its serious attention? In answering that question, I agree very much with what fell from the hon. Member for the County of Mayo(Mr. O'Connor Power) in the course of the observations which he has addressed to the House this evening. I say, the real evil we have to meet in respect to that part of Ireland which we really have to consider is this—that you have a redundant population, dependent for its subsistence and employment upon the cultivation of a not very fertile soil, under humid skies, and dependent for its food upon that one crop which, of all others, is liable to sudden and total destruction. I think that Her Majesty's Ministers have some belief that that is to a great extent the evil they have to meet, because I notice with satisfaction the proposals they make in the fifth part of the Bill. The hon. Member for Mayo has properly described the condition of things when he says that tens of thousands of people, particularly in the West and South of Ireland, are dependent for support and, indeed, existence, upon the cultivation of a land which cannot and never could be made to support them. Well, Sir, with the exception of the fifth part of the Bill, upon which I propose by-and-bye to say a few words, I contend that the whole scope and tendency of the measure is directed towards increasing and perpetuating the very evil we ought to meet. The very object, as it seems to me, of this Bill is to stereotype and aggravate that dependence of the poorer classes of the tenantry of Ireland on that soil which cannot and will not maintain them. The noble Lord who has just sat down dealt at some length, not only with the Court by which the provisions of the first part of the Bill are to be brought into operation, but also upon the scheme which the Bill contains. I do not propose at this late hour to follow the noble Lord in detail into that branch of the subject. Her Majesty's Government say that the foundation of all improvement in respect of the land in Ireland is that there should be a Government valuation of land. Well, that is a very grave, and a very delicate, and a very serious proposal to make. The noble Lord has dwelt largely upon its delicacy and danger. I admit the delicacy, and I admit the danger; but for the sake of argument I will assume that the Government have proved their case by the Reports of the Commissions, and that the necessity of some interference on the part of the Legislature may be conceded; but I demur to the conclusions which the Government have drawn from that statement of the case. I deny that it is necessary to proceed further in that direction in providing for the free sale of land and the perpetuity and continuity of the lease. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister bases the legislation he proposes upon the recommendations of the Duke of Richmond's Commission; but the Duke of Richmond's Commission carefully guarded themselves against being supposed to be favourable to the other two schemes set out in the Bill, and restricted themselves to the more moderate suggestion that legislative interference might be necessary with respect to the fixing of fair rents. The right hon. and learned Gentleman opposite made a great point by connecting fair rents with the other two "F's"—fixity of tenure and free sale. In my opinion, however, if free sale is to be given unlimited, as is now proposed, you cannot stop there. The justification for fair rents and free sale is simply this, as it was put just now by the noble Lord, that the Irish tenant is unable to protect himself against the landlord. But if that be so—if the Irish tenant is in that unfortunate position when you grant free sale—you must protect him, by a parity of reasoning, against other dangers than those which arise from the superiority of his landlord. What does it matter to the incoming poor tenant, if he has to pay what is substantially a rack rent to two persons instead of to one? As the Bill stands, the perfect freedom of sale which tt gives must be restricted in some way or other, or else the incoming tenant, who might arrange to pay a fair rent to the landlord, will have to pay what is substantially a rack rent in consequence of the large sum of money he may have to pay the outgoing tenant, and, still worse, the interest he may be forced to pay the local usurer from whom he has borrowed the purchase-money. By having to pay a large sum down to the outgoing tenant, his means for stocking his farm and for carrying it on profitably will be greatly crippled. Therefore, if the Bill is to effect its object, it must proceed one step further; and, having interfered with the valuation of the land, it must interfere to regulate the interest upon borrowed capital—it must re-enact the old usury laws—and then I shall be able to show that you have not carried out sufficiently and fully your own proposals to their ultimate conclusion. I may mention that this idea is not confined to English people. What is the organ of public opinion which has done more than any other to keep alive the flames of agitation in Ireland? What is that organ which has done more than any other to procure funds for the maintenance of that agitation? We all know that it is The Irish World. And what does that paper do? It devotes one-half of its space to arguments in favour of abolishing Irish landlordism, and the other half, with equal impartiality, to denouncing usury as one of the curses of the country. Can we believe that the Irish tenants and the Irish peasants who read this paper, and know the advice it gives them, would be satisfied with being secured against the unjust rent of the landlord, and would be content for the future to pay the exorbitant rates which the local usurers demand from them? If that be so with respect to the tenant farmers, I wish now to say a very few words on that other person, who has hitherto been only lightly alluded to in these debates, and who is not mentioned with any degree of substantiality in the Bill of Her Majesty's Government—I mean the Irish labourer. My impression is that the Bill, as it is drawn, affects prejudicially those 440,000 