MOTION OF CENSURE.

HC Deb 24 May 1881 vol 261 cc1214-62

ADJOURNED DEBATE. [SECOND NIGHT.]

Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Question [23rd May], That, in the opinion of this House, the action of the Irish Executive in arbitrarily arresting a Member of the House without reasonable ground; in proclaiming a state of siege in Dublin; in imprisoning the Rey. Mr. Sheehy and many other men of high character and good conduct; and in affording the use of the armed forces of the Crown for the wholesale execution of wanton and cruel evictions is an abuse of the exceptional powers conferred by Parliament; and is calculated to promote disaffection in Ireland."—(Mr. Justin M'Carthy.)

Question again proposed.

Debate resumed.

MR. O'DONNELL

said, he felt bound to express his deep regret and that of the whole Irish Party that, owing to circumstances which might have been prevented by the Government, the admirable speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) had been delivered in circumstances which rendered it impossible that it could be read and appreciated by the country at large. He (Mr. O'Donnell) certainly thought that, when after weeks of solicitation from Irish Members, forced out of a sense of common justice by Members of the House not belonging to the Irish Party, the Government at length accepted the challenge of the Irish Party, it was incumbent upon them to allow the Mover of the Resolution to bring his Motion forward at a time which permitted of its being properly laid before the country. He trusted that no political Party, if it had to face similar circumstances in Ireland, would follow the precedent of the present Government. Rarely had so important a statement as that of his hon. Friend been made in such unfavourable circumstances, and never had a statement of a similar character been characterized by such moderation and calmness; and, in supporting the Motion of his hon. Friend, he (Mr. O'Donnell) should also endea- vour to treat it with as much moderation of language and as much calmness in every respect as could be fairly expected from an Irish Member who had to raise his voice against—he had almost said outrages—against misconduct as grave as that of which Her Majesty's Government had been guilty in Ireland. The Motion specifically impeached the conduct of the Government. They were impeached for their ungenerous, unmanly, unconstitutional arrest of the senior Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), while on his way to plead the cause of his constituents in Parliament; and on a pretext which, in the face of long indulgence, which for purposes of their own they had extended to him, certainly seemed to constitute an act of unfairness of the very gravest description. Their conduct was also impeached on account of the arrest of a most respected Catholic clergyman, patriotic, indeed, and bound to the interests of his flock as Catholic clergymen have been for generations—a clergyman who, to his honour be it said, had expressed in feeling language the wrongs of his people, and whose sole desire was to bring about a removal of the evils they endured by a combination within the limits of legal agitation. The removal of leaders such as Father Sheehy and others by the Government must lead to deplorable results, and would lead the wretched peasants to the direction of leaders of a very different description. The Government, again, were impeached for the misuse they had made of the extraordinary measures intrusted to them. They had originally declared their purpose was to use the Coercion Law against the perpetrators of outrages; but, at the onset, they had used it against the chosen leaders of the Irish people, men of acknowledged worth, respectability, and moderation; and finally the Government, and the Chief Secretary for Ireland in particular, were impeached as being the authors of a Circular worthy of the worst days of a Mouravieff in Poland, a Circular which was an outrage and a disgrace to the English name, and which cast a most unmerited stigma on the great body of the Royal Irish Constabulary, which it had been the object of every former Government to hold up to praise and honour in the House—and all this because the Chief Secretary for Ireland had grown sensitive under the reproaches repeatedly addressed to him for the blunders of his Administration. He therefore took the poor resource to bully his subordinates into a course that looked very much like a direction towards the preparation of unreliable evidence. He (Mr. O'Donnell) did not desire to treat this as a Party question, for he freely acknowledged the good-will existing towards Ireland among the Liberal Party, and their earnest desire to introduce a fundamental amelioration of the land system of Ireland; and in their hearts the English and Irish Conservative Party must feel themselves deeply interested in the remedy of Irish grievances and the introduction of real reforms. Nothing could be more suicidal than that the territorial Party should offer a blind resistance to the claims of the Irish tenantry, for if such a course was followed the territorial Party would reap the bitterest consequences in the near future. The phrase under which the Government covered their attacks on individual liberty in Ireland, and under which they attempted to justify their arbitrary arrests, was "the necessity of restraining incitements to violations of the law;" and taking the Irish land system in all its quibbles and technicalities, he would admit that the Irish tenantry, and those who supported their claims, were not acting in a strictly legal sense in resisting the evicting law of Ireland. If the Government would come forward and say that, technically speaking, a group of landed proprietors possessed a perfect legal right to clear the soil of Ireland of its inhabitants, there could be no defence to such an exposition of the law. But as the land system in Ireland had been condemned by none more severely than by the right hon. Gentlemen sitting on the Treasury Bench, and as it was their avowed object to put an end to the evils of the existing system, the Government, he (Mr. O'Donnell) held, were debarred by their own action from laying a weighty stress upon the violations of the law which they alleged were committed by the leaders of the Irish peasantry. He was there to boast that it was the object of the central and local leaders of the tenant Party in the Land League to bring about, pending the passing of a remedial measure, such a reduction of rents in Ireland as would enable the people to hold on till the advent of that blessed time which the Government bade them expect. Technically speaking, it might be illegal for the Irish tenants to combine for the purpose of obtaining a reduction in rents. Seen, however, from any other point of view than that of strict, unbending law, the right of the tenants to combine against the exaction of excessive rents could not be gainsaid. Assuming that Mr. Dillon, Father Sheehy, and other most respectable men who had been swept into the Bastilles of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford had declared that the Irish tenantry, after so many years of distress and excessive rents, were entitled to demand that rents should be lowered to the extent of 20, 30, 40, and on some estates of 50 per cent—assuming all that, what, he would ask, had been the action of the tenants of England and of the landlords of England? Was it not a fact that the landlords throughout the length and breadth of England were granting to their tenantry a greater reduction than was demanded from the rack-renting landlords of Ireland by the leaders of a miserable and starving peasantry? In order to bear out what he had said, he would refer hon. Members to the investigations of Mr. Sturge, of Birmingham, to show what great reductions had recently been made in rents in Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Shropshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, Somersetshire, Wiltshire, and other counties. If the Irish Leaders who asked for reductions varying from 25 to 75 per cent had uttered strong words in the heat of their indignation, it should be remembered that they were inflamed by the recollection of generations of misery, starvation, and neglected appeals. Their action might be due to this cause—that they knew by experience that, unless they should succeed in vividly arresting the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the probability was that he would fail to perceive that the remedy of Irish grievances could come within the range of practical politics. When an agricultural crisis confronted the landlords of England, they did not come snivelling to that House to ask for coercion; and he would ask the Constitutional and agricultural Party of England in that House, why should they hand to the Irish landowners in this severe strain of the Irish nation Bills for coercion and rack-renting, which, to their honour be it said, they would scorn and thrust from themselves? He was content to ask English landlords to treat the Irish tenantry as they were ready to treat their own tenantry; but he protested against their treating the Irish tenantry worse than they treated the comparatively prosperous tenantry of England, and he protested against a Liberal Ministry, which advertised to the four quarters of the world its burning sympathy with the oppressed, inflicting on Ireland a land system 50 times worse than existed in England. There would be little or no cause for a land agitation and organization in Ireland if the Irish landowners would come forward with reductions of 20, 50, and 60, and 70 per cent, as was done by the same class in England. The thing being rightly considered, the landowners and the cultivators of the soil were in the same boat, and it was only because of the stolid and stupid policy which forced the landlord to be the enemy of himself and of the tenant, that the Government, professing a special zeal for Ireland, declined to bring forward a single measure to bridge over the interval which must elapse before their remedial measures could be expected to bear any fruit. That was the only way in which the slightest excuse could be urged for them; and in consequence of it the Irish tenantry had to form their organization and combination; but he denied that the sad necessity to which they were reduced gave colour to the misapprehension of the law which had been perpetuated month after month by the most fair-seeming Chief Secretary for Ireland that ever sat on the Treasury Bench. But the right hon. Gentleman, who would, no doubt, speak in the course of the debate, would, he (Mr. O'Donnell) would venture to predict, no doubt exhibit all those quiverings of indignation with which the House was so familiar, and would endeavour to get behind his subornation of evidence Circular by drawing attention to the monstrous proceedings of a starving tenantry who were guilty of the crime of asking for a reduction of their rack-rent to the amount of 50, 60, or 70 per cent. The right hon. Gentleman, no doubt, imagined that he would be licensed by the House to imitate the practices of Russia, because of his own negligence or inability to perceive the real force and weight of the crisis in Ireland. He (Mr. O'Donnell) was not the man to deny that a certain amount of suffering had fallen on the members of the landlord class in Ireland; but, to a very large extent, it was the action of the landowning class in Ireland that had accelerated and accentuated the crisis from which the landlords were now suffering in that country. But the sufferings of the Irish landowners were in no way peculiar. The landlords of England were being deprived of their revenue—they were having their incomes cut down to the most modest proportions, in consequence of what had been admitted as the real inability of their tenants to pay their rents; but the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford would attribute the reduction in the incomes of the Irish landlords to the feigned inability of the poor Irish tenants to pay their rents. ["Hear, hear!"] But if English tenants were unable to pay, surely, à fortiori, Irish tenants were unable to pay; and it was admitted on both sides of the House that owing to circumstances in Ireland the inability of the tenant to pay was greater than was the case in England. Were they to have nothing but this Coercion Bill, for which an English landlord never would have asked to enable him to deal with his tenants, for the wretched Irish tenants, and was it to be rendered still more objectionable by the manner in which it was applied? Would no one point out to the Government that the true solution of the difficulty was by way of conciliation? Would a soldiery evicting the people by the sabre, and at the point of the bayonet, and terrorizing them by their guns, prove a remedy? Could such a policy sow anything but the seeds of abiding discontent and disturbance? Notwithstanding the prejudice which had prevented the English agricultural Party from looking at the Irish agricultural situation as they would look upon their own, that Party had suggested as a help to reform in Ireland that large and bounteous measures should be given to Irish industries, and that something should be done to relieve the existing misery pending a reform of the agricultural system. He (Mr. O'Donnell) was not going to say how far that would go to remedy the existing state of things; but it would, at all events, bridge the present distress. If the Government did not wish to treat the question as a Party one, let them get rid of that jealousy of the Land League, which had done so much without them. It would then be easy for the Government to tide over the present crisis, and instead of having the interval between the old bad system and the promised good system filled up with an increase of misery and wretchedness, the crisis would be passed over in a manner that would commend itself to the universal approbation of the people of the Three Kingdoms. But the Government had done nothing, nor tried to do anything. Though apparently impotent for the purposes of good, they had the power of doing immense evil; but what, he would ask, would be the policy of a wise Government in dealing with the Irish tenant, who, it might be assumed, had been reduced to a state of unavoidable and innocent bankruptcy? A wise Government would propose a composition. Why should there not be some offer of a loan on the security of the tenant right—something that would give breathing time to the harassed tenant and the straitened owner, and put a stop to the state of war now existing? It was, he freely owned, both the object of such men as Mr. Dillon and Father Sheehy and others, both lay and clerical in Ireland, to obtain for the tenant such a reduction of rent as would enable him to live. If the Irish landowners had treated their tenants with the same generosity as English landlords, and given their tenants reductions of 30 or 40 per cent, the Land League would not have been under the necessity of making the demands it had made. If, because the senior Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) was driven to organize the people in the absence of any measure to bridge over the interval against bad landlords and to organize them to resist excessive rents, and to stand by one another in a demand for large reductions proportionate to the necessity of the crisis, and to fix upon those who were endeavouring to perpetuate misery and disunion in the popular ranks the stigma of moral excommunication, was such a man to be torn from his Constitutional duties in that House, or, as in the case of Father Sheehy, from exercising his sacred functions as protector and guide of his flock? The Prime Minister could forget his habitual courtesy when Irish Members told him that, at the moment of his arrest, Mr. Dillon was on his way to that House to lay before it the enor- mous mass of evidence he had collected as to the condition of the Irish peasantry and the insufficiency of the Government Land Bill. It was well known in Ireland that such was Mr. Dillon's intention, and nothing could clear the Government from the "most reasonable suspicion," that they arrested Mr. Dillon because he was a powerful adversary of their policy within the walls of Parliament, and not because he was a bitter denunciator of their shortcomings on the hillsides of Tipperary. There was nothing which Mr. Dillon had said or done for days immediately previous to his arrest which he had not said or done weeks