§ Order for Committee read.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."—(Mr. Trevelyan.)
§ MR. BIGGAR, who had on the Paper a Notice to move that the House go into Committee that day three months, observed that, although the Bill contained the pleasing proposal that £40,000 should be granted for the purpose of proposed tramways in Ireland, this proposal had such conditions attached to it as deprived it of all its attractiveness. There were several districts in the West of Ireland where it would be unreasonable to expect a tramways line to pay; and yet in many of these places there would be an agitation got up to bring them within the operation of the Act. For example, take the district from Clifden to Galway—a line between these two places would never pay. The population was sparse and poor, and the produce would never be equal to the maintenance of a line. Even in such a prosperous district as that between Ballymena and Larne a narrow-gauge railway barely paid working expenses. He hoped, therefore, that the Government would withdraw the Bill and introduce it next Session, at a period when it could be fully examined and discussed. The second part of the Bill—namely, that 968 relating to emigration, was opposed to the first part. The Government proposed, in the first place, to construct tramways for the accommodation of the people in the poor districts of Ireland, and then they proposed to remove from the country the very people who would be likely to receive any advantage from tramways. This scheme of emigration was promoted by a number of busybodies of the Exeter Hall type, the same class who sent missionaries to the negroes and supplied them with rum and Bibles. These people thought they knew the interests of the Irish people much better than their own Parliamentary Representatives; but the Irish people would be much obliged to these meddlers if they left them alone to manage their own affairs. The Government ought to be ashamed of their measure. With regard to the last part of it, he could not believe that it was seriously proposed. The Land Commissioners had at present power to sell lands to the occupying tenants; but if they, who required no profit, were unable to carry into operation the Purchase Clauses of the Land Act, how was it possible that a public Company, which would require a profit, could do so? He entirely dissented from the opinion of the Chief Secretary, when he said that he did not believe in any system of peasant proprietary in which the tenant had not to supply a material part of the purchase money and be bound to repay the loan within a limited time. The Purchase Clauses of the Land Act would never succeed until the total amount of the purchase money was advanced to the tenant; and he contended that the tenant's interest in his occupation afforded ample security to the State for the repayment of the loan.
§ MR. SPEAKERDoes the hon. Member propose his Amendment that the House go into Committee on the Bill this day three months?
§ MR. BIGGARNo, Sir; but I will divide against going into Committee.
§ SIR EARDLEY WILMOTsaid, that, as a friend of Ireland, he was extremely sorry to hear the sentiments expressed by the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar). Any Irishman who had any true affection for his country ought to thank the Government for having introduced this Bill. As a matter of fact, the present Session was the first in his recollection in which any remedial legis- 969 lation for Ireland had been brought in; prior to this he had regretted the indisposition on the part of any Government to introduce measures that would tend to the development of the resources of Ireland and to contribute to her material prosperity. During the present Session three measures of that character had been introduced, two by Irish Members, and the third by Her Majesty's Government, all of which were calculated to do good to the country—he referred to the Fisheries Bill, which was supported by the Chancellor of the Exchequer; the Labourers (Ireland) Bill, which was calculated to confer material benefits on a portion of the community hitherto greatly neglected; and the Bill now before the House, which was also calculated to do much good. Having sat for some weeks this Session on a Select Committee, he had had an opportunity of hearing most convincing evidence that one great want in Ireland was the want of communication, especially in the Western parts of the country, where there was a great absence of facilities for conveying the agricultural produce to market. Evidence had also been produced before the Committee with respect to the fisheries; and it was stated that in many places after great catches of fish the fishermen were obliged to leave the fish on the shore because they had no means of taking it to market. He thought, therefore, the introduction of tramways and railways was most important, and he gave the project his cordial support. He also approved of the clause by which the amount to be advanced by the State to assist emigration was raised from £100,000 to £200,000. He agreed with the Irish Members that emigration, in the long run, would be a bad thing for Ireland. He believed if the resources of the country were properly developed it would support a larger population than it possessed at present; but they must deal with circumstances as they existed, and when they found there were certain districts where the people where starving, where if they had the land for nothing they could not live upon it, he considered they were justified in resorting to the temporary remedy of emigration. When the Government introduced their Coercion Bill he asked them not to forget that there were loyal and peaceable people in Ireland who ought to be considered. 970 The Chief Secretary had not forgotten his appeal, and had introduced this useful measure. Therefore, while differing from the Government on many points, he thought they had done that, in the present instance, which entitled them to the gratitude of Ireland and the Irish Members.