individuals who are classed as Irish labourers. Everybody will admit that of late years the wages of the general body of Irish labourers have been much improved; but have they been increased by the action of the tenant farmers or of the landed proprietors? No one will deny that it is by the latter and not by the former that the wages of the labourers have been increased and their condition improved, and this Bill, which aims a Mow at the rights and position of the landlords, does indirectly, but very substantially, affect very prejudicially the interests of the labourers. That, I say, is the indirect influence of the Bill upon the labourers; but in other respects the interests of the labourers are directly prejudiced by the provisions of the measure. According to the fifth part of the Bill, the landlord is to sell his property to his tenant. Upon the property so sold are the cottages and allotments of the labourers. But by a subsequent provision of the Bill the moment the tenant becomes the proprietor, by an exemption contained in the last page of the Bill, he becomes the absolute lord of the labourers, their cottages, and their allotments on the farm, on which, perhaps, they were born. I do not know whether it is an omission or not; but, undoubtedly, as the Bill is drawn, and as I am advised, this exemption would place the labourers completely at the mercy of the new peasant proprietor. I know it will be said that in two clauses of the Bill there is some slight mention made of the labourer. But how? The landlord is to have the power of resuming possession of a portion of the farm for the benefit of the labourer. But when? When he raises the rent of the farm; but not until then. I believe, if that clause is read with the only other one in which the labourer is mentioned, it will be found that even this very limited and illusory relief is put off for a period of 15 years. Therefore, I say that, as far as the Irish labourer is concerned, both directly and indirectly, he is prejudiced by the whole scope of the Bill. I believe that all the Members of this House have received a very remarkable letter, signed "Edward Richards," which bears on this branch of the question, and I would ask leave to read a few words from it. Mr. Richards gives his name and address. He says— In defence of a much maligned class, and as a duty I owe to the public, I must say that the most powerful case of eviction I ever heard of was that of a poor tenant farmer. The story is too long to tell; but suffice it to say that Mr. Richards found himself the champion of the poor tenant against a rich neighbouring farmer—also his own tenant—and, failing all other means of obtaining redress, he became the defendant in a Chancery suit. And while the poor tenant was turned into the road, the rich farmer, having crushed the poor tenant, became a leading member of the local Land League, and now refused to pay a farthing of rent for the perpetuity farms which he held. What justice or mercy could the labourers expect from farmers or peasant proprietors of that kind? This Bill, unjust as the noble Lord who has just sat down knows it to be, acting most prejudicially upon the interests of the landlords as a body, might possibly have been accepted in some of its main provisions by them, in the miserable and disturbed condition in which Ireland now finds herself, owing very much, as I maintain, to the mixture of arrogance and weakness displayed by Her Majesty's Government—the landlords, I say, might possibly have been content to accept some of the many provisions of the measure, if the Government could hold out anything like a reasonable expectation that the measure would really settle the Land Question in Ireland. I do not ask the Government to say whether they intend the measure to be a settlement; because, after what has occurred, their intentions go for very little. But can the Government point to any facts which can in the least justify them in the expectation that the Bill would settle the question? We have heard to-night a very able speech from the hon. Gentleman the Member for Mayo. He, like the noble Lord opposite, is going to vote for the second reading of the Bill; but what was the whole tone, tenour, and scope of the speech of the hon. Member? It was this—"If you will insert in this Bill all the Amendments which I suggest, and the whole of the 18 Amendments suggested by the Roman Catholic Prelates of Ireland, then I and my Friends will continue to support the measure, and we will hope that it may be for the benefit of Ireland." We have the assurance of the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government that he will not assent to the propositions made by the Roman Catholic Prelates; and we must assume, until we hear to the contrary, that he will refuse his assent to the still wider proposals we know are in store for us from hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway. Well, then, what hope have we that this Bill, so deficient as I have shown it to be, with respect to the largest and poorest class now suffering in Ireland—this Bill which fails to receive the support of those Gentlemen by whose labours it has been mainly produced, and to gratify and satisfy whom it may be reasonably supposed to have been suggested to the House—what hope have we that this measure will in any degree be regarded or received as a settlement of the Land Question? But, then, while I object to the whole of the first part of this measure as being essentially unjust, and while I hold that it does not contain within itself any reasonable ground for regarding it as a settlement of the question, I freely admit that there are other proposals which do seriously deserve the consideration of the House; and I agree with the noble Lord that it is a pity these proposals have not been submitted in a more substantial, clear, and enlarged shape for our consideration. The hon. Member for Mayo has shown that with respect to the reclamation of land the scheme is very misty, and that the Government proposals are drawn in a manner which is not in the least likely to attract a