and weeks before. At the very commencement of the operation of the Coercion Act, he challenged the Government to bring him to every kind of trial for recommending "Boycotting" to the Irish peasantry; but day was added to day and week was added to week, and Mr. Dillon was allowed to continue his way throughout Ireland so long as he was creating what the Government called an incendiary spirit in Ireland—so long as he indirectly contributed to that panic which the Government hoped would induce the House of Commons to swallow any kind of Land Bill whatever; so long as he played the tactical game of the Government, he was not molested; there was free course for all the incendiary doctrines he could disseminate. But no sooner was it discovered that he was on his way to that House, with all the prestige of his position as a darling leader of the Irish peasantry, to denounce the shortcomings of the Land Bill, than all of a sudden it occurred to the ingenuous mind of the Chief Secretary for Ireland that the hon. Member was an incendiary agent whom it was dangerous to leave at large, and that it was necessary to keep him from further contaminating the minds of the Irish peasantry, and he, therefore, had him confined in Kilmainham Gaol. It might serve the purpose of the Government to put the right hon. Gentleman in the forefront of the battle, and count upon his appearance of respectability, and the appearance of respectability went a long way with the British mind—his venerable aspect as the Parliamentary Aristides—to induce the House to believe that there was no sinister motive behind the arrest of Mr. Dillon, and thus suddenly terminating his career. But the Irish Members, at least, knew at what to estimate the ingenuousness of the right hon. Gentleman. Not for whole the world would he do anything of which he could be ashamed; not for all the world would he whisper a counsel that he would blush to acknowledge in the face of day; not for all the world would he beg his subordinates to do a thing and keep it dark. No; the right hon. Gentleman they knew was incapable of subterfuge; and doubtless the House would believe him with undoubting, childlike faith—he (Mr. O'Donnell) would not say credulity—when he declared that nothing but consideration for the safety of Ireland, and not of the fate of the Government over the Land Bill, inspired his summary and extraordinary arrest of the most dangerous opponent of the land legislation of the Government. As for Father Sheehy, he had denounced the wrongdoing of the Irish landlords in about the same terms as Archbishop Croke. But Father Sheehy was a Roman Catholic curate; and the right hon. Gentleman, in his ignorance of Irish sentiment, imagined, doubtless, that it was safer to lay hands on a curate than on an Archbishop. The cowardly act, as it turned out, however, was not safe, for the arrest of Father Sheehy had produced a more widespread feeling against the Government than would have been caused had they had the courage to lay hands on the venerated Archbishop of Cashel. Father Sheehy, no doubt, used strong language. But was he not an eye-witness of the black work of eviction going on in his district, were not the estates of Coote and Townsend in his neighbourhood, and did not all the best feelings of his nature prompt him to utter burning words against the tyrants who were making Ireland an opprobrium to England—aye, and a danger to the British Empire? The Government imagined they were safe in casting these men into Kilmainham; but they were, as it were, only ripples on the shore of the ocean of revolution which the Government had to face in Ireland, but it would burst in thunderous surges thousands of miles from their shores. And not only did they impeach the Government for the arrest of Mr. Dillon and Father Sheehy, but they maintained that the general character of the arrests was a breach of the covenant which the Government made with the House when they asked for powers to imprison "dissolute ruffians" and "midnight marauders," the men arrested being, for the most part, leaders of a Constitutional agitation. A respectable shopkeeper in a district in Donegal, who was president of the local Land League, for exerting his influence to procure a satisfactory arrangement for 80 tenants whom their landlord had threatened to evict, was denounced by a sub-inspector and thrown into gaol. It appeared from the statement of the Mansion House Committee that, in the district in question, on the 1st of March last year, there were 2,550 persons in distress, and yet the landlord referred to proposed to throw 80 additional families on the world. In another part of Donegal, on the 1st of March last year, there were 900 individuals in the receipt of relief. They actually subsisted upon 7 lb. of Indian meal for a week. Yet these were the districts in which landlords had carried out their heartless policy of eviction. If a district in England came within a measurable distance of such misery, was there an English landlord who would carry out eviction in such a region? Yet the English Liberal Party lectured farmers on their indifference to the tenantry. The Liberal Government carried out coercion in Ireland in order to aid the eviction of tenants a thousand times more wretched than tenants to be found in any district in England. He now came to the consideration of the remarkable Circular issued by the right hon. Gentleman to the Irish Constabulary. Since Her Majesty's Government had gone the length of opening private letters, might they not go the length of stopping the transmission of publications in which the Circular of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford appeared? If they were not ashamed to do that act at home, let them, at least, be ashamed to allow Europe to know the intense hypocrisy of liberating Liberalism. The Inspector General of the Irish Constabulary issued the Circular to all his subordinates on the 7th of the present month. The right hon. Gentleman began by recommending that that document Was not to leave the hands of the county inspector to whom it was addressed, and must be kept under lock and key, adding that— Any orders given to insure the instructions in it being carried out must be communicated verbally. He (Mr. O'Donnell) presumed that that was Latin for a whisper; when practicable, the sub-inspectors, head and other constables, would be trusted to do that class of work, and it was to be communicated as emanating from the county inspectors themselves. The pure hand of the right hon. Member for Bradford must not be seen in that dirty proceeding; therefore, he seemed to have introduced into Irish administration the character recently prominent in connection with bribery at elections—"the Man in the Moon," and, perhaps, in addition to all his other titles he would condescend to accept that new one. What, it might fairly be asked, would have been the action of the Government if that Circular had not almost miraculously come to the knowledge of the House through hon. Members from Ireland? Some Irish Member, seeing something inexplicable in these arrests, might have got up and asked the First Lord of the Treasury what was the reason for that sudden increase of arrests—that sudden conflagration of reasonable suspicion in Ireland? Would the Prime Minister have answered that it was because the local authorities, acting on their own judgment, had seen the necessity of those arrests, and would he have repudiated the insinuation that Her Majesty's Government had instigated and stimulated the action of the police and their spies in Ireland? Would he not have reminded the House that the Government had pledged themselves that, so far from stimulating those arrests, they would carefully supervise the reports of the local informers and spies, and exercise a restraining and purifying control? It was on the faith of declarations that in case of necessity they would stand between the Irish people and their local denouncers that the Government got the Coercion Act passed. Would the Chief Secretary for Ireland have sat still and allowed his Leader unconsciously to palm off such a deception as that upon the House? Or would the Chief Secretary for Ireland have nudged the Prime Minister and whispered to him—"Say it was all the work of the local agents. I told them to do it; but that must not be let out?" He could not think that those two Ministers would have been guilty of playing an ignoble comedy of that kind. And yet what was to be the interpretation put upon a vile Circular of that description? The Chief Secretary for Ireland proceeded to authorize his Inspector General to say that he deemed it Absolutely necessary to convey to the county inspectors his disappointment that the police had been unable, in the majority of instances, either to give ground of reasonable suspicion as to who were the perpetrators of outrages, or as to those who instigated them and used inflammatory language." Now, the Irish Constabulary had stood the crisis of the temptations of the Fenian insurrection; they bore on their caps, by special grace, the letters which indicated that they were a Royal Irish Constabulary; they had been the champions of everything fair and open according to the idea of the Government of Ireland; they had shown, as the most thorough-going Irish patriots must admit, the most wonderful fidelity to their salt. Yet that Constabulary were now censured and sneered at as hidden traitors, and as being false to their salt, their wages, and their oaths, by the right hon. Gentleman in his desire to parade a number of arrests by which to meet some of his critics in the House of Commons. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say that— It was most difficult to conceive that the police, with the local knowledge they possessed of the character and habits of the people among whom they lived, were not oftener in a position to know at least some of those who were the perpetrators of those outrages; but that it was still more difficult to understand that they failed in so many instances to give ground of reasonable suspicion against them. Granted, said the right hon. Gentleman, that they did not know who were the perpetrators of outrages, but it was quite inexcusable that they did not trump up some "reasonable grounds of suspicion." The right hon. Gentleman went on to say that "the most active leaders and instigators of the popular movement were well known to the police." How did the right hon. Gentleman know what was well known in Ireland? Let them mark the chaste beauty of the expression of a Liberal in Office, "the instigators of the popular movement." What a marvellous difference there was between the style of a Liberal Leader on the stump and in Opposition, and his style when in the enjoyment of the sweets of Office with £4,000 a-year. There were no longer any burning denunciations of the evils inflicted by a Tory majority and an abominable aristocracy. Such was the marvellous change that had come over the mind of the right hon. Gentleman since he took his seat on these Benches. Surely, out of sympathy for the right hon. Gentleman in his present decadency, they must allow him a temporary repose in a scene blessed with a more bracing atmosphere than seemed to pervade official positions. Perhaps, when once more in the cool shade of Opposition, the moral sense of the right hon. Gentleman might again ascend the height from which he thundered against the iniquities of Lord Beaconsfield's policy. The Circular was an insult of the most offensive character to the Irish Constabulary. When the right hon. Gentleman informed the Force that he was unable to understand how it was it so often happened that the constables could not attach any reasonable suspicion against individuals as instigators, he was simply accusing the Irish Constabulary as a body of being accomplices and shelterers of the "dissolute ruffians" whom he had so often trotted out on the floor of that House. The inspector General—that was, the right hon. Member for Bradford—who was only the speaking trumpet of certain other persons, said he could only express An earnest hope that the energies of both the officers and men would be used to wipe out what must appear a reproach on their efficiency as preservers of the peace and detectors of crime. If that Circular had been issued by a Prefect of Police under the Third Empire, or by a chief of the Third Section in St. Petersburg, it would be denounced as a deliberate instruction to forge evidence. In fact, the direct instructions to the Constabulary were to forge evidence. That was the only explanation which could be placed on the Circular in face of the previously declared fact that the Constabulary had no reasonable suspicion. The right hon. Gentleman admitted, within the four quarters of the Circular, that the Constabulary had no reasonable suspicion, and yet he said to them by it—"I do not believe you. You must have suspicion. You are shamming; you are lying." And having said that in secret, the right hon. Gentleman did all in his power to escape responsibility. If they had asked the right hon. Gentleman about this Circular, for a copy of it, did the House suppose he would have admitted that it had been issued? No, he would have declined to give any information whatever; he would have taken refuge behind his official immunity and personal respectability. Under these instructions, the police would be entitled to conclude that a little extra zeal on the part of those in search of promotion would be looked upon with a kindly eye by the right hon. Gentleman. The county inspectors were to instruct the sub-inspectors the sub-inspectors the constables, and the constables their subordinates, that it was their duty to discover reasonable suspicion against the perpetrators of outrage, and if not against them against men like Father Sheehy, and they were further to understand that the parental eye of the Chief Secretary was upon them. It was absolutely impossible to extenuate the character of that Circular, except on one ground, upon which the Irish Party were prepared to extenuate the policy of the right hon. Gentleman with respect to Ireland—namely, a combination of ignorance, and an overweening self-confidence such as was rarely seen in the Liberal Party. It was intended that this Circular should be concealed from Parliament and the country; and he hoped that English public opinion, as well as Irish public opinion, would declare that a more mischievous and discreditable document was never unearthed from the State archives of British relations with Ireland. The Government complained that there was lawlessness and outrage in Ireland, and said that this was the result of the instigation of certain persons. This only showed the ignorance of the Government with regard to the affairs of Ireland. The peasants of Ireland, whose lot had been rendered intolerable by famine and eviction, needed no instigation. In 99 cases out of 100 the outrages in Ireland were committed from a sense of unendurable misery—from a sense of impending ruin and death, to which the Government showed themselves utterly insensible. What instigation was required to induce the gathering of an angry, furious crowd to hoot a process-server, guarded by 100 soldiers, engaged in spreading writs of eviction? He considered the Government had broken their pledges to Parliament. Instead of acting as a restraining and controlling power, instead of protecting the miserable peasantry of Ireland from their legal oppressors, the Government had actually descended to the mean and miserable position of inciters and instigators of informers and information-layers of all descriptions. If they had similar conditions in England they would not look for instigation. They would look for the remedy and apply it. But Government had not a single project before the House to meet the present urgent wants of the Irish tenantry during the interval that must elapse before they could legislate on the Land Question; and they fell back upon an instrument of coercion that English landlords would be ashamed to apply to English tenants, and, he hoped, English landlords would be ashamed to apply to Irish tenants. If there was a guarantee that justice would be done to Irish tenants, and fair play given to the landlords—even the fair play that the Land League gave them—there would be an end of outrages; but the circulation of a Circular of this kind, hounding on 12,000 constables to forge evidence against inoffensive persons, would not bring peace to Ireland or credit to Her Majesty's Government.

