BOROUGHS TO HAVE ADDITIONAL MEMBERS.

HC Deb 24 March 1885 vol 296 cc394-447

MR. SEXTON

moved, in page 15, column 2, line 41, after the word "Dublin," to leave out the word "four," and insert the word "five." The hon. Member said the object of the Amendment was, of course, obvious. It was to increase, by one Member, the representation which was allotted by the Bill to the City of Dublin. He thought he should easily be able to show that the City of Dublin had been treated exceptionally hardly in the Schedule; and if he established that contention he hoped to be able to lay before the Government, with great confidence, the Motion he had the honour to make. He was still further encouraged by the circumstance that the right hon. Baronet in charge of the Bill (Sir Charles W. Dilke) had dealt very tenderly with the claims of the City of Westminster, the proposed representation of which he had agreed to increase from three Members to four, although the City of Westminster had a population of nearly 40,000 less than the City of Dublin, which had only four Members allotted to it, even with an extended boundary. The Motion which he desired to make was one which he thought would commend itself both to English and Scotch Members of the House. He did not propose to call in question the relative augmentation of the representation allowed to the three countries under the Bill. He was satisfied that the gross representation of England, Ireland, and Scotland should remain as it was now proposed; and as the additional Member for the City of Dublin, if he were allowed, must be taken from some other constituency in Ireland, he conceived that the English and Scotch Members would be in a position to give a fair and impartial consideration to the case he proposed to make. It would also commend itself to men of all political Parties. The Motion was not made in the slightest degree in the interest of any political Party, and he candidly confessed that if it was adopted he was unable to see to what particular Party it would work with advantage. Indeed, he thought there were very few people in Dublin itself who could speak with confidence upon that point. The vital principle of the Bill was the principle of population. Whenever the Government had been attacked with reference to any of their proposals they had generally defended themselves by a reference to the principle of population; and when they were not prepared to agree to an Amendment that was proposed they usually referred to the population principle in order to justify their objection to such Amendment. But before he came to the question of the population of the City of Dublin, he wished to say, in the first place, that he pleaded for Dublin as the capital city of Ireland. If any deviation was to be made from the strict principle of the Bill in the case of a capital city it should be a deviation favourable, and not adverse. Dublin was a capital city in every respect, except that it was not the seat of the Legislature. It was formerly the seat of the Legislature, and he had no doubt whatever that it would very soon again occupy that position. But in the meantime, and until that result was secured, the special interests of Dublin were such as needed particular representation in that House. Questions relating to the municipal life of the city—to its rating, and to the collection of its rates, were constantly demanding attention; and, therefore, he maintained that Dublin was entitled to the full measure of representation which it ought to have according to the principles of the Bill. The position he laid down was this—that Dublin should no longer be cramped within artificial and restricted boundaries—that the boundaries ought to be so drawn as to include the whole City of Dublin, as it actually stood at the present moment; and that when the boundaries were so drawn the representation ought to be fixed according to the principles of the Bill to the full extent of the population. Speaking of Dublin as the capital of Ireland, he found it described by a standard authority as the centre of all the political, ecclesiastical, educational, fiscal, commercial, and military institutions of the country, and he might add that it was also the seat of judicature, and the centre, not only of literary and scientific research, but also of political Party organization. The right hon. Baronet the President of the Local Government Board, in repulsing the case of Limerick last night, referred to the question of area. The right hon. Gentleman stated that the area of the borough of Limerick was exceptionally large. Now he ventured to assert that no such point could be made in reference to the borough of Dublin, because the present extent of the Parliamentary borough of Dublin was only 5,500 acres. The addition he proposed to make to that area was about 3,000 acres, so that the total area of the extended borough would only be between 8,000 and 9,000 acres, or less than one-third of the area of the present boundaries of the borough of Limerick. He found, by a Return issued in 1881, that the area of Sheffield in that year was 20,000 acres, or more than twice as much as he proposed to give to the borough of Dublin; the area of Leeds was 22,000 acres, or more than twice as much; and he thought he could point out upon the maps appended to the Report of the Scotch and English Boundary Commissioners at least half-a-dozen cases of boroughs where extensions had only been carried into effect under the fifth Schedule of the Bill, which covered an area more extensive than that which he proposed for Dublin—a borough much more considerable in point of population. He came now to the question of population, which was the vital point under the Bill. The unit of representation in the Irish boroughs was 47,000—that was to say, that for every Member allowed to an Irish borough there were 47,000 inhabitants in the borough. The unit for the Irish coun- ties was 52,000 for each Member, and the average for all Irish Members, taking the counties and boroughs together, was a little over 51,000. Now the present population of Dublin was 273,000, which, with the four Members proposed to be given to the borough, allowed an average of 68,000 odd for each, or, in other words, the proportion of the population of Dublin was nearly one-half as much again as the proportion for the Irish boroughs in general. Moreover, the proportion for the borough of Dublin was one-third in excess of the general unit of population for the whole of Ireland. Perhaps the Committee would allow him to compare Dublin with the other Irish boroughs. Newry had one Member for 15,000 population, Kilkenny one for 15,000, Galway one for 19,000, Londonderry one for 29,000, Waterford one for 29,000, Limerick one for 48,000, Cork one for 52,000, Belfast one for 55,000, and Dublin one for 68,000. If the representation of Dublin were calculated upon the basis of the average population of the Irish boroughs, the result would be as follows:—The population of Dublin was 273,000, and four Members for the borough upon the general average of 47,000 would give 188,000, leaving Dublin a surplus population of 85,000 unrepresented. He would compare Dublin with the only other strictly parallel case of a borough that occurred in Ireland; he referred, of course, to the borough of Belfast. Dublin got four Members, with a population of 273,000, but Belfast got four with a population of 221,000; so that Dublin, with an excess over Belfast of 51,000, got only the same representation, although the average of population for a borough Member was as low as 47,000, or 4,000 less than the excess of Dublin over Belfast. If he were fortunate enough to obtain an additional seat for the City of Dublin he presumed that the seat would have to be taken from some Irish county; but he did not shrink for a moment from that test. He had been obliged, in previous debates, to agree with the right hon. Baronet (Sir Charles W. Dilke) that there was no tenable claim in the case of Drogheda or Limerick for the transfer of a Member from any Irish county, because if such a transfer were made the Member would have to be taken from a place representing a larger number of people and given to a place representing a smaller. Therefore, he had found it impossible to maintain that position, having regard to the fact that the principle of population was the vital principle of the Bill; but he was prepared to say that Dublin was entitled to have another Member, even although that Member had to be taken from some Irish county. He had pointed out already that the county average for Ireland was 52,000 for each Member, whereas the average in Dublin City was 68,000, or one-third in excess of the general county average in Ireland. The county average in Ireland varied from 30,000 at Longford up to 70,000 in Clare; and out of the 32 counties in Ireland there were no fewer than 30 in which the average of population for each Member was less than the unit proposed for the City of Dublin. He, therefore, contended that he was entitled to press upon the Government—and he believed they had no reply to his contention—that he was strictly adhering to their own principle of population when he claimed that Dublin was entitled to take a Member from any one of those 30 counties. The right hon. Baronet had told them that the county of Tyrone was to have four Members for a population of 197,000, or one for every 49,000. The county of Tyrone, therefore, was the first of the Irish counties from which a Member might be taken.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE

remarked, that Tipperary had a population of 2,000 less.

MR. SEXTON

said, the right hon. Baronet had distinctly referred to Tyrone. He had asked which of the Irish counties came first, and the right hon. Gentleman said Tyrone.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE

remarked, that if he had said so he had made a mistake. As a matter of fact the population of the two counties was almost the same; but that of Tipperary was 2,000 less than that of Tyrone.

MR. SEXTON

said, that was not so according to the Census Rturns.

SIR.CHARLES DILKE

stated that on referring to the Census Returns he found that the hon. Member was right. The population of Tipperary was 199,000, while that of Tyrone was 197,000, or 2,000 less.