sufficient amount of capital to enable them to be carried into effect. The whole scope and tenour of the Bill appear to me almost intended to drive capital away rather than to induce it to flow into Ireland. There were some sentiments expressed by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law) which somewhat favoured that view. He seemed quite annoyed that anybody should suggest that the introduction of fresh capital thrown into Ireland was really one of the wants of the country. "Want of capital!" said, in effect, the right hon. and learned Gentleman. "No; the sinews and muscle of the tenant farmer who cultivates the soil—that is capital sufficient. Only give him a little more security in regard to the occupation of small farms—that is the sort of capital that is wanted for the restoration of the prosperity of Ireland." Now, I greatly doubt that. I believe, with everybody who has hitherto sifted the question, that it is to the introduction of capital in Ireland, and to the development of her industrial resources, that you must look in the long run for that prosperity which we all equally wish should be the fortune of that country. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister has based this measure to a great extent upon the recommendations of the Duke of Richmond's Commission. I have, I think, already shown that the right hon. Gentleman has greatly exaggerated and altogether mistaken the recommendations of that Commission; but before any recommendation on the subject of tenure in the Duke of Richmond's Commission, stood a recommendation on the subject of public works, which I propose shortly to read to the House. The hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. P. J. Smyth) asked what has become of, and where is the development of the industrial resources of Ireland? I would answer the hon. Gentleman in this way. I was looking, a few months ago, to a remarkably able letter written on this subject, to which his own signature was appended, and to which I would refer him for an exhaustive statement on the subject; and I find this reference to the industrial resources of Ireland in the Report of the Duke of Richmond's Commission— The employment of capital and labour in the development of the resources of the country by arterial drainage, the construction of railways and other public works, and the encouragement of fisheries, is also urged upon us by the witnesses as one of the best remedies for the present depression and to prevent the recurrence of the existing distress. It will be seen from the evidence that from the want of regular, continuous employment for the people, the condition of these classes is deplorable, and the consequent sufferings and privations which they and their families have periodically to endure demand the serious attention of Her Majesty's Government and of Parliament. That is my answer to the hon. Member for Tipperary and the hon. Member for Mayo; and I say that in the first recommendation of the Duke of Richmond's Commission I find a justification for the Amendment which I am precluded from moving, but in the spirit of which I desire to make a few further remarks. This is no new idea. The hon. Member for Mayo said, and it was the only part of his speech which was liable to complaint, to my great amazement, that the Tory Party have only one policy for Ireland, and that is coercion and proscription. How any Gentleman, who is going to support Her Majesty's Government on the second reading of this Bill, could presume to lecture the Tory Party on the subject of coercion I confess I am unable to understand. It would seem as though the Tory Party have never before now proposed any measure for the real material advantage of Ireland. For myself, I take my stand to-night on precisely the same ground as that on which the late Lord George Bentinck took his 34 years ago. I venture to ask the hon. Member for Mayo this question—How was it that that great scheme, which now everybody connected with Ireland admits would have been greatly for the benefit and would largely have contributed to the prosperity of that country, came to be rejected? It was rejected because the political Predecessors of the hon. Member for Mayo, in the so-called Liberal representation of Ireland, at that time preferred their Party to their country, and threw out the Bill. Lord George Bentinck said— There has been no inquiry made by Parliament, in which the result has not been a recommendation that the difficulties of Ireland should be sought to be overcome by stimulating the employment of her people."—[8 Hansard, lxxxix. 776.] Well, Sir, I say that that is as true now as it was true then, and it is the justification and the vindication of the course which I presume to recommend for the adoption of the House. We have heard a great deal about the Devon Commission of 1847; but I will refer to a Commission which sat even 10 years before that—namely, the Land Commission of 1836. That Commission recommended for the benefit of the Irish people that railways should be assisted by the Government. I will venture now, in a very few words, to indicate some of the public works to which the attention of the Government might beneficially be directed. In the first place, there is arterial drainage, which is, perhaps, at the root of the real improvement of the soil of Ireland. I do not know whether any hon. Member is prepared to dispute that proposition; but, if so, I would refer him to a statement by Professor Baldwin. He says—"I think it is the foundation of the permanent improvement of the agriculture of Ireland." Now, I would venture to ask Her Majesty's Government what has been done of late years in promoting the arterial drainage of Ireland? I believe, according to the best evidence which can be obtained, that at the normal rate at which the arterial drainage of Ireland has been going on it would take about 1,000 years to perfect that drainage. There you have a very great subject for your favourable consideration, and a subject on which there is no considerable difference of opinion. Perhaps it may be said that in the fifth part