CLAUSE 1.—(Alteration of amount of purchase annuity and of rate of interest payable to National Debt Commissioners.)

HC Deb 09 July 1909 vol 7 cc1543-618

(1) In the case of advances made in pursuance of future purchase agreements, three pounds ten shillings shall be substituted for three pounds five shillings as the rate of the purchase annuity under section 45 of the Irish Land Act. 1903 (in this Act referred to as the Act of 1903).

(2) So far as respects advances made for future purchase agreements, the rate of interest to be paid by the Land Commission to the National Debt Commissioners under section 36 of the Act of 1903, shall be 3 per cent. per annum, instead of 2¾ per cent. per annum.

(3) The National Debt Commissioners shall, in the accounts kept by them of the Irish Land Purchase Fund, distinguish between advances made in pursuance of pending purchase agreements and advances made in pursuance of future purchase agreements.

Mr. JOHN REDMOND

I desire to move the second Amendment standing in my name to leave out section (1). The object of both my Amendments is practically the same, but I think it will be better for me to move the second one. On this question I think it will be necessary that some latitude should be given to the discussion, otherwise it will be quite impossible for me to fully explain this Amendment and have a proper discussion. The first sub-section proposes to change the purchase annuity from what it is to-day, £3 5s., to £3 10s. That is being done to provide additional interest to enable the 3 per cent. stock to be issued. I suppose it is scarcely necessary to explain to English Members that the whole trouble of this matter arises simply from the fact that it has been found impossible to float the 2| per cent. stock for land purchase except at a considerable loss. Under the Act of 1903, of course, a certain loss is anticipated, and it was provided, as hon. Members will remember, that that loss should be, in the first instance, met by the Irish Development Grant, which was fixed at that time at £185,000 a year. After the Development Grant there stood the guarantee fund, which I need not trouble to explain to the Committee, but which really meant the rates of the country. Consequently it will be seen that the loss on the floating of the land stock was to be met first by the Development Fund and after that by the rates of the country. It was estimated when the Bill was going through that the total amount required for these transactions in land purchase would be over £100,000,000, and a hopeful view was then taken by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover (Mr. George Wyndham) of the money market. Now the responsible Government of the day tell us that their calculations lead them to believe that not £100,000,000 but something nearer £180,000,000 will be required for the total transactions of land purchase, and although the Member for Dover contests that figure, I understand that even he admits that his estimate of £100,000,000 was an underestimate, and that consider- ably more money will be required than he anticipated. That is the first fact which we have staring us in the face.

The second fact is that the money market has been so bad, and is so bad to-day, that the Development Fund has actually disappeared, and no more money at all can be raised for land purchase in Ireland except by coming upon the rates to pay the discount. Then there is the further fact that there are something over £50,000,000 to £56,000,000 of completed agreements waiting at this moment to be paid off. Therefore, the position in which we find ourselves is that no money can be raised according to the present law even to pay off the completed agreements which are waiting to be cleared off, amounting in all to £50,000,000 or over, and these transactions cannot be carried out without throwing upon the ratepayers of the country the burden of finding vast sums of money which would amount, if the money market does not materially improve, to £200,000 or £300,000 a year. If we take into account the whole of the land purchase transactions, taking the more moderate estimate of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover, even then the ratepayers of Ireland would be called upon to bear a burden of £500,000 a year for a period of 68½ years. That is an utter impossibility. That burden could not be placed upon the ratepayers of Ireland without dislocating the local government of the country. It is quite unthinkable, and it could not be done. Consequently, we are reduced to this position, that unless some legislation is passed dealing with the finance of the Land Act of 1903, no further steps can be taken, and land purchase in Ireland will be dropped and hung up. This Bill proposes to deal with this situation. It proposes to take over from the shoulders of the ratepayers of Ireland altogether the liability for these discount losses, not only in regard to completed agreements, but also in regard to all future transactions. It will work out in this way, that so far as the completed agreements are concerned the Treasury relieves the ratepayers of this liability and takes it over itself. Therefore, so far as the completed agreements are concerned the Treasury propose to take the liability off the ratepayers and to assume it themselves, a liability of £200,000 a year for 68½ years, but for the future it is provided that, although the liability is taken off the ratepayers of the country, it is not assumed by the Trea sury. A new device is proposed to be put into the law whereby these discount losses in future will fall on the landlord and tenants, upon the vendors and the purchasers of Irish land. It is provided in the clauses for that purpose that the purchase annuity in future should be raised from 3¼ to 3½ per cent., the additional quarter per cent. going to increase the interest paid by the tenant on the new 3 per Cent. Stock which is to be created. By this device the liability for losses on future transactions which is taken oft the ratepayers is put on to the shoulders of the landlords and tenants. We protest against this provision, and my Amendment, if carried, would leave the purchase annuity just as it is at this moment, and would throw the losses for future transactions, as for completed agreements, upon the shoulders of the Treasury instead of upon the landlords and tenants. What was really the bargain made in 1903? It was that the rates of the country were undoubtedly to be liable for default on the part of the purchasing tenants in payment of their annuities. I would remind the House that that liability has never been disputed by any of us who speak in the name of the tenants. The Committee of the Irish Party last year drew up a Memorandum upon this Question, and in that Memorandum was inserted this paragraph, which puts our complaint with clearness:— The only obligation which the Irish rates with the consent of all parties were pledged to was that which may result from default on the part of the purchasing tenants. The Irish party accept this obligation as one which the ratepayers of Ireland ought to assume and under which there could he no legitimate apprehension of losses. Nevertheless, this was a serious and weighty contribution to the settlement of the land question, and it is an obligation which no Irish representative dreams of repudiating. Ireland is prepared to keep her bargain, but, if there is to be similar good faith on the part of the State and if the intentions of the Act are to be carried out, losses on the flotation of the 21 per Cent. Stock, resulting as they do from fluctuations of Imperial credit, must he provided for as an Imperial charge. This is, in our judgment, the fundamental principle on which the new financial arrangements must be based. No one can seriously contend that it was any part of the bargain of 1903 that the rates or the landlords and tenants should ever be asked to pay this loss on flotation. Unfortunately, the clause is in the Bill, and I suppose the Treasury are entitled to stand by the letter of their bond; but I could, were it desirable for me to do so, quote statements made in this House by Leaders on both sides, both by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover (Mr. Wyndham), as representing the Government of the time, and by the present Prime Minister and others, to show it was never intended this loss should fall upon the ratepayers, and certainly it was never suggested by anybody that it should be thrown upon the landlords and tenants. I therefore contend that we are asking for the strict spirit of the bargain of 1903 to be carried out when we say the loss on flotation on future transactions, as on the completed agreements, should be taken over by the Treasury. The Government, as I have pointed out, have gone halfway. The Treasury have accepted the liability for the losses on the completed agreements of £56,000,000, but I am afraid they are going to injure their chances seriously of finally settling this question if they do not go the rest of the distance and assume the liability for the whole. The additional amount is not very large; it is an amount which will only gradually come into operation. No matter how successfully the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Birrell) may be in accelerating the work of the Estates Commissioners, it will be a considerable time before the whole of the land of Ireland is sold, and, therefore, before the whole of this loss would fall upon the Treasury, and I see no reason to believe that the Money Market is going to remain as low always as it is at this moment. By refusing to do this the Government are undoubtedly risking this great national policy, for which both parties in the House made themselves responsible in 1003. If they insist on this new stock and increased annuities for future transactions it will undoubtedly lead to friction, trouble, and delay in making terms. The landlord will try to get approximately the same price as he is now getting, and the tenant will see that he will be directly at a loss in respect of this addition to his annuity unless he induces the landlord to take a smaller price. You will therefore have a new element of friction, trouble, and delay introduced into land purchase negotiations all over the country, and it must be manifest to everybody that to set up a system whereby you have one set of tenants paying annuity at one rate and another set of tenants paying annuity at another rate is dangerous and not likely to lead to the smooth working of land purchase. There is another consideration the Treasury ought to bear in mind. I do not know whether the House really understands the nature and origin of this Development Fund of which so much has been heard. In the year 1902 an Education Bill was passed for England, and the sum of £1,400,000 was handed over to English primary education. It was held that Scotland and Ireland were entitled to an equivalent grant. Scotland got something over £200,000, and in the case of Ireland this equivalent grant was stereotyped. It was not to be based year by year upon population, or even upon any calculation at all. It was fixed at £185,000. Under that arrangement Ireland has lost hundreds of thousands of pounds. What has happened has been this: While the amount going to education for England has enormously increased since the sum of £1,400,000 in 1902, and while the amount going for education as an equivalent grant to Scotland has also enormously increased since that year, the grant for Ireland has been stereotyped at £185,000. If our grant had, as it ought in justice as an equivalent grant, been an elastic grant, and had been raised, as the Scotch grant has been raised, and had been kept in fair proportion to the amount going to education in England, then there would be enough of this Development Grant probably to meet the entire of these additional charges which we seek now to throw upon the Treasury. The Treasury has actually made an enormous profit out of the Irish Development Grant. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover, in speaking on this point last year, made a very remarkable statement, coming from a man in his position. He said:— The Irish Development Grant was an equivalent grant to Ireland consisting of £ 185,000. It was given because in the year before, the Education Act passed for primary education in England, placed £ 1,400,000 annually upon the votes of this House, and it was said £185,000 was an equivalent grant for Ireland and a little over £200,000 was the equivalent grant for Scotland. What has happened? I do not pretend to speak with exact information, and it is not easy to get exact comparison, but such study as I have been able to give to the statistical abstract leads me to believe the English grant has doubled and the Scotch grant has trebled since the Irish Development Grant was passed. That is to say that this equivalent grant, as it is called, is no longer an equivalent grant. The amount given to England has doubled, and because it has done so the equivalent grant to Scotland was trebled by the right hon. Gentleman, but what is called the equivalent grant to Ireland has not increased. It is stereotyped at £185,000 a year. That is a grave injustice to Ireland, and I mention it here as a reason why the Treasury ought not to be parsimonious in taking over this comparatively small additional liability. I saw some figures the other day, and I give them for what they are worth—they are calculations based on expenditure per head of population—and they show that, compared with England, the Irish Development Grant or equivalent grant is now deficient by a sum of £319,950 per year, and compared with Scotland it is deficient by £493,650 per year. That has been going on since 1903, so that there is a goodly accumulation of arrears due to Ireland in respect of this matter. If that money wore forthcoming now it would more than meet the whole of the demand we are making. The additional amount we are asking the Treasury to take upon their shoulders for protection against loss on future transactions would not, I think, when all have been incurred, represent more than £200.000 per year. For the sake of that are they going to run the risk of destroying the proper working of their land purchase scheme in Ireland? I think they are making a most unwise proposal. It is not for us to devise schemes which would enable the Treasury to take over these losses and otherwise recoup themselves in other directions. The Treasury appointed a Committee of their own under the presidency of the present President of the Board of Education (Mr. Runciman), when he was Secretary to the Treasury a year or two ago. They made a number of suggestions, and we also in the Report of the Irish Party's Committee made suggestions which we have put on the Paper in the form of Amendments which will be reached later on. I am not at liberty, of course, to discuss them now, but I may be allowed to point out that what we suggest is that the money required for land purchase in Ireland should be raised by Consols. Mr. Runciman's Committee's Report contained this remarkable statement:— In one form or another every witness that came; before us raised the question whether the requisite cash could not be raised by Consols rather than by Guaranteed 2¾ per Cents. Mr. Runciman's Committee went on to give reasons for objecting to that. They said that Consols ought to be reserved for some national emergency. Ireland contributed to the Imperial Exchequer, and whenever a great national policy is adopted for Ireland, Ireland ought to be able to take her full share of the Imperial credit. But we are not getting our full share of the Imperial credit under the present arrangement. I contend it would solve the difficulty, from the point of view of the Treasury, if they issued Consols. I cannot, however, develop that argument now. It is not my duty to suggest alternatives to the Treasury. I ask them, having assumed liability for these losses in connection with completed agreements, to go a little farther, and to assume a similar liability with reference to future land purchase transactions, and thus avoid the danger and friction and trouble in the working of their Land Act. I commend this Amendment most earnestly to the Government, and I beg them at the commencement of these discussions to show that they have an open mind on these matters, and are willing to join hands with us in making this a final settlement of the Question. I have no doubt that the representatives from Ulster will take the same view as I have done, and that is a matter which the right hon. Gentleman should take into account. As far as he is concerned I fancy, if he had his way, he would not make two bites at the cherry. [Laughter.] I am not suggesting to the right hon. Gentleman that he should devour his colleague who sits on his right hand (Mr. Cherry). I recommend him rather to turn to the Treasury representative on his left (Mr. Hobhouse).

Captain CRAIG

I have pleasure in associating myself with the hon. and learned Member in his Motion for the rejection of this sub-section. I do not intend to traverse nearly so much ground as he has in support of this proposition, but I would like to call the attention of the Committee first of all to the success which has attended the old system of 3¼ per cent. instalments payable by the tenant, and to ask the Committee to allow what has been an undoubted success, as far as the payment of annuities is concerned, to continue under the present Bill. I do not think anything is more regrettable than that at the very outset of the discussions on this Bill the Chief Secretary should refuse to fall in with the wishes of all parties in Ireland. Those who have had any experience of the Act of 1903 and its success from the tenants' point of view—and I am attempting to approach this question entirely from a tenants' point of view—agree that it would be most regrettable to introduce anything into this Bill that would cause the slightest dissatisfaction among the tenants in Ireland, not only among those who are about to purchase, but also among those who have already purchased. I do not think the Committee quite appreciate the fact that if the annuities are raised from 3¼ to 3½ per cent. an extraordinary and uneconomical situation will be thereby created among the farming classes. It amounts to this, A man who has already purchased under the 1903 Act has been paying his instalments for the past six years on the 3¼ per cent. basis—his land, his farm area, being practically of the same as that of his neighbour who has not purchased out. But when under this Bill, if it ever becomes law, the tenant across the way purchases, he will be, for a term of 68½ years, paying ¼ per cent. more on the instalments, and consequently will be during that long period at a disadvantage in every local market to which he takes his produce. It produces an uneconomical situation, which, in my opinion, will have grave results in all future land transactions in Ireland. A man takes his produce, or his cattle, or horses, to the local fair, and in allocating the prices to be paid by the buyers he will have to take into consideration that someone may come along who bought under the 1903 Act on the 3¼ per cent. basis, and may actually undersell him in his own local market. That, to me, appears absolutely absurd, because if any of the produce of the farm is worth £10 to a buyer it seems a pity that someone should come along and offer him the same produce exactly at a quarter per cent. reduction, and he will be able to take that quarter per cent. on all market produce that is brought in, and still the seller would be on exactly the same terms as the person who had bought under this Bill, if ever it becomes law. How many people will be affected? It will affect the residue of the tenant farmers in Ireland, after the 202,00 odd have been accounted for, and if one approaches the subject from that point of view alone they will see how absurd it is to have two rates working throughout the country. The right hon. Gentleman may say, How can we get out of the difficulty on account of the depreciation of the value of money? But I hold that it does not matter how he frames his scheme it will be an absolute failure if it is to be passed by the raising of the tenants' annuity.

If tenants desire to purchase their holdings, I do not see how they rightly can be expected to pay more than their neighbours had to pay only a very short time ago. At the very beginning of this Bill there is undoubtedly a flaw—a flaw which I fear will be the cause of wrecking the right hon. Gentleman's Bill. I sincerely hope it will be wrecked, because I think it is a bad Bill; but, at all events, from his point of view, I think he is going to put the burden in the very worst way he possibly can in suggesting that the tenants who already know should pay this extra price. These sort of details are, it is true, slow in filtering through the country, and the tenants in Ireland took some time to really understand the Bill of 1903. It took some of them several years, two or three years, to really appreciate what the effect would be of purchasing under that Act, and it will take a considerable time for them to understand this Bill, but when they do understand all that it means, how simple it is, and how easily land can be transferred, then I say that the right hon. Gentleman has deliberately destroyed and taken no advantage of the knowledge which the tenants possess under the 1903 Act. They will now have to reconstitute their calculations on an entirely new basis. Instead of the hitherto simple and well understood basis on which sales were carried out, not only those who are vendors in the case, but the others, will have to take into consideration entirely new data and entirely new principles. I think this is one of the first and most serious blots on this Bill, and I associate myself entirely with what has fallen from the hon. and learned Member below the Gangway. Every man who understands, or has anything to do with Irish land, is agreed that to begin this scheme by altering this rate of interest, or the rate of instalment payable by the tenant, will be a fatal blot, and I hope the Committee will decide in our favour, and against the Chief Secretary, on this question.

