MOTION FOR LEAVE. FIRST READING.

HC Deb 28 March 1887 vol 312 cc1624-729

[FIRST NIGHT]

THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR) (Manchester, E.)

in rising to move for leave to introduce a Bill— To make better provision for the prevention and punishment of crime in Ireland, and for other purposes relating thereto, said: I rise, Sir, to perform with what success I may, a difficult and responsible, and in many respects a painful task, under Parliamentary circumstances somewhat different from those which have usually attended those who have had similar tasks before in previous Parliaments. [Cries of "Hear, hear!"] I do not allude to the fact, which I presume hon. Gentlemen had in their mind when they gave me that cheer, that for the first time we have, at all events, the legitimate Opposition against us. I allude rather to the circumstance that this debate has been preceded by a discussion on more or less the same subject which has extended over four nights. During that discussion we have bad a remedy for the state of things existing in Ireland which I shall have to put before the House—we have had a remedy proposed for it by the legitimate Opposition; and though I do not mean to discuss that remedy now, I wish the House to have it in their minds, when they listen to the statement I have to make, and to compare it and its probable efficacy with the difficulties it is intended to meet. Right hon. Gentlemen opposite are of opinion apparently that at this moment if we could alter those judicial rents which were fixed before the recent fall in prices we should so completely remove all the causes of disorder in Ireland that we might indefinitely postpone the mea- sures which I am going to ask the House to consider. I would ask the House to recollect, in the first place, that we also have proposals which we mean to make to the House at the earliest opportunity, dealing, as we think, in a far larger spirit with the land difficulties in Ireland. I would ask them also to recollect, what I before stated to the House that, with the same state of facts before them, the Gentlemen who brought forward the Amendment last Tuesday refused to touch judicial rents in 1885 or 1880; and I ask them further to recollect that even if the measure which they propose, was carried out to its fullest extent, it must do very little to diminish the evictions of which they complain; and that, if I might remind them of a concrete case, it would do nothing whatever to prevent such occurrences as the Glenbeigh evictions, and the events which occurred on Lord Clanricarde's property. These occurrences produced the most painful impression on the public mind in connection with evictions in Ireland. That is all I can gay about the remedy proposed for the present disorders in Ireland which the right hon. Gentlemen opposite have made themselves responsible for. There is an Amendment down on the Paper to-day—not put down and not standing in the name of any Member of the legitimate Opposition. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] Well, I believe I was wrong. I believe we must now count among the legitimate Opposition the hon. Member for Cork and his followers. But there is an Amendment now standing on the Paper in the name of the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) which asks us, before we proceed to consider this measure, to make further investigation into the state of Ireland. I am afraid that the House is already but too well acquainted with the state of Ireland, and if anybody entertains doubts as to the condition of that country, surely it is not the hon. Member for Cork and his Friends. They, at all events, if no other hon. Members of this House, should know to what an unhappy state that country is reduced. They should know the condition of Ireland as an artificer recognizes his own handiwork. If I may judge from the tenour of the speeches which were delivered by right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Opposition Bench in the course of the debate which con- cluded on Friday, they are of opinion that we have no case for the Bill we are to introduce, because, as they think, the statistics of crime in Ireland do not show a state of affairs so grave that any strong measure of Criminal Law Amendment is justified. I stated before, and I state again, that we do not rest our case upon statistics of agrarian crime in Ireland. We take the view now that was taken by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone)— That you must not only consider the amount of crime, but you must take that amount into consideration in conjunction with its source, with its character, and with what it indicates and what it means. That opinion, which I have already quoted to the House—and which the right hon. Gentleman thanked me for having quoted—I now repeat as exactly indicating the frame of mind in which Her Majesty's Government approach this question. We do not think that the amount of crime in Ireland is, taken by itself, a trustworthy indication of the state of the country. Much of that crime is merely in the enforcement, as everybody knows, and as was stated over and over again last week, of a system of intimidation and terrorism which there prevails. The amount of that intimidation and the amount of that terrorism is no more indicated by the amount of crime necessary to keep it in force, than the security which we derive from the law in respect of murder is indicated by the number of men whom it is annually necessary to hang in order to preserve our lives. But do not lot hon. Gentle-men suppose because I preface my statement with these remarks that statistics in Ireland indicate a favourable contion of affairs in that country with regard to the operation of the Criminal Law. It is not so. Since 1845—the year in which the statistics of agrarian crime were first collected—there have been only seven years in which the present melancholy list of crimes has been exceeded in amount. In every one of those years was exceptional legislation in existence for the enforcement of the Criminal Law, except in 1880. It is true that in 1880, 1881, and 1882 the amount of agrarian crime was largely in excess of any that prevails now. But, Sir, though it is true of those three years that they were in excess, the statistics of crime show not only a most formidable list of such crimes, but a steady increase during the last three years. I do not think I have the statistics with regard to the last three years. In any case, hon. Gentlemen will readily take it from me. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] They will hardly deny the statistics which are in the hands of every Member of the House—I shall not doctor them—they will hardly deny that the statistics of crime at this moment, for the 12 months, show an excess over the previous years, and that that excess shows no sign of diminishing. I am going to give hon. Gentlemen the statistics. But those statistics on the Table of the House are not the only statistics which are of interest as showing the amount of crime, and the failure of law in Ireland. At this moment, 498 persons in Minister, 175 persons in Con-naught, 221 persons in Leinster, and 23 persons in Ulster are under special police protection. The number of police-men required to carry out the special police protection is 770, and some idea of the additional cost thrown on the taxpayers of the country by the condition of Ireland may be indicated by the fact that each of these policemen costs, on an average, £70; and that the total cost, therefore, for extra police required to give the necessary protection to individuals amounts to no less a sum than £55,000 a-year. So much for statistics. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] I am afraid if hon. Gentlemen resent the shortness of time which I have taken over an argument on which I do not rely, they must be conscious of an enormous fund of patience if they contemplate the appalling length of the speech I shall make on arguments on which I do rely. We have two things to prove before we ask the House to assent to this Bill. We have first to prove that the law is not enforced over a large and important part of Ireland; and, secondly, we have to show that the vacuum left by the absence of the ordinary law is filled up by law which is not that of the Crown, and which is not that of Parliament. In order to prove the first of these propositions—namely, that over a large part of Ireland the existing machinery of the law is inadequate, I will ask the House for a moment to confine their attention to the West and South West of Ireland, the Counties of Mayo, of Galway, of Clare, of Limerick, of Kerry, and of Cork—an area of about one-third of the whole of Ireland, and, roughly speaking, of about half of that part of Ireland exclusive of Ulster. I shall make as few quotations as I can, but I am afraid I cannot explain matters without making more than I could wish. I shall road some extracts from the charges of the Irish Judges delivered at the Assizes in the counties which I have named. I shall present them in geographical order, beginning at the North. I take first the charge of Judge Lawson in the County of Mayo. The learned Judge said— He regretted to say that on this, the first occasion on which he had the honour of presiding in this Court of the County Mayo, he could not say anything to them in favour of the state of things which existed in that county. In his opinion, judging from the official reports laid before him, he regretted to say the county was in a state of great disorganization. It was very hard to say how long that state of things would continue, or if there would be any remedy found to put an end to it. The present state of things was morally unsatisfactory, and, according to the reports made to him, approached as near to rebellion against the authority of the country as anything short of civil war could be.

An hon. MEMBER

What date is that?

MR. DILLON (Mayo, E.)

He does not say anything about crime.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The date of the Report is March 10. I shall now read an extract from the charge of Mr. Justice Murphy at County Galway. He says— Mr. Foreman and Gentlemen of the Grand Jury of the county of Galway,—The number of cases that are to he brought before you at the present Assizes is very small. I think in all it only reaches 16, and these offences, as represented to me in the lists furnished by the officers of this county, do not appear to be of a serious nature. If this return of offences manifested or indicated the condition of your county there would be presented to me the opportunity—of which I would, indeed, be very glad to avail myself—of congratulating you on the condition of your county. However. I regret to say, from the returns made to me by the inspectors of the Crown and the officers of the county, it appears that any conclusion derived from the list presented for your investigation would be wholly incorrect. They report to me that there is a complete paralysis of law, that it is unable to protect many of the inhabitants in the exercise of their most ordinary rights, and that lawlessness is perfectly triumphant. I now pass from the County of Galway to the County of Clare, where the Judge who presided, Mr. Justice O'Brien, said— I find by the usual returns which are compiled by the Constabulary that even with regard to the undetected crime there is a large increase since the time of the last Summer Assizes over the corresponding period of last year. He goes on to relate certain horrible crimes which had been brought under his notice. He then proceeds to allude to a speech made five years ago by the present Lord Fitzgerald in that place, and Mr. Justice O'Brien says— Nearly five years have elapsed since that charge by Lord Fitzgerald, and no person can say after so long a period of time this country is not worse off in every respect—worse off in obedience to the law, worse off in the peace and security of life and property, and worse off as regards every class and every rank in that material prosperity, of which peace and security to life and property are the necessary foundations. He goes on to say— All these returns which I have before me, and the information which has reached me from other quarters of an unquestionably authentic character, lead me to the conclusion that law to a great extent has ceased to exist in this county; the common rule of obedience which must exist in every civilized State and which every honest and well-disposed citizen is expected to perform and must yield, if unwillingly, is abrogated for the present by an influence and replaced by an influence fatal to industry, fatal to prosperity, fatal to every interest connected with the welfare of the community, and an influence that I still cannot but be persuaded is becoming dominant here and elsewhere through the want of courage and firmness in meeting it. I pass from Clare to Limerick, and I hope the House will have patience with me. Mr. Justice Johnson said— Gentlemen, turning to the list of reported cases furnished to me by the authorities, I am sorry to say that the county presents no advance towards peace and order since the time that I last had the opportunity of addressing you. On the comparative calendar which is presented to me, the serious offences have not diminished, but increased. I find that firing at the person has increased by two; assaults inflicting bodily harm have increased from 13 to 24; cattle stealing has increased from one to four; maiming of cattle has enlarged from 9 to 16; intimidation has doubled, and the very serious offence of seizing arms and levying contributions has more than doubled.

An hon. MEMBER

How many were there?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

He does not say how many. I am quoting his address. He goes on— I find here that in no less than nine cases parties of armed men "—this, perhaps, answers the hon. Member's question—"frequently disguised, and all under circumstances which enable them to avoid detection, and be made amenable, have gone deliberately roaming about through the country for the purpose of wreaking vengeance, or committing injury on the unfortunate inmates of peaceable homes, sometimes, as I have said, to the large number of 30, sometimes being smaller—varying from two persons to 30—sometimes their visits being accompanied with acts of brutal violence. I have a case before me where no one was made amenable, where a peaceable family were dragged from their beds at night, and the women of the house cruelly beaten. In another case before me, because a son had the courage to stand up for his father he was shot through the thigh. Now, gentlemen, it is quite idle for us to shut our eyes and say there is peace where there is no peace, while these things are going on through the country. Now I come to the County of Kerry. "These returns," says the learned Judge in his charge—[An hon. MEMBER: Who is the Judge?] Mr. Justice O'Brien. He says— These returns present a picture of the County of Kerry such as could hardly be found in any country that has passed the confines of natural society, and entered upon the duties and the relations, and acknowledged obligations of civilized life. The law is defeated—perhaps I should rather say has ceased to exist—houses are attacked by night and day, even the midnight terror yielding to the noonday audacity of crime; person and life are assailed; the terrified inmates are wholly unable to do anything to protect themselves, and a state of terror and lawlessness prevails everywhere. "You can easily understand," he goes on to say—after giving some dreadful cases of crime, and the amount of damages which the Grand Jury had to present— You can easily understand that these things do not at all give you any idea of the material injury that arises from crime and disturbance in the loss of employment, the discouragement of capital, the injury to trade, and the multiplied consequences of all kinds detrimental to the community that arise from insecurity to personal property and life. To all these evils we have to add another, and, perhaps, the worst of all—that of which you are conscious, which experience and observation teach every day in all the forms of social life—a system of unseen terrorism, a system of terror and tyranny. I now come to the County of Cork, and this is my last quotation, for which I apologize. Mr. Justice Johnson says— The list which has been furnished to me of the cases that will be submitted to you for the purpose of finding bills is exceeding small for a great county of this kind. It consists practically of only 14 cases, which are all crimes or offences such as everyone must expect to find in any agricultural community. Happy would it be if that represented the real state of affairs in the county. From the returns presented to me judicially, which it is my duty judicially to living under your notice—from those returns I am unable to say that this great county is in an orderly or in a satisfactory state. The returns from this and the West Riding—and they cover a period of only about three months since the last Winter Assizes—show that in a considerable portion of this great county people who live in remote and isolated districts are subject to violence, alarm, plunder by day and by night—principally by night—from gangs of armed men, disguised, who rove through the country, seizing arms, plundering sometimes property, always with a show of violence, often accompanied with threats, and sometimes with assaults of the meanest and most dastardly character, and sometimes with grave results. And after giving the usual melancholy account of the crimes to be brought before them, including one of a most horrible character, where a man's daughters were dragged out of bed by ruffians, who poured pitch on their heads, and cut off their hair with shears, he concludes thus— Now, as long as there is no security—and there can be no security in the part of the country where that takes place repeatedly and without detection or possibility of detection—so long as there is no security there is no order; so long as there is no order there can be no peace; and so long as there is no peace there can be no prosperity. Now, I ask the House to observe that the men who give this testimony are not partizans—they are not politicians travelling about the country in order to make up a good Parliamentary case. They are Judges of the land—Judges of the High Court of Ireland—who, in the exercise of their duty, feel it incumbent on them to make these public statements as to the condition of the counties through which they travel; and I ask whether a more terrible picture of the state of society was ever drawn—[Cries of "Oh, oh!"]—than that which is given in these charges? I heard one hon. Gentleman on the Front Bench opposite say "Oh." I do not know what power of colouring he may have at his command; but, if he could draw from his imagination a picture of a state of society worse than that given by these Judges. I can only say that I should think very highly of his skill as an artist. That shows the condition of that part of the West of Ireland—about, as I have said, one third of all Ireland, and about one half of that country exclusive of Ulster. Those charges exhibit the condition of public order in these dis- tricts. Now, what is the power of the law to meet that state of things? the hon. Member for East Mayo, the other day—when he was attacking me—said, what was the use of adding battalion of police to battalion, and raising the Estimates for the Constabulary Forces year after year; and I replied to him that it was in vain to raise the Force if the Courts of Law wore incapable of fulfilling their elementary official functions. This is the evil which we have especially to meet. It is this existing paralysis of the Courts of Law which we have specially got to meet. Whence this paralysis of the Courts of Law? The first answer I have to give is that evidence to convict is not forthcoming. I shall not trouble the House with any long particulars on the subject.

MR. SEXTON (Belfast, W.)

We want the particulars.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I dare say I can give enough to satisfy the hon. Gentleman. In the counties I have just enumerated the number of offences reported since the previous Summer Assizes amounted to 755. The number of cases for which there was no clue to the offenders was 536.

MR. M. J. KENNY (Tyrone, Mid)

How many threatening letters?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The figures I am giving have no reference to threatening letters. The number of cases in which the injured persons declined to swear any information was 422. So terrified were they by the system of intimidation which prevails in those counties, that they dare not come forward to give evidence against those who outraged and ill-treated them.

MR. PARNELL (Cork)

Is the right hon. Gentleman now giving us the number of agrarian offences in those counties, or of all offences?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

NO, Sir; these are the number of grave offences which the Judges had to try.

MR. PARNELL

Agrarian?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

No; not agrarian. I am sorry my voice has failed; but I distinctly stated that I was dealing with the counties the condition of which I have just described. With regard to the interruption of the hon. Member for Cork, it was a relevant one, and I am glad he made it, because I want to say a word of explanation to the House upon the term "agrarian offences" used in the statistics before the House. There is no doubt, I think, that the police have somewhat unduly restricted the cases which they describe as "agrarian." I make that observation simply to guide hon. Gentlemen aright, because it makes no difference in my case. My case is that the whole of this part of Ireland is sinking into absolute disorganization, and I decline altogether to confine my attention to agrarian crime; and I say that if in 422 cases out of 755 where injuries have been inflicted those who were injured did not dare to come forward to give evidence, it matters not whether the crime is agrarian or non-agrarian. It shows a condition of terrorism which this House is bound to deal with, and without delay. I have stated to the House one of the causes of the paralysis of the law. Another cause is that when they did come forward the juries, in the face of the clearest evidence, declined altogether to convict. [Mr. T. M. HEALY: Hear, hear!] If I gather rightly the cheer which the hon. and learned Member for North Longford has just indulged in he highly approves of the action of these juries.

MR. T. M. HEALY (Longford, N.)

I repudiate that altogether. I referred to the action of those juries which refused to convict the Walkers and other Orangemen.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Of course, I accept the disclaimer of the hon. and learned Member; but he will admit that his cheer was ambiguous. I was very unwilling to trouble the House with a multiplicity of narratives, but I must do it. I will give them a case from County Roscommon. A man was tried at the late Spring Assizes for assault. In his charge Mr. Justice Murphy said— The case is clear. You can disregard the evidence if you please. It is perfectly uncontradicted, and so on. After half an hour's deliberation the jury returned a verdict of "Not guilty." His Lordship thereupon said— Gentlemen, your verdict is contrary to the evidence. It is your privilege to disregard the evidence and your oaths. Here is another example from County Tipperary, one of the counties which the late Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. John Morley) told us was in a quite satisfactory state, in which the right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that some after-glow of the golden age still lingered. I will read some extracts to show how the juries did their duty, and I specially call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) to the fact that the cases I am about to give are not agrarian cases. The jury do not content themselves merely with giving a verdict against an unpopular landlord or in favour of the evicted tenant. Demoralization has passed far beyond that point. A farmer named Clarke was indicted for obtaining money by means of forged documents purporting to be given by the agent. The case was proved in the clearest manner.

MR. T. M. HEALY

Who says so?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The Judge charged strongly for conviction; but the jury, which consisted principally of farmers in the same rank of life as the prisoner, disagreed. The next case is also in the favourite county of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. John Morley)—Tipperary. Two men, named Fitzgerald and Donovan, were charged with having assaulted two men on the high road near Cappawhite, named Crowe and Ryan. They were not unpopular landlords; they were not land grabbers; they were not men who had taken evicted farms. The evidence was perfectly clear, and the Judge charged strongly for conviction, but the jury acquitted.

MR. PARNELL

On what authority does the right hon. Gentleman make these statements?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I am giving the House facts which I have ascertained from what I consider an authentic source.

MR. SEXTON

They are not facts at all.

An hon. MEMBER

They are falsehoods.

MR. PARNELL

What is your authority? What are you quoting from?

DR. TANNER (Cork Co., Mid)

Mr. Speaker, may I say one word?

MR. SPEAKER

It is very difficult for me to secure the proper conduct of orderly debate unless I have the cooperation of hon. Gentlemen. I must appeal to hon. Members for that cooperation. The right hon. Gentleman can be replied to subsequently in argument.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I do not exactly know what the hon. Member complains of. I am reading the information given to me of an authentic kind, upon my responsibility as a Minister of the Crown. Here is another case in Tipperary. A man named John Hogan——

MR. T. M. HEALY

Where is this from?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

He was charged with a most horrible outrage on a respectable girl. He was acquitted by the jury in the face of the clearest evidence, and why? Because he was a well-known leader in that neighbourhood. That is, no doubt, a case indirectly connected with this agitation. Whether hon. Gentlemen have any reason to be proud of it I leave them to consider. The truth is that in Tipperary, as in other parts of Ireland, there is not the slightest chance of getting a conviction from a jury if either agrarian or Party questions come into consideration. Do not lot hon. Gentlemen suppose that I think that Northern juries are immaculate. I make no such assertion. What I say is, that the whole mode of regulating the jury system in Ireland is one that makes it absolutely unworkable. Is there any man in the least acquainted with Ireland who is not aware that, if a ease involving Party considerations comes before a jury, and if you know beforehand the political complexion of the men who compose that jury, you can tell beforehand not only what the jury will do, but how they will be divided in their verdict? And I ask you whether, in these circumstances, it is possible for the jury system to be—what it was intended to be—an instrument for the execution of justice? I heard of a case the other day singularly illustrating the frame of mind with which many Irishmen regard the jury system. There was a man over 70 years of age who applied to be excluded from the panel, and he was told that he should be so relieved Next day he returned and said he would rather be on the panel, "for it might give him an opportunity of serving a friend."

