ADDRESS IN ANSWER TO HER MAJESTY'S MOST GRACIOUS SPEECH.

HC Deb 09 February 1882 vol 266 cc250-97

ADJOURNED DEBATE. [THIRD NIGHT.]

Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment proposed to Question [7th February]—[See page 133.]

And which Amendment was, At the end of the Address, to add the words "And humbly to assure Her Majesty that, in the opinion of this House, the only efficacious remedy for the deplorable condition of Ireland is a readjustment of the political relation established between Great Britain and Ireland by the Act of Legislative Union of 1800."—(Mr. P. J. Smyth.)

Question again proposed, "That those words be there added."

Debate resumed.

MR. DAWSON

said, he desired that opportunity of stating, in reply to some comments in The Times leading article of that morning, that in his remarks the previous evening he had no inten- tion of making light of the attempt upon the person of the Chief Secretary for Ireland. It was of too serious a character, and no one could reprobate more strongly than he any attack of such a character upon the right hon. Gentleman, or any attempt calculated to show him disrespect. The remarks he made were solely drawn forth by the very widespread belief that it did not bear the diabolical construction placed upon it. That brought him to the question of outrages in Ireland; and in that connection he complained of the wanton and unnecessary hardships inflicted upon some of the persons arrested under the Coercion Act. That was contrary to the Bill of Eights, which provided that too heavy bail or unnecessary punishment should not be inflicted upon any subject. If Englishmen were to be treated in a similar way, a state of things would arise which Ireland had never equalled. While making those remarks, he favoured the firm and proper administration of the law in Ireland, That did not exist. Magistrates who were regarded as Saxons administered the law in a vindictive manner; and those who were selected from amongst the people did not, generally speaking, administer it with sufficient firmness. He knew instances of that where "popular magistrates," as they were called, were afraid to act with the necessary firmness lest their action might be misunderstood. The Government should be answerable to Ireland for the nomination of its magistrates. As Lord Mayor of Dublin, he wished to point out that he and his fellow members of the Municipal Corporation had no power or control whatever over the police of that city, the force being entirely in the hands of the Government. The case was very different in regard to the police of every city and municipal borough in England and Scotland. That state of affairs was owing to the Government under which the country was ruled. He complained that on the occasion of the street disturbances in Dublin the police were called out without the Executive having consulted the municipal authorities. He never felt so humbled in his life—[laughter]—and that loud laughter on the part of the hon. and learned Member for Bridport (Mr. Warton) spoke a vacant mind. He repeated, he never felt so humbled in his life as when, some time ago, he accompanied the Lord Mayor of Dublin, the Sheriff, and about 40 members of the Corporation as a deputation to the Chief Secretary for Ireland to ask him why they had not been consulted respecting the measures that were adopted for quelling the riots in the city. The Lord Mayor of Dublin was a gentleman of gracious manner, and of a presence that would have commanded respect. Then, why was he not consulted? But they were told the Executive, and not the municipality, had power over the police. He asked, what would be the result of such a proceeding if a riot occurred in London, or any large town in this country? In the presence of two Englishmen, neither of whom had more than a very limited experience of Ireland—one of them the hon. Member for Leeds (Mr. Herbert Gladstone), and the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. E. Forster), who said the Corporation had no power to interfere, and that the Executive was altogether responsible—he asked dispassionately, would the people of Leeds, represented by the hon. Member opposite, permit themselves to be treated in that manner? Would the people of England bear it? He said Irish institutions had been reformed by English legislation; but they had been left devoid of all power, and the people were left hopelessly under a crushing and despotic rule of police, controlled by military officers, who rode on horseback through the streets like plumed warriors. The police of Dublin were employed in hunting "suspects" in other parts of the country, when they ought to be looking after breaches of the sanitary laws in that city. In Edinburgh every constable of the 500 composing the Police Force of that city was a sanitary officer; whereas in Dublin the police were diverted from their municipal duties to act as spies, and passed by offences which were detrimental to the health and the welfare of the inhabitants. They were a noble class of men, from whom he had on every occasion received courtesy and attention; it was the system under which they were placed that he condemned. He knew that they were persecuted and mulcted by a military rule that would scarcely be borne by Her Majesty's regiments; and, in the interests of the peace and prosperity of the country, he urged that they should be put under municipal control. The experience of centuries showed that the English House of Commons could not Legislate for Ireland with advantage; and why, he asked, should they persist in so hopeless and unsatisfactory an attempt? It was said that there was no practical proposition for giving Ireland the power of legislating for herself; but the example of the modus vivendi now happily working in Austria and Hungary showed how a separate Assembly for conducting the affairs of each country could be combined with a common authority dealing with the common affairs of both countries. It was a gross fallacy to treat Ireland in that argument as though it were as much a part of Great Britain as Yorkshire or Kent; and as long as they hugged that delusion to their bosoms, they would never reach a satisfactory solution of the relations between the two countries. There was another difficulty which arose out of the differences of race in Ireland. Many magistrates hesitated to give a just verdict, to call a robber a robber, or a drunkard a drunkard, for fear that it should be thought that Saxon prejudice made them severe to the Irish race. It could not be just that English gentlemen, able to deal with English affairs with ability, but incompetent and ignorant in the affairs of Ireland, should have the power to plunge into more than Oriental gloom the Irish subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.

MR. T. D. SULLIVAN

said, he desired to make only a brief contribution to the debate, not because he thought it of any use to argue the Irish Question before that Assembly, but in order to keep alive the protest of the Irish people against the nefarious Act of Union. He thought they should take occasion not at great length, but, at all events, in an emphatic manner, to declare again and again in that House and elsewhere their belief and determination that under this so-called Union the Irish people would never rest contented. He believed that the claim which they put forward in that respect would be won, and that their cause would triumph; but it would not be won by speeches made in the House of Commons—it would be won by the force of a whole series of circumstances working together to that end. It would be won because it was the cause of right and justice—because they claimed what they were fairly entitled to. It would be won because there was no concession that was made in the direction of justice or right that did not strengthen their hands and weaken those of their enemies. From time to time, as reform after reform was effected for Ireland in that House, the British Government and the British people seemed to nurse the delusion that the whole question was settled between Ireland and England, and it seemed to him that they had not got rid of that delusion up to the present day. When any little instalment of justice was offered to Ireland they were always told that the last grievance of their country had been redressed, and that an era of peace, goodwill, and prosperity was opening before them; but that would never be the case until they went to the root of the difficulty between the two countries, which was the Irish National Question. He acknowledged that some useful measures had been passed—the Ballot Act was a good and useful Act, which had strengthened the Irish National Party, and enabled them to send true Members of Parliament to Westminster, instead of the shams who had represented them before. The Education Act was a good Act; but the more they educated the Irish people the more they struck against the legislative Union between the two countries. The education and intelligence of the people were working for them and their cause, and not against them. They had a very serious grievance in the matter of franchise, and they were bound to have a redress of that grievance; but when they got it their hands again would be strengthened, because every concession in the direction of justice would strengthen the just cause of the Irish people. Still, even then, they would not rest and be contented—the river of Irish disaffection would never dry up until their just national claim had been recognized. It seemed to him that the English Government and the English Members and Ministers and the English people were entirely misled by the use of this word "Union." There was no union between the countries—no union except a union of force. There was no union of hearts, there was no union of affection between the countries, and there never could be until the wrong that was done Ireland by that so-called Act of Union was undone. Now they had 80 years of the Act of Union; and he asked any man in that House or out of it, was Ireland more united to England to-day in the respects he had mentioned than she was 80 years ago? Those 80 years were one long-continued series of oppression and repressions. At the present day they had the National Leaders of the Irish people imprisoned, and yet they thought they had a Union between the two countries. The so-called Union of the two countries had been a hideous failure, and never could be anything else. The bare recital of the oppressive and atrocious Coercion Acts which had been passed for Ireland since the Act of Union was mournfully monotonous. He held in his hand a list of 25 Acts of a repressive character passed since 1831, and those were Acts passed by successive Liberal Governments. He admitted the existence of an extreme Party in Ireland, as in every other country where discontent prevailed. Every day that justice was deferred the hands of the Separatist Party in Ireland were strengthened. The refusal of English Ministers to do the act of justice required of them was all the more unaccountable that there were no difficulties in the way which could not be adjusted—which had not, in fact, been adjusted in the case of other countries. In every part of the world except in Ireland—even in Russia, as the correspondence of The Times the other day showed—Englishmen were ready to honour and commend such patriotic aspirations as were now expressed by the Irish Nationalist Party. Their eyes were blinded to all claims of right and justice when those claims came to their own doors. No doubt, on the present occasion, as on former occasions, the Government could produce two or three denationalized Irishmen to delare that all was right and well in Ireland; but it was time that the Government should be able to set the true value upon statements of that kind. All was not well in Ireland. It had no peace, no prosperity, and never would until the National Question was satisfactorily settled. Respect for law and order would never prevail until that time, because then the law would be made by Irishmen in the capital of their own country. People talked about dismemberment of the Empire; but was not Ireland a portion of the Empire before the Act of Union was passed? Geography, they were told, forbade the separation; but if that argument was pressed France might tomorrow claim to annex Germany, or vice versâ. The claim of the Irish people was not for total separation between the two countries. They claimed but the restoration of that Parliament which gave true peace and prosperity to their country, and which English jealousy and greed destroyed by the most foul and fraudulent means. The hands of England could never appear clean in that matter, and the Irish people would never condone the offence. It was vain for English Ministers to expect that the national feeling of Ireland would pass away. It was not passing away, it was growing stronger every day, and the rising generation of Ireland at present would enforce it as boldly and courageously as their fathers. The history of the connection between the two countries proved that the British Parliament was not a Parliament upon which the Irish people could rely or trust. The Representatives of Ireland were contending day after day for reforms, and day after day they were overwhelmed by British majorities. The Church Act and the Land Act might appear to be very good; but they might depend upon it that until the national feeling of Ireland was satisfied they would have no peace in that House or out of it from Ireland. He knew there was little use in pressing the matter upon the attention of Parliament now, they would be voted down by an obedient majority; but the resources of real civilization—not the resources of force and barbarism—were upon the side of the Irish people, and certain was he that they would yet prove triumphant.

