§ 1. £26,394, to complete the sum for the Chief Secretary for Ireland—Offices.
§ (4.32.) MR.DILLON (Mayo, E.)When I was interrupted last night I was pointing out the grave cause of complaint that we Irish Members have against the right hon. Gentleman the Irish Secretary on account of the tone of his answers. I said that the acts of violence committed by the police in Ireland were in large measure due to the tone and temper exhibited by the Chief Secretary in this House. The complaints of the sufferers from police brutality at Cashel and Tipperary have been brushed aside by the right hon. Gentleman as contemptible, on the ground that no cases were treated in hospital. I proved that at least 30 or 40 men were struck down, and numbers of men came up to me who had had their heads broken open by police batons, and who had blood streaming down their faces. The right hon. Gentleman said they were trifling cases. What I complain of is that deliberately in this House, in words that have been read by every policeman in Ireland, the right hon. Gentleman spoke of the knocking down of peaceable citizens by blows on the head which caused blood to flow freely as trifling matters. I do not wonder that the Irish policemen draw their batons, and use them continually without the slightest compunction, when the right hon. Gentleman talks in that way. I put three plain and specific questions to the right hon. Gentleman as to the legality of the proceedings of the police on that occasion. The right hon. Gentleman did not answer me on any one of those questions, 1493 and his only reply to me was a statement that every charge of the police in Tipperary on that day was provoked by some outrage of the character of stone-throwing. I proved clearly that in numberless cases there was nothing of the kind and no resistance to the police, but the right hon. Gentleman abstained from giving any expression of opinion which would have acted as a check on the police in future. On the contrary, he stated that the police were justified in everything they did. It is a remarkable and interesting fact that no prosecutions have been undertaken by the Government inconsequence of the Cashel and Tipperary meetings. I believe the reason is that the right hon. Gentleman is afraid of the evidence that would have been given at the trials. A Debate in this House is had enough, and he does not want to have sworn testimony as to the conduct of the police on those occasions. I think it constitutes a serious and great grievance against the right hon. Gentleman that during the three and a half years he has been responsible for the Government of Ireland, while he has always been ready to shed crocodile tears over the sufferings of land-grabbers who, it is alleged, are boycotted, he never has expressed any sympathy for the people whom the police dragoon and injure. Another charge which I have to bring against the Irish Executive is that they are in the habit of deceiving this House by means of cooked and unreliable statistics. The officials in Ireland, knowing what the right hon. Gentleman wants at any given time, supply statistics to order. I believe the statistics as to boycotted evicted farms are utterly unreliable and false. I do not charge the right hon. Gentleman personally with this, but I do charge his officials with it. No doubt since the year in which the Coercion Act was passed, there has been a diminution in the number of boycotted farms, but that is due to the fact of our having replanted dispossessed owners in their old farms. That operation has been going on all over Ireland. I was amused by reading the other day a letter from a League Secretary in the County of Louth with regard to the decrease in boycotting. He said—
I have read Mr. Balfour's speech, hut really, Sir, what can we do in this parish, 1494 seeing that last week we had bonfires on all the surrounding hills to celebrate the reinstatement of the last evicted tenant in the last boycott td farm in our parish? What can we do, as we have no farm to boycott?This enthusiastic Secretary thought it was a matter of reproach to his parish that they had no boycotted farm in it. Well, then we are furnished with a list of boycotted individuals in Ireland, which swells or dwindles in accordance with the desire of the right hon. Gentleman. We have, on more than one occasion, pressed the Chief Secretary to give ns the only means by which the statistics can be tested, namely, the names and particulars of each case. What was the answer I He would not give us the names of the persons because they might become known in the district, and be subjected to annoyance. Of all the grotesque arguments ever brought forward in the House that is the most grotesque. The boycotted farmland persons must he known in the different districts already. The fact is there is a monstrous system of falsification and dishonesty practised in the preparation of these statistics. I have here a judgment of Mr. Justice Monroe, which affords an illustration of the extraordinary system which prevails in some parts. The judgment has reference to King's estate, in County Leitrim. The people of the district were very poor, and, on their own responsibility, resisted the payment of rent. The agent of the estate had under him a gentleman named Cooke. In the judgment it was shown that Cooke put in a claim for £76 4s.,£44 10s. of which was charged for the use of two horses and carts in carrying provisions and coal to the men in the protection huts. Mr. Cooke alleged that the men in his employ were boycotted, and could not buy any provisions, and he was, therefore, obliged to take them provisions twice a week a distance of 16 miles. Two of the labourers alleged to be boycotted came up and swore that they could buy provisions, and that Cooke never brought them any at all. These labourers have been returned, I have no doubt, as boycotted individuals, but when the case came before the Court in Dublin it was found the whole thing was-a monstrous and gigantic fraud, the subagent of the estate plundering his prin- 1495 cipal on the plea of having his men boycotted. That is a sample of what is going on. There are other cases in which men make a good income out of the hiring of their own cars to take their own police escort with them. Such a system is a disgrace to the Chief Secretary. We have no means of knowing to what extent the fraud has been practised. So long as the right hon. Gentleman pursues this system of secrecy in connection with alleged statistics this country and the House have every right to complain. I may be told that we Irish Members are very persistent in our questions. It has been constantly charged against us as a grievance that we ask so many questions, and that we pursue the Irish Minister so keenly. It must be recollected that we who represent four-fifths of the people of our country have no influence, direct or indirect, on the Executive Government of our country. To be a Nationalist means that a man is absolutely denied all influence on the Executive Government. It is only natural that an amount of friction should arise unknown to a nation like this. What is the philosophy and reason of the questions asked? Questions are the natural channel by which friction, which will arise in the freest nations, between the Executive and the people, is removed. In this country all minor cases of friction are adjusted peaceably in conversation between the Representatives of the constituents and the Ministers of the various Departments. We in Ireland have but one Minister, and that Minister represents but one-fifth of the people, and that one-fifth composed of an unpopular class. It is only natural, it is inevitable, that as long as you allow the Irish Members to appear in this House at all there should be evidence of friction, which is furnished by the number of questions we ask. Anyone who has considered the question in a broad and philosophic spirit will admit that one of the chief, if not the chief, functions of Members of this House is to act as links of connection between the Government and the people of the country. Now, after four years experience of the present system of administration, it is well we should take a survey of the general policy of the Government. The Chief Secretary 1496 boasted in the House yesterday, and he has boasted in the country on various occasions, of his great remedial measures, of the liberal policy which his Government has endeavoured to inaugurate in Ireland. I say that policy is a policy of bribery in regard to public works, a policy which has always been characteristic of Governments that were not free Governments. I know there was a certain amount of dissatisfaction amongst my Radical friends at the attitude of the Irish Members towards the Railway and Drainage Bills of the Government. Many Radicals thought we ought to have opposed those Bills, I have never maintained that very high level of public virtue. But I have never voted for such Bills without standing up and warning the House of the value of their action. I have never asked the Government to introduce such legislation, but I maintain that if the Government will persist in squandering these large sums, we, who represent very poor districts, are justified in voting with them. I noticed the other day that even the staunch and unbending Radicalism of the Liberal Representatives of London was not proof against similar considerations in regard to the subvention to the London Police. But while we in Ireland have accepted these grants of public money, we have not asked for them. We have warned the right hon. Gentleman, by referring to the failure, waste, and scandalous jobbery that have characterised these operations in the past, what will probably be their fate in the future. I have no doubt that, under the Light Railways Bill, railways will be constructed which will not pay for the grease for the wheels. I have no doubt jobbery will be rampant. I have no doubt the loyal minority are enthusiastic for the Light Railway schemes of the Government, because they know much of the expenditure will find its way into their pockets. Personally, I do not think you will get value for your money. I should be the last man to oppose a rational scheme of public works. We in Ireland need public works. We have needed them for long years, but I warn the right hon. Gentleman, and whoever may succeed him, that if you really want an economical and rational system of public works in a country like Ireland, you can only 1497 have it under Local Government, a Government which will he responsible to the public opinion of the country. I come now to another portion of the policy of the right hon. Gentleman, the portion which I should like to describe as the Catholic University and the Rome Rule portion. It has been said against us, and used as an argument against our cause, arid as against the establishment of an Irish Parliament, that an Irish Parliament would inevitably he a slave to the Pope, and subservient to Rome. I would like to know what Tory Member will now get up and use that argument. We shall hear no more about Rome Rule in Ireland, since the Government, finding their own efforts unavailing, invoked the aid of His Holiness the Pope of Rome, and appealed to religious prejudices to crush a national political movement. No more humiliating, more disgusting, political spectacle was ever exhibited in this generation than the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary standing before a Manchester audience and rebuking the Catholics of Ireland for net showing sufficient deference to the head of their Church. We understand how to show that deference, but I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that I and my co-religionists are as independent of Rome, and of the agents of His Holiness, in all political matters, as any Nonconformist on these Benches. I can tell him that we are far more independent in political matters of the Court of Rome than he and his uncle, who have debased the character of Englishmen by crawling to the Pope, and offering bribes to His Holiness to aid in crushing the Catholic people of Ireland, and to inflict an intolerable wrong. To some extent it succeeded, when an agent was brought from Rome to go among the people, and to trade on their reverence for the Church to crush their political aspirations. I do not think we shall hear much more of Rome Rule in Ireland, not even from the hon. Member for North Armagh, for I am told that at a meeting of an Orange Lodge a cheer was raised for Monsignor Persico and his Mission. A strange idea seems to have hovered in the mind of the Chief Secretary that he could buy the assistance of the Court of Rome, that when he found himself "driven to the ropes" he could come 1498 forward and offer to the people of Ireland a Catholic University. The right hon. Gentleman evidently thought that, by an alliance with certain Bishops and Monsignor Persico, he would be able to bribe the Irish people from their desire for liberty by offering us the long delayed measure of justice to the requirements of Catholic education. I tell the right hon. Gentleman we scorn his offer, and I never felt more confident that I speak the feeling of the Irish race, of Irish Catholic people throughout the world, when I tell him that we will not allow his Catholic University, or his promise, meant to deceive and corrupt certain Irish Bishops, we will not allow his promise to intervene for an hour between us and the goal upon which we have see our hopes, or allow him to use this to sow discord between us and English Radicals, now our fast and sworn friends. We scorn his offer; we want not a Catholic University, but liberty to regulate our own Irish affairs. We have been denied this justice for two generations; we can afford to wait for our University until we have Home Rule. When we have our own Parliament we shall have our University, but we have waited so long we can still wait for a year or two. By his promise and his intrigues the right hon. Gentleman has succeeded in capturing two Bishops for the support of the detestable policy he is pursuing in Ireland. The right rev. Dr. O'Dwyer, Bishop of Limerick, has gone so far as to write one of the most infamous, cowardly, dastardly letters ever penned by ecclesiastical hand, and he does this as the servant of the Government of Ireland. I am not afraid, although I am an Irish Catholic, to characterise in its true terms that letter, which appeared in the Press of Ireland on the same day that a number of wretched people were evicted.
§ THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR, Manchester, E.)I rise to order. The hon. Gentleman may attack me; that is germane to the Vote. But in attacking an Irish Bishop, who has nothing whatever to do with it, the hon. Member appears to me to be travelling beyond the Vote, though his remarks would, no doubt, be appropriate if the salary of the Irish Bishop were under consideration.
THE CHAIRMANNo doubt if the hon. Gentleman went on to attack in detail the action of the Bishop it would be irregular. But I understood him to attribute the Bishop's action as being possibly inspired by the right hon. Gentleman.
§ MR. DILLONThe right hon. Gentle man springs from his seat to defend Dr. O'Dwyer—
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURI cannot allow that statement to pass. I sprang from my seat because I thought—wrongly as it now appears—that the hon. Member was travelling beyond the Vote. I did not intend to defend the Bishop.
§ MR. DILLONI will say nothing more on that subject. But I am glad to see the Tory Party so enthusiastic in support of the Bishop. He has done his best for their policy in Ireland, but his worst for the Church in Ireland. I am exceedingly glad that he stands alone among the episcopate of Ireland in his scandalous line of conduct. But I dismiss that. I ask the Committee what progress has been made in solving the Irish question? The right hon. Gentleman tells us he has inaugurated all kinds of liberal schemes of Irish policy. Well, I may be pardoned if I hold the faith I have always held that the people of the country are the best judges of what is for their benefit. If he and his uncle have been such benefactors, what kind of a people must they be who live in Ireland, single he cannot get one single vote from the three southern provinces or the western half of Ulster? For four years ho has had arbitrary rule, and though he claims to have exercised it so beneficently that the country overflows with prosperity, jet the people continue to vote steadily against him. I think we may now ask, after this trial of his policy, Where is it going to end? Where is it going to stop? We see the consequences of all his coercion and strong Government. He has ruled Ireland now for four years, he has had from this House all that he asked for in the nature of strong legislation, he has had a free hand in the administration of Ireland, and I maintain that the right hon. Gentleman has produced absolutely no result in reconciling the people to his Government. On the contrary, politically, the Government 1500 is weaker in Ireland to-day than it was when the right hon. Gentleman accepted I the post of Chief Secretary. It cannot I be denied. Anyone can see that if two policemen are placed by the side of a Nationalist the expression of that man's Nationalist opinions may be prevented. And this is the great triumph of the Government. It cannot be pretended that the system of intimidation the right hon. Gentleman professes to be so anxious to restrain extends even to the vote at the polls. We heard from the hon. Member for South Tyrone, the official supporter of the Government, in a speech that unhappily was cut short, that over the greater part of Ireland absolute peace and contentedness reigns, and that there never were more friendly relations between the police and the people. Then I say in any of those district's where peace and contentment reign, where the people and the police are fraternising, where the people are reaping the golden benefit of your beneficent rule, start a Government candidate against one of our Party. There is not a man on these Benches who would not willingly vacate his seat to-morrow if the right hon. Gentleman would give us the satisfaction of contesting the seat. I represent one of the poorest districts in Ireland, where it is probable the Light Railway policy of the Government should attract support; let the right hon. Gentleman send a man there to stand on the Light Railway platform, and I will stand on none; I will remain in England and never open my mouth during the contest, and let him see what would be the result. That is a fair test. You profess, in your speeches, that your object is to make Ireland contented to remain, as you say, an integral part of the United Kingdom, and you claim success. Then, I say, put it to the test and see if you have reached the people. The right hon. Gentleman has indeed succeeded in elaborating a hitherto unheard-of system of police persecution and espionage. The right hon. Gentleman talks most glibly of Irish social matters, and recently spoke about an auctioneer at fairs. For my own part, I never knew it was the custom of Irishmen to sell cattle by auction. The right hon. Gentleman has never addressed an open-air meeting in Ireland, except on one occasion, when he sallied forth into 1501 the Phoenix Park and addressed the Royal Irish Constabulary. He addressed them as if they were a body of troops encamped in the Soudan, surrounded by dangers and savages, and praised them for their extraordinary courage. That is the only case which I remember when the right hon. Gentleman had the courage to address Irishmen, though it is true that about 18 months ago he addressed a meeting of the wealth and fashion of Dublin, backed up by the presence of the Government officials, in the "Antient Concert" room. But the rank and fashion of Dublin were careful that their names should not appear in the Press, and the right hon. Gentleman addressed his audience in camera. Such is the Government under which the people of Ireland have to suffer. They are governed by a man who knows nothing of the circumstances of the country, who utters gibes against the Irish people, and who never allows any consideration of after consequences to check him in sneering at, and insulting, the Irish nation. He must be a bold man indeed who would say that the Government of the right hon. Gentleman has been a success. In one respect, and one only, his policy may be said to have been a success—namely, that he has become the hero of the bitter high Tory, anti-Irish faction of the country. In conclusion, I may mention an amusing incident as an illustration of the high-water mark of the popularity to which the right hon. Gentleman has attained in Ireland. A few days since a poor man was charged at Castletown Roche Petty Sessions, in the County of Cork, with being drunk and disorderly. The Resident Magistrate asked the constable how the man was disorderly, and the witness replied that the man "was driving a donkey and cart and was abusing the animal by calling him Balfour." Immediately the Magistrate imposed on the man a fine of 5s. and costs. There is a moral in this ludicrous incident, because, if we look aside from its absurdity, it shows that the name of Balfour is the worst term of opprobrium that can be used in Ireland, and because it is, at the same time, an evidence of the appreciation entertained for the right hon. Gentleman's policy in Ireland.
