HC Deb 01 March 1883 vol 276 cc1173-227

Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment [27th February] proposed to Main Question [15th February]—[See page 98.]

And which Amendment was, To insert, at the end of the 10th paragraph, after the word "Executive," the words:—"Humbly to assure Her Majesty, that the state of distress among the population of many parts of Ireland; the inadequate machinery of the Land Act, and its partial and imperfect character, especially with regard to leaseholders, the right of tenants to their improvements, the purchase system, and the condition of the agricultural labourers; the unsatisfactory operation of the Arrears Act; the state of the Law of Parliamentary and Municipal Franchises in Ireland; and the condition of Local Government in that Country, are all questions demanding the urgent attention of the Legislature and the Government; and that the absence of any undertaking to legislate on any of these questions, or on any question affecting the welfare of the Irish People must tend to promote discontent and intensify disaffection in Ireland."—(Mr. Arthur O'Connor.)

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

Debate resumed.

SIR JOSEPH M'KENNA

said, that many things had been urged by the Irish Members in this debate which deserved the notice of the House. He would only deal with one. The view which seemed to have been entertained by several Gentlemen, and even by Her Majesty's Government, was that Ireland was really a favoured nation, and favoured by England, inasmuch as time and money had been devoted to her, and that the present request, if granted, would amount to injustice to the British taxpayers. There never was a more monstrous delusion than the belief that Ireland was financially a favoured nation by England. On the 18th of April last, when he moved for a Committee to inquire into the facts he then brought forward, he placed the true state of the case before the House. Those facts had never been controverted. He did not propose to go fully into the question at this time, but would take another op- portunity of renewing his Motion for a Select Committee. He believed that if the injustice which had been done to Ireland under English rule had taken place between any two foreign countries—between Turkey and Egypt, for instance—the English people would have protested against it with great indignation; but because it was purely Irish they were apathetic. He had nothing to do with historic matters in reference to the treatment of Ireland; the injustice which he condemned had occurred in his own time. In 1853 a new departure was taken in the system of taxation of Ireland. Consolidated Annuities, as they were called, to the amount of £260,000 a-year, were compounded for and got rid of, and the class which had been liable was relieved from the tax, a relief concerning which he was not disposed to complain; but the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, now Prime Minister said the object was to make taxation in that country identical with English taxation as far and as quickly as possible; but the right hon. Gentleman mistook identity of impost for equality of taxation. Since this new departure in 1853 the taxation of Ireland had been increased by £3,000,000 sterling a-year, although the population had been reduced by 2,000,000 or 3,000,000. Taking only one item of this "indentical taxation," they found that while the tax on the English popular beverage, beer, had been reduced since 1851 from 2s. 8½d. per bushel of malt to 6d., the duty upon the Irish and Scotch national beverage, whiskey, had been increased, and in the case of Ireland that increase was from 2s. 8½d. to 10s. per gallon. The result was that the taxation of Ireland on that drink had been increased from £900,000 in 1851 to £2,400,000 odd in 1871. He wished the House to reflect upon the effect of that taxation upon a poor country like Ireland, and he asked if it were any wonder, under such circumstances, that the people were impoverished? It was all very well to say that Ireland might avoid the tax by giving up whiskey drinking; but their consumption of alcohol was not excessive, and it was impossible to effect a violent change in the habits of a people in such a matter. The inequality in the respective taxation of England and Ireland was proved by the fact that an Income Tax of 2s. 6½d. in the pound would produce a revenue equal to that derived from all taxes now levied in the former country, while it would require an Income Tax of 5s. 3d. in the pound to equal that levied by the present mode of taxation in the latter country. The duty now levied upon the alcohol in beer was only equivalent to a tax of 1s. 10d. per gallon of proof spirit, compared to a taxtion of 10s. a gallon on spirit in the popular beverage of Ireland. He was almost disheartened by the result of his endeavours to draw the attention of the House to this subject, because on a former occasion, when he had happily and entirely demolished and pulverized and smashed every argument of every Chancellor of the Exchequer who had spoken on previous occasions with regard to it, the House had been suddenly counted out. The result of the calculations he had submitted showed that Ireland was paying, having regard to the condition of the two countries, twice as much Imperial taxation as England. If Ireland had a federal arrangement she would be asked to contribute only her fair share towards the Imperial Expenditure—that would be one great advantage of Home Rule. He admitted that by any system of identical imposts the incidence of taxation might press more severely on one country than on another; as, for instance, a tax on cheese would press heavily in England, but would not be felt at all in Ireland, where it was not consumed. But where the incidence of identical taxation pressed with greater severity on one country than on the other, there should be an effort made to return the excess in some way to that country. Ireland was not treated in that manner. All that Ireland asked for was that she should bear her fair share of the Imperial burdens. If Ireland were taxed for Imperial purposes according to her means, her contribution to the Exchequer would be not £7,000,000, but about £3,500,000, or at most £4,000,000, which was all she was paying in 1851.

SIR BALDWYN LEIGHTON

said, that the House had listened for months and years to long and eloquent speeches from hon. Members on this Irish Question, and they had listened with feelings of disappointment, and almost of despair, for practical proposals. The Chancellor of the Exchequer made yesterday a sort of appeal to private Members to bring forward such proposals with regard to Ireland. The hon. and learned Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power), on Tuesday last, complained of the silence of the Opposition side of the House with regard to any such proposals; but there was a good reason for that. For hon. Members on that side did not approve the management of Ireland by the present Government, and therefore they did not feel called upon to make proposals for remedying the state of things they had produced. But if the hon. and learned Member for Mayo would bring before the House in a distinct form his plans which he had sketched out for migration and emigration, he should not find himself without support on the Opposition Benches, and, indeed, he himself would second the Motion.

Mr. O'CONNOR TOWER

said, he should be glad to have the opportunity of doing so.

SIR BALDWYN LEIGHTON

said, he was glad to hear the Chief Secretary the other night speak of the necessity of not destroying the self-reliance of the Irish people. They wore a people with very good qualities and some bad ones, not having that thrift, industry, and self-reliance which go to make the wealth of nations. If, instead of encouraging these qualities, anything should be done to, by holding out impossible hopes, impair whatever thrift, industry, and self reliance the Irish people possessed, they would make a second Poland of Ireland in reality and not in imagination. The condition of Ireland was not to be changed by violent political or social changes, but rather by industrial development and the maintenance of law and order. What she really wanted was a period of repose, of peace, and quietness. He did not complain of the appeal made by the Government that private Members should bring forward practical proposals; but it was somewhat of an anomaly for a strong Government, having taken up almost two whole Sessions with Irish legislation, to appeal to private Members now to make some practical proposals for the settlement of the Irish Question, instead of bringing forward some well-considered measure themselves.

MR. LEAMY

said, he was glad to have heard the speech of the hon. Baronet who had just sat down, and the undertaking which he had given. He fully agreed with the hon. Baronet, that it was a matter of reproach to Her Majesty's Government that, having had Ireland in their hands for the last three years, they should now come forward and say they should be glad to hear of some proposal from private Members to assist the Irish people. The Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant said the other night that the policy of the Irish Executive might appear to some cruel. It would appear to hundreds of thousands of the Irish people a cruel and heartless policy. They often heard in Ireland of what was called "a touch of Cromwell's policy." But the Irish people would hear with still more bitter feelings what might be called "the pinch of hunger policy" of the right hon. Gentleman. Some 300 years ago "the gentle Spenser" recommended that the "mere Irishry" should be starved out, and should be forced to devour one another. It so happened, however, that it was the lot of that great poet to die in the capital of the country which he had enriched with one of the greatest creations of human genius for want of bread, while the descendants of the mere Irishry whom he would have starved out, were a source of difficulty to those who succeeded him in Office. The policy of the right hon. Gentleman the present Chief Secretary was twofold—to assist those who were willing to emigrate, and to offer the shelter of the workhouse to those who remained. What class of people was to be assisted to emigrate? Those whose strength and industry could contribute wealth to a new Continent were to be emigrated; but for the old people there was to be no outdoor relief, nothing but the workhouse test, and, said the right hon. Gentleman— When they feel the pinch of hunger their indisposition to enter the workhouse, never very serious, will disappear. If anything could show the right hon. Gentleman's ignorance of the character of the Irish people, it was that assertion. Would the right hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) endorse it? If there was anything the unfortunate Irishman looked forward to with a greater dread, it was that he might be compelled to go into the workhouse, where husband was separated from wife, and where the children were exposed to degrading association with the vagabond and the prostitute; and yet the right hon. Gentleman had the courage to say that this feeling on the part of the Irish people was never serious, and that, whether it was or not, it would be overcome by "the pinch of hunger." That phrase would earn for the right hon. Gentlman an unpleasant memory in Ireland—it would be remembered there in connection with him when his name had been forgotten by his own countrymen. The right hon. Gentleman put aside with a waive of his hand for various reasons the thought of public works or other forms of outdoor relief. The Chief Secretary said that the present miserable condition of the people of Ireland was due to the painful efforts they had made to obtain the benefit of the Arrears Act, which enabled the landlords to get two years' rent. Why did they make those efforts? Was it not in the hope that they would be able to wipe off old scores, stick on to the old farms, and get the benefit of the Land Act, which would reduce their rent from 20 to 30 per cent? Was it not in the hope that with a clean slate and a reduced rent they might continue to live in their own country? Did the right hon. Gentleman think that those painful efforts would have been made by the unfortunate people last year if they had thought that in the first months of this year they would be told that their efforts were useless, that Providence had been unkind to them, that they must leave their land, that there was no remedy for their distress, and no help for them at all except exile or the poorhouse? The right hon. Gentleman was supported by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who said that the Bishops of Ireland had expressed a decided opinion against outdoor relief, and also against relief by means of public works. He (Mr. Leamy) was not going to say he approved of indiscriminate outdoor relief. Most Irish Members desired that the people should be helped, but not by means of outdoor relief, except for a short season, so as to tide them over the immediate difficulty. What they desired was, that the relief should be by way of reproductive public works which would give the people employment involving no loss of self-respect. The employment would doubtless in some cases prove of such a character as to enable them by-and-bye to face the recurrence of distress. But while the Chancellor of the Exchequer quoted the opinions of the Irish Bishops as against these two systems of helping the people, he completely ignored the recommendations of the Bishops—indeed, he had often noticed that the opinions of Irish Bishops were regarded as of great weight by Ministers, so long as those opinions coincided with the Ministerial policy; but whenever they were adverse they were totally disregarded. An Irish Bishop knew every fibre of the Irish heart. He had grown up amongst the people, and as curate, priest, or Bishop, had been brought into the most intimate relation with the community. The opinion of such men deserved to be well considered. He (Mr. Leamy) was not sorry, however, to find with respect to the Memorial to the Chief Secretary presented by the Bishops, and published in The Freeman's Journal and Irish Times, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, while utilizing their objections, had ignored their recommendations. He hoped that that would bring the conviction to the minds of the Irish Bishops that the time had gone by when they should go to Dublin Castle, and that if they were to gain anything for their country, it would not be by doffing the mitre to an English official, but by going into the ranks of the people. The time had been when it was common to find a Papist's head on the top of a pike outside Dublin Castle rather than under its roof doing homage to an English official. He thought he discerned some gleam of hope in the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he asked that a scheme should be laid before him; but time was pressing, and it would be too late by-and-bye to prepare any scheme. The Government was the party that ought to devise the scheme. They did not question the existence of the distress, which was admitted on all hands, and it was the Government, and not the private Members, who should propound the plan. The right hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) the other night pointed out one defect in the speech of the Chief Secretary. He referred to his omission to give any estimate of the distress which was likely to exist between now and the harvest. Hon. Members knew what had been the condition of England during the past few months owing to the floods. In Ireland it was the same. Parts which had hitherto escaped were now in great extremity, and they must be prepared to face the distress which would inevitably arise between now and the next harvest. How was it to be met? By the workhouse test or emigration. Passing from that point, he wished to say one word with regard to the Land Act. An amendment of that measure was necessary, and it was desirable that its administration should be facilitated in every possible way. He wished to read to the House a quotation from a remarkable statement made at a meeting held at Borris by Professor Baldwin, one of the most experienced of the Land Commissioners. He said— I wish the Press were here to take down my words when I state that if the farmers were obliged to pay for the labour expended on their lands, there would he no margin for rent, but as they and their sons and daughters do the labour they manage to pay the rent. If the next fifteen years were to be like the last five, the rentals fixed by the Sub-Commissioners' Courts could not possibly be paid, as in fixing those rentals the Sub-Commissioners were not influenced by the recent distress. This was the opinion of one who had more experience in the matter than nine-tenths of the Commissioners, and surely it was a most startling statement. If true, it showed that those whose rents had been reduced would find it difficult to pay. How much more difficult, then, would it be for those whose rents had not been reduced? He submitted that it was only fair and just that those whose rents had not yet been reduced should have every facility given them to have their cases considered. If, therefore, the Government wished those tenants to perform their contracts, it was absolutely necessary that they should at once increase the number of Sub-Commissioners so as to enable a larger number of cases to be disposed of. He regretted that while the Government had showed their intention to do nothing for the distress, they were silent as to whether they proposed to afford facilities for the adminstration of the Land Act.

