IRISH CONGESTED DISTRICTS BOARD.

HC Deb 14 March 1902 vol 105 cc55-111

(5.10.) MR. LUNDON (Limerick, E.)

I rise to call attention to a question of very grave importance, viz., the working of the Irish Congested Districts Board, which consists of ten members in all, and includes two ex officio members, the † The following is the notice referred to:—" On Civil Service Estimates, to call attention to the case of certain evicted tenants in Ireland; and to move, 'That, in the opinion' of this House, the continued existence in Ireland of a number of families of tenant farmers who have been evicted from their holdings in recent years, and are now without regular homes or settled means of living, is a great evil, and a constant source of ill-feeling and bitterness amongst different classes of the people in certain districts in Ireland, requiring the immediate attention of the Executive Government.' "— Chief Secretary or Under Secretary, the Land Commissioner, five members to be appointed by His Majesty, and three temporary members also appointed by His Majesty. In the Board, as at first constituted, the Rev. Father Davis, P.P., Baltimore, Co. Cork, seemed to inspire the people of the south—in Cork and Kerry especially—with a belief that from his varied experience and great knowledge they might feel confident of obtaining some substantial results. Dr. O'Donnell, the great and patriotic Bishop of Raphoe, succeeded the good Father Davis, but both were heavily handicapped by the great majority of the Board who were by no means in sympathy with the poor peasant concerned. The right hon. the Member for the Montrose Burghs succeeded Mr. Jackson on the Board, but, after all, it mattered little as he and other friends were in a minority. Next we had later on introduced the Rev. Father O'Hara, P.P., Kilimagh, a host in himself. Emigration schemes to Canada and Manitoba were broached, and in both projects Mr. Tuke and Mr. Horace Plunkett were conspicuous figures. We have had enough of emigration. We have been emigrating and emigrated until the life blood has been almost drained out of us, and those who remain at home are no better off; nay, they are much worse off, because it is the fine young men and young women who have gone away, and the poor old people who are left behind to eke out a miserable existence on their bits of land or to die in the workhouses and fill each turn a pauper's grave. The revenues of the Board are rather restricted, being the interest, I believe, on the million and a half remaining over from the Irish Church Fund, as well as the Irish Reproductive Loan Fund and other funds of a minor character. The programme of the Board appears to be of a large and varied character, if it were only carried out. It comprises: Agricultural development, forestry, breeding of live stock and poultry, sale of seed oats and potatoes, amalgamation of small holdings, migration, emigration, fishing and its appurtenance, weaving and spinning, and other suitable industries.

This is a big bill of fare, surely, but after all it has but a small share of reality. Improvements have, no doubt, been made on the original Act by Amending Acts, particularly those of 1899 and 1901. The former made from the Exchequer or some other imperial source a grant of £25,000 annually for the relief of the poor tenant and others in the scheduled districts, while the Act of last session rendered the working of the Act of 1891 more simple. It rendered it more easy to deal with cranky tenants who were not satisfied with the general arrangement, dealing with turbary rights, where no statutory conditions as to rent do not prevail, and it empowered the Board to purchase land for the purpose of migration. Among the Questions on yesterday's Paper I saw one from my hon. friend the Member for East Galway, representing that the people of the townlands of Ballinagurrane, Curraghlahan, Derry-more, Ballinapark and Cahirlishtrain, seventy-five families with an aggregate of 372 persons all told, had a poor-law valuation of £24 13s.—that is, something bordering on £12 for each individual. Yet with such a condition of things before their eyes, the Congested Districts Board have taken no action to ameliorate the lot of those poor people.

Now, Sir, I would ask? How do those wretched peasants manage to get along to keep body and soul together, and to pay rent for the little holdings, most of them either mountain or cut out bog? For once in my life I was in that part of the country, and witnessed evidence of misery such as no other part of the country could present. Such a thing as the making of rent off those little holdings was altogether impossible. I learned from a friend who accompanied me that the more youthful portion of the inhabitants there, and in other parts of West Con-naught, go to the north of England in the harvest and come home after a few months, to pay the greedy landlord his rent by their earnings whilst at this side of the water. Some of the poor people around the sea coast go out in the open sea and tear away the seaweed from the rocks to convert it into kelp or use it as manure for their little bits of crag. I saw, here and there, some pieces of cut-out bog with a collection of houses built around on land more elevated, what they call in Irish "graigs," built with an utter disregard of the rules of architecture, whether of the flat-roofed, castellated, or Gothic style—each built in the owner's own style. I went into some of those mansions with my friends, with a careful look-out for my upper story, to see nothing but poverty and misery, yet with fine manly faces on the young men, and young women equally good looking. Well, they say the savage loves his native shore, and then why not those brave peasants love their bogs and mountains, bad and unendurable as they are? Away from those scenes of misery I saw some fine lands, and no houses nor people there, save and except a few here and there, which, I concluded, were the houses of herds. I saw some cattle in the distance, and I then said to myself, "I suppose those are the ranches we have heard so much about." I conversed in Irish with some of the men there, old and young; they spoke their native tongue with grammatical accuracy; the more youthful of them spoke English tolerably well.

To come to the latter part of my Amendment, I would say that the confidence of our people in the future working of the Congested Districts Board is not at all enhanced by the appointment of Lord Shaftesbury in the room of Lord De Vesci. If I rightly remember, the right hon. the Chief Secretary for Ireland said that in connection with the appointment was a promise that the noble Lord would visit those parts of Ireland at no distant date. Well, if I am before him at any one of the places, I will recommend the poor people to welcome him, and I will shake a fistful of green rushes under his feet, he being one of our itinerant performers, the sum and substance of whose benefaction will consist in his going around giving a few plausible platitudes on the improvement of our condition, like the "cuckoo" who comes and trolls her song and then moves away to more congenial quarters. We want a Board which will do something substantial for our distressed people, with compulsory powers to purchase the outlying estates; failing that, we will be mindful of the old saw, "Keep pegging away, pegging away." With these few words I beg to move the Amendment which stands in my name.

(5.35.) MR. T. P. O'CONNOR (Liverpool, Scotland)

seconded the Amendment. He said that he regretted that the debate should have taken place in the absence of the hon. Member for East Mayo, who had made the congested districts a study for many years, and whose absence was a distinct loss to the debate, and he regretted also the absence of the hon. Member for South Mayo, which was not, however, voluntary, but due to the action of the Government of Ireland in confining him in prison for a speech he made in Ireland, which prevented him being present to take part in the debate on a subject upon which he was possessed of great knowledge. During the course of the present still young session there had been no less than five or six full-dress Irish debates, which fact would suggest two reflections to Members of both English political Parties. A point of departure in a certain new policy, recommended to the English Liberal Party, was that the Irish question was dead, buried, and surmounted by a gigantic monumental tomb which would for ever prevent its making its appearance again in the light of day and in the minds of living men, but that suggestion was hardly borne out by the fact that in a session not four months old there had been so many Irish debates. The appearance of the House at this moment was not inspiring, and suggested the reflection whether Parliament could not be better employed in discussing great questions of Imperial policy rather than have Irish debates on every alternate night, and whether the Irish Members could not be better employed in building up the ruins of Irish life into something like a healthy state rather than addressing empty Benches in the House of Commons.

Many people were tempted to think that, after all, the Irish question was a question of sentiment, passion, and conflict against the Government on one side, and discontent upon the other; but the discontent of Ireland had a solid foundation of great material want and great material wrong. Only this day he read in a financial paper— The Census Returns show a decline since 1891 of 53 per cent. in the population, which now stands at 4,456,546 only; in 841 the population numbered 8,196,597. The wheat acreage has declined from 445,775 acres in 1855 to 42,934 acres 1901—a falling away of 90.4 per cent.! Even the potato acreage has diminished in the same period by 35.3 per cent., and another staple department of rural industry—flax—has lost 42.9 per cent of acreage; if the comparison be made with 1870 the loss is nearly 72 per cent. And the article concluded with the words— Surely it is time for Irishmen who have their country's welfare really at heart to find better food for their political activities than the windy rhetoric and race-hatred which is all their present representatives offer them. He could not accept that as being the correct representation of the mode in which they met their combatants, but he quoted the figures to impress upon the House the fact, so constantly forgotten, that in Ireland, after all the benefits derived from the British connection of the last 100 years, they had a nation in ruin. That general condition of Ireland was aggravated when it came to the Congested Districts Board, because they had every evil which belonged to Ireland generally aggravated by a number of circumstances which did not affect other parts of the country. The hon. Gentleman who had proposed the Amendment had alluded to the fact that Connaught was the refuge into which Cromwell drove the population after he had devastated and re-settled many other parts. That produced congestion, but, evil as was the effect of his work, the Cromwell of the olden days, the Cromwell of the Ironsides, was far less destructive in his methods than the Cromwells of the present day. Connaught was more terribly devastated by famine and plague than any other provinces, and yet the landlords of that province, instead of acting as any other landlords in any other country would have done in a spirit of sympathy, took advantage of hunger and disease to clear the population, whom they sent off wholesale all over the world, and thousands of them died in consequence.

What happened in 1847? In the halcyon days when they had no Irish Party to interfere, 120,000 people were sent out of the single county of Gal-way at the will of one foreigner—he did not desire to mention the nationality to which he belonged. [An HON. MEMBER: He was a Scotchman.] There were good and bad Scotchmen. This man, by the caprice of his own will, cleared a whole county, and sent the people to seek refuge in another land. This process had gone on since the days of Cromwell, diminishing the population, and the wretched congestion of Connaught had been aggravated by bad laws and bad landlords. The extraordinary result which this system had produced was that side by side with this unparalleled condition, large tracts of excellent fertile land were lying idle with no population upon them, while the barren land wasovercrowded. He would give the House one or two examples. There was one estate of 350 acres in one parish of the congested districts with only one tenant. There was another tract of 460 acres with ninety-five tenants. Take the question of grazing. There was an estate in one of the districts of the Westport Union of 50,000 acres in the hands of one man, and side by side with that there was another parish where there were 600 families occupying 6,000 acres. That was a state of things which no civilised Government ought to permit. With regard to the condition of the people on small holdings, his hon. friend had touched lightly upon some of its features, but the main feature was that the labour in which these people were engaged was the hardest and the meanest paid labour, and in some cases it was most perilous. When men and women had to go out into the sea to pick up little bits of seaweed for food, they had almost got to the last depths of human labour, except the kind of labour some people had to endure in chemical and gas works in England. He very much regretted the absence of the hon. Member for South Mayo, because one of the most striking passages in his speech was that in which he described the budget of a farmer in the congested districts. He would quote upon this point a passage from Hansard in the speech of the hon. Member for South Mayo. He said— I take the case of an average £4 holder, who is supposed to be much better off than a £2 or £3 holder, and I can defy contradiction when I say that the receipts of such a man for a year amount to as follows:—Butter, £4; cattle, £5; pigs, £5; sheep, £2; eggs and poultry, £2 10s; making a total of £18 10s. What is his expenditure? Rent, £4; taxes, £1 2s 6d; clothing, £6; meal and flour, £8; groceries, £3 7s 6d; sundries, £3; young pigs, £1; or a total of £26 10s—without saying anything about a small saving for old age. This is equivalent to a deficit of £8, which must be found elsewhere in order to live. That brought him to another dark picture. They had all met in this country the harvestman from Ireland with his small bundle tied up in a red handkerchief. As a boy he remembered the harvesting season in Ireland. The Irish harvestman would go to the station, get into a cattle truck, and travel to Dublin, and upon the deck of some boat would manage to get over to England or Scotland. He would live on the plainest and the coarsest fare, and wear the plainest clothes, and after very hard labour, perhaps he would manage to bring back about £10. In his thrift and his self-sacrifice, by hard labour for small wages, and in his constant thought for the welfare of his wife and children at home, he claimed that the Irish peasant was one of the noblest examples in the country. But what became of that £10? It did not go to his wife and children, but it went to Lord Sligo, Lord Clanricarde, or Lord de Freyne. It went to alien landlords who never spent a single penny upon improving the condition of the people of Ireland. His hon. friend gave the case of a poor young girl of sixteen years of age leaving her home in the West of Ireland and going to a town in Scotland, after tramping the roads night after night and enduring great hardships. To appreciate this, they had to know the Irish feeling of family affection and association. They had to consider the high regard the Irish had for the safety and purity of their women, and the horror they had of sending them amid the struggles and temptations of great cities, in order to understand the depth of pathos behind a story like that. This problem was on some sides one of the most hopeless that ever engaged the attention of statesmen, and on another side he regarded it as one of the most hopeful. He did not know any problem which, when faced in a generous spirit, gave richer and prompter results. In illustration of this, he mentioned what had been done at Baltimore, in Ireland. He visited that town some years ago, and met one of the most truly great men whom he had ever had the pleasure of meeting—Father Davies, the parish priest of Baltimore. Father Davies had under his charge Cape Clear Island, which was eminently a congested district, and the kind of place they were dealing with. It was a place which, for generation after generation, was in the condition of many of the congested districts today—a condition of chronic hunger, deepening into periodical famine. One fine day the Baroness Burdett-Coutts had her attention brought to the condition of the island by the late Father Leader. She advanced money, which was spent in buying boats. The money was repaid. One of the most gratifying and hopeful features of this business was the punctuality with which the Irish people had met all the advances made to them for the improvement of their condition. The result was that now it was a place with the best fishing boats in the world for the purpose for which they were used. Baltimore was at present one of the fishing centres of the three kingdoms, with a prosperous, thriving, and contented population. That showed what could be done.

