TENANTS' RELIEF (IRELAND) BILL.

HC Deb 20 September 1886 vol 309 cc984-1073

(Mr. Parnell, Mr. Sexton, Mr. Dillon, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, Mr. Pinkerton, Mr. Mahony.)

[BILL 47.] SECOND READING.

[FIRST NIGHT.]

Order for Second Reading read.

MR. PARNELL (Cork)

It has been frequently stated, Sir, that an unmistakable mandate was conveyed by the result of the General Election against the concession of self-government to Ireland. I desire to take the liberty of saying that, in my judgment, another and still more unmistakable mandate was also conveyed by the result of the General Election, and that was a mandate to the House of Commons that they should show themselves equally willing and equally able to provide for the wants of Ireland, and to redress her grievances as her own Parliament would do. I cannot think, Sir, that any argument drawn from the lateness of this Session—in view of the fact that a House has been returned of Members many of whom are fresh, most of whom are vigorous and young, and in view of the fact that the House has only been met together for a short period of six weeks since its election—ought to cause the House to feel that it has had too much or too hard work to do, and is entitled to a holiday immediately, especially if I can substantiate and make good my case that a state of urgency exists in Ireland with regard to the relations between the landlords and the tenants of that country. Nothing was more remarkable, no argument was stronger than those arguments which were addressed to the different constituencies by Members of the Liberal Party who described themselves as Liberal Unionists, in which they affirmed their belief that England was both able and willing to redress Irish grievances and to attend to her wants. I think, Sir, I am right in calling upon Gentlemen who used those arguments to the English constituencies now to consider my case; and if I am able to make a case for immediate interference by the Legislature, then they ought to consider how far they will be justified in asking the oppressed and impoverished Irish tenants to wait for fully five months before even they consider this question. My measure, Sir, is a simple one. It consists of three provisions. The first and the most important of them undoubtedly is—because it is directed to the more immediate and pressing necessity of the case—that which provides that any tenant of a statutory tenancy who has had his rent fixed prior to the last day of the year 1884 may apply to the Land Commission to abate his rent, and that the Land Commission may abate the rent, provided two requirements are satisfied. The first of these requirements is that the tenant shall show—before he is entitled to make the application, before the Land Commission can take any action to relieve him—that he has paid half the rent ordinarily payable in respect of the year 1886, and half of any antecedent arrears thereto. The second requirement necessary in order to entitle the tenant to relief from the Land Commission—the second imperative requirement is, that he shall prove to the satisfaction of the Land Commission that he is unable to pay the remainder of his rent without deprivation—I observe that in some versions of the Bill which have appeared in the Press the word "depreciation" has been substituted for "deprivation"—"of the means necessary for the cultivation and stocking" of the holding. Then, if the Court, after these two requirements have been satisfied, makes an abatement, it is to apply to the rent ordinarily payable in the year 1886, as well as to the antecedent arrears, and also to the rent which would ordinarily become payable in the ensuing year—that is to say, in 1887. The second main provision of the Bill is one providing for the admission at once of all leaseholders to the benefits of the Land Act of 1881—that is to say, of the rent-fixing clauses of the Land Act of 1881—who would, on the expiration of their leases, be entitled to apply to have their rents fixed. There are certain exceptions by which it is intended to provide for the cases of beneficial leases where valuable consideration has been given, and also to except middlemen from the operation of the Act, whether they desire or whether they do not desire to come under its operation. Lastly, the exceptions contained in the 58th section of the Land Act of 1881 are re-enacted. The third and last provision of this Bill is that for suspending all ejectment proceedings—proceedings for the recovery of rent—upon payment of half the rent and arrears due. This Bill, with the exception of the provisions regarding the admission of leaseholders, is a temporary Bill, directed to provide against a temporary emergency. It is intended to meet the depreciation in prices, which we undoubtedly cannot prove will be permanent. We only know, so far, that this depreciation in prices began in 1885, and it has gone on without any signs of recovery—indeed, showing signs to the contrary from that time until now. We cannot prove that this depreciation in prices will be permanent; but we have reason to fear that it will be. As, however, we cannot prove the permanency of this depreciation, we simply ask that the House shall take action for the limit of time which has reference to the rents due in November, and also for the further period which must elapse before the House can take any action on the Report of the Commission appointed by the Government for the purpose of inquiring into this matter. We abstain entirely from prejudging the proposals of the Government, because we do not suggest action beyond the limit of time I have mentioned. But we take the fact of this admitted depreciation in prices since the bulk of the judicial rents were fixed, the damaged harvest, together with the potato blight which has, unhappily, set in to an alarming extent in Ireland; and we propose a remedy for this state of affairs pending the time that the House will be able to take action in the next Session of Parliament on any proposals or Report that may be submitted by the Royal Commission appointed for that purpose. This time cannot be until next November twelvemonth. Parliament is to adjourn now for five months, and it will not meet again until, I suppose, the middle of next February. In the case of the Land Act of 1881 and the Arrears Act of 1882 the remedial action of those measures did not begin to come into effect until the November following the Session in which they were passed—that is to say, the Land Courts were not at work in Ireland until the November of 1881—the Land Act having occupied nearly half of the Session—and the Arrears Act did not come into operation until the November of 1882, having been passed in the Session of that year. Therefore, unless the House accedes to my proposals the tenants and the landlords in Ireland will, practically speaking, be left in statu quo until next November twelvemonth. Another twelve months' rent will then become due, in addition to the six months' rent which will fall due in this November, and which we seek to provide against by this Bill. I take the last day of the year 1884 as the date within which the tenants must have had their rents fixed in order to entitle them to apply for an abatement, because the fall in prices commenced at the beginning of 1885. And although the Land Commission does not appear to commence to recognize that tall in prices until the commencement of 1886, and, justly speaking, the tenants whose rents were fixed in 1885 should also have been admitted to the benefits of this Bill, yet as those tenants are few in number, and as the date coincides with the date of the commencement of the depression, I have thought it better, and perhaps fairer, under all the circumstances of the case, to take that far back date as the date of the limit. Now, it may be objected, in the first place, and probably will be, against my Bill that inability of the tenants to pay their rents will be a matter of exceeding difficulty and most tedious to ascertain. Now, Sir, we have some experience to teach us regarding this matter. It is from the Arrears Act of 1882 that this clause which I am now considering has been very largely taken. Under that Act inability to pay was a necessary condition for the action of the Land Commission, precisely the same body that is chosen by this Bill— Inability to pay without loss of the holding or the means necessary for the cultivation thereof. I have substituted or adapted for those words the expression— Inability to pay without loss of his holding or deprivation of the means necessary for the cultivation and stocking thereof. Now, in the working of the Arrears Act the Court of the Land Commission satisfied itself within a period of four months of the inability to pay their rents of nearly 200,000 tenants. So that it is not a question that we can be in any doubt about, that this matter of inability to pay can be decided expeditiously and fairly, for its practicability has been already proved for us by the working of the Arrears Act of 1882, an Act than which no measure ever passed by Parliament for Ireland has ever, proved more satisfactory to both parties. The number of tenants involved will not be so great in this case as in the case of the Arrears Act; and in all probability before three months have elapsed, after the Land Commission has completed the necessary preliminaries, the question of the inability of the tenants to pay will be satisfactorily decided without any trouble or practical difficulty. Then, Sir, we have the further condition that the tenant must pay one-half of the rent to the landlord or into Court before he is qualified to apply to come within the provisions of the Act. Now, that condition is also mainly adapted or copied from the Arrears Act. In that case the tenant was not required to pay so large a proportion of the rent and arrears as I am requiring him to pay under this Bill. He was only required to pay one-third of the rent and arrears; the landlord had then to give up one-third, and the State advanced the remaining third. I provide that the tenant shall pay one-half of the rent and arrears—the State paying nothing—and then that the Court shall estimate how much of the remaining half shall be paid by the tenant, and how much shall be lost to the landlord. Now, I have shown that in these two main provisions this Bill closely follows the Act in Ireland which proved most satisfactory and speedy in its working. The only practical difference I make is this—that the State shall not be a loser in the transaction. Well, Sir, the clause regarding the suspensory proceedings while the judicial inquiries are proceeding, which will probably amount to about two or three months, is one which is taken verbatim from the Arrears Act of 1882. It is a clause which worked very satisfactorily. No complaint was ever made of it, and it was found that evictions and proceedings in ejectment could be stayed under that clause without any practical loss whatever to the tenant, and that it enabled the Arrears Act and the Land Act of 1881 also to be worked in a much smoother way than otherwise would have been the case. It has been argued, and may be argued again, in reference to this Bill that the Civil Bill Courts in Ireland have already power to grant stays in the execution of decrees; but there is a wide difference between the power to grant a stay in the execution of a decree and the power to suspend or postpone proceedings, which was provided by the Act of 1882, and also provided by this Bill. In the one case, the case already provided for by the rules governing the proceedings of the Civil Bill Courts, the proceedings are not suspended or postponed until after the decree has been granted. It is only, if I am correctly informed, the execution of the decree—that is to say, the actual ejectment—that can be stayed by the Court; the Court has no power to stay the proceedings themselves. Such a power was found necessary in the working of the Arrears Act. It was agreed to by all Parties in this House, and passed by the House of Lords without any objection. I do not seek to push the matter any further than was intended by the Arrears Act of 1882; but I claim that it is absolutely necessary that this suspensory power to that extent should be given in the present instance. If you only go as far as the power which already exists you will have the infliction of large and heavy costs upon the small tenants, against whom proceedings are taken. These costs, in many cases, amount to moret han the entire rent. I would say in the case of the majority of the tenants against whom action is taken that the costs of ejectment proceedings in the Civil Bill Courts amount to more than the rent. They amount to £2 16s. for each ejectment; the rent in the majority of cases would not probably amount to that sum—I mean in the case of the smaller holdings, which are some 400,000 in number. It is no advantage to the unfortunate tenant who is unable to pay his rent to have an ejectment decree taken against him, and to have his rent more than doubled by the costs of ejectment proceedings—in fact, in the case of the Arrears Act, many tenants have had decrees granted against them before the Act came into operation. In the case of some thousands of tenants in the North and West of Ireland the Arrears Act was altogether nugatory and useless, because the costs exceeded the two years' rent that was got rid of under the Act. So that I hope the Government and the House generally will admit that if any action is to be taken at all it will have to be an action suspending the proceedings in ejectment, and not waiting until after the ejectment decrees have been obtained and additional cost heaped upon the tenant. Now I wish to say a word with regard to the leaseholders. It may be said that the provision with regard to the admission of leaseholders is out of place here; that, this being a temporary measure, the leaseholder ought to have no part to it. I say in reply that the leaseholders have waited long enough, and too long, and that I will be no party to perpetuate the horrible injustice—an injustice which is now, owing to the depreciation of prices, becoming crushing—caused by their continued exclusion from the Act of 1880. It is a marvel to me how they have continued to exist during the years since 1881, and to retain the roof over their heads. I have no doubt that a large number of the outrages committed in the last few years, and more especially during the first year or two after the Land Act of 1881 commenced working, were committed in reference to rack-rented leaseholders. These leaseholders are rack-rented in a way beyond the ordinary standard of rack-renting in Ireland. They are, many of them, paying 50, 60, and 70 per cent above the Poor Law valuation. In the case of a great many, undoubtedly, arrangements have been entered into, after long trouble and contention between the landlord and the tenant, for an abatement of rent. In the case of a good many others they still remain crushed under impossible rents; and if we do not want to see the flower of the Irish tenantry crushed out of existence, then I say something ought to be done, and very speedily, for them to enable them to have their rents reduced in the same proportion as the Land Commission have been reducing rents since the commencement of this year. Now, I have gone over the provisions of the Bill, and I have dealt with the difficulty which will be raised about the question of inability to pay rent. It will now be necessary to say a few words with regard to the question of the fall in prices, which is, of course, what we base our contention upon. Now, Sir, sometimes it has been denied that there has been any fall in prices at all. Others say that there has been some fall in prices, but not so great as alleged; while others again say—and this is the most preposterous of all—that the Land Commission, in fixing the rents in 1882,1883, and 1884, took into their consideration the fall in prices in 1885—that they scented and foresaw the reduction which came in 1885, and fixed the judicial rents so as to allow for that reduction. I think I shall show, first, that the depreciation of prices has not been exaggerated; secondly, that the Land Commission did not, in fixing rents in 1882–4, take into consideration the fall in prices in 1885 and 1886; and, thirdly, that the Land Commission are now taking cognizance, for the first time, of the fall in prices which began in 1885 and has continued steadily since. The fall has been very marked in the principal articles of produce in Ireland. These articles are butter, beef, pork, mutton, wool, two-year-old stock, and one-year-old stock. I find from a Return which has been carefully compiled from prices given in The Irish Farmers' Gazette—and let me explain that The Irish Farmers' Gazette is not a Nationalist but rather a landlord's paper—for each month of the year 1885, that butter, which for the six years ending in 1884 sold at 103s. 6rf. per cwt., was in 1885 sold at an average price of 75s. per cwt., or a fall of 27 per cent. The price of beef averaged in the six years 67s. per cwt.; but in 1885 it was 56s. per cwt., or a fall of 15½ per cent. This is one of the articles which has the least to do directly with the prosperity of the Irish tenants, for a great number of the tenants make no beef; they sell their cattle as young or store stock to a few large graziers in Ireland, or send them to English farmers who fatten. Pork, which was 54s. 7d. in the six years, was in 1885 down to 43s. 6d., or a fall of 20.3 per cent. Mutton, which in the six years averaged 79s. per cwt., was down to 65s. 5d., or a fall of 18.4 per cent. Wool, which in the former period was 11d. per lb., had fallen to 8d., or a fall of 27 per cent. Two-year-old stock, which in the former period were sold at £12 10s. per head, were down to £10 per head, or a fall of 20 per cent. I may state that, although we have not been able to make a Return for 1886 with regard to two-year-olds, there can be no doubt that this class of stock has suffered a very large depreciation. ["No!"] It is all very well for the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh (Colonel Saunderson) to say "No," and shake his head; but he will not go back and shake his head at the tenant farmers of Ulster. Speaking as a practical man, I say that two-year-old stock has depreciated since 1885 a further 15 to 20 per cent at least. Nothing in the fall of prices in agricultural produce is more remarkable or sudden than the fall in store stock, which the Irish, farmers chiefly depend upon for the payment of their rent and their subsistence. One-year-old stock since the close of 1884 is also down 22 per cent. Now, Sir, this shows an average fall considerably above 20 per cent in the chief articles of produce raised by Irish farmers; and with the exception of butter there has been no rise in any of these articles during the six months of this year. [An hon. MEMBER: Wool.] It is chiefly foreign, and it has only very recently risen. With regard to butter, there is a larger demand only within the last few weeks because the Irish farmers have no butter to sell. Let me say that owing to this fall in prices the Land Act of 1881 has proved absolutely of no benefit whatever to the Irish farmer. I say it would have been far better for the Irish, tenant farmers if the old prices had remained as they were prior to 1878; and if there had been no Land Act the Irish tenant farmer would have been at the present day in a much better position than he is now. There has been a fall since that year in the principal articles of 22 per cent, and the rent has been reduced under the Land Act by 19 per cent, so that the farmer is 3 per cent to the bad; and this without taking into account the very considerable rise in the price of labour owing to the emigration of a large number of labouring men. But the decisions of the Land Commissioners are a much higher testimony than the statistics I have quoted, strong as those figures are. What do we find has been their action during the six months of the present year? I find that a great and startling reduction in the rents has taken place as compared with the reductions made previously. I find for the months of January, February, March, April, May, and June, in 1886, in Ulster the reductions have been 9 per cent below the valuation; whereas, previous to 1885, in Ulster the reductions only averaged 4.2 per cent below the valuation. There is a much larger difference, however, in the other Provinces. In Leinster the reductions this year have averaged 18 per cent below the Poor Law valuation as compared with the previous reductions of 15.3 per cent above the valuation, or a difference of 33 per cent in the judicial rents fixed before the fall in prices and those fixed since. In Connaught the reductions in the judicial rents averaged 7 per cent below the valuation for the six months this year, as compared with 13.2 per cent above the valuation for the years previous to this, or a difference of 20.2 per cent. In Munster, where the reductions prior to 1885 were 25.8 per cent over the valuation, we find that it is now 1.4 per cent above, or a difference of 24.4 per cent, as compared with the rents previous to the depreciation in prices. Well, Sir, that is a very important piece of testimony, and I shall be very curious to hear the reply from the Government Benches. The average reduction all over Ireland below the Poor Law valuation is 9.5 per cent for the six months. The average reduction in the year, as compared with the rents reduced previously, is 18 per cent. Then, again, the amount of reductions is larger. Not only is the relative standard of the rents smaller, but the amount of the reductions, as compared with the original or former rents, is much larger than it was in the previous years. Up to August, 1885, the reductions averaged 19.4 per cent of the old or former rent. In the first six months of this year the reductions averaged 28 per cent of the former rent. It is a common saying with regard to Irish landlords that it is necessary for Parliament, over and over again, to interfere to compel them to do that unwillingly which the English landlords do willingly. We have information with regard to the reductions which have been going on upon many estates in England. An hon. Member for one of the Home Counties gave it as his information the other day in the course of debate that many English landlords find it very difficult to get any rent for their land at all, and that very large reductions have been made. Some recent reductions have been recorded in The Land Agent's Record. On the estates of Lord Lonsdale, in Westmoreland and Cumberland, the reductions have been 20 per cent. On Lord Zetland's estates they have been 20 per cent on the half-year. On the estates of the Duke of Sutherland, in Scotland, they have been 40 per cent. The tenants of Lord Fitz-hardinge, in Gloucestershire, have received a permanent reduction of 20 per cent; Mr. Wise, of Leamington, has allowed a reduction of 25 per cent; and Dr. Morrison, of Yorkshire, has reduced his rents, based on the current rates of 1884, by 50 per cent. I believe I may call the Secretary of State for War (Mr. W. H. Smith) as a witness, because he has abated 40 per cent of the rent due from his tenants. Some of the Irish landlords are doing the same thing as the English landlords. Let me give an example. Earl Fitzwilliam has given a reduction to his tenants for the present year of 50 per cent on the old rent. Wicklow is one of the better-off counties of Ireland, and Lord Fitzwilliam's are not among the worst-off tenants in the county. Yet his Lordship has recog- nized the pressure of the time, and has given directions that 50 per cent of the rent is to be returned to his tenants. This is on a large estate, and on the large estates, according to the evidence of Sir Richard Griffiths, the rents average only about the Poor Law valuation; consequently, the reduction given by Earl Fitzwilliam to all his tenants alike, including leaseholders, will come much under the Poor Law valuation. The Return of evictions up to the last day of June has not been issued to Members, although it has been presented; but we have just received from the Chief Secretary information which comes down to the end of last week. It has been argued that, because there was a diminution in the number of evictions in the last quarter of last year and the first quarter of this year, there is therefore no immediate necessity for the action of Parliament; that the landlords are not evicting their tenants in Ireland, and that there cannot be any pressure now. We have had experience to show us that whenever there have been seasons of depression in Ireland, and whenever there have been starvation, distress, and inability to pay rent, evictions have mounted up. We have evidence, on the contrary, that whenever tenants have been fairly well able to pay rent evictions have been very few. In 1849, the season following the terrible famine of 1846–7–8, there were evicted 16,686 families and 90,000 persons; in 1850, another bad year, there were evicted 19,000 families and 104,000 persons; in 1851, 13,000 families and 68,000 persons. Thus, in those three years, there were evicted 50,000 families and 252,000 persons. Let me compare with that period some good years. In the 11 years from 1865 to 1875 the average annual number of evictions was only 629. If I come down to a more recent period of distress, and in some places of famine—for instance, 1880—I find that the number rose to 2,102 families, or 10,000 persons; in 1881, the year before the Land Act came into operation, to 3,415 families, or 17,000 persons; in 1883, to 3,643 families and 17,000 persons; in 1884 to 4,000 families and 20,000 persons. It will be argued, by some at least, that as the figures were not maintained in the last quarter of 1885 and the first quarter of this year, there is no pressing necessity for the Bill, because there is no likelihood of numerous evictions. My contention is, and it is a just one, that the comparatively small number of evictions in the end of 1885 and the commencement of 1886 was not due to the fact that there was no distress and in ability to pay rent, but was due to two distinct causes. One cause of the reduced number of evictions in the last quarter of 1885 was that Lord Carnarvon addressed a public appeal to the Irish landlords to refrain from eviction, to meet their tenants half-way, and to be very cautious how they used the terrible penalty of eviction. The other cause which had a bearing upon the number, of evictions in the first quarter of 1886 was the fact that the right hon. Gentleman the senior Member for Newcastle (Mr. John Morley) was Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, and by his; speeches and declarations in this House distinctly discouraged evictions. There was also the reason that matters were in suspense; the landlords were waiting to see what offer the Government were going to make them, and they were consequently indisposed to press their claims to the utmost extremity until they saw what their future permanent position, was likely to be. These two causes are no longer determining factors in the situation. Lord Carnarvon has ceased to be Lord Lieutenant, and has been replaced by a Nobleman of whom little is known except what is bad; the senior Member for Newcastle has ceased to be Chief Secretary for Ireland, and he has been succeeded by a right hon. Gentleman who has announced that he is going to leave the unfortunate tenants to their fate, and that any loss must fall, not on the landlords, but rather on the State. That these causes have ceased to be determining factors is proved by the statistics coming down to the 30th of June, but not yet published; and also by the further information the Chief Secretary had just given as to the evictions which have taken place since the end of June. They disclose a very alarming state of things. In the quarter ending March, when the right hon. Member for New castle was Chief Secretary, there were only 698 evictions of families, comprising 3,477 persons. In the quarter ending June, when the fate of the Home Rule Bill and the Land Bill was absolutely certain, the evictions mounted up to 1,309 families—as nearly as possible double. In the two months and a week which have elapsed since June 30, I find there have been 1,037 families evicted, or 5,311 persons. These figures are very alarming. They show that landlords have commenced to evict, and that probably 1,500 families have been evicted in the current quarter. If the rate of increase continue, the evictions will probably reach 2,000 in the next quarter. That will be higher, I think, than in any quarter during the last 20 years—higher than any quarter since 1851. The highest average in 1884, which was the worst year since the passing of the Land Act, did not come up to the average which will be shown by the quarter ending the present year. These Eviction Returns are very instructive reading. We have heard something of the relation between outrages and evictions. In Munster, in the quarter ending June last, there were 428 evictions, and of these 187, or nearly one-half, were in the county of Kerry. I ask whether these evictions do not partially explain the disturbed state to which that county has been reduced? As compared with the whole Province of Munster the evictions in Kerry were more than one-half, as compared with Connaught they were nearly one-half, and they largely exceeded the whole number in Leinster. If the Government sent down a Land Commissioner to Kerry armed with the powers provided by this Bill, so that the tenants, upon payment of half the rent, would be secured from eviction, they would have done more far the peace of Kerry than all the General Bullers that could be sent down. Some attempt will be made to show that half the evicted tenants are, as a general rule, admitted as caretakers. Now, among all the Returns granted by Parliament relating to Irish affairs we have never had a Return informing us what becomes of the caretakers. Some hon. Gentlemen on the opposite side who desire to take a roseate view, say that they are almost universally readmitted as tenants. I have great reason to doubt the accuracy of that statement; but even if it is accurate, they are not admitted as tenants under the Act of 1881. They are admitted with the provisions in their favour in that Act broken, destroyed, and taken away. ["No!"] Unless the tenant redeems within six months after his eviction he forfeits his rights and sinks to the status of "a future tenant," which only carries with it the right to sell his miserable holding if he can get a person to buy it, so that only a small number of the evicted tenants find themselves with the rights which the Act of 1881 conferred upon them. But we have reason to believe that a large number are never readmitted as tenants. They drift away by degrees. Being as caretakers deprived of the right of cultivating their holdings, they are compelled to resort to the towns, where they try to set up a little trade or small business, if they have means or skill, or they sink to the level of a day labourer. Nothing is more piteous than to trace the history of an evicted tenant. He sinks from a position of prosperity to the status of a caretaker. If he fails to redeem within the prescribed time he can only be admitted as "a future tenant," and if not admitted by the grace of his landlord he must go, as I have said, to a neighbouring town, and become a small tradesman, and thus you see in the Irish towns a great many men who themselves as well as their fathers before them paid large rents broken down and destroyed owing to the refusal of the Legislature to provide for seasons of temporary but severe distress and pressure. I think I have gone in anticipation through the principal arguments which will be used against this measure. It is a measure essential in the present condition of the Irish tenants. It does not go as far as the Arrears Act of 1882, which compelled the tenant to pay only a third of the rent and arrears. It compels him to pay half the rent before he can have recourse to the relief provided by the Courts of Law. It compels him also to prove his incapacity to pay the balance of his rent in the same way as the tenant was compelled to do by the Arrears Act of 1882. In fact, it is an almost exact copy of that Act, and it is a measure which I recommend, from my knowledge of the situation of Ireland, as one well calculated to pull matters smoothly through during the coming winter and during the interval which must elapse before this House can turn its attention to the settlement of this great Irish Land Question. I have the utmost confidence, if Parliament adopts this measure, that it will be richly rewarded by the result, and that it will be better for the landlords themselves. I believe that a great many of them will give this reduction; but there will be a minority, whether large or small, as there always has been from one cause or another, disposed to exact the last shilling, the last pound of flesh. It is against this minority that Parliament will have to provide, as it had to do before in 1870 and 1881. Not that the majority of Irish landlords are necessarily just, for the Act of 1881 showed that there were among them almost as few just men as there were in Sodom and Gomorrah, for in almost every case where the conditions of holdings were brought under the notice of the Land Commission a reduction was given. In almost every case, therefore, where the proceedings of Irish landlords formed the subject of the deliberation of the Land Courts these landlords were deemed to have been exacting for many years unfair and even exorbitant rents. I think we have a right to say that the Irish tenants shall not be left defenceless and at the mercy of the landlords during the coming winter. The history of Irish landlords is a history of which they cannot be proud. Had it not been for the conduct of this class in dealing with the Land Question, you possibly might have conciliated the Irish people to your rule. These men whom you have put in as stewards have been false to their trust, and have oppressed, ill-treated, and rack-rented their tenants. Theirs is not a history where the question is to go by default in their favour. If it is to go by default it ought to go against them. The House would do well—and I earnestly entreat the House—before leaving for its holidays to consider this question, and to see whether they cannot further this Bill as a stay upon the troublesome times which otherwise are sure to come in Ireland. I do not wish to enlarge upon that side of the question. It is an argument which in many respects is not a worthy one. I prefer to base my claim on the case I think I have made out—that there has been a large depreciation in the prices of agricultural produce; that this depreciation has been so great that many tenants will be unable during the coming winter to pay their full rents; that you have in Ireland a Land Commission well qualified to investigate this question, which can adjudicate upon each of these cases; at all events, it can decide on them temporarily and for the next year, and during the time that must elapse before your Land Commission and Parliament can get to work. I have the utmost confidence that the justice of Parliament and of this country will not permit this Bill to be lost; but that this House will, as I now ask it to do, read this Bill a second time.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Parnell.)

