Commons Sitting of 26 April 1882

MINUTES.
Public Bills—Second Reading—Land Law (Ireland) Act (1881) Amendment [2], debate adjourned; Bankruptcy [37]; Metropolis Management and Building Acts Amendment* [107]; Interments (Felo de se)* [98]; Militia Storehouses* [116].
ORDERS OF THE DAY.
  LAND LAW (IRETAND) ACT (1881) AMENDMENT BILL.— [Bill 2.]
  (Mr. Redmond, Mr. Parnett, Mr. Mealy, Mr. Sexton, Mr. Justin M'Carthy.)

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Mr. REDMONDsaid, the duty which devolved upon him of moving that the Bill be now read a second time was important and difficult. Its difficulty and importance must constitute his claim to the indulgence of the House while he endeavoured to explain the proposals they now made. He believed the necessity for legislation to amend the Land Act of last Session was now well-nigh universally recognized both inside and outside the House. That Act had two great objects, neither of which had been attained. The first was to bring redress within easy reach of every tenant in Ireland who was suffering from injustice; and the second—which, of course, depended, to a large extent, on the success of the first—was to conciliate the good-will of the Irish people, and to spread peace and prosperity throughout the land. The Land Act had been more than seven months in operation. Some of its provisions were only enacted for six months. Of those provisions which had expired they could speak absolutely, and say that they had proved melancholy and disastrous failures. The permanent provisions of the Land Act had been sufficiently long in operation to entitle them fairly to form an opinion as to the success they had had or were likely to achieve in the future. Of these also it might be said that they had failed to fulfil the object with which they were enacted. As the Act stood now, it could apply to

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  only about one-half of the tenant farmers of Ireland; but the very class of tenants which, by reason of their poverty, most required protection was, owing to the failure of the Arrears Clause, excluded from the operation of the Act. Of all the tenants in Ireland who were entitled to apply to the Land Court, only about 80,000 had done so, and yet its machinery was so clogged that years must elapse before these cases could be disposed of. Consequently, widespread disappointment and disaffection prevailed among the people. Those who were precluded from applying to the Land Court denounced the invidious and unjust distinction by which they were excluded; those who had applied lamented the prolonged delay, coupled with the continued obligation which rested upon them of paying exorbitant rents pending the decisions of the Court upon their cases. All this time the work of eviction was steadily proceeding, and the Irish people, who were told to look upon this measure as a message of peace, and as a settlement of their just demands, saw now with consternation that the work of extermination was carried on with increased facility under its provisions. The natural result of the failure of the Land Acton the one hand, and of the provocation by Coercion on the other, was the condition in which Ireland was found to-day. The Bill which he had now the honour to propose afforded a means—he was almost tempted to say the only means—whereby peace, prosperity, and tranquillity could be restored to Ireland. The proposals in the Bill were moderate and just. They were made in the name of the Irish people, and he claimed for them the fair and unprejudiced consideration of the House. The Bill might be said to deal with four distinct matters of importance. He would take first in order that question which, by reason of its vital and pressing necessity, might be considered first in importance. He meant the question of arrears. It might be well to recall the history of those arrears. They had their origin in those years of bad harvests, when over a large portion of Ireland famine was averted only by the charity of the world. In the districts referred to small tenant farmers were unable to live without assistance, and, naturally, rents fell into arrear. The necessity of averting destruction
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  from those men who were suffering from the act of God was recognized by the House of Commons, which two years ago passed the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. The necessity of lifting off the shoulders of the people the load of arrears it was impossible for them to meet was recognized by Parliament when last year it inserted the Arrears Clause in the Land Act. In recent times no responsible politician had alluded to the subject without acknowledging that the Land Act must remain, to a great extent, a failure so long as those arrears were allowed to continue an impassable barrier between a large portion of the people and the benefits of the Land Act. The Arrears Clause of the Act of last Session had expired. From first to last the Arrears Clause was inoperative. To-day the work of evicting from their homes those who were unable to pay rent in respect of years when the soil did not produce enough to enable them to live was being carried on with terrible rapidity. During the quarter ending the 31st of March last, no fewer than 1,300 families, or 7,000 souls, were evicted from their homes in Ireland; and as long as such scenes continued to be enacted peace would be an impossibility. At all cost the work of eviction must be stopped in Ireland. So long as it continued discontent, bloodshed, and outrage were absolute necessities of the situation. Now, the proposals of the Bill for dealing with the question of arrears were strictly moderate, and they had the merit, which the Arrears Clause of the Bill of last year had not, of being thoroughly practical. In a spirit of fairness to both landlord and tenant they recognized that Providence had blessed Ireland with, at least, one really good harvest since the arrears were incurred; and, consequently, the first requirement of the Bill was that the tenant should be obliged to pay a year's rent, or, at any rate, what the landlord should consider equivalent to one year's rent, in respect of the year ending the 31st of August last. When that had already been done by the tenant of a farm valued at not more than £30 a-year, and when the Court was satisfied that the tenant could not possibly pay the arrears, the Court was empowered to make a grant to the landlord not exceeding one year's rent, or not exceeding one-half the total arrears, which grant was to release the

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  tenant from all liability for arrears up to the 31st of August last. The result of that proposal would be that, in the case of the tenant of a farm of the yearly value of not more than £30, if three years' rent were owing, the tenant would be bound to pay the rent for the year ending August 31 last; the Court would grant a sum equal to the second year's rent, and the third year's rent the landlord would be called upon to sacrifice. That sacrifice could not be considered unfair; because it must be remembered that these arrears were, for the most part, arrears of rack rents, and that under no conceivable circumstances could the landlord hope to recover, by any means, the total amount of arrears due to him. One great difference between the proposed clause and that in the Act of last year was that the latter was optional to the landlord, and the former to the tenant; while the grant proposed to be made to the landlord was absolute, and would not have to be repaid by the tenant. The Bill proposed that the money required for these grants should be supplied from the Irish Church Surplus Fund. The Irish Church Surplus Fund was the property of the Irish nation; and he knew of no more national object to which it could be devoted than to saving the Irish people from extermination and ruin. That, he thought, was a practical proposal, and moderate; and he thought when hon. Gentlemen, who in that House represented the landlord class, came to give their opinion, it would be found that, even in their eyes, the proposal did not deserve opposition or censure. There were also other provisions in the Bill connected with arrears, which he had, perhaps, better mention at once. In view of the block in the Land Courts, it was deemed absolutely necessary that some protection should be afforded to tenants pending the settlement of their rents. As things were a tenant might apply to the Court, but might have to wait years for the decision of his case, during which time he would be called upon to pay his present, perhaps, exorbitant rent. Moreover, when the judicial rent was fixed, it was only dated from the first gale day after the decision. This Bill stated that when a tenant applied to have a fair rent fixed all proceedings for recovering the full amount of the old rent should be stayed, pending the decision of the Court; that the rent payable in the meantime should be
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  calculated on the basis of Griffith's Valuation; and that payment should be made of the new rent (when decided), not as now, from, the next rent day after the decision, but from the next rent day after the application to the Court. It was provided also that, after the decision of the Court, the difference between the fair rent and the rent paid on the basis of Griffith's Valuation pending settlement should be refunded by either the landlord or the tenant as the case might be—an arrangement not unlike that recently suggested by the hon. Member for the County of Tyrone (Mr. Dickson). He might point out, in passing, that Griffith's Valuation, which had been the subject of many denunciations, and had been described as "confiscation" and "robbery," had been virtually approved by most of the Sub-Commissioners throughout the country. He now came to the second important matter dealt with by the Bill—namely, the question of leases. To the leaseholders of Ireland the Act of last year had unquestionably been a mockery and a delusion. By a process of reasoning not easy to understand, a distinction was drawn in the Land Act between leases made before 1870, and leases after 1870. The latter, if certain conditions were fulfilled, could be interfered with by the Court; but leases made before 1870 were held to be sacred. It was notorious that leases were forced upon tenants since 1870, with the intention of robbing them of the benefits of the Act passed that year; but it was equally notorious that in 1S69 similar leases were forced upon the tenants in anticipation of that Act. The fact of a man paying an exorbitant rent under an unjust lease for 20 years instead of 10 was no reason why redress should be denied to him. However, in their wisdom, Ministers and Parliament thought otherwise; and they decided that the only leaseholders who should have the benefits of the Act last year were leaseholders holding under contracts made since 1870; but experience had proved that those men had been fooled to the top of their bent by the action of the Land Courts. He believed that only about 70 leases had been set aside, or about 5 per cent of the number of applications. He understood that Mr. Justice O'Hagan had stated no lease had been interfered with by his Court, which could not have been upset in an ordinary Court of Equity. The Lease Clause of the

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  Land Act was hedged round with such conditions that it was practically useless even to holders of leases made since 1870. One reason which made the clause of last year useless was that the provision that leases forced upon a tenant since 1870, even under a threat of eviction, if it was at the expiration of an old lease, could not he interfered with by the Court. That was a needless and absurd provision. Its effect had been to cut away from the operation of the Act nine-tenths of the leaseholders who had accepted leases since 1870. He would give an illustration. He knew a farmer who held under a lease which expired towards the end of 1871. During the continuance of that lease, which had been a long one, the tenant had erected a house, in which he established the business of a general country shop. This business became valuable, and the landlord knew the tenant would pay anything rather than be deprived of it. At the expiration of his lease, accordingly, a new lease was forced on him at an exorbitant rent, and he had to pay to the landlord a fine of £500 in respect of the business which he had himself created. This lease was forced on him by threat of eviction in the very tangible form of notice to quit. This man had no remedy under the Land Act, for the reason that the lease was forced upon him, not when he was a tenant from year to year, but on the expiration of another lease. Another way in which the leaseholders since 1870 had been cheated out of the benefits of the Act was by the provision making it necessary to prove that the lease had been forced under threat of eviction. Many landlords or their agents had sworn that the notices to quit were not technically to make them accept a new lease, but to induce them to pay a higher rent. Upon that subtle distinction a large number of applications were dismissed. He had a curious piece of information with regard to how the Lease Clause had worked in the county Wick-low. Sir Edward Hutchinson had a number of tenants who, up to 1872, were tenants from year to year. In 1872 large increases of rent were demanded from them, and they were given the option either to take a lease or not. Many of them accepted leases as the lesser of two evils. Those people had to pay as high rents as those who did not accept leases, and were now shut
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  out from the benefit of the Act. The others had gone into the Land Court and obtained, reductions varying from 20 to 30 per cent. That illustration showed how the Lease Clause of the Land Act was a mockery. It had kept the word of promise to the ears of the people and broken it to their hopes. This Bill proposed to deal with the question of leases in a thorough and simple fashion. He proposed to place a leaseholder on the same footing as any other tenant in Ireland, so that if he considered that he was suffering injustice he could apply to the Land Court for redress, and trust to the Court to judge of the merits of each individual case. He trusted when the Bill was discussed they would hear no more about the exploded fallacy of freedom of contract between landlord and tenant; it no more existed in the case of leaseholders than, in the case of yearly tenants. It was well known to all who were acquainted with Ireland that no tenants were more severely rack-rented than the leaseholders. Unless the protection and benefits of the Land Act were extended to this class of tenants, it must fail to meet the requirements and to satisfy the just demands of the Irish people. He now passed to the third matter of importance dealt with by this Bill. He referred to the "Healy Clause," which he might be permitted to call the heart of the Land Bill of last year. That heart had been paralyzed, if not killed, by the judgment of the Court of Appeal in the case of "Adams v. Dunseath." The "Healy Clause" enacted that no tenant should be charged rent in respect of improvements made by himself or predecessors in title for which he or they had not been compensated by the landlord. The Court of Appeal in "Adams v. Dunseath" practically killed this provision, by defining the word "improvements" to mean improvement works effected by the tenant, and not the increased letting value which was the consequence of that improvement. He might give from a magazine article which he read the other day an illustration which bore on this point. It was the case of a tenant who held a farm, a portion of which was waterlogged, and. valueless in consequence. The tenant expended £100 in drainage works, thus largely increasing the letting value of the farm. According to the ruling in "Adams v. Dunseath," the

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  tenant would be only entitled to a fair percentage onhis£100,and all the increased letting value of the holding became the property of the landlord. He did not believe that this proposition would bear a moment's examination. Assuredly the farmer rented the land as it stood. If by his action he injured the farm, he had to pay the landlord compensation for deterioration. If by his action he improved it, why should the benefit not be his? If his speculation were unsuccessful, his was the loss. If successful, assuredly the entire benefit should be his. But this was only one point in the judgment to which he referred. The Court decided, and they laid down the doctrine that the enjoyment for a certain time was to be taken as compensation by the tenant. He did not believe that the Judges in the Court of Appeal had acted in accordance with the spirit in which the right hon. Gentleman the Premier framed the measure. The doctrine of enjoyment being compensation was unjust. In many cases tenants had been paying exorbitant rents in respect of their own improvements. This Bill provided that in cases of improvement the presumption should be in favour of the tenant, that the burden of proof should be thrown upon the landlord. This was manifestly fair, because the tenants had no records to show the money they expended; whereas the landlord could have very little difficulty in showing, from the accounts in his rent office, every farthing spent by him on improvements. The Bill proposed to define improvements as not only improvements in works, but improvements in the letting value of the holding. It proposed that the doctrine of compensation by enjoyment should be done away with. It also further defined and elucidated the term "predecessor in title." Up to this point they had been dealing with the relations of landlords and tenants in Ireland. They regarded that portion of the Land Act as a stopgap. It could not provide a permanent settlement of the Land Question, and if they desired to make the defective clauses more efficient, it was only to secure protection and justice to tenants pending the settlement of the question on different lines. The Land League had, it seemed, accomplished a great work in the political world to-day. They found all sections of Irish politicians, and English politicians as well, acknowledging
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  that the only permanent settlement of the Land Question which was possible was the settlement advocated in the first place by Michael Davitt and the Land League. Landlordism in Ireland was doomed; and the landlords were crying out in behalf of those doctrines which two years ago were denounced as confiscation and robbery. The Purchase Clauses of the Land Act were inoperative, because they were halting and halfhearted proposals in their conception. The proposals contained in this Bill were thorough and practical, and they were also, as he contended, strictly moderate. Where the Land Court was satisfied of the credit of the applicant it was empowered to advance the whole of the purchase money to the present tenant. In the case of a tenant over £30 valuation it was proposed that the Court should hand over the money on annuities of 5 per cent, extending over a period of 35 years. To tenants under £30 it was proposed that the Commissioners should be empowered to advance the whole of the money on annuities to be repaid at the rate of £3 16 s. per annum, extending over 52 years. Those proposals worked out very simply. In the case of a tenant occupying a farm at £40 a-year, the Court would advance the £800 required for the purchase, and upon that amount the tenant would pay £5 per cent, or £40 a year for 35 years, when the farm would become his own; and in the case of a tenant occupying a farm at £20 rent, the Court would advance the £400 purchase money, and the tenant would pay £3 15 s. per cent, or £15 4s. a-year for 52 years, at the end of which time he would become the owner of the soil. In the case of the tenant paying over £30 there would be no increase of rent; in the case of the tenant paying less than £30 a-year there would be an actual reduction of rent. To these proposals, which were moderate and practical, he did not anticipate any serious objection. From the landlords he certainly did not expect any opposition, because some such proposals as these must be carried if a large number of the landlords were to be saved from inevitable ruin. As for the Government, he confessed he did not know what to expect. If the Government had grasped the situation in Ireland they could have no hesitation in accepting the Bill. It provided the means of staying the strife