Mr. GEORGE WYNDHAM

I venture to rise at this early stage of our proceedings, and before we have heard the view of the Government upon the Amendment, because I think it is really convenient that I should now state the position of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, and those who act with him. We do not feel it incumbent upon us, in order to justify the support we give to this Amendment, to indicate to the Government and the Committee the exact lines of any alternative scheme of finance, which we might, if we were in their place, think it right to propose, but we do think that, before criticising the plan of the Government and supporting this Amendment, we are bound to indicate generally our attitude towards the present position of Irish Land Purchase. Our attitude is, that it is necessary to deal effectively with the block in pending agreements, but in dealing with that block it is not neces- sary to prejudice the interests, either of the landlords or tenants who may come to terms on some future agreements. We think that the spirit of the Act of 1903 must be observed in the case of pending agreements, but it must not be departed from in the case of future agreements. The first sub-section of this Bill to which an Amendment has been moved does mark this very wide departure from the spirit of the Act of 1903, and I think I may say of almost all the Land Purchase Acts which have preceded it, in so far as future agreements are concerned, and therefore before the Government replies, I think it our duty as an Opposition to point out to them how very grave will be their responsibility if they refuse to accept the Amendment which has been moved by the hon. and learned Member. The Amendment, it is true, on the face of it, only says that it is a mistake to depart from the present rate of annuity payable by the tenant, namely, £3 5s., and to increase the rate of that annuity to £3 10s. and those who are not familiar with the problems of Irish land purchase may perhaps say, "There is not much difference between £3 10s. and £3 5s. If the tenant is getting what is practically the freehold on fair terms, surely he may cheerfully pay up the extra 5s." But that would be a very superficial view.

The rate of the annuity which the tenant pays on the advance made for purchase is really at the foundation of the whole system of Irish land purchase, and this is the first time that any Government has proposed to increase the rate of the tenants' annuity. The uniform course of all Land Purchase Acts for Ireland, from the first proposal, which was made by John Bright, right on over a period now of nearly 40 years, the uniform course has been with each succeeding Land Purchase Act an attempt should be made to reduce the rate of the annuity, because I think it is obvious to all those who have considered this problem that, by reducing the rate of the annuity, you secure two good things. In the first place, you make it easier for the tenant to come to terms with his landlord; and, in the second place, you make the security of the State better than it would otherwise be. In so far as the rate of the annuity is low, the tenant is enabled to give the price which the landlord can accept, and in so far as the lowness of the annuities make the annuity a lesser sum than the rent which has been paid—to that extent, therefore, you increase the security of the State. Therefore I think all must hold that it is well to make the rate of the annuity as low to is consistent with sound finance. Now for the first time the Government propose to retrace the steps of this Parliament and the Treasury, and to increase that rate. They propose to make this sudden reversal of what has been the uniform practice upon a point which involves, I will not say the good faith of this House and the Treasury, but still upon a point in respect of which this House as a whole and the Treasury have committed themselves more than once. Not only in the Act of 1903 but in the Bill of 1902 this House by general assent, and, of course, with the leave of the Treasury, stated that the rate of annuity was to be £3 5s. It was lot a happy thought of those who introduced the Bill. I did not say to myself one fine morning, what a good thing it would be if the rate of annuity was £3 5s. On the contrary, close communications and negotiations had been continuing with the Treasury for a period of more than two years before the Act of 1903 was passed, and the point had been settled before the Bill was brought in in March, 1902.

In departing from what has been the uniform practice, the Government and the Treasury will also be departing from the deliberate conclusions arrived at by the Treasury after long reflection and close examination of all the financial considerations involved. It is, in considering whether the rate should be increased from £3 5s. to £3 10s., impossible to overlook the reason which induces the Government to make this increase. They do not do this in order that the number of years during which the tenant is to pay the annuity shall be shortened. I should not agree with that object, but, at any rate, a case might be made out for concluding the transaction more speedily. They are leaving the Sinking Fund at exactly the same amount, and they are only increasing the interest. Of the £3 5s., £2 15s. represents interest and 10s. the Sinking Fund. It is proposed to retain the Sinking Fund at 10s., but to increase the interest to £3. That, again, is an even more striking departure from the uniform practice of the House and the Treasury. The rate of interest has stood at £2 15s., I think, since the Land Act was brought in in 1891. Although the circumstances of the money market are difficult, it is folly to assume that you can decide the scheme of finance which shall prevail over a long period of years by the conditions of the money market at any moment. Our difficulties spring from the fact that the state of the money market now is far worse than it was when we made ourselves responsible for the Act of 1903.

The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Charles Hobhouse)

The money market is the same to-day as it was then.

Mr. WYNDHAM

Consols are, I suppose, about 85; they were 92 when the Bill was introduced. I personally hold that a difference of seven points in Consols represents a very great difference in the facilities for conducting the operations of land purchase, and if Irish land stock, which is always about two points above Consols, stood seven points higher than it does now it would bring it up to 94, the Government would not have introduced these financial proposals, and if they had they would have been turned to derision and objected to in all quarters of the House.

Mr. BIRRELL

What was your first loan?

Mr. WYNDHAM

I am not talking of the first loan. I am talking of when the Treasury and the Government drew up the Land Bill. We were disappointed in the steadiness of the financial conditions, but that is not a reason for constantly departing from the uniform practice to which, as I hold, this House and the Treasury are almost in honour committed. There may be another change in the circumstances of the market. Conditions in the City may be better. Will anyone say that in the course of 60 years we are not to anticipate that there will be ups as well as downs, and if we are to anticipate that, surely it is reasonable that this great House and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland should adopt a plan which will last through the ups and downs, and after having adopted such a plan, after two years of reflection, they should not abandon it when they come across the first down in the value of gilt-edged securities. That is what the Government are asking us to do. We, as the Opposition, say that the Government have to present an overwhelming primâ facie case for making this fundamental departure from all the principles which have governed Irish land purchase. So far, if we are to judge from the speeches which the Government have delivered upon this Bill and the Bill which preceded it last autumn, they do not see any necessity to bring forward an overwhelming prima facie case. They say it is not their fault that more money has to be raised than we expected, and that it is harder to raise it because the price of gilt-edged securities is lower than it was, and it is impossible to ask for better terms from the Treasury. Part of their argument is that it is impossible to ask for better terms, because they are dealing with future agreements. In respect to pending agreements, the Government has brought the Treasury in aid to a certain extent, but in respect of future agreements, which they believe to amount to a very large number, the Government are really doing nothing. They are withdrawing aid which was previously given. They are going to depart from giving cash, and are going to substitute stock, and the whole loss which may accrue from the depreciation of that new stock to be issued under Clause 4, section 3, is to fall on the parties to the bargain. Not only is the tenant in respect of all future agreements to pay £3 10s. instead of £3 5s., but the landlord in respect of all future agreements is to receive stock at its face value in full discharge of the loan.

Mr. MAURICE HEALY

indicated dissent.

Mr. WYNDHAM

This is very important, and I want to make it quite clear. In respect of pending agreements which are not touched, really what the hon. Member says is true. In respect of future agreements the Government are giving no aid whatever. They are going back to paying in stock instead of paying in cash, which places a burden primarily on the landlord, while raising the tenant's annuity from £3 5s. to £3 10s. You place this burden primarily on the landlord, but you cannot consider these burdens as resting one on the landlord and the other on the tenant. In a secondary degree any burden which you put on the landlord reacts against the tenant, and any burden you put on the tenant reacts against the landlord. If you want people to come to terms you must facilitate their bargaining. If you make it hard for them separately you make it hard for them both conjointly. The Government say that they are unable to agree to our proposal—the proposal which is urged by the whole House, by hon. Members from Ireland who sit below the Gangway as well as by those who sit for Ulster, and by the regular Opposition in its corporate capacity. They think it is sufficient to say, "The size of this problem is almost unlimited, except by the seaboard of Ireland, and the resources at our command are absolutely limited by the provisions relating to the Irish Development Grant of 1903." I do not think this Committee can come to a considered decision on the question we are now debating unless they will permit me to say a few words on both these pleas. Except on one hypothesis which I dismiss—I think it has been dismissed by the learned Attorney-General—that the Government are bent upon selling every acre of Ireland, no matter whether grass, heather, or rock, to somebody—if they cannot find a tenant or ex-tenant, then to somebody who can be found in Ireland or America—it can be demonstrated that the size of the problem is nothing like so large as the Chief Secretary would have us believe. I wish that some English Members were present, because the one hypothesis will touch the pockets of all taxpayers, and any hypothesis must affect the reputation of this House in dealing in a wise manner with a great problem for a long series of years. But English Members are not here. Nevertheless, I wish to make this good. In the whole of Ireland there are 6,000,000 acres of waste land, 3,500,000 acres under crops, and 11,500,000 acres under grass. Taking the figure of the Chief Secretary, we have already dealt with 9,770,000 acres, and the right hon. Gentleman tells us that we are only half way through the problem. How does that square with the disposition of Irish land as between waste land, agricultural land under crops, and grass land? The whole of the agricultural land of Ireland, if you add the land under crops to the whole of the 11,500,000 acres of grass land, and exclude the 6,000,000 acres of waste land, is only 15,000,000 acres. Well, the right hon. Gentleman has dealt with nearly 10,000,000 acres. Where are the other 10,000,000 acres, unless he is going to sell the whole of the grass land and the whole of the 6,000,000 acres of waste land? It does not exist. If you confine your attention to land under crops and the whole of the grass land, then the Chief Secretary, so far from being half-way through the job, is two-thirds through. There are only 15,000,000 acres all told, so that, according to that calculation, he only needs half as much again, but he does not mean half as much again in terms of money, even if he means it in terms of area.

I think I may impress the right hon. Gentleman in aid of my argument. Speaking on 30th March, the Chief Secretary not only stated that the rough estimate which I have made is wrong, but he was also kind enough to indicate quite clearly the reason of my error. The Chief Secretary said my conclusion was wrong, because I had left out of account all holdings over £3,000 in value. When we introduced the Land Act of 1903 we had a limit on the total amount of money which would be advanced for any one purchase, but in compliance with a requisition coming from all parts of the House, we raised the limit to £7,000, and said that limit was only to be reached in exceptional cases. I believe when you deal with exceptional cases in Ireland they have a tendency to become the rule. I have not heard of any applications for over £3,000 being refused on the ground that they were not exceptional. In this Bill the Government are going back, and I think rightly, to the lowest limit that ever obtained, namely, £3,000, only to be exceeded in exceptional cases to £5,000. When he indicated the extent of my error, the Chief Secretary said that in consequence of the miscalculation £40,000,000 would be brought in which otherwise would be kept out if we had not raised the limit to £7,000. Now that the Chief Secretary is doing away with the £7,000 limit, I ask him why he does not do away with the £40,000,000 worth to which he referred. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will address himself to that part of my argument.

That is not the only reason which I urge-in saying that the problem is not even half as much again. If you limit the amount of the advance to £3,000, it is clear that, except upon the hypothesis which I have dismissed, you will not sell all the grass land of Ireland. When we brought in the Act of 1903 we expressly stated that it was not our intention to sell all the grass land of Ireland. We expressly stated that in our opinion it would be a form of economic insanity to break up the grass land of Ireland. I do not know whether the Government propose really, in all sober earnestness, to try to bring under cultivation all the permanent pastures in Ireland. If they do, they will inflict the greatest injury on Ireland which she has ever endured. [An HON. MEMBER: "NO."[I think they will. But whether they do contemplate that as a possibility or not, it is not a matter to be considered in locking forward 50, 100, or 150 years. It represents a revolution in the whole history, tradition, and economics of the country. It will be a change from the state of affairs that existed in Ireland before the Normans ever went there. Before the Norman invasion of Ireland we know that the grass ranches of that country were being fought for among the inhabitants of that country. Nobody, in the course of 1,000 years, has ever suggested that you should bring under cultivation or use for any other than its existing purpose the great permanent grass lanches of Ireland resting upon the limestone of that country. So I say it is not conceivable that the 11½ million acres of grass land are still going to be cut up into symmetrical plots, none of which, mark you, is to be worth more than £3,000.

A number of people occupy tracts of grass land in Ireland which are worth a great deal more than £3,000. I do not believe that they will sell their excess of property which they own at the capital value of £3,000. I am convinced that if efforts are made to force such a purpose, if it is against their will, this House will never consent to be a party to the success of any such efforts. But, however that may be, even if you were to say that the whole of the recommendations of the Dudley Commission were to be carried into effect, even if you were to say you could carry them into effect by a wave of a wand, and make them not only the law of the land but economic facts in Ireland in the course of two, three, four, or five years, even then we would not have gone far towards absorbing the whole, or anything like the whole, of the 11½ million acres of grass land in Ireland. So that is another reason for believing that the problem is smaller than the Chief Secretary supposes. I want to adduce a third reason. I have adduced it before, but the Chief Secretary has never really, I think, addressed his mind to it. I shall ask him to do so now. He tells us we have already dealt with nearer ten than nine million acres of the area in question. I have suggested before, and now urge that the remainder which has to be dealt with is a less valuable article than the ten million acres with which we have already dealt. We have found out, as was naturally to be expected that it is far easier to buy and sell a good article than a bad article, and that it is far more difficult to buy and sell poor land than good land. That is borne out by everything that has taken place. It is known to all those who have taken an interest in this subject that the land in the Western Provinces of Ireland is a far less valuable article than the land in the Eastern Provinces of Ireland, and that of the transactions which have taken place far more relatively and absolutely have taken place in the provinces of Ireland where the value of the land is great than in the provinces where the value of the land is small. Take the Returns for any one year, and you will find that agreements are come to with the greatest difficulty in Connaught, where the value of the article is least. I am not talking of the number of years purchase given. I am talking of the value of the article. The same number of years purchase of a valuable article is far greater than the same number of years purchase of a cheaper article; and what comes out quite clearly from all the facts of the case is that we have been dealing inside these ten million acres with the dearer and not with the cheaper article.

That is proved also by the fact that the number of bargains concluded has been greater where the article is dearer, and by the fact that the average amount of the advances in the earlier transactions under the Land Purchase Act largely exceeded the average amount of the transactions as time has gone by. If you take the transactions upon which money has passed you will find that the average amount of advances is far higher in the earliest transactions than it is in the cases where there are agreements pending. And if you examine the agreements that are pending you will find that the average amount of the advances is larger, far larger, in the first year than in the second, in the second than in the third, and in the third than in the fourth of the years which have expired since the Land Act was passed. Why-are we to suppose that that progress will be arrested? Even if exactly the same number of years' purchase is given as in the past, that progress which has already made a substantial reduction in the average amount advanced will, I believe, proceed, and if it proceed then the amount which is necessary in order to complete the whole of this transaction will not only be less, but very much less, than the Chief Secretary has at present in his mind. I should like, if I may, to sum up the argument which I hope I have made clear. I contend that we have dealt not with half, but with two-thirds of the agricultural area of Ireland. I contend that by reducing the limit from £7,000 to £3,000 you are according to the Chief Secretary him self, diminishing the size of the problem by £40,000,000. I contend that the amount to be dealt with is not half as much again as would appear if you argue this in acres, but is less than half as much again, because the value of the article which has to be told in the future is demonstrably and progressively less than the value of the article which has been sold in the past. Therefore I urge that the additional sum cannot be more than £50,000,000, and I am perfectly certain for the second and third reasons which I have given—the lowering of the limit and the decrease in the value, of the article—that it must be less and considerably less. I apologise to the Committee for having gone at such length into this matter. I have studied the figures quite impartially, and I believe it is very important for this Committee, before deciding to reject this Amendment to know that they are not in for such a big business as the Chief Secretary fears.

But let me take the other consideration, which ought to be carefully weighed before this Committee comes to a decision upon the Amendment. The other consideration urged by the Government is that the resources at their disposal for assisting in the solution of the problem are limited to such facilities as were given under the Irish Development Act in 1903, and for future agreements the Government are going to give no assistance similar to that which was provided in the Irish Development Act of 1005. The hon. and learned Member has really anticipated this part of my argument, but it is my duty, as the Minister who brought in the Irish Development Act, as well as the Irish Land Purchase Act of 1903, to say in explicit terms that the Irish Development Grant was an equivalent for the additional money pent upon English primary education. That is so. Not only is it so but it is so apart from the Irish Land Act of 1903. We did not say, "Here is an Irish Land Bill which it is hard to carry, let us grease its wheels by inventing an equivalent grant to Ireland." No; in 1902 I was authorised by my colleagues and by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, then Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, now Lord St. Aldwyn, the year before the Irish Land Bill of 1903 was introduced, there would have to be a set-off in respect of the Irish Development Grant as against the Education grants to England and Scotland in 1902. It was to be the equivalent for the sum spent on English education. It has been pointed out that, owing to the terms of the Act in which that equivalent grant was embodied, the original Development Grant Act the equivalent to Ireland was fixed at £185,000 a year. That is quite true.

