APPLICATION AND CONSTRUCTION OF PARTS OF ACT.

HC Deb 23 July 1896 vol 43 cc500-63

(1) Where an application is made to the court to fix a fair rent for a holding, which is not subject to the Ulster tenant-right custom or any usage corresponding thereto, or the tenant of which does not claim the benefit of any such custom or usage, the court shall ascertain and record—

1. (a) the annual sum which should be the fair rent of the holding on the assumption that all improvements thereon were made or acquired by the landlord;
2. (b) the condition of the holding and the buildings thereon;
3. (c) the improvements made by the tenant wholly or partly by or at his cost, and with respect to each such improvement—
1. (i.) the nature, character, and present capital value thereof;
2. (ii.) the date (so near as can he ascertained) at which the same was made; and
3. (iii.) the deduction from the rent proper to he made on account thereof;
4. (d) the extent (if any) to which the landlord has paid or compensated the tenant in respect of each such improvement;
5. (e) the improvements made wholly or partly by or at the cost of, or acquired by, the landlord;
6. (f) such other matters in relation to the holding as the court may think expedient; and
7. (g) the fair rent of the holding; and the record shall he admissible in evidence on its mere production from the proper custody.

(2) No rent shall be allowed or made payable in respect of an improvement made by the tenant on a holding by reason only of the work constituting such improvement not being suitable to the holding.

(3) For the purpose of an application to fix a fair rent, a tenant shall be deemed to have been fully paid or compensated for every improvement made by him in pursuance of a contract entered into for valuable consideration.

(4) For the purpose of an application to fix a fair rent, a tenant shall not be deemed to have been paid or compensated for any improvement not made in pursuance of a contract entered into for valuable consideration, except to the extent to which the court, having regard to all the circumstances of the case, are of opinion that valuable consideration has been given by the landlord in respect of the improvement.

(5) A contract by a tenant not to claim, on quitting his holding, compensation for any improvement made by him, shall not authorise the allowance of any rent in respect of any improvement, except to the extent to which the court, having regard to all the circumstances of the case, are of opinion that valuable consideration has been given by the landlord in respect of the entering into that contract.

(6) Section four of the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870, shall not authorise the allowance of any rent in respect of an improvement, provided that the rent may be allowed in respect of an improvement made by the tenant, if made twenty years before the passing of the said Act, and not being a permanent building or reclamation of waste land.

(7) For the purpose of this section valuable consideration shall not be held to have been given by reason of the mere letting of the land on lease or otherwise or the mere enjoyment by the tenant of any improvement where the rent of the holding was not fixed, reduced, abated or, after the improvement was made, allowed to remain unaltered with the intention expressed or implied of recouping the tenant for his expenditure of capital and labour in making the improvement; and in the case of an improvement made in pursuance of a contract entered into for valuable consideration, such intention shall be implied where not expressed.

(8) Sub-sections two and four of section five of the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870, shall not have effect in the case of applications to fix a fair rent.

(9) Nothing in this section shall affect any right enjoyed under the Ulster tenant right custom or any usage corresponding thereto.

Clause read a First time.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

in moving "that the Clause be read a Second time", said the Government had been freely charged with continually changing the Bill backwards and forwards. It was true that they had dropped the procedure clause, much to his regret, and that was a sacrifice they had been compelled to make owing to the limitation of time at their disposal. Although the form of Clause 4 had been very considerably altered, he did not think that any material change had been made in the substance. As the clause was first introduced it was no doubt open to the charge of obscurity, and they had endeavoured, as far as they could do so, in the changes made to remove that obscurity. He thought it would be found in connection with the sub-sections dealing with compensation that the practical effect of the clause in its amended form was really the same as the clause in its original form; it was much more clear and less ambiguous. It would be said that the Government had dropped altogether one important sub-section of the clause—namely, Subsection 3. It was true that the Government had dropped that sub-section, but from the outset that sub-section was simply an endeavour to state the law as they believed it now stood. The Government had made a few endeavours to state the law. The first was objected to; a second was tried and it was also objected to; and, therefore, the Government took the course, not altogether unnatural in the circumstances, of saving that they had made two attempts to apply the law as it stood, and neither of them being received with favour, the best thing to do was to drop the subsection altogether and leave it to the Courts to decide any matter that might be in dispute. The right hon. Member for the Montrose Burghs, speaking the other day on the Motion to omit Clause 4, stated that this sub-section and the question with which it dealt were in reality the most important touched upon in the Bill. He altogether demurred to that view. The Government were trying to apply the law, but beyond that Mr. Justice Bewley and other witnesses examined before the Select Committee stated that, in their opinion, the question raised in that clause was practically an academical one; and if they were right he could not see how it could be said that the omission or non-omission of the sub-section was of such extreme importance as the right hon. Gentleman represented it to be. He understood that the Sub-Commissioners were now all carrying out the administration of the Acts on the principles declared by Lord Justice Fitzgibbon before the Select Committee to be the principles laid down in this respect by the decision in the case of "Adams v. Dunseath." Therefore, if the question was academic at the time that Mr. Justice Bewley gave his evidence before the Committee, it had become even of less importance now, because, as he understood, the law as laid down by Lord Justice Fitzgibbon was being carried out in practice. It appeared to him, therefore, that the Committee would, on the whole, be wasting valuable time if they were to occupy themselves merely with discussing whether a particular attempt at definition in the Bill was or was not in accordance with the opinion of Lord Justice Fitzgibbon and in accordance with the decision in "Adams v. Dunseath." No doubt there was an important question raised by Amendments which were to be moved as to whether the altered definition of "improvements" included within the word "improvement" the whole of the benefit which accrued to the holding from the work carried out by the tenant; but that question was not raised as he introduced the Bill originally, the mere omission of the subsection in the original Bill or the Amendment he subsequently put down to the sub-section were of no serious importance. A word ought to be said as to the first sub-section in the new clause. The Committee would see that the new version of the clause very considerably extended and amplified the details which were required to be ascertained by the Court in the first draft of the Bill. He did not conceive that in doing this the Government would be met with any opposition on either side, because greater detail was one of the matters insisted on by the Committee, and he was given to understand that the landlords on the other side also desired greater detail. But there was a question in connection with a sub-section which required careful consideration. It would be observed that in the new clause the Government had excepted from the operation of the schedule holdings which were subject to the Ulster tenant-right custom. These words had been put in because the Government were most anxious to make it clear that they had no intention in the Bill to in any way prejudice rights or privileges which might be enjoyed by the tenants under the Ulster custom. It would be clear to the Committee that in excepting Ulster in that way it would be necessary afterwards either to provide a special schedule for the case of Ulster or else leave it out. In drafting the new clause the Government left a gap purposely because they wished to inquire carefully whether there was anything in connection with the Ulster custom which made it difficult or impossible to apply the schedule. In dealing with the matter in this way the Government had an open mind; but if there was anything in the schedule inconsistent with the Ulster custom or interfering with the privileges of the tenants a proviso could be inserted to the effect that the Land Commission should in these circumstances omit such conditions in this schedule as they might consider inconsistent with that custom. The question, however, could be decided in Committee after discussion. On the whole, although the form of the clause had been considerably changed, it had been a change merely in the interests of greater clearness, and no principle had been substantially altered.

MR. JOHN MORLEY (Montrose Burghs)

said he still maintained that by the omission of the third sub-section this vital clause dealing with the question of improvements had been seriously damaged—to put the charge no higher. When the right hon. gentleman introduced the Bill he dwelt on the importance of this particular subject, namely, the apportionment of the enhanced letting value after allowance had been made in respect of the tenants' outlay; and the right hon. Gentleman was then, though he was apparently no longer, aware of the great importance from a practical point of view of putting an end to the doubts raised by the judgment in "Adams v. Dunseath." If the right hon. Gentleman had gone through a portion of the evidence dealing with this matter he must see that it was a subject urgently requiring to be dealt with. The evidence given before the Committee was that the practice of the Sub-Commissioners and even of the Commissioners themselves varied. This clause touched a momentous question, and their contention was that it should not be left to the individual discretion of the Sub-Commissioners, but should be settled by legislation. They contended that there should be laid down once for all a principle which should guide the Sub-Commissioners in deciding as to the letting value. He had listened carefully to the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman and he did not find in them an explanation of this point. He did not by any means agree that the difficulty was insurmountable, or that words could not be framed which would guide the Sub-Commissioners. He considered that a very heavy blow had been dealt at the Bill by the retreat from the position taken up by the Government on the Second Beading. According to the change in the words they were not going to allow the Sub-Commissioners to take into consideration the very important matter of the occupation right. ["No, no!"] That was as he was advised. He did not question the full integrity of the Sub-Commissioners' intentions, but he could not leave out of sight the enormous pressure which was sometimes put upon them in another place. He had to remember the pressure of 1881–82 which was applied by the Donoughmore Commission. He thought that the directions as originally proposed to be given to the Sub-Commissioners were more favourable than those proposed under the new clause. Those words would have enabled the Sub-Commissioners in fixing a fair rent to make a difference between a sitting tenant and his landlord and a new comer.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said that it was clear that occupation rights were included.

MR. J. MORLEY

said he was advised that the change in the words would prevent the Sub-Commissioners from taking into consideration the important matter of the occupation right.

MR. DILLON

said the Government did not propose to do anything to improve the law as laid down in "Adams and Dunseath." The tenants were not satisfied with the law as laid down in that decision, and now the Government in this clause failed to grapple with that critical question. He thought the Chief Secretary had taken up two separate positions which were absolutely inconsistent. This was not a small subject, for obviously there was no security for the tenant unless he was protected in respect of any increase in the value of his holding due to his own capital and labour. He therefore thought the statement of the Chief Secretary that the Government never even dreamed of improving the law in that regard would create widespread dissatisfaction and anger throughout the whole of Ireland.

MR. T. M. HEALY

thought it only just to acknowledge that the course which the Government had taken in postponing this clause and bringing it up now was a wise one. It entirely negatived the statement made by some very important persons in a letter to the North of Ireland Farmers' Club that the intention of the Government was to entirely abandon the clause; and, furthermore, as the clause had now first to be read a Second time and then discussed in detail, Irish members would have two shots at it. In regard to the Ulster custom, he thought the course taken by the Government was the best one. The question was an extremely doubtful and difficult one. They had had in connection with this clause an illustration of the way in which public opinion was misled in Ireland. The clause repealed certain provisions of the Act of 1870, under which, according to a decision of the Court of Appeal, a tenant whose lease prevented him from contracting himself out of that Act might be rented on his improvements. This Bill repealed that provision, and he found that a motion passed by the Irish Agriculturists Association repudiating the Bill was seconded in a strong speech by Mr. O'Neill, who was the subject of this very abominable decision. His view of the Bill, the hon. and learned Member concluded, was that it was an extremely small and moderate Measure. The Government were proceeding tentatively in the matter, as one would expect from a Conservative Government. Those who on that account would not endeavour to give the Bill a shove along and to push it into the House of Lords in something like a reasonable and creditable shape were not only deceiving the House; they were deceiving their country and were its worst enemies.

Clause read a Second time.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR moved in Sub-section (1) to omit the words "Where an application is made to." His reason he said was this. Supposing a preliminary objection was taken to any fair rent being fixed, it would be unreasonable to require that all these particulars should be first made out.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment proposed to omit the word "fix" and to insert the word "fixes."

Amendment agreed to.

COLONEL WARING moved in Subsection (1) to omit the words— which is not subject to the Ulster tenant-right custom or any usage corresponding thereto, or the tenant of which does not claim the benefit of any such custom or usage. He moved the Amendment, he explained, on the ground that it was importing into the Ulster tenant-right custom an element which had never had a place in it. The Ulster tenant-right custom was confined entirely to the value of the improvements of the holding at its transfer from one tenant to another, and it was entirely a new departure to import into it the implication, as this clause did, that it dealt in any way with the question of fair rent. They only asked that they should have the same facts recorded and the same basis to go upon in any future proceedings in regard to the holding which landlords and tenants had in other parts of the country. Nobody placed a higher value on the Ulster custom than he did. He had always recognised it to the full in his own case; and if he thought the inclusion of the Ulster farmers in this schedule would in any way interfere or detract from the fullest exercise of the Ulster custom he would be the last person to propose this Amendment.

MR. J. PINKERTON (Galway)

said that every Member of the Committee must know that the buildings on a farm formed a very large and important part of the improvements; yet in almost every case the buildings had been excluded, simply because the landlord's solicitor came forward and stated that the landlord was prepared to admit that they were the property of the tenant. God never made a Sub-Commissioner who could value a farm without the buildings upon it. By leaving out the buildings the Government were robbing the tenant of at least three-fourths of his improvements. He had some acquaintance with the work of the Sub-Commissioners, as he had acted in several cases as valuer for the tenant, and in every one of these cases by the adroit manipulation of the landlord's agent, the tenants received no allowance in respect of the buildings. It was absolutely necessary that the tenant should be secured in this matter, and that full allowance should be made for the buildings. Agricultural land without the buildings was perfectly valueless. If the buildings were left out of account, in the vast majority of cases the land would not have more than a prairie value.

