§
(3.) Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a sum, not exceeding £3,614,903, be granted to Her Majesty, on account, for or towards defraying the Charge for the following Civil Services and Revenue Departments for the year ending on the 31st day of March 1889," viz.:—
| CLASS I.—PUBLIC WORKS AND BUILDINGS. | |
| Great Britain:— | £ |
| Royal Palaces | 5,000 |
| Marlborough House | 500 |
| Royal Parks and Pleasure Gardens | 12,000 |
| Houses of Parliament | 6,000 |
| Gordon Monument | |
| Public Buildings | 20,000 |
| Admiralty, Extension of Buildings | 800 |
| Furniture of Public Offices | 3,000 |
| Revenue Department Buildings | 35,000 |
| County Court Buildings | 5,000 |
| Metropolitan Police Courts | 3,000 |
| Sheriff Court Houses, Scotland | 5,000 |
| Surveys of the United Kingdom | 40,000 |
| Science and Art Department Buildings | 2,000 |
| British Museum Buildings | 2,000 |
| Edinburgh University Buildings | |
| Diplomatic and Consular Buildings | 3,000 |
| Harbours, &c. under Board of Trade | 2,000 |
| Lighthouses Abroad | 1,000 |
| Peterhead Harbour | 1,000 |
| Rates on Government Property (Great Britain and Ireland) | 80,000 |
| Metropolitan Fire Brigade | 2,500 |
| Disturnpiked and Main Roads (England and Wales) | 10,000 |
| Disturnpiked Roads (Scotland) | 5,000 |
| Ireland:— | |
| Public Buildings | 35,000 |
| Science and Art Buildings, Dublin | 7,000 |
| £ | |
| Treasury, including Parliamentary Counsel | 10,000 |
| Home Office and Subordinate Departments | 15,000 |
| Foreign Office | 10,000 |
| Colonial Office | 6,000 |
| Privy Council Office and Subordinate Departments | 7,000 |
| Board of Trade and Subordinate Departments | 20,000 |
| Bankruptcy Department of the Board of Trade | 3 |
| Charity Commission (including Endowed Schools Department) | 6,000 |
| Civil Service Commission | 9,000 |
| Exchequer and Audit Department | 9,000 |
| Friendly Societies, Registry | 1,500 |
| Land Commission for England | 2,000 |
| Local Government Board | 40,000 |
| Lunacy Commission | 2,000 |
| Mint (including Coinage) | 20,000 |
| National Debt Office | 2,500 |
| Patent Office | 9,000 |
| Paymaster General's Office | 4,500 |
| Public Works Loan Commission | 1,500 |
| Record Office | 4,000 |
| Registrar General's Office | 8,000 |
| Stationery Office and Printing | £70,000 |
| Woods, Forests, &c. Office of | 6,000 |
| Works and Public Buildings, Office of | 8,000 |
| Mercantile Marine Fund, Grant in Aid | 15,000 |
| Secret Service | 8,000 |
| Scotland:— | |
| Secretary for Scotland | 2,000 |
| Exchequer and other Offices | 500 |
| Fishery Board | 3,000 |
| Lunacy Commission | 1,000 |
| Registrar General's Office | 1,000 |
| Board of Supervision | 3,000 |
| Ireland:— | |
| Lord Lieutenant's Household | 1,000 |
| Chief Secretary's Office | 6,500 |
| Charitable Donations and Bequests Office | 300 |
| Local Government Board | 15,000 |
| Public Works Office | 10,000 |
| Record Office | 1,000 |
| Registrar General's Office | 3,000 |
| Valuation and Boundary Survey | 4,500 |
| Pauper Lunatics, England | |
| Pauper Lunatics, Scotland | |
| Pauper Lunatics, Ireland | 60,000 |
| Hospitals and Infirmaries, Ireland | 3,000 |
| Savings Banks and Friendly Societies Deficiency | |
| Miscellaneous Charitable and other Allowances, Great Britain | 500 |
| Miscellaneous Charitable and other Allowances, Ireland | 600 |
§ MR. T. P. GILL (Louth, S)said, he had to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland for some information with regard to the case of a man who had been dismissed from the position which he held as doctor at a dispensary in Ireland, in consequence of his having been sentenced under the Coercion Act for a speech delivered by him at meeting of the National League. Dr. Magner, the person to whom he referred, was sentenced by the Recorder of Cork. He was asked, at the time, if he would give a certain undertaking not to repeat his offence; but on his refusing to do so he was sentenced to two months' imprisonment. A letter was sent from the Local Government Board refusing to sanction the election of Dr. Magner, and a few days after the receipt of that letter he was dismissed by the Guardians from the dispensary position which he had been holding all along, the reason given that he had been committed to prison under the Crimes Act. The hardship of the case was very great indeed, because Dr. Magner was a young practitioner at the outset of his career; he was most popular in the district, as was proved by the fact that he had been elected to two dispensary positions, and he had been sent to prison 1360 because he proposed a resolution at a meeting which, in England or in any part of Ireland which was not proclaimed, would have been perfectly lawful. But the Government were not content with that; they had since pursued him into his professional career, and while he was in prison dismissed him from his situation. He hoped the Chief Secretary for Ireland would agree with him in thinking that the Government had pursued this gentleman a little too far, and that there was an element of vindictiveness in this straining on the part of the Local Government Board to inflict punishment on a man in Dr. Magner's position. He did not think it had been contemplated by the Chief Secretary for Ireland to impose penalties to this extent. He thought that when a man had suffered punishment under the Act for an offence of the kind which Dr. Magner had committed it ought to be sufficient. But to ruin his professional career, to deprive him of his living, and to put a stigma upon him which would ever after prevent him from holding a similar appointment in Ireland, and one which would compel him to go beyond the British Dominions to escape from its effect, was, he thought, a most unjustifiable proceeding. Possibly that had been done because it had not come under the direct supervision of the right hon. Gentleman, and he would ask him to say that, if the facts were as he (Mr. Gill) had stated, he, for one, did not wish that Dr. Magner, having been punished, should be still further pursued by the Local Government Board.
§ THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR, IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR) (Manchester, E.)The hon. Member for Louth has alluded to the Local Government Board as having pursued Dr. Magner with vindictiveness, with the intention of ruining his professional career. It seems to me, however, that there is no foundation at all for that charge. Dr. Magner was found guilty of an offence under the Crimes Act and sentenced to imprisonment; he appealed against the sentence, and the Judge who heard the appeal confirmed it, but gave Dr. Magner, as I understand, an opportunity of undertaking that he would not again commit the offence with which he was charged. This undertaking Dr. Magner refused to give, and 1361 it would therefore appear that he was not acting under any casual impulse, but had deliberately broken the law. The question arose, what action should be taken by the Local Government Board with regard to the appointment that Dr. Magner held? It has always been the practice, and, in my opinion, ought to continue to be the practice, of the Local Government Board to dismiss any of its servants who had been convicted of an offence against the law. That principle they applied to the appointment which Dr. Magner held. It appears to me that the Local Government Board simply carried out the duties laid upon them by Parliament. The hon. Gentleman says that the professional career of Dr. Magner has been ruined; I trust, however, that that will not be found to be the case. I wish to point out that the Local Government Board could not do otherwise than they have done; and, secondly, that their action is not likely to entail that professional ruin which the hon. Member for Louth seems to imagine.
§ MR. J. S. O'CONNOR (Tipperary)said, he was sorry to hear the right hon. Gentleman say that Dr. Magner had indulged in a persistent attempt to break the law. This gentleman was a young doctor at the outset of his professional career, and he had attended a meeting of the National League, at which he brought upon himself, by the unfortunate speech, which he made, all this punishment. He could not have had any deliberate intention of breaking the law, because at the time that was a new law in Ireland. Dr. Magner was asked to give an undertaking that he would not persist in making speeches in connection with the National League. It was, therefore, not enough for the Local Government Board to ruin Dr. Magner by depriving him of employment, but there was an intention to dishonour him. The right hon. Gentleman had said it would be no detriment to Dr. Magner in his practice that he had been deprived of his position. But there, again, the right hon. Gentleman showed his ignorance of society in Ireland, because he would otherwise know that a young doctor always sought for some permanent employment which would afford him a salary while he was working up that practice which, as the right hon. Gentleman said, attached to all eminent 1362 men. But Dr. Magner had had no time to work up that professional career, and attach to himself a circle of patients which would enable him to bid defiance to the action of the right hon. Gentleman, and enable him to give up his appointment. Therefore it was that this action on the part of the Local Government Board must have the effect of ruining Dr. Magner, who might have to seek in another country, where he was not so well known, for that employment of which the action of the Local Government Board, at whoso head was the right hon. Gentleman, had deprived him. One would have thought that having been punished for the offence with which he was charged, Dr. Magner might, for the full benefit of his profession, be restored to citizenship, and that he might be allowed to do what, in fact, had been permitted in the case of others who had purged themselves from their offences. But no; the Local Government Board, with the right hon. Gentleman at its head, would extend to Dr. Magner no mercy. The right hon. Gentleman, however, was pursuing a course which his Predecessors had not followed in like circumstances. He (Mr. O'Connor) remembered that under the operation of the old Coercion Act of 1881, Dr. Kenny was deprived of his appointment as physician to the Dublin Board of Guardians, but that some time afterwards he was restored to his functions; and he said that, in like manner, Dr. Magner, who had been deprived by the Local Government Board, should also be reinstated. But the right hon. Gentleman would not restore Dr. Magner to his functions or to the privileges of citizenship—he had taken such a course as would deprive him of his daily bread, not because he had committed an offence of intimidating two or three people, but because he was the political opponent of the right hon. Gentleman. He could not accept the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that the Board had sympathy with the patients of Dr. Magner during his imprisonment. It ought to be known to the right hon. Gentleman that, pending the time during which Dr. Magner was undergoing his sentence, the Board of Guardians had appointed another physician, and were prepared to pay him if he would take a salary of them, although he was quite willing to perform the duties of Dr. 1363 Magner while be was in prison for nothing. This young man, not knowing the force of the law, had, by an indiscreet speech, brought himself within its meshes; he was in prison, and for five days during that time was kept on bread and water; he came out of prison emaciated, and yet this was not sufficient for the Local Government Board and the right hon. Gentleman, for he had been deprived of his livelihood, and his professional career was blasted; all the education heaped upon him by his parents had been thrown away, and ail because he had made a speech of which the right hon. Gentleman disapproved. That was the action which earned for the right hon. Gentleman and the Government, who were the promoters of the Coercion Act, the everlasting contempt of the Irish people. He trusted the right hon. Gentleman would reconsider this matter in the light of the precedents on which he could fall back. The case of Dr. Magner had aroused in the breasts of the people of Ireland great sympathy with the man himself, and he thought the right hon. Gentleman would do well to reconsider his determination in this matter by the time they had an opportunity of bringing the subject again before the Committee upon the Estimates.