MR. MOLLOY

wished to remind the House that the Prime Minister, another important Member of the Government, and many hon. Members on the Ministerial side of the House, had promised at various times to consider any practical proposals for Home Rule that might be brought forward, and he trusted that those hon. and right hon. Gentlemen would now keep their word. It was the common opinion that the cry of Home Rule was raised simply for purposes of obstruction, and that it was a vague demand which had never been formulated in precise terms. But that was not so. In listening to the speech of the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. P. J. Smyth) yesterday, he was surprised that he gave no definition of the question of Home Rule. Looking back through the records of the House, he was reminded that during the time of the late Mr. Butt a National Convention, representing every department and class of Irish life, was called together in Dublin, and at that assembly a definite shape was given to the demand for self-government for Ireland. To those who were constantly complaining that the Representatives of Ireland had never given any definition of Home Rule, he might reply that at that Convention the schemes prepared did not propose in any way to interfere with the Prerogatives of the Crown. Whatever Prerogatives the Crown had with respect to Ireland under the Constitution would remain identically the same were an Irish Parliament sitting in Dublin, except that in regard to all questions connected with the internal affairs of Ireland she would be guided by her Irish Ministers, and not by her English Ministers as at present. Secondly, as regarded the Imperial Parliament, that Parliament would retain supreme control in all Imperial affairs, the jurisdiction in all international transactions, questions of peace and war, the government of our Colonies and Dependencies, the Army, Navy, and commerce of the Empire. The Imperial Parliament would also levy Imperial as distinguished from local taxes. Ireland would be represented in the Imperial Parliament, not necessarily by Members of her own Parliament, and would have a voice on questions affecting the Empire, but would not take part in any questions connected with the internal affairs of England and Scotland. The Irish Parliament, under the Home Rule definition, would have supreme control of the internal affairs of Ireland, the jurisdiction, including education, agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and public works, Courts of Justice, the magistrature, the Post Office, and all other details of Irish business and Irish national life. As things were, Parliament was overwhelmed with work, and it was impossible to overtake the arrears of legislation. In every Session there was a striking contrast between the promises in the Queen's Speech and the achievements of the Session. In the meantime works of public utility in Ire- land had to be sacrificed because the necessary Bills could not be passed through the Parliament sitting in London. He could not understand why, considering the utter inability of Parliament to transact the Business that pressed upon it, every hon. Gentleman should not be prepared to say to Irishmen—"Yes, take all this, and leave us to carry out the work of this country." The question would be brought forward more formally during the Session; and he hoped his statement of what was claimed by Home Rulers would enable many English Gentlemen to deal with the subject not as one brought forward from improper motives, but as a question embodying a real demand of the Irish people, which must be conceded sooner or later, and which would increase in gravity every day that it was delayed. At present the matter was in the hands of men who might be said to be moderate and reasonable in their demand; delay would take it out of their hands and put it into the charge of men who were neither moderate nor reasonable.

MR. O'SULLIVAN

said, he held that nothing would more quickly secure contentment, prosperity, and respect for law and order in Ireland than the granting to the Irish people of their just demand to administer their own internal affairs, which, he said, simply meant the making of their own local laws and the administration of their local taxes. As things were, if a small railway, which would cost £ 40,000 or £ 50,000, were projected, an enormous expense had to be incurred in bringing engineers, solicitors, and witnesses to London, and in paying London counsel, and then the matter was probably decided by half-a-dozen gentlemen totally ignorant of the wants of the district, and probably altogether unacquainted with Ireland. As an example of the way in which Ireland was taxed by the Imperial Parliament he instanced the fact that in 1854, when the duty on spirits in Ireland was 3s. 4d. a-gallon and the duty in England was 7s. 8d. a-gallon, they took one jump and raised it in Ireland to 10s., whilst in the rich and prosperous country of England they only advanced it to the same sum. This was a gross injustice, and a succession of such injustices had made the people of Ireland determined never to cease their efforts until that country had be- come a Nation instead of a Province. They had no objection to join England in an honourable federation, and to let all Imperial questions be settled by the House; but they did object to having Irish laws made by Englishmen, or, indeed, by any body of men in the world except Irishmen—by an Irish Parliament. With regard to the Land Act, even its strongest supporters would admit it had many drawbacks. He considered that the provision made for leaseholders was entirely insufficient, and that all leases which had contracted the tenant out of the benefits of the Act of 1870 ought to have been set aside. The Arrears Clause was likewise imperfect, because it left arrears which the tenants were wholly unable to pay to hang like a millstone round their necks. Greater facilities ought to have been given for the purchase of farms; and in regard to the poor labourers, it ought to have been made compulsory on the landlords or the tenants to build cottages for them. Notwithstanding all its drawbacks and all that had been said against it, he was still very thankful for the Bill. It had made many happy homes in Ireland. The days of the rack-renter and the exterminator were gone for ever. A man was secure now as long as he paid a fair rent. He was thankful for the Bill for more than its intrinsic value, because he believed that if it had not been for the passing of that Bill they would have had in one-half of his country rebellion as serious as that of 1798 against the acts of the landlords. The people would not have sat quietly by and allowed their countrymen to be banished from their homes, as they would have been but for the Bill. The Bill had prevented revolt and had brought peace to the country. A great deal had been said against the Bill. The country was passing through a great crisis, but he believed they were at the beginning of an era of prosperity; and if the Government could do something for the leaseholders—pass a Bill to provide the labourers with decent homes, and legislate liberally with regard to the tenants' arrears—contentment would be restored to the country.

MR. P. J. SMYTH

said, that if it were convenient that that debate should close, he should be happy to withdraw the Amendment. [Cries of "No!" from the Irish Members.]

MR. GLADSTONE

Sir, if there is an indisposition to allow the Amendment to be withdrawn, of course I can only express my regret at that indisposition. I do so not because I am adverse to the discussion my hon. Friend has raised, not because the subject introduced yesterday in so excellent a spirit, and with so much eloquence, is unworthy of our attention, but because I think that, recommended as it is by him, it is entitled to discussion and effectual discussion; but that effectual discussion cannot, as he has justly recognized, be had upon this occasion. There is no mode of preventing the progress of Business which can compare in efficacy with that of insisting that all possible subjects shall be discussed at one and the same time. My hon. Friend wishes to relieve us from that difficulty by at least withdrawing one most important subject which formed the topic of his speech yesterday. But, unfortunately, he is not to be permitted to do so; and, that being the state of affairs, I wish to say a very few words upon that subject itself, for the Government are not willing to be responsible for the indefinite prolongation of this debate, when it is so confounded with other matters that it can reach no definite issue; and, upon the other hand, they are unwilling to appear by silence insensible either to the claims of my hon. Friend or to the claims of the matter which he has introduced. With regard to the question of the extension of local government in Ireland, it was a matter of great pain to us to find that owing to the impediments thrown in our way last Session we were unable to persevere with a measure of local government for Ireland, of which we had given Notice of our intention and desire to introduce. We attach the greatest value to the extension, perhaps I ought to say to the establishment, of local government in that country. We believe that one of the great evils under which the country labours is the want of local administration and of centralization of authority. We believe that the state of Ireland never can be satisfactory until its people have acquired and learned by practice those powers of local government which have proved so beneficial in other quarters of this Kingdom. Moreover, we believe that where the Irish people have had the opportunity, within a limited range, of giving proof of their powers and qualities and capabilities for local government, as they have done under the Poor Law Act, and through some other channels, they have demonstrated, if, indeed, anyone has been disposed to doubt it, their perfect capacity for the discharge of such duties. But that is treating of the subject of purely local administration. The Motion of my hon. Friend embraces other matters of wider scope, and what I have to say upon that subject is that even the short discussion which we have had to-night indicates many of the difficulties which the House will find in its way when it comes to deal seriously with that matter. Seriously, I am afraid it cannot be dealt with on this occasion. But the difficulties which will surround it when it comes to be dealt with have come to the surface in even this brief debate. Two hon. Members, who belong to what is known in Ireland as the Popular Party, have spoken to-night, and both of them are entitled to the respect of this House—namely, the hon. Member for King's County (Mr. Molloy) and the hon. Member for the county of Limerick (Mr. O'Sullivan). Both recommend that arrangements should be made to enable an Irish Legislative Body to deal with Irish affairs, and both declare their adhesion to the principle of the preservation of the integrity of the Empire, and their desire that Imperial questions should continue to be treated in an Imperial Parliament in which Ireland should be represented. As far as their general declarations go, I do not think that any exception can justly be taken to them; but, at the same time, these hon. Members have shown how differently they construe the words which they themselves have used. I will not undertake to say to what decision this House might arrive, provided a plan were before it, under which the local affairs of Ireland could be, by some clear and definite line, separated from the Imperial affairs of Ireland; but I must remind those hon. Gentlemen that when they say that they object to having any laws made for Ireland excepting by a Parliament sitting in Ireland, they also say that laws affecting Imperial interests are to be made here, and that those laws affecting Imperial interests would be laws for Ireland, just as much as laws touching only the local affairs. I am afraid that even those two hon. Gen- tlemen are involved in almost hopeless contradiction—[Mr. O'SULLIVAN: Not at all.]—well, that is a matter of opinion, and I say it without any intention to give offence—in the construction they assign to language which they join in using. The hon. Member for King's County quoted, as an authority, the declarations made at a meeting held in Dublin, in which it was fully laid down that this House, as a branch of the Imperial Parliament, was still to make provision for the discharge of the claims and obligations to the public credit or for the defence of the country, and for the maintenance of every Imperial establishment. But the hon. Member for King's County having quoted those declarations, the hon. Member for Limerick, while appearing to second him, loudly complained that this Parliament, in fulfilling that very duty in making provision for the wants of the country, had legislated on the subject of the internal duty leviable upon Irish spirits on the principle of requiring the people of Ireland to pay the same rate of duty upon a given commodity as they called upon the people of England and Scotland to pay. [Mr. O'SULLIVAN: The poor country and the rich one.] The poor country and the rich one? The hon. Gentleman shows that down to a certain date the Parliament of this country had been content to give to the people of Ireland the privilege—if it be a privilege—of drinking spirits at a much less duty than had been levied on the people of England and Scotland. But the hon. Gentleman well knows that that principle of financial preference to the people of Ireland was associated with a system of civil and religious inequality, and with the denial of political privilege; and the hon. Gentleman, if he understands, as I hope he does, the principle of liberty, must know that equal responsibility for meeting the burdens of the State is essential to and inseparable from the establishment of equal political rights. But I am now referring, not to the merits of the question, but to the evident contradiction that arises as between two hon. Gentlemen—between the first, who admits the full authority of this Parliament to deal with the question of taxation necessary for the discharge of Imperial obligations, and to meet the wants of the Imperial Government; and the other Gentleman, who complains that these Imperial purposes are, under the laws of Parliament, required to be met by equal contributions upon the consumption of the same article in the different countries.