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  of generations, and arriving at a generous, amicable, and just settlement. He could not conceive that the Government was so dead to the sense of its responsibility in Ireland as to refuse to give its approval to the proposals in the Bill. From the landlord's point of view, the proposals were just and fair. He was one of those who did not desire that every man in Ireland who was a landlord should be driven from the country; and he was convinced that if these proposals were carried out, some, at any rate, of the landlords, even though they might have to sell their estates, would be content to live in the country for the future. Those of them who had any love for Ireland, any sympathy with the wishes and aspirations of the people, would remain; and those of them who had not might go, for they were alien in spirit as well as in race. There were other proposals in the Bill, but he would not go into them, as they were matters of detail, and he must thank the House for having given him its attention. He had explained, as clearly as he could, the important provisions of the Bill. He had said that the proposals were moderate. They were not made on the responsibility of one Member of the House, but they were the proposals of the whole Irish Parliamentary Party for the amendment of the Land Act, for the restoration of peace and order in Ireland. It was their answer—and it was a complete and crushing answer—to those who said that they desired to deprive the tenants of the benefits of the Act of last year. He did not know what fate awaited the Bill; but this, at all events, he knew—that if the Government abandoned their hateful policy of Coercion, which baffled conciliation, and which proved utterly powerless to repress—if they accepted the proposals now submitted to them by the Irish Party, in a spirit of honesty and moderation, he believed in his heart they would be doing a great deal to hasten the arrival of the day when Ireland would no longer be what she was now—a disgrace and a danger to England—but when she would be a peaceful and prosperous nation, finding the best security for law and order in the existence and prosperity of a peasant proprietary, and finding her surest guarantee for liberty and Constitutional rights in laws made by Irishmen on Irish soil.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Redmond.)
  MR. GLADSTONE: I do not think, Sir, that we have any right to complain either of the length of the speech of the hon. Gentleman, in which he has introduced an important, and what, I hope, will be a useful debate, or of the judicious method he has pursued in directing our attention rather to what he considers the principal and essential features of his Bill, than to a very full and exhaustive statement of its details—or, finally, of the spirit of that speech, in regard to which I make due allowance for the points of view from which he approaches the subject. Of course, there are parts of it—I mean parts of his general declaration—in which he will not expect me to concur; but I fully grant that, from the point of view of one who has approved of many proceedings in Ireland down to the present date, of which I am not able to approve, he has fairly and impartially said everything that he could in his speech towards opening a favourable prospect for the working of the system of the Land Law in Ireland. There is one extremely important portion of the speech and of the Bill which I intend to recognize as a most fair and proper subject—a most allowable subject—for present and immediate discussion; but on which I do not propose to dwell to-day, for a reason which I will give, and which, I think, the hon. Member will probably admit to be sufficient. My object in rising at this moment is, in the first place, to do such justice as I can to the spirit and to the language of the hon. Gentleman; and, in the second place, perhaps, to narrow, to some extent, the field of the debate. Sir, I undoubtedly regard this Bill as establishing, on the part of those who have brought it in, a fair claim to this acknowledgment—that we are bound to assume the perfect good faith of their proceeding; and, whether we agree or do not agree with the principal enactments of the Bill, we cannot, I think, in justice, construe it otherwise than as an authentic expression of the desire of the hon. Gentleman and his Friends to make the working of the Land Act such as that it shall be, in their view, an effectual security for the restoration of peace and tranquillity in Ireland. Indeed,

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  Sir, the language of the hon. Gentleman near the commencement of his speech—I do not know that I quote his exact words—left no room for doubt upon this head; because he said, in effect, that the Land Act and the provisions which it contained, plus the Bill of the hon. Member, with the provisions which that Bill contains, afforded the only means of restoring peace and prosperity to Ireland. That is, undoubtedly, a declaration worthy of notice, coming from the hon. Member, as the person principally in charge of this Bill, and as speaking for those whose names are on the back of the Bill, and for others. Under these circumstances, I regret that, for reasons which I will state, and for which the hon. Member himself must be prepared, it is not in the power of the Government to support the second reading of this Bill. He has spoken of the Bill as containing four main heads—one of them the subject of arrears, to which he assigns, at the present moment, an overwhelming importance; the second, the subject of the Purchase Clauses, to which he assigns not so much importance at the present moment, but which, under the ultimate development of the measure, is also of overwhelming importance; and the third, I will call it, though he took it second, the question of leases, to which he assigns a very great importance; and, lastly, the subject of improvements, to which he assigns, likewise, a very great importance. That is what I understand to be a very rough outline of the hon. Member's speech. Now, I draw a disdinction in speaking of the provisions of this Bill. I am not prepared, and we are not prepared, to depart from the grounds upon which we originally objected to the institution of a Parliamentary inquiry into the working of the Land Act. We considered, and we still consider, that the Tenure Clauses of the Bill ought not to be disturbed, nor, at the present time, to be amended. That we consider as a general rule. But there are matters outside the main subject of these Tenure Clauses with respect to which that objection does not apply. It certainly does not apply to the question of the Purchase Clauses; and I am bound to say that, in our judgment, it does not apply to the question of arrears. The question of arrears is one that may be dealt with without, in the slightest degree, disturbing the general structure
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  of the Tenure Classes. But the question of the Purchase Clauses is one of a wholly different character. It is really not a question of interfering with the working of the Land Act—for the Purchase Clauses can hardly be said to have got to work—but it is a question whether, either by the modification of the plan which was embodied in the Bill, or by the development of the subject in accordance with some larger plan, good can be done with reference to what I think a very large majority of the House appear to contemplate as the ultimate solution of the Irish Land Question. Now, the hon. Member must not conclude from the remarks which I am about to make that I am derogating from what I have said with respect to the Purchase Clauses. The great Irish question will naturally present itself from three points of view to the mind of any Gentleman contemplating it. One point of view will be that which relates to the present Bill for the amendment of the Land Act—rather generally for the amendment of the Land Act. One will be the subject of the Purchase Clauses of the Act; and the third will be the important question of the proposals which it may be our duty to make during the present Session for the direct purpose of the maintenance of peace and order in Ireland. As regards the subject of peace and order in Ireland, I think, considering that that discussion stands in a certain form, at least, for an early day, it would be wrong on my part to advert to it at the present moment. I think, Sir, as respects the Purchase Clauses, the hon. Gentleman will probably feel that when a Notice has been given on the part of a large section of this House, which, in itself, leads to the expectation of proposals of great importance and great weight, considering the quarter from which they proceed, I should only prejudice that discussion; and I could not enter adequately upon this portion of the hon. Member's Bill were I to venture upon any remarks on that part of the subject beyond the admission I have made that it is a perfectly allowable subject for practical consideration, if we can have that consideration during the present Session. Now, Sir, the reason why we cannot support the second reading of this Bill is, that in many of the clauses of the Bill—in the majority of them—it does re-open, and re-opens

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  very largely, the Land Tenure Clauses of the Act of last year. We have given the best advice and the best consideration in our power to the subject of those clauses. We did consider it at the time when the proposal for Parliamentary inquiry was made in the House of Lords. We opposed that inquiry, taking into view, undoubtedly, the associations under which the proposal was made. But, whatever those associations may have been, and even putting them aside—though I will not say that we have felt ourselves absolutely precluded by any preliminary bar, or by the idea of consistency with the course taken at the commencement of the Session, from reconsidering the subjects of leases and improvements, which I take as the two main divisions of the hon. Member's Bill with which I am now dealing—yet we are advisedly of opinion that, looking at the whole subject of the Act of last year, the delicacy of the questions raised, the gravity of the interests involved, and the amount of case which the hon. Gentleman is able to show for interference on those points, we should not be justified in acceding to the second reading of a Bill which involves the acceptance of a principle that so largely disturbs the framework of the Act. With respect to the question of improvements, we admit that, in certain points, the judgment to which the hon. Gentleman has referred does not accurately correspond—far be it for me to say it does not accurately correspond with the Act, because that would be a judgment questioning the legal authority of those who have given the decision—but does not accurately correspond with the intentions with which the Land Act was framed. But it has been our duty to consider carefully, in concert with our own Legal Advisers, and in concert with the Commissioners, so far as it has been in our power, what is the real scope and the real importance of those deviations, and we do not find that the scope of those deviations is such as—especially in the absence of a large experience—would justify us in re-opening the whole of that most difficult, complex question with regard to the relations of landlord and tenant in respect to improvements. Again, in respect to leases, I do not deny that there may be plausibility, and perhaps more than plausibility, in the claim made by the hon. Member that the
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  tenant who takes a lease in succession to another lease may be entitled to have his claim, as against abuse, considered, as he would be entitled if he had been a yearly tenant before the conclusion of the lease. But we are not able to say that that, after all, is the question which is mainly kept in view by those who desire to re-open the subject of leases. The question mainly, in their view, evidently is this—they desire to place the lessee-tenant upon the same footing with the yearly tenant, not only with regard to his enjoyment of whatever advantage may arise in respect of abuses practised against him, but their claim—I do not say that Gentlemen may not be warranted, from their point of view, in raising it—is to have a reconsideration of rents under leases, in the same way as rents under yearly tenancies. Well, I must be frank to the hon. Members. We, I think, considered that matter pretty fully. I am not sure that the secondary point I have mentioned was considered last year; but, at any rate, the question of altering rents under leases was very distinctly considered, and the Government very distinctly gave their judgment that they would not be warranted in asking the House to interfere with the covenanting leases in regard to land. Our contention always, I think, was this—when we gave effect to the opinion of those who hold that a lease in Ireland does not extinguish tenant right, we contended that a lease was known and believed in Ireland to be a covenant to pay a certain rent for a certain number of years; and with that covenant we are not prepared to interfere. I now come to this most important question—the question of arrears. That is a provision of a temporary character; and I am bound to admit that, although the clause in the Act of last year has been by no means without utility, and although no inconsiderable claims have been made in respect to no inconsiderable amount of arrears under it; yet it has proved to be very far short indeed of the necessities of the case. The hon. Member, I think, himself spoke—at any rate, various Members sitting in that quarter of the House have spoken—of the failure of that clause as constituting the failure of the Land Act; and have described the failure of the Land Act, from their point of view, as a dismal failure, very much in connection with

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  the operation of this clause. On the other hand, we have heard from our own side of the House—and from very many Members sitting on our own side of the House, who appear to me to be quite as well entitled to speak for their constituents in Ireland as those whom the hon. Gentleman calls the Irish Parliamentary Party—urgent and repeated applications to draw us into a discussion of the question of arrears. We have never repelled those applications; we have not been insensible to the great and serious difficulties with which the question has been surrounded. I am quite prepared to say that we think it demands our practical consideration; and that we certainly look with some confidence, provided we can attain certain substantial conditions, to legislating upon the subject at a somewhat early date during the present Session. Now, Sir, the conditions which we deem to be essential to a satisfactory plan are these. We do not look upon this as a matter which ought to lead us into a general contentious re-opening of questions that have been considered and dealt with. We desire to be able to approach it—when we do approach it—in a spirit of perfect impartiality. It is for the interest of landlords quite as much as of tenants—and it is to the interest of all classes in Ireland, and of the country, and of the Empire, which never can be well while Ireland is ill—that, if possible, we should arrive at some fair and impartial settlement of this question. Well, then, next to the impartiality with which it is our duty to approach the question—and, indeed, if possible, even beyond it in its importance—is our desire to move in accordance with Irish opinion. And here I am not about to draw any invidious distinctions. After the speech of the hon. Member, I should be totally without justification if I did not give expression on this occasion to what, after all, is a truism and a commonplace—namely, that Ministers charged with the Government of the country, and with advising the House in the work of legislation, have no right, even if they had the inclination, to bear in mind, upon a subject of this kind, former differences, however sharp; and that it is their duty to invite from every quarter every suggestion which they can obtain from persons qualified to speak which may contribute to a satisfactory solution of the
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  question; and therefore, also, I hope that those whom I see sitting directly opposite—and I am glad to see both the right hon. and learned Gentlemen the Members for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson and Mr. Plunket) with a pen or pencil in hand—will not withhold their counsel in regard to a practical subject of great importance, and I trust that no barrier of Party differences or old recollections may arise. And, thirdly, what I feel is this. Having to re-open the question of arrears, our plan must not only be impartial, it must not only be sustained by a wide concurrence of Irish opinion; but I hope it may be so framed as to be effectual. We have had the advantage of a good deal of Irish opinion upon this subject; but I think those who have applied their minds to it will be prepared for a little further development from myself. It is obvious, I think, that the question of arrears may conceivably be dealt with upon either one of two bases. There are a great number of important secondary questions involved in the question of arrears. The source from, which the money is to be derived, and many other points, are points of importance, upon which a responsible judgment must be exercised by the Government, and by the House. But there are two distinct and definite bases, upon either of which a measure may be founded. It may be a voluntary measure; it may be a compulsory measure. If it is a voluntary measure, then it will be framed on the basis of the Act of last year. It would proceed upon the principle of making loans to tenants, and of the repayment of these loans under their voluntary action, with an increase of the inducements which were offered by the Land Act. But the Bill of the hon. Member contains a Compulsory Clause, and I am not sorry that it contains that Compulsory Clause; because I think that the question between voluntary and compulsory action is a question which may, under the present circumstances, be fairly entertained; and that the choice which the Government might make between those two methods of procedure is a choice that would be materially influenced by what they find to be the state of Irish opinion. That Irish opinion, I hope, will be largely drawn forth by the discussion of the Bill which the hon. Gentleman has

  1495
  laid before us. I have nearly said all I have to say upon these matters; but I wish to speak a few words on the clause of the hon. Gentleman with regard to arrears. It is on the basis of compulsion, and, being on the basis of compulsion, I am bound to say that I think it a clause, upon the whole, drawn with great care and judgment. There are several points in that Clause to which I wish to refer. In the first place, arrears, in the language of that Clause, are to be arrears owing in respect of rents due before and down to November, 1880. That is an important—a very important—condition of the Clause. Secondly, the Clause of the hon. Gentleman proceeds upon proved incapacity to pay. That, likewise, is a provision of great importance, and of great value, if we can work it. When we induced the House to pass, in 1880, what was called the Compensation for Disturbance Bill—I am not going to refer to any matters associated with that name—we proposed to proceed upon the basis of proved incapacity to pay. We were under the belief that the Civil Bill Court would be competent to deal with that question; and I do not despair, if a plan of this kind be adopted, of its working this provision, which, in point of principle, is a very valuable provision. Thirdly, the Clause draws a distinction, which I think is just, at a certain point of valuation. It marks the intention of the framers to meet the necessities of the case, and not to go beyond that necessity. The fourth point, as I have said, is that the basis of it is compulsion—that is to say, the application of the one party will suffice to make it compulsory on the other party. Now, I do not know—I am not now giving any judgment on the part of the Government—but I hope, with the hon. Member, it will not be supposed that because its basis is compulsory, it is therefore a Clause conceived in a spirit of hostility to either party. I myself happen to be acquainted with the sentiments of some considerable number of Irish landlords, and men who have taken a large share in the discussion of this question—by no means on the side of the tenant—who appeared to desire that some compulsory plan, in the sense I have described, of dealing with arrears should be introduced and adopted. That is a subject of great importance, and a
  1496
  subject on which we are anxious for more light. The hon. Gentleman finally proposes that the sum which may be advanced in respect of arrears under his Clause shall be a gift, and not a loan. I entirely agree with him that if we are to proceed upon the basis that he has described, that is the proper course to take; and I will go one point further, and say I think he is right in drawing the sum that he desires to have from the Church Surplus, in so far as this—that I do not know that anything could be more emphatically a peace offering, or a more legitimate application of that money, than the application of it to this proposal. But I will go a point further, and I will say this—it would not be fair, on my part, to ask the hon. Gentleman whether he has entered into a careful calculation to show that the Church Surplus will yield at the present moment money sufficient for this purpose. But, viewing the nature of his case, I would venture to go one point further, and say that, believing, as we do, that the matter, although serious and important in a pecuniary point of view, yet is limited, I should not myself be prepared to make it a fundamental objection to a Compulsory Clause that something might possibly be required from the Public Exchequer in order to work that Clause efficiently. I am very anxious, indeed, to take the care that properly appertains to my function in setting forth what I conceive to be the main parts of this very important Clause in order that it may draw the attention of the House, and that we may learn whether Irish opinion is favourable to the one mode of proceeding or to the other mode of proceeding. For my part, I have stated the three conditions which, I think, it is our duty absolutely to keep in view—namely, in the first place, to treat this subject impartially; secondly, to treat it in conformity with Irish opinion, so far as we can entertain it, and to allow no recollections of former transactions to interfere with our appreciation of that opinion; and, thirdly, to make, if we can, a plan which shall be effective. What I hope is, that considering the good and fair spirit in which the hon. Gentleman has opened this question, the debate may be a debate which will tend mainly to a practical issue, and which will give to the Govern-