MR. LITTON

said, the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell) had addressed the House for about two hours, and if all the hon. Member's 12 or 14 Colleagues proposed to follow his example, the debate would rival the debates on the Coercion Act, which wasted the time of the House for two months. ["No, no!"] If their object was not to keep back the Land Bill, they would endeavour to close the debate, and look forward to a division that evening; but if, on the other hand, they wanted to delay the progress of that measure, they would waste the whole time allowed for the discussion of this subject, in order that the right hon. Gentleman, who was so persistently attacked, might have no opportunity of replying to the accusations made against him. It was his (Mr. Litton's) duty, and the duty of those Irish Members who differed from the 32 or 33 followers of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), to state boldly, and at the earliest possible period in the debate, that they differed entirely from the charges that had been brought forward by the hon. Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) both with respect to details and principle. Reference was made to the English landlords, and a comparison with Irish landlords sought to be instituted, but that comparison did not apply; for if the relations were the same the ground would be cut from under the Land Bill. The Government had been charged with the responsibility of having brought about disorder in Ireland. He ventured to say, although he sat on the Government side of the House, that the country and the House were fully acquainted with the position of affairs in Ireland, and they would recognize that the whole responsibility of putting class against class rested upon the Land League itself, and not upon Her Majesty's Government—["No, no!"]—and no Government could have acted differently, having due regard to the maintenance of law and order. The hon. Member for Longford, in his speech, had stated that the action of the Government had been to set class against class. But it was simply an abuse of terms to speak in that way. He (Mr. Litton) would ask whence had that opposition between class and class, and all the horrible disorder and misery now happening in Ireland, arisen? It had arisen from hon. Gentlemen opposite, from the teaching of the hon. Member for the City of Cork, and those who followed him. They spoke of a national strike against rent, and advised the people to obey their leaders in everything, and some members of the Land League had said—"Give us rifles, and we will soon free the country of landlords." He had read in The Times that morning the last teachings of the Land League. At a meeting held in County Roscommon, Mr. Kettle, in addressing a meeting of the Land League, had asked the people whether they were prepared to obey a national edict against the payment of any rents; and the answer was that they were ready to obey anything. After that, could the hon. Member for Longford stand up in his place in the House, and, putting his hand on his heart, justify his statement that the Government were setting class against class? Had the hon. Member read history so badly as to be unable to see that the setting of class against class was due to the teaching of hon. Mem- bers opposite? Ever since he (Mr. Litton) had taken part in public life, he had protested against the agitation going on in Ireland, and had warned the people that while they had a just cause in demanding a reform of the Irish Land Laws they were ruining it by following the guidance of such men as the leaders of the Land League. He was amused at the air of injured innocence assumed by hon. Members opposite. He did not believe they were in earnest, or believed in their own language or action, though he would except the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy), who was in earnest in all that he did. Hon. Members opposite complained of the Coercion Act; but he (Mr. Litton) maintained that it was the action of the Land League which had rendered that Act necessary, and the Government would be abandoning their duty if they did not put it down. He could not imagine how hon. Members opposite, with sober faces, could get up and attack the conduct of the Government as they had done. What were the charges formulated by the hon. Member for Longford? They were, he believed, four in number. First, the action of the Government in arresting Mr. Dillon; secondly, in arresting Mr. Sheehy; thirdly, in employing the police force in support of the law; and, fourthly, in their use of the Constabulary in order to carry out wholesale evictions. No doubt, the arrests of Mr. Dillon and Mr. Sheehy were the real questions, without which the debate could not have arisen; and he supposed hon. Members opposite would adopt a similar course on each fresh arrest, a having a debate which would last three or four days, and so occupy the entire time of the House, to the exclusion of all remedial legislation. If a man broke the law, no matter what his religious or political position, he should be made amenable; and his conclusion was, that the Government should arrest all suspected persons at once, and so have only one debate on the subject. Could it be said that a man was placed above the law by being a Member of that House, or being ordained a priest? The mission of the priest ought to be one of peace. He believed it was so in the Roman Catholic Church, and the Archbishop of Dublin had given wise counsel to the priesthood. He believed priests were forbidden to interfere in temporal matters. ["No, no!"] Well, if not, in what direction ought they to lead the people? To refuse to pay their rents? To resist legal process? He thought, not. Whoever advised others to resist the law must take the consequences of their acts, and the Government would have shown themselves unworthy of their position if they had hesitated to arrest either priest or laymen, or made any distinction as to political or religious position or convictions when people were encouraging others to a breach of the law. He could not lend himself to believe that the Motion was brought before the House seriously. If it was, every honest man on both sides of the House was bound to support the Government in the maintenance of law; and if they were bound to do so, the Government would be unworthy of the confidence of the Liberal Party, or of any other Party in that House, if they failed to maintain the law. He found that the Representatives of the present agitation in Ireland were willing to support its views in that House; but outside that House they had failed to place themselves in the position of their followers, and so accept the responsibility of their conduct. He must, therefore, give his support to the Government.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