It was sometimes said that the Irish people were wanting in gratitude, but there never was a greater calumny against any nation. If the hon. and gallant Member for Yarmouth said so, he would not take any notice of it, nor did he wish to show any want of personal respect when he said that that gentleman was one of the incursions from England who had not added to the felicity or good feeling of the people of Ireland. The people of Cape Clear Island were full of gratitude to the illustrious lady who set them, up, and that was strong proof of what the Irish people were capable of. To illustrate the extraordinary condition of discipline and order into which the population had been brought by good management, he would repeat a joke of Father Davies. There was a ferry boat running between Cape Clear Island and the mainland. He asked how the ferry boat was kept up. Father Davies said it was kept up by a tax of 5s. which was contributed by each house in Cape Clear—a tax voluntary, but backed up by the thunders of the Church. Referring to what had been done on the Dillon Estate, the hon. Member said that formerly it was one of the most wretched estates in Ireland, where the people were in a state of chronic semi-starvation such as he had described in connection with other places. Now it was the centre of thriving industry and prosperity. The expenditure of a small sum of money had been enough to transform the whole face of this estate. Cattle used to live in the same rooms with the families. This practice was quickly disappearing; roads were being made, land was being drained, and a new world of hope and prosperity had been opened to the people.

The Irish Members raised this question again and again because it was a bitter and sad problem. It was one, however, which could be easily dealt with, because it was not large, and they raised it because they entertained the belief that it was in the power of the Government of Ireland to deal with the problem in such a way as for ever to remove it from the sorrows and wrongs of Ireland. His philosophy was that we were all very much the creatures of our environments—mere puppets on the wave of time and circumstance. Starting with that as his philosophy, he wanted the people in those districts to grow up in cleanly, prosperous, and secure homes. That was what he wanted the Chief Secretary to help them to do. The Irish problem faced them wherever they went. It faced no man more directly than himself, because he was the Member for what, after all, was an Irish town in the midst of an English city. He did not look for the time when emigration from Ireland would altogether cease. Young men and women must seek larger opportunities under more favourable conditions, but let the emigrants be a different kind from those sent out in past generations. Let them, when they landed on the shores of England, Scotland or America, start the battle of life, not already beaten and baffled, and with all the recollection of sorrow behind them, but educated, thrifty, and cleanly, and coming from substantial and prosperous homes. That was the new Ireland which the hon. Member for South Tyrone was endeavouring to create. Let them face the problem, and a new Ireland would come forth, in which there would be a prosperous and happy people.

Amendment proposed— To leave out from the word 'That' to the end of the Question, in order to add the words in the opinion of this House, the beneficial working of the Irish Congested Districts Board is marred by the slowness and partial character of its operations, by its entire failure to extend any benefits to many districts scheduled as congested, and by the character of recent appointments to the Board; and that the entire question of the congested districts demands the immediate attention of the Executive Government.'"—(Mr. Lundon.)

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

* (6.15.) DR. AMBROSE (Mayo, W.)

So much has been said on this subject, and so eloquently, that very little remains for me to do. This has been an annual discussion for some years; now it has become not only a weekly, but almost a nightly, question in this House. And why is that? As I said in the course of the debate on the Address in reply to the King's Speech, the Government have brought this trouble on their own shoulders. My hon. friend the Member for Scotland Division spoke of the clearances in Co. Galway in 1847, but there was no comparison between these and those effected in Co. Mayo. When this House voted £1,750,000 to the Irish landlords for the purpose of improving their estates, the landlords tumbled over one another to get a share of that money, but never to the day of their death, did they do their duty to the unfortunate tenants. They said to these tenants, "Now that the land is clear and the bogs drained, you will have to walk out unless you pay four times your old rent." That is the curse which this House has brought on the small tenants in Ireland. In 1839 a captain in the Royal Navy was sent over to superintend relief works, and his report to the Chancellor of the Exchequer was that a recurrence of these seasons of distress had become almost periodical. They must, I fear, be necessarily expected so long as the present condition of the poor continues. But the present condition of these wretched tenants was far worse than it was in 1839. In the latter year the tenants had a share of the good land as well as of the bad; but now they have only the bad land, consisting of bogs and rocks and boulders. There are grass lands 100,000 acres in extent in the Westport Union, with only bullocks roving over them. Has this House any conception of the number of people over whom this agitation has been raised? The population of the congested districts is half a million; but I maintain that the whole Province of Connaught is congested and there are over 700,000 of a population. What are the conditions of these people? The hon. Member for South Tyrone can describe it in better and more graphic language than I can. There is not in one of these congested districts of the whole Province of Connaught a man who holds a little plot of land larger than from three to five acres. And what is the sort of land? The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary said at Dover, in one of those ebullitions of after - dinner oratory for which he is so remarkable, that he divided the agricultural land of Ireland into great grazing farms, which are very good for fattening cattle for the English market; and small stripes or patches of land for the smaller tenants, which are quite as essential to the agricultural development of Ireland as the big grazing farms. That may do foran afternoon audience at Dover, but it will not bring much comfort to the unfortunate people of Connaught. If the right hon. Gentleman were put on one of these patches in Connaught and asked to bring up a calf upon it, he would find that he could hardly bring up a rat upon it. The holdings are simply scraped out from the rock or squeezed out of the bog. I had Questions on the Paper about the persecutions to which these poor people are subjected in the neighbourhood of Mallaranny, Co. Mayo. They had to go for seven or eight miles out on the seashore to tear up the seaweed which it has pleased Almighty God to grow there, and after that to carry it a mile and a half more inland on their backs—fir these little plots are not all situated in one spot. We have hoard of the squeezed sponge, e.g., the Colonial Secretary compared Mr. Kruger to a squeezed sponge, but if any one wants to see a squeezed farm let him go to County Mayo, County Donegal, or County Kerry, and look at the pieces of bog land worked by these unfortunate people. Not only have they to go from three to seven miles along the seashore or out to sea to collect the seaweed, but they have to bring sand on their hacks to try and dry up the bog land. That is what I call a squeezed farm.

How do these people live? Last year 27,234 of these people, boys and girls, came across to England and Scotland for six months, in order to earn as much money as would keep the pot boiling for the rest of the year, and to pay a rent to the landlord. They carried back to Ireland £6205,616, and will it be believed when I say—I am simply quoting the words of the Land Commission—every penny of that sum went into the pockets of the landlords; and if they had not done so into the workhouse they had to go. I have seen these poor people going away with their stick across their shoulder and a bundle hanging thereon containing all their possessions. His hon. friend told a pathetic story of one of those poor girls from Achill, and that applied equally to the 27,234 persons from Connaught. A young girl, aged sixteen, told her story to the Inspector of the Agricultural Department. She and her friend left Achill, and fortunately did not meet the same fate as a number of others did five or six years ago, when the fishing boats which were taking them to the steamer at Westport were upset, and twenty or thirty persons were drowned, and their bodies now lay in a heap under the sod in Achill Island. That might be a laughing matter for the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Antrim—

MR. MACARTNEY (Antrim, S.)

said he was not laughing; he was hardly listening to the hon. Gentleman.

* DR. AMBROSE

said he was glad the right hon. Gentleman was not listening to him. The poor girl landed at Paisley, went to Dumfries, and then to Perth, a distance of 150 miles, under the direction of a ganger. Sometimes they slept in small, dark places, sometimes in barns, and sometimes out in the open. He would put it to the Chief Secretary and the Attorney General, how would they like their sister or their daughter travelling aboutnightand day under the direction of a man who probably knew no God, and on whom the virtue of those girls depended? How would they like their sister or their daughter to be exposed for six months to such temptation? What must be the anxiety of the poor mother in Achill, with no one to comfort her, and nothing to solace her except the roar of the sea. She had no music except the never ceasing thud of the little cows chewing the cud in her little cabin. What must be her feelings, who had brought her daughter up from the cradle to childhood, and who had watched her playing with the little cattle which occupied the same one-roomed cabin. The agony of that poor woman, who had gone through the mill herself, must have been equivalent to the agony of the damned. It was the duty of the Government to come to the assistance of those unfortunate people, to lift them off their miserable conditions, and place them in a happier and more reliable position for the future.

(6.30.) MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL (Kerry, W.)

said it was not his intention to weary the House with any further details of the conditions of life in many parts of Ireland. The pictures which had been presented to the House were true, and he hoped that his hon. friends would be listened to in a sympathetic spirit, and that the case they put before the House would be treated on the merits. The Congested Districts Board was established about ten years ago, to look after poor districts in Ireland, and he was prepared to admit that excellent work had been done by the Board in many parts of Ireland. It was true that the mariner in which the Board was elected was not that which should obtain at the beginning of the twentieth century, but still, where good work was done he was prepared to admit it. No one could now pass through the Dillon Estate without being struck by the change wrought there by the action of the Board. Again, Clare Island, whore the people were almost on the verge of starvation and unable to pay their rents, had been changed into a comparative paradise. In Donegal, a great impetus had been given to the fishing and other industries by the sympathetic support which has been given by the Board, and, of course, they knew that that support was given because Donegal was represented on the Board by a man who knew the local needs of the people, who lived among them, who sympathised with them, and who, day after day, was thinking out in his own mind schemes by which the people could be raised from poverty to something like prosperity. Again, Baltimore, which not very long ago was a comparatively poor and unimportant town in the south of Ireland, had been, through the untiring energies of a rev, gentleman who at that time sat on the Board, raised to a position of importance. That brought him to the important question which he wished to discuss, and he hoped the Chief Secretary would consider it worthy of his consideration. He wished to direct the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to the treatment which two counties, Cork and Kerry, had received in recent years from the Board. Last night they were told that districts where there was agitation, and whore the United Irish League had power, would not be taken into consideration in connection with remedial in measures.