§ MR. CHILDERS (Edinburgh, S.)said, he wished to make an appeal to the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. He had heard a good deal about Dr. Magner, although he was not personally acquainted with him. Representations had reached him to the effect that Dr. Magner was a young man of unimpeachable character, this being his first fault, but that he had been unwisely induced at a meeting of the National League to move a resolution. Dr. Magner had not, as far as he was aware, taken any part before in the National League movement, and he was not, he believed, a strong partizan, although, in common with the young men in the district, he belonged to the Party in favour of the National movement. He had been proceeded against under the Crimes Act and been punished, and certainly, to his mind, it seemed that the language used by the Judge who sentenced him did not imply that he was a very hardened sinner. He would appeal to the right hon. Gentleman not to give a final 1364 answer at this moment, but to consider the propriety of again allowing Dr. Magner to resume his position at the dispensary, if the statement with regard to him were found to be true. He did not put this appeal on the ground of right or on the ground of policy, but upon the principle of extending leniency to a public officer, who had been already severely punished for the commission of a first offence.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURI do not know how many offences involving two months' imprisonment the right hon. Gentleman opposite thinks ought to be committed before the Local Government Board take notice of the matter; but, as far as I know, I should only be misleading the right hon. Gentleman if I were to hold out any hope whatever that I should reconsider this case. I will examine the facts, but I do not hold out the slightest expectation that the action which the Local Government Board very reluctantly took will be reversed.
§ MR. EDWARD HARRINGTON (Kerry, W.)said, he desired to draw attention to the fact that an appeal had been made by a prominent Member of the late Government (Mr. Childers) to the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour), which one would have supposed would meet with some attention. The right hon. Gentleman, in that appeal, sought to forestall the impetuous action of the Chief Secretary in saying "No" to everything of the kind that related to Ireland. He had not pressed the Chief Secretary, but immediately the right hon. Gentleman sat down they had from him his non possumus; but, in spite of that, he could assure him that the people of Ireland before then had even in a matter of this kind proved that they were not powerless, and had carried their point against the Government. They would do so in this instance, and he believed that Dr. Magner would be in his position when the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland was not on the Ministerial Bench. The right hon. Gentleman affected not to know the name of this doctor; but it was strange to say that twice before in that House, and frequently in Irish journals, this charge had been made, and the Chief Secretary was himself present at the meeting of the Local Government Board in Dublin when Dr. 1365 Magner was dismissed. Under the circumstances, it was strange that the right hon. Gentleman was at a loss as to Dr. Magner's name. It would be in the recollection of the House that the hon. Member for East Cork (Mr. Lane) got a month's imprisonment for inciting certain tenants to adopt the Plan of Campaign. In this case the District Inspector went to a Dr. Hays and asked him if he would prosecute the hon. Member. Dr. Hays said he was not intimidated, and that he did not see any harm in the Plan of Campaign. He (Mr. Edward Harrington) asserted that the general belief in the district in which he lived was that because Dr. Hays gave this approval of the Plan of Campaign the Local Government Board refused him the increase of salary which was warranted by all the circumstances. While this belief existed in the minds of the people, he thought something more ought to be done by Her Majesty's Ministers than to make flippant and casual utterances at the Table of the House, which were as much as to say that Irish Members were not worthy of belief. Passing to another matter, he said that in Tralee at the present time there was a Mr. M'Gillicuddy, known as the Sessional Crown Prosecutor, whose duty it was to take to a higher tribunal cases brought under the ordinary law or the exceptional law in Ireland. Against this gentleman he wished it to be understood that he made no personal charge. This gentleman and his first cousin, Mr. Morphy, held a set of offices in common—they sat at the same table. Mr. M'Gillicuddy initiated all prosecutions, from an action for the sale of United Ireland down to a prosecution for murder. Mr. Morphy, owing to the press of business now existing, assisted in these prosecutions, and virtually conducted them. One day he would be engaged in a case against a newsvendor, and the next he would be engaged in defending a Moonlighter, while his cousin, the Sessional Prosecutor, was prosecuting cases at the Petty Sessions Court.
§ MR. EDWARD HARRINGTONsaid, he should rather ask why this should be. He knew that people came many miles to Mr. Morphy to get him to defend in their cases, because they believed that 1366 they would get off in that way. There was the case of Harrel, who was charged with murder in Cork. He should be sorry to say that the evidence against him was strong; but the Crown thought it was, and bail was refused, and he was kept in prison for some months. The man was discharged, and the belief in the County of Kerry was that he would not have been discharged were it not that the solicitor representing him at the Cork Assizes was Mr. Morphy, the first cousin of the Crown Prosecutor. The hon. and learned Solicitor General for England who asked "Why not?" should remember that these two gentlemen occupied the same rooms, and that the depositions taken by the Crown Prosecutor were before the solicitor for the defence. When confidential information came into the office of the Crown Prosecutor the ears of the defending solicitor would be opened to it also. He asked if it was decent that in the County of Kerry, where 150,000 people had been evicted since evictions commenced, these inflammatory elements should be added when an easy remedy could be found? He believed these men were as honourable as any other solicitors; he made no charge against them; but, as a Member for the county and one who had had to face charges of complicity and tacit assent to crimes committed in Ireland, he said it was his duty to call attention to these facts in order to see if a remedy could be found. This matter was notorious in the county. No one would deny that whenever a Moonlighter was taken up the first thing Mr. Morphy would do would be to see his first cousin, the Crown Prosecutor, who occupied the same rooms with himself. Would anyone say that in England, where there was absolute confidence in the administration of the law, any instance parallel to this could be found? He asked the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General to say something on this subject, which certainly called for some comment.
§ SIR EDWARD CLARKEsaid, as an appeal had been made to him he should like to say a word or two on the story which had been laid before the Committee, a story which he had heard, before, and which had been repeated in detail on the present occasion. He thought there was nothing whatever 1367 in the complaint which was made as to these two gentlemen. He hoped the hon. Member opposite would not think that he was particularly attached to legal subtleties or legal etiquette in a matter of this kind. Hon. Members on that side of the House knew that in the discussion of some other matters in which they were interested, he had taken a line which he should take now if he thought it necessary for the cause of justice, without the slightest hesitation. The hon. Member, said that these two gentlemen were cousins; that one was the Crown Prosecutor, and that the other practised at the Court; that they had the same rooms. He did not know whether there was only one table in the room, but the hon. Member opposite said they used the same table; and the result was taken to be that they both saw the depositions which were to be used in the cast s in which one prosecuted and the other defended; but, of course, there was no advantage to either side in seeing the depositions. Then it was suggested that confidential communications made to the Crown. Prosecutor were handed to the cousin who was about to defend the prisoner, and that the confidential statements made on behalf of the prisoner might be handed to the Crown Prosecutor. But there was no reason to suppose that confidential communications were revealed on either side, for any personal charge was expressly disavowed, and, if so, there was no possible harm in these gentlemen occupying the same rooms. In the Temple it often happened that the counsel in the same chambers were employed on opposite sides in a case, and there was no reason to suppose that confidential matters were communicated to each other. Those were the remarks he had to make, and he should not have risen had not the hon. Member made an appeal to him.
§ MR. EDWARD HARRINGTONsaid, the great point which he wished to impress on the Committee was, that the gentleman who was first cousin to the Crown Prosecutor and used the same table was employed invariably in the prosecution of such crimes as he (Mr. Edward Harrington) had been guilty of—that was to say, offences in connection with the Press, which hon. Members on that side called frivolous prosecutions of a political 1368 aspect. But most usually this gentleman was employed for the defence of Moonlighters and those accused of murder. His point was not so much what might happen between these two men. He would rather hear the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, or someone responsible for the administration, state what they considered to be the effect on the minds of the people who saw the same men prosecuting in a Press offence and defending in a case of murder.