Sir, I am glad I did not stand between the House and the able and manly speech of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Tyrone (Mr. Litton). But the reason why I did not rise immediately after the speech of the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell) was, that I hoped he would have been followed by some Gentleman acting with him, and that then I should have heard some argument, and not have had merely to reply to the hon. Member's personalities. I rise now, without waiting further, because I am very anxious that the sense of the House should be taken to-day, and I know very well that if I were to put off what I have to say, it would be said that no time was given to reply, and consequently there would be an effort to postpone the division, and to prevent the House from expressing its opinion upon this Motion. I do not think I need dwell much upon the speech of the hon. Member for Dungarvan. There was no attempt on his part to prove the allegations contained in the Resolution. But there were remarks upon another matter which I wish fully to dwell upon before I sit down. As far as the actual Resolution itself is concerned, in the hon. Member's speech there are only one or two bold statements, without any attempt at proof, and a great part of his address consisted of a description of the agricultural depression in England. Now, I will turn to the Resolution itself. I will occupy the House as short a time as I can; but as I fear I must occupy some time in what I have to say I will deal with the charges in the Resolution seriatim. The first of these charges condemns the Irish Executive for arbitrarily arresting a Member of this House without reasonable grounds. Now, I will give the grounds upon which the Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) was arrested. But in doing so I must say that I do not give that information—I could not give it, and the majority of the House will not expect me to give that information—with regard to a person arrested, simply because he happens to be a Member of Parliament. There ought to be no respect of persons before the law, because they happen to be Members of this House. I will state the grounds upon which, in compliance with the opinions expressed by large and decided majorities of this House, I have refused hitherto to give the reasons for arrests, beyond repeating what was stated in the actual terms of the Warrant of the Lord Lieutenant. There were three reasons why we thought it necessary to take that course, and why the House of Commons agreed with us that it should be taken. First, there was this reason—and it was the chief reason—we felt that if we did state the ground of arrest we should be endangering individuals. It would be impossible to give such information without enabling the persons to be traced out who have given us the information upon which the arrests have been based, and without endangering their persons, and probably their lives. The next reason, as was very well stated by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, was that we did not wish to release ourselves from, and to cast upon the House, the responsibility of our action in the exercise of the large and exceptional powers which have been given to us. There was a third reason, also, which is not without some importance—namely, that if we had determined to give an answer and make a statement in every case, in all probability the time of the House of Commons would have been occupied with nothing else than these arrests. Well, I consider that the last two reasons are removed by this Motion. We are not now trying to shake off our responsibility, and release ourselves from it. We are not doing that; but are doing what we are bound to do—namely, meeting a Vote of Censure, and taking the opinion of the House as to whether we deserve that censure or not. It is very important, at the present moment, that the time of the House should not be wasted; but I confess that I myself am glad that my right hon. Friend consented to ask the House for the opportunity this morning of meeting this accumulation of charges, and I wish to express my thanks to the right hon. Baronet the Member for North Devon (Sir Stafford Northcote) for so kindly assenting to the proposal, and to the private Members who, in consideration of the nature of this charge, and of the very urgent Public Business which the Government have to conduct, have kindly given up a part of that very small quantity of time which is allowed to them by the exigencies of the present Session for bringing forward their Motions. What enables me to make known the grounds of the arrest of the hon. Member for Tipperary is that we arrested him for the speeches that he had made, and that, consequently, I endanger no one by the statement which I propose to make in regard to those grounds. I am well aware that when we passed the Act we did not contemplate that our main action would be with regard to speeches; and our main action in connection with it has not been with regard to speeches. But it would be an entire mistake to suppose, and no one can refer back to the debates, and for a moment say that speeches inciting to violence were intended to be excluded from the operation of the Act. What was stated at the time was this—that we mainly wanted the Act because we wished to arrest those who committed, and those who incited to the commission of, special and individual outrages, and because we could get no evidence, people not daring to give it, as to the perpetrators of crimes, or as to those who abetted them, and because, even if evidence were procurable, it was very doubtful whether juries would convict. But in the debates that took place, the possibility of a speech which would incite, not to an individual act, but which would create such a state of mind among those who might hear it or read it as would make it likely that they would commit outrages, was also contemplated. [Mr. PARNELL: You never said so.] ["Order!"] Now, then, I come to the speech itself. The immediate ground of the arrest of the hon. Member for Tipperary was a speech he delivered at the weekly meeting of the National Land League, Dublin, on Tuesday, April 26. [Mr. SEXTON: What is the report that you have?] These meetings were so far curious, that for the purposes of Government reports they were private, while for purposes of publicity throughout Ireland everything was made known, especially to those persons who might be led to break the law by the instigation of the speeches. The speech, then, was made at a Committee meeting of the Land League, at which the Government reporters were not allowed to be present. It was, however, carefully reported, and the reports agree. I am sure I am not straining the doctrine of reasonable suspicion when I say that the report in The Freeman's Journal never having been disavowed, and being confirmed by the report in The Irish Times and other papers, may well be considered to be a fair report of the speeches. After stating that an appeal would be made to the Government to stop evictions and the sale of farms, the hon. Member for Tipperary said— If this appeal were refused, he considered he should be borne out by the entire feeling of Ireland in declaring that the blood which might be shed would be on the heads of Gladstone and Forster. He had been accused in the House of Commons of saying an unjust thing when he said the blood which was recently shed in attempts of this kind was on their head; but he left it to reasonable men—what could they expect if they sought to drive 5,000 or 10,000 desperate men out of their homes? Who was to blame if these men would not consent to be driven out like rats without fighting? He had heard it openly stated by the people that they would not do it this time; that they would show fight; and if they were to go out they would knock some people over before they went. He would mention a case which did not get into the papers. The other day an eviction was going to be carried out in his county; 40 policemen came to carry it out. They found the door barricaded; the priest stood by, and said he would not interfere, but he thought it right to inform the police that the first blow they struck five or six would be shot, as the men were inside with loaded rifles. The police held a consultation, and went back to Nenagh. If evictions were carried out on a large scale in Tipperary, the police must, be prepared for fight and resistance; the people would resist, and the next time a man was shot in Ireland for refusing to leave his home peaceably, the verdict would be, if he were not very much deceived in the temper of the people, wilful murder, not against the policeman who shot him, but against Gladstone and Forster. Now, Sir, I must tell the House what, in my belief, is the real meaning of that speech. What the hon. Member said was really this—that an appeal, which the hon. Member knew could not be granted, would be made to the Government to suspend evictions and executions for rent. There is not a Member in this House who believes that it would be possible to prevent the landlords of Ireland from obtaining the payment of their just rents by legal process. [Mr. HEALY: They are not just rents.] But the hon. Member goes on to say that if the appeal is not granted the people will not let themselves be driven out like rats without fighting, and that if they should come out they will knock some people over before doing so. The mode in which they will do thus will be that so successfully practised in Tipperary. Remember the illustration. At the first blow struck by the police, five or six would be shot, as the men would be inside with loaded rifles. Blood, he says, will be spilt, which will be on the heads of Forster and Gladstone. A verdict of wilful murder will be found against them—in other words, the Government will be murderers. The whole resistance would be blameless, and therefore justifiable. Well, if that is not an incitement to murder on a most extensive scale, I do not know what would be held to be an incitement. Let me illustrate and explain the speech by the cases which were brought forward. The hon. Member for Tipperary alluded to the sorrowful business which had happened at Sligo; and it was in order to prevent the recurrence of such a sorrowful business, and to do what we could to prevent men being incited to make a resistance which might result in the loss of their lives, that we felt we were bound to take the steps which we did take. In alluding to that sad business, the hon. Member for Tipperary gives the impression that such a case as that was one in which the people had a right to resist. But it was not a case of eviction at all.

The case in Sligo, in which Sergeant Armstrong was battered to death and two men shot, was not a case in which the sheriff was proceeding to evict, but one in which he was merely proceeding with writs to take possession of the chattels on a farm, under process of law, for non-payment of rent. Was resistance to such a process as that to be encouraged; and were we, in our fearful position of having to carry out the law, and of having to secure that there is a law in Ireland, to allow a man, because he was a Member of Parliament and enthusiastic in his views, to make speeches which would almost certainly encourage other persons to do the same thing, and probably occasion a similar loss of life? I will take the other case of what happened in Tipperary. This is really a very instructive case, and hon. Members will remember the impression which was tried to be produced—that there was an eviction; that the police came to drive a man out of his home; that there were loaded rifles in the house, and the police were driven back. Now, this is the true account. The man was named Madden. He was a leaseholder. [Mr. HEALY: Upon whose authority do you give it?] I pledge myself to the correctness of the account I am about to give. The hon. Member may disprove it if he can. [Mr. HEALY: What about the Police Circular?] Madden was a leaseholder, with a farm for his own life and 31 years. He had become embarrassed, and had raised £600 from a money-lender to pay his brothers and sisters. He had mortgaged his lease to the National Bank, and had borrowed from a man named Crowe £42 on promissory notes. A debtor's summons was issued in August, 1879, and he was adjudicated a bankrupt in October, 1879. All his property, therefore, vested in assignees. The National Bank, as mortgagees, claimed £331 on their mortgage; and, with the consent of the landlord and permission of the Court, he sold the lease to Crowe for £400. The Court, on March 22, 1881, ordered the sheriff to put Crowe in possession. About April 10 the sheriff's bailiff went to get possession, and found the house barricaded and filled with armed men, and an immense crowd outside. The bailiff and the constable withdraw. Since that time peaceable possession has been given to Crowe. Madden was made a bankrupt either at the instance of Crowe or the mortgagees. The action of the landlord had nothing to do with the matter, and yet here was a case which the hon. Member for Tipperary held up as illustrating what would happen if the law were carried out. And what was the example to be followed? Why, that if they resisted, public opinion would go in favour of the people, and a verdict of murder would be found against the Representatives of the Government, and not against the persons who committed the murder. It is no pleasant thing to have to arrest a Member of Parliament; but were we, I would ask, to decline arresting Mr. Dillon because he happened to be a Member of Parliament? I know it will be said—Why did you not arrest him before? Indeed, the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell), of all persons, has already put the question. Many hon. Members, I dare say, wonder why we did not arrest him before, and all I can say on that point is that his previous speeches were most carefully examined by myself, and submitted to the legal gentlemen whom it was my duty to consult; and that though we thought they were most mischievous speeches and likely to do a great deal of harm, yet we were informed that we should be straining the powers given us by the Act if we arrested him because of those speeches. [Ironical cheers from the Irish Members.] Perhaps hon. Gentlemen opposite think that we ought to have strained those powers. [Mr. HEALY: You have; remember the Circular.] I can assure hon. Members that their interjections will not have the effect of shaking me, or of diverting me from the order in which I intend to make my remarks. When the Protection Bill was passing through the House I said we felt we were bound by limitations which were embodied in it. Lord Cowper and myself were aware that one limitation was that we must "reasonably suspect" anyone whom we might arrest of having committed, or incited to the commission of a crime punishable by law being an act of violence or intimidation. The speeches to which I am referring did not appear to us as though they came within that limitation, though some of them came very near it. But now I wish to make a remark which I hope will not be misunderstood. Although it was my fate to arrest Mr. Dillon I felt that in arresting him we were arresting a man who was in one respect the most dangerous, because the most enthusiastic and, perhaps, the most sincere member of the Land League.

MR. J. COWEN

I rise to Order. [Cries of "Order!" and "Chair!"]

MR. SPEAKER

If these interruptions are continued, I shall have to take a course which I should be very sorry to take.

MR. J. COWEN

I only rose to a question of Order.

