EIGHTH NIGHT.

HC Deb 19 May 1881 vol 261 cc827-931

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 loading 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.

MR. CHAPLIN

Mr. Speaker, I do not doubt that I shall express a very general feeling when I say that the introduction of another Irish Land Bill in the year 1881, cannot fail to suggest to the minds of hon. Members reflections of the gravest, I will even say of the most painful character; and especially when we remember that it is not yet 11 years ago since the last great legislative measure dealing with this question was accepted by Parliament and by the country. To me, I must say that it seems but the other day that I heard the right hon. Gentleman, the author of this Bill, in language as eloquent as, and not from that which he used the other night, unfold to a crowded and anxious House of Commons the details of his great scheme of Land Reform in 1870, by which, to use his own description, his very words at that time, he desired by a manful effort "to close and seal up for over, if it might be," this great question so intimately concerning the happiness and prosperity of Ireland. Well do I remember the scene on that occasion, presenting as it did so marked and striking a resemblance, in many respects, to the scene we witnessed here again the other night before we parted, on the eve of the Recess. Then, as now, I need not say, the case of the Minister was urged with a power and an eloquence which was not surpassed even upon this occasion. Then, as now, there was the same conviction, the same sincere, I do not doubt, and deep conviction of the goodness and justice of his cause the same bright hopes and sanguine anticipations of a happy and a favourable future; the same popular acceptance of his views beyond these walls; the same powerful support of a great majority within them. Nay, more, as if to make more striking still the marked resemblance on these two occasions, the Minister himself conducted then, as now, with a magnificent and powerful appeal to the eternal principles of justice, in a speech which fascinated friends and foes alike, and which contributed, I do not doubt, Sir, in no small degree to the ultimate passing and the final triumph of his measure. I need not dwell on the progress of that measure. Suffice it to say that it shortly took its place on the Statute Book, and I think that hon. Members on both sides will bear me out in saying that for months—nay, more, and for many years—the Liberal Party, as a whole, were never wearied of singing paeans in the praise of what they called this great heroic measure of legislation. But, alas Sir, for the vanity of human aspirations. What is the position of that Act to-day? What have been its fruits? What are its friends and supporters saying of that measure now? There it is, unhappily, recorded in a short and simple sentence in one of the Reports of one of the Commissions, not the Commission appointed by a Tory Government, and presided over by the Tory Duke of Richmond, but the Bessborough Commission—his own Commission—appointed by the Minister himself, to consider his own act and deed. And it recommends, Sir, nothing short of its total and absolute repeal. So much for heroic legislation. After 11 years' operation of its working, I think I might say—Sic transit gloria mundi. I commend the careful study of that sentence to the consideration of the Government. I think it cannot fail to be of use to hon. and right hon. Gentlemen on that side of the House, who were enthusiastic supporters of that measure at the time, and who, for aught I know, are trying hard to be again enthusiastic in support of the latest proposition of the Prime Minister for the regeneration of Ireland. I cannot help thinking that the Minister will himself acknowledge and allow that, with this knowledge and experience now before our eyes, we are bound more than ever to scrutinize most narrowly the grounds on which Parliament is invited to enter upon and sanction, for the second time, what seems to me to be the strange and revolutionary proposals contained, at all events, in one portion of this Bill. Now, let me ask the House to consider what are the grounds upon which this measure is brought forward. The right hon. Gentleman, upon the introduction of the Bill, gave us three reasons for his Bill. The first was that old and long-standing evil—namely, the land hunger, which permeated, as he said, the people of the country. The second he based on the fact that the Land Act of 1870 was defective, and had become inadequate for its purpose; and, as he called it, a third and a conclusive reason consisted in the fact that there were a limited number of bad landlords in the country, distinguished by conduct that differed from that of the greatly preponderating number. I am not here to-night to deny the justice or the truth of any one of those three reasons. But I utterly and totally deny that they are the only reasons for the introduction of this Bill; and I say that, on the other hand, the right hon. Gentleman has omitted altogether all mention of that which I conceive to be the chief and the principal reason of them all. I shall have a word to say on that point before I bring my observations to a close; but I desire, in the first place, to examine the reasons that the Prime Minister has given us himself. I quite admit that the first two reasons are deserving of our most serious attention; but I cannot say with any truth that I attach the same importance as the right hon. Gentleman to the third and final reason which he gave us—namely, that there are a limited number of bad landlords in Ireland. That, I am afraid, is no now information. We have known it all along, and for this reason—that there are always some black sheep in every flock. It is, unfortunately, true—no one here has attempted to deny it—that there are a certain number of landlords in Ireland who do not perform their duty; but I must remind the right hon. Gentleman that that is equally true of the possessors of every other kind of property in the world, and I certainly never heard before that that supplied a reason for mulcting the property of the great majority who do perform their duty. And that that is the case with the great majority of the Irish landlords we know, from the high authority of the Minister himself, for he told us that they had been tried and honourably acquitted—and really, if doctrines of this nature are in future to prevail, I cannot imagine where they are to stop, or what is to prevent the extension of this kind of argument to the partial confiscation of all kinds of property whatever. I cannot admit that the third and final reason of the right hon. Gentleman affords sufficient justification for the introduction of this Bill. But, Sir, with regard to the first two reasons he gave us, there, I must say, I think that the right hon. Gentleman does stand on stronger ground, when he tells us that the Land Act is defective, and points to the land hunger in the country as the rooted and the standing evil which demands legislation at our hands. Sir, it is, undoubtedly, too true that the Land Act, so far, has failed almost entirely to fulfil its objects. And why? Because that measure proceeded, if I may presume to say so, in the wrong direction from the outset. That Act erred not only in what it did, but even more, perhaps, in what it left undone; and it therefore failed—as it was doomed to fail, and as many people always said it would and must fail from the first. No policy of spoliation and injustice, I cannot and I will not believe, is ever really successful in the long run; and that Act was founded on injustice and nothing else, when it took the property of one class and transferred it to another class, without the smallest compensation being made. For instance, when the principle of compensation for disturbance was made a leading and vital principle of that measure—and here I would like to correct what I think is a wide-spread misapprehension on this point. I have heard it said that the Conservative Party, as a whole, accepted the principle of compensation for disturbance on the second reading of that Bill. They did nothing of the kind. Compensation for disturbance was not in the Bill at the time of the second reading; at all events, not in our view—not in our view of the Bill as it came before its on the second reading—but when it was altered in Committee, and Amendments were moved by the Government to make the principle of compensation for disturbance as clear as it is in the measure now before us, then by vote, and speech, and division, and every means in their power, it was opposed by the Conservative Party as a whole. But I have sail that Act was worse even in what it left undone; and there are, I think, hon. Members on both sides of the House who will agree with me in this—that it must have been conceived in error and in total ignorance of the real interests of Ireland, when not the least attempt was made to grapple or deal with, or even to recognize, what has been so often spoken of as the "cancer" of the country, the acknowledged and undoubted source of nearly all it evils—namely, that frightful competition for the land which arises entirely out of the circumstances and peculiar conditions of the country. In 1870, the right hon. Gentleman said we take the facts and circumstances of Ireland as we find them; and there, I think, with all respect, the right hon. Gentleman was wrong. That was the cardinal blot of his Bill, when not the least attempt was made to deal with the evils arising from the competition for the land; and the consequence was that the circumstances of Ireland proved stronger then the Bill, and because he took them as he found them and lot them as he found them, they have rendered the provisions of the Bill for the most part practically useless, and of no effect. It is generally admitted, I think, on both sides of the House, that in discussing the Irish Question one fact must always he kept in mind, and that is that apart from the land of Ireland there are few if any other means of subsistence for the population, and, consequently, there has always been for its possession an excessive and an unnatural demand. This, again, has led to most serious abuses, including nearly all those constant causes of trouble and complaint we are for ever hearing of in Ireland. The commonest of all is this—that the rent is constantly being arbitrarily raised. But admitting, for argument's sake, that it is so, let me ask the House what it is that enables the bad landlord to profit by his greed and exercise his power? It is the competition for the land, and that alone, which, if one man will not give the rent, always induces another to come forward and take his place. The same thing accounts for the extravagant prices we hear of as being given for tenant right. We were told by one witness before the Agricultural Commission of the case of one estate—and it was said to be by no means an uncommon one—on which the lowest price given for the tenant right was 20, where it averaged 40, and where, in one case, it had been known to reach the incredible sum of 63 years' purchase of the rent, or considerably more than the value of the fee simple of the land itself, irrespective of all considerations of tenant rights altogether. Why, what a monstrous and intolerable state of things this is. Again, I ask, what is it owing to? Certainly not to the greed and rapacity of the landlord in this case; because it could only have happened on an estate where the most unlimited right of free sale was in existence already, and where there is perfect freedom from all office rules, which it is fashionable now to call objectionable, but which I must say, for my own part, in a case of this kind, should be disposed to speak of as of the most necessary and salutary character. It is owing to the same competition for the land, and nothing else. The same thing accounts for the overcrowding of the population in certain districts of the country, which the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland spoke of, in almost the closing sentence of his speech the other night, as the greatest evil of the country. And it accounts as well for the sub-division of their farms into miserable little plots of land, many of which, were they let rent free, would not enable the tenant to obtain a decent livelihood. And when I have mentioned the minute sub-division of the farms, the overcrowding of the population in certain districts of the country, the extravagant prices given for tenant right, the arbitrary raising of the rent, and still more, perhaps, the fear that it may be arbitrarily raised, I think that I have named nearly all the most prominent of the causes of disaffection and discontent in Ireland. It is easy, therefore, to perceive why the Land Act failed so completely as it did. Instead of trying to devise some other means of livelihood for the population; instead of trying to divert their attention as far as possible from these miserable little plots of land, to which, I fully admit, with a feeling with which we must all sympathize, many of them are passionately attached, it linked them more inseparably than ever to the soil. It made the occupation of the land more to be desired and more to be coveted than ever, by giving to the tenant a share in its possession which did not belong to him before, and instead of lessening the competition it tended rather to aggravate and to increase it. It afforded, in consequence, fresh opportunities to landlords who desired to do so to raise the rents; it stimulated and encouraged still more extravagant payments for tenant right; and, instead of doing anything whatever to promote a wise and judicious consolidation of the worst and most miserable holdings, by inflicting the fine of compensation for disturbance, it made that process more expensive and more difficult, and in many cases impossible for ever. Now, that I believe to be a fair and not inaccurate description of the working and effects of the Land Act of 11 years ago. And that being so, and competition for the land being, as I say, the great evil of the country, is the Bill now before us likely to be more successful than its predecessors? Well, Sir, I will say at once that in some respects I think that perhaps it may. It differs from the Land Act of 1870 in this—that the land hunger, at all events, is recognized, and there is some evidence in the Bill of a real intention and desire to deal with it; and, so far as these parts of the Bill are concerned, we have some reason to hope that perhaps it may be. But the Bill is of so varied and so intricate a character that I must ask the House to allow me to consider it under three distinct heads, each one of which would form, in my opinion, the subject of a Bill itself. In the first place, there are the clauses by which it is intended in the future to govern the relations between the landlords and tenants in Ireland, and these I shall call for the sake of distinction—not from any wish to use the words offensively, but because I think that they most accurately describe their real effects—the confiscation clauses of the Bill. Then there are the clauses by which it is intended to convert those who are tenants into owners of the land, and these may be fittingly described as the proprietary clauses of the Bill; and, lastly, there are the clauses by which it is intended to deal with the evils arising from land hunger. Such are the clauses relating to the reclamation of land and emigration, and these, I think, may very properly be termed the remedial clauses of the Bill, because they seem to me to be by far the most important in their probable permanent effect on the condition of the country. Let me, therefore, take the remedial clauses first. And here, I think, it must be evident to all that if we are really in earnest in our desire to go to the root of the whole question, we must begin by doing something to lessen the competition for the land and to relieve the overcrowding of the population in certain districts. That, in my opinion, is the starting point of all, without which, whatever reforms you may adopt, you may be certain will be rendered practically useless and of no effect as long as you allow the state of things in the West of Ireland to continue as it does. But, Sir, if they are to be relieved, it is equally clear that some of the people must be moved, and then comes the question—how are we to move them, and where are we to move them to? It would be too inhuman and too barbarous to turn these poor unhappy people out of their present homes, wretched and miserable though they be, until you first provide for some improvement, and, I hope, some real improvement, in their hard and in their bitter lot. I will be no party to turning them adrift to find their way across the Atlantic or elsewhere for themselves. But there are, now-a-days, facilities for schemes, which, if adopted, by emigration or other means, would confer great benefits on one and all. And however distasteful it may be, and however much they may be disapproved of and disliked by those who live by agitation in that country, by the professional politician, to whom continued agitation in Ireland is as the very breath of life, and whose occupation and whose means of livelihood, in many cases, wrung from his wretched dupes, would be gone with- out it; there is no real, and no true friend of Ireland, who can deny that, in their proposals for emigration, the Government have taken a step, and a long step, in the right direction. However, I cannot, on the second reading of a Bill like this, enter into the details of any scheme of emigration. There may be difficulties, no doubt, but they are by no means insuperable; and to those who have been enabled to make themselves acquainted with the views and opinions of men competent to form an opinion on the subject—men, for instance, like Lord Dufferin, who has enjoyed peculiar facilities—in arriving at a judgment on the merits of Irish emigration, both in our Colonies and at home, like Mr. Tuke, and others, who have written or have spoken on it, there cannot be a question, or a doubt, that a scheme of emigration, properly organized, and conducted with due and proper safety wards made for the reception of the emigrants, and for starting them upon their new career on their arrival with their families, would confer a blessing and untold boon, not only upon those who go, but on those as well who stay behind. But I would not stop at emigration, and at that alone; I should like myself to offer to these people an alternative as well—namely, that of migration to other parts of Ireland. In fact, to give them the choice between emigration and migration wherever it was possible; and wherever land could be reclaimed with advantage for that purpose. I cannot give my adhesion to the scheme proposed by the hon. Member who sat near me the other night, that the grazing lands of Ireland should be purchased, broken up, and adapted for the purpose. To me, it seems that to require that the grazing lands should be cut up in the worst and most inconvenient manner, for the purpose of affording means of livelihood to the surplus population, would be as wise as to require that machinery and all the modern improvements of science should be banished from our manufactories to give employment to the surplus population in our towns. But with regard to reclamation of land and migration to those parts of Ireland, I may say that nothing was more strongly urged by witnesses before the Agricultural Commission, who, I believe, were thoroughly competent to give evidence and form opinions on that subject, than the advantages and the necessity of providing for the surplus population of the West, by an offer of migration as well as emigration from the country; and I hope that the Government, if Amendments should be moved in that direction, will see their way to accept them, in order to enlarge their scheme as far as migration is concerned. Now, Sir, I suppose it would not be proper if I said anything as to the establishment, or re-establishment, of manufacturing industries in Ireland. I was struck by something that fell from the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster the other night on this point. No doubt, Ireland does possess exceptional advantages in water power which might be turned to great advantage; and I cannot think that any reforms or remedial legislation that may be adopted can be considered satisfactory or complete which does not include encouragement, and, if necessary, assistance for the re-establishment of some of those industries in Ireland which, in former days, were destroyed by the bitterly unjust and selfish policy of England. Well, now, Sir, I come to the proprietary clauses of the Bill, the darling project, I presume, of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster—his beau ideal of rural happiness and prosperity, not only in Ireland, but, I believe, throughout the world. Now, I quite admit the social and political importance of adding largely, if possible, to tho number of owners of land in Ireland at the present time; but I do not think that your Bill is in the least degree happily designed for the accomplishment of that object. All I can say is this—that if I had to choose between the position of an occupier or owner, a landlord or a tenant, under this Bill, I should not hesitate for an instant in taking the position of the tenant. I cannot conceive what is to induce people to become owners of land under this Bill which you have brought forward. But, at the same time, I am not indisposed to give a fair trial to the experiment of the right hon. Gentleman. Still I must remind the House that it is a great experiment, and I cannot share his sanguine expectations as to the result. I am not speaking now of the enormous liabilities and risks you are about to impose on the taxpayers of the country. And remember that is a subject in itself of importance that cannot be overrated. What you are going to do is this—you are going to make the State the chief and greatest landlord in Ireland, at a time when the whole institution of landlordism is being violently denounced and assailed. But I am looking more to its future effects on the condition of the people and the fertility of the land itself; and I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman what precedence and what experience has he for his guidance? was disappointed with the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the other night. He told us, from despatches he quoted, that vast numbers of the serfs in Russia had been converted into owners of the soil, and that a large proportion had repaid the money they borrowed to re-purchase the land. But why did he not say something of their condition at the present time? Was he ignorant of their condition, or was it that he knew that a statement of their condition would tell against his proposals? I was reading a remarkable article the other day bearing on this question. It gives a description of the Russian serfs now owners of the land in Russia, well worthy the attention of the House, and what it says is this— From one end of the country to the other the so-called peasant proprietors "—that Radical ideal of the agrarian status—"are in a state of semi-starvation; while in several of the Volga Provinces, once the richest in agricultural produce, the starvation has assumed the form of a widespread famine which the Government is engaged in alleviating by considerable grants of money. This calamity has not overtaken the country casually and without warning. It has been approaching systematically for the last 10 years, and cannot be ascribed in any important degree to the simple visitation of God or the operation of abnormal climatic phenomena. Well, now, Sir, the evidence given with regard to the purchase of land in Ireland under the "Bright Clauses," as they were called, or from the Church lands, is of a most conflicting character; but I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he looks to any other foreign countries and the systems that prevail there? If he does, all I can say is this—that the evidence that it has been the duty of the Agricultural Commission to take on this point does net warrant that conclusion, but rather the reverse. But it is not necessary to look abroad at all. We have experience much nearer home. It is an entire mistake to suppose that there is no peasant proprietary in England. In the county I represent there are hundreds—thousands of freeholders and peasant proprietors at the present time. Vast tracts of country, vast areas of land—I am not speaking solely of the Isle of Axholme; but on the East Coast of Lincolnshire, between the Humber and the Wash, you will find vast tracts of country peopled, to a great extent, if not exclusively, by them. And I have seen, and I know something of the lot of these people for myself, and I will say at once, from my experience of them, that a more exemplary and industrious, a more deserving and hardworking class does not exist in England. I wish to Heaven I could say the same of their prosperity. But, alas! with them, Sir, at the present time, prosperity and comfort are unknown; their work is harder and their fare is worse than that of any labouring man in England. But, notwithstanding this, and all their efforts, and all their admirable conduct, many of them—aye, far too many of them, for they are a class that I should wish to see increased—have been utterly undone by an unhappy combination of unfavourable seasons and the relentless foreign competition which for some years now they have been called upon to undergo. The complaint of even those who have been able to bring them to maturity is this—that their crops make noticing, and that ruin stares them in the face; and their lot is harder far than that of either labourer or tenant for another reason too, which I commend to hon. Gentlemen opposite below the Gangway, who are always ready to denounce and to declaim against the territorial system of this country; and it is this—you may rest assured that the mortgagee at all times will demand the punctual payment of his interest far more sternly than the landlord ever does, or, in unfavourable seasons, ever did demand the punctual payment of his rent. In this distressing and deplorable state of affairs, the land is steadily losing its fertility, and, pari passu with its owners, is going rapidly from bad to bad, and from worse to worse. And if this is what is happening in England, why are you to expect such a very different and so much more favourable result in Ireland? The fact is, and I often think it is the irony of fate, that it is the right hon. Gentleman himself, more than any other man in England, who has rendered a successful peasant proprietary, as I believe, in this country impossible in future. There were yeomen, and there were peasants too, who flourished at one time in considerable numbers in this country; but they have disappeared in a great degree, and much to my regret, as I regard the class of yeomen as a class we can ill afford to lose, and one that it will be still more difficult to replace. But they have disappeared and died out in a great degree, and they did so, for the most part, with the advent of Free Trade. Now, I am not going to say one word about Free Trade to-night. It may be a very good thing in its way; no doubt it has been, and a peasant proprietary may be the same. No doubt, they are both of them excellent things in their way; but you may depend upon this—that, under existing commercial conditions, the two things cannot flourish in England together. And, as I suppose the right hon. Gentleman is not at present prepared to part with Free Trade, or to occupy that suite of apartments in certain public establishments in this country, which he is always ready, I observe, to offer to those of his Friends who make that proposal, I am afraid that he must give up for the present his dream of a peasant proprietary in Ireland. That, however, is only my opinion. I do not presume to dogmatize upon it, nor to offer more or less, perhaps, crude opinions of my own, to the views of the right hon. Gentleman, who, I understand, has made a life-long study of this question; but I have ventured, and, indeed, I have thought it my duty to place this view of the case, which I have seen something of myself, before the House of Commons, because it does seem to me to be one that is deserving of our most careful and serious consideration before we finally adopt proposals of enormous importance like those which have been put forward by the right hon. Gentleman. At the same time, although I cannot share his sanguine views, and while I must decline all responsibility for them, I should not feel either justified or right in refusing, at all events, a fair trial of his scheme. Sir, the House, then, will perceive that while I am prepared to give a qualified assent to what I have called the proprietary clauses of the Bill, I go heartily and completely with the Government, perhaps I go further than the Government, in what I take to be the remedial portion of the measure, and specially intended to deal with that which the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister himself has described as the old and rooted evil of land hunger in the country. But when I come to what I have described as the confiscation clauses of the Bill, there, I am afraid, I must adopt a very different attitude indeed. I am quite aware that hon. Members on that side of the House are sometimes apt to be indifferent to charges of confiscation, especially when made by hon. Members on this side. But that is not the case with the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister. He takes quite a different line. He stoutly denied the other night that there was any confiscation under the Act of 1870, and he has challenged us to prove that there is confiscation in the Bill of 1881. And, further, he supported his statement as to the Act of 1870 by alleging that, according to statistics, rents have risen, and with the rise of rents the value of property which has been sold in Ireland has been increased since the passing of the Act of 1870. Now, even supposing that allegation is correct, it does not necessarily prove that he is right. It is the natural tendency of everything in these days, as years roll by, to increase in value, because gold has been daily becoming more plentiful; and what we have to consider is, not whether land in Ireland has increased at all in value within the last decade, but whether the increase would not have been considerably greater if it had not been for the passing of the Land Act 11 years ago. That is supposing this allegation is correct. But is the right hon. Gentleman correct? The right hon. Gentleman gave us no statistics the other night; but he did give us some last Session, I remember, in regard to this question. They stopped, however, with the year 1878. Why did they stop there? Why has he not given us statistics down to the year 1881? They would have thrown considerable light on his assertions. I have not myself been able to obtain statistics for 1881; I have not had time to do so. I had no idea, for a moment, that such an argument would be advanced; but it so happens that I have seine statistics that were sent to me from Ireland last Session in regard to the year 1880, and I will read three cases which bear directly on the value of land. They are taken from sales in the Land Court, before Judge Flanagan, and the date is June 25, 1880—not quite a year ago— Lot l, 563 acres; yearly rent £180; sale adjourned, there being no bidding. Lot 4, 42 acres; yearly rent £85; the only bid £500; sale adjourned. Lot 4, 387 acres of the lands of Molloy, producing a yearly rent of £156 9s.; Mr. T. McCreedy, solicitor, offered £2,000. There was no other bid; and after waiting for some time, Judge Flanagan said—'It is a perfect farce to be putting property up for sale now. For all I know, Mr. McCreedy, you may get it for half £2,000 next year. No mortal man can tell. Your bidding, however, is not quite 12 years' purchase.' Now, Sir, I do not know what the statistics of 1881 may say; but if they at all bear out the records of sales in the Land Court in the year before, I think the House will agree with me that the right hon. Gentleman has certainly not disproved the charge of confiscation against the Act of 1870 by the singularly unfortunate illustration he has selected upon this occasion. The right hon. Gentleman challenged us to give him proof of confiscation in the Bill which is now before us. Perhaps I may be allowed to offer to the House a short and simple definition of what I mean by "confiscation;" and if the House accepts my definition, and if I am able to show, as I think I shall be able to show, that it is strictly applicable to this part of the Bill, I may at least hope that some hon. or right hon. Gentleman opposite will do me the favour to attempt, at all events, to meet the arguments I shall use, and, failing that, to acknowledge the truth and justice of my position. Now, what does "confiscation" mean? I understand confiscation to mean this—we are guilty of confiscation if we take away property or valuable rights, which at present they enjoy, from those who are entitled to them, without making compensation to them for the property or the rights of which they are deprived. Will any hon. Member on the other side of the House deny that proposition? If not, then I wish to ask the House this ques- tion. Does or does not the Bill perform that operation? I think I can undertake to show in the course of about three minutes that it does. Take the case of present tenancies alone, where tenant right did not exist before. What happens under this Bill? The day this Bill passes, every tenant will be able to take his landlord into Court, and, whether his rent be a high rent or a low rent, to call upon the Court to fix it in future. If the tenant once goes into Court, the Court is bound to fix the rent, and it becomes in future, in the language of the Bill, a "judicial rent." Thereupon, a judicial rent being established in that way, the farm from that time forth is held subject to what are called the "statutory conditions" of the Bill. These "statutory conditions" really include fixity of tenure for 15 years for certain, and a renewal of fixity of tenure for successive periods of 15 years as long as the tenant may desire. It may be described without exaggeration as being really an actual fixity of tenure if the tenant so desires. But "fixity of tenure," in the words of the Prime Minister in 1870, is virtually the "expropriation of the landlord!" It undoubtedly deprives him at once of all real control and management over his estate in future, and it deprives him of all what may be called the advantages and pleasures of ownership. It deprives him, in a word, of nearly every right you can mention that attaches to the possession of an estate in Ireland, excepting the receipt of whatever rentcharge the Court may think fit to allow him. Now, nobody can deny that these rights do possess a certain value, whether they be little or whether they be great, and you are going to take them from the landlord without giving him the smallest compensation whatever. I say, then, that if my definition of confiscation be correct, the fixity of tenure, as embodied. in your Bill, even for a period of 15 years, is neither more nor less than sheer and simple confiscation. And that is not all. Every tenant in future will have the right to sell his interest in his holding for the best price he can obtain, subject, 1 admit, to this limitation, which the Prime Minister pointed out the other night—that the landlord may claim his right of pre-emption; and in that case he may call on the Court to fix the price of sale. But though the Court may be called on, in this way, to settle the price which the landlord is to give to the tenant for the tenant's interest in his own estate—a somewhat novel and remarkable state of things in itself—I do not understand that the Court may fix the price at zero; the Court, I understand, is bound to allow the tenant something for his interest, otherwise the right of sale, so ostentatiously paraded in the first line of your Bill, would be nothing but a farce. And if that be so, what is the landlord's position, if the tenant should elect to sell? If, for instance, the tenant wishes, for some cause, to give up farming and take to something else, the tenant will at once be able, however liberal may have been the terms in point of rent or otherwise on which he has held the farm up to the time of sale, to realize a sum of money for an interest for which he gave absolutely nothing upon entry, and every penny of which is just so much taken directly out of the pocket of the landlord, and deducted from the rent which he would otherwise receive from the tenant who succeeds him. It makes no difference whatever to the tenant who comes in. In either case he will have to pay the same, either in increased rent, or in the shape of interest on the sum of money he pays for the goodwill; but the tenant who goes out, although he may have held the farm at the lowest of low rents, and on the most liberal terms for years, is to receive from the tenant who comes in a sum of money which, on every principle of right and of justice ever known, is the property of the landlord, and of no other person in the world. You give him no compensation for this, and if my definition of confiscation is correct—and it is, I believe, generally accepted by the House—this, again, is nothing less than mere and sheer and simple confiscation. Let me test it on another and