MR. PENROSE FITZGERALD (Cambridge)

, in rising to move, as an Amendment, that— In the opinion of this House, it is inexpedient at the present time to make any further alteration in the Irish Land Laws, said, that the task which the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) had set himself was not an easy one, and he felt he should find it very difficult to follow the hon. Member accurately through the figures he had given to the House. He had set himself to prove that the value of agricultural produce in Ireland had gone down so much since the Commissioners under the last Act settled the rents, that it was impossible for the Irish tenants to pay the judicial rents, reduced as they were at that time on an average of from 19 to 23 per cent. Secondly, the hon. Member felt it his duty to explain to the House that, at the present moment, there was no other legal means except the proposed Bill by which a tenant in Ireland could get any further reduction of his rent. He, however, did not think that had been proved. At present, if tenant and landlord agreed, say, to 20 years' purchase of a holding, it was perfectly competent for the tenant, on making that agreement with his landlord, to receive an immediate reduction of something like 20 per cent on his judicial rent. Therefore, there was now in existence means by which tenants could get an almost immediate reduction in their judicial rents. There was another point, the most important of all. Before being convinced by the argument of the hon. Member he would like to have it distinctly shown that there was any means which the hon. Member had discovered by which the Land Commissioners could distinguish between those tenants who could not and those tenants who would not pay their rents? That was the strongest and most important point that all landlords had to deal with, and it was one that it would be impossible for the Commissioners to decide justly. With regard to Clause 2 of the hon. Member's Bill, which dealt with leaseholders, it was necessary that it should be proved to the House that leaseholders were in such a position that there could be no postponing of the consideration of an alteration of the Bill of 1881. He did not think that they were in such a position. He might, perhaps, say that when the Royal Commission which was about to be appointed had made its examination and had presented its Report, he certainly should not be prepared to prevent leaseholders being admitted to the Act if the Commission recommended their admission. Hon. Members opposite knew that all along he had felt very grave doubts whether it was at the present time, and after the Act of 1881 had been passed, just to exclude leaseholders from that Act. By that Act, in his opinion, one injustice had been committed, and now they were bound to commit a second in order to prevent a third. With regard to the 3rd clause of the hon. Member's Bill, he must use the same sentence as he had used with respect to the first. How could the Commissioners in Ireland find out, after what had happened in the last seven or eight years, the difference between inability to pay and the determination not to pay, because the latter had been ordered? That was the one reason, and the strongest and the sufficient reason, for the House to reject the Bill. It was, he contended, absolutely impossible that any Commissioners could ascertain which were the tenants who could not pay and which were the tenants who would not pay. Then, again, he did not think that it had been proved to the satisfaction of the House that all landlords were about to evict suddenly, harshly, and unjustly. The difficulty which landlords had experienced of getting new tenants for their land, and the difficulty of working their land themselves under existing circumstances, had been such that very few landlords, and certainly not those who came under the head of good landlords of the old class, would be at all inclined to evict during the coming winter if their tenants could make a return equivalent to something like that which the hon. Member for Cork had proposed. As to the process by which the Commissioners had based their reduction of rents, and which the hon. Member for Cork asked the House to go into now, he might say that, in 1885, both the yield and the price of agricultural goods in Ireland settled the rents which were paid. In the autumn of 1885 and in the spring of 1886 the rents were determined both by the yield and the price of agricultural commodities in 1885. The cereals of 1886 were as yet in the field, and they did not exactly know what the yield was, nor could they exactly predict what the price would be. He would ask the House, therefore, whether it was sufficiently satisfied in this matter that the case was so dangerous a one or so urgent and pressing that there should be at once anticipatory legislation with regard to the yield and the price of the agricultural commodities of 1886 in the autumn? It was very much more difficult to get at the price of cattle. He begged that hon. Members would not think that he denied that there had been a fall in the price of cattle. He was not such a fool as to deny that, because he knew very well that there had been a fall. But he maintained that cattle fat and fit for the butcher had not fallen in price, but had fetched a fair price. Stores had fallen to a certain extent, and indeed considerably during the last year; but there was already a rise at the present moment. Half-starved stores had certainly fallen considerably, and had been almost unsaleable in 1885. But it thould be remembered that in 1885 there was a very trying and a very severe and hard winter in England, and when there were no roots, no turnips, and no hay, or very little, in England, the price of stocks of all sorts fell in Ireland rapidly. Therefore, in 1885, when there were no roots and no hay in England, they had a direct reason why stock fell in Ireland as it did fall. This year there were abundant crops of turnips and man-golds in England, and hay was cheap and plentiful. This was also the case in Ireland. It would be necessary, therefore, for those farmers in England who wanted to fill their yards with stock, to come to Ireland and buy two-year-olds and three-year-olds in the autumn. Hence he did not think that in Ireland there would be anything like that pressure which the hon. Member for Cork looked forward to during the coming winter. He was very glad to hear what had been said about the reductions by landlords in England; but he would point out that in England the lands which had suffered most were as a general rule the heavy clay wheat-growing lands. The yield and the price of wheat from such lands had suffered most. There were 2,500,000 acres of land under wheat in England, and only 70,000 statute acres under wheat in Ireland, which showed that the great depression in this country had been produced by wheat, which had comparatively very little to do with the position of agriculture in Ireland. Barley had maintained during the past two years an average price. Oats also had remained very much the same during the last two or three years, and wool in Ireland had decidedly gone up in value. As the hon. Member for Cork had used The Irish Farmers' Gazette as a means of persuading the House to pass his Bill, he would read to the House what the commissioner of that Gazette had stated with regard to the prospects of the crops. Of 59 reports on the wheat crops, he said that 37 were average, 16 were over average, and six under. Of 58 reports on the barley crop, 30 were given as average, 19 as over, and nine as under. With regard to oats, there were 92 reports, and 42 were average, 40 were over, and 10 under. Of flax there were 28 reports, of which 12 were average, nine were over, and seven were under. Of 91 potato reports, 53 were average, 34 were over, and four under. Of 92 turnip reports, 34 were average, 40 were over, and 18 were under. Of 87 reports dealing with mangolds, 47 were average, 29 were over, and 11 under. Of meadow, that was, the hay crop, as regarded quantity, 27 reports were average, 61 over, and only three under. Grass and pasture land seemed equally plentiful, 53 reports being average, 52-over, and four under. The Irish Farmers' Gazette went on to say— Cereals and roots are a good average and hay and grass abundant. The potato disease is reported from various localities. Four and five years ago there were large importations of champions and magnum bonums, and nearly everyone in Ireland had a complete change of seed. The consequence was we had scarcely any disease in the country the two following seasons. But we and others warned farmers that these new varieties (for as regards general cultivation in this country even the champion was new) would not long remain impregnable to the attacks of the potato disease, but if grown year after year were sure to fail a prey to it. The turnip crop is good and keep of all kinds abundant, the one general complaint being that it has been very difficult to save old meadow hay on account of the recent wet weather. Now, the wet weather did not begin till the middle of July; and putting aside corcas land, which is quite exceptional and, as far as we know, confined to one locality, that is surely late enough for the general run of meadows to be saved. This was a report of the prospects of this autumn, drawn from the same source as the hon. Member for Cork had drawn some of his statements. Now, with regard to the prices in 1885—he had no authentic Return of the prices in the present year—he would compare them with the prices in Ireland in 1852, which was the year of Griffith's valuation. In 1852 wheat per 112 lbs. was at 7s. 6d., and the average price in 1885 was 8s. 5d. Oats in 1852 were 4s. 10d., and the average price in 1885 was 8s. Barley in 1852 was 5s. 6d., and the average price in 1885 was 7s. 5d. Flax in 1852 was 49s., and the average price in 1885 was 55s. Butter in 1852 was 65s. 4d., and the average in 1885 was 95s. Beef in 1852 was 35s. 6d., and the average price in 1885 was 55s. Mutton in 1852 was 41s., and the average in 1885 was 56s. Pork in 1852 was 32s., and in 1885 the average was 46s. 6d. Milch cows in 1852 were from £8 to £14, and in 1885 from £11 to £20. Two-year-old cattle in 1852 were from £4 to £8 10s., and in 1885 from £7 to £13. One-year-old cattle in 1852 were from £2 10s. to £5 10s., and in 1885 from £4 to £8 10s. Lambs in 1852 were from 18s. to 26s., and in 1885 from 18s. to 50s. He wished to point out the extraordinary and increasing divergence between the top and bottom figures; and he submitted that the Returns showed that if good farming and strict attention to business paid well 20 years ago, it paid nearly twice as well now. In every commodity it was the worst sorts that foreign competition told most heavily against; but against any competition our best produce, he believed, could hold its own. He would now consider the aspect that was given to the case by the Returns of the joint-stock and savings banks. In 1876—a very good year—the amount in the savings banks, which were used by the smaller tenants and the shopkeepers, was £3,100,000; in 1885 it was £4,200,000. Since 1881 the advance in the amount paid into these banks had been continuous, although the population had been decreasing. The figures in the case of the joint-stock banks, which were used by the larger tenants and some of the landlords, had also shown a continuous upward tendency, except in the years 1879 and 1880, when then there was a decided check, owing, no doubt, to the difficulty of collecting any rent in those years. In 1840 the sum deposited in the joint-stock banks was £6,000,000; in 1849, £7,500,000; and in 1885, nearly £29,000,000. Now, it was, no doubt, impossible for poor tenants to pay two rents. The difficulty which faced them was that two bodies were endeavouriug to get rent from them—the landlords on the one side and the Laud League on the other. Since the foundation of the League, in 1879, the receipt of £360,714 had been acknowledged in the public Press by the treasurer. He would not take any of the romantic sums which were said to go into the fortunate pockets of hon. Gentlemen opposite; but he was merely taking what was acknowledged by the treasurer during those years; and this showed that subscriptions were flowing into the coffers of the League at the rate of £52,000 a-year. [Several Home Rule MEMBERS: Does that come from Ireland?] The House was once more asked to make it impossible for landlords to collect their rents; but no proposal was made to make it impossible for the Land League to collect theirs They had often heard that to be skinned was nothing to eels when they were used to it; but he did not think that the wildest naturalist ever expected the eels themselves to aid the operation. He thought this double rent was one of the reasons which made it impossible for the tenants to meet their proper obligations. It was curious that the amount spent upon alcoholic liquors in Ireland in 1885 exceeded the amount spent in 1884 by £341,000; and that was about the sum by which the rents of the landlords were reduced through the operation of the Land Act. While hon. Members below the Gangway opposite were trying to persuade the House that it was impossible for tenants to pay the judicial rents, many tenants were doing their best to show that this was not the case, because they were ready to pay very high sums for tenant right—in other words, they were ready to pay large sums as a preliminary to the payment of the very rents which were said to be too high. He saw in the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork the same dangers as were contained in the measure of 1881. That Act allowed the tenant to sell a tenant right which he might not have bought, and tenants who had only acquired possession of their holdings a year before the Bill was passed, and who had paid nothing for tenant right, were treated with the same generosity as was extended to tenants who had been rooted to the soil for centuries. If the Bill before the House were passed it would be proved that there could be no hope of finality in legislation with reference to Irish land. He objected to the measure on that ground, and also because it would despoil a class of men from whom the Judicial Commissioners had already taken half their incomes. By the operation of this Bill it was hoped to take the remaining half from them. But the House could not keep on halving the incomes of the landlords for ever. An end must come very soon if such measures as this were to be passed by the House of Commons. It was important to bear in mind that the class whom the Bill attacked was the class whom hon. Members opposite had persistently held up to obloquy in Ireland, and threatened with extermination. The House knew that the sentence of extermination had been pronounced, and it was for Parliament to say whether it would assist or prevent its execution. There was an easier and readier way to exterminate landlords than shooting them, which was a process not unattended with danger. They could be ruined by Act of Parliament. If such legislation as was now proposed were favoured, in a very short time few landlords would be out of the workhouse. The crime of the landlords in the eyes of hon. Gentlemen opposite—the crime for which they were to be punished with bankruptcy—was a political crime; it consisted in this, that they did not agree with the majority of the Irish Representatives as to the expe- diency of the policy of separation from England. If he thought in his heart that it would be better for the happiness and prosperity and comfort of Ireland to be separated from England, he should sit upon the Bench opposite, and vote for such a policy. But he did not in his soul think that Ireland would be more happy, prosperous, or contented if separated from England, and he, therefore, refused to he coerced by any means which hon. Members opposite could devise into supporting proposals which must be injurious to the interests of that country. This Bill would prejudge the most important question that was to be left to the Royal Commission about to be appointed by the Government. In 1885, before the very grave necessity which was now said to exist for the reduction of rents arose, in numberless cases tenants, headed by the president and secretary of the Land League, went to the landlords and demanded a reduction of from 20 to 30 per cent. If this Bill were passed, there would be presented to the tenants in Ireland one reason why they should pay more attention to violence and agitation than to good farming, thrift, and industry. God knew they had had enough of that sort of encouragement already, and he implored the House not again to tempt the tenants by showing them that they had more to gain by combined agitation and violence than by industry, honesty, and farmyard manure. Another reason for the rejection of the Bill was that it proposed to benefit one class only; but at the present time poverty rested on the shoulders of all classes in Ireland, and this Bill held out no hope to anybody but the tenant actually in possession of his farm. He would like to point out to the right hon. Gentleman who framed the last Land Act that he himself had said, after the Devon and Bessborough Commissions, that the landlords of Ireland had been tried and found not guilty, and, further, that they could not be tailed upon to make any further sacrifice. Two Commissions, then, had sat—like Court Martials—to consider the conduct of the landlords, and by both of them the landlords had been acquitted. If this Bill were passed it would go forth as the opinion of the House of Commons that the landlords of Ireland were not going to make any reductions in their rents in the present bad times. That he denied. Numerous landlords had already made large reductions beyond the judicial rents, and he believed that many more would have been prepared to do so had it not been for this Bill. He could not look upon this Bill without suspicion considering the quarter from which it had come. The same hand that issued the "No-Rent" manifesto had drawn up this Bill. The "No-Rent" manifesto urged the tenants to pay no rent at all, and he very much feared that this Bill would have the same meaning in Ireland. Everyone knew of the pressure that had been brought to bear on the tenants to make them obey the laws of the Land League. He believed that every single outrage and murder that had taken place in Ireland had been the carrying out of a sentence. It was to be noticed that it was not so mnch the police or the Sheriffs or the landlords who had been murdered, but the tenants themselves; and the reason for their murder had been disobedience to the laws laid down for their guidance by the Land League. Every additional murder and outrage that took place showed how difficult it was to tear the tenants of Ireland from their allegiance to the laws of the Realm, and to enforce the laws of the League. The one test in Ireland by which they were able to find out the difference between the cants and the wonts was the test of the Sheriff and the writ. This Bill, he contended, if passed into law, would operate as a postponement of the one real and only solution of the Irish Land Question. Landlordism was dead. The last Land Act killed it. The fee simple had been taken from the landlords, but it had not been given to the tenants, and property in land was still divided. There was but one solution of the question. You could not cut the living child in two. The tiller of the soil must be the owner of the soil, and until a peasant proprietary was established in Ireland he saw no way out of the difficulty in Ireland. He did not think he had anything more to say in regard to the Bill before the House; but if he were in Order in so doing he would like to make one remark with regard to the Royal Commission the Government were about to appoint, and that was that he hoped that that Commission would have instructions to inquire fully and thoroughly into everything that could be brought before it as a grievance by Irishmen. He did not believe in the necessity for this Bill, and he asked the House to look upon it with grave suspicion, to view it as a postponement of the final settlement of the Irish Land Question, and not to give it a second reading. He begged to move the Amendment of which he had given Notice.