He wished just to compare the manner in which Kerry and Mayo had been treated. Kerry at the present moment was comparatively quiet, and they all knew what an enviable reputation Mayo had. The limit of the issue of Land Stock was £262,000, and, whereas not a penny of it was spent in Kerry to improve farms, the amount spent in purchasing and improving farms in Mayo was £260,000. He did not intend to plead in begging terms for his constituents; but he thought that fact proved that it was not alone the justice of the case that determined action on the part of the Congested Districts Board. There were two things which compelled the attention of the Board; one was agitation and the other a local representative on the Board. Mayo was ably represented on the Board by Father O'Hara, and it was to his untiring energy, aided, of course, by the other members of the Board, that many of the people of Mayo were in a happier position than formerly. When he heard there was a vacancy on the Board, he asked the Chief Secretary whether, considering that a large part of Kerry was congested, the enormous rates which the people had to pay for public works and the manner in which it had been neglected by the Board, it would not be possible to appoint some person with local knowledge. He did not even ask that a Nationalist should be appointed. Now they were told that a man from Belfast had been elected. He did not know whether he was a good or a bad man—ho trusted he was a good man—but he did enter his most emphatic protest against the system of appointing men to the Board to look after the interests of districts about which they knew nothing. A Return was granted to him last year, to which he was sure that the attention of the Chief Secretary must have been directed. From that Return it appeared that the total amount paid by Kerry for guarantees of railways and harbours amounted to the enormous sum of £1 3,000. The population in 1901 was 165,000, so that really the whole county might be regarded as coming within the condition of things which made up a congested district. This was a county governed by the old grand jury system, which represented only the landlord classes, and many of the works for which Kerry had to pay were not such as to give an adequate return for the money which they had spent. He hoped that the Chief Secretary, having S appointed a man who had no local knowledge, would insist upon that man; spending some time in acquiring such I knowledge as would ensure Kerry getting some share of the money expended by the Congested Districts Board. When he compared what was done for Donegal and Mayo with what was done for Kerry, he came to the conclusion that Kerry suffered solely because it had no member on the Board to voice its demands. The Report testified to the excellent work done by the parish Committees, and he suggested that some attempt should be made to start these Committees in the congested parts of Kerry. He desired to draw attention to the fact that the constituency which he represented was almost entirely on the coast, and that people were to some extent dependent on the fishing industry, and he asked whether it would be possible for a sum to be expended by the Congested Districts Board to build an ice house for the assistance of that industry. He noticed from the report that the Congested Districts Board had provided in other parts three ice hulks, and had made provision in another town for the erection of an ice house. He trusted the southern counties would receive the attention of the right hon. Gentleman, and that districts which had been neglected in the past would be dealt with, and that more energy would be displayed in carrying out the useful work which the Board undoubtedly did.

* (6.45.) MR. HAYDEN (Roscommon, S.)

said that the Irish Members did not approach the Congested Districts Board in their criticisms of it in any hostile spirit Wherever it had brought its powers into operation it had, on the whole, given considerable satisfaction to the people of the districts which it served. They complained not so much of what the Board did, but that it did not do more; that what it had done for some portions of the country it had not done for other portions which were admittedly congested and which had been settled by law to be congested districts. In former debates it had been admitted that work such as the Congested Districts Board carried on should not be carried on with undue haste. That argument was a fair one to apply a few years ago. The most important work which the Board had done was taking the people out of those districts where they had been existing on small holdings from which no living could be obtained, and placing them upon the rich grazing lands from which in the past they had been driven. When this work was started by the Congested Districts Board it was regarded as a mere experiment. The Board commenced with the purchase of the Clare Island Estate and the purchase of the French Estate. The experiment had now been given a fair trial both by the public and the Congested Districts Board, and the result was to justify the further extension of that work. These people on Clare Island had been lifted out of the direst poverty and had been put into a comparatively prosperous condition. They had met every obligation which they had incurred to the Congested Districts Board in a manner which redounded to their credit. With regard to the French Estate, it was within his knowledge that before the Congested Districts Board operated on that estate, the people found it so difficult to live that they were dependent on the goodwill of the shopkeepers in the neighbouring towns to supply them with food, while they paid their high rents, lest they should be driven from their homes. These people had not only paid what they owed to the Congested Districts Board, but were now able to pay cash to the shopkeepers for their small requirements. Those two estates were the first of the migratory experiments entered into by the Congested Districts Board, and it was admitted on all sides that the result justified far greater operations in the same direction. That these operations were not proceeded with to a greater extent was doubtless owing to the limited means at the disposal of the Congested Districts Board, but that could be altered, and the main object of the Amendment was to endeavour to influence the Executive and the Congested Districts Board to push forward with greater energy the work which was admitted in Ireland to be of a most beneficent character.

He complained of the utter neglect by the Board of districts which had been settled by law to be congested; little or nothing had been done in the County of Roscommon, one of the divisions of which he represented. A large part of the Ballinasloe Union, he was informed, had never been visited by any one connected with the Congested Districts Board, and so far as the work of the Board was concerned, the district might as well be situated in the rich grazing County of Meath. The grave discontent in the Frenchpark district was largely, if not solely, due to the fact that the Board had failed to do anything, or to hold out hope of anything being done, of a like nature to that which had been carried out in other portions of the country. If any place in the whole of Ireland, or, in fact, in the world, required treatment such as it was in the power of the Board to apply, it was the property in the hands of Lord De Freyne. The tenants on that estate were to a large extent composed of the class so pathetically described by the hon. Member for the Scotland Division, who, in order to pay their rent, had to come over to this country under such horrible conditions to earn a necessary few pounds. The Chief Secretary, in the course of his peregrinations, had visited that estate, and he would not deny that it was a fair field for the operations of the Board. The people on the estate waited hopefully and anxiously to see if the Board would extend to them a helping hand. At last, driven to desperation, being told that all the money available for purchase was locked up in the Dillon Estate, and that considerable time must elapse before it would be released, the people banded themselves together, with the result that there was the discontent and disaffection of which some hon. Members complained, and in consequence of which the Coercion Act had been put into force. Was it a fair answer to these people, when at last their patience was exhausted and they made complaints—perhaps in a way of which the right hon. Gentleman or the law did not approve—that because they had ceased to be patient and were endeavouring to make, their voices heard amongst their countrymen in England and America in order to obtain assistance, they would be put at the bottom of the list, and be dealt with last of all. He begged the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues to give up that policy; it was bound to end in failure, and the Board would have to recognise the necessity of going to the assistance of the people.

His third complaint was with regard to the appointments to the Board. A few days previously they had been somewhat astonished by the announcement that a vacancy on the Board had been filled by the appointment of the Earl of Shaftesbury. That nobleman might, for aught they knew, be a very estimable man, and after he had served his apprenticeship, a very efficient member of the Board, but at present what on earth did he know about these, congested districts? Was he acquainted with the conditions of misery under which these poor people had to live? When such appointments were made the person" appointed should be men living in the district, acquainted with the conditions and habits of the people, and full of sympathy with their feelings and aspirations. Withoutknowing anything about the Earl of Shaftesbury, he greatly doubted whether he had the knowledge and experience which were essential for work of the character he had to perform. He made no complaint whatever of the manner in which the Board did its work; the grievance was that the Board, having been satisfied with the results of their experiments in the matter of migration, had not gone much further, and made greater progress with the work, and that other places, certainly as congested, were neglected—a circumstance which, he believed, was largely due to the fact that some members of the Beard were entirely unacquainted with the nature of the work they had to do and the people they were supposed to benefit. He asked that in future, vacancies should be filled by men living in the district who desired to assist the people with their knowledge and experience. If that were done, there was little doubt that the complaints of neglect and want of progress would soon disappear, and the beneficent work it was in the power of the Board to do would be so extended that the blessings now confined to a limited few of the people would be enjoyed by a much greater number.

(7.7.) MR. CONOR O'KELLY (Mayo, N.)

thought they had just reason to complain of the slow progress made by the Congested District Board, and also of the dilatoriness of that body in disposing of holdings already in their possession. It was not surprising that in the last twelve months there had been many protests against the extreme slowness of the Board in striking, for the benefit of the peoplet those holdings, which they had acquired for that purpose; and a further matter of surprise was that the Board had allowed many holdings in Co. Mayo, which could easily have been acquired, to pass into the hands of graziers. At the present rate of progress, Members now in the House would not see the Board get beyond the merest fringe of this great question. A few months ago, a very large farm in South Mayo was thrown into the market. It had been stocked for a number of years by a very successful grazier, and it was surrendered by him because of his inability to make it pay. That farm had become historic by reason of the controversies which had raged around it during the last twelve months. Dr. Crean gave up that farm because he was unable to make it pay, and also because of representations made to him by the local clergy that the farm would be purchased by the Congested Districts Board for the benefit of the people. The immediate district had been, for the last seven or eight years, schedule as a congested district, and if the congestion was to be relieved at all, it could be only by this farm being acquired and divided among the people concerned. But, instead of offering to purchase that farm the moment it was in the market, the Board made no sign, and did not attempt to relieve the congestion which they themselves had recognised for years past. The farm was in the market for eight or nine months, and then a grazier from North Mayo became the owner of it—not that he expected to succeed where Dr. Crean had failed, but simply because, as he said, if he could only gain temporary possession, the Congested Districts Board, by-and-bye, when they got up out of their sleep, would compensate him to induce him to give up possession. Many other similar instances could be given. After citing other instances, the hon. Member declared that it was a sham and a mockery for the Board to go on scheduling districts as congested, and then allow the farms which could relieve that congestion to pass, without making any attempt to purchase them, into the possession of a miserable ring of graziers.

As to the delay in disposing of farms when once the Board had acquired them, in 1898 the Board purchased a farm outside Clanmorris, and it took four years to strike it into fourteen small holdings. In the ninth report of the Board it was stated that by the autumn this farm would be disposed, of and a migration scheme carried out. But the tenth report came out. The farm had been in possession for four years, but up to the present not one of the holdings had been disposed of. If it took four years to strike fourteen small holdings, how long would it take to relieve the congestion all over the province? Another practice against which he desired to protest was that of allowing the Land Commission to advance money to graziers in congested districts. If that practice was allowed to go on, the net result would be to confirm the districts in their congestion. He was of opinion that if the right of pre-emption were given to the Board in connection with land in congested districts, it would put an end to many of the abuses which at present afforded just and reasonable grounds of complaint to those immediately concerned. He hoped the next time the Chief Secretary visited Mayo he would go over the district he had in mind. The whole of it was given over to graziers, and it was an economic phenomenon how the towns situated in the heart of those vast rolling plains were able to live.

Comment had been made on the recent appointment to the vacancy on the Board. Who was this Lord Shaftesbury? He hoped that Lord Shaftesbury would justify his appointment. They could not hope that the Chief Secretary would have appointed a representative of the tenants, but he would have preferred the appointment of Sir David Harrel. He hoped the Chief Secretary would give them some assurance that the estates now in the possession of the Congested Districts Board would soon be apportioned amongst the tenants. The Chief Secretary must recognise the hunger there was for land in Ireland, for not long ago he had no less than 400 applications for holdings from one vicinity. If the problem of the congested districts was to be solved, three things were necessary. Connaught must be scheduled as a congested district; a larger income must be given to the Congested Districts Board to meet the larger necessity which would follow on the scheduling of Connaught; and the House must get over its prejudice against granting compulsory powers to a Board, the majority of whose members were drawn from the Party opposite.