§ COLONEL NOLANsaid, he rose to state that he differed from the hon. Member for Cavan as to the utility of a line of tramways in Connemara. There was a dense population along the coast, and such a line would be largely used not only by tourists, but by the people of the district. Everyone, in Connemara wanted this mode of communication. He regretted the objection of the hon. Member for Cavan. He believed a certain canal that turned out badly was at the bottom of his hon. Friend's opposition to this sort of legislation. In his (Colonel Nolan's) opinion, the poorer a district was, the more it needed the construction of tramways to open up its resources.
§ MR. HEALYsaid, he was inclined to agree with the hon. Member for Cavan in his objection to the Bill; and if he went to a Division against it he would vote with him. He (Mr. Healy) was of opinion that the Government had brought in this Bill at the bidding of interests to which they ought not to have submitted, while they always rejected the representations of Irish Members with contumely and scorn. The emigration part of the Bill had been introduced in deference to Mr. Tuke and the Exeter Hall party, and the tramways portion to please promoters. There was no demand from Ireland for either section of the Bill. The tramways part of the measure was simply iniquitous. The unfortunate taxpayers, who had no voice in the matter, would have to pay the whole of the money; while the landlords—or, in other words, the grand juries—who were to decide what tramways were to be made and where, would not have to pay anything. Under the Bill the unfortunate ratepayers of the country, weighed down already with the blood tax, the police tax, and the rack rents fixed by the Sub-Commissioners, would be fleeced just as the ratepayers of the County Waterford had been fleeced for the Waterford, Dungarvan, and Lismore Railway. The right hon. Gentleman, who knew nothing about the 971 matter, indeed, proposed that the presentment Sessions should have a voice in the question. But the grand jury pricked a certain number of ratepayers, of whom half were chosen by ballot, to form the Presentment Sessions, so that the ratepayers chosen-would approach the landlords in position. The right hon. Gentleman would say that the grand jury was the only body to whom the matter could be left. Whose fault was that? Had not the Irish Members year after year urged the Government to do away with the grand jury system? One clause actually proposed that the grand jury might charge such baronies as they thought proper, and at such a rate as they pleased. Why, the grand jury might run a tramway through one barony and throw the tax for it on another. He was surprised that the Chief Secretary, with all his ignorance of Ireland, could propose such a scheme. He never knew a more monstrous Bill. There was no health or soundness in it. If the right hon. Gentleman really desired to benefit the Irish people—from whom the Prime Minister, since he first became Chancellor of the Exchequer, had obtained a greater amount of money than Germany had wrung from Prance as her War Indemnity—let him put the 2 per cent on the State first; and then, if that were not found to be sufficient, let the baronies be called upon to supply the deficiency. The right hon. Gentleman, however, was very careful about the money of the State, and very liberal with the money of the unfortunate ratepayers who would have to pay for these speculative schemes. With regard to the emigration scheme, let the Government emigrate as many as they could. They were sending out to America recruiting sergeants of agitation, who would go out with hatred in their hearts, and would learn in a free country what freedom meant. He promised the Government the more they sent out to America the greater would be the terror they would inspire when they got there. Those people would not be the poor miserable peasants they had been shipping off like cattle, but educated men; and their children would, he hoped, be in Office in that great Republic which had done so much for Ireland. The Government were sowing dragons' teeth, and he wished them joy of the harvest they were destined to reap.