  1497
  ment that light and aid which I think the House will feel that we must necessarily want, before we can endeavour to enter upon the reconsideration of this most important subject of arrears in connection with the section of the Act. Not alone, I must say, the speech of the hon. Gentleman, but the introduction of the Bill itself, I hold to be a favourable symptom; and I trust that the debate may throw a light upon a horizon which has long unhappily been darkened. If it is, I cannot say how great a value I attach to any expectations connected with it; because, though I know, and have perfect confidence in the power of this country, and in the solidity of this Empire, for the purpose of asserting everywhere the Imperial authority, yet I likewise know that it is an Empire organized on the principles of freedom—that the compulsory government of any of its parts is an idea hostile and alien to the entire spirit of the Constitution. Therefore, whatever may tend to the uniting of Ireland, for a great practical purpose such as that we have in view, which raises no subjects of Constitutional difficulty, but which touches the whole constitution of society in that country—the importance of it I cannot overstate. Nor can I overstate the earnest anxiety of the Government to know that no weakness and no pettiness on their part shall interfere with their adoption of such a course as may be most conducive, not only to the passing of legislation in a satisfactory manner, but to the completing, in a most essential point, the important labours of last year for the benefit and for the happiness of all classes of the people of Ireland.
  Mr. HEALYsaid, he was sure that he should not be expressing the opinion of hon. Gentlemen on that side of the House if he did not endeavour to reciprocate the expressions of the right hon. Gentleman in the temper in which he had met the proposals in this Bill. The right hon. Gentleman stated that he thought he saw in the Bill a gleam of hope; but their feeling of satisfaction with the course taken by the right hon. Gentleman was considerably mitigated by his statement that he would be obliged to vote against the second reading; and he (Mr. Healy) could not help regretting that when the Premier had stated that a gleam of hope which had been shed on the question the
  1498
  Government should proceed to place an extinguisher upon it. But he must say that their feeling was again mitigated by the statement that it was the intention of the Government to deal with the arrears question. He was very glad, indeed, that the Government had seen the great importance of it. It was a question which he might say, in the present condition of affairs in Ireland, was one of the greatest magnitude; and he thought, so far as he could judge from the expressions of the right hon. Gentleman, that the Government were about to meet the question in a proper spirit, as they were evidently intending to meet the wishes of the Irish people. With regard to the proposal to make the charge fall upon the Irish Church Surplus, which was an Irish fund, the Government must remember that it was not in the power of any private Member to propose to make a charge upon the public funds, and upon the pockets of the country; and, therefore, they were restricted to the Irish Church Surplus, as they were obliged to put forward some scheme, and he (Mr. Healy) considered it was a proper fund to be applied as they proposed. Therefore, he listened with satisfaction to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman, that his mind was not shut against the question of the augmentation of that fund for the purpose of a charge upon the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman stated that they could not disturb the Tenure Clauses of the Bill—namely, those relating to improvements and leases. As to the first point, he gathered that the right hon. Gentleman did not admit the accuracy of the statements made by them on that question. But he stated he would wait, in order to see the effect of "Adams v. Dunseath." He (Mr. Healy) had occasion to put a Question on this point to the right hon. Gentleman; and his reply intimated that, while the decisions of the Court did not express the intention of the Government, yet he would watch carefully any further manifestations of injustice that might be occasioned by the decision in "Adams v. Dunseath." Before coming down to the House he (Mr. Healy) had fortified himself with some cases of that description. He took the ease of two tenants on the estate of the Knight of Glin—Dillon and Hanrahan—who had appealed against the

  1499
  decision of the Sub-Commissioners; and their rents were raised, in one case £4 and the other £3, by the Court of Appeal in consequence. Owing to the decision in "Adams v. Dunseath," the judgment given by Judge O'llagan represented a loss for the next 15 years of £60 in the case of Dillon, and £45 in that of Hanrahan. They had before the Court at present no less than 70,000 cases; and he asked the Prime Minister if he could give them any assurance as to what percentage of those cases injustice would not be worked by similar decisions? Last year the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) proposed an Amendment which was intended to put it beyond doubt that no enjoyment of improvements by the tenant was to entitle the Court to increase rent. The declarations of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister on this point were remarkable. On the 9th of August the right hon. Gentleman said that—
  "In the Act of 1870 we did, in respect to the tenant, recognize the principle that he might be recompensed by a reasonable lapse of time in respect of the improvements he had made, and that the use and profits of those improvements for a certain time might be considered as compensation; but we do not recognize that principle in the present Act."—[3 Hansard, cclxiv. 1393.]
  On another occasion the right hon. Gentleman, speaking on an Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Devon (Sir Stafford Northcote), said that the doctrine accepted at the time of the passing of the Act of 1870 was one they must certainly decline to recognize then, as it was neither the basis of the Act of 1881, nor was there any occasion for it—that was the doctrine that the enjoyment by the tenant of the improvements on the property for a certain time should be a ground for raising the rent. But the language of the Government was still more remarkable when the hon. Member for the City of Cork moved his Amendment on that subject, to the effect that the time during which a tenant might have enjoyed the advantages of his improvements should not be held to be compensation. The present Lord Chancellor of Ireland (Mr. Law) said that it was absurd to suppose that the Court would hold enjoyment to mean that the tenant had been paid for his improvements. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gladstone) also said the
  1500
  Amendment was unnecessary, because it was little short of impossible to imagine that a Court could think that compensation was due to the landlord for an improvement which had not cost him a single farthing. He (Mr. Healy) then rose, and, being mindful of a racy expression which the right hon. Gentleman had made use of, asked him if he would lay 10 to 1 that the Court would not assess rents on tenants' improvements. The right hon. Gentleman nodded, as much as to say that he was prepared to do so. Perhaps it was fortunate there was no stake involved, for if there had been, he was inclined to think that he (Mr. Healy) would have been, by this time, a considerable winner. He wished to call attention to a still more important matter. In the Act of 1881 there was no definition of improvements. There was, however, a statement that the definition of matters not given in the Act of 1881 was to be ruled by the Act of 1870; and that defined "improvement" to mean any work on an agricultural holding which adds to the value of the holding, and which is necessary to the holding. The most important point in the Bill was that, while it approved the definition of the Act of 1870, it omitted the requirement that the improvement should be suitable to the holding. He thought he could show that the definition of improvements in that Act, in view of the 9th sub-section of the 8th clause of the latter Statute, worked very unfortunately for the tenant. Let them take a case. Suppose that under the Act of 1870 the tenant built a villa residence on a farm. That, not being an improvement suitable to the holding, the landlord would not be bound to pay compensation for. But in the Act of 1881, it was stated that no rent should be payable on a tenant's own improvements. In "Adams v. Dunseath," however, the Court of Appeal had laid down that such rent might be charged when there had been a user for a certain time. The effect was that where there was an improvement which might be very necessary for the holding, but which the landlord did not deem to be so, the tenant might be assessed for it. Therefore, they were in a worse position than ever under that Act, than if the tenants had been left to make any arrangements they could with their landlords. It was a most extraordinary state of things.

  1501
  The tenant was put in a worse position by the Act of 1881, with regard to improvements, than he was by the Act of 1870, because, in the Act of 1870, he was dealing with a landlord who would deal with him, in reference to assessing rents upon improvements, from motives of policy; but the Act of 1881 had taken out of the landlord's hands altogether the power of fixing rents, and put it into the hands of the Court, which was bound to decide the matter on mathematical and legal principles; and the legal principle was—that no matter what improvements might be made by the tenant, so long as he got a user of them, the Court was bound to fix a rent on them. Under the Act of 1870, the landlord was not bound to assess rent upon improvements unsuitable to the holding; but now the landlord had no power in the matter, and the Court was bound to fix rent upon such improvements. The Prime Minister had admitted that it was not the view of Parliament that rent should be levied on improvements. The cases he (Mr. Healy) had quoted showed that it was so levied. Therefore, he considered that they had made out a very excellent case as regarded improvements; and he wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it was not his intention that rents should not be assessed in those cases? What were the intentions of the Government in regard to the other thousands of tenants whose cases had yet to be heard? Because of a failure on the part of Parliament, were these men to go on paying what the Prime Minister himself had said was unjust and beyond the intention of Parliament? In effect the right hon. Gentleman practically stated that because the House of Lords had brought forward a Committee, and because he was obliged to put down his foot at an early period of the Session, and say he would not have the Act of last year disturbed, he did not want to take it up again, notwithstanding that he saw his putting his foot down was doing an injustice to a large class of the people. Owing to the decision in the case of "Adams v. Dunseath," if it continued to be followed in the cases of some 80,000 tenants who had applied to the Court, at a fair percentage the loss to the tenants would amount to at least £1,000,000. Yet the right hon. Gentleman said, because the House of
  1502
  Lords had asked for a Committee, that he was not prepared to disturb the Improvement Clauses, although he (Mr. Healy) had shown what the original intentions of the Government and of Parliament were, and notwithstanding that he had instanced cases in which the tenants were sustaining considerable loss, and that, upon a fair average, the loss to the thousands whose cases had yet to be dealt with would amount to millions of money. This only impressed the more strongly on the minds of the Irish Members the real reason why the Government did not wish to disturb this Act of Parliament. What they were thinking of was the time of Parliament. The House had not time to attend to this matter. When the right hon. Gentleman thought of the weary days and nights of last year, he might be well excused if he hesitated at the prospect of another series of nights such as they had last year. Although, in a sense, it was to the Irish Members a labour of love, still they had no desire for it to be repeated. But in plain justice to the people of Ireland the Government ought to tell them what they intended to do, seeing that their failure to carry out their original intention of the Act of last year would involve the Irish farmers in a loss of so large a sum of money. The failure of the Act in the respect pointed out had not been owing to any laches on the part of the Irish Party, for the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) had brought forward an Amendment which would have safeguarded the tenants, and saved these millions to the tenants; and it would be remembered that when that Amendment was submitted, the right hon. Gentleman stated that he could not conceive the probability of any Court ever holding that user by the tenant was a compensation for his improvements. The excuse given for not dealing with this matter was a very poor one; but he saw in his mind's eye a House that would be only too glad to lend its ear to the cry of the Irish tenant. But the only House which had the time and inclination to deal with that important matter had been destroyed, and the men who would constitute it were powerless. Therefore, when the foreign Government in Ireland had to consider whether, from the points of view of time and politics, they could deal with the question, it was humiliating for the Irish Party to come forward and to

  1503
  plead before foreigners, knowing well that the treatment of the question depended very much on how it would tend to serve Party purposes. That was, unfortunately, the conclusion which was forced on them. He had dealt at sufficient length with the first point—the improvements. As to the second, which was that the use by the tenant or his predecessors in title should be deemed compensation for improvements, the Court, in the case of "Adams v. Dunseath," had held that the word "improvements" meant the labour and capital expended by the tenant on the land which tended to increase its value, and not the increase in value. For those improvements the tenant was to pay. Thus, if a man expended £1,000 on his land, according to the Court, he would be simply entitled to an interest on it, and not to gain anything from the improved working of the land, owing to this £1,000 having been put upon it. That meant that if the £1,000 brought no interest, the tenant would receive none; and, if it did, the landlord was to share it with the tenant. That seemed to admit the truth of the allegation which had been made in that House, that the improvability of the land belonged to the landlord. But he was prepared to prove that such was not the case. Supposing a landlord had two farms, and charged £50 per annum for them, one being improvable and the other non-improvable, was be to be told that £50 did not include, in the view of the landlord, the improvability, on the one hand, and the non-improvability on the other? The Irish landlord was not a fool, and when he let his land he would take care that he fixed such a rent as would include the improvability. The improvability was already taken into account in the rent, and all benefits arising from any expenditure which tended further to improve the land must necessarily, in common justice, belong to the tenant. This Bill, which the Government had refused, was intended, therefore, to make clear the decision of the Court in the case of "Adams v. Dunseath." He wished to call attention for a moment to the pledge given last year by the Prime Minister on the subject of town parks. The right hon. Gentleman had then said that he could see no reason in principle why a man holding town parks land should be excluded from the benefit of the Act, and
  1504
  why they should not be treated like other holdings.
  Mr. GLADSTONEsaid, the hon. Member must have misunderstood him. He had stated that, in his opinion, it was worthy of consideration whether the cases of these persons ought not to be dealt with in some Bill. He had never intended to convey the belief that town parks ought to be dealt with like other holdings.
  Mr. HEALYsaid, this recalled to his mind the circumstance that, in the discussion on the matter, the Irish Members proposed that in respect to town parks the Act should be limited to towns of over 6,000 inhabitants, and the right hon. Gentleman said he could see no principle upon which distinction should be made between towns according to the number of their inhabitants; but he also said, during the course of the coming Recess, he would look into the subject. At any rate, he knew this—that when he had asked the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether be could give them any idea as to the area in Ireland covered by town parks, and the right hon. Gentleman having endeavoured to get the information through the only machinery for the purpose in the country—namely, the Local Government Board—stated that he was unable to find the area. The result was that nothing whatever had been done; but he (Mr. Healy) was sorry the matter had as yet remained undealt with, for the view had been conveyed to the Irish tenantry that it was the intention of the Government to inquire into it. These town parks, unfortunately, were very often held by persons carrying on some small business, perhaps the business of a publican, grocer, or general dealer, in a small village. According to the view of the right hon. Gentleman, these men were not farmers. He held that they were traders first and farmers afterwards. The people themselves, however, if asked what they were, would describe themselves as farmers first and shopkeepers afterwards. These men were excluded from the Act; and it appeared to them, and to him (Mr. Healy) also, very unfair that this should occur because a man eked out his living in the way described. Furthermore, there was what was called land let for accommodation purposes. It frequently appeared that a country doctor, with an income of about £90 a-

  1505
  year, or a parish priest or curate, whose income was generally small, found it necessary, to eke out his salary, to farm a a little land. That was at once held to be accommodation land, and the consequence was that those who farmed it were subjected to rack rents. In dealing with these matters the right hon. Gentleman should take a broad and comprehensive view, and include all classes within the provisions of the Act except a very special class indeed, and leave it to the Court to decide whether the rent fixed was a fair one or not. Finally, he desired to draw the attention of the Prime Minister to a very important matter which was untouched by the Land Act. There were now some 70,000 cases remaining undealt with by the Court. In the 60th section of the Act it was stated that all applications made to the Court up to a certain time were to be considered as having been made on the first day the Court sat, and, therefore, that the rent fixed by it should date as from the first rent day before the Act came into operation in August, so that the rents would date from March. There were 60,000 of the cases still down for hearing to which this section would apply. The Court was blocked, and it might be two or three years before the cases were disposed of. Therefore, while it could cut down the rents from March, 1881, the landlords might in the three years the tenants were waiting to have their cases tried, proceed against them by ejectment and turn them out, although it might afterwards turn out that the rents were far too high, and ought to be lowered some 25 or 30 per cent. The right hon. Gentleman, merely for the sake of technicality, because he did not wish to interfere with the Tenure Clauses of the Bill, was going to exclude 60,000 people from the benefits of the Act. It appeared to him (Mr. Healy) that this was a very unfortunate thing—there was something almost ludicrous about it. He could not believe that it had ever entered into the heads of the Government that there would be at least 60,000 tenants who would have made application, and whose rents would have been cut down as from the gale day before the passing of the Act. If the Government had imagined that there would have been such a large rush, surely they would have made arrangements to have safeguarded the tenants'
  1506
  interests until the Court could fix the rents permanently. They had not made such arrangements, however. This was an Act for which the tenants were told they ought to be grateful; but it led to strange anomalies. But the present Bill, whilst it carefully recognized the title of the landlord to rent, said that only the Government valuation should be made payable until a fair rent was fixed, and contained provisions thoroughly securing the tenants who were waiting to have the rent so fixed. The Government did not deem it necessary to refer to this clause in the Bill, or to the poor people who, on the faith of the right hon. Gentleman's representation, had gone into the Court, and were practically liable to be shipwrecked in the meantime whilst waiting to have their cases heard, without any protection from the Government. It appeared to him that this was an extraordinary thing, so much so that attention could not be too often and too vigorously called to it. It was now proposed that until the decision of the Court could be obtained in these numerous cases, there should be a stay of all proceedings, and that the rents should be taken at Griffith's valuation from the date of the application which was to relate back to the day after the passing of the Act. Doubtless, in all human affairs, most proposals, which dealt with conflicting interests as between man and man, were more or less imperfect and open to improvements, and that Bill, of course, had its imperfections; but he should like to know, bound as they were to bring forward a proposition on behalf of the tenant which would not have the appearance of being too much opposed to the landlord's interest, what proposal a body of men could have brought forward that would have been more impartial or more just to all parties interested? If the Government had properly considered the position of these tenants, he should have thought they would have done something for them. He would, therefore, appeal to them now not to exclude this subject from their action. The right hon. Gentleman had described the bringing forward of that Bill that day as a gleam of light amid the clouds of the Irish difficulty, and had said he believed it was the intention of the Irish Home Rule Party to make the Land Act of 1881 a

