SECOND READING.

HC Deb 21 March 1888 vol 323 cc1873-956

Order for Second Reading read.

MR. PARNELL (Cork)

, in rising to move, that the Bill be now read a second time, said: In doing so it will be unnecessary for me to occupy the time of the House at any great length with the introduction of this matter, because in the discussions which we have had previously during this and other Sessions upon this most important and vital question we have been gradually narrowing the area of the dispute and reducing the proposals to one or two definite points of distinction or difference. We have now before us practically two methods of dealing with this question. We have the method proposed by the hon. and learned Member for Inverness (Mr. Finlay) last Session during the discussions upon the Land Law (Ireland) Amendment Bill, and the position taken up by the hon. Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell) and reduced by him to the shape of a Bill this Session, and also taken up by myself and proposed in the Bill which I now ask the House to road a second time. We also have the method proposed by the Government last Session—rejected by us last Session for reasons then given, and which I shall repeat again now in detail—a method which is foreshadowed by an Amendment placed, I believe, on the Paper at short Notice.—the Amendment by the hon. Member for South Birmingham (Mr. Powell-Williams), who proposes as a solution for this question the general bankruptcy of the Irish tenants. Nothing that has happened since last Session has induced us to alter our minds in the slightest respect with regard to this bankruptcy proposal. It was one, however, which we fully considered then—which we anxiously and earnestly considered with every desire to meet the views of the Government, and which, after full consideration, we rejected as impossible and most inequitable, and likely to lead to the most disastrous consequences. What, then, remained? There remained the proposal which I shall submit in the Bill, which is the proposal of the hon. and learned Member for Inverness and of the hon. Member for South Tyrone; and there also remained what I may call the Scotch precedent—that is, that we should depart from the foundation laid in the Act of last Session and adopt an entirely different manner in dealing with arrears—namely, to give the Land Commission power to deal with those arrears, as was done in the case of the Scottish crofters. I rejected that proposal, because I desired above all things that the proposal which I was to submit to the House should be a moderate one, and that there should be no excuse whatever for its rejection. I should have preferred, undoubtedly, the Scotch proposal. There are questions connected with the constitution of the County Courts in Ireland, and especially with the constitution of some of them, which render it impossible for us to look with much hope to the action of some of those tribunals in regard to this question; but taking them as a whole, I came to the conclusion that it would be right for me not to depart from the foundation which was laid for us by the Act of last Session in the 30th section of the Act, that it would be better for us to build upon that foundation rather than to lay down one entirely new, so that we should have a better chance of inducing the House of Commons to accede to an addition to the 30th section of the Act of last year, an addition which was then urged by the hon. and learned Member for Inverness, and an addition which we hope, taking it as a whole, will afford practical and very large relief to the majority of the Irish tenants as regards this question of arrears. I have taken this 30th section as a foundation, and I have built upon it the structure of the Bill, which I want the House to give a favourable hearing to. The 30th section of the Act of last Session provided, as the House remembers, that the Courts in which the proceedings against tenants were taken for non-payment of rent and also for any debts should have the power, within the limitation of £50 valuation, to postpone the execution of the decree if cause were shown, and also to spread the debt over such period as they thought proper by instalments. I ask the House to go a step further, and to give the Court the additional power of reducing these debts in the case of rout, of reducing the cost in such proportion as they may think proper. The Act of last Session, in its 30th section, was confined, as I have said, to £50 valuation. I ask the House to extend that limit from £50 to £100, in order to meet the cases of leaseholders who are entirely shut cut from the equitable provisions of that section—or at least very largely shut out—owing to that limitation, the great majority of leaseholders having a valuation of over £50. I also ask for an extension in the provisions in the 30th section to the case of civil bills for the recovery of rent, Section 30 being limited as regards rent to cases of ejectment, the power of spreading instalments over a certain period being limited to cases of ejectment. I have introduced a limitation into my Bill which does not exist in the Act of last Session. I have limited the effect of my Bill to cases of rent; but I am willing—if it should seem proper to the House, and in view of those who support the Amendment which has been placed upon the Paper by the hon. Member for South Birmingham—to meet that Amendment, so far as I reasonably can, to forego that limitation, and to extend my Bill, if it reaches Committee, to all cases which are covered by Section 30 of the Act of last year. There are some supplementary provisions of minor importance in this Bill. There is the provision for the extension of time for redemption within three months after the passing of the Act, in case the six months period of redemption allowed by the Act of last Session shall have expired before its passing. This, I think, is a reasonable provision. It is not one of very great magnitude, nor of extensive application, but it is one which, if the other portions of my Bill commend themselves to the House, will undoubtedly be thought satisfactory, because it provides that the tenant whose period of redemption has expired—owing to the operation of the 7th section of the Act of last Session—shall have the advantages offered by the provisions of this Bill. Then it also gives power to the Court where a judgment or decree has been recovered prior to the passing of the Act to reduce the amount of arrears and costs—that is to say, allowing the Court on this question of arrears to go back on its judgment, and. bring it into accordance with the principle of the Bill. These are the main provisions of this Bill; in effect, the entire provisions. It is one which I recommend to the House on account of the present situation in Ireland. We know not what that situation, may be. We are now at the end of the term of respite afforded by the operation of the 7th section of the Act of 1887. That 7th section provided the substitution of notice of eviction for the actual carrying out of the eviction of the tenants. It provided that no ejectment should be actually carried out for a period of six months. It, therefore, afforded a temporary respite from actual ejectment to the Irish tenants. That temporary respite for the Irish tenant is exemplified by the fact that, whereas in the quarter ending September, 1887, the number of evictions was 4,195; in the quarter ending December, 1887, when this 7th section had come into operation, the number of evictions was only 550, or, roughly speaking, a proportion of one in eight of what they had been in the previous quarter These evictions, the House will bear in mind, have not been stopped or prevented. They have only been postponed or suspended, and looking at another Return I find that in the same quarter, the quarter ending December 31st, 1887, when the evictions were reduced by the operation of the 7th section to 550 from 4,195 in the preceding quarter, the alarming number of 3,352 notices of eviction were served. I ask the House to consider what is to become of those 3,352 notices of eviction, served, mind you, up to the end of last year? We have no information, no Return as to the number of eviction notices which have been served since; but we may assume that they amount, at least, to another 3,000. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour) has any information in his possession with regard to this matter; but I think if he had the information in his possession it should have been laid upon the Table of the House before the second reading of the Bill. I will assume, in the absence of any contradiction by the right hon. Gentleman, by analogy with the result of the working of Section 7 of the Act during the quarter ending last year, that there have been up to date upwards of 5,000 or 6,000 notices of eviction served under the operation of that section. This is a very alarming prospect, and I ask the House to consider what is likely to result when these notices of eviction come to be put in force. You have had a respite from agrarian agitation and trouble in Ireland during the winter, largely owing to the effects of that section; but I Say it again to the House that it is only a respite, and that, failing some extension of the provision of the 30th Section of the Act of last year, you are bound to be plunged into a sea of trouble and confusion and disaster in Ireland, the results of which no man can foresee. What is the remedy proposed by the Government? There have been rumours that they are going to adopt the Amendment of the hon. Member for South Birmingham (Mr. Powell-Williams). This Amendment—which has been placed upon the Paper at the last moment—it is rumoured is to be adopted by the Government as the plank upon which they may sit to ride over this stormy sea in Ireland. Well, Sir, I think if any action was to be taken, it should have been taken by the Government in the form of a Bill, and not in the form of an Amendment to the second reading of a Bill, the only result of which, if successful, will be to throw out the only proposal in the shape of a Bill the House has before it. This is a pressing question, and it needs immediate action. The greatest trouble in connection with all your attempts to deal with this Land Question has been that you have always been too late—sometimes by 10 years, sometimes by two years, and sometimes by one year. In 1885 I asked the House to abate judicial rents, and the House refused. But a year later, the House, on the proposal of the Government, abated those rents; but they were too late, for meanwhile this load of arrears had accumulated—arrears that by your Act of abatement you admitted to be excessive. We are told that we must deal with the question of the abatement of rents or arrears of rents to the landlords on the same footing as with the other debts due by the tenants, but the question of rent by your own legislation, repeated over and over again, has been placed upon an entirely different footing. Since the Devon Commission sat 30 or 40 years ago the House has been engaged in constant attempts to fetter the action of the Irish landlords against their tenants. But has the House ever found it necessary to fetter the action of any other creditors besides the landlords? The necessity has not been urged, it has not been maintained, much less has it been proved. The necessity with regard to the landlords has been shown to exist in every year by numerous Acts of Parliament and by the impossibility of maintaining any sort of settled government in Ireland owing to the way in which the landlords had exercised their rights over their tenants. Now, Sir, it is absurd, it is monstrous, to attempt to set up an analogy between the two classes of the tenants' creditors. The analogy does not exist. In the first place, it has never been proved that the debts due by the tenants to the shopkeepers are excessive. It has been proved in the case of the rents by the action of the Legislature. In the second place, it is evident that this class of creditors—the shopkeepers—have not been pressing for a settlement. It is not alleged that any difficulty exists between the tenants and the shopkeepers; that any large processes have been served; and I believe in no case, or in very few cases, have the tenants lost their interest in their holdings and the shelter of their rooftrees owing to the action of this class of creditors. Nay, more than this; if you adopt the suggestion made by the Government of last Session, and new fathered by the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham—if you adopt that suggestion, when the next period of scarcity comes on the West of Ireland, the result will be the absolute starvation of thousands of people. At present, on the recurrence of those periods of scarcity, the only barrier between the small holders in the West of Ireland and actual starvation is the forbearance of the shopkeepers—those men against whom you are now invited to take penal action, and who are absolutely the only people who support these poor peasants in those seasons of scarcity. They give them credit—they give them food, in their sore need, on credit; but if you plunge the whole country into bankruptcy, you destroy this assistance and the credit of those poor people. Now, Sir, I think I have said enough prior to the moving of the Amendment of the hon. Member for South Birmingham on this question of the bankruptcy proposal. Speaking for myself personally, I earnestly wish that it had been possible to have adopted such a proposal; but I long since came to the deliberate conclusion that it would be most unjust to the shopkeepers, that it would ruin the credit of the tenant farmers themselves, and it would tend to the destruction by famine—on occasions of periodical scarcity—of many thousand of small occupiers. I greatly regret that under these circumstances it is impossible for us to meet such a proposal with anything but the most absolute hostility. I now ask the House, are you going again to fly in the face of the advice which is given you by every popular Representative in Ireland—from the hon. Member for South Tyrone and the hon. Member for South Berry (Mr. T. W. Russell and Mr. Lea) the representatives of the Presbyterians of the North of Ireland, to the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon), who represents a larger constituency, in addition to that part of the county he represents here? Well, Sir, if you do so, upon your own heads be the result. I have endeavoured to draw this Bill as moderately as it is possible to draw it. If you will point out any checks or any precautions that can be put into it in addition to those already existing, any limitations, any reasonable limitations, I shall—should the Bill reach Committee—be only too glad to consider them, and if they do not affect the main purpose of the Bill, to adopt them. If you say that there ought to be limitations as regards the duration of this Bill, I will agree to them. I think the limitation of two years would be a reasonable one, and I should be happy to adopt such a suggestion in Committee if the Bill reached that stage; but unless you are prepared yourselves to afford some effectual solution to this question, I should ask you to pause before you shut the door in the face of these unfortunate people. The Land Question is a good illustration, a very good illustration for us, and such action—if hostile action is taken against this Bill to-day—is the best argument we could have in England, in Ireland, everywhere, in favour of the restoration of a Parliament for Ireland. It is an excellent illustration of the impossibility of governing Ireland from Westminster by the votes of English Members, under the direction of English public opinion. Your muddling and messing with this Land Question is the best illustration we could have. You say "the Irish Land Question is the whole of the Irish Question," but if you think so, why do not you take it up? Why do not you take it hand earnestly and conclude the question? You say to us, "But you are always bringing forward the Land Question. Why do not you move an abstract resolution in favour of Home Rule?" Well, Sir, I used to see the fate of such abstract resolutions in favour of Home Rule 10 or 12 years ago, when those annual Motions were moved by the late Mr. Isaac Butt, and when the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Thanet Division of Kent (Colonel King-Harman) used to second them, and I prefer practical illustrations and examples. But at the same time I should feel very glad if the great Unionist Party would deprive me of those practical illustrations, and I invite them to do so. How is it you cannot settle the Irish Land Question? In the first place you know nothing at all about it. You go to Birmingham for your guides and preceptors, instead of to Cork or to Tyrone. It is evident from the attitude of the hon. Members I have referred to that they detect danger to the Union perhaps in this proposal, but I think that point has not yet been raised against the necessity of dealing in an effective way with the settlement of the arrears question. But if there be no danger to the Union, of what is it that you are afraid? I invite the House to cast away this fear, and to weigh this Bill, and to deal candidly with this branch of the subject for once in their life, and I assure them that they will be amply repaid by the result. But I cannot promise them that the claim they demand of Ireland for self-government will be lessened in its intensity. It may be easier for you under such circumstances, with this agrarian question settled, to perform the first duties of Government, but it will never be possible for you, no matter how much you settle the Irish Land Question, to govern Ireland with the consent of the people. You will always have her people arrayed in hostility against any attempt to deprive her in perpetuity of those rights which were given to her in 1782; and I believe that if to-morrow the Irish Land Question were settled upon the most absolutely fair basis, that it would in no respect diminish the strength of our claim for the restitution of our Irish Parliament. I am therefore not afraid of seeing full justice done to Ireland in Westminster. I invite you by all means to try it, and you will find that neither I nor any of my hon. Friends by word, deed, or action will interfere to prevent your trials from having their fullest, freest, and their best effect. In conclusion, Sir, I have to recommend this Bill to the House on the ground of its moderation, on the ground of the urgent necessity of the case—an urgency which I very much fear the next few weeks, certainly the nest few months, will amply disclose—and also finally, upon the ground of the absence of the slightest effort to offer any other tangible solution which the Irish people, and the great majority of their Representatives, can possibly accept. I beg to move the second reading of the Bill.

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

MR. POWELL-WILLIAMS (Birmingham, S.)

, in rising to move as an Amendment the omission of all the words after the word "That," in order to add— No Bill providing for a composition of arrears of rent in Ireland will be satisfactory to this House, and effectual for the relief of the tenants, which does not, at the same time deal with their debts to other creditors besides the landlords, said, that the question, as the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) had shown, although a very important one, was comprised in very narrow limits, and could be concisely dealt with. With what object had the hon. Member for Cork introduced the Bill? It was obvious from his speech, and from other considerations, that it was in order to keep the tenant upon his holding and prevent him, if possible, from being excluded from it. If that were the object of the hon. Member, then in his judgment the measure absolutely failed to effect the object the hon. Member had in view. It was for that reason that he (Mr. Powell- Williams) had placed his Amendment upon the Paper. The hon. Member for Cork, in the course of his address, offered to make the same concession that he had offered to make on a previous occasion, but it was a concession which did not appear to him to be satisfactory. The concession was that, whereas the landlord was compulsorily brought into the Court in order that a settlement of his debt might be effected, no other creditors of the tenant should be compulsorily brought in. [Cries of" No ! "] That was, as he understood it, the legal effect of the concession offered by the hon. Member, and would be the effect of the alteration the hon. Member proposed in the clause. Now, he thought that if one creditor was compelled to come into Court the other creditors should also be compelled to come into Court. It was clear that unless compulsion was put upon all classes of creditors, some would never come into Court so long as they saw security for their debts increasing day by day. He supposed they might take it for granted that everything which the tenant possessed—his tenant right, his stock, and the implements with which he carried on his farm, were ultimately accountable for his debts, assuming that there were no other means of discharging them. If that were so, what was the use of relieving the tenant from the danger which threatened him from the landlord if he were left entirely open to the danger which threatened him from the gombeen man and the money-lender? [Cries of" Oh !"] Of course hon. Members from Ireland would not agree with what he was saying. It had been intimated by the hon. Member for Cork that the debts of the tenants were of two descriptions—that there were just debts and that there were unjust debts. Assuming that that was so—that one-half of the responsibility was just, and that the other was unjust—he would ask the House what earthly difference it made if they wished to protect the tenant upon his holding? A just debt was just as good as an unjust debt if they simply wanted to make use of it for the purpose of selling up the tenant. They were both debts; both entailed the consequences of debts, and if the law allowed their collection, the question whether they were just or unjust did not come in. They might relieve the tenant from the unjust part and still prevent him from being able to retain his holding and discharge the obligations he had contracted because of the just part which they did not propose to touch. He maintained that if Parliament interfered at all in the matter, and he was free to confess that he thought it ought to interfere—if it interfered at all it should do so effectually and in a manner to secure the tenant from every danger from whatever quarter it was threatened. After all, this line between a just and unjust debt was possibly an imaginary one. At any rate he felt indisposed to draw it too sharply. It had been said that the landlord had had an unjust share of the profits in his dealings with the Irish tenants, and that, therefore, a large portion of the arrears that had accumulated were arrears for which the tenants were not morally responsible. Had the money-lender in Ireland and the gombeen man had no unjust proportion of the profits in. their dealings with the Irish tenants? All he had to say about that matter was this—if the money-lenders of Ireland were not accustomed to take an unjust share of the profits upon their transactions, then Ireland was a paradise which the impecunious Englishman had not hitherto had revealed to him. He maintained, therefore, that the effect of the Bill would be unjust. It would tend in one direction to relieve an unjust debt, while it would have the effect of making an unjust debt in another direction more secure. If that were so, he put it to the House, whether a Bill as it was drawn by the hon. Member for the City of Cork was not a Bill that would operate quite as much for the benefit of the gombeen man and the money-lender as it would for the relief of the debtor. It was said that the Irish tenant was deterred from going into Court and from having his just rent fixed in consequence of the danger hanging over him from undischarged arrears of rent, and that, therefore, he was obliged to go on paying an unjust debt for an indefinite period, or, at any rate, was obliged to incur an unjust responsibility, because he (Mr. Powell-Williams) took it that, as things went now, the tenant did not actually pay. If the tenant went into Court and got his rent abated and went on with his tenancy under new and favourable conditions, what advantage would it really be to him if he were liable to be sold up by some creditor other than the landlord? That was a strong point in favour of legislation of some kind, but not in favour of this Bill. When the obligation and the sacredness of contract came again to be asserted in Ireland, no earthly power could prevent a man who had a legal debt from coming into Court and pressing it against a debtor, notwithstanding the fact that the result of doing so would be that the debtor would be sold up and turned out of his holding. The Bill, therefore, as it stood, would only, after all, partly relieve the tenant from his debts, and would simply be an incomplete relief to him. The only way in which he could be completely rescued from his embarrassments, and be on a solvent and solid footing, was to deal with all his debts alike. He had heard it stated and argued that a landlord ought not to object to have the rent abated, or the debt due to him entirely swept away, because it must be regarded as absolutely irrecoverable—that it was only represented by an entry in a book, and that after all it was nothing more or less than a bad debt. If that were the case, and he believed that was the view taken by hon. Members who represented Ireland, it was a strong argument in favour of his Amendment, because if the landlord's debt was absolutely irrecoverable, the debts of the gombeen man and of the money-lender were irrecoverable too, and if the one ought to be swept clean away, the other ought to be swept clean away also. The tenants knew this—at least many of them did—and there Were not wanting indications last year that not a few of them wore willing to accept the proposal of the Government, that the whole of the debts of the tenants should be dealt with alike, and be placed upon an equal footing. What was wanted was this—that when a fair rent had once been fixed, and when the tenant was upon his holding under new and more favourable conditions he should remain upon the holding, and that the relationship between him and the landlord should not be liable to any sudden disturbance. What was necessary was that the dangers which beset the tenant on his holding should be cleared away, and that he should be released from his position of indebtedness, notwithstanding that some part of that indebtedness might be just and another part unjust. Unless he were relieved from debts of every kind, there would be a millstone round his neck which would prevent him from cultivating his holding with profit to himself and with advantage to the landlord. It was with a view of placing the tenant in a more favourable position, and of making a clean sweep for him of all his responsibility, enabling him in future to fulfil the conditions of his tenancy, that he begged to move the Amendment of which he had given Notice.