MR. C. LEWIS (Londonderry)

, in seconding the Amendment, said, that he thought it was not unfitting that a Member for an Ulster constituency should do so when it was considered that nearly one-half of the statutory rents settled in Ireland had been in respect of holdings in Ulster. Up to 1885 out of 172,000 applications for judicial rents 82,000 came from Ulster alone. In reality this relief would affect a very small proportion of the tenants of Ireland. There were 565,000 agricultural tenancies, and the number of statutory tenancies created up to the end of 1884 was 156,000, so that 8–11ths of the agricultural tenants of Ireland were outside the operation of this Bill. That fact could only lead to a new grievance and agitation. But if this Bill was necessary for the protection of the impoverished statutory tenants who suffered under judicial rents, how was it that the tenants not under judicial rents required no such protection? The Bill actually started by making a gross and miserable inequality between the two classes of tenants in Ireland by leaving the bulk of them outside the Bill. Then there was an important consideration relating to the morality of the proposal contained in the Bill. Of the 156,000 statutory tenancies, 79,000 were cases in which the rent had been judicially fixed by the Commissioners, whole in the remaining 77,000 the rent fixed was mutually arranged between the landlord and tenant, and then ratified by the Land Commissioners. It thus appeared that in nearly half the cases to which this Bill would apply the landlord and tenant had come together and amicably fixed the rent. Was Parliament to treat those agreements as if they were unilateral, binding the landlord while they did not bind the tenant? The landlord and tenant agreed as to the rent after a full consideration of the prices and all the circumstances, and was the tenant to be allowed to escape from this agreement, in consideration for which the landlord had renounced certain rights which as a landlord he formerly pos- sessed? It would be utterly impossible to keep up a system of morality in commercial transactions if the tenants were to be allowed to break engagements thus solemnly entered into. But what evidence had the hon. Member for Cork given of any necessity for this Bill? Not only had he not proved any case, but he had not attempted to prove any. Figures had been quoted as to the fall of prices; but he did not know whether the House noticed that one cereal—that of oats—which was really the most largely cultivated in Ireland had never been mentioned, though reference was made to the fall in the price of wheat. But while 68,000 acres were last year under wheat, there were 1,350,000 under oats, and in the price of oats there had been a decided rise. A great deal was said about the price of milch cows, and two-year-old stock, and one-year-old stock, and store stock; but how did this affect the small tenants of three or four acres? They had a patch of oats and of potatoes, a pig or two, and plenty of chickens, but no cattle, and this class of tenants were quite unaffected by the fall in the prices of stock. He firmly believed that the Commission which he was glad to find the Government intended to appoint would find that the alleged fall in prices was a bogus fall. Hon. Members would receive very valuable information as to the resources of the Irish tenants upon perusing the agricultual returns for this year. He would, with the permission of the House, compare the condition of things now with that of 1883, as in that year by far the largest proportion of the judicial rents were fixed. The statistics were very simple, but still very pregnant evidence against the hon. Member for Cork. The number of horses and mules in Ireland rose from 561,000 in 1883 to 578,000, showing this year an increase of 17,000. Asses—and a good many were found on the small farms—rose from 189,000 in 1883 to 196,000 this year, an increase of 7,000. Cattle rose from 4,096,000 to 4,184,000, an increase of 90,000; sheep, from 3,219,000 to 3,367,000, an increase of 147,000. Pigs decreased from 1,340,000 to 1,262,000. Goats rose from 2,063,000 to 2,066,000; and poultry increased from 13,362,000 to 13,910,000, or nearly 500,000 of an increase. If the Irish tenant had been in the direst distress, what would one naturally expect? Why, that his pig would go, and his cattle would go, and his goats and his sheep would go. Again, if the Irish tenant had of late years been going irretrievably to the bad, surely there would be less land in cultivation. But what was the fact? In 1883 there were 4,957,000 acres of land in cultivation, as against 5,033,848 in 1886. The facts relating to the sale of tenent right were also very interesting. He had secured from land agents in the County Derry certain figures with regard to sales of tenant right actually effected during the last 12 months. The returns were at the service of any hon. Gentleman. He found that in one case a farm of 43 acres, at a rent of £20 10s., was sold within the last three weeks for £420, or 21 years' purchase. In another a farm of 69 acres, at a rent of £25 8s., was sold for £385, or 15 years' purchase; a farm of 29 acres, rent £10, fetched £230, or 23 years' purchase; a farm of 52 acres, rent £39, fetched £530; a farm of 70 acres, rent £83, fetched £507, or six years' purchase. He entreated the House to take notice of the next two cases, which were very remarkable and related to a class of farms quite unknown in this country—namely, farms with a rent of from £3 to £5 a-year. The first was a farm of 24 acres, with a rent of £2 18s. 9d., for the tenant right of which £100 had been paid; the next was a farm of 38 acres, at a rent of £4 9s. 6d., and in that instance the tenant right fetched £164; in both of those cases the price given was equal to 31 years' purchase. Further, a farm of four acres, rent £1 4s. 6d., fetched £20, or 16 years' purchase; a farm of 17 acres, rent £4, fetched £50, or 12½ years' purchase. He had taken the trouble to inquire whether the suggestion made in the debate on the reply to the Address from the Throne was correct, that the persons who purchased those tenant rights were what might be called American returned Irish idiots, who bought them merely for the sake of becoming the owners of a piece of their native soil, and threw their dollars on the auctioneer's table as if they did not care what they paid. He was in a position to state that the purchasers in the cases he had mentioned were, for the most part, neighbouring farmers, who had long been farming in the county of Derry, and were consequently thoroughly acquainted with the value of the property they were buying. It might be said that he had given only a few instances; but they were all within the last 12 months, and were mostly within the present year, and were, many of them, in August last. These were matters which were well known in Ulster. They had been repeated ad nauseum in the local Press. The real facts of the value of property in Ireland were kept back from the people of England; but they were very much at variance with the state of affairs which hon. Gentlemen opposite alleged to exist in Ireland. In the face of that conflict of testimony he thought the Government had taken the only course which, as a Government, and as business men, they could have taken, and had determined to test the statements on the spot and not allow the country and the House to be deceived, or allow contracts to be departed from which ought to be honourably fulfilled. He reminded the late Chief Secretary for Ireland of a case to which he had called his attention when the late Government were in Office. It was the ease of a man on Lord Kingston's estate, who had gone to the agent to pay his rent, but when there, the local priest had addressed the tenants, urging them not to pay their rents. The tenant, therefore, although he had brought his rent with him, instead of paying it, went off on a drunken orgie, and, having been arrested by the police, a bank deposit receipt for £200 was found in his pocket. These facts were contained in the answer given to him in that House last March, and hon. Members could see it recorded in Hansard. He mentioned that case, because the Land League were telling the tenants that they should all of them make an offer of a certain percentage only of their rents to the landlords—those who could pay and those who could not, without distinction—and they were to be subjected to all sorts of disagreeable consequences if they dared to pay more even under process of law. Hon. Members must have been struck with surprise at the number of testimonials that were being promoted in Ireland at the present time, notwithstanding the pinched condition of the poor tenants. Indeed, what might be called a testimonial fever had broken out among the poor farmers of Ireland. He had taken up a single number of United Ireland, and found there accounts of the progress of testimonials to patriots, which were being subscribed by those tenants who had been by stress of circumstances rendered unable to pay their rents. There was the "Sexton Testimonial Fund," which appeared to have been handed about for signature at several National League meetings, with exhortations from the president that they were to be liberal with their subscriptions. Yet the House and the country were told that these poor tenants could not afford to pay £1 or £2 of their rents. Then there was the "Lynden Testimonial." That gentleman was, he believed, a Provincial patriot, who was well known in the County Kerry. Then there was the "Holden Testimonial." Those were "dark horses," in the sporting sense, because they were not told what those gentlemen had done. It was considered to be quite sufficient to be told by the president that they were worthy subjects for the patriotic contributions of poor tenants unable to pay their rents. Then there was the "William O'Brien Testimonial Fund," and the "Thomastown Brass Band Fund," Well, there was indeed a great deal of brass about those funds, and especially the promoters of them. Then, there was an attempt to get up a "Gibson House Fund," which did not appear to be a success. There were other testimonials to the living and memorials for the dead. Then they went away from ambitious patriots and Provincial agitators to "The Boyle Town Commissioners Election Petition Indemnity Fund." Thus they went from "grave to gay," from "lively to severe." Altogether there were eight testimonials reported as going on in full progress among those miserable, poverty-stricken tenants in the month of June. Before sitting down he would say a word or two as to the fallacy of the parallel which the hon. Member for Cork had endeavoured to draw between the Arrears Act of 1882 and the Bill now before the House. The two Bills were as different as light from darkness. The basis of the former Act was the payment by the tenant of a whole year's rent—that the tenant was to be, to some extent, solvent. There was another very remarkable mistake which the hon. Member for Cork had made. He said the Courts would be able to settle the whole of the cases to be brought before them in three months, as had been done under the Arrears Act; but all that had been done under that Act was that the Government had to take care that they were not defrauded; for the landlord and tenant, in almost every instance, came before the Court with similar interests. It would take a very much longer time under the proposed Bill, because the Courts would have to decide between conflicting statements. He did not believe that it could be seriously suggested that any number of Commissioners could deal with 160,000 cases in three months. It would obviously be to the interest of the landlord to say that the tenant could pay, and to that of the tenant, even if he had the rent in his pocket, to prove that he was unable to do so. The present Bill was illusory both to the Irish people and to the English people. It was never intended to pass, but, like the famous green spectacles, only intended to sell. It would be impossible for the Bill, if it were passed in a month's time, to come into operation to any appreciable extent this year. He ventured to think that not 10,000, no, not 5,000, cases of distressed tenants could be dealt with by the Land Courts before Christmas, and therefore it was impossible to believe that the Bill was seriously introduced. It was merely an excuse to enable the hon. Member for Cork and his Friends to go to the people of Ireland and say that Parliament had refused them something. He pointed out also that the 1st clause of the Bill contained an extraordinary proposition. It had no regard to the actual value of a man's property, to the yield or nature of the crops, to the cost of production, or to the extent of relief a tenant might enjoy in the general depression of prices enabling him to buy articles at a less price than prevailed two or three years ago. No such test as this was provided. One of the conditions which the Court had to consider was that where the tenant was Unable to discharge the remainder of such rent or arrears without loss of his holding or deprivation of the means necessary for the cultivation and stocking thereof. But the tenant might have lent all his money the day before to a relative. He might have spent all his money in drink for the purpose of a carouse in a neighbouring town, or he might have de- pleted his estate in any of the various ways which improvident men adopt when the money of other persons is concerned. Yet, provided he possessed the qualification of poverty, no matter whether brought about by wilful proceedings or wasteful conduct, the law was to step in to save him from the consequences of his improvidence. The conduct of the hon. Member for Cork and his Friends reminded him of what Bacon said of the generosity of some men in leaving large legacies to charity when they died. If this Bill passed hon. Members opposite would go to the people of Ireland and say—"See what a generous Bill we have passed for the benefit of Irish tenants." Yes; but they never put their hands into their own pockets. All they did was to pick the pocket of the Irish landlord. Parliament had already adopted a generous measure of relief to Irish tenants at the expense of the unfortunate Irish landlords; and the present Bill was another generous measure of relief for the purpose of sustaining in poverty a number of persons—if the case was a true one—who ought, for the sake of their families, to try and better their position by removing elsewhere. It was apparently a matter of no importance nowadays what had been said by statesmen in former days in reference to matters of this kind. But he was really astounded when he looked back on the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian delivered in 1870 with reference to the Law of Contract, and the contempt and derision which he heaped on the idea of rents being treated in this manner. It surprised him also to see how easy some right hon. Gentlemen bore the yoke which they had put on themselves. He was inclined to think that all our difficulties in Ireland in reference to the Land Question had arisen from doing what the right hon. Gentleman expressed his pride in proclaiming that he had done—namely, in banishing political economy to the planets of Jupiter and Saturn. They could not defy the laws of supply and demand; they could not defy the laws of political economy. These laws obtruded themselves on our notice at every turn in dealing with a question like this, and it was in the power of no statesman to destroy them. If he were asked to suggest what proper expedient should be adopted to bring back the Land Laws of Ireland to a proper position, he would have no hesitation in declaring that we should call back the laws of political economy from Jupiter and Saturn for a short time. It would be interesting to see what effect the operation of the laws of supply and demand would have on the solution of this question. The House ought not to suppose that a factitious way of dealing with a great and perilous question like this could be resorted to, and as was suggested by the adoption of this Bill. If this Bill were passed into law every tenant in Ireland would immediately conclude that the rent having been once reduced it would always remain reduced. The House was familiar with the powers of agitation possessed by hon. Members opposite. If it were found desirable or expedient to renew the Bill at any time, an agitation to this end would immediately be forthcoming, enforced in all the various ways in which the present measure had been launched before the public. The Nationalist Press had said that it was to be war to the knife if the House did not pass this Bill. They were so much accustomed to this kind of language in the past as not to feel any great surprise at it now; but he hoped, at all events, that the House was equal to the performance of its duty. The landowners of Ireland had suffered much, and probably would have to suffer more than they had hitherto done; but that was no reason why they should be deserted. He could not refrain from asking the House, when it was called upon to pass a measure like this, where was its sympathy for the tenant farmer of England or for the suffering shopkeeper in London? He believed that the production of this measure was simply part of a system by which an attempt was being made to terrorize Parliament into granting legislation which they were justified in resisting to the uttermost. He called upon the House to notice the circumstance that the hon. Member for Cork had not attempted to produce the smallest amount of proof in favour of the Preamble of the Bill. The hon. Member had maundered over the depreciation of prices in many articles which did not in the least affect the ability of the vast majority of small tenants in Ireland to pay their rents. As to leaseholders, he remarked that there was no reason why, if Parliament dealt with judicial rents in the way proposed, the lessors should be asked to surrender their leases, and come within the operation of judicial rents. As matters were sought to be arranged the landlord would no longer possess the security of the judicial rent; he would practically place himself on an inclined plane, at the bottom of which would be found "No rent." It was, he thought, really time that the Legislature found out some way of thoroughly grappling with the evil, and the sooner it devised a way of saying to hon. Members from Ireland, "Thus far we have gone, but no farther," the sooner would peace and prosperity be restored in Ireland.

Amendment proposed, To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in the opinion of this House, it is inexpedient at the present time to make any further alteration in the Irish Land Laws,"—(Mr. Penrose Fitzgerald,)

—instead thereof.