  1507
  living reality in Irish minds. He desired to impress upon the right hon. Gentleman that when a proposal of that kind was brought forward, it must be taken as an indication of the desire of the Home Rule Party, in the first place, to answer the charge that had been brought against them of attempting to upset and to shipwreck the Act of 1881; and, in the second place, to set themselves right with the country and prove their bonâ fides by bringing in a Bill of this kind, which had been described by hon. Gentlemen on the Government side of the House as a moderate measure. Being a moderate one, it was necessarily the result of compromise. He would remind the right hon. Gentleman that he had told the Opposition in the course of the discussion on the Bill of last year that that was the smallest Bill the Government could ask the House of Commons to pass. The right hon. Gentleman had great difficulty in passing it; but he at length succeeded, and now he (Mr. Healy) would tell the Prime Minister in turn to remember that this was the smallest measure the Irish Party would be satisfied with. Knowing the condition of the country to be what it was, and knowing the charges that had been made against them, it was the desire of the Irish Party, animated as they were by patriotism and a desire to promote the best interests of their country, that the Bill should be accepted as it was presented; but he would tell the House that, coming from the quarter it did, it was the smallest measure they would ask the House to pass.
  Mr. O'SHEAsaid, that unsatisfactory as was part of the right hon. Gentleman's (the Prime Minister's) statement with regard to certain points of the Bill, he sincerely believed his declaration with regard to the intention of the Government to deal with arrears would be hailed with joy by the whole of Ireland to-morrow, and would do more for the pacification of the country than any number of superior Resident Magistrates or police. He was glad there appeared to be a mode of arranging this matter in a friendly way by—as the right hon. Gentleman himself described it—a "combination" of all Parties in the House. All sensible landlords in Ireland were most anxious that some peaceable settlement of this question should be arrived at. He (Mr. O'Shea) himself was
  1508
  in communication with a great many landlords in Munster and elsewhere, and all those who were desirous of seeing peace return were willing to make some sacrifice, and objected to the stringent measures taken by a few of their neighbours. It would be of the greatest possible importance that any arrangement of arrears arrived at should be made compulsory. In fixing the valuation of the holding to come within the operation of the Bill below £30, the hon. Member for New Ross (Mr. Redmond) had shown considerable moderation, and had hit the point of almost absolute justice, because tenants of such holdings were not the men who could but would not pay their rents; they were absolutely unable to pay. The proposal that all these cases should be adjudicated on by the Sub-Commissioners appeared to him, however, to be one of the ill-considered points in the Bill. The block of business in the Courts was already so great that he should be sorry to see extra work placed on its shoulders. A separate department should be formed in the Land Court in Dublin for carrying out the necessary arrangements. Power of intervention should be given to that department, and a severe penalty should be imposed upon anyone giving false testimony or making false affidavits. With regard to the right hon. Gentleman's statement on the subject of the date from which judicial rents should be paid, he quite agreed with the hon. Member for Wexford. It was illogical to compel a man whose name stood lower on a list to continue to pay a rack rent, while another man whose name stood higher had to pay merely a rent fixed by the Court. With regard to leases, during the progress of the Act last Session he had used every means in his power to bring forward information, in the hope that the Government would see their way to giving leaseholders the same advantage as the ordinary tenants from year to year. He could never understand how a contract made for a term of years became more sacred than a contract made for one year; and nothing had tended more to unfortunate dissension and to greater crime in certain localities with which he was acquainted than the omission of leaseholders from the operation of the Bill. The leaseholders saw on all sides of them men applying to the Court. They saw transactions between landlord and tenant out

  1509
  of Court. They saw the advantages I gained by their neighbours who could state their cases, but they themselves had no hope under the Act. It was extremely mortifying to them, and it had created a sense of injustice in their minds that had led to horrible crimes. He hoped, then, it was not too late, although the questions of tenure were important, for the Government again to consider this matter, and, as they had already declared their intention to improve the Act of last year, that they would go still further. There was an amount of uncertainty about the decisions of the Court which produced unfortunate results. It was impossible that the case of "Adams v. Dunseath" could remain without effect on the Land Act, differing as it did from the interpretation which the Prime Minister put upon the clause. No theorist could defend such a contradiction as there had been given effect to. He was sorry that in the Bill there had been no mention of labourers, and believed it was time that some step by a Royal Commission or otherwise should be taken to obtain the evidence which would bring before the House the absolute necessity of legislating for this class. In conclusion, he would earnestly appeal to Her Majesty's Government, now that they were dealing with this question in a friendly spirit, to allow the hon. Members who were in prison, and who had largely assisted in the preparation of the present Bill—for it was the Bill of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell)—to take part in the discussion of these subjects whenever they came before the House. He was sure nothing would be lost by doing that. On the contrary, it would have a most tranquillizing effect.
  Mr. MACFARLANEsaid, he had listened with the greatest attention and interest to the speech of the Prime Minister on that the first occasion when a serious discussion had taken place on the subject since the passing of the Land Act. He wished that some parts of the speech had been a little more clear and defined; but the tone and the expressions he used were such as to convey entire satisfaction to all those interested in the Land Question. At that moment they were in the dark as to the precise length which the Prime Minister would go in dealing with the question of arrears. A
  1510
  great advance, however, had been made when the Prime Minister accepted the necessity for dealing with the arrears, even if it involved an advance from the Imperial Exchequer. There were hon. Members who would object to that, for, unfortunately, there was a small section in the House who were only willing to give Ireland as much justice as could be given for nothing; but he believed that if the right hon. Gentleman proposed, as he had pledged himself, to move a serious Resolution on this subject, he would obtain the support of an overwhelming majority. It was now eight months since this Land Act was launched. From that time to this it had been, in nautical language, so to speak, on its trial trip, and was now in dock for Her Majesty's Government to repair. It had been found that its machinery, like all new machinery, did not run smoothly and completely; and it was now once more back in dock for the Government to repair, in order that it might be rendered more suitable for the large number of passengers it had to carry. The great danger the Act had incurred was that of being swamped by the number of passengers. Eighty thousand rushed to avail themselves of it; but, up to the present, only 10,000 had received any benefit. He was sorry to say that the Prime Minister had said that he would not deal with the question of leaseholders, and he did not think the right hon. Gentleman had taken up a logical position on the point. The right hon. Gentleman objected to disturb contracts. But the Act of last Session provided that in the case of every lease which should fall in during 60 years after the passing of the Act, the tenant who occupied under that lease should be a present tenant according to the Act. There could be no greater interference with contract than that, for the material covenant in all those leases that at their termination the tenant should deliver up possession was cancelled by the Act of last Session. He could see no difference in principle between setting aside a material covenant in a lease and setting aside every lease in Ireland, and he regretted the determination of the Government. He could not see why the law had not stepped in and made them all free at one stroke. He had previously pointed out to the right hon. Gentleman during last Session that the Act would

  1511
  be no settlement of the Land Question if it left 120,000 of the leaseholders unprovided for. He would not, however, pursue that subject further, for he knew how useless it was to discuss a subject, especially one connected with Ireland, when the Government had set its foot down and said, "We will go no further." With regard to the question of improvements, he regretted that Her Majesty's Government had not followed the principle of the Land Laws of Bengal. That principle was extremely simple, and would have settled the whole question without difficulty. The Indian Act provided that no extra rent should be payable to the landlord by the tenant, unless he could show that the value of the land had been increased from causes other than the labour and capital of the tenant. Such a provision would amply protect the tenant for his outlay; and if the question came before the House in a practical form, he would endeavour to induce the Government to accept it, for it seemed to him the simplest and soundest principle of justice that could be used in the case of Ireland. As to the Purchase Clauses, he believed it was accepted by the House generally that in their development would be found the only final solution of the Irish Land Question. The compulsory purchase of estates was not contemplated by anyone; but what they wanted was that when the landlord wished to sell and the tenant to buy the Government would advance the money where the security was sufficient. He was sorry that the right hon. Gentleman had not specified for the satisfaction of the House the exact nature of the proposal he intended to make in respect to arrears. The question could not have come upon the Government by surprise, because he (Mr. Macfarlane) proposed an important Amendment on the subject last year, which he was only induced to withdraw on the introduction of the halting proposal introduced by the Government. He understood that the Government would deal with the question some time during the Session; but it should be an immediate some time, for during the waiting tenants were being evicted. He thought the proper course would be for the Government to reinstate all the tenants evicted since the passing of the Act, if they could prove that the arrears were caused by rack-renting or the Providential de-
  1512
  struction of the crops. He appealed to the Government on their behalf. They should remember that the tenants were being evicted in thousands for arrears at the present moment; and these poor people would be cast upon the world unless the measure contemplated by the Government was made retrospective. Though he disapproved of much of the policy of the Government, and condemned it as grossly mistaken and injurious to the interests of the country, yet he gave them credit for the best motives in introducing the Land Act, and in taking other measures which they had taken with respect to Ireland; but it was impossible for any man to govern a country with which he was not very familiar, if he absolutely refused to consult a single Representative of that country. It was impossible to derive proper and sufficient knowledge from the permanent officials at Dublin Castle. The right hon. Gentleman was perfectly capable of forming an opinion on any subject; but it was not in human nature not to be affected by the perpetual dropping of one story into one's ears. The Representatives of the land were not the persons whose advice had tended to the pacification of Ireland. It was these people whose principles, carried out for so many years, had brought Ireland to the state she was in. ["Question!"] He hoped it would be impressed upon the Prime Minister that a few millions of money laid out in solving this question and in reinstating these tenants would be money spent to advantage. Tenants so replaced would, he believed, never give the right hon. Gentleman an opportunity of reasonably suspecting them of anything disloyal. He, therefore, appealed to him to deal promptly and liberally with this question of arrears, the cost of which would be but as a drop in the ocean compared with the expenditure going on in Ireland at present.
  Lord EDMOND PITZMAURICEsaid, that, in his opinion, it was no exaggeration to say that the issues submitted then to the House by that Bill were in many respects of quite as great importance as those which were discussed at such length last year, and which most persons hoped had been settled for a considerable period. Personally, he did not last year—any more than he did now—believe that the Land Act could

  1513
  be a final settlement of the Irish Question. Indeed, he had prophesied so in the House last year in the debate on the second reading of the Bill, and on more than one occasion in Committee. He was then told by some of Her Majesty's Ministers that he was an evil prophet, and that he was doing his best to bring about the fulfilment of his own evil prophecies. He did not recall these observations from any wish to re-open old sources of difference or dispute, which must be painful and bitter to many in the House, but only for this reason—that, if upon this question he ventured now to say a very few words, he might remind Her Majesty's Ministers that what he told them last year had come to pass—namely, that before there would be a single future tenant under the Land Act, there would be several proposals made to amend it. This Bill was the first of such proposals, and it contained provisions of the utmost importance in regard to three of the main questions, and in regard to the four points which, though called subsidiary, were likewise of the utmost importance. He had great pleasure in paying a willing tribute to the ability and skill with which the hon. Gentleman the Member for New Ross (Mr. Redmond) had submitted his case to the House. He would also congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the friendly terms in which he spoke of the landlords, for he expressed his own opinion that whenever the hour of final social liquidation arrived, it would not be necessary for all the landlords to leave the country, but some might be allowed to remain. Animated by his example, the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) likewise spoke in quite friendly terms of the landlords. Therefore, he (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) felt that he could approach this subject in the same friendly spirit as hon. Members opposite had done. With regard to the question of arrears, when last year the Government submitted their proposals, which were not part of the Land Bill, he did not offer any opposition to them. His own opinion was, however, that the Government had only nibbled at the question. If he understood them rightly, the Arrears Clauses of the Land Act were purely temporary clauses, which had actually expired already. Therefore, it was not a question of amendment, since the measure was no longer
  1514
  a piece of legislation, and the Government were not now making any change of front at all. The Prime Minister had pointed out that the vital question in regard to arrears was this—Were the propositions which were to be laid before the House for ultimate acceptance to be permissive or compulsory? His (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice's) own conviction was that whatever was done in this matter ought to be compulsory. If it were not made compulsory, they had far better leave it alone altogether. Nobody could fail to see that the true reason for dealing with this question of arrears was to obtain peace and quiet in the land, and what was required was that there should be a new state of things in Ireland, when, if possible, all parties might start afresh; that there should be a burial of old feuds and differences; and that the fatal conditions of the country should be remedied so far as it was possible for propositions of this kind to remedy them. If they made the law optional, they placed it in the power of one or two individuals, who, by their own strong-headedness or unwillingness to operate, would have it in their power to nullify intended legislation. They would thus deprive themselves of the very objects they had in view. It would be advantageous, both to the landlord and to the tenant, to make these clauses compulsory, and he hoped that whatever the Government did would be compulsory. But this was not the only consideration which arose in regard to this question of arrears. The hon. Member for New Ross pointed out very clearly that there was an immediate connection between his proposals in the last clauses of his Bill relating to arrears and the first two clauses of the Bill, because he showed that unless something were done in the direction of the first two clauses, the very condition of affairs which they wished to remedy by legislating in regard to arrears might come into existence again in a slightly altered form. As regarded these proposals, he saw no objection to the 1st clause, which provided that the judicial rent was to date from the day succeeded the date of the application to the Court. The 2nd clause provided that, pending the decision of the Court, Griffith's valuation was to be taken as the rent. That proposition, as far as it related to Griffith's valuation, was one

  1515
  which he should feel bound to oppose. Every Commission which had inquired into the question had declared that Griffith's valuation could not be taken as representing in any way the existing condition of things in Ireland, for it was sometimes too high and sometimes too low, and was no actual criterion of the value of the land. As to the block in the Land Court, there was no appreciable diminution in the number of applications, and the adoption of Griffith's valuation would not only double but quadruple them. The consequence would be that the work of the Land Court would come to a standstill. He was sure that was not the object of the hon. Member for New Ross. He had no hesitation in stating that that was a terrible blot on the Land Bill, and he saw no sign of its immediate removal. Her Majesty's Government appeared rather in a state of unhappy optimism in considering this question, and were obviously unwilling to look the facts in the face. They continually spoke of the sensible impression that was being made in the number of cases; but he (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) absolutely denied the accuracy of such statements. Even where decisions were actually given the cases were renewable in 15 years; therefore, what the Government had to show was not that cases had been decided, but that this enormous rush of business would be well at an end a considerable number of years before the expiry of the first term. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department, in his speech at Derby, began talking about sunshine. An hon. Friend near him suggested that it was moonshine. The right hon. and learned Gentleman seemed to think that the number of cases in the Land Court was actually diminishing. It was the absolute duty of Parliament and of the Government to look in the face this question of a block in the Court, and to see whether some arrangement, even if it were of a rough-and-ready description, could not be made in order to diminish it. He would suggest that a sort of flying Commission should be sent into every Poor Law Union district, consisting of one person appointed by the head of the Survey Office, one representing Parliament, and another appointed by the Land Court. This Commission should be empowered to fix
  1516
  an interim rent, which would be so much above or below Griffith's valuation. In Ulster he believed that valuation would be found fair. In Munster it was notorious that the valuation was made at a time when the circumstances were altogether different from those of Ulster, so that he believed Munster would represent one end of the scale and Ulster the other. An interim rent being ascertained, he would suggest that it should be taken as the rent pending appeal. If either landlord or tenant liked to appeal, he should be able to do so before the Land Court; but if either failed to go to the Court within a short time, then the interim rent should be the fixed rent. In that manner we should clear the block in the Land Court, for there would be sent to it only the disputed cases, and there would be some chance of the work being done before the end of the first 15 years. But if the Government really desired the establishment of peace and order in Ireland, they must go a step still further. In regard to small holdings they must make up their minds to fix a rent that was not to be permanently quarrelled over for 15 years; there must be something practically approaching to a permanent rent; and they must give the landlord, if he were dissatisfied, the right of tendering the estate for purchase. He would give the landlord the right of tendering his estate at a certain number of years' purchase of the rent ascertained by the interim Commission in the manner just described. He assumed that the rent so fixed would be low, and the tenants would be glad either to go on holding at that rent, or to buy up the estate in the same manner that they enfranchised copyholds in England. In this way they should deal with the arrears, as desired by the hon. Member for New Ross and by the Government, and they would arrive at a way of carrying out the Purchase Clauses conformably with the views of the writer in the Quarterly Review, which were supposed to be endorsed by right hon. Gentlemen opposite. ["No, no!"] He heard an hon. Friend near him say "No, no!" Let him tell the Radical Party it was of no use their saying "No, no!" to these propositions. It was high time that hon. Members who, like himself, believed themselves to be just as good Liberals as any Radicals in the House, and who also had a connection with Ireland, should say—