MR. MAURICE HEALY

said there was one portion of the first sub-section which he would like to see the Ulster tenant get the benefit of, and that was the portion which provided that where improvements were recorded, the record should be evidence of the making of the improvements. That was a very valuable provision, and he thought the Ulster farmers ought to get the benefit of it. When Mr. Gladstone was passing his Act of 1870, he recognised the importance of this question, and dealt with it in a special clause providing a procedure by which the tenant, the moment he made an improvement, could go into Court and record it; but the clause had proved absolutely valueless, because it involved expenditure by the tenant which he could not incur.

MR. R. M. DANE (Fermanagh, N.)

said he should oppose the Amendment because he understood that the entire clause was governed by the first subsection, which excepted the Ulster custom from the clause.

* THE CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS

said that in his opinion Subsection (9) governed the whole clause and not Sub-section (1).

MR. DANE

said that if that was so, and the Amendment covered only what was in Sub-section 1, he should waive his objection.

MR. DILLON

said that if the Government had adhered to their original draft, this question would never have arisen. Sub-section 9 only applied, as he understood it, to the rights already enjoyed.

MR. CARSON

thought it was incorrect to mix up the general question of the Ulster custom with this clause. It was perfectly apparent that this clause applied to the whole of Ireland, and he would suggest that the words referring to the Ulster custom should be struck out of the clause and a general clause afterwards inserted reserving to Ulster all that Ulster now had.

THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY

said that provision must be made for maintaining the Ulster custom, and it was admitted that there was no object in doing anything in Sub-section 1 which would prevent the Ulster tenant getting the advantage of the clause. He would therefore suggest that the Amendment should be accepted, and when they got to Sub-section 9, they should consider whether or not it was sufficient to safeguard the interests of the Ulster tenants.

* MR. J. JORDAN (Fermanagh, S.)

said he should certainly oppose anything that would abridge in any shape or form the privilege of the Ulster tenants.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said that the proposal of the Government was to accept this Amendment, undertaking to make it perfectly clear, either by Subsection 9 or by a new clause, that any privileges or advantages enjoyed by the Ulster tenants should be absolutely protected.

MR. PINKERTON

insisted that some security should be given to the Ulster tenants that in future the buildings would be taken into consideration.

MR. J. A. RENTOUL (Down, E.)

remarked that the striking out of these words did not seem to him to make any difference whatever.

COLONEL SAUNDERSON

said that the hon. Member for Galway would perhaps be relieved if he would allow him to read a statement by Mr. Bailey, which described how the Ulster tenants were dealt with. Mr. Bailey said all improvements are presumed to be the property of the tenants, no matter when made. It is not necessary to prove the making of such improvements as buildings and fences. They are evident, and the tenant is entitled to them without limitation of time, where they add to the value of the holding.

* MR. SERJEANT HEMPHILL

said that, as representing an Ulster constituency, he knew the tenant-farmers in his constituency were anxious and fearful lest anything should be done to alter their existing position.

THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY

said words would be brought up so specific, precise, and all-inclusive, that Ulster tenant-right would be more absolutely and completely preserved.

Amendment agreed to.

*SIR J. COLOMB moved in Sub-section (1) after the word "record" to insert the words "in the form of a Schedule."

MR. MAURICE HEALY

protested against stereotyping in the form of an Act of Parliament procedure which the Land Commission would direct whenever necessary, but which they might wish to vary from time to time. There was a mass of things which it was desirable the Sub-Commissioners should do, but they could not put them all in an Act of Parliament. Let the Committee give the Land Commissioners credit for some common sense, and not multiply needless statutory directions to the Sub-Commissioners.

Amendment agreed to.

*SIR J. COLOMB moved to leave out Paragraph (a), and to insert:— the several classes of land found on the holding, marking same on a map, and showing in respect of each such class the estimated area thereof, and the sum which should he the fair rent thereof (per acre or per class) on this assumption that all improvements thereon were made or acquired by the landlord. The hon. Member said it was desirable the proceedings of the Land Court, and all matters connected with it should be on a basis that everyone could fairly understand. Where different classes of land were dealt with they could only arrive at a fair rent by aggregating the total value of each class of land, or the value per acre. So it was in the interests of common sense and the avoidance of disputes and difficulties to lay down rules as to the information to be provided in the Schedule.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said the Amendment would not serve any useful purpose, and asked the hon. Member not to press it.

Amendment negatived.

MR. DILLON moved in paragraph (1) Sub-section (c.), to leave out the words "the present capital value thereof," and to insert instead thereof the words "the increasing letting value due thereto." He asked upon what basis was a man to act in ascertaining the present capital value of an improvement? Was he to consider the cost of the improvement to the tenant or the increased value to the holding of the work? If not, on what principle was he to ascertain the value? It had been stated in evidence before the Committee on the Working of the Land Acts that if a tenant spent say £100 on his holding, and, owing to the poor quality of the soil, or some other circumstance, only increased the value of the holding by £2 per annum, the Sub-Commissioners only gave him credit for that £2. But if the tenant had the good luck to increase the value of the farm by £10 per year, he did not get credit for the £10, but was allowed some indefinite interest, for there would seem to be no principle to guide the Sub-Commissioners in the matter. In other words, the Sub-Commissioners said to the tenant: "If you venture your money and fail you will be the sufferer, but if you win you will get none of the rewards of success." He contended that such a system was fatal to the expenditure of capital, and of enterprise and of industry on the part of the Irish farmers.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said he thought there was no difference between the words in the Bill and the words the hon. Gentleman proposed to insert. The present capital value of the improvements meant, of course, their present capital value qua improvements, and the increased letting value due to them. The advantage of the words in the Bill was that they carried on the language already used in the Schedule.

MR. CARSON

said the matter was not of vital importance, but he thought it would be of advantage to the landlord and the tenant if in the assessments of the Land Court, both "the present capital value, "and" the increased letting value" of the improvements on a holding were recorded. He therefore suggested that both terms should be used in the Bill. ["Hear, hear!"]

Amendment by leave withdrawn.

Words "and the increased letting value due thereto "inserted after the words" present capital value thereof."

*THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND moved to omit the words "proper to be" from Paragraph (iii) in Sub-section (1)—"The deduction from the rent proper to be made on account thereof."

Amendment agreed to.

MR. MICHAEL McCARTAN (Down, S.), moved to omit the words "or compensated" from Paragraph (d.)—"the extent (if any) to which the landlord has paid or compensated the tenant in respect of each such improvement." He thought the landlord was sufficiently protected by the word "paid" which had the advantage of being simple and easily understood.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said the phrase "paid or compensated" the tenant was used regularly throughout the Acts.

MR. J. C. FLYNN (Cork, N.)

said the words "or compensated" had led to a great deal of confusion and complication in the decisions of Sub-Commissioners in respect to tenants' improvements.

Amendment negatived.

MR. DILLON moved in Paragraph (g) after the word "holding" to insert the words "due regard being had to the occupation interest of the tenant." He said this was a point on which Mr. Justice Bewley was very emphatic, but it was one which all the Sub-Commissioners did not take into account.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

objected to the addition of the proposed words. The occupation interest was already taken into account, and if the words were put in it would be assumed that, over and above the interest now taken into consideration by the Courts, there was something else which it would appear had been neglected—namely, the occupation interest. He should certainly oppose the Amendment.

MR. DILLON

said the Amendment would simply be a direction to the Sub-Commissioners to administer the law in accordance with the view of the Court which was presided over by Mr. Justice Bewley. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would further consider the point between now and Report, and in that case he would not put the Committee to the trouble of a Division.

MR. T. M. HEALY

remarked that when they had a statement from the Chief Secretary on his responsibility that it was the duty of the Sub-Commissioners to take the occupation interest into account, that that was only incorporating what was already the law, he was quite sure the Sub-Commissioners would recognise what their duty was in the matter.

MR. CARSON

demurred to any attempt being made by anything which had fallen from the Chief Secretary or any other person to interfere with the construction of an Act of Parliament. The Chief Secretary was perfectly right, the occupation interest was taken into consideration now. What was occupation interest? It was this, that the sitting tenant had the right to go before the Commissioners and get his rent fixed at a figure under the market or competition value. There was no other occupation interest whatsoever, and never was, and that the tenant got under the Act.

MR. FLYNN

quoted from the Report of the Select Committee presided over by Mr. John Morley, to show that, the occupation interest was not always taken into account at present. That, he said, was clear from the evidence of experts who were conversant with the decisions and practices of the Sub-Commissioners. What had protected the occupation right was in the north the Ulster custom, and in the south a wholesome dread and fear of popular combination, such as the Land League agitation. Surely it would be a healthier state of things if the law now formally recognised the tenant's undoubted right.

MR. CARSON

, as his statement had been challenged, quoted what Mr. Sub-Commissioner Bailey said in the Committee, as follows:—"I would say that the fair rent of a holding was about roughly two-thirds of the competition rent." That was what the tenant got by being in occupation of the holding.

MR. VESEY KNOX (Londonderry)

said the statement, of the right hon. Gentleman was an entire fallacy, because it ignored the improvements which in Ireland were in most cases made by the tenants. On the average of holdings in Ulster, 30 per cent. was a very poor allowance for a tenant's improvements, without anything whatever for occupation right.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

pointed out that occupation right was a very difficult thing for a witness to deal with, and he was persuaded that no one had deemed that occupation interest was included under the present law.

MR. DILLON

observed that Mr. Justice Bewley had said: "I think that occupation interest does exist and should be respected and taken into consideration in fixing a fair rent." He would not press the matter further at the present stage, but would raise the question again at the Report stage.

MR. McCARTAN

contended that the Chief Secretary ought to give some undertaking that the question would be dealt with at a subsequent stage.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

MR. DENIS KILBRIDE (Galway, N.) moved at the end of Sub-section (1), after the word "custody", to insert:— for the purpose of an application to fix a fair rent, the word 'improvement' shall, notwithstanding anything in the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870, be construed to mean any increased letting value due to or arising out of any expenditure of labour or capital on or in respect of the holding. He explained that in the Land Act of 1881 it was provided that no rent should be payable on a tenant's improvements, but that, unfortunately, the expression "improvements" was not defined in the Act, and that to interpret the word it was found necessary to refer to the definition in the Act of 1870. Under that Act it was required that an improvement should be a work, and the tenant was only entitled to a certain amount of interest on the capital expended by him on the improvement. The tenants' own view was that they were entitled to the increased letting value accruing to the holding, in consequence of their labour and the expenditure of their capital. In Adams v. Dunseath, however, it was held by the Court of Appeal, that all that the tenant was entitled to was a certain percentage on the capital expended upon an improvement. The object of his Amendment was to put beyond dispute what the value of an improvement was to be held to be. If a tenant should expend £100 in the improvement of his holding, and the value of the holding were thereby increased by £5. or £10 a year, the tenants ought to receive the entire benefit of that £5 or £10. At present, under the interpretation of the courts of law, instead of getting that, he would only get a certain indefinite percentage. In the Committee upstairs the official witnesses all refused to determine what that percentage was. His object was to do away with the interpretation put upon the Act of 1881 in Adams v. Dunseath, and to establish beyond the possibility of cavil a question that the value of a tenant's improvements meant the whole increased letting value of the holding due to the expenditure of his capital and labour. Tourists in Ireland who saw unreclaimed land were apt to think that the state of the land was due to the want of enterprise and indolence of the peasantry. That was an error. The existence of unreclaimed land was due to the fact that formerly the tenants knew that if they made improvements they were liable to be robbed of them, and that in recent years all they could claim with success was an undefined percentage on their expenditure. Let the tenant have the full benefit of his labour and work. He wished the tenant to be stimulated to reclaim the land upon his holding, and wanted to do away with the miserable hair-splitting in the courts of law on the question of the percentage which a tenant should receive in respect of his outlay. As a rule, money spent in reclamation brought in a very small return. He knew cases where capital expended in various reclaiming operations did not yield more than 2½ or 3 per cent. It was very rarely that the tenant got more than 8 or 4 per cent. on the capital sunk in the improvement of his holding. Surely that interest ought not to be divided with somebody else. They would probably hear a good deal from the representatives of the landlords about the "inherent capacity of the soil," which they averred was the property of the landlord. But what was the money value of this inherent capacity of the soil as long as it was allowed to remain dormant? It had no money value as long as it was in a condition of inactivity. He hoped they would have the support of Members from Ulster who represented the tenant farmers, because if this was a burning question in the south and west of Ireland, it was a still more burning question in Ulster, and with the Presbyterian farmers. He had received within the last six months Resolution after Resolution from mass meetings of tenant farmers, of Presbyterians and Unionists in Ulster claiming that the whole of the increased letting value resulting from the improvements of the; soil was the property of the tenant. All these Acts of Parliament dealing with the land question were due to the fact that when they first dealt with Irish land they did not accurately define what they meant by the word "improvement." They left that to be defined by the Land Judges and the Court of Appeal in Ireland, and their decisions had put them in the present difficulties with regard to Irish land legislation. If the Chief Secretary and the Attorney General for Ireland wished to finally settle this question they ought to accept the definition of "improvement" in the Amendment, which was, he thought, incapable of misconstruction. All who took an interest in the British taxpayer ought also to support it, for it affected the whole question of land purchase, and all the security for the advancement of the £30,000,000 under the Land Purchase Act of 1891. This Bill would take away all fictitious and unnecessary safeguards for that security, and the only security would be the land in Ireland. It was to the interest of the British taxpayer that these transactions should be carried out on commercial principles He begged to move the Amendment.