MR. T. M. HEALY

It is a disgrace to make anonymous charges of that kind.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The charge I make is not against an individual, but against the system. Let the hon. Gentleman get up in his place and say if, in his opinion, the juries in Ireland may be trusted on Party questions to act according to their oaths. But, Sir, I regret to say that Party feeling is not the only nor the most tragic cause of the failure, of the jury system in Ireland. Terrorism also prevails. I heard the other day of jurors in a respectable position who had begged of an officer whose duty it was to order some jurors to stand by that he would include them in the jurors to be asked to stand by. The officer refused, but said that if they did not come up to be balloted for he would not fine them. They, therefore, said that they did not dare to take advantage of this privilege, because they had been canvassed and they must appear. Hon. Gentlemen will see what that means. It means that they had been canvassed by friends of some of the prisoners for trial, and were told what verdicts they were to give. They were unwilling to violate their oaths; yet they could not free themselves from the tyranny which oppressed them. Is this to be wondered at when we see the Press of Ireland—at least, the organs of the hon. Member for Cork—publishing the names of jurymen who have given verdicts one way, and holding them up to public reprobation? That system has certainly been carried out by United Ireland, whose editor has actually defended it. Here is one sentence, to the effect that— The most besotted and bloodthirsty juror will, we fancy, moderate his eagerness for conviction if he knows there is a right of appeal from the dark security of the jury-box to the calm judgment of his neighbours in the world outside. There is exquisite irony in the words "calm judgment of his neighbours outside." The judgment may be calm, but the modes of enforcing it are terrorism, Boycotting, shooting, and outrage. A gentleman wrote to United Ireland somewhat complaining of this method of procedure; and this remark is in the form of a footnote to the correspondent's letter. [An hon. MEMBER: What date?] The date is the 11th of December, 1886— In a self-governed Ireland it would, of course, be intolerable that men should not be allowed to differ freely in the jury-box and everywhere else; but in the state of chaotic conflict to which the English rule reduces us he who is not with us is against us, and must ex- pect to be dealt with accordingly. That is not liberty, but it is the way of winning it, and the only way within our power at this moment. What does this mean? It means that those who desire the separation of Ireland from England—[Cries of "Oh, oh!"] Does the hon. Member doubt it? The phrase used is "a self-governing Ireland." I will modify my sentence, because it does not affect my argument. I say those who desire a self-governing Ireland are prepared to promote that object by exorcising avowed terrorism on every man and woman—on every man who goes into a jury-box determined on giving a verdict according to the evidence. I apprehend that the House will be satisfied, from the evidence adduced, that the jury system in Ireland is not now a workable system. The truth is that all Irishmen—those who are not terrorized—regard that system as a means of advancing their own political objects. They go into the jury-box only with the view of defending a partizan or condemning the conduct of an opponent. So long as you have a system which is worked in that manner, it is in vain to hope that justice will be administered in Ireland. I apprehend that having shown that over this part of Ireland a system of absolute lawlessness prevails to the extent I have described, I might almost rest there the case of the Government for amending the Criminal Law. But, in truth, the case does not rest upon that alone. It does not merely rest upon the fact that the ordinary law has ceased to fulfil its appointed functions. It rests not less largely upon the fact that the space which the law ought to fill is now occupied by the National League. Four nights of last week were mainly occupied by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite trying to whitewash the National League. It was represented by the right hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Mr. John Morley) as an innocent trades union which existed for the solo purpose of protecting weak tenants against strong landlords. If that were its object, not a single man on the Ministerial side of the House would have a word to say against it; we should accept it as we accept the trade unions which flourish in this country. I do not deny that there are men connected with that League in Ireland who have at heart simply and solely the good of the tenant; but in the tangled web of Irish politics there are very few perfectly white threads, and how far they go beyond the agrarian objects which hon. Gentlemen suppose they have in view, let them consider the number of persons actually Boycotted. It may be that some members of the National League have only in view these disinterested objects; but we cannot forget that the League leans in part upon those dark, secret societies which work by dynamite and the dagger—whoso object is anarchy, and whose means are assassination. But leaving out of account the connection of the National League with secret societies, and taking only a few short public utterances of its members, I say that it is an absurd travesty of the facts to say that the National League has any resemblance whatever to a trade union which exists merely for the protection of the weak. Let me road one or two extracts from speeches which will bear out what I say. The hon. Member for North Wexford (Mr. J. E. Redmond), on the 7th of December last, made this statement to his hearers—[Cries of "Where, where?"]—at Castlerea—"You are not only to fight for a reduction of rents——"

MR. J. E. REDMOND (Wexford, N.)

I never spoke at Castlerea.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

It was the hon. Member for North Fermanagh (Mr. William Redmond). He said— You are not only fighting for a reduction of rents, not even for your homes and against landlordism. You are fighting to-day in the struggle in which your fathers fought, for the old immortal cause of Ireland having the right to govern herself.… And if you win in this, you are also striking a blow for Home Rule, the Irish nation, and for the green flag of our people. [Cheers.] Hon. Gentlemen appear to think that this is an innocent quotation. They forget what it was I was attempting to prove—that the National League is not merely a League for keeping tenants in their holdings——

MR. T. C. HARRINGTON (Dublin, Harbour)

Considering the extent to which I have been responsible for the National League for the last four or five years, I claim the right, in face of the imputation of the right hon. Gentleman, to ask whether this was a National League meeting at all at which the hon. Member for North Fermanagh had spoken the words?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Will the hon. Gentleman deny that the hon. Member for North Fermanagh is an important member of the National League? I apprehend the hon. Gentleman will not deny that the hon. Member for North Fermanagh is one of that Parliamentary Party which uses the National League as its main political instrument. At the same mooting the hon. Member for East Galway (Mr. Harris) said—and I call the attention of the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian to the quotation— This is not a question between small reductions and large reductions; it is not a question of what a man is able to pay at present prices; and it is not a question of sympathy for good landlords or had landlords: hut, my friends, the great mighty question is whether the lands of Ireland shall belong to the people of Ireland, or whether they shall belong to the enemies of the people. I am not going to indulge in a No Rent Manifesto. But we put a programme before you that will lead to that result—that will first take one slice, then take a second slice, and we will keep slicing at it until nothing remains.

MR. T. M. HEALY

I rise to Order; and I ask you, Sir, whether, seeing that the Government indicted the hon. Member for Galway for this speech, and that the Judge at the trial told the jury that they must not consider that they had the speech before them, as there was no proof that it was delivered as read out—I ask you, Sir, whether a Member of the Government can still produce that speech in this House in order to found his case upon it?

MR. SPEAKER

This is not a question of Order at all. It is done upon the responsibility of the right hon. Gentleman.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

One more quotation I shall make from the speech of the hon. Member for South Galway (Mr. Sheehy). He said— He would advise the tenants not to be in a hurry to purchase their holdings, or to buy from the landlord anything that really belongs to themselves, and what was it in the land that did not belong to themselves? It must be beneath the ground. That is going a step even beyond prairie value— There were other purposes they should never lose sight of—the resolve of the Irish people never to lie calmly under the British yoke, never to relax their efforts until they had the green flag free in their own country. They should never forget that was the first object of national organization. He appealed to them to remember their own interests, to remember the weakness of the enemy, and nothing could defeat them but their own cowardice. Ireland expects that one and all, young and old, will join hands against the dual enemies—landlordism and the English Government. Now, Sir, have I or have I not now shown proof conclusive to the House that the leaders of this so-called innocent organization mix up—and intentionally mix up—a policy of terrorizing and plundering the individual with that of the disruption of the Constitution? And if that be so, I hope that we shall hear no more from right hon. Gentlemen opposite of this trade union theory as connected with the National League. If this were a more barren theory—if hon. Gentlemen opposite contented themselves with going to Ireland and making speeches of this kind which led to no effect—I should be scarcely inclined to quarrel with them, and I should be the last to interfere with that particular display of their energy. But, unfortunately, these speeches are enforced by a mode of intimidation painfully familiar already to this House, but over which, I am sorry to say, I shall still have to detain them for a few moments. I allude to the question of Boycotting. I do not know whether hon. Gentlemen would like me to read some anecdotes of instances in which Boycotting has been put in force. [Cries of "Go on!"] I will humour hon. Gentlemen; but I cannot always give the names in such cases for obvious reasons. In the West of Ireland, towards the end of 1886, a private meeting of the committed of a local branch was held, and afterwards a local newspaper published what purported to be an account of the proceedings and resolutions passed. The resolutions condemned a firm for supplying goods to an obnoxious trader, who was a shopkeeper who had supplied the police, and calling on the members to strictly Boycott obnoxious persons, on pain of expulsion.

MR. W. H. REDMOND (Fermanagh, N.)

I rise to Order, Sir. The right hon. Gentleman is reading anecdotes which imply serious charges against certain people in Ireland. I want to know whether he will have the common honesty to——

MR. SPEAKER

Order, order! The imputation of a want of common honesty addressed to the right hon. Gentleman is out of Order.

MR. W. H. REDMOND

Mr. Speaker, I did not——

MR. SPEAKER

Order, order! The Chief Secretary for Ireland.

Mr. W. H. REDMOND

remained standing, amid loud cries of "Order!" and "Name!" but eventually resumed his seat.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The effect of the resolutions to which I have referred was that the traveller for the firm in question was refused orders by some traders.

MR. W. H. REDMOND

Will the right hon. Gentleman give the name of the firm in question?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I would give the name if I could do so with safety to the parties concerned. It is a respectable Dublin firm.

Mr. W.H. REDMOND

again rose. [Cries of "Order!" and "Name him!"]

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Shortly afterwards the president of the branch was arrested for drunkenness, and a letter from the firm was found in his pocket, addressed to himself. The letter regretted and apologized for supplying goods to an obnoxious individual, and promised not to repeat the offence again. The Boycotted shopkeeper was refused a supply of goods by the firm soon after. Also in the president's pocket were found rough copies of the Boycotting resolutions which had been published in the newspaper. The following is a copy of the letter referred to:— To——(the president of branch National League).—(Address)——. Dear Sir,—We regret very much to find that we have given offence by sending goods to a party in your town who we now understand is in bad repute, and, had we been aware of it, of course we should not have executed his order, which was sent us by post and executed in the regular course of business, and trust you will kindly explain this, not only to your own branch, but cause it to be explained in neighbouring branches, as you can easily see we were not to blame, and, of course, will not supply his orders in future. However, we trust you will have the matter set right for us, as we should be sorry to give any offence in any way, and oblige yours truly,——. There are more serious cases than that; but that will sufficiently show the powers of the National League. Here, however, is another case. In 1883 a low-class butcher took the grazing of a small farm from another man, at a small an- nual rental, on the condition that it was to be surrendered at any time when demanded. In the spring of 1886 the landlord, not having received 1d. by way of rent from the butcher, sent for the latter to meet him at his house. At the same time he sent a similar message to a neighbouring farmer. At the interview the landlord said he wanted the land in order to let it to this neighbouring fanner; and the butcher expressed himself perfectly satisfied and agreed to surrender the land. Failing to do so, however, he was dispossessed, and in October, 1886, the neighbouring farmer took over possession. At a fair held in the same month this farmer was prevented from buying stock, owing to the intimidation practised by the butcher, for which he was subsequently prosecuted and convicted. After this the farmer and his family became very obnoxious, and he was referred to as a grabber at a meeting held in November at the chapel-gate after Divine Service; the local blacksmith, who for years had worked for him, refused to shoe his horses any longer; he had to procure the necessaries of life from a place some four and a-half miles distant; and his neighbours decline to hold any intercourse with him. At the end of 1886 this farmer was denounced as a land-grabber at a meeting, and in the beginning of the present year he was being vigorously Boycotted. Early this year one of his workmen was hooted and groaned at, and a few days afterwards a strange woman sent for the farmer and warned him to give up the farm. The wife of the working man who, as stated above, was hooted and intimidated, was confined a short time afterwards, and the local midwife refused to attend her, as being the wife of a man who worked for a Boycotted person. Was not that a terrible state of society? [Laughter.] Does anyone find that a ludicrous incident, or one for laughter? Recollect, this is not an agrarian case—properly speaking—for the tenant had voluntarily given up his farm and had not been evicted, and this is the result of it. [An hon. MEMBER: These are anonymous stories.] Then I will take another case. In December, 1881, Laurence O'Hara was evicted for nonpayment of two years' rent of a farm in the Pilltown district. His inability to pay was due to intemperate habits and idleness. The landlord placed caretaker son the farm until February, 1884, when it was taken by Pat Carrigan at the rent paid by the former tenant. Since then Carrigan has been rigorously Boycotted, and also anyone who speaks to him or has any dealings with him. At present six persons are wholly and 18 persons partially Boycotted for working for or associating with Carrigan. At various times during the past three years, several persons have been summoned before the local branch of the National League to answer charges of having spoken to or worked for Carrigan, or to get forgiven for having done so. In many such cases the proceedings were reported in the local National papers. Again, on the 2nd of August, 1885, at a special meeting of the Thurles National League, summoned by placard, and attended by about 180 persons, a resolution was adopted condemning the practice of dealing with obnoxious persons. This resolution was directed against Thomas Ryan, owner of the principal hotel, who was in the habit of letting cars to the police for eviction duty, and supplying Emergency men. In about a week Ryan found he was completely Boycotted, and he sought for forgiveness by the National League; but in the absence of Father Cantwell, the president of the League, nothing could be done. Ryan wrote to the National League towards the end of August, 1885, tendering his submission, and offering to accept any terms imposed on him. A special meeting of the League was summoned for the 30th September, 1885, to consider the case. About 300 attended, and by a majority of 270 it was decided that he was not sufficiently punished, and that the Boycotting should continue for six months longer. Another special meeting was held on October 11, 1886, and about 250 persons attended. Ryan's submission was then received, and the Boycotting was removed. Ryan has not let cars to the police or bailiffs since he submitted to the League. Here is another case which seems to be of peculiar hardship. A man—having made some money in America—about the end of October last year took an evicted farm. He paid a half-year's rent in advance, and bought 30 head of cattle, spending about £300. [Cries of "Name!"] No; it is one of those cases in which I cannot give the name. The National League immediately took up the matter, and a priest addressed his congregation about the "grabber," and condemned his action. The man attended this priest's chapel. [An hon. MEMBER: What chapel?] Hon. Members are perfectly aware that I cannot give the name. Having refused to give the name of the person concerned, I cannot stultify myself by giving any indication that may lead to his identification.

MR. W. H. REDMOND

That is a slander on the Catholic Church.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The man attended this priest's chapel, and after the address mud was thrown at him and he was hooted at. His servant attended before the National League and promised to leave his employment, and eventually it was found necessary to afford him personal protection. Believing he could not hold out against the Boycotting, he wrote to the priest asking to be allowed to hold the farm for the half-year for which he had paid rent, and that he would then give it up. The priest held up the letter at chapel, and told the congregation its purport, and asked if the man's request should be granted. They decided it should not be granted. It was then agreed to hold a public meeting about the case. the man has since been rigorously Boycotted. The hon. Member for North Fermanagh has told me that I am slandering the Catholic Church. I will read him a case which will show how the National League treat the Catholic Church when the minister does not happen to agree with them. A National League meeting was held at Ballinakill, near Woodford, County Galway, on the 13th of March, 1887, for the purpose, evidently, of preventing Sir H. Burke's tenants from settling with him. The parish priest of the place is the Rev. J. Calligy, who is unpopular with the disaffected, owing to his opposition to agitation. A leading Land Leaguer—Francis Tully—in addressing the meeting, said— I am sorry our priests are not with us today. If they were I would have a word with one of them. The Easter dues will soon be called, and I would advise you to pay it to the campaign fund, and let the old boy, Father Calligy, go and eat the turkeys in the big house. You can speak to him if you like, but there is no law to compel you. It appears, therefore, that ministers of the Catholic Church who happen to incur the anger of the Land League are treated with very scant respect by the friends of Gentlemen opposite. Here is the last case I will read. Towards the end of 1886 a committee meeting of a local branch of the National League was held, and a car driver appeared before it, charged with having driven the police. On entering the room he tried to defend his action, and one of the members asked him to sign a guarantee that he would not drive the police again. He refused, and he was then turned out of the rooms. A Boycotting resolution was passed against him. He was Boycotted, and the demeanour of the people became so hostile that he subsequently attended the committee, asked for pardon, and promised never to drive police again. He was refused pardon, and, thereafter, he could only get provisions secretly, and no one would speak to him.

MR. COBB (Warwick, S.E., Rugby)

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman—and I think it will save the time of the House—if we may take it that these alleged facts came from the officials of Dublin Castle, or from the correspondent of The Times newspaper?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Does the hon. Gentleman realty suppose I would quote unauthenticated extracts from The Times, or from any other newspaper, as evidence on which to ask the House to in-crease the stringency of the Criminal Law in Ireland? There is one more special case which I will bring before the House, because it shows—as well as the anecdotes I have read to the House also show—that this Boycotting is in no sense confined to cases where there has been eviction of tenants. A farmer was Boycotted for having taken from a landlord grass land which had never been in the possession of a tenant, as the hon. Gentleman well knows. I do not know whether the House would desire that I should go minutely into the facts of the case. The man paid his rent in advance, when his attention was called to a resolution passed at a convention in Wexford, "that no landlord's grass should be taken." The House will observe that the resolution of the League in this case was not directed against land-grabbers, or against landlords who attempted to let lands from which a tenant had been previously evicted; it was passed against landlords as a class, and not in favour of any tenants whatever, and the persons who passed it were acting in the interest of a class war, and intended to make use of that resolution, as they would of any weapon that came to hand, to destroy a representative of that landlordism which, out of this House, hon. Members constantly and were never tired of denouncing. But if anyone desires to have an idea how far this system of Boycotting extends, and how the National League is mixed up with it, I should like that he would look at only one issue of United Ireland. I have here some eight or nine announcements which appeared in one issue only of one newspaper. The first was— County Sligo—the Rev. P. Lowrie, parish priest, presiding. It was passed unanimously that John Henry O— —I will not venture upon the Irish names— be adopted as the candidate for this electoral division; that Henry Brock send in his resignation at once, to save the expense of a contest. William Alexander, Sub-sheriff, was the only person who could be got to purchase the hay and straw got on a Boycotted farm, and saved by Emergency men. Now, here you have, first, the ordinary course of Boycotting; and, secondly, the extravagant pretension that by their system of Boycotting the National League are to manage local elections. Here is one from Meath— At next meeting, at Rathmore, 25th March, the people will be expected to pay their subscriptions for the year, as a remittance is due to the Central League. Then here is one from Kilkenny— The hon. secretary brought under the notice of the meeting that cars have been supplied at Clonmel to emergency men and others, and in the past week two cars were supplied to parties who were unknown. The hon. secretary also brought before the meeting the fact that, since last meeting, evicted land had been taken. The general feeling was that hunting should be stopped. So that you will observe that the National League are determined not only that the land from which the tenant has been evicted shall now be cultivated, but that it shall not, oven in a state of nature, serve for amusement, or for any use whatever to mankind. Then there is this— At Drimore, a case of land-grabbing was postponed for the purpose of giving the accused parties an opportunity of being present. I will not go on with these extracts. The interest with regard to them lies in the fact that, as I have said, they are all taken from one issue of one newspaper, and they show the extent to which the system on which I have been commenting extends. If the House desires to know the extravagant pretensions of those who direct this terrible weapon of Boycotting, and how far they go beyond the mere agrarian objects which right hon. Gentlemen opposite think those persons have in view, they cannot do better than simply look down the columns of advertisements in the same newspaper with regard to evicted or surrendered farms. Would the House allow me to read out some of the other heads or titles under which persons are Boycotted? They included—"Care-taking on evicted farms," "Being un-popular as a landlord," "Acting as agent," "Associating with Boycotted persons," "Supplying necessaries to the police," "Purchasing necessaries from Boycotted persons," "Having accommodated obnoxious persons," "Not joining the National League."

MR. T. C. HARRINGTON (Dublin, Harbour)

Might I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he would give the name of any person who had been Boycotted for not joining the National League? I shall be able to satisfy the right hon. Gentleman that the information he has been supplied with upon the subject is perfectly untrue.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

For "not joining the National League"—that spontaneous association of which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle spoke. I hope hon. Gentlemen will allow me to state the case in my own way. My point at this moment is not the number of persons Boycotted, but the number of Provinces in which the National League presume to interfere to use Boycotting to carry out their will. "Not joining the National League," "being related"—that is being the father, the mother, the son-in-law, and so forth—"to a Boycotted person, being related to persons who have been Crown witnesses at one time or another," "for having given evidence in any case for the prosecution," "for driving police in the execution of their duty," "for not voting for Nationalist candidates at Poor Law Guardians' election," "for being appointed teacher at a National School, contrary to the wishes of the people," "for having caused his wife to change her religion," "for being suspected of having paid rent," "for not paying rent to League trustees," and, lastly, "for having obtained compensation for being shot at." I am glad to see hon. Gentlemen appreciate the humour of that. "Well, Sir, the right hon. Gentleman opposite will recollect that, in the earlier part of my speech, I dealt principally with that broad belt of the country which lies on the West and South "West of Ireland, and I gave from the Judges' charges an account of the terrible condition of that region; but I would point out to the hon. Gentleman who thinks that the disorders of Ireland do not extend beyond its limits, that the very worst district in Ireland for Boycotting is the South Eastern Division. The Returns of the number of Boycotted persons are divided by the police, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian well knows, according to the districts of Divisional Magistrates—Western, South Western, South Eastern, the Northern, and the Midland. Well, the South Eastern—which includes the counties of Carlow, Kilkenny, Queen's County, Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford, and Wicklow—has a pre-eminence—an unhappy pre-eminence—as regards persons totally Boycotted, over any other Division of Ireland, and only falls short by one of the grand total, which includes those who are both partially and completely Boycotted. [Mr. W. E. GLADSTONE: Read the figures.] As the right hon. Gentleman asks me, I will read the figures. The number Boycotted in the Midland Division—would you like the counties too?—[Mr. GLADSTONE: No.]—was 91, the persons Boycotted in the Western Division was 124, the persons Boycotted in the South Western Division was 282, the persons Boycotted in the South Eastern 281, and the persons Boycotted in the Northern Division was 58. In other words, on the date to which this Return refers, there were 836 wholly or partially Boycotted in Ireland.