  1517
  "Whatever the future of Ireland maybe, whether good, bad, or indifferent, it is perfectly certain that the very worst thing that can happen to Ireland would be for her to become the sport of the Radical Party in England." ["Hear, hear!"] In saying that, he was not working to gain the cheers of hon. Members opposite; but still he would say that nothing could be a greater misfortune than such a fate. ["Hear, hear!"] He had the courage of his convictions; and, although he believed the Repeal of the Union would be a great misfortune, he should prefer the Repeal of the Union itself to leaving Ireland to be "bally-ragged" and "chucked" backwards and forwards between the two great Parties in England. In regard to this question, he had been alarmed more than he could express at the tendency he saw to make Ireland the sport of English Parties; the greatest offenders in this respect were not the Members of the Whig Party, nor of the Liberal Party, nor of the Conservative Party, nor of the Party opposite (the Home Rulers); but they were the English Radical Party who sat below the Gangway. It was not that Irish politics had so much interest for the Radical Party as that they were a means to ulterior operations; and, therefore, he expressed his individual opinions irrespective of the good opinion of the Radical Party in England—great as was his respect for its Members—with which he invariably acted on religious and educational questions. Respecting another point, he said last year that he was no great believer in the sanctity of leases. The justification of the Bill of last year was that there was said to be rack-renting; but what proof had there been that there was less under leases than under annual rents? He had never been able to see that there was anything in a lease which necessarily took it out of the purview of the law. Of 10 farms five might be let on lease and five not; they might be intermixed; and they were to say to the leaseholder, because he was supposed to be in a better position than his neighbour before the passing of the Act, that that was to be an argument for putting him afterwards in a presumably worse position. It was natural that that should cause dissatisfaction among leaseholders, and that they should complain of having been dealt with differently from others; and he thought
  1518
  they should be placed on an equal footing with them. He did not see any great reason for objecting to something being done with regard to improvements; but all these questions were thrashed out last year ad nauseam, and he asked hon. Members opposite, whether they really thought Her Majesty's Government would be justified within six months in re-opening all these questions? ["Yes, yes!"] He must say he did not. He was bound to say that he could not see at all how the whole of this complicated question was going to be thrown again on the floor of the House, and still more so in regard to that other question, on which he frankly acknowledged he differed from hon. Gentlemen opposite. The Improvement Clauses had, he thought, been dismissed last year in a manner which satisfied those Gentlemen. Since then Mr. Parnell—he mentioned the hon. Member by name as he was not allowed to take part in this debate—had spoken on this subject, and had used the phrase "prairie value." [Cries of "John Bright!"] He understood the phrase was used by Mr. Parnell in reply to the right hon. Gentleman, and not disowned, as a fair description of what the hon. Member proposed. There was in the clauses of the Bill a translation of "prairie value;" for if its Clauses 4 to 8 were passed, "prairie value" would be an accurate description of the worth of land to the landlords. Now that, as it seemed to him, was the very proposition that had been said by the Prime Minister to contain the doctrine of public plunder. ["No, no!"] If hon. Members opposite could show that he had given an unfair description of those clauses, let them do so, and he would at once withdraw what he had said; but it certainly was his opinion that those clauses, drawn as they were with great ability and great clearness, were deliberately intended to compass that object at which the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster had hinted when he used the words "prairie value." The hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy), in his most ingenious speech, would have led the House to believe that all these clauses aimed at was to put right a little matter touched upon in the decision in the case of "Adams v. Dunseath;" but in truth their effect would be far greater. It was true that the last sub-section of the 5th clause did touch the point men-

  1519
  tioned by him in the case of "Adams v. Dunseath"—namely, the decision that the time of enjoyment of improvements was, in certain cases, to be taken into consideration against the tenant in ascertaining his rent. If that sub-section had stood alone, he was quite willing to grant that there would have been a good deal to be said on both sides, because it was at least open to argument whether a tenant holding at a low rent, for, say, five years, had by that low rent been compensated for his improvements? But, taking Clauses 4 and 5 together, he would ask anybody who had read the Bill whether it did not go much beyond this? If it had merely been confined to this point, it would not have been necessary to go beyond the last sub-section of Clause 5. Then, again, they had Clause 4 offering a definition of improvements; and by the 1st and 2nd sub-sections of Clause 5, the presumption in regard to improvements was entirely altered. They had a provision in regard to the rent of a holding during a statutory term, which was undoubtedly intended to make the doctrine in Clause 5 still clearer; and, lastly, they had the declaration respecting title by occupancy, in which it was said to be practically the same thing as occupancy by title. All these clauses, taken together—and they must be taken together—would leave the landlord the happy possessor of something rather less than the "prairie value" of his land; and the House, if it made this change at all, ought, at least, to do so with its eyes open. Do not let them believe they were merely remedying a little injustice done by the decision in the case of "Adams v. Dunseath." He (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) had no wish to discuss that case; but he wished to enter his protest against the course taken by the hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) in bringing individual cases before the House. Why did the Prime Minister object to the Committee of Inquiry by the House of Lords? Was it not because the Sub-Commissioners were to be examined in regard to their judicial decisions? But, at least, those persons would have had an opportunity of answering on any of the facts mentioned. What the hon. Member for Wexford did was, without Notice to anybody—to come down to the House, bring up cases, give figures and facts, and then assert that there had been gross injustice, that millions of property had been confiscated,
  1520
  without the persons whom he implicated having an opportunity to reply to him.
  MR. HEALY: I did so because the Prime Minister, in consequence of a previous Question put by me on the subject, said that he would watch the operation of the law, and would go into specific cases. That was a direct inducement to me to notice this case.
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICEsaid, he did not know what justification the hon. Member might have had; but it was a most inconvenient course. If that sort of thing was to be continued for the benefit and enlightment of the Prime Minister, it did not seem to him that Public Business would make any progress that Session. He had no wish, however, to follow the hon. Member's example, except to say this—that he hoped the House would reserve its judgment in regard to the various allegations against the Sub-Commissioners. In so far as the Bill raised the question of the conduct of the Sub-Commissioners, the best answer was that given by the Government, that they must take time to see how the Sub-Commissions worked. Having heard a great number of violent attacks made both by the landlords and the extreme portion of the tenants against these Sub-Commissioners, he was glad to express his own opinion that he believed they had done their best to fulfil honestly a very difficult task; and even if they had, but without evil intention, done injustice, he recollected one thing that was clear—namely, that it was the first duty of a Member of Parliament to refrain from questioning judicial decisions. Those gentlemen whose names had been of late so often brought forward in that House and "elsewhere" ought, until they had been shown to be wrong, to have the presumption of every doubt in their favour. In any case, if their decisions were wrong, they could be carried by appeal before the Head Court. He must now say he was sorry for having trespassed at such length on the attention of the House; but he felt that upon that Irish Land Question he occupied a disagreeable position. He must say this, although he should be showing himself a peculiar person, that he had very little sympathy indeed either with the views of Her Majesty's Government upon the Irish Land Question, or with the views of a large number of his Radical Friends; and if he were to express his own reason

  1521
  for having limited sympathy with their views or positions, he should tell them, speaking with perfect frankness, that it was because he believed there was, in regard to this question of Ireland, a very great want of knowledge amongst a great number of Members of that House; and, although he felt that the Government had had a most difficult task, and had done their best to perform it—although nothing would induce him to join in the clamour that had been raised against his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland—and although he felt that the Government had acted most wisely in simply accepting that portion of the Bill which related to arrears, and stating that they would not allow all these tenure questions to be re-opened, yet, he equally firmly believed what he said last Session, that the problem of Irish government was getting more and more difficult, because they had removed all those props and supports one by one on which the whole theory of Irish government rested, and last year they broke the last and most important of them—the power and influence of the landlords. Without entering upon matters of controversy in regard to the Irish landlords, what he did wish to insist upon, and what he did with the utmost respect urge upon the Government was, that they must realize, or else facts stronger than they would wish would make them realize, that the problem of Irish government was now entering upon a totally new phase, that they must form some distinct plan of policy as to what they intended in Ireland, and what their views were. At all events, they could not go on drifting. His theory was that the Government in regard to Ireland was not, perhaps, altogether a united Cabinet, and that for that reason they were to a certain extent inclined to drift. The patriotism of all Parties alike was necessary and ought to be united in trying to find some solution of this Irish Land Question, which lay at the root of all government. He felt convinced, however, that that solution would not be found by shutting their eyes to obvious facts and plain warnings. That was his contention in regard to the point which he urged just now, when he said that he utterly differed from the Radical Party, because he heard them say every day that they were for the most drastic legis-
  1522
  lation against Irish landlords—["No, no!"]—and at the same time they were strongly opposed to the repeal of the Union. There was a certain amount of difficulty in reconciling these different opinions. In thanking them for the attention with which they had listened to him, he could only say that they ought to realize the gravity of the situation, and not to suppose that they could settle the question by calling out "No, no!" whenever an independent Member, perhaps of peculiar views, called attention to inconvenient facts in the House of Commons.
  MR. SEXTONsaid, the noble Lord opposite (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice), who had just addressed the House with remarkable ability, had described himself as a peculiar person. He (Mr. Sexton) could only say, in answer to it, that he must confess to a wish that there were more peculiar persons of his type in the House of Commons, for, whatever might constitute the peculiarity of the noble Lord, he was, at any rate, a thoughtful politician, and spoke not particularly under the influence of sentiment, but rather approached the type of a cold and logical doctrinaire. When such a Member expressed himself on that particular question of the political state of Ireland in so manly and straightforward a manner as that which distinguished the noble Lord's utterances that evening, he (Mr. Sexton) felt they had fallen in with a remarkable sign of the times, and in the utterances of the noble Lord they (the Irish Members) saw the herald of the coming time when they should no longer trouble the House of Commons with Irish questions. He (Mr. Sexton) hoped his hon. Friend the Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) would never have to encounter a more severe charge than that made against him by the noble Lord. Because, what was the objection made by the noble Lord when he spoke against his hon. Friend? It was that he had brought forward specific cases of grievance. His (Mr. Sexton's) experience of the House of Commons was not long; but it was long enough to satisfy him—and he would take the liberty of reminding the noble Lord upon the point—that the ordinary charge brought against Irish Members was that they indulged too much in general complaints of grievances, and devoted themselves too little to exact

  1523
  and specific facts. He was sure the noble Lord, on consideration, would see, if his hon. Friend had committed a fault at all, that it was, at all events, a venial fault, and one into which he had been led by the accusations so frequently made against Irish Members. He (Mr. Sexton) took what was, perhaps, the most remarkable feature of that speech, the declaration of the noble Lord, that he would prefer to see the Repeal of the Union granted than that Ireland should always be "shuttlecocked" between the great Parties of the State as the most creditable utterance of an English Member in that House within recent years; and he took his stand beside the noble Lord in thinking, that of all the Parties which formed the component elements of that House, the Radical Party had shown itself least moved by permanent political principle, and most by Party requirements, and mere considerations of the convenience and comfort of the moment. He must confess that, in one respect, the speech of the Prime Minister was to him an agreeable surprise, and it was especially so, when he considered it, not from a practical, but from a sentimental point of view. He felt that the satisfaction with which that speech was received would be derived infinitely more from the tone of the right hon. Gentleman's language than from its substance. The Irish Members had been so often made the target for his denunciation and scorn, attempts had been so often made to stigmatize them as persons who favoured, if they did not actually promote, outrage and crime, that it was a mental luxury to find the most eminent authority in the House deeming them once more within the pale and brotherhood of human nature. They (the Irish Members) were always ready to recognize and to reciprocate even a small admission which, like that, need not be regarded as any special compliment. On the part of the Irish people and the Irish Members he claimed for them that it was not in their nature, and it was not their desire, to be violent or troublesome, or even uncivil, unless on desperate provocation. Therefore, he should endeavour to follow the initiative set in the first instance by the hon. Member for New Ross (Mr. Redmond), and followed by the Prime Minister, as regarded the tone of the remarks he
  1524
  should make use of; hut, in the first place, he was bound to note that they were discussing the Bill in the absence of its principal promoter. They owed that Bill, which, upon the admission of the Government, was drawn with so much care, so much judgment, and so much moderation, considering all the circumstances of the case, to the initiative of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). They owed it to the manliness and nobility of spirit which had led that hon. Gentleman, forgetting in his prison cell the personal sense of injury and all feeling of resentment, to submit from that cell, where he was suffering unjustly the penalties inflicted under a coercive law, to the judgment of the House that most moderate and reasonable proposal. He and the Party of which he was the accredited, honoured, and recognized Leader, had been charged with a desire to perpetuate disorder in Ireland; one of the most grievous, and, at the same time, most baseless charges ever made against any Party, and more particularly theirs. But, as his hon. Friend the Member for New Ross had said, that Bill was their reply. No speaker on the Treasury Bench presumed to describe it as anything but just, and, considering the circumstances of their position, a moderate Bill; and when he said that that Bill had proceeded from the hon. Member for the City of Cork, whose presence in the House would be no injury or loss to it, and would be a great gain to the public interest, he offered a most conclusive vindication of his Party against any charge which had hitherto, or might be hereafter, made coupling that Party with the perpetuation of disorder in their country. The hon. Member for the City of Cork, presenting that Bill by the hands of his Colleagues, conveyed to the Members of that House a request, amounting to a command, to say nothing which would interfere with the application of remedial legislation, or even exasperate the present situation in Ireland. The Prime Minister had avowed that his object was to narrow the field of the debate; but in one respect, so far from narrowing the field, he widened it by volunteering information on a subject which they did not introduce, and on which they did not feel any need of information. The right hon. Gentleman said that one of the elements