§ (5.20.) MR. A. J. BALFOURThere are two complaints brought against me by the hon. Gentleman, which I confess I was surprised to hear from him, one that I make too few speeches; the other, that I am not popular in Ireland. With regard to the speeches I have made at Dublin or elsewhere, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that, so far from desiring to stump the country, I should be very glad if I could cut down the disagreeable task of making speeches in Ireland and elsewhere, to even smaller proportions than at present. Then as to my want of popularity in the South and West of Ireland, and the comment it affords on our policy, I do not know that the hon. Gentleman and his Colleagues, who have great influence in these parts of the country, have done their best by speeches and by articles in the newspapers to increase that popularity. On the very day on which I was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, unless I am greatly mistaken, the Freeman's Journal, United Ireland, and other journals of similar complexion, immediately, without warning or experience, transferred to me every one of the epithets with which they had been plastering my predecessors, and when the Committee recollect that the sole estimate which the Irish people are allowed to have of the policy of the Government, and of my personality, is derived from such speeches and newspapers, they will not be Surprised that in some parts of Ireland I may not be as popular a man as the hon. Member for East Mayo. After the remarks I have already made on this Vote it will not be necessary for me to traverse the whole of the speech of the hon. Gentleman, but there are one or two points in his speech which I think should not be passed over. One of the chief objections he urged against the Government was that they were in the habit of resting their case upon what he called "cooked statistics." Though he was good enough to say that I was not personally responsible for the cooking, he gave the House to understand that he did believe that whenever political exigency required that a case should be made out for the Government all available machinery was set to work to cook statistics for the purpose. I need not say that a more baseless or more 1503 absurd charge was never made in this House, even on Irish Estimates, where baseless and absurd charges seem the order of the day. The Hon. Member backed up his general accusation by referring to what he called the monstrous statistics I had produced about boycotted farms. I do not know what statistics he alludes to, for I have refused to give such statistics. I cannot bear in mind all the speeches I have made, but I do not believe I have myself given such statistics, though I cannot speak with confidence on the point. I have said, and I repeat, that the information which I have been careful to collect on this subject does prove that boycotted farms are now taken in Iceland, and in much larger numbers than they used to be. The hon. Gentleman asked why I do not give the names of persons boycotted. This is a very naive request. The immediate result of announcing the names of persons boycotted would be, as the hon. Member knows, to increase the stringency of the persecution to which they are subjected. There are cases, no doubt, in which the sufferings of the boycotted person are already so great, in which the persecution is so complete and the man so cut off from union with his fellows, and from the necessaries of life in the neighbourhood in which he lives, that his name might be mentioned without risk of doing much additional harm, and I have frequently given names in such instances; but there are many other cases in which the boycotting is in process of relaxation, and to announce names in connection with these would only have the effect of renewing the persecution. The hon. Member, in order to show the inaccuracy of the boycotting statistics produced by the Government, referred to the case of a land agent heard in a Court of Law in Dublin recently. The land agent pretended to his employer that the labourers on the estate were being boycotted and he fraudulently charged his employer with the expenses of procuring necessaries from a distance. This is conclusive proof that the land agent was a scoundrel; but what else it proves I do not know. How does it prove the statistics are wrong? The hon. Member says no doubt this was included in the list of boycotted persons. But this case does not necessarily invalidate the 1504 Returns, because a man might be boycotted or under police protection at one time, and not at another. As a matter of fact, this man had been boycotted and under police protection at one time; but boycotting had ceased, and police protection withdrawn, and the Returns counted before these fraudulent transactions of the land agent occurred. The most careful watch is kept over the Returns, and they are subjected to revision whenever boycotting is relaxed or ceases. The authorities responsible for the statistics are under the most stringent orders to criticise the Returns at relatively short intervals, to examine the condition of every boycotted person on the list, and where necessary, to remove a name from the list, so that the House may have a correct view of the general position of boycotting in Ireland. So much for the accusations which the hon. Member has been good enough to bring against me. With regard to the violent denunciation he was good enough to bring against the Holy See and Mon-signor Persico, I do not think it necessary to say anything. It is no business of mine to criticise the ultra-Orange speeches it may please hon. Gentlemen from time to time to deliver. The Government had nothing whatever to do with the Mission of Monsignor Persico; they were never approached or consulted on the subject, and if Monsignor Persico came, as I presume he did, to a conclusion which ultimately compelled the Pope, in obedience to the dictates of morality, to condemn the Plan of Campaign and boycotting, it certainly did not depend in any way on the action of Her Majesty's Government. The hon. Member then went on to discuss the policy of the Government with regard to public works in Ireland. He was good enough to say that I was in the habit of weeping crocodile tears—and I observe that that is a favourite metaphor of the hon. Member—over the fate of any emergency man who might fall a victim to the fury of hon. Members opposite, while I had no heart for the sufferings of the Irish people; and then he denounced the general policy of the Board of Works, and, therefore, of the Government. He told us, so far as I could make out, that the money would be wasted and would not benefit the people on whom it was expended, that it came from the tax payers 1505 of the country, and that, even where executed, the works would do no good for the population they were intended to benefit; and he concluded with the amazing statement that in spite of all these considerations his virtue was not equal to resisting the bribe.
§ MR. DILLONIt is not fair to say that. What I did say was that there was no doubt that there was great waste, and that the works were not in the proper place, but that I represented a very poor district, and that some of the money would find its way into the pockets of my constituents.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURI quite accept the hon. Member's statement, but I think that his original version was a good deal more powerful. He, therefore, does admit that the policy of the public works of the Government is, at all events, one that might benefit his poor constituents. That is the first admission in favour of the policy of the Government that I have ever been able to extract from hon. Members opposite. The hon. Member thinks that some policy of public works is desirable, but not under the present regime. He thinks that when the good time comes, when Ireland is blessed with a Home Rule Parliament, then, and then for the first time, money will be plentiful in Ireland; that then, for the first time, it will be possible for the Government to borrow at a cheap rate; and that then, for the first time, jobbery will vanish from Irish shores. I confess that if the rosy view which the hon. Member takes were in any way justified I should find some of my strongest objections to Home Rule, from the point of view of Ireland, would be removed; but I am afraid that the hon. Member will find that the money he is going to borrow will be at the moderate rate of 5 or 6 per cent., and he will find by painful experience that if there be jobbery in the Government of the United Kingdom, that jobbery will sink into insignificance beside the jobbery which will take place when a Parliament is sitting in College Green. Then I was asked by the hon. Member to point out what evidence there was of the success of Her Majesty's Government, and he said that it was a proof that we had no success, that if any Member on those Benches were to resign his seat it would not be contested by any 1506 one holding the views of the present Government. The hon. Member appears to be of opinion that the whole policy of Her Majesty's Government is to make an electoral conversion of the provinces of Connaught, Leinster, and Munster. Of course, I should be extremely glad were I able to sway the electoral districts in Ireland, and to persuade the electors that their duty was to give a loyal support to the Constitution of this country, as it at present exists. But I never anticipated for a moment that I would be able to convert in the course of a few years the political convictions of those gentlemen. Is that a proof that Her Majesty's Government has failed in its efforts? I entirely fail to grasp that argument. The policy we have endeavoured to pursue is a twofold policy. In the first place, it is a policy of endeavouring to support the minority in Ireland, who are attacked in their just rights, from plunder and spoliation, a minority not consisting in the main of the landlord class—though even an Irish landlord has his rights—but a minority—I admit, if you like, a small minority—consisting of the peasantry of those three provinces, who most undoubtedly, by the admission of hon. Members themselves, have been the victims of the most cruel and brutal oppressions in history. That is the first task we have in view. The hon. Member for East Mayo, who has behind him the organisation of which he is a leading member, has very little reason to congratulate him self on its results. The state of Ireland is not all that it should be, but it is far better than it was when we came into office, and as far as that branch of the policy of Her Majesty's Government is concerned, I claim now, as I have claimed before, that it has met with success. The second branch of the policy of Her Majesty's Government is that of ameliorating the material condition of the people of Ireland. In carrying out that policy, also, we have made great progress. It is true that every effort we have made has been hampered either by hon. Members themselves or by their Radical allies. The whole power that the Rules of this House give to a minority have been used to make it difficult for Her Majesty's Government to carry out that policy; but I have the satisfaction of reflecting that no inconsiderable 1507 portion of it has been carried out, and as regards the remainder, important proposals are now before the House and the country, and before many months they will be carried to a successful issue. When that time comes hon. Members opposite may use what arguments they please, and may give what version seems best to them of the recent history of Ireland, but three facts will stand out in plain relief. It will be obvious to all men that we have been able to vindicate the law and to protect the weak against the strong; it will be obvious to all men that we have done more than any previous Government, whether it was before the Union or subsequent to the Union, to improve the material prosperity of the poorest people in the West and South-West of Ireland; and, further, it will be seen that we have made the largest contribution towards the settlement of that perennial source of difficulty in Ireland, the land question, than was ever attempted or even dreamed of by Irish reformers in the past.
§ (5.42.) MR. T. P. O'CONNOR (Liverpool, Scotland)I suppose it is the entire breakdown of this bankrupt Session that has given the right hon. Gentleman's eloquence such a monumental, turn. This is the second time in the course of the Debate on this Vote that the right hon. Gentleman has pronounced an elaborate epitaph on his own administration. He was in a melting, lachrymose mood last night, and we then thought that on the morrow he would be more cheerful; but this evening in almost the same terms, although at somewhat greater length, the right hon. Gentleman has for the second time engraven the inscription on his early tomb. I am not at all surprised at the right hon. Gentleman being in this mood. Not even the satisfaction of seeing the Chancellor of the Exchequer in trouble, which for a few days seemed to keep up his spirits, has sufficed to keep the right hon. Gentleman out of the melting mood. Of course, we can understand why in his statement he disclaimed any idea of his policy leading to the electoral conversion of the people of Ireland. I can assure him that he may console himself with the reflection it has largely led to the electoral conversion of England. I am sometimes a little doubtful as to 1508 whether it is to him or to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that we ought to be most grateful, but, on the whole, I think it is to the Chief Secretary we are most obliged, because of the universal disgust and detestation which his policy has excited in Ireland, in Scotland, and in Wales, a policy which will meet with overwhelming condemnation at the next General Election. The right hon. Gentleman laughs at that; but if he is so confident of success at the next Election, why is he always pronouncing funereal orations? Now, the right hon. Gentleman has misrepresented the speech of my hon. Friend. My hon. Friend did not complain that the right hon. Gentleman made too few speeches. The complaint was that he made too few speeches in Ireland. So far as England is concerned, and so far as this House is concerned, the more speeches the right hon. Gentleman makes the better pleased we shall be; for I do not remember a single speech delivered by him which has not driven a nail into the coffin of his policy. With the somewhat doubtful exception of his uncle, the Prime Minister, I do not know any man whose orations are more useful to his foes and more prejudicial to his friends. I do not know any man whose statements have been so frequently and so clearly disproved than those of the right hon. Gentleman. What defence has he now set up? The right hon. Gentleman says he is blamed for giving answers from official sources, which all Ministers have to do. That is quite true in one sense, but the right hon. Gentleman has been the first Minister who, when a charge is made against an official, thinks the reply of that official should be accepted, even against the statements of Members of this House, who were eyewitnesses of the occurrences in question. I say the adoption of such a policy is most scandalous and outrageous, and one which even no Minister of the Czar of Russia would dare to adopt. I need not weary the House with details. We cannot forget that at Mitchelstown three lives were lost, and the word of an official was sufficient to prevent the trial of the persons responsible for the deaths. The same thing occurred at Tipperary, and again there was no inquiry. My hon. Friend here was at a meeting in Ireland and saw policemen charge and savagely assault unarmed people, and yet the 1509 right hon. Gentleman, on the information supplied to him by the officials, denied that any such events had taken place. Again, when the people lit a bonfire in celebration of the marriage of one of their most trusted leaders, they were batoned by the police, and the explanation of the right hon. Gentleman was, this was done because the crowd were causing an obstruction, which is a mockery as every one knows who is aware of the solitude, desolation, and ruin of Irish towns, thanks to the misgovernment of the right hon. Gentleman. Why does the right hon. Gentleman refuse inquiry into these matters? He does it in pursuance of a deliberate policy. If an official feels 'that whatever offence he commits he will be defended by a Minister in Parliament, by the money of the Executive in a Court of Law, and that, if necessary, the jury who try him will be packed to secure his acquittal, that official becomes as irresponsible as if there were no law, no Courts, and no Parliament. The natural result is that the police in Ireland have been demoralised and brutalised as has never been the case before. For days together they are in a state of chronic intoxication. They are given as free a range as if they were soldiers permitted to sack an enemy's country. The right hon. Gentleman must intend all that. His sinister and futile hope is that the people can be coerced into tame submission to the authorities and the abandonment of their political convictions. The right hon. Gentleman declares that that is the policy of the civilised world, and that it will have to be adopted by the Government who follow him. We can plainly gather from the right hon. Gentleman what is the character of the Government which he thinks will succeed him. Men who expect to live long do not compose their own epitaphs. The right hon. Gentleman tells us that the next Government will have to adopt his policy. He justifies that statement by saying that the Plan of Campaign exists in certain parts of Ireland, and that the Plan of Campaign is an illegal conspiracy. Within 24 hours of the accession of a Liberal Government, the Plan of Campaign will have disappeared into thin air. There will be no further need for it. The emergency men will have gone about their business in Belfast, and 1510 will be trying to enlist in the Army which at that moment the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh will be endeavouring to raise in order to man the last ditches. The landlords of Ireland will then, not for the first time, curse the sinister counsels of their friends and patrons in England, and Ireland, too, because they will have no choice but to accept the reasonable and just terms of their tenants. I hope the tenants will ask no more. An hon. and learned Member opposite (the Member for Harrow) laughs at that; but let me remind him that when a few months since the Land Purchase Bill was before the House, he went about the country declaring that slavish greed was not a characteristic of the Irish tenants. What will happen when a Liberal Government comes in power? We shall have a Bill passed in this House, a simple measure, probably of not more than one clause, which will not require any of the hanging-up machinery of which we hear so much, to get it through. We shall pass it; and if the House of Lords is inclined to reject it, we shall bring a little pressure to bear on that illustrious Assembly, after the example of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, and bring them to their senses. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary could himself have put an end to the Plan of Campaign at any period during the past four years had he been so inclined. If the right hon. Gentleman had but a little more perception of facts, and a little less of that priggish dogmatism that belong to him, he would have dealt with the question of arrears of the tenant farmers of Ireland by inserting a clause in his Bill to that effect. A couple of lines would have been sufficient; and in this way he would have relieved the farmers of much of their difficulties, and the Plan of Campaign would have come to an end within 24 hours. As a result of that, the farmers would have had more money put into their pockets, and the right hon. Gentleman would have avoided all the disturbances which have arisen from his policy. There would have been no necessity for the Mitchelstown affair; no necessity for Bodyke; John Mandeville would not have been done to death; and the right hon. Gentleman would have been saved from pursuing his course of 1511 callousness and cowardice, which has so disgusted every man of sense and feeling. Has the right hon. Gentleman's policy made the people more contented? No. I tremble to think what the people would have done if it had not been for the fact that they share the convictions of the right hon. Gentleman himself, that his administration is on its last legs, and that between their final emancipation and the present there stands nothing but a single discredited and bankrupt Ministry. Were it not for these hopes; were it not for the hopes reposed in the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, and in the action of the Liberal Party, I believe that the people of Ireland would have long since ceased to listen to the tranquillising councils of their leaders, and that there would have grown up again in Ireland, against their advice, those dark and sinister associations that have played such an important part in the history of the past. But the Irish people know that their day of deliverance is at hand. They know that the right hon. Gentleman has no delusion on the question. His friends may prepare their wreaths of laurels, but all his thoughts are of cypress. His friends may prepare their testaments of praise, but the right hon. Gentleman is writing his own epitaph in language so characteristic of his rule, that when it comes to be inscribed upon the tomb of his administration, it will add new force to the old saying, "As lying as an epitaph."