§ MR. TREVELYANsaid, that if the hon. Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy) really believed—as he presumed from his speech he did—that the motive of the Government in bringing in this Bill was one of ill-nature and ill-will towards Ireland, he was welcome to his opinion. The only other motive suggested for the Bill was that it was brought in to please Exeter Hall and a set of gentlemen who were his (Mr. Trevelyan's) personal friends. Well, he had to plead guilty to never having been inside Exeter Hall in his life. No doubt, in so far as the Bill dealt with emigration, it consorted with the scheme promoted by Mr. Tuke and the hon. Members for Carnarvonshire and Bedford (Mr. Rathbone and Mr. Whitbread) and their coadjutors; but the suggestion, as to the largest and most important part of the Bill, that it had been brought in to please certain contractors who were friends of Ministers, was preposterous. It had been his misfortune never to have had anything to do with public Companies; and, so far as he knew, until this Bill was actually on the Table of the House, he had never had a conversation with a contractor in his life. The only motive which the Government could have in this matter was to do good to Ireland; and no other that could hold water for a moment had been suggested. The hon. Member for South Warwickshire (Sir Eardley Wilmot), in his kindly speech, said that the Government had this year endeavoured to bring in remedial measures. That had been repudiated by the hon. Member for Monaghan (Mr. Healy), who said the Government had accepted nothing for the benefit of Ireland from the side of the House on which he sat. Now, taking as a definition of "benefit" the lending or allotting of public money, he would remind the House that two Bills had been brought in by hon. Gentlemen opposite with that object. Under one of those Bills £250,000 of the Church Surplus had been expended in a manner which he believed to be very pleasing to Ireland; and the new clause in the Labourers Bill, by which loans were to be granted out of the Exchequer, would, he believed, accord thoroughly with Irish ideas. Both of those Bills were accepted by the Government with the single desire to meet Irish wishes. If the hon. Gentleman thought the Government had any elec- 973 tioneering motives in what they had done, he gave them credit for more stupidity than he should have thought possible. It was said that the Bill was lavish of the money of the ratepayers and careful of public money. But when the hon. Member talked of the unfortunate peasant having to pay his money for the benefit of English contractors, he forgot that the Irish peasant would have between him and his liability to pay several parties whose interest it would be to protect him. It was also objected that the Bill was to be worked through the grand juries. Whatever charges might be made against grand juries, he had never heard of their being anxious to promote the interests of English Companies established in Ireland. The main objection he had heard taken in private conversation to grand juries having to administer the Bill was that they probably would not use the powers which were given them by the Bill. He repeated that the only persons whom it was intended to benefit were the peasantry of the districts which would be affected. It might be that grand juries were not the best administrative agency which could be devised; but surely hon. Members did not wish the Bill to be postponed until a new Local Government Bill had been passed for Ireland. He was glad, however, to observe that, though there were 10 pages of Amendments, with some of which it would be impossible for the Government to agree, the greater number of those Amendments were of a practical and useful character, and obviously devised with the object of making the Bill a practical and efficient measure. While, therefore, he accepted any blame that might be deserved for bringing on the Bill so late in the Session, he did not hesitate to ask hon. Members to let them go at once into Committee, and proceed to the consideration of these Amendments.
§ MR. DAWSON (LORD MAYOR of DUBLIN)said, he could not agree with the criticisms of his hon. Friend the Member for Monaghan. Six ratepayers could petition against the application of the powers of the Bill to a particular district, and the provisions sufficiently met the objections of his hon. Friend. He welcomed the measure as one which was likely to open up the resources of Ireland. There was great wealth in many Irish counties. In Clare there 974 were rich lands, which only required improved communication for their produce to find an accessible market, and the coasts of Donegal teemed with fish, while the peasantry were in a state of chronic semi-starvation. As to emigration, he was as strongly opposed to it as the hon. Member for Monaghan, not, however, from any sentimental feeling that the people should cling to the country, but because, as long as one of the resources that God gave them in their native land remained undeveloped, he held it to be a monstrous thing that one human being should be forced out of the country. He would support the Bill, although he wished the Government had been more liberal in its aid.
§ MR. ASHMEAD-BARTLETTprotested against the Bill, not only on account of the late period of the Session, although that was a sufficient objection, but also because no sufficient warning of its introduction had been given. He protested also against the Government introducing another measure in relief of Irish distress, without giving the House time to investigate its merits. In London there were hundreds and thousands of persons who were in as absolute want as any of the distressed peasantry of Ireland. Yet the Government had induced one of their own supporters (Mr. Broadhurst) to withdraw a Motion of great importance, which proposed to deal with the housing of the poor in the Metropolis. Distress was hardly less prevalent in England and Scotland than it was in Ireland; and no sufficient reason had been given for such exceptional legislation. The Government, in deference to the wishes of the Irish Members, had withdrawn the Police Bill and the proposal to extend the Bankruptcy Bill to Ireland, alleging as an excuse for their conduct, that time could not be found for those matters; yet they now found time to press forward the present Bill, which proposed to devote a large sum of public money to the relief of distress in Ireland. In conjunction with other recent proceedings of the Ministry, it looked very much like a fresh bargain with the Irish Party. He protested against the transaction as unfair to the loyal poor in England and Scotland.