(7.19.) THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WYNDHAM,) Dover

We have been listening to a very interesting debate, and I think the House may congratulate itself upon the fact that everyone who has taken part in it has avoided, as far as possible, attacking those who hold different opinions. As I doubt my own capacity to traverse all the ground covered by the last speaker without, perhaps, bringing into this debate some of the elements which have been so happily absent, I shall not go into great detail upon the matters which the hon. Member has put forward this evening. The hon. Member has complained that we have lost many chances of acquiring land in Ireland. I do not mean to take up in detail the opportunities that we have missed. The general statement is that we have been remiss in buying land which would have been very useful for relieving the congestion. I think the House knows by now that I, at any rate, and all my colleagues on the Congested Districts Board, believe that a vast amount remains to be done in order to relieve the congested districts in many parts of Ireland. I hold that that work cannot be done if you deal with one estate by itself, and do not take time by the forelock, and unless untenanted land which may be offered by-and-bye is acquired as occasion offers. Without attempting to offer a very elaborate defence, I must say that the experimental stage has necessarily been a long one. I do not think the Board is to be attacked for having been slack or wanting in diligence. If we go into past history we shall find that this work is a very novel experiment, which was only started some ten years ago. When a body is entrusted with such wide discretionary powers, touching public and private interests at certain points, it is, I think, right and proper to go slowly. But it is not the Board that goes slowly; it is the House that goes slowly. In the Act which constituted the Congested Districts Board there was no money provided, and other Amendments to fifteen or sixteen Acts of Parliament were necessary before you could proceed. Consequently, we had at first to discover exactly where the existing law hampered us in our work.

Let me now pass to the other main point in the hon. Member for North Mayo's speech, namely, the charge that we have been guilty of dilatoriness in disposing of the estates we have bought. Precisely there, also, we have had to make change after change in the law, and even now our powers are not adequate in order to deal with this state of things. As a good deal of advice has been offered to me this afternoon, perhaps I, in my turn, may be allowed to offer a little advice. Taking advantage of the happy environment in which we are privileged to live, move, and act today, I say that if hon. Members would preach to the Irish tenants sometimes that each man cannot have everything to which he is entitled, or which he thinks himself entitled to, and at the same time secure a general settlement affecting 300 or 400 people, it might have a beneficial effect. Last year the Government gave further powers to the Board, and until we got those powers we could not proceed with the work satisfactorily.

MR. JOHN REDMOND (Waterford)

Why did you not get those powers long ago?

MR. WYNDHAM

I am avoiding as far as I can controversial points. I know that a good deal of criticism may quite justifiably be levelled at those who rushed round the country, but still it is better to rush round the country than not to see it at all. I have been in Ireland on many occasions; I have made five or six visits to the congested districts, and I mean to continue my practice of visiting them. I assure the House that I have learned something at every visit which I have made. I hope I shall have the pleasure of saying something more upon this point when I bring in a Land Bill which I hope in a very few days to introduce. I am afraid that if I were to enter into detail upon this point now I might weary the House; and not only this, but I am afraid that I should be inviting some other hon. Members to make speeches upon contentious points. The hon. Member for South Roscommon has made a most temperate speech, which did not appear to be hostile at all; and I can conceive no greater compliment to our policy than that nobody complained of what we did, but only complained of us not doing more things at the same time. I have a less sanguine view of the possibilities of this life than the hon. Member, but even he admitts that it is necessary to proceed slowly during the experimental stage. I will venture to give some figures to show that the Board has been expanding its work very rapidly since we have had the power to do so. We expended on purchases of estates in 1892–93, £7,600; 1893–94, £349; 1894–95, £5,118; 1895–96, £4,520; 1896–97, £5,545; 1897–98, £14,145; 1898–99, £11,495; 1899–1900, £304,532, including the purchase of the Dillon estate; and last year, £31,242.

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

What was the price paid for the Dillon estate?

MR. WYNDHAM

The price was £290,000, in round numbers. The fact that the owners of the Dillon estate, who had not resided on it for forty or fifty years, were prepared to take £290,000, for it does not raise any presumption that another landlord in different circumstances ought to be expected to take mechanically the same price for that same kind of estate. I think that in all these eases an effort should be made by both parties to deal, instead of starting the matter by laying down some definite condition and then assuming that it is a victory to impose that condition and a defeat not to succeed in doing so No one could buy a horse in that manner. [Nationalist cheers.] I am afraid I do not understand my own joke.

MR. JOHN REDMOND

It is a very poor joke if it is intended to treat the buying and selling of land as a commodity like the buying and selling of a horse.

MR. WYNDHAM

I admit it is not exactly the same, but what I meant to imply was that in the sale of a horse there was generally a certain amount of give and take, and if hon. Members will allow me to say so, I think it would be greatly to the advantage of all parties if there were more of this kind of thing in regard to the buying and selling of land. A man will accept a comparatively small price for a thing on which he sets no store. I wish to point out that if a man sets no store on an article he will very often part with it for something less than the intrinsic value; but when you go to another person who sets great store on the same article, it is always necessary that he should be granted some inducement to part with it. These really are my two main excuses for our failure to purchase a great number of estates. We have purchased twenty-nine up to March of last year, and recently, also, we have purchased several. The difference as to price is always a difficulty in a matter of this kind, and the question of turbary prevents us from disposing of that which we have already acquired, but the Board will make every effort (o succeed on both these points, as I hope at no very distant date to explain. In fact, I trust when I introduce the Land Bill in a few days I may be able to deal at greater length with some aspects of this question. The hon. Member for South Roscommon complains that we have neglected Roscommon, but I cannot say that in regard to land purchase, because in the case of that county the Board had exhausted the whole of their credit for the year.

MR. HAYDEN

That was, of course, in the case of the Dillon estate only.

MR. WYNDHAM

That is so, and under the Act passed last year we are again in a position to purchase property in that county. The hon. Member referred to a matter which we debated last night, and I would rather rest on what was said then and not re-open the controversy. He alluded to the phrase which I used—" at the bottom of the list "—and asked what that meant. It means precisely what I said last night, and I think the words I used were quite intelligible. The hon. Member for East Limerick, who initiated this debate, said, in reply, I understand, to something that occurred in the debate last night, that we were not entitled to gratitude for the sum placed at the disposal of the Congested Districts Board. I quite agree with that. The bulk of the money is assessed on the Irish Church Surplus Fund. A part of it, indeed, is a Parliamentary grant, but, of course, not a grant in excess of Ireland's fair share, on the lowest computation, of the general advantages to be drawn from the Imperial Exchequer. No one has ever contended that this allocation of money is in any sense an eleemosynary work on the part of the State. It is practical work in order to build up conditions which require to be built up in Ireland, and I cannot conceive of any object to which money could be more properly applied. The hon. Member criticised some of the work of the Board with respect to the supply of cattle. I can assure him that the cattle, and especially the black cattle, introduced are appreciated in a great part of the west of Ireland, and persons who have bred these cattle find that they can dispose of them to advantage in the market.

The hon. Member did not overdraw the picture of poverty in the West of Ireland. I wish that people in this country did realise the condition of things there. When I was making a tour in that district I entered a small cabin at one place, and after a few words, which ended in a most pleasant and cordial welcome on the part of the hostess, she explained that she had locked some of her things away in a separate compartment, because she thought I was a sheriffs officer. I visited a small cabin in winch two families were living. The first apartment was only 11 feet by 7 feet, and the daylight shone through a cranny in the wall. In the next apartment there were eleven people living, with a cow, a donkey, and a pig. There were a spinning wheel and a loom, and a large cradle, all in this same cottage, and the walls admitted the light through numerous crannies. I am perfectly certain that that is a worse state of affairs than exists in the slums of our big cities. There is something to be said on the other side, I know; but I call that a condition of life which ought to be remedied, and I personally shall never cease to bring it before the country, in this House or out of it, on proper occasions. I consider it outside party politics altogether, and in all matters of controversy in connection with this subject I think we should never hear the shallow talk that we are seeking to conciliate the irreconcilables or kill Home Rule by kindness.

The hon. Gentleman the Member for West Kerry criticised the recent appointment to the Congested Districts Board of Lord Shaftesbury. I take the whole responsibility for that appointment. I made it after very grave reflection. I consider that each new appointment that has to be made to the Board is a matter which any Chief Secretary should consider very carefully. It has been said by one Member that he should have preferred the appointment of Sir David Harrel. I did at one time hope to do that, but it was found that that appointment could not be made without legislation, and Sir David Harrel himself was one of the many people who recommended me to appoint Lord Shaftesbury. The hon. Member for West Kerry said that we should have obtained some one who really lived in the south of Ireland, and I am told that we ought not to appoint a landlords' representative. Now let me take up the point in regard to the landlords' representative. I ask hon. Members to reflect that the vacancy was created by the very severe illness of Lord de Vesci, an illness from which, I regret to say, that noble Lord can hardly hope completely to recover; and there was something to be said, in my opinion, for appointing a landlord to a landlord's place on the Board. When the Board was instituted it was supposed to be not elective, but representative of all parties. I think our proceedings might have been open to criticism, which would otherwise be avoided if we had had no representative of the landlords upon it. But Lord Shaftesbury was not put on the Board as the representative of the landlords. The hon. Member for West Kerry said he was an Earl who would know very little of the poor people whom he had to look after, and as long as he does not know Lord Shaftesbury he is entitled to say that. Perhaps, however, the hon. Member may be reminded by the name that his grandfather was an Earl who did look after the poor, and Lord Shaftesbury himself, although he has taken some part in public life, and has made an eloquent speech in the House of Lords, is not disposed to enter into partisan politics. He wishes to devote himself to the life followed by his grandfather. He was for some time in doubt as to where that might best be done, but he felt that, being a representative of a family to which large grants of land were made in Ireland in former years, he owed a duty to that country, and he therefore came to me and asked, whether there was any way in which I could enable him to discharge the obligations placed upon him in virtue of those great grants made to his ancestors. Lord Shaftesbury is the representative of Lord Chichester. I ought not perhaps to go further into this matter. I have gone into it so far because I think it one of importance. There is no salary attached to the appointment at all. The work is done for love, and it is work to which this new recruit intends to devote the whole of his energies and a great part of his time. He has undertaken to attend all the meetings of the Board whether in England or in Ireland, and he will make a special study of all that concerns Co. Kerry.

I must refer last, but certainly not least, to the very eloquent speech of the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool. He said that the appearance of the House of Commons was not inspiriting. The House was not crowded when the hon. Member rose, but it filled when he went on, and those who listened to his speech were interested in it a great deal. I cannot, however, fairly attribute the absence of hon. Members to any prejudice on their part against Ireland as Ireland. Has the hon. Member ever looked in at the Scottish debate? On the other hand, I have noticed that Irish debates, even if they begin with an empty House, generally end by securing a full one. Hon. Members from Ireland may not always convince us, but they always give us a good deal to think about when they speak. I do not propose at this hour to go into the version some hon. Members have given us of the history of the problem. We are always told that Cromwell drove the population into the West of Ireland. Some have doubted whether that was the whole truth. He certainly drove a great many of the Catholic gentry, but it is not so clear that large portions of the people were driven unto the West of Ireland. The hon. Member spoke of the landlords of the past who had cleared their estates; but he forgot to mention those other Irish landlords on whose estates the people are, or were living in contentment. In dealing with this question you cannot approach the men whose estates were never cleared in a spirit almost of hostility and vindictiveness, because someone else in another part of the country had cleared his estate. When listening to the hon. Member, I thought of the De Freyne Estate, the rents of which were reduced in 1852; and so far from evicting their tenants, the owners of that estate assisted their tenants immediately after the famine. That, I think, should be remembered.