SIR EARDLEY WILMOT

said, he did not rise for the purpose of criticizing the conduct of the Government in regard to the administration of Ireland. He considered that latterly, at all events, the measures which they had found it necessary to introduce and adopt, in the disordered condition of that country, entitled the Government to approval and support. But he rose to urge upon them what he imagined they were fully sensi- ble of already—namely, that measures of severity and coercion must be only preliminary to those of a remedial character, for it was the saying of one of the greatest statesmen who ever spoke in that House, that coercion could never raise or improve the condition of any country; in fact, that it tended to demoralize and degrade it. That great distress existed at the present time in many parts of Ireland it was impossible to deny; and how were they to meet and remedy that distress? Now, there were, according to the principles of political economy, only two possible ways of giving relief, except what was merely casual and temporary—one by increasing production, the other by diminishing the population, and thereby reducing the demand for it. Of these two modes of meeting the difficulty, he considered the first obviously the best. Emigration might be desirable at the present moment, when the urgency was pressing, but he always objected to it as unlikely to give permanent relief. He had always been taught to consider the labour of any country as its blessing and its wealth, and he likened emigration to tapping for the dropsy, which might give ease for the moment, but by which, in nine cases out of ten, the malady returned with redoubled force. How, then, could the unemployed Irish labourer be employed? He had more than once in that House dwelt on the expediency of reclaiming the waste lands, which, according to the late Sir Richard Griffith, no mean authority, comprised at least 1,500,000 acres of soil well capable of cultivation, while more than 2,000,000 acres would still remain irreclaimable. Lord Russell, when Prime Minister in 1846, had proposed a scheme of reclamation. Even if they were unable to set about the work of reclamation, there was behind it a system of arterial drainage, which would furnish employment and wages for thousands of labourers; and he had been glad to see that a deputation on this question of drainage had only a few days before waited on the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and had been courteously received by him. He (Sir Eardley Wilmot) told the Irish Members that he firmly believed the Chief Secretary had at heart the best interests of the country; and he confidently expected that this general plan of arterial drainage, which had also been strongly recommended by Sir Richard Griffith and other authorities on Irish agriculture, would receive the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary's best attention. Then, where lands were incapable of being reclaimed, they had the plan lately proposed—which appeared most feasible—by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Dublin (Dr. Lyons), of planting them again with forest trees, as appeared to be their former condition. Many trees would grow and flourish with scarcely any amount of subsoil, and the re-afforesting of the country would dry up the marshy districts and improve the climate of Ireland generally. Passing from land to water, Ireland had magnificent water power which had never been developed or turned to commercial purposes. They in England had no river equal to the Shannon, which ran like a vast artery from North to South, and, if made properly navigable throughout, should convey the produce of the North of Ireland to Limerick and the South. The subject of the Shannon had often been before Parliament, but no improvements on an extensive scale had taken place. Then there was the question of fisheries, which might be made a much more abundant and lucrative element of food for the population and of commerce than at present. How often had pressing appeals been made by friends of Ireland to the Government, not only on behalf of greater encouragement to the fisheries, but also for the construction and improvement of piers and harbours, at comparatively small outlay, around the coast, within which the fishermen's craft might find refuge and security in stormy weather. The subject of the Irish railways had more than once been submitted to that House, and schemes proposed for completing them, where imperfect, had been brought forward by those most cognizant of the wants of Ireland. In other places, wherever railways were made, the material condition of the adjacent country showed an improvement in the most striking manner; but in Ireland, where markets for agricultural produce were most requisite, the railway system, except with one or two exceptions of the principal lines, was incomplete, and the chain of communication broken and fragmentary. Assistance and encourage- ment in this direction would not only add to the existing markets for agricultural and other products, and employ labour, but would prove to the inhabitants that we were desirous of rendering them substantial assistance Last of all, he could not help echoing the wish expressed by the same eminent statesman whom he had already quoted—the late Sir Robert Peel—who, in the speech delivered in that House on his resignation of the Office of Prime Minister, in 1846, a resignation brought about by a similar Coercion Act to that which the present Government had found it necessary to introduce, said that it was near to his heart that the municipal, civil, and political institutions of Ireland should be identified with those of Great Britain, not literally, Sir Robert Peel added, for that would not be possible with the differences in the two countries, but in the spirit, if not in the letter. That had also been always his own wish and desire. He would repeat what he had already said in that House— Paribus se legibus ambo Æterna in fœdera jungant. It should be understood that there were two sections of the Irish nation—one, lawless, disloyal, turbulent, and driven too and fro by every wind of agitation; the other, and he believed the much larger section, loyal, law-abiding, industrious, and open to all the noble and generous impulses and influences of our nature. While the first justly received the punishment due to their hateful crimes, the other deserved every consideration at the hands of the Government, and for these he asked for remedial legislation. He would, therefore, entreat the Government, so soon as peace and order should be re-established in Ireland, to devise measures for the development of those material resources which she possessed, and which had been too long neglected. Surely it was a noble ambition, and none nobler, for Gentlemen who now occupied the Treasury Bench, no loss than for those who sat on the Front Bench of the Opposition, to strive to the utmost, and resort to every expedient which was just and worthy of a true lover of his country, to endeavour to raise Ireland to the same condition of wealth, prosperity, and happiness as we ourselves enjoyed in England and Scotland.

COLONEL O'BEIRNE

said, he must express his regret that the Chief Secretary for Ireland had no help to offer to starving families in Ireland but the poorhouse. The existence of distress being admitted, he thought it most unfortunate that no effort was made to afford facilities for the raising of money for the execution of public works which would give employment to the poor. He did not think that any wholesale system of emigration would be practicable. Some districts were, no doubt, over-populated, but he did not see how they were going to get the people to go away. They might very well promote migration to districts where land was unreclaimed. He should be glad if an addition could be made to the Land Act to prevent the occupation of any holding of less than 20 acres. He thoroughly assented to all the observations which the Chief Secretary had made with regard to the granting of outdoor relief, which would only lead, to the pauperization of the people. The right hon. Gentleman had torn to shreds the statements of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell). The facts and figures contained in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman could not be contradicted, but he wished the right hon. Gentleman would hold out some hope that the distress would be relieved in some other way. It was a cruel thing to offer these poor people no alternative but the poorhouse. He should oppose any amendment of the Land Act. He considered that under the present Act as it stood the Irish people enjoyed a tenure of land such as was held by no other people in Europe, and not even by the tenantry of the United States of America. By the Land Act the landlords, as everybody knew, had been deprived of one-fourth of the value of their property, and he would therefore oppose any amendment of the Land Act unless some compensation were given to the landlords.

MR. KENNY

said, he must express his regret that the Chief Secretary had not seen his way to speaking more favourably of measures for the relief of distress. If asked to choose between the suggestions made in the speech of the Chief Secretary, and those in the speech of the junior Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson), he would infinitely prefer the latter of the two utterances, for it showed that whatever a man's politics might he, an Irishman was the only man who could speak with effect on the affairs of his country, and he should not be sorry if that right hon. and learned Gentleman had the direction of the affairs of the country at the present time. He took it for granted that there was no necessity on his part to attempt to prove that distress existed in Ireland. That was admitted by the Chief Secretary himself, who stated that the distress was even greater than what had been stated in the newspapers; and the burden of every speech in this debate was to the effect that from Donegal to Cork there was one wail of want. It had been stated by the hon. Member for Tralee (The O'Donoghue) that the cause of the distress was the want of employment; but he thought that if they wanted a substantive reason for Irish distress they should go a little deeper. Irish distress, in his (Mr. Kenny's) opinion, arose from the physical condition of the country. In consequence of the systematic manner in which its interests were neglected by each successive Government, the country had, in a great measure, relapsed into a state of nature. Instead of the country being properly drained and properly reclaimed, it was, on the contrary, almost perpetually waterlogged. Therefore, in his opinion, the first remedy to apply to the distress was the establishment of a system of arterial drainage. If Ireland were properly drained, the wheat crop, which was frequently a complete or partial failure, could be successfully ripened, and the potato crop, which almost every second year was a failure, would not be a failure at all. The Shannon, for instance, were it only properly excavated and levelled between Killaloe and Limerick, would drain whole districts of the country at present flooded with water, and enable those districts to be properly reclaimed and rendered valuable. Other remedies applicable to the existing distress were the reclamation of waste lands, and the encouragement of the fisheries. There was plenty of fish on the Irish Coasts, hut there was no proper fishing gear, no suitable boats, and even where these requirements could be provided there were no proper places of refuge. The development of the Irish railway system also ought to be encouraged. A very useful line was now being promoted in West Clare, from Ennis to Miltown Malbay, and he hoped the Government would give it their assistance. He did not accept the theory that Ireland was over-populated. It was said to be over-populated in the time of Dean Swift, when the inhabitants numbered only 2,000,000. The Dean also, in a well-known essay, as a remedy for overpopulation, suggested the cooking of Irish babies as a splendid article of food for the Irish aristocracy, who were anxious to get rid of the people. But some authorities had stated that Ireland would support a much larger population than the Island had ever contained. Sir Robert Kane, for example, had expressed the opinion that Ireland could maintain 20,000,000 of people. Belgium, with fewer natural advantages than Ireland, was able to maintain a population of 400 to the square mile, whereas in Ireland there wore only 160. Switzerland, too, maintained as many inhabitants to the square mile, although the country was almost wholly mountain and water. In no other country than Ireland had such a remedy for social evils as emigration ever been suggested. He was altogether opposed to the State system of emigration, which would only serve to denude Ireland of the best of her children. In the United States it was calculated that each adult immigrant was worth $2,000 to the State by way of taxation alone. He did not see why the British Government should not, by real remedies for the evils of Ireland, reap the advantage which now went to the United States and other countries. The next proposal of the Government was that the workhouse system should exclusively be employed for the relief of the distressed. The Irish people were bitterly opposed to that system, and the workhouses had never been more than half filled. The Government ought to give power to Boards of Guardians to grant outdoor relief. It was a cruel thing to compel the poor to enter the workhouse. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had made a great deal of the high wages which were supposed to be now paid in Ireland. But what were those wages? They were generally from 7s. to 9s. a-week, and in Waterford and other counties, where better wages were paid, about 10s. a-week, with a house rent free. In England from 18s. to 20s. was paid. Then the right hon. Gentleman had said that sheep and cattle fetched very high prices. But there were fewer cattle and sheep in the country at the present time than there were 10 years ago. In 1873 the number of cattle was 4,147,000; whereas in 1882 it was only 3,924,000. Reckoning the price at £11 14s., the diminished number represented a loss of £2,600,000. Of sheep, in 1873 there were 4,494,000, and in 1882 only 3,071,000—a diminution in number of nearly 1,500,000, and a loss of nearly £3,000,000. Another important question was that of the leaseholders, of whom there were 135,000 in Ireland. There had been 3,000 applications for breaking leases, but only 105 had been granted. The Land Act was working very slowly. In County Clare, out of 3,000 applications, only 600 cases had been settled, and three or four more years would be required before all the cases could be heard. He regretted that the Government had made up its mind to refuse the reasonable demands of the Irish people; but at the next Election they might show their appreciation of such treatment in a manner which the Government would not like.