most simple ground. You are going to confer on the tenant a great boon—"a pecuniary advantage" you tell us. Where is it to come from? Does it come from the estate? Out of whose pocket does it come? It comes out of the pocket of the landlord and of nobody else. How do you get over that point? I hope, when the right hon. Gentleman or some other Member of the Front Bench comes to speak, he will be able to explain more clearly than has been done that this Bill does not embrace the principle of confiscation. Now, Sir, having shown, to the best of my ability, that they both mean confiscation, let me say a word as to the policy of fixity of tenure and free sale, as embodied in this Bill. "Free sale" may be summed. up in a sentence. Free sale, however you may try to limit it—for whatever rules the Court may make will be evaded, just as office rules are evaded at the present time—free sale, I say, is only another word for rack-rents everywhere in Ireland in future, and fixity of tenure is oven worse; for fixity of tenure, in plain English, means taking the property of one man and giving it to another, and my authority for saying so is a Member of the present Cabinet—the highest legal authority in England, Lord Selborne, the present Lord Chancellor, who said it as Sir Roundell Palmer in this House, at a time when he and his Colleague, the right hon. Gentleman, were fighting tooth and nail against this very principle, its advocate to-day. Truly, what a marvellous specimen of policy and statesmanship this fixity of tenure is. What does everybody who knows anything about Ireland tell you is her first requirement at the present time? Why, capital, and the investment of capital in that country. And what sort of inducement do you think it is that you are offering to capital, and to those who are its owners, at the present time? Why, your own Lord Chancellor has told us that your great and grand specific for the troubles you are placed in at the present moment, and which you have so thoroughly brought upon yourselves, is, in plain English, taking the property of one man and giving it to another! Was there ever, out of Bedlam, such as policy as this put forward by a Minister for the regeneration of Ireland before? I pass on to consider what I understand to be the principle of this part of the Bill. The House will have observed that, although this Bill embodies what are known as the "three F's," yet that fixity of tenure is contingent on judicial rent, and the right of sale is, to a certain extent, controlled by the power of the Court to fix and regulate the rent. I take it, therefore—and it has been admitted by more than one Member of the Government—I take it, therefore, that judicial rent is the centre and pivot on which the remaining portion of this Bill must turn. In other words, the main principle of this part of the Bill is the valuation of rents by the State. That being so, I confess I listened with the utmost curiosity to the explanation of the Prime Minister on the introduction of this Bill, because it so happens that, in common with a good many other hon. Members of this House, it was my good fortune some years ago to hear him discourse at great length on this very question; and I must do the right hon. Gentleman the justice to say that a more complete, a more able, or a more elaborate destruction of the very principle he advocates to-day I never heard from any other Minister or statesman on any other subject in the world. It is far too long to quote; but it is very instructive and most interesting to read. ["Read, read!"] I have not got it here, and therefore I cannot read it; but hon. Members who are desirous of doing so, will find in Vol. 199 of Hansard, beginning about the bottom of page 1843, some five and a-half columns of what appeared to me to be absolutely unanswerable and conclusive arguments against the very proposition which forms to-day the main and the essential principle of this part of the Bill. I confess that I was not very much surprised, because since I have taken any part in public life I have noticed this—and I do not in the least wish to speak with any offence or disrespect towards the right hon. Gentleman—but I have noticed this, that when he professes a policy most loudly it is always 2 to 6—and that is far from being liberal odds—that, sooner or later, exactly the opposite is almost quite certain to occur. At all events, that is what has happened upon this occasion. [Mr. GLADSTONE: Not at all; not at all.] Well, let the right hon. Gentleman disprove it if he can; he will have every opportunity. But how does the right hon. Gentleman account for it on this occasion? I listened with great attention to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman on the introduction of the Bill; but the sole excuse and explanation I could gather from his speech was this—that in the present circumstances of Ireland, and with the authorities before us, this change had become quite inevitable. And what were his authorities? He did not condescend to tell why it was inevitable; but he told us what authorities he looked to. They were the rival and various Reports of the two Royal Commissions. I have not a word to say to the Report of the Bessborough Commission, or to the Minority Report of the Duke of Richmond's Commission; but I have a good deal to say as to the Majority Report of that Commission. The right hon. Gentleman has placed a very remarkable construction upon that Report. But, in the first place, I would refer exactly to what he said the other night. He taxed me with being in some way connected with this Bill. The right hon. Gentleman dwelt at great length, not only on Monday night, but on the first introduction of the Bill, on the Report of the Duke of Richmond's Commission, and he quoted a single paragraph from that Report at least twice or three times. I can assure him we are exceedingly complimented by the attention he has paid us; and here, again, I think that I perceive another of those complete conversions of opinion of which I spoke just now, as amiable, I must say, in this case as it is complete, and which are so eminently characteristic of the right hon. Gentleman. Last year the House will recollect the Richmond Commission was the grossest delusion that ever was practised on the mind of man. This year it is a high and responsible authority, to which the right hon. Gentleman looks for guidance and direction, and the humblest of its Members—the Member for Mid Lincolnshire—is, indeed, exalted to the high honour, for he is suddenly informed that he shares with the Prime Minister the paternity of this Bill. I cannot express to the right hon. Gentleman my unbounded gratification at this complete change of sentiment on his part. I tender to him my grateful acknowledgments and thanks; but both natural modesty of disposition and my strict adhesion to truth compel me alike, I am afraid, to decline this signal mark of favour which he presses on me, and I hope he will not think me churlishly ungrateful if my desire to preserve whatever reputation and character I may still enjoy, either of a public or a private nature, impels me to renounce all connection whatever with what I suspect to be the disreputable offspring of an illicit amour of his own with the Land League, and which the right hon. Gentleman, with an audacity—a happy audacity I have rarely seen equalled—is now trying to father upon me. I really must protest altogether against this attempt on the part of the right hon. Gentleman to father that illicit child on me. But now, Sir, in all seriousness, let me consider for a moment the construction which the right hon. Gentleman has placed on the Report of the Duke of Richmond's Commission. What is that construction? I understand it to be this—that what we have recommended is the establishment of a Court, or of some other public authority, to regulate rents everywhere in Ireland in future. Now, I venture respectfully to say that we have recommended nothing of the kind. All that we have said, and I adhere to every word that we have said, is this, that— Bearing in mind"—I am afraid I shall have to read it again—" bearing in mind the system by which the improvements and equipments of a farm are very generally the work of the tenant, and the fact that a yearly tenant is at any time liable to have his rent raised in consequence of the increased value that has been given to his holding by the expenditure of his own capital and labour, the desire for legislative interference to protect him from an arbitrary increase of rent does not seem unnatural. Arbitrary increase of rent on what? Why, on the expenditure of his own capital and labour. I think I should be content to submit to the verdict of any legal authority on either side of the House, and I think they would pronounce unanimously in favour of my interpretation of that paragraph of that Report. I do not know what might happen on that side; but I would certainly undertake to submit to the verdict of any legal authority on this side. And now let me ask the House, how does the right hon. Gentleman arrive at this extraordinary construction? First, he quotes one single paragraph in the Report, in which no mention of a Court is even made, and then he went on to tell the House that, in his view of the ease, legislative interference with rent could not he disassociated from legislative interference with the right of sale and tenure. In other words, what he says is this—"If you take one of the 'three F's '—namely, fair rent—you must take them all"—and having laid down that proposition, he then goes on to say that the language used by the Commission, and the necessary construction of the single paragraph he did read, must mean that and nothing else, when the very following paragraph of the Report, 14 sonic reason best known to himself, he thought fit not to read, says, as I understand it, exactly the reverse. Remember the proposition of the right hon. Gentleman is—"If you take one of the three F's' you must take them all." And the following paragraph of the Report of the Agricultural Commission says— With a view of affording such security, fair rents, 'fixity of tenure,' and 'free sale,' popularly known as the 'three F's,' have been strongly advocated by many witnesses; but none have been able to support these propositions in their integrity without admitting consequences that would, in our opinion, involve an injustice to the landlord. Well, now, that is the language of the Report, and how the right hon. Gentleman, in the face of that second paragraph, could have placed the construction which he did upon the Report of the Duke of Richmond's Commission passes, I must say, altogether my humble, although it may be somewhat limited, comprehension. I frankly own, for my part, that I disapprove of the proposal altogether; because it always seemed to me that the valuation of rents by the State in Ireland, either with justice or with satisfaction to the interested parties, is neither practicable nor possible by any Court whatever in the world; and for the very reasons which were literally driven home by the right hon. Gentleman himself at the time he utterly demolished that proposal when it was formerly brought forward in this House. And I cannot understand how a Minister in this House can either ask or expect the House of Commons to accept proposals, until otherwise explained, of which he has publicly declared in this House he could conceive nothing more calculated to carry wide - spread demoralization throughout the mass of the people of Ireland. I admit that it is desirable that this question should be settled; and if, on some other occasion, the right hon. Gentleman would do what I think he might do, and what I think he ought to do, to remove the difficulties which many of us feel—namely, take his own speech in 1870 and answer seriatim, if he can, the arguments he used on that occasion, then I can only say, as far as I am individually concerned, I shall be disposed to make large sacrifices of my opinion in order to arrive at a happy solution of this question. But, unless that should be done, and until it has been done, I shall feel it my duty to oppose, from first to last, the adoption of these principles into our legislation, and for the very reasons that have never yet been answered, and which were supplied by the Prime Minister himself. I object, then, altogether, both in point of policy and in principle, to this part of the Bill; and I view, I confess, with the utmost apprehension what seems to me to be its probable permanent effects. I agree with what the Prime Minister said in 1870—that it is calculated to demoralize the people. It cannot fail, I think, to lead to the establishment of rack-rents everywhere in Ireland. It will destroy all confidence, and all sense of security. Nay, I think it has gone far already to destroy them in regard to all kinds of property in Ireland, and, with them, will most inevitably banish capital and the investment of capital in that country. And although I admit that it does confer enormous boons on one class of the country—namely, the present occupiers of land, it confers those boons upon them alone; and even that is done at the expense, and at the sole expense, of one other class of the community—namely, those who are the owners of the land in Ireland. And what kind of treatment is it that you ask us to inflict upon them; first, you are going to take away from them all interest in the future management of their estates. You deprive them of the rights, and you release them from all the duties which attach to property in Ireland, and you convert them in future to the position of mere rent-chargers on their own estate. And that is not all, for in all human probability you are going to inflict upon them a large pecuniary loss as well. Under this Bill, you may lower their rents, mulct them of a portion of their income, and fine them of part of their possessions, bought very likely, for anything that you know, on the faith of your public professions and inducements, and on the guarantee of a title which very likely Parliament has given them itself. A case was submitted to me the other day, which I may mention. A friend of mine, about a year ago, bought an estate for £30,000 in Ire- land. He bought it in the Land Court. The rent was certified by the Judge, and endorsed upon the title as certified by the Judge. If you pass this Bill, and he is taken into Court, you may reduce his rent by £200 or £300 a-year. [Mr. JOHN BRIGHT: The rent was not guaranteed.] But the title was guaranteed, and what is the use of the title without rent? Does the right hon. Gentleman suppose that people invest £30,000 in estates in Ireland to look at them? They invest as a means of interest, to receive something back as interest. And in this case it is possible that the rent may be reduced £200 or £300 a-year; and are you going to give the man to whom you have sold the estate yourselves compensation, or, failing that, are you not bound to re-purchase his estate on equitable terms? It is the gravest possible question in my mind whether you are justified in doing this under any circumstances at all. It may, I know, be argued, I know it has been argued, that the State has the right to reduce him to that position if it thinks fit. But then the State is bound not so to think fit until it has shown conclusively that it is for the public interest and welfare; and I do not think that you have done so. I admit that may be a matter of opinion; but this is not a matter of opinion, that whether you have shown that it is expedient or not, you are bound—there can be no question upon this point—to give him compensation. And I ask where, in what clause, what line or sentence of this Bill is there the smallest compensation mentioned? You give none, and I say then there is only one description for measures of this nature—you tell us of judicial leases and judicial rents. I say, in the presence of the Government and of the authors of this Bill, that this part of your Bill is nothing else than one great scheme of judicial plunder, more worthy, I had almost said, of a Cabinet of—but I will not use the expression that I had upon my tongue—of anything rather than of Ministers of State. And all this harsh and cruel treatment of the landlord is to be inflicted on him—why? Because you tell us that the circumstances of Ireland absolutely call for legislation at your hands. Granted that it be so. I acknowledge that the present circumstances of Ireland must be dealt with sooner or later. I do not stop to in. quire who it is that has brought Ireland into that position, though it would not be difficult to show. But why inflict all these pains and penalties on the landlords? They are not responsible for the circumstances of Ireland. They did not create that fatal competition for the land which is the cause of nearly all the evils you complain of. They are not to blame for the absence of manufactures, and of other industries in Ireland, which has driven the people to the land, and to the land alone, as their resource. Nothing of the kind; and no one knows it better, I suspect, than the Prime Minister himself. And if we really want to know the truth upon this question, and if we have the courage and the candour to acknowledge it to ourselves, we must look—not to the landlord element in Ireland, but to a very different cause indeed, to find the source of that which I admit is, perhaps, the most perplexing problem of the time. The truth is that the English Parliament and the English people are mainly responsible for those conditions of the country which have driven the people to the land, and to the land alone, for their support. It was not always so; there were other industries in Ireland in former days which flourished, and flourished to a considerable extent, until they first aroused, and were afterwards suppressed, by the selfish fears and the commercial jealousy of England; England, who was alarmed at a rivalry and competition that she dreaded at the hands and from the resources and energy of the Irish people. The history of what happened at that time is so admirably given in a series of letters published about 100 years ago, in a little volume called The Commercial Restraints of Ireland, that, with the permission of the House, I should like just for one moment to refer to it. I know of nothing more painful in the whole history of Ireland, or more calculated to bring a blush to the faces of every Englishman than the plain unvarnished tale they tell. What happened, in a word, was this—Petitions were presented to the King, by both Houses of Parliament, in the year 1698, praying him, by every means in his power, to hinder the woollen trade of Ireland. One single passage from the Petition of the Commons will sufficiently explain their nature. This is what it said— And we do most humbly implore Your Majesty's protection and favour in this matter, and that you may make it Your Royal care, and enjoin all those You employ in Ireland to make it their care, and use their utmost diligence to hinder the exportation of wool from Ireland, except to be imported hither, and for the discouraging the woollen manufactures and encouraging the linen manufactures in Ireland, to which we shall always he ready to give our assistance. This Address was presented to the King, and the answer was explicit. It was this— I shall do all that in me lies to discourage the woollen trade in Ireland, and to encourage the linen manufactures there, and to promote the trade of England. Now, Sir, what followed upon this? A Bill had already received the Royal Assent on the 25th. January of that year, by which largo additional duties were imposed on the exportation of all woollen goods from Ireland. But this was not sufficient to satisfy the English Parliament, and, in the words of' the same writer, a perpetual law was made prohibiting the exportation of all goods made or mixed with wool, except into England and Wales; and as duties amounting to prohibition had been already imposed on the importation into England, this measure practically operated as a complete prohibition of the exportation of woollen goods from Ireland. The immediate effects of this cruel law cannot be described better than they are depicted by the same historian, in two pictures which he draws of Ireland before and after the passing of this law. Before the passing of this law, he says— After the Restoration, from the time that the Acts of Settlement and Explanation had been fully carried into execution, to the year 1688, Ireland made great advances, and continued for several years in a most prosperous condition. Lands were everywhere improved, rents were doubled, the Kingdom abounded with in money, trade flourished, to the envy of our neighbours, cities increased exceedingly, many places of the country equalled the improvements of England, the King's revenue increased proportionally to the advance of the Kingdom (which was every day growing), and was well established in plenty and wealth; manufactures were set on foot in divers parts; the meanest inhabitants were at once enriched and civilized, and this Kingdom is then represented to be the most improved and improving spot of ground in Europe. How happily does this contrast with the state of Ireland to-day. But no sooner was that fatal policy accepted than a change indeed came over the spirit of the dream; and what we learn of Ireland afterwards is this— The consequences of this prohibition appear in the Session of 1703. The Commons lay before Queen Anne a most affecting representation, containing, to use their own words, 'a true state of our deplorable condition' they set forth the vast. decay and loss of its trade, it being almost exhausted of coin; that they are hindered from earning their livelihoods, and from maintaining their own manufactures; that their poor are thereby become very numerous; that great numbers of Protestant families have been constrained to remove out of the Kingdom, as well into Scotland as into the dominions of foreign Princes and States. I make no comments on those statements. Their simple and pathetic eloquence speaks, I think, Sir, fair for itself. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the other night, spoke of the confiscations in Ireland in past ages, and he traced the miseries of Ireland, in great degree, to them. But these confiscations, I must remind him, occurred before, not after, the glowing picture of prosperity that I have given. Her condition, therefore, cannot fairly be ascribed to those confiscations to which he alluded, and I am convinced that it is in the history of these cruel laws that lies the secret of that fatal competition for the land in which, and it may well be, a just retribution upon us, the source of all the troubles and the difficulties that you have to deal with will be found. And now I want to ask this question. Were the Irish landlords guilty of these cruel laws? Can even the English landlords be said to have been mainly instrumental in their passing? I do not know, I am sure, how far the latter can be called upon to bear their share of blame. I have read, I am afraid, of laws that prevented the exportation of cattle into England, to prevent the rents of grazing lands in England going down; and I suspect, if all the truth be known, they cannot be acquitted of their share of selfishness as well. But this I do know, that the men who were mainly responsible for the passing of these cruel laws were the great manufacturers and traders of that day in England, men belonging to a class whom I see so largely represented in the Benches opposite to me to-night. They were, in fact—and I may say this without offence, as I am sure that no offence whatever is intended—they were the Forsters, the Chamberlains, and the Brights of that day and time; and it is reserved for their successors in 1881—the successors of a class who fattened and grew rich for ages on the proceeds of a trade, which, to her misery and ruin, they first destroyed in Ireland. It is reserved, I say, for them to call upon the Parliament of England in 1881, in their loudest tones of spurious justice, and of spurious generosity, to make atonement for the sins, and for the crimes, of the whole British nation by inflicting yet another and a mortal blow on one class of the Irish people; on one class of the community in Ireland. Sir, I will be no party to any measure of reparation of hypocrisy like this. If you really wish to make to Ireland reparation for the sins committed against Ireland, at your own cost, and for yourselves, then I will go with you almost any length you please; but I will not go one step along the path you ask the House to tread, nor assist you in this travestie of justice, this cheap and mock generosity at other people's cost, which, I believe, will bring upon you nothing but the scorn of all justice—loving people in the world. And now, Sir, what should be our course to-night? Whatever may have been the case before, and I never had a doubt myself since I mastered the provisions of this Bill, the speech of the right hon. Gentleman on Monday night has made it absolutely clear. The Government are pledged to give no compensation to the landlords. They deny confiscation, and they repudiate compensation. They must expect, in consequence, from us a prolonged, determined, and a bitter opposition to the Bill. I know not whether it is to be the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill; but i fit be not that, it is to be the very essence of the Bill which he now demands. Our fortunes as a Government, he says, and (our Bill shall sink or swim together. In God's name, I say, then let them sink. I see little hope myself for Ireland except in this—that this measure and its authors should perish and be swept away together. In 12 short months they have reduced that country from a state which they themselves described as one of comfort and satisfaction, which was never known before, to the Pandemonium of to-day. For my part, I care not in the least how soon the time may come; and I am persuaded that the country, thoroughly deluded and misled by the Prime Minister at the General Election, is rapidly beginning to entertain the same opinion too. Nor do I feel quite sure that the Prime Minister himself is altogether free from foreboding of that nature. Why did he turn to the most timid of his followers behind, who are always to be found amongst the Whigs, and warn them that if, by any combination, this measure were rejected, a larger and more sweeping measure would be carried by the Opposition? What guarantee have we that if you pass this Bill to-day yourselves, you will not bring in a larger and more sweeping measure in two years' time? I recommend that, Sir, to the consideration of hon. Gentlemen who sit behind the Prime Minister to-day. Sir, the right hon. Gentleman has reminded me, with perfect truth, that I cannot claim to speak as a Representative Member of the Party on this side of the Rouse. Were it otherwise I would meet his challenge, and reply that, in one sense, what he says is true. Ireland should have, and quickly too, if I could have my way, a measure which would be both a larger and a smaller one as well; larger in everything that would conduce to the permanent removal of the source of all her ills; but smaller, infinitely smaller, in respect of all your revolutionary schemes. Sir, I have placed an Amendment on the Paper, which expresses my own views on the question; and had it been in my power I should have pressed it to a division, and taken the sense of the House upon it. But the Forms of the House will not admit of that proceeding. I shall, therefore, give my vote in favour of whatever Amendment is put by Mr. Speaker from the Chair, in order to record my protest against the principles contained in this part of your Bill; and I am more than ever strengthened and confirmed in this intention by the deep conviction which I entertain as to the real causes of the introduction of this Bill. I challenged the reasons of the right hon. Gentleman at the beginning of my speech, and I will make good that challenge before I bring my observations to a close. I said that they could not be the real and only reasons for this Bill, because every one of these three reasons which he gave us—the land hunger, the defective nature of the Land Act of 1870, and the limited number of bad landlords—would have been just as good a reason, and possessed as much force, as an argument for the introduction of this Bill, any time you liked to mention—five years ago, three years ago, two years, or one year ago, as it has today; and yet, if anyone had gone to the Prime Minister 18 months ago, and told him that a Bill of this tremendous character was called for by the necessities of Ireland, he would have scouted the idea, and laughed the person who proposed or who suggested it to scorn. And he would have pointed for his answer to his remedial legislation of 10 years ago, and to the improved and contented condition of the people of Ireland. This is no mere fancy or supposition upon my part; on the contrary, it is almost exactly what the Prime Minister actually did. Let me remind the House of a most remarkable statement which he made about 14 months ago. I see it was on the 1st April, 1880; not a very inappropriate day in the light of subsequent events. He was speaking at the Liberal Club in Edinburgh in reference especially to the Act of 1870, and the condition of the people, and this is what he said— The The change which had been made in the Land Laws was a just change, and gave a confidence to the cultivator of the soil which he never had before, and the cultivation of Ireland had been carried old for the last eight years ender the cover and shelter of the Laud Laws, with a sense of security on the part of the occupier, with a feeling that he was sheltered and protected by the law, with a general sense of comfort and satisfaction such as was unknown in the previous history of the country, I quite admit that this statement was made at a time before the right hon. Gentleman had been brought directly in contact with the latest phases of Irish agitation and obstruction in this House, and it may be while he was still under the impression that the comparative quiet maintained in Ireland since the passing of his Land Act by a succession of coercive measures which only expired last June was, in reality, owing to the beneficial effects of his previous legislation. If that was ever his impression, it must leave been rudely and speedily dispelled, for the new Parliament lead scarcely met when he became alive to the difficulties he had to encounter from Irish agitation and obstruction. And how did he encounter them? Concession became at once the order of the day, and sop after sop was thrown to the Party of agita- tion. The Peace Preservation Act was not renewed; and, in consequence, you have had—as you were warned by us you would have—to suspend the Constitution of the country. Then came the weak, the temporizing, and, as I thought and pointed out at the time, the misleading speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, in answer to the proposition of the hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power) for an ad interim Bill, to suspend the power of eviction for two years. That was followed by the sudden announcement of the appointment of the Royal Commission to inquire into the working of the Land Act. And then came the attempt to smuggle through the House the Irish Land Act in the form of a single clause in the Relief of Distress Bill; but that was stopped by a Member of this House, who, in common with the great majority of hon. Gentlemen on both sides, naturally objected to an important measure of this kind being scrambled through the House of Commons in that way by a side wind. Then we had the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, which is still fresh in the recollection of the House. And now, after 12 months of open defiance of the law in Ireland, we have these sweeping and extravagant proposals, proposals which concede to the breakers of the law the bulk of everything they have demanded, and which differ little, if at all, as far as I can see, from those schemes of public plunder which the Prime Minister himself so unsparingly denounced, except, indeed, in this particular—that the Government give ne compensation to the landlords; and which certainly was included in every scheme which has been either suggested or attributed to the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). No, Sir; let the truth be known. This Bill, whatever its merits or demerits may be, is one great measure of concession to Irish agitation; it is the triumph of violence and crime over law and order in that country. If credit there be, let the credit be given where credit is due. And much as I differ from him in his political opinions, and much as I abhor, for the most part, his views, I must say the daring and persistence of the man has met with more than its reward. For rest assured that the people know full well in Ireland to-day, what every, Member of the House of Commons, in his heart and in his conscience, knows is nothing but the naked truth, that without this Irish agitation and obstruction through which we have passed, this measure never would have seen the light, and that it has been wrung, not from the long-settled conviction or the policy, but from the weakness and the fears of the Ministry, by the revolutionary policy of the hon. Member for the City of Cork. Now, I ask the House of Commons where is all this to end? Do not suppose that even if you pass this Bill to-day, unaltered as it is, you will put an end to disaffection in that country. You have surely learnt something from your experience in the past; as it was in 1870, be assured it will be in 1881. Confiscation and concession then are only followed by larger and by more extended measures in the same direction now—and the acceptance of your policy to-day will simply mean new concessions and still greater confiscations a little later on. So evil is the lesson which your weakness and your concessions will have taught them, that the ink will not be dry which makes judicial rent the law throughout the land, before a new and more determined agitation will arise from the ashes of the old one against the intolerable injustice of paying any rent at all. And all past experience will have taught them that if it only be conducted with sufficient violence and outrage, in the long run they are sure to win. And then I fear that we shall see the same humiliating spectacle again. A weak, divided, and distracted Cabinet at home, a helpless Lord Lieutenant, a paralyzed Executive, and a trembling Chief Secretary in Ireland, making more and more concessions, till at last, with what you call "the English garrison," in other words, the most loyal portion of the population driven out, you will find you will have to choose between the armed suppression of the people and the country on the one hand, and on the other the secession, either attempted or accomplished, of Ireland. from. England. The great statesman who has gone—to whom the Prime Minister the other night paid a tribute, the nobility of which I can assure hint that we who sit on this side of the House, for the sake of the affection that we bore our Leader and our Chief, shall not easily forget, he warned you of the certain and the fatal end of the policy you then began. I ventured to remind the House of his striking prophecies so literally fulfilled in one of our debates last Session. You would not hear his words at the time when they were spoken. You only laughed mid mocked when I quoted them last Session. Is it too late, even now, to heed the silent voice which warns you from his grave? Will the Liberal Party never learn wisdom from experience? Remember you have tried your hands already at Irish legislation on these disastrous principles before, and you have failed utterly and completely as never Party failed before. I read your Bill with increasing wonder and amazement every day, for I see in it a volume—aye, Sir, and a large and capacious volume—of recantations, contradictions, broken pledges, and former falsified predictions on the part of the Minister and his Colleagues, in the light of which you stand before us and before the country as a Government utterly discredited already in dealing with this question. What room, then, have we for more confidence; what hope of better or happier results in your proposals of to-day? I reluctantly confess that I have none; reluctantly, because I desire from my heart to see Ireland again tranquil, contented, and at rest; but peace and happiness, prosperity and contentment can never be attained by revolutionary schemes like these, which appeal to the avarice, the cupidity, and the worst passions of the human race in any country or any nation on the earth. Especially do I believe that this is true of Ireland and the Irish people. Ireland, I grant you, has suffered much, and often at the hands of England. She has suffered even more, perhaps, at times, at the hands of those whom she believed to be her friends; but the worst and the most cruel blow that has ever been inflicted on her will be this—when, by the acceptance of this Bill, you teach the lawless and the disaffected, to the terror and dismay of the peaceful and well affected subjects of the Queen, that by outrages, by violence and crime, by persistent and daring defiance of the law they can wring—nay, more, they have wrung—from the Imperial Parliament the grossest and the most unhallowed Act of great public confiscations that ever yet has been attempted by any Minister or statesman in any civilized society or country in the world.

