HC Deb 29 February 1892 vol 1 cc1564-75

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £30,486, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1892, for certain Expenditure in connection with the Relief of Distress in Ireland.

MR. DILLON (Mayo, E.)

I do not intend to oppose the grant of this money, nor do I complain of the money spent last year in relief of distress in Ireland. My observations refer rather to details of administration of the money than to complaint as to the amount of relief afforded. As far as I have been able to ascertain the distress was fully met and adequately dealt with. I do not believe any people in the West of Ireland were left in a state of destitution, and I am perfectly prepared to give credit to the Government for that. Now, Sir, the circumstances that surrounded the institution of these works for the relief of distress leads me to observe that, although representing one of the districts in which most of the money was spent, I had no opportunity of addressing the House on the subject last year. When the know- ledge came to us twelve months ago that the West of Ireland was threatened with one of those famines which have unhappily become an institution in Ireland we made an appeal to the Government to investigate this matter, and to take immediate steps for the relief of this distress. Sir, as on previous occasions, our early representations were met with contempt and derision, and it was said that we were raising the cry of pauperism. I can recollect the cruel and insulting articles that appeared in the Times, and the speeches delivered by some gentlemen connected with the Government treating our warnings with contempt. It was not until a somewhat serious and prolonged agitation had taken place in the West that we could induce the Government to take any steps. The then Chief Secretary was engaged in that recreation in which he is so accomplished a master, and we could not even discover his address. It was only after repeated meetings, and after speeches of a strongly condemnatory character, that the right hon. Gentleman awoke to the seriousnes of the situation in Ireland. The present Chief Secretary went to Ireland carrying with him a small box or basket of potatoes, which somebody stole and substituted others. He returned to this country and represented our statements as grossly exaggerated. The events that have occurred since, and the enormous expenditure, of which this Vote forms part, prove that we understated rather than overstated the case. After a strong appeal from the Member for Newcastle, in answer to urgent invitations, and goaded to some extent by the reproaches made against him, the Chief Secretary made a desperate resolution, and for the first time in the five years of his government of Ireland he marched away from Dublin, and, with feelings something like those which animated Stanley when he embarked on the Congo, he advanced to the Shannon and crossed that terrible river. I was in America at the time, and day after day I read columns of telegrams describing the progress of the right hon. Gentleman as if it were a march of an army in a hostile country, and it seemed wonderful to the Americans that there was no terrible loss of life or injury to limb. I never thought there was anything to fear, and I think the Chief Secretary made a remarkably good departure in acquainting himself with the people and with the country that he governed. The sights he saw led to his mind being aroused for the first time as to the true condition of the people in those districts, and the fact of his going through had a good deal to do with the very liberal scale on which relief was afforded to those people. As regards the distribution of that relief, I cannot resist the conviction that it was, to a considerable extent, affected by the nature of the right hon. Gentleman's reception. The Magistrates behaved in the most reprehensible fashion by telling the people that if they did not give the right hon. Gentleman a warm welcome they would suffer. I believe that in some districts the right hon. Gentleman was welcomed with a small and miserable appearance of hospitality, and that the people received more than their due share. That is a very unfortunate thing, and unfortunate that any impression should have been left in the minds of the people that this relief was employed for the purpose of furthering political objects. I am sure the people of this country would not approve such a proceeding. You can always get a good idea of what is in the mind of the Government by studying The Times. They sent a special correspondent down to the West towards the close of last summer, and he gave a most magnificent account of the result of these relief works, and described the gratitude of the people, and threw a flood of light upon the views of the official classes in Ireland. As regards the administration of the fund, it was placed mainly or altogether in the hands of the police. One of the extra items in this Vote is £1,400 as extra pay to the police for acting as gangers, timekeepers, overseers, &c., in connection with the relief works, and of that item I should like some explanation. If the work of overseeing and timekeeping on the relief works was done by constabulary men and officers, who were amply paid for all their work, the sum