MR. SPEAKER

The right hon. Member for Bradford is in possession of the House, and is entitled to continue his speech.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

I cannot conceive how I can be supposed to have transgressed the Rules of Order. I have no doubt that if I do so transgress those Rules you, Sir, will call me to Order. I was saying I regretted that it fell to my fate to have anything to do with the arrest of the hon. Member for Tipperary, and I say so because I am anxious that there should be no misconception of what I am now about to add. Mr. Dillon took very great care, in those speeches, not to bring himself within the provisions of the Act; but I do not wish to be supposed to insinuate by that statement that he wished to guard himself against the consequences of what he said. I believe his feeling was that he was useful to the cause of the agitation in Ireland, which I think he had most mistakenly determined to advocate. Therefore, he was anxious to keep himself at liberty, as long as it was possible, for the purpose of aiding it. But the way in which he conducted the speeches to which I am referring was very well described in the last speech which he made in Tipperary on the Sunday after the Warrant for his arrest was issued, but before he was arrested. He then said— There are a few practical points which I wish to impress upon you in reference to the coming struggle between tenants and landlords. The first of these is that you must use your organization as far as the law will permit you—and I advise you to keep within the law, not because I believe you respect the law, but simply and solely because it does not pay to allow the landlords to catch you outside the law. He did not, I believe, think it would pay to allow the Government to get rid of him; and all I can say to those hon. Members who suppose that we neglected our duty in not arresting Mr. Dillon before is, that they would probably be of a different opinion if they had to do what I have been obliged to do—carefully read his speeches, and judge them in connection with the powers which have been given us by the Act. I hardly know whether I need defend myself against the charge that we picked out this particular time for arresting the hon. Member for Tipperary, because we were afraid of his action with regard to the Land Bill. On that point I can honestly say that I miss his absence, and for this reason, like the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) and the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar), who do us the greatest possible service, though no doubt unintentionally by the course of action which they take, I think that we might have derived somewhat similar assistance from the hon. Member for Tipperary. I am told, however, that we arrested him because he was coming over to this House to state the case of the tenants who were in arrear. Well, the supposition that we might prevent that was the only ground which I felt had to be weighed against his arrest. But we had no reason to be confident that he was coming. I wish to be perfectly fair in the matter, and, therefore, I will give the exact expression in his speech. It was this— Next week a last appeal will be made to the Government to suspend the process of eviction in Ireland during next year. There is no statement, however, to the effect that he was going to make that appeal, and we had no reason to believe that he was coming over. On the contrary, we knew that on the Tuesday he was fully expected, and there was every probability that he would attend a meeting, at Monaghan, and we were aware that he was advertised to attend what seemed to us to be, from his point of view, a very important meeting in Dublin on the Friday, and another at Middleton, in County Cork, on the Sunday. The real fact is, that we could not run the risk of a repetition of these speeches; and, therefore, as a Government, we felt ourselves obliged to act. Indeed, I do not myself think that Mr. Dillon had made up his mind to come to London that week. If he had done so, I think he would have stated that it was his intention to do so at the last meeting he attended. But, be that as it may, the point is one which, in my opinion, does not matter much. The next charge refers to our conduct in proclaiming a state of siege in Dublin. Now, I do not know whether the hon. Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) has ever when abroad seen a town in a state of siege. If he has, he will, if he goes goes to Dublin, find there at the present moment a very different state of things. I suppose that it was simply an oratorical mode of expressing the fact that we had prescribed the city and county of Dublin under the Act. I have no objection to state, and I suppose everybody knows, that our chief reason for doing that was to arrest the hon. Member for Tipperary. In Dublin the meetings of the Land League Committee were held by which that powerful organization sent aid and advice to the other Land League Committees throughout Ireland. At the meetings held in Dublin speeches were made which were calculated, in our opinion, to incite to disorder, and probably to such disorder as might occasion loss of life. Therefore, we proclaimed the city and county of Dublin. As the Land League chose to victimize the City of Dublin, we deemed it necessary to have the power of arresting persons who made speeches there inciting to disorder and which might cause bloodshed, and which could not be made in any place more dangerously or more effectually. I have now dealt with the first two counts of the indictment. I come next to the arrest and imprisonment of the Rev. Mr. Sheehy. I do not wish the House to suppose that we thought it was a light matter to arrest a clergyman—or a clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church. If Mr. Sheehy had been a layman, he would undoubtedly have been arrested before he was. We know very well that there are reasons why we should be very careful—why any Government should be careful—before arresting a clergyman. There is a difficulty as regards their flocks in dealing with clergymen; but there is also a habit of using strong language which is not, perhaps, confined solely to clergymen of the Roman Catholic Church, and which requires some forbearance on the part of the Government. But I may state at once that the immediate cause of the arrest of Father Sheehy is stated in the Warrant. He was reasonably suspected of having been guilty as partici- pator in a crime punishable by law—that is, assembling with others and unlawfully attempting, by threats and menaces, to compel divers of Her Majesty's subjects to quit their lawful employment. I cannot give the detailed grounds on which the arrest was made. [A laugh.] Hon. Members laugh, but they know perfectly well what would be the effect of giving those details. The persons concerned would either have to leave the country, or their lives would not be worth 24 hours' purchase. But I will state what I can state in reference to the speeches of Father Sheehy, and which might themselves have warranted his arrest. My only reluctance in referring to these speeches is due to the fact that we may fairly lay ourselves open to the charge that we ought to have arrested him sooner than we did. I must occupy the House as shortly as I can; but here is a speech made at Feenagh, in County Limerick on April 3. On that occasion Father Sheehy produced a writ which he held up to the gaze of the people, who groaned heartily. He then said— This writ has been issued against a man named Connor, in a place called Bargavan, within the jurisdiction of the Castle Mahon branch of the Land League; and being asked for advice as to what course should be pursued by Connor now that this has been served, I say to Connor and Connor's neighbours—'Fight this battle to the bitter end. Force Lord Guillamore to bring the sheriff, and ask the neighbours not to be absent on the occasion, and by their moral support, and in every way by their influence on the occasion, to save Connor from any injurious consequences resulting from his manly attitude.' [Mr. HEALY: Is that all?] Is that all! It is enough. Now, I will state what was the consequence of Father Sheehy's advice. The speech I have quoted is one of a great number of speeches of the same kind, and we must bear in mind not merely the violence of the language used, but whether the language results in violence. On the next day, Mr. Collett, Lord Guillamore's agent, was serving writs with the bailiff and two constables when he was set upon by a mob, who stripped him of nearly all his clothes, and his bailiff of absolutely all, and beat the latter. Next day, while Mr. Collett was leaving by train, under the protection of the constabulary, at Newcastle Railway Station, another mob attacked him and smashed the railway carriage with stones, Mr. Collett being nearly killed. That was the way in which, following Father Sheehy's advice, these people assembled together and used their moral influence against the execution of the law; and I do not think that there is anyone who examines the language of Father Sheehy in regard to the assembling of the neighbours who will wonder when I say that I reasonably suspect Father Sheehy of expecting that that would be done. There is another speech I will read, delivered by the Rev. Father Sheehy at Athea, County Limerick, on May 1, 1881— The Land League pledges those who are loyal to its principles, under every instance where a solid reduction is not made by the landlord, to force him to collect his rent at the point of the bayonet, to force the emergency men to come up from Dublin, and the sub-sheriff to come out from his comfortable quarters, and the Royal Irish to trudge from their barracks, the hotel-keepers and car-owners taking care to 'Boycott' them, and so forcing them, at last, to reach the homestead where the rack-rent is to be collected. Now, if this be done, as I hope it will be done, it will take these misguiders of landlordism a much longer time than that which is to be numbered by the number of days within six to collect the current gale; and when the gale is collected, they will have to repeat the same operations next September and next March. What does that mean? What does it mean addressed to an excitable and high-spirited audience but that they are to risk the shedding of blood, and even the loss of life, in resisting the landlord until the rent is reduced. Could anyone that has the experience of Father Sheehy—knowing his duty to preach forbearance—have any doubt what would be the result of the words he used? I will give another illustration. A meeting was held at Kilmallock about that time on a Sunday—these meetings are generally held on a Sunday—it was about three or four weeks ago. Another Roman Catholic clergyman, Father Clery, spoke. He said— I am speaking deliberately. I am not speaking hastily, but calmly and dispassionately, and I ask you for a cheer for Fenianism. I give you my reason for that, as I wish to explain everything. I say when people are oppressed, and when suffering is entailed upon them, without hope of redress, they have a right to rebel. My Fenianism was the Fenianism that would be successful. If I had a resolution to propose, I would like it to be one for breaking open the gaols and emancipating the prisoners. [Mr. HEALY: Hear, hear!] The hon. Member for Wexford cheers even that If these are his sentiments, perhaps he will go to Ireland himself and express them. On reading Father Clery's speech, I thought it my duty to state to the Irish Executive that I thought the reverend gentleman ought to be arrested. After he had called for cheers for Fenianism, and stated what he did, the House will, perhaps, wonder why he was not arrested. And it must be borne in mind that the events of that Sunday evening were not inconsistent with the tenour of the speeches delivered in the afternoon. In the evening, a Land League meeting was held at Kilmallock. Two patrols of police, of four men each, were attacked by a mob with stones. The men at the barracks turned out to protect the patrols, and a very large mob collected and pelted the police with all sorts of missiles. The only way in which the riot could be stopped would have been to fire on the mob; but as there were many persons trying to stop the rioting, several innocent people would have been shot. It was thought better to withdraw the men to the barracks. Many of them were hurt. After the police retired, the crowd paraded the streets with bands, hooting and shouting at the police. Later in the night, when darkness came on, the windows of the barracks were broken by a large mob. Thus the police consented—to their very great discouragement as upholders of the law—to be beaten back rather than, in that case, to have fired, and, perhaps, killed innocent people. I do not for a moment doubt that that riot would not have happened that evening had it not been for those speeches on that day. Well, now, why, I say, was Father Clery not arrested? I got back, in reply to my communication, a statement that he was a very old man. But I found afterwards that that was not exactly true. He is not a very old man. But he was not a man who had taken a very violent part before in the agitation, and if the Government had arrested him without arresting Father Sheehy it would have been thought a very invidious proceeding. Father Sheehy spoke at the same meeting, but, on that occasion, was more careful as to the expressions he used. But he was the real instigator of the disorder that prevailed. A night or two ago, on a Motion for adjournment, a letter was read by the hon. Member for the City of Cork from Father Sheehy, written before his arrest. I must detain the House while I read that letter. It was not reported in the London papers, but was in The Freeman's Journal. In it he says— Mr. Clifford Lloyd, R.M., is here in his magisterial capacity since Friday. On the evening of his arrival he went through the town, and, though an utter stranger here, being an importation from Belfast on the day previous, he insisted on the people dispersing to their homes, who were quietly chatting in the street in groups of three and four, as is the wont of people at that time in the town. On their refusing, he proceeded furiously to strike them with his cane, and struck several violently over the shoulders. He subsequently brought out the police with their shotted guns and cleared the streets. The police clubbed the people freely with the stocks of their rifles.…. This furious conduct was climaxed last evening. Our local band played some airs through the streets, and on its passing the police barracks some few persons in the crowd cheered. Forthwith, over a dozen policemen, whom the magistrate had formed into line in anticipation of the arrival of the band, rushed into the midst of the crowd and used their bâtons like so many maniacs. Now, before I state what is officially reported in this matter I would say a word about Mr. Lloyd. Mr. Lloyd is a magistrate who was sent down to assist another magistrate in that district, the district itself being in a most dangerous condition. He had been to Belfast, where, I believe, he has obtained the good esteem of the respectable men of both sides. It has been stated, or insinuated, that he had a special feeling against the Land League. My experience of Mr. Lloyd is this—that his action brought him into considerable disfavour with some hon. Gentlemen from the North of Ireland—not Members below the Gangway. He prevented a meeting of the Land League being interfered with by armed Orangemen. That was my first experience of him, and I much approved of his conduct. We found that he acted with great energy, and I may say, also, with great forbearance in many difficult positions he has occupied, and we sent him down because we believed that he was courageous, energetic, and discreet, and likely to quell the disturbance that certainly existed in that district. I am perfectly sure of this—that any man sent there likely to quell the disturbance would have had the attacks made upon him that have been made on Mr. Lloyd, and hon. Members like the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) and those that sit with him would vindicate those attacks. Having said so much about Mr. Lloyd, I may state that I had a letter from him to-day in which he says that these statements about his own actions—the use of the cane and so forth—are absolutely without the smallest foundation, with the exception of the statement that the Rev. Father Sheehy's servant may have been struck when a small body of police were rudely and deliberately attacked by some 300 rioters. This is what he writes after seeing the charge against him. But what was the information he gave to the Government in the simple execution of his duty before he knew that any charge was made against him? Here is the report of what happened. He says— Mr. Lloyd wishes particularly the Government to understand what is meant by the term 'Boycott,' as understood in Kilmallock and the country round, and he speaks now for his own personal observation. On the day of his arrival in Kilmallock, he saw two men being hunted through the streets by a large mob shouting 'Boycott them, Boycott them!' The men rushed into a publican's house in a state of abject terror, the mob striking at them with their sticks. The door was slammed in the face of the mob, who then commenced to kick in the door, when Mr. Lloyd himself interfered with a few policemen, sent for more, and cleared the street with some difficulty, amid the groans and hoots of the people. After some time, he had the two persons escorted out of the town into the country by an officer and some men of the police, and, from inquiries made, he found that their alleged offence was the statement that they had paid their rents—a high misdemeanour—which, however, they denied having been guilty of. Now, that is the account of the occurrence, not sent in order to meet Father Sheehy's account, but given by Mr. Lloyd in the course of his duty stating what happened after he got there. Mr. Lloyd states that he knows that a man "Boycotted" is in the position that neither his property, person, or life is safe, but all are in immediate danger. He cannot appear in public, for he would receive exactly the same treatment as that already recorded, and that is what members of the Land League are loudly boasting of—that, holding and making use of such weapons, they are "masters of the situation." The reason why I state this is to explain the action of the Government. It is sometimes imagined that we can arrest men under this Act simply for "Boycotting," or advising "Boycotting." Where "Boycotting" simply means exclusive dealing, we cannot do that, and we have not done it; but where "Boycotting" means putting any person in danger, we can do it, and have done it in many cases, and shall do it again.