MR. GLADSTONE

Sir, I am desirous to explain a material statement in my former speech which has been misunderstood by the hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire. It is certainly true that I hold him responsible for the Report of the Richmond Commission. I am not quite sure whether I am to understand that he approves of the paragraph in the Report on which I rely or not.

MR. CHAPLIN

I entirely repudiate the right hon. Gentleman's construction of the paragraph; but I accept the responsibility for the paragraph itself, and I wrote it.

MR. GLADSTONE

Then I wish the hon. Member to understand exactly what it is that I charge him with. I have never said that the Richmond Commission recommended the "three F' s"—never. The statement of the Richmond Commission is this—that the "three F's" had been urged upon them, but that they could not be admitted in their integrity without injurious consequences to the landlords. And the "three F's," according to my contention, are not in their integrity in this Bill. I have never said that the Richmond Commission recommended in terms the establishment of a Court, for they never used the word Court. What I said was that I considered that no other construction could be given to their recommendation. The main part of my statement was this—that in the preamble of the paragraph to which I alluded in my speech, the Commissioners do refer, and exclusively, to augmentations of rent founded on the tenant's improvements, but that their recommendation is not confined to augmentations of rent founded upon the tenants' improvements, and that they advocated special legislative interference to protect the tenant from any increase of rent which is an arbitrary increase. Their recommendation, therefore, is not limited to an increase of rent founded upon a tenant's improvements.

MR. STANSFELD

said, that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lincolnshire (Mr. Chaplin), his Colleague on the Richmond Commission, had made a very powerful and eloquent, but somewhat discursive speech, in which he had given his approval to emigration and migration as a means for improving the condition of Ireland. He (Mr. Stansfeld) would not follow him as to its details; but he had strongly objected to what he pleased to call the confiscation clauses of the Bill. Now, these were just the clauses in which he (Mr. Stansfeld) took the deepest interest; and he was, therefore, thankful to the hon. Member for having so unmistakably and broadly thrown down the glove with reference to that part of the Government measure. The hon. Member had defined confiscation as the taking away of the property of the landlord class without compensation; and towards the close of his remarks he had given the House to understand that, because there was no offer of compensation to the landlords in this measure, the Government must expect prolonged and even bitter opposition. He hardly recognized his hon. Friend, after his recent experience of his qualities, in the part which he bad played that night. The hon. Member said of one of the clauses to which he (Mr. Stansfeld) had referred, and which practically gave fixity of tenure, that it took away the right of the landlord, and that that right, if taken away, required compensation; that it took away the right of the landlord to evict.

MR. CHAPLIN

denied having said so. The clauses took away every right, except the rights of a rent-charger; all the advantages of ownership, except the receipt of rent.

MR. STANSFELD

said, in that case, the hon. Member must mean that the right to evict would he taken away also. He (Mr. Stansfeld) called that "compensation-for-disturbance confiscation." The position assumed by the hon. Member was this—that in point, not only of law, but of justice also, the landlords of Ireland should have the right, without let or hindrance, to evict tenants who, according to the terms of the Report of the Richmond Commis-mission, which was signed and acknowledged by the hon. Member himself, might by their labours have doubled or trebled the value of their holdings, in favour of a neighbour who would be willing to pay the increased value. The hon. Member had upon the Paper an Amendment which proposed that the House should say that— While anxious to give the tenant protection against the arbitrary raising of rent on improvements made by himself, and to secure to him also whatever interest he might have justly acquired in his holding, it declined to accomplish those objects by accepting a measure which confiscated the rights and property of one class and conceded them to another. With the proposition and opinion so expressed by the hon. Member he (Mr. Stansfeld) was at direct variance. To his mind the clauses of the Bill which the hon. Member had endeavoured to stigmatize as confiscation clauses were simply clauses intended and adapted to give the tenant protection against an arbitrary raising of his rent, and to secure to him the interest which he had justly acquired in his holding. Further, he maintained that there were no clauses in the Bill which proposed to accomplish those ends by confiscating the rights of property of the landlord and making them over to the tenant. he would go a little back, and endeavour to point out to the House what the rights were which it was proposed by the Bill to safeguard. In his view, the Bill conceded the principle of what was called the "three F's,' although he was quite aware the Prime Minister had said that it did not contain the "three F's" in their integrity. [Mr. GLADSTONE: Hear, hear!] But, be that as it might, the fact was that they could not, under any scheme, have what were called the "three F's" without conditions or restrictions of some kind; and the practical question was, what those conditions and restrictions ought to be, and that was a question for Committee. And here he must say that his hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lincolnshire, by attaching his name to the recommendation of the Richmond Commission in favour of some system of arriving outside the will and judgment of the landlord at the notion of a fair rent, was logically bound to carry out that proposition by some concession for security of tenure, and by something in the nature of free sale. At the very fringe of the argument the supporters of the Bill were met by a fallacy. Political economy had been flaunted in their faces, and that very much by the successors of those who had not always been in love with its doctrines, and who spoke about freedom of contract as if it were some dogma of an abstract science, as to which there could be no exception, forgetting that political economy was not an abstract, but au applied science. It was applied to the conditions of human life; and in this case to the conditions of Irish life, and those persons failed to see that so far as it applied to the conditions of that life there was, as he (Mr. Stansfeld) contended, nothing unsound in the provisions of the Bill, and that the Report of the Richmond Commission had completely disposed of the notion that such a thing as freedom of contract existed between the landowning and the smaller occupying classes in Ireland. In fact, no one believed that it had ever existed. How could there, indeed, he would ask, be freedom of contract between two persons, when one of them was not free to refuse to enter into the proposed agreement? With the small Irish. tenant the question was one, not of making a provident or improvident contract or bargain; it had been a question of getting on to, or keeping on. the land for the sake of home and life, the only alternatives being starvation, or emigration, or the workhouse a last resource. Was it possible to speak of free contract under such conditions? That being so, he was disposed to go further in this matter than others, and to say that the question of the relation of landlord and tenant in Ireland was not only not a question of freedom of contract, but not of contract at all. The tenants, when they got on the land, for the sake of home and life made no terms. They dealt with it as if it wore their own. They had not the independence or the means to make terms like the Scotch Lowland farmer with long leases. The law made the terms for them, and it was this law, which they had discovered to be a bad law, that they now sought to amend. It was well known that in Ireland the tenants generally made the improvements and, as the Richmond Commission termed them, "the equipments" of the farm—the word "equipments" meaning, not the manuring or the draining of the land, but the building, the home and farmstead; and, in fact, they by their labour created, as it were, almost the whole value of the holding. He knew of an estate in Ireland of a nominal rental of £16,000 a-year, and 4,000 tenants paying an average rent of £4 per man. In that case, as the House could not fail to perceive, the improvements and equipments must have been made by the tenants, because it would be ruin and bankruptcy to any such estate if the landlord were to make them himself. If it were sought to establish the English relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland, the landlord of such an estate must, first of all, get rid of the 4,000 tenants. The small buildings on their holdings must be razed to the ground, and on the consolidated farms which would be created new and fitting buildings must be constructed. That, as he had said, must lead to the absolute bankruptcy of the estate whose own or entered upon such an undertaking. He undertook even to say that if the principle of the English Poor Law, which was part of the Land Law of the country, were introduced into Ireland, and administered in the same way as in England, in the case of those 4,000 tenants, the result would be a greater measure of confiscation even than that which the hon. Gentleman feared would be the result of the passing of the Bill, which had been so strongly denounced by himself and others. The law under which those pauper tenants built houses had declared them to be merely tenants from year to year, liable to be evicted at the merest caprice of the landlord, without the slightest claim to compensation. He asked whether such conditions could be regarded as relations of contract at all? They were, in his view, relations of law, and not of contract, which meant a mutual understanding and intent which did not exist in the present state of facts. What was the view of the Irish tenant himself on this subject? The view of the Irish tenant was that his interest in his holding was that of a part owner in the soil. That was the outcome of his own experience of the working of his own mind, and that was the reason also why he held that capricious eviction, e the gradual and insidious raising of rents to compel eviction, or bring about the destruction of the tenant's rights, were offences on the part of the landlord amounting to crimes; and, unfortunately, it sometimes happened that the tenants who held this view took the law into their own hands, and punished what they deemed to be offences as though they had been actually crimes in the eye of the law. Another reason which showed this relationship was taken from the other side. He (Mr. Stansfeld) was not aware that any of the good landlords in Ireland would be found to contend that landlords would not act criminally who, under all circumstances and in every case, availed themselves to the utmost of their legal rights; but confusion arose when they began to talk about contracts, and especially of contracts which, being incomplete and imperfect, raised questions of equity, as well as of law, which the Courts of Equity in this country had not always been able to enforce. It was perfectly true that explicit contracts were, as a rule, only terminable by fraud; but these exhaustive and explicit contracts were few, and when they were not exhaustive or explicit, the law stepped in and filled up the blanks. But in the law of Ireland the tenant occupying under a yearly tenancy was shut off from the operation of this rule. If the matter had only been left to the Law Courts, unhampered by the legal doctrine of yearly tenancies, they would soon have found a means of meeting the difficulty, which would have approached long ago the confiscatory scheme which had been so loudly denounced by the hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire. He (Mr. Stansfeld) remembered years ago reading in "Jeremy Bentham," that one basis of civil right was a reasonable expectation, created in the mind of one of two parties in consequence of the action of the other. The Irish tenant had a claim on the ground of that reasonable expectation. He went upon the land, stayed upon it, spent his labour upon it, built upon it buildings which still existed; and was it not to be supposed that he had a reasonable expectation of being permitted to remain, to occupy that land subject only to a fair and reasonable rent? It had been said that the rents demanded from Irish tenants were fair and reasonable; but he thought that, taking those circumstances and history into account, it was clear that, in the majority of cases, the rents which might be charged were neither fair nor just, and that the majority of the people of the country held that view with good grounds for so doing. The existing system was one which could only continue and work on the hypothesis of mutual forbearance and mutual goodwill, and on the hypothesis of a sufficient and continuous popular assent. That assent had been withdrawn. The whole system bad collapsed, and what Parliament had to do was to dis- cover, if possible, a substitute for existing conditions of law, which should be in accordance with the facts of Irish life and the traditions and customs of the Irish people, and should also contain within itself principles of right and justice which were likely to become permanent in their character and operation. The order in which the "three F's" had been put in the Bill of the Government was not that which he should have adopted. He should have preferred that free sale had been placed last, because that would have followed as a logical sequence on fair rent, which would make it impossible for the tenant to sell more than was his own. If once they granted the principle of fair rents, they must logically accept also the principle of security of tenure, and for this reason. What was the use of setting up a Court to determine what rent a landlord should or should not be entitled to charge the tenant, if the landlord might snap his fingers at the tenant and evict him, it might be without compensation, and if he might get a higher rent which was not a fair rent by a new specific contract from a new man. If fair rent were granted as a question of logic, it followed that the measure could not stop there, and could not stop short of something like security of tenure. Then, if the tenant had made any improvements, they would be confiscated, unless free sale were conceded. Having arrived at a fair rent, the doctrine of free sale became unobjectionable so far as the landlord was concerned, because the tenant could only sell what was his own. Did hon. Gentlemen opposite object to the tenant selling his own? His hon. Friend (Mr. Chaplin) had said that the compensation for improvements would be taken out of the landlord's rent; but the hon. Gentleman failed to see that if, by some satisfactory process, they settled the fair rent, then they would give the landlords that which was the landlords', and they would not leave to the tenant even the possibility of selling that which was not his own. One objection to the Bill was that which had been raised in the course of the debate, and was based upon the amount that should be paid for tenant right. There was great misconception on this matter. It had been argued that part of this tenant right belonged to the landlord; but he (Mr. Stansfeld) had failed to see it. The new tenant gave to the landlord all that belonged to him. It had been also said that in some cases this tenant right might reach a very large sum, and the hon. Gentleman spoke of a monstrous case in which 60 years' purchase of the rent was given for the tenant right. But he could quite understand how that was. The facts, he maintained, proved nothing either as to the justice or the unreasonableness of that transaction or of that price. As an illustration of this, he might mention that he saw last autumn, when driving in a certain part of the neighbourhood of Londonderry, a holding on the roadside, about a couple of acres in extent. The rent was £1 a-year, which was about the original value of the land; but the tenant right was £150. It was easy to see how that value had accrued; for, in the course of generations, successive tenants had built a homestead and outbuildings of a comfortable and superior order; and he undertook to say that anybody wanting a house of that kind in the neighbourhood of Londonderry would make a prudent investment if he paid £150 for the tenant right of that holding. That would be no less than 150 years' purchase of the rent, and yet it would be a prudent investment on the part of the incoming tenant, whilst taking nothing from the landlord and securing his rent. It was sometimes said that if we interfered to determine a fair rent, we must also interfere to determine a fair price for the tenant right; but he could see no analogy between the two cases, for the tenant could not enter into a free contract with his landlord, while the incoming tenant and the outgoing tenant could. The tenant must pay or go; he had no choice. In the case of the purchasers of tenant right, however, he would say, Caveat emptor. Landlords in Ulster had tried to limit the price to be paid for a farm; but they could not accomplish any such object; for if the incoming and outgoing tenants agreed between themselves, and if the incoming tenant was desirous to carry out his bargain, no clause which the ingenuity of lawyers could draw would prevent him from paying the outgoing tenant the balance for the tenant right which the law might declare to be illegal. Coming now to the Bill itself, he wanted to say why, in his opinion, it conceded the "three F's." He was Dot going to say it conceded them all in the same way. The 1st clause conceded free sale, the 7th clause gave fair rent with renewal at periods of 15 years; so that, in principle, the whole of the "three F's" were recognized. If the measure had not done that after the study he had given to the question, it should never have had his support. He desired now to say a word or two on the 3rd sub-section of the 7th clause, by which the Court was directed in fixing the rent to bear in mind the tenant's interest in reference to certain considerations, and amongst those considerations was specifically mentioned the tenant's right to compensation for disturbance. A great many interpretations had been placed on that clause, and it might seem rather presumptuous for him to express his opinion upon it; but he had a definite notion on the subject which he desired to express. The direction to the Land Court was very like that given to Assessment Committees in this country, which, in ascertaining the gross annual value of hereditaments for the purpose of rates, were called upon to determine the rent one year with another that a hypothetical solvent tenant would be expected to pay. Now, the Court, having arrived at the hypothetical rent, would find itself confronted with the fact that attached to the tenancy was a condition created by law in favour of the tenant which would enhance its value, and which would, therefore, if taken into account, raise the primâ facie hypothetical rent; and the object of the 3rd sub-section was to direct that the tenant should not be called upon to pay, in the shape of an enhanced rent, for the right which the law had given him to compensation for eviction, The interpretation of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Dublin University (Mr. Gibson) was impossible, and would lead to the absurd. First of all, he assumed that the Court might deduct the value of the compensation from the capitalized hypothetical rent; but he forgot that compensation was a contingency, and that if they were to deduct anything it could only be the value of that contingency. Secondly, the right hon. and learned Gentleman argued that some deduction would be made from the hypothetical rent on the ground of the tenant's right to compensation for disturbance; but it was evident that no such deduction could be made at all, for it would be unreason- able and unjust to lower the hypothetical rent on account of an obligation imposed by law upon the landlord to the benefit of the tenant. Lastly, his construction would lead to the absurd; for the tenant might apply "from time to time "—that is, every 15 years—to the Court to fix a fair rent, and each time, the right to compensation for eviction still remaining, there would be precisely the same reasons as at first—which, as he had endeavoured to show, were no reasons—for lowering the rent on that account; so that, as a consequence of the view of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, it would eventuate in the landlord's rent being reduced and reduced until it was extinguished altogether, and could be reduced no more. His object in these remarks had been to argue that the scheme known as the "three F's" was one which was economically sound, which was equitable, which was politic, and which was just. He would say, further, that it was urgently necessary. Let them not deceive themselves about Ireland. That country seemed to him to resemble, in sonic respects, the dead level of a vast sea, which was easily moved by storms. Her population was agricultural, and consisted, to a great extent, of small occupiers. There was no peasant proprietary; no variety of classes; no variety of interests; nothing standing up above the dead level that so to say could break or divert the rising tide of popular opinion, passion, or prejudice, in that country. What swayed the poor Irish. tenants and their belongings swayed Ireland, and the minds of the tenants were passionately moved upon this question now. If he could believe that the Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho), or the proposed Amendment of his hon. Friend opposite (Mr. Chaplin), were the last words of the Conservative Party on this subject—if he could imagine the rejection of the Bill in "another place," a consequent Dissolution, and the return to that House of a Conservative majority—he said in the deepest and sincerest conviction, without the slightest consciousness of exaggeration, that to his mind these alternatives would stare that Government in the face—either a measure utterly inconsistent with these Amendments which they had placed before the House, or martial law, or civil war. In the face of these alterna- tives, he persisted in believing, in spite of the protests of his hon. Friends opposite, that these Amendments were. not their last words; and he would persist, until he was finally deceived, in the hope and the conviction that they would regard this measure as something which was necessary, something which was inevitable, something which was required in the interests of the country at large; and he had the profoundest conviction that, if they did so, the day would never arrive when they would have cause to repent—that they had sacrificed preconceived opinions to public exigencies and the public good.