MR. T. D. SULLIVAN

said, he intended, before he concluded his remarks, to make, at least, one practical suggestion which would show that the Irish people were endowed with the spirit of self-reliance of which the Chief Secretary for Ireland had spoken. He confessed that he was not disappointed by the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, because he had expected very little from him, not owing to any personal shortcomings on the right hon. Gentleman's part, but because he was an official of the British Government and an administrator of its policy. The right hon. Gentleman admitted the existence of severe distress in some parts of the country. He had told them that the people were living in a condition which it was impossible to realize in England, and in a condition more deplorable, perhaps, than any people living in any part of civilized Europe. Why was it that the Irish people, who had lived so long under British rule, were now in such a condition? The Chief Secretary went on to say, a great many of the people were living in a single room, in which their pigs and their cattle were kept; whilst their children were clothed in a way which was only a name and a pretence for saying that they were dressed. The Chief Secretary said that in 1847, when the people began to feel the pinch of starvation, they went readily to the workhouse, and that he believed they would do the same now if they were not persuaded to do otherwise. After so many years of British rule, was not that description of the state of things the Chief Secretary found in Ireland a condemnation of the Government which existed, and should it not carry conviction as to the mismanagement and misrule which had taken place? A stranger in these districts would naturally ask—"Who rules this people? What sort of a Government had they, if they had any Government at all?" The facts themselves should convict the Government of misruling and oppressing the Irish people. They were told that the distress existed only in the congested districts. That it did exist must be admitted on all hands. Then, what was the remedy? The remedy was that in times of extreme distress and want amongst the people some public employment should be opened—some reproductive employment, not in the nature of gifts or of a distribution of charity, but loans to public works, money which would be paid back to the Imperial Exchequer. "No," said the right hon. Gentleman, "public works are demoralizing." He always thought idleness, and not labour, was demoralizing. He always considered it a noble thing to do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. No doubt, money might be expended in a way that would be demoralizing—it might be squandered and misapplied, and in that way it would demoralize the people; but sums wisely and carefully expended would, by-and-bye, well repay the Exchequer. It was said that the workhouse and emigration were open to the people. Was there nothing demoralizing in either of those? Everyone know that there was nothing more demoralizing to boys and girls than the workhouse; and the House was asked to sanction the cultivation of the virtue of self-reliance, not by honest employment, but by turning people into the workhouse. Then as to emigration. Was there nothing demoralizing in wholesale emigration? Hundreds of thousands had been forced to fly from Ireland to the seaboard cities of America, and very serious demorali- zation indeed had been the consequence. They were told that the British taxpayer should not be called upon to contribute to the relief of Irish distress; but they never heard a word about the British tax-gatherer, who was well known in Ireland; and he challenged the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say, on a fair balancing of accounts between the two countries, whether England did not reap a good financial profit out of Ireland? It was said that the distress existed in the congested districts; but how did those districts become congested? Who congested them? Who hunted the people of three provinces of Ireland across the Shannon, planting a line of disbanded British soldiers all along that river in order to perpetuate that banishment of the inhabitants to the West, the evil results of which now confronted the Government? The rulers of England did that. And now it was demanded that the people should go still further West, across the ocean, and out of the country altogether. Irishmen, in former times, had been exiled by force of arms, and sent as slaves to Barbadoes. The same policy which operated hundreds of years ago was still at work, and it seemed that Irishmen had a right to be anywhere except in Ireland. The Government were face to face with the same state of things that existed in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. They who represented the people of Ireland would be ashamed to stand before that House perpetually pleading with regard to distress and famine in Ireland if they had anything to do with, or were responsible for, the government of Ireland; but they were not allowed to touch its affairs with their fingers. It was others who managed things, aliens who had no sympathy with the sufferings of the people. This was why it was the old story again and again, and why they were compelled to stand there and state the case of Ireland and claim from them relief, but not as charity. His practical suggestion was "Hands off." If they allowed them to have the control over their own affairs and develop their own resources, they would hear no cry of famine and want from Ireland. Whatever destitution there was would be met out of their own resources. To teach people self-reliance, the way was to let them rely upon themselves, and they were ready and willing to take up the management of their own affairs. The remedial measures passed were but a slight reparation of the wrong done, a small instalment of a very large debt of justice. They did not touch more than the fringe of the question. This latest attempt of the Government to banish from Ireland some additional thousands would no more cure the evil than the previous banishment; the operation might be repeated again and again and would do no good. The only way to get peace for Ireland and England was, as he had already said, "Hands off;" and then, and then only, would they see the dawn of peace and prosperity in Ireland.

MR. O'DONNELL

said, he regretted that the noble Lord the Leader of the House had prevented the hon. Member for Longford (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) from moving his Amendment. It showed the noble Lord's antagonism to the Irish Party. He noticed that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant had just returned to the Treasury Bench from his temporary seat on the Front Opposition Bench. He thought that the right hon. Gentleman might well have remained where he was, for he was more Tory, in the Irish point of view, than any Conservative Chief Secretary who had ever tried to govern Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman added the varnish of Liberalism to principles which were most opposed to the interests of the Irish people. The proposal to utilize the distress to promote the emigration of the miserable Irish people was the beginning, middle, and conclusion of the speech of the Chief Secretary—a speech containing as odious and detestable a set of propositions with regard to Irish government as ever fell from an incompetent English official sent over to misgovern Ireland. He (Mr. O'Donnell) had been reading the eulogium of Harriet Martineau on a number of poor Scottish workmen who, in a period of distress, refused alms, and insisted upon doing some kind of honest work rather than stoop to touch even public aid, and that was the attitude of the Irish people today. They asked an opportunity of honest work, and the answer of the right hon. Gentleman was a refusal to allow them an opportunity, and an expression of his determination to drive them into the demoralization of the workhouse—that moral hell—rather than allow them to maintain the dignity of manhood and the chance of revival, when the present crisis of misery had passed. How different the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Guilders) from that of the Chief Secretary! The former did not lay claim to infallibility in considering the state of Ireland. On the contrary, he declared his willingness to listen to the arguments of the Irish Representatives, and his desire to be supplied with further information upon all important questions of the day. It was different with the cock-sure essay-writer, who came down with his infallible opinions written out on pages of paper, confident in the all-embracing accuracy of the views he had taken up on every possible aspect of the Irish Question. There was a line of Pope about a certain class of innocent people who were ready to rush in where beings of superior organization would fear even to tread. He confessed he was reminded of that line when he compared the attitude of the Chief Secretary and the attitude of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, even as an Irish statesman, had the advantage at every point over the titular functionary, who held the Office of Chief Secretary. The Chief Secretary had one idea in the elaborate essay which he read to the House. That idea was that to the restriction of the outdoor relief was due every improvement in the condition of the poor of Great Britain, and the decided march which the British nation had taken in the general progress of the world. He made no reference to the improvement of trade and commerce, no reference to the success of the British policy at homo and abroad; and as the Chief Secretary was prophecying that the prohibition of outdoor relief would be advantageous in Ireland, he ascribed all the progress and prosperity of the British Empire to that cause. These men only became dangerous when they were placed in a position in which they could carry their narrowness of view into effect; and, unfortunately, it was in the power of the Chief Secretary to impose most serious obstacles, not only to the progress of Ireland, but to the relief of distress among the starving and dying population of the country. He (Mr. O'Donnell) denied the statement that there was over-congestion or over-population in Ireland, as there were thousands and thousands of acres of waste land calling for the ap- plication of human labour to restore them to fertility. There was not a congested parish in the West or North of Ireland that had not within a few miles, other parishes in which a beneficent and humane Government would have an opportunity of acquiring abundance of land at a cheap rate, and planting upon that land such families as it might be reasonable to withdraw from the alleged congested districts. But the enterprize, the statesmanship, and the humanity of the Chief Secretary, which shrank from the operation of removing the surplus population a distance of 10 or 15 miles to neighbouring lands, was equal to the enterprize of tearing those Irish families from their native land, transporting them over thousands of miles of ocean, and casting them despairing upon a foreign and unknown shore. That was the statesmanship and humanity of the Chief Secretary. The Chief Secretary had told them of his visit to one of the distressed districts in company with the good priest, Father Gallagher, where he saw the seaweed meals of the starving children; but the right hon. Gentleman did not speak of the contrast which was drawn between the right hon. Gentleman's lunch basket and the seaweed food of the families he went to commiserate, but not to aid. The right hon. Gentleman evidently thought that by a recourse to a resolute refusal of outdoor relief the misery of the children might so influence the parents that they might be driven to the workhouse, and from the workhouse to emigration. He (Mr. O'Donnell) thought that if Father Gallagher knew that the official who was accompanying him only intended to gaze on that misery and starvation merely for the purpose of pointing a moral of compulsory emigration, he would have preferred to have left him to go on his tour alone. The right hon. Gentleman had referred to the British taxpayer and the sacrifices imposed upon him for Ireland; but he had forgotten that during this century alone something between £400,000,000 and £500,000,000 had been abstracted from Ireland, and had, for the most part, gone into the pockets of the British taxpayer. Let the British taxpayer show an equivalent for that! He had not been able to reply at once to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman with regard to Donegal. He felt that if he related his own experience it might not have so much effect on the right hon. Gentleman as the experience of one of the Liberal Members, one of the legal Representatives of Donegal in that House. If the right hon. Gentleman had consulted the hon. and rev. Member for Donegal (Dr. Kinnear), and ascertained his experience, he would not, perhaps, have delivered his recent remarkable oration. At a meeting of farmers of Donegal, held in the presence of the hon. and reverend Member, the hon. and rev. Gentleman said— In Donegal the rental, in 1800, amounted to only £47,000. In 1880 it was £367,681, so that in Donegal within this century tenants' improvements have been taxed to the extent of over £320,000. Every penny of that amount had been taken from the poor peasants of Donegal, and was undoubtedly the permanent cause of the present misery. Why did not facts of that kind appear in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman? Why did he not inquire into the actual working of the Land Act in Donegal? He would have then learnt, not only that for the last four-fifths of the century had these vast confiscations been going on in Donegal, but, in the words of his own supporter, the Land Act was a mere mockery and a sham. If the hon. and rev. Gentleman did not, like the Ulster Members, tell the whole truth in that House, he did so when addressing his constituents; and if the Chief Secretary had read his speeches, he would have learned the real state of the case. Those speeches would have supplied the right hon. Gentleman with matter for coming to a conclusion of a different kind than that the prohibition of outdoor relief was all that was necessary to restore a golden age to Ireland. Among all the addresses and speeches which had been made by English officials appointed to administer English rule in Ireland, there had not been one since the Union more full of detestable and ruinous doctrines, more full of coarse and callous inhumanity, more calculated to drive people from misery to despair, and which was more calculated to stimulate the passions and prejudices of a starving population, than that of the present Chief Secretary. Let the right hon. Gentleman appoint any meeting-place in Munster, Connaught, or Leinster; let him bring his military guards and surround himself with all the protection he could; and if he attempted to lay down before a meeting of 10,000 Irishmen such doctrines as he had propounded in his speech in that House, nothing would save him, even in loyal Ulster, from being hissed and hooted off the platform. The right hon. Gentleman was not only the successor, but the outdoor of his Predecessor, the right hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster). For partizan purposes the Members of the Opposition might encourage the right hon. Gentleman along his path of ruin with an occasional cheer; but their scoffing comment was—"How do you like the right hon. Gentleman for the Border Burghs after the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford?" He was satisfied no Irish ultra-Tory could possibly have hit upon the plans which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Border Burghs had hit upon; and between them the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford and the right hon. Gentleman the present Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant had thoroughly succeeded in damning the reputation of Liberalism in Ireland. They had heard very little from the present Chief Secretary of any practical reforms in which the people might now be employed. There were many practical reforms which any ultra-Tory Secretary might introduce. Among such would be the building of piers and harbours, and the laying out of money in obtaining boats and nets, and other things necessary for fishermen. These last would afford a practical reform, which not only would relieve the congested districts at present, but would provide employment and a means of living of a permanent character. They had, however, heard no suggestion of any such practical reforms from the right hon. Gentleman. He should not be sorry should the Government reject the Land Act Amendment Bill which the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) proposed to introduce. The Irish Leader and his supporters would then be able to bring before the great Convention of the Irish nation, shortly to assemble in New York, this fact as a further proof of the unfitness of England to govern Ireland. There were other questions relating to Ireland that would have to be brought forward in that House, and among them the reform of the Parliamentary and municipal franchise; but, even with the restricted franchise which they pos- sessed, the Irish people would be represented in that House by a body sufficiently strong to render it impossible for any English Government to ignore altogether the realities of the Irish situation. For his own part, he was disposed to receive in no spirit of regretful-ness the declaration of the noble Lord the provisional Leader of the Government, that there would be no remedial measures of consequence for Ireland this Session; and that, above all, the political liberties of Englishmen were not to be extended to the Irish people. But as long as one link of the chain of slavery bound Ireland to the caprice of English statesmanship, or to politicians like the Chief Secretary, by which ignorance, incompetence, and prejudice destroyed the chances of a great and generous people, so long would there be no real and radical redress for Ireland, and so long would the people struggle against the Act of Union.