§ MR. J. E. ELLIS (Nottingham, Rushcliffe)said, the remarks he had to make were rather of a financial character, and therefore lay rather with the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Jackson) than with legal Gentlemen opposite. He thought it would be admitted by everyone that in the present circumstances of Ireland there was nothing to which the Government should address itself more than to watching the character and capacity of those who were appointed to the very responsible position of Assistant Land Commissioners. He hoped the Government would give their minds seriously to that matter. There was at the present moment very great doubt in the minds of those who were well-informed on the subject as to the qualifications of those who had been recently appointed to the position of Assistant Commissioner. He was bound to say that what had taken place was not qualified to enforce the conviction that the Government carried things with an even hand with regard to the Land Commission. He thought that officials connected with the Commission ought not to be allowed to go on political platforms. His next point was on the very curious way on which these Votes were placed on the Estimates of the year. They were asked to vote a sum of £45,912 this year for the Land Commission. Last year the original figures were £62,452, to which must be added the supplementary sum of £37,575, making for the year 1887–8 the total of £100,028. The sum of £45,912 was deducted from that in the Estimate, and the expression was used that the sum of £54,116 resulting from the subtraction was "a net decrease" to that extent as between 1887–8 and 1888–9. Of course, the £54,116 showed a decrease in the Civil Service Estimates for the year 1888–9 as compared with 1887–8, and it swelled the 1369 total decrease to that extent. He asked whether the £45,912 put down for 1888–9 was all that they would have to vote, or would it be followed by a large Supplementary Estimate? [Mr. JACKSON: No.] He, of course, understood that the Vote was only for the period up to 22nd August, when, in default of other arrangements, the Land Commission expired. But in these cases surely like should be compared with like, and an explanation given that the £100,000 was for 12 months, and the £45,000 only for five months. But they were not comparing like figures with like figures, and to the extent shown the apparent saving was fictitious, using that word in a sense which the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury would understand. He failed to understand the answer of the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury to the hon. and learned Member for North Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy) earlier in the evening. It appeared on the face of the figures that there had been a reduction in the number of Sub-Commissioners, and he ventured to say that this was not a time when such a reduction ought to be made. The grievances of the Irish occupiers of holdings were too serious and too numerous to admit of anything of that kind. There were not only proceedings under the Act of 1881, but if the Act of 1887 was to be worth anything the Courts would be full of applications, and were becoming so now as a matter of fact under the latter Act; and, therefore, so far from weakening the Land Commission, he submitted that it should be strengthened in every possible way. An answer was given the other day to the hon. Member for Kildare (Mr. Carew) which struck him as remarkable. The hon. Member was told that whereas the last sitting of the Land Commission in Kildare was in September the next sitting would not place before next June. This meant that the unfortunate occupiers were to pay abnormal rents without relief until that time. Meantime the action of the landlords was most significant. Even the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Parliamentary Under Secretary for Ireland (Colonel King-Harman) had been proceeding somewhat harshly against a poor old woman; and his solicitor said he was not instructed to take any other course than he had taken—
§ THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Colonel KING-HARMAN) (Kent, Isle of Thanet)said, he begged the hon. Gentleman's pardon for interrupting him. The rent had been reduced by 60 per cent.
§ MR. J. E. ELLISThe words of the Judge were—
Surely you will not proceed against this old woman for the rent which has been judicially reduced 60 per cent.The only way to stop this sort of thing was to strengthen the Land Commission, to increase the sittings of the Court and bring up the arrears of the Commission; and that was a point he would press most strongly on the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury. There was another point upon which he wished to say a word or two in reference to the Land Commission. He wished to utter a clear note of warning on this question, which was looming in the distance, of Irish land purchase. The Report of the Irish Land Commission contained some very striking sentences on this subject. On page 6 of their Report for the year ending 22nd August, 1887, they remarked—In the Church property branch of the Commission we have again to report that the collection of revenue has been unsatisfactory. … the arrears due at March 31, 1887, were more by £47,787 than on March 31,1887.They further declared the security upon which large advances of public money were being made was diminishing. Though these statements in the Report to which he referred dealt simply with the Irish Church branch of the work of the Commissioners, it applied also to the land purchase portion of their proceedings. Practically, £4,000,000 odd of public money had been advanced through the Commission; and if the process to which he drew attention went on and the security diminished in value, arrears increasing relatively to the instalments as they become duo, the prospect was very far from a cheering one. The House would have an opportunity of going more fully into this subject when the Government brought in their measure for creating a large number of peasant proprietors in Ireland. He had alluded to the matter thus early because he was one of those who were resolved resolutely et their faces against further legislative proposals in the direction of Lord Ashbourne's Act, holding, as he did, that 1371 the only sound policy for bringing to bear the guarantees of the State in such operations was, that they should be allied with some form of Representative Assembly in Dublin, which would command the confidence of those by whom the money was to be repaid. It seemed to him that, so far as the Government policy at the present moment went, it was a most disastrous one on these Irish agrarian matters. So far as he could understand it, the Government were not helping the operation of the Act of 1881 for a very good reason. The Prime Minister had characterized that Act as one of the two downward steps in public financial morality which had been taken during the depression of the last 10 years. They could not wonder, then, at the Government wishing more or less to paralyze that Act of 1881. He (Mr. J. E. Ellis) must respectfully protest against this policy. The Government seemed to be pursuing the same course with regard to the Act of 1887, because by delaying the sittings of the Sub-Commissioners they withheld from occupying tenants the opportunities that were promised to them by the Ministry when the Bill was passed last year. He hoped he had put his points clearly before the Secretary to the Treasury, and that some of them might be cleared up by that hon Gentleman.
§ THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. JACKSON) (Leeds, N.)said, that he thought if the hon. Gentleman (Mr. J. E. Ellis) had looked at the Estimate he would have found it there distinctly stated that the Estimate was one of the amount required between the 1st of April and the 22nd of August, 1888. He believed it would be quite contrary to precedent and quite unusual for the Government to have made provision for a service which was not sanctioned, and he held that it was entirely in accordance with the ordinary practice of the Treasury in a case like this, where a Commission came to an end—that is to say, when an Act expired—not to have made provision for any longer period. The hon. Member, in a good-natured way, seemed to imply that he (Mr. Jackson) had taken credit for this as being an increase, and asked whether this was all the House would have to vote for the coming year. Well, it was all they would have to vote for the coming year, unless Parliament extended the Act or made some new provision. The hon. 1372 Member would see until that provision was made or until the present Act was extended it would be quite impossible to enter the amount of expenditure which would have to be provided for. With regard to the number of Commissioners, he (Mr. Jackson) had on a former occasion endeavoured to explain what, perhaps, the hon. Member would remember—namely, that the number taken on the Estimate for 1887–8 was the number originally provided, supplemented by the number contained in the Supplementary Estimate, and the explanation of that was very simple. He hoped he might make it clear. Towards the end of the year, or, at any rate, beyond the middle of the year, they received an application for a considerable number of additional Sub-Commissioners. At that time the number which would be required was necessarily very conjectural.
§ MR. T. M. HEALY (Longford, N.)What month was that in?
§ MR. JACKSONsaid, he spoke on this matter subject to correction; but he was under the impression that it was in the month of August. The Government were at that time, of course, quite without experience as to the amount of work which might come before the Sub-Commissioners; but, being desirous to meet all requirements, they sanctioned the full number included in the application, and that number appeared on the Estimate for last year. As a matter of fact, however, the total number sanctioned by the Government and provided for in the Estimate was not appointed, and had not been appointed up to the present time.
§ MR. J. E. ELLISWas not the money paid?
§ MR. JACKSONCertainly not.
§ MR. J. E. ELLISThen how can the accounts show a saving by comparing two sums, one of which was imaginary?
§ MR. JACKSONsaid, he did not know that. Hon. Members would see from the Memorandum that he did not seek to take credit in any sense for any saving, but had only endeavoured to make it clear what was the cause of the decrease. When, towards the end of the year—in December last—it became his (Mr. Jackson's) duty to supervise the Estimates which were prepared for presentation to Parliament, it was part of that duty to visit Dublin and go through the Estimates generally with all the Depart- 1373 ments in Ireland. In conference with, the Land Commissioners, it was agreed that they should make provision for 65 Sub-Commissioners, 50 being, as he believed, the existing number, with the distinct understanding, as he had already observed, that if a further number was necessary the Government would sanction an addition, as there was no desire to delay or obstruct the business which the Sub-Commissioners were doing. He hoped he should have the approval of hon. Gentlemen in saying that, as a matter of procedure, his experience taught him that it was wise always to obtain the guidance of a little experience rather than to make too large a provision in the first place for work which might never arise.
§ SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL (Kirkcaldy, &c.)said, he was glad to hear this explanation from the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury. He thought the Government had acted very wisely in deciding that the staff of Sub-Commissioners for carrying out these Acts should not be stinted. He did not agree with, the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Rushcliffe Division of Nottingham (Mr. J. E. Ellis) in thinking that the course the Government were pursuing in the matter was disastrous. He thought the Government were pursuing the right course, and that if they carried it out their conduct would be worthy of commendation. He did not say that their action was right in all its details; he thought, for instance, that what was done in regard to the revision of rents was done in a very rough way, and it still remained to be discovered by experience whether it contained the elements of success; but, speaking generally, he had always thought that the Government had adopted the right principle. Though they had grumbled at the Act of 1881, and though he thought they were unwise in throwing dirt at it, still he gathered that they had accepted it and were carrying it out. He only rose to say that he hoped the Government would carry out the system properly. He thought it utterly out of place to talk about what the Government had done being a matter of contract or breach of contract—it was a matter of State intervention for the settlement of a question existing as to the rights of two co-owners in the land—
THE CHAIRMANOrder, order! I must point out that the hon. Member is travelling very wide of the Question before the Committee.