of £1,410 for distributing £30,000 is an enormously excessive amount for extra pay to these men. The First Lord of the Treasury consulted the Catholic priest, and gave them a large voice in putting men on the relief works, and to that extent neutralised the mischievous influence of the police; but, making due allowance for that fact, the use of the police was not a wise or proper course. There is another matter connected with this system of relief works which is worth bringing under the attention of the Committee. I represent one of the poorest districts in Ireland, and the right hon. Gentleman has treated my district in a liberal fashion. In the first place, he ran a railway right through the middle of it, which I never asked him for—if I had asked him for it, I might not have got it—and he has greatly benefited the people. He disbursed £13,000 in the Barony of Swineford, which includes one of the poorest populations of Ireland. When these famines occur, and anyone comes down amongst the people—as the right hon. Gentleman did, much to his credit—who has the power of giving them relief, it is impossible for his humanity to resist the demand made upon him by the condition of these people. But what I have always urged upon this House is, that the system of waiting for a famine to come and then bringing in a Bill for relief is one of the most wretched, degrading, and hopeless systems ever undertaken by an Executive Government. Yet this has been going on in our unfortunate country for the last hundred years. Nothing is done in the intervals to take away the root of the evils; and when distress recurs, we are compelled to raise an agitation for relief; and no Government system of relief was ever applied to a people without leaving behind it frightful demorsaliation. The whole financial system of the West of Ireland is thoroughly rotten. If we take the Union of Swineford, we find a population of 53,700 people, with an annual valuation of only £1,000; and it is a remarkable fact, full of sorrowful significance, that in that Union the population is not decreasing, although emigration is taking place from other districts. As to the economic condition of this district during the last ten years, I may say that before this latest distress I had a calculation made which showed that there had been spent there from external resources £110,000 in public charity and relief works within ten years; and that in the same Union, within the same time, £300,000 had been paid in rent largely taken away by the absentee landlords. Was there ever heard of in the whole world such folly as this? Look, again, what happened this year. The right hon. Gentleman spent £26,634 out of this fund, and very probably £4,000 out of the other fund which he collected from the public. I do not suppose that he spent less than £10,000 or £15,000 on the railway, and at least the sum of £35,000 has been spent from the Public Exchequer and private charity from outside sources to keep the people alive in that Union; and yet the landlords, who do not subscribe to these charities, have taken their rents out of this money. It is a most deplorable system, and it is humiliating to us to have to come to this House as paupers when we know that that this is an artificial condition of things. Yet I was threatened with the bayonets of British soldiers and the batons of policemen because I endeavoured to address my constituents on this subject. I was forbidden by a Magistrate to point out to them that they were bound in duty, as well as entitled in morality, to hold for their children and their wives the products of their labour. The right hon. Gentleman sent his troops down at great expense to stop me; but he had to come down afterwards and spend public money there. I am glad to have this opportunity of telling the English House of Commons that it is a fraud on the charity of this country that the absentee landlords of Swineford, and other districts in the West of Ireland, should be allowed to take their rents out of the charity of the English people. I am aware that the right hon. Gentleman in his answer to me will point to the Congested Districts Board, and say the course I have urged has at last been adopted by the Government. I am glad that such a Board has been brought into existence; but I warn the right hon. Gentleman that, as in the case of these relief measures, so in the case of the Congested Districts Board, until you stop the leakage, and do something to bring about a proper economical basis on which to build your structure in the West of Ireland, you are defrauding the people of this country by pretending that these measures can do any permanent or lasting good; while all you are really doing is to increase the security for the rents of the landlords. I am now, as I always have been, ready to meet with friendly criticism any scheme for improving the condition of our people. I do not care where it comes from—a Conservative or a Liberal Government; but I feel it my duty to point out the economical unsoundness of the present schemes, and I think nothing can be done for the population of the West of Ireland, with any hope of producing good fruit, unless you begin by purchasing, at a fair valuation, the rents of those landlords who are the curse of that country, and have been the cause of its poverty.