MR. O'BRIEN

said, the last speaker had saved him the necessity of addressing the House at any length; but he wished to enter his earnest protest against the speech of the Chief Secretary. It was, perhaps, as well for some of the Irish Members that there had been an interval to permit of their growing a little calm after that speech, for a speech more bitterly wounding to Irish feeling, or more marked by the callous influence of Dublin Castle, he hoped he should not soon again have to listen to. This debate would probably close to-night, and it would close without having advanced one step the vital question—"What is to become of the unfortunate people who are starving upon seaweed on the West Coast of Ireland?" They asked for food, and they were taunted with being incorrigible beggars who were living on the bounty of the British taxpayer. They were told there was no room for them in their own country, where, out of more than 16,000,000 of fertile acres, there were not more than 3,000,000 devoted to the support of the people. It was admitted by the Chief Secretary himself that the people were in unspeakable misery. He said that if the farms were held rent free they could hardly support themselves, and he also referred to the struggle they made to pay the rent necessary to enable them to take the benefit of the Arrears Act. It was admitted that they had no money, no food, no chance of getting any, that their credit was gone, yet they were told there was to be no relief for them unless they broke up their little homes, and went into the workhouse. And they were told, in the hardest, coldest, and most naked way, the reason why. The reason was that if they got any relief now, they would cling to their unfortunate cabins, and would continue to be disagreeable to the British taxpayer. He did not like, especially in the Chief Secretary's absence, to say anything that would be unfair or unjust to him, or to any man; but it was impossible to avoid feeling that it was a moment when Ireland was supposed to be tame and prostrate under coercion that was chosen to deal her this cruel blow in the face. Three years ago, when the organization of the people in Ireland was a little more strong, the cry for relief was a little more promptly and respectfully attended to. He would only add that, if it were not for the sake of the unfortunate people who were dying while Members of that House were theorizing, he could almost thank the right hon. Gentleman for convincing the Irish people that, in the depths of the fatuity and folly of English statesmanship, there might be a worse Government of Ireland than even the Government of the right hon. Member for Bradford.