§ SIR GEORGE CAMPBELLsaid, he begged pardon—he did not understand what the subject was. He had been speaking with reference to the observations of the hon. Gentleman behind him (Mr. J. E. Ellis), and had fancied that he had not gone beyond those observations. However, he had said all he desired to say: He would only remark that he shared with the hon. Member great apprehension lest any largo scheme of purchase introduced by the Government should lead to difficulties and disturb the right and sound course which they were following.
§ MR. T. M. HEALY (Longford, N.)said, the hon. Gentleman the Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell) would have done wisely if he had refrained from praising the action of the Government until he had learned a little more about it. He (Mr. T. M. Healy) had a distinct recollection of the action of the hon. Member in 1881 and 1887, and he was sorry to say that that recollection was not one of gratitude to him for the part he had taken in the passage of the measures of those years. Be that as it might, he was bound to say at the present moment the hon. Member was premature in praising the Government for what they had done. He (Mr. T. M. Healy) quite agreed that the explanation of the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Jackson) was a candid one, and satisfactory so far as the hon. Member himself was concerned. He entirely acquitted the hon. Member of the least desire to stint the service of the Commissioners. The difference of the two Estimates had been satisfactorily explained; but, so far as the Executive of the Government of Ireland was concerned, he did not take that view. He had pressed the Government for an explanation, but had received no information as to what were the number of Sub-Commissioners appointed to carry out the Acts when the applications rose beyond the powers of the existing Commissioners. The House had not had that information, nor had they received the information which they desired to have as to who the men were. As long as they had the Land Act before them, 1375 he had got up and testified unfeignedly against the character of the men appointed for the administration of the Act. He had not on any occasion failed to protest against the character of the men appointed. He believed it was owing to the character of the men appointed in the past under the late Mr. Forster and the Government that succeeded him that the present agrarian crisis was due. With regard to the Commissioners who had been appointed by the present Government, he was willing to admit that they had got a severe scare owing to the fall in prices. What the Commissioners last appointed had done was clearly due to the scare which existed amongst them, for a more untrustworthy lot of gentlemen it would have been impossible to get even in the days of Mr. Forster. Mr. Forster was the man who killed the Act. It was to his Sub-Commissioners, and to the delight he took in appointing bad men, that they owed the trouble existing in Ireland at the present time. He (Mr. T. M. Healy) was quite free to admit that the action of some Commissioners appointed by right hon. Gentlemen opposite had been better; but, at the same time, he contended that these gentlemen had acted with the greatest stringency. Who were they? He would not go into the individual names and characters of the men; but he would say that if hon. Members would take the trouble to inquire who the men were, they would find that, almost without exception, they were drawn from the landlord class. However, even with regard to them, he would refrain from hasty criticism, preferring to wait another year, or perhaps to the month of July or August next, to see how they went on, before expressing a decided opinion as to their conduct. But that it was necessary that some consideration should be given to this question of the character of the Sub-Commissioners was clearly shown by circumstances which had already occurred. He would give an instance. Take the case of the action of a Sub-Commissioner upon an estate where, above all others, the Sub-Commissioner should have been most cautious, and should have done his best to avoid offending the susceptibilities of the tenantry—namely, on the Kingston estate. There the tenantry had almost unanimously adopted the Plan of Campaign, 1376 and at the sitting of the Court, which was very naturally crowded with the tenantry, on there being some demonstration, Mr. Doyle, the Sub-Commissioner, said to one of the barristers present—"These people are a pack of howling savages." That was a small thing of itself; but it showed the spirit which animated these men. Everything which they did in the interests of the tenantry was done grudgingly. The little technicalities, the bitter, rotten law points, which were raised from time to time, were always decided against the tenants. No doubt many of these points would be reversed on appeal; but the Sub-Commissioners knew perfectly well that the appeals could not be heard for a couple of years or so, and that, in the meantime, the tenantry would be liable to pay the full rent. And when the decision of the Sub-Commissioners on these matters of law was reversed on appeal what would happen? Why, the cases would go back to the Sub-Commissioners to be settled, and it would probably be five years before the fair rent was fixed. It was under circumstances such as these that they heard the encomiums of the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy on the conduct of the Government and the Commissioners. To his (Mr. T. M. Healy's) mind, it was an appalling thing to see an hon. Member who took such a prominent part in opposing Amendments to the Land Acts brought forward by Members of the Irish Party now coming forward with his encomiums upon the action of the Executive and the Commissioners. He (Mr. T. M. Healy) thought the Government should devise some means to effect a speedy hearing of appeals on law points raised before the Sub-Commissioners. The Government might make some provision for expediting the hearing of these appeals in their Judicature Bill. At present the landlords had a great advantage in regard to one portion of the machinery of the Land Act. If a man listed a lease which could not be dismissed—a lease, say, for 99 years or for 200 years, and for domain or pasture land—the landlord could apply summarily to the Commission to have it dismissed. The landlord could always depend upon the exercise of summary jurisdiction upon a law point, whilst the tenant could not. He must say that, in his judgment, it was a most necessary reform in connec- 1377 tion with the administration of the Land Acts that when a tenant's fair rent application was dismissed on a law point, as scores of thorn were every day dismissed on most frivolous and abominable grounds, there should be some means of summarily determining these points. The whole momentum and machinery of the Act was directed against the tenants. There was a remarkable difference between the administration of the Crofters' Act and the administration of the Irish Land Act. He had lately noticed that under the Crofters' Act an almost analogous question with reference to the tenant's improvements to that which had arisen in the case of "Adams v. Dunseath" which had come before the Court, and in Scotland the decision was in favour of the tenant. All these eases decided in the Court of Appeal in Ireland were decided by a majority of Tories. The present Court of Appeal in that country consisted almost entirety of Tories, and by the Appellate Jurisdiction Act they were prevented from coming to the House of Lords. The Irish tenantry were, therefore, at the mercy of people who, he might say, would be only swayed by prejudices. In his opinion, there ought to be an appeal in all these matters up to the masthead, and these appeals should be speedy. The tribunal should be above suspicion of being in favour of the landlord party. It was a remarkable thing that every time in England, where appeals were heard in the House of Lords, the decisions were given in favour of the tenants. The hon. Member for the Rushcliffe Division of Nottingham (Mr. J. E. Ellis) referred to this matter of land purchase. Now, he (Mr. T. M. Healy), at the time Lord Ashbourne's Act was passed, was to a considerable extent in favour of it; but he had now come to see that the view taken of the measure by Radical Members above the Gangway—though he had come to the decision with reluctance—had been the correct view; and he would tell the House why. They would find with regard to the £5,000,000 that they were giving away under Lord Ashbourne's Act before long that very large arrears would arise, for the reason that they were not getting the cream of the Irish tenants. They were only getting tenants whom he might describe as "bargain-driven." He desired emphatically 1378 to warn the Government as to the character of the tenantry purchasing under Lord Ashbourne's Act. They were getting the wastrels of the Irish tenantry. They were for the most part, notably in the case of Lord Waterford's estate, tenants who were hopelessly in arrear, and who purchased on the landlord's terms solely in order to escape eviction. They were persons who before long would most likely become a burden upon the taxpayer. He did not attach blame in this matter to the gentlemen at the head of the Land Purchase Commission. Mr. M'Carthy and Mr. Lynch had decided the point that there was no pressure, by danger of eviction, brought to boar upon the tenantry of the Marquess of Waterford—that the people had not purchased under threat; but he (Mr. T. M. Healy) was bound to say that, considering the indirect pressure brought to bear upon these gentlemen by the Under Secretary for Ireland, and men of his class, it would have been as much as their position would have been worth if they had decided these points in favour of the tenants. This, however, was a matter for the consideration of the English taxpayers, whom he warned, as one anxious for the settlement of the Irish agrarian question by purchase, that they were getting a bad bargain. He warned them that under the existing system they were not getting the good tenants, but only the bad tenants—only the men who were in arrear and who were practically broken by bad seasons. They were gutting the squeezed oranges, and the men who were able to pay rents were holding back and waiting for better terms. Before long they would see the fruit of the pressure that was being brought on the tenants. He feared that the next Administration would have to face the problem which had to be met in the case of the tithes half-a-century ago, and probably the British taxpayer would be saddled with a loss of £3,000,000 of money. For his part, when next the Government demanded another £5,000,000 to recoup the Treasury under Lord Ashbourne's Act, he should give the proposal his strongest opposition unless a clause were inserted in the measure to the effects that sales should be forbidden to tenants who were in arrear with their rent or to whom a writ of ejectment 1379 had been delivered within six months. They were told that there were no arrears of rent under the Land Purchase Commission. The reason of that was very simple, and it was that the instalments had not yet begun to become due. The Land Purchase Act was only passed in 1885, and practically did not come into operation until 1886, and there had not been very many instalments of purchase money due, but, by and by, they would come down like snow-flakes, and as the tenant had not been a free agent purchasing on fair terms they would have before long a very nice mess to dear up in Dublin. The fact was that the landlords were making use of the system of State advances in order to obtain an equivalent for the rack rents they had formerly been in the habit of charging, and which were now rendered impossible by the Land Acts. When the Irish Secretary was below the Gangway on the opposite side of the House he was very emphatic in the language in which he reminded the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) of what had to be done in the case of the advances made in respect of tithes over half-a-century ago. He pointed out that the amount advanced had