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

MR. LAWRENCE GANE (Leeds, E.)

said, that he claimed the indulgence which he knew the House always extended to a new and untried Member, especially when representing, as he did, a large working - class constituency, where great interest was felt not only in the Irish Question generally, but in the Bill before the House. The Bill commended itself to him as likely in a great measure to remove the bitter feeling now existing between Ireland and England, and to solve the problem which now presented itself before Parliament for solution. Hitherto, hon. Members on the Conservative side of the House had spoken in a spirit which almost put them out of court in tendering advice on the question. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Penrose Fitzgerald) locked at the measure avowedly with suspicion because of the quarter whence it came; but that was an attitude and condition of mind which really disqualified a man from forming a valuable opinion on any great question like this, which appealed to the sense of justice of both sides of the House. The question was not "Whence comes the Bill; whose brain devised it; what fingers held the pen that drew it?" but "Is the Bill founded on statesmanship, on justice, on wise policy?" If it be, surely it mattered not from what quarter of the House it came, the House would judge it on its merits. If every line was to be looked upon with suspicion because the Bill came from the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell), it was impossible for the measure to be estimated rightly. Dangers were always discernible to the minds of the panic-striken; and he therefore submitted that the moment a man looked on a measure like this and decided that because it had come from a given quarter it must be regarded with dread and suspicion, from that moment he disqualified himself to estimate the Bill aright or to offer really trustworthy counsel to the House with regard to it. From beginning to end they had had from the Conservative Benches the most piteous appeals on behalf of the landlord class. The question had not been whether there was really a case for the measure, whether famine was likely to occur, and whether there would probably be numerous evictions in Ireland during the winter. Those matters had been rudely thrust aside, and the principal ground on which the House had been appealed to to reject the Bill was that it would affect injuriously that admirable, that meritorious class of men, the landlords. From beginning to end it had been a mere question of rent, rent, rent. But those who had drawn up the Bill had inserted certain essential conditions, and unless those conditions were fulfilled the measure would have no operation whatever. The conditions were certainly not lacking in stringency; and unless a clear case were shown before the Court, no relief whatever could be rendered. That being so, surely no very great harm could be done. No relief was to be given haphazard. There was, admittedly, a great financial problem to be solved. On every hand it was confessed that unless something was done during the coming winter there would be almost numberless evictions in Ireland. These evictions would cause not merely widespread distress, but bitter and harsh and lasting class feeling, which Conservative Members seemed to desire to put an end to. Well, it was a very easy thing for those who opposed the Bill to show that it was not needed, if such were really the case. Had prices fallen, or had they not? That was simply a question of fact which could be easily ascertained. If they had not, then the proposal of the hon. Member for Cork fell to the ground. In his hearing to-night only one article had been named as not having fallen in value; and if that were so, and if landlords on every hand were reducing, or stating that they were willing to reduce, their rents, surely they were themselves proving that there was some case for the House to consider. The landlord which had been sketched to the House by hon. Gentlemen opposite was a being of perfection—wise, kind, generous, and yet so ill-used! One would think that the landlords of Ireland had been men living from hand to mouth, men almost despoiling themselves of the comforts, if not the necessaries, of life; men whom legislation had affected most harshly year after year. But he submitted that there was something more important by far than even landlords' wrongs. They were asked—"What would be said in Regent Street supposing tradesmen there found themselves in difficulties?" He thought, at all events, the House knew very well what would not be found. They would not find these tradesmen turned out into the street with their wives and families. The House were asked to deal with an avowedly exceptional state of things. In days gone by, again and again, the House, by legislation, had recognized that it must deal with the Irish Question according to the facts which presented themselves for consideration at the time. As to political economy, why, man was not made for it. On the contrary, political economy was made for man. The question was were there men and women and children who would starve by thousands on all sides in Ireland unless this measure were adopted? Regent Street might be dealt with when its condition approached that of the Irish agricultural districts. Surely no one could charge the poor peasantry of Ireland with lack of industry and thrift. We were told again and again how they exercised thrift at home, how they saved in America for the needs of their relatives, and how they eked out their miserable earnings with the result of the harvesting in England. It was then said that their savings were spent lavishly in purchasing their holdings. But, if this were so, surely neither thrift nor industry were lacking in the Irish tenant. Again and again they saw—as they had seen it to-night—property regarded as more sacred than human life and human weal, and he maintained that if political economy demanded that, then the sooner such political economy were, as it had been said, relegated to Jupiter or Saturn the better. There was surely something more than rent to be considered. He appealed to the House to consider fairly, altogether irrespective of the consideration of whence the Bill came, whether or not there had been this alleged fall in prices, and whether or not there was this alleged probability of evictions. If that were proven, surely this measure was not so very dangerous. It would not remit the rent. It only prevented, in certain special circumstances, the rent from being distrained for in a harsh and cruel way. It left the matter for settlement by a duly constituted Court. If the view of hon. Gentlemen opposite were correct, and the Bill were as harmful as they endeavoured to make out, why were not those hon. Members prepared with some counter proposal? Surely something must be done during a long and trying winter; and yet, if the Bill were not passed, nothing would be done except in so far as the individual landlord might himself give relief. But Parliament had to do with the landlords who would not give relief to the tenants voluntarily. The law was not made for the righteous, but for the ungodly; and the object in the proposed legislation was to bring pressure to bear upon the landlord who ought to act in a certain way, but would not do so. Was it any answer to say that there was an abundance of money in the hands of some tenants? But it did not follow that because this was the case that there were ample means in the pockets of all the Irish peasantry. There was nothing to show that there were not thousands of these poor people who had a hard battle to keep the wolf from the door every day. If during the coming winter in many districts of Ireland there were this cruel and bitter distress, which had been foretold, and the House rejected the only measure which at present attempted to deal with the trouble—if, then, evictions became as frequent as they had been in the past, what guarantee had the House that all the past evils also would not be reproduced? And if they were, there would be something far worse than material distress to deal with. The spirit of Ireland would be still further embittered towards us. The people of that country were at present looking to this House hopefully, and he asked hon. Members to approach the question apart from considerations of the quarter from which this Bill emanated, and to look at the matter fairly and kindly, believing that those who advocated it were as honest as those who held different views. Their arguments might be fallacious; then let their fallacy be shown; but let no Bill of this kind be met with the insinuation that it was going to be used for dishonest purposes. As to the ruin and desolation which the Bill would bring in its train, he thought some of the panic-stricken cries they had heard to-night from the opposite side of the House were almost amusing. He submitted that the Bill, so dreaded by hon. Members opposite, was an honest, a healing, and a kindly measure. Though it was small, and its provisions only temporary, yet its results might be incalculable, and a new herald of better and brighter days for Ireland.

MR. BARTLEY (Islington, N.)

said, it might be taken for granted that the views and the interests of hon. Members on the Government side of the House were quite as wide and keen on this Irish Question as those of hon. Members who sat below the Gangway opposite. An idea seemed to prevail in some quarters that only one section of the House took any interest in the welfare and prosperity of Ireland; but such an idea was by no means correct. The great question was, would this Bill promote the welfare and prosperity of Ireland? It provided for three things; but its chief clause was that which provided that tenants who professed that they could not pay their rent, and who proved their inability under certain conditions, should be allowed to pay half their rent for the current year, and that all evictions, as far as such tenants were concerned, should be stayed. In order to justify this most revolutionary measure, the Preamble stated that there had been great depreciation in the value of agricultural produce since the greater number of the judicial rents were fixed. All must agree, however, that the hon. Member for Cork, in his somewhat laboured address, did not justify the position he had taken up, nor in any way attempt to prove the Preamble of his Bill. The hon. Member for Cambridge, on the other hand, had adduced statistics and evidence to show that, although a certain number of articles of agricultural produce had decreased in value, still it was not proved that there had been a great general depreciation during the last three or four years; and, indeed, everything tended to show that, although there might have been some depreciation up to last year, things were improving at the present time. They must remember that when the rents were fixed under the Land Act, they were fixed for 15 years, and it was inconceivable to suppose that in fixing the judicial rent the possibility of fluctuations in the price of produce was not taken into account. They had a right to consider what would be the effect of this measure on the tenants. There were three classes of tenants in Ireland who would be influenced by the Bill. First of all there were those who could pay their rents, but who would be intimidated and prevented from doing so by the action of the National League. Surely to relieve these of half their rent would be a most immoral and wrong state of affairs. Although the hon. Member for Cork stated it was his intention that only those who were so poor that they could not pay should be included, he did not think it required much argument to prove that if this Bill became law practically every tenant in Ireland would take advantage of it. It would not be fair to the landlord that such an opportunity should be given, and it could only give rise to fresh agitation. Then there was a second class of tenants—namely, those who could pay their rent if they made an effort, but whom it would be very difficult indeed to induce to do so. No doubt, the greater number of the tenants in Ireland were somewhat pinched in circumstances, and this class would be encouraged in every possible way to take advantage of the provisions of this measure. He asked if the Legislature ought to give them such encouragement? By so doing they would strike at the root of every kind of industry, and reduce Ireland to a state of chaos. If it were justifiable for the Legislature to reduce the lia- bilities of tenants in regard to their rents, why should not their liabilities be similarly reduced in regard to the debts they owed to tradesmen? Indeed, it seemed to him that the landlords had a greater claim to consideration by that House than the tradesmen, inasmuch as a landlord was obliged to give credit for his rent, whereas a tradesman need not do so unless he pleased. There was a third class of tenants whom this Bill was supposed especially to refer to—namely, those poor, wretched, miserable tenants who could not possibly pay their rents. Of course, every Member of that House sympathized with such tenants, and would do their utmost to improve their condition. But he asked whether the Bill would do any particle of good to such tenants? He did not think it would. He considered that emigration and migration would do more for that class than any such Bill as this. Mr. Tuke, in his pamphlet on the Potato Question, mentioned a place where there were 110 houses, the rents of which ranged from 30s. to 5s. There were only three tenants who paid over £2, and the average rent paid by the tenants was 6d. a-week. This Bill would reduce it to 3d. Would such a measure place these tenants in a position of prosperity and happiness? However much rents might be reduced, the misery of the poorer class of tenants in Ireland would not be allievated. This Bill, instead of benefiting, would only prolong the misery of the poorer tenants, for it was unreasonable to suppose that those who could not now pay 6d. a-week rent would be able to thrive if their rent were reduced to 3d. The effect which the mere introduction of this Bill into the House would have would be to still further stereotype the chronic misery which existed in Ireland; to retard the real and only lasting means by which Ireland might be made prosperous; to keep open the sore of discontent, and to retard the beneficial operation of the purchasing powers of Lord Ashbourne's Act. Moreover, the Bill would tend to increase the value of tenant right in Ireland, the excessive growth in the value of which was one of the great evils of the Land Act of 1881. But the introduction of the Bill would greatly benefit the National League. It would tend to impress the tenants generally with the power of the League, and it would en- courage the tenants of small, miserable holdings to hope that, if they only trusted the National League, they would, one day or other, be able to live on their holdings. This was a futile hope, and without a complete change in the small holdings, it was impossible for the small tenants to live. Another effect of the Bill would be to encourage and promote the Irish - American Question in the House. Everyone who had the welfare of Ireland at heart should resist this measure. The hon. Member for Cork might say that while we recognize the misery of Ireland we do not attempt any remedy for it. That was not the case, for he believed that the Government were determined to do everything in their power to stop it. But the number of evictions had been greatly exaggerated. They only amounted in six months to 860 in 500,000 tenants, or about 1½ per 1,000. Moreover, the number of evictions was enormously increased by the action of the National League, and without their action evictions would be comparatively few. In the case of those tenants who could not keep themselves on their present holdings, the only plan was to remove them and give their places to others. He believed that the Government was on the right tack in improving the agricultural position of Ireland, If Her Majesty's Government were not in earnest in this matter, they would have to reckon, not only with hon. Members opposite below the Gangway, but with their own supporters, for this Parliament was determined, if it could, to solve the great Irish Question. But he believed Her Majesty's Government were in earnest in seeking the true remedy for the chronic misery in Ireland. Ireland did not want heroic remedies; it had had too many of them. Five years of real statesmanship, without heroics, would do a great deal to put Ireland in a different position. He believed that Her Majesty's Government was now on the right tack, and that the anxiety of hon. Members opposite was caused by their fear that the measures which the Government might take would put an end to the Irish grievance. He hoped that the Royal Commission would recommend that steps should be taken for the encouragement of Irish industries, and to improve the condition of cattle farming, horse breeding, fish curing, and deep sea fisheries. An improve- ment was also necessary in the manufacture of butter, which at present was so badly made. Then migration and emigration were points deserving of the greatest attention. It was impossible for people to make a living in miserably overcrowded districts like parts of Connemara. It was not conceivable that any Act of Parliament would ever make the tenants of the bog lands in many parts of Ireland happy or contented; and, above all, nothing that that House could do would ever enable a man to live upon the proceeds of a small strip of such land. The want of capital was a great source of the agricultural difficulty in Ireland. They had seen the beneficial effects of the introduction of £5,000 for potato seed, and how it had multiplied a hundredfold. If fresh capital could be introduced into the farming industry of the country agricultural distress would be alleviated, and we should get rid of the National League. [Ironical cheers and laughter from the Home Rule Members.] If only they could do away with the spirit which that ironical cheer indicated they would free the country from the great obstacle which at present existed to the introduction of capital. That cheer also clearly showed that the object and meaning of this measure was not the improvement of Irish agriculture, but the maintenance of what he believed to be that baneful institution, the National League. The measures which had been indicated by Her Majesty's Government, on the other hand, would tend to restore peace and tranquillity to the country; and, therefore, they had been received with derision by hon. Members opposite. He believed that agitation lived and grew upon Irish misery and poverty, while that very misery and poverty tended to foster agitation. It was because they believed that the measure of the hon. Member for Cork would increase agitation and intensify the misery and poverty of the Irish agricultural tenants that those who sat on the Ministerial side of the House opposed it, and trusted that it would be rejected by the House of Commons.

MR. PINKERTON (Galway)

Sir, it has been asserted, again and again, that this demand upon the part of the holders of judicial leases is a most unjust and unreasonable demand. I am quite prepared to admit that, to those who have only taken a superficial view of the question, there seems to be an amount of truth in this assertion. If rents had been fixed so as not to trench upon the tenants' improvements; if due consideration had been given to the downward tendency of price; if a fair average had been struck, then I say this demand for a revision would never have been brought forward, and would never have received a moment's serious consideration from any side of the House. But when we consider that those rents were fixed upon the high level of the most prosperous years; that they were fixed by Commissioners who practically ignored the vast interest the tenants had, by their industry, created in the soil; that those Commissioners took, as their standard of value, a valuation that included the building, fences, drains, and reclamation, put upon the land by the unaided efforts of the tenants; I say, when we consider that those rents, in the present agricultural depression, confiscate the property of the tenants, the demand for a revision is both just and reasonable. With your permission, Sir, I shall say a few words with regard to the valuation of Sir Richard Griffith, which was the standard of measuring values with the Commissioners. The instructions issued by Sir Richard Griffith to his assistants laid down fair and just lines to proceed upon, which, if honestly carried out, would have reduced the sum total of the valuation to a very considerable extent; but, in nine cases of ten, those deputy valuators took the rent rolls of the different estates as their guides, and I could prove, in hundreds of cases, never set foot upon the farms they pretended to value. It amounted simply to this—that it was the landlords and agents of Ireland who made the valuation, and not Sir Richard Griffith. I am stating what I know to be true. In my own immediate neighbourhood half-a-mile of the country round was valued from the top of a hill; and, contenting himself with this bird's eye inspection, the valuator departed, with the happy consciousness that he had clone his duty. The tenants in some cases objected to this expeditious method of valuation, and appealed. The next valuator who was sent visited the land in question, and he expressed his regret that he could not set aside the decision of his predecessor—it would create confusion—but he would lower the valuation enough to cover cost of appeal. At the time of that valuation wheat was the staple crop in England; and English valuators, ignoring the instructions of their chief—that thin cold clay soils producing aquatic plants were to be classed low in the scale of value—regarded all the stiff clay land as splendid wheat soil, and put on a corresponding valuation. When we also consider that the greater part of the country at that time had been lately drained, the result was, as anyone conversant with agricultural matters knows, that new drains, which are all acting well, have the effect of materially improving the appearance of the soil. The country, under these circumstances, presented a very favourable appearance; and lands, dear at 10s. per acre, were, by these experts, valued at 30s. In the 10 years preceding the passing of the Act of 1881 an opinion gained currency among landlords that 25 per cent added to Griffith's valuation represented the fair letting value of the land; and those landlords and agents who were astute enough to see the cloud of depression looming in the distance made every effort to induce their tenants to take leases upon these terms. The tenants whose spirit had been crushed by periodical increases, like drowning men, grasped at this straw of protection; and we can realize the position those men now occupy, when it has been found necessary, in many cases lately in the Land Court, to reduce rents 25 per cent below that valuation. Let it be distinctly understood I am speaking for that portion of Ireland with which I am thoroughly acquainted—namely, Antrim and Derry; and in those counties I hold that the occupiers of lands, which were highly cultivated—as the greater portion was at the time of that valuation—have been plundered since by excessive rents fixed by a valuation based upon their own improvements. In the first place, the ordinary leaseholder, who has got no reduction, has a double claim upon the Government for redress; in the second place, judicial leaseholders, whose rents were fixed by a false standard of value, have a right to the consideration of their claims for a further reduction. I hold that the initial blunder of the Act of 1881 was the exclusion of the leaseholders; by so doing, you were placing a penalty upon the most in- dustrious and enterprizing of the Irish tenants. The improvident farmer, who held from year to year, had a blessed immunity from increases; but the improving tenant, who had good farm buildings, fields well fenced, drained, and cultivated, saw with consternation the result of years of toil confiscated by the stroke of the pen of an incompetent valuator. It has been said the Land Act dealt hardly with good landlords That is true; but it treated improving tenants with severity; it treated with double injustice the leaseholders whom it excluded; and it did not give sufficient consideration (in the case of those admitted) to what was the result of the tenant's efforts, and what was due to the natural fertility of the soil. I strongly opposed the revision of judicial rents upon the present Land Court methods. I do so still. I do not believe in a perpetual wrangle between landlord and tenant in the Law Courts, which gives the oyster to the lawyer, and leaves the shell to the contending parties. But the proposal of the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) obviates this difficulty. The necessary expenditure upon the part of judicial leaseholders has been already gone through; their lands have been surveyed; their claims for improvements have been scheduled; and the value of the land can be fixed for short periods by a scale of average prices. This will entail no extra expenditure, cause no ill-feeling; if prices fall, rent must be lowered in the same proportion; if prices rise, the landlords are entitled to an increase. But I am, still strongly of belief that attempts to settle the rent question are only temporary expedients, and that, sooner or later, an end must be put to dual ownership in land. Another argument put forward by the landlord Press is, that prices were as low at the time of Griffith's valuation as they are at present. What does that prove? Why, the cost of production has more than doubled since then. Farm servants are paid exactly double what they were receiving 30 and 40 years ago. The high price of tenant right is also quoted against the claim for reduction of rent. What are the facts with regard to that? The week before last, in my own immediate neighbourhood, upon the estate of Lord Robert Montagu, a highly cultivated farm was sold at seven years' purchase for the goodwill. Now, it is admitted by everyone who understands the Irish Land Question, that, in the vast majority of cases, the tenant's interest in the soil is equal to the landlord's. I am afraid, however, in this ease, the landlord would not be willing to sell his interest in this farm for seven years' purchase. This farm, 10 years ago, would have sold for more than twice as much. Now, what right, in a partnership of this kind, has all the depreciation in value to fall upon the tenant, and what claim can the landlord put fairly forward to escape scot free? I hold a letter in my hand from an extensive auctioneer in the North of Ireland. He says, with regard to the sale of tenant-right, none but choice farms can be sold; a dead lock exists in the sale of middling lots; that over a large portion of land it is doubtful whether the tenant's interest is worth one year's purchase. It is the worst season in the land sales since he commenced the business in 1865; so bad, in fact, that farmers, who are anxious to retire from farming, prefer to hold on, rather than sacrifice their tenant-right interest. It is claimed that evictions are few and far between in the North. I admit that I never saw an eviction; but I have seen several equivalents. I have seen tenants who struggled, year after year, to pay an exorbitant rent, who have hoped against hope, at last forced to sell in order to pay off arrears. An eviction must be an heartrending scene, if it is worse than seeing the breaking-up of a home, the shipwreck of a lifetime. I have seen men who have toiled for a lifetime, who have been temperate and industrious, forced at last to root up all the tender memories binding them to the home of their fathers, and to transplant themselves in their old age to another land. There are two methods of eviction. I do not wish to say an unfriendly word against landlords individually; there are many of them forced by their necessities to make tyrannical exactions; but it is doubly hard that tenants in whose lives there have been no holidays should be driven to the wall through the extravagance of a landlord or his predecessor in title. This love of the Irish for their homes may seem a matter of childish sentiment; but it is a sentiment it is foolish to ignore. They have, by their unaided efforts, improved their holdings. It is hard for the man who has carved his farm from the mountain, or reclaimed it from the morass, to understand that it belongs to another who has never spent a penny in its improvement, who in all probability is a stranger to the country, and has no sympathy with its people. We base our claim for relief upon three considerations:—First, the Act of 1881 was not fairly administered, as the Improvement Clause was entirely ignored; secondly, that the Commissioners did not take what they considered a "temporary depression" into account; thirdly, that the exclusion of the doubly-burdened leaseholders is not far short of a crime. To prove that the depression is beyond anything anticipated, I will submit to the consideration of the House a comparison of prices between 1882–3 and those of last year. These prices are beyond dispute, being the average of the leading markets of the North of Ireland; and if anyone can say, in the face of those figures, our demand is unreasonable, he must have a singular notion of what is reasonable and what is not. In 1882–3 oats were 9½d. per stone; potatoes, 4s. 2d. per cwt.; beef, £3 0s. 8d. per cwt.; butter, 1s. per lb.; pork, £2 13s. 9d. per cwt. In 1885–6 the same articles were, respectively, 8d.; 1s. 8d.; £2 10s.; 9d.; £2 15s. 6d. Let us look now at the average price of the seven years preceding the Land Act, upon which the Commissioners relied, to a certain extent, as a guide:—Oats, 10½d. per stone; potatoes, 2s. 7½d. per cwt.; butter, 1s. per lb.; beef, £2 16s. 6d.; flax, £2 18s. per cwt. Hon. Members opposite do not realize the difference this makes in the sum total of a farmer's profit. Let us take as an illustration a farm of first-rate arable land of 42 acres, cultivated upon a seven-year rotation. I am taking this quantity to simplify the calculation. Upon that rotation 12 acres would be in oats, which, at an average yield of 120 stone per acre, the difference of price between 1882 and last year would entail a loss of 15s. per acre, or, in other words, £9. The difference of price in potatoes upon three acres would be £36 10s.; but as the price was over the average we will not take potatoes into our calculation, but suppose them to be consumed upon the farm, and a ton of pork produced, which is £8 5s. per ton less in price, or else one ton of beef, at £10 13s. 4d. less than in 1882–3. In butter the falling in price would entail a loss of £2 per cow, taking a moderate average of 160 lbs. per annum as a fair yield for each cow, allowing eight cows for the farm—£16. The falling-off in the price of store cattle would entail a further loss of £10. All these inflict a loss upon the entire holding, as compared with 1882–3, of £53 18s. 4d. Now, these are not fancy calculations; the prices taken are from the official records of local markets. The average yields I have taken are quite within the limits upon good land well cultivated. How is this falling-off to be met? For the last year or two it has been met by the most rigid economy on the part of the tenants. The hon. and gallant Member who took it upon him to value the price, and expatiate upon the quality of the dress worn by a tenant's daughter, did not know how little truth was in his statement. It has been met by reducing the number of hands, by putting a stop to reclamation and improvement; and this forced economy has the disastrous result of leaving, in winter time, considerable numbers of unemployed labourers, who suffer in no Blight degree from the burden of excessive rents, for every 1s. in excess upon the rents takes 6d. out of the labourer's pocket. If the Government wish to stave off the claim for an independent Parliament for Ireland they ought to treat this question fairly.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. GIBSON) (Liverpool, Walton)