That was done because otherwise Ireland would not have got any equivalent at all. She would have been given the option, but only the option, to spend, if she could, £185,000 a year on Irish primary education, and more if she could make out a good claim that more was needed, as was done in England and Scotland. In Scotland the equivalent grant was £203,000 a year, but it has increased because Scotland has gone on making a case for further sums on the same score, just as England has gone on making a case for further sums on the same score, so that now the increase of money granted upon that score in England is rather more than double what it was in 1902, and in Scotland, I think, about three times as much. Now, it is competent for us to take up one of two grants, but we have got to choose between them. We can either say that this is an equivalent grant or it ought now to be raised in proportion to the increases of the grants to which it was originally the equivalent. But supposing the Government say that this cannot be done, then I maintain that there is only one other grant which they can take up, and that is one for some purpose of real national moment in Ireland. A new claim arises whether this is, independently of the argument as to the equivalent of the Irish Development Grant, entitled to the careful and generous consideration of this House. I do not argue that you may have it both ways, but I do ask that you should have it one way or the other. Either the equivalent grant for 1903 was to develop that policy with the grants with which it was equivalent, or if the case is made out for some further aid then it should be forthcoming. We of the Opposition say —I speak for them—that having made our-selves responsible for the Act of 1903, we do not think it would be possible for us to suddenly cut off all aid, and to throw land purchase back into the condition in-which it wallowed before we made ourselves responsible for that Act. If this was not a very sanguine hope, if it had been possible four or five years ago to effect such improvements in the system of Irish education as to make it proper and right to allocate, say. £100.000 a year to the Irish Development Grant for that purpose, would anyone—almost on the morrow of the Irish Land Act of 1903—seriously argue in this House because a great reform has come within the range of practical politics with regard to Irish education, therefore you are to annul the great reform of a year previous in regard to the purchase of Irish land. It is not a contention which any man could accept or the House should agree to.

What is the difference? There is only a difference of years. The Government at the present time do feel justified in saying that they are at liberty, in respect of all future agreements, to give no aid whatever towards the solution of the problem. Why do they deny such aid in respect of Irish land purchase, on which all parties in Ireland are agreed, when they were perfectly willing to give the aid of £600,000 in respect of a purpose on which all parties in Ireland differed? I do not know what their intention is. I am anxious to hear the Chief Secretary's statement; I want him to prove the problem is as big as he believes it to be, and I want him to prove that his resources are as limited as he declares them to be. Unless he can do the first, or unless he can do the second, I do not think that he has made out a case for rejecting this Amendment. What is involved in the rejection of this Amendment? That these future agreements cannot be reached for, I believe, five or six years, if they are postponed to pending agreements. The presumption is that they will only be dealt with after great delay. They are to be dealt with under the disadvantage of being based on stock, and not upon cash, and in addition to those disadvantages of delay, and the substitution of stock for cash, the Government says, "Yes, and the tenant purchaser is to pay 5s. more than all the tenant purchasers involved in the present agreements, amounting to millions and tens of millions of money." You will create a distinction, the results of which will be intolerable. The object of land purchase in Ireland, among other objects, was to remove the existing distinctions, which were the cause of social jealousy and unrest. Now you are going to set up two classes in Ireland —those who have purchased up to tens of millions, while others are to wait five, six, seven, or eight years for the privilege of paying more than those who had the advantage of priority in time. That is a solution of the problem to which the Opposition cannot be a party. If it were our fortune to have to deal with this matter, we should deem it our duty to deal with the block in agreements, and to offer such terms to those who have not been able to arrive at bargains as will not put them in a prejudiced position by comparison with their more fortunate fellows.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

The right hon. Gentleman gave so fantastic a description of the results of his financial proposals in 1903 and of the actual existing facts in connection with the amount paid for Irish education that I must be allowed to put the real facts of the case. The right hon. Gentleman said that the grant for Irish education was a sum of £185,000, but he did not prove that in any particular. The Irish Development Grant was never so great in any particular that it was equivalent to the education grants to England and Scotland, but I do think that the Irish people and Irish educationalists have been prejudiced in a most unfortunate way. The facts really are not altogether as the right hon. Gentleman stated them. I admit that everybody in this House will admit that where the Irish Development Grant was given to Ireland that the Irish people were absolutely and fully entitled to receive that grant of money, and even more than that I would say they have not received, the Irish taxpayers and the citizens generally, the benefit of the £185,000 of Development Grant to the extent that they have been mulcted in order to afford facilities for the purchase of Irish land. But since the Irish Development Act of 1903 a sum of £58,000 has been placed upon the Votes, taken off the Development Grant, for Irish school teachers, and by the arrangement of last year a further sum of £114,000 was given to Irish teachers to enhance their salaries, making altogether a sum of £170,000 in addition to that which was given to the Irish people under the Development Grant of £185,000. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Waterford (Mr. John Redmond) in proposing this Amendment said that the Scottish grant had doubled or trebled. [An HON. MEMBER: "Trebled."] Trebled. The facts which have been given to me since the hon. and learned Gentleman spoke are that in the year 1903, when the grant was made first of all to Ireland, the grant to Scotland was £230,000. To-day it has not doubled or trebled, but amounts to £262,000. When the Development Act of 1903 was passed there was a choice between basing the sum on population or a fixed sum. The right hon. Gentleman opposite chose to take a fixed sum for Ireland, and very properly, because a sum based on population would have resulted in a diminishing, and not an increasing, quantity. With regard to Scotland, the case was that the population, being a growing population, and consequently the school population being also a growing population, it was to the advantage of Scotland to base their grant upon population. That has been the cause of the increase in the Scottish grant. I do not think I need follow that particular part of the right hon. Gentleman's speech any further.

Mr. GEORGE WYNDHAM

The hon. Member must not take me as accepting his argument. The figures quoted by the hon. and learned Member for Waterford (Mr. John Redmond) were on a very careful examination of all sums spent for education in Ireland and Scotland given in the Statistical Abstract. If you compare it with the grant, and if you take the growth of the amounts on similar objects, I think you will find my conclusion was not very far out.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

The statement was that the grant for education had actually doubled since the year 1903, and a statement of which he took no notice in the course of his remarks. I come to the part of the speech I rose more particularly to deal with. He says that he himself, and his Friends on the opposite side of the House, are going to support this Amendment mainly as, I think, on the ground that there is a distinct departure in this Bill from the spirit of all previous Acts. Let us just see what the spirit of previous Acts in financial matters were. The right hon. Gentleman quoted from the Bill of 1002, and I think he led the Committee to believe that the rate of annuity in that Bill was 3¼ per cent. That was not the ease at all. The proposals of that Bill were 3¾ per cent. annuity, the money was to be raised by Loan Stock, not dissimilar from the proposals of the present Bill, at 3 per cent., which is precisely the proposal of this Bill. Then take the Bill of 1891. The proposal of that Bill was that there was to be 2¾ per Cent. Land Stock, not cash, and that the tenants were to pay not an annuity of 3½ as this Bill proposes, but an annuity of 4 per cent.

Mr. CLANCY

For how many years?

Mr. HOBHOUSE

Most of the annuities raised in connection with previous Acts were for 35 years at 5 per cent. and 49 years at 4 per cent. I think.

Mr. CLANCY

Four per cent. was payable only for eighteen years.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

There were certain decadal reductions. I do not wish to go into the details, but I want to point out——

Sir F. BANBURY

Which Act was it?

Mr. HOBHOUSE

I think there is no case, with the exception of the Act of 1903, of any Act providing for a percentage of 2¾ per cent. except one. Under the Act of 1891 the interest was 2¾ per cent., and the Sinking Fund l¼ per cent.

Mr. WYNDHAM

Does the right hon. Gentleman think he is contradicting me, because I made two statements. One was that the total rate of the annuities had never been increased. He has not contradicted that. The other statement was that the rate of interest had been 2¾ per cent. since 1891. He has not contradicted that.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

I took the right hon. Gentleman's words. He said: "The spirit of all previous Acts," not of one particular case. In only one case was the percentage payable 2¾ and the Sinking Fund 1½per cent. In every other case the interest was 3½ and 3⅛ and the Sinking Fund 1½.

Mr. WYNDHAM

The right hon. Gentleman is not contradicting me. I said if you began with the year 1870 that the total annuity had never been raised in succeeding Acts. In the Act of 1891 it was 4 per cent., and it never was raised. This is the first time you have raised total annuity. Then I made another statement. I said: Since the Act of 1891 the interest had been 2¾, and that it has never been more than 2¾ since 1891. The right hon. Gentleman is not contradicting those statements.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

No doubt the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover (Mr. Wyndham) would be very glad if no explanation were given of the facts he put before the Committee. I do not propose to let them rest where they are. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say that we had done an unprecedented thing, namely, that we had raised the rate, whereas the former rates had been always reduced. What is the reason for that? The state of the money market was such that you could not afford to reduce the rates; but the whole of the annuities were on a self-supporting basis. The right hon. Gentleman cannot pretend that at the present moment, under existing financial conditions, the annuity payable by the tenant is on a self-supporting basis. I believe that hon. Gentlemen opposite would be glad if it were so. They do not wish to shoulder on to the general taxpayer of the country any unnecessary or improper burden. They know that the interest of their own country is quite as much wrapped up in a self-supporting, self-sufficient, and, if I may use the term, a self-contained system of land purchase, as in that interest of the taxpayer of Great Britain.

I want to deal, if I may, with the relative positions under the Act of 1903 and under this Bill from the financial point of view. There were certain obligations undertaken by the Treasury on the one side, and certain obligations were imposed on the ratepayers and taxpayers of Ireland on the other. The question under this Bill really is whether the conditions which the tenants obtained under the Act of 1903 ought to be modified in view, not only of the state of the money market, but also of the increased obligations which are accepted by the Treasury under this Bill. Nobody can for one moment deny that the obligations accepted by the Treasury under this Bill are of a very large and serious character. I want to go for one moment into the question as to the price at which this stock of 100 millions sterling could be raised. The hon. Member for Waterford (Mr. John Redmond) suggested that it might have been raised by means of Consols. I think we shall come to that question on a later Amendment, when I shall be prepared to offer some remarks upon it in connection with the Report of the Runciman Committee. The right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Wyndham) undoubtedly took too optimistic a view of the state of the money market when he suggested that the stock could be issued at 95. Within three or four months, certainly within five months of the passing of the Bill of 1903, he made the first issue to the public of that stock, and instead of its being taken up at 95, the highest price realised was 57. That was an issue of something over five millions. That is the fact which has brought us to our present difficult and almost impossible position. If the right hon. Gentleman's original view of issuing stock at 2½ per cent. had been realised I understand that we should have been in an even worse position that we are now The Irish ratepayers under the Act of 1903 —and I think this is an important point—were asked to make themselves responsible—and they accepted the position—first of all for the deficiencies in the payment of annuities, and there has never been any difference of opinion as to that being a proper charge upon the Irish people. But in addition, under what is known as the Kildare petition, they had placed upon them the responsibility for the bonus dividends, for the advance dividends, and for the cost of unproductive balances, all of which went to make up what are known as incidental expenses. They also had placed upon them the excess over the Development Grant if ever that giant should become exhausted.

Mr. LONSDALE

Will the right hon Gentleman explain what he means by the Kildare petition?

Mr. HOBHOUSE

The Kildare County Council petition.

Mr. LONSDALE

It was not at that time.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

It was just afterwards, within a year or so. On the other side the Treasury had their obligations. They took over the obligations for the £12,000,000 bonus and the excess stock in connection with the bonus. They took over all the expenses of the issue ox' stock so far as they were the expenses of the National Debt Commissioners. They also took over the cost of working the land purchase scheme, which upon the difference between the amount allocated in 1903 and the amount allocated to-day amounts to £60.000 a year. In return for all that the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Wyndham) said there would be a reduction in the cost of Irish administration amounting to£250,000 a year. But so far from that reduction having been realised, there has been a growth in the cost of general administration in Ireland of something like £30, 000 a year. The right hon. Gentleman thinks that the failure to realise that sum is a matter of no importance. It may not be to him, but it is a matter of considerable importance to the Treasury, who have to make it good out of the general revenue.

These facts have had a twofold result. They have cast a far heavier burden upon the Treasury than it ever expected to bear, in respect of, first of all, the Aid Fund, and in the second place the failure to realise the savings in general administration; and on the other side they have brought about an unexpected exhaustion of the Development Fund, which, if the original arrangement arrived at and recorded in the Act of 1903 were carried out, would undoubtedly mean a heavy burden on the Irish ratepayers. I am not going to argue what the intention of that Act was. Two right hon. Gentlemen whom I see opposite take rather different views. The right hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Wyndham) says that it was never contemplated that this extra charge should fall on the ratepayers of Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman beside him (Mr. James Campbell) took an entirely different view on second reading.

Mr. JAMES CAMPBELL

No.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

In his speech on that occasion the right hon. Gentleman said:— I, for one, have never attempted to deny that by the letter as well as the spirit of the Act of 1903 any loss on flotation not covered by the Development Grant was to fall on the ratepayers.

Mr. CAMPBELL

The right hon. Gentleman misrepresents me if he says I have ever suggested that that was contemplated. On the contrary, I said that although that was in the Act, it was never contemplated that any liability should attach to it.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

The right hon. Gentleman continued:— There was not a member in the House who did not perfectly well understand that it was part and parcel of the bargain they were making. If you are making a bargain there are two sides to it, and there must be something in contemplation. But I do not want to argue that point. Since that arrangement was made the present Prime Minister has agreed—and it is important that his exact words should be noted—that the loss should not fall on the ratepayers. He went further than that. The former part of his words are not often quoted. The Prime Minister said:— I want to put this in perfectly plain language. I do not think that this loss ought to fall on the taxpayers of the United Kingdom. I think the taxpayers of the United Kingdom in contributing their £12,000,1)00 have done very well. On the other hand"— This is the part which is always quoted: I do not think that this loss, if it can be avoided, ought to fall upon the ratepayers of Ireland. In these words of the Prime Minister no mention is made of the persons who are most interested in the sale of land in Ireland, namely the landlords and the tenants. I think it is quite clear that the Prime Minister, in excluding, as he did exclude, the taxpayers of the United Kingdom and the ratepayers of Ireland, thought that there was one other body of men on whom this expense ought to fall, namely, the persons directly interested in the purchase and sale of land in Ireland. The original Bill—and I hope I may have got the acquiescence of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover (Mr. George Wyndham) in this-contemplated equality of sacrifice between the taxpayers of this country and the ratepayers of Ireland in making up any deficiency.

Mr. WYNDHAM

If the right hon. Gentleman invites my acquiescence, I can only say that that view is excluded by what has often been said —that nobody contemplated that any loss would fall upon the ratepayers of Ireland, except the deficiency involved by the failure of the tenant purchaser to pay his annuity.

Mr. HOBHOUSE

Yes, but the right hon. Gentleman has forgotten this: that we did not contemplate any considerable loss upon the flotation of the stock necessary for the purchase of land, while he left out of account the £160,000 contributed by the ratepayers of Ireland. They did not contemplate any serious loss arising from any other cause. Therefore any equality of sacrifice, though it was "give and take," would have been very small. I do not think that is misinterpreting the position of the right hon. Gentleman in 1903. The scheme was expanded—but what I want to point out is this: That the Treasury now accepts a burden that it had not before. It accepts the whole cost of the excess stock in connection with pending agreements. It also accepts an expansion of the loss in connection with the bonus, an extension not only in cash of £12,000,000, fixed by the Bill at £15,000,000, but also the extension of the losses in connection with the excess stock upon the extra £3,000,000. The whole of that burden is to be taken over in future by the Treasury. What is to be the cost of that? If the figure at which the stock up to the present time has been issued is maintained—neither lessened nor heightened—the cost of the excess Stock, in cash, upon this £50,000,000 of pending agreements, will amount to something like 8½ or 8¼ millions of Stock. So that the flotation of the first £84,000,000 of land purchase will have cost the Treasury something like £250,000 a year in excess of what was anticipated by the Act of 1903. They take over, in addition, those incidental expenses to which I alluded earlier in my remarks, and to that extent they will relieve the ratepayers of any anxiety.

After all, you have the Treasury taking over, on behalf of the taxpayers of the country generally, these increased charges, and are you not to put upon the persons concerned, and who alone directly benefit from land purchase in Ireland, some of the charges that will arise in the future? Are they to be the only people that are to be left out, and not accept their share of the burden which is falling upon the public generally in the three counties? The hon. and learned Gentleman protested against any such idea. In the past, as I have endeavoured to point out, annuities for land purchase, which up to this Bill came to something like £24,000,000, were based upon a self-supporting scheme. It is admitted that the annuities under the existing scheme are not self-supporting. The Runciman Report, to which reference was made by the hon. Member for Waterford, suggested an annuity, not of 3½as is proposed by this Bill, but of 3⅝ and the extra ⅛ was to be devoted to the cost of running the scheme. I think there was some misunderstanding about that suggestion. The⅛was to have been devoted to paying the launching and flotation of the scheme, and any balance remaining was to be devoted to increasing the Sinking Fund, and the reduction, therefore, of the number of years during which the annuities would run. However, that is not the proposal of the Bill. The Bill merely proposes to make the annuities the cost of finding the cash necessary for purchase. The result of that proposal is that on the one side the tenant should pay a figure for his annuity, which is sufficient to find the money necessary for land purchase; and, on the other side, that the landlord should receive some reduction in the amount of years' purchase he receives for his land. Is that an unreasonable proposition? Undoubtedly, that will be the result of the Bill. I think it ought to be the result. It is unquestionably the fact that land purchase has enabled landlords, in a commodity that was otherwise unmarketable, unsaleable, to receive a very good price indeed for their property. They have received, under the previous Acts to which the right hon. Gentleman alluded, on an average 17, 18, and 19 years' purchase. Under the present Act they receive at least two or three years' higher purchase of the land. Land- lords will not be in a worse position than under the previous Act.