MR. DILLON

said there could not be a shadow of a doubt that it was the intention of the Act of 1881 that no rent should be made payable in respect of any improvement executed by the tenant on his holding. It had simply been the interpretation put by the Courts in Ireland upon these Acts which maimed and mutilated them, which had kept Parliament busy for the last 15 years trying to patch them up. He had put upon the Paper the following Amendment, which would have the same effect as that of the hon. Member, but which was framed in the language which had been used by the Chief Secretary himself:— For the purpose of removing certain doubts which have arisen as to the interest of the tenant in the increased letting value of a holding arising from expenditure of labour or capital by the tenant on or in respect of such holding, be it enacted that in fixing the fair rent of a holding no rent shall be allowed or made payable in respect of such increased letting value. He was convinced that the Amendment of the hon. Member for North Galway was as much in the interest of the landlord as of the tenant, as it would increase his security by promoting and stimulating the enterprise of the tenant. It was preposterous to talk of some latent capacity of the soil that might be called into play at any moment, as the landlords had declared over and over again that they would not make any more improvements. If the Amendment were accepted it would result in an enormous simplification of the law. He waited with great curiosity to hear what argument would be advanced against this Amendment by the right hon. Gentleman. The Irish landlords, as they had said themselves, were now reduced to the position of rent-chargers, and the position of a rent-charger was a much more secure and comfortable position than that of a man who was trying to extract gold from land let at a rack rent. By the admission of everybody the landlord would never obtain the latent capacity of the land except by the consent of the tenant, who might or might not make any improvements. It was a very extraordinary position to take up, to say that the whole question was an academic one, but if it was their proposal ought to be accepted, as it was infinitely simpler, and easier to administer. The Government, in this discussion, ought to be bound to take up their stand upon one platform or another with regard to this subject. In the vast majority of cases the tenant in Ireland who expended labour or capital upon his holding did not get more than three per cent. for his investment, while in a large number of cases in Mayo he did not get more than one or two per cent. upon it. Of course there were a few lucky men who obtained 10 or 20 per cent. interest upon their investment, but such cases were very rare. It had often been alleged that the reason the tenants in Ireland did not obtain a larger return for their capital was because they were bad farmers, and because the country was in a backward condition. But the country was naturally in a backward condition because the farmers had no protection for their capital. It was a universal error on the part of Irish landlords that they would lay out no money in the improvement of their property, and that in such cases where the tenants improved, the value of their improvements might be seized upon at any moment by their landlords. He appealed to the Committee to accept the Amendment, which was one of considerable importance in the eyes of the tenant farmer. The Amendment, if accepted, would tend to induce the tenants to put their labour and their capital into the soil, and therefore he appealed to the Irish Members opposite who were landlords to accept it. ["Hear, hear!"]

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said that no doubt it was the desire of the Government to pass a Measure of a practical character, which would induce the tenants of Ireland to invest their labour and capital in the land. There might be good reason on that consideration for the State to lend money to the tenants for that purpose at a low rate of interest, or of giving them a bonus for any improvement which they might effect. He, however, could not see that there was any reason for confiscating the property of the landlords for the encouragement of the tenants. That, however, was the meaning of the Amendment. It had been contended that unless the Amendment was adopted the intentions of Parliament, as declared in previous Acts, would be frustrated. They had, however, the best interpretation of the framers of the Act of 1881 in the language of Mr. Gladstone, who took an entirely different view of the matter from that taken by hon. Members opposite. When Mr. Parnell brought forward his Bill in 1883, Mr. Gladstone protested against the proposal to confiscate the landlords' property by making every improvement that had ever been made upon an estate the property of the tenant for the time being. If they were to determine that all improvements upon the land in Ireland which had been effected since the beginning of time were the property of the tenant, they would most undoubtedly be confiscating the landlords' property, and they would be reducing the landlords' interest in the land simply to the prairie value.

MR. DILLON

said that Commissioner Doyle had declared that if they were to reduce the landlords' interest in the land to a prairie value they would have to increase it very much indeed. ["Hear, hear!" and laughter.]

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said that if the Amendment were to be adopted, its effect would be to confiscate the property of the landlords. In these circumstances he could not accept the Amendment. ["Hear, hear!"]

MR. MICHAEL DAVITT (Mayo, S.)

said that in his opinion the reply of the right hon. Gentleman would be profoundly disappointing to Irish Nationalist Members, because by refusing to accept the Amendment he had rendered the Bill practically worthless to the tenant-farmers in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman had said that to accept the Amendment would be to confiscate the property of the landlords, and he had quoted an opinion of Mr. Gladstone in support of that assertion. He, however, could quote an equally eminent authortiy, that of Mr. John Bright, in the opposite direction. He believed that nine-tenths of the improvements that had been effected upon the farm lands of Ireland had been made by the tenants, and not at the expense of the landlords. The law as it stood was a deliberate confiscation of the tenants' property, and this worthless Bill would stereotype that law.

MR. J. MORLEY

said that some time ago the Leader of the House took part in a discussion on the views of Mr. Henry George; and the right hon. Gentleman then maintained the proposition that most rent in England and Scotland was not rent in the true sense, but was, in fact, interest on the landlord's capital. The right hon. Gentleman gave as an illustration the case of a farm of 400 acres. He specified three heads of outlay by the landlord, amounting in all to £8,000. The gross rent of the farm was £700; but there were outgoings, which reduced it to £630 net, which was 8 per cent. on the £8,000. A deduction of 3 per cent. was made for rates, tithe, etc., leaving as a net return a 5 per cent. return on the outlay. The right hon. Gentleman wound up by saying that not one farthing of that was due to the "inherent properties of the soil," as Mr. Henry George called them. He denied that they were any true foundation for rent. If that was the right hon. Gentleman's contention, he could not see the excessive enormity which seemed to attach to prairie value in his eyes.

THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY

said that he did not dissent from the substantial accuracy of the version of what he had said. He did lay down the proposition, which he believed to be perfectly true, that at this moment, in a highly developed farming country, such as the lowlands of Scotland, and possibly the north of England, where there had been an immense expenditure on farm buildings, drainage, etc., the fall of agricultural prices had left to the landlord only a bare commercial interest—if that—on his original outlay. But he did not see that that had any relation to the present dispute. What the landlord had lost was the whole purchase money of his estate. A farm bought two generations ago, say, had had all this money spent upon it; and if the fall in prices could have been foreseen, that expenditure would not have been undertaken. He could not see how the right hon. Gentleman passed from these premises to the conclusion to which he wished to force him. While he believed that the argument about the "inherent properties of the soil" had no application, he would admit that if Mr. Henry George's arguments were worth anything they were applicable in the case of Irish land. In Ireland the landlord did not make the improvements; in England he did. But, as he held, and as the House held, that property in land, as apart from improvements, was a perfectly legitimate form of property, and, as every Irish tenant held that view as strongly as himself—[cheers]—Mr. Henry George's views should be as readily repudiated in Ireland as they were in England. ["Hear, hear!"]

MR. J. J. CLANCY (Dublin Co., N.)

said that the landlord had already made allowance in the rent for the inherent capacities of the soil. Why, otherwise, was land let at different values—some at 1s. an acre and some at 10s. an acre? What even might be said as to the past, with regard to the future it could not be denied that, when a fair rent was fixed, the land was let with all its inherent capabilities. It was a foolish policy on the part of the landlord to resist this claim of the tenants, which was merely that they should not be rented on their improvements. The Crofters Commission had rejected the principle laid down in "Adams v. Dunseath," although there was no provision in the Crofters Act corresponding to the Improvements Clause in the Irish Land Acts. [Mr. T. M. HEALY here whispered something to the hon. Member.] He was informed that he was wrong in that particular; but, of course, if he was wrong, his case was all the stronger. [Laughter.] The provision for which the Irish Members were asking being in the Scotch Law, he thought it would be indefensible on the part of Parliament to refuse to place the two sets of tenants on an equality.

MR. RENTOUL

argued that the tenant's improvements were in the nature of a gambling transaction. In one case he would lay out a large amount of money with no certainty that it would be returned; in another ease the improvements made on another part of the farm would yield twofold and threefold. The result was that the tenant had to place one set of improvements against the other. There was hardly a tenant who made extensive improvements on his farm who did not fail in some of them. The argument, however, was that the tenant should be rented on those improvements which turned out well, though no compensation was offered to him as a set-off to the improvements which had been attempted, but which had failed. Within his own experience and to his own loss improvements were attempted in subsoiling land in Ireland, and it was thought that this land after the outlay of a large amount of money would produce crops. Before the subsoiling it was worth a penny an acre; but since the subsoiling, costing an enormous amount of money, it had not been worth more than 1s. 6d. an acre. Inherent capabilities of the soil sometimes existed and sometimes they did not; and the tenant had to take his chance; and those who supported this Amendment contended that the tenant who showed pluck, energy, knowledge and capacity should not be rented on the improvements which he had made by his own labour and expenditure of money.

* MR. SERJEANT HEMPHILL

thought that this was a vital point in the Bill, and said it was vain for the Chief Secretary to imagine that unless such an Amendment as this was inserted the Bill would give any satisfaction in Ireland. [Cheers.] He had no hesitation in saying that if the Government left this clause in its present shape and rejected this Amendment the tenantry of Ireland would be in almost exactly the same position as they were in at the present moment. A remarkable case came before him in the North of Ireland. It was a farm of 10 acres which had been taken by the tenant's grandfather 40 or 50 years ago. The case came on for adjudication before the Land Court, and it was conceded that the tenant, his father and grandfather, had improved 38 acres of the farm. Two acres remained in the condition in which they were at the time the farm was originally taken. The farm therefore showed the state of the original farm, and the effect of the tenant's improvements, which were all made by the tenant. It was proved by witnesses that the unimproved two acres were valued at 2s. to 3s. 6d. per acre, and the improved portion was at least worth 12s. an acre. On what principle of common honesty could it be said that the difference between 3s. and 12s. should go into the landlord's pocket? It was a fallacy to say that the Amendment would involve going back to prairie value; it embodied, indeed, the fair principle of the Act of 1881, Section 8. In every part of the country the occupation right or interest of the sitting tenant in the holding had always been recognised, at least by good landlords. In the South of Ireland it never entered into a just landlord's head to put a tenant out by the sheriff without giving him compensation. ["Hear, hear!"] He trusted that his right hon. Friend the Attorney General would not send the Irish Members back to Ireland with such a Bill as this so far as improvements were concerned. Every morning they were receiving representations from meetings all over the country, declaring that if the clause passed as it is, so far from being a boon, the Bill would leave Ireland in precisely the same excruciating condition that it was at present. ["Hear, hear!"]

* THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR I RELAND

quoted from the judgment in Adams v. Dunseath, to the effect that improvements which brought out the latent capabilities of the soil, the increased value did not necessarily belong to the tenant. After the usual interval the Chair was taken by Mr. STUART-WORTLEY (Sheffield, Hallam).

MR. PINKERTON

, in supporting the Amendment, said that in Ireland with an enormous expenditure on the part of the tenants in improvements, rents were higher than in any part of England or Scotland. The Ulster tenants were anxious that this Amendment should pass, because so far as the state of agriculture was concerned at present, the removal of legal technicalities and the glaring blunders of existing Acts would confer no immediate good upon them. What they wanted at the present moment was a substantial reduction of rent, and inasmuch as the Government had declined to shorten the judicial period for which fair rents were fixed and give them an opportunity of going into court, they should at least take due precautions that when the tenants did enter the courts they could not possibly be rented on their own improvements. What would be thought of a mine owner in England who put the price of the finished article upon the raw material? What the Irish landlords were claiming at the present moment was that the raw material in Ireland when it had been turned into the highly finished article should be credited to them (the landlords) at the full letting price. The Chief Secretary said he objected to further reducing the rents on the strength of the tenants' improvements. But the right hon. Gentleman shut his eyes to the fact that it was only because of these improvements the Irish tenants were enabled to pay at the present time what were practically rack rents. All the improvements in the case of Irish land had been the work of the tenants. This Amendment did not interfere with the landlord's property in the soil in the remotest degree. It gave him the full letting value of its inherent capacity. But that inherent capacity might lie locked in the land till the crack of doom so far as the landlord had any concern in it. It was the tenant who unlocked it and by refusing this Amendment they would be depriving him of that key which could unlock the latent capacity of the land, handicapping him in the international race, and refusing that which might put him to a certain extent on a level with the tenants in England and Scotland. He hoped hon. Members from Ireland would give the people of this country another object lesson, and that they would take united action to secure to the tenants this measure of protection and thereby end the struggle that had been carried on for centuries.