VISCOUNT EBRINGTON (Devon, Tavistock)

said, he rose for the purpose of seconding the Amendment, and he did so because he thought that the proposals contained in the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) either went too far or not far enough. If it were designed only to make the 30th section of the Act of last year fulfil the intentions of Parliament, and do that which he believed every Member of that House thought it should do—namely, effectually prevent evictions taking place when the tenant's difficulties did not arise from his own conduct, act, or default—then, though he was sure the object would have the sympathy of all parts of the House, the Bill went very much too far. If, on the other hand, it was designed to set weak tenants en their legs, to restore to insolvent farmers the power of carrying on their business with advantage, both to themselves and to the community, then it did not go anything like far enough. The case for the Bill rested mainly, as he understood it, on the fact that a considerable number of ejectment notices had been taken out, or threatened on account of arrears of rent which either had been reduced, or would be reduced if the tenants could go into Court; and it was assumed, in the first place, that if the present rents were unfairly high for the times, the arrears were consequently unjust and unfair likewise; and, secondly, it was assumed also that the tenant's debt to his landlord stood on a different footing from any of his other obligations. Now, he submitted that it was entirely begging the question to take either of those propositions for granted. In the first place, the House would remember that an Arrears Act was passed in 1882, which whitewashed the great bulk of the tenants under £30 valuation in Ireland—more than two-thirds of the whole number—and gave them the chance of settling their arrears and getting a judicial rent fixed afterwards. Again, the fact that a farm was not worth a certain rent now was no proof whatever that it was not worth much more two or three years ago. There were hundreds of acres of wheat land in the East of England which were not worth 5s. an acre now, where they wore worth formerly 25s. per acre; nor was that fact a proof that 25s. was too high a rent then, or that the higher rent was not more easily paid then than the lower rent now. He would put another case. Even two years ago the price of corn was higher than at present, but if a man bought a truck-load of oats from a farmer two years ago and had not paid him until now, would he be justified in tendering him no more than the present price? If this was inequitable for one kind of merchandize, why should it be equitable for another commodity, especially when the price of that commodity had been in the great majority of cases fixed between the parties by the State. Again it was stated, and especially by his hon. Friend the Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell), that arrears oven of judicial rent stood on a different footing to other obligations, because the State had, for reasons which he did not question, interfered already between landlord and tenant; and his hon. Friend argued that though they might justly compel one creditor to accept a compromise, it was not fair to call on tradesmen who had supplied the necessaries of life to do the same, His hon. Friend accepted that representation of the arguments he used the other day, but it introduced a principle which was not recognized, except in the case of minors, by the law of this or any other country. If a man became bankrupt, the baker, the coal merchant, and the chemist, who had supplied bread, fuel, and medicine, had to take their chance and share alike with the publican and the tobacconist; and if this principle of his hon. Friend's was acted on in a practical way, he would like to know if he proposed to apply it only to the traders who had supplied some 4,000 or 5,000 Irish tenants with meal, and that too without inquiring whether the price of the meal was fair or exorbitant. He thought the poor of Dublin and London, not to mention other places, and the bakers and butchers who supplied them, would very soon demand that such privileges should not be restricted to so small a proportion of the population, but that they also should share in the advantages. He did not think the House was likely to adopt this principle; but, even if it did, he contended that there was no guarantee that it would give relief where it was needed. A man who had exhausted his credit and had no assets unencumbered but his labour and his tools, could not do justice to more than an acre or two of an agricultural holding. They might relieve him of one part of his liabilities, they might wipe off his debt to the landlord, but they would not do him much good, and he would be unable to carry on his business properly if he were still left deeply involved with other people. Yet that, unless the testimony of many witnesses was false, was the condition of very many of the Irish tenants in many parts of the country; and their indebtedness was not confined to those who had supplied them with the necessaries of life, but they were very much in the hands of money-lenders and banks, and had been so for years. He would, not detain the House too long with quotations, but he would read one or two which had a distinct bearing on the question. He found that Professor Baldwin, as long ago as 1880, told the Duke of Richmond's Commission that a very large section of the tenants throughout Ireland wore hopelessly bankrupt; that in many places they owed on an average from three to five years' rent to shopkeepers alone, the average of insolvents in small farm districts being as much as one in six. The Professor stated further that one bank in Mayo had lent £5,000 in £5 bills, and that the Cork butter merchants had lent out nearly £500,000 among the farmers of the adjacent districts, the interest never being less than 10 and sometimes as high as 25 per cent, and that he was sure that there were 100,000 tenants in all in Ireland who were nearly bankrupt. The banks in Kerry, he said, charged the small farmers 10 per cent; and he declared further, question 32,554— In one town a money-lender showed me his books, and by his own admission the interest he charged was 43½ per cent. He had two Bhops—whisky and grocery; the money-lender is generally a shopkeeper. He had over 100 Petty Sessions decrees for £1 19s. 11d. ready for execution. Another witness, the late Dr. Lyons, in the debate on the Arrears Bill in 1882, spoke of the indebtedness of the tenants above £30 as being immensely greater than that of the small ones. More recently, before Lord Cowper's Commission, evidence was given that showed no improvement. Mr. Tyrrel, Clerk of the Peace of the County of Armagh, stated that the county was covered with judgment mortgages. Mr. Wilson, Chairman of the Board of Guardians at Portadown, told the Commission that 75 per cent of the farmers were bankrupt; and Mr. Black, of Antrim, a farmer and linen-merchant, put the proportion of insolvents at one in eight, and handed in a letter containing these words— One money-lender told me lately he could give me a dozen farms he has on bonds. The hon. Member for Kilkenny (Mr. Marum) told the same Commission that the deposits in banks were more than covered by "floating paper," and that nothing could be more rotten than the financial position of the tenants at present.

MR. MARUM (Kilkenny, N.)

said, he had explained his reasons for arriving at that conclusion.

VISCOUNT EBRINGTON

said, that did not alter the fact; and, the hon. Member added, that this was only a sample, and the truth of that statement of the hon. Member's was confirmed by various witnesses from every part of the country. Some hon. Gentlemen might say that they might be interested witnesses, but he would ask the indulgence of the House while he read one more extract from the evidence of Mr. Tuke—a gentleman whose knowledge of the subject and whose disinterestedness were very well known. In examination before the Lords' Committee in 1882, Mr. Tuke gave this evidence, 7722— The shop-keepers, who are the guardians, are bitterly opposed to emigration—though a man worth only £10 or £15 may owe £40 of shop debts, and £30 or £40 rent. They say—'I can get a shilling out of him, and I would rather he should remain here in his poverty than go,' He was asked, Question 7788— Therefore any measure, I suppose, which only deals with one class of debts, and not with the other, would still leave the tenant with a heavy weight of debt around him, which he would no more be able to discharge than he would if it had not been touched? Mr. Tuke replied— Undoubtedly it would leave him with the shop debt, but my impression is that the trader, looking at this man as a continuous customer, will not come down on him, as was suggested the other night in the House of Commons, and at once sweep the district. His feeling is to keep these people, and get a few shillings out of them. And he went on to say, Questions 7794 and 7787— The shopkeeper simply hangs on, and does not press for a settlement, as in England. He says—'I shall get sixpence or a shilling out of this man, and I shall be able to sell him a bag of meal at double the price, and get some of the debt back in that way.' I believe that is the argument in their minds. What it wants is a simple insolvent debtors' court, in which rent and shop debts might all be brought in. He did not suppose that a shopkeeper's nature elsewhere was very different from what it was in Connemara, and he thought the last extract he had read from the evidence of Mr. Tuke threw a good deal of light on the long-suffering and patience and readiness to give time, and not to press for payment, which his hon. Friend the Member for South Tyrone said was the characteristic of the Irish shopkeeper; and it threw a good deal of light also on the willingness of some Irish Members to accept the principle of a simple and expeditious composition last year, provided always that it should not apply to creditors who did not appear in Court. He submitted that he had said enough to prove that the tenants' debts to their landlords were equalled, if not surpassed, by their debts to other people, and that no composition of arrears would by itself give effectual relief. At the same time he must admit that there was much, force in the objection raised last year by the hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. Dillon), when he pointed out that in the case of very small estates the cost of any proceedings would swallow up the whole of the assets. But what were they to do in such cases as those quoted by Mr. Tuke, when 25 families paying nominally £85 rent owed £333 arrears, and £381 shop debts. Therent only amounted to about 2d. a-day for each family, and no reduction of that would make the difference between prosperity and the reverse, and what would a man be profited when he had a millstone of other debts around his neck, even supposing the whole of his arrears was wiped off? Some hon. Gentlemen might retort that he, at any rate, ought not to object to such a course after saying at Devonshire House that the old arrears were worth nothing in cash to the landlords. He did say that, and he believed it to be true. The money that might have paid them was gone, and was irrecoverable; but he might have said also, and did say now, that the arrears generally would never have reached their present amount if there had been a little more common honesty in Ireland, and if the Plan of Campaign had not been condoned and defended by right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Opposition Bench. He could remember the right hon. Member for Derby (Sir William Harcourt) saying once that a landlord had as much right to a fair rent as to the coat on his back, and another right hon. Gentleman used very strong language about public plunder. Of course, he did not expect him to repeat that sort of thing now.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT (Derby)

I said a fair rent.

VISCOUNT EBRINGTON

said, he believed he had quoted the right hon. Gentleman correctly. He should like to know what the candid opinion of these right hon. Gentlemen was in regard to the Plan of Campaign? If any of them spoke in the course of the debate, he hoped they would kindly tell the House, as men who sought some day to be sitting opposite, whether they considered the Plan of Campaign honest or dishonest. It must be one or the other; it could not be both, and their candid opinion, if they were not afraid to give it, would be of interest both in this country and in Ireland, and would have great effect on the accumulation of arrears there at the present time. It appeared to him that if Parliament passed this Bill they would only be preparing the way for another Arrears Bill in the future. If the tenants in Ireland were taught that there was one class whom they might plunder with impunity, and that, too, with the half-disguised approval of right hon. Gentlemen sitting below—the Leaders of the Liberal Party—they would be great fools if they did not go on doing it. If there was only one section of the community—and that a small and unpopular one—interested in the honesty of the Irish tenants the temptation to dishonesty would be irresistible. He should think that even those who desired to establish Home Rule there would like a sounder foundation for it than that. But, however that might be, he wished to diminish those temptations, and to interest other people besides landlords in the honesty and solvency of the Irish tenants. He believed that this Bill would have just the contrary effect, and would only continue in precarious possession of their holdings men who, in their present condition of a general indebtedness, could not possibly do justice to them. He begged to second the Amendment.

Amendment proposed, To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "no Bill providing for a composition of arrears of rent in Ireland will be satisfactory to this House, and effectual for the relief of the tenants, which does not at the same time deal with their debts to other creditors besides the landlords."—(Mr. Powell Williams.)

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

MR. T. W. RUSSELL (Tyrone, S.)

said, that his opinions on the question of arrears of rent in Ireland were pretty well known, yet, inasmuch as he looked upon the situation as one of the gravest character, he hoped the House would allow him, as concisely as possible, to put those views fully before it that day. He was going, in the Division which was about to take place, to vote against the Government to which he had given all but a uniform support since he had entered the House. He was going to vote against his own Party, and he asked the House to believe that he would do neither the one nor the other unless under the sternest sense of duty. There were three objections which he thought might be fairly, and with great force, urged against any such proposal as that involved in the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell), and in the Bill which he had himself also introduced into the House. He thought it might reasonably be asked, in the minds of some people at all events, why should this Land Question be re-opened again? Why should they have a Bill at all—were they ever to see the end of this seemingly interminable question? Now, he said that, although he did not agree with that contention, he could well understand the feelings of those who urged it. Parliament had passed, he admitted, great measures for the Irish, tenant; but what he wished to urge was this—that Parliament never legislated for the Irish tenant until the year 1870; Parliament never touched the question in anything like a radical way until the people of this country, by the means of household suffrage in boroughs, got their hands on the machinery of that House. Before that date the Irish tenant had little or no protection in Ireland, and little or no representation in that House. The House of Commons was content to turn a deaf ear to Mr. Sharman Crawford and men like him; and the result of their perversity in the past was the state of Ireland to-day—a condition of affairs dangerous to the Empire and ruinous and hurtful to Ireland herself. No one was more ready than he to admit the value of what had been done in the past, and done in every case against the protest of the Irish landlords. He did not care whether it was the Act of 1870, the Act of 1881, the Act of 1882, or the Act of 1887; whenever men had stood up in that House to try and bring relief to the tenant farmers, they were met by an absolute non possumus from hon. Members on the other side of the House. He was prepared, as he had said, to admit the value of what had been done in the past—the great value of what had been done, he was prepared to go further, and say that if one or two small things were done—things which could not affect the landlords so much, but which meant much to the tenants—he, for one, would be prepared to consider the question as a closed book, and leave the rest to the solution of the purchase scheme which the Government had already foreshadowed. One of the small things to which he had attached vital importance was this very question of arrears. What was the situation? The question was raised last year, and here he asked the attention of the House and the attention of hon. Members who thought that the question ought not to have been raised at all, on the ground that they had had enough of land legislation. Now, what was the situation? The question raised last year was deemed to be of such urgency that lengthened debates took place upon it, and with the full approval of the Liberal Unionist Party the hon. and learned Member for Inverness (Mr. Finlay) placed on the Notice Paper of the House an Amendment to the Government Land Bill substantially the same as the Bill which he (Mr. T. W. Russell) had introduced, and covering the principle of the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork. The Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Inverness was not accepted by the Government, who favoured a modified form of bankruptcy proceeding, which the hon. Member for Cork could not accept, and this was a point which he wished to urge on the attention of the House. The question was admitted to be one of the utmost gravity and importance, and it was left unsettled because the Parties in the House could not agree upon it. But did that alter the gravity of the situation one iota? On the contrary, he thought it intensified it. It was unreasonable to say that, because last year they did not agree, and did nothing to settle the question, that this year they were to do nothing also. The Chairman of Committees, who did not often take part in the debates, thought the matter so urgent that he rose at the last moment and begged both sides to come to an agreement. The question, then, was urgent and absolutely imperious. He supported the 7th section of the Land Act of 1887, relying on the discretion of the Irish landlords, but he would not be caught trusting to it again. At least 5,000 notices had been served by registered letters under that section, and he held himself partly responsible for those registered letters. He was told that these notices would not all necessarily result in eviction. That was his case last year, and he believed it now; but even if they never resulted in eviction the tenants were absolutely at the mercy of the landlords, their rights and interests were destroyed, and their improvements confiscated. These notices had been falling with all the softness of an April shower over all Ireland during the last six months, and as surely as the House was now discussing this question they would blossom into a November hurricane, not only of evictions, but of ruin to tenants and landlords, to the peace of Ireland, and, as he held, to the union of the two countries. There was not a man in that House who did not know the effect of unjust evictions upon the English people. When the evictions were just, and had a moral basis to rest upon, he believed that the English people would insist that they should be carried out. But his conviction, was that scarcely one of those evictions which would be due in a week or two, or a month or two, at least, had any moral basis to rest upon. They were not founded on or buttressed by justice at all, but upon injustice. It was the picture of burning roofs and ruined roof-trees in Bodyke, and places like Bodyke, which had led to the returns of Northwich and Spalding and Coventry, and he said emphatically that he would be no party, for the sake of Irish landlords, to ruin the best interests of Ireland and the best interests of England as well. He was asked why this question was to be re-opened. It was on account of its urgency, because Parliament had left it unsettled, and because evictions on account of arrears were being carried out, and because bad landlords were using those arrears to keep the tenants out of the Land Court, where they would have a fair rent fixed. He would like to read a letter, not from a constituent of his own—the tenants he represented were not generally in arrear—but from a tenant in the county of Louth. He had been bullied by landlords during the last 10 days as no Member of that House had been for what he was about to do; but they might bully away. The letter was as follows:— I hope you will excuse my writing you to say that, unless you do something for us about arrears, we shall he ruined Hundreds of us were caretakers in November last under Section 7, because we dared to serve notice to them to have a fair rent paid in accordance with the Land Act of 1887, and we are certain to be evicted in April for one year's rent and the hanging gale, and our landlords keep us out of Court because we are unable to pay the terrible arrears of rack-rents. They object to us going into Court in cases where the rent is £3 10s and £4 10s. the Irish acre, double the Poor Law valuation, although we offered to pay the arrears at the rate of the new rent to be fixed, by borrowing money and getting a little more time. As we are loyal men, the banks would lend it to us if the fair rent were fixed: but we cannot get a fair rent fixed.