of the Bill there is some reference to drainage, and that "drainage" may be held to include arterial drainage. I do not know how that is; but I would ask how is it proposed that the drainage should be carried out? Why, by the formation of companies. The Government are not to be authorized to give assistance unless and until a company is formed. [An hon. MEMBER: That is the law now.] Then, what I say is, that that which is now suggested by the present Bill is not sufficient for the purpose. I would wish to go much further than the present law, and I presume that the Government intended to go further by the clause of the Bill to which I refer. Otherwise, why is it inserted in the Bill? I am pointing out now that the provisions of the Bill are insufficient, and that they are really illusory. I would ask what prospect the Government have that those companies would be formed, to which they would be willing to advance the money, so that arterial drainage might be carried out? I am satisfied that the whole scope and tenour of the measure is such as to deter and not to induce the flow of capital into Ireland. Well, then, Sir, there is another question which was very much debated in this House last year, and in the discussion of which I took a part—I mean the promotion of fisheries in Ireland. I cannot conceive any work more important at the present moment to Ireland and the future prosperity of Ireland than the development of the fisheries. There was last year absolute unanimity among the Irish Members on that question. I had the pleasure of supporting the proposal, both by my speech and by my vote. It was suggested that there should be a large increase in the money already voted to the Irish fisheries and the Irish fishermen for the purpose of restoring that which before the Famine of 1846 was a very important and lucrative source of employment to large numbers of the Irish people. A development of this industry would be a source of great relief to large numbers of the Irish people, especially on the Western coast, where there has been great suffering. Under the system established by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Gloucestershire (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach), I believe about £5,000 a-year is now voted in loans to fishermen. Sir, I propose that this should be largely increased, and that all the fishermen who ask for grants under proper circumstances should receive them. For this purpose, I consider about £15,000 annually would be sufficient. But then comes the other important question of fishery piers and harbours; and there, also, a great work is to be accomplished, for no work in Ireland, I am certain, could be undertaken by this House or any Commission which Her Majesty's Government might appoint, which would be more beneficial and productive, and which would tend more to further the improvement of the condition of the maritime population of that country. Since Lord George Bentinck made his proposal, private enterprize has undoubtedly done much to supply Ireland with main lines of railway, and it is therefore unnecessary to propose any great scheme of that kind. But there are many small lines of what might be termed mountain railway which are much wanted in Ireland, and which would tend to develope the dormant agricultural resources of great tracts of land in that country. I suggest, therefore, that the Government should undertake to give increased facilities for the construction of these smaller lines of railway. It will then be asked, "How is the money to be found?" Sir, I cannot conceive that the Irish Church Fund could be better applied than in promoting works of the character to which I have alluded. I do not say that I have given anything like an exhaustive list of those works of the character I have indicated which may be beneficially promoted; but I repeat, that I cannot conceive any more beneficial objects to which the Irish Church Surplus could be devoted. Following out the line of argument which the hon. Member for Mayo pursued, I go one step further, and say, if it be necessary to supplement that fund by a draft of money from the Imperial Treasury, either by way of loan or as a gift, I would far rather adopt that course; and, in so doing, expiate, if need be, the sins of the forefathers of the present House of Commons in destroying the Irish manufacturing trades. That course appears to me much preferable to the scheme which finds favour with the hon. Member for Southwark, who told us that we are bound to do penance for the sins of our forefathers, and expiate them at the expense of the Irish landlords, who, like the rest of the Irish population, were injured by the unjust legislation of the English House of Commons. I regret I have not had an opportunity of taking the sense of the House upon my Amendment, as distinguished from that of my noble Friend the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho); but I feel very strongly that this Bill is not the proper solution of the Land Question, and as we have had no indication from Her Majesty's Government that they are prepared in any way to mitigate its injustice or modify its injurious provisions, no other course is left to me than to vote for the Amendment of my noble Friend. If this Bill could be made more consonant with justice, and deprived of those harsher features which alarm and perplex the public mind, it would not be a measure of which I should feel disposed to say that it ought not to receive the sanction of this House; and I will still hope, amidst all the difficulties of the position, that Parliament may devote itself to the consideration of the question how the real evils and wants of Ireland may be best met. Sir, there is no Royal road to national prosperity, but there may be many humble paths which, taken together, lead to that result; and I trust we shall not finally part with this question without having devised some schemes which will be beneficent in their effects, and contribute to the lasting peace and prosperity of Ireland.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Mr. Errington.)

SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFF

asked the right hon. Gentleman at the head of Her Majesty's Government, what would be the course of Public Business? He was unable to understand why the debate should be adjourned at that early hour (12.30), unless it was for to give the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Monk) an opportunity of bringing on his Motion, which had miscarried on Tuesday last, on account of a misunderstanding on the part of the Whips. If the Motion for adjournment were assented to with that object he should certainly oppose it.

MR. GLADSTONE

Sir, the Motion for the adjournment of this debate is no matter of arrangement or any act of ours, and I do not know that we should be justified in opposing it. Yet I hope the House will now begin to think of some arrangement for drawing the debate upon the second reading of the Bill now before us to a close. It is a matter of very great urgency that the judgment of the House should be taken on the main principles of the Bill; and we learn tonight from the Opposition Bench that the Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire is to be supported from that Bench. The discussion upon the Amendment of the noble Lord will necessarily occupy some time, and it is a perfectly fair and straight-forward Motion. But, Sir, I think, after four nights' debate, it is not unreasonable to express a hope that we may now very soon reach the conclusion of this stage of the Bill. The limit of time necessary for this purpose I will not undertake precisely to fix; but, as far as Her Majesty's Government are concerned, we hope the debate will be brought to a close within what I think will be a liberal extension of time—namely, the two Government nights of next week.