The question of the migratory labourers has been referred to. The number of those labourers is not now so great as to make any one despair of dealing with the problem. There are only 20,000 migratory labourers now, whereas formerly they numbered 40,000. But even if these migratory labourers paid no rent at all, or did not pay the £2 or £4 a year to which their rent now amounts, they would still be migratory labourers, they would still be living in a congested district, and without rent and landlord they would subdivide their land, and thus increase the congestion. In dealing with this problem patience was required on all sides as well as earnest work. The hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool touched also on the fishing question. Father Davies, to whose work in co-operation with the Baroness Burdett-Coutts the hon. Gentleman referred, was a great pioneer in the development of Irish fisheries. He had had the privilege of meeting not one but several Irish priests in the West of Ireland who were imitating the late Father Davies in living lives of splendid devotion. Some of them, residing in islands such as Clare Island, had often to go miles over the sea, or over the mountains, in order to give the consolation of religion or advice in material affairs. These men are heroes as well as saints, and are entitled to greater thanks than any members of the Congested Districts Board for the success which has attended many of their efforts. Look at the change which has been effected in the Arran Islands, off Galway. It is not ten years since no rent or rates were paid on that island, and the Government had alternately to despatch a gunboat to collect rents and an Inspector to start relief works. Owing to the co-operation of all classes living there, and, in a certain measure, to the work of the Board, the people of the islands are now making from £6,000 to £8,000 a year by fishing. Indeed, not content with reaping the harvests of their own seas, some of them go to the North Sea and compete successfully with the fishermen of Scotland and the Isle of Man. How absurd it is to say that the Irish lack initiative or courage when they have the opportunity, and how untrue it is to say that they are not good business men! None of these men are in arrears with their instalments for boats and gear, representing about £600. I think the success which has attended that experiment in the Arran Islands should, if possible, be spread elsewhere along the western coast. In conclusion, I trust that in future we may be allowed to address ourselves more often to what, in my opinion, is the paramount problem of the Irish question and the one which demands constant attention at our hands.

(7.54.) MR. JOHN REDMOND

I only propose to occupy the attention of the House for a few minutes. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary has done tonight what he has done on many occasions since he took office—he has made a speech sympathetic in tone, and admitting the perfect case to which the Irish Members desire to call attention; but, like all his former speeches, it had a lame and impotent conclusion. The right hon. Gentleman commented favourably on the tone of the debate and complimented the Irish Members for speaking in such moderate terms. In view of the character of the subject—than which there is none more likely to arouse strong and bitter feeling—the House will recognise that our case has been put with temperance before the House. It is interesting in passing to note that my two hon. colleagues who were specially picked out for compliment for the moderation of their tone—the Member for North Mayo and the Member for South Eos-common—are the two Gentlemen who have just been released from the gaol of the right hon. Gentleman. What a burlesque that is on Irish government! My two hon. friends, convicted as common criminals in the common police court, although the right hon. Gentlemen had said that he would not deal with political opponents except by political methods, come here to the House of Commons the day after they are released and the House does not resent that. Nay, the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Ireland falls upon their necks and lavishes upon them the most extravagant compliments for their good sense and moderation in tone. I only mention that in passing as another illustration of what a burlesque the whole system of government in Ireland is.

I said that the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary was sympathetic Undoubtedly it was; and I am convinced that the right hon. Gentleman by his visits to the West of Ireland has learned a great deal, and I am quite certain he is sincere in the picture he has put before the House of the sordid misery and wretchedness of the people in that part of Ireland, which is a perfect disgrace to the government of Ireland, which has tolerated it so long. The right hon. Gentleman has admitted all that with an eloquence not to be equalled on these Benches, but what I complain of is that, having proved our case, he concluded without holding out any real hope of amelioration. The right hon. Gentleman has told us that the Congested Districts Board is an experiment. Yes, but it is an experiment eleven years old. And yet, in the face of that fact, the Chief Secretary admits the gravity of the case, and says that his policy is still to go slowly. If the right hon. Gentleman pursues that rate of progress which has marked the past eleven years, no man living this day can hope to see the time when there will be any real appreciable change in the state of things, which admittedly is a disgrace to humanity and civilisation.

What do we ask? We ask for some declaration of policy to show that he admits the gravity of the case, and that he and the Government are going to deal with it boldly. He, however, practically says that they are afraid to deal with it except in the most gingerly way. The last Bill was passed in the strain of the session, and under circumstances that rendered it impossible to give it proper discussion. The right hon. Gentleman clearly foreshadowed last year, in the corresponding debate to this, that great discrimination would be required to deal with the case. He said that he had no fault to find with the discussion that had taken place, because it had given him points to think upon. But what hope has he given us tonight? I noticed that in connection with the projected Land Bill, he suggested that he is going to deal with the Congested Districts Board by way of enlarging their powers and giving them more money. But if he is really going to do that, why does he not tell us so frankly? One of the strangest things in political history is that an English Minister in preparing a Bill will consult everybody in regard to its provisions except the people most concerned. Surely the natural thing, and the rational thing, would be to take advice, to seek information and assistance from those people who are elected representatives of the men whose miserable lot he deplores, and whose situation he hopes to ameliorate. But, knowing everything of the country, the last persons to be consulted on these matters are the people's representatives. The eighty Nationalist Members do not know—I doubt if any Irish Members know; I think I should be safe in saying that the 104 Irish Members in this House know absolutely nothing of what the provisions of this Land Bill are to be, or whether it is to deal with this congestion or not, with the exception, of course, of the Attorney General. Is not that a very absurd system, and does it not condemn the whole system? When you introduce a Bill for the benefit of Ireland, the people you exclude from consultation and knowledge of the subject are the representatives of Ireland. I wish the right hon. Gentleman had been more explicit, and instead of darkly hinting at the possibility that he would deal with some of these subjects, I wish he had said boldly that it was his intention to grapple with the real evil of the present state of things. If he had told us that, we should not want him to let out the secret of his Land Bill at all. But he could have let us know in general terms that he did propose to ask for increased powers for the Congested Districts Board, and to ask for additional money, and that he did intend to ask for machinery which would enable this experimental Act of the past eleven years to be turned into a working arrangement, with a Department properly equipped to settle the question. If he had said that, we would have been perfectly satisfied with his speech, which was sympathetic in tone, and which was in substance an, admission of our case. He has not done so. He has left this question, as he has left scores of other questions since he came to the Irish Office, admitting our case and offering no solution whatever. From that point of view, his speech will be read with disappointment in Ireland, and at the end of his term of office he will have to reproach himself with having done nothing practical to remedy the state of things which he has admitted is a disgrace almost to humanity, and, therefore, to the rich and powerful English Government which permits it to continue. (8.8.)

(8.40.) MR. J. P. FARRELL (Longford, N.)

said he desired to allude to the reply of the Chief Secretary to the case which had been put forward. The right hon. Gentleman had, as usual, made a very eloquent speech; in fact, in listening to its pathetic description of the existing poverty, one might almost have supposed it was a speech delivered from an Irish platform rather than by the right hon. Gentleman, who was to take severe measures in regard to Ireland. The fault he had to find was that, while the right hon. Gentleman made eloquent speeches—apparently brimful of feeling and good intention—no result appeared in the shape of legislation. If there was one direction more than another in which the right hon. Gentleman had a chance of putting his good intentions into practice, it was in connection with the Congested Districts Board. That was admittedly a matter which did not create bitter Party feeling; it was rather a social and economic question. The hands of the right hon. Gentleman were, therefore, to a great extent free from those difficulties which surrounded him with regard to other and more thorny aspects of the Irish question. But in spite of these sympathetic addresses, the policy of the Congested Districts Board apparently was to pursue the same old jog-trot, and the only reply of the right hon. Gentleman was to bid the people to be patient. If there was a people on the face of God's earth who had exhibited patience, it was the Irish people. They had been tried in so many ways, and so many difficulties had been put in the way of their rising in the scale of prosperity, or improving their social position, that it was little short of mockery to preach to them the virtue of patience. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman was well-intentioned, but a certain warm quarter was said to be paved with good intentions. Intention was not the only thing necessary; the right hon. Gentleman must be earnest, and put before himself firmly and fixedly the bringing in of legislation to give effect to his good intentions.

The claim put forward by the Irish Parliamentary Party was that the whole of Connaught should be settled as a congested district. Connaught presented this extraordinary feature above two of the adjoining provinces, namely, that side by side, right through the whole of that province, they found the most barren, unproductive, and unfertile soil which ever the eyes of man rested upon; while within a few miles was to be found the rich soil of the valleys and the most suitable rich pastures for the flocks and herds of the wealthy. On the unfertile and unproductive soil human beings eked out a miserable existence, whilst the fertile plains adjoining were given up to the bullock of the rich landowner. Consequently, the Nationalist party were merely endeavouring to rectify a state of things which was a disgrace to civilisation, and which this House had power to remedy if it only had the will. The Congested Districts Board had power to purchase considerable portions of land out of the grants made to it by Parliament. For instance, they could spend in the county of Leitrim £65,979, and there was not a single penny spent there. In Sligo there was a limit set down for the purchase of land amounting to £55,938, and not a single penny was spent there by this Board for the purchase of land. In the county of Donegal the limit was £200,363, and if there was one county in the whole of Ireland which presented a crying case for the application of this money to purchasing land for the tenants, it was Donegal; and yet the Board had only spent £200,942, or less than one-hundredth part of the spending power which the Board possessed When they complained of this, the right hon. Gentleman said there were difficulties about the bogs. If the right hon. Gentleman took a statesmanlike view of the question, and recognised this as the broad question for the settlement of a standing grievance, he was sure that he would receive the co-operation of the Nationalist Party, and then all the difficulties would pass away like snow before the sun, and the terrible condition of the peasants, described so eloquently by the right hon. Gentleman, would not be constantly recurring in Ireland.

He had an intimate knowledge of the state of large portions of the counties of Connaught, Mayo, and Roscommon, and he had travelled through North, East, and South Mayo, and he had no hesitation in saying that in those districts there was plenty of room for something to be done to improve the condition of the people. In those districts one might drive for forty miles in a straight line almost without meeting a single human being. That storm-swept district was practically uninhabited except for an odd hut on the roadside where the occupants dragged out a bare existence. If some of the money which was now being spent so freely in South Africa, and to which Irishmen were compelled to contribute, was devoted to Ireland and applied to the draining of those vast wastes and plantations, and the placing of the people upon the land on reasonable terms, it would not be long before the unhappy state of that country would be completely changed. If those lands were in possession of the Netherlands Government or the Belgian Government, who were now spending huge sums of money building large dykes to keep back the sea, those paternal Governments would spare no effort whatever to make the lands he had alluded to in Ireland suitable for habitation, upon which the people could live under circumstances of decency and common comfort.

All this question came down' to the one solid fact which never could be put aside, and that was that the Government, as it existed at present in Ireland, took no notice of the representatives of the people, and proceeded on its own lines utterly regardless of the effects of the policy pursued. There were many other districts which were deserving of the attention of the right hon Gentlemen. In Roscommon the funds available under the Act of Parliament were exhausted, and the population in that county were obliged to live on the bad land and on the bogs and swamps, because the fertile land had passed into the hands of huge graziers. In the years 1846 and 1847 three shiploads of tenants were sent from Roscommon to America, and of those three ships only one reached the other side of the Atlantic. The whole of one district had been entirely given up to the grazier, while close at hand, on the bogs and swamps, a large population were trying to drag out a miserable existence between the hills and the Shannon. What happened on the plains of the Boyne in 1846 and 1847? Large numbers of the population were shipped to America, and those vast plains were devoted to grazing, whilst on the other side thousands of people were living up on small patches of land.