(11.38.) MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I cannot congratulate either the Committee or the hon. Gentleman upon the performance we have just witnessed. (Cries from the Irish Members of "No performance," "the truth," "speech.") The hon. Gentleman speaks not so much as a despairing philanthropist as a disappointed politician. He cannot forgive me for having been one of the instruments by which, not with his assistance, but in his despite, relief, and immediate relief, was given to the West of Ireland. He cannot conceal the bitterness—(A voice: "Neither can you")—with which he learned that I had travelled through these districts, not guarded by a multitude of police, but without their assistance, and that I was welcomed by his constituents, as by others, in a friendly and generous spirit, and with a full recognition that my object was to make myself better acquainted with their needs; and that my purpose was not, as he seems in his generosity to suppose, to make political capital out of them, but to do something for the relief of the distress about which the hon. Gentleman talks so much and towards mitigating which he does so little. I do not propose to occupy the time of the Committee at any length in dealing with the charges of the hon. Gentleman, but it will be very easy to refute those which have any reference to my own action. The hon. Gentleman appears to think it was not until the Government had listened to the speeches he made in this House and the speeches the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Morley) made outside that we contemplated the possibility of distress in Ireland, or took steps to relieve it. That is the opinion of other hon. Gentlemen opposite.

MR. MAC NEILL

Yes. I mentioned that.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The hon. Member's memory is enfeebled by partisanship when he makes such a charge. The facts are these. Before Parliament separated in August, 1890, we, on this side of the House, had sat up all one night, until our proceedings were lightened by the dawn of the day following that on which we began, in order to pass a measure connected with Light Railways, which would enable us to hurry on the employment of labour with a view to meeting impending distress. That measure was resisted by the hon. Gentleman's friends opposite.

MR. SEXTON

I, with several Irish Members, supported the Bill, and a very small minority resisted it.

MR. DILLON

The right hon. Gentleman had me under arrest at the time, or, at any rate, I was unable to appear here.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I acquit both hon. Gentlemen, the hon. Member for East Mayo because circumstances over which he had no control prevented him from taking part in the proceedings. I do not remember what they were, and with reference to the hon. Member for West Belfast, though I think he joined in some of the Divisions against us, I amply recognise that he did render yeoman service towards the passage of a Bill intended for the future salvation of the poor people in the West of Ireland. But the broad fact remains, we conclusively proved by our action on that night that we contemplated the possibility of distress, and we were already preparing the means to meet that distress; and that, further, we were hampered in our efforts by hon. Gentlemen sitting on the other side of the House. What is the use of talking about the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle; there is the broad fact recorded on the Journals of this House conclusively proving who were the friends of Ireland and who were her enemies, who were prepared to help her in her hour of need, and who were prepared to interfere with that assistance if they could only get a little temporary politics benefit thereby. That is enough on this argument, but that is not all I could point out. Long before the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle all the arrangements for my tour in the West were made, and incessant communications were passing between myself and those whose duty it was to deal with distress there. But so much for the manner in which the Government were "spurred on." I now come to the proposition urged by the hon. Member that he, and he alone, has been the apostle of the true doctrine that the distribution of eleemosynary relief is demoralising. I venture to say that no man in or out of the House has urged that doctrine more earnestly and more frequently than myself. I can say that I have not contented myself with urging it in the House and in this country—I went down to the West, and I said it to the people at meetings there; I said it in discussions with priests and local leaders; I did everything in my power to impress on every man having any influence that to suppose that this House or any Government was to continue giving at quinquennial or decennial periods large sums of money for relief was to build hope on the most insecure foundation, and which, even if secure, held out no prospect of permanent amelioration in the condition of the country. I did not confine myself to speeches in this matter. The hon. Gentleman appears to think it is our pleasure to come forward and ask for a Vote from the House for the relief of distress every ten years, and yet to refrain from taking any steps for the relief of the poor population in the West of Ireland. Sir, I claim for this Government, alone among Governments which have existed in Ireland before and since the Union, that we have proposed and carried measures which have for their object the amelioration of the condition of this poor population. We have carried the Light Railways Bill, to which I have already alluded. We proposed it, carried it, and have given effect to it; and if anything is calculated to permanently increase the value of the soil, to improve the fishing industry, and to give to the people who live on that inclement seaboard a chance of competing in the race of life—if anything can give them that chance, it is the railways we have planned, constructed, and paid for. That is not the only proposal we have made and carried for dealing permanently with the West of Ireland. The hon. Gentleman has himself alluded to the Congested Districts Board. That Board has at its disposal large funds and ample powers. Its labours, unless legislation interferes, will extend over many years, and in them we have a right to hope that by ceaseless and continued endeavours a great effect will be produced in the amelioration of the conditions of life among those classes with which the Board has to deal. The Board was first proposed in the Land Act of 1890, an Act which I should have thought, on many grounds, had title to the gratitude of the Irish people. But I speak only of this establishment of a Congested Districts Board. Against the Second Reading of that Bill every man below the Gangway opposite voted, including, no doubt, the hon. Member for East Mayo, unless again on that occasion he happened to be otherwise employed. At all events, the whole Party of which he is a distinguished Member united to oppose a measure for dealing specially with the necessities of the West Coast. And after that the hon. Gentleman talks to us as if he had been preaching wisdom to deaf ears, as if he had been the author of a number of bountiful schemes to which we objected, as if he were the enlightened apostle of Irish progress and we the deaf and obtuse obstructives to his beneficent schemes for the welfare of the people. I have heard the hon. Gentleman in countless speeches descant on the woes and wrongs of Ireland, but never in any speech have I heard from him a practical proposition from the day he entered this House until now—unless I am to count among practical propositions the contribution towards the solution of the Irish problem he has been good enough to offer to-day. What is that contribution? It appears, in spite of all evidence ever given, in spite of all elementary principles of public morality, in spite of the obvious forces of economic law, the hon. Member sees no source for Irish regeneration, or amelioration of their condition, except in the refusal of Irish tenants to pay their rents. There alone he sees the promised land, there only does he see the dawn of future hope to light his countrymen to political salvation. He comes down to the House with this nostrum in his pocket, and accuses us who sit on this Bench of incapacity to found a constructive policy for Irish interests and of ignorance of Irish misfortunes. If anything is certain in this world, if there be one truth which the universal experience of mankind has conclusively established, it is that you cannot found the prosperity of a nation on national dishonesty and national disgrace. If we are to take the hon. Gentleman as a Representative of future statesmanship and as a Leader of that future Parliament he hopes to establish in Dublin, if we are to suppose he has laid down the great principles of public policy which are to direct the counsels of the Irish House of Commons, then, indeed, we have more reason than ever to despair of the future of the race he represents. I, Sir, have better hope for Ireland. I believe that deep as is the darkness which appears to have settled over the regions of the West, grinding as is the poverty which, in seasons of distress oppresses the people, nevertheless, partly by their own efforts, partly by the assistance we are able to give them, they will lift themselves out of that slough of poverty and despond, and will become, what I am sure they deserve to become, some of the most worthy, contented, peaceful elements of a great and united people.