§ *(6.5.) MR. WEBB (Waterford, W.)It has been complained against us that we have kept up this Debate upon lines too narrow—that on such an important question as the Chief Secretary's salary, in which his policy and his government of Ireland properly come up for consideration—a policy and a government that are interesting the whole world—we descend too much to particulars. But particulars are the very essence of the situation, and whilst in the few words I have to say, I would desire to treat the question broadly, I cannot hope, nor do I desire, to avoid particulars altogether. It has been my rule in political life to endeavour to think well of my opponents—it is pleasanter to feel that one is contending with honest, though mistaken, adversaries than with dishonest men or men that are inten- 1512 tionally malevolent. But certainly I never found the task so difficult as in the case of the right hon. Gentleman Courtesy, and a desire to conciliate-rather than exasperate, should be the characteristics of a man who seeks to govern: these qualities appear to me entirely wanting in the bearing of the right hon. Gentleman towards us. We cannot but see irresponsible rule in its most hateful garb; we cannot but feel, down to our very finger tips, that he and his supporters scorn and dispise us and those we represent. In the two special instances that claimed our attention last night—the acknowledged firing by the police into an unarmed and inoffensive crowd, and the escape from trial of a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary who had committed a felony—a class of cases with which we are, alas! too familiar in Ireland—did one word of sympathy or one gesture of assurance that justice would be done escape the right hon. Gentleman. And that is his bearing all through—a bearing that might pass with the representatives of a powerful and a happy people, but which, cuts us to the quick and rouses in us and sustains a determination never to submit to a continuance of his rule. The right hon. Gentleman last night asked how it was that we were not able to imitate his stoical indifference—his philosophic coolness in Debate; as well might the man who-applies the thumb-screw ask his victim why he does not imitate his demeanour. We are weak and powerless; he wields all the Forces of the Empire; he inspires the Executive; nay, we believe the Bench is not free from his influence; and as for the Magistracy, which should stand indifferent between people and Crown—they are the instruments of his will. It is idle to ask us to remain calm in the face of the injustice and the indignities to which he subjects our people. He is reported to have written on a recent occasion that we
Form a Political Party violent in their designs to the verge of treason, unscrupulous in their methods beyond the limits of legalitya Party whose eloquence, energy, and determinationHave been steadily and unswervingly employed, not for the purpose of settling the political controversy on a permanent basis, but for the purpose of embittering it in the interests of a political revolution.1513 We are not violent beyond the measure of our necessities. We have gone no nearer the verge of treason than many a Political Party in this country within the present century. Our methods have been the only methods through which reform and peace with Great Britain were procurable. Our eloquence (an eloquence in which I can claim no part), our energy and determination have been steadily and unswervingly employed to settle on a permanent basis a great and once apparently hopeless political controversy in which the very existence of our people was at stake. If it has been embittered, the fault does not lie at our door, but at the door of those who, in stupid blindness, for their own supposed interests, have step by step opposed reform in Ireland, and at the door of the right hon. Gentleman, who fitly sums up in his bearing and his policy their ideas of progress and of freedom. We are told that Ireland is peaceful and prosperous. Our peace is not the peace of subjection and despair; it is the peace of vitality and hope—peace the outcome of the sacrifices and the struggles of this Party which he so much condemns, and of the statesmanship, wisdom, and highest Christianity of the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian and the Party he leads. I believe Ireland is tolerably prosperous at present. In this belief I differ from some of my friends. This prosperity is due in no degree to the policy of the right hon. Gentleman. It is the result of the security against eviction and raising of rents—of the large sums of money that are now in the pockets of the tenants, and that were formerly unjustly in the coffers of the landlords—it is the result of that political revolution, of that partial settlement of the land question that the right hon. Gentleman so bitterly condemns. But, after all, it is the prosperity of the Second Empire in France, of Italy under Austria, of the Southern States under Slavery, of Russia—it is not such progress as would be under really free institutions such as we shall have. An hon. and gallant Gentleman asked if Belfast was not prosperous. I rejoice in the prosperity of Belfast. We are as proud of Belfast as you of the South of England are of Manchester and of Leeds. The turn of the spindles in her mills is sweet in our ears; we are as 1514 proud of the ships turned out of her yards as you here are of the vessels run off the stocks on the Tyne or the Clyde. The progress of Belfast is largely due to the suitability of the North for the growth of flax—to the encouragement of its manufacture by the people and Ministry of this country; whilst, on the other hand, they discouraged and suppressed the production and manufacture of wool, which were suited to the other parts of Ireland. It is due to the manner in which Protestants were encouraged and petted, the Catholics persecuted and depressed—a policy not yet altogether abandoned. It is, I believe, mainly due to the political content that reigns there. They have had it all their own way, and they are satisfied—just as we over the rest of Ireland will be satisfied when we have it our own way—only that the liberty we aim at is liberty for Protestant and Catholic for North and South alike, not for Protestants at the expense of Catholics or of the North at the expense of the South. You can bring forward no proof that the government and administration of the right hon. Gentleman is not loathed and detested as no government was ever so loathed and detested in Ireland. He himself admits its failure—four years ago we were promised peace in 20 years—it is now relegated to the days of our grandchildren. In my experience Irish Protestants are, as never before in my time, day by day ranging themselves on the side of their Catholic fellow-countrymen. The old naturally hold back, clinging to the false traditions in which they were reared; but the younger generation, largely influenced by disgust at the policy of the right hon. Gentleman and by the sacrifices and utterances of the Irish Party, are taking a better part. The Protestant trading class is honeycombed with detestation of his policy—thousands of its members are blinded by petty and by false and mistaken considerations to the duty of openly expressing their real opinions. Talk of boycotting—of depriving men of their means of support because of their opinions—there has seldom been a more complete boycott than under the possibility of which those live who in any way depend upon the official and attending classes in Ireland. The Govern- 1515 ment, the right hon. Gentleman, and his friends are deluded as to the real feelings of the Irish people by the overgrown and rapacious official class in Ireland, the outcome of the false system he represents and controls. It inspires a Press; it stands as a veil between him and the Irish people. Even if he would he could not do justice and act lightly. And even this official class is permeated with dislike of his rule. Amongst them nobler and more generous feelings are springing up. We at this side of the House have constant opportunities of realising this fact. The right hon. Gentleman has not one qualification for the rôte he has assumed, for the position in which he has been placed, and for which he now seeks to be paid. He knows nothing of our country, of its traditions, or of the feelings of our people. He does not I am sure make one-tenth the effort to identify himself with it as do the German Governors of Alsace and Lorraine to identify themselves with and understand those they rule. Did he ever consult the representatives or public opinion of the country? Did he ever adopt their proposals? Did he ever consider their united opposition sufficient ground for questioning the wisdom of his own schemes? All he can do is to propose abortive petty measures for light railways and for draining which seldom mature, and, when they do, effect little or nothing. I suppose he is welcome to pour his thousands into Ireland—in my mind it is a demoralising and an enervating system. After all, he will effect nothing. Paralysed by the system he seeks to administer, he is unable to take a step in advance or to remove the rottenest stones out of the edifice he seeks to support. He must, in his heart of hearts, admit that the Irish Question is the latent cause of the paralysis that has overtaken the course of public business in this House—a House whose traditions are so glorious, and whose power of usefulness and of blessing to the human race will be well nigh boundless when it has for ever abandoned the impossible attempt to crush out the spirit and the aspirations of the Irish people. Gentlemen opposite admit all this, and yet they are unable or unwilling to set about reform even upon their own lines. 1516 Their only policy is coercion and suppression. It is amazing how this policy can be supported by so many great and good men and women in and out of Ireland—but so have bad policies in all times and all over the world been supported by the great and good. I was reared in the contest with the most hateful and diabolical system the world ever saw—the^ system of American slavery. Up to the last that system had the support of culture and refinement in the United States and in this country. It crumbled to its fall, and no one now seeks to defend it. My later years have brought me the unspeakable privilege of being permitted to take part in a contest for Irish liberty and Irish freedom. That cause will triumph, and when it has triumphed no one will be found to attempt to-justify the policy of the right hon. Gentleman. Summed up in a few words, that policy is one than which, no more criminal can be conceived. The murder of an individual is bad enough. But what are we to say to the attempt to strangle and to murder the God-given spirit and the feeling of a nation—that spirit and those feelings through which alone we can attain real prosperity, and through which alone these Kingdoms can be really, and in fact, united. A new renaissance is spreading over the world. In mental and physical training, in all the essentials upon which progress depends, the peoples are making a fresh start forward. In the last century, when it was of vital importance that all should be free to take part in a great industrial awakening, we were bound hand and foot—the crime is now admitted. A greater awakening has now come upon the world, and were the policy of degradation which this Vote is asked to support to be continued, future generations would have in vain to deplore a more miserable failure and a more heinous crime against our people.
§ (6.26.) MR. PARNELL (Cork)I do not think, Sir, that I ever recollect a time when the discussion, of the Constabulary Vote and the discussion of the present Vote haw presented so many objects of interest and attention, and have necessitated the expenditure of so much of the time of I Parliament. That one fact, taken by itself, shows, I think, very great discontent, not only upon the part of the 1517 Irish Representatives, but also upon the part of their constituencies, with regard to the administration of the law by the right hon. Gentleman. Now, Sir, that administration of the law has been described by my hon. Friends, and grave and weighty criticisms have been advanced against it; but to effectually demonstrate to the House the iniquity of that administration, and the hardships from which the every-day people in Ireland suffer, owing to that administration, we should require their tongues—we should require to know their experience; and it would be necessary that they should stand at the Bar of this House and personally impeach the right hon. Gentleman and his agents in Ireland for the sufferings that they have inflicted upon them. We can only faintly tell—we can only imperfectly depict the depth of all the suffering that is going on in Ireland. I am sometimes almost tempted to believe even that the right hon. Gentleman himself has neither the time nor the inclination to fathom the result of his own action. If it were possible for him personally to investigate these matters—I do not say it is possible—I think he would hardly have the conscience to stand up in the House and defend the actions of his agents, and represent the reports of his policemen as true. The right hon. Gentleman is hard at work during most of the Session answering the questions of Irish Members regarding his administration, and during the winter months, probably his choice and his health do not encourage him to encounter the rigours of the Irish climate in pursuit of that information of which he stands so much in need. It has come to pass that we are left in this unsatisfactory position. We are, as it were, beating the air. We cannot, owing to the want of information, efficiently place before the House the position of the Irish people who are suffering from what is being done by the agents of the Government in that country. And although the right hon. Gentleman may not be so very much to blame under the circumstances I have endeavoured to describe, yet he is to blame to some extent, because he has relied with implicit confidence from the time he entered upon his present office until now on the representations made to him and the advice given to him by 1518 the effete and rotten permanent officials of Dublin Castle. His initial mistake was made in 1886, when he declined to carry out the remedial legislation necessary to deal with the agrarian crisis. The right hon. Gentleman in 1887 took the responsibility of delaying remedial legislation in order to press on an abominable and cruel Coercion Act. In this way he set on foot the commotion and disturbance which undoubtedly, owing to what I regard as the folly of the right hon. Gentleman, will outlast his time, and will certainly prevent his administration from attaining that measure of success which might, under different circumstances, be possible for a Chief Secretary to achieve. The Plan of Campaign was started because of the failure of the Government to introduce legislation to deal fairly and justly between landlord and tenant in Ireland. I do not, and never have, concealed my views with regard to the Plan of Campaign. At its outset I saw my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cork, and told him that I thought the Plan of Campaign ought to be limited to those estates on which it had already been started. He represented to me that if the combination were general the movement would be so strong that the Government and the landlords would be altogether unable to cope with it, but that if it was limited, as I suggested, the result might be that the tenants would be sacrificed. I could not help admitting that there was a good deal of force in what my hon. Friend said, but I still felt justified in pressing upon my hon. Friends the desirability of limiting this movement as much as possible. They assented to my expressed wish, and did not push it beyond those estates on which it had up to that time been started. But my friends tell me now that my predictions have come true, and that while we, on the one hand, have limited the movement to that small number of estates, those who have been shut out are pursued by a combination of the Government and the landlords with a hatred and a relentness vindictiveness which are even for them extraordinary. I may have been wrong in the position I took up, but I thought it better that a small number of tenants should suffer or be sacrificed rather than that there should be the terrible evil of a general agrarian 1519 struggle. I cannot here too strongly condemn the fatuous conduct of the Government in not having yielded to the pressure brought upon them that these Plan of Campaign estates should be allowed to share in the Act of 1887. There were only 10 or 12 of these estates, and on the Coolgreany and Ponsonby estates the tenants consisted mainly of leaseholders. These tenants were deprived of the benefits of the Land Act, but their struggle was recognised or sanctioned by the Act of 1887, which admitted leaseholders to the benefit of the Act of 1881. The right hon. Gentleman, acting under the advice of the partisan permanent officials, who urged the right hon. Gentleman against all surrender, has, owing to the strife on these estates, been deprived of even that small modicum of success in his administration which is all that a Chief Secretary under the present system can secure. He has been told that the British Government is not strong enough to surrender these 10 or 12 estates; that he must not give way in regard to them. That is the policy of the right hon. Gentleman. I, at any rate, do not think it is statesmanship. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman, even at the eleventh hour, whether he cannot utilise the remaining weeks of the Session to bring forward some plan by which the strife on these estates might be terminated, and by which the tenants on these estates might take their share in the benefits that the Legislature intended for them. After the experience of the successful arbitration in reference to one of these estates carried out by the hon. and learned Member for Hackney (Sir C. Russell), it ought not to be difficult to frame a measure which would pass through the House without difficulty or opposition, and which would provide for an inquiry and a fair settlement of the dispute on each of these estates. Of course, if the right hon. Gentleman is determined to pursue these tenants to the bitter end, he may do so. I may say that I have not discussed the suggestion I have made with any of my hon. Friends, and let it not be supposed that my suggestion is any sign of weakness. These tenants will be protected, and effectually protected, to the end. If it takes 50 years before the means and methods of the present Government are removed, 1520 these people shall not suffer. Money will be found for securing that they shall not suffer. But I make the suggestion in the interest of peace and humanity and justice, and not in the interests of the pockets of the landlords. I daresay that my hon. Friends would prefer to fight it out, and are careless as to whether the suggestion I make is accepted. I have myself little doubt that my suggestion will have been made in vain, but I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that I have made it, and that the responsibility will not rest on me. Let me now turn from the Plan of Campaign to a consideration of the programme of the Government with regard to next Session. We, had an important announcement made to us yesterday by the Leader of the House. It is not the intention of Her Majesty's Government, it appears, to persevere with the Irish Land Purchase Bill this Session. This Bill is dead, and it is the intention of the Government, we are told, to re-introduce it next November, or early in the coming year, and press it through. I endeavoured at an earlier period of the Session to place some of my objections before the House, and I think the right hon. Gentleman will admit that I showed by the tone of my speech that I was not guided by any blind or unreasoning hostility to the Bill. I was anxious to make it a workable measure, in order to fulfil the object which it was introduced to carry out, and I say again now, and I trust the right hon. Gentleman will ponder what I say, that my anxiety is that these 33 millions of money shall be used to the best advantage for the purpose of settling as far as it can extend this land question, or the most difficult and pressing portion of this land question in Ireland. When, during the Second Beading of the measure, I suggested a method of fining down the rents, that method was not suggested as any great or original discovery, though I happened to be the first to discover and suggest it myself in the spring of 1881, when the Laud Bill of that year was first introduced. But, of course, I shall prefer a solution by occupying ownership, and I did not advance the principle of fining down the rents as a better and more perfect way. I did not so advance it. I advanced it simply from the point of 1521 view of economy, and in order to allow the limited amount of money available to be stretched as far as possible to do the greatest amount of good for the least amount of money. But if any objection is taken—and I am addressing myself particularly now to the right hon. Gentleman whose salary we are considering and in whose jurisdiction and upon whose responsibility the Land Bill of the coming year will be framed—if any objection is taken to the principle of fining down the rents on the ground that it is not an abolition of dual ownership, and that occupying ownership is preferable, I say I am entirely with that objection. By all means use this money for occupying ownership, but do so use it. Now, Sir, what is the situation? The Bill which the right hon. Gentleman has had framed by the advice of his subordinates will not carry out the objects you have in view. Your money will be to a large extent wasted and used for purposes for which it is not in the contemplation of Parliament that it should be used. Instead of enabling boná fide occupiers to become the owners of their holdings, much of it, if you proceed upon the lines laid down, will be used for the purpose of enabling large graziers in Connaught and other Irish provinces to become the owners of their holdings, and I do not believe that that is the wish of the people of this country or of this House. What I wish to suggest to the right hon. Gentleman is this, that he should occupy some of the Royal Irish Constabulary in the interval in obtaining Returns to this House as to the situation of the estates in Munster and in Connaught, and especially in Connaught, with regard to the amount of rent paid upon each estate by tenants living on their holdings, and by tenants not living on their holdings, and by tenants of the class of grazing tenants, who do not come under the operation of the Land Act of 1881, because they are of that class. I think he will find that the magnitude of the problem he has undertaken will be enormously reduced, and that, by means of the information obtained, he will be able to introduce alterations into the Bill which will enable the money to be provided by Parliament—the £33,000,000—to go very much further than he has any idea of at present. I believe, speak- 1522 ing in regard to the case of Connaught, that probably not more than one-fifth or one-sixth of the value of the land in that province need be purchased out at all for the purpose of establishing an occupying ownership. In the case of Munster, probably not more than one-half of the land of that province need be purchased. The case of Ulster is entirely different, because there, owing to the operation of the Ulster custom, the extensive clearances which have taken place in Connaught and in Munster have not been carried out. You have a province of medium and small occupying tenants who are well fitted to become the owners of their holdings, and where, undoubtedly, the money of the State, if spent with proper safeguards, and in accordance with local feelings and requirements, may be well and safely spent. But that does not apply to Connaught and Munster, and to some extent, though not at all to the same extent, that does not apply to Leinster. The advice I would respectfully give to the right hon. Gentleman would be to make his Department acquainted with the circumstances of Munster and Connaught during the coming autumn and winter before the re-introduction of his Land Bill. The Constabulary are well fitted to collect these Returns. They know the circumstances of all the different estates, and they already collect many Agricultural Returns which are of great value to us: and they can easily, with little addition to their ordinary duties, put the right hon. Gentleman and the House into full possession of the most important details with reference to these matters, with the result, I believe, that there will be great advantage to the State and great economy of money. Finally, I would entreat the Government to consider, in view of the fact that they propose to allocate large Imperial grants to Ireland for local purposes as a counter guarantee to the sums to be advanced from the Imperial Treasury, whether some regard ought not to be paid to the principles of local control and local responsibility. It appears to me to be a bitter mockery to say that here are sums which are given to English Local Authorities to do what they please with, and that in the case of Ireland we should intercept these sums, should deprive the future Irish Local Authorities of all right to control 1523 them, and should previously hypothecate them for the purpose of securing the British Treasury. That is a due regard to the British Treasury undoubtedly, but not a due regard to the principles of local self-Government for Ireland—principles on which the present Government have come into Office, and by their regard to which they will have to stand or fall at the next General Election. I, for one, can take no part in and can on no account agree to any hypothecation of local resources without the will and sanction of the Local Authorities. I do not believe that any danger or risk of whittling or obstructing the working of the Land Act will be likely by taking Local Authorities into your confidence. I do not think that for an instant. I would say, trust to these Local Authorities since you are going to set them up, and if you do not trust them do not set them up. It would be the height of foolishness at the first turn to assert of these Local Authorities, to whom you look for so much in the future government of Ireland, that you will not trust them to have their say whether these counter guarantees are to be given. These are the subjects which I have thought it right to put before the right hon. Gentleman for his consideration. I hope he will be able to pay some attention to them, and I hope he will be able to give immediate attention to the first suggestion I made with regard to the termination of this turmoil on these Plan of Campaign estates. I trust he will have an opportunity during the recess of paying further attention to the other matters which I have brought before him—matters which are well worthy of his attention, and matters which I believe, if attended to, will enormously facilitate the settlement of the Irish land question, and will reduce the sum necessary to be advanced by the Imperial Treasury to manageable proportions, and to an amount which will not terrify the taxpayers of this country.