He did not think that Irish Members were making an unreasonable demand when they asked that the operations of the Congested Districts Board ought to be immediately extended. As yet they had received nothing beyond the platitudes which had been addressed to the House in eloquent and sympathetic tones by the Chief Secretary, and the Government had not given them any earnest of the smallest character to indicate that they intended to deal with this question in a practical spirit. Was it to be wondered at that hon. Members from Ireland complained of this policy of procrastination and delay? If the right hon. Gentleman confined his policy to making eloquent speeches on the one hand and dabbling in coercion on the other, he would find that his term of office would not be characterised by any grateful recollections on the part of the Irish Parliamentary Party or the Irish people. He would go much further in regard to the settlement of the congested districts. He spoke only for himself, and perhaps he spoke from the selfish standpoint of one who wished to benefit his own constituency if occasion arose. He thought the question of the congested districts should be dealt with as a broad question entirely apart from provincial considerations. There were, throughout Ireland, many instances besides those which had been alluded to that could be cited as requiring the attention of the Congested Districts Board. There were districts in Co. Cavan quite as congested as those even in the furthest parts of Co. Mayo. In Co. Longford, which he represented, there were large masses of population living on barren bogs and on the mountain sides, whilst vast areas of land were given up to the wants of dumb animals rather than to the wants of man. He would strongly appeal for consideration of this question on the broadest lines. He suggested that the right hon. Gentleman, in any proposals he would make in the forthcoming Land Bill, should deal with it on a broad fixed principle.

* MR. SPEAKER

The hon. Gentleman is now advocating legislation. This is not the occasion on which that can he done. He can only deal with the action of the Government.

MR. J. P. FARRELL

said he thought, as the right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Land Bill, he was at liberty to do so also.

* MR. SPEAKER

The right hon. Gentleman refrained from going into the matter. He only suggested that when he brought in the Land Bill he might have an opportunity of going into the subject.

MR. J. P. FARRELL

said he thought the Nationalist Members had reason to be dissatisfied with the progress which had been made by the Department as at present constituted. There was one reason why the Congested Districts Board had received so much support and countenance, notwithstanding its procrastination, and that was the presence on it of two reverend Gentlemen whom the Irish people had reason to believe were good and faithful representatives—he referred to Bishop O'Donnell and the Rev. Denis O'Hara. The Nationalist Members were, of course pleased that the Chief Secretary took a sympathetic interest in the work of the Congested Districts Board, but one performance would be worth tons of promises. They did not want eloquent and sympathetic speeches merely to please the ear, but they wanted something done by the Board to fulfil its mission and do good to those for whose benefit it was created. If the right hon. Gentleman approached in that spirit the work which lay to his hand he would receive the support of Irish politicians of all shades in this House.

(9.7.) MR. POWER (Waterford, E.)

said that no subject which could engage the attention of the House was of greater importance to Ireland than that which was now under discussion. He pointed to the decrease in the population of Ireland as a sign that the landlords had not managed their property in the way that duty required. No better proof of the incompetence, or rather the unwillingness, of this country to do anything for the people of Ireland could be found than in the condition of the congested districts, not only in Connaught but also in Donegal, Cork, and various other parts of the country. In the west of Ireland there was nothing more sad for a Nationalist to see than the fertile plains, where once were the happy homes of the people from which, by cruel and unjust laws, they had been expelled. On all sides in those valleys were to be seen roofless walls—monuments of British misrule. The people had been expelled from the houses which they built and from the land which they reclaimed, and driven on to the rocky sides of hills to eke out an existence which, to his mind, was almost impossible. Five years ago the Nationalist Members told the Government that there was a state of things in the West of Ireland amounting almost to famine. The Government, with their usual callousness, denied this, but after a few months they sent inspectors into the districts, and relief works were established. The lowest wage given was 3s. per week, for fairly able-bodied men, and the highest wage was 6s. per week, without any food, for able-bodied men. For these wretched starvation wages large bodies of men were prepared to walk long distances to and from their work. If there was no other evidence, that was sufficient to show the appalling state of poverty to which those districts had been reduced. The fertile plains from which the people had been driven were available for the people now on the hills and the bogs if the Government would have the wisdom to transplant them.

He recognised the spirit in which the Chief Secretary approached the subject. The right hon. Gentleman had enumerated the difficulties with which they were confronted, but what were statesmen here for but to remove difficulties and find homes for the people in their own? country? Recognising that there was great need for legislation, were statesmen going to stand by and do nothing? He appealed to the Government to deal with this question, and to find homes for the people where they could live and thrive. He knew the congested districts of the constituency which he had the honour to represent, and he thought statistics would prove that the poorest of the people were more than anxious to fulfil their just bargains. The way in which these people had repaid the loans made to them proved that, although they were poor, they were willing and anxious to discharge their duty. In dealing with the Irish people they must be approached in a sympathetic spirit. He remembered well the case of two poor people who were offered relief, and they said they had never yet received a penny in charity, and they would go to the grave, by the help of God, without receiving charity. Those were the sort of people who had to be dealt with; and he urged the right hon. Gentleman not only to make use of the powers which the Congested Districts Board already possessed in dealing with these Irish people, but to increase their powers; and if he did so he would do something to remove this blot, which was a disgrace to the English Government, and to brighten the lot of these people, which cruel and unjust laws had made so sad.

(9.20.) MR. O'MALLEY (Galway, Connemara)

said that this question had not been approached in any spirit of hostility to the Congested Districts Board. It was generally recognised in Ireland, and had been sufficiently admitted here this evening, that the Congested Districts Board, with all its shortcomings and failings, was the most popular Board that Ireland had seen since the Union. He fully admitted that in regard to the fishing industry the Board had done something for Connemara. It had developed the fishing industry in the village of Clegan in the most extraordinary way, and, in his own experience, he had seen that comparatively small and insignificant village grow into a town of considerable dimensions and becoming prosperous. He was sorry to say, however, that the operations of the Board had practically wiped out the best race of ponies ever seen by introducing foreign blood; although the breed of cattle had somewhat improved. As to the operations of the Board in respect to purchasing estates, he thoroughly agreed with the Member for North Mayo. He visited his constituency more than once every year. The Board purchased in 1899 a small estate in Connemara, and houses were built upon it. He found this year that those houses were not occupied, and he asked the Rev. Canon McArthur how that was so. The Canon replied that, although there had been hundreds of applications for the houses, he supposed that they were not occupied because the prices asked for them were too excessive, and the people were still out in the cold clamouring for houses. Considerable sums of money had also been wasted in other parts of Connemara. The experiment of planting trees had been a complete and absurd failure; and he did not know what good the trees would have done, even if they had grown.

He also complained that the Board had purchased land which was really not worth cultivating. In the neighbourhood of Carana a thousand acres had been bought which were not worth a thousand shillings, as they consisted of miserable bogs and swamps, practically unable to produce any economic rent whatever. If there was to be any visible improvement in the district of Connemara it was absolutely necessary that large grass farms should be taken, to enlarge and improve the small miserable holdings of the tenants. The complaint of the Irish people was that all these rich grass farms were held by graziers and shopkeepers in the towns under the eleven months tenancy. So long as those lands were in the possession of these men, and so long as the poor cotters were confined to four, five, or six miserable acres which were absolutely worth no rent whatever, so long would there be discontent, unhappiness, and misery in Ireland. One of the great evils of the present system was that the tenants of these wretched holdings had to pay the most exorbitant rents. The Land Courts of Ireland had fixed rents of 15s., 20s., and 25s. an acre for land not worth fifteen pence, and so long as that continued there must be discontent. In his own constituency he saw the wretched character of the holdings, and saw surrounding them on all sides large areas of grazing land from which these unfortunate people had been driven in the past; and when he saw that condition of things he could only tell these people that they must not rest satisfied until they got this land again into their possession. The evil would never be remedied until these grass lands were broken up, and the tenants, holdings enlarged, and the people called upon to pay a fair rent in place of an exorbitant one. The" right hon. Gentleman had promised to introduce a Bill to remedy this state of things, but unless he was in a position to take the remedy indicated of breaking up the grass lands he would never get rid of the difficulty. The right hon. Gentleman, he was convinced, meant well, but he thought he might have learnt something from the failure of other Chief Secretaries. The real evil with regard to Ireland was that the Irish people were never consulted. Whenever measures for the benefit of Ireland were submitted to this House, the feelings and the aspirations of the Irish people were always ignored. The Executive Government of Ireland had heard tonight the voice of the Irish people asking them to rise to the occasion and deal with this matter once and for all. They asked for a Land Bill which would for ever settle this question, which would prevent the emigration of the people, which would remove discontent and the poverty which had been described. If the Government did that, they would not only be doing their duty, but they would engender in the hearts of the Irish people a feeling of gratitude very different to the feeling with which they looked at the Government today.

* (9.37.) MR. T. W. RUSSELL

said that he had studied this question for many years, and he had, in season and out of season, tried to direct the attention of the English people to these congested districts. He believed the question discussed this evening was the real crux of the Irish question. The legislation of the past thirty years had sensibly ameliorated the condition of other parts of Ireland. Land Bills and other legislation had made considerable difference to farmers in other parts of the country, but there had been no adequate relief for these districts. Fair rent legislation could not possibly affect a district where no economic rent was derivable from the land. Economic rent was derived from profits after the farm had been properly tilled, and the husbandman properly provided for. In not one of the districts which had been described this evening was there even subsistence for the tiller of the soil, let him work from morning till night as hard as it was possible for peasant to work. That was the real reason why legislation which benefited other parts of the country had never touched these districts and never could. What were the facts which struck even casual observers? You came at one moment to a crowded and festering area, where the people were huddled together and herded like swine, where they were living under conditions which an ordinary Englishman would not expect his horses and dogs to live under; and beside those areas they would come to vast solitudes, great tracts of land from which these people had been driven in the olden days, and upon which the old traces of cultivation still remained. It did not need ruined and roofless cottages to show that people had lived and laboured there. There were the fences of the holdings from which these men had been driven in the past on to the stony wildernesses and wretched bogs where they now lived. The real difficulty, and he admitted the difficulty, was how to get these people put back on to this land, now only occupied by black Angus cattle and sheep. That was the real responsibility of Englishmen after the famine. There were too many people in Connaught before the famine, in his opinion; but after the famine, and after the emigration of thousands of people from Ireland, England allowed the Irish landlords to clear these fertile lands and drive the people into the bogs. That was the thing which had to be undone. He admitted the difficulty, because it was not an easy thing to get the Irish farmer to look with kindness on any change whatever, and directly they talked of enlarging holdings, all sorts of difficulties would crop up, but those difficulties would have to be faced.

What was the Congested Districts Board doing in the matter? How many inspectors were employed upon this work? He only knew of one, who was an exceptionally competent man. But these difficulties would have to be got over and the people saved. He cordially agreed with everything that had been said with regard to the principle on which the Congested Districts Board was founded and the work it had done. Enormous services had been rendered to Ireland since the commencement of its operations. Twenty-seven estates had been purchased by the Board, and the results of its operations had been of a highly satisfactory character. In the case of Glare Island he had heard it stated that until it was taken over by the Congested Districts Board no rent had been paid for over thirty years. Whether that was true or not he did not know, but, at all events, things were on that estate as unsatisfactory as they could be. But what happened there was that, with the assistance of the Congested Districts Board and the Catholic, priests, the tenants had got the land into their own possession. [A NATIONALIST: "And William O'Brien."J The hon. Gentleman was quite right, and he did not omit his name intentionally. The result was the tenants in that fertile island were now paying their rents in the most honourable way, and would continue to do so until their indebtedness to the Congested Districts Board had been paid off. As he had stated on the previous evening, the Dillon Estate was the estate which in troublous times was the first to break down; that was the estate in the West of Ireland that was the danger point of the whole country. That had now been transformed into a perfectly peaceful place. There was turbulence all round, but the tenants of that estate were as quiet as they could be, and everything was peace and order. The same thing was true of all those estates which had been bought by the Congested Districts Board, and re-sold to the tenants and settled. That could not be denied. Here was a fatal disease; we had found the remedy; the thing had been proved; the results everything that could be desired; then why not apply the remedy?