[Colonel SAUNDERSON (Armagh, N.)

Will the hon. Member give the name?] He thought that when hon. Gentlemen opposite were asked for names by hon. Members below the Gangway they had refused, and very properly refused, to give names. He refused to give the writer's name, because he was not going to put that tenant at the mercy of Irish landlords; but he would hand the letter to the hon. and gallant Gentleman if he chose to read it for himself. He believed this letter was a complete answer to the contention that this question ought not to be raised, and that the House should have some repose on the matter of Irish Land Law. Now, one objection was raised to the Bill by his hon. Friend the Member for South Birmingham (Mr. Powell-Williams), and the question asked was—"Why should not all debts be treated alike?" That seemed a very plausible objection, and one likely to commend itself on the first blush; but he thought it to be all the more dangerous because it was introduced into that House by hon. Members who, he believed in his heart, wished well to the tenant farmers in Ireland. He would ask the House seriously to look at the debt to the shopkeeper and contrast it with the debt to the landlord. Let the House take the case of a shopkeeper in the West of Ireland, where most of this trouble arose. In the West of Ireland want and distress were chronic. A shopkeeper supplied an Irish family with the necessaries of life—what did that mean? Indian meal and the barest subsistence. That was supplied; the debt was never questioned by the tenant; it was not pressed for; the shopkeeper was willing to wait and take his chance of good times and of getting his money as he could. He would admit that the shopkeeper, like any other man, would probably charge a higher price for goods sold under such circumstances, and he did not blame him for that, nor did he suppose that anyone in business would do so; but, as a matter of fact, the debt was neither questioned nor pressed, nor did it constitute a danger to the State or to Ireland. He would now take the debt of the landlord. He said that had been questioned; it had been questioned by that House and by the Courts set up by the authority of the House, who had not only questioned it, but reduced it and declared it to be unfair But that debt was pressed, for; it was insisted upon; it was sued for, and evictions took place upon that unjust debt. Now, in his opinion, there was no analogy between the debt of the shopkeeper and the debt of the landlord under these circumstances. That was his case. He saw no reason why a grocer should be cheated out of his just debts because they refused to pay the landlord his unjust debt. If hon. Members knew the state of the law in Ireland now, they would know what took place every day. A merchant sued for his overdue account; he got a decree at Quarter Sessions; he proceeded to levy, but he was not in the game position as the landlord. The moment he proceeded to levy, notice was served upon him under the 8th of Queen Anne, in whose days a tenant had not much chance, that unless he paid the arrears of rent due by the debtor he proceeded at his peril; he seized for an amount equal to one-half the rent due, but he must pay the landlord every penny of the year's rent. And yet, when the landlord had absolute priority now, he was to be told that the landlord and the shopkeeper ought to be on the same footing. He was about tired of the gombeen man. One would imagine that he had studied that question, but those wise men from Birmingham seemed to know more about the gombeen man than he did. The fact was that since the extension of the banking system in Ireland, as every man who knew anything about the country knew, the gombeen man had practically disappeared. Would anyone pay the gombeen man 20 per cent for money that he could get from a bank at 6 per cent? No. The farmer had his name now on half-a-dozen bills at the bankers, and, as he had said, the gombeen man had disappeared. All he had to say with regard to the Amendment was that he respected the source from which it proceeded; he was perfectly certain that his hon. Friend and those whom he represented were sincerely desirous of benefiting the tenants in Ireland; but he was certain that their plan would not work, and that it was incapable of being brought into operation in Ireland. He should vote for the second reading of the Bill, and he was not able then, nor would he be able at any future time, to give the slightest support to any proposition of the kind contained in the Amendment. It was objected to all such legislation as this that it was absolutely demoralizing to the tenants and to honest men who desired to pay their debts. He frankly admitted it; but it was absolutely impossible for any Gentleman who was going to vote for the Amendment to plead that excuse. But the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork limited the demoralization. It did not sweep away arrears at all; it simply gave a discretion to the County Court Judges, of whom he would say that they were not likely to do anything but absolute justice between landlord and tenant—it simply vested in the County Court Judge a discretion on a simple issue. But the Amendment of his hon. Friend widened the issue and emphasized the demoralization. It brought in all debts, whether sued for or not; and therefore the Amendment of his hon. Friend, as far as demoralization was concerned, was worse than the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork. Then, again, this charge of demoralization applied to the Bankruptcy Laws, almost all of which were designed for the protection of the unfortunate but honest trader, although it could not be denied that fraudulent debtors got through the Bankruptcy Court as well as unfortunate traders. He would now come to what the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork proposed. The principle and kernel of the Bill was this:—the hon. Member took the 30th section of the Land Act, which, gave the Judge of the County Court, when ejectment was sued for, the power to reduce the rent, and extended it so that the Court would have power also to reduce arrears. That was the sum and substance of the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork. He was told that the whole matter was amply provided for by the principle of giving to the Chairman of the Quarter Sessions power to extend the time for the payment of arrears. He was informed by a high legal authority that the decree of the County Court Judge only lasted 12 months, and that explained the reason why the Judges refused to extend the time for the payment of arrears for more than 12 months. The County Court Judge at Carlow was reported as saying that the County Court Judges had considered the question, and had come to the conclusion that when men were in a hopeless state of insolvency it was useless to give time; and in no case that he was aware of had they spread the arrears over a period of more than 12 months. He thought his right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) did not contemplate anything of the kind, because last year he made the statement that the discretion of the County Court Judges was absolutely unlimited. When the Land Act passed he had dreamed of a composition, and that was the reason why he acquiesced in the 30th section; but he had been bitterly disappointed. He thought that when the poor landlords came into Court with the poor tenants the County Court Judge, who had power to make a composition, would have been willing to do it. His case was that if the rent was unfair, and it had been declared to be unfair, the arrears could not possibly be fair. Almost all these arrears had accumulated in bad times, and he held that it was not an extravagant proposal to ask that the County Court Judge, who had power to deal with rent, should have power to deal with arrears also. It was clear that the landlords could not get all their rents and arrears, and he thought they were the most foolish of men when, having a bad debt on their books, they absolutely refused a good arrangement. His last point was that by their not dealing with arrears, tenants were absolutely deprived of the benefit of the very legislation that had been passed for their benefit. No doubt they were entitled to go into the Land Court, and get a fair rent fixed, whether they had arrears or not. But, as a matter of fact, they could not get into the Land Court. They were threatened and bullied by the agents, and the arrears were held over their heads as a whip when they tried to go there and get the benefit which the House designed for them. He wished now to make a very brief personal statement. Some of his friends had said that he had rushed and forced this question to the front. There was nothing more untrue. He asked the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether, in the speech he made on the Address, he did not beg and beseech the Government to deal with the question of arrears? The course he had taken on the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Central Bradford (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) was not due to any belief that there was no force in the Amendment. but to the fact that, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian had stated, an Amendment to the Address was practically a Vote of Censure on the Government. He was told that he was encouraging the National League and supporting the Plan of Campaign; but he did not think that many people could be got to believe that. He thought he was the last Member of the House against whom any such charge could be made. He had never given any encouragement to the National League, and he had fought against the Plan of Campaign much more than the landlords—they had only succumbed to it. He thought it was unworthy of Members of the House to condemn him for performing the duty which he believed to be solemnly laid upon him; and he said that not only with reference to Tyrone, because Tyrone was not affected by this question, for the tenant farmers there had not much arrears, but he could not forget that he was a Member of Parliament. He was told, also, that he was obstructing the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland in his work of pacification, and undoing the work of the Crimea Act. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman, when he came to speak, would be able to tell the landlords that he had defended him in his work a little more than they had done. They had only provided work for him. He had tried to help the right hon. Gentleman in what he knew to have been an arduous task. Whatever might be said, and by whomsoever it might be said, he was doing what he believed to be right by the people of Ireland. There might come a time—and he was not sure that he did not see signs of it—when there would be no room for men like himself in Irish politics, when the landlords would be left face to face with Irish Members below the Gangway, and when the loyal tenantry in Ulster, as they did in 1885, would stand sullenly by. That time might come, but so long as he stood there he should maintain that they had a right to be free from unjust debt, and that those who had a just claim on the tenants of Ireland ought not to be mixed up in this question. He should go into the Lobby with the hon. Member for Cork with a perfectly clear conscience, and he was glad to say that he should be accom- panied by his hon. Friend and Colleague the Member for South Londonderry (Mr. Lea). They would have the eight to-day, when they went to a Division, of every Member for Ireland, save and except the landlord party, walking into the Lobby with the hon. Member for Cork; and they would have the Radical and Liberal Unionists walking into the other Lobby to support the worst phase of Irish landlordism which had cursed Ireland since the days of the Tudors, and which would repeal the Union as sure as fate.

COLONEL SAUNDERSON (Armagh, N.)