§ (6.56.) MR. A. J. BALFOUR (Manchester, E.)I think it is not necessary for me to make any reply to the hon. Gentleman, but I desire to express, on my own behalf, my sense of the moderation which has characterised the speech just delivered, and to say that any practical suggestion falling from the hon. 1524 Member will, of course, receive the respectful consideration of the Government. But I ought not to be understood as holding out the faintest hope of proceeding with a Land Bill in the remaining portion of the Session. I refer rather to the suggestion made with regard to the Land Bill being introduced at a very early date. I take it that I should be out of order in discussing the provisions of that Land Bill. The hon. Gentleman's particular position, and the place he holds in the councils of the Party of which he is the leader, no doubt may render it appropriate that he should, on the Chief Secretary's Vote, give some general view of his notion of the policy to be adopted in respect of the Bill which is in charge of the Chief Secretary. I presume that is the consideration, Mr. Courtney, which enabled the hon. Gentleman to be in order in making the observations he did. But I take it that I should be stretching your indulgence if I were to discuss with him at this moment the question of giving Local Authorities control over the expenditure of the sums to be lent by Parliament for the purchase of land in Ireland, or to express any opinion upon the suggestion that he has thrown out—a suggestion, in my opinion, very well worthy of attentive consideration—with regard to limiting the area, size, or character of the farms to which the principle of land purchase is to be applied. I did not rise to discuss the speech of the hon. Gentleman, but to express my own sense of the general moderation which characterised it, and to inform him and the Committee that practical suggestions, coming from those Benches, as from any other Benches, will always receive due consideration from this Bench.
§ Vote agreed to.
§ 2. £1,457, to complete the sum for Charitable Donations and Bequests Office, Ireland.
§ Resolutions to be reported.
§
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a sum, not exceeding £102,602, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to delray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1891, for the salaries and expenses of the Local Government Board in Ireland, including various Grants in aid of Local Taxation.
(7.4.) COLONEL NOLAN (Galway)I should like to know from the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the amount of money he proposes to allot this year to the different Poor Law Unions, and, as I have considerable experience in the administration of the Poor Law, perhaps I may tender to the right hon. Gentleman a little advice. There are now put on the Poor Rate an enormous number of charges that have no connection whatever with the Poor Law. For example, there is the expense of making out the voters' list, and expense of administering the Vaccination Acts. There are, at least, six or eight different charges now put on the Poor Law administration which I think ought to be put on the local rates. I draw a distinction in this way. When there is anything that a Local Body can possibly keep down, it is extremely proper it should be put on the rates. The interest of Local Bodies is entirely in the direction of keeping burdens down. But take the case of vaccination. A Poor Law Board have no authority to reduce the number of children born or vaccinated. We are absolutely helpless. When we perform our duty well we increase the rates. We have no possible means of keeping down the rates, and I say that is a burden which should be shifted entirely to the Imperial Exchequer. The expense of preparing the voters' lists, too, should be borne by the Imperial Exchequer. There are at least six charges which are in no way connected with the Poor Law which we have no authority whatever to reduce. I quite acknowledge that we can only expect a certain amount of assistance, and as the chairman of a Poor Law Union I am disposed to say the Chancellor of the Exchequer has assisted Poor Law Boards a good deal. But I think it would be well if he would look at this matter from the point of view I have set forth.
§ (7.10.) DR. TANNER (Cork Co., Mid)I propose to move to reduce the Vote in respect of the item of salaries. The amount asked is £23,391, being an increase of £65 upon the amount asked for last year. Of course, local government affairs in Ireland are despotically managed by the right hon. Gentleman who has just received his wages, and it is worthy of notice that though this year several Boards of Guardians have been 1526 disfranchised, there is an increase in the expenditure. I regret extremely that when Irish Members rises the Chief Secretary prefers to converse with the First Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer than to listen to what is said. We all recognise the constant discourtesy of the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
§ DR. TANNERI am merely stating what is true. Whenever I try to bring a matter under the consideration of the Chief Secretary he tries to show his discourtesy in the worst possible way. However, we are getting accustomed to it, and we know we shall not have to endure it very much longer. Now, we ought to get some information respecting the various Boards of Guardians that have been done away with this year. I have the privilege, the great privilege, of belonging to the Cork Board of Guardians, one of the largest Poor Law Boards in the South of Ireland. It has suited the convenience, the will, and the pleasure of the Chief Secretary to-do away with that Board. Why? Simply because I exposed the illegitimate conduct of a man who is illegitimate himself. Such Boards as those of Dungarvan and Cork should not be allowed to lapse without some very good reasons, being assigned in the House of Commons. The circumstances of the Cork Board are very remarkable. So long as the Board happened to be Conservative, and confined themselves to passing resolutions of eulogy upon the Government of the day, they were not interfered with, but when the political complexion of the majority was changed owing to the political conversion of many of the-ex officio Guardians, and the Board sought to pass resolutions conveying censure upon the administration in Ireland, the Government stepped in. Up to the year 1886, by reason of the predominance of the ex officio Guardians, the Conservatives had a majority on the Board of three or four. They accordingly always elected a Conservative chairman. But opinions began to change and the old Tory Party thought they must make a new departure. Accordingly Mr. Henry L. Young was chosen to be run as a candidate for the chairmanship. Mr. Young was chosen be- 1527 cause he was a colourless politician, though on many occasions he lent himself to the Tory Party. On one occasion I had the great pleasure of materially conducing to his defeat. On that occasion we succeeded in placing a democrat in the chair, a Mr. Michael Hearn, a tenant farmer. We had a few votes at first, but after a fortnight's fighting the opposition collapsed, just as the Orangemen in the North collapse. The following year, however, by dint of scraping together all their members, Mr. H. L. Young was appointed Chair man. The Conservative ex officio Guardians, who are always talking about what they do and can do for the poor people in the South of Ireland, having once established Mr. Young in the chair, left him. He was left to him self on the understanding that he would refuse to put any resolutions which were in any wise political in character. The week following the election of Mr. Young we had a difference with him, and on three occasions we took exception to the tactics of the Tory Party. Our resolutions were refused, the Local Government Board were appealed to, and they, of course, backed up the party of disorder, of disunion, of hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness of blood and murder. ["Order!"] I have seen bodies that have been murdered by the minions of the right hon. Gentleman. [The CHAIRMAN: Order!] Well, I believe what I say, Mr. Courtney. Sometimes, perhaps, I speak strongly, but I have seen things in Ireland that I really—
§ DR. TANNERWhen I was interrupted by discordant jeers from' hon. Members opposite I was stating that when the newly-elected Chairman of the Cork Board appealed to them the Local Government Board came to his assistance. As I say, the Chairman was elected by the votes of the ex officios, many of whom had no right whatever to be on the Board. At any rate, there are a certain number of gentlemen on the Cork Board who are always absent when work has to be done, and who only turn up when there is a job to be done. When we had done what we considered it was our right to do 1528 we received a couple of protests from the Local Government Board. We received a third warning because we passed a resolution of confidence in the leader of the Irish Party, in the leader of the Irish nation, a man of whom we are all proud. And then a sealed order was sent down dissolving the Board. This is no small matter. The Cork Board is one of the largest in Ireland. There are at present about 2,300 persons in the workhouse. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary makes signs of impatience. Of course, the number of poor in the Cork Union has been increased since the present Chief Secretary came into office. What has been done since the dissolution of the Board? Great and grievous harm. Two Vice Guardians have been sent down to Cork. I do not know them, but I have heard about them. Mr. Burke is in many ways a most respectable gentleman, and I have heard that Major Kirkwood is a graduate in the school of horseracing, like mast of the Lord Lieutenants who come over under the Tory r°gime. What did these gentlemen do when they came to Cork? One of the first actions of the Vice Guardians who superseded us was to cut down out-door relief. In our administration we had always to encounter the opposition of the ex officio members to any out-door relief being given. In their view, whenever an unfortunate person was reduced to destitution by bad times, he should enter the workhouse, but they did not succeed in enforcing their policy upon the Board, because popular feeling and common sense was too strong against them. But when our successors, the Vice Guardians, came into office, they at once proceeded by every means in their power to cut down the list of the recipients of out-door relief. In this way there were several families deprived of the pittance of a few shillings a week, which had been doled out to them. For instance, there was a blind man, named Madox, who with his family had by assistance in this way been enabled to keep out of the workhouse, and thus there was a saving to the races, but he by the new policy was forced to enter the workhouse. Public attention being directed to these matters a check was given to these proceedings by the expression of public opinion, but 1529 still matters are not what they should be in this respect in Cork Union. I will admit that the administration of the Vice Guardians has been productive of a small, a very small, amount of benefit. We had always to contend against the opposition of the Tory members, strong feeling was excited on the Board, and the work was somewhat impeded. The new Guardians, having full sympathy and assistance from the Local Government Board, were at once able to get the money for the purpose of providing labourers' cottages, which we for years had been vainly trying to obtain. With all their facilities, however, these gentlemen are unable to do the work satisfactorily, they naturally being hampered by the feeling of opposition which naturally arises among the people who are deprived of their recognised right of representation. The administration of affairs in the Union, in the manner I have endeavoured to point out, is far from satisfactory. In recent years similar action was taken in regard to the Ballinasloe Board of Guardians, but in that case there was, undoubtedly, a considerable amount of violence displayed, which in the case of our Board did not exist. I was the person who bore the brunt of the situation on our Board. I impeached the action of a gentleman who was a member of the Board. I told the truth about his conduct, his character, his pedigree, and his aspirations, and I was met by threats that I should have my head punched—
THE CHAIRMANIt is not necessary to go over all these details in discussing the action of the Local Government Board.
§ DR. TANNERI will follow your ruling, Sir. There were various scenes on the Cork Board, and the Board was dissolved, but I will not enter into this. But I demand from the Chief Secretary the reasons for the arbitrary action of the Local Government Board in dissolving this and the Dungarvan Board. I shall have occasion later to question the action of the Local Government Board Inspector. In this, as in other matters, the Chief Secretary, as President of the Local Government Board, has not done his duty, I conceive. I demand an 1530 explicit reply dealing with details in connection with the dissolution of these two Local Representative Bodies, and I ask when will representation be restored.
§ (7.40.) DR. CLARK (Caithness)Into these matters of detail I do not propose to enter, but I do protest against the way in which the amount of this Vote has been growing year after year, until it has almost reached the amount of the English Vote. We are asked to vote £132,000.
§ DR. TANNERI beg pardon; it was my intention to conclude by moving the reduction of the Vote under head A by £1,000.
§ DR. CLARKWhile the amount for the English Vote is only £164,000, the salaries paid to officials seem to me preposterous in amount and number. I take one Department, the Medical, and compare it with the Departments in England and Scotland. The Medical Department in England costs £130,000 a year. I do not object to the English Vote, under which the Chief Inspector gets £1,200 yearly, for that is not too much, but I do object to that officer in Ireland getting £1,200, while in Scotland he only gets £200. If the present condition of things is allowed to continue we shall have the Irish Vote mounting up to the English Vote. Next year I intend to move a number of reductions on this Vote, and one of the things I will endeavour to do will be to red ace the Medical Inspector's Vote from £1,200 to £600, and it will then be three times the amount paid for Scotland. These high salaries are, I suppose, paid as a kind of bribe to Ireland, but I think the time has come for pruning down these extravagances, and placing Ireland, as regards officials and salaries, in a position similar to that of England and Scotland.
§ (7.44.) DR. TANNERI beg to move the reduction of Item A, Salaries and Wages, by £1,000.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Item A, Salaries and Wages, be reduced by £1,000."—(Dr. Tanner.)
§ (7.45.) MR. FLYNN (Cork, N.)I regret that my hon. Friend has thought it desirable to move a reduction on a specific item, for it narrows the extent of our criticism.
§ DR. TANNERI may explain that I was anxious to get the reasons that actuated the Board in the suppression of the Cork and Dungarvan Boards of Guardians.
§ MR. FLYNNI quite appreciate my hon. Friend's object in moving a specific reduction, and that reduction being moved, there are one or two anomalies in administration to which I would invite the attention of the Committee. We find a large amount set down for auditors of the Local Government Board. We find these officers go round—
THE CHAIRMANThat is item C, and the hon. Member must not enter upon that, the reduction being moved in regard to item A.