Let me in half a dozen words say what, as I conceive it, speaking on behalf of the Treasury, is the position in terms of capital value to the Treasury on one side, and the landlords and tenants on the other. The Treasury in the future will have to find cash on bonuses of £15,000,000. They will also find cash for excess Stock bonuses of £2,250,000. In regard to the pending agreements of £50,000,000, their capital charge will amount to 7¼ millions, and the capital representing charges in connection with incidental expenses will come to something like half a million, and the capitalised value at present prices of the increased expenses—only the increased expenses—in connection with the Land Commission and the Congested Districts Board, works out at a figure of something over £5,000,000. so that a total of something like £30,000,000 is imposed upon the general taxpaying public of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. On the other hand, there ought to be credited—this is a point on which I think the Irish Members are entitled to lay stress—to the ratepayers of Ireland the capitalised value of the Development Grant of £160,000 which has been charged in the operations of land purchase, and that amounts to £5,500,000. There ought to be credited to the land-owners and the tenants the capitalised value of the quarter per cent. which they will have to pay in future on the increased annuity, amounting to nearly £14,000,000. There are shown in connection with the £30,000.000 three parties—the Irish ratepayers, capital value of £5,500,000; the Irish purchasing tenant and selling landlord, something short of £14,000,000, about £13,800,000—

Mr. T. M. KETTLE

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman will the period of redemption for the new 3 per Cent. Stock be the same, or will it be shorter?

Mr. HOBHOUSE

It will save something like three years. The annuity will, I believe, be for a period of 65 years and the 2¾ per cent. annuity will be for 68½ years. That has always been the period estimated, but as a matter of fact the annuity in every single case accumulates at slightly different rates, and depends upon the rates at which the National Debt Commissioners can invest the payments made by the tenants in discharge of their annuities. It entirely depends on the rate at which the Commissioners can accumu- late for the Sinking Fund the sums the tenants pay, and that period may vary from 67¾ years to 68½ years.

Mr. KETTLE

How will the period he determined? How are we to know? It is not in the Bill——

Mr. HOBHOUSE

It depends upon the rate at which the National Debt Commissioners can purchase the Stock necessary. Before the hon. Gentleman interrupted me I was endeavouring to point out there was a great burden taken over by the Treasury; also a burden accepted by the Irish ratepayers; and a similar burden which we are putting upon the purchasing tenants and the selling landlords. We do not say we have accepted the burden with alacrity, but we have accepted it, and I think it is only fair that other persons much more interested than we can be should accept their share of the burden.

Mr. T. M. HEALY

It seems to be forgotten by the Treasury what the present rate of interest they are charging is and how it arose. It arose from an agreement with the Cunard Company in 1903, and I want to know why Ireland is to be treated worse than the Cunard Company, Limited? What happened in 1903? When arrangements were made which fructified into the Statute of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover the Cunard Company, which was a private shipping company with a total capital of £2,000,000, wanted additional ships. We were not interested in the Cunard Company, but we saw this House, by an extraordinary instance of beneficence, giving this company, which was only paying a small rate of interest, an advance of £2,600,000—more than the total of their entire capital; and at what rate of interest? At 2¾ per cent., and for two years, I think it was, they were not asked to pay any interest whatever. What security had they to give? Had they the security of a nation? They had the security of ships going to be built experimentally, and the Treasury of that date had no hesitation in making that bargain in the interest of its shipping trade. We said at once, "If you are going to give a number of private adventures money at 2¾ per cent. why should not the Irish nation be entitled to money at the same rate?" and accordingly, in consequence of the Cunard bargain, we struck a bargain with the Treasury of the day that the money should be advanced to us to the extent of £100,000,000 at 2¾ per cent. What I want to know is this? Hitherto the Treasury has been regarded by Ireland as a body with fixed principles, but now we find there is a Liberal Treasury and a Tory Treasury, and just as the personnel of the Government fluctuates so do the principles upon which the Treasury acts. There was a saying I heard once, in connection with Ireland, by, I think, Lord Salisbury, and it was this that in the Government of Ireland there ought to be continuity at all events in regard to money matters.

I respectfully submit there ought to be that continuity. You have a highly organised system in your Treasury; we are not able to encounter it by a Department which watches what you do; we can only day by day see what is done by the Gentleman at that office. I draw from the proposals of the Government in the Land Bill this inference, that when the Chief Secretary for Ireland brought in his Land Bill he did not know what the Budget was going to contain, and I would draw the further inference that if only a month elapsed between the date of this Bill and the date of the Budget, either the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary was not consulted or he did not grasp the effect of the Budget proposals upon re-land. Of course, the right hon. Gentleman made his bargain with the Treasury last year. At that time was a Budget contemplated raising off Ireland a sum variously estimated at from £1,000,000 to £2,000,000—I put it at £2,000,000—extra taxation? Nobody last year contemplated the Budget of 1909. This Bill was introduced on 15th March, 1909. Did the right hon. Gentleman then know the terms of the Budget that his colleague the Chancellor of the Exchequer was going to introduce? Did he know that a considerable sum was going to be added to what England extracts from Ireland every year, and if he did know, why did he not make his bargain with the Treasury in these terms: "You are effecting great advances in Ireland; you say, however, you cannot afford the loss, and that this matter of loss must be borne in proportion. Give me the old terms—the terms of the Act of 1903—and then I will have something with which to face Ireland." If the right hon. Gentleman did not do that, either he did not realise what the Budget was going to cost Ireland or he entirely forgot the relations between Ireland and the Treasury having regard to his present Land Purchase Bill. Therefore, I think the right hon. Gentleman is bound to revise his position, having regard to the Budget which has been introduced. The Government say, and the Secretary to the Treasury also says, "There has been a loss, and we cannot afford this loss on flotation. The Irish people cannot afford it, and therefore it must be paid from some other source." But has any estimate been formed of the amount you are going to get out of Ireland under the new taxes? Has any estimate been made of the amount which the Irish farmers will have to pay through the increased Death Duties, the Stamp Duty, and other duties upon the assignments which the Irish agriculturists in the future will have to pay? If our estimate of £2,000,000 be inaccurate as to the extra amount that you will get from Ireland, what is your estimate? But if you get only £1,000,000 I respectfully submit that that entirely destroys the argument of the Government that they are entitled to something more from the Irish taxpayer. We shall be told that they will get it back again in old age pensions. Seeing that you distribute these pensions in silver, the 5s. you give is in silver bullion, and it is only costing you half-a-crown. I should like to know what is the value of the silver you are distributing? You are not distributing gold, but you are taking silver coin, which is valued by weight at 2s. 5d. per ounce, and you are paying it in the shape of five-shilling pieces. It is not costing you 5s., for it is costing you nothing like it. You buy your silver in the open market and distribute it in five-shilling pieces upon a gold basis, and therefore it is idle to say that old age pensions in Ireland or in England is costing you anything like the amount you have set it down as. Therefore I think we are entitled, having regard to the introduction of the Budget, to a different method of calculation from that which the right hon. Gentleman the Financial Secretary to the Treasury has put forward. The Treasury say that we have made an entire error in our calculations, that the amount of land to be bought is no longer £100,000,000 but £180,000.000. Who told you that? I have been constantly pressing in this House to know who, from time to time, the wiseacres are who represent the Treasury. They tell one lie to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover and a different lie to his successor. Are the same set of liars in office to-day as were in office in 1903? Who are these calculators? [An HON. MEMBER: "Lumley."] It is very extraordinary when dealing with the Treasury that you always find it is convenient to adopt this trade-mark of the Treasury, but you are never told that the Treasury consists of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, like any other Department, and we never think who the particular gentlemen are who make these calculations. The Member for Dover was advised only six years ago that the whole of this problem could be handled within the limits of £100,000,000. Was it with a political object that the Liberal Government said the amount required would be £180,000,000?

I cannot get rid of the fact that the Liberal party have never been in favour of land purchase in Ireland, because that has never been the Liberal policy. What is happening? Are rents being reduced under the fair-rent system in Ireland since the Liberal Government came into office? When the present Government came in we were told, and we always expected, that if we did not get an addition to land purchase we might be consoled with the fact that they would take it out of the landlords some other way. I always understood that Sub-Commissioners were to be appointed who would give reductions equivalent to the amount which we should otherwise get under a land purchase system. So far from anything of the kind having taken place, if you now take up any list of fair-rent applications which have been dealt with up to the present moment, you will see that the reductions given are insignificant, and where they have been given adequately by the Sub-Commissioners appointed by the Government you will find, on appeal, what you never had before, that they have been raised. And raised by whom? By the officials appointed by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland. So that we are neither, from the agrarian point of view, getting it in meal or in malt.

The administration in the courts is worse than it was when the Tories were in office. The Tories were afraid of criticism, but the right hon. Gentleman opposite is never criticised, and the present Administration is never criticised from a Nationalist point of view. The present Government have an absolutely free hand in the country so far as the general body of the Nationalists are concerned, and I include myself, because we are naturally supposed to be more in touch with the Liberals than we were with the Tories. On the administrative side of your Government the people are getting nothing so far as the Land Acts are concerned, and on the purchase side they are getting an addition to their interest. They are actually getting higher terms, and when this Government leaves office, so far from the Irish land question being any nearer a solution, or so far from the handcuffs of Irish landlordism being easier to wear, for the general body of the people the conditions will be harsher, and you are leaving a more difficult problem for your successors to deal with. If the Treasury were wrongly advised in 1903, I want to know who advised Mr. Gladstone in 1886. When Mr. Gladstone brought in the Home Rule Bill he considered the Irish land purchase question, and I remember we used to attack the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham—upon whose birthday we all offer him our congratulations—because he put it at £200,000,000, whereas Mr. Gladstone had only put it at £100,000,000. After 23 years, the price of land having risen, you now say that Mr. Gladstone was wrong in 1886, as well as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover in 1903, and that the price of Irish land is now something like £200,000,000. What is the object of all this? I believe it is a belief generally entertained that the Government do not want to settle the land purchase question. It is my belief. I do not think the purchase transactions will proceed under this system; but, whether they proceed or not, the question of financing the existing bargains stands upon quite a different plane from the question of dealing with future bargains. No Government could tackle the question of future bargains for five or six years, probably not for eight or ten years, and, therefore, I ask why the Government do not address themselves with more seriousness to wiping off the existing glut which prevails in the purchase department? I must say a word at the way in which the money placed at the disposal of the Estates Commissioners is being expended. I do not think for a moment that the money you have is being used to the best advantage. You raise money in London in the interests of the landlords. One would expect, at all events, that the money which is costing us so much in the Development Grant would be prudently used; but, instead of trying to find out genuine, bonâ fide tenants to whom to give these lands, in numerous cases you select the most worthless class of men—graziers of a particular type. You look round, as recently in Westmeath, and get men who are not tenants at all, and you make them a present of thousands of pounds and turn the whole district into disorder. I have seen money, raised in London at huge expense to the taxpayers, given to the local auctioneer, the local hotel keeper, the local land grabber—men who have had no connection with Irish land—and then the Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Hobhouse) points to the additional cost of administration and to the fact that there is no reduction of police. How can you have a reduction of police when you give the money to that kind of people? You annoy the whole countryside by giving away thousands of pounds and hundreds of acres of land to worthless people, and then you have to get police to protect them when it is all done. That is what we are paying for. When money is being raised at enormous cost, and you say you can no longer raise it, we are entitled to say: What is the account of your stewardship of the money you have already raised? I take a little estate, as an instance, and I see a sum of about £4,000 or £5,000 handed over to the landlord and a bogus tenancy created. I will not mention the name of the bogus tenant; but the tenancy is created in this way: A thousand pounds is given to him, £500 is given to his brother, £500 to his niece, £500 to his nephew, and £500 to his herd. A number of bogus, artificial tenants are made by the Irish Land Commission of people who never owned land, and who have had nothing to do with land. You shovel away the money of the taxpayers upon these worthless persons, and then, when they are inducted into their new holdings, each of them requires a posse of 10 policemen to protect them from the attacks of people outside. That is the system you are carrying on, and then you come and say it costs you such an enormous amount to raise this money that you are bound to increase the interest to 3 per cent. The conclusion I have come to with regard to the Bill is not a very hopeful one. When this Amendment is moved by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Water-ford (Mr. John Redmond), and when it is supported by the entire Irish representation, do you suppose the Irish landlords will not take it up in another place? Do you suppose this will not be the very first Amendment that will be moved by the Irish landlords there, and do you suppose the House of Lords will not say that Ireland was united in demanding that the rate of interest should not be disturbed? The House of Lords will then leave intact that provision which throws the burden upon the Treasury. The Treasury will at once say, "We cannot accept this Amendment; it is a breach of our privilege," and you will have immediately a conflict of the keenest and most unfortunate kind between the two Houses. This is not an urgent matter, and I would respectfully urge the Treasury to leave the rate of interest as it is. It will be something like four or five years before the clause will come into operation. There will certainly be another House of Commons, and probably another Government by that time. Why, as this is so much in the future, need the Treasury tamper with the arrangement? Leave the existing arrangement as it stands, and you will thereby, as Liberals, at least have given some earnest of your intention to develop land purchase in Ireland.

Mr. S. H. BUTCHER

I should be sorry to suggest that the Government are not sincere in their profession of forwarding land purchase in Ireland, but it is beyond dispute that the sub-section now under discussion knocks a hole in the financial basis of land purchase. It is not a matter which affects only the tenant purchaser; it carries consequences all through the Bill, affecting the landlord as well as the tenant. I should like to ask the Government, as practical men, to give us a rational forecast of the effect of this clause and consequential clauses upon the whole policy of land purchase in Ireland. I believe, from what has been said by the Government in this and other Debates, and also from the general structure of the Bill, that their idea is that the loss which is to be, borne is one which may be equally divided between the landlord and the tenant—that the tenant will be prepared to purchase his farm at a higher rate, and that the landlord will be prepared to sell at a lower figure. Can we rationally hope that either of those results will come about? Take, first of all, the case of the tenant. It has been said that the tenant under earlier Land Acts was prepared to pay, and did pay, 4 per cent. annuity, but he paid it for a much shorter term of years—49 years—and on the whole got it at a lower price than he could hope to get it now. There is this also to be remembered. In the last five or six years a certain standard of value has been created in Ireland. You cannot expect tenants all of a sudden to change their point of view and to go back to the figures belonging to previous conditions of land purchase. Further, there is this to be remembered, that there are at this moment, and have been all along, certain influences in Ireland that are adverse to purchase altogether, and there will be strong dissuasion exercised by certain persons in Ireland against purchases. [An HON. MEMBER: "That is not so."] Will it not be an exceedingly natural thing for the tenant to say, "Well, after all, had I not better wait for the new revision of land, which is not far off, and, in the meantime, I will prepare my land for that revision; will I not be better off in the end than if I were to make this doubtful bargain?" My own conviction is that the tenants will not, and cannot be expected to, pay a higher rate of annuity, and if there is to be that higher rate the whole burden must ultimately be borne by the landlords. Next I come to the landlords' case. Will the landlords be prepared voluntarily to sell at a lower price? I observe that in the Report of the Runciman Committee the opinion is expressed —somewhat doubtfully, it is true—that the landlords may not improbably be prepared to sell at a lower price. They give two main reasons for that. One is, they say, "If you take the figures before the Act of 1903 you will find that 18 years' purchase was the average price accepted by the landlords, whereas the figures for 1903 are higher and the landlords may go back to something like the former prices." Surely that argument is invalidated by the fact that the rents which are compared in the two cases are entirely dissimilar, that before 1903, and back to 1896, there were a great many non-judicial rents, and the calculations upon those rentals form no criterion of the proper number of years' purchase when you are dealing with the different rentals—the non-judicial rent, and the judicial rents of the first and second terms; it is, therefore, entirely misleading to take them as the basis of future agreements. Secondly, it is worth observing that under the previous Acts in that period, when land purchase went forward rapidly—from 1896 to 1900—land stock was at a premium of 20 per cent., somewhat equal to what the bonus has been hitherto.