§ MR. BARRYsaid, that, although the Bill might be open to criticism in some points, he thought the first part of it, relating to tramways, was calculated to 975 do good, and he hoped his hon. Friends would allow the Bill to go into Committee. He argued, however, that at present the measure contained no provision for securing the regular payment of dividends to investors, and that unless it were amended in that respect the development of tramways would be retarded. Although he did not agree with the hon. Member for Monaghan in his sweeping criticism of the Bill, he did agree with him very much in the protest he made against entrusting the administration of the Bill to such unpopular fiscal bodies as the grand juries.
MR. O'BRIENsaid, he could not agree with some of his hon. Friends in their wholesale condemnation of the Bill. (Ministerial cheers.) He was sorry that hon. Gentlemen opposite should cheer him. The opposition of the Irish Members was chiefly confined to the Emigration Clauses; and he thought, after the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) at Devonport, in which he stated that he had invited Mr. Tuke to commence this system of emigration, it was hardly possible that the Irish people could view the scheme without suspicion and aversion. During the last four years Ireland had lost a population of 100,000 a-year; and, unfortunately, the children she lost were those whose loss she could least afford. It was the young, the strong, the well-to-do people that Mr. Tuke's Committee had been picking up, while the old and helpless were left behind. He did not attach a feather's weight of importance to the rose-coloured representations which came from emigration agents. He wished that from the beginning the Irish Members had set their faces against it, and told Earl Spencer that the Irish race would stand it no longer. Stronger men than he had burned their fingers over the same policy. Cromwell's rough-and-ready system was not a bit more detested by them than Earl Spencer's genteel process of starving the people into submission, and then driving them away under the guise and cant of philanthropy. Those Englishmen who went over to Ireland to patronize the people, and, meddling in matters which they did not understand, skimmed away the cream of the rural population, presumed too much upon the indulgence that had been extended to 976 them, and in future they would encounter the hostility of the whole Irish race. He hoped his hon. Friend would not challenge a Division on this subject. For his part, he would be guided by the opinion of his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), whose judgment he had never known to fail. As to his (Mr. Brien's) opinion of the Bill when it was first introduced, perhaps the less said the better.
§ DR. COMMINSsaid, that, while giving the Government credit for good intentions, he entirely agreed with the strictures passed upon the Bill by the hon. Members for Cavan and Monaghan. The tramway scheme was, in his opinion, ill-digested, and would work badly. No doubt, however, it could be amended so as to render it less liable to criticism than it was now; but there was every probability that it would, if passed in its present shape, give rise to bogus speculation and jobbery. He thought they ought to be content with the protests they had made, and ought not to divide the House.
§ MR. DALYsaid, he intended to vote for the Bill, because it would be of great benefit to the Irish people. He thought it would be a grave responsibility for any Irish Member to take upon himself to endanger the passage of such a Bill. He gave it his hearty support, on the principle of the German proverb—"If you can't get what you like, like what you get."
§ MR. HARRINGTONsaid, he was in favour of the tramways scheme; but he strongly objected to sandwiching in the measure the proposal with regard to emigration. He suggested that a plan should be adopted which would enable the promoters and opponents of any railway or tramway to Be heard in Ireland, so that they might be spared the trouble and expense of appearing in London. He hoped, however, his hon. Friend would not divide the House on the question in deference to the views of the hon. Member for the City of Cork. Yet he had not much faith in the Lord Lieutenant, because he believed that the views of two landlords and one bailiff would have more influence with him than the representatives of a whole barony of the ordinary population.
§ MR. O'KELLYalso appealed to his hon. Friend the Member for Cavan not 977 to divide the House. He believed the Bill contained some provisions which could be made beneficial to many parts of Ireland. If the Government would accept such Amendments as would create a more perfect control over the working of the Bill, it would be deprived of many of the features which the Irish Members deemed obnoxious.
§ Question put, and agreed to.
§ Bill considered in Committee.
§ (In the Committee.)