§ MR. FLYNNI come at once to the matter which has induced my hon. friend to move the reduction, the suppression of the Boards of Guardians in Cork and Dungarvan. I have no doubt that when the right hon. Gentleman comes to reply he will say that the Boards did not confine themselves strictly to official business. Now, in the first place, I ask the Committee to consider, what is the action of the Department having supervision in England? I have seen in the newspapers of the day a report of some very disorderly proceedings at a meeting of the Clerkenwell Vestry, when the members, departing altogether from the propriety of official proceedings, indulged in language of a personal and recriminating character, and wound up with a bout of fisticuffs. Of course, there is no defence for such conduct, which is an extreme example of what has taken place at other times in other parts of England, but we do not expect to hear that the Local Government Board in England has, at once, taken action in suppressing the Clerkenwell Vestry, or any other body which has committed an offence against the propriety of official administration, in the autocratic manner characteristic of the right hon. Gentleman who presides over the Local Government Board in Ireland. My hon. Friend made a reference to the suppression of the Ballinasloe Board. I am not familiar, as doubtless some of my hon. Friends are, with the particulars in that instance, but I am acquainted with the circumstances in relation to Cork and Dungarvan, and I say those circumstances were not of 1532 a sufficiently grave character to justify the extreme action of suppressing those Boards, and depriving the ratepayers of that representation which is the very essence of local administration in this and other countries. In Dungarvan there was some trifling disregard of the rules and regulations laid down by the Department, but attention was paid to the remonstrance, and yet the next thing we hear is that the Board has been suppressed and paid Guardians are sent down, the right of representation being taken from the ratepayers who, of course, had no voice in the nomination or selection of the superseding Guardians. But the case is worse in the Cork Union. We have on previous occasions asked for an explanation of the autocratic and, to us, unjustifiable action taken. We who have local knowledge can vouch for the work of the Guardians being carried out legitimately, fairly, honestly, and without a suspicion of jobbery, and they had, within a comparatively short time, reduced the rates of the Union to reasonable proportions. The Local Government Board could not lay to the charge of the Guardians anything in the nature of jobbery or corruption. The grave and serious offence in the eyes of the twopenny-halfpenny Magistrates of Dublin Castle was that on two occasions the Guardians did not confine themselves to the 14th Article of the General Rules, but had attempted to carry resolutions dealing with public questions of the day, actions which Guardians have in times past been allowed to take without interference. Does the right hon. Gentleman defend the suppression of the Board on the ground that there was friction and a rather hot encounter between my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Cork and the hon. Member for South Hunts (Mr. Smith-Barry)? The hon. Member for South Hunts, with that tendency to hide his diminished head, and never to defend himself in public, which has marked his career for some time past, has not explained that he was accused by certain Guardians of being responsible for a state of things in the Union, and out of this arose a resolution which was proposed, and resisted by the hon. Member for South Hunts and those ex officio Guardians who only attended the Board meetings when there was some appoint- 1533 ment to be made, or business to be transacted in which they or their friends were personally interested. On the occasion there was a warm altercation between my hon. Friend (Dr. Tanner) and the hon. Member for South Hunts, and the next thing we hear of is that the Local Government Board have sent down sealed orders for the suppression of the Board, and the appointment of paid Guardians. Surely the Representative of the Local Government Board here is not going to contend that because there was a certain amount of strong language indulged in by hon. Members of the Board, even though they are Members of this House, is a sufficiently grave reason for taking this high handed autocratic step? We await the official explanation with considerable interest. I feel convinced that the right hon. Gentleman will not be able, not-withstanding his well trained ingenuity, to allege anything more serious against the Cork Board of Guardians than the fact that, on one or two occasions, they passed resolutions dealing with public political matters, and then proceeded with the ordinary business of the Board. It should be borne in mind, that before Boards of Guardians represented the National feeling in Ireland, as now they do, so far as elected members are concerned, it was a constant practice to pass resolutions of a loyal or political character, resolutions congratulating a Lord Lieutenant upon his accession to office, or commenting upon political events of the day entirely outside the routine business of a Board of Guardians. As my hon. Friend (Dr. Tanner) reminds me, in the days antecedent to Disestablishment, when there was great excitement in Ireland, and Party feeling ran high in relation to the much vexed Church question, a number of Boards of Guardians, then in the hands of the land owning class, passed resolutions denouncing the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian in favour of Disestablishment. Such resolutions Boards in past times passed without reproof, if not with encouragement, and they were not more outside their ordinary business than if Boards in these days passed resolutions in reference to the Land Purchase Bill, or any of the ill-starred measures of the present Ad- 1534 ministration. It is the more desirable that these Boards should be permitted to act in this way, as they are the only bodies who reflect the public opinion of the locality. The right hon. Gentleman gets his information entirely from official sources, and, by putting their opinions on record, these Local Boards offer a further means of enlightenment to the right hon. Gentleman and his Colleagues. Copies of these resolutions are sent, I understand, to the Chief Secretary, as well as to the Local Representatives in Parliament. It cannot be contended, or it should not be contended, with any respect for the principle of Local Government, that such action on the part of Local Boards is a grave dereliction of duty, to be marked with suppression. We demand some explanation why an important body like the Cork Board of Guardians was treated in this arbitrary manner at the instance of a clique of officials in Dublin Castle, inspired and directed as we think, by a political cabal, of which the hon. Member for South Hunts is a prominent member. There is one other matter to which I wish to call attention in connection with the action of the Local Government Board in regard to certain medical officers, in order to show how the Dublin Castle officials, inspired by the right hon. Gentleman's policy, sound whatever stop they like on the instrument on which they play. Over and over again we have brought under the notice of the right hon. Gentleman in this House certain views connected with Irish administration. I wish particularly to call attention to the readiness with which the Local Government Board officials pounce upon what they consider to be a blot, if the act is committed by a medical officer who has the misfortune to hold Nationalist views. Complaint was made of an alleged dereliction of duty by a medical officer at Killarney. A complaint was conveyed to the Government, through the medium of an insignificant and insolent minority, that application was made to the dispensary medical officer to attend a sick person, and that it was not attended to, although it was repeated. This matter was laid before the right hon. Gentleman, who, although he was unable to find time to inquire into a shooting outrage at Charleville, was in a position to set the whole 1535 machinery of the Local Government Board in operation, and it then transpired that the explanation was, the applicant had only a red ticket, and the medical officer did not deem it an urgent case. Now, the Board of Guardians might easily have dealt with this little matter, yet the right hon. Gentleman and the Local Government Board were so responsive to the touch from certain quarters, that the whole machinery of the Department was set in motion. I think this incident is most significant of the real nature of the Government policy.
§ (8.7.) MR. A. J. BALFOURI understand that the hon. Member has attacked the Local Government Board for having inquired into a matter brought before the House of Commons.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURBut how can the hon. Member complain of the prompt action of the Local Government Board? I think I may at once pass from that to other matters which have been mentioned. I have been questioned with regard to the dissolution of the Cork and Dungarvan Boards of Guardians. The dissolution of the latter Board occurred in 1888, and the matter is at least a year and a half old, and has been discussed.
§ DR. TANNERThe right hon. Gentleman will pardon my ignorance; he had me in gaol last year, and I could not possibly bring the matter under his notice then.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURI was particularly referring to the remarks of hon. Members who were not in gaol. The Board was dissolved because it disgrace fully wasted its time, and also its money in regard to contracts. But it will come into existence again next March, and I think hon. Members will be glad to learn that the result of the administration by paid Guardians has been to place the affairs of the Union in a much more satisfactory condition. With regard to Cork Union, the dissolution of that Board took place in July last, under circumstances which have already been described—
§ DR. TANNERI am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman. He has before admitted that the Board was doing 1536 its duty in an ordinary manner. When, however, an altercation arose between two of the Members, who are also Members of this House, the Local Government Board suddenly intervened.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURWhat really occurred was this: The dissolution of the Cork Board of Guardians took place in January last. The hon. Gentleman would have the Committee believe that the Board was doing its duty in an ordinary way, and was suddenly and arbitrarily dissolved for political purposes.
§ DR. TANNERI did not say anything of the kind.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURAt least twice before January the Board was warned that it would be dissolved unless its manner of conducting business was altered. The Board of Guardians know perfectly well that if they continued proceedings contrary to regulations laid down by the Local Government Board, no other course would be left to the Local Government Board than to dissolve them. This is but obviously just to the poor. If the majority of a Board of Guardians are to constantly occupy themselves with discussing, not the affairs of the Union, but mere abstract political resolutions, it is perfectly clear that the poor will suffer. If at a time when business is to be transacted the Guardians quarrel in an unseemly and discreditable manner over these extraneous resolutions, such conduct must properly and necessarily is followed by dissolution. Any one who looks into the series of transactions which terminated in the dissolution of the Cork Board of Guardians must agree that the Local Government Board acted as they were bound to act, and if, after repeated warnings, they had refrained from taking the step which was expressly prescribed by statute for such cases they would have proclaimed their own incompetence to manage the Boards of Guardians. I have refrained from describing the character of the scenes and the language used at these meetings, but even if the scenes bad not been, as they were, of a discreditable character, and even if the language had been moderate and decent, which it was not, their action would have been an offence against the regulations of the Local Government Board.
§ MR. CLANCY (Dublin Co., N)How many Irish Boards of Guardians are suppressed?
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURI think two.
§ (8.15.) MR. CLANCYI think that the doctrine which the right hon. Gentleman has laid down in regard to Public Bodies passing political resolutions is a somewhat extraordinary one. Surely the mere doing that is not a sufficient justification for suppression. Of course if persistence in passing resolutions outside the scope of business should lead to actual mismanagement of the affairs of a Union I would sympathise with, and, indeed, advocate a policy of stringent suppression.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURI endeavoured to explain that this Board was suppressed because these political resolutions were brought forward at such a time that the legitimate business of the Board was delayed.
§ DR. TANNERThe second resolution congratulating the Leader of the Irish Party on the result of the Parnell Commission Inquiry was only proposed after a resolution had been carried congratulating a Conservative gentleman, who had been ill, on his recovery.
§ MR. CLANCYEven if it were true that some members of the Board were inconvenienced by the discussion of political resolutions before the regular business was proceeded with, I think it was a very hard measure to deprive the ratepayers of the right of having their affairs administered by elected Guardiarns. Of course if such conduct really prejudiced the affairs of the Union, such an extreme course of action might have been justified. But I do not gather that the right hon. Gentleman has charged against the Cork Board anything like the misappropriation of funds, the fraudulent placing of contracts, or delay in the management of business, and, that being so, I think it is a very hard casa to deprive the ratepayers of the right of electing a Board for the simple reason that certain members of the Board were inconvenienced on one occasion. In neither the case of the Cork nor of the Ballinasloe Boards has the right hon. Gentleman been able to point out anything more serious than mere personal 1538 inconvenience, and, therefore, I say that the punishment inflicted was too severe. In another case a complaint was made that a contract was given to a person who ought not to have had it, and even in that case I doubt whether the suppression of the whole elective system was not too severe a punishment. Some smaller penalty would surely have adequately met the case. The Local Government Board has the minutes of every meeting of a Board of Guardians in Ireland transmitted to it within a week of the meetings being held, and surely nothing would have been easier than for the Central Authority to refuse to confirm the contract, and to insist on its being given by the Local Board to another person. No, the Local Government Board preferred to suppress the Local Board of Guardians, and this is indicative of the whole system of Irish government. The fact is, that the Dublin Castle officials avail themselves of the slightest pretext for suppressing one of these Boards, and the suppressions generally take place in those parts of Ireland where the Nationalist Party have obtained the upper hand on the Boards. In many cases recently in the North of Ireland Boards of Guardians have made it the first business of the day to pass political resolutions in support of the policy or measures of the Government, and within the last six months nearly every Board in the North has adopted that course, especially in regard to the Land Purchase Bill of the Government. Nevertheless, in no single case in the North of Ireland, where these transactions have taken place, has the heavy hand of the Local Government Board been felt. It is only when we come to the Nationalist parts of the country—Leinster, Minister, and Connaught—that the Local Government Poard come down, hot and heavy, on the least pretence, and sometimes on no pretance at all. Some protest is called for from the Nationalists against this policy of terrorism—this attempt to humiliate where they cannot convert. I hope the Boards of Guardians will not be intimidated. These Local Bodies are the representative centres of local feeling, and I think that Boards of Guardians and Town Councils and other authorities are justi- 1539 fied in passing these resolutions, and I hope they will pass them whether they be Orange or Nationalist. We can only protest, as we shall protest again and again, against offences of this kind being visited with the severest punishment, namely, suppression. (8.32.)
§ (9.5.) MR. BLANE (Armagh, S.)The list of salaries and wages presented to the Committee under this Vote this year is very significant. At present, we have under 5,000,000 of population, and in the year 1848 we had over 8,000,000, and with the latter number, the amount voted was £19,636. If we now voted a proportionate amount to this Irish Bumbledom, we should be paying £10,000, but instead of asking us to vote that sum, we are asked for over £23,000. In the year 1848, the cost of Inspectors amounted to £2,110, but in the present Estimates we are asked to vote for Inspectors alone £3,930. In 1848 the cost of travelling and auditors was £3,300, but now, though there are 3,500,000 less people in the country, the cost is £6,750. If this money were voted for poor people who require relief, I think nobody on this side of the House would say much, but the cost of the poor per head per week was only 2s. in 1848, and it is the same to-day, and therefore the increased charges made under the Vote must have been devoured by the officials. No portion of the increase goes to the poor. It is all absorbed by salaries, allowances, and travelling expenses. The total cost in 1848 was £41,699, whereas now, with little more than half the population, it is £132,603, that is to say, some thousands more than three times the amount. And it must be remembered that in 1848 the country had only just emerged from a period of famine and great distress. The distress was so great in 1847 that the House had to give a Supplementary Estimate, and I believe there was also a Grant in Aid voted. The salaries voted to these officials are far beyond anything they would obtain in ordinary civil life. I find that the Inspectors have £500 a year, which rises after five years to £700, and comes under the general Vote of salaries and wages. The auditors draw a large 1540 amount, not only for salaries but for travelling.
THE CHAIRMANAn Amendment has been moved to item "A." The hon. Member must confine himself to that item. He cannot deal with the others.
§ MR. BLANEWe are dealing with the question of salaries and wages. Well, I must say it appears to me we are voting two-thirds as much in salaries as we ought to according to the population, I think the official charges should have some relation to the number of population, because when increased burdens come and have to be borne by a smaller number of people they press with great severity on the poor. They do not press on the landed class, but on the humbler classes, who are getting every year less able to bear them. Although we are a richer people than we were, it must not be forgotten that there is not that equal distribution of wealth which some of us are endeavouring to bring about. There is a great deal of distress amongst the people, and the poor have to pay these large salaries and expenses out of every smoke of tobacco they take and every glass of beer or cup of tea, coffee, or cocoa they drink. If we devoted this money to bettering the condition of things, so far as the poor people in the workhouses are concerned, I should not complain; but we do not. It goes to what are called the loyal minority. We hear a great deal about the loyalty of these people, but we find that out of almost every Vote that comes up they get something for their loyalty. You never find salaries and allowances getting less. They are an ever-increasing quantity. We are asked to vote more than we did last year or the previous year; in fact, ever since 1848 the demand has been increasing, and I must protest against this enormous sum being voted in the shape of salary for men who, if they were thrown on their own resources in any other country, would find it difficult to make a living.
§ (9.13.) MR. HAYDEN (Leitrim, S.)I desire to call attention to a case of peculiar hardship. It is this: Mr. Peter Keogh, a gentleman for some years a 1541 Guardian of the Ballinasloe Union, and a Juror of the County of Roscommon, and who had experience of the management of large numbers of workmen, having been appointed to the mastership of the Athlone Workhouse, the Local Government Board refused to sanction the appointment. How far they were legally entitled to do so may be hereafter tested: but the grounds on which they base their refusal are, first, that Mr. Keogh was twice convicted, and, second, that lie has had no official experience. With regard to the convictions, I may inform the Committee that one of them was on account of an alleged assault on the occasion of his eviction from his farm for a rack rent, sought to be levied on improvements which were the result of his labour and expenditure. The other was a conviction without the right of appeal, for having been amongst a crowd at Ballinasloe Rail way Station when cheers were given for some Coercion Act prisoners who were passing. Convictions such as these are not now regarded in either country as affecting a man's moral character. With regard to the charge of inexperience, I think that the Guardians who know Mr. Keogh personally, and are aware of his intelligence and capabilities for the office, are better judges of his qualification than the members of the Local Government Board. Full acquaintance with all the duties of office is not always deemed essential in Ireland, otherwise the Vice President of the Local Government Board would not hold that position. But the real reason for the refusal is that Mr. Keogh was appointed by a popular Board, at the meetings of which the landlord section only attend when some job is to be carried. Failing success there they resorted to private intriguing with the Authorities in Dublin to carry out their views. Complaints are sometimes made of the conduct of Boards of Guardians, and it is said that their suspension ought to be justified on account of their manner of conducting their business, but I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to give a single instance in which in Ireland such language or such conduct has occurred us the Evening Standard describes as taking place at a London Vestry to-day. It says— 1542
There were the usual personalities, and scenes of confusion peculiar to this Board, and remarks such as 'You are a liar;' 'You little rascal:' 'You vagabond; You are an unmitigated har,' &c, were frequent, notwithstanding the energy with which the Chairman (Mr. W. L. Kellaway) wielded his gavel, and shouted for order. The ratepayers' gallery was crowded during the whole of the six hours' meeting, and the people shouted and applauded and joined in the hilarity which some of the wits of the Board created. But the climax was reached about a quarter to I o'clock, when Mr. John Ross, after many offensive personalities, said something to upset Mr. George Elcock. The latter gentleman rushed round the table, and excitedly exclaimed, ' You say that again!' Mr. Boss repeated his assertion, and Mr. Elcock struck him a violent blow with his fist the left eye, which caused an immediate swelling. Mr. Boss retaliated by throwing one of the heavy metal inkstands at the head of his opponent; but this fortunately missed its mark, and did no greater harm than smothering Mr. Elcock in ink, and breaking a piece off the board-room table.There is a half a column of similar de scription, and I should like the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to give an instance of a similar disgraceful scene to this described in a London Conservative newspaper having occurred in Ireland. Will the English Local Government Board dare to take notice of this and suppress the Clerkenwell Vestry? Certainly not. A somewhat similar scene occurred at a meeting of the St. Paul's Vestry, Deptford. The Evening Standard says—Mr. Smith demanded to lie heard, and for a time confusion prevailed, Mr. Smith declaring that last time brute force was used, and challenging any member now to turn him out. Other accounts were passed, the Chairman immediately putting the motion on Mr. Smith rising. Mr. Wheatley protested against ' this indecent way of doing business,' and other members spoke in a similar strain.No notice will be taken of these proceedings by the English Local Government Board, whilst Irish Guardians are hampered in every possible way in the exercise of their duty. If this is the right hon. Gentleman's idea of conceding Local Government—depriving men who have the confidence of the people, and who best know the wants of their localities and the qualification of their officers of the little power they at present possess—it bodes ill for the success of his remedial policy, and in this instance, at all events, is only likely to result in adding another to the list of suppressed Boards.