MR. O'SULLIVAN

Will the right hon. Gentleman give the names of the persons "Boycotted?"

MR. W. E. FORSTER

I think it would not be right to give the names. The hon. Member knows that if it is not already known who they are, the fact of my stating in the House the names would lead from "Boycotting" to something worse.

MR. O'SULLLIVAN

It is in my neighbourhood, and if it had occurred I should have known it.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

I give the hon. Member credit for not knowing these circumstances. Well, now as to the attack on the police barrack. Mr. Lloyd reported as follows:— His Excellency will, therefore, not be surprised to hear that last night an attack was made on the police barrack here, which is situated at one extremity of the town. At about 9.45 p.m. a band began to parade the town collecting the rioters. I at once went across to the barrack, which is opposite where I am lodging, and ordered the men to divest themselves of their side-arms and get their bâtons. Here I may say that one reason why I was glad to send Mr. Lloyd down was because I knew that he had a belief that much could be done by the police with their bâtons, and without arms. The Report continues— A very small force was available—only 20 men in all. The horses had to be protected in the rear, and the barrack kept occupied. For these duties I left six men with rifles. Our arrangements were just completed when the band began outside the barrack, and the mob commenced yelling and shouting. With Mr. Sub-Inspector Jennings, I led out 13 men, and was received with a volley of stones; but giving the order at once to clear the street, the small body of police, led by Mr. Jennings, very bravely charged in the very centre of the mob, which numbered from 300 to 400 people, thus dividing it into two portions. The police first charged one way and then the other, using their bâtons freely and with determination. The mob was completely taken aback, and was utterly routed. The people showed signs of renewing the attack; but I sent up a prominent Land Leaguer to inform them that if they did so I should use our fire-arms. We remained during the night prepared for any emergency. I need not comment upon such a condition of affairs. At daybreak I had several rioters arrested.

MR. O'DONNELL

I want to ask the Chief Secretary—[Cries of "Order!" and interruption.]—

MR. W. E. FORSTER

I say that this showed great courage, great forbearance; arid if you compare it with the letter of Father Sheehy, you will see the difference of the account. This stoning of the police and stoning of the soldiers is a very serious matter. The police did their duty, and they are fulfilling their duty in a most courageous and forbearing manner. But policemen are men of flesh and blood, and so are the soldiers, and the soldiers are young soldiers; and if we are to have clergymen of the Roman Catholic Church—men of position—making speeches to bring the people into such a state of excitement that stones are hurled at them, the consequences may be grave. Now, I have told the House why we could not give the grounds upon which we thought it necessary to act on that special Warrant in the case of Father Sheehy. I can only say that, at some future time, if the general policy of our arrests should be contested, I would gladly let it be tested on the strength of these grounds. I have shown what we had to deal with in Father Sheehy; but I will acknowledge that, for reasons I have already stated, and also for other reasons, we thought that great forbearance was necessary. We hoped that some sense of his Christian duties, some sense of what would be the sufferings of the persons—men of his own flock—that he was exciting, would prevent a continuance of that conduct; and we also thought that that might happen with him which has happened with other priests, that lie might be advised by other persons to be more moderate and careful. But we waited till we could wait no longer. We waited till it was clear that others were following his example, thinking that because they were clergymen and because it was their business to prepare people for the next world, that they might break the law and incite men to what would lead them to punishment in this world. And Father Sheehy had boldly stated that he would take that line. I want hon. Members to listen to this. There was a meeting at the National Land League, in Sackville Street, on March 3. Father Sheehy then said— There might be arrests. The priests of the country were determined to take such decisive action that it would be impossible for the Government to pass them over and arrest others; so that thê Government, if they acted fairly, if they were not cowards, as he believed they were, would have the responsibility of arresting the priests first; and then, having arrested the priests and put them into prison, their work be on their own heads, because they would then touch a chord in the Irish heart which has not yet, perhaps, vibrated. He, therefore, dared them to the worst. [Cheers from the Irish Members.] I thought that I should find some hon. Members cheer this statement of a clergyman, that he would take advantage of the religious feelings of the Irish people, and that he would defy the law, relying that he would not be arrested on account of his position when he endeavoured to strike a chord that would be dangerous to the Government. The Government have to consider the effect of striking such a chord; but, upon the whole, we believe that we should not be acting justly if we respected persons and allowed priests, because they are priests, to incite people to actions of that kind. Now, Sir, I come to some remarks on our general policy. I can only state to the House that when I first went over to Ireland to assist my noble Friend the Lord Lieutenant in the prosecutions, the ground we took was not to arrest everyone whose case was brought before us. Some hon. Members seem to suppose that we try to create and manufacture outrages. [Interruption from Irish Members, and cries of "Hear, hear!"] Well, the outrages exist, at any rate; and I may inform hon. Members, although I do not expect some of them who say "Hear, hear!" to believe me, but I know that the House generally will believe me, when I state that we only arrested a small proportion of the cases that were brought before us. We only picked out for arrest those whose apprehension we thought would have most effect in discouraging and deterring others, and those against whom the cases were most apparent; and there were a large number whom other persons—not local magistrates—thought we should arrest—no doubt, as they thought, on good grounds—but whom we did not arrest. Then I hoped that that would be sufficient as regarded retrospective arrests. I think we have hardly made a retrospective arrest since—that is to say, we have hardly made one arrest of any person charged with committing or inciting to an outrage before the passing of the Act. The hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell), with that accuracy which characterizes him, says that we have arrested no perpetrators of outrages. Well, I have just sent for the list that was last laid on the Table of the House, and I find that in that list there are 54 persons named, two of them for treasonable practices—

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

Remember, too, that two of them were arrested on suspicion.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

Yes, they were all arrested on suspicion; they could not have been arrested on anything else. Nineteen of the cases were for inciting to outrage, and 33 for perpetrating outrage. For a time the Act had an effect; then we found out that the outrages were increasing, and we also found out that the organization that had been checked in the first place by the Act, had again become very active. I stated then, and most distinctly, that I hoped, as regarded every bad outrage, every decided outrage, the police would be able to let us know who should be arrested in connection with it. One of the great difficulties the police had to contend with was the completeness of the organization—people, for example, being actually sent from a distance to commit these outrages. I do not think that any hon. Member who has read or heard anything, or knows anything of the worst of these outrages, particularly the murders, can have the slightest doubt about the matter. And now comes this question of the Circular. It was certainly not directly issued by me. [Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR: Yes; but you are responsible for it.] Yes, I am responsible for it; but I merely state the fact of its issue by the Chief Inspector, because of the remarks made by the hon. Member for Dungarvan. The orders were, I may say, those of the Chief Inspector, made with my sanction and that of the Lord Lieutenant. Taking the Circular, I desire to correct a mistake I made yesterday. The last thing I would do would be to avoid any responsibility; and I may have conveyed to the House that, although I was fully responsible for the substance of the Circular, I was not responsible for the opening paragraph. It was submitted to me in proof; but I was so attentive to the general substance of the Circular, that I lost sight of that paragraph. I have no objection to state that had I foreseen the critical examination of the hon. Member for Dungarvan, it would have been worded otherwise. It is suggested that it was necessary for us to guard against misconstruction; but that was not so, because it was a confidential Circular, sent only to 18 men, who were certainly not likely to subject us to misconstruction. I may tell you, too, why those words were used. They were used because the Inspector General did not wish the police generally to suppose that there was a censure upon them by the authorities. We did think it desirable to remind them in some degree of their duties; but we did not wish to remind them in a manner that they might think they were censured by the authorities in Dublin. The words "lock and key" are generally used in confidential Circulars, and I think we did perfectly right in telling the police that it was their duty to stop these outrages if they could.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

Stick to the Circular.