said, that he did not intervene at an earlier period in the debate to state the views of the Government, because he expected that some answer would have been given to the very clear and striking statement of facts and figures that had come from the Government side of the House, from his hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge, and from others who had followed him. He thought there had been, up to the present, a certain air of unreality about the debate. It was impossible that the Bill could be accepted by any responsible Ministry; and he ventured to think that the thin appearance of the House at the opening of the debate, and especially the appearance of the Benches below the Gangway, where hon. Members from Ireland sat, and that quarter of the House which the followers of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) used to throng, showed the appreciation which hon. Members had of the real significance of the measure now brought forward. The real interest of the debate was centred in the presence of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian. It was what the right hon. Gentleman meant to say; it was what he intended to indicate that they were all looking forward to. The hon. Member for Cork told the House that his Bill consisted of two sets of provisions. The first set was of a temporary character, and related to the abatement of arrears of rent, the present year's rent and the future year's rent of 1887. There was attached to this a provision enabling every tenant whose rent had been fixed before the end of 1884 to insist upon getting a compulsory credit, whether the Judge in the Court in which the action was laid liked it or not—a credit which was indeterminate in point of duration until his application could be disposed of, which might not be for months, or even years hence. That was the first part of the Bill, and the other part, the hon. Member said, was not temporary. It was a permanent amendment of the existing law; it was the inclusion of leaseholders in the Act of 1881. The hon. Member said that this had waited long enough, and therefore he included it in his Bill. He would deal with this last part of the question first. It was simply out of the question, as the hon. Member well knew, for the Government, after the declarations they had made, to undertake new constructive legislation this Session; and when any measure of that kind was brought forward it would require grave and anxious consideration, and it would receive much elaborate discussion on both sides of the House. It would then be for the Government to determine whether or not they would yield to an acceptance of the views which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian expressed in 1881, and again and again in subsequent Sessions of this Parliament. This question of admitting leaseholders to the Act of 1881 was brought before the right hon. Gentleman's Government year after year, and from that Government it got a stern and consistent refusal. In 1881 the right hon. Gentle- man said it would be impossible to strike more directly at the very root of contract as it was understood in Ireland, and that a lease was a binding covenant to pay a certain sum. The right hon. Gentleman thought that the leaseholders enjoyed security under their lease, and as long as it lasted they were bound to pay the rent under it. When the lease fell in the leaseholders were entitled to the status of present tenants; but as long as the lease lasted they were not entitled to revision of rent. It would be the duty of the Government, when the question came before them next Session, carefully and anxiously to consider whether they should assent to the views of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, supported as they were by his great authority and by much independent reasoning—or yield to the blandishments of hon. Members opposite. There was a reason above all others why the Government could not undertake to consider this question this Session. Whether the leaseholders were included in the Act of 1881 or not, they were not entitled to come within either Clause 1 or 3 of the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork. They might admit them as much as they liked to the Act of 1881; but they would not be entitled by that admission to pay half-rents, nor would they be entitled to the stay of execution under the Bill, because the Bill related to judicial tenants whose rent had been ascertained up to the year 1884. The introduction, therefore, of this Bill was, to a certaint extent, an expedient to enable certain hon. Members to say that they supported the Bill for the inclusion of leaseholders which the Government turned a deaf ear to. There was no case of urgency in the case of leaseholders. He now came to what was the real and serious part of the Bill, and that was the part which related to the judicial tenants whose rents were fixed before 1884. The House should bear in mind the vast sea of agitation which lurked behind these proposals if any Parliament could be found insane enough to grant them. Up to December 31, 1884, the tenancies in respect to which the judicial rents had been settled numbered 100,000, the old rental of which was £2,886,000, and the judicial rents £2,352,000. In round numbers this was a reduction of £500,000. There were two ways of settling judicial rents. One was by judicial decrees, and the other was by agreements between the landlord and the tenant. Up to the month of July last there were fixed altogether in Ireland, by way of judicial decrees, 88,000 rents, and the number settled out of Court was 88,000. They had, therefore, in round numbers, 176,000 judicial rents fixed up to the month of July last. This Bill affected tenancies settled up to the month of December, 1884, amounting to 100,000, leaving uncovered 76,000 tenants whose rents had been settled since; and the hon. Member for Cork had boldly stated in his speech that the tenants whose rents were settled in 1885 had just ground of complaint in the rent imposed on them by the Commissioners, because of the fall of prices, to which the Commissioners did not give full effect. He said that the reason why they were not included was that they were a comparatively insignificant number, Was it to be thought that this 76,000 would acquiesce and enjoy the prospect of the others obtaining what was asked for them? The Bill assumed that primâ facie every tenant in Ireland, big or little, no matter what his valuation, whose rent was fixed before the end of 1884 was unable to pay his rent. It assumed that primâ facie the amount of reduction that ought to be made was 50 per cent. He asked the House, considering the inquiry which the Government had granted, whether the Bill did not prejudge the results of the inquiry? The effect of one of the clauses of this Bill would be that a landlord would be prevented from touching the holding or the stock of a tenant who had not paid his rent. The landlord, therefore, instead of being a secured creditor, would become a personal creditor only, and would have to look on while the stock and farm were sold by other creditors, shopkeepers and usurers, who so often preyed upon the tenant. But the clause which struck him above all others was that which gave the tenant the right of applying for a stay to the Court. This clause had no parallel even in any Bill hitherto introduced by hon. Members opposite. He did not know whether hon. Members had been struck with the change in the language used by the hon. Member for Cork on September 3 and the language of the Bill. On September 3 the hon. Member said that power should be given to tenants whoso rents were fixed a year or two ago to apply for a revaluation on the basis of prices, and that the suspension of proceedings in ejectment ought to be permitted on payment of three-fourths of the original rent. Now, the hon. Member for Cork suggested that the payment should be one-half instead of three-fourths; but he had not explained why he thought fit to make that change. The proposal of the hon. Member on September 3 was that a discretionary power should be given to the Courts to stay ejectments upon terms; but his proposal now was that the landlord should be prevented from resorting to any legal process The richest tenant in Ireland, if sued by his landlord, might say—"I am going to apply to the Land Court, although I know that it will be a bogus application; but Parliament says I may, and until my case is determined I intend to keep my money in my pocket;" and the result, in that case, would be the extraction of a compulsory credit from the landlord, who would have to subsist as best he could on half-a-year's rent, although the Court might decide, when the application should be heard a year or two afterwards, that he was entitled to the whole rent. This 3rd clause offered a direct bribe to every judicial tenant to go to Court and apply for a reduction; and should he fail he would still, pending the decision, keep half his rent in his pocket. He would call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian to his own Land Act of 1881, which they all regarded as a final settlement of the Irish Land Question, and in which the vital principle of the non-disturbance of judicial rents was laid down. The right hon. Gentleman, in introducing that measure, did not attempt to support it on the ground that the mass of Irish landlords were unjust. On the contrary, he recognized that they had done their duty. The Act gave the tenants the right of free sale, a right which was not enjoyed by the Highland crofter, perpetuity of tenure, and the right to have a fair rent fixed by an independent tribunal. The landlord was not to raise the fixed rent for 15 years, and the tenant was to be held bound to pay it. The landlord's remedy was to be an ejectment action when two gales, or a whole year's rent, should be due. The right hon. Gentle- man, when attacks were made on the fundamental principles of the Land Act, had more than once admitted that the State had contracted very solemn obligations towards the landlords, who had made great sacrifices, entitling them to consideration. He should like to know whether the right hon. Gentleman still adhered to the view that judicial rents stood in a different and better position as compared with ordinary rents? When the right hon. Gentleman was introducing the Government of Ireland Bill he stated that there were certain reserved contracts which would not be under the control of the Irish Parliament. The contracts in question were not specifically mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman; but they would be found in Section 51 of the Land Purchase Bill, which showed the views of the right hon. Gentleman at the time. That section set forth— Provided that this Act shall not, nor shall any Act passed by the Irish Legislature, impair any obligations arising from contract or judicial decision under the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1870, and the Land Act of 1881, and any Acts amending the same. This Land Purchase Bill, when it was before the House, had received a good deal of discussion; but not a single Member below the Gangway opposite objected to this proposed consecration and stereotyping of judicial rents. If the Irish Government Bill and the Land Purchase Bill had passed into law no tenant could have wagged his little finger against a judicial rent, and the House would have had no power to tamper with such rents. He mentioned these matters to prove that the idea that the judicial rents were impossible rents was not present to the minds of the Irish Party in the month of June. When did the fall of prices become impressed upon the hon. Member for Cork and his followers? According to the statement of hon. Members, the Judicial Commissioners were not aware of the fact until the other day; and actually the hon. Member for Cork, and three-fourths of the Irish people, were ignorant of the fact of the crisis until the 8th of June last. Nothing was heard of the impossibility of paying rents until June 8, and from that time the cry had been pretty constant. He was very sorry for the fall in prices, which, in many cases, had seriously affected Irish farmers; but he could not forget that the assertion that the payment of rent was impossible had been made before now, and in years exceptionally prosperous. In 1883 the hon. Member for Cork introduced a Bill with the object of amending the Land Act of 1881. He then said that the rents fixed in 1881 were impossible rents. Rents were always impossible with the hon. Member for Cork; and yet the strange thing was that the tenants lived and thrived under these impossible rents. As to the Arrears Act, that was an Act which was introduced under very exceptional circumstances. The right hon. Gentleman opposite would remember that in 1880 a Bill was introduced into Parliament by his Government, called the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. [Mr. GLADSTONE: Hear, hear!] He was glad to hear the right hon. Gentleman cheer that, because that was a Bill the very principle of which was absolutely inconsistent with the Bill before the House. That Bill, though introduced at a time of great distress, after a year of famine, only provided that in the case of a landlord resorting to legal remedies the tenant should be entitled to compensation for disturbance. But that Bill gave no power of abating rents or staying proceedings. In 1882, after the Land Act was passed, there was still a vast burden of arrears hanging round the necks of the tenants; and the right hon. Gentleman, whether wisely or not, at all events generously, introduced the Arrears Act of 1882. At that time it was a moot point whether the operation of that Act should be effected by voluntary action, or whether it should be made compulsory. The right hon. Gentleman then said that if the method of compulsion were adopted it would involve something in the nature of a gift, and accordingly the State stepped in and gave a large gift to the landlords. The right hon. Gentleman felt it to be his duty, in introducing that Bill, to fence it round with the most elaborate precautions. In the first place, the Act was limited expressly and in terms to the tenant who was paying for his one holding not over £30 a-year. In other words, it was intended to benefit the poorer tenants, and not the rich farmers and graziers. The tenants, too, had to pay one entire year's rent down, and he was surprised to hear the hon. Member for Cork say that under the Arrears Act it was sufficient for the tenant to pay one-third. As a matter of fact there were hardly any arrears due on the judicial rents; and what the hon. Member for Cork sought to do with regard to judicial rents was to take half the money for this year and half for the year 1887. In addition to the precautions he had mentioned, the State recognized that the Arrears Act was legislation of an exceptional and startling character, and undertook to pay one-half of the arrears due to the landlord, not exceeding one year's rent, and in that respect a very large sum was paid to the landlord. But the distinction to which he would draw attention was that that Act distinctly gave the landlord certain rights. It limited the period within which the application could be made; it declared that the landlord should have a charge on the goodwill of the farm; and, above all, the Act did not apply to judicial rents. He ventured to think that the Bill before the House differed in all essential particulars from the legislation of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. What, then, was the solid basis of fact upon which it was sought to justify proposals the like of which had never been heard in the British House of Commons? It was said that the facts showed that there was an absolute inability on the part of the tenants to pay the rents imposed up to the year 1884. As to that, he did not find that any distinct or cogent evidence had been offered by hon. Members opposite below the Gangway. Beyond all doubt Ireland had been increasing in prosperity, as the right hon. Gentlemen opposite had said when introducing his Land Act of 1881, unless the increase of deposits in savings banks, the consumption of intoxicating liquors, and the sales of tenant right were to be laughed out of the House. One of the arguments in favour of the increasing prosperity of Ireland relied on by the right hon. Gentleman opposite was the decline of the smaller tenants and the growth of a more solvent and responsible body of occupiers. Between 1841 and 1881 the class of tenants holding from one to five acres had diminished in a remarkable degree, and the number of tenants holding from five to 15 acres had also diminished. But the number of those holding from 15 to 30 acres had increased 70 per cent, and those holding from 30 acres and upwards had increased 200 per cent. But it was said that between 1884 and 1885 there had been a great change; that there had been a fall in prices in 1885; yet there were more holdings in 1885 than in 1884, which showed that there was no great press of evictions, and there was more land under cultivation in 1886 than in 1885. Did that show that capital was lost and extinguished, and that tenants were crushed by rapacious landlords? One of the proofs of a progressive tenantry was the increase of tenants with large holdings. Again, there was a very important increase in the number of stock on the farms in 1885 and 1886, as appeared from the statistics laid before the House. In 1885, too, the crops were undoubtedly good, and in 1886 they were above the average. But the House might be told that there was great danger in agricultural figures, unless they were very carefully considered. The hon. Member who had just sat down complained that the Land Commissioners who fixed the rents did not discharge their duty properly, because in 1882 prices were exceptionally good, and that they had been largely influenced by that fact in fixing the rents. It was, no doubt, a dangerous thing to fix rents by prices, because rents were often high when prices were low. But in the very year mentioned by the hon. Member, the year 1882, he found from Thom's Almanack, an authority upon which all Irishmen relied, that the value of crops per acre was only £5 12s., as against £6 4s. in 1884. The Commissioners in fixing judicial rent were, it must be assumed, not noodles, but men fairly competent for their work, and in fixing the rent of any holding they would have regard to the crop as well as to the prices which prevailed. The hon. Member for Cork had quoted figures with regard to the reductions that had been made; but the statistics scarcely supported his view. The fact was that from 1881 to 1882 the judicial rents fixed were 10.2 per cent over the Poor Law valuation, in 1884 to 1885 they were 8 per cent over the Poor Law valuation. In May, 1886, they were 8 per cent over the Poor Law valuation, and in June, 1886, 10 per cent under. This difference between rents fixed in May and those fixed in June did not reflect upon the capacity of the Commis- sioners, but showed that there must have been considerable irregularity and variety in the class of holdings that had to be valued. In The Times of that morning there appeared a statement as to the amount of reductions made in the judicial rents in each year since 1881. In 1882 the average reduction was 20 per cent, and down to the autumn of 1885 18 per cent. In October, 1885, it went up to 21 per cent, and it had since gone on to 22 per cent, and this year to 27, and in one case to 29 per cent. In the Civil Bill Court, however, before a Judge who sat alone, the reductions were much smaller. But he desired to call the special attention of the House to the fact that the difference in the proportion of reduction between the earlier and the later years was in round figures only about 7 per cent; and because there was this difference the House was asked to decree that the tenants of Ireland, who had already received a reduction averaging 20 per cent, were entitled to further reduction of 50 per cent. The views of the hon. Member for Cork were extravagant, and the figures which he gave the House were not of a very accurate character. For instance, he omitted entirely to mention the fact that the price of wool had risen 60 per cent. Sometimes the hon. Member stopped at 1884, and gave no information as to the prices for 1885. Another argument relied upon by the hon. Member for Cork was that of the "inherent vice" of the landlords. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, however, in one of his speeches on the Land Bill of 1881, said that the Irish landlords had been on their trial, but that as a class they were found free from blame. What more than this could be said of any class? No doubt there were black sheep amongst the landlords of Ireland. There were black sheep in England. There were black sheep in every country, and even in every House of Assembly in the world. The right hon. Member for Mid Lothian had protested against imputing to the Irish a double dose of original sin. Were not the Irish landlords to be included among the Irish? It would be grossly unfair to pass this sweeping, and, to many, ruinous and exterminating measure because there might be some landlords who exercised their rights without moderation. Irish landlords were not fools, and they did not unnecessarily resort to evictions—if it could be avoided it was avoided—for its effect in most cases was to leave the land on the landlord's hands to be garrisoned at considerable expense. An hon. Member had some time ago referred to the "wholesale evictions" on Lord Kenmare's estate; but on the 1st of September there appeared a letter in The Times from Lord Kenmare's legal advisers in this country in which it was stated that there had only been 15 tenants permanently evicted on the estate during1 the last seven years, which, on an average, was one tenant a year in every 700; and each of the evicted tenants had had the offer of being reinstated, or of selling his holding for his own benefit if he paid half-a-year's rent.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR (Liverpool, Scotland)

I never mentioned Lord Kenmare's name.