DR. TANNER

How many Protestant Home Rulers were Boycotted?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Are there any Protestant Home Rulers out of the House? I think, Sir, I have given the House some idea of the extent to which this dreadful system of Boycotting extends. One consequence of it, however, has not been adequately dealt with. One of the main objects of the right hon. Gentleman's Land Bill of 1881 was to give every tenant in Ireland, out of Ulster, a right of sale in his holding. That goodwill would amount probably in the South of Ireland to something between 15 and 20 years' purchase of the rent, and it was intended by the right hon. Gentleman that if in any case the tenant had to leave his holding he should have as one of his assets this most valuable tenant right. But the value of that tenant right has been absolutely destroyed by the National League. It is now of no use to the landlord, and it has been taken by force from the tenant. Under the baneful tyranny of the National League a tenant who has to leave his holding, or who elects to leave his holding, has now no power whatever of selling his tenant right. It has lost all value; nobody dares buy it; it is useless to the man who has it to sell, and it is useless to the landlord on whose hands it is thrown. Indeed, the action of the National League in this matter amounts to an absolute destruction of a valuable asset which was, as I have said, created by the right hon. Gentleman opposite. And those who pretend that the action of the League is directed towards the benefit of the tenant must surely forget that the most tyrannous landlords in Ireland have never done anything to deprive the tenants of their property comparable to what the League has done through their method of action. I have shown what the professed objects of the Leaders of the Land League are. I have described to you the terrible nature of the punishments and sufferings which the proceedings of the League inflict. I have shown you that the violent speeches which they make in Ireland are speeches which bear serious fruit, and which have terrible consequences; and I do not think that any Gentleman who has not given his mind to the subject can realize fully the gravity of the situation with which we have to deal. This League interferes not merely with dealings between landlord and tenant, but between buyer and seller, between father and son, between husband and wife. There are some diseased parasitic growths which mimicked with a ghastly success and healthy organism; they have the same laws of nutrition and decay, but they flourish according as the organism to which they are attached—weakens and perishes. Such is the Land League. It imitates with a terrible fidelity the processes and operations of the Courts of Law. It has its own jurisprudence; it has its own methods of procedure, and its own forms of punishment, and the tyranny which results from this state of things is ghastly indeed. It strikes—as I have said—at every relation of life; it does not spare the relatives of those who have offended, and its influence extends even beyond the grave. Doubtless many of those whom I am addressing are very indifferent to the rights of landlords, and are not very sedulous for the preservation of the Union; but even to them I would appeal, with some hope of success, when I say that no tyranny, however grave, no tyranny however cruel, can compare with the anarchy which must prevail if you have at the same time in the same country two set3 of tribunals and two sets of law—one the legal tribunal which gets no verdicts, the other the illegal tribunal which invests its own laws, its own methods of procedure, and inflicts with unerring certainty its own forms and degrees of punishment. Now, Sir, I have completed the broad outlines of the case which I desired to lay before the House. I have, I think, shown that crime is uncontrolled and unpunished in parts of Ireland, and that in other parts of the country which are more satisfactory as regards the open commission of crime this system of secret terrorism reigns absolutely undisturbed; and I conceive that in proving these two facts I have, I contend, made out an adequate case for giving to the laws those powers which they at present lack for fulfilling their functions. I now come to a brief—but I hope an adequate—description of the aims of the Bill which Her Majesty's Government propose to the House to meet this state of things. As I have told the House, the two chief causes which render our Courts of Law in Ireland inoperative are the difficulty of getting evidence, and of getting verdicts according to evidence. I trust that the general provisions of our Bill will aid greatly in meeting the difficulty of the first of those evils. We have one special provision directed towards that object, borrowed from the Crimes Act. We have borrowed from the Scotch law—a law under which I think hon. Gentlemen will not deny that it is possible for men to be both happy and free—we have borrowed from the Scotch law a plan under which it will be possible for magistrates to examine witnesses on oath, even in cases in which no person is charged before them with the committal of a crime. I need not, however, dwell on that provision. The House is familiar with it as part of the Crimes Act of 1882 of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt). Then I come to the question of the difficulty of getting verdicts according to evidence. We propose, in the first place, to abolish the jury system altogether for certain classes of crimes punishable by a certain length of imprisonment. We provide that two magistrates shall have summary jurisdiction, and a maximum power of inflicting six months' imprisonment, with hard labour, for the following offences:—Criminal conspiracy, Boycotting, rioting, offences under the Whiteboy Acts, assaulting officers of the law, taking forcible and unlawful possession, and inciting to the above offences. I may say why in this Bill we do not propose to interfere in the slightest degree with the liberty of the Press. We entertain the hope that by giving magistrates power of summary jurisdiction for inciting to these offences we may be able to deal with that class of cases, and prevent the Press from being sharers in these crimes. Of course, it will be felt that if the jury system has really broken down it will not be sufficient to give this power summary conviction with the maximum power of imprisonment, and only for those offences. The graver criminal would escape if you leave the system in other respects unaltered. We, therefore again, with small modification, borrow from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby's Act of 1882, that— If the Attorney General for Ireland shall certify that a fairer trial can be held in some other place in Ireland, the High Court shall direct that the trial be held in some other place in Ireland; with this limitation, however—a qualification which was not in the Act of 1882—namely, That the prisoner, if he can show that a fairer trial cannot be held in such a place, should have power to make representations to the Court to that effect, and the Court shall have power to direct accordingly. Then we give power either to the defendant or the Attorney General to have a special jury in any case in which he may think fit, thus assimilating the criminal practice to what is believed to be the civil practice both in England and Ireland. But we are here met by a problem which has exercised the minds of other right hon. Gentlemen who have had to devise some plan by which the defects of the jury system in Ireland might be overcome. It is manifest that intimidation and Party spirit may extend to every part of Ireland, and need not necessarily be confined to the district where the crime takes place. How are you to meet that case? If the change of venue and a special jury are not sufficient to secure a fair trial, what expedient are you going to adopt to meet it? [Mr. T. M. HEALY: Send them to Belfast.] The difficulty of getting over the possibility—rather that you may not get a fair trial in any part of Ireland—is enhanced by this further consideration—that even if you could got a fair trial it may be at the cost of the lives, the property, and the happiness of the jurymen, on whom the fasten the duty of giving a verdict. We think, then, that it would be unfair to cast upon the shoulders of men, unpaid and arbitrarily chosen, the whole burden of preserving the fabric of law and order in Ireland. We, therefore, have been obliged to devise some means by which the very gravest class of offences may be tried by some other means than a jury trial in any part of Ireland. The method by which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby attempted to meet this difficulty was by having a trial by Judges without a jury—Judges selected from the Irish Bench. The Irish Judges, it is no secret, very strongly objected to that expedient, and I am not prepared to say that they were wrong. At all events, this is not the expedient which we think right to adopt. We prefer to retain, as far as we can, the spirit and principle of the jury system—so long as that jury system can be applied with some hope of obtaining a fair verdict; and we, therefore, under certain limits, which I will presently describe, propose that the Attorney General for England and the Attorney General for Ireland together may certify that a fairer trial can be had in England; and then, under the same conditions as to trials as are to exist in regard to change of venue in Ireland, the trial shall, ac- cording to the certificate, be held in England. [An hon. MEMBER: In what part of England?] The name of the place will be in the certificate. We are not of opinion that this proposal in any sense violates the spirit of the Criminal Law; but we are rather of opinion that it violates it infinitely less than the plan proposed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby. We are aware that in certain circumstances it might be a hardship to a prisoner to be tried in England—that a prisoner might not be able to convey his witnesses, solicitor, and counsel from Ireland to England. Therefore we provide in the Bill that Irish counsel shall be allowed to practise in English Courts, and also that the State shall provide the necessary funds for conveying both witnesses and lawyers to London.

hon. MEMBER

What about the fees? What is the scale of fees?

MR. T. M. HEALY

I hope we get a good retainer.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The hon. and learned Member for North Longford ought not to complain at all of that now. Sir, this proposal we intend to confine to certain specified crimes. From this list of crimes we have carefully excluded everything which can possibly be conceived to have a political complexion. We have excluded, therefore, treason, treason-felony, sedition, and seditious libel. The crime can be tried in England if it be shown, and only if it can be shown, that a fair trial cannot be had in Ireland, or that the jurymen are in fear of their lives and property from such a trial. The only crimes to which, under those circumstances, we propose to apply this provision are murder, attempt to murder, aggravated crimes of violence, arson, and breaking or firing into dwelling-houses. As I said before, we conceive that by limiting our proposal in this way, and by preserving to the prisoner the privilege of being tried before an impartial jury, we do much more to carry into effect the spirit of the English Criminal Law than we should do by providing instead some machinery analogous to that which was passed into law at the instance of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby. Now, Sir, there is a further limitation which applies to every one of the provisions I have enumerated to the House. We recognize—and we gladly recognize—that there are parts of Ireland in which crime and lawlessness, and intimidation, and disregard of the law of the land are not in such a state as to necessitate such a stringency of the Criminal Law; and, therefore, we have provided that the provisions I have read shall only have application in those districts which are proclaimed by the Lord Lieutenant.

MR. W. BOWEN ROWLANDS (Cardiganshire)

Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether it is in contemplation to establish any uniform system of panel-striking?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I do not object to the interruption; but I think the hon. Member will see that I should servo no good purpose by going into details of that kind at this stage of the discussion. If I can give the House an adequate idea of the proposals of the Bill, I shall be satisfied; and I hope that, so far as I have gone, I have succeeded in doing so. So far, we hope we have made adequate provisions for securing that the Courts shall give verdicts according to the evidence; and, one of the great objects which we have in view being to insure the adequate punishment of those who exercise intimidation, and as the various combinations with which Ireland is cursed chiefly carry out their purpose by means of intimidation, we are not without hope that these clauses will be sufficient in themselves to strike effectually at any unlawful association or combination for the purpose of intimidation. But, at the same time, we felt that we should not be justified in leaving the Executive absolutely powerless to deal with such associations in the event of the failure of our plan for the establishment of summary jurisdiction. We, therefore, have introduced clauses which we think will have the effect of dealing with the case of dangerous associations. The Lord Lieutenant in Council will have power—under certain limitations which I will describe—to make it an offence against this Act to have anything to do with an association for the commission of crime, for carrying on operations for or by the commission of crime, for encouraging or aiding persons to commit crime, for promoting or inciting to acts of violence or intimidation, or for interfering with the administration of the law or disturbing the maintenance of law and order. But we are of opinion that these powers—which we think necessary, but know to be extreme—should be exercised only under limitations which we do not propose to apply to the rest of the Bill. The Lord Lieutenant, according to our proposal, may make a Proclamation making such associations illegal. If Parliament be sitting at the time, the Proclamation must be laid upon the Table of the House within seven days from the time it is made; and if Parliament, be not sitting it must be summoned forthwith in order that the Proclamation may be laid upon the Table within seven days of its meeting. If either House of Parliament shall, under those circumstances, present an Address to the Crown practically condemning the Proclamation, it will be of no force.

MR. T. M. HEALY

That is to save the Orange Society when the Liberals come in.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

When the Lord Lieutenant has issued his Proclamation, he may choose certain specified districts in which it is to have effect. The Proclamation will, in itself, extend potentially to the whole of Ireland; but we hope that it will not be necessary to extend it in practice or put it in force all over the country. There are districts, I have no doubt, where the Laud League is a perfectly innocuous association; but there are districts where it is a curse to civilization. We do not propose to make it binding on the Lord Lieutenant, because he thinks that the National League or some other dangerous association ought to be put down in one district—we do not propose to make it binding upon him to put it down in every other district in Ireland. I think I have explained, I trust clearly, the provisions of the Bill we propose. As I have explained that the application of the Bill may be limited in point of space, we do not propose that the measure shall be limited in point of time. We do not propose to put it in the power of any Government to compel their Successors to have to consider the condition of Ireland at a time when it may be perfectly impossible, through Parliamentary exigencies, to carry out their plans. I do not know whether the House will care to learn the distinctions between this Bill and the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby. The main distinc- tions are these—his Bill was limited in point of time, and ours is not; his Bill was not limited in point of space, while ours is or may be; we have added to the offences which can be dealt with summarily criminal conspiracies in support of Boycotting, and Whiteboy offences and incitements to commit them. We have given to the prisoners what the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman did not give—a power to protest against the change of venue; and, whereas the right hon. Gentleman proposed to deal in certain cases with certain offences by Special Commission, we prefer to retain the jury system and to deal with them by change of venue to England. The right hon. Gentleman had certain powers in his Bill which we omit—certain laws relating to strangers, and certain clauses dealing with the Press. These are the main distinctions between us and the right hon. Gentleman. We think all the differences which separate our Bill from his are improvements. Some of them go in the direction of strengthening the Bill. The majority go in the direction, not of making the Bill more efficient, but of making it more equitable in point of working to any prisoners who may be tried under it. Now, Sir, I have laid my case before the House. I have explained our Bill to the House. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian told us on Thursday night that our Bill was a Bill for putting down agitation. Our Bill is a Bill, not for putting down agitation, but for enforcing the law. The law which we wish to enforce is not the law specially or particularly which regulates the relations of landlord and tenant. The law we seek to enforce is the law which gives in this country and every civilized country security to private individuals. It is the law which prevents your pocket being picked and your head being broken; it is the law which enables you to go home with some security that midnight marauders will not invade your house, fire into your dwelling, possibly shoot you, possibly drag your wives and daughters out of bed. There are those who talk as if Irishmen wore justified in disobeying the law because the law comes to them in a foreign garb. I see no reason why any local colour should be given to the Ten Commandments. But, lastly, the laws which the Government seek to enforce are the laws which, as far as I know, are the same in every civilized country which even pretends to a glimmering of civilization. [Mr. T. M. HEALY: What about the Whiteboy Acts?] Nor do I think that any regard to local prejudices in Ireland need induce us to treat leniently those who shoot a man for no other offence than that he is suspected of a desire to pay part of his rent. I am quite aware that we are approaching the consideration of this subject under very peculiar difficulties. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian told us that never before in the history of Crimes Acts did the legitimate Opposition set themselves against the legitimate Government of the day.

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

What I said was, that the Government of the day had never proposed coercion without knowing that they would have the support of both Parties in the House.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I accept the correction of the right hon. Gentleman. I do not retort upon him, though I think I might, as he retorted upon me, that he had forgotten his own speech. At all events, we have the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that three-sevenths of the House of Commons are opposed to the Government on this occasion. It is quite true that, for the first time in the history of this country, the victims of oppression, of outrage, of murder, have called upon the Government to protect them, and that Government has not been supported by the English minority. But, Sir, we do not take the view apparently now taken by the right hon. Gentleman, that our conduct in this matter is to be regulated by the views of the Opposition. If they fail in their duty—as I think they are failing—that is no reason, and that shall be no reason, why we should not do our duty. This may support us, or it may not support us; but we should be utterly failing in the first and elementary duty of Government if, through any fear of Parliamentary opposition, or any dread of a hostile majority, we were to neglect or defer, for one single day, the answer to the appeal which comes up to us from every part of disturbed Ireland. Sir, this will be my last word. Many of those who are most devoted in the cause of liberty pay but a cold and frigid respect to the cause of order. I will not ask whether, under some circumstances, these two great principles are or are not ever opposed; but I will say, and say boldly, that in this case they are united, and that if I appeal to one rather than to the other, it is in the cause of liberty that I ask this House to support us in breaking the yoke under which so large a part of Ireland is now groaning.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make better provision for the prevention and punishment of Crime in Ireland; and for other purposes relating thereto."—(Mr. Arthur Balfour.)

MR. DILLON (Mayo, E.)

I know, Mr. Speaker, that I rise under circumstances of the greatest difficulty to reply to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, which has been prolonged over such a considerable length of time to so late an hour of this evening. Towards the close of his speech he informed the House of certain differences which seemed to him to distinguish his Bill from the Bill introduced some years ago by the right hon. Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt). There was, however, one difference which he omitted to mention. The Bill which was introduced by the right hon. Member for Derby in 1882 passed into law; the Bill which is now introduced by the right hon. Gentleman opposite will never pass into law. If I believed that the people of England—I will not say the Members of this House—if I believed that the people of England would be capable of passing into law such a Bill as that described by the right hon. Gentleman I would give up for ever the hope of seeing these two peoples—the English and the Irish people—shaking hands and uniting in peace in a common brotherhood. It is the old, old story again. For 700 years these two peoples have hated each other, and have struggled against each other, and many a bitter and sorrowful thing has occurred at both sides out of that long and terrible struggle; and, now after these hundreds of years in the 87th year of the pretended Union, what is the be3t proposal that can be made for bringing peace between the two nations? It is that Act by which the Government of Ireland has suppressed in Ireland every liberty for which the people of England themselves hold dear, and did not hesitate to fight, and to fight against the Throne, in days gone by. The best proposal that England can make for the Government of Ireland now, at this period of the 19th century, is to suspend every liberty that is dear to every man who is not a slave in his heart, and suspend them, too, without any limit as to time. All I can say is, that I would not put the right hon. Gentleman to the trouble of bringing me over to the Old Bailey to be tried, as I see he has exempted criminal conspiracy, but I would fall back upon methods——

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Criminal conspiracy is not exempted from offences to be tried in England.