MR. PARNELL

Sir, we were expecting that the noble Lord the Leader of the Government would reply to the numerous and cogent arguments which had been placed before him; and it is a remarkable fact that, although this debate has lasted from a little after 5 until now—nearly 9 o'clock—we have not had any answer to the representations which have been urged and the practical suggestions which have been made from those Benches. We were invited yesterday by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make suggestions as to the best way in which the present distress in Ireland could be met. My hon. Friends have accepted the invitation, and have made many valuable suggestions, some of them of a most practical character; but I do not find that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been in his place to listen to the replies to his invitation. I regret that we have again to continue our complaints with regard to the irresponsible character of the pre- sent Irish Administration. We cannot help seeing that the government of Ireland at the present moment is not a government by the Parliament, that it is not a government by the Cabinet, but that it is a government by Lord Spencer. That Nobleman seems to suppose that because he succeeded to that government at an unusual time he is entitled to depart from all Constitutional precedents, and to rule Ireland as if she had not a representative system, and as if, in fact, she was outside the pale of the Constitution, and in the condition of a conquered province. Such a system as that, if persevered in, must break down sooner or later. It cannot last. Sir, we looked on the right hon. Gentleman the present Chief Secretary as being a Representative of Radicalism in this House. In the last Parliament I had many times had the pleasure of listening to his able expositions regarding the rights of the people when he was introducing his Motion for the extension of the household franchise to counties in England and Ireland; but I regret to find that, for some reason or other, he has appeared more quickly than any of his Predecessors to have imbibed the worst traditions of Dublin Castle. In fact, the speech with which he favoured the House yesterday comprises a re-hash of all the worst sentiments of the Dublin Castle Party. I should have thought it had been impossible for a Gentleman of his antecedents and knowledge to have gone so far down in so short a time. It appears to be the fate of every Chief Secretary, sooner or later. I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman one question. The right hon. Gentleman, in the last Session of Parliament, said he would not allow the people to starve, and he promised that he would give outdoor relief, and he did not then say that the workhouse test would be insisted on. On the contrary, when he was challenged by several of us publicly in the House as to whether he would insist on the workhouse test, although he had an opportunity of speaking after this challenge, he did not reply. He therefore left us to suppose, from the general tenour of his speech, that the precedent set by the late Conservative Government, and his own Predecessor, the right hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster), would have been followed, and that outdoor relief would have been administered in a judicious and proper manner to meet distress. But Parliament had adjourned for scarcely a week, when we were startled and horrified by the issue by Lord Spencer of one of the most cold-blooded letters that even a Viceroy of Ireland ever issued. I want to know whether the Chief Secretary, who had not then reached that country from London, was consulted before that letter was issued by Lord Spencer, and whether he was consulted by Lord Spencer before he made his last speech in the House of Commons on Irish distress? I should be glad to know also whether the Cabinet was consulted as to the terms of that letter, or whether Lord Spencer took upon himself to direct and dictate the policy of the Poor Law Board in Ireland without any consultation with the Cabinet? What right had a Nobleman, occupying the Constitutional position of Viceroy, which, after all, is nothing more in the direction of practical government than the position the Queen of England would occupy if she were in that country—I should like to know by what authority Lord Spencer addressed that letter to the Local Government Board of Ireland? The Chief Secretary is the President of the Local Government Board in Ireland, so that the Sovereign in this country would have just as much right to address a letter to the Local Government Board in England, directing what they were to do and what they were not to do, as the Lord Lieutenant had to address that letter to the Local Government Board in Ireland, of which he is not a Member, and of which he is not President. I have seen the Chief Secretary distinctly pledging himself last Session that outdoor relief would be administered. Now, by his own confession in this House the day before yesterday, the people are in a starving condition. They are becoming gradually enfeebled by want, by the necessity of eating seaweed for the purpose of supporting their existence, they are becoming liable to those diseases that follow from a low course of diet, and very soon we shall have the terrible famine fever—the terrible typhus. All these circumstances are known to the Chief Secretary, and last Session he understood, when these things would arise, to issue an Order; and though I do not like to be offensive to him, I cannot help thinking that he disregarded the pledges he made to the country and to the House in regard to the administration of his Department. Well, it is all the more to be regretted that the Government should insist upon setting themselves in antagonism to Irish feeling and Irish sentiment, and every feeling of humanity, since the area of distress is, comparatively speaking, limited. The situation differs in this respect from the last Irish famine or distress in 1879, when it took nearly £500,000 from charitable sources, and the expenditure of £150,000 in the shape of outdoor relief to cope with the distress. Now, in all probability, the expenditure of £150,000, judiciously administered in outdoor relief, would tide the people over to the next harvest, and would save thousands of innocent persons from the suffering and the degradation entailed from slow starvation, and that £150,000 or £100,000 could be easily obtainable from the Church Surplus Fund. We do not want to burden the British taxpayer. We have a fund of our own, an Irish fund, which was received from Irish land, and that is amply sufficient, and more than sufficient, for the purpose proposed. We have this reasonable claim to urge also—that the draft from this fund for the purposes of the Arrears Act was very much less than was anticipated. That whereas it was supposed that £2,500,000 would be necessary, besides a probable charge of £400,000 or £500,000 on the Imperial Exchequer, £l,000,000 is all that has been actually paid for the purposes of the Land Act; and we now simply ask that some £100,000 £200,000 of the residue of that fund should be allocated and administered in the shape of outdoor relief in limited areas in the Western Irish counties to meet the dreadful distress prevailing there. There is a great confusion, and I think it is lamentable that the Chief Secretary, either through intention or ignorance—I do not know which—should have created it. There is a great confusion as to the permanent and temporary works necessary for the relief of this distress. We are to consider questions of emigration, questions of migration, questions of public works, and questions of advancing loans to tenants for improving their holdings as immediate remedies for the present distress; but I cannot understand how anybody in his senses can really and soberly and seriously advance such things as a means of feeding a hungry people. The Chief Secretary may advance £3,000, or £4,000, or £5,000, or £10,000, or £20,000 to emigrate 10 per cent of the people; but, supposing the right hon. Gentleman should apply that money and carry out that scheme to-morrow, how in the name of goodness would that on-able the 90 per cent of the people left to be fed? That is the problem. We consider we are entitled to ask the Government to give us a plain answer to that question. How do you suppose that the remedy of emigration which is mentioned by the Chief Secretary can cope with the work of feeding the people who will not be emigrated? It is perfectly open to the Chief Secretary to argue that emigration, properly carried out, may be of advantage in diminishing the congestion in some of these districts. That may be exceedingly true, but that is a question of permanent remedy, the application of which we have not time to discuss, because people living on seaweed and refuse of every description cannot afford to wait while these high and important problems are being argued out and decided upon. The only possible temporary remedy is outdoor relief, the administration of which, to a limited extent, would enable the Government—the English Government—to consider some plan of emigration, if they desire it, or some plan of migration, if they desire it, or public works, or advancing money to tenants for improving their holdings, all of which are exceedingly well worthy of trial and consideration. But in the course they are now pursuing, the Government are doing the very thing to defeat their own object—they are setting both priests and people against thorn. The Chief Secretary spoke of the Seeds Loan as an example of the way in which the British taxpayer was mulcted. Now, I think the Chief Secretary was very unfortunate in selecting the Seeds Loan as such an example, bearing in mind the fact that that loan was being exceedingly well paid back, and was repudiated only in two or three poverty-stricken Unions where the people happened to be absolutely unable to pay the money. I have always stated that it was the duty of the people, since they accepted the money, to do their best to repay it; while, at the same time, I must say that, under the circumstances of the years 1879 and 1880, when the Act was passed, Parliament might fairly have given the money as a grant, and not as a loan. However, it was given as a loan, and, therefore, it is right and necessary and politic that the people should pay back this loan, and that course I believe they are pursuing in Ireland. Certainly, with regard to the policy of that Seeds Act, I believe I am right in saying that if the hon. and gallant Member for the County of Galway (Colonel Nolan) had not introduced his Bill on the subject so hastily for getting this money by way of loan, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer was considering the desirability of introducing a Bill on the part of the Government, making a grant of money to the people for the purpose of providing them with seeds. The Chief Secretary spoke of the restrictions that had been placed on the granting of outdoor relief in England, and the benefits resulting from those restrictions. I think he said that the number of paupers in England had been diminished during the last 10 years by the workhouse test being more rigidly applied. Now, I do not think the Chief Secretary is entitled to draw that deduction from the figures he quotes, because poverty has notoriously decreased from very different reasons than the substitution of the workhouse test. But I ask the Chief Secretary, would he have dared, during the Lancashire Cotton Famine, to stand up in his place in this House, and say—"The workhouse test must be rigidly applied." I do not think he would, because public opinion in England would not have tolerated such an infamous barbarity. He told us that, in 1881, the outdoor relief administered in England amounted to £2,500,000, while it was £3,500,000 in 1870. Now, I find that in Ireland, in 1881, there was only a sum of £90,000 expended in outdoor relief; so that if we ask—as we would be entitled to, but as we do not ask—that Ireland should be allowed to expend this for the same proportion of outdoor relief as that England expended in 1881, we would be in a position to expend in outdoor relief a sum of £500,000, instead of £50,000 or £50,000, which I believe was the amount of the expenditure in 1882. The argument that because the unfortunate man who has a holding of £4 does not pay any rates, and does not elect the Guar- dians, therefore he should be starved, is certainly the latest and most extraordinary development of the principles of Radicalism. Now, when, by-and-bye, he comes to turn these small holders into ratepayers, to pay rates in the shape of county cess, I hope the Chief Secretary will remember the deduction he made in his speech the day before yesterday. Emigration forced on by starvation is not what we should have hoped for—is not what we might expect from the present Government. It is a policy which will render them infamous in the minds of the Irish people, and one which will certainly, in one shape or other, recoil on their heads. It would appear as if Lord Spencer had in his mind some great scheme of emigration, and that the idea occurred to him that the distress in these Western districts gave him a great opportunity for carrying out the scheme by driving the people into the workhouses, and then turning those workhouses into great receiving houses for emigrant ships. That was the policy pursued in 1847 and 1848, and we know with what disastrous results—how the famine, getting hold of the people, pursued them into the workhouse, from the workhouse to the emigrant ship, and from the emigrant ship to the wards of the hospitals of New York. Is it the desire of the Chief Secretary that the scenes of 1848 should be repeated, even in a limited way in 1883? I assume it is not; but he is going the right way about it. Much has been said about the congested state of the districts in the West of Ireland. No doubt, they are overcrowded, and may have to be relieved by the application of a system of emigration or migration—probably in both ways. At the same time, the statistics frequently quoted to show how small are the majority of holdings are rather misleading. That they are so is proved by some of the results of the Arrears Act. About 90,000 tenants have applied under that Act in respect of 140,000 holdings. It is, therefore, evident that many tenants of small holdings are in possession of two or more, and this is a fact which ought not to be overlooked by those who wish to gauge the power of the tenants to make their way. I am of opinion that the very small farmers whom the Government wish to induce to emigrate are not likely to succeed. As the hon. Member for Car- narvonshire (Mr. Rathbone), who appeared to understand this question better than Her Majesty's Government, said, this is not a question of plenty of money; it is a question of where you shall put the people when they are emigrated. I quite agree that the system advocated by Mr. Tuke and the hon. Member for Carnarvon is the correct one. They look out for the friends and families of persons wishing to emigrate and who may be settled in America, and they ask them if they will receive the family and look after them and help them for a while until they can get settled in their now homes. A family going under such circumstances would run a better chance of becoming good and useful artizans in America than a family taken, as the Chief Secretary proposed to take them, from the West of Ireland, and simply shipping them out to New York. In many cases Mr. Tuke appears to have been able to provide for the reception of the families, and not only for their proper reception, but for their employment and location on land. But the area of such emigration must necessarily be limited by the circumstances of the case; and what we are entitled to ask, and what no explanation of has been made, is, where does the Government intend to locate and provide for such large numbers of families which must necessarily emigrate if it is desired to produce any effect on the West of Ireland? Professor Baldwin has estimated that 100,000 families or 500,000 persons must be evicted out of Ireland before any effect would be felt. Is the Government going to provide £5 per head for each of the families, which in some instances will consist of six, seven, or eight persons? Has the right hon. Gentleman considered how he will transport them across the Big Lake? Has he considered what an enormous number of steamers will have to be provided? Has he considered the arrangements necessary for their reception in New York? Has he considered what he will do with these thousands of people living in such wretchedness under the wise and beneficent rule of England, and who will go to New York in rags? Has he considered whether he will look out for employment for them? Has he considered how they are to make a start towards getting their subsistence from the land which exist in such boundless quantities in the North-West Provinces of America? Has he considered these questions? If he has, what are his plans to get this species of wholesale emigration set going, or has he any plan at all? These are questions which we are entitled to ask, because it is the Chief Secretary and the Government who have put forward this scheme of emigration, this process of lifting hundreds of thousands of people out of the country as a means of ameliorating the condition of these congested districts, and as the means of alleviating the present distress in the West of Ireland. The emigration from Ireland which has taken place up to the present time, and which has been most successful, has been an emigration of young people who have gone out, and who in the course of a few years have succeeded in bringing out the whole of their families whom they had left behind. But this is not the system proposed by the Government. The Government propose to lift whole families, and, at the very outside, they do not propose to allocate for that purpose more than £5 per head for the adults. Some of the Unions have been notified by the Local Government Board that the Guardians will only receive £3 or £4 per head; but taking it at its best, and supposing it to be £5 per head—although we are not entitled to estimate it at all, for owing to the want of information we scarcely know what the intentions of the Government are—a family of seven would get but £35, and this sum would not carry them further than New York after providing decent clothes in which they might appear amid the civilization of the New World. The Chief Secretary had quoted statistics showing that in the Newport Union 1,844 persons had applied to the Inspector to be sent out; in Oughterard Union 1,556, and in the Belmullet Union 3,000, and the Inspectors had stated that a great difference would be made in the condition those left behind if those persons were emigrated.

MR. TREVELYAN

Only the Belmullet Inspector said so.