remained a debt to the Treasury for something like 60 years, and at the end of that period the Treasury had to wipe off the whole of it as a bad debt; and, as he (Mr. T. M. Healy) had said, they might find in the future, when the Liberal Administration came into Office, that in respect of the Land Purchase Scheme they had a debt of £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 to wipe off in consequence of the whole thing having been administered in favour of the landlords. With regard to another point—namely, the dismissal of cases which, came before the Sub-Commissioners, he wished to point out that to some extent there was a kind of speciousness in the answer which had been given by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour) when he said that the Land Commissioners did not dismiss cases on caretakers' notices, but only adjourned them. What he always wondered at in official circles was why they were afraid of the plain truth. He did not see why because a man held an official appointment he could not look at facts as they stood It was said that 1380 these cases were only adjourned, and one would think by that, that what was meant was when an adjourned case came on again the tenant would be able to apply afresh; but what were the facts? He knew a tenant who had spent thousands on thousands on his holding—a tenant who at one time was in very considerable circumstances, his rent alone being £228 a-year, the value of the land £140 a-year, and the buildings on the land £21, and the man had erected all the buildings himself. He went into Court in December, and the landlord at once served him with a notice under Section 7, the man being at once turned into a caretaker. That was in the county of Louth. The contention of the Government was that in this case, as in others of a similar kind, there was not a dismissal but an adjournment; but the fact was this, that by the next time there would be a sitting of the Court in the county of Louth, this man's time for redemption would be up, and he would then be a caretaker without the right of going into Court—he would have no status at all. There was no machinery for extending the period of redemption under any of the Land Acts except under the section dealing with the case of sale. Under Section 7, if a man had a notice served, on him, he was debarred from going into Court, as the adjournment of a case amounted to dismissal. If the Commissioners did not sit again in a county whore they had held their Court until a period of two or three months had elapsed, there was no possibility of prolonging the period of redemption so as to have a case heard within the time during which a tenant could make good his claim. There had been some talk about this question of arrears. The Government had offered certain terms, and he (Mr. T. M. Healy) would deal with just one case, because the landlord who was interested happened to be a Member of the House, and would be able to defend himself. He would take the case of the widow who had bean referred to some time ago, and deal with it in an historical spirit, and without any offence to the right hon. and gallant Gentleman concerned. The landlord was the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Under Secretary for Ireland (Colonel King-Harman), and the case was this. There was a woman whoso rent was £15 8s. He would not say 1381 whether at one time that was or was not a fair rent, but at any rate it was reduced to £7. Now, fancy what the feelings of a person who had been paying £15 8s. a-year rent must be when reflecting on the fact that the landlord had the power, if he could not succeed in screwing this rent from him, of turning him out on the roadside—fancy what his feelings must be when he reflected on the fact that the rent which was considered a fair one by a Court of Law was only £7. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman had said that he had only proceeded for one-half year's arrears after the reduction was effected. Well that half-year would practically be a sum of nearly £8—the amount of that half-year was more than the entire amount of the woman's present year's rent. Now this Court consisted of sworn gentlemen—
§ COLONEL KING-HARMANI beg the hon. Member's pardon. They are not sworn.
§ MR. T. M. HEALYThe right hon. and gallant Gentleman ought to know, for he has appointed them.
§ COLONEL KING-HARMANI have appointed none of them.
§ MR. T. M. HEALYsaid, if they were not sworn he would withdraw the expression. At any rate, those nominees of the Government were supposed to be impartial, and they were appointed by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's Government if they were not by himself. He did not know who the Sub-Commissioners were who reduced the rent. Perhaps the right hon. and gallant Gentleman knew, and could produce their names.
§ COLONEL KING-HARMANI do not know them.
§ MR. T. M. HEALYsaid, at any rate they were the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's creatures, and the Government paid them for what they did. They were like day labourers receiving daily wages. They got three guineas a-day, and were sent round to operate on the property of the tenants. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman said he offered to take half-a-year's rent, and he had said that he had offered the woman a reduction of 20 per cent. Well, he (Mr. T. M. Healy) should like to know whether the right hon. and gallant Gentleman considered it a reasonable and a fair thing that when, after hearing evidence, 1382 the Court, which was not supposed to be biassed, and if it was so was certainly not in favour of the tenant, solemnly derided that the old rent should be reduced by 60 per cent, that it was becoming of a Gentleman in his position, holding as he did an Office under which he might have been supposed to have respect for law and order, and looking as he did for respect for law and order from the people of Ireland, to offer only 20 per cent reduction when the Court had allowed 60 per cent? He (Mr. T. M. Healy) submitted that there was a great discrepancy between equity and fact in the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's action. This was one of the jokes of the present system. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman said that he had appealed against the decision of the Court, but that the appeal had not come on—
THE CHAIRMANOrder, order! I would point out that the conduct of a particular landlord cannot be called to account under any item in this Vote, and that, therefore, the hon. and learned Member's observations are irrelevant.
§ MR. T. M. HEALYsaid, he would not pursue the matter; but he had merely desired to illustrate the difficulty of administering the Land Law in Ireland by referring to a particular case. If he was not relevant, he would not continue his observations. He had been dealing with the action of the Land Commissioners in the matter of caretakers' notices. In this case an appeal had been lodged—
§ COLONEL KING-HARMANsaid, that if it would be in Order for him to do so, he could give a full explanation of the matter referred to by the hon. and learned Member, but the Chairman's ruling would prevent him from making a reply.
§ MR. T. M. HEALYsaid, he should be delighted to hear any reply the right hon. and gallant Gentleman should have to make. The only observation he would make on the matter he would put into a concrete form. He would merely draw attention to the hardship of the Act of 1887 by showing that if an appeal was lodged, it never could come on because there was no speedy method under Section 7 by which the case of a person who was turned into a caretaker could be considered before the period within which redemption must be effected elapsed. Before the 1383 appeals could be heard there ceased to be anyone to appeal. He submitted, under these circumstances, that the Government ought to institute a means by which these appeals could be speedily dealt with. He contended that the speedy hearing of appeals was a matter of absolute necessity, and that, therefore, not only should the Government appoint more Sub-Commissioners, but that they ought to adopt measures for the strengthening the Court of Appeal by diverting power from the Common Law Courts to the Land Commission. Perhaps the Government would give him some information as to the course they intended to take in the matter of the renewal of appearance contained in the Land Act. The hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury had said that it was not the practice of the Treasury to estimate for more than the period over which an Act operated; but they all knew that the Act must be ox-tended beyond the 22nd of August next, and he thought it would be a most unfortunate course to take to have no provision whatever for its continuance beyond that time. It would hardly be possible for such a course as that to be taken, and he thought they were entitled to know what the Government proposed to do in the matter. He would respectfully urge upon the Government the necessity of speed in this matter; time was of the essence of the case, as had been pointed out by Chief Justice Pallas himself. With regard to the Commissioners, they know very well that Mr. French was constantly in communication with Members of the Government such as the right hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite. He was appointed last year, having been constantly about the House and the landlord party, and they knew very well that he was put in as a landlord's man. He could realize the difficulty the Land Commissioners had in making further new appointments; but it was necessary that some new appointments should be made if the work was to go on. And now he would turn to the administration of another Act before them—namely, the Crimes Act. He was very sorry to hear what the Representative of the Irish Government had said with regard to one case which had been brought before their notice. The right hon. Gentleman opposite, whom he would not call the Chief Secretary, 1384 because he supposed they were now to look upon him as the Head of the Irish Local Government Board, in his statement with regard to Dr. Magner was most remarkable. He (Mr. T. M. Healy) had always thought that when a man was punished for a crime he got the full measure of his punishment at the hands of the magistrates and the Court who convicted him; but that did not seem to be the case, or, at any rate, that did not appear to be the view of Her Majesty's Government. Dr. Magner's offence was that he presided at a meeting. It was the first time in his entire career that he had done so. Now it was a very odd thing that the Government should take a firm stand with regard to this gentleman. Dr. Magner was a man of only 22 years of age, a distinguished University student. He got his M.D. before 21, and he was also an M.A. of the same University where he obtained his degree. He (Mr. T. M. Healy) could imagine a gentleman of that position, on the first time of his having to make a speech on the Laud Question and to preside over a meeting of Irish tenant farmers, not having great happiness in his choice of language, at any rate not so happy a choice as that which might be expected from the author of A Defence of Philosophic Doubt. Such a man would be right enough in the choice of his language, no doubt; but the expression for which Dr. Magner was punished with two months' imprisonment—namely, that the people had struck against rent, was an expression which Dr. Magner denied that he had ever used. Now anything more grotesque than the system of reporting employed by the Irish police could not be imagined. Let them take such a test as this. Supposing the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) conceived with his great intellect and genius a great speech which it took him one hour to deliver. An Irish police reporter would condense that speech into half-a-column, although, as delivered, it would probably occupy three columns of the space of a newspaper. There they saw the genius of a police reporter as distinguished from the genius of a Gentleman like the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian. From his own knowledge of these Irish police