MR. SPEAKER

The hon. Member for Galway having interrupted several times in a manner quite unusual, if he does so again I must warn him that he has disregarded the authority of the Chair.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

I must next refer to the second paragraph of the Circular, which states— It is to the fact of the impunity with which secret and violent outrages are committed that the Inspector General desires to call attention in a very special manner. I admit that I was disappointed at the extent of that impunity. The Circular goes further, and states— It is most difficult to conceive that the police, with the knowledge they possess of the character and habits of the people among whom they live, are not oftener in a position to know at least some of those present at the perpetration of nightly outrages; but if it is difficult to believe this, it is still more difficult to understand that they fail in so many instances to give grounds of reasonable suspicion against anyone. These officers, no doubt, occupy a difficult position; but it is my business and the business of the Inspector General to stir and stimulate them. If it had been a question of manufacturing outrages, then what hon. Members have said would, no doubt, have been perfectly true. But they are not manufactured; they are too certain and too evident. Our business is to stop them. We have, not unfrequently, had men sent up to us as being suspected without what we considered reasonable grounds of suspicion. We have, therefore, naturally asked the police if you really do believe these people did commit or incite to these outrages, you ought to have looked out more carefully and obtained more information that would give us some grounds on which to act. The Circular further states— The most active leaders and instigators of popular movements of every description and their respective characters are well known to the police. Had I had to write that, I should probably have qualified that term. Probably, however, everyone knows what it meant. It does not mean popular movements as we understand the term in England, or a movement for Constitutional purposes, but one leading to such acts as "Boycotting," for example. The Circular says— The persons who are likely to be led by their influence and advice are also well known; and the Inspector General is, therefore, unable to understand how it so often happens that on the occasion of an outrage admittedly committed at the instigation of the leaders referred to, the police officers and their constables state that they cannot attach any grounds of reasonable suspicion against any individual even as an inciter to outrage. Now, statements with regard to outrages come to us. We have not the slightest doubt that the outrages have been committed. Had we acted as hon. Members have supposed, we should have taken these statements without inquiry, and not have stimulated the police to give the reasonable grounds of suspicion. I know very well what must be the fate of any Minister who attempts to restore order in Ireland. (Interruptions from the Irish Members.) But I expect to be believed by the majority of this House when I say that this would have been a bad Circular to have issued had it not been issued in order to obtain information for persons who were sifting for themselves with the greatest possible care the grounds upon which cases were sent up, and who, in the majority of instances, did not accept those grounds. Now, I think I have said all, or nearly all, I intended to say with regard to the actual charges made under this Resolution; and I must add a few words on other charges which have not been made to-day, but which I regret were made in the heat of debate by one of the Members for the University of Dublin some time ago—that we had not carried out these measures, as we ought to have carried them out, with energy and determination. The noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill) says we have carried them out with caprice.

LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL

Yes; it is quite apparent.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

No doubt, it is apparent to the noble Lord; but the noble Lord recently gave us, as an illustration, that Archbishop Croke—

LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL

No; nothing of the kind. I referred to Father Sheehy in my Question.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

I am glad the noble Lord does not forget that even he has some degree of influence as a Member of Parliament. He forgets, however, that he may convey an insinuation by asking a Question, without the remotest foundation for it, and an insinuation which may equal in effect and intention any statement. I am now about to speak to Members from Ireland on the Benches opposite me behind the Front Bench. This Act, though the widest ever passed, has its limits, and we cannot go beyond its limits. It is our belief that anyone in our position would have acted as we have done. You who stand by and look on cannot tell what we were obliged to consider when putting into operation an Act with regard to which we were pleged not to arrest persons except we believed they came within its terms. Speeches which were comparatively innocent at first have now become very dangerous, and the effects which have followed and follow from them are so frequent, and they must be, or ought to be so well known, that I admit, and we accept, the responsibility that we have to deal with speeches in a different manner from that in which we had to deal with them at first. Again, if we had strained the law, if we had not shown some forbearance in exercising it, we might very probably have set public opinion against the law. But we resolved to err on the safe side. I may say, here, that nothing I have heard from any Member of the House gave me so much pain as the words used by the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) a few days ago, I hope without intention. I admit his great talents, his great experience, and his great patriotism; but I think he ought not to have said, without specifically defining the reasons or grounds, that the Government had lost the respect of everyone in Ireland.

MR. HEALY

I rise to Order.

MR. SPEAKER

Does the hon. Gentleman rise to Order?

MR. HEALY

Yes, Sir; because, three nights ago, you ruled that I was out of Order in referring to a debate that was past; and I now ask you whether or not the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland is in Order in referring specifically to the remarks made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin to the effect that the Government had lost all the confidence of the Irish people?

MR. SPEAKER

As I considered that the right hon. Gentleman was not out of Order, I have not interposed.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

I will not go farther than say that I am ready at any time to meet any specific charge of neglect of our duty since this Act was passed. But now comes the question of what is to be our future policy in Ireland. I am not going to trespass on the time of the House further than to remind hon. Members below the Gangway, who act, as they say, on behalf of the tenants and people of Ireland, that although we are not assisted, at least intentionally, in passing our remedial measures, we intend to pass them. We believe that the law of the country has to be amended. We mean to amend it. We are determined, also, that the law shall be respected. There is a combination to make robbery successful by armed resistance. There is no doubt whatever that in very many cases these poor fellows, whose feelings of selfishness are appealed to, in order to induce them not to pay their rents, are able to pay them, and ought to pay them, even though it may be desirable in some of those cases, perhaps in many of them, to have such an alteration of the law as will make the rent lower in the future. But there are hon. Members who, I suppose, would say—"Let that combination succeed." We intend that it shall not succeed. We do not intend that a combination to rob any persons, even though they be landlords, shall succeed because there is armed resistance. The hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell), with that precision and accuracy which invariably distinguishes him, put together the state of Limerick and Donegal.

MR. O'DONNELL

No.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

But I put down the words in writing.

MR. O'DONNELL

Yes, with the accuracy which usually distinguishes the Chief Secretary. [Cries of "Order!"]

MR. W. E. FORSTER

We must face the facts, and not be deluded by any utterances we may hear. The misery of the cottier tenants of Mayo, Donegal, and parts of Galway is selfishly made use of as an argument and a ground why tenants who in other districts are perfectly well able to pay their rent should not pay it. Were we to allow this conspiracy to succeed, we should strike a blow against the existence of all law in Ireland and do that which would be disgraceful to any Government. But we intend to defeat it if we can. And while, Sir, I have anything to do with this Act, when we have reasonable grounds for suspicion, we shall first arrest the perpetrators, and then the abettors and exciters, be they Members of Parliament or not, be they clergymen or not, or be they members of the Land League or not. Now, I know that there are many Members in this House who say, as others outside in the country say—" You ought to put down this Land League." That would require, I suppose, a fresh Act of Parliament. I will tell hon. Members who are somewhat impatient of our action in this respect, that it is not by proceeding against the Land League as a name, or as an organization, that we can quell disturbances; but it is by going against the individual leaders of the Land League. If they descend to illegal acts, we shall make them responsible for such acts as individuals. I have now to reply to the Question put to me by the noble Lord the Member for Wiltshire (Lord Folkestone). I do not want the House to have any exaggerated notion of the present situation. I do not think it is so bad as a mere perusal of the papers would snake it appear. It is bad, no doubt. In January the number of agrarian outrages was 439; in February it fell to 170; in March to 148; in April it rose to 296—many of them, too, very bad cases—and for the first two weeks of this month—May—the list still continues discouraging. But there appears to be a change for the better. I do not really know whether it is a permanent change or not; but I hope it is. In the first week, the number of offences were 91; in the second, 91 also; and in the third, 56. [Mr. PARNELL: Will the right hon. Gentleman give the number of evictions?] I have not got the Return. What we have to deal with at this moment is a violent resistance in one or two districts, and that resistance we must quell. It is worst, probably, in County Limerick than anywhere else. I look with alarm upon it; but not alarm that the law will not be sufficiently powerful, but lest there should any day be a collision with serious loss of life. There are two parties with whom it would rather seem to be a desire that there should be a collision. There are some persons who think honestly that there will not be peace in Ireland until there has been a serious collision. There are, too, those who I verily believe wish for a serious collision, because of the discredit which they think might attach to the Government for it. I hope to disappoint both these parties. I believe that by our policy of sending an overpowering force wherever we expect resistance, we shall be able to restore law without bloodshed; at any rate, without serious bloodshed. The difficulties of the Government are very great, and I trust that the House will to-day give a decided opinion as to whether they will continue their confidence in us or not. I have a right to ask that on behalf of the Government. For myself, personally, I do not ask for sympathy, still less for forbearance; but I do ask for fair play. This I am getting from the country, and this, I confidently believe, I shall also receive from an enormons majority of this House.