MR. E. HARRINGTON (Kerry, W.)

I beg to say to the hon. and learned Gentleman that the letter is a tissue of falsehoods.

MR. GIBSON

said, the letter was signed by the legal representatives of Lord Kenmare, and had not been contradicted, as far as he was aware. The fears as to an avalanche of evictions were baseless. In considering the statistics of evictions, it must be borne in mind that there were 565,000 tenants, holding one acre and upwards, in Ire-laud. The Eviction Returns were, of course, documents of high authority; but they must be read with these points borne in mind—namely, that they did not indicate whether the eviction was for non-payment of rent or some other cause, nor did they show if the tenant was subsequently re-admitted as a caretaker, nor whether the eviction was that of a judicial tenant. As far as his knowledge went judicial tenants were very seldom evicted; and, therefore, for anything that the Returns showed to the contrary, the evictions in these Returns might not include a single case of a judicial tenant. The hon. Member for Cork had said that the small number of evictions in 1885–6 was, in the last quarter of 1885, owing to the benignant attitude of Lord Carnarvon, and in the first part of 1886 to the similar attitude of the late Chief Secretary. He observed, however, that without exception the numbers of evictions varied steadily with the seasons. The number in the March quarter was small, and the December quarter had the smallest number of the year. The figures he had appeared to vary from those given by the hon. Member for Cork. He found that in the year 1882 there was a very large number of evictions, 5,201 altogether; but from that number there was a very large deduction to be made, because 2,331 persons were restored as caretakers and 198 as tenants. In 1883 there were 3,640 evictions, but 236 were restored as tenants, and 1,507 were restored as caretakers. In 1884 there were 4,188 evictions; 1,760 were restored as caretakers, and 229 as tenants. In 1885 there wore 3,127 evictions; 1,540 were restored as caretakers, and 120 as tenants. In the first quarter of 1886 the figures were rather remarkable; 698 were evicted, 388 were restored as caretakers, and 20 as tenants. The hon. Member for Cork had complimented the Lord Lieutenant then in Office on the small number of evictions during that period; but it would be found that his Predecessor in 1885 had a very similar record—namely, 720 evictions, 46 restorations, and 326 who were restored as caretakers. The House would be surprised to learn that those were the normal figures in every one of the corresponding quarters of former years. The number of evictions was always comparatively large in the June quarter. In that quarter of 1882 the number of ejectments was 1,732, in 1883 it was 1,247, in 1884 it was 1,358, and in 188 5 it was 1,326, and that gave a larger number than for the summer quarter of the present year. He thought in the face of the figures which he had given it could not be said that the Irish landlords were oppressors; nor did he think the House would believe that they were such fools as to put in operation wholesale evictions, which would be their own ruin. The House should consider, before it gave its sanction to such legislation as was proposed, that under the present law no judicial tenant could be evicted unless he owed a whole year's rent, and that then he was entitled to six calendar months more from the time that he was dispossessed in order to redeem his holding. The County Court rule which had been mentioned also gave a very wide discretion to the Judges in those Courts whose jurisdiction was sufficient to embrace the cases of all the poorer class of tenants. He thought the Bill, if passed, must act as a wholesale invitation to all the tenants of Ireland, rich or poor, to come into Court to have their rents reduced, and get thereby a half-year's credit until their claims were disposed of. It was simply nonsense to say that all those cases could be determined in four months. It had taken two years to settle the rents for the tenants in the Bill, and how many years would it take to settle this question of abatement? Under the arrears Act of 1882 there was no real litigation, for landlord and tenant made common cause; but the present Bill, if passed, would initiate litigation more angry and prolonged than even that under the Land Act of 1881, which had been described as one of the greatest blessings ever bestowed on the Legal Profession in Ireland. If the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition gave encouragement to this Bill it would be sealing the condemnation of his own Land Act, which he had regarded and brought forward as the final settlement of the Land Question in Ireland. The pivot of the Land Act of 1881 was the judicial rent fixed for 15 years, which could not be raised by the landlord in good years, but which protected him from loss in bad ones; and if that were removed the whole fabric of that Act must perish. The effect of the proposed legislation would be to weaken the self-reliance and the exertions of the tenant, and to induce him to place his trust rather upon a possible reduction of rent if he should get behind in his payments. It would give a compulsory credit to every tenant who chose to come to the Court, whether he was able to pay or not, until his case was disposed of. The Bill very largely differed in a wide and startling degree from the measure sketched by the hon. Member for Cork in his speech during the debate on the reply to the Speech from the Throne; and yet no Member of the House was capable of expressing himself more clearly than that hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman said that in 1883, and though he very nearly agreed with the right hon. Gentleman—because he made an exception in favour of the right hon. Gentleman himself—he thought that the fact of the hon. Member for Cork, who was never carried away by passion and who was a thorough master of all that went on in Ireland, bringing forward the proposal on the 3rd of September to pay three-fourths of the rent, giving a discretionary power to stay execution, and now introducing such a modification as they had seen, showed that something extraordinary had occurred since then. He did not know for what purpose the Bill was introduced—whether as an implement of agitation or to try the faith of right hon. Gentlemen, and see how far they were prepared to follow the hon. Member. But this he knew—that whatever use the hon. Member and his Friends might make of the measure outside, he was well assured it must in this House meet the fate for which it was admirably prepared in all its provisions—the fate of decisive rejection.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE (Edinburgh, Mid Lothian)

I am sorry to find, Sir, that in the course of this debate, notwithstanding the rumours and indications which have appeared in various quarters, there have been no signs of a tendency to approximation of opinion, or to an amicable arrangement between the two sides of the House. The speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman who has just sat down (Mr. Gibson), and the speeches of the hon. Gentlemen who moved and seconded the Amendment, have been in the tone of an absolute and uncompromising opposition to any measure whatever for affording any relief whatever to any portion of the Irish tenantry in the actual circumstances in which we stand. The question whether that uncompromising attitude is required and justified by the facts is, it appears to me, the only question which we have to-night to decide in determining what vote we shall give in regard to the second reading of the Bill of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell). Now, Sir, I must venture to comment on the arrangement under which the debate has been conducted. I cannot be wrong in supposing that that which is perfectly regular and legitimate—that the selection of Gentlemen to move and to second the Amendment which was to be fatal to the Bill was an arrangement made by and with the sanction of Her Majesty's Government. That being so, I cannot help being struck with the particular position which they occupy as individuals in regard to this particular subject. [An hon. MEMBER: Question!] Question! This is a question affecting the welfare especially of the agricultural body in Ireland; and there are in this House—notwithstanding what is said of the diminished power and representation enjoyed by Irish landlords—no inconsiderable number of Gentlemen who are the Representatives of agricultural constituencies in Ireland, and who are strong and determined supporters of Her Majesty's Government. Then, Sir, I am led to ask myself, and I hope a reply will be given to the question—How and why is it that no Representative of those agricultural constituencies in Ireland has been found ready to come forward and to move the rejection of this Bill? If ever there was a subject which called for the exertion of the energies and the talents of the county Members sitting in this House, and sitting for Ireland as Irish Representatives in this House, this is the subject and the occasion. But the Amendment has been moved by an hon. Gentleman perfectly qualified for the task by every personal gift, but who, it appears to me, is by no means qualified by the fact that he sits in this House as the Representative of an English borough. Not less remarkable is the choice of the Seconder. The Seconder has the misfortune, as I understand and believe, of not being an Irishman at all.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL) (Paddington, S.)

I beg the right hon. Gentleman's pardon. My hon. Friend (Mr. C. Lewis) is an Irishman.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT (Derby)

The noble Lord says the hon. Member is an Irishman.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

Well, I have not seen his baptismal certificate; but I maintain and believe that in the case of so distinguished a Gentleman I cannot possibly be wrong, and that he is a person born on this side of the Channel. It is true that he is an Irish Member; but he does not sit for an Irish constituency, and it is impossible we should not ask why is it that, in order to move the rejection of this Bill, a choice was not made of two, or at least of one Gentleman representing Irish agricultural constituencies? [Cries of Oh!"] Gentlemen opposite think that question very ridiculous. It appears to me to be pertinent and appropriate. I will venture to give a reason, which, in the absence of other reasons coming from quarters of great authority, will, I think, find acceptance with some portions of this House. I think the Motion for the rejection of the Bill, and for refusing all relief to all persons affected by it, has been made by Gentlemen unconnected with agricultural constituencies in Ireland—["No no!"]—for the plain and simple reason that no Member representing such an agricultural constituency in Ireland, however firm and fervent he might be in his allegiance to the Government, could be found for the purpose of making the Motion. ["Oh, oh!"] My reason, at any rate, holds the field for the present, and if I am wrong the Gentlemen to whom I refer will have ample opportunity for recommending themselves to the favour of their constituencies by boldly coming forward in the course of this debate and denouncing the provisions of this Bill and maintaining that no case exists for it. Sir, the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland was pleased, very courteously, to refer to me more than once in the course of his speech. Among other references to me he stated, I believe with perfect accuracy, that in 1881, in introducing the Land Bill to this House, I stated that the Irish landlords had been upon their trial, and had not been found guilty, or words to that effect. The hon. and learned Gentleman is, I believe, quite accurate in his reference. I spoke on the best evidence in my possession—namely, the evidence of an important Commission which inquired into the condition of land in Ireland at the close of 1880 and the commencement of 1881. I must confess that the very large number of applications for judicial rents, and the proof which I must presume to have been afforded in those cases that the existing rents were beyond fair rents, somewhat disappointed me, and in some degree modified the declaration I had previously made; but, at the same time, I am very far indeed from founding the vote I intend to give on this Bill on any general charge against the landlords. I will state more specifically the grounds of that vote by-and-bye; but I find it no part of my duty, and no matter of accusation against them, to enter into any reasoning connected with, their proceedings in any particular. The hon. and learned Gentleman states that the judicial rents are in a different position from other rents in the view of Parliament. Well, Sir, that is one of the propositions which it appears to me to be very difficult to handle with a careful application of it to principles. No doubt, they are in a different position in respect of certain particular enactments which apply to them. For example, the 15 years' term of judicial rent has nothing more nearly analogous to it in the ease of ordinary rent than an arrangement which can be made under a lease. There are specific differences between judicial rents and other rents, and certainly I am prepared to contest the proposition that judicial rents are covered with a general sacredness that does not apply to ordinary contracts in relation to rent. ["Oh, oh!"] A proposition of that kind, which need not necessarily be argued now, has, in my opinion, led to very erroneous and questionable views with regard to the position of the two orders of landlords in Ireland—those whose tenants have appealed against them, and who have more or less succeeded in their appeals, and those who have presumably found no occasion to make any such appeal. The hon. and learned Gentleman says—and I believe with truth—that the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, which we introduced in 1880, and the deplorable rejection of which by the House of Lords has been the source of many of our subsequent difficulties, did not provide for an abatement of rent. Sir, that is perfectly true—I believe it to be true according to my recollection; but it provided for the payment on account of disturbance in the very case where that payment on account of disturbance had been included in the law of 1870. I will venture to put it to the hon. and learned Gentleman that the question as to the mode of relief to be afforded to the tenant is totally different from the question whether any case has arisen for affording some relief to the tenant in the circumstances in which he is now placed. It is conceivable that you may simply arrest judicial proceedings, take no other step whatever, wait for the result of your inquiry, and then for the legislation that may follow. It is quite conceivable, and, as I think, preferable, that, in addition to the arrest of proceedings, some proposal on the principle of the hon. Member for Cork should he adopted; and it has indeed, I think, been distinctly and justly stated by the hon. and learned Gentleman that the matter should not be allowed to hang over, but that an immediate decision should be come to as to what amount of temporary abatement should be made, or it is perfectly possible that you might give relief in the form of compensation for disturbance. But these are only questions of difference in form; the substantial question is, whether a case for relief to any portion of the tenantry of Ireland has in any form arisen, or whether it has not. The hon. Member who moved and the hon. Member who seconded the Amendment assert that there is no case for relief in any form to any portion of the tenants in Ireland, and that is the question on which I think the judgment of the House will have to be taken. Now, the hon. and learned Gentleman also observed, and again, I believe, with truth, that the Arrears Bill was limited—and the same assertion might have been made as to the Compensation for Disturbance Bill of 1880—to holdings under a certain figure. The hon. and learned Gentleman appeared to me to attach great importance to that distinction, and I am not surprised that he should have attached importance to it. Undoubtedly, we attached importance to it in the case of the Arrears Bill, and in the case of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. But the hon. and learned Gentleman, in this portion of his speech, and I think in many other portions of his speech, completely forgot the position in which he has himself been placed by the act of the Government to which he belongs. The Government are those who have appointed a tribunal to inquire whether the judicial rents are too high or not. If it is so important to draw a distinction between rents under £30 and rents over £30, why has not that distinction been drawn in the instructions to the Commissioners? The Government have admitted that rents of all amounts are fit subjects for inquiry; but how can the hon. and learned Gentleman expect the hon. Member for Cork to be the person to introduce that distinction, and to exclude from the operation of his Bill a portion of those whose case the Government themselves, by a solemn act, have declared to call for and require attention? I feel a great obligation to the hon. and learned Gentleman for all that he said about the Land Act of 1881. He says, with great truth, that in approaching that subject I did so with a sense, if not of reverence, yet, at any rate, of awe and of difficulty, and of oppression; that it was one of the most difficult subjects, one of the most arduous and complicated subjects, with which any Gentleman in this House could possibly be called upon in a responsible manner to deal; and that I looked upon the enactments in that measure as enactments that ought not, excepting under the most clear and evident considerations of necessity, to be disturbed. I hoped it contained the elements of a permanent settlement in Ireland, as far as that settlement, generally speaking, could be effected under any legislative arrangement between landlord and tenant. And, Sir, that is perfectly true. But who are they who disappointed me? Who are they who have called the Land Act in question? They are those who have recommended Her Majesty to appoint a Commission. [Laughter.] The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War (Mr. W. H. Smith), strong in his 24 hours' experience, laughs at the observation which I make. If the right hon. Gentleman had applied as many years, as he has applied hours, to the investigation of Irish matters, he might have known a little more of the subject. We provided, in the Act of 1881, arrangements made with great difficulty, made under circumstances extremely arduous, due in many respects to the special case of Ireland, due in some respects to that rash act of the House of Lords to which I have already referred, and we hoped that those arrangements would be solid and undisturbed. At any rate, we respected those arrangements ourselves. In the important propositions made this year we avoided raising any question with respect to the basis upon which rents have been fixed in Ireland. The present Government, in what I thought must have been humorously called by the right hon. Baronet the Chief Secretary for Ireland a "sober policy," have re-opened in all its breadth this question of judicial rents. I am not at all sure whether they are conscious of the vast importance of the step that they have taken. Last year they took a step of vast consequence with respect to coercive or repressive legislation without fully, as it appeared to us on this side of the House, comprehending the nature and the consequences of that action. I am afraid that there has been somewhat similar haste and want of full investigation in the proposition now made by Her Majesty's Government to inquire whether the rents fixed in Ireland under the Act of 1881 are rents which can or cannot be paid. But my present purpose is only to reply to the query of the hon. and learned Gentleman. He says—"When did you become conscious of the inability to pay rent? When was this inability to pay rent first thought of?" Sir, I will answer the question. It was first thought of when Her Majesty's Government determined to advise the Queen to issue a Commission which was to inquire into three points. [A laugh.] I may be permitted to observe that laughter from a Cabinet Minister is not argument, and perhaps it is the best proof of the truth of my argument. Perhaps, however, manners are not a proper matter for discussion. One of the three points is to inquire whether, by an exceptional fall in the price of produce, the capacity or incapacity to pay rent has been affected? I know nothing of the interior of the minds of other men; but, as far as the public is concerned, my answer to the hon. and learned Gentleman is that the first moment—the first time—the time of the birth of this great idea of resettling and reconsidering Irish rents, was the time when Her Majesty's Government determined to advise the issue of a Royal Commission. Sir, the hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment, which amounts to the rejection of this Bill, founded himself very much on the proposition that it was impossible for the Courts of Justice to distinguish between those who cannot pay the rent and those who will not pay the rent. It is quite plain to me that it is too late to urge that argument in Parliament, which has more than once recognized the practicability of drawing and acting upon such a distinction. The Compensation for Disturbance Bill, which was passed in 1880 by this House, was entirely founded upon the proof of inability to pay rent; and not only so, but upon the proof of inability to pay rent defined by a minute and careful reference to the cause which had produced the inability. In the Arrears Act, which passed into law, and which became the foundation of extreme and costly transactions, the inability to pay rent judicially proved was the basis of the entire proceeding. Therefore, it is impossible to accept the doctrine of the hon. Gentleman as to the impossibility of doing that which it was deemed possible to do on former occasions, and which we have done on the great occasion of the Arrears Act. It can hardly be held now that there is no reason why there should be a reference to a Court of Justice, for the purpose of giving relief to those who are unable to pay rent. The hon. Gentleman, again, when he made use of that argument, suggested to me what I confess appeared to be the purport of the great bulk of his speech. Three-fourths of his speech, at least, and a large portion of the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman who has just sat down, are in the nature of a distinct and deliberate argument against the appointment of a Commission, such as Her Majesty's Government have advised, and ought to have led up to a Motion, not for the rejection of this Bill merely, but for an Address to the Crown, praying the Crown not to issue such a Commission. The hon. and learned Gentleman seemed also to attach great value to another argument he used, and which appeared to me to be, I will not say of the most flimsy, but of a most narrow and inadequate character. He said—"You are assuming that there is no other way of getting judicial rents reduced than by a Bill of this nature." I answer there is such a way—namely, by availing ourselves of the provisions of the Purchase Act of Lord Ashbourne. I want to know how many tenants there are in Ireland who have availed themselves of that Act? What is the capital value of the Irish land, and how many of those tenants, or how much of that land, can possibly obtain relief from the judicial rent under the Act of Lord Ashbourne? If the hon. and learned Member tells me that the Act of Lord Ashbourne is to be indefinitely increased and extended—that instead of having the Treasury made the direct creditors of some few thousands of tenants in Ireland we are to extend the Act to tens of thousands, twenty, and hundreds of thousands of tenants—I tell him he is reckoning without his host. Such an extension—such a multiplication of the relations of debtor and creditor—in every respect, economically and politically, most objectionable and most dangerous, will receive the deliberate and determined opposition of a large portion of this House. It is said, and possibly it is true, that some may receive relief—1 per cent, 2 per cent, or probably 3 per cent, for I do not know how much of the £5,000,000 under Lord Ashbourne's Act actually remains undisposed of. I will not contest it; but I am not prepared to admit that those who may be able to obtain such relief can supply us with a proper measure of our action on the occasion that is now before us. Sir, there was another passage at the end of the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman which I heard with some surprise and regret. It appeared to be calculated by the hon. and learned Member that there would be a total abandonment by the Irish landlords of their character, position, and responsibility in that country by the handing over to the tenants of the whole property of the soil. I know not whether the hon. and learned Member is at present in his place; I should be glad if he would contradict me, and assure me that I have misunderstood him. In my opinion, it would be a most unfortunate day for Ireland that should witness the adoption by the Legislature of any measure contemplating the extirpation or extermination from the country of an entire class of the community. My wish is that the Irish landlords should remain in the country, and that they should do their duty there.