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE

Sir, it is, no doubt, very desirable that we should make progress with Business, and get on with such an important Bill as that under discussion. At the same time, it cannot be wondered at that a measure of such great importance and of such complication should encounter a very considerable amount of discussion. The Bill raises a large number of questions, and I am well aware that there are many hon. Gentlemen who are anxious to take part in the discussion upon the principles of the measure. One thing, I believe, would tend very much to the limitation of the debate, and that is that the Government should give us, in a clearer and more intelligible form than we have yet received, some explanation of the 7th clause. A great deal turns upon this. The question was raised at the very beginning of the discussion by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dublin University (Mr. Gibson), and so much hinges upon it that we are entitled to have with regard to it a clear and intelligible explanation. With that assistance on the part of Her Majesty's Government, I think it may be found possible to conclude the debate upon the second reading within a reasonable time; but that assist- ance is quite essential. It will, I am convinced, save time in the long run, that those who have strong opinions on the subject, and wish to bring forward their views in the course of the discussion upon the second reading of the Bill, should have an opportunity of doing so.

LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL

desired to point out to the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister that, in showing what appeared to be rather undue impatience that the debate upon the second reading of this Bill should close, he had somewhat forgotten the extraordinary course which the debate had taken from its commencement. It must not be forgotten that the debate on the first night practically collapsed owing to the conduct of Her Majesty's Government. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin made on that occasion a speech, in which he put certain questions to the Government apparently of so difficult a character that the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant was quite unable to make any answer to them. It ought also to be borne in mind that one of the events of that first night's discussion, which occurred on that day when the House met after the Easter Recess, was that Her Majesty's Government, as he believed, tried to snatch a division, because the only occupant of the Treasury Bench, after the right hon. and learned Gentleman had concluded, was the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who cried "Divide!" On another night of the discussion, the First Lord of the Treasury very gratuitously put down a Motion which had raised a controversy that occupied two hours. On the previous occasion there had been a discussion of great length, chiefly owing to the remarkable opinions held by hon. Members opposite with regard to a matter on which they found themselves unable to agree with hon. Members on that side of the House—namely, the war in Afghanistan. Looking at all these events, he could not but think that the right hon. Gentleman was far too sanguine in thinking that the debate was likely to close within the period he had indicated.

MR. LITTON

said, there were, undoubtedly, many Irish Members as well as himself who desired to speak upon the second reading of the Bill. He had attentively listened to the debate during the four nights which it had occupied; and although he wished to address the House, he had failed to catch the eye of Mr. Speaker. He was at all times indisposed to press any observations of his own, if the House considered that the subject had been sufficiently discussed; but he did not feel himself bound to yield to the suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman to give up the right which he claimed of speaking upon this question.

MR. SHAW

said, he had remarked since the commencement of the debate that English Members had absorbed a great deal of the time spent in discussion. But there were Irish Members who also desired to take part in the debate. He knew that Gentlemen who sat behind him, and many Irish Members on the other side of the House, had risen repeatedly, but had failed to catch the eye of Mr. Speaker. Although the Bill was said to be of very great importance to English Members, it had struck him that they had, in the course of the discussion, advanced very little argument. Under the circumstances, probably Irish Members might be allowed to occupy more time in discussing the Bill during the next two nights. The nights they had already devoted to this subject had been very much interfered with; but, no doubt, if the next two Government nights were given to it, it might be possible to close the debate within that time. But he understood there was a subject upon the Paper for discussion on Monday, which might give rise to a great deal of controversy; and therefore he suggested that the matter, which was not one of pressing importance, should be deferred. He hoped the House would not misunderstand him as having the slightest wish to interfere with any proper mark of respect to the memory of that great Statesman, Lord Beaconsfield; but the Motion was not one of such pressing importance as the going into Committee upon this Bill. Even the question referred to by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition was one which could not be discussed so completely at the present stage as in Committee. Undoubtedly, the 7th clause was one which it would be found very difficult to explain. Nevertheless, when it was reached in Committee, and dealt with as a matter of Business, he saw no reason why progress should not be made with it. He trusted the House would not object to the suggestion he had thrown out for postponing the Motion to which he had referred. He was quite sure they would consider it in a proper spirit, and arrive at a just decision.