MR. MACARTNEY

had listened with great attention to most of the speeches which had been made during this debate, and he had also studied with as much attention as possible the Amendments which had been put upon the Paper; but what surprised him was that, although the Bill had been denounced in the most unmeasured terms by those who disapproved of it, he had not heard anyone declare his intention to vote against the second reading. Those who opposed the Bill did not really seem inclined to dispute its principle. The principle of the Bill had been accurately described by the right hon. Gentleman who last spoke as based on the "three F's;" and he believed it was because those "three F's" had been advocated at all the meetings throughout Ireland; from the extreme North to the extreme South, that this measure had been framed as it was. There was no real fixity of tenure—absolute fixity of tenure could scarcely be given—but the other two principles, free sale and fair rent, were certainly included in the Bill. He had had the honour of introducing certain Bills on this subject, some of which had come to grief, others of which had been read the second time. He had acted with the late Mr. Sharman Crawford and others to establish the Ulster Custom universally in Ireland. Now, this Bill did not carry out that principle, because he did not see in it that holdings which had not been proved to be under the custom of Ulster were to be presumed to be under that custom; but, although' that was not contained in the Bill, the holders got another compensation in the right of free sale independent of the Ulster Custom. The crucial question in this Bill was that of fair rent; and he thought the 3rd section of the 7th clause might be understood in the sense the right hon. Gentleman who last spoke had assigned to it, so that, if a tenant came before a Court asking fair rent, the Court, taking into consideration the Ulster Custom and compensation for disturbance, might be likely to look on these two rights as improvements of the tenant's holding, and, therefore, not to be deducted from his rent; but, although such might be the intention, it was most obscurely expressed. It was important, particularly in a matter where they wished to avoid litigation, that the clause should be so drawn that it would not require 25 or 30 lawyers to explain it. So many Members had understood the clause in different and opposite senses that it was clear it would be open to legal gentlemen to find different meanings for it. They must also remember that the questions would be heard before the County Courts, or the Land Courts of the county, of which there were nearly 40, and in many instances it had been found the Judges took very different views. Therefore, he should like this clause to be made perfectly clear, because then he would have no objection to it; but if it was not made clear he would be strongly opposed to it. It was not the fault of the landlords in the North of Ireland if the tenants had not leases. On a great many estates there used to be leases for 61 and 80 years. It could not be contended that at the expiration of such leases the tenants should not be subject to an increase of rent. On a property with which he was connected the tenants were offered leases at the close of last century; but they refused, saying, if they took leases they would be tied, and they preferred the tenant right of Ulster. It had been said that throughout Ireland the improvements had been invariably made by the tenants. He had heard that statement often; but such was not the case. Many tenants had reclaimed lands in Ireland, and had been allowed to go into occupation for a number of years at a nominal rent, at the end of which they were to pay a real rent; but the statement that all improvements were made by the tenants was false. Before the Land Act of 1870 it was also the custom on many estates to give timber and slates for buildings to be erected, and also to contribute to other outlay. Assistance was also given to tenants in draining, fencing, and in straightening fences. But that outlay on the part of the landlord ceased with the Act of 1870, which assumed that the improvements were made by the tenant, so that it was no longer the landlord's interest to have anything to do with the matter. With regard to free sale, it had been practised in the North of Ireland on the best managed estates from time immemorial, and where it existed it was found that the property was most flourishing, the tenants were most prosperous, and the rents most secure. It was not, therefore, correct to say that free sale put a limit on the landlord's rent where the rent was a just one. It would also be wrong to make tenant right a reason for reducing the rent; and if the Government wished the Bill to become satisfactory and to see it pass, they must make this and other points perfectly clear. He did not agree with hon. Gentlemen on that (the Opposition) side that the Bill should be scouted, and that it would be as well that the Ministry should fall with it. Ireland was in a very serious condition. Irishmen, such as he and those who thought with him—though some might, perhaps, deny them that name—felt there was something so serious in the condition of the country that it required a very serious remedy. They were anxious to see the tenants secured, all reason for dispute removed, and unjust men prevented from arbitrarily and unfairly increasing rent. At the same time, they were anxious to see their own fair rents maintained, to keep their good tenants, and to live on good terms with them. The whole of Ireland was not revolutionary; but it might become so if measures calculated to do good were refused. There were, of course, many matters in the Bill which required amendment. He considered, for instance, that the reference to the Courts should be simplified. By Section 3 of the 7th clause a fair rent was defined to be— Such a rent as in the opinion of the Court, after considering all the circumstances of the case, holding, and district, a solvent tenant would pay one year with another. That, surely, covered everything. Tenant right was a circumstance of the holding, so was compensation for disturbance. In the Act of 1870 there was a provision that in any newly-created holding the county cess or county rate should be equally divided between landlord and tenant. They had hitherto been paid by the tenant, and that was always considered in letting the land. He took it that where a fair rent was fixed the holding ought to be held to be a new one. [The ATTORNEY GENERAL for IRELAND (Mr. Law) dissented.] The right hon. and learned Gentleman shook his head. Well, that was just one of the points he wished to have made plain. If the tenant went into Court and required to have his rent fixed, and the rent was altered, either by being raised or lowered—when the tenant, instead of holding from year to year, would hold for the statutory limit of 15 years, assuredly that was a new holding. They were the same parties, but it was a new holding. The right hon, and learned Gentleman still shook his head; but he must still adhere to the opinion he had just expressed. As to arrears of rent, how were these to be treated? Were these to be taken into consideration by the Court, and was any arrangement to be made whereby a tenant on applying to the Court should be bound to lodge a proportion of the rent due? If that was not done a man who owed four or five years' rent and obstinately refused to pay a halfpenny to the landlord might come into Court merely for the sake of another year's delay. The Prime Minister had passed a great eulogium on the County Court Judges, and said he did not understand why they did not possess the confidence of the people, and yet he said the Government intended to give them the go-by, and allow the tenant to go direct to the Superior Court. There did not appear to be any such intention in the Bill, and he could not help thinking that it was an afterthought of the Prime Minister. He did not think it would be a wise move that the tenant should be able to go direct to the Superior Court, for it would entail great delay and expense. He hoped the measure might be so improved in Committee as to become satisfactory both to landlords and tenants. There had been, and would be, some sacrifices on the part of the landlord. They were unavoidable in the circumstances. But he believed the Bill could be made perfectly fair to all parties; and, therefore, he would oppose all Amendments to the Motion and vote for the second reading.

MR. A. MOORE

said, they had listened to a great deal of eloquent denunciation of the Bill by the hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire (Mr. Chaplin); but they did not receive from that hon. Gentleman any outline of a proposition for the solution of their difficulties. The Bill before the House they on that (the Ministerial) side supported as a great measure of expediency put forward in a spirit of conciliation. It was all very well for any hon. Gentleman to raise the cry of confiscation; but that was not the view of the measure taken by men who were large landowners in Ireland. Lord Lifford, a Member of the Conservative Party, had signified his intention to support the Bill, so had Lord Monteagle and Lord Bessborough, the President of the Land Commission; and Mr. Bagwell, the son of his hon. Predecessor, went so far as absolutely to put before the Commission a short Bill based upon the "three F's," an outline of the measure now before the House. These gentlemen were judges of their own interests, and were as capable of forming an opinion on the Bill as the hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire, or other hon. Gentlemen on the same side of the House. A great deal of the opposition to the measure was founded on the dislike of hon. Gentlemen to the principle of free sale. That was a point upon which he felt perfectly easy. Free sale permeated the social life of the country in every direction, and it was an absolute necessity to legislate on that principle. Free sale was sometimes permitted—he was speaking of non-tenant right counties. Then, again, they found it permitted only with certain restrictions. But, whether permitted or restricted, money secretly passed. Very often it was in the case of a marriage, a farm was to be given up when the father and mother got sufficient to enable them to hand over the land. A valuable consideration passed in that case, which it was as necessary to protect as if the money were given in open sale. Nor could the landlord prevent it. The real and unassailable argument in favour of free sale was that it was customary even now. The evidence of the administrator of all the estates under the control of the Court of Chancery showed that it was the common practice in all parts of the country, in the South as well as in the North. In many cases the goodwill of the tenancy had been sold for more than the fee simple of the land; in fact, the considerations given for tenancies were so valuable that it was necessary to legislate for them in one direction or another—either to prohibit or to legalize them. He need not advocate the latter course; his own view was that the tenant's goodwill consisted in a sort of proprietary interest in his land, an interest that no Irish landlord could wholly ignore. When free sale and virtual fixity of tenure had created for a tenant a tangible interest in his holding, the necessity for fair rents naturally followed. The clauses relating to fair rents certainly formed a cardinal part of the Bill, and ought not, therefore, to be open to the charge of obscurity; but, in spite of all that had been said on that point, he believed that all that was intended was that, in fixing a fair rent, the tenant's interest should be borne in mind. A great deal had been said about confiscation, and the hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire had prohesied that, after the Bill passed, the landlords would become absentees, and would lose all interest in their estates. But the Ulster landlords had not done so, and as for confiscation, though he owned that he had his doubts as to the working of the Bill, he thought that its general effect would be to increase rather than to diminish the value of estates all over Ireland. Tenant right was a guarantee for arrears of rent, arid made it to the interest of an outgoing tenant to leave his farm in good condition; in short, it was, so to speak, the reserve fund of landed property. There were two matters with which the Bill ought to deal—namely, leases, which were often most tyrannical, and the large sum, estimated at £16,000,000, belonging to the Irish farmers, and lying almostidle in the bank at 1 per cent. The farmers would be glad enough to get 2 per cent for their money on Government security, and he should like to see them subscribe to a fund which would enable them to buy their own farms. Next, with regard to the very important subject of overcrowding, he could only say that in many districts, particularly on the Western seaboard, the evil was so great that free sale and fixity of tenure would be all but worthless, unless steps were taken to diminish the excessive density of population. This Bill would fall short of what was required unless means were adopted to provide for this teeming population who were in a chronic state of semi-starvation. The Irish, he might observe, were a sentimental people, and there lurked in their minds a suspicion that the plan of emigration was, in reality, a project to exterminate thorn. He could well understand the hesitation and difficulty which a Prime Minister must feel in regard to undertaking large public works; but he would suggest that that scheme should have a fair trial, and that the Commissioners should receive a limited amount of funds stud be strictly tied down in its expenditure, so that they might not incur any risk. A scheme had been tried with success on the property of Mr. Crosbie, the well-known shorthorn breeder, of Kerry, and also on the property of Captain Kennedy.

MR. SPEAKER,

interposing, remarked, that the House was now engaged in discussing the second reading of the Bill, and reminded the hon. Member that he was going into minute details on points which could be more properly discussed in Committee.

MR. A. MOORE

said, he would content himself with saying that the overcrowded districts to which he referred had special claims to the consideration of the Legislature. He thought it was the ditty of every Irish Member to vote for this Bill. There might be points of which some of them were not much enamoured; but, on the whole, it was a measure of necessity and of expediency. The hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) had stated that he was about to abstain from voting for the second reaching; but he had also announced in a published letter that he would not abstain were it not certain that he should not thereby endanger the passing of the Bill. For his own part, he ventured to think that abstention on an occasion like this was a course unworthy of, and, indeed, impossible, for any serious politician. In such a crisis of Irish history, it was the duty of every man to say distinctly whether he was in favour of the Bill or not. He could not bring himself to believe that the hon. Member for the City of Cork wished to expose Ireland to another winter such as she had lately passed through; and he hoped the hon. Gentleman would slow his patriotism by helping them to make this a good measure, and would exert his great influence in inducing his countrymen to accept it as such.

MR. CLOSE

said, that, as an Ulster man, he should support the second reading of the Bill. There was a happy unanimity of opinion, not only throughout the country, but among hon. Members on both sides of the House, as to the absolute necessity of legislation on this subject. He could not shut his eyes to the fact that a postponement of legislation on this question beyond the present Session would work most fatal injury to the peace of Ireland. He was therefore ready to co-operate in a fair, honest, and impartial spirit in passing this measure. But, while voting for the Bill at its present stage, he reserved to himself full liberty to discuss, and if possible amend, its provisions in Committee. He heartily supported, for instance, the emigration and the reclamation clauses; but there were other portions of the Bill which he as heartily disapproved. There were complications and obscurities in the Bill which he believed, if not cleared up, would tend to litigation and a perpetual disturbance of the harmony which should exist between landlord and tenant. He considered it especially desirable that a system of fixing fair rents should be established, as, from personal experience in Ireland, he knew that was one of the points most sought for by the tenants. He therefore hoped that the obscure clauses which the Prime Minister had attempted to explain would be rendered intelligible, and the Bill, as a whole, cast into a form which would render it acceptable to the House generally, and beneficial to the country.

SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOT

wished to remind the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Halifax (Mr. Stansfeld), who had menaced the House with an outbreak of civil war in Ireland if the Bill did not pass, that civil war did at the present moment prevail in Ireland. Blood had been shed that very day, and there were constant collisions between the authorities and the people. Ireland, in fact, was in a more dangerous condition than she had been at any previous period during the present century, notwithstanding that the Government was armed with exceptional powers. And why was Ireland in that condition? Because the Government had shilly shallied with the land agitation, the danger of which they perceived so long ago as last autumn. And in the face of such a state of things in Ireland they were asked to pass an ameliorating, kindly measure such as had never before been introduced into that House. The Prime Minister had declared that confiscation did not exist within the four corners of the Bill. But if confiscation did not exist, what became of the statements of the right hon. Gentleman himself in 1870, and of other right hon. Gentlemen sitting on the Treasury Bench, who declared to be dangerous that which the Bill now actually proposed? The House had a right to ask those right hon. Gentlemen what had occurred since 1870 to change the opinions they then so solemnly expressed. It was a significant fact that when a Liberal Ministry came into power Coercion Acts should have to be used for Ireland, and concessions made which, in other circumstances, would never have been entertained. Parliament, so to speak, was called upon at the point of the bayonet to pass a measure which it was perfectly well aware confiscated the property of the Irish landlords. He knew of an estate on which, since 1854, the landlord had borne the whole cost of the improvements, and now the right hon. Gentleman proposed to give the tenant the right of selling those improvements. If that was not confiscation he did not know what was. Upon that same estate, he might mention, the landlord, on coming into possession, found no less that 11,000 tenants; but, foreseeing that with a failure of the potato crop these unfortunate people would be reduced to starvation, he organized a scheme of emigration for the surplus population on his land, and provided the remainder with proper dwellings in place of the hovels which they had been occupying. Such landlords as that—men who had been good landlords and done their duty to the best of their ability—ought not, he contended, to be brought under the hard-and-fast provisions of the Bill. The case he had mentioned was not exceptional; he knew many others like it, with the details of which, however, he would not trouble the House. He was in Ireland during the first Famine. He was quartered all over Ireland. He was quartered in the North and the South, the East and the West. He had ample opportunity of knowing the state of Ireland at that time, and he believed that a precisely similar state of things existed at present in the Western portions of the country, and he was convinced that some scheme of emigration was an absolute necessity. If that was not done the sore would fester and would remain open for the agitators. He hoped, therefore, the Bill, if it became an Act of Parliament, would contain provisions by which those, living in the Western parts of Ireland might be removed, either by means of migration or emigration. He should like, also, to see the number of tenant proprietors increased; but the clauses dealing with that point were so vague that he ventured to say they would not work efficiently. As to the reclamation of waste lands, no one who knew Ireland would deny that much might be clone in that way, and he was sure no one on either side of the House would grudge the money which it might be found necessary to expend in order to carry out that object. In reference to manufactures, he might observe that he had seen in Waterford two mills which wore doing a fair business, and he could state of his own knowledge that in that locality where those mills were situated the people were being taught habits of industry. Such undertakings ought in every way, he thought, to be encouraged as affording the best safeguards for the honest employment of a too numerous agricultural population. But now he came to the main provisions of the Bill, and with regard to them he had no hesitation in saying that they were such that ought never to receive the assent of the House. Taking the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 7th, and lath clauses together, it was clear that they contained the principle of fixity of tenure pure and simple, for a landlord, once having put a tenant into possession of one of his farms, could never got rid of that tenant, hampered as he would be by penalties of every kind if this Bill became law. Then why, he would ask, if the rent was a fair rent, and had not been raised for a period of 15 years, was the landlord to be dragged. into Court? Surely the landlord ought also to have equal power to take his tenant into Court, and show that his rent was just and moderate. On that point he thought the proposal of the hon, and learned Member for Antrim (Mr. Macnaghten), with which the Prime Minister found fault, a most admirable one, tending, as it would, to prevent litigation and to save expense, both to landlord and tenant. The right hon. Gentleman, in the course of his speech, referred to the estate of a noble Lord, against whom he had nothing to say, because he believed him to be a most honourable and amiable man, and, for one who might be called au absentee landlord, a very good one. But then that noble Lord seldom or never went mar his estates; and yet such was the man who, in 1881, was held up by the right hon. Gentleman as a model landlord, and not the men who lived on their estates, who spent their money in the country, and who had been held up as models in 1870. Their system was now said to be exotic, and not in accordance with the views and wishes of Irish tenants. Nothing, he might add, could, in his opinion, justify such an expulsion of landlords as that proposed by the Bill, and which the speech of the right hon. Gentleman evidently showed that he contemplated. The Bill must, he maintained, fail, because it sought to set class against class, and would tend to perpetuate litigation of the most unhappy kind. The present tenant was the only man who would be benefited by the right of free sale. The Bill would have the effect of making Ireland poor; and for those reasons, and because he believed it would be mischievous in practice as well as unwise in policy and unjust in principle, he should vote against the second reading.