said, the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. T. W. Russell) had informed the House that he foresaw the day when he would have to seek some other field of political activity in Ireland, and when he would no longer stand between the Party to which he (Colonel Saunderson) belonged and the Irish Members below the Gangway. He wished to state that he and his Colleagues had never required any buffer between them and the Irish Party opposite. He and his Friends held strong views against those of hon. Gentlemen opposite, and they were always ready to meet those Gentlemen face to face, and to ask the House and the country to give the decision on the result of their contention. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. T. W. Russell) gave the House, in the terms of a letter, which he (Colonel Saunderson) was surprised he had not verified, an instance of oppression which had evidently made a great impression on his mind, in which a landlord had behaved with great severity to his tenants in the matter of arrears. He did not give the name of any of the tenants, or of the estate, nor did he say whether he had made any personal inquiry as to the truth of the statements which had been made to him by letter. He (Colonel Saunderson) often received letters containing strong statements, but he never founded any argument upon them without first verifying their accuracy. From what he knew he was disposed to say it would be found on inquiry that there was very little foundation for the statements in the letter which the hon. Gentleman had quoted, in which case, of course, the arguments founded upon them would fall to pieces. The hon. Gentleman had candidly admitted that the Bill before the House would not find favour with the constituency he represented; therefore he must be exonerated from the suspicion of being actuated by interested motives in the course he had taken. The object of the Bill was the protection of tenants who, according to the hon. Gentleman, required protection in other parts of Ireland than Ulster. He (Colonel Saunderson) never knew that the Union depended on the tenant farmers in Cork, Kerry, and Munster. He believed that the Union would even survive the desertion, if such a thing took place, of the hon. Member himself. He believed that the Party of Law and Order outside Ulster—even in Munster—would stick by the Union, even if the House rejected this Arrears Bill. Therefore, he hoped the House would not take the sudden action now recommended by the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), and supported by the hon. Member for South Tyrone, in the belief that to reject it would endanger the Union and the consolidation of the Empire at large. Before passing such a Bill, the House would naturally ask whether it was likely to benefit the class in Ireland which was deserving of sympathy. Was there in Ireland a class which absolutely required the protection the Bill sought to afford? He maintained that the only class whom the Bill would benefit were those who did not deserve the sympathy of the House. It would assist a political Party which deserved no sympathy, and he denied that it would practically benefit any class. There was no doubt, then, what course he must pursue; but he would like to correct an error into which the hon. Member for South Tyrone had fallen. That hon. Gentleman undoubtedly did not like landlords; he had a prejudice against that excellent class to which he (Colonel Saunderson) had the honour to belong; and he informed the House that when any remedial measure was proposed in Parliament on behalf of the Irish tenants it was invariably opposed to the bitter end by the landlords. But that was quite a misconception. When the Land Bill of 1870 was introduced, he (Colonel Saunderson) happened to be a Member of that House, and he supported that Bill all through, and in that course he had the sympathy of a great number of Irish landlords. At that time the hon. Gentleman was not a Member of the House; he was engaged in a more temperate agitation than that in which he now found himself, and that must be the hon. Member's excuse for his ignorance in the matter. He (Colonel Saunderson) should, however, oppose this Bill once more, because he considered that the hon. Member for the City of Cork had not made out a case in its favour. The House would be probably agreed that a very strong case indeed ought to be made out to unsettle the legislation so recent on this subject as that of last year, and bring in a new system of adjusting rents in Ireland before it could accept such a proposal. Were they to have Land Bills for Ireland every year? Undoubtedly they were coming before the House with increasing frequency, and if they did not desire to establish the principle that land legislation should be brought in every year for Ireland it was the duty of the House to reject the Bill. He absolutely denied that the hon. Member for City of Cork had made out a case strong enough to justify the House in departing from the wise principle of refusing to re-open the legislation on the Land Question, which had been settled, and which had secured peace in Ireland. The hon. Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell) had spoken of 5,000 eviction notices dropping down upon Ireland; but surely the hon. Gentleman knew that the number of evictions pending was not indicated by the number of notices issued, and that it often required more than one notice before an eviction could be accomplished from a single holding. He (Colonel Saunderson) had known of a case in which 10 notices were issued to recover possession of one holding; therefore the large figures which had been given must be discounted largely to arrive at the number of evictions they represented. In order to induce the House to pass the Bill, the hon. Member for the City of Cork needed to clearly show that during the last four or five years rents had been too high, and could not be paid by the tenants; but he did not show that. The hon. Gentleman had no right to say that during the years 1883–5 judicial rents in Ireland were too high, and if a rent was not too high accumulation of arrears should not be allowed to take place. The right hon. Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) brought in an Arrears Bill in 1882 which practically whitewashed the Irish tenants who were insolvent up to November, 1881; therefore the exist-once of arrears was not the reason why the Irish tenants did not claim the protection of the Land Act. But a large number did claim that protection, and in a Return issued by the Land Commissioners he found the following facts:—In the year 1883 the average reductions of rent all over Ireland by the Commissioners was 19.5 per cent, from which it might be assumed that the rents then fixed were fair. In 1884 the average was only 18.7 percent, the value of land having apparently risen; no arrears, therefore, were justifiable in either of those years. In 1885 the average reduction was 18.1, showing, if anything, a still further slight increase in the value of land. It was not until 1886 that the great drop in the value of produce took place, and that drop was at once acknowledged by the Land Commission. So, in 1886, the percentage of reductions rose to 24.1; and in 1887 it further increased to 31.3, which was an advance of nearly 12 per cant upon the reduction in 1883. Those figures showed that during the years 1883, 1884, and 1885 there was no fall in the value of land, and that the rents fixed by the Land Commission wore almost the same until 1886. Where, then, was the right to have the arrears in respect of those years wiped out? The Bill of last year dealt with half the rents which accrued last year; therefore, only half the rents of 1887 remained to be dealt with under the arrangements of the Bill under discussion, if the House intended to deal with arrears on the principle of last year's Bill. But the reduction must be pari passû with the fall in prices. By how much, then, would they reduce the arrears? The principal object, he supposed, of the promoters of the Bill was to set the insolvent tenant on his legs again; but would the remission that it was proposed to allow have that effect? No; he ventured to say that the relief proposed by the Bill would be but a drop in an ocean. If the tenant was thoroughly insolvent—indebted not only to the landlord, but also to the shopkeepers—8, 9, or 10 per cent taken off the arrears of one or two years would have no effect at all in placing him in a satisfactory position to make his liveli- hood on the land. What, then, was the only remedy? The remedy applied equally to judicial and non-judicial tenants. Indeed, there was only one remedy, and that was free sale. When the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian, in his Irish Land Bill, gave the right of free sale to the tenants, he probably had in view the relief of the glut in the Irish land market. When a tenant found he could not carry on his agricultural operations any longer he availed himself of a right, conferred for the first time on tenants outside Ulster, of selling his farm to the highest bidder. But these farms did not find such a ready sale now as in former days; and it was a remarkable fact that the price of tenant right in the open market increased in proportion as rents were reduced; indeed, sometimes tenant right sold for more than the fee-simple would fetch. It appeared that if the House should affirm the principle of bringing in an Arrears Act every year, the price which tenant rights would sell for would soon be enormous. It might be asked why had not that right of free sale worked outside Ulster as well as it did within the Province, and why was it not looked upon as a greater blessing by the people? Because, outside Ulster, free sale was absolutely tabooed. In Ulster, where the exercise of the right was permitted, it had worked well. Taking next the case of non-judicial tenants, he found that, undoubtedly, a great number of tenants had not sought the protection of the Land Act. Now, what was the reason? In many cases the tenants had not applied, because their rents had seemed so reasonable that it could not be supposed that the Commissioners would alter them. But another reason was that the hon. Member for the City of Cork had told the tenants not to apply for reductions under the Act. The advice of the hon. Gentleman received a powerful sanction in Ireland from the organization of which he was the head. Indeed, it was for giving that advice, or, in other words, interfering with the beneficent intentions of the great act of justice to Ireland which the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian at that time looked upon as a final measure, that the hon. Gentleman was imprisoned under that right hon. Gentleman's Administration. The hon. Member for the City of Cork was put into Kilmainham Gaol for being reasonably suspected of inciting persons to intimidate others from paying rents lawfully due. In the opinion of the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian—of those days—the hon. Member, in inciting persons not to pay rents, was contravening the law of the land. So far, then, as the tenants holding non-judicial leases were concerned, this Bill would not help them, or would relieve them from a very small part of the incubus which pressed upon them, according to the hon. Member for South Tyrone and the hon. Member for the City of Cork. It would not have the effect anticipated by its promoters. But he (Colonel Saunderson) opposed the Bill upon higher grounds, but chiefly because it involved a principle absolutely fatal to the prosperity and hopes of Ireland. If this Bill was passed, on what principle would any Irish tenant hereafter pay any more rent? By agreeing to this measure they would establish the principle that if a tenant, whether judicial or non-judicial, only withheld his rent and refused to pay it, a Bill would be brought into Parliament to whitewash him, and clear off his debts. Such a principle must be fatal to the morality of the Irish people. The Irish tenant was a tolerably quick-witted man, who would listen to the voice of the charmer and say—"I will pay no more rent, or, at any rate, only a fractional part of what I owe." Then he would appeal to his friends in the House of Commons to bring in a Bill which, would free him from the debts which the law required him to pay. That would ultimately destroy the morality of the Irish people. Undoubtedly the Arrears Act of the right hon. Gentleman tided over a difficulty at the time; but everyone who knew Ireland in 1882 knew that it would have a permanently evil effect on the future of the country. The Bill before the House reechoed the same principle, which would run all along the legislation of the future if the House sanctioned a principle so absolutely unfair, pernicious, and unjust. But it would do more. By legislation such as was now proposed, they would burn into the Irish mind the lessons which had been so sedulously taught by Irish agitators. If Ireland was ever to become a happy and prosperous country, one lesson must be taught to the tenants and all other classes. [Mr. PARNELL: Landlords as well.] Yes; landlords as well, that the law of the land must be obeyed. But what was the teaching which the tenants were receiving at present? In December, 1886, the hon. and learned Member for North Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy) said, at a meeting of the National League— If they allowed themselves to be hunted out like vermin, rats, and dogs, they deserved the fate of rats and dogs; but, if they resisted, that which had happened before in Ireland would happen again—the law would be changed to suit them. Were they going to sanction that principle by passing this Bill? Then the hon. and learned Member said in January last year— I decline to obey the law. The law for England is made for the English people, and the law for Ireland must be made to suit the Irish people. It was strange that the hon. and learned Gentleman should refuse to obey the law, while he made his living by practising it. The question was, whether Ireland would in the future be a more happy and contented country if Parliament affirmed the principle that all Irishmen had to do was to resist the law; that, under certain conditions, they were not to pay rent; and that if they only refused to pay Bills would be brought into the House of Commons by aspiring politicians like the hon. Member for South Tyrone, which, would wipe away the debt which, up to the present time, the law of the land said they ought to pay? He hoped the House would hesitate before it passed such a measure as that. The argument in favour of the Bill was that the Irish tenant must be kept in Ireland, that he loved his native land, and that you must do all you could to keep him there; but what about the shopkeeper? Was he not as much an Irishman as the farmer? If this Bill was passed to help the tenant, why should not one be passed to help the shopkeeper, who might be insolvent, to get rid of his debts by mulcting the manufacturers who had supplied him with goods? In the transcendental sense the doctrine applied as much to the shopkeeper as to the tenant. The passing of measures of this kind demoralized all sections of the Irish people. There was a growing notion among the people that debts need not be paid, and that debts to shopkeepers had as little sacrednesss as debts to landlords. A case occurred the other day which showed the exact condition of demoralization into which the people of Ireland were rapidly falling with regard to the questions of right and wrong. The case was tried before Dr. Darley, Q.C., County Court Judge, at Carlow. The plaintiff, Mr. Daniel James, was an ex-constable, who was now a shopkeeper, and he sued a man named Kelly for £1 9s. 5d., the balance of a debt. The solicitor of the plaintiff wrote him a letter claiming the debt, and the defendant wrote on the back of it the following reply:— September 19, 1887. Dear Sir,—I am surprised at an intelligent man like you to imagine that I am such a d—d fool to give you or the ex-head money that I want a d—d sight worse than either you or he. You did well to charge 2s. 6d. for a penny stamp and drop of ink. I did not care if it wore £20, because I do not mean to give any money these hard times. If you imagine there are fools to be found in the latter end of the 19th century, you are greatly mistaken, Sir. Are you aware that if Mr. James were to allow me 50 per cent reduction for all the money I left in his shop he would be in my debt now? And do you not know that the Plan of Campaign is going in for more than 50 per cent for all kinds of debts, notwithstanding the imprisonment of William O'Brien and Balfour's Coercion Act? Have you the audacity to threaten people and the British Home Rule Union in Ireland at present? Unless you keep quiet I shall tell them about your conduct towards me, or I shall have it brought before the House. Ned Harrington would do it in a pair of minutes. Ned will be one of our Government in the old House in College Green ere long. The civilized world shall be informed of your conduct if you apply to me again. I am happy to know you or your client cannot get money from me that only law and not justice declares to be yours; and, thank God, the Irish and English democracies are now united for the first time under the Irish and English leaders, and such tyrants as you and James will have to conduct yourselves, or else leave the country. Should I receive any more annoyance from you I will acquaint my legal adviser. The Judge gave a decree for the plaintiff, and remarked that he supposed that this was an extension of the Plan of Campaign. The principle was now permeating the Irish people, and the spread of it must be checked. To adopt such a Bill as that would be to perpetuate the discords and outrageous principles which were the cause of the existing state of things in Ireland which were so much to be regretted. This Bill was not merely an Arrears Bill. He did not blame the hon. Member for the City of Cork for bringing it in; it was the least he could do, because the greater proportion of the arrears arose from the fact that the National League, of which he was a member or the head, had laid hold of the money, and so prevented the payment of rent. Hon. Members opposite could not contradict that—["Oh, oh !"]—they dared not do so. They knew very well that all over the South and West of Ireland, wherever the National League predominated, resolutions had been passed over and over again condemning those who had fulfilled up to now their legal obligations. The greater proportion of the arrears which the hon. Member for the City of Cork sought to wipe out were arrears of his own creation, and the non-payment of them was due to the action of the organization of which he was the head. The hon. Member, therefore, could do no less than attempt to whitewash men of debts so brought about. Some of them were owing by men who could pay and would not, and who had lodged their money under the Plan of Campaign, instead of paying it to the landlords. Were these the men who ought to be whitewashed by the House? He ventured to maintain that to adopt the principle of the Bill would simply be to place in the hands of the hon. Member and his organization a mighty lever with which to continue to stir up that discontent which gave life to agitation. For those reasons he hoped the House would reject the Bill. But he could not say that he liked the Amendment either. Last year he should have voted for the Bankruptcy Clauses of the Government. But he did not like the Amendment, because it left open the question of bringing in another Arrears Bill in the immediate future; and to be continually settling and unsettling this question would be detrimental to and destructive of the best interests of Ireland.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN (Birmingham, W.)

As I know the time of the House is very limited, I will put what I have to say into as brief and concise a form as I possibly can. At the outset let me observe that the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell), and the observations by which he introduced it to the House, are characteristic illustrations of Irish procedure in reference to this question. That procedure follows three distinct lines. In the first place, if I may venture, coming from where I do, to use an American expression, I would say that the Irish Members "catch on" to some admitted grievance. They get hold of something which every reasonable and fair-minded man will allow deserves a remedy, and upon that they found their subsequent action. In the second place, they proceed to exaggerate this grievance, to develop and to magnify it beyond anything which is reasonable or fair. And, in the third place, they produce as a remedy a measure which goes altegether far beyond either the grievance or the exaggeration of the grievance. The effect of this proceeding is to continue, and even to create and stimulate, that unrest and agitation in Ireland which it ought to be the object of every patriotic Irish Member to diminish and to do away with. This is undoubtedly the effect of the policy of hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway. What is the object of this Bill? It is somewhat difficult for us to speak of motives. I hope the House noted particularly the peroration of the hon. Member for Cork, and if they did they would find that the object of the Bill is much less the material advantage and the practical gain which it is to bring to the tenants of Ireland, and that it is rather brought forward as an illustration of the necessity and desirability of Home Rule. The hon. Member for Cork says we have to learn from this the absolute incapacity of the Parliament at Westminster to deal with the Irish Land Question; and I assume he infers from that the necessity of establishing a Parliament in Dublin in order to take up the business which we at Westminster are unable to accomplish. But the hon. Member for Cork seems to forget altogether that he and his Colleagues voted for a Bill which was brought in by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone), and which equally took from Irish Members the power of dealing with the land, and relegated it to this despised Parliament at Westminster, which the hon. Member for Cork declares to be totally incompetent to deal with the question. I pass on to speak of the divisions of this Irish policy. There is undoubtedly a grievance to be remedied, for the House has decided that by exceptional circumstances rents have become excessive in amount, and they have authorized Courts to deal with them by way of reduction. It appears to me to follow that any arrears which may have resulted from these rents must also be considered excessive, and ought also to be dealt with by the Courts. I think that was practically admitted by the Government in our debates last Session; and I have always held that, to that extent, the Land Act of 1887 was incomplete, and ought to be supplemented. In the second place, I think that the hon. Member for Cork exaggerates the extent and the effect of these grievances. He assumes, by calculations peculiar to himself, that there are something like 6,000 ejectment notices pending, which must and will end in the eviction of the tenants. We have grave reasons to doubt figures brought forward in this way by hon. Members below the Gangway. I remember that when the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) last year spoke of the number of ejectment notices then pending, he said that the notices which would be immediately substituted under the 7th section of the Act would affect 20,000 or 30,000 families. It has since turned out that only 3,000, at the outside, have at present been affected. The hon. Member for Cork will find, however, that the number of notices served since January are very few in comparison with anything he had stated. These notices are served in order to bring the tenants to book who refuse to make any agreement with their landlords; but there is no reason to assert that any large proportion of these will be carried so far as eviction. In the third place, I ask—whether the number be 6,000 or 3,000 notices—if any large proportion are due to excessive rent? Assume the case as the hon. Member puts it. Assume that the arrears are partly due to rents which have been held by the Courts to be too high. Those rents, on an average, have been hold to be too high to the extent of 14 or 15 per cent. It is possible to that extent the arrears may be excessive, and I say that they ought to be reduced. But is that the case of the hon. Member for Cork? Does the hon. Member contend that if they were reduced to that extent the tenants would be relieved to any appreciable extent, or that the evictions which he desires to prevent would be avoided? The Bill of the hon. Member goes altogether beyond any case he has made out. If his view is to be taken as a ground for legislation, that can be met by a Bill giving power to the Court when reducing the rent to reduce the arrears in the same proportion, which would be, at the outside, 14 or 15 per cent, leaving to the tenant all his involvements to other creditors as well as the landlord. It appears to me that the Bill of the hon. Member altogether exceeds any fair case that he has brought before the House. In the first place, there is no limit of time. I do not comment upon that at any length, because the hon. Member has said that he would be willing to accept a reasonable limit of two years. But why does he bring forward a Bill which is an exaggerated demand, and then, with an appearance of moderation, say that ha will be willing to reduce that demand very considerably hereafter? Then there are two other limitations to which I think he should agree as being just and necessary. There ought to be a limit to the amount of reduction, which ought not to exceed the proportion in which the rent is declared by the Court to be excessive. It is only with that part of the rent which is declared by the Court to be excessive with regard to which discretion ought to be given to the Court to deal. In the third place, there ought to be a limit as to the class of arrears to be dealt with. The hon. Member has argued as if the Court would only have to deal with unjust arrears arising out of unjust rents. But there may be arrears from other causes. There may be arrears from misfortune, such as murrain amongst his cattle. Suppose, owing to that or to some other accident, the tenant loses all the cattle he had accumulated, then, owing to no fault of his own, he gets into arrear. The Bill of the hon. Member would make the loss fall upon the landlord, although it could not be said that the rent was an unjust one. But it was unfair that the landlord alone should be called upon to bear all the misfortunes of the tenant. While the grievance is admitted, the only just remedy would be a Bill entitling the Court to reduce the arrears from 14 to 15 per cent, but that would be perfectly inadequate to meet the difficulty. The real difficulty in Ireland does not rest upon the fact that a certain portion of the rents de- manded during the last two years in Ireland have been excessive and unfair. That may be a grievance of the tenant with which we ought to deal, but the real difficulty is a different one. It is the complete insolvency and embarrassment of a large portion of the tenants, and unless you deal with that you do no good. If you took the whole rent away from the landlord the difficulty would remain, and in a great number of cases would not have the effect of continuing the tenancies. In addition to that, see what other objections there are to the proposal brought forward by the hon. Member for Cork. It would create throughout Ireland a sense of insecurity, for every tenant would be tempted to withhold his rent in order that the arrears might be dealt with before the Court, and he might have his chance of getting a reduction. What injustice, moreover, you would inflict on the honest tenant who pays his rent and struggles to fulfil his obligations, and who finds his dishonest neighbour who has refused to pay getting a reduction ! He would be taught a lesson which he could hardly fail to learn—that for the future it would be to his advantage to carry out the Plan of Campaign, of which, in effect, this Bill is only a clause and provision. The real difficulty is the hopeless insolvency of a considerable number of the tenants. How has that insolvency arisen? I am informed that before 1870 the tenants in Ireland had but very little credit with the shopkeeper, and hardly any with the money lender. Now, the shopkeeper is represented as a kind of beneficent agent—a sort of philanthropist, who, out of the pure goodness of his heart, steps in to the aid of the tenant, and who alone interposes between the tenant and famine. But before 1870, when the Irish tenants were in a much worse condition of famine than they have been since, they did not interpose. When in 1870 the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian passed his land legislation, he gave the tenants a security, and, the tenants possessing that security, the shopkeeper was at once induced to tempt the tenant to get into debt, not only in times of famine, but in times of prosperity. The money lenders also, since 1870, have lent the tenants money, and induced them to indulge in a kind of living they had never indulged in before, and which, in comparison with their former mode of life, is an extravagant one. That is the history of the indebtedness which has grown up since 1870, and involved so many poor tenants in inextricable embarrassment. Under these circumstances the Bill is no good. It is a mere tinkering of the question, which leaves the tenant burdened with all these debts, whilst, at the same time, it relieves him of a portion of his debt to the landlord. I am now coming into conflict with my hon. Friend the Member for South Tyrone. I have the greatest deference to his opinion, and I know him to be a great authority on all matters connected with the land in Ireland. I appreciate in all humility the humour of his sneer at the wise men from Birmingham, though I do not think it comes with a good grace from him when he was one of those who pressed one of these "wise men from Birmingham" to go down to his own constituency and address the tenant farmers upon this very question, including the question of arrears. With all deference to him, I may say that I do not agree with the distinction he endeavours to set up between the debt of the landlord and the debt of the shopkeeper. He says the debt of the landlord is an unfair debt. I dispute that. In many cases it is not an unfair debt. In cases where arrears are arrears of a fair rent it cannot be said to be an unfair debt. In any case the unfairness refers only to a portion of the debt due to the landlord, and as regards 85 per cent the debt of the landlord is as fair as that of the shopkeeper. Again I dispute the hon. Member's contention that the debt of the shopkeeper and the money lender is in all cases a fair debt. I say that where the shopkeeper and the money lender exact an unfair and usurious profit and interest the debt due to them is as unfair and inequitable as any debt due to the landlord. On these grounds I am prepared to treat both debts in the same way and by the same methods. I can go further, and say that without regard to the origin of the debt, and looking only to the relation between debtor and creditor, it is desirable to relieve the debtor from the inextricable embarrassment in which he is involved. But to relieve him of part of his liabilities is to do him no service, but to involve him in a certainty of greater troubles. On all these grounds I believe that in the interest of the landlord, in the interest of the tenant, in the interest of the shopkeeper, and for the peace of Ireland, it is desirable to relieve the tenant wholly and at once of all his embarrassments in cases where he is really unable to meet them. I may be told by the hon. Member for Cork and his Friends that this is a proposal to make the whole of Ireland bankrupt. It does nothing of the kind. Last year hon. Members wore offered this result without bankruptcy. [Mr. DILLON: NO.] I take no contradiction from the hon. Member on that point. I am speaking of what I know. I ask him to refer to the debates in Hansard, and the reports of his own speech on the subject, and he will find that he was offered by the Government, at my suggestion, the proposal that, without going into bankruptcy, the tenant who claimed relief from his embarrassments might be called upon to give a list of his liabilities and be relieved of the whole of them by a composition or payment by instalments—[Mr. CHANCE: That is bankruptcy.]—or by such other measures as to the Court might seem just. That was the proposal made, and rejected by hon. Members below the Gangway. The hon. Member who says it is bankruptcy is a lawyer and knows it is not bankruptcy. I may be entirely ignorant and unwise as regards Irish land, but I might be expected to know something about bankruptcy; and this is nothing of the sort. That the tenant in this case is insolvent is a fact that nothing can prevent being true, whether you relieve him or not; but the proposal of the Government which I supported was a proposal to relieve him without the odium, without the stigma, without the costs, without the disqualifications which attach to bankruptcy. Does not the hon. Member know that every proposal for bankruptcy must involve a cessio bonorum, and that here there was to be none? The Court was to have the power to deal with him, having regard to equity and justice, and without regard to the fact that it left in his hands the principal asset he possessed—the goodwill of his farm. It is not a system of bankruptcy. It is a system of tenant relief, and the only one, in my opinion, that will settle this question. We are told that the landlord is in a different position to the other creditors, because he presses for his debt and they do not. The hon. Member for South Tyrone omitted to state that the credit given by the shopkeeper is voluntary and can be stopped, whereas the credit given by the landlord is compulsory, and can only be brought to an end by evicting the tenant. In that case the position of the landlord is much harder than that of the shopkeeper, and it is much more unreasonable that he should be called upon to bear the whole burden of the tenant's insolvency. We are told that the shopkeeper does not press for his debt. Of course he does not, so long as he has good security, which is being increased at the expense of the landlord. He will wait until the landlord's interest in the holding has been altogether whittled away, and when the whole interest has passed into the hands of the tenant then we shall hear of ejectment of tenants at the instance of the money lender and the shopkeeper. On these grounds I would, urge hon. Members below the Gangway to reconsider their decision. The hon. Member for Cork says that if the Government accepted this view it was their duty to bring in a Bill. I do not agree with him. Her Majesty's Government have said that, so far as they are concerned, and so far as their power goes, this shall be an English and a Scottish Session, and not an Irish Session in the sense in which we have had it before, when the whole time of the House has been devoted to Ireland. I think, therefore, that the Government would be inconsistent if they were to bring in a Bill in view of the statement of the hon. Member for Cork that he would meet it with unrelenting hostility. Under these circumstances, there would be little chance for the progress of any English or Scottish legislation. If hon. Members from Ireland will reconsider their position, and once and for all agree that they will not continually throw their shield over the usurer, the money lender, and the publican—the classes, no doubt, from whom they receive their largest support—but take a patriotic course, and promise support to the Government in bringing in a Bill founded on these lines, we might all unite in pressing the Government to bring in a measure; but if they will not do this or meet them the responsibility is theirs, and let the tenants of Ireland know that if they are not relieved—not only of their debts to their landlords, but all their other debts—the fault lies with the hon. Member for Cork.