MR. SEXTON

said, that in order that there should be no dispute he would quote the actual figures. The population of the county of Tyrone was 197,233, which gave an average of 49,308; and the population of Tipperary was 199,612, which gave an average of 49,903, so that the difference of 2,000 was in favour of Tipperary. Therefore, if an additional Member was to be given to the City of Dublin it would have to come from the county of Tyrone. He would not, however, press that matter further than to say that each Member for Tyrone would only represent 49,000 persons, while the average in Dublin was 68,000. If they took away one Member from Tyrone the average for each of the three remaining Members would be 65,000, while the average for five Members in the City of Dublin with an extended boundary would be one for every 63,000; so that after taking away a Member from Tyrone and giving him to Dublin the principle of population would still remain unviolated, seeing that the city and county average would still be practically the same. A very curious collateral result had followed from the abstention of the Boundary Commissioners from recommending the extension of the boundaries of the City of Dublin. The population of the county of Dublin, under the Bill, was 145,000. His proposition was that 40,000 should be taken out of the county and put into the city, which would leave 105,000 in the county, and would still supply an average for each of the two Members above the county average for the rest of Ireland. But if the county was to be divided, as it now stood, its average would be 72,000 for each Member—that was to say, that while they cramped the representation of the city, and starved the representation of the borough, they placed in the county the highest average of any county in Ireland—namely, 72,000. He had stated that the Boundary Commissioners declined to commit themselves to the recommendation of any extension of the boundaries of Dublin. What were the Instructions to the Commissioners? They were instructed, no doubt, that the boundaries should be in conformity with Schedule 5 of the Bill; but he found that their Instructions contained these words— Where it appears to the Commissioners from information obtained in the course of their inquiry that an alteration of the existing borough boundaries is desirable, a description of the alteration shall be embodied in their Report. Should there be any such case the Commissioners will, before making any recommendation, take the necessary steps for satisfying themselves whether or not there is any number of houses beyond the boundaries, but contiguous thereto, the occupiers of which, either by community of interests with the borough, or from any other circumstance, form part of the county population proper. He would turn now to the plea of the Commissioners for declining to enter into that question in the case of Dublin. They said— The Corporation of Dublin pressed upon us the propriety of incorporating with the City some of the external townships constituted under various Acts of Parliament, but with separate rating powers; but as it was evident that the proposed extensions were of such magnitude as to affect the representation of both county and borough, we pointed out that it was beyond our discretion to enter into the consideration of the question. He contended that it was not beyond their discretion, because the words of their Instructions which he had just read enabled them and entitled them, if they thought it desirable, to inquire into the question of the extension of the boundaries of the borough without regard to Schedule 5 of the Bill. Schedule 5 governed the boundaries they were to make on the maps; but it was within their Instructions to inquire into the extension of boundaries. They stated that the proposed extensions were of such magnitude as to affect the apportioned representation of both county and borough; but he maintained that that assertion was untrue. It was absolutely and obviously untrue both as regarded the county and also as regarded the borough. The population of the county was 145,000. It was sought to take away 40,000 from it, leaving 105,000, and giving an average of 52,000 for each Member. That average was quite up to, if not beyond, the general average for a county constituency; and how could the Commissioners, with decency, contend that the extension of the borough boundaries would affect or alter the apportioned representation of both county and borough? It did nothing to affect the apportioned representation of the city and borough. He had pointed out that the average of the borough representation in Ireland was one Member for every 47,000 people, and he had shown that the representation proposed to be given to Dublin was one Member for every 68,000. The average of Dublin therefore, under the Bill, was 21,000 over the average required for the representation of all the other boroughs in Ireland; and when the Government had already, by the Schedule, violated every principle of representation by population in regard to the City of Dublin, it was superfluous and absurd for the Commissioners to refuse to inquire into the extension of the boundaries of Dublin on the ground that it would do that which had already been done. The Commissioners seemed to think that the reason they assigned would not bear the test of inquiry, because they proceeded to add another reason for not inquiring into the extension of Dublin City. They said that although the case of Dublin had been made the subject of a previous inquiry by a Municipal Commission in 1881, no legislative action had been taken to give effect to the recommendations of the Commission. But no legislative action was taken in the case of Belfast. Nevertheless an inquiry was hold in Belfast, and 13,000 people were added, in order to eke out the necessary population and give the borough a presentable margin above the average. Although in Dublin legislative action was considered to be a necessity, in the Northern city no such object was held to be a vital one. A good many years had been spent and wasted in the efforts to extend the municipal boundaries of Dublin. A Select Committee of the House of Commons reported upon that question in 1878, and upon the recommendations of that Committee the Conservative Government of that day appointed a Commission of Inquiry. The Duke of Marlborough was Viceroy at the time, and in appointing the Commission language of an imperative character was employed directing the Commissioners to report by a certain date in the following year. If the Conservative Government of seven years ago thought the question of the extension of the boundaries of Dublin an urgent and pressing matter then, although the Liberal Government of the present day professed to be more concerned about the principle of municipal government than their Conservative Predecessors, they had, nevertheless, been content to give all the recommendations which resulted from that inquiry the go-by. In 1881 the Muni- cipal Commission reported, and at the end I of that year the Government, with the Report of that Commission before them, recommending the extension of Dublin,; excused themselves from carrying out the recommendation, on the ground that; they were very busy with the Land Act. In 1882 they further excused themselves, on the ground that arrangements for the working of the Land Act were still occupying their attention. In 1883 Earl Spencer made a further excuse to the Corporation of Dublin for not carrying out the recommendations of the Commissioners, on the ground that the rating of Dublin required a revision, and that the Government had a measure in contemplation, which, however, had never come to light, for the amendment of the law relating to the local government of cities in Ireland. Last year Earl Spencer again excused himself to the Corporation, upon the still more vague and impalpable plea that he had other matters to engage his attention. They all knew that matters of an extremely unpleasant kind did occupy the attention of the Irish Government during a great part of last year; but from one excuse or another the Irish Government, for the last four years, had staved off this question of the extension of the municipal boundaries of Dublin. It was well known, however, that the authorities at Dublin Castle were never at a loss for excellent excuses for doing nothing. What were the recommendations of the Boundary Commissioners in 1881? What the Irish Members were now urging was an extension of Parliamentary boundaries, and not a municipal extension, although both were based on the same principle. His contention was that Dublin and the townships converging upon Dublin formed one body of people—one indivisible city, with a common ground of enterprise, law, trade, and industry, and a common fund for income and profits. In the map appended to the Report of the Municipal Commission of 1881 the part coloured blue represented the present borough of Dublin. The five other districts represented the five townships abutting on the city; and here he would direct the attention of the right hon. Baronet and the Committee to a very curious fact. One of the five townships—the township of Pembroke—already formed part of the Parliamentary borough of Dublin; and side by side with it, lying alongside the present boundary of the city, alike in position, with a similar area, and differing from it in no one quality that could be discerned, was the township of Rathmines. He would defy any human intelligence to point out any reason why the township of Pembroke should be included in the Parliamentary borough of Dublin and the township of Rathmines left out. Two of these five townships were situated on the Southern side of the city, and two of them on the Northern. They were not distinguishable to the eye from the city itself; and, as an illustration of the close and definite character of the tie which bound them to the city, he might point out that there were four lines of tram-cars running from the centre of the city to the outer extremity of these four townships, and the bulk of the people dwelling in the four townships earned their income as merchants' clerks or artizans in the City of Dublin. They went into Dublin by the tram-car lines in the morning, and returned in the same way to their homes in the evening. Many of those persons had shops in Dublin, where they realized their incomes, but lived with their families in one or other of those four townships. No test could be applied by which it could not be proved that those four townships were one in unity of position, in unity of interest, and in everything that could constitute a unity or give a claim to one common government with the City of Dublin. He failed to see how the claim he made for the unification of these townships with the City of Dublin was to be contested. He believed he might say that Dublin was the only instance in the Three Kingdoms where the Government had refused to extend the boundaries of the city. He did not know any other case contained in the Report of the Commissioners.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE

remarked, that a similar extension had not been acceded to in the case of Drogheda.

MR. SEXTON

said, he was speaking now of the Report of the Commissioners. In every case where the Commissioners had recommended an extension of boundaries their recommendation had been adopted, and in most cases the Parliamentary boundaries had been made coincident with the municipal borough. He would invite the Committee to consider for a moment the remarkable contrast in the treatment of the Irish and the treatment of the English and Scotch constituencies in a similar position. Take the case of Birmingham. In the case 'of Birmingham, the Boundary Commissioners had added four areas—three of them, judging from the groves and hills and dales they contained, being practically rural, and all of them outside the municipal boundary. Was he right in saying that that was the case? [Sir CHARLES W. DILKE: No!] He (Mr. Sexton) had carefully examined the map, and he was of opinion that the areas proposed to be included within the Parliamentary borough were outside the municipal borough of Birmingham. Birmingham already contained 436,000 people; they proposed to add 36,000 more to it under the Bill, and to give seven Members to it; but if Birmingham were treated as Dublin was treated, it would only be entitled to six. In the borough of Bradford, with a population of 180,000, they had extended the Parliamentary boundaries, so as to make them coincident with those of the municipality. By those means they had added 4,000, making the population 184,000, and they proposed to give to Bradford three Members. If they had treated Bradford in the same way as Dublin, that town would only be entitled to two. Then, again, there was the case of Bristol, with a population of 206,000. He asked the right hon. Baronet's attention to this case. The right hon. Gentleman appeared to doubt whether the Parliamentary borough of Birmingham had extended beyond the municipality.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE

said, it had not; the hon. Member was labouring under a misapprehension. There was a population of 36,000 outside the municipal boundary.

MR. SEXTON

said, he was glad of that admission; 36,000 people outside the municipal borough had been added to the Parliamentary borough of Birmingham, in order to entitle it to seven Members, and they had been added to a borough that already had a population of 400,000 within its boundaries, and a borough which had a co-extensive boundary for municipal and Parliamentary purposes. In that case the Government proposed to go outside the municipality and to add 36,000 more, in order to entitle Birmingham to seven Members. In Ireland they altogether disregarded the recommendations of a Commission to extend the municipal boundaries, although in England, where a municipality was already extended as far as it could be, they went outside and took in an additional area. All he would say was that the additional areas added to Birmingham were in no respect urban. His point, however, was that the same treatment was not extended to Ireland, and that in Dublin the Government refused even to extend the municipal boundary to its natural limits; whereas in England they first extended the municipal boundary as far as it could go, and then carried the Parliamentary boundary beyond it. He would now take the case of Bristol. The Commissioners reported that in Bristol, before they set to work upon it, the boundaries of the borough and of the municipality were the same. Then, what had they done to it? The Parliamentary boundary of the borough was already extended as far as the municipality; but they had now actually added to Bristol three Local Government districts and part of a parish—having added to the borough a district as large as the old municipality itself. They had doubled, under the Bill, the size of the Parliamentary borough of Bristol, and they had added to it a population of 47,000. In the case of Dublin he only asked them to add 40,000, and they refused. By the addition to Bristol they were enabled to give to that city four Representatives, but if they had treated Bristol as they had treated Dublin it would only have been entitled to three. And now he would turn to the case of Liverpool. In Liverpool, before the Bill was drafted, the borough and the municipality had the same boundaries. They contained 550,000 people. What did the Government do under their Bill? Although they had already extended the borough to the utmost verge of the municipality, they actually added to Liverpool by the Bill so much of two great and populous parishes as was not already included within the boundary. To the population of 550,000 they added 48,000 more, and they gave to that 600,000 nine Representatives; whereas, if Liverpool had been treated in the same way as Dublin, it would only have been entitled to eight. The Parliamentary borough of Manchester had already, before the introduction of this Bill, had its borough boundaries extended beyond the municipality. What did the present Bill do? It added to J the city two Local Government Board districts containing a population of 30,000, and to the borough thus created they proposed to give six Members; whereas, if they had treated it as they had treated Dublin, it would only have been entitled to five. The course pursued in regard to Edinburgh and Glasgow was precisely similar. In each case large additions had been made to the Parliamentary boundaries, in order to make them coincident with the municipal boundaries. The Government added 20,000 people to Glasgow, which would entitle it to seven Members instead of six, and they had in the same way increased the boundaries of Edinburgh, in order to entitle that city to additional representation. Then, he maintained that, on every ground of comparison, whether they contrasted Dublin with the other boroughs in Ireland, or with the Irish counties, or with the great boroughs of England and Scotland, the City of Dublin was clearly entitled to another Member, and it was entitled, if its boundaries were properly extended, not only to five, but to six Representatives. He was, however, content to rest his demand upon five. He felt that that claim was supported by the vital principle of the Bill; and he believed that, in moving that the representation of Dublin be increased from four Members to five, he was making a demand which could not be refused except by a gross and palpable violation, in the case of Ireland, of the principle which had been freely applied to every other great city of the Three Kingdoms, and of the principle which the Government professed to rely on as the fundamental principle of the Bill. He therefore submitted the Amendment with the utmost confidence to the Committee.

Amendment proposed, In page 15, column 2, line 41, after the word "Dublin," to leave out the word "four," and insert the word"five,"—{Mr. Sexton,) —instead thereof.

Question proposed, "That the word 'four' stand part of the Schedule."

SIR CHAELES W. DILKE

said, he had no fault to find on that occasion with the speech of the hon. Member, because the hon. Member had frankly met and faced the difficulties of the situation, instead, as he and others had done in former instances, of dealing only with general statements. On this occasion the hon. Member had fairly stated from what quarter he sought to take the seat which the acceptance of his Amendment would cost, and he had put before the Committee the claims of the City of Dublin as against those of the county of Tyrone. The hon. Member must excuse him if he reminded him once more of a remark which he (Sir Charles W. Dilke) had made once or twice before—namely, that the Irish Members generally were treading on dangerous ground when they proposed to treat the Irish constituencies in any degree exceptionally, because the retention of 103 Members for Ireland had been defended by the Government, and had been accepted by the House generally in the earlier stages of the Bill, on account of the desirability of having an even scale as between the three countries. The hon. Member had spoken of the Irish borough scale and Irish borough averages as if they were standing by themselves; but they were not. They were an essential portion of a scale which applied to the whole of the Three Kingdoms. The hon. Member had proposed to the Committee to extend the boundaries of Dublin by adding, so far as he could make out from the Amendment which the hon. Member had placed on the Paper, a population of about 44,000 people. The hon. Member said the area he proposed to add was 4,000 acres. He (Sir Charles W. Dilke) made it very much more than that.