Carry this argument just a little further. Since 1903 there has been a new class of vendors. Sellers of land under the previous Acts were, in the main, persons who could afford to sell. They had property elsewhere out of Ireland; they had other means, their lands were not heavily mortgaged, or they were not limited owners. But by degrees, before 1903, land purchase had almost come to a standstill, and the number of those who were prepared to sell was being rapidly exhausted. There came, in 1903, another class of limited owners; men whose lands were held under mortgage, and who had many charges to meet and a very small margin of rent. These men could not afford to sell under the terms which existed before 1903. Under the Bill will they be better off than they were before? I think they will be much worse off than under the Act of 1903, because, in the first instance, they are paid in stock and not in cash, and, further, there will be immense delay before the bargains are completed. During that interval they may be paying these charges off at 5 per cent., or whatever may be the full rate of interest, whereas they will only be receiving interest at the rate of 3½ per cent. It is plain that the great majority of the men of whom I am speaking will not be able to sell without bringing financial ruin upon themselves. The question I wish to put to the Government is this. Do they believe in one of two things? Do they, on a rational consideration of all the facts, and taking a wide outlook over the field of land purchase—do they believe that the tenants will be willing to pay more than they hitherto have paid, and that the landlords will be willing to receive less? The only alternative is do they, in framing this Bill, intend to fall back upon compulsion as the only way out of the difficulty. I think there is no alternative between these two measures. If they wish the voluntary system to continue this Bill is calculated to destroy that system. If they wish a compulsory system to begin, I say that they have entered on a very dangerous and difficult task, and one that will cause not only great unrest, but also, I am afraid, great trouble in Ireland. I would ask the House to consider this problem. How are they to remedy the failure, or partial failure, of an Act which is due to an abnormal and unforeseen success taken in combination with the condition of the money market? Its extraordinary success may be judged by the one fact that in all Purchase Acts before 1903, during a period of 22 years, only £23,000,000 worth of land was sold. Under the Act of 1903, in a space of five years and up to the end of last year, £77,000,000 worth of land was sold, and very nearly a quarter of a million of tenant purchasers were created. We ask ourselves what was the cause of that success. We all know—everyone in Ireland knows —that there were four or five conditions of success, every one of which is struck at by this Bill. Beginning with Clause 1, which is now under consideration, and going on to the bonus first of all, then to the low rate of tenants' interest, next, the fact that the landlords are paid in cash, and then again the question of bonus, which is also altered under the Bill, and I may add that the automatic system of purchase by which landlords and tenants alike were spared all the trouble and delay involved in the new revision and revaluation —each and every one of these conditions of success is now struck at. Yet we are asked to believe that this Bill will go on as a working measure when one by one those conditions are withdrawn, beginning with Clause 1, section 1, and that clause is a note of warning as regards the meaning of the Bill as a whole. I ask the House of Commons to remember that Parliament fastened upon Ireland a system of land tenure which was bad and wasteful to the land, destructive of industry and enterprise, and which was fruitful in all the causes which could produce friction and estrangement between landlord and tenant, and then, in a rare moment of statesmanship; in 1903, Parliament repented of that folly, and they resolved to do what they could to repair that error. The House of Commons then was aware—I think the whole country was aware—that in undertaking that gigantic transaction they had to face a certain risk of loss—of limited loss if only of the bonus—they had to face that certain risk of loss, and they had also to face a possible prospective risk—a risk which I believe these six years have proved was no risk at all—that tenants might repudiate their annuities, or of some form of non-payment. Now when the first bad turn of the market comes the House of Commons is asked to undo that work which they did in 1903 and to save this comparatively small certain loss, a few hundred thousands a year for a limited period, to go back on the policy which they then deliberately inaugurated in this country, and which has ever since been loyally accepted and worked out in Ireland. The question is really for the Committee, whether, looking at the greatness of the end which is imperilled, it is worth the while of this country to make this small sacrifice. If they do not accept it—I am only expressing the opinion which, as far as I know, everybody in Ireland shares—you throw back the country upon its old harassed divided condition, and you will raise once more, that which we had all hoped had ceased and stopped, that embittered war between landlord and tenant.

Mr. JAMES TOMKINSON

The crux of the question, as I understand, with which the Amendment deals is the unforeseen fall in the value of securities, which has seriously affected the issue of Land Stock in connection with Irish Land Purchase, and the question is on whose shoulders this loss is to fall. The hon. Member pointed out, with great truth, that this fall—a general fall—in securities was not of a character to be generally foreseen, but I should like to remind the Committee that the mere fact of a large and further exploitation of British credit was at the time insisted upon by not a few Members as extremely likely to have that effect, and there is no one cause which has perhaps contributed so much to the general depression of the finances of the country and the fall of Consols as the issue of this Irish Stock—not only the issue of it, but the knowledge that from time to time, as opportunity offers, there will be a supply adequate to the demand. That, as a general cause, has contributed to the fall of securities very much, and the general commercial community has suffered. I am extremely sorry that anyone should have to bear that loss; but, going back upon the whole transaction, I must say that I think, and I have always thought, that such a tremendous boon was conferred upon Ireland, both to the sellers and purchasers of land, that when some further sacrifice is asked for I think it is unfair to ask the nation generally to bear it. It has always struck me, as an ordinary English taxpayer, accustomed to English land questions, although I know how immensely they differ, that when the effect of an Act was this, that by a calling in of British credit, you might go to a tenant who had twice had his rent reduced and who is paying a rent which an unprejudiced Court has said is a fair rent, £10 a year, and tell him that he and his successors in 68 years will become the possessors, instead of tenants, and to effect that he will pay not £10, but £8—surely there is room for a little margin, and to ask the Irish tenant or landlord to assume a fresh burden, is not a very unreasonable request. That is my idea. With regard to the scope of the operations of this Act, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover said, I thought very justly, that there was no intention to entirely break up the whole of the eleven million acres of grass land in Ireland and place tenants upon them. I observe that it is very usual, both in England and Ireland, when one suggests that it may be very good policy to break up a certain amount of grass land very thinly populated and place small tenants upon it, it is immediately assumed that you want to do a wholesale operation and convert the whole of the land into small holdings. I think people forget what a very long way a comparatively small amount of land goes in the formation of small holdings. A short time ago in England only 1 per cent. of the whole country was under small holdings. I should hope that the extension of holdings, so necessary to the Irish welfare, in order to make the small holdings of sufficient size to enable people to live upon them in comfort, could be effected without any such wholesale devotion of the remaining 11,000,000 acres to land purchase.

Mr. J. C. FLYNN

We all recognise the very sympathetic spirit with which the hon. Member approaches the Irish land question, but he appears to be unfamiliar with this aspect of it, because he has contended that the great fall in the price of Irish Land Stock, following, of course, Consols, has been due to the very large exploitation of Irish Land Stock on the market.

Mr. TOMKINSON

In a large measure.

Mr. FLYNN

Surely the Boer war is not such a very recent event as to have escaped the hon. Member's memory altogether. We have always contended that it was mainly outside the scope of the operations of land purchase that this tremendous slump has taken place in land stock, and it seems hard to us that when a great beneficent measure of reform is entered upon, with the consent of both parties to the transaction, landlords and tenants, and the whole population practically, both country and town, are sympathetic with it, that this crisis should arise owing to no fault of Irish tenant and landlord, owing to a condition of things over which the Irish people have as little control as they have over the climatic conditions of the country. If the fall had been confined to Irish land stock, and Consols had not similarly fallen, there would be a great deal in the argument with regard to this flotation of land stock, but we contend that this great fall in the price of stock which has led to the financial deadlock was caused by circumstances for which the Irish people could not be held responsible. The hon. Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Butcher) referred to some class of thought or opinion in Ireland which endeavours to dissuade people from continuing this operation of land purchase. He is greatly mistaken. I can only attribute his observation to the habit he has—which I deplore in a Gentleman so learned—of introducing some tainted element into any discussion on the land question. [An HON. MEMBER: What about the "Freeman's Journal"? The "Freeman's Journal," or any other journal, is entirely in its right in discussing the financial proposals and the operations of land purchase, and to what extent they can be conducted with safety to the tenant purchasers. I myself have time and again warned tenant farmers not to pay an inflated price, and in many cases they have paid prices far beyond the legitimate price of the land. The hon. Member for Cambridge University altogether ignored the question of the bonus, and might have been discussing the question from the point of view of an inhabitant of Mars as far as that was concerned. The financial condition of this great Empire, the enormous expenses piled up for defensive and offensive purposes—all these things affected land stock, and therefore I think the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. J. Redmond) was thoroughly justified in saying that if that deficiency exists the tenant purchasers should not be asked to pay a higher rate of interest, the landlords ought not to be expected to take less than a fair price for their land, and the loss should not fall upon the Irish ratepayers, but the Treasury of this great Empire should be able to foot the bill.

The Runciman Report refers to the fact that issues of Consols should be reserved for occasions of great national emergency. No doubt the Members of that Committee were thinking about German invasion, "Dreadnoughts," airships and scareships, and other things about which the public mind has been agitated for the last two or three years, but what Imperial concern could be of greater importance to the people of this Empire than the settlement of the Irish land question on a fair basis? The settlement of the Irish land question, the enhanced prosperity of the Irish people, the settlement of the Irish difficulty, generally speaking, as regards national self-government and land pur- chase, would be worth many "Dreadnoughts" and many corps d'armée of men. Everything for the past six years goes to prove beyond doubt that the vast bulk of the Irish tenant farmers have been and are willing to pay a fair price, but they have been, and are, paying more than a fair price, and if a deadlock has come it rests not upon the tenants, or upon those who, after all, have made the land of Ireland and contributed to its fertility, and therefore the Treasury ought to bear the burden.

Mr. J. GORDON

I agree that the Amendment involves one of the most important, if not the very most important, question, either socially or economically, or perhaps politically, that we could have brought before the House in connection with Ireland. The Chief Secretary himself said when introducing the Bill in December last:— To do anything which would arrest the progress of land purchase would be a blunder, economic and political, of the very first magnitude. I think every representative of Ireland, whether Nationalist or Unionist, thoroughly agrees with that statement. Holding these views, the House and the country would have expected the right hon. Gentleman to do something to further the progress of land purchase in Ireland. But what does he do? Let us see what the Bill, so far as future land purchase is concerned, would bring about. The right hon. Gentleman wants to increase the amount the tenant will have to pay by nearly 8 per cent., and he wants to reduce the bonus which the landlord will receive by about 7 per cent. on the average: that is to say, at one stroke he creates a gap of nearly 15 per cent. between the landlord and the tenant on the question of purchase. Terms have been arrived at after a good deal of higgling of the market and negotiations by friends of both landlords and tenants, and an average price has come into existence over the country. I do not atop to consider whether that price is too high or not. It is a price which both parties can carry out through arrangement. The right hon. Gentleman comes in on this matter, which he describes as one of the greatest importance, and creates a chasm between the two parties of 15 per cent. How is it followed up by the right hon. Gentleman the representative of the Treasury (Mr. Hobhouse)? He gives as his reason for dealing with it in the way proposed one which is thoroughly characteristic of the Treasury. He says that a liability has been cast on the Treasury they never contemplated at the time the Act was passed. Did the people themselves, landlords and tenants, contemplate that this great responsibility would be cast upon them? Are not they less able to bear it than the Treasury? If we believe, as we must believe, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover (Mr. Wyndham) we know from what he stated in the Debates that the intention was that the ratepayers should not have to bear the burden, and, therefore, the only way in which it can be met, once you have exhausted the equivalent grant, is by sums provided by the -Treasury. That is all cast aside now, and the right hon. Gentleman on behalf of the Treasury magnifies everything that Ireland has got and minimises everything that Ireland has contributed. He magnifies the extent of the problem you have to face in providing out of the Treasury for the deficiency. He is backed up in that by the Chief Secretary. Let me take one of the statements of the Financial Secretary. He says that if the Government provided for the deficiency on sales already agreed upon it would cost £250,000. Let me tell the Committee what it would really cost, because there can be no doubt about that matter. At the present moment you have about £82,000,000 worth of land sold or agreed to be sold. You have equivalent grant to the amount of £160,000 a year. You have actually paid £30,000,000. That has absorbed £114,000 of the £160,000. You have still £46,000 a year of the equivalent grant, which would provide for £12,000,000. Therefore, the equivalent grant without a shilling additional money will provide for and complete sales amounting to £42,000,000. The sum of £40,000,000 more will complete the problem, and, having £42,000,000 provided for by the £160,000, you will provide for the additional amount with £150,000 instead of £250,000 as the Financial Secretary states.

I know very well how these figures are magnified. I am sorry that English Members are not here in order that they might understand the true nature of the problem you have to deal with. If you apply that test to everything else the right hon. Gentleman has said you will get a somewhat similar result. The Chief Secretary is magnifying this problem to make it appear appalling to the British taxpayer. I ask the House to remember that men like myself who have not a penny of value in land, and who are asked to contribute as ratepayers, are most willing and anxious that this work should be done. We are perfectly ready to bear our share. There are many people in Ireland in the same position as myself who have no personal interest in this matter, but who are taxpayers of the United Kingdom. We know how vital to the prosperity of the country this problem is. I agree with the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Flynn) that it is vital to the prosperity of the United Kingdom that the condition of the people of Ireland should be improved, that they should be more prosperous, and, if you like, that they should be made more loyal, and to see that they are enjoying their share in the Empire to which they belong. The Chief Secretary says the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover is all wrong. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover got the opinion of experts as well as the present Chief Secretary. The Chief Secretary says that my right hon. Friend must be including waste lands and the big farms which are outside the Act altogether. Under the Act of 1903 there has been sold 69,855 tenancies at a price of £25,675,547. I am quoting the figures which were given to the House in October or November last. The price is £370 per holding. The number of holdings agreed to be sold —though the sales have not yet been carried out—is 173,271, at a price of £53,961,000, or £310 per holding. The statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover that the price per holding is going down is borne out by these figures. There are to be sold in Ireland 173,317 holdings. That is almost to a hundred the number of those which have been agreed to be sold, but of which the sale is not yet carried out, and those which have been agreed to be sold have been agreed to be sold at practically £54,000,000. Yet the right hon. Gentleman estimates the cost of those which have not been agreed to be sold as £103,130,000. That is to say, those not sold are to realise twice the price which the holdings not only sold, but agreed to be sold, under the Act of 1903 have realised. And, what is more, going back to the Acts of 1870 and on to 1896, you had 73,783 holdings sold for £24,777,000, or about £340 a holding. With regard to the lands remaining unsold, what the right hon. Gentleman has done is this: Utterly regardless of whether the remaining land forms part of the holdings or not, or whether they are going to be sold or not, or whether they are agricultural land within the Act or not, he has taken them upon an acreable value instead of taking them upon the standard of price of the holdings, which would be the only true figure to take to estimate them. But take the whole problem in Ireland to be £142,000,000. Anyone who knows much about Ireland will agree with me that that is much nearer the figure than that of the Chief Secretary. What does it mean? It means that on the sales already agreed on up to £42,000,000 not a single shilling of loss will fall on the Treasury; that as to the next £40,000,000, which brings up the lot agreed on or sold, the Treasury is only to give what that will cost—that is, £150,000 a year at the utmost; and that the balance of £60,000,000 would cost £225,000 a year more. I think that is very strong. That is what we are asking for over and above what is in this Bill. But there is another very important matter which I think the Chief Secretary has left out of consideration. Does he know that every shilling will be produced at any face value of the Stock issued when the Sinking Fund has done its work? Is he aware of the fact—I am sure he is—that the Government are not bound to redeem at the face value? After 30 years the Stock is redeemable, if the Government wishes—not otherwise—if they give three months' notice. Therefore, they are not bound to pay that off. Because the argument is based on this: The price of Stock is never to go up; you are not to get any credit in Ireland from any fluctuations in the upward direction. Suppose that is so, when the day comes for paying off this Stock, which they have issued, they can do exactly what the Treasury always do in paying off—walk into the market and buy, and on their assumption the price will be the same as that at which the Stock has been issued—say, £88 for every £100 Stock—and they will have £12,000,000 in their coffers which has been produced by the Sinking Fund. That is a matter which, if you take the annual payments at the interest, 2¾ per cent., without the ½ per cent. for Sinking Fund, which will not be required, will reduce the £225,000 a year to a sum of £190,000 per annum. Is the right hon. Gentleman going to tell this House that what he has described as a question of the greatest magnitude from the political or the economic point of view is going to be sacrificed because the Treasury do not want to pay £200,000 a year more than they anticipated long ago, and that, rather than pay this sum, they would put a burden which would amount to a great deal more than that when imposed in the way suggested in this Bill on 'and-lords and tenants, and do far more than any burden he can think of to injure the Irish people and make the transfer and sale of land under the Act of 1903 an absolute impossibility? I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman, if he considers the question, would wish to do that or would wish to be a party to doing that, and I think if he brings sufficient pressure to bear on the Treasury he will be able to get the Treasury to provide him with that £200,000 a year. What is more, two or three years ago, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover mentioned tithe Committee, in a matter in which opinion in Ireland was sharply divided—and opinion in Ireland is absolutely unanimous here—the right hon. Gentleman came down to this House and said he would give Ireland £650,000 a year. He was getting this from the Imperial re venues. That is exactly the same place that we ask him to produce this £200,000 from. Will the right hon. Gentleman say that the purpose to which the £200,000 is to be devoted is not as vital to the prosperity of Ireland as any single subject, I do not care what it is, that you could have devoted £650,000 to? If he was willing to give that in addition under the Irish Councils Bill is not it really absurd to say that the Treasury will not allow him to give this £200,000 a year to work out this great social and economic problem? The hon. Member for North Louth (Mr. T. M. Healy) called attention to a very important matter. Whether we are agreed exactly upon the causes or the amounts, there is a vast body of opinion in Ireland that Ireland has, contributed more than its due share to Imperial revenues. You are going to increase that by taxation which will bear very heavily on Ireland, and whether it be 1½ millions or 2 millions, at all events it is increasing the burden which Ireland will have to bear, and this sum which we ask is, in comparison, only a trifling matter. By adding to the prosperity of Ireland it would almost pay as a commercial investment, because you would make the Irish people better able to assist in paying taxes to the Imperial Exchequer, and, by establishing peace and contentment, you would lessen the expense of managing the affairs of the country. Does the right hon. Gentleman take this into account: that the sooner you work this problem out, the sooner you get rid of the cost of the Irish Land Commission, which is about £300,000 a year? Would it not be a matter of importance if you could get rid of this cost 10 years sooner by making this concession to help on Irish land purchase? By doing so, you would be freed from the expense of the Irish Land Commission—not absolutely freed, because you will have a small body to work out the financial matters connected with Irish land purchase—but, compared with the existing cost, this item would be an absolute trifle. What is done here is, in the first place, you are estimating for at least £40,000,000 more than would be required for working out the problem in Ireland. When you come down to examine the problem with anything like due regard to what is involved, you find that it comes to a matter of £200,000 per annum. I do not believe that a Member of the House with the welfare of the Empire at heart, and with also the welfare of Ireland at heart, would grudge £200,000 per annum to settle this great problem—the greatest, from my point of view, in Ireland. I have always believed that if this problem were settled all other problems would be much more easily dealt with, and whether they were settled according to my views or not, at all events they would be very much simplified. I do ask the right hon. Gentleman not to stop land purchase in Ireland, and to take into serious consideration the united expression of opinion from Ireland upon this question by leaving the Treasury to carry out purchase on the basis on which they started. Practically it will be a very considerable time before anything is paid on these new agreements. We may be able to have the Stock floated at a very much higher figure, and the loss would be very much less. I do implore the Chief Secretary to take into consideration the terrible injury which he would inflict upon the country, and to see that in some way the money is provided for.