MR. DILLON (Mayo, E.)

The right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken asked me to refer to the debates of last year on the important point he has raised, and said he would take no contradiction from the Member for East Mayo. [Mr. J. CHAMBERLAIN: On this point.] Yes; on this point; but he will take a contradiction based upon the reports he has referred to. I think I shall be able to convince the House in the course of five minutes that I am right, and that the right hon. Gentleman will then be obliged to take a contradiction from the Member for East Mayo. What was the statement made by the right hon. Gentleman? That Her Majesty's Government had offered to us, at the close of last Session, a measure for dealing with the question of debts in Ireland, on the principle of treating all debts on the same basis, but without applying bankruptcy to the Irish tenants, and that we refused the offer. Now, according to the authorized report, in the course of that debate the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour) stood up and said that he understood that the Irish Members declined distinctly to accept— Any arrangement by which the debt of the ordinary creditor was to be put upon an equality with the debt of the landlord. The report went on as follows:— Mr. DILLON: Nothing of the sort. I distinctly said, and so did my hon. Friend the Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell), we made an offer—that is, a definite offer—by which the debts of all creditors should be treated on an equal footing. Then let the House listen to the answer of the Chief Secretary. The report went on thus— Mr. A. J. BALFOUR said, that, at all events, it would not be contested that in the meaning the Government had always attached to the phrase ' dealing with all creditors alike '—in the sense contemplated by Bankruptcy Law in this or any country in the world—neither hon. Gentlemen from Ireland nor the Leaders of the Gladstonian Party were prepared to accept the suggestion which the Government had made to the House."—(3 Hansard, [318] 1483.) Later on, I again rose, wishing to make the position absolutely distinct and clear, knowing of the custom of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. J. Chamberlain) not to. accept contradictions unless they are in printed matter and can be produced, and cannot be got over. I again rose in course of the debate, after the Chairman of Committees had intervened, and I said on behalf of the Irish Party— The other night the Chief Secretary made the following statement;—'The Government are prepared to consider any plan by which the creditors shall be placed on the same footing.' To this the hon. Member for Cork replied that he was prepared to accept the principle that every creditor should be placed on the same footing according as he pressed his claim; but he said that every creditor did not press his claim. The Irish Members were perfectly willing to go so far, because so far they saw their way; but as to the proposal suggested or outlined by the Government, all the fear of the Irish Members was that the creditors should be dragged in spite of themselves into a bankruptcy system which would he expensive and destructive to their interests, and which would do more evil than it could hope to cure."—(Ibid., 1487–8.) Now, has the right hon. Member for West Birmingham, I ask, given the House an honest or a truthful statement of what took place on that occasion, when I have proved to the satisfaction of every honourable man that the Irish Members have repeatedly offered to accept the principle of equal treatment of creditors, although that, I contend, is an iniquitous principle? We, however, saw that we were face to face with a powerful Government, who threatened to exterminate our people unless we consented to give way and accept this unjust principle; and I said that rather than see our people driven from their homes I would consent to the shopkeepers and bakers being defrauded of their just debts than risk such a result. The choice was a direful one, and of the two great evils I chose the lesser. Will the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham now accept my contradiction of the statement which he has so deliberately made, that the Irish Members absolutely refused to accept the offer to treat all debts on the same footing?

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN

There is absolutely no contradiction—[Cries of "Oh, oh!"]—no contradiction of anything I said in the extracts which have been read by the hon. Member. The Government proposed that all creditors should be treated alike and simultaneously, alike in point of time, as well as that they would be put upon equal terms. The hon. Member for the City of Cork and the hon. Member for East Mayo refused their proposal, and, in consequence, nothing whatever was done.

MR. DILLON

I repeat that the Chief Secretary for Ireland, on behalf of the Government, said the meaning which the Government always attached to the phrase "treating all creditors alike" was that all creditors should be placed on equal terms, and was in the sense contemplated by the Bankruptcy Laws; and I distinctly stated in my reply that if the Government—and I invited them to do it—sketched for us the means of dealing simultaneously and absolutely with the debts of all creditors without bankruptcy, we would be willing to consider it with a view to its acceptance. I will leave that matter now, but I cannot pass from the observation made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham on this question. The right hon. Gentleman has sustained, and thoroughly sustained, his long and well-earned reputation for turning somersaults in politics. He is sure to change his mind every two or three months about the schemes connected with everything he touches, proposing a new one at frequent intervals and changing the principles to be applied to them. What did he say on the 19th August last when dealing with this very question? I had proposed an Amendment to the Bill of the Government, which Amendment proposed to carry out precisely the proposition made by the hon. Member for the City of Cork, and the right hon. Gentleman rose in his place and said— I think the Government would do well to accept the Amendment proposed by the hon. Member for East Mayo, and to deal with the arrears of rent; thus protecting the tenants against unjust and improper action on the part of the landlords; but we have said distinctly that we are not prepared to do so, and therefore the House is bound to consider what alternative shall be adopted. I do not understand from the right hon. Gentleman's speech this day that he thinks the Government are wrong in their refusal last year. On the contrary, he rises to support the Amendment of his followers, that no Bill providing for a composition of arrears of rent will be satisfactory which does not at the same time deal with the tenants' debts to other creditors besides the land- lords. It is very remarkable that, with all his past experience and his former declarations as to the principles which should guide the Government, he now assumes that all the opinions of the Nationalist Party, with its 85 Representatives in this House, of the majority of the tenant farmers, and also the opinions of the Irish Unionist Party, who represent the remainder of the tenant farmers of Ireland, are to count as nothing in the balance on an Irish question of this kind as compared with the united views of the "wise men of Birmingham." The right hon. Gentleman h as laid down a perfectly novel principle—though it is not at all a surprising thing on his part—as regards the action of Courts of Law in respect to arrears of rent, should those powers be confided to them. Does the right hon. Gentleman entirely forget the case of the Scotch Crofter Commission which his Government took part in starting? Does he forget that the Scotch Crofter Commissioners have in many cases made reductions of 30, 40, and 60 per cent on the arrears, and in some instances wiped out many years' arrears altogether? The right hon. Gentleman has been in America for some months, and I suppose has been led to think and read as little about Ireland as possible; for he says the reductions of rents, according to which, in his opinion, the reduction of arrears should be made, have been lately only 14 or 15 percent. Why, has the right hon. Gentleman been sleeping for the last six months? What about the reductions in the cases of leaseholders, the class most affected by this Bill? Is he not perfectly aware that the reductions in the cases of leaseholders would be more accurately described by 40 than by 14 per cent? And one of the most crying and greatest grievances is that the leaseholders who are admitted at the present time by the Legislature to have been paying unjust rents, as admitted by all sides of the House, should now be exterminated for non-payment of arrears of rent, which have just recently been declared by the Courts to be 40, 50, aye, 60 per cent higher than the rents that should justly have been demanded of them. Yet we are told by the right hon. Gentleman, who is so thoroughly acquainted with the condition of Ireland, that he undertakes to lay down the law for Ireland over the heads of all her Representatives—we are told by him that it is not possible that real relief can be given to the tenant in this way, because he cannot get more than 14 or 15 per cent reduction. What answer did he attempt to make to the hon. Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell), when he pointed out that in the loyal Province of Ulster, where they have got no Plan of Campaign, the tenants are just now being rewarded, as we always told them they would be—they are being mulcted not only in unjust rents, but, by the hundred, in those fraudulent and monstrous arrears, and are denied the benefit of the provisions which this House attempted to bring to their relief by the threats of evicting landlords, and they are deprived, if they dare to attempt to gain access to the Courts, of the benefits of the legislation of last year by those very arrears of rent which have been declared unjust. When I was listening to the hon. Member for South Tyrone, and listening to the remarkable case which he cited to this House in support of the Bill, I could not help being struck by the appositeness of that as an illustration of the effect of the Amendment, if it were carried, which the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. J. Chamberlain) rose in his place to support. Here were 100 tenants who desired to go into the Courts to have their rents adjusted. They were immediately met by legal processes, and the tenancies were threatened to be broken; being loyal Ulster tenants, and not having at their back the Plan of Campaign, or any of those "wicked" contrivances by which we have managed to protect the tenants in the South to a certain extent, they then offered—and will anyone in this House stand up and say their offer was not an honest one?—they offered to go into the bank and to raise upon that credit which you are seeking to destroy the money to pay the landlord, which I venture to say no just Judge would call upon them to pay—namely, the arrears of the rent which they now sought to get reduced by the Court. That was their offer, and it was more than a just offer. No honest landlord in England would have hesitated for a second to accept it. If the principle of the Amendment were accepted, those tenants would have to be deprived of their rights as they are now; but they never could have made that offer, because what bank in Ireland would advance 1s. on the credit of a tenant if they know that at any moment this House may be got to cut down that tenant's debts on the avowed principle that no regard will be had to the justice or injustice of the debts; but that, forsooth, because the man had had the misfortune to live under a cruel and rack-renting landlord, he should be denied his rights, and that every single creditor shall suffer not for his sake, but for the sake of the landowner. I say it, with the most perfect confidence, that if the people of this country, who have been taught the value and traditions of commercial honesty, were aware to-morrow of the principle of the Amendment, the principle of the measure which the Government tried to shove through that House last year by threats and by coercion, and the principle which underlies this Amendment, they would rise up and denounce it. I take as a statement of that principle the most remarkable words used by the noble Marquess the Member for the Rossendale Division of Lancashire (the Marquess of Hartington) in summing up and concluding the debate on this question. He said— I do not think that the proposal was distinctly put by the hon. Member for East Mayo. I understood the hon. Member to say that he would propose to place the debts of the landlord and all other creditors on equal terms, and that only such debts should be dealt with as came into Court. The proposal I made was that as each creditor came into Court, the Court should have power to adjudicate on his debt, having regard to the justice of that individual case. But now listen to what the noble Marquess laid down as the proposal of the Government— What his right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham suggested was that if a tenant came into Court for a reduction, he should be compelled to make a return of his indebtedness generally, and that all his creditors should submit to an equal reduction. I venture to say that in the annals of civilized society such a proposal was never adopted. How would that work in Ireland? Take the case of a rack-rented estate where all the tenants were in arrear, you will always find, if you inquire in this matter, that the tenants go on paying as long as they are able to pay. ["No, no!"] Well, at all events, in loyal Ulster they go on paying the landlord as long as they are able. Suppose, now, the principle was adopted of reducing the debts without any regard to the honesty or dishonesty of the case, and I shall put now the case of a dishonest tenant. A man goes into the bank and gets a bill for £10 or £20 to pay something on account of his rent, knowing that he will never be able to repay it. He is then brought into Court by the landlord, and the Court decides on a reduction of 50 per cent on his debt, and no discretion being allowed to the Court, 50 per cent is knocked off the Bill of the bank though hard money was paid for it; and the trader who sold him manure, or who sold him food through the spring months, when the tenants of the West of Ireland are always half starving, must all suffer without any regard to the justice or injustice of the dealing with the landlord, simply because the landlord chances to be a rack-renter. I say a more grotesque proposition was never laid before Parliament; and if the people of this country could be got to understand what we were compelled to submit to last Session, they would condemn both the hon. Member for the City of Cork and myself for what we accepted. But we never had a free choice, and, for myself, I never hesitated for a moment as to our position on the matter, if we had a free choice. We were driven up into a corner, and bullied from one Court to the other, until we had to agree to a new policy. We were told that the operation of the Coercion Act would be laid to our charge if we did not yield to this dishonest arrangement. We are told that we are the champions of the shopkeepers in Ireland. We are the champions of honesty in Ireland. Those men cast their reproach to us across the floor of the House that we were encouraging the people of Ireland not to pay their just debts. But they knew that that reproach was unjustifiable. Also, when they said that the Irish people were unwilling to discharge their lawful obligations. I have never encouraged the people of Ireland not to pay their just debts. I have always said, and I defy the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh (Colonel Saunderson) to quote a single extract from a speech of mine made in England or Ireland, in which I did not advise the people to pay their just debts, and only to hesitate when they were dealing with debts which the wisdom of the Legislature has declared to be unjust debts. We are accused of being the champions of the gombeen man; but the gombeen man has ceased to exist in Ireland, except in the imagination of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. The gombeen man—the curse of Ireland—is now unknown, and the gombeen man has been swept out of existence by the agitation I and my friends have supported. ["No, no !"] Yes, he is. He perhaps lingers in loyal Ulster. If so, he is one of the blessed institutions which loyal Ulster is careful to preserve; but I can answer for Connaught and Minister, and I can tell you that the gombeen man has no power in those districts; he has, in fact, ceased to exist. Can the right hon. Gentleman or any hon. Member produce a petition from the people of Ireland to be preserved from the gombeen man? He will not give them anything in the shape of the assistance they need. Last year we were perfectly sound in the principle—when we did consent to this at all—in the principle which we laid down, that these debts should be treated only as they turned up. It has been one of the marked features of this debate that the interests of the Irish shopkeepers and of the Irish landlord are totally and absolutely different, that the justice of their demands are different, and so are also their proceedings. Why so? I will tell you why. The Irish shopkeeper has to live in Ireland among the people—the Irish shopkeeper cannot afford to do what the Irish landlord does. He does not depend for his existence on the 14,000 armed police which are employed in Ireland to preserve the landlord system. He depends for his existence upon the people of Ireland. The needs of the landlords of Ireland are totally different to those of the people of Ireland. When the times are bad, the shopkeeper has to suffer with his people, and he has got to wait, and very often to wait long, for his money. In the chief Southern Provinces of Ireland there are not any cases in which, the shopkeepers have put men out of their homes, unless in the most gross and outrageous cases of dishonesty and drunkenness—cases where every honest man would do the same—but I say that such cases as those in which shopkeepers have put pressure on the tenants, and harried them, and deprived them of the means of keeping their homes, can be counted upon the fingers, and are practically unknown. They cannot be pointed out. The truth is, that the relief coming from the Member for South Birmingham (Mr. Powell-Williams), which no one asks for, is a relief utterly at variance with every principle of civilized government and ordinary commerce that should prevail among people. The Representatives of Ireland are told that the House will not give the relief that they ask for to the Irish tenants, because they do not ask for relief against debts for necessaries or for money lent. In that I think the House is asked to consent to a most dangerous principle. If a Member representing some poor constituency in England or Scotland or Wales brings a Bill in to-morrow, declaring that every man who comes before the County Court Judge must get his debts cut down—

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN

That is the law.

MR. DILLON

It is not the law.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN

I beg the hon. Member's pardon. I ought to know, because it was I who introduced the clauses to which I am referring. There are clauses known as the County Court Clauses, under which a small debtor coming before a County Court Judge is required by the Court to give a schedule of all his debts to the Court, and the Court, in certain cases, may make an order for his relief by a composition payable at once or in instalments and without all the expensive proceedings which are necessary in ordinary cases of insolvency.