MR. CHAPLIN

said, that, no doubt, Irish Members should take a prominent part in the debate; but, at the same time, he would point out that the Bill contained a principle that the Prime Minister had said was quite as much English as Irish, for in 1870 the right hon. Gentleman had said in his hearing—"This is quite as much an English as an Irish Land Bill." Therefore, he hoped he might be allowed to say a word for English Members, who also desired to take part in the discussion. He should be sorry to say anything disappointing to the Prime Minister; but, as far as he had been able to ascertain the views and wishes of hon. Members on that (the Conservative) side of the House—Irish as well as English Members—he did not think there was the remotest chance of the debate being finished in the course of two more Government nights next week. He had heard Member after Member signify his intention to take part in the debate, and he remembered that the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gladstone), at the very commencement, had said that this was the most serious question that had ever arisen in his time. He (Mr. Chaplin) agreed with his noble Friend below him (Lord Randolph Churchill), that the Prime Minister was over sanguine if he thought that five or even six days were sufficient for the discussion of the Bill on second reading. The days which had been devoted to the debate had only been, so to speak, half days, for a great deal of time had been taken up on those occasions by the consideration of other matters. Take, for instance, to-night, when the Afghan Question had been considered, and very few Members had had an opportunity of speaking on the Bill. With regard to what had fallen from the right hon. Baronet below him (Sir Stafford Northcote), it was a fact that no answer had been given to the speech of the right bon. Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson). Not only was the speech of the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant insufficient; but when the Attorney General for Ireland was pressed across the Table by a right hon. Gentleman on this side of the House, he said—"Oh, dear, no! I am not going to be entrapped into any off-hand statement of this kind." If the Government thought they were going to get rid of the second reading in two more days, they would find themselves very much mistaken. It would last a great deal longer than they seemed to suppose.

LORD GEORGE HAMILTON

said, he did not wish to procrastinate or prolong the second reading of the measure; but the hon. Member for the County of Cork (Mr. Shaw) had said that if they got into Committee on it, it would then be very easy to settle what was the meaning of Clause 7. He would venture to suggest to the Prime Minister, however, that nothing would tend more to facilitate the discussion, and probably the conclusion, upon the second reading than a clear definition from the Government as to what was the meaning of Clause 7. Speaking as one tolerably conversant with the Ulster Custom, which it was proposed to extend all over Ireland by this Bill, he said that the whole principle and the whole purport of the first part of the measure depended upon the interpretation to be put upon Clause 7. The Attorney General for Ireland had not attempted to dispute the contention of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin; in fact, he had expressly declined to explain the meaning of certain clauses, lest he should be drawn into a wrangle. ["No, no!"] The right hon. and learned Gentleman had said—but he (Lord George Hamilton) would not enter into a dispute with hon. Members on the question, because there was really no answer given to the arguments of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin. The hon. and learned Member for Dundalk had confirmed the construction put upon the clause by the right hon. and learned Gentleman. The Chief Secretary had told them that the interpretation of the right bon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin did not convey the intention of the Government; then, all he would ask was that they should put up someone—say, the Solicitor General for Ireland, whose answers were not wanting in intelligibility—to tell them what were the intentions of Her Majesty's Government as to Clause 7; and if the words which were now in the clause were insufficient to adequately explain their intention, what words could be employed in order to make their object perfectly clear.

MR. GORST

only wished, for a moment, to correct a misapprehension of the hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire (Mr. Chaplin), which, he thought, in justice to Her Majesty's Government, ought to be corrected; and he was not sure that the right hon. Baronet the Member for North Devon had not fallen into a somewhat similar mistake. They had both stated that Her Majesty's Government had given no answer to the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin; but that was not correct—it was an injustice to the Government. The Government had given three answers to that speech. The first was given by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant; the second was given by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Dundalk; and the third was given by the Attorney General for Ireland; and the peculiarity of the case was this—that all three answers were entirely inconsistent with one another. If the Government would allow so humble an individual as himself to give them a piece of advice, with a view to bringing this discussion to a satisfactory close, he would suggest that they should make up their minds what they really did intend to mean by Clause 7. If they would state to the House what their real intention was, the House would be able to debate the Bill.