MR. PLUNKET

said, he desired to interpose in the debate for a very short space of time. With reference to what had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. E. Forster), he would make no comment on it, except to say that he and those who acted with him had always held, and should continue to hold, the Government responsible for the way in which they had exercised their powers in Ireland. They also held them responsible for much of the trouble which had arisen in that country; but, so far as he was concerned, he had endeavoured, while frankly criticizing the Government, to keep within the limits of fair comment and moderato language. Every word that he had used in that House, or out of it, he would be ready On the proper occasion to maintain; but the question to-day was of a totally different character. It was a Motion directed against the Executive, and intended as far as possible to paralyze its arm. From every proposition contained in the Motion he entirely dissented. He would be a party to any such attempt to weaken the hands of Her Majesty's Government in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had received but scant courtesy in his defence against those who attacked him. But he (Mr. Plunket) thought the right hon. Gentleman had completely succeeded in his answer to the charges which had been, on this occasion, made against the Government; and therefore he only wished to refer to one matter, and that was with the object of defending the characters of two honourable men from the aspersions that had been cast upon them. Language had been used stronger than it was usual to hear in a debate with reference to the circumstances that preceded the arrest of Mr. Sheehy—language such as the "infamous conduct" of Mr. Coote. He would not now stop to comment on that language; but he merely wished to put on record the actual circumstances of the estate referred to—the estate of Mr. Coote, in Limerick, near Kilmallock, the agent for which was Mr. Uniacke Townsend. The case was this. There had not on that estate been an ejectment for 23 years, and during that period six leases had expired. The charges were of rack-renting, of harsh action, and raising of rents; and what were the facts? Over a property, the rental of which was £4,064, in 23 years the increase in rent had been only £147. [Great interruption from Home Rule Members.] To these interruptions he would not yield; but it would be impossible to continue debate if they were persisted in. Several of the rents on this estate had not been increased since 1825; and there had been only two evictions, and these for non-payment of rent, in the last 23 years. One of these was a case in which there was a family dispute, a farmer being beaten by his children, and compelled to go to America; and the other was the particular case on which such stress had been laid—the eviction of a man named Murphy. And what were the circumstances of his case? This tenant certainly had not been an improving tenant for the last 16 years, and his farm had never been in a satisfactory condition. Ho paid a rent of £140 a-year; so he was not one of the class of small and helpless tenants. [An hon. MEMBER: What is the valuation?] It was impossible to proceed in the face of these interruptions.

MR. SPEAKER

I have distinctly pointed out these interruptions are disorderly, and I must take serious notice of them if they continue.

MR. PLUNKET,

resuming, said, that since 1825 there had been no alteration in the rent of this man's holding, and then it was reduced by £8. What were the circumstances of this eviction, on account of which the whole County Limerick was to be raised, and in reference to which such strong language had been used by the rev. gentleman? In May, 1880, an ejectment process for non-payment of rent was obtained, the tenant being £160 in arrears. It should be said also that the landlord would incur a loss of £250 by the ejectment, because in addition to the amount of arrears the landlord recently expended £90 upon an addition to the dwelling-house and the offices, the latter of which had been allowed to fall into disrepair; and in October, 1880, he offered £100 to the tenant to assist him to emigrate. This was the man whose case was brought forward as the test case from the county of Limerick. What happened? At last one of these two ejectments took place, the tenant owing £160. The sheriff took possession under the decree, and a caretaker was put in, pending redemption. There was some arrangement, by which a certain amount of the redemption was secured by the letting of the grass, and shortly after the tenant came and offered the balance. By this time an addition to the rent hall accrued, and the landlord said—" I will willingly accept you, if you will get security for the balance of the amount." The tenant went away apparently with the intention of obtaining the security; but then there came about one of those occurrences with which they were now too familiar. The Land League came into operation, and the tenant was persuaded to take forcible possession of the holding, defying the law, the landlord, the agent, and everybody else. That happened on an estate upon which landlord and tenants had always been on the best possible terms. Then came this unfortunate influence, and they saw the consequence. The remainder of the story was brief. The man was prosecuted for his illegal re-entry into the premises; but the jury disagreed, notwithstanding the man's own admission. Judge Barry on the occasion remarked that this was another of those discreditable scenes that had taken place during the Spring Assizes, and went to justify the remark that all over Ireland trial by jury had become a farce. It was so in the county of Limerick. He would not occupy time further; but lie would leave it to the justice and honour of the House to say whether the charges against this gentleman and his agent, so recklessly made, had been fairly or justly main-tained.

MR. O'SULLIVAN

said, that as his county had obtained so much notoriety during this debate, it would not be out of place if he said a few words on the subject. He knew every inch of the property and every tenant upon it for the last 25 or 30 years, and he was prepared to say, without fear of contradiction, that though there were many rack-rented estates in Limerick, not one was half so rack-rented as the estate of Mr. Coote. The right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Plunket) lead said that the rents had not been raised for 25 years. But what were those rents? He would give some instances, and would mention names. Did the right hon. and learned Gentleman never hear of a tenant named Walsh, who had his rent raised from £4 an acre to £4 8s., or of Widow Duggan, evicted from her holding? There was no more rack-rented or persecuted tenantry in the County Limerick. Did the right hon. and learned Gentleman never hear of Widow O'Donnell, of the Abbey Farm, Kilmallock, who, for a farm of 22 acres, paid £96 a-year, the valuation being about £56? Was that a rack-rented farm? True it was that the rent on the farm had not been increased much during the last 25 years; but he (Mr. O'Sullivan) had known the family for 33 years as hard working, industrious and honest as any in the parish, and during all that time they had toiled from daylight to dark to pay the exorbitant rent and keep themselves alive. When their cattle died, neither Mr. Coote nor Mr. Townsend gave them any sort of help. They were left to the kindness of their neighbours, and still had to pay the rack rent; in fact, if he were to trace the mode in which the tenants were treated on the estate of Mr. Coote, he could show that they had been rack-rented for the last 40 years, in place of 25 years. As to the case of Murphy, he was very unfortunate, it was true. He lost 13 cows from distemper, and he paid £3 3s. an acre for land, out of which he (Mr. O'Sullivan) would defy the best Scotch farmer to make more than £4 4s. Out of that he had to pay his rent, county cess, and the poor rate, besides over two acres of waste, for which he paid full rent, and the remainder left for the family to live upon was about 10s. an acre. Then, after the bad year of 1879, this miserable tenant was evicted for a balance of some £12 and one year's rent. Murphy had to pay £140 for a farm the valuation of which was £71 6s. 4d. Mr. Townsend took possession of his crops, and these he put up to auction and realized all but a balance of £12; but, in addition to that, he asked for £30 for costs, and would not allow Murphy to enter until those costs were paid. Now, this was the model agent and the model landlord held up for their admiration by the right hon. and learned Gentleman! Why, of all the many mistakes the right hon. and learned Gentleman made in his life, he never made a greater mistake than when he held up Mr. Coote as a model landlord and Mr. Townsend as a model agent. It was notorious that Mr. Townsend, as agent for many properties, raised the rent on every property ever which he was agent over and over again. Whenever a father died, Townsend put an increase on the holding for the son. When the son got married, a further increase was added. It was true that the rents on Mr. Coote's property had not been increased very much, because they had been advanced before to such an extent that the tenants to pay had to deny themselves the common decent necessaries of life. The raising of the rent any more must have resulted in the landlord getting nothing at all on the Ashdown property, the Massey property, and the Oliver property. He could tell a story of Mr. Townsend that would astonish the House. When a father died, he put on some 4s. or 5s. an acre rent, and he admitted as much in his evidence before the Land Commission. And he could show a model lease of Mr. Townsend's, granted for one year, which would show the restrictions placed upon the unfortunate tenant—how the tenant was forbidden to break ground without the consent of Mr. Townsend, and was compelled to lay down a certain amount in grass year by year. He could give names, and did not rely on generalities. He could give the particulars of the letting to a tenant named Cahill for 18s. or 19s. an acre of a holding that half the year was flooded with water. With energy and capital he drained and improved the land, and this model agent raised the rent 6s. or 7s. an acre, until finally, from 19s., it was advanced to £2 1s. 9d. an acre. Such had been the tyranny practised by Mr. Townsend towards the tenants on those properties, that at last they would have nothing more to do with him, and declared they would rather pay the rack rent into the bank for the landlord than pay Griffith's valuation to the agent; and so writs were going about the estate like snowflakes. Arrests were being made in a most arbitrary and reckless fashion. Instead of "village ruffians" being the persons arrested, they were often respectable farmers and shopkeepers, and, in one recent case, a bank official. He had just received a telegram from the parish priest of Kilfinane, stating that three men in Kilfinane had been arrested that day. He believed that for denouncing the proceedings of this agent, Father Sheehy and these three men had been arrested. He might just mention that since the passing of the Act, while Mr. Kennedy, the magistrate, resided in the district, no man was arrested; but since Mr. Lloyd had come to reside there, and had control over the place, seven persons had been arrested in seven days. If the Government went on like that, he was afraid he would have no constituency at all when he returned. He thought the matter was far too important to bring within the compass of one day's debate, and he should, therefore, move the adjournment of the debate.

MR. CALLAN

seconded the Motion.

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

MR. GLADSTONE

Sir, I shall not proceed at any length, as I see the clock warns me that only a few minutes are at our disposal; but I cannot allow the Question to be put without emphatically protesting against it. This Motion purports to be a Motion for discussing the conduct of the Executive Government. The charges against the Executive Government have been stated over and over again. The charges with respect to Mr. Dillon have been discussed on former occasions at great length, and the whole of last Friday night was spent in discussing the charge with respect to the arrest of Mr. Sheehy. The hon. Gentleman who made the Motion has had an opportunity of making his statement. Those who have supported the Motion leave, for the most part, entirely abandoned the case against the Executive Government, and have made this a general debate on the conduct of the landlords of Ireland. I submit that in the commonest justice the House should be allowed to go to a division; and I shall not hesitate to place it on record that if hon. Members, by pressing this Motion, prevent the House from going to a division, they will do so because they dare not take that opinion of the House which they profess themselves anxious to have.

MR. PARNELL

Sir, I wish to point out to the Prime Minister, in the very few minutes at our disposal, the fact that only one Member—with the exception of a very few words which were hurriedly addressed to the House by the hon. Member for Limerick (Mr. O'Sullivan)—only one man belonging to the Party who have brought forward this Motion has had an opportunity of stating our case against the Government in the light of publicity. Now, I ask that the right hon. Gentleman shall give us an opportunity of replying to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. The Coercion Act was obtained from this House under false pretences. The Prime Minister, by the strategy which he adopted on that occasion, closed the mouths of Irish Gentlemen. You have not got "urgency" now, and you not likely to get it; and I say that we dare to claim of this House the right of putting our case fully before the country, and we shall insist upon that right.

MR. CALLAN

thought the speech of the Chief Secretary for Ireland furnished an ample vindication of the course which he (Mr. Callan) had felt it be his duty to take on the previous evening. He wished to add that the right hon. Gentleman had made no allusion to one portion of his Circular of which complaint was most strongly made.

And it being ten minutes before Seven of the clock, the Debate stood adjourned till this day.

House suspended its Sitting at Seven minutes to Seven of the clock.

House resumed its Sitting at Nine of the clock.