MR. SEXTON

How much more?

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE

said, he made it nearly 8,000 acres; but he would not quarrel with the hon. Member on that score.

MR. SEXTON

said, the total area of Dublin and of the county which he proposed to include within the boundaries of the borough was between 8,000 and 9,000 acres.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE

said, that was a point upon which he could not agree with the hon. Member; but it was not a point that was of particular importance in the matter. The only difference would be that the proportion which now existed in the borough and county area would be altered.

MR. SEXTON

remarked, that, of course, if 4,000 acres were added to the boundaries of the city the area of the county would be so much less.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE

said, the hon. Member seemed to think that Dublin was treated in some way exceptionally; but he could not admit, in the least, that that was the case. Dublin stood, in the scale of representation, in the place in which its population would entitle it to stand. Islington, for instance, was much larger than Dublin, and it had allotted to it, by the Bill, the same number of Members. Dublin, he admitted, was a little high up in the scale; but, of course, if they had a scale with averages, they must have some places above the average, and some places below. Ireland had many seats which were below the average of the towns to which the hon. Member had alluded. If they took the cases much above, and compared them with those that were much below, they might make out instances of apparent hardship; but such instances were inseparable from any proposal to deal with the constituencies as a whole. In proposing to extend the boundaries of Dublin, the hon. Member proposed to make a boundary which, in his (Sir Charles W. Dilke's) opinion, would be of a somewhat irregular and objectionable shape, especially in regard to the inclusion of Kilmainham. He, however, did not propose to argue the question on that ground. The hon. Member had gone through a number of English and Scotch cases, and had contrasted the refusal of the Commissioners to extend the Dublin boundaries with the readiness with which the extension of boundaries had been granted in various English and Scotch constituencies, and in the case of Belfast. He (Sir Charles W. Dilke) had, on several former occasions, told the Committee that the Government had not proceeded upon any uniform plan in regard to the extension of borough boundaries. Each case had been considered separately, and on its merits. For instance, in the case of Glasgow the extension was small, and was only intended to bring the Parliamentary boundary up to the municipal limits. That extension was not made for the purpose of giving additional representation to Glasgow, because Glasgow was rather short of the average number of Mem- bers. The hon. Member for Glasgow, and the people of Glasgow, were desirous of a large extension of the borough boundaries, so that a much larger population might be included than had been included.

MR. SEXTON

remarked, that such an arrangement would have disturbed the representation, so far as population was concerned, of two counties adjoining.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE

said, that, no doubt, that would have been the case. The Government, however, would not have resisted the proposal on the ground of disturbance between county and borough. But when they came to examine it on its own merits, they arrived at the conclusion that the arguments in favour of an extension were not tenable. There was a great objection altogether apart from that of including people outside in the towns. When such an inclusion was made, it was simply for Parliamentary reasons; but in this case it was proposed to be done for municipal purposes. The hon. Member had said nothing about the wishes of the population of the county of Dublin outside the present Parliamentary borough; but he (Sir Charles W. Dilke) fancied, from letters he had received, that there was considerable objection on the part of the people outside to being included within the limits of the City of Dublin. But, no doubt, the feeling in regard to the municipal extension and municipal rates had something to do with that opposition. He assumed that the Corporation of Dublin, as was the case with the Corporation of Glasgow, would be quite willing to say that the enlargement of the Parliamentary borough should be without prejudice to the question of municipal boundaries; but still the people of the suburbs, he fancied, had a great dislike to any proposal for including them in the city. In many of these cases the people living outside disliked, and would greatly resent, the idea of being included within the limits of a city; and that feeling strongly existed, he believed, in the suburbs of the City of Dublin. That was an argument which, in several other cases, had been used before the Committee. There were many cases where they could extend, and bring into the town everything that properly belonged to the town. Such, judging from the maps, and from what he had heard, was the case in Belfast. They could easily extend the limits so as to include everything that properly belonged to Belfast; but it was not so in the case of Dublin. The extensions proposed by the hon. Member would not include within Dublin everything closely connected with and commercially forming part of it. It appeared to him that in Dublin they had to face the same difficulty as that with which they had to deal in Glasgow, in London, and on Tyneside—namely, that they could never get quite to the end—that they could never, by any such extension of boundaries as the Committee was likely to sanction, include the whole urban population, having more or less to do with the life of the town. They had had, in the case of Tyneside, a proposal for the extension of the borough of Newcastle, so as to include the whole urban district; but it had been thought better to deal with the matter by the formation of single-Member county divisions. They had dealt both with Glasgow and Tyneside upon that principle, and he thought not unfairly. With respect to Birmingham, on the extension of the boundaries of which the hon. Gentleman had dwelt, that case would have to be considered under the next Schedule, and the Amendments which had been placed upon the Paper; but when the hon. Member, in a facetious way, spoke of the additions made to Birmingham, being rural, because of the "groves," "dales," "hills," and other romantic names borne by some of those places, he was taking a very fallacious test as to the true character of particular neighbourhoods, as anyone familiar with the Metropolis itself could easily show. In his own constituency (Chelsea) there were several "hills," and "dales," and "groves;" but it could not be argued, from that fact, that the population was rural. The hon. Member had severely criticized a remark of the Boundary Commissioners that the extension of Dublin, and an addition to its number of Members, would affect the representation of the county and of the borough as regarded numbers. The hon. Member said that that was untrue; but he (Sir Charles W. Dilke) would be disposed to say it was perfectly true. He fancied the hon. Member must have misunderstood the sense in which the Commissioners used the phrase. What they meant was that the proposal for the extension of the City of Dublin was made with the view of gaining an additional Member for the city, and that that was shown by the nature of the proposals of the hon. Member himself.

MR. SEXTON

remarked, that Dublin was to have an additional Member already.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE

But not according to the scale.

MR. SEXTON

What scale?

SIR CHAELES W. DILKE

said, he referred to the scale of population which prevailed throughout the United Kingdom. Dublin did not stand in the highest place upon the scale; but was below certain other boroughs. There was, at least, one borough with a larger population than Dublin, to which it was only proposed, by the Bill, to give four Members. He, therefore, maintained that Dublin was fairly treated according to the scale in the Bill. If the hon. Member could show that the Bill proposed to give five Members to any borough smaller than Dublin, it would be a strong argument in favour of his Amendment, and he (Sir Charles W. Dilke) would be satisfied that a mistake had been made. So far, however, was that from being the case, that there was no instance of a borough with a less population than Dublin having over four Members allotted to it.

MR. SEXTON

wished to remind the right hon. Baronet that it was intended to give five Members to Leeds, which had a less population than Dublin would have with its extended boundaries.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE

The hon. Member said "with its extended boundaries;" but the Government went on the boundaries as defined by the Bill. It was impossible to contend that, as the Bill stood, Dublin was unfairly treated. He would admit at once that if they added 42,000 to the population of Dublin, as the hon. Member proposed, that city would be entitled to a fifth Member. That was exactly what the Boundary Commissioners meant when they said that the proposed extension of boundaries would affect the representation of counties and boroughs. The hon. Member proposed that Dublin should have an additional Member, because of the addition of 42,000 population.

MR. SEXTON

said, that what he had stated at the beginning of his speech was that he did not intend to raise the question of the relative representation of the Three Kingdoms. He had said that Dublin must be treated on its own merits.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE

said, that in that case, if the hon. Member desired to separate Ireland from England, he (Sir Charles W. Dilke) must point out again that it was a dangerous thing for the Irish Members to raise the question of the equality of representation between the Three Kingdoms, or to attempt to upset the arrangement by which the Government considered they were justified in retaining 103 seats for Ireland. If they were to upset the even scale, and were to hold that Dublin ought to be represented by a larger number, they would lose all the ground on which they now took their stand for keeping the representation as it was. The hon. Member wanted both to eat his cake and have it. He wanted to keep 103 Members, and yet desired to cut the feet of the Government from under them by establishing an Irish scale which would remove the justification for retaining 103 Members. On all the grounds he had stated, he must ask the Committee to reject the Amendment of the hon. Member, although on this occasion the hon. Member had acted fairly by the Committee in placing before it an alternative.

DR. LYONS

said, that no one felt more constrained than himself, from the circumstances of the case, to vote for the Amendment. He thought there was every justification for it; and it could not be contended that Dublin was not perfectly entitled to five Members. An inquiry had already taken place by a Select Committee into the propriety of extending the boundaries of the City of Dublin. The Commissioners took considerable pains to inquire into the whole subject. In addition to that Committee, there had been a Royal Commission upon the same question, upon which several able and distinguished persons were appointed to inquire into the whole circumstances of the case. One of the Commissioners was Mr. Exham, a gentleman now deceased, but of high character and great ability, and well known to many Members of the House. Another Commissioner was Mr. O'Brien, who filled a distinguished position in Ireland in connection with a most important public Department—namely, the Prisons Board—and whose position pointed him out as a gentleman in whom the public could repose complete confidence. The Commissioners applied themselves, with the greatest possible diligence, to the examination of the subject intrusted to them, and presented a Report. He could not see how the conclusions they arrived at could be successfully contested. They stated that, in their opinion, the extension of the City of Dublin had been too long neglected, and that it ought to be undertaken immediately. That was, no doubt, in the contemplation of the Government of which right hon. Gentlemen opposite were Members, because there were circumstances which showed that the late Government had intended to extend the boundaries. He had spent the greater part of his life in the City of Dublin, and he knew there was nothing more artificial or unsustainable than to attempt to draw a distinction between the City of Dublin and its suburbs. The functions of one were identical with those of the other. There was a continuous line of streets, bearing the same names, running through the Parliamentary borough into the surrounding districts; and the suburbs were, to all intents and purposes, part of the city, and undistinguishable from the Parliamentary borough. There might have been distinctions in former days; but they ought no longer to be tolerated. The identity of the population was the same; persons occupying businesses in the city had their private residences in those outlying townships; and in every respect, so far as the suburban property was concerned, it belonged to what was practically and popularly known as the City of Dublin. He, therefore, contended that the artificial distinction which now existed ought no longer to be maintained; and the day must come, before very long, when it would be universally recognized that such a distinction was altogether untenable. His own opinion was that that day had come. The right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill had stated what amounted in substance to this—that the case of the townships outside the Parliamentary borough of Dublin, although in direct contact with it, had been fully inquired into by the Boundary Commissioners. That was not the case. What had really occurred was this—when the Commissioners found that the population of Dublin, within its present boundaries, was exhausted by the four Members awarded to it by the Bill, they proceeded no further with an inquiry which he (Dr. Lyons) maintained they were in a legal sense bound to make—namely, what should really be the proper limits and requirements of the city. He was forced to the conclusion that an artificial limit was laid down in the first instance, and that the Instructions given to the Commissioners had been something to this effect—"You are to give four Members to the City of Dublin; but when you have got a proper number of population for four Members, according to the scale laid down, then you are to go no further with your investigation." An arbitrary line was drawn at that point, and the inquiry was not allowed to proceed further. He believed that such a principle constituted a blot upon the Bill, and that there had been a failure to do justice to the City of Dublin such as to necessitate a reexamination of the whole case. The restriction of four Members placed upon Dublin by no means did justice to the city, according to the scale which the Government had themselves laid down. Why should the City of Dublin be deprived of its fair share of representation? Why should Dublin have four Members only in the face of nine Members for Liverpool, and seven for Glasgow? He certainly hoped that the question would be reconsidered upon the Report. The Committee had already departed from the hard-and-fast line laid down in the Bill in the case of Westminster, the representation of which had been raised from three to four; but, as far as he remembered the figures, the population of Westminster was not nearly as great as the present population of Dublin. Having transgressed the rule in the case of Westminster, and shown that the Government were not adopting a hard-and-fast line, he thought they would act not only unfairly, but illogically, if they continued to apply a hard-and-fast line to Dublin. He trusted that the case of Dublin would be treated as one of the reserved cases for ulterior consideration. The right hon. Baronet who had charge of the Bill a few nights ago said that as far as possible the policy of the measure was to retain the natural boundaries for boroughs; but that contention failed altogether in the case of Dublin, because in that case some most unnatural and artificial boundaries had been created. The Government only proposed to give four Members to Dublin, and had drawn an arbitrary line and prevented further investigation. He contended that the Government ought to re-open the investigation into the boundaries of Dublin for Parliamentary purposes. In the future, Dublin would have to fight many contests in that House; but where would she be with only four Members?