MR. O'SULLIVAN

The Act of Union expressly declares that there shall be a difference in the scale of the taxation of the two countries.

MR. GLADSTONE

The hon. Gentleman may remind me of the Act of Union. If I were to remind him of the Act of Union, and the various matters declared in the Act of Union with which subsequent Parliaments have dealt, with the assistance of the hon. Gentleman, I think he would not be disposed to urge that as a decision of binding authority. But I wish to point, not merely to a contradiction which illustrated the difficulty of the case, but I wish to point out this—that neither they, nor so far as I know Mr. Butt before them, nor so far as I know Mr. O'Connell before him, ever distinctly explained in an intelligible and practicable form the manner in which the real knot of this question was to be untied. The principle upon which the hon. Members propose to proceed is this—that purely Irish matters should be dealt with by a purely Irish Authority, and that purely Imperial matters should be dealt with by an Imperial Chamber in which Ireland is to be represented. But they have not told us by what authority it is to be determined what matters, when taken one by one, are Irish, and what matters are Imperial. Until, Sir, they lay before this House a plan in which they go to the very bottom of that subject, and give us to understand in what manner that division of jurisdiction is to be accomplished, the practical consideration of this subject cannot really be arrived at, and, for my own part, I know not how any effective judgment upon it can be pronounced. Whatever may be the outcome of the hon. Member's proposal, of this I am well convinced, that neither this House of Commons, nor any other that may succeed it, will at any time assent to any measure by which the one paramount Central Authority necessary for holding together in perfect union and compactness this great Empire can possibly be either in the greatest or slightest degree impaired. We are not to depart from that principle; and what I put to the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, and to the hon. Member who preceded him, is this—that their first duty to us and their first duty to themselves, their first obligation in the prosecution of the purpose which they have in view—namely, of securing the management of purely Irish affairs by Irish hands—is to point out to us by what authority and by what instrument affairs purely Irish are to be divided and distinguished, in order that they may be appropriately and separately dealt with, as to what they call internal from those Imperial affairs and interests which they have frankly admitted must remain in the hands of the Imperial Parliament. Well, Sir, I do not pretend myself to advance this discussion towards a practical issue, because it is upon those who are disposed to raise the discussion that I must make the call that I now make—not for the purposes of this present debate, for I believe there is no advantage, but considerable disadvantage, in its continuance; but in order to let them understand, though we give full credit to their loyalty of purpose, that they shall give us a clear explanation as to the mode in which that vital matter is to be determined. Who is to say what purposes are Imperial? Who is to determine the circumscription within which the Irish authority is to have final control? In the course of the arguments which they used, the hon. Members referred to the case of Finland in its relation to Russia. That case, however, affords no practical illustration of this matter. It would be just as rational for hon. Gentlemen to quote the case of the Channel Islands; and I must remind the hon. Members that though we have sometimes interfered with the Customs duties of the Isle of Man, we have never, certainly in my recollection, interfered with the legislation of the Channel Islands. There a wholesome development is given to the principles of local government, and no practical inconvenience is felt. I take it that the case as between Russia and Finland is not very different from that as between Great Britain and the Channel Islands. Another case which was laid before us was that of Austria and Hungary. I am not an authority with reference to the rather difficult and complex question relating to Austria and Hungary.. I fully grant that the magnitude of that case is such that if you can, by a deve- lopment and explanation of that case, show that it affords a precedent for us, you occupy, so far, a ground on which you can take your stand in the argument. I have heard it alleged that the great and paramount difficulty of the question to which I have just referred—namely, the defining of divided authority—is attained in the case of the Austro-Hungarian Empire by a reference of the matter to the personal authority of the Sovereign. Well, if that be so, am I to understand that it is the proposal of those Members of the House who have taken the views I am referring to that the personal authority of the Sovereign in this country is to decide the question as to what subjects are to be referred to the Parliament of Ireland, and what subjects are to be referred to the Imperial Parliament? If that is the doctrine held, you are immediately involved in a dilemma more hopeless than any that has yet presented itself. Either the Sovereign is to decide on the authority of responsible Ministers or upon personal will and opinion. If the decision is to be made on the authority of responsible Ministers, then on which responsible Ministers—those of Great Britain, or those of Ireland? Evidently you would not consent to giving the responsible Ministers of Great Britain the power of drawing a distinction which involves most vital, difficult, and delicate questions of the subject. If you say, "No, we shall have nothing to do with responsible Ministers for the one country or the other," then I say you are in a greater difficulty still, because if in. the highest and nicest matters of government you are going to set up the personal responsibility of the Sovereign, apart from the advice of responsible Ministers, you are at once proposing a revolution in this country more profound than you need bring about by the establishment of any form of government whatsoever. With regard to the remarks of the hon. Member for Limerick (Mr. O'Sullivan) on the Land Act, I am sorry it is impossible to pursue the discussion of all these subjects. It is desired to debate the conduct of the Government in the administration of Ireland. It is desired to debate—and, in a measure, I cannot wonder at it, though the circumstances are not favourable—the operation of the Land Act. Why do hon. Members insist upon mixing with the subject a very great and difficult matter—and from what I have even now said I think it will be admitted the question is difficult as well as great—why do they insist on having all these matters mixed up? I am inclined to hope that they will allow this matter to be reserved for future consideration. I would venture, however, to press this upon them—that while I express myself favourable to the introduction, rightly understood, of local government in Ireland, as to the purpose they have in view, they cannot take the first, the most preliminary step, until they have produced a plan and set forth the machinery by which they mean to decide between Imperial and local questions, and so to give satisfaction to Members of this House upon the first and most paramount duty—namely, to maintain the supremacy of the Imperial authority for every practical purpose relating to the interests of this great Empire.

MR. MITCHELL HENRY

said, that was probably the first time a responsible Minister of the Crown—certainly the Prime Minister—had really shown a desire to grapple with the difficulties of the question of self-government for Ireland. Without pretending that he was able to give a complete answer to all the right hon. Gentleman's contentions, he wished to indicate the mode in which the difficulties the right hon. Gentleman had suggested could be solved. The nearest analogy between what the late Mr. Butt had asked for and an existing Government was to be found in the case of America. There there was a Supreme Government, with a number of State Governments, each of which was supreme within the borders of its own State. Questions arose as to what matters were really matter for each State and what for the General Government alone, and those questions were determined by a decision of the Supreme Court. It was objected to Mr. Butt's proposal that in this country we had no written Constitution, and therefore it was impossible to decide all those questions that might arise as matters of law. But if Parliament gave the Irish people self-government in matters in which it was admitted they ought to have self-government that could be defined in a Bill, and they could easily define the majority of matters which would come before an Irish Parliament. It was said, that notwithstanding, a contest might arise between the two countries as to what was Imperial and what was local; but to seize upon such a contingency as an excuse for denying to the Irish people the most ordinary rights of self-government was not statesmanship—it was tyranny, and worse than tyranny. But what was the complete answer to these objections, and what were the debatable questions which were likely to arise if they once separated Imperial affairs from local affairs? The British Parliament would still control the Army and Navy, the whole of the Imperial taxation, her relations with foreign Powers, and everything of the greater kind of Business which was now discharged in the House. That being so, if any question between the two Parliaments must be decided, then in the last result it would be decided by the force of the majority. Establishing a local legislation in Ireland would in no way diminish the power of the Crown in that country. The Sovereign would have just as many soldiers in Ireland as she had now. ["No!" and "Less!"] She would still have as many ships round the coast, and have the same right of raising taxes for the support of the Empire; and in case there was a rebellion, the Government could put it down, as they said they had put down rebellion now. These were not real objections, that could be urged in a serious spirit and with the authority and under the responsibility of an Executive Government, but were objections which had been put forward to relieve an Executive Government of that which it was their duty to do—namely, to consider the condition of Ireland. If the right hon. Gentleman turned his mind to the solution of the difficulty—and surely the responsibility was his—he would find that it was very easy, in looking at this question, to magnify those difficulties, and raise up such a barrier against the solution of them that they would never make any progress in peace and harmony between the two countries. That was the reason of his deprecating any continuation of that discussion, and he would ask his hon. Friend to withdraw his Resolution without putting it to a division. It was a great subject, and should not be touched upon in a slipshod manner. The greatest difficulty of all was amongst Irishmen themselves. They did not sufficiently define what they wanted. There was, doubtless, a Party of complete separation, which had lately come to the front in a way disastrous to Ireland, and thrown back her progress for such a time as none of them would see regained. There were others who wished to see Ireland under the Constitution of the time of Grattan; but that was not a scheme which commended itself to the great Convention in Ireland, which formulated those principles which had been explained by the Member for the King's County (Mr. Molloy). Until the Irish came to some conclusion for themselves, how could they expect other people to come to a decision? He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would accept the responsibility put upon him by his Office, and make an effort to improve the government of Ireland in such a manner as would release her from that system of centralization which had been her curse ever since the Union. They would accept whatever was offered in a good spirit. If they were not at once to be allowed to manage the whole of their own affairs, let them have an opportunity of managing some of them. Giving the Irish people the opportunity of using their own governing powers and faculties at home would, as the late Mr. Butt predicted, do much to sustain the integrity of the Empire, and do that which the right hon. Gentleman himself most desired—not separate the two countries, but to unite them, not in hate, but in bonds of peace and love.