Sir FREDERICK BANBURY

I cannot be taken as an enthusiastic supporter of the Act of 1903, but the majority of the House of Commons having made that bargain, I hold strongly that the House of Commons ought to stick to it. That means also that, having supported the Act of 1903, they must adhere to the section under the Agricultural Rates Act of 1898 in regard to relief from the guarantee fund to make up any deficiency which might arise. If you adhere to the first part of the bargain it is only fair that you should adhere to the last part of the bargain. I do not quite agree with the hon. Member for Waterford that possibly this particular rate might have to be taken in relief of the loss on flotation. I always thought there would be a loss on flotation, and I actually went so far as to advise my right hon. Frieid on the point. I quite admit that there was a general hope that the loss on flotation might be met out of the Irish Development Grant, but that hope turned out to be illusory. I think that the House is bound by fair means to see that a loss does not fall upon this particular grant under the Act of 1898. If my view be accepted, then we are bound to retain the Act of 1903 in its integrity, and the only question is whether or not it is possible to meet the financial problem. I think it is by the issue of Consols. I am quite certain that the proper course is to issue Consols, and that there is no other course if you seek the true solution of this problem. It is evident that the mere issue of 2¾ per Cent. Stock must tend to bring down Consols, the security being both the same. The issue of a lower priced Stock tends to cause people to sell, and that brings down the price of Consols. I do not for a moment say that if you issue Consols that it would not bring down the price if the Money Market remained the same, but you would have one sort of Stock, which I believe is the proper way to manage your finances. If you do that you will be taking a very great step in the direction of solving this particular question. Though I voted against the second and the third readings of the Bill of 1903, now that it is an Act of Parliament, we are bound loyally to carry it out to the best of our ability. I think the right hon. Gentleman should reconsider his position, and see whether it would not be possible to do as I suggested, namely, to issue Consols instead of 2¾ per Cent. Stock, as he proposes to do. I do not pretend to have a knowledge of the Irish farmers, but I have some knowledge of human nature, at least I think so, and I do not think that it can be held for a moment that the fact that while one Irish farmer, having purchased his farm under the present Act, is paying instalments at the rate of 3¼ per cent., another tenant in his neighbourhood is paying 3½ per cent., will not produce friction and tend to mitigate in some ways the advantages which undoubtedly have arisen from the Act of 1903.

Mr. MAURICE HEALY

I have read many appreciations of the Irish Land Bill, some of them alluding to it as better than the Act of 1881, and better than the Act of 1903. Other criticism has represented it in a different light, and as a Bill which, instead of being of public advantage, is something of the contrary kind. My judgment of the Bill is that our decision on the Amendment which is before the House will decide whether this measure is a public benefit or a great public calamity. My view of the matter is this, that if this clause is allowed to stand in the Bill as it now exists, the right hon. Gentleman might as well, as regards the future of land purchase transactions, tear up the Land Purchase Act, or to enact in so many words that from the date of the passing of this Act no further land purchase transactions shall take place in Ireland. It has been argued that the question before the Committee is who will bear the loss which is unquestionably to be incurred. The Secretary of the Treasury made an ingenious plea on the subject and he said that the Treasury and the taxpayer were bearing so much, but that, if the landlord and the tenant would only bear so much more, all will be right. That is a case of much virtue in iniquity. According to my view, if you once pass this clause in its present form, farewell to all further land transactions. I say that is not only probable and arguable, but that it is mathematically demonstrable. The Land Act of 1903 was introduced by the right hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Wynd-ham) because he said the number of willing vendors was exhausted. It may be that that was a slight exaggeration of the case at that date. I think perhaps the number was not quite then exhausted, but the willing vendors may be said to have been exhausted in 1903. The right hon Gentleman the Member for Dover said it was, therefore, necessary to provide what the Chief Secretary has described as temptations or inducements to bring into the market further portions of Irish land. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover provided those inducements in the shape of a reduced annuity and in the shape of a substantial bonus. Those two great inducements, and they are great inducements, have been in operation for five years. If they have not succeeded in bringing all the land of Ireland into the market, and if there are still large areas on which land purchase has not operated, and if the inducements of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover have failed to bring this land into the market, what will be the effect of the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Birrell)?

The Chief Secretary has magnified the problem before us, and, as has been adverted to by previous speakers, he has replied it involves a burden on the Treasury which no one anticipates. Let me say to him or retort on him that in magnifying the importance of this question he is also magnifying the importance of the problem which will exist when this Bill passes into law. If it is true that this Bill will put an end to land purchase, and if it is also true that there is still one-half of the land of Ireland to be dealt with, is not that the strongest argument against this Bill? The right hon. Gentleman will see that by magnifying the extent of the land still to be operated on he has by that fact increased his own responsibility in introducing any measure which would have the effect of retarding the operation of land purchase. Will this Bill retard land purchase or not? To answer that question I have to ask what is the situation. The Irish landlord is at present able to offer his second-term tenant a reduction of five shillings in the pound, and at the same time get '23 years' purchase and 12 per cent. bonus. I speak in terms of second term rents. The tenant, if he is trying to induce the landlord to sell, can say, "You can give me 5s. in the pound, and at the same time get for yourself 23 years' purchase and 12 per cent. bonus."[An HON. MEMBER: "More than that."] I am taking a figure by way of example. The figure is quite unimportant for my purpose. Whether you take 23, 18, or 29, the argument is exactly the same. I take 5s. in the pound because it is a round sum, and will be easily understood by all my colleagues. What is the inducement the landlord will have to offer and the tenant will have to offer when this Bill is passed? When this Bill is passed to give the tenant five shillings in the pound the landlord will have to sell at 21 years' purchase, and he will get a 5 per cent. bonus, and 7½ per cent. for the benefit of his remainder. Is it not what I have said, mathematically demonstrate that a landlord whom the temptation of 23 years' purchase, and 12 per cent. bonus failed to induce to sell will not be induced to sell when all the tenant will offer him will be 21 years' purchase and 5 per cent. bonus? It is like saying to a man, "Here I have been bargaining with you for five years to get you to take a pound (£) from me, and now I am offering as a great concession fifteen shillings."

It is mathematically demonstrable that this clause, if it is passed in its present form, can only have one effect, and that is the effect of suspending all land purchase transactions in Ireland. What is the only argument that I ever heard on the other side. It has not been used in this House, for the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Birrell) in introducing his Bill did not say a word about it, or very little about it. But it has been used in Ulster by a gentleman who knows more about land purchase, I say it to his credit, than any man sitting on the Front Bench—that is the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Tyrone (Mr. T. W. Russell), the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture of Ireland. That Gentleman's record on the whole land question is highly to his credit, and as I say, no man more keenly appreciates the difficulties of this problem of land purchase. He is the only man, in or out of the Ministry, who has offered a reply to the difficulty which I have stated. The reply which he has given to the tenant farmers of Ulster is, "It is true this Bill offers less inducement to the landlord than the Act of 1903, it is true, therefore, that under this clause the landlord will be less likely to sell; but we have compensated whatever defect there may be in Clause 1 by a subsequent clause dealing with the question of compulsion." Is that the ground on which this clause is to be defended hero? I need hardly say that, personally, I am in favour of the principle of compulsory land purchase. If I thought that this was a compulsory land purchase Bill, and that Clause 1 had as its complement a real compulsory land purchase proposal, I would think the Bill deserving of the laudation which has been given to it, and that it was one of the greatest land measures ever introduced into Parliament. But the Chief Secretary did not introduce it as a compulsory land purchase Bill, and he was quite right in not doing so. When the problem of compulsory land purchase has to be dealt with, it will have to be dealt with, not as a subsidiary clause in a Bill, but by a great substantial enactment standing by itself. The Bill does introduce in a subsidiary way the principle of compulsory land purchase, and I am glad to see it. But the right hon. Gentleman is entitled to have his Bill argued as it stands. I will not degrade this House by assuming that the proposals with regard to compulsory land purchase are going to be mauled and mangled elsewhere, and that we shall get the Bill back from another place in a form different from that in which it was sent up. I ask the right hon. Gentleman does he adopt the argument of the Member for South Tyrone (Mr. Russell)? Does he say that the defects in Clause 1 are more than compensated for by the fact that the tenant who fails to induce the landlord to accept his terms can go to the Estates Commissioners and insist on compulsory purchase? That is the test of whether this is to be a good or a bad Bill. Let us not shut our eyes to it. If a landlord could not be tempted to sell on the terms of the Act of 1903, terms which have been dangled before him for five years, which ten years ago would have seemed to any Irish landlord riches beyond the dreams of avarice, and which have undoubtedly made the tenant pay more than he ought to have paid, how does the right hon. Gentleman expect this clause to accomplish the object in view?

That is the real question before the Committee. The speech of the Secretary to the Treasury was a speech in vacuo; it never dealt with the realities of land purchase, or with what was going to happen when the Bill passed. Will the Chief Secretary give us his view, not of what is just or unjust, not whether something can or cannot be said for the financial scheme of the Act of Parliament, but of how this clause is to affect land purchase in Ireland? Will he tell us how he expects this clause to accomplish that which the Act of the right hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Wyndham) failed to do? It is said, indeed, that we are asking too much. Well, I think it was a common case—I think the Leaders on both sides of the House admitted—that it was the intention of the Act of 1903 that these loans on the flotation should not fall upon the Irish ratepayers. For my part, I never entertained any doubt on the subject. It is said, indeed, "There is the bond, there is the Bill, there are the limitations in the Bill. On this point what is the answer to Clause 40? The Act of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover was the result of a treaty. The limitation was put into the Act not because it was part of the treaty, but because it was conceived that the treaty, owing to technical difficulties, could not be carried out without that limitation in the Act. It was never part of the arrangement that the losses on flotation should fall upon the Irish ratepayers; and I say it is the merest Treasury quibble to tell us that because particular terms are in the Act that they are part of the bargain made. Those terms are in the Act because it was conceived that those terms represented the bargain. If the result has shown, and the working of the Act has proved, that those terms did not represent the bargain, we are perfectly entitled to come here and say so. It has been said that this Bill contains many good things. I concede it. But they are subsidiary matters. The main question which we have to decide is: "How will this Act affect the future of land purchase in Ireland?" If it is a fact that it will put an end to land purchase in Ireland it is a bad thing. It is as if a cook came to me and said: "Here is an excellent pudding, full of admirably rich ingredients, the finest suet, the best currants, etc.," but added that there was one trifling defect, and that was that there was a dose of strychnine in it. That is a summary of this Bill. It has many excellent points, but if, as I believe, it will suspend land purchase in Ireland, it will undoubtedly inject a most virulent poison into the body politic, and my metaphor, drawn from cookery, will undoubtedly be justified—and more.

I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to give his attention to this most grave problem. I have a great admiration for him. I believe in many respects his administration in Ireland has been a broad and courageous one. In one matter, education, he has conferred upon Ireland that for which the country ought for ever to be grateful. With that record in the past, I appeal to him to let his record in the future be consistent, and not to let it be said that while his Conservative predecessor set upon foot a great measure to appease agrarian unrest in Ireland his was the hand which stopped the wheels of progress and undid all the good that had been effected.

Mr. BIRRELL

It reminds one of old times to hear once more the Member for Cork City, who has just sat down, discoursing upon land purchase. Everybody will agree, however defective his knowledge of culinary matters may be, it would puzzle anybody to acquaint him with any ingredients of land purchase detail with which he is not already acquainted. He says that the Bill contains many good provisions, but he has allowed himself to say it contains a dose of strychnine inasmuch as he fears the effect of the Bill would be to stop land purchase in the future altogether. Well, of course, if that were so I should agree with him that it would be a disastrous measure in some of its provisions, and well worthy of consideration for further amendment. But I must remind the hon. Member that some of his friends have told us that really all you can do in Ireland now for a good many years to come is to deal with the existing block, and until this is disposed of, there will not be any further land purchase in Ireland at all. Therefore, whatever view of the case you take, I do not know that the provisions of this clause would work anybody this particular harm, for at all events, six or seven years to come.

Mr. MAURICE HEALY

No one said that——

Mr. BIRRELL

It certainly was said by I some speakers.

Mr. MAURICE HEALY

What was said was that the agreements would have to be financed in the next six or seven years.