MR. DILLON

I thought you said it was. But if this Code of laws, the worst ever proposed, or dared to be proposed, by any Minister of England before—if this Code of laws should receive the sanction of a majority of the people of England, I, for one, would abandon public agitation, and would consider myself at least a slave, if I were to agitate publicly under such circumstances. I would do either of two things—I would either leave for ever a country where no freeman could live, unless like a slave; or, if the people were able and willing, I would be proud and happy to load them into battle against such an infamous system. The right hon. Gentleman talked of civilized people approving of his Bill. I say there is not a civilized people on this earth who would not sympathize with any and every effort a people like the Irish could make, or dared to make, or would be justified by their resources in making, to resist so hateful, so infamous, and so oppressive a law. One thing I am certain of, and I warn you hero of it, that though the resources of the Irish people are too limited, as compared with those of England, to oppose your tremendous power, though they may be downtrodden and disorganized, and crushed under the iron heels of your overwhelming Constabulary and military, so as to be seemingly to submit like cowards and slaves to such a Code of laws as this before the House, they never would, and will only wait until an opportunity comes for striking back against you. If I believed we were in the same position now with regard to the people of England as we stood in seven years ago, when this present struggle commenced, I would despair of ever burying the hatchet and sword between the two nations. But, Sir, it is a good thing for England, as well as for Ireland, that there sits upon these Benches a body of men who represent the convictions of a majority of the people of this country; and who, if I am not greatly mistaken by the expressions of sympathy and kindness I have received from them in private life, are prepared to stand by us to the utmost which Parliamentary law will allow us in resisting and opposing a system which can have only one result—the disorganization of society in Ireland and the driving back of the people of Ireland to those sad methods which resulted in so much bloodshed in the past. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland has told the House that the Bill he is going to introduce will not be limited in point of time. No, Sir, it will not be limited in time. You cannot limit nought—you cannot limit nothing. The Bill must first come into existence before any limit can be put to it as to time, it must be passed before it has any operation at all; and I am greatly mistaken, and shall be greatly surprised, notwithstanding the Government has now a majority at its back, if it ever succeeds in dragging its hateful carcase through all the stages of this House. I will not waste time, Sir, in going into the details of this Bill. The Government appear to have culled from the whole of the 86 Coercion Acts that have gone before, the very worst provisions, and united them with provisions of such stringency which, so far as my historical reading goes, wore never before proposed by any previous Coercion Government. I will say, Sir, before I proceed to say a few words on the case which the Government have endeavoured to make, it seems to me extraordinary that English Conservative Gentlemen will not pause and reflect now, after seven years of the later stages of this bitter struggle, on the fact which has been repeatedly told them by a late Chief Governor of Ireland, that after three Coercion Acts of the severest stringency have been passed by this House, and one of them administered by a man of very different mettle from the present Governor—that the Chief Secretary should be obliged to got up and state that the condition of the country is infinitely worse than ever it was before, and that these Coercion Acts only made the people more embittered against English rule. That certainly ought to make men ponder seriously when another Coercion Bill is brought forward. An hon. Member, the other night, said he denied the Crimes Act had been a failure—ho declared that it had put down crime, but what does Lord Spencer say, the man who administered the Act? He declared, in several speeches in England—and I read them all very carefully—that though by the Crimes Act actively and severely administered, he had reduced the amount of crime in Ireland to a certain extent, there was no improvement in the condition of the people, or in their feelings towards England? No. Lord Spencer declared during the three years the Act was in force he found the hatred to English rule had increased, the disaffection to the law, and the disorganization of the people of Ireland to be greater when he left Ireland than when he took up the reins of Government. Those are Lord Spencer's own words; and, Sir, before I leave this position of Lord Spencer's administration of the law, may I say this—Lord Spencer was our enemy while in Ireland, but I say this, that he faced us with the courage of a man, and while there in Ireland he did his duty manfully and well, and passed through an ordeal compared to which the hottest battle was but a trifling matter. He believed, whether true or not I cannot say, that his life was not safe day or night, and going into battle compared with that is as nothing; and sneers at Lord Spencer come very ill from Gentlemen on that Bench who know nothing of the dangers which lie before them. [Cries of "A threat!" from the Ministerial Benches.] I make no throat. I have merely replied to the sneer cast the other night at Lord Spencer; because it was said he had gone back on his own words—had gone back on the policy he had tried to carry out in Ireland. Such a sneer conies very badly from the Treasury Bench. Lord Spencer never flinched in exercising the powers which were given him, and he showed a courage—whatever the result may have been—in which I am sure he will not be imitated by the right hon. Gentleman opposite. Let me now, Sir, go for a few minutes into the case made by the right hon. Gentleman opposite the Chief Secretary for Ireland for this, the 87th, and greatest of all Coercion Acts, which is to last for all time, which is to crown the great edifice and seal the Union between England and Ireland, by declaring to the world that that Union can only be hold together by depriving the inhabitants of Ireland of every one of the liberties that any brave man would fight for. I would ask hon. Members who have listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, have they heard any case made out by the right hon. Gentleman for such a drastic Bill as this, or for any Coercion Bill at all? I declare most solemnly that as I sat and listened to the right hon. Gentleman my wonder grew piece by piece, for a more disreputable, a more wretched, and a more miserable attempt at making a case for a Coercion Act I never heard. I tell the right hon. Gentleman this—if he will allow me to take his place on that Bench for half-an-hour I would make a ten times bolter case for a Coercion Act from my own knowledge. I do not deny that there is some crime and some trouble in Ireland; but I say that the Chief Secretary has not proved the necessity for a Coercion Act. He stands up hero and reads a lot of anonymous stuff about crimes in Ireland, supplied to him by permanent clerks in Ireland, and he cannot answer a single question in relation thereto. He depends upon Government officials in Dublin Castle to make up the unfounded and wretched trash he has produced; and the only thing the right hon. Gentleman has succeeded in proving is that he knows absolutely nothing of the condition of Ireland, this Chief Secretary of a fortnight or so. He only spoke what he was told. But suppose that all his facts were admitted, what do they amount to? The right hon. Gentleman specifically refused, at our invitation, to go into the question of the statistics of crime in Ireland, and why? Because they would have shown what his Predecessor (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) stated at Bristol not long ago—that the condition of Ireland in respect of crime was, with the exception of two districts, improving. It is unparalleled in the history of the 86 Coercion Acts that the Chief Secretary for Ireland should refuse to give any statistics as to crime in support of a Coercion Bill. The right hon. Gentleman commenced by referring to the charges of certain Judges, who, he said, were notoriously fair-minded and unbiassed men, who were not making up a political ease for coercion. I beg leave to take issue upon that point. A most extraordinary thing is that in the case of every Coercion Act the charges of certain Judges were ready for the Government to assist them in applying for coercive powers for Ireland. But what did these Judges say? Judge Lawson—and this affects the Division I represent—stated that the condition of Mayo could not be distinguished from a condition of actual revolution or civil war. The right hon. Gentleman carefully avoided giving the House a Return of outrages on which that charge was based. I am well acquainted with the whole county, and I challenge contradiction when I say that I am satisfied, from personal investigation, that the North, South, and Western Divisions of the County of Mayo—leaving out the Eastern Division, which I represent—are as peaceful as Essex, or Sussex, or Surrey. The law and the process of the law have just as much currency in North, South, and West Mayo as in any part of England. I am better acquainted with the condition of Mayo than Judge Lawson, for I have lived there for a long time, and my family are connected with it. The observations of Judge Lawson were based on the police reports which the right hon. Gentleman has not road for us. They say these reports have all reference to East Mayo. Now, I know East Mayo better than any other Division, and what occurred in East Mayo was this. East Mayo, under my guidance and advice, had almost universally adopted the Plan of Campaign. So far as the levying of rack-rents goes, there is not the slightest doubt that in East Mayo there has been some disorder, and the law has been impeded, but there has been no other disorder. But as to outrages and robbery and crimes of violence, they are wholly absent, and you are safer walking the roads of East Mayo at night than you are in walking through the streets of London. In my recollection, which extends over a considerable period, I have never known the district of East Mayo more peaceful. There is undoubtedly disorder, and there is undoubtedly Boycotting; but, in the cases where the landlords have given way, a more absolute condition of peace does not prevail throughout the whole of Ireland. But we are told that the law has been set at defiance. In that one respect it has, and I am proud to own in this House that I personally am responsible for the paralyzing of the law in that respect in East Mayo. I only wish that I had paralyzed it at Glenbeigh and in other districts in Ireland, and that every Member of our Party could have operated with as much success in his Division as I did in East Mayo. We managed to bring the people through last winter by moans of the Plan of Campaign without violence. So far as I am aware, with but two or three exceptions, there was hardly a single eviction in East Mayo; and in all other respects the country has not been so peaceful in the memory of man. Yet, although there has been no special allegation of crime made by Judge Lawson, we have the general statement that the country is in a state of civil war, simply because by means of the Plan of Campaign I made Lord Dillon grant a reduction of 20 percent—and simply because Lord Dillon and Mr. Rashleigh could not collect their rents, until they consented to the terms we proposed. That is what the civil war means. I will not go into the charges of all the Judges; but I simply call attention to the fact that with the solitary exception of Judge Johnson in the County and City of Cork, no specific details were gone into. In the case of Judge O'Brien and Judge Johnson, some districts have been described as very bad, but no details were gone into. The general statement was that a condition of "disorganization" prevailed. We know what that means. Disorganization in the minds of those Judges means combination against the payment of rent in cases where landlords refused to give reductions. That is what the Judges denounced. I do not know what the Chief Secretary's own view may be, but that is what the friends and backers of the Chief Secretary have in view. They speak of the disorganization of society; but there was only one in the whole of the extracts from the charges of the Judges which had any effect upon the House, and that was a case mentioned by Judge Johnson, where a girl's hair had been cut off. I say, unhesitatingly, that if we could discover the man who committed the outrage, supposing it was really committed, we should see that he was punished. We have denounced it in stronger language than you have ever used. If we could discover these men, they would be dealt with in a most summary fashion. Where I used to live, in America, such men, if found, would be lynched, and in a modified way they would, no doubt, be so dealt with in Ireland. But are we to be told that the liberties of a country are to be taken away because a set of young blackguards break into a house and commit such an outrage? If I were to take up the criminal literature of England, I would undertake to find cases compared with which the one cited by the Chief Secretary would shrivel up altogether. In all these cases the right hon. Gentleman made out no case whatsoever. When I pass on to the next portion of his speech, I find that his case is even a great deal weaker than it had been in the previous portion, because, in reply to our repeated calls for particulars, the right hon. Gentleman said—"Yes, I will give some cases." These cases were with regard to the action of jurors. In spite of his own contrary intention, we drove the right hon. Gentleman at last into giving us particulars. I do not know whether the House noticed it, but he gave us six or seven cases of the action of jurors, and it was a remarkable circumstance that in not one of them did the case arise in cither of the six counties upon which he founds his legislation. He began with Roscommon. Now, Roscommon is not in the districts mentioned. The next was Tipperary. Tipperary is in a state of absolute peace. He never said a word about Tipperary in connection with bringing in coercion. He gives three cases in Tipperary, and what did he tell? He said that none of them were cases of agrarian crime at all. We must presume that he has taken the strongest and the best cases with which to illustrate his argument; but did anybody ever hear such a method of argument? He goes and undertakes to prove that, from the condition of six counties in Ireland, coercion is necessary. He is then called upon for particulars, and he takes refuge in other counties and cities—cases which do not refer to agrarian crime at all. ["Oh, oh!"] In not a single one of these cases did he give any particulars of what affected the juries. He simply says that the Judges charged strongly for conviction. Well, I have heard Judges charge strongly for conviction in England and juries disagree. In all parts of Ulster I heard Judges charge strongly for conviction and juries disagree. In these cases, he deliberately tells us, first of all that they have nothing to do with agrarian agitation, and nothing to do with politics; and then he gives us no proof whatever that the minds of the juries were unduly influenced one way or the other, and we are wholly without information as to the reasons why the juries disagreed. Of course, it may be that a friend or cousin of the prisoner was on the jury. He did not tell what the Judges said, and we were obliged to trust to the right hon. Gentleman's own descriptions of what took place. Now I come to another branch of his great argument, which was this. He denounced the National League. If the rest of his case was weak, this I think may be described as the weakest part of all. He undertook deliberately to prove that the National League was engaged in some desperately wicked work, the nature of it he forgot to mention. He did not state at all what his case was that he was going to prove against the National League, and I listened with great curiosity to hear what was the case that he would endeavour to make out against that organization. What did he do? He commenced by citing four meetings, in none of which had the National League anything whatever to say. That shows how much the right hon. Gentleman knows about Ireland. There were four meetings called under the Plan of Campaign, and acting under my advice; and in no instance had the National League anything whatever to do with those four meetings. When that was pointed out to him, the right hon. Gentleman said—"But the people were prominent members of the National League." Are we then to be told that any organization is to be responsible for every word uttered by every prominent member of the organization? But that is not all. Having referred to these meetings, he proceeded to quote an extract from these speeches, one by my hon. Friend the Member for North Fermanagh (Mr. W. Redmond); the second by the hon. Member for East Galway (Mr. M. Harris); and the third by the hon. Member for South Galway (Mr. David Sheehy). He never quoted from any speeches of mine, although, unfortunately, I have made a good many. Now, I say that all the speeches he quoted were absolutely and entirely innocent. With the exception of one of them, they do not contain the expression of a single sentiment upon which there is the shadow of a shade of a foundation of establishing coercion. What did they say? All that these speakers declared was that, in their opinion, the object before the people of Ireland was not only to get reduction of rents, but to set themselves free, and to get the right of governing themselves. We all admit that. We never denied it; and yet he went all this way round to prove that the National League had set that object before the people of Ireland. All I can say is, that he took a very long détour to very little purpose; for if he had but obtained a card of membership, he would have seen that it is plainly stated thereon that the very first object of the League "is to gain legislative independence for Ireland." Of course, everybody knows that is the object of the National League. That was the most that could be made out of the great mass of speeches which are collected by the Government at enormous and idiotic expense, piled up at the Castle in Dublin—I suppose numbering about 10,000. We are entitled to say that out of all those speeches, he could not find any worse passages than those perfectly innocent ones which he has given to the House. With the exception of the quotation from the speech by the hon. Member for East Galway (Mr. Harris), as to the correctness of the report of which there is very great doubt, about "slicing down rents," I say there is not a single passage which, from our point of view, is other than perfectly innocent. That speech has been quoted over and over again, and I do not care to go into a discussion as to whether the report accurately represents what the hon. Gentleman said or not; but it is more childish folly to say that any single sentence uttered by any man, in the course of a long political agitation, is to be taken as a justification for taking away the liberties of a people. It is preposterous, and it only piles on additional proof, if, indeed, additional proof were necessary, to convince any fair-minded man that the case of the Chief Secretary is so lamentably weak that he has been obliged to have recourse to these wretched quotations, which are picked out by the eagle eye of the Loyal and Patriotic Union for retail to the people of England. Now I come to the fourth branch of the right hon. Gentleman's case, and it is the only branch in which he plainly demonstrated himself—that is with regard to the practice of Boycotting. I am not in the habit in this House of making statements I do not believe in, and nobody denies that Boycotting is very prevalent in certain parts of Ireland. To an Englishman, not knowing the other side, the right hon. Gentleman's statement would present a terrible picture; but to us the right hon. Gentleman has again succeeded in proving nothing but his own ignorance of the country he has undertaken to govern. Evidently, from the strong language and strong rhetoric that he used, he made up his mind to lay on the colours as thickly as he could, and he went so far as to challenge right hon. Gentlemen opposite for a more appalling picture than the authentic facts before him presented. What did he do? I made a note at the time at random of some of the cases he brought forward. One was with regard to a well-known case at Thurles where Boycotting took place. It was the case of a man who came before the local branch of the League, and asked to be forgiven. He was not forgiven, and the Boycotting went on. What was the date of the case? It was the 14th of August, 1885. At the very time that this man was before the Thurles branch of the League asking to be forgiven and being refused forgiveness, the Tory Party were in alliance with us. They asked and they got our support at the Elections in November of the year 1885, and they knew right well of the Thurles case of Boycotting. It was publicly and notoriously before the country at the time. The newspapers took considerable interest in it; but it did not make the Tories refuse an alliance with the hon. Member for Cork, so long as, by his co-operation, they could secure a majority at the polls. Then the right hon. Gentleman went on to quote a resolution passed a long time ago, condemning certain evictions, and declaring that, in the opinion of the meeting, no man should be permitted to hunt over the land. Does the right hon. Gentleman not know that farmers in Ireland are legally entitled to prevent any man hunting over their lands? And does he not know that it is one of the legitimate weapons by which we got reductions of rent in Ireland? I call it a fair bargain; but the last of the Boycotting cases is very amusing. The right hon. Gentleman, in bringing it forward, nearly wept over it, and he leaned over the Table to an unusual length. He was more emphatic and impressive in his manner than over. The right hon. Gentleman said a labourer was working for a Boycotted man, that his wife was going to be confined, and that he could not get a midwife to attend her. Now, does he mean to put a clause in his Bill to compel mid-wives to attend women where they do not choose to do so? If so, I shall be prepared to oppose such a clause. I mention this to show the absurdity and the idiocy you are being driven into by attempting such an impossible task as that which you will be attempting by means of this Bill, if it passes. Do you suppose that by any Act of Parliament you can compel a midwife to attend a woman when she does not choose? There is a tragic side as well as a comic side to this subject—this is one of the comic sides; another was when a little boy, aged 10 years, because he whistled "Harvey Duff" at a passing policeman, was summoned for intimidation. These, Sir, are the results of idiotic legislation like this. I have now come to the end of the Chief Secretary's case, and I do not think there is realty any case at all. The case which the right hon. Gentleman attempted to prove made out no case for any coercion at all, much less for such a terrific Bill as he proposes to introduce into this House. He has, indeed, made out a case that he should speedily leave the Irish Office. He succeeded to-night in proving, to the satisfaction of every Irishman, that he is actually moving in the dark in Ireland—that he is dealing with a condition of people and things about which he knows absolutely nothing. That being so, he is absolutely and entirely in the hands of the most dangerous gang of men that exist in any country. He is like a child in the hands of the men who have been the curse of this country and Ireland all through this century—the permanent officials of Dublin Castle and the landlords, whoso interest it is to keep England and Ireland enemies; and, if it is the case, he is being borne along a road the termination of which it is not hard to see. He is now learning the lessons and hearing the stories from thorn with which dozens of Irish Chief Secretaries before him have been stuffed. He is learning that all you have to do is to have a continuous and strong Government and plenty of coercion; and these people who tell him this laugh at him behind his back. They know perfectly well that their day has gone by in Ireland; they do not expect, nor care, nor desire that—[here the hon. Member snapped his fingers]—about the Union. If you asked an Irish landlord to stake his life or any of his money on the maintenance of the Union, would you find one to do it? They care nothing about your Union, but a great deal about their rents. What is their opposition to Homo Rule? They know that Home Rule is a question of a short time, and they want, under the shadow of this Coercion Act of yours, to thrust their hands up to their shoulders in the pockets of the British taxpayer—put their cash into carpet bags, and get out of the country before Home Rule is granted. They want to sell their estates for double their value. They want to leave you face to face with the impoverished tenants of Ireland, who will have been compelled, under this Coercion Act, to sign agreements to pay double, or nearly double, the price of their farms, and then they will leave it to the British Government to collect the money. If they get their money, you will find very few of them staying in Ireland to maintain the Union, or support your Government. Everyone knows that if to-morrow, by some great operation, you were to buy out all the Irish landlords at their own valuation, and give them, out of the British Treasury, the cash for which they eagerly long, the Loyal and Patriotic Union of the defenders of the Empire would vanish in smoke, and you would be left masters of the field—aye, but with a very unfortunate state of things to face—with an impoverished people who had signed agreements to pay enormous sums, and the Irish landlords, after cursing Ireland for generations, would have left you with a wall of separation between England and Ireland which it would tax the utmost ingenuity of English Statesmen to get over or to get round. Well, Sir, I have said already that this Bill is not honestly brought before the House. I regret that I should be compelled to speak at any great length; but as there are not many Members listening to mo, the infliction will be less. The question is one so enormous that, in fact, it is utterly impossible for me to attempt to deal with this case within moderate or brief limits, because what I contend is this, that this Bill is an attempt at coercion of a thoroughly dishonest character, and no case whatever has been made out for it. Furthermore, I contend that if it is passed, so far from restoring order in Ireland, or lessening the amount of crime, it will tend enormously—as all the previous Bills have done—to increase disorder in that unhappy country, to increase crime, and what is now known as important—to enormously increase and intensify that feeling, which so much has been done to get rid of in the past year—of hatred of the English people, of utter distrust of this House of Commons. There is no escape from the effect of the passing of this Bill. But there is another aspect of the case which, to my mind, if not to the mind of the right hon. Gentleman, is no less important, no less vital, and it is this—that if this Bill be passed, which I doubt, and if it be carried out, as I do not in the least believe the Government will succed in doing; with the vigour and courage which Lord Spencer displayed, it will undoubtedly enable the Government and the landlords of Ireland to inflict upon the people an amount of suffering and cruelty such as they have not endured since 1852. That being so, I feel it my duty to lay before even the present small audience some portion of the vast mass of information on the subject which has naturally come into my hands from the various districts of Ireland, and which shows the frightful system of persecution and extermination to which the tenants are subjected. Of course, it is manifestly impossible for me to go at full length into all the information I possess. I shall, therefore, commence by taking two or three typical cases of eviction campaigns—that is, eviction on a large scale—and first I will take the case of the estate of Mr. Daly, Ballyhaunis, County Mayo, on the borders of my own Division. There are 27 tenants who are rented at something like a fraction over 70 per cent over the Government valuation, and there is one instance of a poor woman who pays exactly three times the Government valuation. These tenants applied to me for protection about two months ago, and asked if I could put in force the Plan of Campaign. I said, "Certainly," and I requested some friends of mine to go down. The tenants paid in under the Plan of Campaign, and their rents are safely lodged where Mr. Daly cannot touch them. He served them all with summonses, and got them into Court, and so shocked was the County Court Judge (Judge Richards) at what he had heard, that he said to Mr. Daly in open Court—"Cannot you make some compromise; can not you give some reduction? "Mr. Daly replied—" Oh! they can go in the Land Court." "But," says Judge Richards, "would not it be possible to give them some reduction, without putting them to that expense?" But the landlord pressed the case, and got the processes. Now, these evictions, and it is significant, were the first that took place in Ireland after the new Chief Secretary was appointed. I omitted to mention that the tenants had offered to pay Griffith's valuation, which was 20 per cent higher than Lord Dillon's tenants had settled for. The money is where he can reach it, if he chooses to send for it, and he can have it at any moment. The evictions were carried out with great cruelty. Three hundred police were present, great expense was incurred to the British taxpayer, and the next day the tenants went back to their homes, and are there now. An indignation meeting was held at Ballyhaunis, and so strong was the fooling exhibited by Mr. Daly's neighbours that he has asked Mr. William O'Brien and the parish priest to arbitrate on the whole case. Had you this grand Bill in force, what would have been done? These poor people—steady, honest, industrious, prepared to pay more than a just rent—would be to-day lying in gaol, or starving by the roadside of Mayo; whereas they had brought this man to reason, and these poor people have been allowed to return to their holdings. The idiotic thing about the whole transaction is that the British Government has paid about £50 for evicting these people. This would be the result of your Crimes Act—"Pay your full rent, or out you go into the road." Now, I will take the case of the Lansdowne estate. It must have struck hon. Members and the English public with surprise at seeing the accounts given in The Times of the tenants worth their thousands of pounds leaving their magnificent places with nothing. I cannot understand how hon. Members in England can be so obtuse as to believe the men who are Justices of the Peace, prominent citizens, largo farmers, will, because of intimidation, go out of their homes and leave behind them all their improvements. Lord Lansdowne, at an early stage of last winter, as I was informed, under the advice, and, perhaps, gentle pressure of the late Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. John Morley) offered, without being asked, to return to the tenants on his County Kerry estate a reduction of 20 per cent on the judicial rents, and so a settlement was arrived at. But the Queen's County tenants, who wore very highly rented, got no reduction, and none was offered them. The result was that they met together and demanded a reduction in the case of the majority of the tenants who wore leaseholders, of 30 per cent, and in the case of judical rents of 20 per cent. This being flatly refused, a great feeling was aroused among the tenants, and matters came to a deadlock which lasted some time. Then the tenants adopted the Plan of Campaign, and there cannot be the slightest doubt that they did so of their own motion and free will, and without the instigation of any other person. Then came the evictions; and, in connection with them, I want to take up the case of Denis Kilbride, whose case was mentioned in The Times by their correspondent, and it was stated that he was selected as one of the first tenants to be evicted, in order to make an example of him because he was one of the main promoters of the Plan of Campaign. We are told it is always outsiders who promote the Plan of Campaign; but everybody knows that this man was the chief promoter of it on that estate, and that he had been selected to be evicted first for that very reason. He and Mr. Dunn, whom you removed from the Bench for joining the Plan of Campaign, were the leaders of the movement, and though the agent tried to buy and bribe them off, they stood like men by the poorer tenants, and for this their names will never be forgotten in Ireland. Now Kilbride's farm was rented at £760, and his Poor Law valuation was £420 And now I will ask hon. Members' attention to a summary I have extracted from Reports of the Land Commissioners as regards reductions in Leinster in the four last months of last year. Here it is— September—Former rent, £51, Government valuation, £44; reduced rent £40. October—Former rent, £2,593; Government valuation, £1,845; reduced rent, £1,701; November—Former rent, £l,498; Government valuation, £1,311;"reduced rent, £938. December—Former rent, £962; Government valuation, £713; reduced rent, £503. In face of this return, which shows an average reduction of more than was offered by the tenants on this estate, Denis Kilbride has been put out of his holding, because he refused to pay—although he offered to pay 20 per cent over the Government valuation and 50 per cent over the judicial rents fixed on the estates all round him. This man was losing money on his farm under a rent that was a murderous rack-rent. That language is no exaggeration of the rent which I have proved from these returns to be of such a character. He is banished from his home, and probably robbed of thousands of pounds' worth of improvements, and driven out homeless on the roadside from a handsome house, because he will not pay a rent which is 50 per cent higher than the judicial rents, and will not betray his fellows. You must know that when men like this who are in the habit of paying their rents regularly and honestly, and against whom no breath of dishonesty could be breathed even by an Irish Chief Secretary; when they leave handsome homes and submit to see their wives and children, brought up in luxury, exposed to hardship—that a great belief in the justice of their cause must be at the bottom of it. If you pass this Bill, you are putting a weapon of persecution and tyranny, of cruel tyranny and spoliation, into the hands of men who have used those powers most unmercifully in the past. There is a description of these evictions in The Times of to-day which I recommend to the perusal of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite. In it I read a description of an interview between the parish priest of Ballina and the correspondent of The Times, and, knowing what I do of The Times, I would earnestly recommend them to peruse it. The priest told the correspondent they would build houses for the evicted people, and they would support them. He says—" They will never yield;" 'and The Times correspondent says—"I am obliged to admit that Father Meara is one of the finest and best specimens of his class." Is that not enough to make Members of this House reflect? I will say a few words on another case which happened in the Rosslea district in last December. A man came to me in my own house in Dublin from the Rosslea district, and asked for my protection for a number of tenants who were about to be evicted. The tenants on the estate were all Catholics. I consented to take the case up. A day was appointed for meeting; 135 families received notices of eviction, and the Clones Workhouse was noticed to receive 635 human beings. The agent had stated over and over again that he would not abate his terms, which the poor people were utterly unable to pay. These terms included the cost of evictions. The condition of these people was simply this—they were poor mountain tenants, who had previously paid their rent, as long as they were able, from the proceeds of a peculiar kind of embroidery work done by the women of the house, and on account of this very fact the rents had been cruelly and outrageously raised in past years, because it was know these women could make large sums; but this peculiar work deserted the locality in one of those inexplicable ways nobody could account for. The women had no work to do, and the only way for them to obtain money to pay their rents was by soiling their mountain cattle. But this means of obtaining money disappeared also, and the people were reduced to actual poverty. They had fallen into arrears and were about to be evicted for arrears of rent. I went down in January—it was one of the coldest days I recollect—the snow was six inches deep on the fields, and the cold was intense. It had been settled that the evictions were to come off on the Tuesday, and the meeting which I was to address on the Monday was proclaimed, on the ground that it was to be hold for the purpose of obstructing the Sheriff in carrying out the evictions. The police wore armed in order to prevent our meeting; but we held two largo meetings, at the usual waste of public money. The police, I suppose, had 50 cars, and there were 200 police present to prevent the meeting. What was the result? The evictions were postponed on the plausible pretext that the weather was so bad. It was singular that my meeting was proclaimed because I was going to obstruct the canning out of the evictions, and there was no word about the cold or the evictions being postponed, although my meeting was on the Monday and these on the Tuesday. Three or four days ago I received a letter from the priest of the district, in which he said— The poor people will never forget you for coming down and helping them in that struggle. He added— The evictions which were to have come off last week have been settled on the terms originally proposed. The agent actually accepted better terms than I originally proposed accepting—one year's rent, and giving a clear receipt up to May, 1886. But if the Government had had a Crimes Act, what would have been the result? There was no crime in that district; but if Judge Lawson went there, he would say law was not obeyed, disorder was rampant, and the Queen's writ could not run, because I held a meeting to protest against these evictions; whereas, the result has been that the struggle is ended, the landlord has got his rent, the people have been protected, and the district is at peace. I would invite the attention of hon. Members to this fact. Every single Englishman whom I know, who has travelled in Ireland, has become a convert to our views. I do not know a single case of any honest Englishman travelling among the people who has not come back a convert to our view of the case. I allude to these cases in order to show that, by allowing popular agitation, not only has injustice and cruelty been avoided, but also that wild revenge which is the inevitable accompaniment of coercion. I, therefore, urge hon. Members to pause very seriously before they embark on a course which will lead to things being done in Ireland that will make them disgusted with themselves, and sorry they have had anything to do with it. I desire now to turn for a few moments to the condition of the West of Ireland, and to read you a few words from that mine of information, the Cowper Commission Report, which, though they come from a witness hostile to us, ought to have great force on Members of this House. Lord Cloncurry is well known as a bitter opponent of the League. He has lost £10,000 in his struggles with us in Ireland, and, of course, his whole evidence is tinctured with hostility to our movement. he gives his evidence unwillingly to the following effect:—It has been shown that for the last few years the price of store cattle has been rapidly falling. He is a great grazier himself. Mr. Knipe asks—(Q. 20,728)— Must it not have an injurious effect on the farmers from whom you purchased cattle? Lord Cloncurry answered— In the Western counties they must have felt the fall very much. Mr. Knipe then asks— And consequently there must be a greater difficulty in paying rent? Lord Cloncurry to this answers— Yes; in Mayo it is a wonder to me how they pay rent at all. I could buy cattle for £8 a head there, that I could not buy for £14 10s.; but where I sell in England the prices have gone down. "I wonder," says Lord Cloncurry, "how they can pay rent at all;" and yet I have been branded as a robber, because I asked Lord Dillon for a reduction of 20 per cent, and they have paid Lord Dillon less this 20 per cent, and Mr. Daly's tenants are going to pay, and so are all of them if they are treated like human creatures and not like beasts. I have just been dealing with a question which is admittedly one of the most serious connected with the serious state of affairs in Ireland—the probable operation of this Act, if passed into law, on the people in the Western parts of Ireland—and I have pointed out that one of the most determined upholders of landlord rights in Ireland is astonished, in his experience as a grazier, that the tenants in that part of the country can pay at all. I will turn from that now to some evidence given by a man who is as much to be taken as the representative of Western Irish land agents as any man, Mr. Henry A. Robinson, who was the agent of Mr. Berridge over the greater part of Western Connaught, and who, I very much regret to see, has become agent over the Island of Arran. Mr. Henry A. Robinson is a man who is typical of the harsh agents in the West of Ireland, and his evidence, as given in the Blue Book, is of the most supreme interest. I entreat hon. Members to study and carefully read the evidence of Mr. Henry A. Robinson before they put into the hands of men like him powers which enable them practically to treat the people of that part of the country like slaves—indeed, worse than any many man would ever dream of treating slaves—because they will enable him, and other men of his class, as he is at present engaged in doing, to drive them out like vermin. He was asked, in examination— Are the tenants unable to pay the rent? Do you think they are? He answered— They are able to pay whenever there is a demand for their small cattle. That regulates the rent more than any other crop. There is no crop that interferes with the rent. The potatoes are for their own use; but as long as there is a demand for their cattle they can pay. This is a point I lean on; because here again is a declaration coming after Lord Cloncurry's declaration, that there had been such a fall in the price of small cattle that he wondered any tenant in Mayo could pay any rent at all. "Are the rents," he was asked, "being fairly paid? "He answered— They were being fairly paid, but they have an inclination to stop paying them. Since when?—They were fairly paid, very fairly, up to two months ago. Is it attributable to anything that has taken place in your neighbourhood?—I cannot say. There has not been any agitation in the neighbourhood; but reading and hearing that tenants have got a reduction elsewhere they expect a reduction. Have they asked you for an abatement?—Yes. Have you offered them any?—No. Are there judicial rents?—Yes. You gave no reduction on judicial rents?—We gave none. When were the judicial rents fixed?—At the very opening of the Commission. When the rents were being fixed in the province of Connaught they were something like 25 per cent higher than they were to-day. Have any been fixed recently?—No, none have been fixed recently. That is the evidence of Mr. Henry A. Robinson, who is agent over a vast district of country in which the Plan of Campaign does not run, and that is more in the nature of a misfortune to the tenants. He has recently been appointed agent over the Islands of Arran, which are populated by a people whom, in my opinion, it is a shameful thing to ask to pay any rent at all. But Mr. Robinson contemplates, as soon as convenient, to descend upon the Islands of Arran and collect the rent. I should like the House to notice the way in which Mr. Robinson deals with the question of emigration. He is appointed because he has the reputation of being an exterminator, and because it is known that he will strike terror in the tenants. Like a great many other men, Mr. Robinson is in favour of emigration, and thinks that the people ought to be induced to emigrate because the land cannot possibly support all that are upon it decently. Asked whether the tenants were in favour of emigration, he says— No, I think they are not. I think they are advised not to emigrate. They would rather remain as they are. They are subject to periodical famine?—Yes. And in a state of chronic misery?—Yes. And, I suppose, in a state of chronic discontent r—Yes. Good God! is this the position that Englishmen are going to assume in their treatment of this question? Can it be possible that Englishmen are going to place in the hands of this man, and others like him, such powers as are proposed to be given in this Bill to harry these poor people as he is harrying them at present? I got a letter the other day from a priest asking me to give the protection of the Plan of Campaign to 27 tenants on Mr. Berridge's estate. I replied that I would, if all the tenants would join. I had a letter from him the other day, to say that the thing was hopeless—that the tenants were too cowardly to join. These poor people had asked for 20 per cent reduction on their judicial rents. They were flatly refused their request, and now they are under notice of ejectment; and the terms of Mr. Henry A. Robinson are that they must pay the full rent and costs of ejectment, which will nearly double the rent upon them. I can do nothing for them, and the only remedy and relief this House is going to give these poor people is to pass a Coercion Act, to enable Mr. Henry A. Robinson to rush into gaol any poor creature who dares to raise his voice against him. I now want to read a few words from the evidence of that rara avis in Ireland, a good landlord, because, even in the County Mayo, there are good landlords. I have been accused of asserting that there are no good landlords in Ireland; but I have, on the contrary, always maintained that there were good landlords there, although they were in a minority. Where there is a good land-land in Ireland, we never hoar of his coming to this House and asking for protection. On his estate there is no Boycotting or intimidation, or trouble with their tenants. For instance, Mr. Thomas Tighe is a landlord in the County Mayo and a Justice of the Peace. He was examined before the Commission, and was asked did any of his tenants hold under judicial leases. He answered— No. In '79 I gave my tenants unasked an abatement of 20 per cent. And you never interfered with them since?—Never. Were any agreements brought before the Court by which the rents were fixed?—No; the tenants took no action in the matter. I and my tenants have lived on the best of terms. He was asked if he wanted to sell his estate? He answered— Yes; I offered to sell my Kilmainham estate at 20 years' purchase. Which they were glad to agree to, I suppose ':—Yes; because the rents were fair. This is in the County Mayo, where, according to the Government, the law has ceased to run. And yet Mr. Thomas Tighe has never had a word of difference with his tenants. There is further evidence to show how he had dealt with his tenants as follows:— You used to get your rents punctually before you sold?" (was one question put to him.)—"Yes; in 1879 there was a very had year, and I stocked the land myself. I never compelled a tenant to strip his farm, or to sell his interest in it in order to pay his rent. He added— I have stocked the land myself in bad years. Those words contain the keynote of the whole matter, and disclose the secret of the remedy for a great deal of trouble in Ireland. It is too commonly the case that landlords allow tenants to strip their farms for the rent; and then this is what Mr. Tighe says of the people in Mayo, where everybody is supposed to be dishonest— I am happy to say that I have been very successful in this way, for the tenants I assisted got on very well, surmounted their difficulties, and honestly paid their rent. I have quoted these words for the purpose of showing that when a landlord acts, as a Christian ought to act, he has no difficulty with Ms tenants; and, in every case of a contrary character, it will be found that the tenants are refractory because the landlord has been acting dishonestly, has been crushing them by his exactions, compelling them to strip their farms in order to pay the rent, and evicting them when he has pauperized them. I have endeavoured to show that where the landlord is just, the tenants will pay if they can. I have shown how men, acting for large and wealthy landlords resident in England, have been convicted, out of their own mouths, of the cruellest and most unmerciful conduct. So long as the Government allow such things to go on, it is criminal, in the highest degree, to think that they can restore respect for the law by simply bringing in a Coercion Act. As regards the County of Kerry, which is more typically Irish in many respects than any other, the condition of that one county, as compared with the rest, cannot justify the Government in robbing a whole nation of its civil rights. I wish to prove that Kerry, up to a recent period, has been admitted to be one of the most peaceable districts not only in Ireland, but in the entire United Kingdom; while now it is the scene of continued outrage and violence, and that the increase of crime is due to something apart from the nature of the people. Surely, when such a change as this has been wrought in the character of a people, men of honesty should first endeavour to ascertain the cause of the change before coercing the people. The cause of that change is not far to seek. The County Kerry was declared by no loss an authority than Chief Justice Lawson to be unusually peaceful until 1878, since which date the list of evictions furnishes a significant reason for the increase of crime. In 1877, 18 families were evicted; in 1878, 26; in 1879, 70; in 1880, the number was 191; in 1881, it was 192; in 1882, it increased to 293; in 1883 to 403; in 1884 to 410; and in 1885 to 458. A total of 11,000 human beings were thus driven from their homes during the period in question. This is the cause, and the only cause, of the extraordinary change in the condition of Kerry. I would now ask hon. Members to direct their attention to the evidence of a Resident Magistrate with regard to Kerry. I will, however, remark beforehand that the Blue Book from which I have been quoting is not accepted by the Irish Party as an impartial reading of the case. It is a mass of evidence collected by a Commission which has been appointed in the landlord interest. On that Commission there was appointed one English landlord connected with the coercion administration of the country, two Irish landlords, one English economist—who might be impartial—and an Irish farmer who, it had been carefully ascertained before he was appointed, voted Tory at the last election. Not a single Representative of the mass of the people was placed on the Commission; but it comprised three Representatives of the landlord class. The President, Earl Cowper, the Earl of Milltown, and another Member asked leading questions to induce evidence in favour of the case of the landlords, which evinced a most unfair animus towards the Nationalists. I have myself at a meeting of the National League warned the people not to go near, and not to put any evidence before the Commission; and they apparently took my advice, for of 120 witnesses examined, I do not believe that 10 have endeavoured to state the Nationalist view. There is evidence in favour of that view, and it is doubly valuable, because given by unwilling witnesses for, excepting in Ulster where Protestant farmers are examined, the witnesses are almost exclusively officials, land agents, landlords' representatives, officials of the Property Defence Association, and of the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union. Therefore any justification that can be extracted from their evidence ought to tell with tenfold force in favour of the Nationalist Party. The Resident Magistrate to whom I alluded is Mr. Considine, of the town of Killarney. He is himself the son of a Limerick landlord. He had been explaining to the Commissioners that the League, so far as he knew, was doing its utmost to put down outrage. Thereupon Lord Cowper said—"I suppose it would be the game of the League at present to put down outrage?" "The game of the League!" that was a question which showed the animus of the President. "Yes," replied Mr. Considine; "I think they would desire to do so"—an answer in which he plainly reproved the President as far as he dared. Then the President, alluding to the Curtin case, remarked—"Only these people have got out of their hands." The reply was— Yes; in my judgment, the central authority of the League have been doing their utmost to stop these outrages; but I think it has gone outside their power to do so. The witness was speaking of the limited district of Killarney; but does it not strike the House that this quotation shows a very unfair way of carrying on the inquiry? A most important witness was Mr. Davis, who for some years had been District Inspector of Constabulary at Castleisland, the worst and most disturbed part of Ireland. I am glad to hear," said Lord Milltown, "that Mr. Davitt has denounced outrage."— Oh, yes," answered Mr. Davis; "he came down here specially and denounced outrage. Do you think it had any effect?"—"I should say it had. Did Mr. Davitt show any sympathy for the Curtin family?"—"I am quite sure he did: and I know members of his Party who were present at the funeral, and did everything to denounce outrages and prevent Boycotting. I allude to this evidence, because it is, in my opinion, monstrous to accuse Irish Members, or any organization with which they are connected, such as the National League, of being in any way responsible, either directly or indirectly, for outrages; on the contrary, I assert that they have contributed enormously towards maintaining the peace, and the absence of outrage during a period of great distress and many evictions. When the Government's own paid officials admit that in all the worst districts of Ireland the influence of the League has been strained to the utmost to put down outrage, it is a preposterous and almost a cowardly thing to say that that organization has instigated outrages. I have never shrunk in this House from taking on my shoulders the full responsibility of any action of my own. I acknowledge that I have been acting in a combination in the shape of the Plan of Campaign against the payment of exorbitant rents, and also to a certain extent in Boycotting to carry out that object; but I assert that I have done more to prevent crime and outrage than any Government official. I would ask the attention of hon. Members to the evidence of Mr. E. Roche and the District Inspector of Constabulary in regard to the district of Castle is land. There the Land Act has operated to a very limited extent, owing to the fact that a large portion of the people are leaseholders. Rents are high, but abatements are made in some instances; evictions commence, then outrages take place, then comes the Crimes Act, and in consequence of the frightful blood tax, the rates in that district are almost equal in amount to the rents. In a district where crime is most rampant, it has been stated by the salaried magistrates of the Government that the influence of the Land League has been dead for years, and that Boycotting is carried out by an organization which they do not like to name. Well, what has been the result of five or six years of this rule in Kerry? You have brought the country into a state that is most deplorable, and, I must say, is a constant source of grief and shame and distress to all Irishmen. And what is your remedy for all this? Simply to continue to carry on the methods of coercion and blood tax which have produced these evil effects. And what, Sir, is the cost of this system? I say, Sir, that to support this system is the worst and most infamous use that the taxes of the country could be put to. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer went out on the terrace of the House of Commons and shovelled sovereigns into the Thames, he would be doing a more prudent and meritorious act than your agents are doing in Kerry. Mr. Heffernan Considine, one of the Resident Magistrates of Kerry, was examined before the Cowpor Commission, and stated, in reply to Sir James Caird, that he knew one landlord who had a Boycotted farm on his hands and had been working it himself for two years. The rent of the farm was £70 a-year. There were seven policemen protecting the caretakers, and Mr. Heffernan Considine estimated that it cost the country £1,000 and the landlord £300 a-year to work this miserable farm of £70 a-year. That is certainly a glorious system for administering the taxes of England; and I venture to say that if any Member of the House were to investigate the circumstances of the evictions, he would come to the conclusion that the tenant was right and the landlord wrong. I am convinced that the people of England—if we can only reach the people of England—will put an end to this system which, according to the Chief Secretary, is to be perpetual. A great many land agents were summoned before the Commission; and I want now to direct the attention of the House for a few minutes to the character of the evidence given before the Commission by some of the agents themselves, which will show what a small amount of reliance can be placed upon the statement of Tory landlords who come from Ireland, and indignantly deny the charges we make against them. One of the agents examined was the agent of the Duke of Abercorn. I do not know whether I am correct or not, but it is believed in Ireland that the influence of the Hamiltons is most sinister and anti-Irish—it is believed that they were not sorry to get rid of the late Chancellor of the Exchequer (Lord Randolph Churchill), whom they regarded as opposed to them in their Irish policy. I know, any way, that the Hamiltons are anxious to have a Coercion Act in Ireland; for, without a Coercion Act, they would soon be unable to levy their rack-rents in the North of Ireland. In fact, they are regarded by their own tenants and by the Ulster tenants as excessive rack-renters. Mr. Thomas M'Farland, the agent to the Duke of Abercorn, was examined and stated, in reply to Lord Milltown, that the tenants had always been well treated, and that there would be great reluctance on their part to sever their connection with the old family. He also stated that between 8 and 9 per cent would cover the cost of management, losses, and outlay upon improvements on the estate. So much for the opinion of Mr. M'Farland; but we shall see that the tenants' opinion is entirely different. A short time ago a meeting was held in St. Johnstone's Schoolhouse of the Donegal tenantry of the Duke of Abercorn. Everyone who knows the locality is aware that there were very few Catholics in the room. The chair was occupied by a Mr. David Robertson, a Loyalist, and he said— He was sure they would all agree with him that it was no wonder the country was in such a state of agitation when they found the tenant farmer in a worse position than he was 50 years ago, and tied down by law to pay rents reduced on an average only 10 per cent on rack-rents put on in 1858 when all sorts of farm produce were double what they were at present. He added— There was one thing certain, a reduction of rent must come, if the tenant farmers were to live in this country. They were told that the Government would give no reductions on the judicial rent. There were three sources—a re- duction was to he looked for from the landlord' from the State, and from the Land League-The last appeared to him to be the most popular and the most effectual.