MR. MACMAHON

said, he had listened with attention to the speech of the President of the Local Government Board; but he failed to ascertain how he accounted for the fact that 118,000 of the population of the City and County of Dublin were unrepresented. The City of Dublin contained a population of 273,000, and the county 145,000, making a total population for the city and county of 418,000. The initial average number for one Member was 52,000, which would entitle the county and city to eight Members. The hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton), however, only asked for seven—two for the county, and five for the city. The city, according to its population, was entitled to five seats. The population was 273,000, and five Members would give an average of 55,000 for each seat; and if hon. Members would look over the printed list, they would find that there were numerous seats provided for a less population than 55,000. He hoped the right hon. Baronet would reconsider the matter, and give five Members to the City of Dublin, as proposed by the Amendment. Great discontent existed in the city in regard to the manner in which it had been treated.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

desired to call attention to the extraordinary manner in which the debate had been conducted by the Government. In the first place, the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board had been sitting upon the Treasury Bench absolutely alone during the discussion of this important matter. The Committee were discussing the representation of the chief city of Ireland—its Metropolis; and surely in the discussion of that question they were at least entitled to have Her Majesty's Government represented by more than a single Member. At the end of one of the speeches they had, indeed, been left without a Representative of the Government at all, because the right hon. Gentleman disappeared; and at a breakneck pace, panting and puffing, they saw the right hon. Gentleman the Postmaster General (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) coming in to take part in a discussion not one word of which he had heard. He (Mr. O'Connor) ventured to say that such a proceeding was neither decorous nor respectful towards the Irish Members. He did not think it was difficult to answer the arguments of the President of the Local Government Board. He had no wish to be personally disrespectful to the right hon. Gentleman; but he could not help describing the speech of the right hon. Gentleman as eel-like, because no sooner had the right hon. Gentleman been answered in one argument than he immediately, with pantomimic velocity, put forward another, leaving the Committee in some bewilderment as to the real ground of his opposition. His hon. Friend the Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) had pointed out that if Dublin were treated as Leeds was in the Bill it would be entitled to additional representation. "Oh dear no," said the right hon. Gentleman, "that is not so." His hon. Friend immediately pointed out that it would be so if the boundaries of Dublin were increased. Whereupon the right hon. Gentleman said that he was not talking about any increase of boundaries, although that was the whole gravamen of the arguments of the hon. Member for Sligo. He (Mr. O'Connor) wished to call the attention of the Committee to the different manner in which London and the Irish constituencies were treated. Last night they were discussing the representation of Westminster, and the right hon. Gentleman swallowed the proposals of his own Bill, and stated that he was going to give another Member to Westminster. The result of adding one Member would be that Westminster would have a Representative for every 59,000 inhabitants; while Dublin, according to the present proposal, would only have one for every 68,000, and one for every 79,000 if the boundaries were extended. He maintained that that was the very reverse of the principle which was supposed to regulate the Bill, and the reverse of the principle on which the attention of the House of Commons was drawn to the Bill when it was first mentioned by the Prime Minister. He referred to the remark of the Prime Minister when the right hon. Gentleman was not speaking upon the Parliamentary Elections (Redistribution) Bill, but upon the Representation of the People Bill, and when he found occasion to give a historic and prospective view of what the Parliamentary Elections (Redistribution) Bill would do. In the sketch which the right hon. Gentleman then gave he said that one of the things to which great attention would have to be paid was the distance of constituencies from the seat of power. The right hon. Gentleman was very much ridiculed for laying down that principle; but it required no argument to show that a constituency which was distant from the political centre of the country fairly demanded larger representation than constituencies which were situated at the centre of political power. Everyone knew that a London constituency, from the nature of things, would be able to bring greater pressure to bear upon the political and Parliamentary decision of the country than a constituency at a remote distance from the political centre. In point of fact, the great complaint which was made in every part of the country with regard to the Metropolis was that the Metropolis exercised an undue influence and pressure upon the Legislature of the country. That was an argument used by the Prime Minister over and over again when fighting his Russo-Turkish Campaign against the late Conservative Government. His argument was that London was "Jingo," and that the country was pacific; but owing to the fact that London was the centre of political gravity, those who were in favour of a "Jingo" policy were able to overthrow the pacific policy of the rest of the country. But, notwithstanding the attitude in this respect which had been assumed by the Prime Minister, they found the opposite principle laid down by the Government now. Westminster—the very constituency in which the Houses of Parliament were situated—was to have one Representative for every 59,000; while Dublin, which was removed physically by 60 miles of sea from Great Britain, and morally and politically by countless millions of miles from the centre of political gravity, was only to have one Representative for every 68,000 population. He maintained that that was a monstrous contradiction of the principles laid down by the Government themselves. What was the answer of the President of the Local Government Board to the arguments of the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton)? His hon. Friend laid down the principle that if Dublin were treated like the English constituencies, it would be entitled to at least one, and probably to two additional Members. To show that that was so, he would take one or two cases. Leeds, according to the present arrangement, with a population of 309,000, would return one Member for every 61,000 population, and would have five Members in all. Sheffield would have five Members for 284,000, which gave the proportion of one Member for every 56,000 population. Thus Leeds would have one for 61,000, Sheffield one for 56,000, while Dublin was only to have one for 68,000. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board had restated one argument which he (Mr. O'Connor) confessed that he was unable to understand. He stated that it was very dangerous to raise the question of the scale of borough representation. Why was it dangerous? The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that if that argument were raised the result would be to show that Ireland was not entitled to retain its present number of 103 seats. The Irish Members were not at all afraid of that argument, and he did not see why they ought to be, when it was clearly shown that Leeds was to have one Member for every 61,000 population, Sheffield one for every 56,000, and Dublin only one for every 68,000. Under such circumstances, the right hon. Gentleman said the Irish Members ought to be afraid of raising the question of the proportion of population to the representation. If Dublin were treated in the same way as Leeds and Sheffield, upon its present population, without any extension of boundaries, it would be clearly entitled to five Members. With the extension of the boundaries which his hon. Friend proposed to carry out, Dublin would be represented by one Member for every 79,000 population, whereas Leeds would have one for every 61,000, and Sheffield one for every 56,000. Nevertheless, the right hon. Gentleman warned them, in the most solemn and portentious manner, that if they raised any objection to the proportion of population to the representation they would be treading very dangerous ground. As to the question of boundaries, why should they not be increased? The right hon. Gentleman suggested that if the boundaries were increased, it might be held by some of the townships that the question whether they were to be included within the municipality or not was prejudged; but it would be very easy for the Corporation of Dublin to give a guarantee that nothing in the Parliamentary boundary should affect the question of municipality. There was one fact to which he wished to call the attention of the Committee, and it was this—that wherever the townships outside a constituency objected to be included in the Parliamentary boundaries in England or Scotland, on the ground that it would prejudice the return afterwards, their representations were thrown over and disregarded. Then why should not these townships be included in the case of Dublin? He would tell the Committee why. Their exclusion from Dublin was intended for the purpose of creating a constituency in the county of Dublin, which was supposed to be hostile to the National Party. It was intended, in reality, to make a certain portion of the county of Dublin a Tory preserve. He had not the slightest objection to the Irish Tories being adequately and properly represented in that House. He would be quite willing that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Dublin University should have all the 33 Members the right hon. and learned Gentleman said the so-called Loyal minority in Ireland was entitled to, provided the National Party were to get as many Irish Members in England and Scotland as they would be entitled to have on the same scale. He did not, however, see the least chance of that. On the contrary, it was all the other way. The President of the Local Government Board and the Boundary Commissioners, acting on the Instructions of the Government, had taken care to reduce to a minimum the representation of the Irish Nationalists, whether situated in Eng- land or in Scotland. The Government refused now to give this additional Member for Dublin, although he quite agreed with the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) that the political complexion of the Member who would be returned was altogether problematical, and could be foretold by nobody. The right hon. Gentleman refused because it would interfere with the arrangement of the Bill, and yet he consented to give an additional Member for Westminster, which would certainly interfere just as much with the arrangement of the Bill. In fact, from beginning to end, by every quibble and caprice of jerrymandering, the framers of the Bill had sought to deprive the Irish Nationalists of adequate representation in that House. He, therefore, felt bound to join his hon. Friend in offering to the proposal of the President of the Local Government Board the most strenuous opposition in his power, so that, even although they were unable to succeed in the object they had in view, they would make their protest so emphatic as to convince the Government that the rights of the Irish people were not to be interfered with with impunity.