reporters, to say that they could take 1385 down every word of a speech, was a perfect farce. They made a practice of copying a great deal from the newspapers; but in this case there was no report in the papers of the speech, for which two months' imprisonment had been meted out to Dr. Magner. But let them assume as settled that Dr. Magner deserved his punishment, what did they find? Why, that he got a sentence of two months' imprisonment, which was confirmed on appeal. Now the County Court Judge, on hearing the appeal, said he would let him off on his own recognizances if he would promise to make no more speeches; but Dr. Magner declined altogether to have his mouth shut thus ignobly. Dr. Magner got only two months' imprisonment from their own Resident Magistrate, and yet the Government, or the right hon. Gentleman, as their representative, inflicted upon this gentleman the following disability:—He fined him £200 a-year for life. Well, he (Mr. T. M. Healy) contended that that was an abominable misuse of the powers placed in the hands of the Government. The idea of a man who only got two months' imprisonment for a particular offence for which under the law he might have got six months—when the ends of justice were met by such a small term of imprisonment—being fined £200 a-year for life was abominable. That was the punishment, because they practically said to Dr. Magner that he should never occupy the position of dispensary doctor so long as he lived—or, at any rate, so long as the present Government was in Office, which, after all, might not be a very long period, which was a reflection with which Dr. Magner might possibly console himself. He (Mr. T. M. Healy), however, would ask the Government to reflect on the extensive reservoir of hatred which they were probably storing up for themselves. The Irish Members wanted, when they got Ireland, to have it as a going concern, and when the present Government did things like this they felt bound to protest against the inconvenience which was being prepared for them. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary himself had once committed the great crime of being a young man. Perhaps when he was 21 he said some things which he would not look upon with delight now, and which he would not care to have contem- 1386 plated as his final utterances upon the subjects with which they dealt. That was not all. If this were a bonâ fide dismissal he could understand it, but he knew it was not. He knew there were men who wanted the post. Dr. Magner had only just been made dispensary doctor, and several gentlemen connected with the Orange and landlord clique had expected to get the situation. Dr. Magner was certainly not an agitator; he was an obscure country doctor, and nobody had ever heard of him before this prosecution. The Government picked him out for prosecution and made his name known all through the country. He was only 22 years of ago, and the Government fixed this indelible disability upon him. He (Mr. T. M. Healy) contended that this was an abominable use of the powers of the Executive. They heard a great deal of Mr. Forster's Act, and, no doubt, it was a very stringent Act. But they all remembered the case of Dr. Kenny. It was greatly to the credit of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, that no sooner had Dr. Kenny's case been raised in the House of Commons, he took Mr. Forster aside and said—"We did not pass this Act with this object; we passed it for altogether different objects." Although a sealed order had n over been withdrawn before, the sealed order in the case of Dr. Kenny was withdrawn, and that gentleman was now in the enjoyment of the position of dispensary doctor of North Dublin Union. They heard a great deal, in times like these, about Civil servants making speeches and publishing pamphlets. The Government gave them full liberty to do this, and civil servants did as they pleased. The Continuity of the Irish Revolutionary Movement could be had for 3d. Civil servants gave the Nationalists of Ireland as much offence as Dr. Magner bad given the Government. There was no limit to the cases which might be tried under the Crimes Act, and yet they had Ministers saying—"We have relegated all these matters to a most fair and impartial tribunal, consisting of excellent gentlemen, paid fair salaries; these matters are entirely in their hands; the Government have no cognizance whatever of these prosecutions. The prosecutions are approved by the Attorney General for Ireland (Mr. Peter O'Brien), 1387 who has not the honour of a seat in this House; and we must let the law take its course." He respectfully submitted that, on its merits, Dr. Magner's was a fair case for the reconsideration of the Government on the point of the eternity of the punishment. It would be only a reasonable thing, if the young gentleman overstepped himself again for the Government to take notice of the fact. He claimed for Dr. Magner the same sanction the Government gave to Civil servants; he claimed that they should give him, say, Primrose limits. It was not the business of the Government in Ireland to be always fighting the people; and he did not believe any Member of the Tory Party from Ireland was prepared to say that Dr. Magner ought to be visited with perpetual punishment. He hoped the Government would say that if Dr. Magner were re-elected his re-election would not be cancelled, because otherwise they would only add to their difficulties in Ireland. The collection of poor rates was often as difficult as the collection of rent, and by the dismissal of a man like Dr. Magner, as well as by increasing the police force against the sentiment of the people, the Government would get into a sea of troubles which would very soon load to the shipwreck of their administration in Ireland. He (Mr. T. M. Healy) had intended to touch upon the case of Mr. Stoney, but he thought it was better to wait until he got the Papers promised hon. Members by the Government. He would, however, allude to the case of Mr. James Byrne. Lord Ashbourne dismissed Mr. James Byrne from the Commission of the Peace because he went from Mallow to Fermoy to take part as a magistrate of the county of Cork in the adjudication of a case in the town of Fermoy. The railway faro was only 2s. 6d., so that hon. Members could easily realize that the distance travelled by Mr. James Byrne upon this occasion was not great. It had been the practice in Ireland for county magistrates to go from one district to another within, their county. That had been the immemorial practice, and no one had ever for a moment dreamt that there was any harm in it. But the Lord Chancellor, without giving Mr. James Byrne a caution, without saying you must not do this again, dismissed him from the Commission. Was there ever such an arbitrary 1388 proceeding? Mr. Stoney was guilty of misappropriating public money, but he was allowed to bloom in the Commission of the Peace. Look at the disparity in the treatment of the two cases. But that was not all. About the time that Mr. James Byrne went to Fermoy, 51 magistrates crowded into the City of Cork from their own divisions to vote for a public house license for Sir George Colthurst's benefit. They heard of the publicans being the backbone of the National movement; but he maintained that in every instance in which the magistrates added another public house to the number, they did it for some corrupt motive of their own. The police protested against the licence, the rector and the parish priest of the place in which the public house was situated protested against it, and yet 59 magistrates crowded into the City of Cork to vote down the opinion of the local magistrates. Did Lord Ashbourne take action in the case of those 59 magistrates? Not a bit of it. If Lord Ashbourne would act with something like equality, with something like fairness with regard to these magistrates, not only the cause of justice but the cause of temperance would be very much advanced. If a rule could be made by which magistrates could be kept within their own Petty Sessional districts, they would find that the jobs now committed by licensing sessions—by landlords and Orange magistrates—would soon be put a stop to. Mr. James Byrne was dismissed for doing that which it was well known magistrates did every day in the week. The Government held up to them as the pink of magisterial chivalry, Mr. Cecil Roche, and other Resident Magistrates. Did the magistrates of Ireland keep to their Petty Sessional districts? No; neither did they keep to their own counties. They went from county to county, and were paid fordoing so. But because Mr. James Byrne went from Mallow to Fermoy to adjudicate upon a case, he was dismissed from the Commission of the Peace. And yet Irishmen were expected to respect the administration of the law. They did not respect the administration of the law, but despised it. The Irish Members were expected to offer up a Hosanna that the Irish Government were good enough to administer the affairs of their country. He thought it was quite pos- 1389 sible for the Tory Party to rule Ireland without provoking all the miserable feelings they did provoke. If they wanted to remain in Ireland, it was certainly not necessary for them to wade through so much dirt. It was of such things as he had mentioned the Irish Members complained. They were of little moment to English gentlemen, but Irishmen felt thorn keenly. Mr. James Byrne was a man of most moderate character, a man who was at one time disposed to be almost too moderate. He (Mr. T. M. Healy) did not think Mr. James Byrne was ever a member of the Laud League, or that he was ever a member of the National League. It was most unfortunate that the Government, instead of steering an even keel in Ireland, were creating in the minds of the people a conviction that they were imbued with only one spirit, and that was a spirit of inequality and exasperation.
§ MR. T. W. RUSSELL (Tyrone, S.)said, he desired to say a word or two with reference to Mr. James Byrne, and the action of magistrates in the Irish Petty Sessional districts. The hon. and learned Member for North Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy) said it was an immemorial practice for magistrates to go from one district to another—
THE CHAIRMANOrder, order! I ought to have interfered before. The hon. and learned Member for North Longford was evidently travelling outside the Vote in assailing the action of the Lord Chancellor. There is no salary for the Lord Chancellor provided for in the Vote.
§ MR. T. W. RUSSELLsaid, he only intended to deal with the case of Mr. James Byrne, and therefore he would not proceed.
§ MR. W. REDMOND (Fermanagh, N.)said, he thought his hon. and learned Friend the Member for North Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy) had a right to some answer from the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour). He did not know whether it was the intention of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to insult the Members who came here to speak on behalf of the Irish people, but whether that be his intention or not, it certainly was nothing less than an insult to hon. Members from Ireland to be refused an answer from 1390 the right hon. Gentleman when they put forward perfectly legitimate grievances in a most moderate manner. His hon. and learned Friend had spoken of the case of Dr. Magner. It was an exceedingly hard ease, and had caused the greatest possible indignation throughout the South of Ireland. It was a case in which a young professional man was deprived by, the action of the Government of his means of livelihood. £200 a-year was a great deal to Dr. Magner. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for doing, as far as he (Mr. W. Redmond) could make out, very little, received £4,500 a-year. Would he not for that sum condescend to toll them why Dr. Magner was deprived by the action of the Government of his only means of livelihood?
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, that perhaps he might be allowed to observe that the hon. Gentleman could not have been in the House during the whole of the discussion upon the Vote, or he would have known that he (Mr. A. J. Balfour) had spoken twice.