§ (9.22.) DR. J. G. FITZGERALD (Longford, S.)The right hon. Gentleman shows on most occasions a tendency to do what is right in regard to these matters if he is not hampered by his officials. Unless the right hon. Gentleman will advise the Chief Secretary to give us some undertaking to consider the advisability of restoring the rights of these Local Bodies, I hope my hon. Friend will press the reduction of the Vote. It is a remarkable thing that at the very moment when the Unionist supporters of the right hon. Gentleman are refusing to support his Land Bill unless lie will extend a larger measure of local self-government to Ireland, the right hon. Gentleman is suppressing one of the Local Governing Bodies that exist. The right hon. Gentleman defended the suppression of the Dungarvan and the Cork Boards on different grounds. At Dungarvan he said the Guardians would persist in giving a contract for bread to a certain local baker, of whose bread the doctor did not approve. I would like to point out that the baker was a Nationalist baker, while the doctor was a Tory doctor. Although the doctor might have some complaint to make of the bread, I do not think that the fact of a loaf having been too small or not of the desired quality for the time being was sufficient ground for suppressing one of these Local Bodies that administer to the wants of the poor. With regard to the Cork Guardians, there is no doubt that certain controversies arose between members of the Board who hold one political view and members who entertain another, but I think the right hon. Gentleman has shown no good grounds for the suppression of the Board. Of course, it is desirable that Boards of Guardians should keep within the bounds of moderation, but I do not think it will be contended that the Boards of Guardians in Ireland as a whole are not conducted in a better and more efficient manner perhaps than the Boards in this country.
§ (9.26.) MR. SHEEHY (Galway, S.)The answer given be the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney Genaral for Ireland (Mr. Madden) this evening 1544 about the refusal of the Local Government Board to sanction the appointment of Mr. Keogh to the mastership of A thlone Union was, I think, the most extraordinary answer ever given in this House. We were told that that gentleman had not previous official knowledge. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to name for me three unions in Ireland the masters of which had official knowledge before they were appointed. The practice is to elect a man who is new to official life. The real reason why the appointment was not sanctioned was that Mr. Keogh had been convicted of an assault, or, in other words, of having defended his home when he was being evicted on account of his incapacity to pay the exorbitant rent which had been for many years wrung out of him. His case was a case of desperation, and he defended his home as any good man would do and ought to do. Mr. Keogh is a Nationalist, like many others in Ireland, he has kept the green flag flying in spite of all difficulties, and it is-because he does not belong to the class of crawlers who are Nationalists one day and who go over to the Government the next day when their own interests are at stake that the appointment was not sanctioned. If he had been rowdy and a man of no character, but a supporter of the Government, there would have been no difficulty. A year ago a man named Hewett was summoned for threatening to blow the contents of a revolver into a man and violently assaulting him, but because he happened to be an emergency man he was let off with the slight fine of 27s., and he is now an officer in Queenstown. The rowdy of a year ago is now the guardian of the peace in Queens-town. Mr. Keogh, the Nationalist, because he defended his home, is not to-get any appointment. This shows that the trail of the serpent is over every office and department in Ireland. Every office is given to men of one faction, and every man who is a political opponent is sure to meet with opposition at every point. It is said that Mr. Keogh is lacking in official knowledge. What official knowledge did the Vice President of the Local Government Board possess-when he was appointed to Office? Mr. Keogh is a man of education, a roan of capacity, and a man of wide experience 1545 in public affairs. We do not intend to let this question drop until we receive a satisfactory assurance, and I think it will be better for the Government to promise that the refusal to sanction the appointment on such paltry and miserable grounds will be re-considered.
§ (9.37.) MR. STANSFELD (Halifax)I feel bound to challenge the statements of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary with regard to the grounds of suspension of Local Boards of Guardians. I know nothing of the facts except from what I have heard; but I maintain that the Chief Secretary's case for the suspension of the Cork Board of Guardians is not sufficient. I know perfectly well that the Irish Poor Law is not like the English Poor Law. It has always been a harsher Poor Law, and has always been administered in a harsher spirit. Allowing for that historic difference, surely the right hon. Gentleman is not prepared to deny that the extreme power of suppression ought to be charily exercised, and only exercised upon a clear and indisputable case. I say that the right hon. Gentleman's case was not clear. The right hon. Gentleman made the significant and important admission that Boards of Guardians were perfectly justified if they chose to occupy a part of their time in passing political resolutions.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURThe right hon. Gentleman is mistaken. What I said was, that members of Boards of Guardians who happen to hold particular views can, if they choose—for nobody would interfere at all—after the Board meeting is over, pass any resolutions they like.
§ MR. STANSFELDI was about to make precisely that statement, so that the right hon. Gentleman's interruption was uncalled for. The right hon. Gentleman admits that Boards of Guardians have this right; only he says it is n question of time and opportunity. According to the right hon. Gentleman, if the Cork Board of Guardians had attended to their Poor Law business first, and passed their resolutions at the end of the business meeting, he would 1546 have had no fault to find, or, at any rate, would have taken no action.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURThat is not so.
§ MR. STANSFELDThen I do not understand what the right hon. Gentleman means. Ho said in the most distinct way that their fault was that they passed these resolutions at the beginning and not at the end of the meeting. I say that is no justification for the action the Chief Secretary took. It is conceivable that by passing these resolutions at the beginning of the meetings they might interrupt business, but the right hon. Gentleman made no such statement. Is it an efficient defence to say that a resolution was passed at the beginning instead of the end of a sitting I Should not the right hon. Gentleman have followed up that statement by a demonstration that the Poor Law had suffered? I do not wonder that he did not put it much higher, because time was when the right hon. Gentleman's friends constituted the majority on these Boards of Guardians and passed political resolutions, and I have never yet heard that they were suspended for passing such resolutions either at the beginning or end of the proceedings of the Board. The power of suppression is an evil power, a power which in this country we should not dream of exercising under any conceivable circumstances. It is incumbent on the right hon. Gentleman to give full and exhaustive answers to Irish complaints. The President of the English Local Government Board (Mr. Ritchie) would not have ventured to address to this House such an argument as we have heard from the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. A. J. Balfour). It is because it is an Irish grievance that the right hon. Gentleman, in his accustomed manner, has thought right to treat it with cynical indifference. Having known something about the administration of the Poor Law, I say he is bound to show that the case was extreme or he cannot justify the application of so severe and stringent a power. He is bound to show that the business of the meeting was not fulfilled and that the poor suffered in consequence of the non-fulfilment of the duties of the Board. I invite the right 1547 hon. Gentleman to complete an explanation which, I say, as it stands, is utterly incomplete and unsatisfactory.
§ (9.43.) MR. A. J. BALFOURThe right hon. Gentleman may have known something at one time of the administration of the Poor Law, but I think he must have forgotten it. The right hon. Gentleman appears to think that such proceedings as those of the Cork Board of Guardians would be tolerated in England. I venture to think that they would not be tolerated here. The right hon. Gentleman appears to suppose that the action of the Local Government Board in suppressing the Board of Guardians was sudden, arbitrary, and unexpected. There never was such a mistake made.
§ MR. STANSFELDI did not say anything of the kind.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURIf the right hon. Gentleman had listened to my speech—
§ MR. STANSFELDI listened to every word of it.
§ MR. A J. BALFOURI will put it in this way. If I had been able to convey my meaning to the right hon. Gentleman, lie would have seen how entirely uncalled for were some of the heated observations he has made. The Local Government Board addressed a remonstrance to the Guardians for an infraction of the recognised rules of the Local Government Board as early as January 18, 1888.
§ DR. TANNERMay I ask the Chief Secretary whether it is not the fact that all the remonstrances were in respect of the same rule?
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURI do not question the force of the observation of the hon. Gentleman. But as early as 18th January, 1888, the Local Government Board addressed a letter of remonstrance to the Cork Board for an infraction of the regulations. The remonstrance was repeated on November 14, 1888, and it was again repeated on August 7, 1889. On that occasion the Local Government Board wrote pointing out that such conduct as the disorderly opposition to the ruling of the Chairman, and adjourning the meeting, leaving much important 1548 business undone, was of such a kind; that, unless the Board of Guardians proceeded to discharge their duties, the Local Government Board would be compelled to dissolve them. Again, on October 2, 1889, the Local Government Board addressed the Guardians on the continued disregard of the order regulating their proceedings, and addressed a final warning, in which they stated that if the Guardians continued to leave un discharged the important functions entrusted to them, the Local Government Board would feel themselves compelled to relieve the Guardians of the duties which they appeared to be unable or unwilling to fulfil according to the regulations governing their proceedings. In 1890 occurred the scenes I have referred to. On three separate occasions the Board of Guardians deliberately put off their business in order to pass political and personal resolutions which had no reference whatever to the duties they were called upon to perform.
§ Mr. J. O'CONNOR (Tipperary, S.)What were those resolutions?
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURThe right hon. Gentleman—
§ MR. J. O'CONNORWhat were the resolutions?
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURThe right hon. Gentleman seems to regard that as a matter of small importance. It is not a matter of small importance.
§ MR. STANSFELDThe right hon. Gentleman must not misrepresent me. I believe I spoke clearly and distinctly. My case was that the right hon. Gentleman had not condescended to give an explanation of the circumstances. The only statement he made was that the Board of Guardians had passed resolutions at the beginning of the meeting.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURThe right hon. Gentleman has given an inaccurate version of my speech. I expressed myself in language which might have been intelligible even to him.
§ DR. TANNERI rise to order. I want to know whether the right hon. Gentleman is in order in making such a statement as that?
THE CHAIRMANThe right hon. Gentleman is entitled to use such language, though I think it is unusual. I must point out to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Halifax that if he had heard the first speech of the Chief Secretary I think the misunderstanding would not have arisen.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURI entirely agree with your ruling, Sir. The circumstance which perhaps made me speak with a little heat is now entirely explained. It now appears that the right hon. Gentleman did not hear my remarks, hut notwithstanding that he comes forward and attacks me for having given no explanation, the right hon. Gentleman did not take the trouble to he in his place to hear my explanation.
§ MR. STANSFELDI beg pardon; I did hear his speech in reply to an hon. Member behind me, and I assumed that that reply was intended as an explanation to the hon. Member.
THE CHAIRMANI am responsible in this matter. I thought that the right hon. Gentleman had not heard the first speech which contained the explanation of the absence of which he complains?
§ MR. STANSFELDI certainly did not hear that statement. I only heard the statement to which I refer.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURThen perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will not again complain of my not having given the Committee an adequate account of the transaction. I explained to the Committee the circumstances which occurred in 1889. It is not necessary to meet the explanation. Suffice it to say that on three separate occasions the Board of Guardians broke through the regulations laid down for the conduct of business by the Local Government Board, and that this was followed by a final warning; and, in my opinion, neither the Presidents of the Local Government Boards in England or in Ireland could possibly have left unnoticed and undealt with so grave and deliberate an infraction of the rules laid down for the transaction of Poor Law business in every Union in the country.
§ (9.52.) MR. J. O'CONNORThe language the right hon. Gentleman 1550 has thought fit to address to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Halifax (Mr. Stansfeld), who occupied the important post of President of the Local Government Board before the Chief Secretary had a seat in this House, was unworthy of the Chief Secretary. The Chief Secretary said the Cork Board of Guardians was suppressed because it passed political and personal resolutions, but he left the Committee entirely in ignorance as to what the nature of the resolutions was. From time to time the Cork Guardians received warnings because they passed resolutions condemnatory of evictions. What subject was more suitable for Guardians to deal with? Is it not provided by laws passed by this House that it is necessary for landlords, the friends of the right hon. Gentleman, to send notice to the Board of Guardians to provide space in the workhouse for evicted tenants? I think it is, therefore, quite within the right of the Guardians to condemn by resolution a course of conduct which places burdens upon their shoulders.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURThe hon. Gentleman does not appreciate the force of my observations. What I said was that those members of the Board who took a particular view of any subject were at perfect liberty to stay after business hours and pass resolutions, but to pass resolutions with regard to a particular suit brought against the Member for Cork at the beginning of business, thereby preventing the public business of the Union from being transacted, was contrary to the regulations of the Local Government Board.
§ MR. J. O'CONNORI will come to that in a moment. Such, I say, was the nature of the resolutions passed by the Board of Guardians in 1888 and 1889. But the Local Government Board did not act on those resolutions, but they acted upon a personal resolution. The Cork Guardians passed a resolution congratulating a certain gentleman upon his recovery from a serious illness, and shortly afterwards the hon. Member for Mid Cork (Dr. Tanner), acting upon the precedent established by the friends of the right hon. Gentleman, proposed 1551 a resolution of confidence in his chief and leader (Mr. Parnell). I maintain that that was a very proper resolution to pass. The hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) has impressed his personality upon the legislation of this House, affecting Poor Law Guardians in Ireland. The character of the hon. Gentleman was attacked, and thereupon the Cork Guardians expressed their confidence in the hon. Member. There was no dissolution of the Board two or three years ago when they passed resolutions both before, during, and after the legitimate business of the Board. And why? Because the Guardians were presided over by a Nationalist. Last year and this year the Board has been presided over by a friend of the right hon. Gentleman, and he has declined to receive resolutions, hence the difficulty. The Chairman has been incited to this course of conduct by the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman made a speech in the Antient Concert Rooms in Dublin, in which he incitedßž Ah! he is going away now. He flies! He made a speech on that occasion last year, and it has been adverted to by my hon. Friend the Member for East Mayo as the only occasion upon which the right hon. Gentleman addressed a meeting of Irishmen, or of people who call themselves Irish when it suits them. This, the only meeting he has addressed in Ireland, was held with closed doors, and those who attended it took care that their names did not appear in the public Press. To this meeting the right hon. Gentleman addressed himself, and among other things he advised those who were Chairmen of Poor Law Boards, and of the same way of thinking as himself, not to accept these resolutions. Therefore, I say he incited to a precipitation of these difficulties. Naturally, the elected Guardians on the Cork Board insisted upon having the resolution considered. The ex officio Guardians left the room with their Chairman, the hon. Member for South Hunts, I suppose, leading them. The Nationalist Guardians put their own Chairman in the chair, and conducted the rest of the business with satisfaction to themselves, the ratepayers, and the poor, for whom they had to provide. This was how the 1552 present state of things was brought about, and the action of suppressing the Board was because the resolution was of a character obnoxious to the Government. My hon. Friend, when the right hon. Gentleman alluded to this, said a resolution had been passed congratulating a Conservative Member of the Board upon his return to health and his duties, and then the right hon. Gentleman said that was an additional reason why they ought to be suppressed. Now, surely the right hon. Gentleman was not serious when he made such an observation as that. Does he think he can impose upon our intelligence as an additional reason for suppression the fact that the Board passed a resolution congratulating a Conservative Member of the Board who had been seriously ill, and who is highly respected by every member of the Board? Well, so much for the Cork Board of Guardians. I turn to another matter I desire to bring under the notice of the right hon. Gentleman in connection with this Vote. The Local Government Board are constantly engaged in the interesting process of boycotting the National Press of Ireland. In and out of the House we hear the Chief Secretary stigmatise boycotting as a criminal conspiracy, but the Boards under the control of the right hon. Gentleman are engaged every day in boycotting the National Press in Ireland. A circular has been sent out by one of these Boards to the effect that only that portion of the Press which is friendly to the Government in Ireland should receive official advertisements. At the present moment the Cork Daily Herald and the Cork Examiner, the two Nationalist papers which circulate not only throughout the County of Cork, but throughout the whole Province of Minister, receive not a single advertisement from the Local Government Board. These advertisements are all sent to the Cork Constitution, which has a limited circulation among the few friends of the hon. Member for South Hunts. The Cork National Press is abolutely boycotted. The Members of the Boards, with the Chief Secretary at their head, have entered into a criminal conspiracy to boycott the Cork Herald and the Cork Examiner. This ought to discount a great deal the effect of those denunciations we hear from the right hon. Gentleman when he stands at that 1553 Table, and with those dialectical flourishes for which he is so remarkable declaims against everybody for indulging in boycotting. Again, the Nationalist newspaper in Carlow, having the largest circulation in that county, has been deprived of these advertisements. The editor has written to the secretaries of these Boards, pointing out the injustice to which his newspaper has been subjected, but he has got no satisfactory answer. He has been told, indeed, that he has been sent to gaol, but I should have thought that the offence of the editor had been expiated by a two months' imprisonment, but that is not so in the view of the Local Government Board and the Government of Ireland. Although he has rested his weary frame on the plank bed, has partaken of the fare of the convict, and worn the convict dress, when he comes out again to pursue his avocations he is followed with punishment into his private life by that system of boycotting which the right hon. Gentleman meets elsewhere with "shadowing" and vigorous denunciation. These things lead us to the belief that the Local Government Board is actuated by that animus which exists in the mind of the Chief Secretary. I should have thought that the Local Government Board would have acted in a fair spirit towards the Local Poor Law Boards. It is many years ago since the Act was passed calling into existence Boards of Guardians in Ireland, and the people were called upon to exercise rights previously suppressed, the people of Ireland being hopelessly subject to penal laws. Without any previous training in the science of local administration the people were called upon to exercise their powers, and yet from the day they were called into existence until now these Boards have conducted their business so well that in one instance only had the Controlling Board found it necessary to exercise its authority and suppress a Board for dereliction of duty, and I may mention that in that one instance business was conducted almost entirely by ex officio members. This is a highly creditable state of things, such as would do credit to a more favoured country. Through all these years the people have done their business 1554 thoroughly well, and there was no friction until, through stress of political circumstances, the people were obliged to use their Poor Law Boards for the exercise of their undoubted right in the expression of their political opinions, or, at all events, those opinions that bore upon the maintenance of the poor in Ireland. We notice that this question first arose on the very inception of the National movement, under a former Government, when an attempt was made to prevent doctors holding positions under the Poor Law Board from taking their natural place among the people in their popular agitation. In all such cases the people stood by the doctors, and, in deference to popular opinion, doctors who were deprived of their positions were reinstated. Now we find another course is being pursued. We found a year or two ago a Wexford Board of Guardians was suppressed because they made special provision for the relief of evicted tenants, and now these Cork Guardians have been suppressed because they passed resolutions of a quatsi-political character, which, undoubtedly, had a bearing on the maintenance of the provision for the poor. Unfortunately, the Local Boards are under the authority of the Board presided over by the right hon. Gentleman, and his animus and his spirit prevails on the Board, and so we see that, without sufficient cause, this great principle of representative local administration is destroyed, for the purpose of giving vent to the expression of political acrimony which distinguishes the Chief Secretary.