MR. D. O'CONOR

said, it was clear, from the speeches which had been made from the Benches opposite, that the Bill was not regarded with much favour in that quarter. He was greatly astonished to hear the noble Lord the Member for North Leicestershire (Lord John Manners) urge the development of the industrial resources of Ireland, the establishment of piers, harbours, railways, &c. He did not think he ever before heard those views put forward by the Party opposite, although he had frequently heard them advocated by the hon. Member for Galway County (Mr. Mitchell Henry), who had given Notice of a Motion on the subject this Session. The noble Lord said that last year he supported a measure for the development of fisheries in Ireland; but he did not tell them what the Party opposite did, when they were in Office, for Ireland. He was not surprised at the action of the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho) and the Amendment which he had proposed. The noble Lord remained true to-day to the opinions he expressed years ago on the Land Question, because he had denounced every possible concession to Ireland. He asked the noble Lord to point out on what occasions concessions were ever made to Ireland, either at the time or in the manner in which the people of Ireland had demanded them. The concessions that had been made were either granted too late, or they had been spoiled in the granting by the introduction of principles which rendered them utterly unsuitable for the country for which they were intended. He admitted that never in the history of Ireland had there been a greater concession than the Land Act of 1870; but it possessed two defects—it did not establish a tribunal to prevent an arbitrary increase of rent, and it contained nothing in the shape of fixity of tenure. Attempts were made by Irish Members at different times to get those defects remedied; but during the whole time the Party of the noble Lord were in Office they carried out the policy recommended by the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire with regard to Ireland—namely, no concession; they told the Irish Members that the Act of 1870 was a final settlement of the Irish Land Question. The result of the policy of no concession to Ireland was the establishment of the Land League. The House was told that the present Government, in a few months after they acceded to power, turned everything upside down. The fact was that the Land League was in existence, and as well organized in the West of Ireland as it was now, during the last year the Party opposite were in Office. He looked upon this Bill as an attempt to remedy the defects of the Act of 1870 with reference to fair rent and fixity of tenure. In so far as it did that, it was a good Bill, and would be successful; in so far as it failed to do that, in so far it would be a failure. With reference to the question of fair rent, the Prime Minister showed clearly it was the intention of the Bill to give fair rent—in fact, the principal objection to the Bill was that it made the rent—unduly fair to the tenant, and almost ruinous to the landlord; but, considering that in the House of Commons landlords were powerful, and in the other House of Parliament predominant, it was natural to expect that the Bill would not be passed in a shape that was unfair to landlords. With regard to fixity of tenure, there was no question that the Bill gave fixity of tenure for the first 15 years; but what was to be the position of the tenant at the end of that period? In the event of the landlord not wishing to go on with another term, would he be able to resume possession, and simply give the tenant compensation under the disturbance clauses? If so, then the value of that part of the measure differed from that which he originally set upon it. However, fair rents, with a certain fixity of 15 years, and with, he trusted, a power of renewing it afterwards, would form a substantial boon to the tenant, and he was not prepared to reject that boon when offered as it was by the Government. As to the fifth part of the Bill, relating to the creation of a peasant proprietary or an occupying ownership, he had always held that that was the real solution of the Irish difficulty. The real cause of the present agitation in Ireland was the fact that the great bulk of the people saw that the landowners were a very small fraction of the community, and differing in class, in feelings, and opinions from the vast majority of the nation. That had led to the bad feeling which existed in many places between landlord and tenant, and what the country required was a large increase in the number of occupying owners. Therefore, he cordially approved of the principle of that part of the Bill, although he was afraid that in practice that portion of the measure would have little effect for a very long time. A very considerable interval would elapse before many persons could take advantage of those particular provisions. In conclusion, he might add that, having been returned at the last Election pledged to the principles of fixity of tenure, fair rents, and free sale, he could not throw any obstacle in the way of the passing of that Bill, which, whatever might be said of it, went a long way to secure those three things to the tenant.

MR. PARNELL

Sir, I am sorry that I cannot join with the hon. Gentleman the junior Member for the County of Sligo (Mr. D. O'Conor), in taking any part in the division upon present stage of the Bill. and I will endeavour to explain to the House my reasons for my abstention. It has been truly said that the debate upon this measure up to the present has been very much a debate upon its details and not upon its principle. In fact, it appears to me that the Gentlemen who have been instrumental in moving the present Amendment do not so much find fault with the principle of the Bill as they show a desire to fritter away the details in Committee, so as to render it still more worthless to the Irish tenant than in its present form. I shall step out of the line which the debate has taken, and say why I cannot approve of the Bill, and try to show my reasons why I think that principle is a defective one. It is supposed by many people in Ireland that this Bill introduces some new principle. Now, I venture to think that this Bill introduces no new principle, that it proposes to restore nothing to tile Irish tenant besides that which the Act of 1870 proposed to restore, for T look liven the Bill, not as a measure that gives anything, but as a measure of restitution. Now, Sir, the principle of the Bill, I think, is identical with the Act of 1870, inasmuch as it proposes to establish a partnership in the land between landlord and tenant. It is true that for a very long time even the authors of the Laud Act of 1870 refused to admit that any property was conferred upon the tenant by that Act, or that any partnership was proposed to be established. So late as last Session, during the debates on the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland was with the greatest possible difficulty induced to admit that the Laud Act of 1870 did confer "some kind of interest"—these were his words—he would not say property upon the Irish tenant. But we now have the Government coming forward and admitting that the Act of 1870 did confer a property upon the Irish tenant in the shape of tenant right in the North of Ireland, and in the shape of compensation for disturbance and improvements provided in the scale under that Act. Now, the only difference to my mind 'between the first main portion of this Bill and the Act of 1870 is that this Bill seeks to carry out the principle of the Act of 1870 in a different way from that provided by that Act. The Act of 1870, as I have said, did really intend to confer a property upon the Irish tenant. It really proposed to do so; but it failed to protect that property. It proposed to protect it by lining the landlord for evicting his tenants to the amount of value of property that was so conferred; but it was found during the practice and the experience of the 10 years we have had with that Act that this system of fining the landlords failed to protect the tenant in that property. Now, I venture to assert, though I hope otherwise, that the system of establishing a Court to fix fair rent will also fail in protecting even the small property acknowledged to belong to the tenant by the Act of 1870. We have had a great many calculations as to the amount of property handed over to the Irish tenant. We were told by high authorities that £80,000,000 or £90,000,000 were to be handed over by that Act; but we have a very easy means of estimating the amount of money property of value actually transferred by a Return which was quoted by the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) the other evening. From that Return it appears that the compensations which have been given by the County Courts in operation under that Act during the four or five years' time over which the Return extended to the tenants in claims, both for compensation for disturbance and improvements, only amounted to £27 each. We thus find that instead of £80,000,000 or £90,000,000 handed over to tenants by this Act, a sum which is only an exceedingly small fraction of that amount was actually transferred, and this only after expensive litigation before the County Courts, and sometimes before the Supreme Courts. Now, in estimating the benefits which this Act was to confer upon the Irish tenants, we must bear in mind that the property which this Bill proposes to acknowledge to the tenant is only that which the Act of 1870 proposed to acknowledge—nothing more. The only difference is that it proposes to protect it in a different way, and this is the great boon which is being held up to the Irish people as the reward for all their miseries during the last two years, and for all the sacrifices they have made. It simply means that an additional value to the amount of £27 is to be handed over to these unfortunate tenants, and this is only to be had at the cost of a lawsuit. The tenant is not afforded the simple means of even knowing what his right is, except by tedious and expensive litigation. Every step in this litigation may be contested by the rich, powerful, and educated landlord opposed to him for the time. We have then, on the one side, the poor Irish tenant, without education, without means, and, until very recently, without the power of organization and combination, pitted against a class of men who have constantly shown themselves to be the most able defenders of their rights that have existed in almost any country. But we have also the authority of the authors of the Bill as to the extent of this benefit to the Irish tenants. We have, in addition, the declaration of the principal Ministers of the Crown. We have first of all the declaration of the Primo Minister, in introducing the Bill, that the landlords, as a rule, have stood their trial well, and he said he did not propose to interfere with them as a body, and that this Bill would not interfere with the rents of the landlords as a body. [Mr. GLADSTONE: Except in the case of the payment of excessive rent.] Just so; in other words, that he did not believe that the rents of the majority of Irish landlords would be in any way reduced. We have also the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant to the same effect. He stated that he believed that a very small minority of Irish landlords would be affected in any way by the measure. We have also the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster the other night, when he said that the Bill would not reduce the rents of more than one—tenth out of the whole body of Irish landlords; and certainly if I am entitled to assume—and anybody can predict what would be the result of the work of this complicated measure—I am entitled to assume that the three right hon. Gentlemen who are responsible for this measure know more about its probable work- ing than any other Member. I now ask the hon. Member for the County of Cork (Mr. Shaw), who is doing so much to lubricate the larynx of the Irish people in order to induce them to swallow this Bill, amended or unamended, as best they can, I ask him whether he considers anything but a very large and general reduction of rent in Ireland will be or ought to be satisfactory to the Irish tenants? The House will be good enough to recollect what the situation is. There have been three years of unexampled agricultural depression—an almost total failure of crops, when foreign competition has come into play in a most unusual and unheard—of fashion. We have compelled the Irish landlords to reduce their rents during the last two years; the English landlords have reduced their rents of their own accord, because they were wise in their generation; but the Irish landlords allowed the question of the reduction of rent to be made a Casus belli between themselves and their tenants, and have produced an agitation of which, I believe, none of us have yet seen the end. Well, the right hon. Gentleman comes forward with his voice and says that as regards the bulk of the Irish landlords their rents will not be in any way reduced. I ask the hon. Member for the County of Cork how he can conscientiously recommend a measure of this kind to the Irish people as a satisfactory settlement of this great question while he hears these statements from three right hon. Gentlemen of such authority? We have been accused of being desirous of keeping up the agitation. For my part, I think the accusation would fit very much better upon Her Majesty's Government. I know of no better way for keeping alive the agitation than by supplying half remedies for admitted grievances. We desire this question to be settled now once for all, and it is because we have every reason to believe that this measure will fail in affording the satisfactory and final settlement that we refuse to allow ourselves to be compromised, and allow the claims of the Irish tenants to be compromised, by the flat and full acceptance of the Bill which the Prime Minister so much desires. Let it not be supposed that because we live in Ireland we desire to keep our country in a state of agitation. Can it be supposed that we, who have some cause for desiring the interests of our country to prosper and Chat, it should return to quietness, should gain more by the continuance of Irish grievances—grievances to be redressed by Liberal Ministries—grievances out of which they may gain Party victories on election hustings, without which it is much to be feared that Liberal Ministries would sometimes find their occupation entirely gone. I know of no period within a great many years when the Irish Question has not been adopted by the Liberal Ministry when this question has not been carefully fostered and cherished, and a sufficient instalment of justice given fur the purpose of keeping it alive; and I, as an Irishman, protest against the present Government losing this opportunity, an opportunity which they may never have again, of closing this question, and certainly it will not be my fault, so far as anything I can say or do, if they lose it. Now, Sir, the attempt to establish a partnership between the landlord and tenant, between idleness and industry, is to be renewed by the Government, after they have failed in their attempt of 1870 to establish it; and the miserable restitution of £27, upon the average, is to be offered to each Irish tenant as his share in the soil of his native land. This miserable dole is to be again foisted off upon him by a Liberal Government as his reward, aild as his share in the exertions which he has made, and which his predecessors have made for many generations in improvement and reclaiming the soil of Ireland. Recollect that the tenants have done everything, and that the landlord has hardly done anything. We were told the other day of the magnificent sum of £3,500,000 sterling which the Irish landlords had spent upon improvements since 1841. But it was out of the tenant's pocket. It ought to be remembered that all that money has been borrowed from the Board of Works, and that both principal and interest have been repaid by the tenants in the shape of added rent. But that £3,500,000 very accurately represents the so-called exertions of the landlords, and it came out of the pockets of the tenants. It has been exceedingly easy for landlords to borrow money; they can do so much more easily than landlords in England. Now, the annual income from land in Ireland was.£17,000,000 or £18,000,000, and the Irish landlords only pretended to have spent £3,500,000. They have had the land of their country absolutely under their control. No foreign despot ever wielded more power over the good of the people and over the resources of the country than the Irish landlords, and they have left us in an appalling and miserable state. Ireland is the worst cultivated and worst formed and the most miserable country on the face of the earth. Evidence of this is to be seen on every hand; yet because we have asked that the land, which has been the absolute property of this privileged class for so many centuries, and which they so shamefully neglected, should be transferred to the only people that have ever done anything to improve it, we are to be charged with being revolutionists, and with a desire to confiscate. We do not desire to confiscate anything. The Land League doctrine is that ally attempt to reconcile the respective interests of the landlord and tenant is impossible. It is time, after the Prime Minister has made an ineffectual attempt to deal with the question, and when he is entering upon another attempt which we fear will also prove ineffectual, it is time that the doctrine we preach should be thoroughly examined, and that it should. be entertained with a little more tenderness and regard fur the just claims of the Irish people. How has the Land League proposed that the existing system in Ireland should be put an end to? We have never asked for the expropriation of the landlords. ["Oh, oh!"] And the hon. Member for the County of Galway, who is the chief propagator of that delusion, is taking upon himself a grave responsibility when he holds out Finch an agreeable prospect to the Irish landlords. The members of the Land League do not think the property of the landlords has yet touched bottom, and are of opinion that they should not be caught out until more is known of the change which American importations are likely to produce. But the League has undoubtedly recommended compulsory expropriation, though not for all landlords. We have recommended that power should be given to a Commission to expropriate compulsorily those landlords who may be acting as centres of disturbance, to use the expression of the First Lord of the Treasury. That is all that the League has recommended up to the present time in the shape of compulsory expropriation. We have asked that the price to be paid to those landlords who have broken the trust reposed in them by the State should be fixed at 20 years' purchase at the Poor Law valuation, and we believe that the mere threat of expropriating them at such a price would do more to reduce rack-rents than all the legal paraphernalia of the right hon. Gentleman and his draftsmen. We have also asked Parliament to restore to the tenant his old Common Law right, which was taken away, as the right hon. Gentleman has told us, by the Act of 1816, before which date ejectment was a difficult matter. The League last year had recommended that ejectment should be suspended for two years; and it appears to me that the essential way in which to effect their suspension would be by repealing the enactments passed by landlord Parliaments in favour of landlords in the years 1816, 1850, and 1861. Another restitution which Ireland may fairly claim from England has been already alluded to by the First Lord of the Treasury, who has told the House that the £52,000,000 worth of property sold in the Encumbered Estates Court has been sold without any regard to the interest of the tenants. But did it not occur to the right hon. Gentleman that if this great wrong had been done it would be fair to undo it, and that there would be no hardship upon a landlord who had purchased in the Encumbered Estates Court if he were asked to give up his purchase upon receiving what he had paid for it? If the land were to revert to the State at the price paid for it in the Encumbered Estates Court, the tenants would have their property in the soil protected, and they could remain as State tenants under the Government, or could become landowners by the process indicated the other night by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Is £52,000,000 too large a sum of money for this country to spend upon this Irish question? The money, I feel sure, can be got by a loan at 4 per cent in the open market. [Several Irish MEMBERS: Three per cent.] If Parliament can but summon up courage to undo the mischief that has been done, a great deal of good may be effected without any necessity for such complicated legal machinery as is now proposed. Among the landlords who have purchased the large amount of property to which I have just alluded will probably be found a very large proportion of the worst and most rack-renting. I do not mean to say that rack-renting is entirely confined to the new landlords, for I know many absentee landlords, and many old landlords, whose estates are just as highly rented as those of the new landlords. But there is a very large proportion of rack-renting landlords among the latter, and they are the curse of their country. Having said thus much upon the fundamental principles of the measure, and upon some points which, I venture to think, may assist the solution of the question before us, I will pass on to a very brief consideration of some of the more striking details of the measure, and show how impossible it is for the Irish tenant to hope that this Bill will really give him even the small amount of property which the First Lord of the Treasury proposes to restore to him. How, I ask, is this little property of £27 to be secured to the tenant? The tenant cannot be considered as the owner of that property until he shall have successfully wrested it from the landlord. Every point in his case is liable to be contested in a Court of Law; every right which he claims may be subjected to modification, and the onus of proof is thrown upon him from the first. He will have to pay for skilled witnesses to give evidence as to the improvements on his holding; he will have to engage counsel and solicitors, and, if finally successful, he will get £27. It should be borne in mind that the majority of tenants are very poor men and very small holders. Out of 600,000 tenants in Ireland, 320,000 were valued under the yearly value of £8, and of these 175,000 are valued under £4. These figures show how useless it will be for many tenants to hope that they will gain anything from the measure under consideration. The costs of the suits will, in nine cases out of 10, eat up all the profits which the tenant can expect to gain. The old proverb of "The shell for thee; the oyster is the lawyer's fee," will have to be modified if the Bill were to become law, for a tenant will have the shells while his landlord and the lawyer will divide the oyster between them. I am, however, happy to say that the right hon. Gentleman has given up the idea of the County Court as the tribunal of first instance under the Bill. It is true that the right hon. Gentleman has rather shabbily covered his retreat by throwing the blame upon the draftsmen. I desire, however, some statement in reference to this question of the Court, for we are still ignorant of what the composition of the tribunal will be. From the statement of the Prime Minister with regard to the draftsman of the Bill, it appears that he was prepared to allow tenants the option of going past the County Court and applying directly to the Commission. I presume, then, that he would have to substitute a great number of sub-Commissioners. This announcement must have whetted the appetite of the multitude of office-seekers who are hanging around this Bill, and who are looking forward to its results with far more hope than the unfortunate tenants. I presume he would appoint a large number of sub-Commissioners to fix what the fair rents should be, and for the purpose of deciding all the other points which are left to the Court to decide. Now, that is one of the chief defects of the Bill incident to the principle as well as to its detail. It is practically impossible, in an agricultural country like Ireland, where there is no other resource than agriculture, to find a tribunal which will not be prejudiced either in favour of one side or the other. For the purpose of deciding those questions, all the educated classes from whom you would most likely draw your sub-Commissioners will be either landlords themselves-or their relations, or in some way under their influence, and in favour of the maintenance of the landlord system in its full integrity. I pass on now to the question of arrears of rent, and I would say that it was worthy of more than the passing notice which the Prime Minister gave it. There is an overwhelming accumulation of evidence in the Reports of both Royal Commissions as to the indebtedness of the tenants, both with regard to arrears rent to their landlords and debts to the shopkeepers. You offer nothing in this Bill that you did not offer the tenant in the small Bill called the Compensation for Disturbance Bill last year. You do not, in fact, offer him so much, because you only give him the right of his interest; and you gave him the prospect, at all events, of something more under that Bill in the shape of compensation for disturbance. You do not give him the opportunity of remaining in his holding, and of enjoying the reduced rent which you hope the Court may in some cases fix. You simply give him the right of selling his interest in order to discharge the arrears of rack-rent which have accumulated during the past three bad seasons to the landlords. Considering, as I have said, that these small tenants in arrear constitute the majority of the Irish tenants, I think we are entitled to make a strong stand in behalf of the interests of those unfortunate people. The Government evidently see that their Bill affords no protection to the small tenants, for they have made a very strong point of the emigration clauses as the real remedy for their case. The Prime Minister and his Colleagues have said that they do not hope to remove the congestion in the West of Ireland by any other means than by emigrating—the people in families. It is admitted on all hands that the congestion which has existed in many parts of the West of Ireland must be got rid of somehow or other. The tenants are crowded upon poor and small holdings, where it would be difficult for them to exist in decent comfort if they had no rent to pay at all. I would ask the Government to take these small tenants under their protection, to place them under the protection of the Commission, and not to doom them to banishment. It is impossible for these poor people to be happy in America. I have seen many of them in America. I have seen them on the land; I have seen them in the cities, and they are not happy, and they are not contented. Passing their lives in the West of Ireland, and many of them having arrived at au advanced age, they are not fitted to undertake the troubles and the struggles of a new world such as America is. Young people, when they go out there, thrive well and can assimilate themselves to the new phase of existence which they have to commence; but to carry out these poor old men and women, amid to set them down upon the prairies of Minnesota or Iowa, is indeed a very poor mockery of English justice to Ireland. The example of what was done by Falter Nugent, of Liverpool, and by Bishop Ireland, of St. Paul, was quoted during some of the discussions upon this Bill As showing the advantages of emigration, Father Nugent emigrated some 20 selected families from the West of Ireland, sent them over, and placed them under the care of Bishop Ireland. Father Nugent is a remarkable judge of character; and I will only say of Bishop Ireland that, if he could not make emigration succeed, no other man is likely to do so. But, with the exception of two or three families, all those 20 families have proved failures as emigrants, and the colony which Bishop Ireland established last year had to be broken up and the people scattered in different directions. I would ask the Government to look into this matter. Emigration is simply a short cut for them. It is simply an evasion of the responsibility which rests on their shoulders. They desire to shift the duties which belong to them, as the responsible Government of the country, upon some emigration agency, and at the expense of the British taxpayer. We require the labour of everybody in Ireland for the purpose of developing the resources of our country. We have plenty of land. I have been accused of wanting to migrate them from the plains of Mayo to the fertile fields of Meath. I believe once in the United States I was guilty of an oratorical flight of that nature; but it was only an oratorical flight. There is no practical necessity for bringing the people from Mayo to Meath. There is plenty of improvable land in Mayo for everybody there. The Gardeners' Chronicle says there are 4,000,000 acres of land laid down in pasture in Ireland which are not fit for pasture, and which is every year deteriorating and becoming less capable of producing food. I should like to give the Commissioners power, by way of experiment, to buy land in the neighbourhood of these congested districts under the Lands Clauses Consolidation Acts, and to transplant the best of those tenants if they desired it—and I am sure they would—upon those lands, and give them a chance of cultivating some of this improvable land, and making it produce what it is capable of producing. The adoption of this course with regard to some 50,000 tenants would remove the crowded condition of things in Mayo, Donegal, and one or two other Western counties; and we should produce a great deal more food for the English market. I believe if you get 50,000 or 60,000 of the people on to these grazing tracts which are not fitted for grass, and ought not to be left one instant longer in grass—I am not speaking of the rich grazing lands, which it would be a mistake to break up, but land capable of improvement and in want of labour—I believe we could give these poor people some chance of making them productive. I ventured the other night to make a suggestion in that direction to the Government. I suggested the Commission should have the power of buying land for the purpose of building decent labourers' houses and allotting half an acre or so to labourers, wherever it was found they were not already provided for. However, I was at once pounced upon by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and a lecture in political economy was read to me which I shall not soon forget. We were told that that was the sure way to bring about a return to the condition of the old 40s. freeholder; that if you gave the Irish labourer land he would try to live upon it, and would refuse to work for the farmers in his district. The right hon. Gentleman, I think, answered his own speech in another speech he subsequently delivered on the Land Bill, far more effectually than I could have answered it. The right hon. Gentleman had shown that the small cottier tenants in the West of Ireland—tenants holding not more than from half an acre to five or six acres—are migratory labourers, in the habit of migrating every year to England, or wherever they can get employment. They took their labour to the best market, and worked very hard in their employment. The right hon. Gentleman had eulogized, with all his well-known eloquence, the industry and energy of these poor people—people who come to England and Scotland every year, and live on 6d. a-day, working, very often, 12 or 14 hours a-day, for the purpose of paying the rack-rent exacted from them for their little holdings at home by the landlords. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman, then, if the migratory labourers of the West of Ireland, holding their five or six acres of land, or more than the half acre which has been spoken of, are not prevented from working, and working very hard, to better their position, why should he suppose that labourers in other parts of Ireland, with much less land given them, would be prevented from working, as the right hon. Gentleman had suggested in his first speech on this question? I feel convinced that if the labourers were rendered independent, on the one hand, of the landlord, and, on the other, of the farmer, if he were independent to the extent only of his small house and his little garden plot, the quality of his labour would be much improved, and he would be contented with his lot; a stimulus would be given to his industry in the shape of the hope of, in time, becoming possessed of greater property. In that way a fresh incentive to industry would be held out to the agricultural labourer of Ireland. I do not think the question of the agricultural labourer could be settled by meddling with the farmers, or by insisting upon the latter building houses or improving the labourers' little plots. I would put the labourer under the protection of the Commission, just in the same way as I propose that the smaller tenants should be put under it; and, if the Commission were formed of men who would not shrink from trouble—of Gentlemen such as I now see on the opposite side of the House, some Englishmen and some Irishmen—I feel convinced that the result would be an enormous improvement in the condition of the labourers throughout Ireland, and a material diminution in the amount of disaffection that, at present, unfortunately exists among the lower classes of Ireland. You cannot expect that the people will be contented as long as they are starving. At any rate, before you apply the remedy of emigration try the other plan—namely, the development of the resources of the country, and I will undertake to say you will not be disappointed in the result. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has asked, "Why are there no industries—why is there no enterprize in Ireland?" It is not very difficult to find the reason. The Irishman has been trained to the knowledge that the result of his labour will not accrue to him. He has learned that that also has been the experience of his fathers before him; and he has come to the conclusion that the less capital he lays by and invests in the land, or anything else, the better for him, and the less is he at the mercy of other people. We cannot have industry in a country-without a spirit of enterprize; enterprize comes from hope, and the Irish people have no hope. Go amongst them and see how listless and despondent they are. Go to America and see what Irishmen are there. They have made the railroads, they have built cities, and Irishmen are to be found there distinguished in every walk of life. They are to be found as employers of labour, as manufacturers, and as professional men. We know that Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat, was the son of an Irishman; we know that Roche, the great shipbuilder, and Mackey, Flood, and O'Brien, the most successful miners that exist, are all true-born Irishmen. Here is an example of Irish enterprize. When I was in Cincinnati a short time ago, Mr. Holland, an Irishman, took me over his shop, and presented me with 50 dollars and a gold pencil-case, in aid of the Land League. Mr. Holland emigrated some nine or ten years ago from the City of Cork as a poor boy, who found that he could not get on in his own country. I found him employing 200 hands in the manufacture of gold and silver pencil-cases, and sending his goods to Manchester, Paris, and other places, successfully competing with other manufacturers. I saw that Mr. Holland had just made a discovery, which promised to make a revolution in electric lighting. He has discovered how to fuse the metal iridium, which has, hitherto, been considered to be infusible, and has so supplied the want of an electric burner. Now, the reason the Irish do not succeed in Ireland is because a nation governed by another nation never does succeed. Under such circumstances, communities lose that feeling of independence which to them is just as necessary as to individuals, in order to promote exertion. The curse of your rule—of foreign rule in Ireland, overshadows everything. The conduct of Her Majesty's Government during the past few months has been leading many moderate men to believe that until your Chief Secretaries and Under Secretaries, your Privy Councillors and your Central Boards, your stipendiary magistrates and military police, your landlords and bailiffs, are cleared out bag and baggage, there can be no hope of any permanent improvement of the country. I think Sir, I have said enough to snow why I ought not to compromise myself or those whom I repre- sent, by accepting a measure which I fear cannot be either a final or a satisfactory solution of this question. I regret very much that the Government appear determined to miss the great chance which is open to them. I believe that if they had adopted a different course—had they permitted remedial legislation to precede coercion—they would have found a very much stronger feeling in this country behind them, and that they would have been enabled to have carried through this House, and also through the other House, a much stronger and more perfect Bill. I hope the result will prove that I am wrong in my forecast as to the effect of the Bill. No one hopes more sincerely than I do that the measure will turn out better for the Irish tenants than I fear it can. As I have said, I and my Friends have no desire to keep things in a perpetual state of confusion. We desire to see this Land Question and every other Irish question settled. We desire to see this division amongst the classes—which, I fear, some Englishmen desire to perpetuate for their own purposes—done away with. We do not want the Irish landlords and the Irish tenants continually to live in opposing camps. As individuals, the landlords are well fitted to take their place as the leaders of the Irish nation. They have been placed, up to the present time, by legislation in a false position, and they would have been more than human if they could have filled it without shame and disgrace. I would entreat the Government to re-consider the question, and to endeavour, in Committee, to make the measure more healthy for the poor people, and less hurtful, and to bring about such improvement in it that we, the Irish Members, may vote for it without feeling that we are compromising the position we have hitherto occupied and sustained.