MR. DILLON

I do not pretend to be as learned in the Bankruptcy Law of. England as the right hon. Gentleman is, but I leave to hon. Members who have nothing more to do than the introduction of that law, and I doubt very much whether the application of the Bankruptcy Law of England would meet the Irish case—I am extremely doubtful of that—and if it does not there is absolutely no point whatever in the observation of the right hon. Gentleman. I am not ashamed to say that I am not thoroughly acquainted with, the English Bankruptcy Law; however, what I want now to direct the attention of the House to is this—the extraordinary character of the way in which the opposition to this Bill has been conducted. If the hon. Member for South Birmingham, who moved the Amendment, had adopted the tone of the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh, I could understand it, and if he had met this Bill by a direct negative, and said that no grievance existed, I could have understood that course; but what have they done? They have adopted a course which I venture to say is unparalleled in the history of Parliamentary life, at least, which I never recollect to have been followed before. A grievance is stated and pressed upon the attention of Parliament by the Representatives of a country, and the Government do not deny the existence of the grievance; they do not deny that the grievance is urgent, and no Party in the House that I know of, except the small Party following the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh, denies that the grievance exists, and that it is a pressing grievance, and yet we are met by an Amendment which declares that this grievance will not be remedied unless we remedy some other grievances of which existence is very doubtful. If they have views of their own upon the matter, why do not the Government, as they admit the grievance, introduce a measure dealing with the matter from their own point of view? Better far, in my opinion,—why do not they introduce two small measures, a couple of clauses in each would be enough—one dealing with the grievance from the point of view of the people of Ireland, and another dealing with the grievance that the Irish people have not put forward, but which the hon. Gentleman the Member for South Birmingham has discovered. They would find that the Bill dealing with this great question from the Irish point of view would have a very easy passage through the House, and they might at their leisure have a discussion of the proposal of the wise men of Birmingham. I can promise them it will receive due consideration at the hands of Irish Members. I do not think it is necessary for me to say anything more on this question. I could, however, say a great deal more, for the case is one of excessive urgency. The facts of the case have been so well put already by my hon. Friend the Member for the City of Cork and by the Member for South Tyrone, that I do not think anything remains for me to say to the speech of the hon. Member for South Birmingham, who moved the Amendment. I listened, attentively, and I am bound to say a speech displaying more gross and profound ignorance of the Irish people I have never heard, and I must say it seems to me that it ought to lie somewhat heavily on his conscience, that a men who professed to maintain the Union between the two countries, as does the hon. Member for South Birmingham, should be the promoter of an Amendment, dealing with a vital question in the interests of the Irish people, without having got the information which it was his duty to obtain, for he made a speech in relation to that Amendment which demonstrated to every Irishman—be he Tory, Unionist or Nationalist—that he had not taken the trouble to endeavour to master the question into which he was going to plunge. Every single sentence of the hon. Gentleman's speech showed his gross and profound ignorance of Irish affairs, and of the condition of the Irish people. He had not a fact, he had not a single statement, to show that there was any demand in favour of his Amendment. He spoke of the condition of Ireland in words that would have applied, perhaps, with some degree of force 15 years ago, but which have absolutely no application to the present case; and I say if any illustration were wanted of the deplorable condition of Ireland as regards legislation, we could not have a better illustration than that supplied by the readiness of the hon. Gentleman in undertaking to overthrow this great proposed settlement in the spirit of ignorance and lightness which he has displayed. I say in conclusion, without in the least degree proposing to make any threat to this House, that they will do well to consider before they vote on this matter, whether they will not drive the tenants of Ulster, whose condition we have heard described by the Member for South Tyrone, into adopting the same methods which we have found successful in the South of Ireland; and if hon. Members tell me that some of these notices of eviction are not going to be carried out, I can tell them why they are not. Because I myself have killed 300 of them by hold- ing back the rents of the landlords until they withdrew the notices and reinstated the tenants. I will tell the people of Ulster, and the hon. Member for South Tyrone, a little secret practised to the West of the Shannon, which has proved effectual in many instances, and you had better beware [Cries of "Oh, oh !"] Hon. Gentlemen might listen to what I say before they interrupt, because it is not so terrible. What I am going to say is those of you who value the Union, take care you do not strain the loyalty of Ulster too far.

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

That part of the speech of the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) which was not devoted to venting his wrath on the various Members for Birmingham who support the Union, was chiefly occupied in discussing and re-discussing the two proposals which were before the House last year—namely, that of the Government, which was accurately described by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain), and the extraordinary proposal which was substituted in lieu of it by the hon. Member for East Mayo. I do not propose to follow the hon. Gentleman into the details of his survey of the argument. I think it will be manifest to the House now, as it was then, that the proposal under which the creditors are not to be all treated simultaneously cannot be a proposal under which they can properly be said to be treated alike. The most elementary knowledge of bankruptcy law, or of that which has any analogy to it, ought to have instructed the hon. Member that the very essence of any such proposal must be that all creditors are treated on a similar footing. The truth is, that the hon. Gentleman has not the most elementary knowledge of bankruptcy law. He declared that a principle of an equal reduction of debt was one wholly unknown in any civilized country. The fact was there is no civilized country where it is not perfectly well known. There is no civilized country where it is not the essence of every law of bankruptcy, or of every law analogous to bankruptcy, and under no such law does the Bankruptcy Judge ever think of looking into the origin of the debt, or of discussing its equity or inequity. If you are always to go back to the origin of the debt—

MR. DILLON:

I made no such absurd statement. What I said, and what I adhere to was, that in no country in the civilized world is there a law under which all debts are reduced equally in consequence of the injustice of one debt.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Nobody has ever before in this House proposed to give relief to a tenant upon such equitable grounds. We never made any such proposal to the House. The very essence of the proposal the Government made to the House was not founded on the equity or the inequity of the debt, but on whether the debtor could qualify for relief by being able to show that it was not by his own act or fault that he was unable to meet his liabilities; and its object was not to distinguish between creditors, but to enable the debtor to pursue his course, with profit to himself and to the community, by relieving him of the load of debt which at present strangled every effort he might make. The hon. Gentleman has based the whole of his speech upon the theory that the debts due to the landlord are inequitable, and he based this theory, as did also the hon. Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell), upon the fact that Parliament has interfered with the contracts between landlords and tenants and has not interfered with the contracts between shopkeepers and customers. I deny that the interference of Parliament is any proof that those debts are unjust. It is a proof that in the opinion of Parliament the contracts between landlords and tenants could not be left in Ireland, as they are left in England, to the uncontrolled operation of the law of supply and demand. It proves that that was the opinion of Parliament, and it proves nothing else whatever; nor can I admit that the debts due to landlords are in any sense necessarily or even probably Unjust.

MR. T. W. RUSSELL

I beg the right hon. Gentleman's pardon. Perhaps he will allow me to explain. I did not say that the debt was necessarily unjust because Parliament had interfered, but that I held it to be necessarily unjust because the Court had determined it to be so.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I quite appreciate the hon. Gentleman's point, and I am quite prepared to argue it on that basis. I think the House may be disposed to regard this question in a more un biassed spirit if it considers what the Courts in Ireland have done. The Lands Court in Ireland fixed judicial rents in 1881, 1882, and 1883. In 1885 prices fell, and they fell all through 1885 and 1886, and the result was that the rent which the tenant could easily pay in the earlier years he could not pay, or could not pay with equal facility, in the later years of his judicial lease; and hon. Gentlemen say that, because last year we gave the Court power to reduce rents, we therefore decided that the rents were unfair. Now, let us suppose a converse case to that which I have just stated. Let us suppose the case of a rise instead of a fall in prices, and let us suppose that the tenant was making a much larger profit in the later years than he was making in the earlier years. Would the tenant, in the opinion of Members opposite, in that case be robbing the landlord or not? A lease invariably contemplates an average line above and below which it is positively certain the profits will rise and fall. If you have a 15 years' judicial term, is there a single man who is acquainted with the elements of agriculture who does not know that in certain years the tenant will make more profit and in others he will make less profit than is contemplated by the average on which the lease is based? Are we, then, to say that in the years he makes less profit the landlord is exacting an unjust rent? If we do adopt that extravagant proposition, ought we not also to say that in the years in which the tenant is making a larger profit he is robbing the landlord? That, Sir, disposes, I think, of the argument as to the inequity of these rents and the exceptional character they possess. Now, I want to call the attention of the House to another point connected with these shopkeepers' and landlords' debts. I say that every man who recollects the debate that took place with regard to the Act of 1881 is aware that that Act gave over to the tenants of Ireland a certain amount of property which was formerly vested in the landlords. The authors of that measure invariably defended it in their arguments with the landlords by saying—"It is true we have diminished the amount of your property, but we have increased the security for what remains." The honour of Parliament and of this House was distinctly pledged to the landlords of Ireland, and it was then stated that the tenant right of the tenant should be the security for the payment of the judicially fixed rents; and, therefore, when I hear hon. Gentlemen getting up in this House and saying that not only are these rents unjust rents, but that actually the debt of the landlord is to be placed in a far worse position than that of any other creditor. I cannot help thinking that they are rashly advocating a policy which cannot easily be made consistent with the honour of this House or with the pledge solemnly given to the landlords by Parliament. So far, my argument has dealt entirely with the judicial tenants. I will now call the attention of the House to the condition of those tenants who have not had rents fixed judicially. Have they any equitable claim at this moment to exceptional relief? What is the history of the non-judicial tenants in Ireland? They have been given, and have had, since 1881, the option of getting a fair rent fixed in the Land Courts. In 1882 their arrears were wiped off, and therefore they started at that date with a clean bill of health, so to speak. Directly they found prices falling, and that their rents, which had been reasonable before, were ceasing to be so, they had it in their power to go to the Land Court and say, "Fix our rents according to the now state of prices." But they did not do so, and if under such circumstances they have allowed a large amount of arrears to accumulate, how can we say that that is the fault of the landlord? How can they come to this House and complain. When I heard the hon. Member for East Mayo ask this House how they could vote for this Amendment without carrying out a similar policy in England and Scotland, I confess I thought he might have recollected that the whole of the legislation in favour of the Irish tenants has no analogy in any country; and I hold that whether we ought to bring in a Bill or not, at all events the argumentative ground put forward for this Bill, does not really bear critical examination for a moment. I now come to the question of the policy of the proposal of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell), and here I must ask him, does he seriously suppose that this Bill, if passed into law, would settle the Irish Land Question? [Mr. PARNELL: "No."] But the whole peroration of the hon. Member's speech amounted to this— The fact that you reject a Bill which will settle the Irish Land Question shows how utterly incapable you are of legislating for Ireland at Westminster. If the hon. Gentleman supposes that this proposal would go any measurable length towards settling the Irish Land Question, I must inform him that he is entirely and absolutely mistaken. The hon. Gentleman the Member for South Tyrone stated that the English democracy would always support just evictions. I believe the English democracy would always do so were they acquainted with all the facts of the case. I want to know from the hon. Gentleman, with his very large experience of what people think in the various parts of the country, what, in his opinion, are the circumstances connected with evictions which have chiefly moved the imagination of the masses in this country? [Mr. T. W. Russell: Bodyke.] Have they gone into the details of the manner in which the debts, to recover which the evictions took place, were contracted? No, Sir, they have not. Hon. Gentlemen have got up resistance to the law. They have taken care that doors should be built up, that houses should be fortified, and that boiling water should be poured upon the police. But while they have taken care that there should be every method of resistance to the law adopted which ingenuity can suggest, they also have taken care that every circumstance, from the eviction of the bedridden crone specially imported for the occasion direct, which, lends Itself to the dramatic narratives in which hon. Gentlemen so freely indulge, should occur in order that they excite the pity and inflame the imagination of the English people. I say that if the proposals in the Bill of the hon. Member were carried out, the amount of arrears affected would be so small and the amount of outstanding arrears would be so large that they would still ultimately lead to evictions, and you would not get over the difficulty which hon. Gentlemen profess to be so desirous of getting over—a desire in which I heartily concur. Whom would this proposal relieve? It would leave outstand- ing, on the smallest estimate, three-fourths of the arrears of rent. Therefore, the Bill, instead of stopping, might lead to evictions—

MR. T. M. HEALY

Will the right hon. Gentleman show how that is to be done?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

If the hon. and learned Member will allow me to develop my argument in peace I will show that the Bill under debate would relieve very few tenants indeed. It would be impossible to prove before the Courts that the arrears of the tenant did not arise through any act or default of his own, and if the tenant could not prove that, he could not get any relief at all. The clause of the hon. Member's Bill would not be applicable to many cases that would arise.

MR. PARNELL

The clause is founded on the right hon. Gentleman's own Act of last year, and under Section 30 of that Act, before the equitable jurisdiction can be exercised in favour of any tenant, he must show that his indebtedness is due to no "act or default" on his part. Those are also the words of this Bill.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The hon. Gentleman has entirely misapprehended my argument. I know well that the hon. Member's Bill is based on the equitable clause of our Act of last Session, which only gives relief in cases where a tenant can prove that his indebtedness is not due to his own act and default. My point is that the number of those who would be able to prove this will be but a small fraction of those who are in arrears, and that the great majority of the tenants in arrears would not be relieved at all by this Bill. For instance, I cannot conceive that any Judge would think of releasing or relieving tenants under the Bill of the hon. Gentleman who had joined the Plan of Campaign. They would be absolutely excluded. [An hon. MEMBER: Why?] Because the essence of the Plan of Campaign is that tenants on an estate should combine together—those who could pay in full and those who could not—and pay a certain proportion of the rent due to a receiver. They were thus prevented from making any individual settlement with their landlord. Surely persons who entered into such a combination would not come within this Bill if it were to become law? This was one point which showed how inadequate the Bill would be to deal with existing arrears. I know a case of an estate on which the tenants have not paid a sixpence of rent since 1881. I have no doubt they have spent the money that ought to have gone towards paying their rent, and it is probably true that at the present time they are unable to pay the arrears. But these men could not prove that their present indebtedness is not due to their own act or default. It is due to their having joined in a combination against the payment of rent, and they and many like them would receive no relief under the Bill of the hon. Member for Cork. If the object of the Bill be to stay evictions, I think it will have very little effect, for under the Bill of last year, which enables the County Court Judge to spread the payment of arrears over a number of years where the tenantshows that his indebtedness is not due to his own act or default, the Judges have only exercised this discretion in one quarter of the cases that have come before them, and it may be assumed that the proportion of cases in which, under this Bill, the Judge would exercise this discretion to wipe out the arrears altogether would be still less. I pass now to another point, and ask what necessity is there for this Bill? Hon. Gentlemen opposite have, I think, in this connection, indulged in very extravagant rhetoric. The hon. Member for South Tyrone has spoken of "an April shower of notices," which would, according to his peculiar meteorology result in a storm of evictions in November. Of the 3,000 notices to which he has referred, I believe that by far the greater portion of them were in consequence of ejectments obtained before the Act of last year. The period of grace on these notices expired about the 1st of January; on the 1st of January it was in the power of every landlord who had issued one of these notices to have evicted his tenant upon whom such notice had been served.

An Hon. MEMBER: Seven months and two weeks before an eviction can take place.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The hon. Member is mistaken. If decrees be issued in October the landlord can dispossess the tenant on the 1st of January. Now this being the legal power of the landlords, I cannot make out that any landlord has exercised that power. I have made inquiries, and I can only find half-a-dozen cases in which a landlord has availed himself of this power,

MR. T. M. HEALY

They are waiting for the expiration of the period of redemption.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

At any rate, this shows that the landlords are at the present moment not evicting, and that there are no indications that they are not desirous to do more than is necessary to recover their just debts. Under the old process of law there have been 66 tenants turned out, and the mention of this fact reminds me of a statement made by the hon. Member for East Mayo. He said that in his whole experience of Ireland—and he has taunted us and the hon. Gentlemen the Members for West and South Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain and Mr. Powell-"Williams) with our ignorance of Ireland—he could count on the fingers of Iris two hands the number of cases in which ordinary creditors had turned a tenant out of his holding. Well, I do not know how many fingers the hon. Gentleman has, but of these 66 cases 18 were cases of tenants turned out by other creditors.

MR. DILLON

Can you give me their names? In what part of Ireland?

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I cannot say.

MR. DILLON

I distinctly stated that I could not speak for the Province of Ulster.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

These statistics then show that there is no disposition on the part of landlords harshly to exercise the power of eviction. But I go much, further. I have also inquired into the action of landlords with regard to their leaseholders, whose case is probably the hardest of all, and who, year after year, were refused any redress by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian. I cannot find out that at this moment there is a single landlord who is asking his tenants who have been leaseholders to pay a larger amount of arrears than would be now due if the Bill of last year had been antedated two years—in other words, if the Act had been passed when the fall of prices commenced.

MR. T. W. RUSSELL

But the Act has kept them out of Court.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I have no evidence of its doing so. The hon. Member quoted in his speech a case which he said occurred in the County Louth. He mentioned that case a few days ago at the meeting of his own Party. I heard of it, and accordingly made inquiries, and I shall be glad if after this debate the hon. Gentleman will show me the letter on which lie bases his statement. I will then make further investigation. I heard the name of the person whom he mentioned at the meeting, but, upon inquiry, I cannot make out that anyone of that name or of any name like it has been guilty of any act which, even by any misunderstanding or misconstruction, could be alleged to be an act of harshness such as that which he has detailed to the House. The hon. Member only brought forward this one case of hardship, and he has searched all Ireland, I suppose, for such cases. He has only found one, and I believe that on examination even this one will prove to be based on a misunderstanding. Now, I ask any Gentleman acquainted with Ireland whether, for every case of hardship inflicted by a landlord, you cannot find 20, 50, nay 100, cases of unjust dealing on the part of the tenants. I say that the difficulties in Ireland are more due to the tenant than to the landlord. I say emphatically that you will find case after case in which landlords have been brought to the verge of ruin, have been subjected to the most cruel sufferings, combinations on the part of their tenants which no human being could justify. If you mean to reopen this Land Question in an arrears Bill, is it not worth considering whether you ought not at the same time that you introduce provisions for relieving the tenants of the debts which hang round their necks like millstones—whether you ought not to make some provision to compel tenants to execute the elementary obligations which they have incurred towards their landlords. I listened with profound regret to that part of the speech of the hon. Member for South Tyrone in which he denounced the Irish landlords.