MR. MELDON

said, the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) had brought forward the Amendment with so much force and argument that he had left very little, if anything, for his Friends to say in support of it. He (Mr. Meldon) had listened with attention to the objections which had been urged by the right hon. Baronet in charge of the Bill, and he must say that, with one exception, the speech of the hon. Member for Sligo had been left entirely unanswered. The only exception was, that on the scale fixing the number of population for a borough in the United Kingdom, and giving 103 Members to be divided upon that scale for Ireland, it was impossible to give a fifth Member to Dublin. That was the only argument adduced by the right hon, Baronet in justification of keeping the Bill as it stood. But the Government had failed to adduce, either now or at any other time, any reason whatever why any weight should be attached to this argument. If the Irish seats were now proposed to be fixed at 103, and it could be urged that that was a larger proportion than Ireland was entitled to, the argument of the right hon. Baronet might have some force in support of a proposal for a reduction of the number; but when once it was conceded that Ireland was to have 103 Members, no force whatever was left in that argument. Therefore, the one reason which had been adduced why there ought not to be 103 Members, distributed according to the principles on which. Members were allocated in England and Scotland, altogether failed; and if there were to be 103 Members, it was clearly demonstrated, and no attempt had been made to establish the contrary, that in Ireland, if the principle of population were to be adopted, Dublin, with its present boundaries, was entitled to an additional Member. Even throwing that argument altogether aside, and adopting the population principle which was followed in fixing the number of Members for the United Kingdom, it was plain that Dublin did not, under the present Bill, receive her fair share of representation. It would be found that in England, when it was sought to give an additional Member to a borough, this principle was invariably acted upon—that an extended boundary was provided which was made to include a sufficient additional population to justify the concession of an additional Member. According to the statement of the right hon. Baronet, the only result of extending the boundaries of the City of Dublin would have been to take away a portion of the county population and give the city the right to another Member. No reason whatever existed why the Boundary Commissioners should not have further extended the boundaries of Dublin, unless it was for the purpose of depriving Dublin of an additional Member. The argument was that the boundaries of Dublin ought not to be extended, and that, in accordance with the scale, it already had its full number of Members. But, unfortunately for that argument, the boundaries had been extended, although only to such an extent as could be done without increasing the number of Members to which the city was entitled according to the scale of the Bill. The Commissioners took in one township, but left out two others. If they had taken in another township the population would have been so increased that an additional Member could not have been refused. Therefore, to his mind, it was perfectly clear that the only object the Boundary Commissioners had in extending the boundaries by taking in the Pembroke district and omitting the Rathmines and the Kilmainham districts, was to add to the city without making it necessary to increase the number of Members to five instead of four. What was the reason alleged for not further extending the boundaries of Dublin? It was that the population, living outside the boundaries, had no desire to be taken in. Now, he certainly had not heard any such reason assigned, and he did not believe there was any considerable number of persons in Dublin, or in the suburbs, who desired to leave the boundaries as they were. The right hon. Baronet said he had received letters from certain persons who said they objected to any proposal for extending the boundaries; but, notwithstanding such an objection, the boundarips had been extended so as to include the township of Pembroke, which, as compared with Rathmines, was certainly by far the most rural district of the two. The district taken in by the Commissioners was a district composed of villa residences, and was far more rural than the districts which had been excluded. There was not a single part of it which could be properly designated as a street. But what was the case in regard to Rathmines? There, they had a continuous row of streets—one called Upper, and the other Lower—and disconnected simply by a bridge. There was a large number of continuous shops; and so far as its urban character was concerned, of all the townships it was possible to include the one selected was the one which, upon every ground, ought to have been left out. He failed to see, however, what use there was in arguing the matter when the Government distinctly told the Committee that they would make no alteration. There was practical unanimity among the Irish Members upon the question. He knew that in Dublin the people were entirely unanimous, and it was unintelligible to them why on earth the township of Pembroke should have been included and the other townships left out. To his mind it was as clear as the sun at noonday that the Commissioners had instructions, fur some reason or other, to extend the boundaries of Dublin so as to limit the number of Members to four, and not to justify an increase to five. That was the only intelligible way of explaining what had been done, and the refusal, now, of the Government to make any alteration in their proposals, although none of them knew anything about the locality or the wishes of the people of Dublin, proved that they had arrived at a foregone conclusion, and that it was only wasting time to expend further argument upon the subject.

MR. PLUNKET

said, he was not going to follow the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board into the arguments he had presented to the Committee in opposition to the Amendment. Those arguments were founded upon certain ascertained figures; and he (Mr. Plunket) thought that the right hon. Gentleman had shown that, according to the general scheme and plan of the Bill, Dublin, in regard to its representation, had been dealt with on sound principles. He was not going to express any opinion himself as to how many Members he should like his native city to return, if he could depend upon returning what Members he liked. That was not the question he desired to discuss; but he had risen to order to correct an impression which had been loft by the hon. Member who had just sat down in that part of hip speech in which he challenged the statement of the President of the Local Government Board that the opinion in favour of including the outlying townships was not universal. The right hon. Gentleman stated that he had received representations to the effect that the proposal to extend the boundaries did not secure the universal assent which it was supposed to have secured. Now, he (Mr. Plunket), speaking from his own knowledge, was bound to say that not only did that proposal not receive the universal assent of, but that almost the universal opinion in the townships affected was that they ought not to be included in the Parliamentary boundaries of the City of Dublin. He would cite one strong argument in support of that view—namely, that when the matter was being considered by the Boundary Commissioners in Dublin, and a scheme as nearly as possible similar to that which was now proposed was put forward in reference to the township of Rathmines, which was by far the most important of those townships, the township itself thought it worth while to employ the most eminent counsel at the Irish Bar to resist it on their behalf. It was only right that the Committee should be acquainted with that fact, and should know that the almost universal feeling of the townships was opposed to the Amendment, and to the proposal for including them within the Parliamentary boundaries of the City of Dublin.

SIR JOSEPH M'KENNA

said, he knew the City of Dublin perhaps better than he knew the parish of Paddington, in which he resided at the present moment. He, therefore, thought that he was entitled to address the Committee upon the statement which had been made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman who had just addressed the Committee, that the inhabitants of the township of Rathmines objected to be included in the Parliamentary boundary of the City of Dublin. If that were so, it arose from the simple reason that the local taxation of the City of Dublin amounted to something like 10s. in the pound on the valuation, and the inhabitants of the outlying townships were simply afraid that one of the consequences of being included within the Parliamentary limits of the city would be that hereafter they would be compelled to contribute in a similar proportion to the local taxation. He thought the Committee was bound to throw that consideration on one side, and unless the townships were able to bring forward some reason quite apart from a sentiment based on their own self-interest—some reason that would commend itself to the common sense of the Committee—this objection, even if it prevailed, should not be accepted for one moment. The hon. and learned Member for Kildare (Mr. Meldon) stated that the township of Pembroke was, comparatively speaking, a rural township. It was a rural township, divided by a canal from the City of Dublin, and divided in the same way that Rathmines was divided from Dublin—by a bridge; but while the one consisted of villa residences, the other was the continuation of a line of streets from Dublin extending over a distance of more than a mile, with houses as close together as in any part of London. Yet this district was absolutely shut out, while the township of Pembroke was included. He hoped that the right hon. Baronet in charge of the Bill, whose conduct of it had won the admiration and approval of hon. Members on both sides of the House, would take this question seriously into consideration before the Report. He was sure that if there was any reason why the township of Rathtnines would object to be included within the City of Dublin, it was only the reason which would be obvious to everyone—that they did not want to pay an additional tax of 4s. in the pound for local rates for the mere privilege of being included within the Parliamentary area. That objection, however, ought only to apply to an extension of the municipality, and not to the extension of the boundaries for Parliamentary purposes. No other intelligible reason could be brought forward to justify the distinction between those townships and the city proper which now existed.

MR. O'BRIEN

said, be was not at all surprised to find that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin(Mr.Plunket)agreed with the right hon. Baronet (Sir Charles W. Dilke) that Dublin had been treated on sound principles. The right hon. and learned Gentleman himself represented a constituency which had been treated so tenderly by the right hon. Baronet that 70,000 persons outside Trinity College had only the same political weight as 2,000 within its walls. He was not at all surprised, therefore, at the view which the right hon. and learned Gentleman had taken of the right hon. Baronet's objection. He bad listened to the right hon. Baronet with a good deal of attention, and it seemed to him that the right hon. Baronet had really left unsaid the only effective thing that could be alleged against the proposal now made—namely, that the mischief was done, and that the whole matter was concluded by an arrangement between the Heads of the Whig and Tory Parties—an arrangement made without the slightest reference to the Representatives of Ireland. For good or evil the Ministry had bound themselves by law that 103 Members was the proper proportion of Members for Ireland, and the only question, therefore, to be settled now was whether those 103 Members had been fairly and equitably distributed. Could anything be more utterly indefensible than the contrast between the measures meted out to Dublin and Belfast? Supposing that Belfast were the capital of Ireland, and supposing that it contained, like Dublin, 273,000 inhabitants, and that with an extension of boundaries it would contain 317,000, as Dublin would have if the recommendations of Exham's Commission were carried out, did anyone mean to suggest that those 817,000 so-called "Loyalists" in Belfast would have been dismissed with four Members? He ventured to say that the Government proposal under such circumstances would not have stopped short at the modest figure of five. The present population of Belfast, even with the addition made to it by the Boundary Commissioners, would only be 221,000. If the rate of increase which, had been going on in Belfast for 10 years before the Census were maintained—and it was perfectly notorious that the population as well as the prosperity of Belfast had been declining instead of growing—but even admitting that it would increase at the rate of 1,300 a-year, it would be a quarter of a century before its population reached the population of even the present restricted borough of Dublin; and half-a-century, if Rathmines and the other townships were thrown in with Dublin, in the same way as the townland of Holywood and the straggling districts around Belfast had been included in the boundaries of that borough. Had the right hon. Baronet given any sort of satisfactory reason why Dublin, as the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) had pointed out, should be cramped and mutilated within an unnatural boundary line, while Belfast received its full and natural development? He believed that the only reason that would for a moment hold water was that the population of the suburbs of Belfast was of the same politics as the dominant Party of Belfast, while the population of Rathmines was notoriously a nest of Tories; and it was supposed that there would be more likelihood of securing a Tory seat by leaving them out, and keeping them as a carefully arranged Tory preserve where they were, rather than adding them to the population of the city. As had been pointed out by several hon. Members, Rathmines was really a continuation of the streets of Dublin. The line of demarcation between Rathmines and Dublin was simply artificial, and not half as wide as the division between the two banks of the pond in St. James's Park, nor half the width of the Chamber in which they were then assembled, Although the long and straggling suburbs of Belfast were taken in order to make a fourth seat for the borough, this compact portion of the City of Dublin was cut off in order to preserve a Tory seat for the county. The matter was one which, in his opinion, would not bear a moment's argument. Even with the population which was now proposed to be added to Belfast, the population of that town would still be 50,000 under that of the present borough of Dublin; and what the Committee were really asked by the right hon. Baronet to do was to say that 55,000 persons in Belfast, because they were Orangemen, and had certain political views, were entitled to equal electoral power with 68,000 Nationalists in the capital of the country. He confessed that he looked in vain for any sort of explanation of that most galling and unfair contrast which had been drawn between Belfast and the capital of the country. If Belfast excelled Dublin in commercial greatness, or if it could be pointed to as a great centre of enlightenment and of intelligence, he could understand the favour shown to it. But he did not think its warmest advocate in that House would point to Belfast as a place to which such a distinction should be applied. It was a place which had never to this day admitted a Roman Catholic into its Corporation, and only recently it had exhibited its liberality by rioting and breaking convent windows. His hon. Friend the Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) had dealt with the question of where they were to find the additional Member; and he confessed that Trinity College was as much over-represented as the City of Dublin was under-represented by the Bill. But Trinity College was defended upon the same principle which had been put forward in defence of the extension of the boundaries of Belfast, and the refusal to extend those to Dublin—namely, the principle of keeping up and maintaining the contrast which was observed in the treatment of the so-called Loyalists and the Nationalists of Ireland. One of the secrets of the failure to govern Ireland had been that Her Majesty's Government never gave a thing without crooking it. They could not make the concession of the new franchise to Ireland without making it as ungraciously and grudg- ingly as was possible. He would not go into the question of the interesting tricks the Boundary Commissioners had applied, even with regard to the four seats given to Dublin. The Committee would have an opportunity of discussing that question hereafter; but even if the Government should succeed, by their present daring course of procedure, in depriving the Irish Party of full representation in Dublin, and in cutting the representation down even from five to three, he thought that, from their own point of view, they would find the achievement dearly purchased by leaving in the minds of the people of Dublin and of Ireland a feeling of soreness and injustice.