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE

do not know, Mr. Speaker, what impression the speech we have just listened to has produced upon the mind of the House. For my own part, I must say that I have listened to it with much interest, and, at the same time, a great deal of pain. The hon. Gentleman has told us very frankly that he is sometimes subject to the temptation to take "oratorical flights," and therefore I hope that, with reference to some of the observations he has made, we are not to look on them as altogether the result of his deliberate conviction, but that he may have indulged in some of those remarks which he sometimes yields to the temptation of making. I certainly would fain hope that some of his closing remarks are of a character that he would not, upon reflection, desire us to take as his deliberate conviction; but, whether that be so or not, I think there is one thing we may learn from the speech—and that is, that in approaching the consideration of this Bill which the Government have presented to us to work upon, we must lay aside the idea that the measure is to be passed—whether we approve of it, or whether we disapprove of it in our own minds—for the purpose of pacifying the people who are causing the agitation and trouble in Ireland. It is perfectly clear from the speech—indeed, there have been other speeches delivered in the course of these debates that would show the same thing—that no measure such as this—probably no measure that any Government would be likely to submit to the House—will have the effect of satisfying and silencing the demands of those who are represented by the hon. Gentleman. I think it is well at the outset to take note of that fact, because we have before us a most serious question, and we have to consider matters of very great difficulty and very great delicacy; and there is no doubt that we approach them—that hon. Members in different parts of the House approach them—from different points of view, and are guided by very different considerations. It is well that we should know, in considering these matters, what are the grounds we have for believing that the measure—of the intrinsic merits of which we may have doubts—ought to be passed for the sake of giving peace and preventing confusion in Ireland. Now, we have arrived, I think, at the end of the eighth night of these debates, and we are still discussing the second reading of the Bill; and it has been said that a very considerable proportion of the discussions which we have carried on have been discussions on points that ought rather to have been considered in Committee. But I venture to think that we have not been at all excessive in the time we have spent in the consideration of this measure, or in the manner in which it has been criticized, because, in point of fact, this is a Bill as to which so very much depends upon the details, and the details themselves are of such a character, that you can hardly consider them properly if you take them one by one, and do not consider them as a whole. The Bill, I am sorry to say, is one which does not, at first sight, exactly speak for and explain itself. There are many things which. when you look at them in the first instance, you think you understand, but with regard to which, when you come to compare one clause with another, you become somewhat bewildered. We have heard a good deal on several of those points, and it is not my intention tonight to go at any length into those points which have been the subject of so much discussion; but I will take one as an instance of the sort of difficulty in which we find ourselves placed on an examination of the Bill. I will take the first lines of the 1st clause of the Bill—the most important, probably, of all the provisions that are contained in the measure—in which it is laid down that the tenant of a holding shall have the right to dispose of his tenancy at the best price he can get for it, subject, of course, to certain limitations which are afterwards referred to. We want to know the meaning of that expression—"tenancy." We look to the interpretation clause as we look at a glossary, in order to see what is the meaning of "his tenancy "—what it is he has to dispose of. We turn to the end of the Bill, and we find this definition—"tenancy means the interest in a holding of a tenant and his successors in title during the continuance of a tenancy." That is one of the most extraordinary definitions I ever heard. It is open to the sort of objection taken to a particular mathematical equation, when you get a solution in the terms of the unknown quantity. It reminds me very much of one of the answers which Sir Robert Peel told us was given to his celebrated question—"What is a pound?" The answer was—" It is the interest of £33 6s. 8d. at 3 per cent for 12 months." That is really very much the sort of explanation given to these words—"his tenancy." It is important we should know exactly what it is the tenant is to have the right of disposing of; and we want a much clearer explanation than that which is contained in the four corners of the Bill. When we hear of "his tenancy," we are led to suppose it is some property the tenant has, and that he is to be at liberty to dispose of it just as he can dispose of his horse, or his plough, or any other article that belongs to him. I think I heard from one of the speakers, I forget which—either the Attorney General, or the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk, or some other legal Member—the statement that there was no meaning in the idea of a man having property unless he was at liberty to dispose of it. Then, if that is so, we want to know what is the meaning of these limitations of yours? If this is a man's own tenancy—his own property—why do you put any limitation upon the right which you give him to dispose of it? Or, again, when you talk of "his tenancy," will you tell us exactly how it is that he became possessed of the right? Some got up and say—"Oh, it is perfectly obvious how he became possessed of it. He was the man who improved the farm; he was the man who by his capital and by his energy made it what it is; and he is entitled to the value of the improvements which he has made." Certainly, nobody disputes that. We are all perfectly ready to agree on that point; and we are, and have been—have been for a long time—endeavouring by legislation—under the Act of 1870 and otherwise—to secure to the tenant the full value of whatever he has done to improve his holding. But we are told there is something besides that. Well, it is that something else we want to know and understand; and the great difficulty we have in finding out what that something else is has been the cause of a very great part of the debates we have had to listen to. I am bound to say now, I feel the very greatest difficulty in making up my own mind as to what is intended by that expression. The Prime Minister the other day, as I understand him, told us that everything in the nature of what is sometimes called the unearned increment—everything that arises from an increase in the demand for and a deficiency in the supply of land, everything that exceptionally raises the value of land belongs, not to the landlord, but to the tenant who happens to be in occupation. [Mr. GLADSTONE dissented.] The Prime Minister shakes his head. That may not have been his meaning; but it was the meaning he conveyed to us. There it is—we never know exactly where we are—when we try to express a supposed meaning, we are told we are wrong; and when we try another, we are told we are equally at fault. The measure is avowedly framed with less regard to the laws of political economy than we are in the habit of observing in legislation, because we have to deal with an exceptional state of things which makes it impossible to treat the case of Ireland as you would treat any other case, and because it is extremely difficult to explain the points on which a solution is to be given. When you bear in mind—as the hon. Member for Antrim said in his excellent speech the other day—the question as to how this matter will be interpreted by the Court, or Commission, that will have to decide on it, that will appear to be the real question we have to consider, and that will, I venture to say, keep all Ireland in a ferment for a very considerable time. If that is the case, do let us consider for a moment how important it is that we should address ourselves to the Bill for the purpose of endeavouring to understand it, and seeing how far it will meet the evils which it is designed, or purposes to be designed, to meet. Hon. Gentleman get up and say—"Settle this question once for all;" others say—"Pass this Bill, or something dreadful will happen;" and others—"You will be misunderstood in Ulster if you do not vote for this Bill; and it is important that you should not shake confidence in the Ulster Custom." But no one, that I know of, has any wish to shake that custom; we all want to confirm, and ratify, and strengthen, and bear up that custom. When we come to what we may call the minor premiss of the argument, we begin to perceive its weakness. You say—"Settle this question once for all." We answer—"Will this Bill settle it?" You say.—"Pass this Bill, or something dreadful will happen." We answer—"Will the passing of this Bill prevent something dreadful happening?" You say—"If you do not pass the Bill, you will shake confidence in the Ulster Custom." We reply—"We are anxious to ratify and strengthen that custom; but this Bill does not do it." When all those things are said, we cannot but remember that very similar statements were made in 1870. We were told the same thing when we were dealing deliberately end scientifically with the great Upas tree which was overshadowing Ire- land, and when we were making a great sacrifice with a view to a permanent and final settlement of this question. We are informed now that in those days the Conservative Party was wiser than it seems to he to-day; that we were advised in 1870 by our great Leader not to oppose the settlement proposed; and that, moreover, when it came to work it did not produce those formidable results that were foretold, but that property rose in value, and every good thing happened. But why was all that? It was because we were then deluded into the belief that that Act was a final settlement. And, whether property did rise in value or not—which is a matter open to some dispute—at all events we believed that security would be obtained, and confidence might very well be restored. But we cannot feel that now. I would only say a few words upon what really impresses me in this matter. We are dealing with a question which is one of a gravity it is impossible to exaggerate. It is not a mere question as between landlord and tenant. It is not merely a question of providing for the improvement and advancement of Ireland. It is a question which touches the whole peace and happiness and welfare of that country, and of the whole of the United Kingdom. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the question. Then, for Heaven's sake! do not let us apply a false remedy—a remedy that will not touch the disease, and which is more likely to do harm than good. What is it, after all, that Ireland requires? It requires for its development the application of capital; it requires the confidence which produces capital; and it requires what is still more important, energy and wisdom in the application of that capital. Until these are obtained it will be impossible for the people of Ireland to work out their salvation. Do not suppose that by any measure you can pass you can do for the people of Ireland that which they can only do for themselves. They must themselves be prepared to work with a proper spirit and energy; and it can only be by the exercise of those great moral qualities of enterprize, self-restraint, and self-exertion, that they can become a happy and contented people. Now, is the measure which you are proposing well calculated to bring out these qualities? I will not say—we should be not quite un- justly accused of harshness if we wore to say—to the people of Ireland—"We can give you no help in these difficulties; you will have to struggle through them unaided by combining energy with self-denial." God knows, the people of Ireland have had enough of suffering, and anything we can do to help them ought to be done freely and liberally. For my own part, I would not be too strict in observing all the principles of political economy in this matter, if I thought that good could be done by a departure from a course that might seem to be not properly applicable. But let us take care we are helping in the right way. I do not in my conscience believe, and I very much doubt that there are many persons in this House who do believe, that the way to promote peace and happiness in Ireland is to bring about all this quarrelling, and all this confusion in the relations between landlords and tenants. There are still points which we may, no doubt, carefully consider, with the view of placing landlords and tenants on the best terms; but, even then, if the changes which might result be such as do not amount to a total revolution in the whole state of society—if they do not amount to the absolute destruction and overturning of what is called landlordism—I venture to say that many of the smaller changes that you may make will not touch the fringe of the question with which you have to deal. I know there are measures pointed at in the 5th part of this Bill which seem to me to present something of a much more hopeful character; and for my own part I am desirous, and my Friends near me are desirous, to promote as far as possible that portion of the measure. But, even there, we feel ourselves in considerable doubt, because we are unable to assure ourselves how far the Government are really in earnest in endeavouring to press that part of the Bill. We know very well that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has always been a strong advocate for the establishment of a peasant proprietary in Ireland. That is, no doubt, the part of the Bill to which he will give his support, and which he looks upon as a matter of great importance. The noble Lord the Secretary of State for India, the other day, in a speech which he made outside this House, spoke of it as being the principal object which the Bill had in view—to make the people owners of the soil—and spoke of the other portions of the Bill as being only a modus vivendi until that was done. But I very much doubt, from the speech of the Prime Minister, whether that is the view which he takes. It would seem that he regarded the first part as the principal part of the Bill, and that he looked for the regeneration of Ireland to the alteration of the relations between landlord and tenant, and to the recognition of the tenant's interest in the property to an extent which I could not gather, but which I understood him to say included all that rise in value which might be due to the great competition for land. I think it well that we should be made to understand that point, because there seems to be considerable doubt with regard to it. I do not wish to misrepresent the right hon. Gentleman; but we understood him the other day to say that the expression, "fair rent at the market rate," was a contradiction in terms, because the highest market rent included two things—the one being the value that was obtained by the tenant's outlay, the other the value acquired from the competition for land in consequence of its scarcity and the earth hunger; and he said the tenant had a property in both those things. Those were the expressions used by the right lion. Gentleman; but, if the statement be correct, when was that property conferred? Was it given by the Act of 1870, or was it an original possession of the tenant restored to him by that Act, or is it something that has grown up since the passing of the Act? Sometimes we are told, although when the Act of 1870 was passed we were led to believe the contrary, that even if we were not aware of it, we were by that legislation actually giving this property to the tenant. I must say that greatly shakes our confidence as to the way in which we are now asked to proceed. For we may again be giving something more than we are aware of, and may not find it out till too late. I will not at this late hour detain the House by going into the other parts of the Bill; but there is one important point about which I wish to say a word or two, and that is the constitution of the Commission which is to be the great tribunal erected by the Bill. We have had as yet no real discussion upon the nature of that Commission, and it does seem to me, that, looking to the enormous extent of its functions and the work to be performed by it, we ought to have had, at an early period of the discussion, a much more complete definition of its powers than we have at present. It is not a mere Commission which is to act as a judicial tribunal. It is not that which most of us, I believe, would be perfectly willing to agree to—something in the nature of a tribunal that might assist in arbitrating in cases of difficulty with regard to rents. I am not at all indisposed to examine proposals that may go to the introduction of a system by which an appeal could be made in the case of fixing rents, especially in the case of the smaller tenants who are unable to take care of themselves. But the Commission proposed in this Bill goes a great deal beyond that. It is something in the nature of those commissions of liquidation which are occasionally appointed to settle and wind up complicated estates in bankruptcy. Some of these special powers, which are now given to the Commission, seem to have been copied bodily from those which were given to arbitrators in the case of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Company. There are powers given by the provisions of the Bill to the Commission of the most extensive character; and it looks as if, not only those poor people of whom the hon. Member for Cork City has spoken, but the whole of the people of Ireland, were to be put into the hands of the Commission. That would be a most serious state of things to establish. You are going to bring about a revolution in the country, and its regulation is to be entrusted to a Commission of whose composition and powers we do not, at the present time, know anything. I may point out, with regard to these matters, that it would be very well worth while if we were allowed to discuss some of these important parts of the Bill before we discuss that which is regarded as less vital. It would be, I think, of very great advantage to us if we could make sure as to the composition of this Commission; and it would be also of great advantage if we were able to make sure of the 5th part of the Bill, which relates to what we consider to be a very material portion of the proposed measures. We know there have been cases in former times in which large and im- portant Bills have been brought in, and where some portions of the Bill that were considered the most popular and the most important were dropped as the Bill proceeded through Committee, and thrown over either for want of time, or upon some other grounds. I am afraid we shall have something of that kind in connection with the present measure. I am afraid, if we go into Committee without an understanding, we shall find ourselves fighting hard over some of the earlier clauses in trying to settle the relations of tenants and landlords; and that when we come to the 5th part of the Bill, and consider what are really its beneficial portions—those relating to emigration, the reclamation of waste lands, the planting of a tenant proprietary on the soil, and other matters such as all of us regard as important for the development of the resources of land in Ireland—I say, I fear we may be told that these matters are too big to be taken up in connection with this Bill, and that the part of the measure for which many of us would have been ready to vote on the second reading will be laid aside. Sir, I wish to explain what is the position of the Conservative Party generally with regard to this question. I do not know whether I need take that trouble, because, a few (lays ago, the Prime Minister, who likes to play his opponent's game as well as his own, was good enough to tell us how we ought to move all our pieces, and also to explain what he thought of the policy we were pursuing. However, so far as I can myself offer any contribution towards throwing light upon our proceedings, I will point out to the House exactly how we stand in the matter. We have never denied, and we never shall deny, that it is a very proper and desirable thing to legislate upon these questions. We are perfectly ready to enter into the discussion of questions of the character of those to which our attention has been invited; and, as my right hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Plunket) said no longer ago than last night at Bristol, the Conservative Party, before they saw this Bill, did look forward with hope to its being something of a character which they would be able to support. [Laughter.] That statement seems to amuse hon. Gentlemen opposite; and I have no doubt that the standpoint from which some of them approach this question is one which has more of a political and Party character about it than anything else. No doubt, some hon. Members opposite prefer that position to the more solid grounds upon which it might be possible to deal with this question. But that is not our view. "We have looked into this Bill, and we have taken some little time to consider what course we ought to pursue. We came to the conclusion that the Bill, as it steed, involved and contained within itself principles of such intrinsic injustice, and principles which appeared to us to be so exceedingly open to objection on economical grounds, that we could not conscientiously accept it, or give it our fiat by voting for the second reading. On the other hand, we were not disposed to take up a position of blank resistance and say—"We will have nothing to do with the Bill, but will do our best to throw it out." We thought it proper to express in a Resolution what our views were with regard to the policy to be pursued towards Ireland. That policy is to be found in the Resolution of which Notice has been given by my noble Friend the Member for North Leicestershire (Lord John Manners). The Resolution runs thus— That this House, while anxious to maintain and secure in full efficiency the customs of Ulster and other analogous customs in Ireland, and to remedy any proved defects in the Land Act of 1870, is disposed to seek for the social and material improvement of that country by measures for the development of its industrial resources rather than by a measure which confuses, without settling on a just and permanent basis, the relations of landlord and tenant. ["oh!"] Hon. Gentlemen opposite who cry "Oh!" would seem to hate landlords more than they love Ireland. It would appear to be their contention that nothing can be done in the way of improvement for Ireland by measures for the development of her industrial resources, and that it is impossible that any injustice or any mischief can arise from measures which we think we see in the Bill before us—measures for upsetting and entirely confusing the relations between landlords and tenants in Ireland. However that may be, I have expressed the views we hold, and we are prepared to stand by the policy which we have announced in the words of my noble Friend, although we are not able, on Parliamentary conditions, to move it in the form of a Resolution contradictory to the issue before the House. My noble Friend the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho) stands first with an Amendment, with regard to which we admit entirely the justice and literal truth of the language employed. It is perfectly true that there are many things in the Bill which we must consider objectionable on the grounds of justice and economy. That, however, is not the way in which we ourselves should prefer to meet the question. But, having to meet it, we are reduced to the alternative of considering whether we shall vote for the words standing part of the Question—"That the Bill be now read a second time"—or whether we shall vote against them. It would be absolutely impossible for us, feeling as we do with regard to the character of this Bill, to vote in favour of the words standing part of the Question, because that would seem to imply that we were insensible to the very objectionable principles contained in the measure before us; and we know perfectly well how a vote of that sort would be used by a disingenuous opponent, who would take care to draw from it inferences which he would well know how to apply. On the other hand, it is said we can abstain from voting; but that cannot be. To abstain from voting would be unworthy of us. We feel, therefore, that it is our duty to vote, in the first instance, for the Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire, with the reservation that if we could ourselves substitute a Resolution of our own for that which he proposes, we should adopt that of my noble Friend the Member for North Leicestershire. I hope the House, in the decision it may take to-night, will bear in mind that this is hut a preliminary discussion as to the consideration of the Bill in its future stages. If the Bill goes into Committee, we shall do our very best to clear up those points which appear to us to be doubtful, to eliminate those proposals which appear to us to be contrary to justice, and to maintain and strengthen those points which appear to us to be really calculated for the benefit of Ireland. I am quite certain of this—that, at the present moment, there is a great deal that depends on the course that this Bill may take; and it is not by shutting our eyes to the facts, not by thinking that everything is pleasant because it is convenient to you to make it pleasant, that you will get out of the difficulty in which the country finds itself. We have had a fair note of warning from the hon. Member for the City of Cork to-night. We are perfectly well aware of the view that he and those who act with him take. We know how great their influence has been in Ireland; and we know very well how great has been their influence on the Benches opposite. We ourselves will not shrink from doing that which we believe to be our duty. We will not be deterred by any menaces or alarms that may be held out as to something dreadful that may happen if we venture to make any Amendments to these proposals. We will do that which we feel to be our duty; and we do it not in the interests of one particular class. We do not come forward and say merely because this Bill involves the confiscation of the property of landlords—which it does—and because it affords no compensation—which it does not, and is, therefore, unjust—we do not say simply on these grounds we object to the Bill; for, if that were all, you might cure it by offering compensation, and by measures which would somewhat take off from the severity of the confiscation. But we say we are perfectly convinced that legislation such as this—and especially legislation won and wrung from you, as this has been, by the agitation of which the country has been for so many months the scene—we say that such legislation is calculated to inflict an evil on the whole of Ireland, and on the whole of the Empire, quite above and far exceeding any class interest you could imagine to be injured by the provisions of the Bill. You will be teaching the people the lesson backwards—instead of teaching them that they should rely on their own energies, and be prepared by their own energies, and by hard work, and by self-denial, to work out a better position either in Ireland or in some other country. You will be teaching them to look exclusively to the Government, to the Commission—to anybody rather than themselves—and you will be teaching them to consider that when they are in difficulties there is a simpler course than work, and that is agitation. It is with the object of protesting. against, and, as far as possible averting, that mischief which we believe would fall on the whole of Ireland, that we take our stand against many of the provisions of this Bill.

THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON

Mr. Speaker, I regret extremely that this long debate could not be concluded by the speech of my right hon. Friend the First Lord of the Treasury, which was, I am sorry to say, delivered last Monday to a House far less full than the present one; and I can assure the House that, at this hour of the night, I have no intention of attempting to fulfil the duty which has fallen upon my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister of winding up this debate. I will endeavour to occupy the House for a very short time; and I hope they will allow me, before going to a division, to make one or two observations on the attitude assumed on this measure by the two Parties who sit opposite. A position has been taken by the Gentlemen who sit immediately opposite to us which has been a subject of some surprise, and I cannot say it has been fully cleared up by the explanation which has just been given. We quite understand that the right hon. Gentleman and his Friends should wish to take some time for the consideration of what course they should adopt in regard to this Bill; and, although the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) seemed to have made up his mind pretty well on the first night of the debate on the second reading, and delivered a most uncompromising denunciation of the Bill, we, perhaps, have no right to wonder that no distinct step was taken on the part of the Opposition on that occasion. But when, after the speech of the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho), he sat down without being able, on account of the Forms of the House, to move any Amendment, and when, subsequently, the obstacle in the way of moving a further Amendment was withdrawn, right hon. Gentlemen opposite did not even then seem very anxious to step into the gap, but allowed the noble Lord, two or three nights after his speech had been delivered, to get up and step into the vacant place and move his Amendment. Although the right hon. Gentleman has not shown quite the alacrity which we might have expected from some of his speeches, it does not appear to me to signify very much whether hon. Gentlemen opposite vote for the Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho), or for the Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for North. Leicestershire (Lord John Manners). Everyone knows that an Amendment, in whatever terms it maybe couched, moved on the second reading of a Bill is virtually and essentially a Motion fur the rejection of the Bill. And in voting for the Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for North Leicestershire, if they had clone so, not less than in voting for the Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire, they would vote for the rejection and destruction of this Bill. That decision seemed, from the speech we have just hoard, to have been arrived at not without some deliberation. It seems somewhat inconsistent with some opinions we have beard from the Front Opposition Bench on former occasions, and even this evening. The hon. Member for North-West Lancashire, speaking the other night, said that when the details of the Bill came to be considered in Committee, it would be subjected to the same temperate criticism as had marked the discussion on the second reaching; and the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin, speaking last night at Bristol, said he thought the Bill would become a moderate and useful measure as it progressed. And I thought I heard in the closing passages of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman just now, some expression of the same kind, pointing to a desire on his part to amend the Bill in Committee. But if the right hon. Gentleman succeeds in defeating this Bill on the second reading, how is it to be submitted to this temperate criticism, and how is it to be amended and made a useful measure in Committee? From the language held by the hon. and gallant Member for North-West Lancashire (Colonel Stanley), and the right hon. and learned Member fur the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson), and the Leader of the Opposition himself, I can come to no other conclusion that they do not with their whole hearts support this Motion for the rejection of this Bill. They do not, wish the Amendment to be carried; and it is only a step they are supporting for the purpose of relieving themselves from some responsibility for the Bill, and perhaps to satisfy some of the rather more ardent Members of their own Party. I wish to ask the House whether that position on the part of a great Party, and in regard to such a measure and such a question as this, is either a dignified or a useful positions? I conceive that on such a question and on such a measure every Member of the House is bound—and more especially the Leaders of a great Constitutional Party—to have an opinion of their own, and that they are bound to vote as if the fate of the Bill depended upon that vote. The right hon. Gentleman has told us that he regrets having to give a vote against the Bill, and he looks forward to Amendments. I do not consider that the speech we have just heard is one which indicates in the slightest degree that if the right hon. Gentleman had the power of rejecting the Bill, he would take the responsibility of exercising that power. If hon. Gentlemen opposite think that no change is required; if they agree with the terms of the Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for North Leicestershire that all that is wanted is a development of the industrial resources of Ireland; if they think that the present crisis is to be met by loans or gifts—an increase of fishery loans and an increase of the grant for fishery piers—then I think they ought to reject this Bill. If they think that the principles of the Bill are unsound; if they think with the hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire (Mr. Chaplin) and the hon. and learned Member for Preston (Sir John Holker), that this Bill is a Bill of confiscation and spoliation, and that it will lead to other measures of Communism and robbery—if that is their opinion, then they ought to reject the Bill, and they ought not to make excuses for voting against the second reading. I can understand the hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire, after the eloquent and able denunciation of the legislation of 1870, and of the proposed legislation of 1881, which we have heard this evening—I can understand him, and can believe that he does vote with all his heart and soul for the rejection of the Bill, and that if the fate of the Bill depended upon his vote, that vote would be given for the rejection. But what reasons have we heard from the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down for rejecting the Bill? He said he would not go into details; but it appeared to me that almost the whole of his speech consisted of criticisms of details. He is not going to reject the Bill because he is satisfied, I suppose, with the meaning of tenancy; or because of a difference of opinion between himself and the right hon. Gentleman behind me as to the unearned increment; or because he objects to the order in which the parts of the Bill are arranged. He said he could not vote for the Bill because it contained the principle of intrinsic injustice; but, having spent a great deal of time in the discussion of details, I did not hear him make any distinct declaration as to what the principle of intrinsic injustice is. [Sir STAFFORD NORTIICOTE: I spoke of confiscation.] The right hon. Gentleman did not say what were the provisions of the Bill which involved confiscation. He did not spend nearly so much time on his ideas as to confiscation as on the definition of tenancy and other parts. If, on the other hand, they consider that some change is necessary; if they do not agree with the terms of the Amendments of the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho) and the noble Lord the Member for North Leicestershire (Lord John Manners); if they consider that some change is necessary, but that we are setting about the change in the wrong way, then, again, it is their duty to reject the Bill, and, at the same time, to indicate in what direction they consider the change ought to be made. If, however, they think, as I believe some of them do, that the principles of the Bill are, in the main, just and sound, but that they are pushed too far, or that they are unskilfully applied, then it would be their duty, in my opinion, to accept the second reading of the Bill, pointing out in what way they think the Bill is capable of amendment, and to devote their energies to Amendments in Committee. For these reasons, I think the course they are taking is not extremely dignified; and I venture to doubt whether it is a very useful course. They indicate plainly enough that they expect the second reading to pass; and they are going to turn their attention to Amendments in Committee. Well, Sir, are they, by opposing the second reading, taking the best course to enable them to amend the Bill in Committee? If they had supported or acquiesced in the second reading, they would have had a right to come forward on the discussion in Committee as allies and fellow-workers, at all events, in the same cause; and there are many Amendments which they could have brought forward, and which would have been entitled to respectful, and possibly favourable, consideration. But what view must we take of Amendments which are brought forward in Committee by hon. Members who have announced themselves, by their opposition to the principle of the Bill, opponents and enemies of the Bill? Every Amendment brought forward under such circumstances must be looked at by the friends of the Bill with doubt and suspicion. The hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) does not intend to vote for the second reading. The right hon. Gentleman (Sir Stafford Northcote) is going to oppose the second reading; but it is more clear and much easier to understand why the hon. Member for the City of Cork should wish to defeat the Bill or, at all events, to be indifferent to its success. The hon. Member has on various occasions indicated what the policy of the Land League is. He has repeated it to-night. His policy I have always conceived to be the total expropriation of the landlords of Ireland, accompanied by more or less compensation for that expropriation. The hon. Member has told us tonight that he is not in favour of the expropriation of all landlords, but that he is in favour of the power being given to expropriate all landlords; and I can see that the position of those who are not expropriated will not be one of any great security. Then the hon. Member proposes to substitute for the landlords occupying proprietors; and he would do this, not by a voluntary, but by a compulsory process. What are the means by which he intends to accomplish this object? He intends, as far as is in his and his Friends' power, to deprive the landlords now and hereafter of their means of subsistence; he intends to embitter the relations between landlord and tenant; and he intends, as far as he can, to make the landlords' existence intolerable, until they will be willing to accept any terms offered them. Naturally, no Bill, the object of which is to improve the relations between landlord and tenant; no Bill, which is intended to restrain the abuse of a system which he wishes entirely to got rid of—no such Bill as that would be satisfactory to the hon. Member. Whatever may be the case with the landlords, whatever may be the case with the tenants, he, at all events, can afford to wait. The landlords may not be able to afford to wait, they may be unable to meet their obligations, they may be deprived almost of the means of living; the tenants may not be able to live much longer in this state of continual warfare against their landlords; it may be almost impossible for the people of these countries to endure much longer the state of anarchy which this conflict involves; it may be impossible for anyone else to wait; but it is perfectly possible, in fact, it is the game of the hon. Member for the City of Cork to wait, because the longer this state of things continues, the longer the feud between landlord and tenant is kept up, the more embittered the relations between landlord and tenant become, the more violent the measures of attack on the rights of property and the measures of defence of the rights of property, the more it suits the hon. Member's purpose, and the sooner he will accomplish his end. His object is perfectly plain, and I am not surprised the hon. Member refuses his support to the Bill. But I cannot imagine how hon. Members opposite can have any sympathy with those objects. It is their desire—it must be their desire—that this question should be settled, and settled as satisfactorily and as speedily as may be; it must be their object and desire that the question should be settled with the smallest amount of change of which it is capable. What is the necessity for legislation on this subject at all? The hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire (Mr. Chaplin) has said he does not consider any of the reasons given by the Prime Minister adequate or complete, and that in his opinion the real reason why the Bill has been brought in is the agitation in Ireland, and the obstruction which has been encountered in this House. Sir, I deny that it is the agitation in Ireland or the obstruction in this House which is the cause of this legislation; but I am perfectly willing to admit, and I do not think there can be any doubt of it, that one of the causes which rendered legislation necessary, and legislation of this character, is the present condition of Ireland. This condition has been caused partly by the agricultural depression which has visited England and Ireland alike during the last few years, which has partly caused the agitation, and partly by the condition of Ireland which has been produced by the agitation. It is not the fact, as has been frequently alleged, that this condition, which in the opinion of everybody necessitates legislation of some kind, is a new thing, or that it dates from the accession of the present Government. In the years 1878, 1879, and 1880, discussions upon the question took place in the House of Lords; discussions to which I would refer at greater length were it not for the lateness of the hour. In the summers of 1878–9–80, the disturbed state of Ireland was acknowledged by Lord Cairns, who was then Lord Chancellor, and by the Duke of Richmond and Gordon; and in 1880 a quotation was made from a charge of Judge Fitzgerald, in which descriptions were given of the state of certain counties in the West of Ireland, which reads word for word with the descriptions of what was going on in Ireland during the last winter in a much more extended area. The causes which had produced the state of things in a limited part of Ireland in 1878–9–80 have produced it elsewhere since; and if the late Government were unable to cope with the agitation in a very limited area in 1878–9–80, how is it possible to argue that it is entirely owing to the remissness of the present Government that that agitation has spread? It seems to me that a more unfortunate quotation was never used than was used by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the senior Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Plunket) last night. He quoted from Shakspeare the lines— A little fire is quickly trodden out, "Much suffered, rivers will not quench. Sir, that little fire, which the right hon. and learned Gentleman seems to think has been burning only since the accession of the present Government to power, was burning, as I have said, and as is acknowledged by Members of the late Government, during their tenure of Office. That state of things was existing in the counties of Galway and Mayo during the three last years of the tenure of power of the late Government. [Sir STAFFORD NORTHCOTE dissented.] I see the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Stafford North-cote) shaking his head. I am afraid I must read the extracts. In 1878, Lord Cairns said— I also regret to say, on the part of the Government, that there is much reason to believe that these occurrences in that district are not merely isolated acts having their origin in purely local circumstances, but that they are more or less connected with a larger organization—an organization having the double effect of leading to the commission of these crimes, and bringing to bear in the district where they are committed a system of terrorism and alarm which prevents any evidence being given against the authors of the crimes. With all the means of information which we possess, while I cannot say that undetected and unpunished crime has increased and is increasing in the greater part of Ireland, I believe that in the particular locality to which reference has been made the state of the country is serious, and it is certainly a subject of great anxiety to the Government."—[3Hansard, ccxxxix. 1209.] In the next year the Duke of Richmond and Gordon made a similar declaration; and in the spring of last year, on March 15th, the following quotation was made in the charge of Judge Fitzgerald:— There seems to be sufficient evidence of an extensive combination for the purpose of forcibly interfering to prevent the payment of rent by tenants to their landlords. This combination manifests its existence in various ways—by the posting of threatening letters demanding such reduction as these persons judge themselves entitled to; by threats of violence to those who continue the payment of rent, and to those who it is apprehended are willing to pay it, and in some instances by actual violence to those who discharge their legal obligations in the payment of their rent. The feeling has further displayed itself by threats against ministers of the Law whose duty it is to serve civil bill processes, by the use of violence to those who have discharged this duty, and in many instances by violence and irritation committed in the face of the constituted authority. This last nature of agrarian crime is dangerous, because it is plain it will lead to bloodshed, which no one can contemplate calmly. Well, I ask whether these descriptions are not descriptions of identically the same state of things that now exists? [Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL: Then there were the Peace Preservation Acts.] There was the little fire burning. It was only in a small part of Ireland, and the late Government were able to devote and concentrate their whole attention upon it. They could use all the powers of the Peace Preservation Act; but they did not prevent it. The state of things I have shown to exist was not suppressed in any one of the three years. At the General Election in 1880, the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) was returned, with 20 or 30 Members, pledged to support an extension of this system. Well, that was the condition of the country, which had long existed, and which I admit had become infinitely worse during the last year, and which I have also shown the late Government were absolutely unable to cope with, although it was then on a much smaller scale. Sir, what is the present condition of Ireland? It is too little to say that we are within a measurable distance of civil war. In some parts of the country there does actually exist civil war between landlord and tenant, and the consequences to the community are equally deplorable, whichever Party may be in power. Many parts of the country are in such a condition that rent cannot be collected except it is at the cost of wholesale evictions—evictions which turn numbers of persons out of house and home, and which create a most bitter feeling between classes in Ireland. And if the law is not enforced, the consequence is equally deplorable, because a number of landlords are defrauded of their just and legitimate rights. Well, Sir, such a state of things as exists in a great part of Ireland, and which, on a limited scale, existed during the last years of the tenure of Office of the late Government, was the sole reason for the legislation with regard to this question. I will only say one word concerning the principles contained in the Bill. With the exception of the hon. Member for Mid Lincolnshire (Mr. Chaplin), we have heard no strong denunciation of those principles. The right hon. Gentleman (Sir Stafford Northcote) has greatly changed his views since last year, when he referred to the "three F's" as "Fraud, Force, and Folly." I think that to-night the right hon. Gentleman expressed his adhesion to one of the "three F's "—"fair rent." At all events, I have not heard him say he was unwilling there should be an interference by a Court of Law for the purpose of regulating the rent. Well, Sir, there is nothing, after all, that is very dreadful in the "three F's." If there is any objection to the "three F's," it is to the extent to which they may be applied, or to the manner in which they are enforced. In the "three F's" themselves, taken as principles, there is nothing to be alarmed at. On the contrary, I have no hesitation in saying that the "three F's" at this moment form the basis of the management of a great many of the best estates in Ireland. Those principles, recognized already to a great extent by many landlords in Ireland, are to be found in this Bill; but they are to be found, not pure and simple, not without limitation, but with limitations of every description. And the question is whether those principles, which are admitted to be sound by many landlords in the management of their own estates, cannot safely be engrafted on the Land Code of Ireland, secured as they are by the limitations in the Bill? Those principles were advocated by the late Mr. Butt, who, while sympathizing warmly with the tenants of Ireland, certainly did not entertain any of the ideas which are now held as to the expropriation of landlords; they were recommended by the authority of one Commission, and by the authority of the majority of another Commission—the Richmond Commission. Whatever the hon. Member for Mid. Lincolnshire (Mr. Chaplin) may say, I am prepared to maintain that the most vital of the "three F's," and that which involves the adoption, to a certain extent, of the others, is contained in the Report of the majority of the Duke of Richmond's Commission. It must be admitted that a passage in that Report does contain the principle of judicial interference in the fixing of rent. No doubt, the hon. Member said it was only meant that that power should be exercised in certain places, and with reference only to improvements made by tenants. But if there is to be interference at all, you must empower the Court to decide when that interference is to take place. You admit tile principle when yon admit the interference of the Court at all. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lincolnshire pointed out to us in a tone of triumph that the Commissioners were not prepared to support the "three F's" in their integrity; but it does not follow that if they were not prepared to support the "three F's" in their integrity, they were not the logical consequence of the recommendations which the Commissioners made. If you once sanction the principle of judicial interference for the purpose of fixing rents you will find that you have obtained a reality without security. I will not, at this hour of the night (1.20), detain the House by recapitulating the provisions of the Bill. We shall have an ample opportunity of discussing them by-and-bye. The question for the decision of the House is an extremely simple one. In my idea, the law in Ireland has too long neglected to recognize the customary and equitable rights of the tenant. Nothing could be more distinct than the Report of the majority of the Duke of Richmond's Commission that it has been the practice for a long time in Ireland for the tenant to make the substantial improvements, and where that is the case it must inevitably follow that the tenant has equitable rights. We have gone all this time on the assumption that the tenants in Ireland were able to protect these equitable rights, and that there ought to be freedom of contract. But we cannot do so now. We have to acknowledge that freedom of contract does not exist in Ireland, and that the tenants never have been and are not in a position to protect themselves in the possession of these equitable rights. The law has given a presumption in favour of the landlord and against the tenant. It has given everything to the landlord and nothing to the tenant. From 1870 we have endeavoured. to reform that state of things by the Land Act of that year. We endeavoured, by a system mainly based on the imposition of certain penalties, and upon other provisions, to protect these customary and equitable rights to which the tenants of Ireland are entitled. The Act of 1870 has been found practically inadequate; and what this Bill proposes to do is to supplement that Act by other and more direct provisions intended to secure to the tenant his equitable and customary rights. That issue is sufficiently intelligible. Is it expedient that changes in this direction should be made; and if it is expedient that the equitable and customary rights of the tenants of Ireland should be more fully recognized than they have been, do the changes proposed in this Bill fully and equitably meet that object? My belief is that they do, and that the Bill does supplement the provisions of the Act of 1870 in both particulars where hitherto it has failed. And, in that belief, I think the House would do well to support the second reading of the Bill, and determine for itself, if it is necessary, in Committee to make clearer and more simple provisions.

MR. CALLAN

had no wish to detain the House for more than a few minutes, and he should not interpose at all if it were not for the fact that in justification both of himself and his constituents he felt bound not to give a silent vote. He happened to belong to a section of the House, of whom there were now only two survivors, who, on an occasion similar to the present, when discussing a Land Bill for Ireland, felt bound to vote against it. He did not on the present occasion propose to follow a precedent which many of his Friends opposite deemed to be an unwise one. But, while he did not intend to oppose the second reading of the Bill, he regretted the absence from it of what he conceived to be a cardinal principle—namely, fixity of tenure. During the Recess he had endeavoured to study the views, not of the enemies of the Bill, but of such of its friends as the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. C. Russell). Speaking of free sale, the hon. and learned Gentleman said that in his judgment, if the restrictions now proposed were allowed to remain in the Bill, the expression "free sale" would be a perfect misnomer. Had anything occurred in the course of the debate to hold out a hope that in Committee the Bill, in this respect, would be improved? The same hon. and learned Gentleman, speaking of the resumption by the landlord, stated clearly and emphatically that the power of resumption by the landlord was a one-sided arrangement, which gave powers to the landlord that might be used with injurious effect towards the tenant. He would ask whether any promise had been made by the Government that that complaint would be remedied? Then, again, the same hon. and learned Gentleman, in speaking of the question of "fair rent," gave expression to the feeling which evidently pervaded the majority of Members of that House—namely, that the provisions of the measure in regard to fair rent were most ambiguous. Although he (Mr. Callan) believed he understood what the object of the clause was, yet he confessed that he was by no means certain that he knew what was really meant by "fair rent." It was the most vital point in the whole of the Bill, and it ought to be expressed in language that "he who runs may read." He had waited with some anxiety for an explanation of what fair rent was supposed to mean; but the matter remained still as it did on the first day of the introduction of the Bill, a kind of geometrical puzzle. Since the introduction of the Bill on the 7th of April, he had twice visited Ireland, and he had spent a considerable time in travelling through the agricultural districts of Louth, Armagh, and Monaghan, in order to ascertain the opinions of the farmers in regard to the provisions of the Bill, and especially in reference to the jurisdiction it was proposed to confer upon the County Court Judges. He had hoped that some promise would be made by the Government that in Committee the clause relating to the County Court Judges would be eliminated from the Bill. But what did the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister say on Monday? He said it would not only be unwise but impossible to pass over a body of gentlemen who had had an opportunity under the Land Act of collecting a mass of experience such as was not possessed by any other body of gentlemen in Ireland. He would give the House the opinion of an hon. and learned Member who was not a violent Land Leaguer, but was a supporter of the Government, and who sat immediately beside them—the same hon. and learned Gentleman to whom he had already alluded (Mr. C. Russell). What did that hon. and learned Gentleman say of these County Court Judges, whom they were told by the Prime Minister it was impossible to pass over? The hon. and learned Member said he had never read a Bill which, in its practical operation, would more thoroughly and entirely depend upon the machinery by which it was to be carried out. He believed the Bill might be made a boon to the Irish tenants if it were wisely, sympathetically, and honestly carried out; but it was also a Bill capable of being made restrictive and oppressive, if worked by people who chose to take an unsympathetic view of it. The hon. and learned Member then went on to say that the County Court Judges did not possess the confidence of the Irish. people. He did not belong to the tenant class; he did not move amongst them; he had no sympathy with them, and those he moved amongst were those who felt no sympathy with them. He (Mr. Callan) had had some experience of county chairmen, and of three in particular, in his own county. He might say of two of them, who were Conservatives, that while they were ready to express every sympathy for the Irish tenants in their acts, they had never been known to show such sympathy. Yet, by this Bill, they would be placed in a position to judge what was a fair and an unfair rent. Happening to be upon some property in the county of Louth on Saturday, he had examined the Poor Law valuation, and he found there was one tenant whose farm was valued at £31 10s., but who paid to a county chairman a rent of £63 7s4d.—more than 100 per cent above the Poor Law valuation. In the case of another tenant, whose property was valued at £14 a-year, the rental was more than 100 per cent above the Poor Law valuation. These tenants were voters; and, therefore, he had called upon them in order to see where the shoe pinched in regard to the present Bill, and they said—"What justice could we expect from a county chairman if he happens to be similarly circumstanced to ours? Our landlord is the county chairman of another county, and he exacts from us an exorbitant rent—100 per cent over Griffith's valuation." He (Mr. Callan) might enter further into this matter, but he had no wish to make charges, indiscriminately, against the county chairmen. The gentleman to whom he referred was a Catholic, and a Liberal, connected with the county of Louth, and he put himself forward as a tenant-righter. He wished his hon. Friends the Members for Sligo joy of the county chairman they had got; but he certainly hoped that the poor impoverished tenants of that county would have some other Judge, under the provisions of the present Bill, than a county chairman who exacted from his tenants a rent that was more than 100 per cent more than Griffith's valuation. Then, again, in regard to leases, it was absolutely necessary that something should be done beyond what was proposed by the Bill of the Government. Even the Prime Minister himself admitted that the subject was one that was worthy of consideration. In the course of his progress last Saturday he (Mr. Callan) called upon an aged lady, and he had received from her in confidence certain documents which, in confidence, he would show to any hon. Member. She held a lease from an English nobleman. To his (Mr. Callan's) knowledge, the late tenant had built upon the property a house and offices, and within the last 25 years had spent something like £1,600 upon it. He laid it all down in grass, and since the passing of the Act of 1870 his lease had expired. And what did this English nobleman, or rather his trustees, do? He forced upon this Irish tenant a lease by which he covenanted to relinquish all rights under the Land Act of 1870. He held in his hands all the correspondence, and among it was a letter dated in 1879. It was a letter to the tenant saying—"Please get the enclosed lease signed and returned forthwith." And three days afterwards, the tenant, not having complied with this mandate, received another couched as follows:— I understand that you declined to sign the yearly agreement forwarded to you as my ten. ant. I therefore require you to give up possession forthwith, as the covenants contained in your lease expired last May. I intend to send the bailiff to your house on Monday for the purpose of taking it over, and I hope you will give up possession without delay. Of course, if you forward the lease signed without delay, I have instructed the bailiff not to take further notice. Thus, with his blunderbuss presented at his head, the tenant, who alone had made the farm a valuable one, was compelled to submit to the landlord's terms. He was told—" If you do not sign that document, relinquishing your rights and debarring yourself from all benefit under the Land Act of 1870, I will turn you out." Reference had been made in the course of the debate to the late Mr. Butt, particularly by the noble Marquess who had just addressed the House (the Marquess of Hartington), whose kindly and sympathetic speech made him (Mr. Callan) regret exceedingly that the noble Marquess, instead of being appointed to preside over the affairs of India, had not been placed at the head of the Irish Executive. Mr. Butt, speaking of the Land Bill of 1870, and summing up its merits and demerits, used these almost prophetic words— Such a measure, if successful in some respects, will leave in our system such elements of disaster as will yet shake Irish society to its base. Mr. George Power Bryan, in moving the rejection of the Bill of 1870, said the Bill, as it stood, did not fulfil the aspirations of the Irish people. The same thing might be said of the present Bill. Did it fulfil the aspirations of the Irish people? You may pass it into law," said Mr. Bryan; "but do net deceive yourselves. It will entirely fail to satisfy the country. The same warning was applicable to the present measure. Would the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland venture to tell the House that the Bill now before it would satisfy the country and quiet the disaffection which now existed? Mr. Bryan added— It is because I am of opinion that if the Bill should pass in its present shape, litigation and consequent ill-feeling would be perpetuated between the two classes of the community which, beyond all others, ought to live in concord and unity; and, also, because I feel that the just demands of the Irish people must he met, that I oppose the Bill."—[3 Hansard, cxcix. 1376–7.] He (Mr. Callan) and a small minority of Irish Members supported Mr. Bryan on that occasion; and on the present occasion he believed that three times the number of Irish Members would take a similar course. At the risk of interruption and of wearying the patience of the House, he had considered it necessary to make these remarks rather than give a silent vote. He had never, since he had the honour of a seat in the House, shirked a vote or given a vote which he thought he ought not to have given. At any rate, he had had the courage of his convictions, and he could not at the present moment endorse the Bill as accepted by the Irish people.