LORD GEORGE HAMILTON

asked the hon. Gentleman to read from page 691.

MR. DILLON

It will be more interesting to the House to read the opinion of the tenants.

LORD GEORGE HAMILTON

asked what was the period to which the hon. Member was referring?

MR. DILLON

1858.

LORD GEORGE HAMILTON

Thirty years ago.

MR. DILLON

I desire to show what a good heart these Ulster landlords have for their tenants. Judging the names of the tenants who have recently spoken, I should say they were members of the Church of England or Presbyterians. And what did they say? They, it appears, had asked for a reduction of 30 per cent, which, they said, had been curtly refused; and at this meeting they asked his Grace for a more favourable reply, and one of the tenants said— They all remembered the time when they did not dare to assemble in a meeting like that to discuss their grievances, and when they had to submit to whatever kind of tyranny was bestowed upon them without raising their voices against it. They had reason to thank God, to thank the Legislature, and thank the spirit of the time that they were able to meet together that evening. These are the affectionate tenantry of their beloved landlord, the Duke of Abercorn. That is a nice commentary on the statement of Mr. M'Farland; and I am inclined to believe that it' these men had not the courage to speak out we would have the Hamiltons posing hero as men who had the love and respect of their tenants, and from whom the tenants would not part even if they could. This only shows that the Northern Protestant, as well as the Southern Catholic, will use strong language when driven to the wall. If I had used in Mayo the language used by Mr. Samuel Crowe I should have been indicted; for that gentleman spoke of the 70 tenants who refused to sign his memorial as black sheep, and I shall await, with some interest, to see whether a prosecution under the new Coercion Bill is the result. It is quite true that there is no National League in that district, and why? Because the tenants dare not join it. The first case I will cite is that of a man who has held himself up to the public of England, and I believe successfully, as a model landlord. He has given evidence before the Commission of the most extraordinary and preposterous character ever placed before any inquiry. That gentleman is Mr. A. M. Kavanagh; and, when called upon to give evidence, he asked the permission of the Commissioners to deliver his evidence without being questioned. The result was a political harangue, extending over seven or eight columns, in which he denounced the late Government, the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian, and the Land Act, and declared he would give no abatement of rent, because none was required. That was his evidence before the Commission; but what happened? As ill luck would have it, the Land Commission went to Loughrea the other day and reduced some of this gentleman's rents. Among the reductions were, £17 17s. to £8. That was in the case of Thomas Haynes; in the case of Michael Comerford, the reduction was from £44 to £30; Michael Murphy, £14 to £7 15s; and in other cases, £2.3 to £17, £13 to £8 15s., and £2 to 12s. 6d. This landlord of £20,000 a-year actually charged for a small holding £2, although the Land Commission said it was only worth 12s. 6d. No wonder Mr. Kavanagh denounced the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian; for that right hon. Gentleman had exposed to the world the infamy of the conduct of one who had hitherto postured before the country as a humane and honourable landlord. Mr. Kavanagh was asked whether, in these rents, there was included any interest on improvements made by the landlord. "No," he replied; "in this country it is quite the other way;" by which he meant that all the improvements were made by the tenants. Passing on, I come to another head of the landlord party. The landlords have been getting into a great deal of trouble lately, and the reason is because many people want to ask—"Why do not a large number of the tenants go into the Land Courts?" The answer is—"Because they dare not go in." If they had, they would have been sued for the hanging gale and for the arrears; they would have had their turf taken from them; they would have been appealed against and dragged from Court to Court at great expense. It is only recently that the landlords have become terrified by the Plan of Campaign, and that the tenants on the worst estates have received relief by plucking up courage to go into Court. I next come to another good landlord, who has not been found out until just lately. Lord Courtown is at the head of the Property Defence Association, and reductions have been made on Lord Courtown's property as follows:—From £52 to £38, £ 19 to £11, £ 15 8s. 6d. to £8, £67 to £31, £10 to £8 15s., and £28 to £14 15s. There is also a long list more. Had Lord Courtown been in this House, he, too, would have repudiated the charge of exacting exorbitant rents. Yet those are the men who the landlords of Ireland have not been ashamed to put forward as the champions of their class, and who last autumn would have persisted in declaring that rents were not too high. Why have not they chosen men like Mr. Thomas Tighe? Because such men will not do the dirty work which these associations require to be done. I have referred to the Land Corporation, and to the Property Defence Association, which have been established for the protection of landlords. But there is a third association of the kind—the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union—which has flooded the country with a greater number of lies than has ever been previously circulated. That association was founded for the purpose of proving that the great mass of the Irish tenantry were in human and discontented without reason; but its action from beginning to end has been a gross libel on the Irish people at largo. At its head is a noble Lord who was once a Member of this House—Lord Castletown—and, unfortunately for him, some of his tenants recently wont into the Land Court. When hon. Gentlemen knew the reductions that were made by the Court on Lord Castle town's estate, they will easily understand how it is that the Loyal and Patriotic Union spent so much money. It is because they have a class interest to defend. Their object is not the Union of the two countries; it is to stave off, if possible, the destruction of their rack-renting system, and to cover the exposure that is being made of the infamous way in which, as landlords, they have treated the people of Ireland. In Lord Castle- town's case, the reductions from the old rent were £10 to new rent £5; from £28 to £13 10s.; from £30 to £22; from £11 to £29; from £478 to £330; from £4 1s. to £2 10s.; from £18 to £10. Here is a pretty state of things for the head of the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union, which flooded the country with its boasts! Is that state of things creditable to the noble Lord? If, in speaking at this length, I can bring home to the minds of the people of England what is the real motive of those Gentlemen who talk about their preparedness to make sacrifices, I shall be content. Sacrifices forsooth! I challenge any Member of the Government to lay a finger on any single sacrifice that has over been made by any Irish landlord for any purpose except the recovery of his own rent. So far from making sacrifices, these noble Lords and hon. Gentlemen of the Union were the very people who were not ashamed to come over from Ireland and ask the Lord Mayor of London to help them. Yet those very men are ready, and do not hesitate, to reproach me and my Colleagues of the National League, because, as they say, we were not ashamed to accept the earnings of the evicted tenants in America, and to be the instruments, as I am proud to be, of carrying out their wishes. At least, the Nationalist Party do not take anything from Englishmen. Nor, as a matter of fact, do we beg from our own flesh and blood. The money is forced upon us, poured out upon us by all classes in America to forward the cause of Irish freedom. To bog from Englishmen is reserved for the Irish rack-renting landlords, and Englishmen, if they knew the truth, would rather give to any object under the sun than to that. Make sacrifices? Why so demoralized have those men become, that they will not make any sacrifice even for themselves. Their rentals, in the aggregate, amount to £10,000,000 a-year; and how much does the House think they subscribe to the Tenure and Property Defence Association? Why, they subscribed last year only £3,000. And yet that Association talked to the English people of being turned out of Ireland penniless, and openly begged of them for help. That was the revenue of the Association for last year, and the banking account was overdrawn, so that they had to come to London to beg for aid. In contrast to this, I can tell the House that the poor tenants of Ireland subscribed £14,000 last year to their organization, while the rent-roll of these men who subscribed £3,000 only for theirs, was £10,000,000. No, those men will make no sacrifice for no principle and no object except that of collecting their rents and filling their own pockets. As a class, they care nothing for the Union; their pockets are their chief consideration; and if the House were foolish enough to allow them to take large sums out of the Treasury of England, they will desert Ireland and the Unionist cause, and they will abandon Ireland to the Nationalists, and leave them absolute masters of the field. As to the general policy of the Government for settling the Irish Question, I maintain that if we pass a Coercion Bill we must abandon purchase. I have no objection to a system of purchase, if it is made perfectly free. For a fair purchase, the first necessity is that the tenant should be free, and the price moderate and reasonable. If a Coercion Bill is passed, I will make it my business to go to the people of England, and warn them all through the country against advancing a single shilling to the Irish tenant for purchase. Speaking as an Irishman and knowing my countrymen, I will tell the English people that Irishmen will honourably pay back every shilling advanced to them by way of loan, so long as there is a firm and free bargain; but that it will be a dangerous thing to the Irish people, and to the English Exchequer, to carry out a system of purchase under a Coercion Bill. It will be madness on the part of the English taxpayers to consent to any purchase scheme while a Coercion Act is in force. Hero is, by way of illustration, a case which has occurred under the Plan of Campaign, which I had had the privilege of putting in force.