Mr. BIRRELL

That the whole time of the Land Commission would be taken up for the next six or seven years disposing of agreements that had priority—the £52,000,000 or £54,000,000 of concluded agreements in connection with which the tenants are waiting to be placed in possession as peasant proprietors; and that during that time very little could be done in the way of future land purchase. I do not take that view in either case. I do not think the provisions of this Bill will in any way destroy the possibility of the continuity of land purchase in Ireland, and I hope to show later on that under the provisions of this Bill it would be possible to provide money to keep future transactions going at the same time as we are working to ease the existing block —as it is called —and as no doubt, it is. Well, now, the hon. Member urged me to give earnest consideration to this question. I have been doing nothing else for a very long time past. The situation that stared me in the face was one for which I was in no sense responsible, but which rendered it absolutely necessary that at a very early date I should urge the Treasury and the responsible Government to deal with the existing state of affairs. The figures are these: There was an issue of £4,000,000 of Stock at 86 on 6th July. The total amount of Stock issued up to to the present moment is £41,201,444 8s. 9d. The net amount raised by the issue of that amount of Stock at the price current was £36,226,479 17s. 3d., leaving the excess Stock the difference between 41 millions odd and 36 millions odd. Nearly 4 millions of the cash raised has been absorbed by the bonus, and the excess Stock in respect of advances alone is £4,499,938 4s. The annuities on that excess Stock amount to £146,248, which leaves us out of £160,000 Development Grant a balance of £13,752, which is the sum at this moment standing between the ratepayers of Ireland and the claims which will fall upon them as soon as the Development Grant has been exhausted. Therefore another issue of £3,000,000 would bring about the state of things which has always been in my mind ever since I became partly responsible for this great question. To a man in my position it is satisfactory to find that, at any rate, I have been able to introduce a Land Bill which, at all events, contains one clause that secures the enthusiastic support of hon. Gentlemen from Ireland sitting both above and below the Gangway, and that is Clause 6. Everybody will agree that it was my bounden duty to represent to the Treasury that it was absolutely impossible that the vast beneficent system of land purchase, not begun by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover, but pursued by him vehemently in his Act of 1903—should be absolutely destroyed, for that was the prospect as soon as it became apparent that the only way of financing the Act was by making large demands upon the Irish ratepayers. That is the way this matter presented itself to me. What was I to do? When I went to the Treasury I was confronted with an Act of Parliament. I am told that it is most desirable that there should be continuity in these matters, and I entirely and most cordially agree with that. The only way continuity in these matters can be maintained —unless people leave their private documents behind them on record —is by looking at the Act of Parliament. We are constantly being asked by our critics—and I feel the force of those criticisms—what is the good of saying, "My intention is so and so"? All you have got to do is to look at the Act of Parliament. The words of a right hon. Gentleman in this House under stress count for nothing. They disappear and right hon. Gentlemen go away. Their words are no doubt recorded in the delusive pages of "Hansard," either corrected by themselves or uncorrected, but all we can do is to look whether there is a Parliamentary bargain on the pages of the Act of Parliament. I think it is a little hard to underrate what I have been able to accomplish in getting Clause 6. The hon. Member for Dover seemed to think he had infected the Treasury for all time with his views, "but other men, other manners." I can assure hon. Members that when I took office I found no trace in the Treasury of the supposed understanding that as soon as the Irish Development Fund was exhausted either it would be increased or the Treasury would assume the responsibility, and relieve the Irish ratepayers from this liability, which must have been foreseen, assuming heavy losses was incurred on flotation. Clause 6, undoubtedly most rightly and properly, assumes that the authors of the Act of 1903 in this matter proceeded upon a far too cheerful view, for, thinking no doubt there was nothing in it, they placed upon the Irish ratepayer an obligation which ought not to have been placed there if there had been any notion that pay day would have arrived. There may have been some reason for this view when the right hon. Gentleman was acting and when he was composing his methods and having all these interviews with the Treasury, but by the time the Bill became law the clouds were lowering, and it was evident that the first issue, instead of being at par or 95 or anything of that sort, would be very much below par. As a matter of fact, the first issue was at 87, and the average rate of all the issues there have been, public and private, is 88. The present price is 86, but we must not stereotype the present as if no other moment would arise. I hope the Stock will rise. Certainly, as time goes on and as the Sinking Fund begins to operate, it is bound to rise unless terrible things which none of us contemplate happen. We have between March, 1904, and July, 1909, the dates of the first and the last issue, a period enabling us to form some estimate of what the average price is likely to be, and the result is an average price of 88. That means that for every £100 you give a landlord you have to raise £112 odd Stock, and for the £12 odd excess Stock there is nobody to pay except the country. The tenant has enough to do to pay his annuity on the £100, and the country has to pay the annuity for 68½ years, or whatever the period may be—it is not a statutory period—on that excess Stock. We have to deal with this large block of pending agreements. It is called a block. In one sense it is a block, but it must have been contemplated. It was never suggested by anybody at the time that there was any prospect of dealing with £15,000,000 or £16,000,000 worth of Stock in a year, not so much on account of money market difficulties, as office difficulties in getting the business through. You can only get water through according to the size of the spout, and I have said over and over again, and I repeat: You live in a fool's paradise if you imagine anybody can set up an office in Ireland which will be able to do an indefinite amount of this work. It is a difficult task, and it cannot be done in blocks of millions The money has to be allotted to the landlords and the land has to be given to each purchaser, and this must take a considerable time. This block was almost inevitable unless agreements had only dribbled in at the rate of £5,000,000 a year, which, at all events, was contemplated as being the largest sum the Treasury would be called upon to pay in the first few years. Some hon. Members have spoken as if the Irish peasantry were slow in appreciating the Act of 1903, but they are nothing of the kind. Give them a bargain they want and however good or however bad it is in a short space of time they know a great deal more about land purchase than nine-tenths of the Members of this House. In March, 1904, four millions were issued; in January, 1905, six millions were issued. The Act began to work very rapidly from the beginning, and we have accelerated it during the last few years. The block is mainly due to the fact that you cannot have a Land Commission Office in Ireland big enough to deal with these estates all at once. As they come in they have to be put on the list, and they have to wait for a considerable time. The block is not now so great as it was. It represents some fifty millions; it has been reduced two or three millions since we last debated this question. In consequence of that block I got the Treasury to assent to the notion that it was always intended by everybody —in the teeth of the Act of Parliament—that this loss should be borne, not by the proper persons to bear it, but by the Treasury. They have agreed to that, but in regard to all future transactions they have taken the line that it is only right and proper that the rate of annuity should be fixed at such a sum as would cover the loss. I expect there will always be a liability on the Treasury in some matters, but at any rate land purchase in the future should be put on a paying footing, and in order to do that it is neces- sary—a regrettable necessity—to raise the annuity to 3½ per cent. Is it not worth while for hon. Members to have in their minds the rates of annuities under former Land Purchase Acts? Under the first Act, that of 1881, the rate of annuity was 5 per cent.—divided into 3½ per cent. interest and l½ per cent. Sinking Fund. That reduced the number of years' purchase to 35. Everybody will agree that had it been found possible to work in practice it was an admirable scheme—35 years is certainly better than 68 years, and, of course, everybody looks forward to the time when the tenant becomes the owner, free from all encumbrances. Under the Act of 1885 the rate was reduced to 4 per cent.—interest 3⅛ per cent. and Sinking Fund ⅞ per cent., while the number of years for which the annuity ran rose from 35 to 49. In 1891 the rate was again 4 per cent., divided into 2¾ per cent. interest, and l¼ per cent. Sinking Fund. In the Act of 1896 it was the same as in 1891, subject to the decadal reductions. That was very good if it could have been adhered to, but it prolonged the period of redemption to 73 years. Then came the Act of 1903, and now we have the present proposals. The House will see that the Irish tenant has been accustomed, under the operation of preceding Acts—under which 24 millions worth of land was sold—to pay a higher rate of interest than that which is now demanded of them, and, although I agree it is better always to reduce obligations than to increase them, I do think the time has arrived—the financial proposals having broken down—when the Government is entitled to say: "All existing agreements we will take over, and we will assume the heavy responsibilities, but really when you come to the future we must ask the landlords and tenants alike to see—the necessity being a disagreeable one—whether they cannot agree to give a little more than hitherto they have been in the habit of doing." The hon. Member for Cork (Mr. M. Healy) says that this slight alteration in the rate of annuity—this difference we are now imposing—will destroy the desire of the Irish tenant for his land, and the willingness of the landlord to sell, and it will bring about a state of things when nobody will part with their land. I really do not think he is justified in taking so gloomy a view as that. What were the proposals that were made at that famous land conference? That the landlord should be provided by the exercise of British credit with such a sum of money as would pay him an income equal to his gross second term rental; whether they were first term or second term rents he was to have such a sum as would give his gross income graded down to second term rents, less 10 per cent, for collection. That was supposed to represent all the landlords wanted. I have a draft calculation worked out. Two-fifths of the holdings in Ireland only have become second term rents, and there are three-fifths either first term or non-judicial rents. Therefore, take for example an estate of a rental of £100; two-fifths would be second term rents, or £40, while three-fifths would be first term rents or £60. Reduce those latter to second term standard by a 20 per cent. reduction, you would get;£48, making a total rental from second term rents on the £100 of £88. Deducting from that £88 ten per cent. for collection, or £8 16s., you get a net income of £79 4s. What sum would realise that at 3.½ per cent.? You have got to consider that the landlord is now in a better position in regard to the way of investing money than he was before, he has a great increase in the area of trust investments. He has the opportunity now of investing his money with perfect safety at 3½ per cent. in gilt-edged or first-class securities. Now, on such a small estate a purchase money of £2,263 would be required to yield this income of £79 4s. If this estate of £100 rental were sold at 21½ years' purchase it would mean £2,150 purchase money, and the bonus according to the schedule of this Bill would mean £129, and therefore the landlord would receive £2,279, which, invested at 3½ per cent., would yield £79 15s., which is rather more than the landlords themselves asked at the Land Conference. Then, as to the tenants' point of view, who agreed to purchase this £100 estate at 21½ years' purchase, they would obtain, while paying a 3½ per cent. annuity, a reduction of 25 per cent. of the existing rent, which is as much as they have hitherto been able to get. I think it will be found, as a matter of fact, that, although the net result of this Bill would probably be to reduce the average number of years' purchase which the landlords are able to get, it would not reduce it below the figures that Lord Dunraven and other landlords' representatives have recognised as the fair price which they ought to obtain. Therefore, assuming that the tenants of Ireland still desire to become the owners of their land, as I am satisfied they still do, and supposing the landlords are willing to sell to the only persons who will ever dream of buying, the tenants, who are provided by the British investor —not the British tax-payer—with cash to carry out the operation, I think it is taking rather a harsh and restricted view of the situation to say that no one in Ireland will ever want to become the owner of his own holding. It would be much better if I had not to stand here making these proposals, but I really do not think anyone will say that the Treasury, in taking over this heavy burden with regard to all pending agreements, have refused to face the situation and to incur very grave responsibility in connection with a matter which they might fairly have supposed was at an end, having regard to the provisions of the Act of 1903.

Then I have been told again to-day that I have very much magnified the problem, and the right hon. Gentleman asked me whether I still adhered to my figures. The hon. and learned Member for Louth (Mr. T. M. Healy) was rather sarcastic, as his wont is, about the people who advise us in these matters. He wanted to know whether I had a different set of liars from those who advised my right hon. Friend. That is a way of putting it which I cannot at all agree to. At all events, liars or no liars, I had to be advised by somebody. The right hon. Gentleman did not do more than give his estimate. He had to form an estimate of the size of the problem in order to determine the amount of money he was going to ask by way of bonus as a free gift—the only free gift in the transaction—from the general Exchequer, and he fixed his estimate at £100,000,000. He did not stake his reputation on it one way or the other, and I am quite sure the gentlemen who advised him did not stake their reputation upon it either. They assumed that £100,000,000 was the minimum sum, and it certainly will be that.

Mr. T. M. HEALY

Are they the same individuals?

Mr. BIRRELL

I do not know that they are. They are a body of persons containing some of the same people, but there may have been a fresh element of mendacity introduced. We have had six years' experience of the Act now, and it has not worked out, I dare say, entirely as the right hon. Gentleman expected it would, because I find that town plots, accommodation plots, market gardens, and large grass farms have already been freely sold and advances made for their purchase. Even houses in towns and villages, when they form part of estates, and when their agricultural value was more than what might be described as their urban value, were included, and whole towns have been bought. The town of Boyle, with a population of 2,400, and the town of Athenry, and many small villages have been sold. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the 11½ millions of acres of large grass farms, and asked are they to be sold. Large grass farms have been sold to a very large extent. The Duke of Lein-ster's estate was largely composed of grass farms and that was the very first large estate to be dealt with under the Act. I cannot honestly take upon myself to say what grass farms may or may not be sold. That they will be sold to a very large extent is certain, but it does not at all necessarily follow that they will be broken up into tillage. But in considering what the problem is, it is impossible for me to strike out ll½ millions of acres of grass land, or any known fraction of them, and say that they do not come within the scope of the Act, because experience has taught me that agricultural land of all kinds and classes is purchasable. Demesnes are purchasable and home farms are purchasable up to the extent of £20,000. Grass lands have already been largely sold by the landlords. They are throwing them in as untenanted land, and it is impossible for me to leave these things out of consideration.

When the right hon. Gentleman spoke about value he said the fat things have gone to a very large extent, and the less valuable lands are left. My estimate is based, not upon acreage, but valuation; and therefore if the land left is small in value it does not in any way affect the figures I have given. In other words, if I may put it in the form of a sum in proportion it is this: Land of a given valuation has already been sold for a given price. All I have done is to assume that the remaining land, the valuation of which we know, will change hands at a proportionate price. If it is sold it will only be sold at a price proportionate to the valuation. We have considered the amount of land already sold sufficiently large to do the sum. We have considered what the cost was, we have considered how much the valuation was, and we have worked out how much the remaining land will cost.

I wish to deal with the point about the £3,000. The right hon. Gentleman in estimating the size of the purchase problem omitted to include, up to the £3,000 limit, farms sold for more than £3,000. He left them out of his calculation altogether, and that resulted in lowering his estimate by £40,000,000. By the time the Act was passed, he had raised the limit to £7,000. We, at all events, are not continuing that. We are, under the Bill, cutting down the limit of an advance to £3,000. The result will be to decrease the size of the problem only to the amount by which the price of these farms exceeds £3,000, but up to that amount they must come within our category. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that when I approached the Treasury I did so with the idea of getting as much as I could. The last thing I wished to do was to magnify the problem. Any attempt to magnify the problem has never received any support from me. In my capacity as a well-wisher of Ireland I wished to make as good a bargain as I could, and although I do not pledge myself to any precise figure or amount, I am perfectly certain that the obligations assumed under the Act of 1903, even without any Amendment of any sort, and even with the Amendment proposed in this Bill, limiting the advance on a purchase to £3,000, instead of amounting to £100,000,000 will be nearer £200,000,000. About that I feel thoroughly persuaded. The idea that there are only 5,000,000 acres of land left in Ireland to be dealt with under this proposal, and that we have already dealt with two-thirds of the problem, is one which I am sure will find no support from any Estates Commissioner or inspector or from any person acquainted with land in Ireland.

Mr. J. H. CAMPBELL

They want to sell the whole of it.

Mr. BIRRELL

Where is it proposed in the Act of 1903 to limit the sale of agricultural land? I look for those limits in vain. We shall impose such limits as we can. We have no desire to see the transaction carried out on such a gigantic scale, but I can-not see in this Act, or in the possibilities of the case, or in any future legislation, even of a Conservative Government anxious to secure the Irish vote, whatever they may do or say—I see no possibility of restricting the scope and the area of land purchase in Ireland within limits. I must not be understood as with drawing from that point. Therefore, I adhere entirely to the view I expressed that an enormous improvement has resulted from the carrying out of land purchase in heland. Nobody who has any experience of Ireland or who has travelled through the country by motor, as I have done—I have been in nearly every county—can have doubt about it whatever. Despite some observations made by the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. T. Healy), land purchase has worked marvels. The Land Acts, tooth before and after 1903, have worked good things, and we want to continue them so far we possibly can.

To that view I adhere, but all I can say is that at the present moment I do not think that the Treasury which represents the whole interests of all persons, English and Scotch, as well as Irish, have acted unreasonably towards Ireland, seeing that they have taken upon themselves a great obligation, immediately securing to persons who have come to agreements with their tenants the full benefit that everybody expected. However bad the market may be—and it was down to 85½—we are giving them the whole benefit of payment in full and in cash at the expense of the British Exchequer. That we are doing. But when we come to the future I do think we are entitled to say to Irish tenants and landlords alike, "If you want this bargain to continue —and we know you do—we must ask you to bear some proportion of the fact that British credit is not what the right hon. Gentleman hoped it would be, or what it was even in his day." The price of British credit is known in the market. Why should not people who get the benefit of British credit pay for it at the market price? If you say they cannot pay for it—they are so poor; or will not pay for it—they are so desperately obstinate—and therefore Irish land purchase will come to a miserable end, I do not think it is true. The increase in the annuity cannot be popular; it must be unpopular; it will create some difficulty, some disappointment. At the same time, I think the Irish people, when they come to consider the whole matter, will be of opinion that the British Treasury, which they may not have any particular cause to love, has in this matter not at all acted the part of a stepfather. The hon. Member for Louth (Mr. T. M. Healy) made a reference to the Budget. It has not yet become law, and no more has my Bill. It may be that fresh taxation to some unknown amount will be imposed upon the Irish people in respect of their whisky and tobacco. It is for them to say whether or not they think they ought not to be called upon to pay any proportion of the expenses in connection with old age pensions and other matters. But really I cannot now go into the whole question of the account between Ireland and England, All I say is it varies from day to day. It does not stand now as it stood at the time of the Financial Relations Commissions.

Mr. T. M. HEALY

It is worse.

Mr. BIRRELL

I am always perfectly ready to go into the matter at any moment and strike a balance as your representative, fully recognising that, whatever it is, full justice should be done to Ireland and the Irish people to the last penny on that account; but, having regard to the variations from time to time, having regard to new sums which she has received since the date of the Commission, that come entirely from the Imperial Exchequer, all I can say is, on this aspect of the case, as it at present stands, that I should be very well pleased if I could have got better terms for Irish land purchase than I have been able to do, but I cannot in common honesty do otherwise than say that in my opinion the proposals embodied in this clause are just and fair, and I cannot accept the Amendment.

Mr. WALTER LONG

It is impossible for anybody on this side of the House, or for any Irishman, or any hon. Member below the Gangway to discuss the very wide-reaching reply of the Chief Secretary when we have only got five minutes left. But I want to say one word as to how strongly I resent the action of the Government in curtailing Debate on this part of the Bill, which is the essence of the measure, and in regard to which we have never yet had until this moment a full development and explanation of the policy of the Government. I listened to the Chief Secretary, I confess, with amazement when he told us in the course of his speech that he had travelled over Ireland and realised the enormous advantage that had come to Ireland from land purchase. Having told us that, he went on to say that in his judgment people in Ireland ought to make further sacrifices if they are to obtain the benefits of further land purchase. That is not the question. The Chief Secretary does not realise that no man can go further than is possible for him to do, and the Chief Secretary is not born and the Government is not created which can make a land purchase system in Ireland successful if they tear up, as by the Chief Secretary's own admission they are doing today, the agreement arrived at in 1903. The Chief Secretary in his speech has not dealt with the main questions brought forward by my right hon. Friend; nor has he attempted to deal with the unanimous opinion of all parties and creeds in Ireland that if you tear up the agreement which was arrived at, not simply in the Act, but of which the Act was the result, you will be face to face with the fact that you have arrested land purchase in Ireland. There is not time to say more than a word or two, and I protest with all the force which I can legitimately employ against the policy of the Government in making this proposal under a procedure and regulations which render it impossible to adequately debate the arguments and conclusions which have been advanced.