MR. O'DONNELL

said, he could not but think that the Prime Minister, like the majority of English and Scotch speakers on this subject, was unconsciously led away by the fallacy which was known as the fallacy of objections—that was to say, that while they saw clearly all the possible objections to the granting of the Irish national demand, they closed their eyes to the immensely stronger objections to the maintenance of the present system. The right hon. Gentleman challenged the Irish Members to produce a precise Constitution showing that no possible danger could accrue to the Imperial authority in consequence of granting national self-government to Ireland. But the right hon. Gentleman must know that it was not only not in the power of the Irish Party to comply with the demand, but it was not in the power of any body of men to frame a Constitution containing within itself an unanswerable reply to every possible objection. It would not be difficult to prove that a greater jumble of inconsistencies was never put together since the time of the Roman Republic than the extraordinary, yet workable, Constitution under which the British Empire had managed to get along. The idea of a House of Lords empowered to throw out everything passed by the House of Commons, and a House of Commons empowered to disagree with everything passed by the House of Lords, and a Sovereign empowered to disagree with anything passed by both, was one which could not be supported by anyone who understood logic. If there were objections to the granting of national self-government for Ireland, there was an irresistible array of objections to the continuance of the existing relations between both countries. Until there was a complete grant of national self-government to Ireland, the Irish people within the British Empire and without it would think of nothing else but how to obtain it. There would not be a question raised in the House, there would not be a question submitted to the constituencies in which Irish influence was to be found, there would not be a question of foreign trade or commerce started which should not be made the occasion of pressing the Irish demand upon the knowledge and attention of the British Parliament. If instead of being at the end of seven centuries of British domination they were only at its threshold, they should continue the battle through the same period, aye, and if necessary, for 20 centuries, until they obtained national self-government for Ireland. To refuse all concessions in that direction, and to compel the people of Ireland to beg on their knees for every reform in their social condition, was a mode of proceeding which the indomitable pride of the Irish people would never tolerate. If the right hon. Gentleman governed Ireland by coercion during the duration of his Ministry, he would leave the Irish problem to his successors, and if his successors took up his mode of dealing with the question, they, in turn, would hand it over to their successors. Let them, on the other hand, grant a small instalment of self-government to Ireland, and they would see that the more they granted the better. He was not an advocate of separation. He was not such a fool to Irish inte- rests as to advocate any such thing. The brains and blood of Irishmen had been used to so large an extent in the building up of this Empire, that he would for ever be unwilling to hand over the total result of the successes of his countrymen to their English and Scotch Friends. They intended to have self-government for Ireland, and they intended to do all in their power to govern their English and Scotch Friends into the bargain. He advocated Union between the countries, but only on condition that the Irish people should get self-government. As the Irish Party in that House gradually came to understand the vast powers at their disposal—powers vastly more effective than mere stupid obstruction could ever be—their wishes would be listened to with greater respect than now. Of course, the Irish were all potential Separatists. Better separation ten thousand times than the present system. Therefore, they impressed upon the Imperial Government the absolute necessity of going some way to satisfy their demands. The right hon. Gentleman talked of local self-government in Ireland. Suppose he introduced local county government into Ireland. Let him introduce county government into Ireland within the broad limits he was about to introduce it in England. Thirty-two Irish County Boards taken together would be found to be nearly an Irish National Parliament. You could not give half-an-inch of local government in Ireland without having to go the whole way. He (Mr. O'Donnell) was opposing the Liberal Party bitterly, but he was not opposing Liberalism. Let no man take him for a Tory. Let no Conservative imagine that because they were working with them in defence of their national rights they were going into the Tory camp. They were, they trusted, perfectly free and fair in their political convictions. They believed in men, not in measures. If ever a Party threw away its powers and chances with a stupidity unparalleled, it was the Tory Party. During the six quiet years that preceded the return of the Liberal Party to Office, the Tories might have easily settled the Land Question; and they were now suffering, not only for their sloth, but for their contempt of Mr. Butt and his Friends. He believed the Prime Minister was not a Liberal in his action, neither did he believe he was a Tory. Yet he believed he belonged to the type of destructive statesmen. In conclusion, he believed their own efforts, and the efforts of their brethren in England and other lands, would make the practical objections to the present system of Irish government more and more clear every day.

MR. EWART

said, that in common with all who heard or who read the speech of the hon. Member who moved the Amendment (Mr. P. J. Smyth), he admired and must bear his testimony to its eloquence. While differing in the main from the hon. Gentleman, he agreed with many of the observations that had been made as to the injustice with which Irish industry was dealt with 200 years ago, and when many laws were on the Statute Book which now appeared harsh and severe, but which had long been repealed. But Irishmen could do no good in moodily grieving over the past. If one side found fault with the means by which the Union was carried in 1800, the other side would remember the Rebellion of 1798, and many events which preceded it. It must be admitted on both sides that there was a good deal to be forgotten. In national matters, as in commercial matters, there should be a Statute of Limitations—["No!"]—and surely 80 years were sufficient for that purpose. Not only Ireland, but perhaps every country, had something to forget. Most assuredly the principles of the Amendment did not prevail over a large part of Ireland. He felt bold to assert that, if it were possible to put the question without terrorism to the people of Ireland, a majority would hold by the Union. He said that notwithstanding that the larger proportion of the Irish Members belonged to the Home Rule Party; but the issues were different. The question on which they were returned was not that of separation, but of the land; on which question he admitted they had the sympathy and support of many who disagreed with them on the Land Question. He confessed that he read with much regret two speeches lately delivered on the subject of Ireland; one by the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen), who much exaggerated the extent of the sympathy he had referred to; the other by the hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle (Sir Wilfrid Lawson), when both conceded the principle of Home Rule, which was another name for separation. As to the question of letting Ireland go, as the hon. Baronet put it, there would be two parties to consider; and he would ask, was the House prepared to abandon the loyal portion of Ireland, not only in the North, but in other parts of Ireland? He did not wish to impart any heat into the debate; but, after such utterances from English Members below the Gangway, he might tell the House that the loyalists of Ireland were prepared to defend the legislative Union with their lives. They regarded it as the charter of their liberty, the means by which they attained their present prosperity. It was his firm belief that if a poll were taken of the people of Ireland, without peril to them, it would be found that they would hold to the Union. Ireland had no special grievance. On the contrary, she had been petted and, he might say, spoiled for the last 50 years, until, at the present moment, she had Land Laws more favourable to the tenants than any other part of the Kingdom, or of any other country in the world, and more than her fair share of representation, and a larger share than she was entitled to, having regard to numbers, intelligence, and wealth, of the attention of the Legislature of the Empire. The loyalists of Ireland would never consent to give up their position as an integral part of that great Assembly to take their place in that of a tenth-rate one. He admitted that there was much wrong in the state of Ireland; but her position was much better than when the Union took place. He was sorry to say that, for want of industry, combined with sobriety, thrift, and contentment, her prosperity was not so great as it might be. She had been deluded by so-called patriots, who had given her no rest. What was the cause of the greater prosperity of Ulster than of other parts of Ireland? It was not that Ulster had a better soil or a better climate; on the contrary, Ulster was inferior in both those respects. It was because the people of Ulster were industrious, sober, thrifty, and contented. He hoped that the residents in other parts of Ireland would see the uselessness, he might say childishness, of the struggle in which they were engaged. They might as well ask for a restoration of the Heptarchy as for a repeal of the Union, or for Home Rule, which meant the same thing. He wished the Home Rule Party would see that, and join with the other Members from Ireland in endeavouring to find means to secure peace to Ireland, and in endeavouring to develop her resources, and then their efforts would be sure to to successful.

MR. PLUNKET

wished to say for himself, and as an Irish Representative, that he was devoted to the continuance of the Union between the two countries, and he was, therefore, opposed to any infraction or any revision whatever of the Act of Parliament upon which that Union rested. He also wished to say that he took down words which fell from the Prime Minister, and which he had heard with the greatest surprise and regret. He might have misunderstood the right hon. Gentleman; but he could only say he paid the greatest attention to the language used, and he could put no other construction upon it than this—that it was really an invitation to Irish Members, if they chose, to re-open the question of Home Rule. He would not now for one moment enter into any argument upon that subject. He agreed with much that had fallen from his hon. Friend the Member for Belfast (Mr. Ewart). The words he used expressed feelings shared by every loyal man in Ireland. ["No, no!"] He meant of every man who was loyal to the present system of the Imperial legislation controlling the affairs of Ireland as well as of the rest of the United Kingdom and the Empire. It was a most dangerous thing to hold up a signal for a renewal of that agitation which in the last Parliament—and, so far as he knew, in every preceding Parliament in the century—had been steadily resisted by both of the great Parties in the Imperial House of Commons. He said again that he did not wish to enter at all into this debate. He merely desired to call attention to the words of the Prime Minister, and to enter his protest against any re-opening of this subject. After the speech of the Prime Minister, he did not see how it would be easy for the present Government to resist pressure for a Committee of Inquiry into the Parliamentary relations between England and Ireland—a demand which had been steadily resisted by the Leaders of both Parties in the last Parliament.