MR. SPEAKER

said, it would be travelling wide of the question to discuss the details of a purchase scheme on the Motion to bring in a Bill to amend the Criminal Law.

MR. DILLON

I recognize the propriety of the interruption, and will not pursue that part of the subject. I have addressed the House at greater length than I am in the habit of doing; but I believe it was impossible to overrate the gravity of the crisis. There can be no doubt that we have once more arrived at what the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian has once described as the "parting of the ways." On one hand, there is a road which will lead inevitably to a repetition of all the miseries and troubles through which the country has passed for the last 87 years. On the other is a road which will lead to a speedy termination of all these troubles, and to a reconciliation which many believed to be impossible a few years ago. The inconsistency of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) in supporting this policy of coercion is astounding. It was only on the 9th of April last that the right hon. Gentleman said that the cause which made the recrudescence of crime in Ireland possible was the agrarian situation, and if the cause could be got out of the way, there would be nothing to justify recourse to coercive measures; and the right hon. Gentleman added that he would bring in a Bill to stay evictions for six months, and to provide for the settlement of arrears. What has occurred since the 9th of April to alter the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman? Why does he go away from those words now, and thus do violence to the teaching and principles of his past life and of his Party? There is not a single fact bearing on the case which was not known in April last. The only strong cases now brought forward date back to 1885, and the beginning of 1886. It is inexplicable that the right hon. Member should recede from that declaration, and should support a Motion which will put off for some time the possible reconciliation of the people of the two countries. For my part—for our part—it will be the duty of Irish Members to resist this measure in a way that the Rules of Parliament will permit of our doing. I believe we shall be supported in that resistance by the entire body of the Liberal Party and by the people of England. If the Bill passes, in spite of the utmost exertions we can make, I, on my part, shall continue to carry on the Plan of Campaign in Ireland. I do not care whether the Government try me in Dublin or at the Old Bailey—I will only say this, that if you succeed, by the aid of packed juries, in convicting me and putting me in prison, on your heads be the crimes and the horrors of the situation that will ensue.

MR. HALDANE (Haddington)

The language in which the Chief Secretary for Ireland introduced this Bill, the nature of the charges which he has launched against the Irish people, and the temper with which those charges have been brought forward, illustrate the passionate inconsiderate-ness with which Englishmen, at certain times, approach the consideration of the Irish problem. We, at least, of the Liberal Party, with all our failings and with all the mistakes which we have committed, have learned one thing. We have learned that hysterical legislation cannot affect the consequences of acts the nature of which we have long since come to understand. The proposals now placed before us are so remarkable and of a stringency so extraordinary as almost to take one's breath away. I do not deny that there might be a state of things for which so extraordinary a proposition might be necessary. It might be natural if the Executive had to deal with a small body of conspirators, systematically banding themselves together to promote acts of rapine and disorder against the general well-being. Then, indeed, a proposition such as that which the Chief Secretary has placed before the House would be necessary; but whether that is the case now is an issue which is one of fact. I base my opposition to the Bill, not upon the nature of the propositions which it contains—although of those propositions I shall have something to say before I resume my seat—not upon any suggested satisfactory condition of the Government of Ireland, because I do not think the state of Ireland at this time can be described in any respect as satisfactory; nor do I base my opposition on any general considerations, other than a broad issue of policy. The policy which Her Majesty's Government are now bringing before the House can only, from the point of view of myself and those who think with me, end in disaster to the cause of social order in Ireland and in the disgrace and humiliation of the people of this country. The Government have introduced a certain amount of confusion into the issue. They say that to refuse to pass this Bill would be to deny to the Executive the means of maintaining law and order, and of carrying out the mandate en- trusted to them. That is a proposition from which I wholly and entirely dissent. In my opinion, the duty of the Executive, not only in Ireland but in every other country that exists under Constitutional Government, is to carry out the enforcement of the law without the slightest regard to the reasons upon which such law and policy have been based. Certainly that is the doctrine which I should desire to support, and the history of this country illustrates the disastrous results of any departure from it; indeed, it affords numerous instances of the evils which have resulted in times when the Crown asserted a contrary doctrine, and sought to sot itself up as possessing an authority co-ordinate with, if not superior to, that of Parliament. I, for one, would be no party to challenge the policy of the Government if I thought that the outcome of that challenge was the affirmation of a doctrine which, whether maintained in the interest of the Sovereign or the subject, I trust is for ever dead. That is not the question we are here to discuss, but something entirely different. We are sitting here, not as the Executive, but as the Commons of Great Britain and Ireland, to determine the nature of the law which the Executive is to enforce; and we are within our rights and privileges when we say that we will not give the further sanction of our authority to any legislation unless it involves an enforcement of a reform of the law. I desire, as far as possible, to state the case I have to make to the House with fairness. It is impossible, on a question like this, in which Parties are separated by perhaps a greater gulf than there is any instance of in the records of this country—it is impossible to approach the question before the House otherwise than in a spirit more or less partizan, but I will undertake, at least, to abstain from anything like a misrepresentation of the condition of affairs. I will endeavour to state the facts with accuracy, and to avoid imputing to hon. Members opposite any motives or purposes which they themselves would not acknowledge. I have said that the question we have to determine is one of policy. The Government have passed from stage to stage of the policy they are now asking the House to sanction in its last development with the utmost regularity. It is not unedifying to see how they have done this. It is long since they passed the point at which the ways diverge. They have become separated from us by a gulf which is ever widening. Her Majesty's Ministers have taken upon themselves the duty of restoring social order in Ireland by means which not only deprive them of the sanction of the majority over whom they have to rule, but which are opposed to the ordinary and common instincts of those very people. We, too, had a policy of social order; we, too, have sought to restore the permanent and just administration of the law in Ireland, but we sought to do so not by means of measures passed in the teeth of the wishes of the people with whom we had to deal; but by securing, as far as we could, the sanction of popular opinion, the good wishes and good will of the Irish people, and those instincts of order which we believe to exist in Ireland as well as in any other civilized community. Her Majesty's Government have now taken upon themselves a task which certainly is a task of great difficulty, and I am afraid we are not likely soon to see the end of it. We certainly have not seen the end of our difficulties in attempting the government of Ireland. The last thing we desire, and the last thing we should seek to do, is in the slightest degree to involve the Government in embarrassment in the discharge of a duty which is almost without parallel; but we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the discharge of that duty will not only involve the Government in difficulty, but cannot fail to involve this country in an embarrassment no less than that in which it will involve Ireland. Let us look at the stages through which Her Majesty's Ministers have passed in the development of their policy. They set out with a denial of the necessity of that which they have entered upon now. The way towards coercion is paved with good intentions. The path which the Government have sought to tread is a path which has been fraught at every step with difficulties which they could hardly have foreseen. In the first instance, they set out with an abjuration of the doctrine of Home Rule, and I do not expect to see them in the slightest degree deviate from that principle. But what is their position now To begin with, they find themselves face to face with the necessity of restoring social order in Ireland. They have their own theory upon that subject, and they have announced that the absence of social order is duo to the absence of prosperity and contentment in that country. Now in that idea is there not something like a confusion between cause and effect? We have heard, in the annals of civilization, of good government preceding contentment and happiness; but I do not think we have ever hoard of contentment and happiness preceding good government? You cannot restore the one unless you take upon yourselves to secure the other. The Government, feeling the difficulty of their position, sot out with the purpose of devising a policy which might assist them in compassing their object. Finding they did not possess knowledge sufficient to enable them to accomplish their object, they invented a policy of Commissions. Undoubtedly, there was a certain amount of wisdom in that. It was necessary for the Government, in order to satisfy the Irish people, to discover and ascertain the mode in which the Irish people were to be satisfied. But the Irish peasant was hungry. It is all very well to inaugurate a policy of Commissions, but a policy of that kind takes time, and you were required to legislate immediately—to deal with a ease of social order as best you might. To undertake reforms in the law was no doubt part of the duty of the Government; but the Government forgot that their policy was essentially a policy which must take time. On their accession to Office they committed the fatal mistake of simply rejecting the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell), forgetting that a policy, which in its place might be wise, might not be successful under circumstances which brooked no delay. That brought them to Policy No. 2. The late Chief Secretary for Ireland (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) found it necessary, for the purpose of keeping up a condition of affairs that was found intolerable, to put pressure on the landlords of Ireland; but he forgot that Ireland was a country in which the people identified the landlords, in their own minds, with all that is most hateful—that it is a country where the necessity was recognized of the Government of the day ranging themselves on one side or the other; and a country which was accustomed to re-cognize the Government almost as a matter of course as ranging themselves on the side of the landlords. Her Majesty's Ministers forgot that they had to make an election on one side or the other; that they could not ride two horses at once, and conciliate the landlords and the tenants as well. The late Chief Secretary endeavoured to do something for the tenants, and he attempted to bring pressure to bear upon the landlords; but the tenants would not have it, nor would the landlords. They objected to a half-and-half policy, and called upon the late Chief Secretary to do one thing or the other. The consequence was that he failed. It was that circumstance which brought the Government to Policy No. 3—the policy which they are now introducing. It was necessary to take stops for insisting on the restoration of the observance of the law. The state of Ireland was a state which certainly admitted of only one verdict. That state was really—I will not say deplorable—but a condition of things in which it was necessary, and above all things essential, that some firm course of administration should be entered upon. Accordingly, the Government have entered upon such a course. We have heard to-night the propositions which have been placed before us by the Chief Secretary, and of which I took a rough note; propositions which can only be described as drastic in their stringency. Before you can form an opinion upon these propositions it is necessary that you should look at the existing condition of Ireland. The real Government of Ireland is at this moment in the hands of the National League. You have got before you the lamentable spectacle of a conflict between the de jure and the de facto Government—of the Representatives in Dublin Castle of the Treasury Bench at Westminster carrying on a feeble and somewhat spasmodic struggle with the irresistible influence of an organization which is flourishing in every part of the country. The reason is not far to seek. The reason is that the National League exists because it is the real representative of the opinions of the majority of the Irish people. The issue, Sir, is one of fact. I, for one, do not like to learn that a rival to the Government exists; but, before suppressing it, there is a necessity for inquiring into the causes which account for its being there. I listened to a speech which was made the other night by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Inverness (Mr. Finlay). I have listened to-night to the speech of the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, and the view which my hon. and learned Friend took of the functions of the League was practically the view subsequently taken by the Chief Secretary—namely, that it is in itself essentially a secret society, enforcing its mandates by means of Boycotting, and enforcing Boycotting by moans and artifices of a secret, violent, and highly criminal nature. Is that a view of the operations of the National League which is founded on fact? Is it a view which anybody would arrive at who considers the existing condition of Ireland? You have only to read the columns of United Ireland to find the doings of the League proclaimed in the light of day in every township and every district of the country. My hon. and learned Friend stated that the doings of the League are doings that are enforced by Boycotting. Undoubtedly they have been enforced by Boycotting; but how came they to be enforced in that way? It is because in Ireland Boycotting is the only way of getting out of the difficulties imposed by the carrying out of an unjust and unnecessary policy. You talk of the National League Party encouraging outrage; but what is the evidence of your own witnesses? Take that of Captain Considine—a gentleman who is certainly not likely to be prejudiced in favour of the League. You will find in the evidence of that gentleman a statement that the efforts of the League have been for 12 months past directed to putting down, as far as possible, crime and outrage. Perhaps Kerry is a county where you have more crime and outrage than in any other. It is said to be the principal centre of disturbance; and it is notorious that it is the district where the National League is less powerful than anywhere else. I know that hon. Gentlemen opposite feel most strongly on the subject of the issue in this case; but how is it possible for you to cure the existing state of things? How are Her Majesty's Government going to substitute for what is undoubtedly the de facto Government of Ireland a de jure Government, which I should certainly like to see established there, and which ought to be there, carrying on its work with the goodwill and assent of the general mass of the Irish people? The question is, how are you to make up your minds as to the meaning of this great popular movement? There may have been mistakes made in questions such as these before now. There has been no one who has been more uniformly wrong in his opposition to all popular movements than the Chancellor of the Exchequer. No man has formed judgments more adverse to popular movements than the right hon. Gentleman. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is a man of the highest integrity. I know that he is a man who would form no judgment as part of a conclusion at which he had arrived unless he believed that that judgment and conclusion were arrived at on proper and sufficient grounds. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer is a man whoso judgment has often been wrong; he was wrong about the extension of the franchise in counties, and he became from the opinion which he formed on that question a political Ismaelite. I believe that there are not a dozen hon. Gentlemen opposite who will now express an opinion that the extension of the franchise which was made in that direction was an unwise one, and I say that the great question before us now is one which has to be decided on considerations of a precisely similar character. I now come to summarize the objections which I take to the Bill which has been shadowed forth by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary. I am afraid that my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General will have his work cut out for him. The Bill certainly has its extraordinary—I might almost say its comic—aspects. I can well conceive my hon. and learned Friend meeting the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland and discussing evidence he had never seen, and upon the nature of which he has had no opportunity of forming a judgment, for the purpose of removing some trial from Ireland to this House. How is any Attorney General to form a judgment upon a matter of that kind? How is any man who does not know Ireland to form a judgment whether a. particular trial ought to be removed or not? There is, however, something more. The Chief Secretary told us that the object of the Bill is twofold. In the first place, to secure evidence; in the second, to secure verdicts; and he hoped by the Bill to be able to accomplish both of those objects. Now, how does he propose to obtain evidence? He re-adopts a provision which was originally contained in the Crimes Act brought in in 1882. No doubt that provision was not without its use. It was a provision which served at all events, to obtain a certain amount of evidence which at the time was sufficient; but the circumstances under which the same provision is brought forward now are very different. Under no circumstances can you now count on being able to obtain satisfactory evidence in Ireland. You cannot do without evidence in Ireland unless you are prepared to carry on the business of the law by means of a drumhead court-martial, which is the only tribunal which would act without evidence. Then, again, how are you to obtain a verdict? There is a simple way of doing it. You may obtain it by constituting the tribunal in a particular way—a tribunal, for instance, which will act without that evidence which the law proscribes as necessary; but this Bill does not provide that. It is all very well to appoint magistrates with summary jurisdiction; but how are they to act? They cannot act without evidence, and the difficulty will be, as it has been in the past, in obtaining that evidence. So far as I can see, Her Majesty's Government have not advanced one step in the direction of obtaining evidence. There are a number of most extraordinary proposals put forward in the Bill. There is a proclamation of dangerous associations. How far is that to be carried? I presume that it means the immediate extinction of the National League. [Cries of "Hear, hear! "from the Ministerial Benches.] "Well, you will extinguish the National League, and you will have to reckon with the consequences of your act. You will have to reckon with having driven agitation, which is now above-board, beneath the surface; and the effect of your legislation will be the formation once more of those secret societies which have been the curse of Ireland. We have been in hopes we might get rid of those secret societies for ever; but if the propositions of the Government are brought forward for bolstering up a bad land system they will inevitably result in the revival of secret societies. Much has been said about injustice to landlords. No doubt there have been instances of the most cruel injustice to landlords; but I am afraid that for one case of injustice to a landlord there have been 100 cases of injustice not loss cruel, and not less disastrous to tenants. I admit that the condition of many Irish landlords is deplorable; but they are suffering from the system which now exists. For the rack-renting landlord who oppresses his tenants we can have no pity; but for other landlords we feel very great sympathy indeed, and if they are to be got rid of they must be got rid of on just terms. Some of those who have been returned to this House—and I am one of them—would only allow ourselves to be elected not only on the terms that we should be free to support a Land Bill analogous to that brought in by the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone); but also that we should be free to support any other Bill which might be brought in by any Government—whether Liberal or Conservative—which proposed to deal with the matter on a just and rightful basis, without interfering in an inequitable manner with the tenants, and without doing anything that might unduly jeopardize or prejudice the interests of the British taxpayer. Let Her Majesty's Government bring forward such a measure, apart from any other measure, and I, for one, promise them that upon such a subject—a subject which is far too important to allow Party considerations to intervene—I will do my best to support any proposal they may submit to the House so long as it is framed in accordance with the ordinary conditions of prudence. There is, however, another reason which induces me to oppose the Bill which the Government have announced. I am prepared to oppose it because I believe it is a measure which will prove to be utterly useless. It is a Bill of which, stringent as it may be—and it is stringent to a degree that is appalling—it is not difficult to prophesy that it will be enforced with a hand more unsparing in its rigidity and its intensity than that with which the measure of 1882 was administered by Lord Spencer and Mr. Trevelyan. What was the effect of that measure? No doubt a certain amount of crime was put down; but at what cost? You turned nearly the whole of Ireland into a condition of irritation, and made the people prepared to resist, almost to the last drop of their blood, a policy you are now seeking to revive. You made Ireland far more Nationalist than ever it had been before. Every Town Council, every Local Board, every popular assemblage in three of her Provinces declared in favour of the Nationalist cause. The influence of the National League was oven felt in Ulster, where there were signs of the people stepping forward and taking part in the operations of the Land League with the rest of the Irish people. Every popular body took sides with what became, from that moment, the Nationalist cause. If that were so under the Bill to which I refer, how much more will it not be the case under the Bill which Her Majesty's Government propose to introduce; every line of which is calculated to make the Irish people hate this country and the administration of its laws far more bitterly, and with greater intensity and a greater sense of injustice, than was even the Crimes Act of 1882? I object to the Bill because it appears to me to be the necessary and logical outcome of a bad policy. I think that the bringing forward of tills measure became an absolutely necessary step with the policy inaugurated by the Government last year. The evil was committed then, when they pledged themselves to oppose Home Rule in any shape or form; and we who cannot support them in that—we who are pledged to bring about a state of things in which the Government of Ireland may be carried on in different lines—are only acting with consistency when we declare that we will oppose this Bill in every shape, in every form, and from every point which the Rules of Debate in this House will permit. We have been taunted to-night by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary with leaving the attack on this Bill in the hands of an Opposition which he said is not the regular Opposition. I deny that the Opposition to which the right hon. Gentleman referred is not the regular Opposition. For the purpose of opposition to this measure we are one. One Party is not lighting less stringently or less earnestly than the other. You have accused the Irish Members repeatedly of having violated every Rule of this House. Perhaps your accusation may not be altogether devoid of truth; but what was the occasion of it? You refused to listen to those eminent Irishmen—from Grattan down to Mr. Isaac Butt—who have addressed you in eloquent terms, and have endeavoured to obtain the redress of Irish grievances. You have refused to these men every act of justice. You refused even to consider the propositions which they have placed before you. You refused to consider their proposals until the Party came to be led by sterner men with a less rigid intention of observing the proprieties of debate. They have forced you to listen to their case. We were as wrong then as you are now, and they have compelled us to listen to the case of the Irish people. At length they have brought us to a state of things in which the Irish Party, so far from being a small minority of the House, is in alliance with the vast majority of the Liberal Party of this country. You say that we have changed our views. Yes; we have changed our views, and we have changed our policy. We have changed that policy at a moment which we believe to be not too late. We have taken up a position from which you will not drive us, either by your taunts or by any arguments you are likely to use. No doubt we—the Liberal Party—have also sinned against Ireland, but the fault we committed was committed in partial ignorance. You, however, through the medium of this monstrous Bill, and through the medium of your general policy, are about to inflict another grievous wrong upon Ireland, and for you there exists no such palliation. You will pass this Bill. [Cries of "No!" from the Irish Members.] Yes; the Bill will be passed, not by convincing argument, but by the mere weight of numbers. And, in making it a part of the law of the land, you will inflict a wrong on the Irish people, the consequences of which will only be measured by the disaster you will bring upon the administration of justice in Ireland, and the disgrace which that administration of justice in Ireland will inflict upon this country.

VISCOUNT LYMINGTON (Devon, South Molton)

In offering a general support to the proposals of the Government, I do not pledge myself as to the various details; but I shall rest my case not upon a question of rent, or the amount of crime, but on the plain duty—I may even say the honourable trust—which I feel is reposed in every Unionist Member of this House to support the only possible Unionist Government in enforcing the authority of the law, and securing to every Irish fellow-subject the absolute protection of the laws of the British Parliament. I am willing to confess that the outward and visible condition of crime, although by no means satisfactory is not so serious as has been the case when former Coercion Bills have been introduced into this House. But the explanation is clear, although I am bound to say that it is not a very satisfactory one. In former times the forces of anarchy, when those forces wore represented by Fenianism, by the Land League, or by the National League, were struggling for mastery in Ireland. To-day—I am ashamed to say so—the forces of anarchy are the masters of Ireland. Outrages are no longer necessary. And why are they no longer necessary? To quote the words of Sir Redvers Buller, "intimidation is rampant" in that country. Sir Redvers Buller was asked by Lord Cowper, "Are the tenants afraid of the League?" and the reply of Sir Redvers Buller was "Yes; they are coerced by the League; they are in fear of the intimidation which is rampant in the country." These are the words of Sir Redvers Buller, whose evidence has been much quoted by hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House, and especially by the Irish Members. It is not the quality nor the quantity of crime. What necessitates the proposal of Her Majesty's Government is the plain, avowed, and self-evident fact, which it does not require Blue Books to prove or disprove, that law and order are in abeyance in Ireland; and that while the Government de jure is that of the Queen, the Government ds facto is that of the League. That is the position which we have to confront. It is a position in which the Unionist Party cannot acquiesce. I make no complaint of, and I bring no charges against, the Irish Party. They, at least, have played their part in this controversy and in this struggle with determination and with courage. I listened, as I always do, with great respect to the speech of the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon), and I felt that the sentiments of that speech constituted, if there had been no speech at all from the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, the strongest reason and claim for the stringent powers which have been asked for on the part of the Government. The Irish Members and the Irish Party are not afraid of using force. They believe in coercion. They are willing and are ready to employ coercion to coerce the tenants into performing the part they wish them to play in this contest, and they know that they must employ force, and sustain the application of force, to enforce the duty that was preached by the hon. Member for North Wexford (Mr. J. E. Redmond, and which sums up the whole principle of the policy and attitude of the Home Rule Party in this House. Speaking at Chicago, the hon. Member said— The duty of the moment is clear. I assort hero to-day that the government of Ireland by England is an impossibility, and I believe it to be our duty to make it so. [Cheers from the Irish Members.] Quito so; that was most admirably expressed by the hon. Gentleman.