SIR CHAELES W. DILKE

said, that several Members, and especially the last speaker, had referred to a contrast between the treatment accorded to Belfast and to the City of Dublin under the present Bill. He, therefore, thought it would be as well to give the Committee some facts, in order to show that there were many large boroughs where the averages were higher than in Dublin, and which, according to the arguments of hon. Members, must be even worse treated. There were the cases of Bat-tersea and Islington.

MR. SEXTON

asked the right hon. Gentleman to cite the case of some four-Member constituency.

SIR CHAELES W. DILKE

said, he had already given several four-Member boroughs. The hon. Member spoke of the unfairness of giving Dublin one Member for every 68,000 population.

MR. O'BRIEN

As contrasted with one Member for every 55,000 in the borough of Belfast.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE

said, that was picking out the lowest places that were in the scale, and, as he had already pointed out, every scale must have its high and low places. He had already mentioned Newcastle-on-Tyne, the great city of Manchester, Kensington, Mary-lebone, Oldham, and several of the Metropolitan Divisions.

MR. SEXTON

asked how many Members it was proposed to give to those boroughs?

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE

said, the number varied. Some had two, some three, and others four; but they were all in the scale. All he wished to show was that there were worse cases than that of Dublin. Taking his own constituency—the parish of Kensington—which was increasing far more rapidly than the City of Dublin, according to the Census of 1881 it had a population of between 81,000 and 82,000, and it was only to have one Member. The hon. and learned Member for Kildare (Mr. Meldon) was altogether wrong in saying that the Commissioners had extended the boundaries of Dublin so as to include the township of Pembroke. That was not so. Pembroke was already within the Parliamentary borough of Dublin. The hon. Member for Mallow (Mr. O'Brien) said the secret of the matter, and the real objection of the Government to this proposal, was that the arrangement with the Opposition precluded it; but he might say that the question of the extension of the boundaries of Dublin formed no part whatever of any arrangement.

MR. MAYNE

said, that as the right hon. Baronet had given examples favourable to his own side, he (Mr. Mayne) would mention cases that went the other way. Take the case of Bristol. Bristol, with a population of 206,503, was to have four Members, or one to each 51,625. Then, again, there was the case of Kingston-upon-Hull. Hull had a population of 161,519, and the average there was only 40,379. Nottingham was a stronger case still. The population was 111,631, which for three Members gave an average of 37,210 for each Member.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE

said, the hon. Member was quite mistaken. The hon. Member was taking the Census Returns of the population of the Parliamentary borough; but Nottingham had been enormously extended.

MR. MAYNE

continued: It was said that there was an objection on the part of Rathmines to be incorporated with the City of Dublin for Parliamentary purposes. No hon. Member who had spoken had given the Committee the real reason why the inhabitants of the township of Rathmines objected to row in the same boat with Dublin for Parliamentary purposes. The right hon. Baronet had assigned no reason whatever, because, probably, he was not aware of any; but he (Mr. Mayne) was pretty sure that the right hon. Gentleman's correspondents from Rathmines to whom he had alluded had carefully kept the real rea- son why that township objected away from him. It was certainly no part of the policy of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Plunket), although he knew the reason very well, to allow the Committee to become acquainted with it. The reason was this—it had nothing to do with taxes or anything of that kind, but, as the Committee had already heard from more than one hon. Member, Rathmines was virtually part of the City of Dublin. The division between them was merely an artificial one, consisting of a narrow canal; and in regard to some of the streets, the upper portion was in Dublin and the lower part in Rathmines, just outside the municipal boundary. All the inhabitants of Rathmines were entitled to the Parliamentary franchise; but the position they occupied enabled them to enjoy practically a double voting power, and that was the secret of the opposition of the inhabitants of Rathmines to the proposal to transfer them to the City of Dublin. Nearly 90 per cent of the male adult population of Rathmines and of the surrounding neighbourhood were citizens of Dublin—that was to say, that they had warehouses in the city where they carried on their business in the daytime, being rated for those places and entitled to vote in the borough elections, while they resided in Rathmines or the neighbourhood, and, being rated for their residences there, enjoyed a second vote for the county. Now, if Rathmines were added to Dublin, even if Dublin were to get a fifth Member in consequence of the extension of the boundaries, these gentlemen would only be able to vote once—namely, for the city. That was the gravamen of the whole case. It was only natural and quite reasonable, from their point of view, that they should object to lose the privilege they now enjoyed—namely, that of a double voting power. Whenever a General Election occurred they were enabled to vote within the city as urban voters and without the city as rural voters. It was patent that a considerable number of gentlemen now voting outside the city, as rural voters, if transferred in future to the city would interfere materially with the voting power of the county of Dublin. Those gentlemen were perfectly acquainted with the favourable position in which they now stood, and, indeed, they had made an extraordinary request to the Boundary Commissioners when they were sitting in Dublin. They claimed not only to be left as they were, as voters for the county, but they said—"We are an urban population, although outside the city, and we think that in addition to the votes we already possess within the city, as county voters in the county there ought to be another seat given to us as an urban district. "When his hon. Friend the Member for Mallow (Mr. O'Brien) said that the bargain was made and sealed, and that no alteration would be permitted, the right hon. Baronet the President of the Local Government Board (Sir Charles W. Dilke) shook his head; but it seemed to him that he was justified in dissenting from the negative gesture which the right hon. Baronet made. If this question was still open, he said that some other and a much stronger case ought, to be made out for the proposed representation of the City of Dublin than had been made out up to the present time. The right hon. Baronet had only given two reasons why the present state of things had been permitted to remain. One of them was the objection of the surrounding townships to being included in the Parliamentary borough; the other reason was indeed an extraordinary one, and if the right hon. Baronet had known Dublin half as well as hon. Members on those Benches, he believed he would not have made use of it. The right hon. Baronet said it would be introducing a most inconvenient precedent if the Parliamentary boundaries were extended in the manner recommended by the Royal Commission which sat to consider this subject; but let the right hon. Baronet look into the facts of the case. The present Parliamentary borough of the City of Dublin, for some extraordinary reason which he had never heard explained, went all the way down to the Cross of Black Rock and the sea coast. Indeed, the Cross of Black Pock was nearly two miles further than Path-mines, so that if in the past it had been thought proper to extend the boundaries to the centre of Black Pock township, it was a sufficient reason for including now the populations of Rathmines and Kil-mainham. He regretted that there was no chance of a further opportunity presenting itself for the consideration of the question, because he felt sure that the right hon. Baronet, on further consideration, would see that the reasons which had been furnished by him in respect of the proposed boundaries, and which he invited the House of Commons to accept, were not such as the Committee ought to follow.