  1525
  of the Irish case was the preservation of law and order, and that, upon an early day, the Government intended to offer further proposals. Their (the Irish Members') experience of the Government during its two years of Office, and the inferences that they had drawn from that experience, had not led them to think that the Government would be slack in the preservation of law and order. They felt that the Government would be always up to the level of the occasion, if they did not exceed it; and, therefore, they would have been content if the Prime Minister had actually narrowed the debate, and had not offered them information of which they had no need. The main aspect of the Premier's speech, however, lay in his declaration that that Bill largely opened the Lease and Tenure Clauses of the Act of last year, and in his further dictum that the Tenure Clauses were not to be disturbed. If he could feel that that declaration sprang out of a sense in the Premier's mind that the Tenure Clauses had proved ineffective for their purpose, or out of a sense that any system of dual proprietorship of the soil in a country where the landlord and tenant classes had not one social or political feeling in common, and where no ties of affection had distinguished them in the past, if he could feel that the Premier's refusal to disturb these Tenure Clauses arose from his sense of impossibility of having any dual proprietorship in the soil in Ireland, he would be content with the refusal. Further, if he thought that the Premier fore bore to deal with the Tenure Clauses because he felt that the Land Question could only be settled by a peasant proprietary, he could have regarded the right hon. Gentleman's refusal as adequate and wise; but there was little doubt the Premier's unwillingness to deal with the subject arose rather from a parental affection for his legislative offspring—arose rather from the hope, which, even in his mind, must now be almost a despairing hope, that the Tenure Clauses might eventually be made to work. He (Mr. Sexton) could understand the unwillingness of the Prime Minister thus early to interfere with the work of his own hand; and he would be unworthy of the position of a public Representative, if he did not make allowance for that part of human nature which in a Statesman led him to approach too
  1526
  late the reformation of his own work. But he (Mr. Sexton) denied the sanctity of any Act of Parliament. The proper moment for amending an Act of Parliament was the moment it was proved to be ineffective; and the earlier they proceeded to the work of necessary reformation, the more effectually did they fulfil their legislative duty, and the better would it be for the public interest. As to the Tenure Clauses, how stood the case with regard to leases? He had no sympathy, to say nothing of patience, with the most unmeaning superstition which made hon. Members cling to the theory of freedom of contract in Ireland. No such freedom existed. The noble Lord opposite (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice), with a frankness which he (Mr. Sexton) could not too much admire, admitted that the pressure of rack-renting was probably as severe on the holders of leases as on the tenants from year to year, and obviously must be so. It was notorious that leases which, in England, were considered as some concession, were, in Ireland, engines for extracting money from the tenants in the shape of fines, and for imposing the most onerous conditions. If it were the landlord's interest or whim to rack-rent his tenants from year to year, why should he forbear to do so with those on whom he had imposed leases? In short, they were ingenious engines of oppression. The House had interfered to save the tenant from year to year, because his contract was purely verbal; but what equitable difference could there be in the eyes of a reforming Legislature between injustice perpetrated under a parole agreement—an agreement by word of mouth—and injustice perpetrated in ink and sanctioned by sealing wax? In 99 cases out of every 100, the free-will of the leaseholder had not been exercised to safeguard his rights. He found from the Parliamentary Return just issued, that only 1,400 leaseholders applied to the Land Court to have their leases voided. On a moderate assumption, there were 80,000 leaseholders who did not come within the operation of the Land Act, and of the 1,400 who applied, only 72 had their leases broken. Yet the Government and the House were deluding themselves with the fond idea that they could hope for tranquillity in Ireland, while they left 80,000 leaseholders

  1527
  to be, as the noble Lord aptly expressed it, centres of disaffection throughout the country. Any man who considered the question calmly and dispassionately must see that it was idle and futile to hope for any permanent good from any settlement of the Land Question which left 80,000 leaseholders to feed upon their sense of wrong. He further held that on the question of improvements, their claim to reform the Land Act was already amply established. The case of "Adams v. Dunseath" was plainly overturned and destroyed by the natural effect and interpretation of the Healy Clause. The noble Lord appeared to attach a strange interpretation to the expression "prairie value" of land. Now, that expression did not mean the value of waste land or land commonly known as prairie; it was the value of land when in a state of pasture, which included lands in various degrees of fertility. Their claim was that whatever was added after the land had passed from the landlord to the tenant belonged to the tenant, and that no length of time during which he had been enjoying his own improvements could ever entitle the landlord to have the property in those improvements transferred to himself. By the judgment in "Adams v. Dunseath," however, it was declared that the length of time during which a tenant had been enjoying his improvements might operate to destroy his right of property in them, and, if the landlord had forborne to exact an increased rent, that fact might be counted in his favour. As a matter of fact, however, it would be safe to assume that landlords in Ireland had generally exacted as much rent as they could conveniently get. Then, as regarded the question of a peasant proprietary and the Purchase Clauses, the right hon. Gentleman, in dealing with the subject, evaded a most important part of the Land Question, because he said a Motion would presently be offered from the other side of the House. Instead of saying that, however, he had better have made a declaration on the subject that day. It seemed to him (Mr. Sexton) that a game of "hide-and-seek" was being played by the two great Parties in the House. The Ministerialists and the Opposition Party were competitors in their plagiarism of the Land League policy. They had both assented already to the 1st article of
  1528
  the Land League policy, and they were both now trembling on the verge of a plunge into the 2nd article; but the Prime Minister, before he committed himself to any statement upon the subject of the establishment of a national purchase scheme for the tenants of Ireland, was anxious to hear what could be said by the right hon. Gentleman on the Front Opposition Bench (Mr. W. H. Smith). He (Mr. Sexton) would have thought that a Statesman of the right hon. Gentleman's sure and long-proven power of initiative, and being at the head of a great majority in the House, would have scorned to wait till he had heard what his opponents had to say; but that he would have come down to the House, and, recognizing that the purchase system must be the ultimate solution of this Land Question, would be prepared to anticipate his opponents, and instead of waiting for an opportunity to "dish" them after they had declared their views, would have had the frankness to declare at once what he himself intended to do. To show the urgency of the "purchase" scheme, he need only refer to a Parliamentary Return lately issued, as being one out of several grounds upon which it might be pressed. According to that Paper, 76,000 applications had been made to the Court; 4,000 cases only had been dealt with, and he challenged contradiction when he said that the Courts, as an almost universal rule, kept above the level of Griffith's valuation. Moreover, since the speech of the Prime Minister, two months ago, in which he said that the largest reductions would be made in the cases first heard, this significant result occurred, that the reductions had become more meagre and less adequate to the necessities of the case than they were before. Griffith's valuation included all the improvements made by the tenant up to 30 years ago; and he (Mr. Sexton) need not say more to convince the House that by the ruling of the Sub-Commissioners in fixing these judicial rents, the improvements of the tenants were now being confiscated, the judicial rents which tenants were being called upon to pay being rents fixed upon their own improvements. Would any Member of the House say that such a settlement could permanently pacify Ireland? The noble Lord opposite (Lord Edmond Fitz-

  1529
  maurice) said that if the Healy Clause and the doctrine of improvements were pushed to their logical conclusion, the landlords would not be left anything worth, having. He (Mr. Sexton) did not feel constrained to contest in any great degree the contention of the noble Lord; but if the improvements effected by the tenants were of such a character that to allow the tenants to assume property in those improvements would be to reduce the landlord's interest to nothing, surely this was proved—that the continuance of a dual proprietorship in Ireland was impossible; it proved that the position of the landlord was untenable; it proved that if morality was to be courageously applied to his position, he must starve; and, therefore, that the only logical escape from the difficulty was that the system of dual proprietorship should cease, and that the landlords must be paid off, or find themselves in a condition of beggary. He would pass to another very singular fact. He had said that 4,000 cases had been heard by the Sub-Commissioners; and how many had been appealed against? One thousand four hundred had been appealed against, and of those 1,400 appeals the Court of Appeal had decided 195. But, what was a singular fact with regard to these 195 decisions? An undeniable fact was this—the Chief Commissioners, in their judgments, had kept so close to the figures of the official valuators, as to adopt them almost entirely. On what principle did the official valuators proceed? They proceeded on the principle of ascertaining the present fair letting value of the farms; and the consequence was that there had been, in the Court of Appeal, a complete confiscation of the occupancy right of the tenant, and of his entire property in his improvements. Bad as the decisions of the Sub-Commissioners had been, they were good and liberal compared with the final decisions of the Court of Appeal. It was absurd to think that rents fixed on those principles could satisfy the farmers of Ireland. The facts he had submitted showed the urgent necessity for the adoption of the "purchase" scheme, and the abolition of the system of dual proprietary. The only question on which the Premier gave them a positive answer was upon the question of arrears; but he (Mr. Sexton) confessed that in the right hon. Gentleman's promise he saw
  1530
  little cause for congratulating his country. No language that he could use could convey to the House his sense of the importance of the terrible question of arrears. There were 500,000 tenants in Ireland who had not applied to the Land Courts at all, and of the number who had applied 10,000 had not their eases heard, and years must elapse before they could have them heard. What was happening in Ireland in the meantime? One hundred thousand tenants were in arrear, and they were being evicted, or intimidated, under threat of eviction, from seeking the protection of the Land Courts. He knew, indeed, of numerous cases in which tenants who had gone into the Court had since been coerced to withdraw from it under a threat of that kind. This was a proof that the withdrawals of which the Prime Minister had made so much had thus, in many cases, been negotiated under duress. The furious and shameful riot and carnival of eviction never had such free way in Ireland as at the present moment. The saddest document he ever saw was the last Return of Evictions for the quarter ending 31st March. It showed that even the fell licence of last year had been exceeded. It showed that in three months 7,000 persons had been turned out on the highway. Of those, 4,000 had been denied even the poor privilege of caretakers; and now the chosen lieutenants of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland were beginning to develop their new policy, by refusing to allow the Land League to spend the funds at its disposal in providing these poor people shelter in the shape of huts. To what were they to be condemned? To wander over the country, to drift into the lanes and slums of the adjoining towns, to have no hope and no heart, to be given up to the counsels of wretchedness and despair, and to end their days in misery and starvation. How much time was to elapse before the right hon. Gentleman would perfect his policy? Delay in settling this question would tend to an increase of crime in Ireland, and he warned the Government to waste no time on this question, for every day was acting against the interests of peace and order in Ireland. He wished he could think the promise of the right hon. Gentleman was something more than words.

  1531
  It was so carefully hedged around, it was such a marvel of diplôme, it was so judiciously guarded by plausible conditions and by subtle references to future development and contingencies, that he, seeing, on the one hand, that miracle of phrase and the marvel of judicious and careful statesmanship, and on the other the terrible fact of the eviction of thousands of families, together with their state of despair, and the hunting policy pursued by the magistrates of the right hon. Gentleman, greatly feared that the policy which he contemplated, depending upon so many contingencies and taking so many months for its completion, would not run as fast as the evils which must inevitably follow from the conduct of the landlords of Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman must be satisfied that Irish opinion was in favour of a settlement of the question of arrears by a compulsory plan. No other plan would settle it. He (Mr. Sexton) told the House frankly, with regard to those arrears, which never had any foundation in morality, and which the poor tenants who were liable for them expected would have been wiped out by the Land Act of last year, that to expect those poor creatures, already overloaded, to consent quietly to pay them in yearly instalments in addition to their judicial rents, was more than human nature could expect. The arrears must be settled by a gift, if settled at all. If there was any moral to be drawn from the action of the landlords of Ireland in anything that had hitherto occurred in connection with the question, it was that any law depending upon voluntary action on their part would be a dead letter. There must be compulsion, or there would be no practical effect. He did not think the evicted tenants would feel that that promise made to-day by the Prime Minister afforded any reason for their hoping anything would come of it. The right hon. Gentleman had touched upon so many conditions that he might retreat from his promise without much difficulty, for, in the words of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, six omnibuses could drive through the passage which he had left for escape. He hoped, however, the Government would apply themselves to this terribly grave question of arrears. Upon the whole, he was obliged to say that, although the
  1532
  Government complimented the hon. Members of the Irish Party upon the moderation of their Bill, and on the judgment which had distinguished the manner in which they submitted it to the House, he was afraid that was all they had guaranteed to them as their reward. It was said that virtue had its own reward; and certainly the Irish Party could only console themselves with that reflection, because any external reward in the speech of the Premier he had sought and failed to find.
  MR. SHAWsaid, he did not agree with the hon. Member who had just spoken (Mr. Sexton) in the very hopeless conclusions which he had drawn from the speech of the Prime Minister. He believed the Prime Minister meant what he said when he spoke of the question of arrears as one demanding their immediate attention. Of course, his language was guarded—and very naturally so, because he (Mr. Shaw) supposed it was possible the right hon. Gentleman had heard the speeches of several of the Irish Members on the subject, and he rather thought no two of them had agreed on the subject. ["Oh, oh!"] Very likely the Prime Minister had several proposals on the subject before him. He (Mr. Shaw) wished to say that he also heartily agreed in the expressions already used as to the moderation of the Bill, considering the names of the Gentlemen who were inserted on the back of it, and their position and antecedents. He did not approve of some things in the Bill; but he would announce, without hesitation, his intention of supporting it if it went to a division. It touched the most important points in the Land Act of last year which required amendment. He entirely agreed with the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Sexton) in his view of the urgency of this question of arrears. It was, to his mind, at the very foundation of the possibility of the settling of this Land Question, and not only was it at the very foundation of the settling of that question, but at the very foundation of the settlement of the social state of the country. Reference had been made to circulars; but he thought, as a rule, crime could not be traced to them. He thought, as a general rule, crime in Ireland was to be traced to local causes, and those local causes, in nine cases out often arose from eviction,

  1533
  which the people thought and believed in their hearts to be cruel and unjust. Therefore, if the House in its wisdom could in any way stop these evictions, many of which had been cruel, he believed it would go an immense way to stop the crime in the country. With regard to arrears, he did not care to express his views until the Government proposal was before them. His own opinion was that very likely they might be able to make some mixture of the two principles. They might be able to put such inducement before the landlords that there would be no difficulty whatever. In settling the question of arrears, he trusted the Government would take the landlords into consideration, as he was quite sure that in many respects there was no class of men, except the poor unfortunate evicted tenants in the country, deserving of more sympathy than many of the landlords in Ireland. These arrears seemed to the landlords the best possible hold they had over the tenants in order to enable them to get anything like a fair settlement; and they could not expect them all at once to throw over the arrears. In fact, they must induce them, by liberal means, to come in and settle this question. He hoped they would, to some extent, put money in their pockets. The question of purchase was also an important one. He was quite sure no one would derive more advantage and relief from the purchase of their estates than many of the landlords of Ireland themselves. Many of them, he believed, were in a most distressed condition. They were men of the worthiest character, men with large families, not brought up to industry in any way, or who had now nothing but misery and want staring them in the face. He was not one of those who said that landlords should be banished. He believed there always would be landlords in Ireland, notwithstanding the sentences they had earned from, the hon. Gentlemen opposite. He believed the people of Ireland would eventually be the best judges themselves as to whether they should be tenants or purchasers. He would give them every facility for the two things, and they might trust to their own shrewdness to determine what they considered best for themselves. He did not see why the Irish Party—by which he meant not alone the hon. Members opposite, but
  1534
  the Conservative, Whig, and rational Home Rule Members from Ireland—could not take up this question and other questions that were really demanding settlement, and produce some feasible plan among themselves, and not place themselves in the hands of English Parties, who would deal with them for their own purposes. They could settle the three great points—the question of arrears, of purchase, and of leases. He did not profess to understand the legal question; but there were many hon. Members who would do so. Then there was another important point. When acting on the Bessborough Commission, he (Mr. Shaw) never found a single farmer anywhere in Ireland—either North, South, East, or West—who put forward the principle that the landlord was not to get anything from the increased value of the land; they all stated that was what was called the unearned increment—he did not know whether they understood it—of the land belonged fairly to the landlord. He believed, however, it was entirely against the spirit of the Land Act to give the landlords the greatest part of the improvements of the land, and if the decision about which so much had been said upset that principle—he did not know whether it was against its letter; but, no doubt, the legal Gentlemen connected with the Government would be able to give their attention to the matter as quickly as possible, and endeavour to remedy it. He, however, believed the landlords of Ireland would not demand the major part of the improvements effected by the tenants. But, leaving that aside, there were the three great points which could be settled by the Irish Members together, and they ought to meet together and settle these things. He would here take an opportunity of referring to another matter, entirely of a personal character. He thought it was only right to say that the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Macfarlane) had said that he (Mr. Shaw) had complained because the Chief Secretary for Ireland had not consulted him on Irish questions. He might practically say that he never complained of anything of the kind. On the Land Question, and on Bills of a similar character, the right hon. Gentleman had often consulted him; and he had never hesitated, whether consulted or not, to let him know