MR. T. W. RUSSELL

I only denounced what I called the worst phase of Irish landlordism.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The hon. Member expressed in his speech a very natural regret at the proceeding which he was about to take against the Party and the Government whom he supports. I can assure the hon. Member I shall offer no reproach to him. I am perfectly aware that he has been guided by most conscientious motives in all that he has done; but I think he would have been well advised had he refrained from joining in these vague rhetorical attacks upon a class who surely are low enough in the world now, and who are not merely the victims of their past folly, and, in some cases possibly, of their past errors, but who are enduring the onslaughts of men who are only attacking them because they think that it is through them that the Union between England and Ireland can be most easily assailed. All the information that I have been able to collect leads me to the belief that at this moment the landlords of Ireland, with exceptions which might actually and not merely rhetorically be counted upon the fingers of both hands, would gladly accept the proportion of the arrears which the hon. Member would desire to see them receive. You may search Ireland from North to South, from East to West, and few indeed would be those landlords who would not grasp at the terms of the hon. Member, and who would not gladly receive, in lieu of the debts owed them by their tenants, such a proportion of their arrears as would have been their due had the Act of last year been passed in 1885. Not only that, but the landlords would gladly accept, and are every day accepting, terms far worse; and if we are to put in opposite scales the action of the tenant and the action of the landlord, I am convinced that every equitable tribunal would decide at this moment that, whatever may have been the case in the past, and to whatever cause the existing state of things may be attributed, the chief sinners are not the landlords, but the tenants. If I may, I will refer to certain characteristic cases. In a case tried in bankruptcy before Judge Boyd, it appeared that the tenants of an estate, now in the hands of a receiver, owed from five to six years' judicial rent—in fact, they had paid no rent since the judicial rents were fixed. The Judge said that the documents before him showed that the tenants must have combined together to pay no rent for six years. Here again is a letter received by the Land Commission in reply to a demand for three years' instalments of tithe rent-charge. The landlord writes— I have for the first time been compelled to borrow from a friend a small sum of money for the maintenance of my household. The sum total received by me of my property since October, 1887, is £11 10s, and the arrears on the 25th instant will amount to more than £3,600. Here are some facts relating to the Glenbeigh estate. They are contributed by the agent— Michael Grady's yearly rental is £10. The amount due when he was evicted was £28. The landlord is willing to take £8 and to reinstate him; He has five head of cattle. Here are two other cases— Thomas Quirke's rental was £13 12s.;a very large amount is due. The landlord has paid rates for some years. He offered to take £6 16s. Quirke has 17 head of cattle, a horse and cart, and a pig. Another man, also named Quirke, was rented at £7 10s. In November, 1887, £52 was due. The landlord offered to take a small sum, to reduce the rent, and not to ask for costs. It appears that the evicted tenants have from five to 17 head of cattle each. There is a fund for their relief, and it is distributed quarterly; and the agent says that many of the people who have been re-admitted as caretakers complain of the leniency of their treatment, because, in consequence, they do not receive any of the money subscribed by the League. In the case of an estate under a receiver, the tenants who owed one-and-a-half year's rent refused to meet him, and expected to be excused 80 per cent of the rental owing. They also intimated that they would only continue to remain tenants if 90 per cent of their former rent were conceded. I could multiply such cases indefinitely. My point is this—if you really mean to deal with the whole of the Irish Land Question, ought you not, while relieving the tenants of their load of obligation, to take some steps to prevent the recurrence of these iniquitous refusals to pay rent? I would sum up by reminding the House that what we are asked by the hon. Member for Cork to do is to interfere with the course of law in the case of a debt secured by special Parliamentary provision, but to leave untouched debts contracted under no such sanction and under no such security, and this at a time when the landlords of Ireland are showing a disposition not only to act justly, but leniently and even generously, towards their tenants, and at a time, too, when illegal combinations exist among the tenants to refuse the payment of just rent and of just arrears. I say that equity is not satisfied by this proposal of the hon. Member for Cork, nor is policy. It removes neither a theoretical nor a practical grievance; but it does enforce the evil lesson which, whatever its other merits may be, your legislation of the last eight years has impressed upon the Irish people—the evil lesson that the worst policy for a tenant is to be honest, and that the best policy is to be dishonest, and that prosperity is not the result of skill, of industry, and of temperance, but the result of dexterous Parliamentary manipulation and of unscrupulous popular agitation.

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

The House has just listened to a speech of an extraordinary character. To use a phrase introduced by the late Sir Stafford Northcote, the hon. Member for South Birmingham who has moved the Amendment (Mr. Powell-Williams) has acted as a "bonnet" for the Government, and yet the Government have not said a word about the Amendment.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said, he had stated that the Government entirely adhered to the views expressed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) last year as to the advantage of relieving tenants in respect of all their debts.

MR. T. M. HEALY

Do you accept the Amendment, then? That is what we want to know. Do I understand that the Government are going to vote for the Amendment? I think we are entitled to an answer from the Government on that point.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Certainly.

MR. T. M. HEALY

Then I am surprised the right hon. Gentleman did not say a few words in defence of that Amendment, for his speech from first to last is an attack on the Amendment. The proposal of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham is more sweeping than ours. But we are told by the Government that the country is one mass of dishonesty, and yet, while Ireland is in that state, not only are the debts of the landlords to be wiped out, but debts of every other de- scription also; and I presume the Income Tax is to be swept away too. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary showed some dexterity in steering clear of the proposal from Birmingham. Were the Government going to spread more widely the demoralization they denounced? The position of the Mover of the Amendment was that "Codlin's the friend, not Short." If hon. Gentlemen opposite consider the Bill apart from Party spirit, they will see that no more moderate Bill was ever proposed to the House. If it were as dishonest as it was alleged to be, if the promoters said—''We will rob the landlord because he is hateful to us," then I could understand the opposition to the Bill; but the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary attacked it because of its moderation. It does not go far enough for him, because he says it will only relieve tenants who have got embarrassed through no wrong or default of their own. It is honest tenants only he says that will be relieved, and that does not suit the wild imagination of the right hon. Gontleman. He wants the dishonest to be relieved; he wants tenants who adopted the Plan of Campaign to be relieved. Was that a reasonable way of dealing with the Bill? Our proposal is to submit to your own Judges who sat on your Benches before the last six months—Judge Holmes and Judge Gibson—when a landlord issued a writ from the Queen's Bench Division the right of saying whether the writ should be proceeded with or not, and whether the tenant was acting dishonestly or otherwise. That is not an extreme proposal, and yet it is found fault with by Her Majesty's Government, because, forsooth, it does not go far enough. Lot me remind English Gentlemen what they will do if they vote against the proposal of any hon. Friend. They will vote for a still wider proposal. Remember you are not going to vote that the Irish tenants should not have relief—you are going to vote for a far more sweeping proposal. The great Conservative Party are now going to declare that a system is to be established whereby every debt, honest or dishonest, should be wiped away—that every creditor is to be asked to go into Court and to have every debt due to him wiped out because a certain creditor proceeds against a debtor. I should have thought that the ozone of the ocean would have relieved the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain) of a little of his bankruptcy on the brain. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham says that under a section of his Bankruptcy Bill creditors may get relief under circumstances which consist, as I understand him, in bringing in hotchpotch the assets of the debtor.

MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN

That is the proposal the Government made. Clause 22, although analogous to the proposal of the Government, has not, and never has been, represented as the proposal of the Government.

MR. T. M. HEALY

Then there was no sense in the interruption of my hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) by the right hon. Gentleman. The whole point of the case of my hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo was we were willing to accept—much as we disliked it, and though we thought it a monstrous thing for this House to force us to do—we were willing to accept a proposal whereby all debts would be considered by the Court; but we were not prepared to accept the scheme of the Government under which every single creditor, no matter who he might be, could plunge the tenant into universal bankruptcy, and that is the point now. In the Bankruptcy Section tenants assets are available; but what is the case of the Government? They say no, the tenant's assets are not to be claimed; his land is to remain to him. That being so, the right hon. Gentleman, when we were offered last year a bankruptcy proposal—

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said, he denied that it was a bankruptcy proposal.

MR. T. M. HEALY

The House has ears, and what was read out by my hon. Friend shows it was a bankruptcy proposal. Here is the remark of my hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo as reported in Hansard on the 6th August last year— Mr. Dillon: Nothing of the sort. I distinctly said, and so did my hon. Friend the Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell), we made an offer—that is, a definite offer—by which the debts of all creditors should be placed on an equal footing."—(3 Hansard, [318] 1483.) That was the offer of last year, and the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland said that nothing would be granted except under a scheme of bankruptcy.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said, what the Government always said was, that they would accept some scheme of treatment analogous in some respects to bankruptcy, but no doubt differing from bankruptcy in some respects.

MR. T. M. HEALY

It is due to the right hon. Gentleman to say that he did not insist upon the word. What he insisted upon was the thing. What we want is to understand the proposal of Her Majesty's Government. We have the Executive Government of this country voting for the abstract Resolution that the debts of all tenants in Ireland should be placed on the same footing and dealt with by some system of bankruptcy, and they do not tell us what the scheme is. We ask what have the Government up their sleeves? They have hinted along with this that they will devise some means by which dishonest tenants can be made to pay, so that there is apparently some scheme hatching between the Birmingham section of Her Majesty's supporters and themselves. We ask what is it they intend? Are we to vote in the dark? The Government are going to take their Supporters into the Lobby to vote for this abstract Resolution without telling us in the least degree what their proposal is. The Government are pinned to action, they are pinned to the declaration as to the necessity of some legislation. Their Amendment declares in favour of it, and we are entitled to press the Government as to what they intend to do. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham says the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell), however, has great powers of preventing any scheme being dealt with, because he will give us relentless opposition. We are not prepared to pledge ourselves in advance to a scheme for or against. We say let the Government produce the scheme. The responsibility is on the Executive Government of the country. It is for the Government, who declare the necessity for a particular class of legislation, to produce it, and we ought not to be called upon, at the beck or call of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham, to say whether we will support or oppose any proposal until we know what it really is. We have got to this length, that there is to be some proposal by the Government, and the right hon. Member for West Birmingham expects us to say we will support it in advance. I decline to do so. We know there is to be a scheme, and we want to know what it is going to be. For my part I do not see the least use in continuing a debate in the spirit adopted by hon. Gentlemen opposite going into the grievances of Irish landlords, and defending their action. It was rather surprising to me with regard to the 3,500 eviction notices down to January to find the right hon. Gentleman seemed to think it a matter of slight importance that three months had elapsed since that time, and he did not even take the trouble to ascertain how many had been issued since. We may, therefore, take it that at least 5,000 have been issued. We are told the landlords are not pressing to act on them. Why are they not? Because the tenants have lost their title, and they are no longer tenants. They are turned into caretakers, and the landlord can evict them at his leisure. We do not know why the landlords are not pressing. They may not be getting sufficient police, and the Government may be waiting. But we know that the landlords would be acting foolishly if they did evict now, for no landlord is such a fool as to evict his tenant while his time of redemption was running. The tenant might get money in the meantime to pay, and the landlord would have to put him back in the holding and to account in the same way as a mortgagee for the assets. The landlords will wait till the time of redemption is up, and you will have to wait for the ripeness of that time to see what course the landlords will really adopt. There is little use in the course the Government are now taking. They are now going to pledge themselves in this Amendment as to the necessity for some legislation, and we ask some responsible Minister to say on behalf of the Government what is the scheme they intend to pledge themselves to. You all say a scheme of some sort is necessary, and we ask you to produce it.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT (Derby)

I know the House is anxious to get to a decision, and I will not detain it long; but I believe that the decision on this Bill will be a very critical decision in the future history of Ireland. We told you that two years ago, with reference to the former proposal of the hon. Member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell), and you would not believe us then. You thought that you could thrust it aside. You thought that by denouncing the Irish tenants by the use of such language as we heard in the peroration of the right hon. Gentleman, the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour) you could get rid of the question of reductions of unjust rent in Ireland. Well, you failed. You had a majority then, as you will have a majority today; but you did not get rid of the question by your majority. You had the support then of the bulk of the Gentlemen who call themselves Liberal Unionists; but, in spite of that, you were compelled to reduce judicial rents. Now, do you really believe that you are going to get rid of this question of arrears by the majority which you will record this afternoon? What is the situation in which the House is placed by this Amendment? No doubt, the speech of the Chief Secretary for Ireland was a speech of "no surrender" upon any terms. It is true that allusions have been made as to the willingness which the Government expressed last year to do something in a vague and hazy way under the pressure which was brought to bear upon them by Devonshire House. Yes; but the pressure of Devonshire House is growing weaker and weaker every day in this direction. What was the result of the pressure of Devonshire House last year? The Government introduced the Bankruptcy Clauses into the Bill of last year; but those clauses, of which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Mr. J. Chamberlain) is so enamoured, were universally repudiated—repudiated by the Irish landlords, by the Irish tenants, by the Liberal Party, and by the Conservative Party, and they were dropped by the Government. What was the course taken by Devonshire House? It was a demand for the settlement of the arrears question exactly upon the terms now contended for by the hon. Member for the City of Cork. Why, that was conceded in an Amendment by the hon. and learned Member for Inverness (Mr. Finlay). It was also included in the Bill which bears the names of the hon. Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell), the hon. Member for Derry County (Mr. Lea), and the hon. and learned Member for Inverness—all Members of the Devonshire House Party—aye, and it was even included in a Bill bearing the name of the hon. Member for the Bordesley Division of Birmingham (Mr. Jesse Collings); and now we have the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham denouncing the scheme which had the support of the hon. Member for the Bordesley Division. Well, then, the measure before us today is practically the same measure which was determined upon by the Liberal Unionists at Devonshire House last year, and which was to be substituted for the Bankruptcy Clauses of the Land Bill. Is it possible, then, for anything to be more ridiculous than this Amendment, which strikes at the Bill of the hon. Member for South Tyrone as much, as it strikes at the Bill of the hon. Member for the City of Cork, should be attacked upon the ground and upon the principles set forth by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham and the Chief Secretary for Ireland? Now, what does my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham say? He says—"I admit there is a grievance—that if the rents were exorbitant, the arrears are exorbitant also, and ought not to be enforced;" but what is the course under those circumstances that my right hon. Friend takes? There is the Bill produced by the hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of Cork, and there is the Bill proposed by the hon. Member for South Tyrone meeting that grievance. How does my right hon. Friend deal with it? We have this Amendment; we know the hand; it is the hand of Esau. We know very well where this Amendment comes from. The right hon. Gentleman destroys by an Amendment the only practical measure dealing with the grievance that he admits, and then he says he is extremely glad that the Government are not going to introduce any measure to deal with that grievance. Is that the manner in which my right hon. Friend expects to pacify Ireland? Is that the way in which he expects to strengthen the Union in Ireland? Admitting there is a grievance in respect of these arrears, my right hon. Friend destroys the only measure which proposes to remedy the grievance; and he advises the Government to introduce no Bill for the purpose of removing the grievance. What will the effect be on the minds of the Irish people? Either that the English House of Commons cannot, or that it will not, deal with the admitted grievances of Ireland. A remarkable thing has been noticed in this debate. The Unionist Party seems to lose no opportunity of identifying themselves with the landlords of Ireland. They take every opportunity of making everybody in this House, and out of it, believe that to them the question of the Union is the question of rent; that the exaction of rent is the object which they are pursuing, and that they absolutely refuse to propose any remedy for a grievance which they acknowledge. Then the right hon. Member for West Birmingham says—"Oh, I would have given you a remedy last year, but you would not take it." But you do not propose to give that remedy this year. Why does not my right hon. Friend introduce an Arrears Bill on his own responsibility? Last year, there never was any proposal whatever to deal with, arrears, except in the form which, whatever you may call it, was practically a bankruptcy proposal. My right hon. Friend, it is quite true, talked about some cheap and easy method of procedure, and I confess that, for a moment last year, during that discussion, I was almost persuaded to join my right hon. Friend. The right hon. Gentleman almost surprised my innocence, for I did not understand what his proposal was, and when he was good enough to refer then, as he has done to-day, to the celebrated Bankruptcy Bill of 1883,I found by reference to the 122nd clause of that Act, that the proposal was a bankruptcy proposal. ["Oh, oh."] Was not a proposal to call all the creditors to receive payment pro ratâ; of their claims a bankruptcy proposal? It was that and nothing else. There never has been any proposal except a bankruptcy proposal to Seal with these arrears. Everybody has rejected that, and no proposal has been made in its place. Last year, when the Government were pressed on this subject, they admitted the grievance. They made a proposal which was not accepted; but they said—"We have not said our last word upon Irish land." The hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh (Colonel Saunderson) has implored that there should be no more land legislation. But that is exactly what the Government said there should be, and whenever any point of weakness or defect was pointed out in their Bill, they said—"We admit there are many grievances, many defects, in this Bill, but we undertake to cure them in the next Session of Parliament by the great measure of purchase which we are about to introduce." What has become of the great purchase measure which was promised by the Government, and which was to cover all the defects of the Bill of 1887? Here is the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham—I was going to say going down on his knees, but that is not a form which he generally employs—I should rather say shaking his fist against the Government, and saying—"Let us have no more Irish legislation whatever." That is the condition in which the Unionist Party desires to leave the Land Question in Ireland. It is not a just, it is not a fair, it is not a safe position. The House of Commons, at the invitation of my right hon. Friend, are going to give a most unwise, a most dangerous vote. They are going to tell the Irish people that they have a grievance; but that although the Representatives of the great mass of the Irish Nation have proposed a remedy for that grievance, that though that Bill is supported by the hon. Member for South Tyrone and his Friends, they will pay no attention to it. The noble Viscount the Member for one of the Divisions of Devonshire (Viscount Ebrington) said that, of course, the Irish Members would not agree to what he said. But the noble Viscount has adopted a policy which he knows the Irish Members cannot accept.