MR. PARNELL

I suppose the same will apply to each of the others, and that if the Inspectors of the other two Unions had been asked the same questions they would have made the same reply. The right hon. Gentleman is dealing with the problem as a whole, and not in regard to one particular Union, and he has recommended this plan of emigration as a means of alleviating the distress in the West of Ireland and permanently ameliorating the condition of those left behind. I would ask the House to consider how the emigration of these 7,000 persons would ameliorate the condition of the 40,000 or 50,000 persons who would still be left behind in these Unions. There was another practical point to which they must turn. English Members saw that the famine of l848 had cleared vast tracts of grazing land since used for raising cattle for the English market, and they thought it good policy to clear those fertile tracts of men, women, and children in order to people them with bullocks and sheep. But in these congested districts the land, from an agricultural point of view, was not suitable for grazing purposes. It was not cleared then, and it had not been cleared since, simply for this reason. If it could have been so utilized the land would have ever since been cleared. The right hon. Gentleman appeared to think that the land would produce 4½ tons to the acre against 6 tons of potatoes produced by the good land. I can only congratulate him upon the agricultural knowledge which he seems to have acquired during his short trip in Donegal; but I can assure him that if the land in those districts produced 4½ tons of potatoes once in every two or three years it could not be turned to a more profitable purpose. I can also assure him that if he clears the land of people he will be simply throwing it back altogether to grow rushes, heather, and other wild productions. It is totally unsuitable for agricultural purposes on account of the wet state of the sub-soil. Thus, and so far from the importation for it being a benefit to this country in the shape of producing more beef and mutton, they would simply get rid of the people to throw the land out of cultivation altogether, so that the land would become worthless to the landlord and of no value to the country. I would ask the Government to consider this question and examine into it from all from all sides, and that without prejudice. Do not let them start with the notion that this is a great policy. A Government which can only propose the expatriation of the people is not worthy of the name. Perhaps they think that because the land movement com- menced in the West of Ireland the best way would be to push a turbulent population out of the country altogether. I would ask the Government to treat the matter fairly and see if they cannot set the people to work on land which exists in boundless quantities—for instance, in the county of Mayo. The right hon. Gentleman would find such on investigation, and that the pains he devoted to the subject would yield abundant returns and immense satisfaction. Do not let it be supposed that we desire to chase the graziers away from the rich lands which they hold. We desire nothing of the kind, and I have never advocated, it except, perhaps, in some poetic flight of fancy in America. Let the people be taken from Mayo to Meath. This is a practical and not impossible means of solving the difficulty, and the rich lands there will still feed abundance of cattle. I am one of those who do not believe it possible to break this land up; but what we say, as practical men, is this—that there is plenty of improvable land in the country—land which is not absolutely useless, but which is unfavourable, and which might be purchased by the State, or by some public company with the help of the State, upon which a colony of these people might be put—land for which they would be able to pay a better rent than that now paid by the men who occupy it. That land, according to the best authorities, is deteriorating from year to year, becoming less capable of producing grass, and reverting to a state of nature. So that, sooner or later, 3,000,000 acres of land—for that is the estimate—will become practically valueless to the landlord for any profitable purpose. All that I ask is that the recommendations of Professor Baldwin, an agricultural authority of great experience, shall be carefully considered by the Government, and that, at least if they are going to consider the question of emigration, they shall consider at the same time the question of migration. We believe that the result will be that a considerable quantity of cattle might be fed there for the English market, and that it would result in the employment of hundreds and thousands of people who now have to come to England and Scotland in the spring and summer to look for work. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has spoken on several occasions in this House upon Irish questions with great sympathy and considerable knowledge, and, I may add, with a great desire to do what is right, has asked the Irish Members for some suggestion with regard to this question, and I would recommend that advances should be made to tenants for the purpose of reclamation and improvement of the holdings. I know of no way in which public money might be spent with more advantage than by some well-considered scheme, carried out by practical men, than by advancing State money in this direction. The Government should require proper designs for carrying this out, and these should be laid out and carried out under suitable superintendence; and if this was done there could be no better expenditure of public money, and no more safe investment, or one by which the State would be more absolutely secured. I not believe the Board of Works for Ireland, under present management, at all adequate for this purpose. We have seen that when £1,500,000 was lent to the Irish landlords for the purpose of works of improvement on their land, that a great deal of the money was misapplied. That money was lent under the direction of the Board of Works. Under the system adopted by them, so far as I can learn, there was no suitable inspection as to whether the work was done for which the money was granted, and in many cases I believe no money was spent on the works for which it was advanced. Undoubtedly some Government Department, with adequate machinery for the purpose, as I have stated, should be inaugurated in Ireland. I very much fear that a great deal of money granted for improving the holdings would be wasted, or injudiciously lent, unless resident engineers should be appointed to lay out and superintend the work, and the services of the county surveyors and their assistants are utilized. The loans might be made through the Boards of Guardians, on the security of the rates and the works themselves. But all this pre-supposed an Administration in Ireland of a practical character, and one desirous of developing the resources of the country, and keeping the people at home and making them happy and prosperous there. This however, does not appear to be the policy of the present Government; and I have no hope from anything which the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary foreshadows, or any indication which Lord Spencer has given, that any practical scheme will be undertaken for the purpose of improving the industrial resources of the country. In fact, it is quite absurd to make suggestions. Lord Spencer has said that the people must go, and Lord Spencer, being now all-powerful, will have his way, at all events for, I sincerely hope, a very limited period. The absence of remedial legislation for Ireland has been very much commented upon by the Irish Members, and at the conclusion of the debate on this subject it will be my duty to move the second reading of a Land Bill, providing for the proper carrying cut of the intentions of Parliament with regard to the preservation of the tenant's improvements on the one hand, and with the view of meeting the Report of the Lords' Committee concerning the Purchase Clauses of the Land Act on the other. We shall be bettor able to judge when we see the reception of that Bill, which is practically endorsed by the Members of all the Provinces, in all its clauses, and almost in all its words. We shall be better able to see what chance we have as regards remedial legislation. The question of local self-government will also be brought before this House. The question of the inequality of the borough and municipal franchise as compared with that of England will also be laid before Parliament. Ireland is now quiet, and upon what Parliament may decide with regard to these measures must depend very largely the opinion of the Irish people in future as to whether they are to obtain concessions by outrage or by Constitutional agitation. The responsibility which rests upon English statesmen is very great. Surely when there is quiet is the time for a great Party like the Liberal Party to persevere in their course of justice to Ireland. The Liberal Party have been taunted with yielding to outrage when it passed the Land Act and the Arrears Act. The Government ought to show itself strong and persevere in its course now that there is no clamour, and to prove that it is not really influenced by intimidation or threats, or the prospect of further revolution. Unless you show that you will fail in one of the first functions of government; you will be false to your promises made at the last General Election, when you pledged yourselves to equalize the Irish and the English laws. We ask you to give something this Session in redemption of those promises, and not to disappoint the yearnings of the Irish people for further justice; and we ask this in the confident belief that if you continue the course that the Prime Minister initiated in 1870, by seeking out imperfections in the laws and striving to grant justice and fair concessions, neither this House nor this country will be disappointed by the result.

MR. PLUNKET

said, that all would hear with pleasure the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) speak in a different tone from that to which they had long been accustomed. For some time the hon. Member had sailed, and claimed to sail successfully, on the wave of agitation and violence, and now he came forward to take the credit and the advantage of the trough of the sea. That, he (Mr. Plunket) thought, was a satisfactory result, already attained by the very short and limited experience the hon. Member had of something like resolute treatment in that House, and firm government in Ireland. It was no concern of his (Mr. Plunket's) to defend the Government; but he wished, as an Irish Representative, to make some observations on what the hon. Member had said, and on the issues raised by the important Amendment which he had brought before the House. The charges that had that night been levelled against the Government had, with some insignificant exceptions, been aimed at their imputed neglect of dealing with the distress in Ireland and the question of emigration. Now, there were two very different views to be taken of the distress in Ireland; one of these involved the problem of the best means of meeting the immediate necessity of the case; and the other related to the policy to be adopted in order to remove those sad conditions of existence which had so long prevailed in certain districts of Ireland, especially those lying along the seaboard. As for the immediate danger, he did not feel in a position to criticize the Government as severely as the hon. Member for the City of Cork had done; but he thought that the general statements as to the distress in Ireland had been to some extent exaggerated, though in certain districts in the West, there was grave cause for anxiety, if not for apprehensions of actual famine. That, of course, must be left to be dealt with by the Government. All he would now say was, that it was the business of the Government, if danger existed, to avert it. They alone were responsible, for they alone were in possession of accurate, reliable, and, he might add, unprejudiced information; but at present there certainly was no proof of the extreme distress on which the hon. Member for the City of Cork had mainly founded his arguments. If the Government could get through this period of pressure without departing from the established system of Poor Law relief, so much the better, for there could be no doubt that eleemosynary aid was calculated to demoralize the Irish people. But no such general principles ought to be allowed to interfere with the discretion of the Government to contravene them for a temporary purpose; and he had no doubt, from the careful speech of the Chief Secretary for Ireland the other evening, that he had taken great pains to satisfy himself, not only by official information as to its extent, but also by personal inspection, testing its accuracy, with a view to finding means of averting it. Coming to the second view of the question—namely, how they were to deal with these congested districts, and prevent a recurrence of such melancholy experiences, he could not but notice a very remarkable change in the tone of Irish Members below the Gangway. The hon. Member for the City of Cork rather taunted the Chief Secretary for Ireland with being unprepared with a well-considered scheme of emigration, and referred to the insufficiency of the sum provided for that purpose. [Mr. PARNELL: The sum per head.] Of course, the hon. Member gave the first place to his favourite scheme of migration; but he also now appeared as the champion of a well-considered and well-supported scheme of emigration from Ireland. As the hon. Member spoke of the infamous conduct of the Government, if it should now fail through want of preparation, the House would certainly remember that two years ago the Government had come forward with a scheme which was practically killed by the opposition of the hon. Member and his Friends. The hon. Member for Westmeath (Mr. T. D. Sullivan) said— The Irish Members had agreed on this subject, and had all along intended to vote against the clause, and would try to tear it to pieces."—(3 Hansard, [263] 916.) The hon. Member for Galway (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) said— Let Progress be reported, that the Government might not have to display, in the full light of day, the imbecility of their tactics. Now, at the end of three days it had come to this—that they were going to spend.£200,000 on emigration from Ireland. From a largo scheme it had been reduced to a miserable, petty, peddling sum, that it was not worth spending half-an-hour upon."—(Ibid. 978.)

MR. PARNELL

What did I say?