MR. J. E. REDMOND (Wexford, N.)

Why do not you read on?

VISCOUNT LYMINGTON

There is no necessity. That is perfectly clear from the Separatist point of view. For my own part, I do not believe that the English people are inclined to be over squeamish as to the means or manner in which they assert the authority of the law in Ireland. I think they have stronger nerves than is supposed by many Gentlemen who claim to represent them in this House. At least I am certain that what would discredit the Unionist Government, and not only the Unionist Government, but what would destroy once for all the Unionist Cause, would be for the Unionist Party to accept a tacit surrender and tacit acquiescence in anarchy. We have never surrendered Imperial interests to the arguments of despair and the forces of anarchy, and while we refuse to the Irish the right to misgovern themselves, we cannot, at the same time, refuse to govern Ireland ourselves. As long as there is a Unionist Party in the House and the country, it is our first, our foremost, and our primary duty to take every measure, whatever it may be, to prove to the English people that the government of Ireland by England is not an impossibility. But, Sir, I make no apologies for supporting coercion. And more than that, I say that unless we are prepared to accept the doctrine of separation, we must in some form or other accept the right of coercion. For separation, complete, frank, and openly avowed, there is something to be said. In this case, Irish Gentlemen, I should hope, would depart in peace, and English and Scotch Members would at least be left in this House in peace. But any intermediate policies, such as the respective plans of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W.E. Gladstone) and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain), must involve some sort of contract between Parliament and the Irish people; and experience has shown that whenever the terms of a contract are distasteful to the Irish people they do not hesitate to repudiate that contract. They are not hesitating to day in regard to the judicial rents—a contract only made five years ago. They are not hesitating to exercise the full pressure they can bring to bear on Parliament in order to got Parliament to upset that contract.

An hon. MEMBER

"What does your own Commissioner report? What docs Sir Redvers Buller say?

VISCOUNT LYMINGTON

I will come presently to Sir Redvers Buller. I should have thought that the Prime Minister would have had some feeling of regard for a Parliamentary contract which he was instrumental in getting Parliament to accept five years ago. [An hon. MEMBER: The late Prime Minister.] Yes; the right hon. Gentleman is not Prime Minister now, owing to the exertions of hon. Members sitting on this side of the House. But supposing the policy of the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian had been accepted by the House; supposing that the Imperial Parliament had imposed upon Ireland the tribute which was to exist under his Home Rule Bill, or that it had imposed upon the Irish tenants the obligation of paying to the Receiver General the instalments under his land purchase scheme; if it is wrong for the Government to apply coercion and to resist interference with the judicial rents—I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it would not be equally wrong, equally immoral, and equally unjustifiable to have insisted upon the Parliamentary contracts entered into under his Home Rule Bill, and under his land purchase scheme? The rents which are denounced by the right hon. Gentleman and his Followers are not the rents of Irish landlords in the sense that they are rents fixed by them. The rights which the Irish landlords possess are not the old rights which they once possessed—the full and absolute right of confiscating their tenants' improvements. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt) quoted a saying of Lord Clarendon, in which he described the Irish landlords as "felonious landlords." That expression was littered many years ago; it was littered before the legislation of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian. In those clays that statement would have been accurate and natural; but circumstances are now changed. [Mr. T. M. HEALY: Not at all.] I say that the circumstances are completely changed. I challenge Sir Redvers Buller—who made a perfectly wild and reckless statement when he said that whatever law there is in Ireland is on the side of the rich—I challenge Sir Redvers Buller, or any Gentleman in this House, to tell me of any country in the world where the occupiers of the soil possess advantages equal to or greater than those possessed by the Irish tenants. They have fixity of tenure, fair rents, compensation for disturbance, and free sale; and I should like to know from hon. Gentlemen what greater boons any Parliament could confer upon any tenantry in the world. But, Sir, there is another charge, and perhaps a greater one—one, at least, which carries with it great weight. We are told by the opponents of coercion that the whole history of coercion has been a failure. We are told that, whatever may be the necessities, whatever the conditions of Ireland, it has been proved by experience repeatedly and over and over again that coercion has failed. Well, many things have happened since 1846, and oven since 1881. At the present moment the balance of Parties in this House is not held by the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) but by the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale (the Marquess of Hartington). The noble Lord holds the balance of power in this House, and in many constituencies in Eng- land. [An hon. MEMBER: But not of his own constituency if he will try it again. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian expressed a wish at one time that the Liberal Party should be able to settle the Irish Question independently of the Irish vote. That wish is, perhaps, now realized, though doubtless in a different sense and with a different intention from that which the right hon. Gentleman supposed or wished for; because to-day a Party exists in, this House and in the country which is pledged as strongly as any Party can be to subordinate all their minor Party considerations to the supreme question of maintaining the Parliamentary union between England and Ireland. Then, Sir, another great change has taken place. Coercion is no longer a weapon open to the old objections. Coercion is no longer a weapon to enable unprincipled landlords to extract from oppressed tenants exorbitant rents. If coercion has failed in the past, I would ask hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House whether their remedial legislation has been so eminently successful? I myself am one of those who still believe in the value and in the advantages of the Land Art of 1881. I supported that Act in Parliament, and I still believe—and believe most earnestly and strongly—that the Act has conferred enormous boons on the Irish tenantry. That it has been desirable and necessary has been proved by the large reductions in rent which have been made by the Land Commissioners. I will go further, and say that that remedial legislation would have proved successful—and successful in its political effects—if hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway had allowed it to be so. If the remedial legislation of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian has failed, it has failed not because it has been bad, not because it has not been wanted, not because it has not conferred great boons upon the Irish tenantry, but because the right hon. Gentleman has never been able to resist that coercion which the Irish people have been able to put upon him to invalidate and destroy the effects of his own legislation. The Land Act has failed, and we are driven to the last resort—a large scheme of purchase to buy out the Irish landlords. What scheme that could ever be devised is likely to succeed until law and order are restored? Why is it that the vast majority of sales under Lord Ashbourne's Act have taken place in Ulster, whore the landlords are not particularly anxious to sell? And why is it that in the other parts of Ireland, where the landlords have offered every facility to tenants to purchase their holdings, the}' do not take advantage of Lord Ashbourne's Act? [Mr. T. M. HEALY: Hear, bear!] The hon. and learned Gentleman says "Hear, hear!" I am afraid the explanation is that the tenantry in the South and West of Ireland have been constantly and insidiously indoctrinated with the belief that a little more pressure put upon the landlords—a little further delay—and they will get the land at prairie value, perhaps at less than prairie value; for under the Plan of Campaign, which has received the sanction of Gentlemen sitting on the Front Opposition Bench, an Irish tenant enjoys, I am bound to say, the unique position, enjoyed by no other man in the world, of having all the advantages with none of the burdens of ownership. The tenant is himself at once the judge and jury as to what rent he should pay. [An Irish MEMBER: Why not?] An hon. Member says "Why not?" From a tenant's point of view that remark can be appreciated. If I were an Irish tenant, of course, I should infinitely prefer the opportunity of discriminating whether I should pay my rent at all; but my point is that unless you can get the Irish tenantry to rely upon the law of this country as a basis of order and good government, no remedy which can ever be propounded by Parliament can possibly succeed, for no remedial legislation, however generous or beneficial, can possibly compete with the Socialistic advantages offered by the Irish Party. How can you expect any people to suffer the delay of remedial legislation which is to be obtained from Parliament, when they can take the law into their own hands and give effect once for all to their own remedies? I should like, Sir, in regard to this question of purchase, to revert again to a statement made by Sir Redvers Buller. He was asked by Mr. Neligan——

MR. SPEAKER

Order, order! I must remind the noble Lord that the question of purchase has no connection with the immediate discussion before the House, which is the introduction of this Bill.

VISCOUNT LYMINGTON

I am sorry, Sir, that I should have trespassed beyond the limits of this discussion. I was anxious to show that remedial legislation is impossible without some re-served power of coercion. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen (Mr. Bryce) said, a few days ago, that— He thought no case could be pointed out in which a democratic Government had succeeded in coercing into friendship and love another nationality which formed a part of the same democracy. And then, speaking of the case of the American Rebellion, he said— They (the Northern States) then, with the characteristic practical good sense of the American, at last changed their course, and in 1876 President Hayes withdrew the Northern Armies from the South, genuine self-government was restored, and from that time till now the Southern States had been a perfectly satisfactory and well-governed country. Of course, no one ever heard of an individual or a State being coerced into love; but if my hon. Friend meant that no State has ever been coerced, by a democratic Government, into obeying laws not of their own making, I cannot agree with him, and I assure him that he is greatly mistaken. If the House will allow me, I should like to answer his allusion to the Southern States. The hon. Member for Aberdeen ought to know that the military Governments of which he spoke were a temporary measure, and that the Southern States came-back into the Union, not by the exercise of self-government, but under the authority of the American Congress, in which they were not represented, and under Acts which their people had no part in enacting. My hon. Friend spoke of Tennessee, and, making his own history as he went along, he led the House to suppose that Tennessee had come back as an ordinary self-governing State into the American Union after, and not until after, President Hayes withdrew the Northern armies from the South in 1876.

MR. SHIRLEY (Yorkshire, W.R., Doncaster)

Is the noble Lord in Order in referring to a speech made in this House in another debate during the present Session?

MR. SPEAKER

The noble Lord, I imagine, is referring to a speech in what may almost be called a stage of the Bill now under discussion, and I cannot rule that he is out of Order.

VISCOUNT LYMINGTON

Before I was interrupted I was referring to the point made by the hon. Member for Aberdeen in regard to the case of Tennessee. I was remarking that the hon. Member seemed to suppose that Tennessee came back into the Union as an ordinary self-governing State after the Northern Armies were withdrawn from the South in 1876. As a matter of fact, Tennessee came back into the American Union under the Imperial Act of a foreign Congress in July, 1866. [An hon. MEMBER: Not a foreign Congress.] It was a foreign Congress in the sense that Tennessee was not represented. Again, to touch upon this question of American Home Rule; and, again, to show that the American democracy did not hesitate to exercise the right of coercion, the Reconstruction Acts of the American Congress, which over-rode the self-government of the Southern nationalities, to quote the words of the hon. Member for Aberdeen, were sustained by the Supreme Court in the celebrated case of "Texas v. White," seven years before the withdrawal of Northern troops referred to by the hon. Member. In that case (1869) the American Supreme Court held that the ordinances of secession passed by the Southern nationalities had been absolutely null, that the seceding States had never been out of the Union, though the Home Rulers of every one of those nationalities had voted them out of the Union; and that during and after the rebellion they had no Governments competent to represent those States in their relations with the National Government. The extent to which coercion was applied by the democratic Government of the United States to compel these seceding nationalities into friendship and love was signally illustrated in the case of the wealthiest of the Southern States—Georgia. That State, after the defeat of the rebellion, passed laws, in the exercise of her perfectly Constitutional Home Rule, declaring negroes incapable of holding office, and refused to ratify, as she was legally entitled to do, a certain Amendment—the 15th—to the American Constitution. For this the American Congress refused her people their right to be represented at Washington; nor was that right allowed until Georgia had been coerced into revoking her State laws and ratifying the objectionable Amendment in 1870. So much, then, for the case of American Home Rule. The whole history of the treatment of the South by the North, the whole conduct of the American democracy in assorting the authority of the Union, is in distinct and absolute favour of the unquestionable and unquestioned right of every democracy, and a proof that a democracy can exercise the most powerful, potent, and stern coercion. As it is with the American people, so I believe it to be with the English people. I grant that they are radical in their sympathies, that they are deeply impressed with the necessity of far-reaching, far-searching reforms; but they have no sympathy with disorder or with outrage. They love their own freedom; they love their own Parliament. I believe they are disgusted at the conspiracy—I can call it nothing else—which is attempting inside the walls of this House to paralyze our Business.

MR. T. M. HEALY (Longford, N.)

I rise to Order. With great respect to the noble Lord, I wish to ask whether it is in Order to speak of a conspiracy within the walls of this House?

MR. SPEAKER

Conspiracy of the kind referred to is a very strong expression for the noble Lord to use. If it was applied to any section of the House, I think the noble Lord will feel that he ought to withdraw the expression.

VISCOUNT LYMINGTON

I will apologize to the hon. and learned Member for having offended his very delicate sensibilities—["Withdraw!"]—and assure him that my remarks had no special reference to him. My experience in addressing public meetings is that the people of this country are beginning to regard with impatience what must appear to them to be the unjustifiable means of standing between the vast majority of the House, who are sent hero to represent them with the distinct and definite object of carrying on, first and foremost, the Business of Parliament, and effecting, first and foremost, the vindication of law and order in Ireland. In conclusion, let me say a few words in reply to a taunt which was addressed pointedly to myself and to other Gentlemen who sit on the Opposition side of the House. It has been repeatedly said that the clamour for coercion comes from those who have not the courage to sit side by side with those with whom they act. ["Hear, hear!" from the Irish Members.] Quite so; we are looking for the example to be set by the Party which is led by the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian. If my noble Friend the Member for Rossendale is the master of the Cabinet, the master of the Opposition is the hon. Member for Cork. The Liberal Unionist alliance on that point with the Conservative Party is an open and avowed alliance, an alliance of which we are not ashamed. The noble Marquess at the head of the Government and the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale at the commencement of this alliance stood shoulder to shoulder at one of the largest public meetings ever hold in London; and I challenge the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian to stand shoulder to shoulder at any great English meeting on an English platform with the master of his policy, the hon. Member for Cork. And, Sir, I maintain, apart from other questions and other considerations, that the Liberal Unionists have as good and as unquestioned a right to sit on these Benches as any Member of the Party led by the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian. We have surrendered no opinion—no Radical, no Liberal opinion—what we have not surrendered are our own convictions and our own independence; we have only surrendered minor and Party considerations to the supreme question of the hour—the question of the Union. Whatever our fate may be, and wherever we may sit in the House, I can assure hon. Gentlemen opposite and hon. Members around me that we shall not be influenced by taunts; but that we shall be guided by the single desire to preserve unimpaired, and at all costs, the full and absolute supremacy, in all parts of Her Majesty's Dominions, of Imperial law and Imperial authority.

MR. J. E. REDMOND (Wexford, N.)