§ (10.15.) MR. T. W. RUSSELL (South Tyrone)I may be allowed to ask the Chief Secretary one question, and that is, whether, while the members of the Cork Board of Guardians were passing political and personal resolutions, the rates were to a great extent uncollected, and the balance at the bank was against them; and whether, since the Vice-Guardians were appointed, the condition of affairs has improved?
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURYes; I believe the administration of the Union has greatly improved.
(10.16.) COLONEL NOLANThe observation of the hon. Member is 1555 calculated to convey a false impression. It is a notorious fact that throughout the Unions in the South and West it is a very common thing for the accounts of the Guardians at the banks to be overdrawn in January, for the simple reason that the rates are not collected until later. I know this is the case of Tuam, which is a well-managed Union. It is a well recognised habit for bankers to allow accounts to be overdrawn until after the fairs are held, when rates are paid in and there is a large balance to the credit of the Guardians. It is simply a matter of arrangement, and there is nothing exceptional in the fact that the account of the Cork Guardians was overdrawn.
§ (10.17.) MR. J. O'CONNORUpon the answer which has just been given, may I ask is it not a fact that the paid Guardians do not give that attention to outdoor relief which occupied much of the time of the elected Guardians, week by week, as they revised the list of the recipients of this form of relief, relieving the charge upon the rates by this part of a well recognised and enlightened system of Poor Law administration?
§ (10.17.) MR. DILLONDoes the hon. Member for South Tyrone mean to convey, by his question, or insinuate, that it is any part of the duty of Guardians to go out and collect rates from the ratepayers?
§ MR. T. W. RUSSELLI intended to convey nothing of the kind, but I do say they would have been better occupied in seeing that the business of the Union was done than in passing resolutions about the O'Shea Divorce case.
§ MR. DILLONBut the hon. Member did not speak of the business of the Union; he spoke of the collection of rates, not of business to be done around the Board table. I have never been a member of a Board of Guardians, but I have always understood that the business of collecting rates is the work of collectors, who are bound to collect the money under penalties, and it is nothing to do with 1556 the business of the Board meetings But, however that may be, any neglect is equally attributable to the majority on the Board, the Conservative and nominated members. The fact is, a shameful, scandalous animus underlies the action of the Local Government Board. The Cork Guardians committed the unforgiveable sin of passing a resolution in favour of my hon. Friend the Member for Cork. They might have passed resolutions by the score on other subjects. These are the only constituted Representative Bodies we have except Town Councils; they are the only representative Rural Bodies, and do yon lay down the principle that they are not to be allowed to give expression to the feelings of the people? The right hon. Gentleman plainly showed what was the real cause of the suppression. Not because they neglected business, because he did not attempt to prove to the Committee that there had been any such neglect; the reason was because the Guardians passed a resolution of confidence in the hon. Member for Cork.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURI stated precisely the reverse.
§ MR. DILLONDoes the right hon. Gentleman say that the Board neglected business?
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURYes.
§ MR. DILLONWe have it from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Cork (Dr. Tanner) that they did not leave the Board-room until they had concluded all the business of the meeting. My hon. Friend says, and he was present that the whole of the business was finished before they separated, and we want something more than a bare ipse dixit on the other side. If they did not conclude the business, what part of it was left undone? Further, the right hon. Gentleman says the proposing of the resolution led to waste of time. Why? Was it the fault of the Guardians who introduced it? Nothing of the sort. It was because of the unreasonable and outrageously partisan conduct of the Chairman, who obstructed the introduction of the resolution, 1557 although he had allowed a resolution in reference to one of his own party—his son-in-law I am told—to be passed without protest and with approval. This was done in a few minutes, but when a resolution was introduced in favour of my hon. Friend the Member for Cork the Chairman obstructed the resolution, the Tory members of the Board made a disturbance, and so the time of the Board was wasted. I protest against the waste of time being charged against the Nationalist Guardians. I say that the members of this Board of Guardians were entitled to pass this resolution, although it did not form part of their particular business. You cannot, by a hard and fast rule, utterly gag the people of Ireland. If you will not give them Local Government it is absurd to say the mouths of Guardians shall be shut, and that they shall not, provided they attend to business, express the opinion of those they represent on public matters of the time. If there was neglect of business, there was sufficient reason for suppression, and there was no reason to refer to the resolution: but as no neglect of business is shown, we may fairy assume that the resolution was the cause of suppression. We are entitled to have the specific grounds upon which the Board was suspended. If the right hon. Gentleman has details of the business, as his answer to the hon. Member for South Tyrone would seem to indicate, we are entitled to have this information. I do not suppose he has the same conception of the duty of Boards of Guardians as the hon. Member for South Tyrone, that it includes interference with the business of rate collectors. The hon. Member has left his seat; I was going to ask him if he had paid his own rates, for I know it is not at all an unusual thing, even in Dublin, to defer the payment of our rates until the autumn, but we do not live in fear of our furniture being seized for arrears.?
§ (10.25.) MR. A. J. BALFOURI need not again go over the grounds upon which I defended the action of the Local Government Board, but the hon. Member has asked me a specific question, to which I will endeavour to give him a reply. The business left undone 1558 by the Cork Board of Guardians on January 9, was the consideration of the Report of the Engineer with reference to the Blarney water supply; a question as to labourers' cottages; the Report of the medical officer with reference to the defaulters under the Vaccination Act; the consideration of a communication from the Local Government Board as to statistics of relief and the salary of one of the officers; and other matters. The business left undone on January 16 included the consideration of a Motion of which notice had been given by the Chairman, in reference to out-door relief, and the Report on the water supply. This is the specific information I have at my disposal.
§ (10.25.) DR. TANNERThe right hon. Gentleman has not answered the question at all. He has not told us what business was left undone on the occasion when the Tory members, led by the hon. Member for South Hunts, the absentee landlord, effected a strategic retreat to the County Club. We put the Mayor in the Chair, and we finished all the business before us; we left none undone; we finished all arrears of business that had accumulated. Some Members of this Committee may not understand that frequently there are before the Board and especially in large Unions like Cork, debateable matters, such as the right hon. Gentleman has alluded to, the Blarney Water Supply, that have to be referred again to officers or to Committees. It would have been unwise and unfair if we had taken advantage of the absence of the Tory members to settle a matter-still under debate. We did not wish to-copy their bad example; we desired to act squarely and above board; we hit straight, and not under the belt, when, necessity arises.
(10.27.) COLONEL NOLANThose who are familiar with the business before Boards of Guardians know that there are subjects with which some members of the Board are better able to give advice than others, and, especially in regard to such matters as building, and engineering, it is the habit to post- 1559 pone a settlement in the absence of members whose technical information may b3 of value. Two of the matters mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman come within this category, labourers' cottages and water supply, and the settlement of such building and engineering questions is not infrequently postponed by every Board. As to vaccination cases, these are always put off. There will probably be a large number of cases as to which it is open to the Guardians to prosecute, but it would be most injudicious to proceed at once. Decision is advisedly postponed, and the result usually is that the list of persons who have failed to comply with the Act is largely reduced, and you are saved the irritation and expense that would be entailed if the Guardians acted up to the very letter of their powers. These are matters outside the necessary financial and routine work connected with the administration of the Poor Law, and I do not think there is much difference in the administration of Poor Law Boards in Ireland to that in England.
(10.30.) Mr. ARTHUR BALTOURrose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put;" but the CHAIRMAN withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question.
§ Debate resumed.
§ MR. M. HEALY (Cork City)There can be no doubt that the Government have been guilty of gross unfairness in the treatment they have meted out to the Cork Board of Guardians for having passed resolutions of a political character. The real question is whether the Cork Guardians did their business in an efficient manner. Does the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary contend that it is entirely beyond the competence of a Board of Guardians to pass resolutions in regard to political topics? If he is of that opinion, I am not, and I would remind the Committee that it is not so very long ago when the right hon. Gentleman himself sent a letter to a Board of Guardians thanking them for a resolution they had passed in favour of his own Land Purchase Bill. That is an incident which occurred within the last six months. So that we are in this position, that the right hon. Gentleman 1560 thinks it necessary to suppress one Board of Guardians for having, as has been stated, neglected its duty in regard to the collection of rates, and for having, at the same time, passed resolutions of a political character in defiance of the Local Government Board, while, on the other hand, when another Board of Guardians passes a resolution expressing approval of the right hon. Gentleman's Land Purchase Bill, so far from suppressing that body he, as head of the Local Government Board of Ireland, actually sends that body a letter of thanks. In point of fact, he did not even allow the letter to be written by his private secretary, but the document approving the action of that particular Board of Guardians was written in his own fine Roman hand. I ask the Committee, and I also ask the right hon. Gentleman, how can he reconcile the action involved in the despatch of such a letter, with that which he took in directing the suppression of the Cork Board of Guardians, which had also thought it right to pass political resolutions, but which had taken a totally different view of the political situation from that of the other body. The real difficulty in regard to that Board arose from the obstruction originated by the right hon. Gentleman's own political friends. Of all the acts which have helped to heap opprobrium on the name of the right hon. Gentleman, there is, I think, none that can be regarded as worse than his suppression of the Cork Board of Guardians, whereby the people of that locality are deprived of their legitimate local representation.
§ *(10.36.) MR. SMITH-BARRY (Huntingdon, S.)I can state, as a member of the Cork Board of Guardians, that great surprise was felt at the fact that that body was not dissolved long before. The majority of that Board persistently, day after day, defied and defeated the ruling of the Chairman and the directions of the Local Government Board, which have been instanced by the right hon. Gentleman, and into the details of which I do not now propose to go. It is, therefore, perfectly untrue and inconsistent with the facts of the case to say 1561 that the difficulty was occasioned by the obstruction of the Tory members of the Board. The ex officio and Conservative members of the Board used to go down for the purpose of doing the business of the Board, and whenever those members were in a majority, the business of the Board was done; but, on the other hand, whenever it was found that they were in a minority, obstruction went on, extraneous matters were introduced, the interests of the Union were neglected, the Conservative members found it necessary to withdraw, after the Chairman left the chair, and the meeting became a perfect bear garden. The result was, that it was utterly impossible to carry on the real business of the Board, and the ratepayers had to complain of the neglect of their interests. Now, however, under the new system, the rates are being reduced, the business of the Union is being efficiently conducted, and I have no hesitation in stating that, in the opinion of the majority of the ratepayers, and also of the Guardians, it was a great relief when the Board was dissolved.
§ MR. TUITE (Westmeath, N.)I desire to say, in reference to the non-appointment of Mr. Keogh, that I assume the reason is that he is a Nationalist, and the Chief Secretary has done his best to ruin him by driving him from his house and home, and now refuses to allow the Guardians to give him an appointment for which he is well qualified.
§ (10.40.) MR. CLANCYWe have just had from the hon. Member for South Hunts a very characteristic speech. I think if anything were wanted to show why the hon. Gentleman could not live comfortably in Ireland, and has been obliged to remove to England, it is to be found in the remarks he has just made. The most detestable character in Irish history is the anti-Irish Irishman, and more than once the hon. Gentleman has illustrated that character in this House. Whenever anyone is wanted in this House to throw dirt on Ireland, we may reckon with confidence on the assistance of the hon. Member for South Hunts. The hon. Gentleman has spoken of the 1562 opinions of the ratepayers of the Cork Union with regard to the action of the Cork Guardians. I should like to know what body of ratepayers the hon. Member represents in the Cork Union. The hon. Gentleman does not represent any portion of the ratepayers, and is obliged to fall back on his ex officio qualification, and even in that capacity he has been an absentee for the last two or three years I have only risen to point out the character of the hon. Member's speech, and that of the hon. Gentleman the-Member for Tyrone, in regard to which I must congratulate the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary on the support or defence he has received tonight from his two jackals.
§ MR. LLEWELLYN (Somerset, N.)I wish to ask you, Sir, whether the hon. Member is in order in the remarks he is making?
THE CHAIRMANI think it would the better conduce to the conduct of business if the hon. Member would adopt a more moderate tone.
§ *LORD DUNSANY (Gloucester, Thornbury)I also rise to order; and I desire to ask you, Sir, whether it is in order for the hon. Member to characterize Members on this side of the House as-jackals?
§ MR. CLANCYI only referred to one hon. Member sitting on that side of the House. This is a more important matter than many people think. It is a question whether the representative system in Ireland is to be extinguished by an irresponsible Chief Secretary. The question is whether these Boards of Guardians are to be suppressed on the merest pretext or no pretext at all. The right hon. Gentleman has not pretended to answer the question whether the business has been left undone by the Board of Guardians. He gave an account of the business left undone on certain occasions, but he did not give a single instance of business left undone on the occasions when the Guardians were present. All the business was completed before the Board separated, and I think we are entitled to an answer from the right hon. Gentleman.
*(10.45.) MR. ROCHE (Galway, E.)I think what my hon. Friend has said is sufficient to explode the pretext of the right hon. Gentleman for suppressing the Board. I happen to have been Member of a Board of Guardians for 10 or 12 years, and on several occasions we could not get three members together to form a quorum. The consequence is that no business whatever was done, and I wow Id like to know why we never heard any complaint from the Chief Secretary. It is idle for the Chief Secretary to say that the Local Government Board did not approve of Mr. Keogh's appointment, because be bad not sufficient legal knowledge. Three months ago, a similar appointment was made by the Board of which I am a member. There were several candidates, and the successful one had never in his whole life occupied any position of the sort. He admitted that he had never kept books, and that he knew nothing whatever about the office for which he had become a candidate. I have no hesitation in saying that Keogh was refused, not because he was inefficient, but because he was an evicted tenant. At the head of the Local Government Board in Dublin is Mr. George Morris, who at one time happened to be agent on the property from which Keogh was evicted. Mr. Morris, in order to carry out the vindictiveness of his former master, refused Keogh the appointment. That is the real reason why he was refused. It is an extraordinary thing that no man in Ireland has the slightest chance of an appointment who has been imprisoned under the direction of the right hon. Gentleman. On a recent occasion we gave an appointment to a gentleman capable of filling any position. He is Chairman of the Loughrea Town Commissioners. The appointment was a small one, that of Registrar. The Local Government Board refused to sanction it because the newly-appointed Registrar had been in prison under the direction of the right hon. Gentleman. No later than this very evening, I have received notice that the appointment of rate-collector in my parish will be filled up to-morrow. 1564 About three weeks ago it was filled up, but the man, like Mr. Keogh and Mr. Sweeny, had been in prison, but the people honoured him, and the majority of the Board thought him best qualified for the position. Mr. Courtney, if I ceased to be a Member to-morrow, and applied for the rate-collectorship, which is only worth some £20 or £30 a year, my appointment would not be sanctioned by the Local Government Board. I would be told that I could not occupy that position because I had been in prison. That is the system which we object to in Ireland, and I think you will admit that we ought to resist it by every means in our power, and we are determined to resist it. I next come to the case of Mr. Timothy Clarke, of the Portumna Board. I brought the case before the House on a previous occasion. I asked the right hon. Gentleman whether Mr. Clarke was undergoing three months imprisonment in consequence of having signed the Relieving Officer's book for relief to evicted tenants. Yon are aware that the law provides that evicted tenants shall be relieved for the four weeks immediately after their eviction. Mr. Clarke, acting in his capacity of Guardian, and in accordance with the rule, relieved these evicted tenants, with the result that the Local Government Board sent down an officer, and when auditing the books, lie objected to every item of relief given to the tenants evicted from the Clanricarde Estate. The case of Mr. Ayre, a landlord, is different from that of Mr. Clark; but at the very time Mr. Ayre was proceeded against, another member of the Board, Mr. Timothy Kirwan, was proceeded against, and allowed to go scot-free. They ceased to be members of the Board, as they were suspended by the right hon. Gentleman, not because they did not do their duty as guardians, but because they refused to allow the evicted tenants of Clanricarde to starve. The right hon. Gentleman then sent down two of his friends to do the duty at a salary of £500.