  1535
  his own opinion on such matters. But he must say that both the right hon. Gentleman and the Prime Minister always received his views with the greatest kindness and consideration.
  MR. MACFARLANEsaid, that he said that he understood that both the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power) had complained of not having been consulted on the subject. He begged to withdraw the statement.
  MR. SHAWsaid, that was with reference to another question concerning Ireland, upon which, the Government had never consulted him, because they had a very shrewd notion of the kind of advice he would give them, and that it would be unpalatable. He had always been opposed to the policy of repression in Ireland, which he believed to be entirely unnecessary, and an incentive to the evils existing in that country. The sooner the Government returned to common sense in that direction the better would it be for the peace of the country; and, until they did so, they would never arrive at the results which they desired.
  MR. GIBSONsaid, that the debate of that day had naturally been looked forward to with considerable interest and anxiety, not only from the intrinsic importance of the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for New Ross (Mr. Redmond), but also because it was distinctly and ostentatiously put forward that the Prime Minister would make an important communication to the country and the House as to the methods of government to be pursued in Ireland as regarded the landed institutions of the country. In consequence of that expectation, the House at 12 o'clock presented an unwonted appearance in respect of the number of hon. Members present. The general expectation to which he referred was arrived at largely from the Prime Minister's own language used in that House on more than one occasion within the last 10 days. The right hon. Gentleman had referred to that day as the period when he would give an explanation, and make matters plain as regarded the intentions of the Government; and other Cabinet Ministers had also, in "another place," lately made clear statements that they would not at present go into the matters under discussion, because these matters were to
  1536
  be dealt with fully that day by the Prime Minister. In these circumstances, therefore, when he (Mr. Gibson) came to the House, he, in common among other persons, felt much interest and anxiety as to the probable nature of the communication to be made. He was bound to say that he thought they might have a statement clear and distinct as to the policy to be pursued in the administration of the country. They also expected some clear statement as to what was to be done with reference to the land topics referred to that afternoon. But, while he recognized to the full the extremely conciliatory feeling and courteous manner in which the Prime Minister had addressed the House, he could not but remark that his statements were indefinite and vague; that they were not distinct; and that the right hon. Gentleman had not availed himself of the opportunity which had fallen to him to make a clear and comprehensive statement about many of the matters upon which public attention had been directed. The right hon. Gentleman had postponed everything to a more convenient season, which all knew, on the highest authority, meant a time which might never come at all. Law and order was a question of extreme urgency and importance, and certainly things occured from day to day, and from hour to hour, which did not allay the anxiety felt on that point; and yet the Prime Minister had put those questions by for discussion on an occasion which he did not promise should be given, and which was an unknown quantity which he did not define, and then the right hon. Gentleman proceeded to state, not his own, but four important points which had been raised in the interesting speech of the Member for New Ross. Having mentioned those points, the right hon. Gentleman had touched on three of them, not giving any final opinion, but postponing them for consideration in the future. As to the last point—the fourth—that which dealt with the arrears, he (Mr. Gibson), had certainly expected that the right hon. Gentleman bad reserved it till the end, for the very purpose of making some definite and distinct statement. On the contrary, when the right hon. Gentleman had come to deal with the question of arrears, putting it into plain English, all he had said was to ask different parts of the House, different Members of the House, to furnish the Government with

  1537
  their views, or, to use his own words, to furnish the Government "light and aid" on the subject. The topics presented for the Prime Minister's consideration were some of the most important and interesting that could well be imagined. They were not new topics. They were not novel, for they had been presented and thrashed out in every variety of form for two months past. In these circumstances, the House and the country, he thought, had a right to expect some intimation of opinion from the Government. First take the Purchase Clauses of the Bill before the House. That question had been raised in the most distinct form. He (Mr. Gibson) expressed no opinion upon the precise and distinct form in which the question was dealt with in the two clauses which the Prime Minister had stated were carefully and well-drawn clauses. The proposals embodied in those clauses were argued temperately and with much force by the hon. Member who introduced the Bill. But the Prime Minister had not given a single vestige of intimation of what his opinion was on these clauses. All the right hon. Gentleman had done was to admit, with some reserve of caution, what everybody thought was notorious, that the present clauses did not work at all. An admission of the kind, although interesting and showing advance in the right hon. Gentleman's mind, contributed nothing towards the solution of the matter. The Prime Minister had said it was an allowable subject to discuss, and a matter requiring consideration, and added that he would say nothing more, as he did not desire to prejudice the Motion of his right hon. Friend the Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith). He (Mr. Gibson) ventured to say that the right hon. Gentleman's words erred somewhat on the side of caution; but caution might wander sometimes near the confines of cowardice, and he thought when the Prime Minister was brought face to face with an important public question in a Bill, on a day which he had deliberately himself selected as the occasion on which to make a statement, although he might have reserved the discussion on the details, it would have been reasonable that he should have said something which would show the working of his mind. He wished to make his acknowledgments to the hon.
  1538
  Member for New Ross for the friendly references he had made to Irish landlords, which, knowing the hon. Member's political attitude, he was glad to welcome. The hon. Member had said, what was a notorious fact, that there were thousands of landlords who were treading on the confines of ruin; and he hoped that whatever changes might take place under the Purchase Clauses, the landlords of Ireland would not, as a class, leave the country. His (Mr. Gibson's) belief was—and he had stated it before, both in the House and out of it—that if increased facilities were given under the Purchase Clauses in the Bill before them, and if they were made to work fairly, instead of remaining a dead letter, like those under the Land Act, the landlords, as a rule, would sell their tenants a portion of their estates, and in many cases would retain their mansions and home farms and live in the country. Those topics the Prime Minister had passed by in a manner which he (Mr. Gibson) would not criticize, although he regretted that the right hon. Gentleman had not said either less or more. As regarded Ireland, that was not the time for a man to use vague and doubtful language, that could be interpreted in a variety of ways, according to the hopes and fears of those who heard and read. It was a time to say either "Aye" or "No" to proposals submitted for consideration. It was not only kind to the people to do so, but it was the best and wisest policy, if you meant to do anything at all. All the Prime Minister had really in substance said was—"I cannot assent to the proposals of the Bill, and I will not give it a second reading. On the other hand, I am not prepared to say that there is not something to be said on the subject of leases;" or, as he had said on the 24th of March—"There is considerable reason for some amendment of the law in respect of leases." He would admit, the right hon. Gentleman said more on the 24th of March than he said to-day; but, at the same time, he ventured to suggest whether it would not have been wiser, under all the circumstances, to have said something more or something less? As it was, just enough had been said to create excitement and agitation which would probably be difficult to allay, without, at the same time, giving any satisfaction. Then there was the question of what was known as

  1539
  Healy's Clause, which the Prime Minister had spoken of as of great, but not overwhelming, importance. He (Mr. Gibson) would not go into the history of that clause, though it was a curious one. It was, however, idle to say that that clause, or any construction put upon it, could be at variance with the original intentions of the beneficent framers of the Bill, for it formed no part of their original scheme—it was never dreamt of until the Bill had nearly left the House, and then it was handed in in manuscript by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the then Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Law) at the last moment. He would only say this much—that hon. Members below the Gangway, who had criticized Healy's Clause and the decision upon it in the case of "Adams v. Dunseath" had not presented the question with their usual accuracy, and anyone would see that the importance of what was done in this particular case on the subject had been ridiculously exaggerated. What had been done by six Judges to one was obvious common sense and fair play, and it was this—in the Act of 1870 there was a clause which said that in a tenancy from year to year in existence before 1870, the Court, in awarding compensation for improvements, would be at liberty to consider the time the tenant had enjoyed the benefit of improving the land he held, and the benefits that had been conferred upon him by his landlord. There was also a provision in the Act of 1881 which said that the two Acts in regard to this matter should be read together. The obvious consequence was that the definition of improvements in the Act of 1870 governed that of 1881, introducing the qualifications he had referred to in the earlier definition for the purposes of the Act of 1881. Now, all that the decision of the Court of Appeal did in that matter was to hold that that particular class of tenancies should be subject, if the Court thought proper, to the just and moderate qualification which he had just mentioned. He wished to contrast, without going into details, the way in which the Prime Minister dealt with suggestions made on the part of landlords with the way in which he dealt with suggestions on behalf of tenants. It had been mentioned, over and over again, that the decisions of the Land Courts had been
  1540
  at variance with the express undertakings of Ministers in that House as to what would be the effect of the working of the Act. What had the landlords been told when they represented the case to the Government? They were told that Ministers had only given their impressions of what the result of the Act would be; but that they had not guaranteed what the result of judicial considerations might be. They said they had no control in the matter. That was the way in which landlords were dealt with. But when it was suggested to the right hon. Gentleman, on the part of the tenants, that the decrees, not of the Commissioners, but of the highest Court in Ireland, were contrary to the intentions of the framers of the Act, the Prime Minister said at once that the decision was contrary to those intentions, and that it would be necessary carefully to watch the decisions in order to decide whether the Government would do anything in the matter. He (Mr. Gibson) thought, considering the circumstances, that was a matter calling for observation and criticism. He passed it by, however; but he would say that when the Prime Minister had censured others so strongly for presuming to suggest that an inquiry might be made in certain circumstances into the judicial working of the Act, it was rather a strong measure for himself to use language that, he confessed, if it did not amount to a reflection, at all events threw a doubt upon the highest Court in Ireland as to a judicial determination it had come to. It was more than that. There was something dangerous in the ambiguity of the Prime Minister's answer, when he said that he would observe the construction which would be put upon that decision by the final Court of Appeal in Ireland. Did not what he said suggest that the interpretation of the Court was a false one, and, if false, should be amended? and did it not suggest to the Assistant Commissioners to put no construction at all on it—the Assistant Commissioners, he would remind the House, being gentlemen appointed only for a year, who were not called upon to give reasons for their decisions. They had only to hold their tongues to do pretty much what they liked. That line of observation on the right hon. Gentleman's part was calculated to lead to complications and confusion in Ireland.

  1541
  It led the farmers to believe that they would get more by holding out; it led agitators to believe that they had only to use terrorism in order to get what they were agitating for. As he had said before, on this question the right hon. Gentleman had said too much or too little. The Court of Appeal should be treated either as the final Court of Appeal, or the Government should promptly bring in an amending Bill. When a decision was given by the highest Court in Ireland, the Prime Minister was bound to bow before the decision in silent assent; or, if he thought that the decision called for observation, it must not only be an observation, but should fructify in legislation. It ill became a Minister of the Crown to throw doubt upon the administration of the law, unless he was prepared at once to amend it. The Prime Minister had said he would reserve the question of arrears. He thought that the shadow of the right hon. Gentleman's speech had influenced all who had spoken, including his hon. Friend the Member for Cork County (Mr. Shaw). There was the same call for "light and leading" in the hon. Gentleman's oracular utterances. Everyone felt that it was a question of vast importance. He thought the word generally used on the subject was "supreme urgency;" and, bearing in mind that the Prime Minister had promised to consider the question during the Easter Recess, and that, in consequence of that promise, the hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. T. A. Dickson) had put down his Question for Monday, and that then that hon. Member was told that Wednesday was the day when the Prime Minister was going to make a statement, he was bound to say that nothing could be more admirable than the courtesy and demeanour of the Prime Minister, who had waited for "light and leading," instead of giving the House something which might be criticized. What had the Prime Minister said of the question to be settled? Only something in the nature of a platitude—"It demanded our practical consideration." Of course it did. Then "the Government would legislate upon the matter at an early date, if the House would tell them how." The Prime Minister then had laid down three conditions which ought to be fulfilled by all right-minded legislators who approached the question.
  1542
  First, they were to be impartial. He (Mr. Gibson) hoped they were all impartial. He could only speak for himself. It was to be in accordance with the opinion of the Irish people. He could not speak for the Irish nation, which was rather like the letter x, which stood for an unknown quantity. Then, all dealing on the matter should be effectual. That was like telling them an Act of Parliament should be an Act of Parliament. Then, all action in the matter would have to be either voluntary or compulsory. That might be true enough; but it all depended upon the terms of the compulsory legislation. If he was to be compelled to accept good terms, he was the man for compulsory legislation. But if the terms were bad, he ought to be allowed some choice in the matter as to whether he would accept them or not. When the right hon. Gentleman said—what was perfectly true—that this Bill was drawn upon the compulsory system, would it not be reasonable, when the creditor had given time to his debtor, that he should have some voice in the matter? Would it, on the other hand, be reasonable to expect a creditor to voluntarily cancel part of his debt? At all events, he should like the right hon. Gentleman, when he had made up his mind on the matter, to give the House some reason why the voluntary element should not, in some shape or form, enter into the arrangement. It might well be that, bearing in mind that while some of the arrears had accumulated during three, or four, or five years, while others had arisen during only one or two years, there was some scope for the voluntary element in some cases, while the compulsory element might possibly, to some extent, be applied in others. Everything, however, would depend upon the nature of the plans which the Government intended to present to the House. He had been thinking a great deal over the right hon. Gentleman's speech; and when he said that the Bill being drawn upon compulsory lines, the grant under it would take the form of a gift instead of a loan, as a gift was peculiar to the compulsory system, he (Mr. Gibson) altogether failed to understand what there was in a gift which was inconsistent with the voluntary element. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman, when he came to speak on the question,

  1543
  would enlighten them on the point. Then, with regard to the sources whence the grants were to come, the Prime Minister did not say that he was pleased; but he said that he was not surprised that it should be proposed that the grants should come from the Surplus of the Irish Church. That, however, was a serious consideration, for it must be borne in mind that the Church Surplus could not last for ever, and that, to use an expression of the Prime Minister, it was within measurable distance of its end. He (Mr. Gibson) found, on examination, that the assets of the Irish Church Fund now amounted to from£1,800,000 to£2,000,000; and it was a serious thing, bearing in mind the many claims of a more enduring character that might be made upon the not very large residue of that fund, to appropriate a very large part of it to what the Prime Minister himself had termed a temporary purpose. In his opinion that surplus should be applied to something more durable and more calculated to insure the lasting prosperity of the country. Turning to the general question, he wished to point out that the main difficulty of dealing with the Land Question in Ireland was the block of litigation in the Land Courts; and if the compulsory system were put into force with regard to arrears, the amount of that litigation would be enormously increased, for they would have in every case what might be a separate lawsuit, and as many lawsuits as cases. If they told the landlord he must submit to the cancelling of a certain percentage of the arrears as bad debts, they could not possibly prevent a landlord, when brought under the compulsory element, from going into Court with the view of showing that the defaulting tenant was perfectly able to pay the whole of the arrears. The result would therefore be that for so many cases of arrears there would be so many fresh lawsuits, in which the tribunal would have to be satisfied of the tenant's incompetency to pay the arrears. He did not say that it was so in every case; but there were a vast number of cases in which the tenant could pay if he would, or in which he would pay if he were allowed to do so, although there were others, of course, in which he, unfortunately, could not pay, whatever his desire on the point might be. It was a very important
  1544
  element, therefore, for the House to consider that, in agreeing to these proposals, they might be sowing the seeds of a vast variety of complicated and very serious lawsuits. With regard to the proposed tribunal, he regretted, as he had said before, that no plan with regard to it had yet been submitted to the House by the Prime Minister. He was of opinion that it was the duty of Her Majesty's Government to submit a plan to the House in reference to it. It was a matter with which no one but the Government could deal; it was not possible for a private Member, nor for any series of private Members, to deal with it. He was, therefore, strictly within his right when he said that the Government were bound to submit a plan to the House with regard to this tribunal. When that plan was submitted to the House, it ought to be fairly and moderately considered on it own merits. Looking at the proposals as a whole, there was one danger to which he wished to draw the attention of the House. It was the serious and terrible danger of demoralizing the Irish tenants by teaching those who had been honest and brave, and had paid their rents, that they had needlessly sacrificed themselves, and those who had been dishonest and cowardly that they had been gainers by their dishonesty and their cowardliness. The other clauses of the Bill he did not intend to allude to—not out of want of respect to the authors of the Bill, but because that had already been efficiently done by the noble Lord the Member for Calne (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice), and also because he had preferred to deal with the important questions referred to by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister. It must, of course, be a matter of grave disappointment and regret to the Prime Minister to find that this discussion was taking place, and that the House should be making a searching criticism into the working of every part of the Land Act only five or six months after it had become law. That such should be the case could not be pleasant to the right hon. Gentleman, and was no cause for congratulation. The Prime Minister, in asking the House to pass the Land Bill, had stated that it could only be justified by the special circumstances of the case. He (Mr. Gibson) thought, however, that there was more truth in the observation