VISCOUNT EBRINGTON

said, that he had not said anything of the kind.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

I apologize to the noble Viscount. But surely, in my opinion, the position taken up by the Government is an unwise and unsafe position upon a question of this kind, to assume, as fundamental, an attitude from which the great mass of Irish Representatives must dissent. You admit a grievance, but refuse the remedy of the hon. Member for the City of Cork and those who support him, with the additional support of the hon. Member for South Tyrone. You are going to thrust upon the Irish people on the point of the sword these arrears of rent, which you cannot deny to be unjust, which nobody denies to be unjust, and in this way you think you will recommend the English Government to the Irish people. It is not reasonable, or just, or likely that any people will be content with a Government which acts towards them in such a way. If the remedy now offered by the Bill of the hon. Member for the City of Cork, which was recommended by the Party at Devonshire House last year, which is recommended in the Bill upon which is inscribed the name of the hon. Member for South Tyrone and the other hon. Gentleman I have referred to, is to be rejected by you, then, in God's name, make your own proposal. But to take up the position of saying that this grievance, which is admitted and which is imminent, is to have no remedy at all, is a course which seems to mo to be founded in injustice, and must inevitably end in disaster.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 243; Noe3 328: Majority 85.

AYES.
Abraham, W. (Limerick, W.)	Chance, P. A.
	Channing, F. A.
Acland, A. H. D.	Childers, rt. hon. H. C. E.
Acland, C. T. D.
Allison, R. A.	Clancy, J. J.
Anderson, C. H.	Clark, Dr. G. B.
Asher, A.	Cobb, H. P.
Asquith, H. H.	Coleridge, hon. B.
Atherley-Jones, L.	Commins, A.
Austin, J.	Condon, T. J.
Balfour, Sir G.	Conway, M.
Balfour, rt. hon. J. B.	Corbet, W. J.
Ballantine, W. H. W.	Cossham, H.
Barbour, W. B.	Cox, J. R.
Barran, J.	Cozens-Hardy, H. H.
Barry, J.	Craig, J.
Biggar, J. G.	Craven, J.
Blane, A.	Crawford, D.
Bolton, J. C.	Crawford, W.
Bolton, T. D.	Cremer, W. R.
Bright, Jacob	Crilly, D.
Bright, W. L.	Crossley, E.
Brown, A. L.	Deasy, J.
Bruce, hon. R. P.	Dillwyn, L. L.
Brunner, J. T.	Dixon, G.
Bryce, J.	Dodds, J.
Buchanan, T. R.	Duff, R. W.
Burt, T.	Ellis, J.
Buxton, S. C.	Ellis, T. E.
Byrne, G. M.	Esslemont, P.
Cameron, J. M.	Farquharson, Dr. R.
Campbell, Sir G.	Fenwick, C.
Campbell, H.	Ferguson, R. C Munro-
Campbell-Bannerman, right hon. H.	Finlay, R. B.
	Finucane, J.
Carew, J. L.	Firth, J. F. B.
Causton, R. K.	Flynn, J. C.
Cavan, Earl of	Foley, P. J.

Forster, Sir C.	Marum, E. M.
Foster, Sir W. B.	Mayne, T.
Fowler, rt. hn. H. H.	Menzies, R. S.
Fox, Dr. J. F.	Montagu, S.
Fry, T.	Morgan, rt. hon. G. O.
Fuller, G. P.	Morgan, O. V.
Gardner, H.	Morley, rt. hon. J.
Gaskell, C. G. Milnes-	Mundella, rt. hon. A. J.
Gilhooly, J.
Gill, T. P.	Murphy, W. M.
Gladstone, right hon. W. E.	Neville, R.
	Newnes, G.
Gladstone, H. J.	Nolan, Colonel J. P.
Gourley, E. T.	Nolan, J.
Grey, Sir E.	O'Brien., J. F. X.
Grove, Sir T. F.	O'Brien, P.
Gully, W. C.	O'Brien, P. J.
Haldane, R. B.	O'Brien, W.
Hanbury-Tracy, hon. F. S. A.	O'Connor, A.
	O'Connor, J.
Harcourt, rt. hon. Sir W. G. V. V.	O'Connor, T. P.
	O'Doherty, J. E.
Harrington, E.	O'Hanlon, T.
Harrington, T. C.	O'Hea, P.
Harris, M.	O'Kelly, J.
Hayden, L. P.	Palmer, Sir C. M.
Hayne, C. Seale-	Parker, C. S.
Healy, M.	Parnell, C. S.
Healy, T. M.	Paulton, J. M.
Hingley, B.	Pease, Sir J. W.
Hobhouse, H.	Pease, A. E.
Holden, I.	Pickard, B.
Howell, G.	Pickersgill, E. H.
Hoyle, I.	Picton, J. A.
Hunter, W. A.	Pinkerton, J.
Illingworth, A.	Playfair, right hon. Sir L.
Jacoby, J. A.
Joicey, J.	Plowden, Sir W. C.
Jordan, J.	Portman, hon. E. B.
Kennedy, E. J.	Potter, T. B.
Kenny, C. S.	Power, P. J.
Kenny, J. E.	Price, T. P.
Kenny, M. J.	Priestley, B.
Kilbride, D.	Provand, A. D.
Labouchere, H.	Pyne, J. D.
Lalor, R.	Quinn, T.
Lane, W. J.	Rathbone, W.
Lawson, Sir W.	Redmond, J. E.
Lawson, H. L. W.	Redmond, W. H. K.
Lea, T.	Rendel, S.
Leahy, J.	Reynolds, W. J.
Leake, R.	Richard, H.
Lewis, T. P.	Roberts, J.
Lockwood, F.	Roberts, J. B.
Lyell, L.	Robertson, E.
Macdonald, W. A.	Robinson, T.
Mac Innes, M.	Roe, T.
Mackintosh, C. F.	Roscoe, Sir H. E.
MacNeill, J. G. S.	Rowlands, J.
M'Arthur, A.	Rowntree, J.
M'Arthur, W. A.	Russell, Sir C.
M'Cartan, M.	Russell, T. W.
M'Carthy, J.	Samuelson, Sir B.
M'Carthy, J. H.	Samuelson, G. B.
M'Donald, P.	Schwann, C. E.
M'Donald, Dr. R.	Sheehan, J. D.
M'Ewan, W.	Simon, Sir J.
M'Kenna, Sir J. N.	Sinclair, W. P.
M'Lagan, P.	Slagg, J.
M'Laren, W. S. B.	Smith, S.
Mahony, P.	Spencer, hon. C. R.
Maitland, W. F.	Stack, J.
Mappin, Sir F. T.	Stanhope, hon. P. J.

Stansfeld, right hon. J.	Watt, H.
Stevenson, F. S.	Wayman, T.
Stevenson, J. C.	Whitbread, S.
Stuart, J.	Will, J. S.
Sullivan, D.	Williams, A. J.
Sullivan, T. D.	Williamson, S.
Summers, W.	Wilson, C. H.
Sutherland, A.	Wilson, H. J.
Swinburne, Sir J.	Wilson, I.
Tanner, C. K.	Woodall, W.
Thomas, A.	Woodhead, J.
Thomas, D. A.	Wright, C.
Tuite, J.
Vivian, Sir H. H.	TELLERS,
Wallace, R.	Flower, C.
Wardle, H.	Morley, A.
Warmington, C. M.

NOES.
Addison, J. E. W.	Brooks, Sir W. C.
Agg-Gardner, J. T.	Brown, A. H.
Ainslie, W. G.	Bruce, Lord H.
Aird, J.	Burdett-Coutts, W. L. Ash.-B.
Allsopp, hon. G.
Allsopp, hon. P.	Burghley, Lord
Ambrose, W	Caine, W. S.
Amherst, W. A. T.	Campbell, Sir A.
Anstruther, H. T.	Campbell, J. A.
Ashmead-Bartlett, E.	Campbell, R. F. F.
Baden-Powell, Sir G. S.	Carmarthen, Marq. of
	Cavendish, Lord E.
Bailey, Sir J. R.	Chamberlain, rt. hn. J.
Baird, J. G. A.	Chamberlain, R.
Balfour, rt. hon. A. J.	Chaplin, right hon. H.
Banes, Major G. E.	Charrington, S.
Baring, Viscount	Churchill, rt. hn. Lord R. H. S.
Baring, T. C.
Barry, A. H. Smith-	Clarke, Sir E. G.
Bartley, G. C. T.	Cochrane-Baillie, hon. C. W. A. N.
Barttelot, Sir W. B.
Bass, H.	Coddington, W.
Bates, Sir E.	Coghill, D. H.
Baumann, A. A.	Colomb, Capt. J. G. R.
Beach, right hon. Sir M. E. Hicks-	Commerell, Adml. Sir J. E.
Beach, W. W. B.	Compton, F.
Beadel, W. J.	Cooke, C. W. R.
Beaumont, H. F.	Corbett, A. C.
Beckett, W.	Corbett, J.
Bentinck, rt. hn. G. C.	Corry, Sir J. P.
Bentinck, Lord H. C.	Cotton, Capt. E. T. D.
Bentinck, W. G. C.	Cross, H. S.
Beresford, Lord C. W. de la Poer	Crossley, Sir S. B.
	Grossman, Gen. Sir W.
Bethell, Commander G. R.	Cubitt, right hon. G.
	Currie, Sir D.
Bickford-Smith, W.	Curzon, Viscount
Biddulph, M.	Curzon, hon. G. N.
Bigwood, J.	Dalrymple, Sir C.
Birkbeck, Sir E.	Davenport, H. T.
Blundell, Colonel H. B. H.	Davenport, W. B.
	Dawnay, Colonel hon. L. P.
Bolitho, T. B.
Bond, G. H.	De Lisle, E. J. L. M. P.
Bonsor, H. C. O.	De Worms, Baron H.
Boord, T. W.	Dickson, Major A. G.
Borthwick, Sir A.	Dimsdale, Baron R.
Bridgeman, Col. hon. F. C.	Dixon-Hartland, F. D.
	Donkin, R. S.
Bristowe, T. L.	Dorington, Sir J. E.
Brodrick, hon. W. St. J. F.	Douglas, A. Akers-
	Duncan, Colonel F.
Brookfield, A. M.	Duncombe, A.

Dyke, right hon. Sir W. H	Heaton, J. H.
	Heneage, right hon. E.
Edwards-Moss, T. C.	Herbert, hon. S.
Egerton, hon. A. de T.	Hermon-Hodge, R. T.
Elcho, Lord	Hervey, Lord F.
Elliot, Sir G.	Hill, right hon. Lord A. W.
Elliot, hon. H. F. H.
Elliot, G. W.	Hill, Colonel E. S.
Ellis, Sir J. W.	Hill, A. S.
Elton, C. I.	Hoare, E. B.
Ewart, Sir W.	Hoare, S.
Ewing, Sir A. O.	Holloway, G.
Eyre, Colonel H.	Hornby, W. H.
Farquharson, H. R.	Houldsworth, Sir W. H.
Feilden, Lt.-Gen. R. J.	Howard, J.
Fellowes, A. E.	Howorth, H. H.
Fergusson, right hon. Sir J.	Hozior, J. H. C.
	Hubbard, hon. E.
Field, Admiral E.	Hughes, Colonel E.
Fieldon, T.	Hughes-Hallett, Col. F. C.
Finch, G. H.
Fisher, W. H.	Hulse, E. H.
Fitzgerald, R. U. P.	Hunt, F. S.
Fitzwilliam, hon. W. H. W.	Hunter, Sir W. G.
	Isaacson, F. W.
Fitzwilliam, hon. W. J. W.	Jackson, W. L.
	James, rt. hon. Sir H.
Fitz-Wygram, Gen. Sir F. W.	Jardine, Sir R.
	Jarvis, A. W.
Fletcher, Sir H.	Jeffreys, A. F.
Forwood, A. B.	Jennings, L. J.
Fowler, Sir R. N.	Johnston, W.
Fraser, General C. C.	Kelly, J. R.
Fry, L.	Kennaway, Sir J. H.
Fulton, J. F.	Kenrick, W.
Gathorne-Hardy, hon. A. E.	Kenyon, hon. G. T.
	Kenyon-Slaney, Col. W.
Gedge, S.
Gent-Davis, R.	Ker, R. W. B.
Giles, A.	Kerans, F. H.
Gilliat, J. S.	Kimber, H.
Godson, A. F.	King, H. S.
Goldsmid, Sir J.	King-Harman, right hon. Colonel E. R.
Goldsworthy, Major General W. T.
	Knatchbull-Hugessen, H. T.
Gorst, Sir J. E.
Goschen, rt. hon. G. J.	Knightley, Sir R.
Gray, C. W.	Knowles, L.
Green, Sir E.	Lafone, A.
Greenall, Sir G.	Lambert, C.
Greene, E.	Laurie, Colonel R. P.
Grimston, Viscount	Lawrence, Sir J. J. T.
Grotrian, F. B.	Lawrence, W. F.
Gurdon, R. T.	Lechmere, Sir E. A. H.
Hall, A. W.	Lees, E.
Hall, C.	Legh, T. W.
Halsey, T. F.	Lennox, Lord W. C, Gordon-
Hambro, Col. C. J. T.
Hamilton, right hon. Lord G. F.	Lewis, Sir C. E.
	Lewisham, right hon. Viscount
Hamilton, Lord C. J.
Hamilton, Lord E.	Llewellyn, E. H.
Hamilton, Col. C. E.	Long. W. H.
Hamley, Gen. Sir E. B.	Low, M.
Hanbury, R. W.	Lowther, hon. W.
Hankey, F. A.	Lymington, Viscount
Hardcastle, F.	Macartney, W. G. E.
Hastings, G. W.	Macdonald, rt. hon. J. H. A.
Havelock-Allan, Sir H. M.
	Maclean, F. W.
Heath, A. R.	Maclean, J. M.
Heathcote, Capt. J. H. Edwards-	Maclure, J. W.
	M'Calmont, Captain J.

Madden, D. H.	Sandys, Lieut.-Col. T. M.
Making, Colonel W. T.
Malcolm, Col. J. W.	Saunderson, Col. E. J.
Mallock, R.	Sellar, A. C.
Marriott, rt. hn. W. T.	Selwin-Ibbetson, right hon. Sir H. J.
Maskelyne, M. H. N. Story-
	Selwyn, Captain C. W.
Matthews, rt. hon. H.	Seton-Karr, H.
Mattinson, M. W.	Shaw-Stewart, M. H.
Maxwell, Sir H. E.	Sidebotham, J. W.
Mayne, Adml. R. C.	Sidebottom, W.
Mildmay, F. B.	Smith, right hon. W. H.
Mills, hon. C. W.
More, R. J.	Smith, A.
Morrison, W.	Spencer, J. E.
Moss, R.	Stanhope, rt. hon. E.
Mount, W. G.	Stephens, H. C.
Mowbray, rt. hon. Sir J. R.	Stewart, M. J.
	Stokes, G. G.
Mowbray, R. G. C.	Sutherland, T.
Mulholland, H. L.	Sykes, C.
Muncaster, Lord	Talbot, J. G.
Muntz, P. A.	Taylor, F.
Murdoch, C. T.	Temple, Sir R.
Newark, Viscount	Thorburn, W.
Noble, W.	Tollemache, H. J.
Norris, E. S.	Tomlinson, W. E. M.
Northcote, hon. Sir H. S.	Tyler, Sir H. W.
	Vernon, hon. G. R.
Norton, R.	Vincent, C. E. H.
O'Neill, hon. R. T.	Walrond, Col. W. H.
Paget, Sir R. H.	Walsh, hon. A. H. J.
Parker, hon. F.	Waring, Colonel T.
Pearce, Sir W.	Watson, J.
Pelly, Sir L.	Webster, Sir R. E.
Penton. Captain F. T.	Webster, R. G.
Plunket, rt. hon. D. R.	West, Colonel W. C.
Pomfret, W. P.	Weymouth, Viscount
Powell, F. S.	Wharton, J. L.
Puleston, Sir J. H.	White, J. B.
Quilter, W. C.	Whitley, E.
Raikes, right hon. H. C.	Whitmore, C. A.
	Wiggin, H.
Rankin, J.	Wilson, Sir S.
Rasch, Major F. C.	Winn, hon. R.
Reed, H. B.	Wodehouse, E. R.
Richardson, T.	Wolmer, Viscount
Ridley, Sir M. W.	Wood, N.
Ritchie, rt. hn. C. T.	Wortley, C. B. Stuart-
Robertson, Sir W. T.	Wright, H. S.
Robertson, J. P. B.	Wroughton, P.
Robinson, B.	Yerburgh, R. A.
Rollit, Sir A. K.	Young, C. E. B.
Rothschild, Baron F. J. de
	TELLERS.
Round, J.	Ebrington, Viscount
Russell, Sir G.	Williams, J. Powell-
Salt, T.

Question put, "That those words be there added."

The House divided:—Ayes 320; Noes 230: Majority 90.

Main Question, as amended, put.

Resolved, That no Bill providing for a composition of arrears of rent in Ireland will be satisfactory to this House, and effectual for the relief of the tenants, which does not at the same time deal with their debts to other creditors besides the landlords.