MR. O'BRIENasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether there is any, and, if so, what, foundation for the following paragraph published in the "Manchester Evening News" of June 29th, headed "Banishing the Irish:"—
The last of the Irish families have left Turton, near Darwen, as requested by the English section of the inhabitants. There was no demonstration made, though large crowds assembled, the Irish taking the expulsion quietly. Some thirty families have been ejected. At one house twenty-eight persons were turned out, but these included lodgers. There is not a single Irish man or woman now in the town?
§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT, in reply, said, the origin of this statement seemed to have been a trade dispute between certain English and Irish labourers at Bolton Waterworks. In consequence of the dispute eight or nine of the Irish labourers left. He had written to the Clerk of Works, and the Clerk of Works informed him that the statement in The Manchester Evening News was not correct. He added that he was in the district daily, and he could say there was no disturbance of the Irish residents, the persons who left being comparatively strangers to the locality who came there to work. At present there were a large number of Irish haymakers in the district, and he had not heard that they had been in any way interfered with.