  1545
  that had been made with regard to that Act, that the only excuse for it would be its success; and that excuse was certainly not forthcoming. The noble Lord the Member for Calne (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice), in his very interesting speech, had warned Her Majesty's Government against the danger of drifting; and he (Mr. Gibson) could only repeat that warning. At some time or other the Government would have to speak plainly and distinctly, instead of postponing these questions for consideration on future days, which might be next week or many days off. How to deal with the Irish crisis was absolutely the question of the day. He ventured to think that no Government could deal with that question which did not use plain and distinct language. He believed that if the Government were actuated by a steady purpose and by a resolute courage—if they were prepared to carry out that purpose through evil report and through good report, if they were not dismayed by unpopularity nor disheartened by ingratitude—and if they applied themselves to restore law and order, that, when they had succeeded in restoring law and order, they might then hope to see also restored in Ireland peace, contentment, and, after a time, loyalty.
  COLONEL COLTHURSTsaid, he wished most especially to say a word or two on the subject of leases. As far as arrears were concerned, he had every confidence in the statements of the Prime Minister; but he could not help wishing the right hon. Gentleman to have expressed himself more positively on the subject of leases. He did not expect him to have promised to deal with them that Session; but he was in hopes that the right hon. Gentleman would have admitted more frankly and positively that there was a question to be dealt with. In his (Colonel Colthurst's) view it was the next most important question to arrears in connection with the Land Act, and he hoped the Government would make up their mind as to the necessity of taking it up. It was most especially important, as far as regarded the county he represented (Cork), where, out of 43,000 tenants, there were 19,000 leaseholders; while, in the whole of Munster, they were in similar proportion. One man out of every two in County Cork considered himself injured,
  1546
  and that he was not receiving the benefits of the Land Act. A very large number of these leaseholders, no doubt, paid higher rents than they would as tenants. This he could only account for by the intense desire that existed on the part of the occupiers in Ireland to get security upon any terms against a continual increase of rent; and he believed that many of the men who were now complaining were not in any way forced to take leases. On the contrary, they themselves offered to pay fines, and pressed the landlords to grant them leases. He could not agree with the clauses proposed by his hon. Friend (Mr. Redmond), for he did not believe that the leaseholders wished to retain their leases, and at the same time to have their rents revised. They would be perfectly satisfied to go into Court and prove that the rent was excessive; and, if they succeeded in their proof, to be made present tenants. As far as he understood the wishes of the farmers in the South of Ireland, this was what they desired. He hoped the Prime Minister and Her Majesty's Government would consider this question, feeling satisfied it was a far more important one than that involved in the decision of "Adams v. Dunseath." It was second only in importance to the question of improvements, and until it was settled it was impossible for the Land Act to work satisfactorily.
  MR. T. A. DICKSONsaid, he was unwilling to allow the Bill to be read a second time without, on his own behalf and on behalf of some other Members from Ulster, expressing his opinions regarding it. If the Bill went to a division, they would all vote for its second reading. They believed its proposals, speaking generally, were just, moderate, and fair; and they believed also that if the Land Act was to work smoothly and satisfactorily, it must be amended on the lines laid down in the Bill. He could well understand the reluctance of the Government to re-open the question so soon after the passage of their Act; but it should be remembered that the same arguments were applied to the Land Act of 1870, although its defects were pointed out soon after it passed. The result of not re-modelling the Act, as soon as its defects became apparent, was seen in the agitation of l879 and 1880, which culminated in the Land Act of 1881. He had intended to refer to the

  1547
  block in the Land Courts and other subjects; but time was running short and would not permit. As regarded the subject of arrears, to which, therefore, he would confine himself, he had had a Question on the Paper for five weeks; and seeing that the House appeared to be agreed that it was a matter of vital importance, when the Prime Minister made a statement on that subject, he and other hon. Members from Ulster hoped it would have been more explicit and satisfactory than it was. So far as he was aware, they had derived very little information from the statement which the right hon. Gentleman had made that day, and had no adequate idea as to how or when he proposed to deal with the subject. The Arrears Clauses of the Act had hopelessly failed, because the landlord and tenant were compelled to go jointly to the Court to obtain the loan; and because another most unfair provision was that the landlord was bound to become security for the loan. The result was, according to the last Return, that only£1,000 of arrears had been applied for on behalf of 128 tenants, and only£500 had been granted. The average rent in those cases was£8, and they had been settled by the payment of 10 s. in the£1. There was no use talking about the state of the country, and the Government could not expect that peace would be restored to Ireland so long as during the last three months you could have 1,300 families evicted, representing about 7,000 persons. The evicted man was an enemy, an angry and a dangerous man, not only dangerous in himself, but more especially so in the members of his family, who might not be so easily restrained. They were told that these evictions did not really take place as represented, that the tenants were generally restored as caretakers. No doubt they wore; but, as a magistrate, knowing what went on in Petty Sessions, he (Mr. T. A. Dickson) could say that their tenure was only temporary, for in a few weeks or months they were again put out under a Petty Sessions decree. He saw in an Irish paper, a few days ago, particulars of 34 evictions recently carried out on the Marquess of Sligo's property. Their average rent was£6 10 s.; the average arrears less than two years, total amount of arrears due being only£220; and yet, for want of that sum,
  1548
  and through the Arrears Clauses not operating, 192 persons were cast out. He had a letter from an Ulster tenant which put the whole difficulty concisely and pithily. The tenant, on behalf of himself and others, wrote—
  "The landlords are turning many out; but we got our fair rents fixed on December 8th. My valuation was£9 10 s.; my old rent£22 10 s.; my new rent£12 10 s.; but all this was no good. The landlord got writs, and evicted us all on January 4th. We got a form from Dublin for the arrears; but the landlord would not sign his name. We put our interest in the farms up for sale; but no one would buy, as the landlord told them not to buy until the time for redemption had passed, and the landlord then bought himself. What are we to do? We are to be thrown out on the 4th January, after having paid rack rents for years. We do not want to wrong the landlord; but we pray you to ask the Members of Parliament to get us time to pay the arrears."
  There was another great evil, which was that, though a tenant might have a fair rent fixed, he still had the arrears hanging over his head. The fact of the arrears kept hundreds and thousands from applying to the Land Courts. The tenant could not apply with the burden of arrears hanging over his head. If he did he was threatened with a writ, and he knew that eviction would follow. He believed that the extent of the arrears were vastly exaggerated. There were 200,000 tenants in Ireland of£4 valuation and under, and 200,000 more between£4 and£10 valuation. The average valuation of 400,000 tenants was£5, and the average rent£7. In the 128 applications for relief under the Arrears Clauses, the average rent was£8, and the average arrears a year and a-half. He had no hesitation in saying that£1,500,000, or even less, would settle the whole question of arrears in Ireland. He thought it was the duty of the Government to devise at once a practical plan for dealing with arrears. He differed with that portion of the Bill which proposed the settlement of the arrears in the shape of a gift to the tenant. Nothing could be more immoral or more demoralizing. What would the Bill do for the tenant who paid his rent last week? What would it do for the honest, struggling, thrifty tenant who, up to the present time, had paid every 1s. of his rent, and was not in arrears? The very man with whom he sympathized! It was impossible to deal with the question in the way of a gift. This

  1549
  Bill proposed that the Land Commissioners should ascertain the amount of arrears due by the tenant, and there upon decide as to his capacity to pay; but look at the enormous amount of work that that would put on those gentlemen. It would make them a tribunal to try the insolvency and the honesty of every tenant who applied to them. He was opposed to the proposal, because he believed it would be impracticable and impossible. He was willing to do anything to relieve the tenants from the arrears now hanging over their heads; and if the Government would bring forward a broad and just measure that would deal liberally with the question, he was certain they would receive the support of all sides of the House. It would do more to solve the great difficulty that now existed, and restore peace to the country by increasing public confidence, than any other plan which had been brought before them.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Mr. Justin H'Carthy.)
  MR. W. E. FORSTER: I do not propose to oppose the adjournment of the debate; but I hope it will be understood by the House that it does not mean adjourning for further consideration the very important and practical subject brought before us. I am especially alluding to the question of arrears. I agree with my hon. Friend who has just spoken (Mr. T. A. Dickson) that it is possible that the amount of arrears may be, to some extent, exaggerated; but there is no question that it is a very urgent matter; and I must also say its urgency is not diminished, but increased, by being brought before the House. And though the Prime Minister made no definite statement as to when he would be able to take the matter in hand, hon. Members must not suppose that the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) was right in assuming that we did not mean to take it in hand; but I think all hon. Members must be aware that, in the present state of Public Business, it is difficult to name an exact day for the plan which it will be our duty to submit. But we do intend to bring forward what we consider to be a solution of the question as soon as we can with any consistent regard to other matters before the House. The right hon. and
  1550
  learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson), in his interesting and, I may say, rather amusing speech, found a little fault with us that we did not disclose our plan today. It is not very often the custom—I do not know that it was the custom of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's Colleagues to state the Government proposal in a discussion on another Bill. He also seemed to think we were to blame for wishing to obtain the opinion of Gentlemen connected with Ireland; but we have often been told that we did not sufficiently seek to obtain their views. The right hon. and learned Gentleman was determined, so far as he was concerned, at any rate, not to give us much of suggestion as to what he thought on the matter. I do not think that the House generally, or the country, will blame us for trying to take the opportunity of this debate to-day to ascertain how this question is looked upon from different sections of the House. If I may compare so important a matter with what has happened in regard to my own position, I would remind the House that I have been sometimes found fault with because I have consulted the Irish Members, and again I have been blamed for not having consulted them. In the same way, we have to-day been blamed for asking the opinion of the House of Commons, whereas we have often been blamed for not having done so. I must admit that what has happened to-day has been very helpful in the consideration of the question. I think we have clearly ascertained that this matter of arrears is one that may be approached without any very strong Party feeling, not merely between the two great Parties, but between the Government and the two sections of the Opposition. Moreover, it is a question that may be approached without creating any angry feelings between different classes in Ireland, because it concerns the landlord quite as much as the tenant. All this is a very satisfactory gain to have got from the discussion. May I go a little further, and say that the whole tone of this debate is hopeful, as I consider, for the government of Ireland? Not merely the mode in which the subject has been brought forward, but the way in which it has been treated, makes me hope that the difficulties which beset the Government and this Parliament, and beset the

  1551
  country, and rather especially beset myself, may diminish if all Irish questions be approached and debated in the reasonable manner in which this question has been debated. Perhaps I may be allowed, before I sit down, to correct one or two misapprehensions with regard to the figures relating to the decisions of the Land Court. The block in the Land Court is, no doubt, considerable; but hon. Members must not suppose that the Business is not proceeding with more rapidity than they seem to be aware of. I shall put on the Table of the House to-day a Return which shows that, instead of the number of cases disposed of being nearly 4,000, as the hon. Member for Sligo alleges, there are 8,600 disposed of in the Land Commission Court, and 1,784 by the County Court Judges. Thus, there are more than 10,000 cases disposed of, and what is of importance is this—that the rate at which they are being disposed of is increasing month by month, and very considerably. There were disposed of in January 1,681, in February 2,416, and in March more than 3,000. I also believe that the appeals will be heard much quicker than hon. Gentlemen imagine. One chief reason why appeals have not hitherto been heard has been that the Land Commissioners waited for the result of the very important appeal to which so much allusion has been made to-day. I do not mean to say it will not be some time before all the cases are disposed of; but the increase in the rapidity with which they are being dealt with is likely to continue, and the number of cases settled by the intervention of the Land Court, without actual litigation, will grow larger every day. I am glad to take this opportunity of stating that the Land Commissioners are issuing an Order, which I hope will be generally known throughout Ireland, for it will tend to considerably increase the speedy settlement of the cases. They have come to the conclusion to let it be known throughout all parts of Ireland that if the landlord and tenant are willing to take the decision of a valuator sent down from Dublin, and to make that the ground upon which the judicial rent shall be fixed, they will send down such valuators. This would enable the judicial rent to be obtained without taking up time and expense in litigation. They hope, and I have the hope,
  1552
  that that will still further promote the rapidity of business. With regard to the Motion for Adjournment, I will merely say again that if hon. Members are able to bring it forward again, I will be very glad to take part in the discussion, which I hope may prove as useful as on the present occasion; but in consenting to the adjournment, the Government do not mean that we feel it is not our duty to take up ourselves, as soon as we possibly can, this question of arrears, and submit our views to the House.
  MR. O'CONNOR POWERsaid, he was very glad that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland had assented to the adjournment of the debate; but he regretted that he had not given any pledge on the part of the Government providing a day for a future discussion. Everyone must admit that not a particle of the time of the House had been wasted on this occasion; and he (Mr. O'Connor Power) could only say, for himself, that while he was disposed to criticize some of the details, he should certainly seize the opportunity of voting for the second reading. He would respectfully appeal to the right hon. Gentleman and the Government to fix a day for the resumption of the debate, especially as the appeal of the Prime Minister for a declaration of Irish opinion had been effectually answered. They had had such a declaration, and upon that, he thought, they might hope that, when the Government next took up the question, they would be able to make a definite announcement on every important point.
  MR. BIGGARsaid, that, before the adjournment was agreed to, he should like to suggest that it would be desirable for the Government to state that, pending the bringing forward again of this question of arrears, they would cease to give special assistance in cases of eviction. If they continued to give special assistance by police and soldiers in the evictions of tenants who were unable to pay their arrears, the public in Ireland would doubt their bona fides in the matter. On the other hand, if they gave that assurance on that point there would be great satisfaction in Ireland. Without such an assurance he did not think the Irish people would have the slightest confidence in the action of the Government.
  MR. O'DONNELLsaid, that as the debate was to be adjourned, and as the Government had not offered any particular day for its resumption, it might, after all, turn out well that no certain day had been fixed; for he trusted the result would be that Irish Members on both sides, without distinction of Party, would utilize the time between now and the renewal of the debate by taking council together, and following the Scotch precedent—sinking all questions of Party and try and put together a body of practical proposals that could be presented to the Government representative of the united opinion of Ireland. He believed that such a proposition would be supported by the public opinion of England, and that it was not hostile to the wishes of Her Majesty's Government. The Prime Minister invited every kind of assistance in the solution of this most difficult problem; and he trusted that every Irish Member, whether advanced Home Ruler or less advanced Home Ruler, Conservative or Liberal, Member for Ulster or Member for Munster, would take the suggestion to heart during the next few days, and present an example of the Irish nation united on the most important question that had ever come before the House of Commons.
  MR. MITCHELL HENRYsaid, that, for his part, he had the greatest desire that the counsels of the Irish Members should be united, so as to produce an impression on the Government on behalf of the Irish tenant; and nothing should be wanting on his part to respond to the hon. Member for Dungarvan's (Mr. O'Donnell's) appeal, especially as that appeal pointed to the payment of rent, while it was the advice to pay no rent that had been one of the causes of the difference between that side and this. [Cries of "Oh!"] He believed they were at one on the question of arrears, and on most of the points dealt with in the Bill, although not entirely. But as to utilizing the opportunity of the next few days in a practical spirit, he thought the hon. Gentleman and his Friends would find none more eager and zealous to aid in the solution of the question than the Members who represented the old principles which were defined by the late Mr. Butt.
  MR. GORSTsaid, he had no desire to interfere with the unity of the Irish Members; but if the solution of the
  1554
  question of arrears was to be in its payment by British taxpayers, some of the Representatives of the English constituencies would have something to say on the subject.
  COLONEL NOLANsaid, he agreed that it would be a good thing if the Representatives of the different sections of the Irish Party would combine in order to place their views upon the subject of arrears before the Government. In the case of its being fulfilled, he hoped that the Government would give the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon), and the hon. Member for Roscommon (Mr. O'Kelly) the opportunity of joining in the debate.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Debate adjourned till To-morrow.

BANKRUPTCY BILL.— [Bill 37.]
(MR. Dixon-Hartland, Mr. Gorst, Sir Edmund Lechmere.)

SECOND READING.
Order for Second Reading read.
MR. DIXON-HARTLAND, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, he was perfectly willing that it should be referred to the Select Committee to which the other Bills relating to the Bankruptcy Law had been committed. He would move the second reading.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Dixon-Hartland.)
MR. CHAMBERLAINsaid, that he should offer no opposition to the second reading of the measure, as, with a few alterations, to most of which he saw no objection, it was in principle a copy of the Government measure of last Session.
Question put, and agreed to.
Bill read a second time, and committed for To-morrow.
House adjourned at ten minutes before Six o'clock.