COLONEL KING-HARMAN (Kent, Isle of Thanet)

How are they to do it? You have made it impossible.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

I will not answer that disorderly question now. It would only lead me into a great and unwarrantable invasion of the time of the House, and I think that an interruption of that kind should not be encouraged by a lengthy notice, even if it were worthy of such notice. This I will say, however—that we, at least, in our adherence to the Act of 1881, and in the I measure which we adopted (his year with respect to Irish landlords, have never contemplated and never desired the removal of the landlords from that country. It is a step which we believe would be injurious to society at large. ["Question!"] I would remind the House that we are at present engaged in considering the second reading of this Bill; and what we have to determine is whether there is a case for legislation in respect to what appears to be its main provision and main purport. What is called the Irish Question was wide enough, as I thought, when the late Government were in Office. It embraced the subject of local self-government for Ireland, or what is properly termed Home Rule, together with the subject of land sale and purchase. But it has now been greatly widened by the recourse to what the right hon. Gentleman calls a "sober" policy. The two subjects to which I have referred are in all their breadth before you, and you will have to encounter them; but to them you have added two other subjects of immense extent and complexity—that opened by the public inquiry into public works in Ireland, and the large application of public funds to their prosecution; and a subject greater still—more complicated still—into which you have found your way, but out of which you will find it rather difficult to discover an exit—namely, the subject of rents in Ireland. I am afraid I am greatly at issue with some of those hon. Gentlemen whose singular modes of expression I was tempted for a moment to notice; for, as far as I can comprehend the state of their minds, although it may be presumptuous in me to invade sanctuaries of that description—as far as I am able to comprehend or even to conjecture—their opinion is that the issue of this Commission to inquire respecting the land and respecting the payment of rent is a matter of secondary importance. It is a Commission which is to examine— To what extent, if any, and in what parts of Ireland, the operation of the Land Act of 1881 is affected, whether by combination to resist the enforcement of legal obligations, or by exceptional fall in the prices of produce; and also, to inquire to what extent there exists any desire among tenants to avail themselves of the provisions of the Land Purchase Act of 1885, and to report upon any modifications of the law which may be necessary. Now, Sir, on the first and third branches of this inquiry I do not purpose to make any remark at all. I remark only upon that second branch of the inquiry, which appears to me to be the most pregnant in its consequences among the three, and under which the Commissioners are to examine what effect a fall in prices has had upon the payment of rents under the Land Act of 1881. In my opinion, the issue of that Commission by the Executive of the country contains within it both an assertion and a promise. I will not follow the hon. Member for Cork, or the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Penrose Fitzgerald), into their inquiries, interesting as they were, with respect to the fall of prices. For my part, personally, I take my stand upon the issue of that Commission, and on the issue of that Commission alone, as being made the sufficient and imperative ground for a proceeding on the part of Parliament, with a view to afford relief to tenants in cases where, upon judicial examination, it may be found necessary. By the issue of that Commission you have asserted your conviction, in the face of the country, that there are cases of judicial rent in Ireland where the rents now fixed, in consequence of the fall in prices, cannot be possibly paid. Have you considered how grave and solemn such an assertion is? Will it be questioned that such an assertion, such a conviction, on your part, is involved in the issue of the Commission? Why, Sir, no Government in this country could possibly assume the responsibility of inquiring by public authority into the capacity of tenants to pay their rents, unless they were profoundly convinced by the information at their command that there were cases—I do not examine now how many—but a class of cases in Ireland, where, in consequence of the fall in prices, those rents cannot be paid. This was not only an assertion, but it was a promise; for it is impossible for the Legislature—impossible even for the Executive, short of the authority of the Legislature—to assert that there are cases of that description, where rent cannot be paid inconsequence of the fall in prices, without being prepared to afford relief to the persons charged with such rent. If I want a proof of the assertion I have just made, I find it in the declaration of the Prime Minister himself. The Prime Minister, immediately upon his assumption of Office, acquainted those whom he was addressing "elsewhere," that there were cases, as he believed, where the judicial rents could not be paid. Is was perfectly true, he stated, in what way the funds were to be found. He stated they wore to be found by drawing on the Exchequer of this country—a proposition prematurely born into the world, where it was not destined to survive, and it has already, I think I may safely say, received its quietus. If the judicial rents are too high—if you, who say so in an authentic form, are about to provide means for their reduction, it will not be out of the Exchequer of this country that the difference will be made up. My only purpose in mentioning this now is to make good beyond all dispute my assertion that, in the face of the country, the Executive Government has taken a measure which implies and involves the fact that in certain cases these rents are too high, and which therewith, by an iron necessity, also involves an engagement on their part that relief shall be given in respect of such cases. Very well; then how far have we got in the argument? [Laughter from the Ministerial Benches.] I am sorry if my remarks are too long; but I have not yet occupied more time, I think, than was very properly and becomingly occupied by the Mover and Seconder of the Amendment, or by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland, and I take it rather as a compliment if my argument is found to grate a little upon the minds of hon. Gentlemen opposite. I am, moreover, anxious that we should make further progress towards the completion of the argument. Hon. Members need not be alarmed—I will not long delay the conclusion of my remarks. The point, then, that we have now reached is this—that there being this admission—that there are rents which are too high, and there being this engagement to afford relief in respect of such rents, the engagement amounts to this—that when the Commission, which is not yet fixed, has inquired, and has reported, when the Government have considered, when the draftsmen have, under their instructions, been able to frame their Bill, when they have introduced their Bill, and have induced Parliament to pass it, then relief shall be afforded. Our contention is this, and I consider it to be irresistible, and not one word that has fallen from the Mover and Seconder of the Amendment—not one word that has fallen from the hon. and learned Gentleman in the slightest de- gree touches this contention—that you have laid down the steps of a long and complicated operation, and that, in the meantime, there exist, in the law, powers for inflicting the penalties of the law upon a body of men with respect to whom you have yourselves, by your own act, laid down that they are unable to pay their rents. I say that you cannot, in reason and propriety, justify such a state of arrangements as that. If you have recognized their inability—and you have recognized it—[Cries of "No, no!"] Why, your Commission, of itself, involves the acknowledgment of it. [Renewed cries of "No!"] Is it possible that there are hon. Gentlemen on the other side, however new in their Parliamentary experience, who can dream for one moment that Her Majesty's Government can issue a Commission to inquire whether the exceptional fall in prices has affected the payment of rents under the Act of 1881—that they can issue such a Commission, before they have made up their own minds that, in certain cases, the exceptional fall in prices has taken place. I say it would be a piece of monstrous injustice on the part of Parliament to allow the operations of the law to go forward, and to allow men to be evicted from their holdings in Ireland on account of rent unpaid, not from want of will to pay, but from an absolute inability to pay, which you yourselves have admitted. [Cries of "No!"] Sir, with respect to the Bill before us, I deal with it simply as a measure proposed for second reading. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Cork has introduced into the Bill, in the first place, a reasonable Preamble. Had I had the framing of such a Preamble, I should not have used exactly the same terms as those which it contains; but if the Bill reach the stage of Committee, of course it will be open to me or any other person to amend the Preamble so as to bring the Bill itself into more exact correspondence with our opinions. The hon. Member gives relief in this Bill to the class of leaseholders. I need not refer to the course taken by us in 1881, and since 1881, with respect to that class. I have never committed myself to an interference with the rents paid under existing leaseholds. I should hold myself entirely open to consider what has been said, not by Gentlemen of the National Party, but by Gentlemen sitting on the opposite side of the House, and including among them the most valorous and determined of them—I mean the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh (Colonel Saunderson)—who has addressed to us the language of open war more repeatedly and determinedly than any other Member of this House, and the still more remarkable passage near the close of the speech of the hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment, and who indicated that, should inquiry appear to be warranted, he, for his part, was very much disposed to give to the leaseholders the advantages enjoyed by other occupiers in Ireland. I will not go into the mode in which he described the moral and ethical character of this relief. It was, he said, that having committed one injustice, it was necessary to commit a second injustice, in order to avoid the committal of a third. I will not endeavour to interpret the tirade of the hon. Gentleman; but I wish only to say that this is a subject in which, under such circumstances, I think every man will do well to reserve, with regard to it, his free discretion. With respect to the deposit of the rent, proposed by the hon. Member for Cork, I can perfectly well understand that if once we arrive at a conclusion that justice requires that, in some shape or other, relief should be afforded to the tenants who you find to be in the category, which you yourselves have established, of incapacity to pay the judicial rents, a question, which I have no doubt the hon. Member for Cork will be prepared to consider with an open mind, may arise as to the nature of the relief. The first thing is, of course, that a temporary arrest of proceedings must take place, and that is the proposition which I put to every candid man on the opposite side of the House, and to those on this side who are supposed to be deeply pledged to support Her Majesty's Government on the Irish Question, that it is impossible to say, admitting you have, in certain cases, a real ground of grievance, and that the tenants are unable to pay these rents, that there should be allowed ejectment proceedings, decrees of eviction, and that six months shall pass away. How can you say you will have, within that period of six months, inquired, drawn your Bill, legislated on the subject, and be in a position to afford relief? It cannot be, Sir. Temporary suspension of proceedings comes first, and then I conceive that an argument may fairly be made on the question whether you ought to stop your proceedings or go forward with the hon. Member for Cork, and fix at once the amount of abatement to be made. I have no desire to misrepresent the hon. and learned Gentleman who has just sat down; but I understood him to say that if the thing were to be done it would be better that the temporary abatement should be settled at once, as that would be better in the interest of the landlord and in the interest of the tenant, than to leave that rather limited question open to be a subject of future litigation, after a new law had been passed. I own that that is my opinion, and I believe the hon. Member for Cork has exercised a sound judgment in providing not for a permanent, but for a temporary, settlement of the judicial rent. Then comes another question—the question of the deposit. I apprehend that this deposit, although we have not heard much about it, is not to be, in any sense, an abatement—that this deposit is not the essence of the Bill. Whether Parliament should exact a deposit, and what its amount should be, whether it would be better to empower the Court to proceed to make rules on that subject, I conceive to he open questions to be disposed of in Committee on the Bill. I do not look upon them as any part of the controversy between landlord and tenant in this matter. I think that if it is felt and believed that the fixing of a deposit of this kind is equivalent to a dismissal and receipt in full for the rest of the rent, then the argument on that question ought to be carefully and impartially considered, and for my own part I wish to reserve full and entire freedom on the subject. That which I urge, and which not one word in this debate has yet been said to displace, or to confute, is this—that we cannot with justice, we cannot with decency, make and send forth to the world this admission—that there is in Ireland a class of persons who, in the belief of the Executive Government of this country, are unable to pay their judicial rents. [Cries of "No, no!" from the Ministerial Benches.] Now, Sir, I own I am astonished. What did Lord Salisbury mean when he said that there were rents of this description—that the real and just rents would fall below the judicial rents, and that the difference must be made up out of the Public Exchequer?

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL) (Paddington, S.)

He never said anything of the kind.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

We all know the noble Lord's boldness in the matter of assertion—I am not aware that there are any limits to that boldness—[Cries of "Order!"]—but I am in the recollection of other Members of the House, and I must say that I see no ground to recede from what I have said. [Cries of "Oh!" and "Order!"

LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL

Quote the passage.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

It is unnecessary for me to quote. I have a perfect right to refer to Ministerial declarations—[An hon. MEMBER: Lord Salisbury did not say it]—and I believe it has never been contested until this moment, when its inconvenience begins to be felt. I maintain that I was perfectly within my right, and that there was no justification for the presumptuous demand which was made upon me. Therefore, if such a declaration were made as I assert to have been made—not that I heard it myself, but I have referred to all the ordinary sources of information which establish what are called facts of common notoriety—then I say that the cry of "No!" which came from that quarter of the House is applicable to the declaration of Lord Salisbury, and should have been addressed to those declarations which take their place as historical facts rather than to my reference to them. I have given no opinion upon the question of the Commission about to be issued by Her Majesty's Government. Both of my right hon. Friends near me (Sir William Harcourt and Mr. John Morley), and Gentlemen in this quarter of the House, and I, myself, referred to the danger which we saw when we first heard of the Commission, of the enormous injustice of sanctioning, in the face of the world, the doctrine that there are rents which cannot be paid, and leaving the persons liable to those rents to be evicted from their houses, and lose the little property they retain in their holdings, while we are making inquiries and conducting the elaborate processes to which they may possibly lead. It is, Sir, because I believe in the necessity of relief of that kind that, while retaining to myself full liberty to consider the best form of dealing with it in Committee, I feel myself absolutely bound, in honour and in justice, to vote for the second reading of this Bill, which I believe to be, irrespective of questions of general policy, on which I do not now enter, an absolute and necessary consequence of that important proceeding on the part of Her Majesty's Government, whereby they have committed themselves to propositions of the deepest importance, and possibly involving the country in consequences the magnitude of which none of us are yet fully capable of estimating.

THE SECRETAEY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. MATTHEWS,) Birmingham, E.

The right hon. Gentleman who has just addressed the House prefaced his observations by saying that he was sorry to find that no agreement on this subject had been come to between the two sides of the House. I think the right hon. Gentleman must have forgotten the language used by my noble Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Lord Randolph Churchill) in conceding a day to the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) for the purpose of bringing this measure before the House. My noble Friend guarded himself most carefully against the conclusion and the suggestion upon which the right hon. Gentleman's hopes were founded. He said that he trusted that no one, at any time, would suppose that in giving a day to the hon. Member for Cork for the discussion of the measure, the Government were intimating, in the slightest degree, agreement or concession. Nothing could be more distinct than the words of the Leader of the House, and, therefore, when the right hon. Gentleman opposite rose and said that he had hopes of an agreement, or of an approximation to an agreement, between the two sides of the House, his hopes must have been founded simply on general goodwill towards the Treasury Bench which led him to indulge in those hopes. The next topic on which the right hon. Gentleman interested the House was a personal comment upon my two hon. Friends who moved and seconded the Amendment to the Bill. Said the right hon. Gentle- man—"Remember who has moved this Amendment; he is not an Irish agriculturist."

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

No; I did not say that. I said "not a Member for an agricultural constituency."

MR. MATTHEWS

"He is not a Member for an agricultural constituency." [An hon. MEMBER: An Irish agricultural constituency.] Well, "an Irish agricultural constituency;" but we are talking of nothing but Ireland now. [An hon. MEMBER: What about Dungarvan? and cries of "Order!"] The hon. Gentleman who moved this Amendment is a landlord in Ulster and Chairman of the Cork Grand Jury, and yet he is not qualified, in the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman, to propose to the House an Amendment upon an Irish agricultural question. One of the great objections to him is that he is a Member for an English borough. We, on this side of the House, can understand the views the right hon. Gentleman holds on the subject of the Union between England and Ireland; but we, on our side, regard the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Penrose Fitzgerald) as being as fully qualified and as fully entitled to deal with Irish agricultural questions as any hon. Member here. Then the right hon. Gentleman said that the Amendment was not moved by any county Member, and attributed it to lukewarmedness or hesitation of opinion among the county Members on this side of the House. But is it a county Member who has moved the second reading of this Bill? The right hon. Gentleman has challenged any Irish county Member on this side to get up and state whether he approves of the Bill or not. Does the right hon. Gentleman seriously think or suppose that the Irish landlords welcome a measure by which half their rents—which are none too high at present—are to be taken from them? There is a silence which is specially eloquent; but I have no doubt there are a number of Members on this side of the House who will gratify the right hon. Gentleman, and inform him of the opinion entertained by Irish county Members as to the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork. Turning to the subject of judicial rents, the right hon. Gentleman said that he recognized no general sacredness in judicial rent.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

I beg the right hon. and learned Gentleman's pardon. I said no general sacredness beyond other rent.