MR. MAC IVER

would not like the Motion for adjournment to pass without saying a word on behalf of a class of Members who, he thought, had a right to be heard—namely, those Members who, though representing English boroughs or counties, still had a large number of Irish constituents. He was one of those Members, though, it was probable—and he admitted it at once—that, at the last General Election, did not get one vote from these Irish constituents. None the less, however, did he wish to urge in the strongest manner possible—and, no doubt, many Members from Ireland and those who sat on the Conservative Benches, and probably some who sat opposite, would agree with him—that the Government should pass some measures which would really be of advantage to Ireland. He referred to matters such as those which had only been referred to briefly by the noble Lord who spoke just now (Lord John Manners). He had listened to all the speeches of importance on the Land Bill; but felt that questions which had been put from that side of the House had not yet been answered by the Government—cones-quently, that the time had not come when he would wish to place his view of the subject before the attention of the House. If he did not divide the House upon the Amendment which stood in Ids name, it would not be from any lack of intention to do so, but from lack of the opportunity.

MR. DAWSON

had given three weeks for the discussion of this measure on various platforms, and he must be anxious to know the result; therefore, it would be interesting to them and to the Government to learn what instructions the Irish Members had received from their constituents on this question. It could do no harm to hear the opinions of English Members on the matter, for then not only would the Government learn the view of the Irish constituencies, but also the English view.

MR. HEALY

said, that as one anxious to speak on the question he desired to make a suggestion which the Government might, perhaps, think valuable. The hon. Member (Mr. Shaw) complained that no time had been allowed to Irish Members to speak on the question, and that the time had been taken up by a number of English Members who, presumably, the hon. Member intended to insinuate, like a good many Irish Members, did not know anything about the matter. He would suggest a course for which the Government had a good precedent. The Bill, they were told, was very necessary for Ireland, and the same was said of the measure to enable the Executive to put Irishmen into prison. They must be as anxious to press forward a measure for the protection of the farmers as they were to press forward the other; therefore, to enable them to get out of the difficulty he would propose that they should take one or two All-night Sittings.

SIR PATRICK O'BRIEN

said, that one reason why it occurred to him that this debate was not likely to close as early as the Premier seemed to anticipate was this—that at the beginning of the debate, judging from the Irish papers, the Land League Convention and meet- ings held in Ireland had granted permission to those Irish Members who sat on the Opposition side of the House to decide what course they should take on this measure. Having given to the Bill all the attention his capacity enabled him to do, he had been under the impression that its leading principle could be more fairly and properly discussed in Committee and, under such circumstances, that the second reading could be terminated in a short time. But, to-night, they had heard from the hon. Member (Mr. Shaw) that the old arrangement had been changed, and that, within a very short period, the ideas that had heretofore prevailed as to the manner of dealing with it had been set aside, and that an Amendment had been put upon the Paper—an Amendment not meeting the Bill with a direct negative, but which certainly would not contribute to its receiving such a good reception "elsewhere," when it passed out of this House, as he could have wished it to receive. Under the circumstances, he could not but suppose that the Resolution had been put forward as a mere brutum fulmen. He hoped hon. Members would not content themselves with putting crude ideas on paper, but would give that explanation which the House was anxious to have as to the reason why this Resolution had been brought forward. It seemed to him that if hon. Members were to explain that Resolution, and the House was to receive the benefit of their views on the measure of the Government, and on other matters connected with the subject, the second reading stage would not be likely to terminate so early as the Prime Minister anticipated.

Question put, and agreed to.

Debate adjourned till Monday next.