SIR PATRICK O'BRIEN

said, in the year 1870 he voted against the Bill introduced by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gladstone) because, useful as it was, it did not embrace the principles to support which he was elected to that House. Now, in 1881, he was there to say he would support the Bill then under consideration; and why? Because it did recognize the principles known by the soubriquet of the "three F's," to support which not only himself and those who acted with him were elected, but also the large majority of the Gentlemen opposite who now recognized the lead of the hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of Cork. That hon. Member, in the speech which they had so lately heard, addressed his hon. Friend the Member for the County of Cork, and asked him upon what grounds he had recommended the Bill to the Irish people? Would it not have been more fitting in the hon. Member to have first asked that question of the large minority of his own supporters who had wished to support the Bill, and had voted against his proposition for abstention? Whatever might be said in that House, he believed that the vast majority of moderate men—from Archbishops down to tenant farmers—were, with Amendments, in favour of the Bill; and he would say that hon. Gentlemen opposite did not perform their duty and their promise to their constituents by refusing to support a Bill embodying the principles upon which they were elected, and thereby weakening its chance of becoming law. They had heard that evening that under the Act of 1870 the average amount of money obtained as compensation by the tenants in Ireland was only £27 each; and the hon. Member for the City of Cork had omitted to state that the Act was passed, not for the purpose of levying damages, but for the purpose of preventing eviction. He had, however, totally ignored the thousands of cases of eviction that were prevented by the Act of 1870. He (Sir Patrick O'Brien) heard a rumour that over 30 Tenant Right Representatives were about to abstain from voting on that night. If it were so, he would be indeed surprised. For the abstention of some he did not find it difficult to suggest a reason. They had to decide between the interests of the Irish tenant farmers and the commands of The Irish World, who would stop the supplies if the Bill were supported; and he supposed, in face of such an eventuality, they would abstain from voting. But there was in Ireland the Land League organization; and though there wore many villages and country towns which derived no benefit from the money received from America, the local leaders of the movement had become petty kings and dictators, and created a sense of importance which caused men in their neighbourhood to fear them in the exalted position which they occupied. The occupation of these gentlemen would be gone if they had no money to keep up this organization, and they would resume their old appellations of Paddy, Jim, or Mike, and be relegated to their former unim- portant and humble positions. Again, he had heard the organization defended upon public platforms on the ground that it was to wipe out the old confiscations in Ireland—Williamite, Cromwellian, and Elizabethian—if any such latter now existed. To assert this was too amusing; the more especially when they recollected that only the other day, in the North of Ireland, when addressing an Orange meeting, the hon. Member for the City of Cork boasted that he was the descendant of one who had crossed the Boyne with that William III., whom he (Sir Patrick O'Brien) supposed the hon. Member for Cork City would call the "Great Deliverer." As regarded the labourers, he found that at public meetings their claims were alluded to at the tail of the proceedings with a bald resolution, like the toast of the "Press" at a public dinner; but no proposition was made in their favour, nor any plan suggested by which their cruel case should be dealt with. For himself, at that hour of the morning, he could not go through the many proposals of the Bill. In Committee, he had reason to hope, many Amendments would be carried out. Leaseholders, for instance, should not be forgotten. But as a Bill embodying in the spirit the great principle of the "three F's," to which he had pledged hinself before his constituents, it should receive his hearty and cordial support.

MR. STORER

said, that, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, he could not sit quietly without saying one word of explanation in answer to the speech of the noble Lord opposite, who had so wrongfully accused the Conservative Party with regard to the course they had taken in opposing the Bill. He wished to say that the Bill was opposed by those who sat near him entirely upon principle. They considered that the principles contained in it were not in accordance with political economy or the rights of property, and that the Bill would entirely fail in obtaining the object intended. Further, he desired to reply to the allegations made against the Conservative Party that they were responsible, in some degree, for the agitation in Ireland, by saying that those allegations were totally unfounded, as was proved by the admission of the Prime Minister himself in his Mid Lothian campaign. In his opinion, the Bill would fail to stop agitation in Ireland, because it was the interest of some hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway that it should continue, and the sore remain unhealed.

MR. HEALY

observed, that it was gratifying that, at any rate, one Conservative Member had risen to protest against a system which, on the occasion of great debates, allowed the Whips to arrange amongst themselves when the division was to take place, and allowed a number of Gentlemen who came down to the House on those occasions to shout down those who got up to speak at a late hour. For his own part, ho thought the course which hon. Members below the Gangway ought to pursue who felt themselves aggrieved by the conduct of hon. Members opposite in this respect, would be to move the adjournment of the debate. Ho pointed out that when hon. Members who sat on that side of the House rose to speak, no matter how great the question and important the arguments they adduced, they were not listened to. On the other hand, when hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench or on other Benches that were not in the cold shade of Opposition rose to speak, it was supposed that their contributions to the discussion were so important that they ought to be listened to without the slightest interruption. He expressed a hope that no hon. Gentleman below the Gangway would be a party to any arrangement of the kind he had referred to, but would at all times, when necessary, exercise his right of speaking.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 352; Noes 176: Majority 176.

AYES.
Acland, Sir T. P.	Barclay, J. W.
Agar-Robartes,hn.T.C.	Baring, Viscount
Agnew, W.	Barnes, A.
Ainsworth, P.	Barran, J.
Allen, H. G.	Bass, H.
Allen, W. S.	Baxter, rt. hon. W. E.
Allman, R. L.	Bellingham, A. H.
Amory, Sir J. H.	Beresford, G. de la P.
Anderson, G.	Biddulph, M.
Archdale, W. H.	Blake, J. A.
Armitage, B.	Blennerhassett, Sir R.
Armitstead, G.	Blennerhassett, R. P.
Arnold, A.	Bolton, J. C.
Ashley, hon. E. M.	Borlase, W. C.
Baldwin, E.	Brand, H. R.
Balfour, Sir G.	Brassey, H. A.
Balfour, J. B.	Brassey, T.
Balfour, J. S.	Brett, R. B.

Briggs, W. E.	Earp, T.
Bright, J. (Manchester)	Edwards, H.
Bright, rt. hon. J.	Edwards, P.
Brinton, J.	Egerton, Adm. hon. F.
Broadhurst, H.	Elliot, hon. A. R. D.
Brooks, M.	Errington, G.
Brown, A. H.	Evans, T. W.
Bruce, hon. R. P.	Ewart, W.
Bryce, J.	Fairbairn, Sir A.
Burt, T.	Farquharson, Dr. R.
Buszard, M. C.	Fawcett, rt. hon. H.
Butt, C. P.	Fay, C. J.
Buxton, F. W.	Ferguson, R.
Caine, W. S.	Ffolkes, Sir W. H. B.
Cameron, C.	Findlater, W.
Campbell, Lord C.	Firth, J. F. B.
Campbell, Sir G.	Fitzmaurice, Lord E.
Campbell, R. F. F.	Fitzwilliam, hn. H. W.
Campbell- Bannerman, H.	Fitzwilliam, hn. W. J.
	Flower, C.
Carbutt, E. H.	Foljambe, C. G. S.
Carington, hon. R.	Foljambe, F. J. S.
Carington, hn. Colonel W. H. P.	Forster, Sir C.
	Forster, rt. hon. W. E.
Cartwright, W. C.	Fort, R.
Causton, R. K.	Fowler, H. H.
Cavendish, Lord E.	Fowler, W.
Cavendish, Lord F. C.	Fry, L.
Chaine, J.	Fry, T.
Chamberlain, rt. hn. J.	Gabbett, D. F.
Chambers, Sir T.	Givan, J.
Cheetham, J. F.	Gladstone, rt. hn. W. E.
Childers, rt. hn. H. C. E.	Gladstone, H. J.
Chitty, J. W.	Gladstone, W. H.
Clarke, J. C.	Glyn, hon. S. C.
Clifford, C. C.	Gordon, Sir A.
Close, M. C.	Gordon, Lord D.
Cohen, A.	Gourley, B. T.
Colebrooke, Sir T. E.	Gower, hon. E. F. L.
Collings, J.	Grafton, F. W.
Collins, E.	Grant, A.
Colman, J. J.	Grant, D.
Colthurst, Col. D. la T.	Grant, Sir G. M.
Corbett, J.	Greer, T.
Cotes, C. C.	Grenfell, W. H.
Courtauld, G.	Grey, A. H. G.
Courtney, L. H.	Guest, M. J.
Cowan, J.	Gurdon, R. T.
Cowen, J.	Hamilton, J. G. C.
Cowper, hon. H. F.	Harcourt, rt. hon. Sir W. G. V. V.
Craig, W. Y.
Creyke, R.	Hardcastle, J. A.
Cropper, J.	Hartington, Marq. of
Cross, J. K.	Hastings, G. W.
Crum, A.	Hayter, Sir A. D.
Cunliffe, Sir R. A.	Henderson, F.
Currie, D.	Heneage, E.
Daly, J.	Henry, M.
Davey, H.	Herschell, Sir F.
Davies, D.	Hibbert, J. T.
Davies, R.	Hill, Lord A. W.
Davies, W.	Hill, T. R.
De Ferrieres, Baron	Holland, S.
Dickson, J.	Hollond, J. R.
Dilke, A. W.	Holms, J.
Dilke, Sir C. W.	Holms, W.
Dillwyn, L. L.	Hopwood, C. H.
Dodds, J.	Howard, E. S.
Dodson, rt. hon. J. G.	Howard, G. J.
Duckham, T.	Howard, J.
Duff, rt. hon. M. E. G.	Hughes, W. B.
Duff, R. W.	Hutchinson, J. D.
Dundas, hon. J. C.	Illingworth, A.

Inderwick, F. A.	O'Brien, Sir P.
James, C.	O'Conor, D. M.
James, Sir H.	O'Donoghue, The
James, W. H.	O'Shaughnessy, R.
Jardine, R.	O'Shea, W. H.
Jenkins, D. J.	Otway, A.
Johnson, E.	Paget, T. T.
Johnson, W. M.	Palmer, C. M.
Joicey, Colonel J.	Palmer, G.
Kingscote, Col. R. N. F.	Palmer, J. H.
Kinnear, J.	Parker, C. S.
Labouchere, H.	Pease, A.
Laing, S.	Peddie, J. D.
Lambton, hon. F. W.	Peel, A. W.
Law, rt. hon. H.	Ponder, J.
Lawrence, Sir J. C.	Pennington, F.
Lawrence, W.	Philips, B. N.
Lawson, Sir W.	Playfair, rt. hon. L.
Laycock, R.	Portman, hn. AV. H. B.
Lea, T.	Potter, T. B.
Leake, R.	Powell, W. R. H.
Leatham, E. A.	Power, J. O'C.
Leatham, W. H.	Price, Sir R. G.
Lee, H.	Pugh, L. P.
Leeman, J. J.	Pulley, J.
Lefevre, right hon. G. J. S.	Ralli, P.
	Ramsden, Sir J.
Leigh, hon. G. H. C.	Rathbone, W.
Leighton, Sir B.	Reed, Sir E. J.
Lewis, C. E.	Reid, R. T.
Litton, E. F.	Rendel, S.
Lloyd, M.	Richard, H.
Lusk, Sir A.	Richardson, J. N.
Lymington, Viscount	Richardson, T.
Lyons, R. D.	Roberts, J.
Macartney, J. W. E.	Robertson, H.
Macdonald, A.	Rogers, J. E. T.
Mackie, R. B.	Roundell, C. S.
Mackintosh, C. F.	Russell, Lord A.
Macliver, P. S.	Russell, C.
Macnaghten, E.	Russell, G. W. E.
M`Arthur, A.	Rylands, P.
M'Arthur, W.	St. Aubyn, Sir J.
M'Clure, Sir T.	Samuelson, B.
M'Coan J. C.	Samuelson, H.
M'Intyre, Æneas J.	Seely, C. (Lincoln)
M'Lagan, P.	Seely, C. (Nottingham)
M'Laren, C. B. B.	Shaw, W.
M'Laren, J.	Sheridan, H. B.
Magniac, C.	Shield, H.
Maitland, W. F.	Simon, Serjeant J.
Mappin, F. T.	Slagg, J.
Marjoribanks, Sir D. C.	Smith, E.
Marjoribanks, E.	Smyth, P. J.
Marriott, W. T.	Spencer, hon. C. R.
Martin, P.	Stanley, hon. E. L.
Martin, R. B.	Stansfeld, rt. hon. J.
Mason, H.	Stanton, W. J.
Massey, rt. hon. W. N.	Stevenson, J. C.
Maxwell-Heron, J.	Stewart, J.
Meldon, C. H.	Storey, S.
Milbank F. A.	Story-Maskelyne, M. H.
Monk, C. J.	Stuart, H. V.
Moore, A.	Summers, W.
Moreton, Lord	Synan, E. J.
Morgan, rt. hn. G. G.	Talbot, C. R. M.
Morley, A.	Tavistock, Marquess of
Morley, S.	Taylor, P. A.
Mulholland, J.	Tennant, C.
Mundella, rt. hon. A. J.	Thomason, J. P.
Nicholson, W.	Thompson, T. C.
Noel, E.	Thomson, M.
O'Beirne, Major F.	Tillett, J. H.

Torrens, W. T. M'C.	Williams, B. T.
Tracy, hon. F. S. A. Hanbury-	Williams, S. C. E.
	Williamson, S.
Trevelyan, G. O.	Willis, W.
Villiers, rt. hon. C. P.	Wills, W. H.
Vivian, A. P.	Willyams, E. W. B.
Vivian, H.H.	Wilson, C. H,
Wallace, Sir R.	Wilson, I.
Walter, J.	Wilson, Sir M.
Waterlow, Sir S.	Wodehouse, E. R.
Waugh, E.	Woodall, W.
Webster, Dr. J.	Woolf, S.
Wedderburn, Sir D.
Whalley, G. H.	TELLERS.
Whitbread, S.	Grosvenor, Lord R.
Whitworth, B.	Kensington, Lord.
Wiggin, H.

NOES.
Amherst, W. A. T.	Feilden, Major-General R. J.
Ashmead-Bartlett, E.
Aylmer, Capt. J. E. F.	Fellowes, W. H.
Bailey, Sir J. R.	Fenwick-Bisset, M.
Balfour, A. J.	Filmer, Sir E.
Barttelot, Sir W. B.	Finch, G. H.
Beach, rt. hn. Sir M.H.	Fitzpatrick, hn.B.E.B.
Beach, W. W. B.	Floyer, J.
Bective, Earl of	Folkestone, Viscount
Bentinck, rt. hn. G. C.	Forester, C. T. W.
Birkbeck, E.	Foster, W. H.
Blackburne, Col. J. I.	Fowler, R. N.
Boord, T. W.	Fremantle, hon. T. F.
Bourke, right hon. R.	Galway, Viscount
Brise, Colonel R.	Gardner, R. Richardson
Broadley, W. H. H.
Brodrick, hon. W. St.J. F.	Garnier, J. C.
	Gibson, rt. hon. E.
Bruce, hon. T.	Giffard, Sir H. S.
Burghley, Lord	Goldney, Sir G.
Burnaby, General E. S.	Gore-Langton, W. S.
Burrell, Sir W. W.	Gorst, J. E.
Cameron, D.	Greene, E.
Campbell, J. A.	Gregory, G. B.
Carden, Sir R. W.	Halsey, T. F.
Cecil, Lord E. H. B. G.	Hamilton, Lord C. J.
Chaplin, H.	Hamilton, I. T.
Christie, W. L.	Harcourt, E. W.
Churchill, Lord R.	Harvey, Sir R. B.
Clarke, E.	Hay, rt. hon. Admiral Sir J. C. D.
Clive, Col. hon. G. W.
Cobbold, T. C.	Herbert, hon. S.
Cole, Viscount	Hicks E.
Compton, F.	Hill, A. S.
Cotton, W. J. R.	Hinchingbrook, Visc.
Cross, rt. hon. Sir R. A.	Holker, Sir J.
Cubitt, rt. hon. G.	Holland, Sir H. T.
Dalrymple, C.	Home, Lt.-Col. D. M.
Davenport, W. B.	Hope, rt hn. A. J. B. A.J.B.B.
Dawnay, Col. hn. L. P.	Jackson, W. L.
De Worms, Baron H.	Johnstone, Sir F.
Digby, Col. hon. E.	Kennard, Col. E. H.
Dixon-Hartland, F. D.	Kennaway, Sir J. H.
Donaldson-Hudson, C.	Knight, F. W.
Douglas, A. Akers-	Lawrence, Sir T.
Dyke, rt. hn. Sir W. H.	Legh W. J.
Eaton, H. W.	Leighton, S.
Egerton, hon. W.	Lennox, Lord H. G.
Elliot, G. W.	Levett, T. J.
Emlyn, Viscount	Lewisham, Viscount
Ennis, Sir J.	Lindsay, Col. R. L.
Estcourt, G. S.	Loder, R.
Ewing, A. O.	Long, W. H.

Lopes, Sir M.	St. Aubyn, W. M.
Lowther, hon. W.	Sandon, Viscount
Mac Iver, D.	Schreiber, C.
M'Garel-Hogg, Sir J.	Sclater-Booth,rt.hn.G.
Makins, Colonel W. T.	Scott, Lord H.
Manners, rt. hn. Lord J.	Scott, M. D.
March, Earl of	Selwin-Ibbetson, Sir H. J.
Master' T. W. C.
Maxwell, Sir H. E.	Severne, J. E.
Miles, Sir P. J. W.	Smith, A.
Mills, Sir C. H.	Smith, rt. hon. W. H.
Monckton, F.	Stanhope, hon. E.
Morgan, hon. F.	Stanley, rt. hn. Col. F.
Moss, R.	Storer, G.
Mowbray,rt.hn.SirJ.R.	Sykes, C.
Murray, C. J.	Talbot, J. G.
Newport, Viscount	Taylor, rt. hn. Col. T.E.
Nicholson, W. N.	Thornhill, T.
Noel, rt. hon. G. J.	Thynne, Lord. H. F.
Northcote, H. S.	Tollemache, H. J.
Northcote, rt. hn. Sir S. H.	Tollemache, hon. W. F.
	Tyler, Sir H. W.
Onslow, D.	Walrond, Col. W. H.
Paget, R. H.	Warburton, P. E.
Palliser, Sir W.	Warton, C. N.
Peek, Sir H. W.	Watney, J.
Pemberton, E. L.	Whitley, E.
Percy, Earl	Williams, Colonel O.
Phipps, C. N. P.	Wilmot, Sir H.
Phipps, P.	Wilmot, Sir J. E.
Plunket, rt. hon. D. R.	Winn, R.
Puleston, A. H.	Wolff, Sir H. D.
Rankin, J.	Wortley, C. B. Stuart-
Rendlesham, Lord	Wroughton, P.
Repton, G. W.	Wyndham, hon. P.
Ridley, Sir M. W.	Yorke, J. R.
Rolls, J. A.
Ross, A. H.	TELLERS.
Ross, C. C.	Elcho, Lord.
Round, J.	Tottenham, A. L.

Main Question put, and agreed to.

Bill read a second time, and committed for Thursday next.