* MR. JORDAN

said that if the Government refused the Amendment, they would be sowing the seeds of a new agitation in Ireland, which would extend even to loyal Ulster. A settlement of this question was necessary in the interest of the landlord as well as of the tenants, and it would be better for the peace of the Government, who hoped to be in power for some years, that they should settle it at once. The tenants of Ireland thought that those who made the improvements ought to get all the benefit of them. If the landlords made the improvements, as they do in England, by all means let them get the benefit of them if they made the land more valuable; but surely if the landlord refused to make improvements and the tenant made them, by all the rules of right and justice the tenant ought to get the full benefit of them. He could not see how the Government could resist such a proposition as that; but the Chief Secretary and the landlords seemed to think that the tenant should make all the improvements and that the landlord should take the benefit of them. That was really what their contention amounted to. In order to deprive the tenant of the benefit of his improvements, new phrases were concocted, such as "the inherent capacity of the soil." He would like to know what other capacity the soil had but an inherent capacity. [Laughter.] Did the Chief Secretary or the Attorney General, with his great legal experience, or the Member for Dublin University, ever hear of an external or exherent capacity of the soil. [Laughter.] If the soil was deprived of its inherent capacity what was there left? A Sahara. Was there anything left that the agriculturist could operate upon? The inherent capacity of the soil was what the landlord had already let to the tenant and what the tenant was already paying rent for. He paid rent for little else, and when the tenant spent his labour and capital upon it he was developing the inherent capacity of the soil. After paying quite enough for the raw material he was asked to pay something more for the manufactured article. Although the landlord was getting the full value of the inherent capacity of the soil in rent, he wanted to turn round and in the name of that inherent capacity, rob the tenant of the improvements he had grafted on that inherent capacity. These were beautiful phrases by which to mislead the public and to appropriate the tenant's improvements. Of course, the Chief Secretary was doing the best he could for the landlords, and it was quite evident that he was not an Irish farmer. [Laughter.] He wished the right hon. Gentleman had to cultivate a little patch on the mountain side for a few years. They would hear very little of his academic arguments after that.

MR. GEORGE MURNAGHAN (Tyrone, Mid)

, thought it was only proper and fair that the representatives of the tenant farmers of Ireland should let the Government understand exactly where they stood. The position was that if their very reasonable Amendment was rejected the Bill would be a useless Bill for the tenant farmers of Ireland. The Irish Members wished it to be understood that if the tenant was not secured in his improvements, the Bill of 1890 would be a useless Bill and would bring no comfort or relief to the tenant farmers. His position as the representative of, perhaps, the largest agricultural constituency in Ireland, was his defence for standing up at that moment. He knew that every moment of time was valuable, and he had hitherto not occupied one minute of the time of the Committee; but at a critical moment like this it was only right and proper that he should express to the Committee the feelings that lay in the breasts of the farmers in his constituency. A critical moment had arrived and if the Government refused the Amendment they would destroy the usefulness of the Bill. What was the Amendment? It seemed to him so reasonable and fair that he could not understand how the Government could refuse to accept it. What did it propose ! It simply proposed that any increased letting value due to any expenditure of labour or capital on the part of the tenant should not be rented on. The Government ought to hesitate before they adopted such a woeful step as the rejection of this Amendment. If the right hon. Gentleman desired to make his Government in Ireland a success, if he desired to secure peace and contentment, and if he desired to carry out the pledges which his supporters gave throughout Ulster, he would accept the Amendment. The hon. Member for South Tyrone shook his head. He unhesitatingly said that the tenant-farmers of the North of Ireland understood they were not to be charged on any improvement and that the inherent qualities of the soil should not act as a detriment to them. If the Government intended to carry out the pledges made by their supporters in Ireland they would accept the Amendment, and they would not do such an injury to the tenant-farmers as would be involved in its rejection.

MR. JASPER TULLY (Leitrim, S.)

said he wished to support this Amendment, which desired to give, to the tenants the full benefit of whatever improvements they might make in the soil. The principal objection he had to the Government proposal as it stood was that it hit the improving tenant. It did not hit the lazy and the worthless tenant. The man who laid out his money and labour in improving his land would be rented on his improvements, whereas the man who allowed his land to go to waste or only kept it in ordinary condition would have no additional tax put upon him for not improving what was called the inherent capacity of the soil. They should not hit the improving tenant. They should not make the enterprise and industry of the tenant the reason for allowing the landlord to levy additional rent. If they were to have peace and contentment in Ireland among the tenant-farmers it should be the policy of the Government to ensure to them, and to the improving tenants, respectively, that every spade they put into the land, that every improvement they made, that every bit of labour they expended on the improvement of the land, should be the same as putting money in the savings bank. He would press as strongly as he could upon the Government the acceptance of this reasonable and just Amendment. If this Amendment were rejected the Bill would be regarded in Ireland as worthless and useless, and as one that would benefit nobody but the enterprising attorneys.

MR. McCARTAN

said the Amendment carried out the intention of subsection (9) of Section 8 of the Land Act of 1881. Mr. Gladstone, in a speech which he made on the 9th of August 1881, said, "It is much better, I think, that those who make improvements should have the full benefit of the improvements." Was there a man in that House animated by a spirit of justice or honesty, who would deny that a person was entitled to the fruit of his toil? The 8th Section of the Act of 1881 said that no rent should be allowed or made payable in respect of any improvements made by the tenant or his predecessor in title. In Ireland it was absolutely necessary, not only in the interests of the landlord and of the tenant, but of the whole country, that there should be improvements made, and that the tenant should be encouraged to make them. The landlord never, or hardly ever, made improvements or contributed to them. Nearly all the improvements made in the soil had been made by the tenant, and surely he should be entitled to the benefit of those improvements. He had been present at some meetings in the North of Ireland since this Bill was produced, and there was at them a general consensus of opinion that, unless the question of improvements was safeguarded, or some provision made entitling the tenants to the enjoyment of those improvements without the landlord charging rent upon them, the Bill would be a rotten or a sham one. There was one unfortunate word dropped by the Chief Secretary in his speech. He said this would be confiscating the property of the landlord. He remembered Mr. Isaac Butt saying that in the course of a long experience he had never yet investigated a title which had not its origin in confiscation. All the property which was enjoyed at the present time by the landlords in Ireland rested on confiscation. He would appeal to the Chief Secretary, if he desired to make an honest effort to secure peace in Ireland and to do that which would in some degree satisfy the tenant, to accept the reasonable Amendment of his hon. Friend.

MR. DANE

expressed his deep regret that the Chief Secretary had not found it possible to solve the conundrum created by the decision in "Adams v. Dunseath." though he readily admitted that he believed the right hon. Gentleman had made a vigorous effort to do so. During the whole 14 years preceding the evidence given before the Select Committee last year by Lord Justice Fitzgibbon all the Judges, except in one instance in the case of Lord Chancellor Law, based their judgments in this matter affecting tenants' improvements on the precedent set by Adams v. Dunseath, and in the whole of that time there was not a single case of appeal. But the evidence of Lord Justice Fitzgibbon went in the teeth of the law as laid down in Adams v. Dunseath. The law on this subject had, therefore, been rendered most uncertain and unsatisfactory, and the question for the Committee at present was whether the Chief Secretary could now, or even on the Report stage, insert in the Bill a declaration of the law on the question. He had made inquiries, and had not found that any case had arisen in which the Commissioners had given a decision since Lord Justice Fitzgibbon gave his evidence There was nothing therefore to guide them, for the Bill was silent on the point as to how this important question was to be dealt with. ["Hear, hear!"] The matter was a small one—he said so advisedly—so far as the landlords of Ireland were concerned, but it was a very large and important one to the tenants, and especially to those tenants who held under what he might call rapacious landlords. ["Hear, hear?"] He regretted to say that there were many such cases, and, therefore, he repeated his regret that the Chief Secretary had been unable to do anything in the Bill to solve the difficulty, He could assure the right hon. Gentleman that it would give great satisfaction to the tenants of Ireland, who were undoubtedly looking forward to this Land Bill as a long step in the way of the settlement of the vexatious Land Question, if he could, in some way or other in the Bill, point out to the Sub-Commissioners what was to be their line of duty when a case of the kind referred to cropped up before them. ["Hear, hear!"]

MR. JAMES DALY (Monaghan, S.)

said there could be no doubt that the issue of this Amendment was of vital importance to the tenants of Ireland. If it were not accepted or agreed to the tenants would still labour under a very bitter injustice, and the whole country would be disappointed and aggrieved if it was rejected. With regard to the use of the word "confiscation" by the Chief Secretary, he could only say that no person who knew anything of the country would make use of such a remark in so far as it affected the tenants of Ireland. ["Hear, hear!"] He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would concede this reasonable Amendment. He was reared in Ireland and he had seen tenants re-claim bogs, and then had their rents increased. The cruelty tenant-farmers in Ireland had suffered was quite unknown to Members of this House.

THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY

said he was the last person who would attempt to minimise the importance of the Amendment, the discussion of which had now been going on for two or two and-a-half hours. On the contrary, he recognised it was one in which Irish representatives were perfectly justified in taking an important part, but at the same time he appealed to them to come to a decision. He thought he was not wrong in saying that the arguments on both sides had now been used, and perhaps he would not exaggerate if he said they had been used more than once. ["Hear, hear."] Under these circumstances, and considering that there were still important points to be raised on the clause, that there were new clauses to be discussed, and, further, that unless the Bill passed through Committee to-night its passage would be embarrassed, if not imperilled, he thought he was not going beyond his duty in appealing to the Committee to bring the matter to the decision of a Division as soon as possible.

MR. DILLON

said that after the suspension of the Twelve o'clock Rule they were at liberty to sit up to any hour, and he would prefer to sit up until 6 o'clock rather than there should be a bar to the discussion of this Amendment. He wished the Bill to go through to-night, but did not think two hours and a half was too long a time to spend upon an Amendment in which the whole of Ireland was deeply interested. The Amendment was one which was supported by the practically unanimous voice of the farmers of Ireland without distinction of political opinion. He could not but think that the speech delivered earlier in the discussion by the Leader of the House himself would create a very strong and marked impression in Ireland, for, in answer to the challenge thrown out to him by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Montrose Burghs, the right hon. Gentleman admitted that in his judgment agricultural rent on all the best lands in England and Scotland had entirely disappeared, and that which was at present paid was simply an interest, and a very moderate interest, on the outlay of the landlord. The Irish landlords had made no outlay, and the rent they were taking now was largely an interest on the outlay of the tenants. He had met landlords who said that they were getting nothing out of their English estates and were living upon what they got out of their Irish property. They were, in fact, receiving interest upon the outlay in capital and labour of their Irish tenants. The Amendment aimed at what was a wholesale system of confiscation. The doctrine of the inherent qualities of the soil was an absurd invention devised for the purpose of justifying the plunder and confiscation of the tenant's outlay. The dormant in herent quality of the land was worthless until it was vivified by the labour and capital of the tenant. That the result of the tenant's industry and expenditure should be confiscated by the landlord was monstrous. The Irish tenant, as was proved by the speech of the First Lord of the Treasury, was rented infinitely more highly in proportion to the value of the land than the English tenant. The Government were not redeeming their pledges to the Irish people, for through the mouths of the hon. Member for South Tyrone and other Members they had promised the Unionist farmers of Ulster that the improvements of the tenants would be completely protected by the law. [Cheers.] If this Amendment were rejected the tenant's improvements would be left at the mercy of the Sub-commissioners. The allowance to be made to a tenant in respect of his improvements would be a matter for the Sub-Commissioners' discretion, and it should be remembered that the Government were packing the Commission with the friends of the landlords. ["Hear, hear!"] When it became known in Ireland that the Government repudiated the pledges which they had given there would be intense and widespread disappointment. ["Hear, hear!"]