MR. SEXTON

said, that the hon. Member for Belfast (Mr. Ewart) was one of a small class of Irish Members in the House, and the main purpose of their presence there was to attack the great body of the Representatives of the Irish people and to deny them the mandate which was verified by every fact in the political history of their country. The hon. Member appeared to him to be a person of a parochial turn of mind, tempered, perhaps, by an attachment to commerce. So long as plenty of yarn was spun and linen produced he had no conception beyond that fact of the happiness or of the greatness of the country. So long as the few manufacturers in his district realized large fortunes, what did he care for the moral feelings of the people, or what did he think of those aspirations which formed the marrow of political life? In his opinion, the hon. Gentleman and those like him were incapable of approaching the consideration of questions affecting Ireland. He had invited them to join the other Irish Members. Where were they to find the other Irish Members of whom he spoke? They were almost a vanishing quantity. He said that he preferred to retain his seat in that Assembly—of which he was so brilliant an ornament—rather than to take his seat in a tenth-rate Body. But the plan for the regeneration of Ireland would enable the hon. Gentleman to find a full field for his intellect, because it would permit him to be a Member of the tenth-rate Body and of that greater Assembly. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Plunket) was a person of a different intellectual type. He was one of the best products of that colony in Ireland, which had been well termed the English garrison. The most noticeable trait of that class was the unsleeping vigilance with which it was ready to assail the liberties of Ireland, and to assail any man, whether English or Irish, who spoke in favour of Ireland. He had heard with respect and admiration the speech delivered by the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government. Previously he had noticed the close attention which he gave to the debate, and much as he had on former occasions admired his great intellectual power and its sudden and masterly exercise, he had never admired it more than when the right hon. Gentleman plunged at once into this question and drew from it facts and maxims of political life. It was not to be expected that he should regard the difficulties raised by the right hon. Gentleman as difficulties which actually existed; but he was bound to say that he showed the true spirit of a statesman in recognizing the reality, the gravity, the urgency, and, he might say, the inevitableness of the Irish National Question, and in pointing out to the Irish Representatives the doubts and fears which existed in the English mind, and which it was necessary to remove to carry conviction not only of the justice of their claim, but of its practical feasibility. It would be the duty of the Irish Representatives, not on that, but on future occasions, to satisfy the English mind on those difficulties which they deemed to exist, and to prove the non-existence of those which they did not consider existed. Whatever might be his duty henceforward in that House, he did most heartily thank the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government for the attention which he had given to this subject and for the care with which he had spoken upon it; and he might assure him—and his voice would be echoed by millions—that he might regard with indifference and contempt the warnings given him by that colony alien to the soil and to the people which had thriven upon the discontent and the misery of Ireland.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 37; Noes 93: Majority 56.—(Div. List, No. 3.)

Original Question again proposed.

Notice taken, that 40 Members wore not present; House counted, and 40 Members being found present,

MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHY

said, he rose to move the following Amendment to the Address:— Humbly to assure Your Majesty that this House regards with grave concern the action of the Executive in Ireland, whereby the liberties of Members of this House have been outraged, and the performance of their constitutional duties rendered impossible; whereby hundreds of Your Majesty's subjects in Ireland are detained in prison without trial or the right of Habeas Corpus, many of them on the alleged suspicion of offences for which, even if duly tried and found guilty, they could not have been subjected to punishment as severe as that which they have already undergone; whereby the lawful organisation of the Irish tenantry has been arbitrarily suppressed at a most critical moment, when its maintenance was essential to the due protection of their legal rights, while the organisation of the Irish landlords against those rights has been encouraged and supported; whereby ladies engaged in the work of public charity have been threatened, harassed, and imprisoned under obsolete statutes and on nominal pretexts; whereby the liberty of the Press has been illegally interfered with, the right of free speech, of public meeting, and of lawful constitutional agitation has been abrogated; whereby innocent persons have been killed and wounded by the armed forces of the Crown; whereby the verdicts of coroners' juries, incriminating the agents of the Executive, have been disregarded; whereby large districts of the Country have been placed under a system of quasi-martial Law; whereby rewards have been offered by the Government for secret information as to crimes to be committed, tending to the demoralisation of the people and the creation of perjured evidence against innocent persons; which action generally has caused in the minds of the people of Ireland a profound distrust of the execution of the Law; and humbly to assure Your Majesty that an immediate abandonment of all coercive measures, and the establishment of constitutional government in Ireland, with full recognition of the rights and liberties of the Irish people, are essentially necessary for the peace and prosperity of that realm and of the United Kingdom. That, he observed, was a lengthened and comprehensive indictment. As an Amendment, he admitted that it was much longer than was usually the case with Amendments on occasions like the present; but it had seemed to his Friends and himself that it would be better not to divide the question into three or four or more successive Amendments, and at the same time that it was right and necessary to accentuate, in the clearest manner, the specific charges which they made against Her Majesty's Government in their administration of Ireland. At all events, the Chief Secretary for Ireland would hardly say that they confined themselves to the utterance of vague generalities. There was a precise indictment in every clause, distinctly setting forth what it was they complained of, and on what it was they appealed to the judgment of the House. It must be allowed, he thought, by any ordinary thinker, whatever his Party bonds or prejudices, that if they could make out against the Government the case, or anything like the case, set forth in that comprehensive indictment, they would show that Ireland had been brought into a condition which, if it were under the power of Russia or some other despotic State, they would regard with the greatest horror. He did not hope by his own argument to make out every count in that gigantic indictment; but he believed that there were in the House Colleagues and Friends of his acquainted with every portion of the case, who would be able to prove that there was no exaggeration, even in that somewhat appalling picture, and that the charge could be maintained not only in the general, but in every particular. For himself, he would rather ask the House to join with him in an appeal to the Government for some explanation of the reasons which had influenced them in the extraordinary change that they had made in the whole condition of Ireland. What had they done with Ireland in the last six months? What was the occasion and the excuse for the extraordinary revolution of policy under which Ireland had suffered since the House rose at the end of last Session? That country, which a few months ago was supposed to be under constitutional law and the regulations which appertain to a civilized land, was now under a species of despotic power which in our days civilization was not supposed to tolerate. Newspapers had been suppressed and editors sent to prison, lawful organizations had been broken up, and even women had been locked up in gaols because they endeavoured to carry on a legitimate and a charitable work. What he wanted to ask the Government was, what excuse they would offer to the House for that monstrous change in the whole governing system of the country? What was the excuse they could offer for the arbitrary arrest of several Members of the House of Commons? When the House separated at the end of last Session what was the condition of things? It was not, so far as he knew, the impression of hon. Members that the autumn was about to open with an arbitrary system of arrest. They were, on the contrary, under the impression that the Land Act was going to be put upon its trial for what it was worth, and that in the meantime something like constitutional law would be allowed to prevail in the country. He remembered a conversation he had with his hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon) a day or so before he left England. Mr. Dillon told him that he had been recommending one of the most active and leading members of the Land League to go over to Dublin and resume his business there, because he felt convinced that no further arrests would be made, and that nothing would be done to disturb the ordinary condition of the country. His hon. Friend told him that he believed the Government had set their hearts on having the Land Act fairly tried, that Mr. Parnell had determined to give it a fair trial, that he (Mr. Dillon) had made up his mind not to stand in the way of its fair trial, and, under these conditions, he was convinced that no rational Government would think of disturbing the country by making unnecessary arrests. He wished to direct the especial attention of the House to the arrest of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). The House was accustomed at different seasons to have its pet aversions. He could remember when a distinguished, and, he might even say, an illustrious Member of the Government now present (Mr. Bright) was a pet aversion of the House, and no words of reproach or even of calumny were too bitter to hurl against him. His hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork was now the pet aversion of the House. But, he would ask, what had Mr. Parnell said or done since the dissolution of Parliament which he had not said or done before that time, and in what manner had he departed from his line of firm, resolute, but still constitutional agitation? He called the attention of the House to one or two of the events of last autumn. He presumed the case against the hon. Member for the City of Cork would be the suggestion that he had raised an agitation which could not be appeased; that he had forced the people into a state of excitement which to the Government seemed most dangerous; and that, to save the country, it was necessary, in the interests of law and order, to consign the hon. Member to prison. He wished to examine that case by looking impartially at some of the speeches delivered by his hon. Friend. An important event during the last Recess was the assembling of the great Convention in Dublin to consider the merits of the Land Act. Never could there have been a more truly representative Convention than that great meeting. Probably even the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, if he had been present—and it was to be wished he had been—would have owned that that meeting was representative in the strictest sense, and composed, in great measure, of the very men whom this Land Act was specially intended to affect—the tenant farmers and the labourers of Ireland. Let it be noted, too, that there was an immense representation of the Catholic clergy there. At that Convention his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork said it was his intention to test the Land Act. That assembly, composed to a large extent of farmers who were especially supposed to be anxious that the Bill should succeed, was not only not forced on by Mr. Parnell, but was far beyond him in its objection to the Bill. It was only by his great influence and by his dexterity that the Bill was oven allowed a toleration as a settlement of the Land Question of the country. The hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) made one of the most eloquent and argumentative speeches he had ever heard to induce the Convention to refrain from passing a resolution for the wholesale condemnation of the Irish Land Act. The hon. Member for Sligo advocated a fair trial of the Land Act, and even went so far as to plead for a fair trial for the Liberal Ministry, on the ground that if the Ministers were displaced they might have a Tory Government still more coercive. For that speech the hon. Member was rewarded with a prison. Then there was another Member of Parliament who took an active part at the Convention in reconciling the people to the Land Act. He referred to the hon. Member for Roscommon (Mr. O'Kelly), who spoke strongly in favour of the Land Act, so much so, indeed, that some of his more extreme friends referred in terms of disapprobation to his speech. And yet he also had been consigned to a prison. He wished to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland what there was in the speeches and the acts of his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork differing from all that he said and done before, and which authorized his being arbitrarily sent to prison? He declared of his own knowledge that it was in a great measure owing to Mr. Parnell's influence in the Convention that there was not a complete repudiation of the Land Act. In the speeches Mr. Parnell made he pointed out certain advantages which the Act clearly conferred on the tenant farmers, notably that which gave them the power to borrow money to improve their farms. He said he trusted the farmers would take advantage of that provision during the coming winter, and by borrowing money in every direction for the purpose of improving their holdings and giving employment and improved wages to the labouring population, would show themselves worthy of holding the land of Ireland. On the second day of the Convention he explained his attitude towards the Bill more clearly. Everyone in the House knew that he was not an admirer of the Bill, that he thought it did not go far enough, and that it was founded on wrong principles. Speaking the second day, he said— We propose to test the Bill, not to use it. The resolution has been misinterpreted by the two different sets of speakers who have addressed you, one in favour of it and the other against it. The set of speakers in favour of the resolution looked upon it as a resolution binding the Executive to use the Bill. It is nothing of the sort. It pledges the Executive to test the Bill, and I for myself do not believe that the Act will stand the test. But we should be assuming an unreasonable and indefensible position in the eyes of the world, and I venture to think in our own eyes also, if we were to refuse to test this measure. That did not look like advising the population of the country to resist the operation of the law, or like an attempt to turn the measure into a nullity. His hon. Friend said— It will be the duty of the local branches to select test cases of an average character where rents are neither very high nor very low. There did not seem to be anything very unconstitutional, or very mysterious, or of the nature of a revolution in the suggestions contained in that speech. That was the tone adopted by his hon. Friend during the whole of the Convention. His efforts altogether tended more to restrain than force it on; and but for him the assembly would have flung the Act overboard altogether. Speaking in the Queen's County afterwards, Mr. Parnell said they proposed to select cases representative of the class of the tenants who might get large abatements if the Act was worked fairly, and cases representative of the class who would not get the reductions which the time required. In that speech there was nothing perilous to law and order, or opposed to the Constitution. At the weekly meeting of the Land League, on the 28th of September, Mr. Parnell said they proposed to test the Act by the selection of average cases, and he hoped to have those cases ready on the first day the Court sat, so that they might be filed at the earliest possible moment, and decisions taken upon them. Would any Member of the House say that that was not a reasonable course to suggest? Would it not have been better to test the Act in that way than to have the rush of applications into the Courts which his hon. Friend deprecated as likely to lead to confusion and dissatisfaction? For his own part, he would advise every man to keep out of every Court of Law if he could; but his hon. Friend did not go so far—he merely asked the farmers not to rush into the Courts until it was first ascertained whether the Act could bring about the results which they desired. That was the whole tenour of his speeches. In none of them did he find a single expression suggesting violence of any kind. Speaking at Dungarvan, his hon. Friend said— We propose to test the Act. We propose to give it a fair trial—a very much fairer trial than they are going to give your 200 friends, gallant and noble men, who are now within the common gaols of this country. On the same occasion he said— The payment of no rent was a course which the Land League had refused from the commencement to recommend to the tenant farmers. Mr. Parnell went on to say that some men of great influence and experience had recommended that they should raise the standard of "no rent;" but he had always been opposed to that. Instead of the payment of no rent the hon. Member recommended the payment of a fair rent upon the value of the land, exclusive of the tenants' improvements, and that was not a very extreme doctrine to propound. He ventured to say the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster would not disagree with it very much; and he wondered whether any of the seditious and violent language his hon. Friend was supposed to have used was based upon the following quotation:— If all that the tenants have done were swept away off the soil, and if all that the landlords only have done were left upon it, nine-tenths of the land of Ireland would he as hare of house, and garden, of fences, and of cultivation as if it was in pre-historic times. It would he as bare as the American prairie where the Indian now roams, and where the foot of the white man has never trod. That was the language of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and from that sentence Mr. Parnell adopted the phrase "prairie value," which had since become famous, and for which the hon. Member had been so often denounced. The 8th of October was a memorable day in the history of this controversy. Mr. Parnell, addressing a land meeting, remarked that a portion of the Land League was in advance of him, and that with this he was considerably pleased. He endeavoured to moderate their opinions, and he (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) considered that the Government had made an extraordinary blunder in incarcerating the very men who would have been instrumental in maintaining order in Ireland. He mentioned these facts to show how completely the Prime Minister, who in his speech at Leeds on that very 8th of October, hinted at the necessity of employing the "resources of civilization" against the Land League movement, had mistaken the character of the men he had to deal with. The Government had treated as its arch enemy the man who really exercised a powerful restraining influence upon disorder in Ireland. When the right hon. Gentleman spoke of the "resources of civilization," who could have supposed that it was the resources of barbarism that were meant—the informer, the spy, the despotic arrest, and the prison? As the Prime Minister, on that occasion, described with such vigour what he conceived to be the character of the hon. Member for the City of Cork, his hon. Friend determined to reply, and where six hard words had been flung at him, to fling back half-a-dozen in return. The Prime Minister had endeavoured to depreciate Mr. Parnell's character in the eyes of his countrymen by holding up to admiration one of Mr. Parnell's Friends and Colleagues, the hon. Member for Tipperary, whom he praised, not, indeed, in a degree higher than he deserved, but because he said Mr. Dillon was determined to stand aloof from Mr. Parnell and to give the Land Act his support. Now the hon. Member for Tipperary had been from first to last totally opposed to the scheme of the Government; he had no faith in the Land Bill, and when he found himself praised by the Prime Minister, he flung back the compliments and repudiated the praise. He was not going to say whe- ther it was post hoc ergo propter hoc or not; but this was certain, that immediately after Mr. Parnell's speech attacking the Prime Minister, Mr. Parnell was arrested, and immediately after the speech of Mr. Dillon repudiating the Prime Minister's praise, Mr. Dillon was arrested. Mr. Dillon had been released before, on the ground that his health would not endure incarceration. He had not made any speech in the meantime; then he made the speech referred to, and he was sent to prison. If the Chief Secretary would not have the conviction sink deep all over Europe that the Prime Minister did punish two political opponents for having replied to him as they did, he must show special reasons why these men had been arrested and sent to prison—he must make it clear that they had said or done something specially dangerous, and quite different from what they had been previously saying or doing. The Chief Secretary would also have to show what excuse he had for the extraordinary systems recently enforced—the spy system, the informer system, the suppression of the Land League, which had been a body acting, not only for a legitimate, but a most honourable purpose, which had maintained and was maintaining order, and which, only for its suppression, would have prevented many of the outrages which they all deplored. The Chief Secretary would have to answer for the entire change in the condition of Ireland since the present Government came in Office. They came into Office in a great measure because of the cordial support of the Irish people, who believed that Statesmen who had said and done so much for Ireland would crown their career by such legislation as Ireland really required. When the present Government came into Office Ireland was in a pacific state. That was evident from the fact that they did not renew the stringent Acts before in operation for the preservation of peace in Ireland. It was true, indeed, that they brought in the Compensation for Disturbance Bill to supersede one introduced by the hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power); but when that Bill was rejected by the House of Lords, there ceased their efforts for that Session. Then they went back to the old, evil policy of coercion. They sent back to prison a man who had done more to maintain order than any Member of Her Majesty's Government—Michael Davitt. They entered upon that ridiculous sham of a prosecution, in which Members of that House were made responsible for ejaculations at meetings which they had never heard, and made by men they had never seen. In such circumstances, the Irish people naturally began to lose faith in the Liberal Government; they thought nothing would be done for them; they became discontented, and discontent deepened into something like disaffection. When Parliament opened last Session the Government preferred coercion to remedial measures. They put the Coercion Bill first, and thus aroused an amount of exasperation in Ireland such as had not been felt for many years under the worst of Tory Governments. The Tories had never promised the Irish people anything, or uttered magnificent speeches in their favour. The Tories had no great traditions coming down from the days of Fox for the good government of Ireland. During some years of the late Administration Irish Members had a certain co-operation with English Liberals then sitting on the Opposition Benches. Times had changed very much since then. Irish Members who felt it their duty to have recourse to an exceptional policy on exceptional occasions had then the great advantage of the assistance of English Liberals now Members of Her Majesty's Government. He read with interest and something like wonder a speech made the other day by the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Chamberlain), in which he expressed edifying and eloquent horror of obstruction. We read in Vanity Fair that Becky Sharp, after her marriage, was very angry with her husband because he ventured to smoke a cigar, and when he reminded her that before her marriage she not only did not object to his smoking, but used even to light his cigar for him, she bluntly replied—"You goose, that was before my promotion; now I am married, and I won't have it." There were Becky Sharps in politics as well as in literature, and it was no uncommon thing to find some political Becky Sharp expressing horror and indignation at the very thing by the practice and parade of which he had obtained his own promotion. He certainly was surprised to find that the employment of spies and informers was what was meant by Liberal government. The Liberal Government had given so much provocation to Ireland that it was not reasonable to expect any people in the world to endure it and remain orderly; and, moreover, they had imprisoned the very men whose influence would have been exerted on the side of peace and quietness. The result was that things had gone on from bad to worse. The Prime Minister had stated that in consequence of his beneficent legislation the number of outrages had diminished; but, in point of fact, there had been an increase of outrages, and the prediction, the constant prediction, of Irish Members had been fulfilled—that with the suppression of the peasants' organization a premium would be put on crime, revenge, and conspiracy. The Government, by their recent action, had worked evil, not only for the present, but for the distant future. It would be long indeed before any legislation, however beneficent and successful, could efface from the minds of the Irish people the bitter memory of the past year of injustice, harshness, and tyranny. His Friend the hon. Member for the City of Cork had been imprisoned; but the Government had not been able also to shut up in prison the hopes, the feelings, and the national passions which his cause and his career represented. He might fittingly address to his hon. Friend the words of one of their great English poets—Wordsworth—who said, addressing the leader of another cause then supposed to be lost, but which had since proved successful, a leader who, like Mr. Parnell, had been sent to prison—Be of good cheer, for, as the poet expresses it, "Thou hast left behind powers that will work for thee, earth, air, and skies; there's not a breathing of the common wind that will forget thee; thou hast great allies; thy friends are exultations, agonies, and love, and man's unconquerable mind." The momentary exultations of Mr. Par-Hell's enemies would in the end prove favourable to his cause; the agonies of thousands of suffering tenants, the love of a people ever grateful would be on his side; and so also would be "man's unconquerable mind, "for the unconquerable resolve of the Irish people was some day to obtain out of all the confusion, the turmoil, the sufferings, and the distress of the present the right to choose their own Leaders. For himself, he was not wholly ungrateful for coercion; it had, at any rate, the merit of having rendered the government of Ireland impossible, save through the medium of an Irish Parliament chosen by the Irish people.