The Chief Secretary had spoken of going slowly, and of the necessity of so doing. He admitted the difficulty, but not the facts. It was one thing in the matter of legislation to proceed tentatively and slowly, but when districts like these, where the suffering was admitted, whore the people had suffered for centuries, the plea of delay ought not to be admitted beyond a certain point. The patience of these people was marvellous; there was nothing like it in the world. As he had said on a previous occasion, if these people had been in a Continental country the condition of things would have bred anarchy, and now, where hunger and want reigned together, where the food of the people did not come up to bare sustenance, and where, when they looked at the children and saw how they were! clothed and fed, this was the condition of things out of which they expected peace and order to come. Let them go slowly and safely, by all means, but when they appealed daily to people starving and suffering all these trials, the House ought not to admit that plea beyond a certain limit. As he had stated before, he admitted all the difficulties, but the Congested Districts Board had been founded on right lines, and it had run for eleven years; they had reached the bed-rock of this disease and had found the remedy. The Chief Secretary admitted the disease, the remedy was at his hands, and the right hon. Gentleman had pointed out that something was going to be done to improve the state of things. He himself represented a part of the country where none of this misery prevailed, but he wished to say that he would give up a great deal of what he desired if he could see one great heroic effort to lighten the heavy burden which had rested on these districts for centuries, and which rested on many of them at the present time with greater force than it had rested upon them a hundred years ago, when the Union was passed. The House could not allow this state of things to go on— The mills of God grind slowly, But they grind exceeding small. The Government must wake up and go to work. It must realise that this work which lay ready to its hands could be no longer delayed with safety to the State.

* (9.51.) MR. BOLAND (Kerry, S.)

said there were two aspects to this problem of the Congested Districts in Ireland. The hon. Member for South Tyrone had just dealt with it from the point of view of the purchase of estates and re-settlement. He approached it from a point of view slightly different to that of the hon. Member and slightly different to the view of some of his colleagues, because the fishing industry was the principal industry in his constituency. He cordially agreed that no solution of the question was possible unless it was dealt with in a fair way with a determination to create a peasant proprietary in Ireland, which was obviously the only way of satisfying the requirements of the people and bringing prosperity back to Ireland. He desired to associate himself very strongly with the observations which had been made by the hon. Member for West Kerry. Applications had been made over and over again to the Chief Secretary and to the Executive Government, that, when a new appointment was made on the Board, the claims of the South-West corner of Ireland should be borne in mind, and that a representative should be chosen who could bring forward the special needs of this locality. No doubt the new member of the Congested Districts Board was prepared to do his work in a perfectly proper manner, but he would point out to the right hon. Gentleman that if their special needs were not conceded, they would on the next appointment be entitled to have a member connected with either Cork or Kerry. Two years ago, in South Kerry the Congested Districts Board approved of a landing-place being established at Coonaloughey, but while the work was being proceeded with, a dispute arose and the work was abandoned. The work was considered by the county surveyor, and taken up by the Board. He held that the case should be again gone into, and if there had been a representative of Kerry on the Board it certainly would have been further considered.

He was quite in accord with the statements as to the good work done by the Congested Districts Board; he regretted they had not done more. It was necessary, however, that they should keep a thoroughly open mind when schemes were brought before them by the people themselves. In parts of Kerry, where the people were largely dependent on the sea, but also had little patches of land, the use of lime was of the greatest advantage. Unfortunately, owing to the expense, it was often impossible for the people to obtain the lime. He hoped, therefore, when the people brought forward any scheme of co-operation and asked for assistance, so that they could obtain lime at a cheaper rate, the Board would meet such approaches in a sympathetic spirit and give all the assistance in their power. When one looked at Mayo and Donegal and saw the admirable work those two distinguished members of the Board, Dr. O'Donnell and Father O'Hara, had been able to do in their own district, one was able to see that the advantage of the presence of a representative on the Board was not merely that it enabled the work to be carried out, but that it encouraged the people to take up schemes. The village committees of Mayo had worked extremely well, and their success must be largely ascribed to the presence of Father Denis O'Hara, a member of the Board. The mere presence of such a man in the district was an incalculable advantage to the people. They saw not only that he was capable of helping them in their demands, but also that his suggestions were carried out in other parts of the country, and it made them desirous of taking up schemes, whether of afforestation or of lime-burning or of potato spraying, such as it was desirable they should adopt. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman and the new member of the Board would take these matters into consideration, and that the interests of Cork and Kerry would be brought forward, as they, unfortunately, had not been for many years past. If those interests were properly brought forward by the new member, the representatives of the district would certainly not object to his being placed on the Board, but if he failed in any way to represent their views, or to see that the needs of Cork and Kerry were attended to, they would claim that the next appointment must be given to a gentleman from that part of Ireland.

(10.6.) MR. SWIFT MACNEILL (Donegal, S.)

knew of no subject which so well indicated the utter hopelessness of English government in Ireland as the treatment of the poor in the congested districts. If the ordinary English Members in London, who were so fond of living well, of being at peace with their neighbours, and of the ordinary, easygoing life, would come in and listen—as they did in their hundreds when some personal or exciting topic was under discussion—to the simple and pathetic story of Irish poverty, their hearts would be stirred, and they would say, "Good God, can we not give even one week's expanses of the war to ameliorate the condition of these people?" The equivalent of such a sum would make a material difference, and give permanent happiness and decent comfort to thousands of families. The hon. Member for South Tyrone almost apologised for addressing the House on the subject because he was an Ulster Member, implying that Ulster was prosperous, and that, therefore, he was speaking not so much as the representative of a congested district, as one having special knowledge of the subject. But he (the hon. Member) also was an Ulster Member, and he represented a county in which there were a large number of congested districts. He had met the Chief Secretary in that county, under circumstances the right hon. Gentleman would well remember, some twelve years ago. The horrible condition of the destitute poor was at that time brought very prominently before the House by questions from the Irish Members, but the Government of the day made a very faint and feeble response. At length he was asked by Mr. Parnell, as representing one of the divisions of Donegal, to move the adjournment of the House in order that the matter might be considered. With much trepidation and diffidence, being a comparatively new Member, he did so, and was greatly embarrassed when he found that greatest of Englishmen of the last century, Mr. Gladstone, intently listening. But in that gentleman's eyes was a look of sympathy, as he went on, with the simple tale of the woes and sorrows of these people. What was the use of argument? What was the use of speaking of these things to empty Benches, and of being-told the next morning by the newspapers that the English Government were sympathetic, and that the Chief Secretary made a conciliatory speech? Men who were starving, and children who were wanting the necessaries of life, could not live on sympathy; they wanted action—sturdy action.

The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary seemed to be in a curious and contradictory position. He spoke of the Earlof Shaftesbury's desire, as a young man, to devote himself to doing good, and he seemed to wish he were fifteen years younger, so that he could do exactly as Lord Shaftesbury was doing. But the right hon. Gentleman had the power—he had the power of moving and stirring the hearts of the people; he had the power of doing that which would not, perhaps, make him illustrious in the annals of fame, but which would give him the true lustre of doing good in his day and generation—of alleviating the lot of the poor and of satisfying the hungry. Why, in God's name, would he not do it when he had the power? He (the hon. Member) had travelled a great deal; he had been amongst Kaffirs and partaken of their fare; he had been amongst Hottentots and shared their hospitality; he had been in the desolations of South Africa; but he had never seen any condition of human misery to equal that to be found in West Donegal and in some parts of South Donegal. Of all things in the world a child was most associated with was gaiety and laughter, but he had never seen a smile on a child's face in the hovels he had there visited. At first sight the children might look to be well fed, because their faces appeared to be fat. Their faces were certainly puffed, but they were pallid from the want of animal food and a proper supply of milk. The men, despite their miserable conditions, were splendid specimens of humanity, and as examples of patience they were simply marvellous. They were illiterate in the I sense that not many of them knew the English language, but they were not illiterate in the sense of not having a fixed belief that a personal God sympathised with them, even though the English Government and man did not. There was a considerable number of hungry men in South Donegal, and the cause for this lay at the door of the Irish Government.

While he was listening to the speech of the hon. Member for South Tyrone, and to the eloquent appeal he made on behalf of the poor, he was reminded of the leading article which, at the close of the last session of Parliament, appeared in an Irish journal, the Irish Times. That article warned the right hon. Gentleman to shake off the moral influenza, because the agitation raised by the hon. Member for South Tyrone would overwhelm himself and his Government. That moral influenza was still there in reference to the congested districts, but when it came to applying the remedy the Chief Secretary had nothing but sympathy to apply. He wanted to give even an English Government its due, and he wished to say that so far as Donegal was represented on that Board it could not have a more representative man than the Most Rev. Dr. O'Donnell, the Bishop of the diocese, who was a direct descendant of the O'Donnells of Donegal. He was a bishop who sympathised deeply with the poor people, and he had stated that there was a great want of money. He was not going in the slightest degree to trespass beyond the verge of order, but he wished simply to say that the Chief Secretary had the means of supplying the money. He was sure the right hon. Gentleman felt it very keenly that these people had to suffer so much. There was a desire among those poor people to conceal their poverty, of which they had always spoken in a light-hearted manner, and it was only in company with their priest that they stated their real condition. They had absolutely no hope in this world. When he thought of those scenes, he wished the speech which the First Lord of the Treasury made at Manchester in 1890 was published and widely circulated, because it gave a most complete and admirable description of the Irish congested districts. He should never forget that speech, because it was interlarded with a furious attack upon himself. The right hon. Gentleman then showed the miserable condition of the congested districts twelve years ago, and nothing had been done since. What he wanted and what he was sure the Chief Secretary wished to do was to alleviate the condition of those poor people, and bring them down on to the more fertile plains. There were large tracts of fertile land, and the tenants were not permitted to live upon it. They were bound to consider those historical matters. Speaking broadly, in all the fertile districts in Ireland it was a fact that the more fertile the district the less was the population. The counties of Meath and Kildare were rich and fertile with a very small population, while other parts of Ireland were barren and over-populated. The state of the country did not improve. The last time O'Connell appeared in the House of Commons, on his way to Rome, he got up to speak, and he was so weak that his voice could hardly be heard. He obtained permission to speak from the Treasury Bench. In the last words he uttered he prayed the English Parliament to give bread to the Irish people. Instead of doing that, their system of government had taken away the bread from the people. They had made Ireland desolate, and they must have food for their people or they would take it.

He agreed with the hon. Member for South Tyrone, who ad that, as far as the Irish Land question was concerned, Ireland would be justified in rising in rebellion if she had the chance. They could not permit, without protest, the expenditure of large sums of money upon war for which Ireland was taxed, when they refused to relieve the condition of the poor people of Ireland. The essence of constitutional government was that the Ministry should be responsible to the country at large and to the House of Commons. In Ireland they were treated as if they were Germans or French, and they got no intimation of the laws intended for the benefit of Ireland until they were brought before the House. Two or three days before he was first elected for Donegal, he recollected that while he was walking up a storm-swept hill he met a poor labourer. This man said to him, "If you are elected, will you work, for the poor?" And he told him that he would. So far as his humble efforts would permit, he had consistently worked for the poor, and at all costs he would continue to do so. Whether they succeeded or not, they would continue to do their duty, notwithstanding all the obloquy that might be hurled at them, and they cared for nothing so long as they got their rights and established their place among the nations of the earth.

(10.29.) MR. GILHOOLY (Cork, N.)

said that this subject had been fully and ably dealt with by his hon. friends, and he was more concerned with the fishing centres of the South of Ireland. He rose mainly to complain that when a vacancy occurred on the Congested Districts Board the whole province of Munster was still left unrepresented on that body. The late Father Davies represented the South of Ireland on that Board, and owing to his exertions and influence on every Chief Secretary, a great amount of good was done in the South of Ireland, for he had always looked well after the requirements of the fishing centres. Since the death of Father Davies the South of Ireland had been almost wholly neglected. While the people there saw the beneficial results of the action taken by the Congested Districts Board in the west and north, they saw that very little had been done in their own districts. In the south the action of the Chief Secretary in appointing Lord Shaftesbury to the Congested Districts Board would be looked upon as showing a want of sympathy with that part of the country. He wished to ask the Chief Secretary whether he would appoint an additional member to the Board to represent the South of Ireland. He was told that at present the law did not permit of this being done, but if the right hon. Gentleman was sympathetic he could pass a small Bill in three or four days providing for the appointment of another representative on the Board.