* THE SECRETARY OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. T. W. RUSSELL,) Tyrone, S.

said that the hon. Member for East Mayo had challenged any Ulster Member in that House to oppose this Amendment. The hon. Member, he felt sure, would do him the justice of admitting that he had opposed the principle of this Amendment from the day when he first concerned himself with the Irish Land question. ["Hear, hear!"] In his opinion this was not as large a question as hon. Members opposite appeared to suppose. It was, in fact, one of the smallest questions in the whole business. Not only Mr. Justice Bewley, but every witness examined upon the point before the Select Committee on the Land Acts, stated distinctly that this was not a real but a purely academic question—["Hear, hear!"]—and that it only arose in connection with a very small number of cases, meaning thereby that the number of cases where the percentage allowed by the Commissioners did not cover the value of the improvements was very small indeed. He thought most people, tenant-farmers included, would be very well satisfied with 4, 5, or 6 per cent. return on their money. He was sure hon. gentlemen would admit that he, at all events, could not be accused of speaking in any spirit of hostility to the interests of the tenant-farmers. He would point out, in the second place, why he thought the position taken up by the Government upon this question was a sound position, and one which ought to be adhered to. Every land reformer—all the old land reformers, including Mr. Isaac Butt—never wavered from this position, that, whilst the tenant was entitled to the most absolute protection for his outlay and his improvements, the capabilities of the soil belonged to the landlord. When the Commissioners went to a farm to fix a fair rent they fixed the rent upon the land in the condition in which they found it. They did not ask what the land would produce if capital, skill, and science were brought to bear upon it; they did not take these things into account, but fixed the rent upon the land in the state in which they found it. But what happened when the rent was to be revised, if another farmer had come in and, with capital and skill, and had greatly improved the land? When the rent was first fixed the capabilities of the soil were not taken into account. [Cries of "Oh!"] It was admitted by everybody that the Land Commission fixed the rent on the land as they found it. In the case that he was supposing the second tenant developed the latent capabilities of the land, and yet, he was told, the landlord was not to get anything for these capabilities, which everyone admitted primarily belonged to him, and that the tenant was to get the whole. The law as it stood at present, as it was explained by Lord Justice Fitzgibbon, in his opinion was perfectly fair and just. He admitted that for fourteen years, in the very small number of cases in which this residue had occurred by a mistake on the part of the Land Commission, it went to the landlord. But Lord Justice Fitzgibbon most distinctly stated before the Commission that that was not the law, nor was it the judgment in Adams v. Dunseath. The law now was that when the percentage had been allowed, 4, 5, or 6 per cent., and a residue arose, the Commissioners were to sit judicially upon it; they might give the whole to the landlord, or to the tenant, or distribute it as they thought just and right, taking all the circumstances of the case into account. It was his deliberate opinion, and he had said so in Ireland, that the law was just and fair to both parties, and he thought the Government were right in absolutely sticking to the present law on the subject.

* Mr. T. SHAW (Hawick Burghs)

did not think any Member of the House, in view of the position occupied by the hon. Member, could regard with any other feelings than those of admiration the appearance which he had just made. They knew perfectly well the situation in which the hon. Member found himself. [Ironical Nationalist cheers.] He did not speak in any carping spirit, and he did not wish to import anything of a personal nature into the discussion. This question was one of principle, and should be determined on broad and general considerations of justice and equity, and not with mere regard to the number of cases which would be affected. His view was that an improvement in this case was whatever improved the land, and that an attempt to analyse the word would defeat its own object. It was the theory of the law and the policy of the State that wherever industry had been exercised in the execution of an improvement the fruit of that industry should be made secure to the industrious person. [Nationalist cheers.] The great question which lay at the bottom of the relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland was that in times past the tenants of Ireland had for generations so exercised their labour and expended their capital as to turn bog or forest land into arable land or good pasture. [Nationalist cheers.] And now at the end of the day they had a Government which was brought in by a large majority for the purpose of doing justice in the matter of the relations which subsisted between the two parties connected with Irish land tenure; and yet in the Measure which that Government had introduced for the purpose of carrying out their undertakings was a definition of the word "improvements" which entirely eviscerated all that rendered it valuable to the Irish tenant farmer. If the question involved were as small as the hon. Member for South Tyrone represented it to be, why did not the Government concede the point? If the Amendment would only affect a very small number of cases throughout the length and breadth of Ireland, why not accept the interpretation contained in the Amendment as to the signification of the word "improvements"? Under the last Government a Bill had been brought in which was based upon the principle that confiscation of the tenants' property in the land by law should cease. He asked the House, and he asked the Government, whether, even at this eleventh hour, they would concede this point to the Irish Party. The proposal made was a just one in all its aspects, for as the Bill stood there was a broad distinction between the principle on which the late Government had acted and that on which the present Government were acting. The present Government if they refused to accept his suggestion would be making it known that they were proposing to declare that confiscation of the tenants' property by law should not cease, but should continue. He hoped that he was not too late in asking the Government to reconsider their position in reference to this point. ["Hear, hear!"] After one of their own Members had stated that the question involved was a very small one, why did the Government allow the message to go to Ireland to-morrow that they had refused to accede to his appeal because they declined to admit that there was in the signification of the term "improvement," that which was the essence of the whole, namely, that the increased letting value of the land should go to the man whose industry, capital, ability and power had created that increased letting value? ["Hear, hear!"]

* MR. MICHAEL FLAVIN (Kerry, N.)

, in supporting the Amendment, said he might be met on the other side by the argument that rents had been reduced in Ireland. But had the rents been reduced to a degree corresponding with the fall in the price of agricultural produce. He would ask the hon. Member for Yarmouth what was his opinion upon that point. He found from authoritative statistics that the average reduction in the price of agricultural produce in Ireland since 1871, had been 28½ per cent., while the wages of the labourers whom the farmers employed had increased in the meantime by 33 per cent. Surely when the tenant farmer was pressed on both sides in this way he was entitled to a reduction of rent corresponding to the loss he sustained.

* THE CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS

called the right hon. Gentleman to order on the ground that he was going beyond the Amendment under consideration.

* MR. FLAVIN

said that surely in the circumstances he was entitled to show to the Committee the loss that the tenant had sustained and the title he consequently had to a corresponding reduction of rent.

MR. T. J. CONDON (Tipperary, E.)

said if the Committee rejected the Amendment he warned the Government that their Land Bill would be worthless in the eyes of the Irish people.

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

The Committee divided:—Ayes, 121; Noes, 180.—(Division List, No. 345).

The announcement of the numbers was received with Nationalist cheers.

*MR. SMITH - BARRY moved to insert at the end of Sub section (1) after the word "custody,"— provided there shall not he taken into account, as part of the improvements made by the tenant, what is justly duo to the inherent capabilities of the soil. Those words were put down by the Chief Secretary himself a fortnight ago, but were recently withdrawn. They were used in the English Agricultural Holdings Act, and their application to landed property in Ireland was supported by a land reformer like Isaac Butt.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said the Government could not accept the Amendment, for a very simple reason. The Committee had just declined to declare the law in one direction—in favour of the tenant; and it would not be fair to declare it in the other direction—in favour of the landlord.

COLONEL SAUNDERSON

said the Chief Secretary was in favour of the principle of the Amendment, as he had shown by putting a similar Amendment on the Paper; and the Leader of the House, speaking on the Second Reading of the Land Bill introduced by his right hon. Friend the Member for Montrose last Session, declared that the inherent capabilities of the soil ought to be taken into account when considering the value of the tenants' improvements. They had the Chief Secretary, with all his vast knowledge of Ireland—[a laugh]—and also the Leader of the House, who also had had long and happy experience of that country [laughter]—in favour of the Amendment. Yet for some reason or other, though they believed it to be perfectly just, they did not feel inclined somehow to insert it in their Bill. [Laughter.] He did not see that any Government ought to be afraid to do justice to any class if they thought justice was required. [Ironical cheers.] Ireland always wanted a grievance; at present the country was perfectly peaceful and at rest, and therefore a grievance must be got up, and the new grievance for Ireland was the inherent capabilities of the soil. [Laughter.] The eloquent and revolutionary Scotchman who had spoken in the Debate appeared to be a sympathiser with Jack Cade. ["Oh."] He believed Jack Cade was a respectable land reformer, whose views would compare favourably with those of hon. Gentlemen opposite. [Laughter.] But the theory of this eloquent and revolutionary Scotchman was this—that if a man worked a farm, naturally he ought to pay no rent for the land he worked. There was a simplicity about the theory which settled the land question at once. But what did an owner of land really possess? He generally got 14s. an acre for his land; and suppose he let some of it for that figure. If he insisted on the man paying him 14s. an acre every year for the next five years, was he a robber? [Cheers.] He held it was as much a bargain as if he let the man a horse. Suppose he hired out a horse for a year and at the end of the year the man brought back the horse and said, "Yes, I agreed to pay you £20 for the horse, but now I will pay you £5, for I have greatly increased his inherent capacity." [Laughter.] His own view of the inherent capabilities of the soil was this—if he had let land which if properly worked ought to bear a fair rent, and if the land was properly worked for a certain time, he said the tenant of that land got repaid for his work and ought to pay him a moderate rent. [Cheers.] At the end of the term the improved condition consequent on the inherent capacity of the land also belonged to him. [Nationalist cries of. "No!"] Hon. Members said "No," because they did not believe that any land ought to belong to him. [Laughter.] That was where they were at issue. All he and his hon. Friends could do was to state what they believed to be their right. They believed the land to be theirs—[cries of "Oh!"]—and he hoped the House of Commons would leave it to be theirs, under the peculiar conditions, of course, on which it belonged to them. They owned it in a different way from that in which the land was owned in England; but they did own it, because if no rent was paid the land fell back into their hands. He regretted that the Government had not seen their way to insert in the Bill what they themselves had openly stated to be in their view only in accordance with common justice. [Cheers.]

MR. T. M. HEALY

said that on those melancholy occasions, when the hon. and gallant Gentleman assisted at the wake of landlordism, it was always a satisfaction to find that his wit never failed. The hon. and gallant Gentleman would never spoil a wake. [Cheers and laughter.] If he had to die, he marched to death with military glee; and the hon. and gallant Gentleman was always an Irishman. ["Hear, hear!" from COLONEL SAUNDERSON.] His wit and his eloquence alike charmed the House and engaged even those of his countrymen who were most opposed to him. ["Hear, hear!"] The hon. and gallant Gentleman had cited several parallels. But in 1886 the Scotch were especially careful not to import into the Crofters Act the terms of the Agricultural Holdings Act of 1883; and the Act which had been passed for Scotland gave the whole of the improvements to the tenant. He had had the painful duty of reading the Debates on the Act of 1870, and one thing Mr. Gladstone laid down most distinctly—that whereas previously the improvements had belonged to the landlord, the intention of Parliament was by that Act to reverse the principle, and give the improvements to the tenant. The hon. and gallant Gentleman had given an amusing illustration of his argument. He would give; others. Did the papermaker, when his paper was made into bank-notes, get the inherent capacity of the rags? Did the man who sold pig-iron, when it was turned into watch-springs, get the inherent capacity of the pig-iron? [Cheers.] If the inherent capacity of the soil were followed out on the principles of the hon. and gallant Gentleman it would include the bread which was made from the wheat. These lettings were nominally made for 15 years, but in reality for ever. That was the tenants' contention. Irish landlords must remember that they were in an entirely different position from English landlords. The latter had spent millions on the soil; they were native proprietors; they belonged to the people, and were of the same blood and religion. But the Irish landlords came across from England and with a high hand took the land from the Irish chieftains who owned it and who had lived with the people and spent themselves in their service. And those wretched serfs had made the country what it was. [Cheers.] It was their country and their soil, and they had again and again challenged the landlords to show where they had made any improvements. The landlords had been condemned by Liberal Unionists like Lord Cowper, who stood to his guns even when attacked by the Duke of Argyll. Irishmen had established again and again, from the days of the Devon Commission until now, that the tenants of Ireland had made the improvements. The tenants spent weary days dragging manure and even the very soil on their backs up mountain sides to create holdings; they waded into the sea for seaweed to make manure for their holdings, and when facts like these were borne in mind it was idle to contend that those improvements were not due to the sweat and toil of these miserable serfs, but rather to the inherent capacity of those and rocks. [Cheers.] He looked upon this clause as the low-water mark of acceptance, and he looked upon this Amendment as one which would make it impossible for the Irish Members to accept the Bill. [Cheers.] When the landlord let the soil, and it was easily drained, did hon. Gentlemen opposite contend that he did not take that fact into account when letting the land? If there was a lake, or a small cutting draining into a river, the fact that either existed in proximity to the holding was carefully taken into account. Those Gentlemen who had their interests attended to by agents and bog bailiffs, those Gentlemen who knew everything that was connected with the soil, and who, as Victor Hugo said, almost charged the tenants for the flies that the dogs ate—[laughter]—could not seriously tell him and his hon. Friends that they did not let the land with its inherent capacity. To the Irish landlords he said that though they had been at enmity for many years with their fellow-countrymen—["No,"]—yet whoever went over to Ireland and breathed its air and mixed with its people, felt the pulse of Ireland burning in him. [Cheers.] In this business let the landlords agree with their fellow-countrymen, and for the sake of a few pounds give up their purple and fine linen, in order that their tenants and their wives might not walk in such mean rags. In discussing a question like this let Gentlemen who boasted of their high distinction in letting estates, remember that they were here arguing a question before Englishmen who had dealt liberally and even generously with their own estates. The question was a small one of a few pounds here and there, and he invited the landlords to seek for their reward not in percentages or in swollen rents, but in the consideration and feeling of the people among whom they lived. [Cheers.]

THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY

said that those who were disposed to rake up the history of the past in Ireland, or even if they examined the present condition of agriculture in some districts of that country, would find many causes which he would not say justified, but might account for, the eloquent speech of the hon. Member who had just spoken. It was unhappily true that the history of Ireland had been signalised generation after generation by successive confiscations. It was unhappily true that there were causes of difference—for which he did not believe that the present generation or any recent generation of Irish landlords were responsible—whether the practice in Ireland had been for the tenants rather than the landlords to make the improvements—fruitful of evil in the sister island. While it was easy for the hon. Member, who he knew felt strongly on the subject, and dealt with it in a manner which made his observations deeply impressive, to dwell on those aspects of Irish agriculture and Irish history, he would most earnestly impress on the Committee the absolute necessity in the interests of the Bill and in the interests of the classes, whether tenants or landlords—who, he believed, had much to gain from the Bill—of rejecting the Amendment now before the Committee, as it had rejected the Amendment which immediately preceded it. The Amendment which the Committee had been debating and had just divided upon was an Amendment which had for its object to give to the tenant the whole of the inherent capabilities of the soil. The object of the present Amendment was to give to the landlord the whole of the inherent capabilities of the soil—["No, no!"]—to give to the landlord, in the words of the Amendment, "what is justly due to the inherent capabilities of the soil." They had attempted, as the Chief Secretary had told the Committee, to formulate in language the division between the two classes interested in agriculture in Ireland and the proper method on which the division of profits on any improvement should be made. They had not succeeded, and they felt they must leave the law to the judgment of the Courts, guided as they had been by such evidence as had been given by Lord Justice Fitzgibbon and others. They had opposed, in the interests of the landlords, the Amendment on which they had just divided; and they opposed this Amendment, if not in the special interests of the tenants, in the interest of the Bill, refusing to commit themselves to the apparently hopeless task of formulating such a scheme to the Court. They believed that if they made such an attempt they would be foredoomed to disaster. They believed that if Gentlemen on that side of the House attempted to embark on the task, they would inflict upon the landlord class an immense injury. Whether the task were possible or not he was sure it ought not to be attempted in that Bill, and he earnestly urged that the Amendment should not be pressed, as he believed the interests of the landlords would not be served by it

MR. CARSON

said he did not rise to advise his friends to persist in going on with the Amendment. He only rose to say that it occurred to him that it was an extraordinary thing that in one year all their views were changed because they had removed from one side of the House to the other. [Laughter and "Hear, hear!"] When the Member for Montrose brought in his Bill last year he opposed it, and he was glad to say he had no greater supporter than the Leader of the House. [Laughter and cheers]. But they moved rapidly in these matters. In 1870, Mr. Isaac Butt said that no one would think of alleging that the inherent capabilities of the soil were the property of the tenant. In 1883, on the Agricultural Holdings Bill, Mr. Shaw Lefevre said that no one would contend they were other than the property of the landlord. Again, Lord Herschell said practically the same thing. How were they to account for these transitions?

THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY

What transition?

MR. CARSON

I call it a transition when an hon. Member at one time professes certain principles as those that ought to be embodied in the Bill; and, when he is on the other side of the House, thinks it is not necessary that they should be put in the Bill of his own Government. [Cheers.] At the present moment, the right hon. and learned Member proceeded, the law was absolutely undefined, and when they asked the House to define it, they were told that it was impossible of definition, and that it is much better to leave the land as it stood. [The FIRST LORD of the TREASURY: "Hear, hear."] All he was attempting to do was to draw the attention of the Committee to what even Nationalist Members would admit—namely, that they were advancing at a pretty steady rate to the time which apparently would come when there would be no acknowledgment whatever of the landlord's rights to those things which had hitherto been admitted to be his absolute property. ["Hear, hear!"]

MR. J. MORLEY

said the right hon. and learned Gentleman had recalled some of the episodes of only 12 months ago. He was only too glad that the Leader of the House, and Gentlemen who sat beside him, including the Solicitor General for Ireland, and he was afraid he must add the hon. Member for South Tyrone, had been reminded of their attitude towards the Bill which he introduced last year. They had forgotten the arguments they then used against that Bill. [The FIRST LORD of the TREASURY: "Not a bit."] He understood that the hon. Member for South Tyrone had advanced a doctrine upon the subject of increased letting value which he had never understood the hon. Member to hold.

* MR. T. W. RUSSELL

My right hon. Friend forgets that this was one of the points on which I had a perfectly clear record, both in Ireland and here; I have never been able to hold any opinions other than that to which I have to-night given expression.

MR. J. MORLEY

said he had always understood his hon. Friend to have gone to his constituents and protested that he would be no party to any legislation which did not give the fullest protection to the improvements of the tenants.

* MR. T. W. RUSSELL

That is exactly my position. I am now, and have always been, sincerely desirous of giving the tenant everything that is his. I have resolutely refused in my own constituency and here to give him anything that is not his.

MR. J. MORLEY

said that, remembering the services which his hon. Friend had rendered on the Land Acts Committee and afterwards, he was most unwilling to impugn him personally. But he could not forget that the hon. Member, after the Bill of 1895 was produced, went to his constituents and advised them to support that Bill. That Bill, he was glad to say, contained the doctrine which the Chief Secretary had first, in a sort of way, inserted in this Bill and then had dropped. The Leader of the House could not take any very strong ground in his reply to the right hon. Member for Trinity College, for in the first draft clause the very proposal embodied in the Amendment was advanced. Of course he was entirely with the Government now, and rejoiced that they had dropped the doctrine of "inherent capability." [Mr. G. BALFOUR: They have not dropped it.] Was it not in the draft clause and have they not now abandoned it? ["Hear, hear!"] He did not himself care for pressing these personal and Party points. [Laughter.] But the Liberal Government suffered from them last year. They were taunted with "prairie value." Now it was the turn of Gentlemen opposite. They had abandoned their old doctrine and had taken that of their opponents. He did not care to press the point; he knew what Irish politics were. [Laughter] He had not forgotten 1885, and this was the same story to-day. Right hon. Gentlemen last year took up a certain line, but now, when they were in Government, they found themselves confronted with difficulties just as their opponents did. New aspects of the Irish land question forced themselves upon the Government, who had most honourably come round to the views of the Opposition, and they had better admit it. [Hear, hear!"] There were good historic and economic reasons why an Irish landlord should not do all the things that the landlord did on an English estate. The holdings in Ireland were very small, and if the landlord had done for each that which the English landlord had done he would have been obliged to have been a millionaire. ["Hear, hear"!] That excluded the Irish landlord from any moral criminality for not making the improvements—he could not have done them. The fact remained that he had not made the improvements. He did not agree that the Irish landlord was a mere rent-charger; he was much more; but they would never get to the root of the difficulty until they recognised to the full the identity between the position of the Irish tenant and the copyhold tenant under the old English tenure. ["Hear, hear!"] The misfortune of the present moment was that the Government, having the opportunity of going to the root of this question, had shirked it and had left out all reference to these burning issues. ["Hear, hear!"] It was as sure as anything possibly could be that within two or three years from now they would have another Irish Land Bill, and the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh, and the right hon. Member for Dublin University knew quite well that even if the present Government were in office they would have one more slice taken off the Irish landlords. ["Hear, hear!"] He thought the hon. and gallant Gentleman might well listen to what had been said by the hon. Member for North Louth—namely, that the landlords would have got far better terms with their own countrymen if they would only have met them upon equal conditions than they would get out of that House, which, he might say without offence, was very ignorant of all details of the Irish land question. [An HON. MEMBER: "So are you"; and cries of "Order!"] Some Gentleman said so was he. But he was a most admirable example. There was he, an English Member—or rather, a Scotch Member now [laughter]; at any rate, a British, and not an Irish, Member. He devoted 36 or 37 days to sitting on a Committee endeavouring to master the intricacies of this question. He had been responsible for Irish administration, and yet some Gentleman said, and said only too truly, that he was no master of the Irish land question. But if he was not master of it, how much less were Gentlemen opposite? [Cheers.] He admitted it, but, if he knew little of it, the hon. Gentleman who interrupted him probably knew nothing. [Cheers.] The Government had at last come round to the view which the Liberal Party and the Liberal Government held and ex pressed last year, and he was glad at the conversion. ["Hear, hear!"] At the same time, he had some sympathy with Gentlemen sitting below the Gangway at the way in which they had been handled. [Cheers.]

THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASUBY

, who was received with cheers, said, I do not think it worth while, and I am certainly not willing, to reply at length to the right hon. Gentleman opposite; but I confess that when I have to deal with a speech like that delivered by my right hon. and learned Friend below the Gangway, the case is different, My right hon. and learned Friend and I have been political colleagues, we have fought side by side in times of stress, I have regarded him in times past with feelings of absolute; confidence, I have felt that on his judgment I could rely; but when he turns round and, on the subject of this Bill, makes an attack upon one who is certainly an old colleague and who I hope he will still consider an old Friend, I admit I cannot allow his observations to pass without some remarks. [Cheers.] He accuses me and the Government of which I form a part of having changed our opinions in the last year, and of having, as he would generously imply, for the sweets of office, given up opinions which we once held and once defended from this side of the House. ["No" and cheers.] Then, indeed, I feel that some explanation is due, if not to him, at all events to others who supported both him and me in those times and in times still more difficult. [Cheers.] Now, what are the facts of the case? The right hon. Gentleman opposite has claimed us as converts to his Bill, as having accepted the principles embodied in his Bill, and he endorses the view of my right hon. and learned Friend below the Gangway that we have come round to opinions we combated last year and that we are converts to doctrines we repudiated twelve months ago. There is not a word of truth in that. [Cheers.] If we had become converts to the view of the right hon. Gentleman opposite we should have accepted the Amendment we have just rejected. [Cheers.] What is our position? We have not committed ourselves to the doctrine of the right hon. Gentleman opposite and his friends or to any other doctrine in this matter. We have not embodied any doctrine in this measure. Are we to he accused of having repudiated our former opinions because we do not formulate a doctrine on this subject in this Bill. [Cheers.] We have refused, either on the invitation of hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway on that side of the House or on this side of the House, to be tempted into the impossible task of dealing with a definition of this difficnlt question, but we have not adopted the doctrine advocated by the right hon. Gentleman opposite and his friends last year, and we have committed ourselves to no opinions, so far as I am aware, which we repudiated when the right hon. Gentleman's Bill was before the House. [Cheers.] I am perfectly certain that, though I may have in debate repudiated, as I shall be prepared to repudiate now, the doctrine that the tenants are to obtain every advantage which they might obtain from expenditure on the soil, no matter how far those advantages may be in excess of any rational or reasonable profit from the capital or labour expended by the tenant, I maintain now, as a practical politician, as one having something to do with the conduct of a great Measure before Parliament, as one knowing what Parliament can do and what Parliament cannot do, as one knowing what will help this Bill to pass and what will not help it to pass, as one knowing what will overload the Bill and what will not—I say we should be perfectly insane to embark on this problem, and therefore I refuse to be dragged into a declaration of opinion which requires us to formulate Amendments to this clause which I firmly believe will ruin the Bill. [Cheers.] Is there in that any political dishonour or anything that deserves the accusation of my right hon. and learned friend? [Cheers.] I do not ask the House now in voting against this Amendment to express its dissent from the principles embodied in the Amendment, any more than I ask a dissent from the opinion expressed on the last Amendment. I ask the House to refuse an opinion, one way or the other on a question which I say ought not to be dealt with in this Bill if it is to have any chance of passing into law. That is the doctrine I lay before the House. It is the doctrine I stand by. It is a straightforward doctrine. It is honourable. It is consistent with everything I have said or done, and I trust that every follower of the Government will support the Government in this clause in the course they are going to pursue. [Cheers.]

Amendment negatived amid loud cheers.

MR. DALY moved to omit Sub-section (3).

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said the Government could not accept the Amendment. If the view of the hon. Member were carried out, it would certainly lead to litigation in every case where there was a contract. Where the tenant actually made an improvement in pursuance of a contract, it must be held that the improvement was made by arrangement with the landlord, and that the tenant should be deemed to have been compensated.

MR. MAURICE HEALY

said that if this sub-section stood alone, he would have considerable objection to it, not in every case, but as affecting some cases. But if it were qualified by Subsection (7), then he would take a different view of it. This was a sub-section purporting to deal with improvements effected in pursuance of a contract entered into by a tenant for valuable consideration, and he quite conceded that in the majority of cases, if a tenant had entered into a contract for valuable consideration, and had received that valuable consideration, he was equitably paid and compensated for the improvements, and was not entitled to, and ought not to get, credit for them. But it all turned on the question, what was valuable consideration? In an earlier part of the Bill the Government defined it as money or money's worth, and if he thought those words were synonymous with money or money's worth, he should not say anything more on the Amendment. In Sub-section 7, in the majority of cases, valuably consideration was practically defined to mean money or money's worth; but in the last three lines of it there were words used which practically said that for the purpose of the present sub-section valuable consideration was not to mean money or money's worth. He would like to have some information from the right hon. Gentleman as to how this sub-section was affected by Subsection 7.