MR. WILLIAM REDMOND

said, here was a case in which Irish Members were all practically agreed upon a certain question with reference to the City of Dublin, and, instead of taking into consideration the opinions of the majority of the Irish Members upon a purely Irish question, the right hon. Baronet the President of the Local Government Board got up and gave his decision without giving any heed to the expressions of opinion which he had received from Irish Members on both sides of the House. Throughout the discussions on this Bill the Government had treated Ireland unfairly, and in every place where it was possible they had so arranged the boundaries as to secure the greatest possible degree of representation for the miserable Orange hierarchy in Ireland which now, with the assistance of an Army, held Ireland for the British Crown. But looking at all that had taken place throughout these discussions, he did not think there had ever been a case of more clear injustice than the case with reference to the City of Dublin. Here were two suburban districts of Dublin excluded from the city boundaries for some unknown reason—Kilmainham and Rathmines—both of which, as had been abundantly pointed out, were practically part and parcel of the City of Dublin. And yet, in spite of the fact that a great majority of the citizens of Dublin were anxious to have their Parliamentary boundaries settled in a compact way which would embrace the whole city, in spite of the fact that the majority of the Irish Members of all shades of opinion in that House were in favour of the inclosure within the boundaries of those two districts, the right hon. Baronet in charge of the Bill would not accede to their demands. And why? Because it appeared that he had received certain letters from persons in Dublin saying that they would not like to have those two districts brought into the boundaries of the city. The hon. and learned Member for Kildare (Mr. Meldon) said in the course of his very able speech that the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board had received letters from certain parties in Dublin deprecating the idea of including Rathmines and Kilmainham in the boundaries of the City of Dublin. Would the right hon. Baronet be kind enough to inform hon. Members from whom he received those letters, and would he say that the people who wrote them had influence sufficient to counterbalance the influence which was possessed by the majority of the Representatives of Ireland in that House? Certainly to Irish Members it must be considered a matter of extreme humiliation to find that the right hon. Baronet made his decision in accordance with the advice contained in letters from people whose names were unknown, and that he paid no attention whatever to the demands of the Representatives of Ireland in the House of Commons. He maintained that there was a very great deal of injustice in the conduct of the Government in refusing to pay some attention and consideration to the demand which Irish Members had put forward that day. "Well, he was sorry that there was no prospect, as apparently there was none, of the Government giving way to the demand of giving to Dublin an extra Representative; that there was no probability that Dublin would get the five Members to which it was entitled. Still, from every other point of view he was glad that the Government had taken up their present position with regard to this question, because when the news reached Ireland to-morrow morning that Irish Members of all shades of opinion had proved that Dublin wanted and was entitled to have five Members, and that the right hon. Baronet and his Colleagues had paid no attention to the claims of the City of Dublin, the people of Ireland would regard the action of the Government as one further proof of the fact that they had very little to expect in the way of justice from the British Government. It had been pointed out that there would be some difficulties in including in the boundaries of Dublin the two districts of Rathmines and Kilmainhain. No doubt there were difficulties, but they would not be insurmountable difficulties. If an exception could be made in any part of the Bill with regard to Ireland, that exception should be made in the case of the City of Dublin, which, as it had already been pointed out, was the centre of the social and political life of the country. He was perfectly sure that if it were a case of giving to London an extra Member to which it might be entitled, that some other part of England would be made to suffer or made to do without a due measure of representation, in order that the capital of the British Empire should be fully represented. Now, what London was to England, Dublin was to Ireland. London was the centre of the Empire and of Great Britain; Dublin was the centre of Ireland, and Irish Members asked that the capital of Ire-laud should have a fairer and fuller representation. They asked the Government to take from some other district, say, from the county of Tyrone, a Member, and give it to Dublin, in order that the City of Dublin, with its great interests, might have an adequate need of representation. It was an extraordinary statement, as coming from the right hon. Baronet, that in fixing the boundaries of electoral districts in Ireland, care had been taken that those districts should be fixed on the principle of the arrangements made as to England and Scotland. Now, he contended that they were entitled to have the electoral districts in Ireland fixed with respect to Irish circumstances and requirements alone, and without any reference to the circumstances or requirements of England and Scotland at all. The Government might mix up England and Scotland as much as they pleased in this matter of boundaries; but in fixing the boundaries in Ireland, he repeated that regard ought not to be had to circumstances which might exist in England and Scotland. Unfortunately, the Government had not acted in this way, and accordingly Orange boundaries had been drawn in Ireland, and Members had been given to certain places on arrangements made in England and Scotland. Ireland was a separate country from Great Britain, and as a separate country, and inhabited by a population totally different from that of England and Scotland, he contended that it ought to have had a Redistribution Bill all to itself. But it was not to be wondered at that in this respect, as well as in other respects, the Parliamentary Elections (Redistribution) Bill was unsatis- factory to the people of Ireland. He understood that before the Bill was drawn up, Her Majesty's Government had given sufficient consideration to the interests of Scotland by inviting Scotch Members to meet them in conference and discuss the scheme of the Bill. He did not know whether that was the fact; but certainly, if it were, it was the most extraordinary thing, that in these matters relating to everything that concerned Ireland, neither Her Majesty's Government nor right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Opposition Bench had the common fairness, or the common politeness, to consult even one Member for Ireland in respect of the redistribution of seats. The Government were going to redistribute the electoral divisions in England and Scotland, and they very properly consulted the wishes of English and Scotch Members; but although they had done so, they had not acted in the same way with regard to the wishes of Irish Members. He supposed the Government regarded Irish Members as mere nonentities, or possibly irresponsible persons; at any rate, they did not extend to Irish Representatives that justice which they had extended to Scotch Members. Under these circumstances, he said that they had in Ireland, from the beginning to the end of the Parliamentary Elections (Redistribution) Bill, every cause for complaint. As he had said, justice was being done to the City of London; but Dublin was not to have adequate representation in that House. But although there was no possibility of getting this question settled in accordance with the wishes of Irish Representatives, he was glad, as he had stated before, that the Government was so stubborn, because their stubborness would prove to the people of Ireland that, whether in respect of redistribution or other legislation, they had nothing to expect in the shape of consideration from English Members in that House.

MR. KENNY

said, the right hon. Baronet the President of the Local Government Board had argued in this case that there were certain places in England, which he named, much more unfavourably treated than the City of Dublin, and he had pointed to two instances in which the boundaries had been extended and additional Members given. The Government had given two Members to the City of Dublin; but they refused to extend the boundaries, and therefore he said that the contrast made by the right hon. Gentleman was utterly unfair. Hon. Members on those Benches wanted the Government to extend exactly similar treatment to Dublin as they had done to other boroughs in the United Kingdom. They wished it to have its fair chance as compared with other places, and it had been pointed out that by extending the boundaries, and adding one more Member, a condition of things would be brought about which would leave Dublin fairly represented, as having one Member to every 63,000 of the population, and that would still leave it to compare most unfavourably with many English and Scotch constituencies. Now, in the case of the City of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, the position of which was almost perfectly analogous to the position of the City of Dublin, it would be found that it had had two Members added to its former representation, and that the population was only 236,000, or 40,000 less than the population of Dublin, which city was only to have the same number of Members. Now, if they added to that portion of the suburban district of Dublin the district which Irish Members asked should be added, and retained the present proportion of Members, they would have a representation in the proportion of 79,000 people to each Member, while, if they added one Member, they gave something like a fair proportion. As far as England was concerned, it was only the case of one or two Metropolitan boroughs which could be cited as an unfair and unjust arrangement. There was another point to which he desired to refer in connection with the refusal of the Government to listen to the request of Irish Members. Their proposal extended to, and would meet, an anomaly, and it would put an end to the inconsistency which had been occasioned by the Boundary Commissioners. The Instructions to the Boundary Commissioners were that, as far as possible, all suburban districts should be included in one constituency. Irish Members desired to add to the City of Dublin certain outlying suburban districts; but at the present time, under the provisions of the Bill as it stood, the Government divided those suburban districts into two separate divisions. Another point which the right hon. Baronet put forward, and upon which the changes had been rung by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Plunket) was that the people of Rathmines objected to Parliamentary consolidation with the City of Dublin, and the right hon. Gentleman argued that they objected because there was such a great difference in the relative taxation as between the City of Dublin governed by the Corporation of Dublin and the outlying districts, and that an injustice would be inflicted on the outlying districts by their being incorporated with the City. But he would point out, what everyone knew, that the difference of taxation referred to was in all probability purely temporary in its character; and, further, that the real objection of some of the inhabitants of Rathmines to Parliamentary consolidation with the City of Dublin, was that they wished to preserve their present double system of voting. Another advantage to be gained by adding Rathmines to the City of Dublin was that the compactness of the constituency would be thereby greatly improved. At the present time the shape of the Parliamentary boundaries of the City of Dublin was something like that of a tennis bat; there was a thin narrow line running out from the City of Dublin which had no connection with it, and which was detached from its natural constituency, the Southern portion of the county of Dublin. If they added Rathmines and the other districts in the same direction with this line, they would add to the constituency a district which would greatly improve its formation. This consolidation and compactness of constituencies had been directly recommended to the Boundary Commissioners, and they had been instructed to effect it wherever it was possible. There was no case more convenient for, or which more clearly demanded the application of, that principle than the case of the City of Dublin; but in this respect the Boundary Commissioners had plainly disobeyed their Instructions. The right hon. Baronet could not defend the position he had taken up logically in any way; he seemed to argue that, as a line had been laid down, there must be no departure from it with regard to the City of Dublin. If the Government and the Opposition distinctly stated that they would not accept any Amendment which might be proposed in Committee on this Bill, he said the sooner the discussion on this stage of the proceedings terminated the better it would be. He thought it would be much more in accordance with strict justice and equity if the Government would accept, in matters of this kind, arguments which they could not logically meet, and thereby afford satisfaction and content to persona who were directly concerned. But if they continued to refuse that just proportion of representation which they laid claim to, it would lead to discontent, and leave this question a source of future agitation, no matter how final the Government might think the present measure would be.

MR. BIGGAR

said, he had listened attentively to the speech of the right hon. Baronet in charge of the Bill, and although he believed that some of his arguments were entitled to a certain amount of consideration, he did not think that the right hon. Baronet had made out a very strong case. There were one or two points with regard to the representation of Ireland which he (Mr. Biggar) thought were entitled to a considerable amount of attention. One was the way in which the Boundary Commissioners were instructed and the way in which they had acted with respect to Dublin and Belfast. In the case of Belfast, they had introduced into the Parliamentary borough a very considerable area which, in fact, could not be fairly called an urban district at all. The place was studded, to a large extent, with detached villas, and had nothing about it which entitled it to be considered part of the town; but in Dublin they refused to admit into the Parliamentary borough districts which were clearly urban in their character. For those reasons he thought the contention of the right hon. Baronet was not sound, and that he ought to give way to the arguments of his hon. Friend the Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton). Another contention of the right hon. Baronet was that there were certain anomalies with regard to the representation of the country as a whole. Of course, that was perfectly well known; but, on the other hand, he (Mr. Biggar) contended that it was the duty of the Committee, as far as possible, to make the redistribution of political power as nearly equal as possible. It was very clear that Belfast had a greater representation than Dublin had; but Dublin was the capital of the country, the place where the chief professional men resided, and where the educational establishments of the country were situated to a larger extent than any other Provincial town, and therefore, from that point of view, Dublin, he said, was very much worse treated than it should have been. Seeing that Dublin was a place of much more real importance than any other part of Ireland, he contended that the Government ought to deal with it as they had just done with Westminster—that was to say, they should give it another Member at the expense of some over-represented constituency. They could take it away from the county, which was rather over-represented according to the present arrangement, the population being under 200,000. He thought the Government should give way, and agree to the Amendment.