Sir, I scarcely think that the Government are to be congratulated on the only defence that has been heard tonight of their policy, and still less do I think that the Liberal Unionist Party are to be congratulated on their spokesman. The Government are not happy in their defenders, for during the long and somewhat tiresome speech we have just listened to, there has been no argument on the question before the House—namely, the introduction of the Coercion Bill. The Liberal Unionists are scarcely to be congratulated, because I think the noble Lord, in the first sentence of his speech, put their position in a far too candid way for their feelings or their prospects. The noble Lord, according to his own statement, is going to support this Bill, not in consequence of the figures in connection with agrarian outrage—not in consequence of the movement for a reduction of rent—but he and his fellow-Liberal Unionists are going to support it because they think that by opposing it they might dislodge the present Government from power. The speech of the noble Lord is a repetition of the statements made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain) some time ago, when he said that he would vote in favour of no proposal which would have the effect of dislodging the present Cabinet from the Government Bench. I do not think I should be doing justice to myself, or the subject under discussion, if I were to dwell for a single moment longer on the speech of the noble Lord. Sir, there are circumstances connected with the introduction of this Bill which distinguish it from every proposal for coercion which has been made in recent years in this House. This is the third Coercion Bill which has been proposed during the six years I have sat as a Member of this House; and, Mr. Speaker, I may truly say that, bitter and humiliating as has been the work of an Irish Nationalist during those years, there has been no part of that work so absolutely hateful as being compelled to rise here time after time to protest against the suspension of the Constitution of his country by men whose minds have been made up beforehand on the subject, and who have been less guided by considerations of national equity than by considerations of Party exigency and discipline. Up to the present moment there has been no single subject of domestic or foreign concern on which men of different English Parties and the most widely divergent political views have been able to agree, save and except only the passage of coercive legislation for Ireland. I rejoice to think that that day has passed, and that we have had, with regard to this Bill, a noticeable departure from the experience of the past. We have now before us the spectacle of the Liberal Party standing forward as the defenders of Irish liberties. That example must exercise an enormous influence upon the Irish people; it will teach them the lessons of patience and self-restraint in the face of terrible provocation. It will comfort them in their present hour of trial and need, and it will teach them that it will not be their fate very much longer to appeal in vain for justice either to the English Parliament or the English people. In what I have to say with regard to the introduction of this Bill—I desire to appeal to reason and argument alone, although it is difficult for an Irishman to pass by without some expression of resentment the insult to his country which is conveyed in this proposal. For my own part, I desire to treat it simply as if it were an ordinary Bill depending for its passage on the weight of reason and argument which is brought to bear in its favour. Of course, I recognize the fact that there are two kinds of coercionists in this House—two distinct classes of hon. Members, who have agreed in supporting coercive Parliamentary legislation, but who do so from very different motives, and for very widely different reasons. The arguments which must be addressed to these two classes of Members on the introduction of this Bill are, consequently, of a somewhat different character. First of all, there are those who believe that Ireland is unfit for Constitutional liberty, who regard the Irish people as irreclaimably savage and as hopelessly disloyal. Such Members support coercion on principle. They have faith in the sword; they believe that, under certain circumstances., force is a remedy. Those men are straightforward and honest—their policy is at least intelligible; and, for my part, regarding them as I do, as open foes, I have much more respect for them than I have for hon. and right hon. Members in other portions of this House, who, although they never lose an opportunity of denouncing coercion in theory, are always prepared to vote for it in practice. To those who support coercion on principle, I ask permission to submit a few questions. Do they not really think that the time is past when coercion can be looked upon as a remedy in Ireland? Is all past experience to count for nothing, and the entire history of the past to be disregarded? If coercion were a remedy either for Irish discontent, disaffection or crime, Ireland to-day would be the most peaceable, contented, and loyal part of the Empire. Coercion has been the only policy which has been perseveringly applied to her by every English Party in turn. Eighty-six Coercion Acts in 86 years! One Coercion Act for every year since the Legislative Union. Has the result been so satisfactory? Has the condition of the country improved so much? Have the Irish people become so contented with English rule that the Government of England at this day still believe in the policy of repression? I believe that even with the English Tory Party this policy of perpetual coercion has exploded. Of one thing I am certain—namely, that those who support such a policy or principle cannot stop short at this Bill. If they hope for the success of their coercion, they must make it thorough. This Bill is drastic enough in some respects, but it is half-hearted and cowardly in other respects. I assert that if coercion is to be the method of government, you must go further than this Bill, and in the end disfranchise Ireland, and do away once and for all with this empty mockery of Constitutional Government; but though they may still be many who regard Ireland and coercion from this old-world point of view, there are few who have the courage to say so. Let me turn to the other class of hon. Members who are the professors of the doctrine that force is no remedy, and who believe that coercion is simply a hateful and desperate expedient. I admit at the outset there may be occasions on which such men might find it their duty to vote in favour of proposals of this character. Is this such an occasion? I assert that before such men can conscientiously vote in favour of such a proposal as this, it must be proved to their minds satisfactorily—first of all, that an exceptional state of violence and crime exists in Ireland to-day; secondly, that the ordinary law has absolutely broken down in its dealings with this exceptional state of violence and crime; thirdly, that the proposals which are now made are likely, judging by the history and experience of the past, to be efficacious; and fourthly, that such social disorder as does exist does not spring from the stupid and persistent refusal of the Im- perial Parliament to remedy admitted grievances. Now, let me briefly take these four points in turn. Does an exceptional state of violence and crime exist in Ireland to-day? I wish, in the first place, to give a warning to English Members to be careful how they believe what they read and hear on the question of Irish outrage. There is at this moment an unscrupulous and widespread conspiracy at work, with the object of misleading English public opinion, and inducing the belief that Ireland is in an exceptionally criminal state; whereas, in reality, Ireland is comparatively tranquil. That conspiracy has its agents everywhere; in this House, and in the Press, and upon the platform, and its hand was recently detected in the columns of The Times newspaper, and more than one of its calumnies have been openly refuted within the walls of this House. The system of manufacturing bogus outrages as a preparation for Irish coercion is of very old origin. It has been at work as a preparation for every Coercion Bill which has been introduced into this House since the Union. So far back as 1811, an Irish Judge disclosed from the Bench the true nature of this conspiracy. Mr. Baron Fletcher, in charging the Grand Jury of County Wexford in 1814, spoke as follows:— Much exaggeration and misrepresentation have gone abroad, and the extent and causes of disturbances have been much misstated. Several advertisements in newspapers now before me describe this country as being in a most alarming state of disturbance; whereas the country never enjoyed more profound tranquillity. These advertisements have been, I understand, republished in the prints of Dublin and London, and have naturally excited strong sensations. It may not be uninstructive for me to explain those misrepresentations and exaggerations which have impelled the Legislature to swell the Criminal Code Session after Session with new Statutes for vindicating the peace of this country. Sir, these words are as true to-day as they wore on the day on which they were spoken, and I call upon English Members to take their facts about Irish outrage and crime, not from platform statements of Unionist or Tory orators in Ireland or in England, not from the statements in Unionist or Tory prints in Ireland or in England; but from the hard figures of the official Returns, and from these alone. Now, Sir, I do not hesitate to say that at the present moment, and for a considerable time past, agrarian outrages in Ireland have been considerably below what I may be forgiven in calling their normal average. It is a significant commentary on the character of the land system which you have maintained in Ireland, that from the very first it has been associated with agrarian crime. The numbers of these crimes have risen and fallen from time to time, but the crimes have never, under your land system, entirely died out; and it is not difficult for anyone, who roads aright the miserable history of the land war of Ireland, to see that right through this history outrages have followed eviction, as surely as disease has followed famine. Every period of agrarian distress has been marked by an enormous increase of agrarian crime; and the explanation is to be found in the fact that the Irish landlords have used every period of agrarian distress as a fitting opportunity to evict their poorer tenants. In 1847—that terrible year of famine and pestilence—agrarian crimes rose to the terrible number of 20,986, and we had the explanation at the beginning of the following year, 1818, when so eagerly were the landlords using that period of famine to evict their tenants that this Imperial Parliament felt called upon in very shame to pass an Act to make it illegal to evict tenants on Christmas Day and Good Friday—the two great festivals of the Christian year. Now, in 1848, the agrarian outrages numbered 14,000; in 1819, 14,903, and in 1850, 10,639—and so on year after year until the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) laid his hand to that great work of remedying Irish wrongs which he has not yet completed, but which we believe he is destined yet to complete. In 1870, the right hon. Gentleman passed a Land Act which seems to us to-day a very small measure; but, Mr. Speaker, it placed some obstacles in the way of evictions, and, in doing so, it tended to sensibly diminish agrarian crime. At the present moment, agrarian crime of a serious character in Ireland is practically unknown, and agrarian crime, even of a trivial character, is rare. I listened with amazement to the speech which was made to-night by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant (Mr. A. J. Balfour), I listened with amazement to his figures until we drew from him the reluctant acknowledgment that those figures did not refer exclusively to agrarian crime, but to crime generally. Mr. Speaker, if we are to go into crime generally, or ordinary crime in Ireland, then I say, Ireland can challenge comparison with any part of the United Kingdom. But, Sir, we are dealing with agrarian crime, and what are the facts? I have in my hand the official Return for the three months ending December last, and let hon. Members when they listen to the figures remember that at this time Ireland was suffering from a depression in prices so great that the Government's own Commission acknowledged that the depression practically made the payment of the full judicial rents impossible. This Return, which we were told to-night by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland was not sufficiently comprehensive as to include all classes of agrarian crime, is divided into 38 different columns or classifications of agrarian crime. Of these 38 classes, no less than 25 are absolutely blank for the whole of Ireland. Sir, during those months there has not been a single case in the whole of Ireland of murder, manslaughter, attempt to murder, conspiracy to murder, assault on police, cutting and maiming the person, taking and holding forcible possession, demand or robbery of arms, riots and affrays, appearing armed, administering unlawful oaths or rescuing prisoners. In point of fact, there has been an absolute absence of all the more serious crimes of an agrarian character; no less than nine out of the 32 counties are absolutely free from any sort of agrarian offence even of the most trivial character; and in only five of the 32 counties do the agrarian crimes amount to a double figure, and of the total of the so-called agrarian offences during the three months—namely, 166, no less than 72 were threatening letters, a most contemptible form of outrage I acknowledge, but still scarcely the kind of outrage to warrant the suspension of the most elementary rights of the Constitution. The total of offences, large and small, including threatening letters in 1886, was 1,025. I heard the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland say in his speech that there were only seven years since 1844 in which the agrarian crimes were fewer than they were last year. Well, I challenge that statement, and I am prepared to maintain that the outrages which were committed in 1886 were down to the lowest level of any year, and I believe were absolutely below the total of any year from 1844 to 1880. But, Sir, in June 1885, the Tory Party came into Office and they found the Crimes Act in operation, and they most wisely determined to allow that Act to drop—but upon what ground? On the ground that Ireland was free from serious crime, and that the ordinary law was sufficient to maintain social order. I repeat that was a most wise decision, and one which the subsequent further diminution of agrarian crime amply justified. But, Mr. Speaker, what was the state of agrarian crime in 1885? I have the Return here. Why, Sir, will it be believed that this Return shows an enormously larger number of agrarian crimes than the Return for the three months ending December 1886. Not only that, but the Return for June, 1883, was not free from murder and other serious agrarian offences; whereas, the Return for the three months ending December, 1886, as I have shown, is absolutely free from a single agrarian crime of a grave character. Now, in June, in 1885, we were told that Ireland was sufficiently free from crime to justify the abandonment of coercion; and now, at the beginning of 1887, although crime is considerably loss, we are called upon to believe that coercion of a drastic character is absolutely essential to maintain law and order. The real difference in the situation is perfectly plain. In June, 1885, the Tory Party thought they could best retain Office by conciliating Ireland, and to-day they seem to be of opinion that that desirable end can best be obtained by coercing and insulting her. But, we may be told that it is not the crime before Christmas last, but the crime since Christmas which has necessitated the introduction of this Bill. Well, I regret that the Government have not felt it their duty to issue official Returns of agrarian outrages for the months that have elapsed since last Christmas. We have consequently no means of tolling whether the number of serious offences has increased or not. If it has increased, then I beg English Members to bear in mind that it was since Christmas only that the Government commenced to interfere with the action of the Leaders of the people; it is only since Christmas that the Government have commenced to suppress legitimate agitation, and to break clown, as far as they can, the combination of the tenants for their own protection against rack-renting. I have no intention of allowing myself to be drawn into a discussion of the Plan of Campaign; but I beg English Members to note that, according to this contention of the Government, so long as that Plan of Campaign was allowed to work unmolested on the few estates the landlords of which refused reductions, which Lord Cowper's Commission acknowledged to be fair and just, so long was agrarian crime repressed; and it was only when these landlords were allowed to recommence evicting that agrarian crime increased. But I deny the statement that agrarian crime has increased in any serious proportion since Christmas last. It is true, I believe, that there has been some Moonlighting in one district of one county of Ireland. I cannot conceive how you hope by the provisions of the Bill we have hoard described to-night to put down Moonlighting; but, even if we were able by proposals of this character to detect and to punish those who were guilty of Moonlighting offences in one district of one county of Ireland, I utterly deny that that is a justification for a Coercion Bill of this character, which will suspend the elementary rights of the Constitution all over Ireland. What has been the experience of the recent Assizes? the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour) made some quotations to-night from the charges of the Judges; but, Sir, he was most unfair in not giving us more information about the recent Assizes in Ireland. Now, the recent Assizes conclusively show that over the greater part of Ireland there has been an utter absence of crime. In the County of Meath there were only four cases, in Westmeath one, in King's County five, Longford five, Leitrim four, Carlow six, Louth one, and Sligo three. And I have extracts from some of the charges made by the Judges. Baron Dowse opening the Assizes at Maryboro', Queen's County, said— The state of affairs is much the same as I found in Carlow, and as my brother Andrews found in the County Kildare. The country on the whole is very peaceful. You have only four cases to consider altogether. Mr. Justice O'Brien, who has been quoted more than once in those debates, delivered a charge to the Grand Jury in the City of Limerick, in which he said, "substantially and really there is no crime at all." In Roscommon, Judge Murphy congratulated the Grand Jury on the condition of their county, and in Fermanagh, Louth and Tipperary, the Judges going Assizes bore testimony in their charges to the peaceful character of these counties. It is true that the Grand Juries in some of those places have passed resolutions in favour of a Coercion Bill. Mr. Speaker, it may be interesting to the House for me to read what took place in reference to the Grand Jury in one county; it will give hon. Members from England a fair index of the value to be placed upon the statements that proceed from these bodies. In the Queen's County the Judge, Baron Dowse, spoke as follows:— The cases are of the usual class to be found in large communities like the Queen's County. There is nothing in them to disclose to any great extent anything like conspiracy against property or law and order; but, as I say, the class of offences is what you may expect in a large community like this. The County Inspector, the man responsible for the peace of the county, when examined before the Grand Jury, said, speaking of the state of the county— I do not say it is in a happy state. I say crime is dead in the county. There is no crime in it at all. But, immediately afterwards, the Grand Jury unanimously adopted the following savage resolution:— That the Grand Jury of the Queen's County consider it to be their duty to record their conviction of the absolute necessity of the adoption by the Government of such legislation for Ireland as may restore the confidence of the loyal, bring the social disorder to an end, and stop the revolutionary action of the National League, which, if persisted in. will eventuate in the ruin of all classes. Now, Sir, I think I have shown clearly enough what value is to be placed upon the demands proceeding from bodies like the Grand Juries of Ireland. we ask, is this the evidence upon which you rely to support the contention that Ireland is in a state of exceptional crime? You say you have secret information. What is that secret information? Why should it remain secret information, when we are expected, on the strength of it, to disregard the figures of this Return, and to believe that Ireland is in a state of crime? What are the sources from which your information is derived? Is it supplied by the paid magistracy, whose official existence may be said to depend in great measure upon the continuation of a state of coercion and turbulence? Is it derived from the Constabulary, whose promotion so often depends upon the detection and commission of crime? If so, I consider your sources of information tainted, and I call upon the House to refuse to sanction a Coercion Bill, as to the necessity of which not one satisfactory title of proof has been offered. But it would not be sufficient, even if the Government had satisfactorily proved that Ireland was in a state of crime and turbulence. They must show, in addition, that the ordinary law has broken down; and that I defy them to do. How have they attempted to do it? They assert that trial by jury in Ireland has broken down. Why did not the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland quote statements to that effect, delivered from the lips of the Irish Judges in the different counties of Ireland? Because no such statements exist. How many Moonlighters brought up for trial before juries in County Cork and elsewhere were improperly acquitted? No, Sir, the one notorious case in which apparently jurors had violated the obligation of their oaths took place in County Tyrone in loyal Ulster; where, I suppose, we shall be told a Coercion Act is not required at all. On the 16th December last two Orangemen, named Walker, were brought up for trial on the charge of having shot an English soldier and a policeman in the streets of Belfast. Mr. Justice Lawson, in his charge, laid it down emphatically that any person, who, in endeavouring to escape from justice, shot down a police officer, was, without any further evidence of malice aforethought, guilty of murder. "In this case," he said— Grave consequences were involved. We are administering the law in the sight of the whole Empire, and it will be a dreadful thing if it can be supposed that a jury of this country will fail to perform its duty. After some deliberation, the foreman of the jury announced that there was no possibility of their agreeing, and his Lordship said they must have wilfully made up their minds to disagree. The jury again retired, and later in the even- ing they came back with the same answer, and the Judge then said— I have said all I can to you. It is highly discreditable to the jurors of this country that in a case like this they cannot agree. The juror who would violate his oath under circumstances such as surround this case is a man I look upon as second in guilt only to the man whose case he has been investigating. I discharge you. These men have been put on their trial again. The men were brought up for trial in Omagh last December, but the Crown Prosecutor never dreamt it was necessary to move to change the venue of the trial to a place where Orangeism was not so strong. He never thought it necessary to order a single juryman to stand aside, though that practice is so common in other parts of the country. The prisoners have been brought for trial again before another jury in the North of Ireland, and with what result? In the case of one man, notwithstanding the statement of the law, which was clearly laid down by Mr. Justice Lawson, that murder was the offence, the jury brought in a verdict of manslaughter, and the second prisoner was acquitted altogether. Now, Sir, I repeat my assertion that in Ireland, generally, trial by jury has not broken down. What has to some extent broken down, is the system of jury-packing upon which the Government have been wont to rely in Ireland, in order to obtain the conviction of political opponents. The awakened interest which has been aroused in England by the recent trial in Ireland has had the effect, it appears, of making it difficult for the Irish Government satisfactorily to pack Irish juries in political cases, and indeed, they have recently had unpleasant experience of finding Conservative, Protestant jurors, specially selected by themselves to convict, refusing to do so. The Daily Express, a newspaper which is the organ of the Government and the organ of the Tory Party in Ireland, recently threw a flood of light on this question. They wrote the other day— The times demand plain speaking. Trial by jury for political and quasi-political offences has been ever more or less of a make-believe and pretence in Ireland. Down to the present time the Crown has succeeded in enforcing the law by such an arrangement of the jury system as in political trials would secure the presence of men upon whom the Crown officers could rely. Owing to causes into which we need not now inquire, that system cannot be further pursued, and the Government is compelled to cast about for new methods of enforcing the law. Yes, here is the truth; it is not that trial by jury has broken down; it is not that Irish jurors refuse to convict men charged with outrage and crime; but it is that the English Government are no longer able satisfactorily to pack juries to obtain the conviction of political opponents. Trial by jury, in its dealing with ordinary criminals, has not failed. The ordinary law, in its dealings with crime, has not broken down, and I call upon this House to refuse to sanction the suspension of the elementary rights of the Constitution simply because the Irish Government no longer find easy, with precision, to pack Irish juries to obtain a conviction of their political opponents, like my hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon). Now, Sir, I pass to the next point—to the consideration of the question whether the special laws now proposed are likely, judging by the history and experience of the past, to be efficacious. I have no intention of wearying the House by entering into the history of the failure of the 86 Coercion Bills that have been introduced and passed since the Act of Union. The very fact that there have been 86 such Acts in 86 years ought, I think, to be conclusive of their inefficacy. But lot me say a word with reference to the two last Coercion Acts you have passed—namely, the Coercion Act of the late Mr. Forster and the Crimes Act of 1882. Was the Coercion Act of the late Mr. Forster a success? we know that under it crime increased a thousand-fold. the late Mr. A. M. Sullivan, who long enjoyed the respect of all parties in this House, summed up the results of Mr. Forster's régime in these words— He (Mr. Forster) found Ireland alarmed and disturbed. He left it a volcano of human passions on one side, a Bastile of Government vengeance and caprice on the other. The 'village ruffians' and 'midnight marauders' went apparently untouched—nay, multiplied in numbers and increased in insolence and of crime; while mayors, magistrates, Members of Parliament, public representatives of every degree were seized and flung into gaol on mere suspicion, without accusation, evidence, investigation, or proof… the inevitable result appeared. The secret societies became masters of the situation. Crime grew rampant. I ask, has that terrible record no terrors for the Government? They will answer, no doubt, that their Bill is framed rather upon the lines of the Crimes Act of 1882. Then, I ask, was the Crimes Act of 1882 a success? Sir, the memorable speech of Lord Salisbury at Newport last October has been quoted before now. It cannot be quoted too often in the course of this discussion. Lord Salisbury, after abandoning that Act, and speaking with the official knowledge which he possessed, said— The effect of the Crimes Act has been very much exaggerated. While it was in existence there grew up 1,000 branches of the National League. The provisions of the Crimes Act against Boycotting were of very small effect. It grew up under that Act because it is a crime which legislation has a very great difficulty in reaching. I have seen it stated that the Crimes Act diminished outrages. That Boycotting acted through outrages, and that the Crimes Act diminished Boycotting. It is not true—the Act did not diminish outrages. Boycotting was the act of persons proposing to do things which in themselves are loyal, and which are only illegal because of the intention with which they are done. What is the use of an Act of Parliament against a system such as that? As far as Boycotting is liable to the law, as far as legal remedies can reach it, do not imagine the Government are passive in putting the remedies of the ordinary law in action. The truth about Boycotting is that it depends upon the passing humour of the population. I doubt whether in any community law has been able to provide a satisfactory remedy. Here, then, is the testimony of the head of the present Government to the effect that the Crimes Act was a failure, that it did not diminish crime, and that it did not interfere with the working of Boycotting. And yet to-night we are asked to give leave for the introduction of a Bill which is framed, in most of its particulars, so far as we can judge, on the lines of the Crimes Act of 1882. Sir, this Bill, if introduced and passed, will fail. It will, I honestly believe, tend rather to increase than to diminish crime. It will, while it is in operation, baffle all attempts at reconciliation and postpone all peaceful settlement of the Irish Question. I ask now the last question which I proposed at the commencement—namely, does the social disorder which exists in Ireland spring from the stupid and persistent refusal of this House to remedy admitted grievances? Sir, if so, no sane man can regard tills Bill as a remedy. Yet, no sane man, so far as I know, denies the existence of grievances in Ireland, or denies the fact that it is from these grievances that outrages spring. In 1823, Lord Brougham made a memorable speech within the walls of this House on this very point. In the course of it he used these eloquent and significant words— We were driving six millions of people to madness, to despair… The greatest mockery of all—the most intolerable insult—the course of peculiar exasperation—against which he cautioned the House, was the undertaking to cure the distress under which she laboured by anything in the shape of new penal enactments. It was in these enactments alone that we have ever shown our liberality to Ireland. She had received penal laws from the hands of England, almost as plentifully as she had received blessings and advantages from the hands of Providence. What had these laws done? Checked her turbulence, but not stilled it. We might load her with chains; but, in doing so, we should not better her condition. By coercion we might goad her on to fury; but by coercion we shall never break her spirit. If the Government was desirous to restore tranquillity to Ireland, it must learn to prefer the hearts of the Irish people to the applause of the Orange Lodges."—(2 Hansard, [9] 1277–8.) Yes, Sir; but the Government answer, no doubt, is that they do not deny the existence of grievance, and that they have a remedial policy. Sir, they did deny the existence of grievance last September. They cannot deny it now, for the Report of their own Commissioners, the evidence of their own officials, and, indeed, the common knowledge in the possession of everyone acquainted with Ireland, all combine to show that the position of the tenantry in the poorer parts of Ireland is absolutely desperate and calls for immediate relief. They say they have a remedial policy. Yes, Sir, and it has been the curse of successive English Governments in Ireland that they have been "everything by turns and nothing long." They have been half-hearted in remedial policy, they have been half-hearted in coercive policy, and they have failed in both. They halt half-way between conciliation and coercion. No remedial measure ever went to Ireland unaccompanied by coercive enactments; and I say whatever of good there maybe in the land proposals which you are about to make will be robbed of all its value by the hateful and unnecessary Bill which is now before the House. Every measure of reform which ever proceeded from this House to Ireland was delayed until too late, and then accompanied by insult. You have never yet learnt the lesson that to rule the people of Ireland you must first win their confidence, and that you can only win their confidence by first trusting them. By your halfhearted remedial policy you have failed to conciliate Ireland, by your coercive policy you have failed to intimidate her; and yet, in spite of the experience of the past, you insist upon treading the same ruinous and blood-stained path. What a spectacle does not England pre-sent to the world to-day—in the Jubilee year of Her Majesty's reign, and in the 87th year of the Legislative Union. You claim success for the rule of your Imperial Parliaments, and you ask for renewed coercion. You point to the record of diminished serious crime with pride, and yet you ask for fresh powers to enable you to rule the country. But yesterday you enfranchised the mass of the Irish people, and to-day you declare that, so far from being capable citizens, they are not worthy of exercising the common rights and privileges of the Constitution. You call on Irishmen to be loyal to England, and you persist in keeping English law what it has been for centuries in Ireland—namely, an engine of national humiliation and oppression. On what sound reason or argument does this proposal rest? It is not called for by an exceptional state of violence or crime. There is no proof that the ordinary law has broken down in its dealing with outrages. All history tells you that coercive legislation has been a failure, and all your experience, and the evidence of your own officials, tell you that such disorder as does exist springs from the refusal of your Parliament to do justice to the people by remedying their grievances. Is Irish disaffection the reason for this Bill? Sir, this accusation of Irish disloyalty is a common one in the mouths of Englishmen. When I hear it I am often inclined to ask what does loyalty mean? What does it mean here in England? It means the loyalty of the people to a Government of their own; it means the loyalty of a free people to a free Constitution. What have we in Ireland to be loyal to? Is it to a Government, the very reason of whose existence is that it is opposed to the wishes and aspirations of five-sixths of our people? Is it to a Constitution, the blessings and privileges of which we have never in 86 years been allowed freely to share with our English and Scotch and Welsh fellow-subjects? Is it to a system of which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain) once said— It is a system which is founded on the bayonets of 30,000 soldiers encamped permanently as in a hostile country. Henry Grattan once said— Loyalty is a noble and a wise principle; but loyalty distinct from liberty is corruption. You deprive the Irish people deliberately and persistently of the rights, privileges, and liberties which you freely give to the meanest of your Colonies, and yet you ask them to be loyal to your rule. No. Loyalty has never yet sprung from such a policy. The only loyalty you have in Ireland is the loyalty of a selfish class, animated by, perhaps, the basest of all human motives, the desire for continued ascendancy; but that loyalty which unites in one common bond of interest and affection, and which grows stronger in time of danger and trial—that loyalty, under the present system, you do not deserve, and most assuredly you shall not obtain. Let me ask this one question in conclusion. Will this Bill, if passed, do good in Ireland? Will it tend to diminish crime? Will it produce amongst the masses of the people of Ireland greater sympathy with law, and with the administration of justice? Sir, in 1866 the senior Member for Birmingham used some very memorable and very significant words in this House. He said— All history teaches us that it is not in human nature that men should be content under any system of legislation and of institutions such as exists in Ireland. You may pass this Bill. You may put the Home Secretary's 500 men in gaol. You may do all this, and suppress the conspiracy and put down the insurrection; but the moment it is suppressed there will still re-main the germs of this malady, and from those germs will grow up, as heretofore, another crop of insurrection and another harvest of misfortune. And it may be that those who sit here 18 years after this moment will find another Ministry and another Secretary of State to pro-pose to you another administration of the same ever-failing and ever-poisonous medicine."—(3 Hansard, [181] 693.) Sir, 18 years after these words were spoken we had a literal fulfilment of them. I ask Englishmen and Scotch- men, are they willing for 18 years more to tread the same blood-stained and disgraceful path. There are men who will rejoice at the introduction of this Bill. I ask English Members to consider who they are. The Ulster Tory Party will rejoice But are they safe guides for Englishmen on this Irish Question? Why, these are the men who opposed the Ballot, the extension of the Franchise, the Church Act, the Land Act—every effort over made by the English Parliament to remedy Irish grievances. They are the men whom the senior Member for Birmingham (Mr. John Bright) thus described. he said— The Ulster men have stood in the way of improvement in the franchise, the Church, and the land. They have purchased Protestant ascendancy, and the price paid for it has been the ruin and degradation of their country. Are English Members to-day prepared to take their Irish policy from these men? But there are others who may rejoice at the introduction of this Bill—those who constitute what has sometimes been called the extreme faction of Irish politics, who openly toll you that they hate the idea of reconciliation between the two nations; men who fear reform, who hate open agitation, and who welcome coercion because it tends to drive discontent beneath the surface, and to give new vitality to secret organization. I am here to-night to declare my deliberate conviction that in the introduction and the passage of this Bill you are playing directly into the hands of such men. But, on the other hand, all those who hope for a peaceful and a speedy settlement of the Irish Question will deplore the introduction of this Bill tonight. Sir, we upon these Benches have often been called "Irreconcilables." If I were an" Irreconcilable" I should vote with a free heart in favour of this Bill. But it is just because I am one of those who hope for the near approach of the day when this great question at issue may be settled upon peaceful and honourable lines, and within the limits of the Constitution, that I deplore the introduction of this Bill, that I denounce it, and that I shall do all in my power at every stage to defeat it.

MR. ILLINGWORTH (Bradford, W.)

I beg to move the adjournment of the debate.

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

Debate adjourned till To-morrow.