MR. J. MORLEY

suggested that the substitution of the words "adequate consideration" for "valuable consideration" would meet the difficulty.

* THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND

said he did not think that the alteration was necessary.

* MR. SERJEANT HEMPHILL

said it appeared to him that there was a great deal in the Amendment. The Attorney General was perfectly aware that, if a party entered into a contract to give a lease of a farm, the giving of the lease to the tenant might be held to be "a valuable consideration." If that were so, what protection was there for the tenant in his improvements? There was something in the minds of the framers of the Bill which he could not quite understand, because originally the words were, "money or money's worth." Why had they now substituted the ambiguous words, "valuable consideration"? The stipulation as to valuable consideration would be satisfied by £1, even though the improvements represented a sum of £500. In his opinion the provisions of Sub-section (7) of the clause would leave the tenants unprotected, and he therefore urged the Committee to be very cautious before they refused to adopt this very reasonable Amendment.

* THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND

pointed out that leases that were silent about improvements would not come within Sub-section (3). The operation of the sub-section was and must be confined to cases where in the body of the contract it was stipulated that the tenant should make the improvements.

MR. T. M. HEALY

thought that when words like those of the Amendment had already been abandoned by the Government, it was a hopeless action to propose them anew. By valuable consideration, however, he trusted more was intended than some merely nominal consideration. The words "valuable consideration" were of the most rigid and inelastic character. No one who had witnessed, he was going to say the tragic, but at any rate the dramatic scene they had passed through could fail to be aware of the extreme struggles which were made and the conflicting opinions which the Ministry and those responsible for the Bill were endeavouring to accommodate. He did not think it was in any sense a discreditable circumstance. They had seen these mutations alike in Irishmen and Englishmen, in Liberals and Conservatives, in the search for proper words. He had suggested the words "adequate consideration," and thought that this would be a more equitable phrase. He urged the Government not to bind themselves in any hard-and-fast sense to the term "valuable consideration." He wished to express his thanks honestly and earnestly to the First Lord of the Treasury for the speech which he had delivered. Speaking for himself, and recognising as he had the difficulties of his position, that speech had made upon his mind a very deep impression, and he fully believed that it marked an epoch for the Government of this country to detach itself, to some extent at all events, from the extreme territorial position in Ireland. ["Hear, hear!"]

Amendment negatived.

MR. T. M. HEALY moved in Subsection (4) to omit the word "valuable," and to insert instead thereof the word "adequate."

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

could not accept the Amendment, because it would involve the introduction into the Bill of a new legal expression. The expression "valuable consideration" had a well-known legal meaning, which it would be unwise to set aside by the adoption of any other expression.

MR T. M. HEALY

said that he would ask leave to withdraw the Amendment for the time, but should raise the question at a subsequent period.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

MR. DILLON

, who had an Amendment upon the Paper to substitute in Sub-section (4) the words "money or money's worth" in place of the words "valuable consideration," said that after what had fallen from the light hon. Gentleman he felt that it would be useless to press the Amendment, and therefore he would not move it. He would, however, move his next Amendment, which was to omit from Sub-section (6) the words:— Provided that the rent may be allowed in respect of an improvement made by the tenant it made twenty years before the passing of the said Act, and not being a permanent building or reclamation of waste land.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said that permanent buildings and waste lands were provided for already. However far back they were erected or reclaimed, the tenant could claim for them. In regard to other improvements, the tenant was to have the advantage of them if made subsequent to 1850. It would be clear that that would include almost all improvements which in 1896 were of present value. The Government had gone as far as could reasonably be expected of them in extending the period to 1850.

MR. FLYNN

contended the sub-committee would hold that it should he utterly waste land before; the tenant could got any benefit whatever. If it was not utterly waste laud, but at any time liable to the interpretation that 50 years ago it had been reclaimed to some extent, then these tenants, who to his knowledge had reclaimed the whole mountain-side, would be excluded, and they would be liable to have a rent fixed. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman if it was not possible to find some other definition of waste land.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said he was afraid it would be an extremely thorny subject to embark upon.

* MR. McCARTAN

supported the Amendment, which he said would affect no part of Ireland more than Ulster.

Amendment negatived.

MR. T. M. HEALY moved, in the same sub-section, after the word "permanent," to insert the word "work." The Amendment, he said, was purely verbal, and was designed to meet the case of embankments or sea walls which had been erected in so many parts of the country, and such works as the scouring and deepening of mines, on which large sums of money had been expended, and which could hardly be called a building.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

thought it quite reasonable that a solid embankment or sea wall should be considered a building, and he could meet him by proposing in the definition clause that a building should include any embankment or sea wall.

MR. T. M. HEALY

offered to substitute for "work," any "permanent structure."

MR. CARSON

said he had known cases in Ireland where great difficulty had arisen in construing a "building," and so far as he was concerned he had not the least objection to "structure."

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

expressed his willingness to insert in the definition clause "structure or sea wall."

Amendment negatived.

MR. DILLON moved, in Sub-section (7), to leave out all the words after the words "tenant of any improvement." The words he proposed to leave out were, he considered, dangerously wide. There was a case in Waterford of an unfortunate tenant who took a holding at 6d. an acre, and so improved it that the rent was raised to 5s. an acre, and it was held that the tenant had been compensated by enjoying the land for 6d. an acre. In all such cases the tenant laid out an enormous amount of labour in reclaiming mountain-land. Their doctrine of "enjoyment" had robbed many tenants in Ireland of the allowance to which they were entitled for their improvements.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said that according to this sub-section mere enjoyment was not a kind of compensation. If a tenant had enjoyed for a great number of years land at 6d. an acre, and at the end it was worth 5s. or 8s. an acre, it would be difficult for any Court not to hold that he had by that enjoyment, coupled with the low rent, been compensated more or less for his improvement.

MR. DILLON

said the question arose, "what was the original condition of the land and the amount of money spent on it by the tenant?" His experience was that in most reclamation holdings the tenant never got adequate interest for the outlay of his labour and capital. In no case would any of those holdings pay a man to reclaim them as capitalist undertakings. He believed that the doctrine of enjoyment had acted very unfairly and unjustly.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

MR. M. HEALY moved to omit the following words from Sub-section (7):— and in the case of an improvement made in pursuance of a contract entered into for valuable consideration, such intention shall be implied where not expressed.

* MR. SERJEANT HEMPHILL

hoped the Government would yield on this point. He had formed the opinion, after careful study, that this clause would give rise to more litigation and more heartburning between landlord and tenant than almost any other part of the Bill. All a landlord would have to do, unless this Amendment was accepted, would be to produce a lease, such as the leases on the Kingston Estate, referred to by an hon. Member, and the moment that was done the function of the Com missioner ceased and he must at once imply that there was an intention which would amount to a contract debarring a tenant from the benefit of the Act.

* THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND

said no such difficulty as that just suggested would arise. The object of the clause was to enact that whenever a tenant made an agreement in connection with improvements he should be bound by that agreement. It only became necessary to introduce the words expressed or implied in order to guard against any reduction or abatement being regarded as compensation, unless the reduction or abatement was made for the purpose of compensating the tenant for the improvement he had made. Otherwise it would be perfectly possible for a landlord to fall back on any reduction he might make owing to agricultural depression as compensation for a tenant's improvement.

Amendment negatived.

*MR. SMITH-BARRY moved, in subsection (7), to leave out the words "entered into for valuable consideration." The hon. Member expressed the opinion that under the clause as drafted hardship might arise to the landlord. He instanced the case of a holding upon which a house had been erected, and upon which the tenant had to pay rent. By the wording of the section he would now be able to claim that the building was erected in pursuance of a contract entered into for valuable consideration, which, though not expressed was implied, and although up to the present he had been charged rent upon it, he would, by the clause as it stood, be no longer liable to pay such rent. He was sure that was not the intention of the Government, but, as that might be the effect of the section in its actual operation, some amendment was necessary to obviate what might be an injustice to the landlord.

MR. CARSON

said, that so far as he could see, the object of the Amendment was only to make clear the meaning of the clause. There was no difference between the intention of the Government and the intention of the Mover of the Amendment. So far as he could see, it would be impossible almost to construe the sub-section unless some alteration in this direction was made.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said that no attempt had been made to define the words "valuable consideration." It was simply stated that in certain circumstances valuable consideration should not be held to have been given. He was afraid that if the words were left out great confusion might arise.

MR. T. M. HEALY

said that the words "money or money's worth" were omitted from the Bill on the suggestion of Mr. Justice Bewley, who was really responsible for all the Government Amendments.

* MR. SERJEANT HEMPHILL

said it was new to him from a constitutional point of view that any judge of the High Court could be consulted on a question of haute politique such as this, and he thought his hon. and learned Friend the Member for North Louth must have been misinformed.

MR. T. M. HEALY

said he was not misinformed. He asserted that Mr. Justice Bewley, in concert with the Government, went over the original draft of this Bill, sent over Amendments, and that the Amendments had been accepted, and that the omission of "money and money's worth" was due to Mr. Justice Bewley, and the insertion of the words "valuable consideration" was also due to him.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said, in justice to Mr. Justice Bewley he ought to contradict that statement. "Valuable consideration" was put in on his initiative, and those words, with all their faults, were entirely due to the humble individual who was now addressing the Committee.

MR. T. M. HEALY

said that, with great deference to the right hon. Gentleman, and with a full acceptance of what he said, he should very much like to see the copy of the Bill as marked by Mr. Justice Bewley and the Amendments he sent over to the Government.

Amendment negatived.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND moved, in Sub-section (7), to leave out the word "intention" and to insert instead thereof the word "object."

Amendment agreed to.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR (Liverpool, Scotland) moved, in Sub-section (8), after the words "sub-sections" to insert the word "one," in order to provide that Sub-section (1), as well as Sub sections (2) and (4), of Section (5) of the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870, should not have effect in the case of applications to fix a fair rent. As he understood it, the effect of the acceptance of the Amendment would be simply to extend to estates bought under the Landed Estates Court the same law as was now applied to estates that had remained in the hands of the old landlords. As the clause stood without this section, the gombeen man, the speculative buyer who had gone through the Landed Estates Court and bought property, would be placed in a far better position than any other landlord in the country, because, in the case of the ordinary landlord, the presumption would be in favour of the, tenant, while in the case of the landlord who had bought in the Estates Court or by private contract the presumption would be in favour of the landlord. He was entirely unable to see the grounds for that distinction in favour of perhaps the worst class of landlord.

MR. T. M. HEALY

supported the Amendment and pointed out that, in the original draft of the Act of 1870, not one single one of these exceptions down to six existed in Clause 5. They were inserted in consequence of the Debate on the Second Reading, when the landlords took the point that the presumption in the case of tenancies where they had been purchased in the Landed Estates Court ought to be different to that in other cases. Why, he would ask, should anyone seek to secure for the gombeen man, who purchased under the Landed Estates Act, a presumption which no Irish gentleman could secure for himself? He could understand the landlords fighting for their old historical position, but he would urge the landlord Party in that House not to insist on putting themselves lower down in the scale of humanity than the gombeen man.

* THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND

said the Government could not accept the Amendment. The reason why the presumption that all improvements were made by the tenant was not extended to cases in which the owners were purchasers of the Landed Estates Court was that every right which the tenant had was supposed to have been set out in the agreement. It was well known that every right which every such tenant had was supposed to be thus set out, and that it was supposed he had no other right. To give him now benefit of the presumption that all improvements were made by him would be to throw on the purchaser a burden he would be unable to bear, as he had no materials to prove what took place before his purchase.

MR. DILLON

asked what right, if this were refused, the tenants under the Landed Estates Court could have to the claim to have fair rents fixed?

* THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND

said the tenant would have that right under the general law of the land.

MR. DILLON

said, why not confer the right now? They were going to perpetuate a decision in favour of land-jobbers and, as they were called in Ireland, land sharks.

* MR. SERJEANT HEMPHILL

did not think the Committee understood the effect of the clause as it stood. If Subsection 8 were left in its present form it would be inferred by the Courts that Sub-sections 1, 3, 5 and 6, Section 5, of the Act of 1870 applied to improvements under this Bill, the well-known maxim of law, expressio unius est exclusio alterius. Suppose the case of an estate sold ten years ago; the improvements made by the tenants on the estate previously to such sale would be shut out.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

said that they had spoken hitherto of estates that had changed hands in the Landed Estates Court, but, unless the Amendment were accepted, estates would be excluded which had passed simply by private contract from one man to another. The result would be that any man in Ireland who had bought an estate would be freed from the presumption with regard to improvements to which other landlords who held land that had been in their families for generations would be subject. He did not see why the distinction in favour of these landlords should be maintained. Parliament had the right a fortiori to take away from these landlords this small and entirely unjust privilege of having a presumption in their favour when it was against the interests of others.