Amendment proposed, At the end thereof, to add the words:—" Humbly to assure Your Majesty that this House regards with grave concern the action of the Executive in Ireland, whereby the liberties of Members of this House have been outraged, and the performance of their constitutional duties rendered impossible; whereby hundreds of Your Majesty's subjects in Ireland are detained in prison without trial or the right of Habeas Corpus, many of them on the alleged suspicion of offences for which, even if duly tried and found guilty, they could not have been subjected to punishment as severe as that which they have already undergone; whereby the lawful organisation of the Irish tenantry has been arbitrarily suppressed at a most critical moment, when its maintenance was essential to the due protection of their legal rights, while the organisation of the Irish landlords against those rights has been encouraged and supported; whereby ladies engaged in the work of public charity have been threatened, harassed, and imprisoned under obsolete statutes and on nominal pretexts; whereby the liberty of the Press has been illegally interfered with, the right of free speech, of public meeting, and of lawful constitutional agitation has been abrogated; whereby innocent persons have been killed and wounded by the armed forces of the Crown; whereby the verdicts of coroners' juries, incriminating the agents of the Executive, have been disregarded; whereby large districts of the Country have been placed under a system of quasi-martial Law; whereby rewards have been offered by the Government for secret information as to crimes to be committed, tending to the demoralisation of the people and the creation of perjured evidence against innocent persons; which action generally has caused in the minds of the people of Ireland a profound distrust of the execution of the Law; and humbly to assure Your Majesty that an immediate abandonment of all coercive measures, and the establishment of constitutional government in Ireland, with full recognition of the rights and liberties of the Irish people, are essentially necessary for the peace and prosperity of that realm and of the United Kingdom."—(Mr. Justin M'Carthy.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there added."

MR. W. E. FORSTER

The Amendment, Sir, which you have just read, as the hon. Member (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) has correctly stated, consists of a heavy indictment against the Government; but I have observed that, although there are many heads in that indictment, the hon. Member has scarcely dwelt upon more than one of them. I think, how- ever, it is my duty, as the Member of the Government most directly responsible for the Irish administration, to lose no time in giving that justification of the course they have pursued since the House separated which I quite admit the House has a right to demand. It is perfectly true, to our great regret and to our intense disappointment, that we have had to make use of all the powers which the Law and Parliament gave us last year for the preservation of order and the protection of life and property; and, in fulfilling that duty, we have certainly had to take such measures as I think do require justification and explanation. Even if this Amendment had not been brought forward I should have felt that the Debate on the Address, in reply to Her Majesty's Gracious Speech, ought not to be concluded without some account of the action of the Irish Government since the House separated. The hon. Member, although he has not attempted to prove the different counts of his indictment, with the exception of one of them, has ended with very strong remarks and has called upon us, in general terms, for a justification. Before I enter into details let me say this much, that we have been driven to take the course we have taken because we believed that without it the law would have been powerless, that industry would have been impossible, and that liberty would not have existed. ["Oh!" from the Home Rule Members.] Yes, I repeat that liberty would not have existed, for hardly a man in Ireland would have been free to earn his living as he pleased; that property would not have been protected; and that life would have been endangered. And, more than that, we believed that if we had not taken action, and strong action, we should have been guilty of what would have amounted to the crime of allowing men to be led into such a state of excitement that probably civil war would have had to be put down. If the House will kindly give me attention I think I can show them clearly the grounds upon which we acted, and I shall be surprised if they do not admit that we had real reason for the course we took. The hon. Member has stated that to his great surprise, and to the surprise of others, it was not until after the House separated last Session that there was any strong action on the part of the Government. The hon. Member has related an interesting conversation which he had with the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Dillon). Now I do not wish to dwell on anything that passed in the last Session, but, perhaps, I may be allowed to refer for a moment to a debate which took place in which I had to defend the action of the Government up to that time. In looking forward fo the future I ventured to say there were two influences at work. The Land Act we hoped would have a beneficent influence on the agitation which had been carried on. Some of the more prominent members of the Land League appeared to have been conducting the agitation in a manner that tended to defeat the operation of the Land Act and cause disorder. The passing of the Land Act did not relieve us from but rather more strongly imposed on us the duty of preserving order. We separated for the Recess in the hope that good influences would prevail. We had a certain amount of fear and misgiving, but we were not without hope. That hope very soon disappeared. The hon. Member has quoted the speeches of Mr. Parnell, and I myself shall be compelled to detain the House by referring to two or three of them. Not long after the House separated we had the Tyrone Election. Mr. Parnell went down to that election, as he had a perfectly constitutional right to do, in order to address the electors in support of one of the candidates. Speaking at Enniskillen, on the 29th of August, Mr. Parnell said— What is the end and the object for which we struggle f We aim at abolishing rent and making the people the owners of the land of the country. The Government passed an Act in the Session just gone by for the purpose of establishing Courts to fix rents. We do not aim at fixing rent, because, as I have said, we aim at abolishing it altogether. On September 9, at a Land League meeting in Sackville Street, Mr. Parnell used these words. After describing letters from designing persons, who were spreading panic among tenant farmers by telling them that if they allowed their interest to be sold they would lose everything, he added— I cannot see that they will lose anything at all where it is possible for the Land League to keep the farm vacant. This has been our principle from the very commencement. Now, directly I read that speech, I confess I gave up all hopes of a quiet time. I knew very well what was the meaning of the statement by Mr. Parnell that a farm was to be kept vacant. I knew how the farm would be kept vacant, and what would be the penalty to be paid by a man who, in the pursuit of his own industry, or in his choice of his own mode of industry, dared to take a farm which had become vacant. Mr. Parnell goes on to say— This has been our principle from the very commencement. Without such a policy we could not have succeeded in this movement at all. [Mr. LEAMY: He did not say that.] I give the passage as it is reported in The Freeman's Journal, and I have already said what, in my opinion, it meant. [Cries of "No!"] There is not a man in Ireland who did not know what it meant. Mr. Parnell continued— Without such a policy we could not have succeeded in this movement at all from the be-ginning; and if we are able to keep a tenant's farm vacant who has allowed his interest to be sold, there can be no shadow of doubt whatever that he will be able, if he desires, to make a satisfactory arrangement with his landlord hereafter—certainly as satisfactory an arrangement as he could possibly expect to make under the Land Act which has just been passed. No doubt, if that policy had been allowed its full course, that prophecy would have been fulfilled. The hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton), whom I see now in his place, was at the same meeting, and was even more clear in his statement than Mr. Parnell. He said— Some writer in some newspaper pretends to argue that tenants who allow their farms to be sold part with their legal rights over them; but I tell him that these tenant farmers of Ireland and the Land League have never depended upon the rights which the law gives them. They depend on the rights which they have already achieved by putting the law aside. When I read those words I knew what we were likely to have last autumn. Well, the Tyrone Election passed over. The bribe to the constituents of Tyrone was not taken. The Ulster Members, forgetting that Ulster was not all Ireland, came to ask me in very fitting terms whether, on the part of the Government, I intended still further to pursue the policy we had been attempting to fulfil? We had diminished the number of prisoners, and they asked me whether we could not release those who remained altogether. I told them, having these declarations before me, that it was impossible; but that if the state of the country would only permit of their release I should be very glad. Few people can imagine what it is for a man in my position to have to deal with men in prison in this way, and I said that if the state of the country admitted, we should only be too glad to release the whole of the prisoners. We did try the release of prisoners for a time. We released Father Sheehy, and we released him on the assurance of a resident magistrate, than whom few men have deserved better of their country. I refer to Mr. Clifford Lloyd, who gave an assurance that he would be responsible for the peace of Kilmallock after Father Sheehy was released. [An Irish MEMBER: A ruffian.] I knew that Mr. Clifford Lloyd would be able to keep his word, and I thought it would be safe to release Father Sheehy. And so it was, so far as regards the district of Kilmallock; but the result has not been a great encouragement to release others. And no wonder that there was no encouragement; for then came that Convention to which the hon. Member for Longford has alluded. I suppose he has read the accounts in the newspapers. Indeed, I believe he was present at the meeting, and, therefore, he ought to know all about it. I say this because many of the other remarks he has made make me feel that he is completely innocent of any knowledge of what was really going on or what really happened. The explanation of that is the fact that the hon. Member was enjoying himself comfortably in Greece, and delighting himself with stories of antiquity rather than concerning himself with what was passing in his own country. That is the only explanation I can give of his extraordinary ignorance of what was happening. But I presume that he does know all about the Convention, because he was there. The Convention was ushered in with telegrams from the United States. I am obliged to bring in the United States, for a very good reason, because if it were not for some persons in the United States this agitation would not exist. But it is not supported by the general feeling of the people of the United States, and there is no warrant for saying that the people of the United States do not generally agree with the action of my right hon. Friend and of the Government. No Irishman, I believe, will doubt that the general feeling in America is that we have been obliged to take the course we have taken. Undoubtedly, there are many Irishmen and Irish women in the United States whose love of their country has been practised upon by false statements and by misleading accounts. They certainly do take a deep interest in what goes on in their old country; and if it were not for what happens in the United States, and for the money which comes from the Irish in the United States, this agitation would very quickly disappear. There never was a case yet in which there was a movement of anything like this in which the support so absolutely depended, so far as regards financial aid, upon the money sent by another country. [Mr. LEAMY: The Sustentation Fund.] No hon. Member can venture to dispute the fact of this dependence. The telegrams from the United States to the Convention were important, because they came from the paymasters. What were they? They were—"No rent;" "Pay no rent;" "Hold the harvest;" "If you pay rent no assistance from this country;" "One step backward, and no more money." At a large meeting of the Union League, representing 30,000 people at Worcester, in the State of Iowa, there came this telegram—"Ignore the Land Bill; pay no rent, and hold the harvest." On the second day of the Convention there came a telegram from Mr. Patrick Ford, a very important person indeed and proprietor of the New York Irish World. It was— We adjure the Convention to unfurl the banner of 'no rent;' hold the harvest. Do this, and American friends will redouble support. If this is not done, America will be disheartened. The question, then, was, what was to be the policy of the Land League? To have declared "no rent at all" would cot have answered. The farmers were not brought to the point that they would refuse to have anything to do with the Land Act, nor were they brought to the point that by paying no rent they would deprive themselves of all the advantages of the Land Act. Mr. Parnell certainly made the statement, which the hon. Member for Longford has quoted, that he would not hoist the banner of "no rent," because such an act would take the clergy away from them. Still, the American money had to be kept. Hence came the test cases. The test cases were not rack-rents, but rents of an average character. In the meantime the tenants were not to go into Court. Mr. O'Kelly explained the matter more fully at Galway, on the 12th of October. The hon. Member said— With reference to the test cases, the plan they had in view was this—Not to put into Court cases of men who were heavily rack-rented, and thereby allowing the Court to cut a very good figure without doing any possible benefit to the people. I do not deny that they had a right to say that. But also, in the meantime, the tenants were only to pay a fair rent, if any rent at all. And what was a fair rent? Mr. Parnell defined a fair rent in this way— If they carried out their principles of a fair rent, it would come to this—that for every pound their farm was worth the landlord ought to get 2s. as a fair rent. Rents were to be reduced from £16,000,000 or £17,000,000 to £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 a-year. As my right hon. Friend said yesterday, it was a mockery to state that that was not the same thing practically as "no rent at all." We have had an explanation of the real meaning of Mr. Parnell's utterances from the Rev. Father Sheehy. It would be very ungrateful for hon. Members connected with the Land League to disown it, considering with what eloquence and effect he has been advocating their cause lately in the United States. He said that it was his purpose to show how much poison there was in the Land Act, and that Mr. Parnell wanted to analyze the poison in it in order to tell the Irish people all about it, and that Mr. Parnell warned them off, and told them to beware of the Land Law and of land lawyers. But there is a better explanation than that in Mr. Parnell's own reply to the American telegrams, in which he states why they did not hoist the banner of "no rent." I hope the authority will not be disputed; it is The Nation of October 8. The Nation of that date contains a telegram from Mr. Parnell, which was afterwards published in The Boston Herald, to the effect that the Convention, after three days' session, had adopted resolutions in favour of national self-government and the unconditional restoration of the land to the people; also that the tenants were not to use the rent-fixing clauses of the Land Act, but were to keep out of the Court, to follow the old Land League line, and to rely on the old methods. The House very well knows what these old methods were. The Executive of the League were also to find test cases, in order that the tenants in some districts might realize to themselves, by the result of such cases, the hollowness of the Act. The object of the League was to keep up a supply of money from America. They wished to make terms with the American agitation, and to continue the supply of money from the States. Therefore, they held out this impossible bribe to the farmers. But that did not bring them within the terms of the Protection of Person and Property Act. Although the agitation might in itself be unscrupulous and unjustifiable, it did not give any reasonable suspicion of intimidation or incitement thereto. What compelled us to arrest Mr. Parnell and his friends was the means resorted to to carry out their object. We were forced by experience—forced by tales of outrage from day to day—we were forced to learn by facts which could not be disputed, that the advice was an order—that threats and hints meant ruin to those who did not obey the threats. The keeping of a tenant's farm vacant—the advice that it should be kept vacant—meant the destruction of a man's property, or ruin to his trade, or outrage on his person, or, in the last resort, murder. Well, a curious confirmation of that came under my knowledge within the last day or two. The hon. Member for Wexford (Mr. Healy) is in America. I suppose he will soon be here. He does not find it necessary in America to make any concealment, and this is what he says there. I quote from a paper the authority of which also, I suppose, will not be disputed—United Ireland.