(11.44.) MR. MAC NEILL

It is pleasant to observe that in the person of the First Lord of the Treasury we have not lost our old friend the late Chief Secretary for Ireland. Speeches of the kind we have just heard will be our charter for the next General Election. I always admired the late Mr. W. H. Smith, but never till now did I recognise that as Leader of the House he was a genius. He did not trade on the animosities between classes, but tried to infuse into our debates his own genial spirit, and regarded us, though opposed to him, as his Colleagues here. How different is the spirit we have just heard. Can any reasonable man fail to see in this exhibition the feeling of a disappointed politician. Again and again the right hon. Gentleman has said he did not go to the West in a political spirit, but his friends undoubtedly have endeavoured to make political capital out of his tour in these districts. The right hon. Gentle- man has done me the honour to say that possibly my memory is weakened by partisanship, but at least one fact is strongly impressed on my memory. Does the right hon. Gentleman recollect that within the last few weeks a gentleman, full of years and honour, was gathered to his fathers, a gentleman whose counsel was sought on these matters—Sir James Caird—who said two-thirds of the holdings in Ireland are such that no economic rent can be exacted for them? This Debate cannot conclude to-night, but let me say a word on an incident upon which I may enlarge later on when I resume my speech. I met the right hon. Gentleman in Donegal, and very hard I found it to find him. No one seeking an interview with a Royal personage could have had more difficulty. At last I found the right hon. Gentleman, and first I had to ask a Resident Magistrate, who consulted an Inspector, and then applied to the hon. Member for Dover, who acted as diplomatic agent, and at length I was ushered into the presence. Then I found an interview or reception proceeding, which, I suppose, if I had not happened to be there, would have been described as an interview with leading representatives of the district. As a fact, I found the local land agent and the dispensary doctor, surrounded by a group of newspaper men, and in a little time I found that the thing was got up for political capital. Did not the right hon. Gentleman on 3rd October, 1890, write a letter to an American gentleman stating that the distress in Ireland had been got up for political purposes? But see with what little wisdom Irish affairs are governed when, shortly afterwards, he made application here for an enormous sum of money for the relief of that distress. That distress was first emphasized by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle, when he made a personal appeal to the Chief Secretary, but the latter would not allow the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle "to dictate to him where he should write his letters from."

It being Midnight, the Chairman left the Chair to make his report to the House.

Resolution to be reported to-morrow. Committee also report Progress; to sit again upon Wednesday.