MR. KNOX

said it would have been absolutely impossible for the tenant to get anything about his improvement one way or the other on his rent. As a matter of fact, when Lord Waterford was selling his estate—in Derry, he believed—the tenants there tried to get what they considered to be their rights under the Ulster custom on the rental and went to the Court of Appeal, but it was held by the Court not to be the sort of thing that was to go with the rent. If the tenant had gone to the Landed Estates Court and tried to get his rent amended by the insertion of his improvements, he would have been told that the statement was entirely irrelevant, and that the improvements, whoever made them, belonged to the landlord. This was a matter which the tenant could not have got from the Landed Estates Court, and, therefore, the purchaser would not in any way be prejudiced.

MR. T. M. HEALY

wished to ask whether the old Irish landlords opposite really desired to identify themselves with the land jobber who had bought bankrupt estates in the Irish Landed Estates Court for the purpose of exacting unfair rents from the tenants. It was this class of man who had brought the land laws about the heads of the Irish landlords, and who had brought the Land League into existence. Where did such men as Scully get their land from? Why did not the old landlords cut themselves apart from these State gombeen men? ["Hear, hear!"]

COLONEL SAUNDERSON

said that personally he had no objection to the Amendment. [Nationalist cheers.] There might be a case in which a man might have purchased land at a fair price in the Landed Estates Court, and have spent money upon the property and made it more valuable, and it would be hard upon him that he should be deprived of his property. He, however, admitted that, as a general rule, the improvements on Irish land were effected by the tenants and not by the landlords. [Nationalist cheers.] As he had already said, he had no objection to the Amendment. [Nationalist cheers.]

SIR ROBERT PENROSE FITZGERALD (Cambridge)

said that he entirely agreed with what had been said by his hon. and gallant Friend near him. [Nationalist cheers.] The tenants upon the estates which had been purchased in the Landed Estates Court were in a worse position than those upon the old estates. [Nationalist cheers.] He might take that opportunity of telling the hon. Member for Louth that there were some Irish landlords who did not date their estates from the Cromwellian settlement. ["Hear, hear!"]

* SIR J. COLOMB

said that, if the Amendment were carried, they would be breaking Parliamentary titles and the conditions under which titles were conveyed.

* MR. SMITH-BARRY

agreed with the hon. Member for Louth that land-jobbers had brought much mischief on the landlords, but that the proposals before the Committee required further consideration.

MR. DANE

appealed to the Attorney General whether this would not be breaking Parliamentary title at all, but only doing an act of the simplest justice?

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said that, in all the circumstances, he would accept the Amendment. [Nationalist cheers.]

MR. T. M. HEALY moved, in the same line, after the word "two," to insert the word "three." He said the section which he sought to maintain should not be applied was the section which provided that the improvements which were made upwards of 20 years before the passing of the Act should be excluded from consideration. He should be quite satisfied if the Government recognised that buildings stood in a wholly different position from any other class of improvements, and limited it to buildings.

MR. GERALD BALFOTR

said it was not correct to describe this as a 20-years' limit. It was a 46-years' limit. The presumption, according to the Bill, was to hold in favour of the tenants in respect of tenants' improvements made subsequent to 1850. It was only in the case of improvements made before that date that there; was no presumption in favour of the tenants. But they had to consider not only the desirability of the improvements, and the difficulty of proving who made them, but also whether, since they were made, the tenancy had not changed in such a way that the subsequent tenant could not properly be held to be the predecessor in title.

MR. MAURICE HEALY

pointed out that the Amendment would not operate where there was a change of tenancy.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

admitted that that was so, but he contended that in these matters it was necessary to have some sort of limit behind which it should not go, and it did not appear to him that 46 years was an unreasonable limit.

MR. MAURICE HEALY

, in supporting the Amendment, moved by Mr. T. M. Healy, that Sub-section (3) of Section 5 of the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870, should not have effect in the case of applications to fix a fair rent, pointed out that the buildings were often more than 46 years old, and the older they were the more difficult it was for the tenant to prove his case.

MR. DILLON

spoke in a similar sense, and said that while, where buildings were erected or reclamations made before 1850, the tenant was put upon his proof, it was almost impossible for the tenant to produce it The sub-section was one of the most unreasonable restrictions in the Bill, and he hoped the Government would give way.

MR. T. M. HEALY

, while insisting on the importance of the Amendment and reserving his right to raise the question in a different form, asked leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR moved to insert, as a proviso:— In the province of Ulster, a holding shall, until the contrary is proved, be deemed to be subject to the Ulster tenant-right custom. He stated that an Amendment to the same effect stood in the name of two of the Government's staunchest supporters, and he was certain also that the Secretary to the Local Government Board (Mr. T. W. Russell), if he were free from the trammels and imitations of office, would give the Amendment his strongest and most earnest support. This support from the Government's own side showed that tenant opinion in Ireland was unanimous in its favour, altogether irrespective of political party. It should be remembered that to a large extent the Ulster custom which was intended to be conferred had been destroyed by legislation. The object of the Amendment was to meet an evil admitted by everyone and to throw on the landlords the burden of responsibility in respect of proof.

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said that he had explained in introducing the Bill why it was impossible for the Government to accept a proviso of this kind. The Ulster custom was not a uniform custom, and the acceptance of any proviso of this description would involve an attempt to define the Ulster custom. A good many Land Acts had been passed during the last few years, but in none of them had an attempt been made to define that custom. To insert the Amendment would, he believed, act to the detriment of the tenants of Ulster rather than to their benefit. Where the custom existed safeguard it by all means, but this was not a reason for assuming that it existed where it had not been proved to exist.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

said he had a strong impression that the right hon. Gentleman pledged himself not only to safeguard it but to enlarge its rights and privileges.

MR. RENTOUL

showed that in the Law Courts there was practically no definition of "fraud" and "cruelty," and in view of the fact that there were many important subjects capable of being dealt with without definition, it would be impossible in each individual case to ascertain the existence of the Ulster custom.

MR. PINKERTON

was sorry that the Member for South Tyrone was not allowed to speak again. [Laughter.] By passing the Amendment they would simply legalise the Ulster custom on the small estates. On the large estates, of course, there was no difficulty. The onus of proof would be thrown on the landlord.

MR. KNOX

agreed that with large estates there was no difficulty. Now, when every tenant had a right of free sale, and when even Ulster custom tenants habitually sold out not under their Ulster custom right, but under their statutory right of free sale, it had become increasingly difficult to prove in the case of smaller estates that the Ulster custom existed. The difficulty therefore was a practical one, and just such a difficulty as ought to be met by an Amendment like that of his hon. Friend which created a presumption. Unless something of this sort was done, the tenants in all the westerly counties of Ulster would lose advantages they had hitherto possessed owing to the difficulty in obtaining proof.

* MR. JORDAN

said the Leader of the House had given a promise that he would safeguard the interests of the Ulster tenants. Was he going to run away from his pledge?

* THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL FOR IRELAND

said the undertaking of the First Lord of the Treasury was to introduce a clause protecting tenants holding under the Ulster custom from being in any way prejudiced by the provisions of the Bill. He did not undertake to vary the law as to the Ulster custom. The clause carrying out his right hon. Friend's promise, which would be moved at the proper time, was as follows:— Nothing herein contained shall prejudice or affect any right or benefit exercised or enjoyed in or by virtue of any of the usages legalised in the first and second sections of the Landlord and Tenant Act, 1870. As to the Amendment now before the Committee, he pointed out that it had been found impossible to define the Ulster tenant-right custom, because, as Sir Edward Sullivan pointed out in his judgments in several cases, it varied very much on estates which were only a few miles distant from each other. Everybody would be anxious to provide that the Ulster custom should apply to all holdings. It was impossible, however, to effect such a result, as they could not define it, inasmuch as it was not uniform.

* MR. McCARTAN

hoped his hon. Friend would press the Amendment to a Division, because the clause which had been read out by the Attorney General for Ireland did not even refer to the Ulster custom at all, but referred to that unfortunate word which had done so much harm in Ulster, namely the word "usages." If the Ulster custom had been particularised in the Act of 1870 they would hear no more of "usages" now. That word had been legalised so that every kind of infringement might be committed on the Ulster custom. As to the contention of the Attorney General that it was impossible to define the Ulster custom, he had to say that that custom was well-known throughout the whole province of Ulster, and would be dearly fought for if it was attempted to be varied in any way. It always included fair rents, tenant-right, and free sale, so that there was no necessity for any definition of it. So far as he knew, the Ulster custom was admitted in every Land Court in the province, and why should it not be presumed that the custom existed until the contrary was proved?

MR. DANE

said that this was a most important matter to the tenants of Ulster. They stood on a different footing to tenants in the rest of Ireland. It was of the greatest possible importance to them that the Amendments should be accepted having regard to the 4th Clause which would apply all over Ireland in- cluding Ulster. There was no opposition to this Amendment from the representatives of the landlords below the Gangway.

COLONEL SAUNDERSON

I object to it very strongly.

MR. DANE

said that that was the first note of objection from that quarter.

COLONEL SAUNDERSON

The custom has never existed on my estate.

MR. DANE

That made it all the more important that the Amendment should be accepted. Every tenant on the hon. and gallant Gentleman's estate would be met with the objection that the custom never existed. He contended that in Ulster the onus ought not to be on the tenant to show that the custom existed, but with the landlord to show that it did not exist. He had hoped that there would be no opposition from the hon. and gallant Gentleman and his friends and he still hoped they would not oppose the Amendment. He quite admitted that it was absolutely impossible to define the custom, but no definition was necessary. All they asked here was that in the province of Ulster some usage should be deemed to exist.

COLONEL SAUNDERSON

said he did not deny the existence of the Ulster custom, but he would point out that in a very considerable part of Ulster it did not prevail. He thought it would be very unfair if they extended the Ulster custom and bound it by a geographical limit. Why did not they propose to extend it all over Ireland. His objection to the Amendment was the impossibility of defining what the custom was.

MR. DILLON

said the Attorney General professed his inability to define the expression custom, and yet this section opened with the expression, "Where an application is made to the Court to fix a fair rent for a holding which is not subject to the Ulster tenant-right custom or any usage corresponding thereto."

* THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND

stated that all the usages prevalent in the province of Ulster were, in the first section of the Act of 1870, designated under the one general word "Ulster custom." Those usages varied from case to case, but they were all covered by the one general term.

MR. DILLON

said if that were so then every tenant would have to prove in all their details the usages that were prevalent. All that was asked for by the Amendment was that the presumption should be in favour of the tenant, and its object was to remove what would be an enormous difficulty to the tenant in proving the existence of the Ulster custom on his holding. The landlord, who was in possession of records and other documents, was in a far better position in this respect than the tenant, and, therefore, it would be inflicting no injustice on him to require him to prove that the custom did not exist on his estate if the contrary was assumed. ["Hear, hear!"]

* MR. SERJEANT HEMPHILL

said the Chief Secretary seemed to imagine that none of his predecessors had attempted to grapple with this question, but he would remind him that in the 7th section of the Bill of last year were words precisely similar to those in the Amendment before the Committee. ["Hear, hear!"] He thought there need be no difficulty in framing a definition of the custom; it might be taken from the interpretation of it which Lord Chancellor Law had given. He appealed to the hon. member for South Tyrone to support the Amendment, for he must know as well as any member representing an Ulster constituency that this was a condition which the tenant farmers of Ulster were particularly bent on procuring. ["Hear, hear!"]

MR. GERALD BALFOUR

said they were all familiar with the fact of the insertion of the 7th Clause in the Bill of last year, but the late Chief Secretary never succeeded in getting that Bill into Committee The proposal was therefore, never discussed in detail, and he ventured to say that if it had been the late Chief Secretary would have found himself face to face with the same difficulty which had prevented the Government from introducing a similar clause into the present Bill. The Government could not accept the Amendment.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

said that the Government would find that Ulster would bitterly resent their action on this question.

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

The Committee divided:—Ayes, 66; Noes, 119.—(Division List, No. 346.)

COLONEL SAUNDERSON moved to omit Sub-section (9).

* THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND

said that under the Act of 1870 the tenant rights enjoyed in the province of Ulster were legalised and covered by the expression "the Ulster custom," and it was a matter of indifference which phrase was to be used.

Mr. McCARTAN, Mr. JORDAN and Mr. T. M. HEALY thought the expression "Ulster custom" should be used.

Amendment agreed to.

On the Motion "That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill,"

SIR THOMAS LEA (Londonderry, S.)

said he looked with very considerable doubt on the clause, and he was afraid before many years they would have to have an Amending Bill in consequence of its working.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

*THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND moved the following new clause:—