(10.35.) MR. MURPHY (Kerry, E.)

said the Nationalists considered that the Congested Districts Board had not done sufficient in Mayo, Donegal, and in other counties. They were tired of listening to the right hon. Gentleman telling the public that the places that agitated and made a trouble over this question were the places which the Congested Districts Board had placed last on the list. His constituency was peculiar. One part included the Lakes of Killarney, and that circumstance ought to conduce to a condition of prosperity. The other end of it included a district which was as poverty stricken as any part of Ireland. It was the district in which the bog disaster occurred a few years ago. That disaster arose entirely through the landlord of the district, Lord Kenmare, having failed to do his duty in not assisting the tenants to provide a proper outlet for the water drained from the bog. He had pointed out to the Chief Secretary that the bog now was practically in the same condition as before, and that a similar disaster might occur again. Notwithstanding his appeals, and the report of an inspector who visited the spot that his representations were well founded, nothing had been done for the people of the district, because they were orderly and did not agitate. It was not his fault that they did not agitate, and he would, when he had an opportunity, preach to them that agitation was the only way that would ever make the Chief Secretary listen to their demands. He would not try to throw cold water on the appointment of Lord Shaftesbury. They took him as the right hon. Gentleman presented him, and they would judge him by the result. Possibly they might be disappointed, as they had often been before. His constituency had been utterly neglected by the Congested Districts Board, but he now, on their behalf, said that they would give the Chief Secretary a further opportunity of showing whether he desired to do anything for them.

* (10 40.) MR. CULLINAN (Tipperary, S.)

said that he called attention a fortnight ago to the circumstances connected with the Kilclooney estate in Galway, but, to his regret, the Chief Secretary was not present. As the right hon. Gentleman was here tonight, he would state the facts again. This was an estate portions of which had been sold by the Land Commissioners to the tenants. Some of it was occupied by large graziers, and the Chief Secretary was asked to have the grazing lands bought up for the benefit of the people in the adjoining congested district. The right hon. Gentleman met them in a most friendly manner. On the 16th of July last a Question on the subject was asked in this House by the Chairman of his Party; on the 18th the Question was answered by the Chief Secretary, who said that he had communicated with the Land Commission to try to negotiate for the purchase of the farms On the 20th the Land Commission, finding they could not sell to grazing tenants, actually sent an official to get them to sign yearly agreements to qualify them to purchase. By this Act they were trying to defeat the good intentions of the Chief Secretary and the Congested Districts Board. The graziers were eleven months tenants, and therefore it was competent for the Land Commissioners to buy the lands and divide them among the poor people. But the Land Commissioners tried to force the graziers to buy the lands. He had that on the authority of one of those gentlemen. He was informed that a large grazier, who had already borrowed £5,000 and had therefore exhausted his claim on the Land Commissioners, stated that he could not buy any more land, and one of the Commissioners actually suggested to this man that he should put in the name of his son.

MR. SPEAKER

It will not be competent for the hon. Member to discuss the conduct of the Land Commission on the Motion before the House.

* MR. CULLINAN

I have no hesitation in saying that the whole cause of the delay in the purchase of these farms by the Congested Districts Board was due to the officials of the Land Commission. It is said that in my constituency there is no congestion. And why? I must answer in the words of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for North Tyrone, who sits on the Front Opposition Bench, when he was asked in the early eighties before the Bessborough Commission why it was that Tipperary had been so quiet, and who answered that Tipperary had done in the past what the rest of the country was now trying to do—it had settled the land question for itself. What was it that had made the English Government seriously recognise the land question in Ireland, and got passed the Land Act of 1870? It was when the tenants in my constituency at Ballycohey fought the landlords with the good old blunderbuss. I agree with the hon. Member for East Mayo as to the action of the Chief Secretary in regard to coercion, and I am not going to advise the policy of subserviency to Dublin Castle, as anything they ever got in Ireland was after agitating for it.

(10.53.) Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes, 148; Noes, 94, (Division List No. 79.)

AYES.
Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel	Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashford	Rasch, Major Frederic Carne
Allhusen, Augustus Henry Eden	Hare, Thomas Leigh	Rattigan, Sir William Henry
Archdale, Edward Mervyn	Harris, Frederick Leverton	Reid, James (Greenock)
Arnold-Forster, Hugh O.	Hay, Hon. Claude George
Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John	Heath, James (Staffords, N. W.)	Remnant, James Farquharson
	Higginbottom, S. W.	Ridley, Hon. M. W. (Stalybridge
	Hope, J. F. (Sheffield, Brightside	Ridley, S. Forde (Bethnal Green)
Bagot, Capt. Josceline FitzRoy	Houston, Robert Paterson	Ritchie, Rt. Hn. Chas. Thomson
Bailey, James (Walworth)
Bain, Colonel James Robert		Round, James
Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (Manch'r)		Royds, Clement Molyneux
Balfour, Rt Hn Gerald W. (Leeds	Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse
Banbury, Frederick George	Jeffreys, Arthur Frederick
Beach, Rt. Hn. Sir Michael Hicks	Jessel, Captain Herbert Merton	Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford-
Bignold, Arthur	Johnston, William Belfast
Bigwood, James		Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.
Bill, Charles		Seely, Charles Hilton (Lincoln)
Bond, Edward	Keswick, William	Sharpe, William Edward T.
Boscawen, Arthur Griffith-		Simeon, Sir Barrington
Brookfield, Colonel Montagu		Sinclair, Louis (Romford)
Bull, William James		Smith, Abel H.(Hertford, East)
Bullard, Sir Harry	Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.
Butcher, John George	Law, Andrew Bonar	Smith, James Parker (Lanarks.)
	Lawson, John Grant	Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk
	Lee, ArthurH. (Hants, Fareham	Stanley, Lord (Lanes.)
Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.	Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage	Stirling-Maxwell, Sir John M.
Cautley, Henry Strother	Leigh-Bennett, Henry Currie
Chamberlain, Rt Hon. J. (Birm.)	Lockwood, Lt.-Col. A. R.	Stroyan, John
Chamberlain, J. Austen (Worc'r	Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Bristol, S.	Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley
Chapman, Edward	Lonsdale, John Brownlee	Sturt, Hon. Humphry Napier
Charrington, Spencer	Lowe, Francis William
Clive, Captain Percy A.	Loyd, Archie Kirkman
Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse	Lucas, Col. Francis (Lowestoft)	Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)
Corbett, A. Ca neron (Glasgow)	Lucas, Reginald J.(Portsmouth	Thorburn, Sir Walter
Corbett, T. L,. (Down, North)		Thornton, Percy M.
Cranborne, Viscount		Tollemache, Henry James
Cubitt, Hon. Henry
	Macartney, Rt. Hn W. G. Ellison	Tomlinson, Wm. Edw. Murray
	Majendie, James A. H.	Tuke, Sir John Batty
Davenport, William Bromley-	Martin, Richard Biddulph
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	Maxwell, W. J. H (D'mfriesshire
Duke, Henry Edward	Melville, Beresford Valentine	Warde, Colonel C. E.
Durning-Lawrence, Sir Edwin
	Moore, William (Antrim, N.)	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
	More, Robt. Jasper (Shropshire)	Webb, Colonel William George
Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton	Morgan, David J. (W'lthamstow	Welby, Lt.-Col. A. C. E. (Taunt'n
Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Edward	Morrell, George Herbert	Welby, Sir CharlesG. E. (Notts.)
Fergusson, Rt. Hn. Sir J. (Manc'r
Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst	Morrison, James Archibald	Wharton, Rt. Hon. John Lloyd
Finch, George H.	Morton, Arthur H. A. (Deptford	Whitmore, Charles Algernon
Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne	Mount, William Arthur	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R.)
Fisher, William Hayes	Murray, Rt Hn. A. Graham (Bute	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestsh. N.)
FitzGerald, Sir Robert Penrose		Wilson-Todd, Wm. H.(Yorks.)
Flower, Ernest		Worsley-Taylor, Henry Wilson
Forster, Henry William	Nicholson, William Graham
Foster, Philip S. (Warwick. S. W		Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
		Wylie, Alexander
	O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens	Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George
Galloway, William Johnson
Gardner, Ernest	Orr-Ewing, Charles Lindsay
Gordon, Hn. J. E. (Elgin&Nairn)
Gordon, J. (Londonderry, S.)		TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Sir William Walrond and Mr. Anstruther.
Goulding, Edward Alfred	Pemberton, John S. G.
Greene, Sir E. W (B'rySEdm'nd	Pierpoint, Robert
	Plummer, Walter R.
Hambro, Charles Eric	Powell, Sir Francis Sharp
Hamilton, Marq. of (L'nd'nderry	Pretyman, Ernest George
Hanbury, Rt. Hon. Robert Wm	Purvis, Robert

NOES.
Abraham, William (Cork, N. E.)	Haldane, Richard Burdon	O'Dowd, John
Allan, William (Gateshead)	Hammond, John	O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)
Allen, Charles P. (Glouc., Stroud	Harrnsworth, R. Leicester	O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.
Ambrose, Robert	Hayden, John Patrick	O'Malley, William
	Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.	O'Mara, James
Barry, E. (Cork, S.)		O'Shaughnessy, P. J.
Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire)	Jordan, Jeremiah	O'Shee, James John
Blake, Edward
Boland, John	Kinloch, Sir John George Smyth	Partington, Oswald
Brigg, John		Paulton, James Mellot-
Burke, E. Haviland-	Layland-Barratt, Francis	Power, Patrick Joseph
Burns, John	Leigh, Sir Joseph
	Levy, Maurice	Reddy, M.
Caldwell, James	Lewis, John Herbert	Redmond, John E.(Waterford)
Campbell, John (Armagh, S.)	Lough, Thomas	Roberts, John Bryn (Eifion)
Causton, Richard Knight	Lundon, W.	Roche, John
Clancy, John Joseph		Russell, T. W.
Cogan, Denis J.	MacDonnell, Dr. Mark A.
Conon, Thomas Joseph	MacNeill, John Gordon Swift	Schwann, Charles E.
Craig, Robert Hunter	MacVeagh, Jeremiah	Sheehan, Daniel Daniel
Crean, Eugene	M'Crae, George	Soares, Ernest J.
Cremer, William Randal	M'Govern, T.	Sullivan, Donal
Cullinan, J.	M'Hugh, Patrick A.
	M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)'	Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr)
Dalziel, James Henry	Mansfield, Horace Rendall	Thomas, J. A (Glamorgan, Gower
Delany, William	Mooney, John J.
Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh.	Murphy, John	White, Luke (York, E. R.)
Doogan, P. C.		White, Patrick (Meath, N.)
Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)	Nannetti, Joseph P.	Whiteley, George (York, Wrth)
	Nolan, Col. John P. (Galway, N.)	Whitley, J. H. (Halifax). R.)
Emmott, Alfred	Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)	Wilson, Henry J. (York. W. R.)
	Norman, Henry	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid.)
Farrell, James Patrick
Ffrench, Peter	O'Brien, James F. X. (Cork)	Young, Samuel
Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.)	O'Brien, Kendal (Tipperary Mid
	O'Brien, P. J. (Tipperary, N.)
Gilhooly, James	O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Captain Donelan and Mr. Patrick O'Brien.
Grant, Corrie	O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)
Griffith, Ellis J.	O'Donnell, T. (Kerry, W.)

Main Question again proposed.