An hon. MEMBER: Where did you get it?

MR. W. E. FORSTER

This is what, according to the last number of United Ireland, Mr. Healy said at New Orleans.

MR. E. POWER

I rise to a point of Order. Is the right hon. Gentleman in Order in reading a newspaper in the House?

MR. SPEAKER

The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly in Order.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

I do not wonder at the hon. Member not wishing me to read it. The hon. Member is not one of the registered shareholders. Mr. Healy said— The tenants of Ireland will not pay rent. They will be evicted; but no man will dare to take the land from which they have been ejected. [Cheers from the Home Rule Members.] Hon. Members cheer that. What is the meaning that no man will dare take a farm from which a tenant has been evicted? We know well what it has meant; it has meant maiming, and outrage, and murder. In stating the number of outrages I will take the course I did last year, and will not include threatening letters. Threatening letters are merely the instruments, and not the acts. They are not the real injury, and I find, by the experience I am obliged to have of this kind of thing, that it is a good sign when threatening letters increase in proportion to the outrages, and a bad sign when they diminish. A good many people send threatening letters when they would like to do something else, if they dared and if they could. One of the good signs at this moment is that the threatening letters are very much larger in proportion to the outrages than they were. In July the number of outrages, excluding threatening letters, was 129; in August, 159; and in September, 198. Alongside of that we had an increase in the number of arrests. We had to try and see if we could diminish them, and if the state of the country would allow us to release some of the prisoners. As my right hon. Friend said yesterday, we hoped the promoters of the agitation would retreat instead of advance; and we thought we would encourage them to do so, if possible, by introducing more clemency into the administration of the law. We reduced the number of "suspects" in prison from 175 on the 1st of September to 133 on the 1st of October; but most reluctantly we were compelled to change our course. I must now make an allusion to that form of outrage which was the most powerful and the most prevalent at that time, as we were warned it would be. At the Tyrone Election Mr. Parnell went down to try and secure the return of one of the candidates—the Rev. Harold Rylett. At Omagh Mr. Rylett said frankly that the Land League proposed that no man should take another man's land; if he did so he was to be "Boycotted." [Mr. BIGGAR: Hear, hear!] I quite expected that the hon. Member for Cavan would say "Hear, hear!" I have no doubt that here in London he will recommend "Boycotting." But what has "Boycotting" become? It began by exclusive dealing, which I consider to be a wicked thing, but not necessarily a crime against the law; but when there was intimidation in it, it became a crime against the law. It had, indeed, become a most prevalent, a most injurious, and a most wicked crime against the law, destructive both to the peace and to the good order of large districts. It had become the strongest weapon of the Land League. I would rather describe how strong a weapon it had become in the terms of one of its advocates. I do not know-that it could be better described than in the following speech, delivered, I am sorry to say, by a Catholic curate at a Land League meeting in Queen's County on the 26th of September. The Rev. Mr. Rowan, C.C. Wished to remind them that to meet this array of mighty warriors, great generals, and English gold and influence they had but one weapon—that weapon the substitute of the old pike that did much good service in '98—and that was the all-powerful weapon of the Land League, the power of 'Boycotting'—the power of crushing by social ban, as by a Nasmyth steam hammer of 1,000 tons, every traitor to his country. Use that weapon with discretion, use it wisely; but, when needed, use it without mercy. [Cheers from the Irish Members.] Is the hon. Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) here? I do not think he is; but I should like to know whether he would join in those cheers, and whether he approves of the use of such a weapon as this without mercy? Mr. Parnell followed Mr. Rowan, and characterized the previous speeches, including the utterances of the reverend gentleman, as "excellent and sensible addresses." No wonder, remembering his famous Ennis speech. In former debates I expressed my opinion on that, speech. I stated that I did not think it was a speech on which we ought to take action by imprisoning the speaker, and for this reason—that at that time it had not been clearly proved that the advice—the wicked advice, as I called it before in Mr. Parnell's presence, and as I call it again—the advice to taboo a man from all social intercourse, and to recommend people not to buy of or sell to him, meant anything more than advice. But we have found out what that speech really meant. We have been obliged to come to the conclusion that it had force and intimidation behind it, and we had to inquire what law there was against it—how far this was a crime punishable by law. We found out that this "Boycotting" might mean three or four things—personal violence; destruction of a man's property, such as maiming his cattle or burning his hay stacks; deprivation of the necessaries of life; absolute ruin to his trade; and of these threats the last was the most effective. Well, I consulted the legal Gentlemen whose business it is to advise me, and they informed me that it was a crime punishable by law. [Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL: At what date?] About the time when I found "Boycotting" was becoming so prevalent, and we had reason to believe that it meant intimidation. I think an hon. Member has made a statement, which is confirmed by a passage in the Amendment, complaining that we took advantage of the Trades Union and Conspiracy Act, under which, for interfering with a man in the pursuit of his trade, three months' imprisonment could be inflicted, and that for this crime punishable by statute law we shut men up for much longer periods than three months. I think we have a perfect right to take advantage of the Act I have referred to. That argument was brought forward when the Protection Act was discussed, and it was understood that we should take advantage of it. But let me point out this. That was not the only Act of Parliament upon which we could act. There is that of William IV., known by the obnoxious name of the Whiteboy Act. That Act also makes this intimidation a crime punishable by law, and attaches to it a severe punishment—a punishment so severe that I suppose no Government now-a-days would make full use of it. It is hardly fair for hon. Members to say we are not to consider this offence a crime punishable by law when we have two Acts against it, because one inflicts a slight punishment and the other a severe one. I am afraid I must detain the House a little longer whilst I describe what this "Boycotting" really is. What is this "Constitutional action," as the hon. Member for Longford describes it, and wishes us to consider it; and how is it made use of by the Leaders of the Land League agitation? I will give a case in which a resident magistrate gives a history of one man—and this is by no means one of the worst cases. I believe there are many far worse. This resident magistrate says he knows the man of whom he speaks, as he lived very close to him, and had had every opportunity of knowing the man's circumstances. Well, this resident magistrate says that this man, before the Land League commenced operations, had a large share of the business of the town and neighbourhood as well as his mill. He had always stood out against all pressure to force him to join the Land League or subscribe to its funds, and, as a consequence, he had been "Boycotted;" all his custom had been driven away from him; the mill upon which he had spent a great deal of money had entirely stopped, and no one would supply him with corn. Even a large corn merchant who had entered into a considerable contract with him had been obliged to withdraw it, being afraid of having his men and horses injured in delivering grain to the man who had been brought to the verge of ruin. That is the weapon, that is the "Nasmyth steam hammer of 1,000 tons." Are we to leave that in the hands of Mr. Parnell and his friends? I will show you the effect of it. In The Leinster Leader of the 24th September there are two or three remarkable advertisements. Here is one—