MR. PLUNKET

said, the hon. Member for the City of Cork was always very handy with this kind of evasion, and he (Mr. Plunket) had not the speech of the hon. Member by him at the moment; but he would challenge him to produce a single word he had said to the contrary. He (Mr. Plunket) himself had regretted the surrender of the Government on that question, and had always regarded it as one of the least creditable and most disastrous of the many concessions they had made to the Party of the hon. Member. At the same time, he could not help thinking that it was scarcely for those who obtained it to complain that the Government had not now a scheme in working order. It was, however, gratifying to know that, though the Government was at that time thwarted by the efforts of the so-called Irish Members, those exertions had, to some extent, been rendered nugatory, for the work had been undertaken by private enterprize and charity, through a Committee formed of such men as the hon. Member for Carnarvon (Mr. Rathbone), who spoke modestly and briefly the other night of the generous and self-sacrificing efforts he had made. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith) had also taken part in it, and men on both sides of politics had done their best to set on foot a practical scheme of emigration. He was glad to know, as the hon. Member for Carnarvon told them, that if the Government funds came short, the Committee would confidently fall back on that English charity which had of late been repudiated, defied, and insulted by some who always boasted themselves the best friends of Ireland. This scheme did not contemplate picking up a man here and there and passing him on to take care of himself on the Continent of America; but the scheme was to be conducted with a careful regard to religious convictions and family ties. It must be painful to everyone to contemplate the departure from Ireland of considerable numbers of the population; but if the hard facts of the case were such that it was really better for them to go, and better for those who remained behind—if it was the only escape from the situation, it was a great satisfaction to know that the emigration would be conducted wisely and humanely, and not under the terrible conditions which prevailed at the time of the great Famine of 1847; and it was right that that should be made known throughout Ireland. As to the Arrears Act, which had been spoken of, he was sorry to have to tell the House that, whatever advantage or disadvantage it might have produced in other respects, its effect had been, as all men of common sense had predicted it would be, demoralizing in the extreme. He heard every day of cases of tenants who had honestly paid their rents during the time of agitation, but who now went to the landlords and said—"What are you going to do for us? What concession are you going to make to put us on an equality with those who, in obedience to the advice of political Leaders, kept their rents in their pockets?" There was also another matter about this Arrears Act which called for notice. There was great temptation to tenants to allow their rents to fall into arrear, rather than make an effort to pay them; for they naturally considered that, when distress again arose, the Government would again come to their assistance, and their arrears would be wiped out. Further, that unfortunately brought another consideration with it, for if the landlords found this course pursued by the tenants, they would take strong measures to prevent such a state of affairs, and to enforce the payment of rents, even if it was by eviction. As to the question of the operation of the Land Act upon landowners, it had been lost sight of in the turmoil of recent events, and he did not himself propose to deal with it then; but none the less was the injury inflicted upon landlords a terrible reality. He knew many—and for every one he knew there were scores and hundreds more—who were on the verge of ruin. They had been kept for some time out of the rent of their land—in the first instance by the action of the Land League, and now by the working of the Land Act, they were to be permanently deprived, on an average all round, of at least one-fifth of their income. Mountains of costs were piled up against them, and their creditors were at that moment only waiting for the land again to become a saleable commodity to rush in and realize their security. In that way numbers of honest, loyal, blameless men would find themselves, without any fault of theirs, and without any compensation, overwhelmed in speedy and utter ruin. Even those who did, for a time, succeed in weathering the storm would have their family charges to meet and all the other outgoings on their estates; while it would be hopeless for them, in the present state of the country, to raise any money, and utterly impossible for them to sell. Thus the effect of the operation of the Land Act of 1881 was almost certain ruin for these people. He did not know whether the House realized the state of unsaleability of land in Ireland. It was one of the promises made when the Land Act was being passed that, so far from injuring the landlords, it would improve their position. They were assured that if there was a little pressure at the moment, still the ultimate value of their property would be increased. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) said— My firm belief is that no damage can be proved; on the other hand, that if the landlord wore compensated you would compensate him for conferring on him a benefit."—(3 Hansard, [260] 1166.) The Lord Chancellor said— I deny that it will diminish in any degree whatever the rights of the landlord, or the value of the interest he possesses. I should never agree to such a proposal."—(Ibid. [264] 632.) Lord Carlingford said— I maintain that the provisions of this Bill will cause the landlord no money loss whatever."—(Ibid. 252.) What was the state of affairs now? It was indicated by an attempt made to sell an estate the other day. This was an estate over which the plough of the Sub-Commissioners had passed, and it was supposed to be a very valuable article. The Judge of the Land Court said— All these rents have been fixed by the Land Commissioners as fair rents, and I am sure the tenants will pay to the day. The rents are so well secured that this property ought to bring 30 years' purchase. The owner said— Three years ago, before the agitation, I could have sold the property for £1,775. Thereupon the Judge remarked— You must submit to the inevitable. The bidding having reached £875, the Judge said— Is there any advance on 11 years' purchase for this estate, with rents paid like dividends at the Bank of Ireland, or nearly so. This is the first estate I have had to sell in which rents have been fixed by the Land Commission. I hoped to get 25 years or 30 years' purchase. Of course, the estate was not sold. To prevent misapprehension, however, he must state that there was an estate in King's County, afterwards sold in the Landed Estate Court, that fetched 24 years' purchase, and this was taken by the admirers of the famous Land Act as the first swallow of the spring. The explanation of the apparently high price obtained in this case was as follows:—The land was situated two miles from the important town of Roscrea, the tenure was chiefly fee-farm, the tenement valuation was £243 15s., and the rent only £196 8s. 6d., and the purchaser was one of the fee-farm tenants. Perhaps it might be alleged that all these matters affected only the interests of the landlords; but the object of the Land Act was to make provision for a temporary necessity, by what were called the Tenure Clauses, and, at the same time, to lay the foundation of a new state of affairs by giving facilities and encouragement to the creation of a system of peasant proprietors. The noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Hartington) had stated about the time when the Act was introduced that the Tenure Clauses were intended as a modus vivendi to get over the time until the more profound and far-reaching policy of the Act should come into operation. But what had occurred? Why, all such hopes had been falsified, and even the few per- sons who purchased under the provisions of the Irish Church Act of 1869, with the view of becoming peasant proprietors, were complaining most bitterly, and asking to have their purchases reconsidered. Why was that? It was because there was no finality about the results of the Land Act of 1881, just as there was no finality in the principles on which it was based. The Government had torn up all the old principles on which landed property rested in these countries, and had substituted for them nothing but the hasty spawn of temporary expediency. At the same time, the agitators had renewed their work, and Ireland was now in a stale of complete unrest and disturbance. It was a melancholy thing, however moderate, comparatively speaking, the arguments might be, or some of them, which had been made in support of it, that hon. Members should have put such an Amendment on the Paper of that House. There was legislation enough in it for half-a-century; and it said— That the absence of any undertaking to legislate upon any of these questions must tend to promote discontent and intensify disaffection in Ireland. That was, in his opinion, a palliation of renewed agitation, accompanied by outrage such as they had kown. It was a direct invitation to such conduct; and he said, if they considered the circumstances under which the Amendment was submitted to the House, it was a monstrous and impudent proposition. How many years had boon spent by that House in endeavouring to do for the tenants in Ireland more than ever had been done for the same class of people elsewhere? English and Scotch Business had been set aside, and for three years this Government, with its great majority, had done nothing. Such was the gratitute evinced for, and the advantages obtained from a policy, not of conciliation, but of surrender. He made no appeal to the hon. Member for the City of Cork. Agitation had been too good a business for that hon. Gentleman and his Friends, and he should not hope to produce any effect upon them; but once again he entered his protest and made his appeal against those other Members of the Liberal Party who did all they could to further and encourage the disastrous and desperate course pursued by the hon. Member for the City of Cork and his Friends. He would not now go back again to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, who had succeeded in extracting from the hon. Member for the City of Cork great praise for himself at the expense of his Colleagues; but he must say lie was amused when the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Charles Russell), who was under no obligation to adopt such a line, charged himself and his right hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Gibson) with embarrassing the Government and hampering their actions. It was the natural right, he (Mr. Plunket) supposed, of the Opposition to criticize the Government; but their criticisms had reference, not to the present, but to the past policy of the Government, and was not in the least calculated to embarrass them in their business now. The hon. and learned Member for Dundalk, referring to the subject of local government, had spoken of the advantage it would have been to the Government to have had the public opinion of Ireland behind them. He had referred to the Municipal Corporations as a splendid example of the representation of this public opinion ill a high state of efficiency, and had sighed for something corresponding in the rural districts. The Irish Government, he (Mr. Plunket) knew, had had a very difficult job to deal with lately; and he did not think that, from recent experience, they relied much on such public opinion in Ireland, especially of the Municipal Corporations. They might, indeed, appeal to them, and, in the words of the old couplet, of which he was reminded, exclaim— Perhaps 'twas as well you dissembled your love, But why did you kick me down stairs? That was a kind of moral support behind one which he, for himself, should be willing to dispense with. Some hon. Gentlemen called themselves "modern" Liberals, no doubt, in order to distinguish themselves from the old Liberals, who, in his (Mr. Plunket's) judgment, did not a little good for this country in ancient days; but the modern Liberals, while they kept the Government in power, did everything they could to damage the character of its legislation, and to defeat its objects. The hon. Member for the City of Cork and other Irish Members had talked a great deal about the fatal influence of Dublin Castle upon Chief Secretaries for Ireland, and both the present and the late right hon. Gentlemen holding that Office had been bullied and abused for having, as it was said, fallen under that influence; but, in point of fact, Dublin Castle was in Ireland what the Home Office was here, as representing the domestic power of the Government, and nothing else. The Irish Executive could alone be thoroughly informed on matters relating to Ireland. When the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford was sent over, he soon found out the real meaning of the outcry against Dublin Castle. He felt obliged to recognize the untruth of these stories, and was turned out. Then they picked up another Chief Secretary, whose soundness and orthodoxy were supposed to be beyond dispute, and they told him—"Prophesy to us smooth things;" but he also had been there only a short time when he found out the hollowness and fallacy of those denunciations of Dublin Castle. The question was—Were their Ministers to be trusted, or were they not? If not, why keep them in Office? The experience of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford had shown the real value of the arguments and pathetic appeals they heard from day to day, the whining, the threatening, and the bullying of those Members who professed to represent the mass of the Irish people in that House. In this tremendous crisis, both for Ireland and this country, when they had a good man, carrying his life in his hand, in order to rightly appreciate the real state of the case and overcome the difficulty, let him not be thwarted; let them not cease to give him a cordial and generous support, nor seek to paralyze his arm.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

said, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Plunket) always attempted to be an effective orator, and occasionally succeeded. But he was rather astonished that the right hon. and learned Gentleman should have endeavoured to rouse the House from a condition which was somnolent, but, at the same time, philosophic, by appeals to questions which were not under discussion. What the House was discussing was not the policy of the Land Act, or Dublin Castle. The question was how to deal with a large number of people in Ireland—men, women, and children were face to face with starvation, and the Government were taking no means to relieve them. The right hon. and learned Gentleman, at such a time, thought it decent to appeal to the prejudices of that House, and to revive past controversies. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had presented a picture to the House of a large number of Irish landlords, who, he said, had been brought face to face with ruin by the Land Act, which had deprived them of one-fifth of their incomes. In other words, these landlords had been robbing their tenants for generations, if not for centuries. ["No, no!"] Yes; that was the decision of judicial tribunals established to try the question. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had said that Dublin Castle was like the Home Office; but he knew that nothing could be more inaccurate than that statement. Did the English Judges go to the Home Office, sit as Members of the Privy Council, join in issuing Proclamations, and afterwards sit on the Bench to try the cases of persons brought before them for disobeying those Proclamations? No; the work of the English Home Office was not done by Judges who had reached their position, like Irish Judges, by political lying and bribery of the most shameful character. He congratulated hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway on the homily which they had been hearing. They had a right to complain of the levity with which the Amendment had been treated by the Government. The debate had been going on for three nights, and there had only been two speeches from the Treasury Bench—one by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and the other by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, though the Government confessed the subject was a very grave one. The former was a man of kindly temper, and was a master of the art of expression; yet all those who sat near him, and some hon. Gentlemen on the Benches opposite, were agreed in thinking that he must either have most inadequately expressed himself, or else his utterances constituted one of the most cold-blooded speeches ever delivered in that House. The right hon. Gentleman was either a mere mouthpiece of Lord Spencer, or had independently arrived at the conclusion that a scheme of emigration was the only practical remedy. There was, however, not a single proposition which had been advanced by the right hon. Gentleman in favour of the action of the Government which could be defended either by reason or by argument. He (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) had been appealed to as to whether he was strongly opposed to emigration. He had no hesitation in saying that the present position of many of those poor people was absolutely hopeless. But the Government were confusing measures of permanent legislation with the means of temporary relief. Would the emigration of 10,000 people supply Indian meal to the 50,000 who remained behind? And were they ready with money and machinery to provide for the emigration of so many? It should be remembered that the hon. Member for Carnarvonshire (Mr. Rathbone) had said that emigration involved the great difficulty of dealing with the emigrants when they got to the other side of the ocean. The policy of the Government was to drive the people, through starvation, either into emigration, or the workhouse. Suppose they went into the workhouse, would the Government be ready with means for emigration by next April? It could not be denied that the United States Government was hostile to emigration by families. They said—"If you make these people paupers, you may keep them." At the same time, they were ready enough to welcome individuals; but they would not receive the helpless population of Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman's objection to public works was that they were not required in the distressed districts; but they wore required in other parts of Ireland, and the results following from their establishment would be beneficial to the distressed districts. Then it was said that the taxpayers of England and Scotland ought not to be called upon to support the pauper population of Ireland. But as many pounds could be collected for emigration as pence for relief. The question was, what were the Government going to do with those people for the next two or three months? It was nonsense to talk of emigration. Were they going to allow them to starve, or to go so far on the road to starvation that they would be mowed down by disease? The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the demoralization of outdoor relief. Was it more demoralizing than relief in the workhouse? In his (Mr. T. P. O'Connor's) opinion, two months inside a workhouse was more demoralizing than six months of outdoor relief. Not only would it be less demoralizing, but it would be more economical, for those who went into the workhouse lost their holdings, whereas they could retain them if outdoor relief were given. In that case they would be able to sow their crops; whereas, if they were driven into the workhouse, they would become permanent, instead of temporary, paupers, as in the former case. He regretted to say that there was, at that moment, in England, a very bitter feeling against the Irish people, owing to the excitement caused in the Press by the assassinations, the invectives of the front Opposition Bench, and the language of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) and the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington). The people of England had been encouraged to hate the Irish people as a whole because of the crimes of a section. Was the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland going to take advantage of that frenzy, and, because of a tempest of unjust and vile passion against the Irish people, turn a deaf ear to, and allow the cry of starvation and the wail of the orphans to go unheard?