§ MR. W. REDMONDasked, if he might observe that if the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant had kept his eyes a little more open than he was usually in the habit of doing, he would have seen he (Mr. W. Redmond) was in the House when last he spoke. It was simply because that, when the right hon. Gentleman rose to deal with the question of Dr. Magner, he did not give any justification, or even explanation, of the conduct of the Government, that he (Mr. W. Redmond) held his hon. and learned Friend the Member for North Longford, was entitled to some reply from the Government. When the right hon. Gentleman spoke of the case of Dr. Magner, he merely said that the Government had determined to adhere to their decision in depriving the gentleman of his professional occupation. But the right hon. Gentleman did not any on what grounds the Government had come to this cruel conclusion, and he did not point out in what particular manner the Government hoped to make the Irish people more satisfied with the rule of the Government, or to make the country generally more tranquil by this action in connection with Dr. Magner. His hon. and learned Friend said it 1391 would be quite possible for a Tory Government to rule the people of Ireland without committing so very many actions utterly repugnant to the general population of the land. The hon. and learned Gentleman said that the Government might go through with their work without doing so much dirty work. That was, he had no doubt, to some extent true, and, as far as he was concerned, he had only to say that the action of the Government with regard to Dr. Magner, although it is painful in the last degree that a man of Dr. Magner's position should be so punished for doing absolutely nothing at all, would only have, like a great many other actions of the Government, the effect of rendering the Government's rule in Ireland absolutely impossible to be attended with any happy results whatever. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant had boasted of having spoken twice to-night, though he was not usually so condescending to the Irish Members. In order that he might be relieved from a portion of the work which Chief Secretaries had always per formed for their salaries, the right hon. Gentleman had proposed that his Under Secretary should receive £1,000 a-year. Dr. Magner was deprived of his humble means of livelihood because it was alleged that on behalf of the National League he gave offence to the Government and to the supporters of the Government, and because it was alleged that his action in attending a certain meeting was calculated to produce disturbance and ill-will in the district. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant was in a few days to receive a bountiful salary. Whatever Dr. Magner had done in the way of causing a breach or disturbance of the peace in the district was exceedingly little compared with the provocation the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant had given by his conduct in the past. Having seceded from the Home Rule movement—
THE CHAIRMANOrder, order! I must remind the hon. Gentleman that the House has passed a Rule which directs that the repetition of other person's arguments is not permissible.
§ MR. W. REDMONDsaid, he should be exceedingly sorry unnecessarily to repeat 1392 any argument which he had heard, and if the Chairman would be good enough to point out the argument to which he alluded, he (Mr. W. Redmond) would avoid it. He was merely pointing out that there were plenty of people in Ireland upon the Government's side who had undoubtedly done more towards creating disturbance and ill-will than Dr. Magner had done by his action. He (Mr. W. Redmond) maintained that the action of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary in refusing to reply to the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for North Longford, and in refusing to hold out some hope that the punishment which had been so unfairly meted out to Dr. Magner would be mitigated, was only driving another nail into the coffin of the Tory Government in Ireland. The only other remark he had to make was with regard to the Land Commission. It had been pointed out that new Land Commissioners should be appointed in order to give effect to the Land Act of 1881, and the subsequent measures amending that Act. As the Representative of a large agricultural county he thought something more should be done than the mere appointment of additional Land Commissioners in order to expedite the business of the Commission. The whole establishment of the Land Commission should be overhauled and remodelled for whatever chance there was of doing permanent good by the Land Act of 1881 and subsequent measures amending that Act. There was no possible chance of inspiring the people with the slightest confidence in its composition unless they gave the people the impression that the Land Commissioners were men who would impartially do justice to them. Many of the men who had been appointed to fix rents had not been appointed on account of their qualifications, but simply through the old worn system of favour, begging, and place hunting. Men had tried to get positions as Sub-Commissioners for their relatives and friends merely in order that they might get some money out of the Government and not because they were qualified. He maintained that the system of appointing Land Commissioners should be thoroughly overhauled. No one should be appointed at the request of any friend of the Government, no matter how influential he might be, 1393 unless he was proved beyond all question to be a man capable for the position and unless be was a man who would receive the support and the confidence of the tenant farmers of the country. That was not the case at the present time. The great bulk of the Land Commissioners were men who were distinctly in touch and in sympathy, not with the masses of the people who were to be benefited by the Act, but with the landlord classes who were to be more or less injured by the Act. He had found that the greatest complaint which the tenant farmers of his own constituency and of other parts of Ireland he had visited, had to make with respect to the Land Act of 1881 was against the character of the men who were appointed. He believed that this Government or any Government who went to Ireland would be doing the best thing they could for the people and ultimately for the landlords if they appointed proper Sub-Commissioners. By doing this they would benefit the landlords because people would go into Court and have rents fixed who were now deterred from going into Court owing to the character of the Commissioners. If the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary was not sufficiently condescending to reply to them with regard to Dr. Magner's case, he ought at least to say whether the Government had any intention of inaugurating a thorough and systematic way of appointing Commissioners under the Land Act who would really have the confidence of the people.
§ MR. CLANCY (Dublin Co., N.)said, he noticed that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House (Mr. W. H. Smith) had arrived, but he hoped the right hon. Gentleman was not going to apply the closure for some time longer, because he desired to make a few remarks before the discussion closed. His hon. Friend had referred to the case of Dr. Magner. He was afraid that under a Standing Order he would not be allowed by the Chairman to refer to it. If he were allowed to do so, he would call attention to a fact what had not been mentioned by previous speakers. Dr. Magner held two appointments. From one of them he had been dismissed by the Local Government Board, and that was the matter which was under consideration. The second appointment was that of medical attendant to the 1394 police stations in his district, and after Dr. Magner's conviction and before the appeal was decided the Lord Lieutenant displayed his partizanship by dismissing this young man instanter. That would not have been so remarkable but that the Government in reference to another ease, the case of a magistrate named Barrett, who had been accused of a criminal offence, said, when the matter was brought to their notice, they had not dismissed Barrett because they were waiting the result of the appeal to the Quarter Sessions. Immediately a Nationalist doctor came on the tapis the Government forgot their fine principles and ran him to ground without waiting the result of an appeal. The case of Dr. Magner was only like many occurring in Ireland at the present time, and he rose to call attention to other cases of the same kind to illustrate the spirit in which the Government of Ireland was carried on. There was the case of the prison warder of Tullamore, who the other day was fined by the right hon. Gentleman through his subordinate £7 a-year for life, because his wife, in his absence, lighted a candle in her window in celebration of the release of Mr. William O'Brien. A more vindictive, a more little-minded, a more contemptible proceeding, he supposed, was never heard of in any civilized world; and this was done to preserve the Union—was done in the name of law and order. That was not the only case. Take the case of the hon. Member for West Cork (Mr. Gilhooly), who had just been convicted under the Crimes Act, and sentenced to two months' imprisonment. That did not satisfy the Government. They used their power, obtained under the Crimes Act, by a clause which was never debated in the House; they used their power to destroy the hon. Gentleman in his business, for they had endorsed upon his licence the fact of his conviction. When his licence came up next year for renewal the endorsement would be an effectual bar to his obtaining his licence again, and he would be thereby deprived of his principal means of livelihood. Then, again, there was the case of the unfortunate man Ferriter. Ferriter had been imprisoned three times within the last three months. He was imprisoned, first, for assaulting the police. But the assault was only a con- 1395 structive assault, for it consisted in slamming the door in the face of a policeman. The policeman did not think of making a charge for three days; but when the facts were brought to the attention of the gentlemen in Dublin Castle they wired instructions to have the man prosecuted for the offence. Ferriter was prosecuted and sentenced to a fortnight's imprisonment. Two other charges were brought against him, and he was sentenced to two other terms of imprisonment. He (Mr. Clancy) called that down right, contemptible persecution. These things were done "to preserve the Union," and to "create a friendly feeling in the minds of the people of Ireland, and give the people of Great Britain confidence in the administrators of the law." Why, these were the things which made the Union hateful. and inspired distrust in the administration of the law. These were the things that made the people of Ireland see in every administrator of the law in Ireland, not a protector of their interests, but an enemy and a partizan. Take a case reported the other day in a daily paper in Dublin. A tenant of the notorious rack renting landlady—Mrs. Maroney—was imprisoned under the Coercion Act at the very time he had an application pending in the Land Court for the fixing of a fair rent. The result was that he had to make an application at a cost of £10 10s., in order to be represented at the Court while his case was under discussion. He (Mr. Clancy) had no hesitation in charging, from his place in this House, that between the local administrator of the law and Mrs. Maroney a conspiracy was got up for the purpose of preventing this tenant from being in Court at the hearing of his own case, or, at the best, for the purpose of having him fined £10 10s. for daring to make an application to the Land Court. This was not the only case of the kind. There was the case of Dr. Hayes, which had already been referred to to-night. This gentleman was voted an increase of salary by the Local Authorities in his district. It was very curious that this was the first case in which the Government refused to endorse the increase of salary, and that the gentleman in this case was the one who, on the trial of Mr. Blane, M.P., declined to give evidence for the Crown to the effect that he was intimidated by the Plan of 1396 Campaign. He refused to say that the Plan of Campaign was a terror to him, and in that way he vindicated Mr. Blane. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, in the remarks he condescended to make to the House, had said that all these things would do no harm to those people. He had said that Dr. Magner would not suffer in the general esteem of the people. That he (Mr. Clancy) considered a remarkably curious admission from the right hon. Gentleman. It was a curious confession from the Head Administrator the chief gaolor in Ireland—the head administrator of the Crimes Act—that the effect of all his persecution was to make those men popular in Ireland. He begged to call attention to that. He begged to draw the attention of Liberal Unionists to that admission—that the persecution of those people in Ireland would not injure them in the estimation of the people; and he (Mr. Clancy) sincerely hoped it would not. But no thanks to the Government for that. They had done their best to destroy the prospects of these men—to ruin them for life—and, as he had said before, what turned the whole thing into a farce was that they said they were doing this to maintain the Union and increase respect for law and order, and bind the two Nations together in tangible bonds of friendship. He passed from that to another matter. If anyone could be astonished by anything the present Government could say or do, he thought they would be astonished by the remark of the hon. and learned Solicitor General for England (Sir Edward Clarke) to-night. The hon. and learned Gentleman had interrupted the hon. and learned Member for West Kerry (Mr. Edward Harrington), when pointing out that in Tralee there was a firm of solicitors, one of whom was engaged for the Crown, and the other of whom was engaged for all the moonlighters who were accused in the county. The hon. and learned Gentleman said "Why not?" He thought it no disgrace, no indecency, that one member of a firm of solicitors should be perpetually engaged for the Crown and the other perpetually engaged for the accused; he did not think there was any probability of collusion. He, perhaps, did not know that in a recent case, one in which great suspicion attached to the accused from the first, the prisoner, 1397 instead of being convicted, as he certainly would have been if he had been tried in Wicklow, and had been prosecuted by another solicitor, was acquitted. He (Mr. Clancy) thought that the interruption of the hon. and learned Gentleman, and the speech by which he afterwards attempted to justify it, was one of the most indecent things he over heard, either in the House or out of it.