MR. MATTHEWS

I accept the correction of the right hon. Gentleman; but I took down the words at the time they were uttered, and I thought I had done so accurately. If by general sacredness beyond other rents the right hon. Gentleman means that the Legislature has not given landlords any pledge that judicial rents shall be paid with greater regularity than other rents, of course we all agree with him. But he will not deny that, by his measure of 1881, some pledge and some undertaking was given by Parliament to the Irish landlords with regard to their rents. And this is the pledge that was given and the undertaking that was made—that, once fixed, the judicial rents should not be interfered with by authority. Do not let it be supposed that I am criticizing the measure of 1881. I am merely stating what it is, and the arguments by which it was defended and justified. I am assuming that the arguments were well-founded. Well, it was said—"We will no longer leave you under the ordinary law of supply and demand; we will not leave you to exercise the freedom of contract which all other persons enjoy; we will take from you Irish landlords the right to settle your own rents with your own tenants, and we will do that for the reasons and upon the plea that one party to the contract—the tenant—is not free and is not upon fair and equal terms with you—the landlord—and, therefore, for freedom of contract, we will substitute official valuation; we will choose the wise and perfect just man, who will fix the fair and reasonable amount of the rent to be paid. That is taking from, you landlords one-half of the rights you possess and the privileges you enjoy; but, in exchange for that, we say, in the terms of an Act of Parliament, that for 15 years there shall be no interference with judicial rents; and we also say, in the terms of that Act, that if the statutory rent is not paid, you shall recover possession of your land." These things are said in plain and undisputable terms in the Act itself, and I am certain that the right hon. Gentleman himself will not assert that that does not constitute a Parliamentary pledge to those who have founded just and reasonable expectations upon them. Therefore, although it may he true that judicial rents have no greater sacredness than other rents, they have this sacredness—that the Legislature has pledged itself for 15 years not to interfere by authority with the rents which it has fixed itself—not upon the plea of bungling and mistake of its agents, not upon the plea that those agents were noodles instead of wise men, and not upon the plea that they did not notice that which every body was thinking of—namely, that the increasing importations from America would lead to a fall in prices. The Act was framed and brought in by the right hon. Gentleman himself, and a pledge was given to the Irish landlords that they should be undisturbed by any public authority for 15 years; that their judicial rents should remain; and that if there was any default of payment, the tenant should be dispossessed of the land he held. I am far from saying that it is not within the competence of Parliament to alter pledges of that kind, in case the circumstances should alter. Of course, it can—that is a mere truism in politics—but it is not in the power of Parlialiament or of its Leaders, to deny that the pledge was given. If you take it back, take it away openly and manfully, if the circumstances are such that you are obliged to break your pledge. I do not say that even that would be within the competence of Parliament—certainly it would not be within the competence of an honest Parliament desiring to act fairly to all parties. The right hon. Gentleman finds no particular or general sacredness in the specific and clear words of an Act of Parliament; but, strange to say, the instant he comes to the language of a Commission, it is perfectly astonishing what inferences he draws from it. The right hon. Gentleman finds in that language assertions, promises, imperative grounds for voting for the second reading of this Bill, and obligations and consequences of the most alarming character. One assertion the right hon. Gentleman made which, I think, on reflection, he will not consider to be accurate. He said the first time that anybody discussed the inability of the Irish judicial tenants to pay their rents was when the Government issued their Commission. I think that must have been a slip of memory or a slip of the tongue on the part of the right hon. Gentleman. I will not treat him as he has treated Lord Salisbury, and refuse to quote. I will quote the words that he used on the 19th of August— We know the opinion that prevails in Ireland—that of, at all events, a large portion of the community, in consequences of the changes in agricultural values—that there is a difficulty in maintaining the judicial rents."—(3 Hansard, [308] 112.) [Mr. W. E. GLADSTONE: Hear, hear!] These are the words of the right hon. Gentleman, uttered before the Reference to this Commission was published. From that little mustard seed, judiciously sprinkled amongst the hon. Members below the Gangway, has sprung up this tree which we see to-night. I think, therefore, the right hon. Gentleman will, upon consideration, retract the statement that it was the Reference to the Government Commission that first started, the idea of the inability of the Irish tenants to pay the judicial rents. The right hon. Gentleman is a master of interpretation and of all distinctions of language, and he says that the language of the Reference to the Commission contains an admission, and, in fact, an assertion that judicial rents cannot be paid. [Mr. W. B. GLADSTONE: Some rents.] Some rents! Well, one can never hope to quote the right hon. Gentleman correctly. [Mr. W. E. GLADSTONE: Never.] Some rents cannot be paid! It is a most extraordinary thing that the word "rent" is not mentioned from one end of the Reference to the other; "rent," which it is said we have solemnly and conclusively admitted cannot be paid, does not occur in the Reference to the Commission. It may startle and surprise right hon. Gentlemen opposite, and I have no doubt it will startle and surprise the House, to hear that the Government framed the Reference to this Commission in a fair and impartial spirit, wishing not to shut out—[A laugh from Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT.] That statement seems to amuse the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby as if it were too laughable to be believed in. The Government indicate no opinion in this Reference. Do let the House listen to the words of the Reference—"The Commissioners will be appointed to inquire to what extent, if any"—this is the solemn admission—"to what extent, if any, and in what parts of Ireland, the operation of the Land Act of 1881"—has the right hon. Gentleman's vision become so faulty that he does not see a wide distinction between these words and the words "payment of rent?" [Cries "Go on!"] I am going on—"the operation of the Land Act of 1881 is affected either by a combination, to resist the enforcement of legal obligations or by an exceptional fall in prices." That is all upon this point. Well, now, I say again I am not such a master of interpretation as the right hon. Gentleman; but, looking at these words as a plain, simple man, it seems to me that they indicate two possible causes for an alleged, but not an asserted, modification of the Land Act. The operation of the Land Act of 1881 is said to be affected in two ways—by a combination to resist the enforcement of legal obligations, or by an exceptional fall in prices. But the fall in prices is not here first asserted by us Who first asserted an exceptional fall in prices? As I have shown, the right hon. Gentleman.

MR. W. E. GLADSTONE

That is a totally erroneous representation. I most distinctly stated in that speech that I did not express any opinion for myself.

MR. MATTHEWS

I am drawing the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the fact that he gave expression to, or repeated in this House, the opinion that prevailed in Ireland, or, at all events, amongst a large portion of the community, that in consequence of the changes in agricultural values there is a difficulty in obtaining rent. It is quite true that the right hon. Gentleman, with that singular caution which he has observed to-night in not committing himself to the opinion of the hon. Member for Cork, any more than he has committed himself to the bare skeleton of the hon. Member's Bill, went on to say— I am not qualified to give an opinion on that subject for myself, and I give no opinion."—(3 Hansard, [308] 112.) But I should like to know what the right hon. Gentleman and hon. Members below the Gangway would have said if the Government, in issuing their Commission of Inquiry, had suppressed all inquiry into the alleged causes which have, in the opinion of some hon. Members, affected the operation of the Land Act of 1881? If we had shut that out from the inquiry of the Commission, surely we should have been charged, and justly charged, with partiality. In the Reference we do, what any impartial and any fair men are open to do, we suggest that two possible causes are operating detrimentally upon the Land Act of 1881. Surely, by the suggestion of those two causes, we do not indicate a preference for the one rather than for the other. Well, the right hon. Gentleman said that the Reference to the Commission contain both an assertion and a promise; that they contain imperative grounds for voting for this Bill; that they contain an actual admission that rents cannot be paid. [Mr. W. E. GLADSTONE: Some rents.] Does that really alter the character of my argument? [Mr. W. E. GLADSTONE: Yes.] I am complaining of a strained and undue interpretation given to the language of this Reference. I say the Reference contains no admission that rents are too high; it contains no admission that any rents are too high; and it is equally untrue that it admits that some rents are too high. There is no difference in the world between the two. There is no such admission to be fairly found within the four corners of the Reference to the Commission. There is no declaration that rents are too high, or that any rents are too high, or that some rents are too high; and I challenge anyone to put his finger on words in the Reference that are susceptible of that meaning. The right hon. Gentleman says—"You have admitted that Irish tenants cannot pay the judicial rents, and, therefore, you are bound to legislate at once, before the Commission has made their Report, before they have told you what you desire to learn—namely, whether or not there has been, to any extent, and what extent, if any, any affection of the operation of the Land Act of 1881 by an exceptional fall in the price of produce." That is the doctrine of the right hon. Gentleman; but is that the doctrine which he has followed himself? I should like to draw the right hon. Gentleman's attention to this—He has preached to us to-night, that by these, as I say, perfectly unambiguous and innocuous terms, we have made an admission, an assertion, and a promise so strong and so binding, that we are bound to proceed instantly with legislation upon the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork, without waiting for that inquiry which, I suppose, it appears we desire to have made by the Commission that we have appointed. But does the right hon. Gentleman's practice agree with his theory of to-night? He issued a Commission to inquire into the condition of the crofters. That Commission reported, and four years elapsed before the right hon. Gentleman proposed to legislate. Was there an assertion, was there a promise, in the appointment of the Crofters' Commission? If so, how singularly did the right hon. Gentleman disregard them. And I am reminded that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby, after the assertion, the admission, the promise contained in the appointment of the Crofters' Commission, met the unhappy crofters with artillery. There was no legislation by way of relief; there was no staying of proceedings; there was no letting the crofters off on payment into Court of a trifle; no, as I say, the right hon. Gentleman (Sir William Harcourt) met the complaints and remonstrances of the crofters with artillery, and for four years no legislation took place. Well, Mr. Speaker, I have now gone through all the arguments the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) addressed to the House. His arguments, in reality, amounted to one, and one only—"The Government have issued this Commission; Lord Salisbury has used language in the House of Lords which I will not quote; and, in consequence, I am bound in conscience to vote for this Bill." But does the right hon. Gentleman approve of this Bill? Why, no; not of a single clause of it. The Preamble is not right; and if the right hon. Gentleman had had the framing of it, he would have framed it in a totally different way; the clause as to leases is not right, and if the right hon. Gentleman is here when the Bill ever reaches Committee, that clause must be entirely modified. [Mr. W. E. GLADSTONE: No.] I am very sorry if I have misrepresented the right hon. Gentleman. I listened to his language with the greatest attention I was capable of paying to it, and I took down, as he spoke, what I thought was the substance of it, and it did seem to me there was not a single provision of this Bill of which he approved. I understood him to say that the temporary staying of evictions was a matter open to argument.

MR. W. E, GLADSTONE

I must apologize, Sir. I have never known an occasion in which there has been so much misrepresentation. I said the temporary staying of proceedings was obviously and absolutely necessary.

MR. MATTHEWS

I am very glad to find that there is, then, one clause of which the right hon. Gentleman approves; but the discretion given to the Court he decidedly said was open to question. In that I am sure I am not wrong. At any rate, I am justified in saying that neither the clauses nor the Preamble of this Bill met with the right hon. Gentleman's absolute approval, and that certainly he has urged upon the House no argument or reason why any of us should vote for the second reading of this Bill, except this—that Her Majesty's Government have issued a Commission to inquire to what extent, if any, and in what parts of Ireland, the operation of the Land Act has been affected by the causes named. Now, Mr. Speaker, when a measure of this magnitude is supported by a right hon. Gentleman of such eminence as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian with such arguments, I am prepared to say that he gives but a lukewarm support to the Bill. Inasmuch, therefore, as the right hon. Gentleman has not contributed much to the support of the Bill, I shall certainly not detain the House at this hour (12.15) by many words in support of the Amendment now before the House. I should be glad to hear some answer—the right hon. Gentleman has certainly not given it—to the arguments which have fallen from my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General for Ireland (Mr. Gibson), who has, I submit to the House, demonstrated that this Bill is, in reality, an invitation to all Irish tenants to strike against rent, not by the means which have hitherto been adopted, but by the legal and regular means projected by the clauses of this Bill. The Court have no discretion to refuse a stay of proceedings; that must be given to a perfectly solvent tenant, a tenant who has got money in his pocket and stock on his farm, who has not been affected the least in the world by any fall in prices. ["Oh!"] We believe it is so. There is no restriction whatever in Clause 3. There is no condition except the pay- ment into Court of half the rent due; upon that the Court shall stay proceedings. It is wholly unnecessary for the tenant to prove that he is insolvent—that he is unable to pay. He may be a perfectly solvent man; he may be unaffected, I repeat, by the fall in prices; he may have had a judicial rent fixed for him that was perfectly fair; and he may have abundant means in his possession with which to pay all the rent due, yet, upon his application to the Court, the landlord is to be hung up for half the rent due up to the time the application was made, and for the whole of the rent subsequent to the arrest of proceedings in 1886, and for the whole of the year 1887, unless the application is disposed of before that time.

MR. PARNELL (Cork)

The clause is similar to one in the Arrears Act.

MR. MATTHEWS

No; it is not quite similar to a clause in the Arrears Act. But I am just now drawing the attention of the House to the results of the Bill as it stands. Any tenant, however solvent, however well off, may get the advantage of the Bill by paying half the rent into Court. The hon. Member for Cork said, with a little inaccuracy, I think, that 200,000 applications were disposed of under the Arrears Act in four months—I took down the hon. Members words—"inability to pay in 200,000 cases was decided in four months."

MR. PARNELL

I said approaching 200,000.

MR. MATTHEWS

Approaching! The real number is 125,000 cases from November, 1882, to 30th April, 1883. [Mr. DILLON (Mayo, E.): 137,000.] If I accept the correction, that shows a considerable difference; that cannot be called about 200,000. If the hon. Member for Cork regards the deposit in Court—whether it should be a half or three-quarters—in the same loose sense, I can understand the discrepancy in his statement. In the case of the Arrears Act, landlords were ready to consider two years' arrears as a bad debt; but do you suppose that, in this case, the Irish landlords will submit without a struggle? The thousands of applications that will be made, if this Bill is passed into law, will take not months, but years to decide; and under the stay of proceedings which the hon. Member proposes to give, the landlord during all this time will get no rent. But that is by no means the greatest objection to the Bill. In the Bill, as it stands, the hon. Member professes to have followed the Arrears Act; but, as a matter of fact, he has introduced variations which are most material. Under the Arrears Act the tenant must be unable to pay "without loss of his holding, or depreciation of the means necessary for the cultivation thereof." The hon. Member for Cork has, in this Bill, added to that provision the words "or stocking thereof." He has, therefore, made the whole of the tenant's capital exempt from any liability of rent. However large the capital may be, however prosperous and complete the farm may be, all that is not to be taken into account in considering the ability of the tenant to pay his rent. When the Arrears Act was before the House, it was suggested, by way of amendment, that the value of the holding and the value of the stock belonging to the tenant—certainly the value of the holding—should be taken into account as a possible asset. The right hon. Gentleman pointed out very strongly that it was impossible to say that if a tenant owed, for instance, £50 rent, and had got a holding worth £200, and had got stock worth £200 more, these two assets were not to be taken into account in considering whether or not he was unable to pay his rent. The hon. Member for Cork, who has so often quoted the Arrears Act, has left out of this Bill any clause of that sort. Neither the value of the holding nor the value of the stock is referred to in this Bill as a possible asset; therefore, the consequence of this Bill is this—that if there be a tenant who has got a holding worth five or six times the amount of rent due; if he has got stock worth three or four times the amount owing; if he has got sufficient money in his possession to pay for labour upon his farm during the year, and for the sustenance of himself and family—although he has got all these, the landlord is to treat him as being unable to pay, and the Court is to treat him as being unable to pay, because he is not to be deprived of his holding, or to be deprived of the means necessary for the cultivation thereof. I venture to challenge altogether the propriety of the reference to the Arrears Act. Of all the legislation with regard to Ireland, for which the right hon. Gentle- man the Member for Mid Lothian is responsible, he will, I should think, look upon the Arrears Act as least worthy to be used as a precedent. Mr. Trevelyan, who was then Chief Secretary for Ireland, pointed out how exceptional a measure the Arrears Act was; how, to use his own words, "necessary it was to have exceptional methods to meet a great catastrophe." What was it that the Arrears Act dealt with? With arrears of rent antecedent to the fixing of the judicial rents, and antecedent to 1881. And what did the right hon. Gentleman do by his Bill? As already has been pointed out, he compelled the tenant to pay one year's rent, and he compelled the State to pay another year's rent. Does the hon. Member for Cork propose, in his Bill, that anything should be paid by the State? ["No!"] I know he does not, and, therefore, I do not see how he can say he has followed the precedent of the Arrears Act. The Arrears Act was intended to settle bad debts, consisting of arrears of rent which, from the point of view of the framers of the Act, were rents that were certainly too high. The arrangement they made was that the tenant should pay one year, and the State another year. It was argued that if there were more than two years arrears, it was not unreasonable to consider that the debt was bad. Who does not know perfectly well that in Ireland, arrears, if they are more than two years' old, do pass into that branch of the ledger from which no commercial man expects to get anything? That was the scheme of the Arrears Act—to make a compromise in regard to what was practically a bad debt, consisting of admittedly excessive rents. The hon. Member for Cork proposes to deal with judicial rents, rents fixed in the interest of the tenant. These are the rents you are dealing with, and you propose to cut them down, not only in the present, but in the future, without any compensation to the landlord with whom, you have given a Parliamentary pledge that you would not touch the rents for 15 years. Sir, the analogy between the Arrears Act and this Bill is a false and a hollow analogy. There is nothing in the character of the two transactions that is really equivalant. What the Bill really does is to suggest to the Court that it should cut the rents down by one-half. I am quite aware the hon. Member for Cork uses the words "as may seem to them just and expedient." I do not know what the hon. Member means by these words. If by just, he means just to the landlord as well as the tenant, I say justice to the landlord demands you should observe the Parliamentary pledges, or give him compensation. It is not just to the landlord to cut down the rent which you said you would not interfere with for 15 years. I fear the justice the hon. Member for Cork means is a very one-sided justice—justice from the tenant's point of view. When the hon. Member speaks of what is expedient, I confess my alarm is intensified and heightened. I do not know whether he means expedient, in order to stay the hand of the National League, or to stop the midnight errands of the Moonlighters. If that is not the expediency, what other expediency can there be? What other expediency can there be outside of justice? And that is all the guide this Bill gives the Court to determine what reduction shall be granted. I have looked, with some interest, at the language used by the hon. Member for Cork five years ago, to see what his opinions were at that time. Some of the words he spoke then are so pertinent to the present debate, that I may be allowed to quote them. In the debate on the Land Bill of 1881, the hon. Member used these words— The Land League doctrine is that any attempt to reconcile the respective interests of the landlords and the tenants is impossible. Furthermore, the hon. Member said— The members of the Land League do not think the property of the landlord has yet touched bottom, and are of opinion that they should not be bought out, until more is known of the change which American importations are likely to produce."—(3 Hansard, [261] 888.] Some hon. Members, therefore, did foresee a fall in prices; but it was only those hon. Members, whose particular business it was to attend to a possible fall in prices, who did not foresee it. The hon. Member goes on— But the League has undoubtedly recommended compulsory expropriation, though not for all landlords."—(Ibid.) I am sorry to say I have not got the exact words of what followed; but the sense is this—that he desired that there should be power given to a Commission to expropriate compulsorily those landlords who were acting as centres of dis- turbance. [Cheers from the Irish Benches.] I am glad that sentiment is cheered. That is all they recommended up to the present time, in the shape of compulsory expropriation. Sir, in these words I find the key to this Bill. It is another step, and a long step, in that machinery of compulsory expropriation which is to enable landlords to be bought out at a price which the hon, Member for Cork thinks reasonable. This Bill, I submit, is not a serious or statesmanlike proposal, intended to reconcile with fairness to both those interests of landlord and tenant which the hon. Member declares to be incapable of reconciliation. It is a measure conceived in that spirit of class partizanship, together with class hatred, which is intended to result in the destruction of a class towards whom the hon. Member has displayed already so much dislike and hatred. When, in the course of this debate, an hon. Member on this side of the House spoke of this measure bringing landlords to the workhouse, the statement was met with enthusiastic and amiable cheers from the Benches below the Gangway opposite. Sir, that is the spirit in which the hon. Member for Cork has framed and brought in this Bill, and it is on account of that spirit that the Bill will meet with the determined opposition of the Government, and, as I trust, with rejection by the House.

MR. JOHN MORLEY (Newcastle-on-Tyne)

Mr. Speaker, I beg to move the adjournment of the debate.

Motion made, and Question, "That the Debate be now adjourned,"—(Mr. John Morley,)—put, and agreed to.

Debate adjourned till To-morrow.