MR. W. H. SMITH

said, that he simply rose in consequence of the concluding observation of the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. T. P. O'Connor). He entirely denied that a bitter feeling existed at that moment, on the part of hon. Members or by Englishmen, against the Irish people, although he certainly admitted that there existed a strong feeling of indignation against those Irishmen who endeavoured to play on the passions of the people, and to incite them to insubordination, to outbreak, and to every crime that could possibly disgrace a race or nation. There certainly was not a bitter feeling against the Irish people. The effort to which his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dublin University (Mr. Plunket) had referred was a sufficient proof of the sincere sympathy which was felt for the suffering of distressed and law-abiding people in Ireland, and of an earnest desire to find the means by which they might be placed in a position of self-reliance, comfort, and happiness. The position taken up by hon. Members below the Gangway with regard to the proposals of the Government was, he thought, exceedingly mistaken, if those hon. Gentlemen would only for themselves consider the position in which the unfortunate inhabitants on the West Coast of Ireland were at that moment. Some of them around him had had the opportunity of personally inspecting the country, and there could not be a doubt that the condition in which these people existed was one which must involve them in perpetually recurring distress. Whatever temporary measures the Government might now propose, or the House sanction, the destitution would appear again next year, or the year following; because those poor people were in a position in which it was impossible for human beings to support themselves and their families. Was it, then, becoming in the House or the Government to endeavour merely to bridge over that temporary crisis, and to leave those people to lapse again into the miserable condition in which they now found them? He did not doubt that there was at that moment a great amount of suffering and misery; but were they to perpetuate that misery and suffering, or were they to do their best to raise the people out of the condition in which they existed, and place them in a position to obtain a better and honest livelihood? He did not doubt what the answer of the House would be. They might, no doubt, by giving them outdoor relief, carry them over the next few months; but if they had another failure of the potato crop, they would have the same cry of distress as was now heard raised again, and they would have done nothing towards putting the people in a better way to obtain an honest and decent livelihood. Some hon. Gentlemen talked of reclaiming the waste lands of Ireland and of making harbours and railways. If there was trade they might construct harbours; if there was a prospect of profit, railways should by all means be made; if anything could be done to develop the industry of Ireland, it should be done; but they ought not to induce those people to remain on their miserable little allotments of land, which could not possibly yield them a subsistence. What was the actual condition of things? The casual employment on which they had relied in the neighbourhood of their holdings had departed from them; the landlords had no longer the power or the means of giving them employment. Some of them had no longer the power to live on the place which was his and his ancestors' for many generations. Industries had ceased to be profitable. The land which those people tilled, having been starved and exhausted, was now incapable of producing any adequate return; its capabilities in many places were entirely destroyed. Surely, then, the House and the Government should do everything in their power to enable them to find homes and independence in another land. Something had been said about insufficient funds being provided by the Government for that purpose. Funds were provided by an Association of which a principal agent was Mr. Tuke, a gentleman who was benevolently devoting himself, without the hope of any other reward than the satisfaction of doing good, to the work of helping those who were desirous of emigrating to find happy homes in a land not far removed from their own shores. In Canada, within eight or nine days' journey from Ireland, the comfort and independence which were denied them in their own country could be obtained by these poor people. There was not a man, he was sure, on either side of the House who did not deeply deplore the necessity which had come upon them; but it was a necessity which they must regard as inevitable and treat as men, with every regard for the feelings of those people, and also with every desire for their permanent benefit, and not with any endeavour, as he was afraid was the case with some hon. Gentlemen, to use the occasion for Party purposes, or for the purpose of making political capital. Virgin lands across the Atlantic were capable of producing large crops without much labour; and sending them to the markets of this country cost, for transport, little exceeding that entailed for carriage from the West of Ireland to England and Scotland. The producers in those virgin lands must compete at enormous advantage with the producers in a country the soil of which was almost exhausted and incapable of maintaining the large population which miserably vegetated on its surface. He trusted, therefore, that the House would sustain the Government in the effort it was making for the benefit of that class in whose interests these arrangements were being made, and that they would not sanction a resort to mere temporary expedients, which would only leave the difficulty to be dealt with a few months hence in a worse form than ever.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 32; Noes 163: Majority 131.—(Div. List, No. 14.)

Main Question again proposed.

MR. ASHMEAD-BARTLETT,

who rose amid great and persistent interruption, said, he had no intention of detaining the House for more than a very few minutes, and he should not have intervened at this stage, but for the brusque and discourteous answer of the noble Marquess the Leader of the House (the Marquess of Hartington) to a Question put to him the other day in reference to a speech delivered by the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Courtney) to his constituents at Liskeard. In spite of the statements contained in the Queen's Speech, the hon. Member said that the object of the policy of Her Majesty's Government was to separate Egypt from Turkey, and that the Sultan had not been consulted in the recent negotiations. That was a most serious statement to fall from a Minister of the Crown at what was then a critical period in our relations with other States. Such a statement as that could only hopelessly alienate a Power upon whom our future interests in Egypt must depend; and at a time when our ancient Ally France was widely estranged from us, and when the French Press was violently attacking the policy of the Government, nothing could have been more injurious. It was a violation of the international courtesy of Governments, and an insult to the Sovereign of a friendly State; and, therefore, when a Minister made such a statement as that, in flagrant contradiction of the words of Her Majesty's Speech, and of the speeches of Leaders of his Party, he should either be compelled to withdraw it, or else he should resign his position. The seriousness of the position was aggravated by the fact that, at last, France had obtained a strong, though a bad Government—an extreme, violent, and almost Jacobin Government—and by a combination between that country and Turkey our interests in Egypt might be seriously frustrated. The other day, he (Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett) had attempted to bring the matter before the House in the form of a Question, which he had put to the noble Marquess the Leader of the House; but the noble Marquess, as he had before observed, had given him a brusque and discourteous answer, and he was therefore compelled to take that opportunity of bringing the matter before the notice of the House at the present time. Another point lie wished to call attention to was the speeches of the hon. Member for Leeds (Mr. Herbert Gladstone) and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain). In doing so he had no desire to be discourteous to the hon. Member for Leeds, though to the President of the Board of Trade he would give no quarter. The hon. Member for Leeds had publicly stated that the Government of the Queen in Ireland was one of the worst in Europe. Now, so far as the influence of the hon. Member went, that statement was a most mischievous one, and totally inconsistent with the statement in the Queen's Speech. [Cries of "Agreed!"] In spite of the interruptions of the hon. Member for Stockton (Mr. Dodds) and others, he intended to say what he had to say. Interruptions of that kind wore the only arguments the hon. Member for Stockton had. But the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, speaking in that House, asked—"What message will you send to Ireland when you have dealt with this conspiracy?" Had they not had enough of Liberal messages of peace? Was not a Land Bill, an Arrears Bill, and two Coercion Bills enough to satisfy even the insatiable appetite of the President of the Board of Trade? Then the right hon. Gentleman said—"Do you think you can go on governing Ireland by repression and nothing else?" Just as if the Conservative Party were they who had introduced repression and coercion into Ireland! The Liberal Party had completely failed in their Irish Administration. The late Government ruled Ireland well and peacefully with the mildest Coercion Act, but the pre- sent Government required the most stringent measure of oppression ever known in that country. Three years ago Ireland enjoyed the fullest Constitutional privileges under a Conservative Government, and if those privileges had been taken away it was by the present Government. The President of the Board of Trade also stated that that policy, if pursued, would involve the creation of a Poland within four hours of their own country. A Poland, Mr. Speaker! suffering under every kind of oppression. Why, the idea was so preposterous that it needed no further consideration. ["Oh, oh!"] He would only make one other remark. He was surprised that hon. Members received the utterances of one of their principal Leaders with so much amusement. The President of the Board of Trade had further said that the Irish policy of Her Majesty's Government had hitherto been two-fold. He (Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett) admitted that it had been two-fold in this sense—that it consisted of bribing sedition, and then coercing the criminals whom that bribery produced. [Cries of "Oh, oh!" and interruption.]The Government had shown no real desire to repress crime in Ireland until the terrible event in the Phoenix Park worked a complete revolution in the mind of the Prime Minister. The right hon. Gentleman had talked of justice to Ireland. Where was the evidence of his policy of justice to Ireland? Was it in his Coercion Acts? He would conclude with one single observation, which, owing to the interruptions he had been favoured with that night, he had been prevented from making before. The reference in the Address to the relations of Her Majesty's Government with Foreign States led him to recall the unfortunate results of their commercial policy. He hoped the Government would not lose sight of the importance of reestablishing the Commercial Treaty which their mistakes had lost to the country. In the hope of renewing that Treaty they had allowed Prance to seize Tunis and became involved in the Egyptian War; and, after all, failed to obtain a Treaty with Prance, and lost the opportunity of making satisfactory Commercial Treaties with Spain and Italy. He had one bit of advice to offer to the Government. Taking warning by the terrible example of the right hon. Baronet the President of the Local Govern- ment Board (Sir Charles W. Dilke), who, during his administration of the Foreign Office, succeeded in failing in everything he undertook, he recommended Her Majesty's Government to revert to the friendly alliance with the German Powers which was established by Lord Beacons-field, and the abandonment of which had led to all their difficulties in Europe. Until they did that they could settle none of the difficult questions in which they were involved; but if they followed his advice, they would have on their side the friendship of stable and permanent Monarchies, instead of shifting and demoralized Republics, and have a security for conserving not only the peace of Europe, but British interests.

THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON

said, that perhaps the House would allow him to make one or two observations in the way of a personal explanation. The hon. Member who had just spoken (Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett) had told them that he would not have delivered his speech at all but for a discourteous reply which he had received from him (the Marquess of Hartington) to a Question he put with regard to the observations of the hon. Member for Liskeard (Mr. Courtney) as to the position of the Sovereign of Turkey in relation to Egypt. He replied, as far as he could recollect, to the hon. Member for Eye, that if he read the Papers which had been presented to the House he would see for himself how far those Papers related to the subject, and how far the hon. Member for Liskeard represented the opinions of Her Majesty's Government. He was unable to see that there was any discourtesy in that reply; and, in fact, he thought, on reflection, that if there was any discourtesy in the matter at all, and anyone who had a right to complain of it, it was not, the hon. Member for Eye, but his hon. Friend the Member for Liskeard; because, if the Papers were consulted, it would probably be the opinion of most hon. Members that his hon. Friend's views and those expressed by Her Majesty's Government were not completely in accord. He must ask the House to excuse him if he did not follow the hon. Member for Eye in what he had said about the speeches of the hon. Member for Leeds (Mr. Herbert Gladstone) and the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade. He had said all that he had to say on those speeches on former occasions; and it was unnecessary, and would be irregular, if he attempted to follow the hon. Member now in the observations he had made, and especially after the subject had been discussed for the greater part of 10 nights.

Main Question put, and agreed to.

Committee appointed, to draw up an Address to be presented to Her Majesty upon the said Resolution:—Mr. ACLAND, Mr. BUCHANAN, The Marquess of HARTINGTON, The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER, Secretary Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT, Sir. DODSON, Sir CHARLES DILKE, Mr. TREVELYAN, Mr. SHAW LEFEVRE, Mr. ATTORNEY GENERAL for IRELAND, Mr. SOLICITOR GENERAL, Lord RICHARD GROSVENOR, and Lord KENSINGTON; Three to be the quorum:—To withdraw immediately:—Queen's Speech referred.