MR. GRAY

said, that most extreme discontent had been caused by the proposed arrangement with reference to the representation of the City of Dublin, and, as he did not understand from the speech of the right hon. Baronet who had charge of the Bill that this was a question upon which the Government were absolutely bound by their compact, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would take it into his serious consideration. Under the scheme, no doubt un-authenticated, but never repudiated by the Government, which was published in The Standard as the draft scheme, it was proposed not to give the same number of Members to Dublin and Belfast, but to give Dublin twice as many Members as Belfast; but after consideration, and probably consultation with the Representatives on the other side of the House, the Government, in their matured scheme, were found giving an equal number of Members to Belfast and Dublin. The discrepancy was so enormous that it was only by a device that it could be defended for one moment. The device was to extend the boundaries of Belfast, as recommended by the Exham Commission which sat a couple of years before, and to refuse to extend the boundaries of Dublin as recommended by the same Commission. The Boundary Commissioners in their Report gave as their reason for the repudiation of the recommended extension in the case of Dublin, that legislation had not followed that recommendation. But legislation had no more followed in the case of Belfast than in the case of Dublin, and the argument was, therefore, as good in the one case as it was in the other; and if legislation did not follow the recommendations of the Royal Commission, who, he would like to know, was to blame? The Government had been appealed to again and again to adopt the recommendations of their own Commission, and to act on them. Questions had been put in that House; Motions had been made, and deputations had waited on the Head of the Irish Government on the subject; but all of no avail. It was out of the power of the Local Authorities to carry out the recommendations of the Commission. All that the Commission did was to dislocate all local arrangements and induce Dublin to hang up its reform pending the adoption of the recommendations of the Commission—to leave Dublin to stew in its own gravy, waiting for the Government to carry out the recommendations of the Commission. And now they were told that because the Government did not do its duty in one respect it was a good excuse for not doing its duty in another. He did not know whether the right hon. Gentleman was well acquainted with Dublin; but anyone who had ever taken an active interest in this matter, and was fairly well acquainted with Dublin, would know that Rathmines was absolutely a continuous portion of the city—that a continuous street ran into it, and that there was no real distinction between Rathmines and the city proper. In Dublin they had this extraordinary state of things, that while the borough extended in one direction far away into the rural districts, in another its artificial boundary shut out a portion of the city. The only argument the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board had addressed to the Committee in favour of the retention of the present extraordinary boundaries was that certain persons in Rathmines had written to him objecting to the proposed absorption of the township. He (Mr. Gray) was not aware that in any other case the views of individual residents had guided the policy of the Go- vernment. He had been under the impression that general principles had been laid down, and that the Government had made up their minds to follow them. No doubt, many private individuals had made representations to the Government in regard to their constituencies or other districts affected by the Bill; but he did not know that they had paid any particular attention to such representations. Now, if the present scheme, which was most imperfect and unfair, were adopted, Dublin would have no chance of fair representation for many years to come. He himself did not regard the matter from a political standpoint. He did not think it would affect the political Parties one way or the other. He did not think it would give a seat to the Home Rule Party or take one away from the opposite Party; but he knew that on the fortunes of the municipality and the general community in Dublin it would exercise a very great effect. They were now maintaining an artificial division between one portion of the city and another portion. That division would have effects more far-reaching than concerned Parliamentary representation—it would establish a distinction in municipal affairs and in social affairs, and would keep up a rivalry between persons whose interests ought to be identical, and who ought to work together. To say for a moment that because a certain number of persons in Rathmines who under the existing system enjoyed the unfair privilege of two votes—one for the city and one for the county—whilst some of them possessed old corrupt franchises such as the freeman franchise, and voted for parts of the county other than those in which their residences were situated—to say that because of this therefore these people should retain their qualifications in violation of all principles of common sense and of the principles of the Bill itself, was a most preposterous proposition. Dublin, as at present arranged, had, he believed, the largest numbers for each Representative. It was only beaten by Glasgow—which was a case rather to be avoided than followed. They had treated Glasgow as badly as they proposed to treat Dublin. He maintained that the proportion of inhabitants to each Member in Dublin would be still above the average of the United Kingdom, even if the boundary were properly adjusted. He did not wish to detain the Committee any longer. The right hon. Baronet was probably well aware of all the arguments which could be adduced on the question. He would merely add that he did not think they were informed, when the Commission was appointed, that it was to report in the bald fashion that it had done. Though the Commission had taken a great deal of evidence, and though everyone knowing the situation had been bound to acknowledge that the arguments in favour of extending the boundary were solid and irrefutable, the Commissioners had paid not the slightest heed to the circumstances brought before them; and the Committee, therefore, had no means of knowing whether what the Irish Members asked for was reasonable or unreasonable—that was to say, no means of knowing, of their own personal knowledge, of the facts. All that could be hoped for was that those whose business it was to investigate the matter and to know whether the contention of the Irish Members was a fair one or not would, if they were not bound hand and foot by the compact, give adequate consideration to that contention.

MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHY

said, the Committee would have liked to hear something from the Treasury Bench as to the position taken up by the Government. They had only had a few words from the right hon. Baronet the President of the Local Government Board in answer to the convincing speech of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton), who had made out a case so clear that it was impossible for the Government, with justice, to refuse to act on it. The argument, so far, had been altogether one-sided. All that the right hon. Baronet had said was that some other places had been treated as badly as Dublin; but he had failed to show that in those cases there was as easy a means of remedying the injustice as there was in Dublin. The Irish Members maintained that as a mere matter of justice—if there were no question as to the population and number of Representatives—the proper boundary for Dublin was only to be found by taking in the Rathmines district. If that Rathmines district—which most naturally and properly belonged to Dublin—were taken in, Dublin would then have an unquestionable claim to an addition to her number of Representatives. He supposed the reason why the Committee had heard nothing more from the Government was tolerably plain—at least, he thought public opinion in Ireland would not find it difficult to discover the reason. It would be said that the Government were determined, by some process or other, to rescue a seat in the city or the county of Dublin from the growing opinion of the National side. He doubted whether the Government would find this operation attended with the desired effect. On the contrary, he believed that the course taken by the Government would only create a Stronger feeling and provoke greater energy on behalf of the Nationalist candidates. He expected that the Nationalists would now secure all the Dublin seats.

MR. SEXTON

agreed with the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down as to what would be the effect of the plot arranged between the two Front Benches with regard to Dublin. It would be such as the intriguers little expected. The right hon. Baronet had told them they should not compare Dublin with other parts of Ireland; but he (Mr, Sexton) contended that they had a right to make such a comparison, and that, having their 103 Members in Ireland, they were justified in asking for a fair apportionment. The right hon. Baronet, speaking of extended boundaries, had referred to letters he had received from anonymous writers; in fact, at one time he had considered one part of the case and at another time another, but he had refused at any one time to take into view the whole case. This was the unanimous feeling on the part of the Irish Members, and he (Mr. Sexton) could assure the right hon. Baronet that they condemned and resented the manner in which this question had been dealt with.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

said, he also felt it necessary to protest against the course taken by the right hon. Baronet. He was sure that this debate and the whole discussion and proceedings on this Bill would be a further warning, if any further warning were wanted, as to what Ireland had to expect from the present Ministry and from any Ministry of the same kind. When the Government announced for the first time that Ireland was to retain 103 seats, Mem- bers on the Irish Benches and the Irish people generally thought that at last they had received from the present Ministry a boon which might be taken without suspicion or arrière pensée, and everyone believed that the just claims of Ireland were to receive full, frank, and honest acknowledgment from the Government. But what had occurred? Why the 103 Members, given to them with one hand, were taken from them as far as possible with the other. The concession to Ireland of 103 Members was a sham, a delusion, and a snare. The eyes of the Irish Members, if they had been closed for some time, were now open, and they could see what an utter sham was this concession on the part of the Government. By every trick, device, and juggle which could suggest itself to the ingenious mind of man, this so-called "concession" had been destroyed, by filching away from the Irish people their fair share of popular representation in England, Ireland, and Scotland. In Ireland they had a proverb which said that there were three things to be suspected and feared—the first was the stones in Dinan River, the second the dog that did not bark, and the third the smile of the Sassenach. He would venture to add a fourth—namely, an Irish reform from an English Liberal Government.

SIR PATRICK O'BRIEN

said, he thought the Irish Members had rather had "the smile of the Sassenach" in their favour in this Bill. He, certainly, as one person in the House, must thank the Government for having given Ireland the 103 Members to which the hon. Member (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) had alluded. He was not "speaking to the country." He was merely addressing to the Committee a few observations in reference to hon. Gentlemen opposite. The hon. Gentleman who had just spoken had a world-wide reputation. His words were winged, and went far beyond the House; therefore, it was easy to understand the wide range that his observations took. Without going into the general question of the franchise, he (Sir Patrick O'Brien) felt, probably more deeply than the hon. Member who had preceded him, how important this matter was to Dublin, and how strongly the Motion of the hon. Member for Sligo (Mr. Sexton) ought to commend itself to every man who had been long connected with that ancient city. In that sense he should certainly be disposed to give the hon. Member his vote. It was too funny, if he might say so, when they had heard talk of Ireland getting 103 Members, and when they found it was more than talk, to find an hon. Gentleman get up here and—wanting a special grievance, without which he could not speak with that platform smartness or command that attention which he could with a grievance—try to manufacture a grievance out of Ireland having 103 Members. He (Sir Patrick O'Brien) did not reply to observations which he knew were only made for electioneering purposes. He had risen to say that the interests of the City of Dublin commended themselves to the attention of all Irishmen, and that, in that sense, he should vote for the Amendment of the hon. Member for Sligo.

MR. LEWIS

said, that any stranger coming into the House that day for the first time, and listening to the speeches of hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway, would believe that a conspiracy had taken place between the two Front Benches in order to deprive Ireland of its fair share of representation in the House. He (Mr. Lewis) would not fight over again battles already decided in the House during the progress of the Bill, or he might have occasion to say something about the manner in which certain portions of the community in Ireland had been treated relatively to the rest of the country. He should not have risen if it had not been to protest against an observation of the hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Gray) to the effect that Dublin City had been treated worse than any other constituency in the United Kingdom. That was not the case. Islington had one Member for every 70,000 inhabitants; Kensington, one for every 81,000; Marylebone, one for every 77,000; whilst Dublin had one for every 68,300. If they went to Manchester they would find that it had one for every 70,600. It must be remembered that this Motion had come from the same hon. Members who had supported the Amendment for retaining a Member for Drogheda and two for Limerick. Unless one could follow the pea under the thimble which was upon the table, it was difficult to know how some of the Irish Members would have the seats bestowed. He believed that nothing would satisfy those Gentlemen but the distribution of the whole of the representation of Ireland over certain constituencies that they believed themselves able to control. Those who had been favoured with a sight of The United Ireland map of the future representation of Ireland would come to the conclusion not only that hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway had nothing to complain of, but that they had appropriated by anticipation and with evident satisfaction the enormous advantages they hoped to secure from the Bill. Those hon. Gentlemen used language in the House to the effect that the Loyal minority in Ireland were likely to have some 20 or 23 Members, and he hoped that prediction was more likely to be realized than the fearful estimate they circulated amongst their friends, as showing how very few out of the Nationalist Party would be returned. The map to which he referred bad been prepared, of course, to show how loyal those hon. Members had been to their friends as against the desperate Tories and Whigs to be found in the North of Ireland; but when they came to that House they said—"Do not be guided by this map that we have prepared, but by our professions here, and we say the Loyal Party will be so over-represented that this Bill is nothing less than a farce—a delusion and a fraud." He thought the Committee was entitled to judge those Gentlemen by their acts when they were at home—when they circulated for their own glorification a map—[Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR: Who circulated?] He (Mr. Lewis) thought United Ireland was a representative journal, and that at least one hon. Gentleman below the Gangway knew something about it. At any rate, it was an organ which those hon. Gentlemen were very much disposed to uphold and stand by. He preferred to judge the opinions of those Members by the representations there made; and, in answer to the wail they had heard from below the Gangway to the effect that the Nationalist Party had been defrauded of their fair share of the 103 Members, he submitted the estimate of United Ireland, and maintained that the Loyalists ought to be the parties to complain rather than the Nationalists.

MR. CALLAN

said, the hon. Gentleman had spoken of The United Ireland map showing the gains to the Nationalist Party under the Bill; but the hon. Member had forgotten to mention that if the Parliamentary Elections (Redistribution) Bill were not before the House at all, the Nationalist gain would be much larger. One advantage he (Mr. Callan) looked forward to was, that under the enlarged franchise, when Irish boroughs or counties wanted a Member, they would go to Irish gentlemen, and not to practitioners in the London Bankruptcy Court.

Question put.

The Committee divided:—Ayes 76; Noes 32: Majority 44.—(Div. List, No. 77.)

Schedule agreed to.