§ (11.0.) MR. T. M. HEALY (Longford, N.)I would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he thinks it possible that any succeeding Liberal Administration will go on as this 1565 Government have proceeded? Does he think the officials of the Local Government Board will act under a Liberal Government as they have done under his rule? The right hon. Gentleman may assert that it is impossible for any civilised country to be governed in a different manner; he speaks as if his system of law and order were like the car of Juggernaut. But may I suggest it is astounding how easily that great car of law and order is shunted into a siding when it suits his purposes. Suppose that under the next Liberal Administration it should occur that a member of a Board of Guardians gets up and proposes a vote of confidence in the hon. Member for Cork, does he think it probable that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle will issue an Order the next morning suppressing that Board? It is not at all likely that such a thing would occur. The hon. Member for South Hunts has had the audacity to state that the people of Cork rejoiced at the dissolution of their own Board, because it had passed a resolution of confidence in their own local Member. I think it would be well for the hon. Member to be a little more modest in his ambition to have his name associated with the people of Cork. He is not entitled to speak for the ratepayers of Cork. Why, he would not be elected as a porter in the workhouse; That the people who elected the Member of Parliament, in whom the vote of confidence was passed, should rejoice that their Board was dissolved for passing this vote of confidence is rather too strong even for a Primrose League meeting in South Hunts. If the House of Commons was entitled to put on record its hatred for the Member for Cork, instead of attending to its business of voting Supply, why should not the Cork Board of Guardians, at exactly the same time, pass a resolution in a contrary sense, and declare their confidence in Mr. Parnell? It is a pity the House of Com- 1566 mons does not set a better example. If the hon. Member for Cork had not been so atrociously attacked by gentlemen connected with the Times newspaper, and by Mr. Pigott, it might be that the House of Commons would now be pursuing the even tenour of its way. But when the House of Commons declares itself to be entitled to enter upon its record such a Report as that of the Parnell Commission Judges, is it a wonder the Cork Board should feel itself justified in declaring its own opinion on the matter, which so seriously affected its own Representative in this House? Remember that this is the largest Board of Guardians in Ireland, and yet for simply passing a vote of confidence you suppress it, and appoint three paid Guardians to do the work of the Board, at the cost of £1,000 a year. The Irish Government ought to have some sense of proportion, because I maintain that a grosser case of absurdity has never been perpetrated, even by the Irish Local Government Board. I observed a case the other day in which an English School Board sat up all night, assisted by wine and sausages, in order to settle who should be chairman, but after sitting about a day and a half the question was settled by tossing, or some other British method of settling difficulties. Were they dissolved? Then there was the Metropolitan Board of Works, a spectacle for gods and men during many years. The Chief Secretary should remember that Irishmen have not received the training which has belonged to English Municipal Bodies since the days of Queen Elizabeth. What we object to is this irritating system of harassing Local Bodies all over Ireland. Let me give an illustration of this policy. For instance, the Local Government Board refused to sanction the appointment of Mr. Keogh as the master of the Athlone Workhouse simply because this man happened to be an evicted tenant, who, on the occasion of his eviction, was alleged to have committed a trifling assault on a policeman and to have resisted the Sheriff. But contrasted this with the action of the Government in the case of another man named Hewett, who was convicted of a most violent assault in the County Kildare, and who yet was considered a fit and proper person to be appointed as 1567 a member of the Dublin Police Force. This irritating policy must be abandoned. It must no longer be the case that a policeman who fires a revolver shall escape scot free, while a Nationalist who commits a petty assault is to be pounced upon. And now I desire to say a few words with regard to the question of labourers' cottages and the action of the Privy Council. The Inspectors of the Privy Council are doing their best to prevent the Labourers' Act working successfully. I trust something will be done to meet the difficulties that have arisen.
THE CHAIRMANOrder, order! The hon. Member is not entitled on this Vote to condemn the action of the Privy Council.
§ MR. T. M. HEALYBut I want something done to ensure that proper homes shall be provided for these miserable roofless families, and I would urge that the Local Government Board Inspectors should do all they can to promote schemes framed by Boards of Guardians under the Labourers' Act. The Local Government Board Inspectors are honestly endeavouring to do something for the poor people under the Labourers' Acts, but they are obstructed in their duty in a most heartless way by those above them. One of them, who tried to do his duty was sent from the South of Ireland to Ulster, where not a single scheme for labourers' cottages has been set on foot. I submit further that if the Local Government Board had any ambition beyond that of suppressing Boards of Guardians, they would do something towards seeing that the Labourers' Act is carried out in Ulster. We sometimes have flash-in-the-pan Motions from the hon. Member for North Antrim to bring forward this matter, and to call attention to the remissness of the Local Government Board in not carrying out the Labourers' Act, but those Motions never get discussed. This is a matter which I submit the Government are bound to take into their consideration. I do not 1568 say that we in the province of Ulster have done what we ought to have done, but not one single scheme has been evolved. A scheme was put forward in Antrim, but what happened? The Guardians rejected it. And what did the Local Government Board do when appealed to? Nothing. I say that they would be well advised if in these days they went in for a little less clap trap and a little more administration—the working classes in Ireland would then be a little better off than they are. These poor labourers cannot now get elected. The House may be surprised to hear that the Queen's Bench decided a long time ago that a landlord in Ireland might cast 36 votes. What chance has a poor unfortunate labourer of getting elected as a Poor Law Guardian when he has but one vote? This House requires no qualification for election. If it did, probably some hon. Gentlemen we now see in this House would not be here, especially if it were an educational test. The Guardians in Ireland, so select must they be to deal with questions of outdoor relief and vaccine lymph that a high qualification test is imposed, but I contend, in the interest of the Irish labouring classes, that the Irish Local Government Board ought to exercise the powers that lie in them, and reduce the qualification. We did pass in this House an Act abolishing the qualification, but as soon as it got into "another place," that illustrious Assembly quickly burked the measure. The Local Government Board, however, have power to reduce the qualification, and I call upon them to do it. Let them give labour a chance of representation on the Boards of Guardians. With regard to the Por-tumna Union, I should like to ask a question as to the ill-treatment of the gentleman to whom reference has been made. Is it not an appalling thing that a man should get three months' imprisonment with hard labour for having signed a cheque in favour of an evicted tenant? He only signed the relieving officer's book, and I am wrong in saying that he signed a cheque. This system of relieving evicted tenants is legal. It seems that on the occasion in question a surplus sum was voted. There was no moral guilt, in fact it appears to have been altogether a 1569 mistake. The Board of Guardians had previously been surcharged in connection with similar votes, and so long as a gentleman named Ay re, a Justice of the Peace for the county, was chairman of the Board the Local Government Board did not make him pay a penny. He was a Conservative; he signed the cheques—to his credit be it said that he was willing to vote money for evicted tenants—and no notice was taken of the matter. His successor, however, got three months' imprisonment for doing that which he had done with impunity. When attention is drawn to these different methods of dealing with the same offence, the answer is that Mr. Ayre when he signed the cheques did not know the law. Is that a valid excuse? Surely that is a most extraordinary confession for the party of law and order to make. And is it not an extraordinary thing that the lawyers should be so keen, and their wits should be so sharp when they have to deal with a Nationalist, and that they should be so dull and stupid when dealing with a Conservative. In the case of Mr. Ayre he said he could not find the amount of money he was surcharged, and when it was attempted by the Sheriff's officer to seize his goods a return of nulla bona was made. The Sheriffs are very friendly sometimes. I hope Mr. Ayre will not be dismissed from the Commission of the Peace, and I do not think he will, but if he were a Nationalist I wonder how long he would be allowed to sit in judgment on Her Majesty's subjects. I maintain that what has occurred in this case is a perfect scandal, and I ask the President of the English Local Government Board whether supposing the chairman of the St. Pancras Union had voted cakes and ale for his necessitous friends on the Board or any one else, he would have got three months' imprisonment for it? I say, certainly not, and I therefore ask, why should there be one law in Portumna and another in St. Pancras? Can anyone tell me if there is a single instance extant in England where people who have been surcharged have been sent to gaol for three months? I do not think so, and yet the Party opposite talk so much about sanctity of law and order. 1570 Another gentleman, Mr. Kerwin, was sent to gaol under similar circumstances for one month, and another, Mr. Clark, who was surcharged £20, had three months' imprisonment, which shows the lovely gradation of guilt which is in the minds of the Irish Magistracy. One gentleman got three months' imprisonment and another one month for the same moral offence. It was not because Mr. Kerwin and Mr. Clark could not pay the money that they were sent to gaol. It was because they would not. The Local Government Board does not pounce upon Mr. Ayre and his predecessors, but it does upon the Nationalists, to whom a vindictive punishment is meted out. Is that the way the Quakers were treated in regard to the tithe question—is that the way the anti-vaccinationists were dealt with in Leicester? When was the Leicester Board of Guardians last dissolved for not carrying out the Vaccination Acts? Is that Board dissolved? Have three paid noodles been sent down to Leicester to preside over the administration of the Poor Law there? You do not treat English Bodies in the way you do the Irish, and yet the latter are supposed to be happy, contented, and loyal. They are supposed to be contented and loyal under a system which tolerates a member of an Irish Board getting three months' hard labour for signing a relieving officer's book, and which at the same time allows a member of the English Board of Guardians to defy the law with impunity. I say such a thing is monstrous. When the Chief Secretary gets up and says—"We have defended the weak against the strong," I ask him, "Did you defend Clark or Kerwin, or Keogh; did you protect the weak in that case?" I say the right hon. Gentleman's assertion is all clap trap and nonsense. The reason I respect the right hon. Gentleman is for his intellectual qualities, and because I know that he never can for a moment believe in his own heart the statements which are put into his mouth by his officials. He thinks those stories are good enough for the Tory Party—and I quite agree with him in that, though I do not think that it takes much intellect to lead the Tory Party, or to convince them upon any point. I most 1571 admire the way he can extract cheers from them by his statements about protecting the weak against the strong. His speech yesterday glided gracefully over all the ugly points he had to deal with, and then out came a volume of clap-trap about "protecting the weak against the strong," and "law and order," and he gracefully invited the Conservative majority to act as judges—moving the Closure at the end of all. That is the right hon. Gentleman's Irish policy. I would suggest to him that before he moves the Closure he would be good enough to tell us some of the facts in justification of his conduct in reference to the man Clark, and in reference to Kerwin and Keogh. I would ask him on the analogy of Ayre's treatment, and on the analogy of the action of the English Local Government Board, to defend his policy. This is a question of daily administration, and I ask him for facts and specific information in regard to the cases we have brought before him. I ask him to justify his administration. I ask him to let us know why, because he finds that Mr. Smith-Barry wishes it, the Cork Board of Guardians has been dissolved?
§ (11.45.) MR. A. J. BALFOURI will answer the questions put to me as far as I can. The man who was refused the post of master of a workhouse appears to have had no special qualification, unless being an evicted tenant is a qualification, and he was twice sentenced to imprisonment by the Magistrates.
§ MR. T. M. HEALYWhat are the qualifications necessary?
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURCertainly not having been twice convicted and imprisoned. With regard to the cases of Clark and Ayre, Ayre was surcharged, and it was found impossible to proceed against him under that Act, and the next time another Act was used.
§ MR. T. M. HEALYNever against Ayre.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURIt was on account of the experience of Ayre's case that another Act was used in the proceedings against Clark. There was no 1572 hard labour, and the sentence of two months' imprisonment was only imposed because the sum of £49 which was surcharged was not paid.
§ (11.47.) MR. T. M. HEALYWill the House believe after that statement that it was on the very same day that Ayre was prosecuted that Kerwin was sent to prison?
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURThe hon. Member is mistaken.
§ MR. T. M. HEALYI am not mistaken. I was on the same day and before the same Magistrate in the same Court Room that Ayre was allowed to go scot-free and Kerwin was sent to gaol.
§ MR. A. J. BALFOURI said Clark.
§ MR. T. M. HEALYI will not allow the right hon. Gentleman to sail off on a question of nomenclature. Ayre and Kerwin were summoned on the same day at the same Court, and the right hon. Gentleman says it was because the inadequacy of one Act was discovered that Kerwin was prosecuted under another. Sir, Mr. Disraeli used to say that the man who said he liked dry champagne would say anything, and I say that a Minister who would get up at that Table and make a statement that can be proved at the moment to be utterly unfounded, must be the most shameless Minister that ever disgraced an Administration. [Cries of "Order!"]
THE CHAIRMANThe hon. and learned Gentleman must be aware that his language passes the decency of Debate. I must ask him to express some regret; to withdraw the insinuation he has made.
§ MR. T. M. HEALYI had not the good fortune to catch every observation you made, Sir, but I take it you hold that it is not in order to say that a Minister who is capable of making a statement that can be proved on the moment to be without foundation is a shameless Minister. I, therefore, have no alter- 1573 native but to withdraw the words. I maintain that a gentleman in the position of the Chief Secretary, who, at a moment like this, when his policy is challenged, can, in order to get a temporary advantage, and secure, it may be, the passage of a Vote, tell English gentlemen behind him, in ignorance of the facts as they necessarily must be—[Ministerial cries of "Oh!"] Which of you knows them? I would like to know did any English Conservative Member ever hear of these cases before to-day? Well, I say that the right hon. Gentleman made his statements recklessly. He did not care for their accuracy. He did not care to seek information. The question had been put to him time after time in this House, so that he could not say he was not seised with knowledge of the facts of the case. Well, I stated advisedly that these two cases occurred on the same day, and he, with the most reckless exercise of his powers of assertion, stated that it was because of the futility of the law in the one case, that the other defendant was not prosecuted under the same Act. I leave these facts to the judgment of the House. But I say that if it had been I, mere Irishman as I am, member of a race unworthy to hold any position in its own country, not being a long-descended man or connected with Dukes, or Lords, or other noble people of high descent, I would have been ashamed of myself, and if the right hon. Gentleman is not ashamed of himself, all I can say is I believe there are those of his own Party in the country who will be ashamed of him.
§ (11.54.) MR. A. J. BALFOURI do not in the least mean to add to the heat of the Debate. The very violent attack which the hon. Member has made upon me has been made on this ground. In reply to a question asked me by the hon. Member for Galway, I stated that the two persons concerned were a man named Clark and a man named Ayre. I also stated that the action with regard to Ayre preceded the action with regard to Clark, and that because the action with regard to Ayre failed, a new procedure was used with regard to Clark. For that I have been attacked in the 1574 language the House has heard. I will now take the liberty of reading to the House the question put to me by the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Roche), and which first brought the matter under the attention of the House. [The right hon. Gentleman here read Mr. Roche's question.] I submit that by that question it is conclusively proved that the charge which the hon. and learned Gentleman has thought fit to bring against me is confuted out of the mouth of his own colleague.
§ (11.56.) MR. DILLONI am not going to let the right hon. Gentleman get off in that way. I will show in a very few minutes that my hon. Friend the Member for Longford was perfectly correct in his statement. The right hon. Gentleman was asked to account for difference in the treatment of these two men, and he said that owing to the failure in Ayro's case a different procedure was adopted in Clark's case. What we say is, that this is not the truth, because on the same day on which Ayre was tried under one Act, another Nationalist named Kerwin was tried under the same procedure as was subsequently applied to the case of Mr. Clark. I think we have made out our case absolutely. It has been shown that what my hon. Friend contended is the simple and plain truth. We make a complaint. We receive an explanation respecting our complaint. We prove by the most complete and conclusive evidence that it is no answer at all, and that it is inconsistent with the real facts. We prove by the facts we have brought forward, and which the Chief Secretary has not attempted to deny—
§ Lord HENRY BRUCE rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put;" but the CHAIRMAN withheld his assent, and declined then to put that question.
§ MR. DILLONWe prove that the reason why a different Statute was used in Clark's case from the Statute used in Ayre's case was that Clark was a Nationalist, and elected, and that Ayre was a J.P. I am not in the least surprised 1575 to see the noble Lord opposite endeavouring to close the Debate. That is the resource on which they fall back when the argument is going against them, and when they find they have not a leg to stand on. I want to put this question to the Committee, Do they think it a reasonable and just punishment, or a punishment that the law ought to allow, that—
§ It being Midnight, the Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.
§ Resolutions to be reported upon Monday next.
§ Committee also report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next.