§ MR. CLANCYsaid, that if he had transgressed the Rules he apologized and withdrew, but he had thought he was justified in describing in as vigorous language as he could command, a proceeding that he thought anything but creditable to the Administration in Ireland, and which would not be tolerated in England or Scotland. This was only of apiece with the whole of the conduct of the Government in Ireland. He (Mr. Clancy) and his Friends charged partizanship on the part of the Administration. Who tried the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Cork (Mr. Gilhooly) the other day? They had 72 Resident Magistrates in Ireland. They—the Government—had sent thorn from county to county to try these cases, and the body was composed of the most ignorant and most learned of men. The man who had been chosen to try the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Cork was the very magistrate whom the hon. Member had been attacking—whether justly or unjustly—for his administration of the law during the past five or six years. They had selected to try the hon. Member the man who must have in his mind an animus against him. Whether or not the Government knew it, as a matter of fact they had sent down a man to wreak his vengeance on the hon. Member. His (Mr. Clancy's) point was that justice should not only be pure, but above suspicion; and surely when they saw a man tried by a magistrate who must have been his personal enemy for years, he (Mr. Clancy) did not care whether the justice was pure or not, but he contended that suspicion necessarily attached to it, and that in the minds of the people such administration of the law was destined to disgrace and failure. He referred to Mr. Cecil Roche. It was denied the other day in the House that this man had been sent about from 1398 county to county, but some most extraordinary denials were sometimes made in this House. Why, this gentleman had tried cases in Clare, Kerry, Cork, and Limerick. He had been sent all over the Province of Munster. Though the Government had declined to place Returns on the Table of the House showing what magistrates had adjudicated on these cases in Ireland, he (Mr. Clancy) begged to tell them that he had personally taken an account of the matter, and was in a position to state that Mr. Cecil Roche—this trusted servant of the Castle—was entrusted with twice as many cases as any other Resident Magistrate in the country. Now he would refer to a matter which had very much affected the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman had got very indignant for having been taunted with having given instructions to the Resident Magistrates as to how they were to perform their duties under the Coercion Act. The right hon. Gentleman had affected indignation, and in some correspondence he had had on the subject that such a practice on the part of a Minister would bring impeachment in its train. Well, he (Mr. Clancy) would place in the hands of the House a simple narrative of facts, and the House would be able to judge whether this impeachment ought to lie against the Chief Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman said he had had no communication with the men who administered the Act. The right hon. Gentleman knew what The Irish Times of Dublin was. It was in the confidence of the Government. The Irish Times had representatives in the Castle. It got its items of information from day to day from the Castle straight, boasted sometimes of doing so. In leading articles and paragraphs it boasted of intimate acquaintance with the Castle officials. Well, on the 22nd of October, 1887, there appeared in the paper this announcement—
Colonel Turner, Captain Welch, and Mr. Cecil Roche, Resident Magistrates, who have, been in attendance upon the Chief Secretary for the past two days at the Castle, have returned to their districts.They were not told what passed between the Chief Secretary and the Resident Magistrates, but if nothing more had happened, it was an indecent thing for the men who administered the Coercion 1399 Act to be found at any time closeted with the chief promoter of all the prosecutions. Think what would happen in England if the Judges of the land were from day to day closeted with the Public Prosecutor. Think of the magistrates of London spending two days together with the Director of Public Prosecutions. Why, if they had this thing palpably going on in London, they would have the Ministers who sanctioned it hurled from power amidst the execrations of the people. Amongst other magistrates were Colonel Turner, Captain Slack, Captain Stokes, Captain Welch, Captain Butler, Mr. Burton. Of these, it might be said, that those who were only Divisional Magistrates had a right to be at the Castle, but what could be said of other magistrates like Mr. Cecil Roche, Captain Welch and Captain Butler, who had to sit and adjudicate upon cases under the Coercion Act? What did he find took place after these meetings? After those consultations with the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary on October 20th, 21st and 22nd, it was recorded that on November 7th Captain Welch held a Court at Kilrush, and on November 8th Colonel Turner, a man who had no right to be there at all, sat on the Bench with the magistrates. He charged Colonel Turner with ear-wigging the Judges on the Bench, with conveying the wishes of the Government to the Magistrates who tried the cases. He had no hesitation in saying that Colonel Turner sat on the Bench to dictate to the judges the sentences they should pass. On November 10th Captain Butler held a Coercion Court, on the Saturday Messrs. Hodder and Roche held a Court at Ennis, and on the 20th carried out a similar mission at Tulla. That was to say, that the very men who were closeted with the Chief Secretary, who knew his views and wishes, these men sat afterwards in open Court, and shamelessly adjudicated on cases that must at the time have been under the cognizance of the Chief Secretary. Anything more indecent in the administration of the law he had not heard of. The Government now thought proper to make no reply, but the country would hear of these proceedings and make an adequate reply he hoped at the proper time. If the right hon. Gentleman thought he was going to get over these Votes easily without explaining in an- 1400 swer to these grave indictments brought against him, these plain allegations of partizanship in judicial proceedings, he was greatly mistaken. There was not one of these charges that Irish Members did not feel called upon to repeat again and again, and not intending any disrespect to the authority of the Chair, they would not be debarred by any rules from doing so.
§ THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH) (Strand, Westminster)It is with great regret that I feel obliged to intervene—
§ MR. T. M. HEALYYou cannot make a speech on the Closure Motion.
§ MR.W. H. SMITHWith great regret, and impelled by the exigencies of the case, I claim to move that the Question be now put.
§ Question put accordingly, "That the Question be now put."
§ The Committee divided:—Ayes 188; Noes 67: Majority 121.—(Div. List, No. 41.)
§ Question put, "That a sum, not exceeding £3,614,903, be granted, on account, for and toward the said Service and Revenue Departments."
§ The Committee divided:—Ayes 207; Noes 41: Majority 166.—(Div. List, No. 42.)
§ (4.) £3,309 7s. 4d., Civil Services (Excesses).
§ MR. DILLON (Mayo, E.)said, he wished to have some explanation of the causes of these excesses. He understood that the Committee were to have full explanation accompanying the Supplementary Estimates, and it might be supposed that this would include particulars as to the nature of these excesses. But he had looked through the Estimates and vainly tried to find it. One or two items were mentioned, but then came the gross sum. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury could give some explanation?
§ THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. JACKSON) (Leeds, N.)said, the excesses did not arise out of the accounts of the current year, but from the year 1886–7. They were before the Public Accounts Committee yesterday, and thoroughly investigated by that Committee before being submitted to the House.
§ MR. ARTHUR O'CONNOR (Donegal, E.)said, there was one question arose on the item that caused most of the excess. It was connected with the bankruptcy business of the County Courts. It was perfectly true that this matter came before the Public Accounts Committee yesterday; but that Committee elicited the fact that neither the County Court authorities, nor apparently the Board of Trade, had any information as to the amount of Revenue derived from the bankruptcy business in County Courts. Now, as under the Act of 1883 a considerable amount of bankruptcy business was thrown on the Courts, it was perfectly clear that without that information it was impossible for the House, which was supposed to be informed as to the way in which the Act was working, to know what was the actual amount of Revenue derived from stamps in connection with bankruptcy business. Estimates were laid before the House every year, and an elaborate account of how the Act worked; but there was excluded from that statement everything connected with the business of bankruptcy in County Courts, and it was, therefore, impossible for the House to form a judgment. The Government, at any rate, ought to be in possession of this information; but the Committee were assured yesterday this was not so. He would ask whether it would be possible to obtain this?
§ MR. JACKSONsaid, he would do that. It had not been done, but he would get the information.
§ MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORWhen?
§ MR. JACKSONAt once. As soon as it is possible.
§ Vote agreed to.
§ Resolutions to be reported To-morrow.
§ Committee to sit again To-morrow.