Captain P. A. CLIVE

One phrase was used by the Chief Secretary as to not stereotyping the price of Land Stock at the present time. But that is just what he is doing by this clause. He is assuming that the price of Land Stock in future will never be able to rise to better terms than exist now. I have some sympathy with the British taxpayer. That sympathy has found expression among hon. Members on this side of the House, and I should have liked, if it had not been for the guillotine, to have moved an Amendment which stands lower on the Paper in my name, among other Amendments of hon. Friends of mine. The result of passing them would have been that the price would have been

variable according to the state of the market, and that better terms might have been obtained, while the British taxpayers would have been able to protect themselves if the money market went against them. But, as this clause stands, it certainly lays down that the tenant is always to have worse terms than he has hitherto had. The right hon. Gentleman admitted that for six or seven years there would be no opportunity of further sales under this Bill. Why, then, does he endeavour to lay down now a price which constitutes a rate at which he can raise the money now, but which may not be suitable for some years hence?

Mr. CHARLES CRAIG

In the half minute which remains I simply desire to refer to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that he hoped to show that sales would go on in spite of all the prognostications of hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House.

And, it being Five of the clock, the Chairman proceeded, in pursuance of the Order of the House of 15th June, to put forthwith the Question on the Amendment already proposed from the Chair, "That the words of section (l) to the word 'agreements' stand part of the clause."

The Committee divided: Ayes, 184; Noes, 149.

Division No. 261.]	AYES.	[5.0 p.m.
Acland, Francis Dyke	Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.)	Haworth, Arthur A.
Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.	Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead)	Hazel, Dr. A. E. W.
Ainsworth, John Stirling	Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Cross, Alexander	Henry, Charles S.
Ashton, Thomas Gair	Dalziel, Sir James Henry	Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon. S.)
Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry	Davies, David (Montgomery Co.)	Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)
Astbury, John Meir	Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	Higham, John Sharp
Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury, E.)	Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)	Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.
Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Dewar, Sir J. A. (Inverness-shire)	Hodge, John
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N.)	Holland, Sir William Henry
Barker, Sir John	Duncan, J. Hastings (York, Otley)	Horridge, Thomas Gardner
Barlow, Percy (Bedford)	Elibank, Master of	Howard, Hon. Geoffrey
Barnard, E. B.	Essex, R. W.	Hudson, Walter
Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)	Evans, Sir Samuel T.	Hyde, Clarendon G.
Beale, W. P.	Everett, R. Lacey	Idris, T. H. W.
Berridge, T. H. D.	Falconer, James	Illingworth, Percy H.
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)	Furness, Sir Christopher	Isaacs, Rufus Daniel
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Gibb, James (Harrow)	Jardine, Sir J.
Boulton, A. C. F.	Gill, A. H.	Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)
Brigg, John	Gladstone, Rt. Hon. Herbert John	Jowett, F. W.
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Glen-Coats, Sir T. (Renfrew, W.)	Kekewich, Sir George
Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Glendinning, R. G.	King, Alfred John (Knutsford)
Brunner, Rt. Hon. Sir J. T. (Cheshire)	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Laidlaw, Robert
Bryce, J. Annan	Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	Lamont, Norman
Buckmaster, Stanley O.	Grant, Corrie	Layland-Barrett, Sir Francis
Burns, Rt. Hon. John	Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward	Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich)
Byles, William Pollard	Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)	Lewis, John Herbert
Cameron, Robert	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)	Lyell, Charles Henry
Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.	Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r)	Lynch, H. B.
Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.	Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-shire)	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)
Cleland, J. W.	Hart-Davies, T.	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)
Clough, William	Harwood, George	Mackarness, Frederic C.
Collins, Stephen. (Lambeth)	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.
M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro')	Sutherland, J. E.
M'Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester)	Rees, J. D.	Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)
Mallet, Charles E.	Richards, T. F. (Wolverhampton, W.)	Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)
Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)	Thomasson, Franklin
Massie, J.	Robson, Sir William Snowdon	Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.)
Masterman, C. F. G.	Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)	Tomkinson, James
Menzies, Sir Walter	Rogers, F. E. Newman	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Micklem, Nathaniel	Russell, Rt. Hon. T. W.	Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander
Moiteno, Percy Alport	Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)	Verney, F. W.
Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)	Scarisbrick, Sir T. T. L.	Walters, John Tudor
Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)	Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)	Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)
Morrell, Philip	Scott, A. H. (Ashton-under-Lyne)	Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.
Morse, L. L.	Sears, J. E.	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	Seaverns, J. H.	Waterlow, D. S.
Murray, Capt. Hon. A. C. (Kincard.)	Seddon, J.	Watt, Henry A.
Napier, T. B.	Seely, Colonel	Wedgwood, Josiah C.
Norman, Sir Henry	Shackleton, David James	White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)
Nuttall, Harry	Simon, John Allsebrook	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)
O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie	Wiles, Thomas
Pearson, Sir W. D. (Colchester)	Snowden, P.	Wills, Arthur Walters
Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)	Soares, Ernest J.	Wilson, Henry J. (York, W.R.)
Philipps, Col. Ivor (Southampton)	Spicer, Sir Albert	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)	Stanger, H. Y.	Wood, T. M'Kinnon
Pointer, J.	Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire)	Yoxall, Sir James Henry
Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	Steadman, W. C.
Pullar, Sir Robert	Stewart, Halley (Greenock)
Radford, G. H.	Strachey, Sir Edward	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Captain Norton.
Raphael, Herbert H.	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)
Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (Gloucester)	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)
NOES.
Abraham, W. (Cork, N.E.)	Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)	Murnaghan, George
Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. F.	Gilhooly, James	Murphy, John (Kerry, East)
Ambrose, Robert	Ginnell, L.	Murphy, N. J. (Kilkenny, S.)
Anson, Sir William Reynell	Gordon, J.	Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)
Anstruther-Gray, Major	Gretton, John	Nolan, Joseph
Ashley, W. W.	Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)	O'Brien, K. (Tipperary, Mid)
Balcarres, Lord	Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B. S. Edmunds)	O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.)
Baldwin, Stanley	Gwynn, Stephen Lucius	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)
Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (City, Lond.)	Halpin, J.	O'Connor, T. p. (Liverpool)
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Hamilton, Marquess of	Oddy, John James
Banner, John S. Harmood-	Hay, Hon. Claude George	O'Doherty, Philip
Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.)	Hayden, John Patrick	O'Donnell, T. (Kerry, W.)
Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks	Hazleton, Richard	O'Dowd, John
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Healy, Maurice (Cork)	O'Grady, J.
Belloc, Hilaire Joseph Peter R.	Healy, Timothy Michael	O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)
Bignold, Sir Arthur	Heaton, John Henniker	O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.)
Boland, John	Helmsley, Viscount	O'Malley, William
Bowerman, C. W.	Hill, Sir Clement	O'Shaughnessy, P. J.
Butcher, Samuel Henry	Hills, J. W.	O'Shee, James John
Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M.	Hogan, Michael	Parkes, Ebenezer
Carlile, E. Hildred	Joyce, Michael	Percy, Earl
Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward H.	Kavanagh, Walter M.	Philips, John (Longford, S.)
Castlereagh, Viscount	Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.	Power, Patrick Joseph
Cave, George	Kennedy, Vincent Paul	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Kerry, Earl of	Reddy, M.
Clancy, John Joseph	Kettle, Thomas Michael	Redmond, John E. (Waterford)
Clive, Percy Archer	Kimber, Sir Henry	Redmond, William (Clare)
Clynes, J. R.	King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)	Renton, Leslie
Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.	Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.	Roche, Augustine (Cork)
Condon, Thomas Joseph	Lane-Fox, G R.	Sheehan, Daniel Daniel
Cooper, G. J.	Lardner, James Carrige Rushe	Sheehy, David
Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)	Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.)	Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.
Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)	Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)
Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)	Long, Rt. Hon. Walter (Dublin, S.)	Stanier, Beville
Craik, Sir Henry	Lonsdale, John Brownlee	Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)
Crean, Eugene	Lowe, Sir Francis William	Talbot, Rt. Hon. J. G. (Oxford Univ.)
Dalrymple, Viscount	Lundon, T.	Thorne, William (West Ham)
Delany, William	Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred	Thornton, Percy M.
Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott-	MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh	Valentia, Viscount
Dillon, John	MacNeill, John Gordon Swift	Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)
Doughty, Sir George	MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.)	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	MacVeigh, Charles (Donegal, E.)	Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.)
Du Cros, Arthur	M'Kean, John	Willoughby de Eresby, Lord
Esmonde, Sir Thomas	Meagher, Michael	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.)
Faber, George Denison (York)	Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)	Wolff, Gustav Withelm
Fell, Arthur	Meehan, Patrick A. (Queen's Co.)	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Field, William	Meysey-Thompson, E. C.	Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George
Flavin, Michael Joseph	Mildmay, Francis Bingham
Flynn, James Christopher	Mooney, J. J.	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. P. O'Brien and Mr. Haviland Burke.
Forster, Henry William	Morpeth, Viscount
Gardner, Ernest	Morrison-Bell, Captain

The CHAIRMAN

then proceeded successively to put forthwith the Question on an Amendment moved by the Government, of which notice had been given, and the Question necessary to dispose of Clause 1.

Mr BIRRELL moved: After "thirty-six"["under section thirty-six of the Act

of 1903"] to insert the words "and by the Congested Districts Board to the Land Commission under section seventy-two."

Question put, "That this Amendment be made."

The Committee divided: Ayes, 177; Noes, 143.

Division No. 262.]	AYES.	[5.12 p.m.
Acland, Francis Dyke	Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-sh.)	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.
Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.	Hart-Davies, T.	Pullar, Sir Robert
Ainsworth, John Stirling	Harwood, George	Radford, G. H.
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Raphael, Herbert H.
Ashton, Thomas Gair	Haworth, Arthur A.	Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (Gloucester)
Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry	Hazel, Dr. A. E. W.	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)
Astbury, John Meir	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Rees, J. D.
Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury, E.)	Henry, Charles S.	Richards, T. F. (Wolverhampton, W.)
Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon. S.)	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)	Robson, Sir William Snowdon
Barker, Sir John	Higham, John Sharp	Rogers, F. E. Newman
Barlow, Percy (Bedford)	Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.	Russell, Rt. Hon. T. W.
Barnard, E. B.	Hodge, John	Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)
Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)	Holland, Sir William Henry	Scarisbrick, Sir T. T. L.
Berridge, T. H. D.	Horridge, Thomas Gardner	Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)	Howard Hon. Geoffrey	Scott, A. H. (Ashton-under-Lyne)
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Hudson, Walter	Sears, J. E.
Boulton, A. C. F.	Hyde, Clarendon G.	Seaverns, J. H.
Bowerman, C. W	Idris, T. H. W.	Seddon, J.
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Illingworth, Percy H.	Seely, Colonel
Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Isaacs, Rufus Daniel	Shackleton, David James
Bryce, J. Annan	Jardine, Sir J.	Simon, John Allsebrook
Burns, Rt. Hon. John	Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie
Byles, William Pollard	Kekewich, Sir George	Snowden, P.
Cameron, Robert	King, Alfred John (Knutsford)	Soares, Ernest J
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Laidlaw, Robert	Spicer, Sir Albert
Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.	Lamont, Norman	Stanger, H. Y.
Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.	Layland-Barrett, Sir Francis	Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire)
Cleland, J. W.	Lewis, John Herbert	Steadman, W. C.
Clough, William	Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David	Stewart, Halley (Greenock)
Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Lyell, Charles Henry	Strachey, Sir Edward
Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.)	Lynch, H. B.	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)
Cooper, G. J.	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)
Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead)	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)	Sutherland, J. E.
Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Mackarness, Frederic C.	Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)
Cross, Alexander	Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.	Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)
Dalziel, Sir James Henry	McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald	Thomasson, Franklin
Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	M'Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester)	Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.)
Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)	Mallet, Charles E.	Tomkinson, James
Dewar, Sir J. A. (Invernecs-sh.)	Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N.)	Massie, J.	Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander
Duncan, J. Hastings (York, Otley)	Masterman, C. F. G.	Verney, F. W.
Elibank, Master of	Menzies, Sir Walter	Walters, John Tudor
Essex, R. W.	Micklem, Nathaniel	Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)
Evans, Sir S. T.	Molteno, Percy Alport	Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.
Everett, R. Lacey	Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Falconer, J.	Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)	Waterlow, D. S.
Furness, Sir Christopher	Worrell, Philip	Watt, Henry A.
Gibb, James (Harrow)	Morse, L. L.	Wedgwood, Josiah C.
Gill, A. H.	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)
Gladstone, Rt. Hon. Herbert John	Murray, Capt. Hon. A. C. (Kincard.)	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)
Glen-Coats, Sir T. (Renfrew, W.)	Napier, T. B.	Wiles, Thomas
Glendinning, R. G.	Norman, Sir Henry	Wills, Arthur Walters
Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	Nuttall, Harry	Wilson, Henry J. (York, W.R.)
Grant, Corrie	O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward	Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)	Wood, T. M'Kinnon
Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)	Pearson, Sir W. D. (Colchester)	Yoxall, Sir James Henry
Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	Philipps, Col. Ivor (Southampton)
Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)	Phillips, Owen C. (Pembroke)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Captain Norton.
Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worcester)	Pointer, J.
NOES.
Abraham, W. (Cork, N.E.)	Balcarres, Lord	Beckett, Hon. Gervase
Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. F.	Baldwin, Stanley	Belloc, Hilaire Joseph Peter R.
Ambrose, Robert	Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (City, Lond.)	Bignold, Sir Arthur
Anson, Sir William Reynell	Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Boland, John
Anstruther-Gray, Major	Banner, John S. Harmood-	Burke, E. Haviland-
Ashley, W. W.	Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks	Butcher, Samuel Henry
Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M.	Healy, Maurice (Cork)	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)
Carlile, E. Hildred	Healy, Timothy Michael	O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)
Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward H.	Helmsley, Viscount	Oddy, John James
Castlereagh, Viscount	Hill, Sir Clement	O'Doherty, Philip
Cave, George	Hogan, Michael	O'Donnell, T. (Kerry, W.)
Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Joyce, Michael	O'Dowd, John
Clancy, John Joseph	Kavanagh, Walter M.	O'Grady, J.
Clive, Percy Archer	Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.	O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)
Clynes, J. R.	Kennedy, Vincent Paul	O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.)
Cochrane, Hon. Thomas H. A. E.	Kerry, Earl of	O'Malley, William
Condon, Thomas Joseph	Kettle, Thomas Michael	O'Shaughnessy, P. J.
Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)	Kimber, Sir Henry	O'Shee, James John
Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)	King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)	Parkes, Ebenezer
Craik, Sir Henry	Lambton, Hon. Frederick William	Percy, Earl
Crean, Eugene	Lane-Fox, G. R.	Philips, John (Longford, S.)
Dalrymple, Viscount	Lardner, James Carrige Rushe	Power, Patrick Joseph
Delany, William	Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.)	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott-	Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)	Reddy, M.
Dillon, John	Long, Rt. Hon. Walter (Dublin, S.)	Redmond, John E. (Waterford)
Doughty, Sir George	Lonsdale, John Brownlee	Redmond, William (Clare)
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	Lowe, Sir Francis William	Renton, Leslie
Du Cros, Arthur	Lundon, T.	Roche, Augustine (Cork)
Esmonde, Sir Thomas	MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh	Sheenan, Daniel Daniel
Faber, George Denison (York)	MacNeill. John Gordon Swift	Sheehy, David
Fell, Arthur	MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.)	Sheffield, sir Berkeley George D.
Field, William	MacVeigh, Charles (Donegal, E.)	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)
Flavin, Michael Joseph	M'Kean, John	Stanier, Beville
Flynn, James Christopher	Meagher, Michael	Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)
Forster, Henry William	Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)	Talbot, Rt. Hon. J. G. (Oxford Univ.)
Gardner, Ernest	Meehan, Patrick A. (Queen's Co.)	Thorne, William (West Ham)
Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)	Meysey-Thompson, E. C.	Thornton, Percy M.
Gilhooly, James	Mildmay, Francis Bingham	Valentia, Viscount
Ginnell, L.	Mooney, J. J.	Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)
Gordon, J.	Morpeth, Viscount	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Gretton, John	Morrison-Bell, Captain	Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.)
Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)	Murnaghan, George	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.)
Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B'y St. Edm'ds)	Murphy, John (Kerry, E.)	Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm
Gwynn, Stephen Lucius	Murphy, N. J. (Kilkenny, S.)	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart.
Halpin, J.	Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)	Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George
Hamilton, Marquess of	Nolan, Joseph
Hay, Hon. Claude George	O'Brien, K. (Tipperary, Mid)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Captain
Hayden, John Patrick	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)	Craig and Mr. Hugh Barrie.
Hazleton, Richard	O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.)

Question put, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill."

The Committee divided: Ayes, 172; Noes, 140.

Division Mo. 263.]	AYES.	[5.19 p.m.
Acland, Francis Dyke	Cooper, G. J.	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)
Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.	Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead)	Henry, Charles S.
Ainsworth, John Stirling	Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon. S.)
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Cross, Alexander	Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)
Ashton, Thomas Gair	Dalziel, Sir James Henry	Higham, John Sharp
Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry	Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.
Astbury, John Meir	Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)	Hodge, John
Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury, E.)	Dewar, Sir J. A. (Inverness-sh.)	Holland, Sir William Henry
Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N.)	Horridge, Thomas Gardner
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Duncan, J. Hastings (York, Otley)	Hudson, Walter
Barker, Sir John	Elibank, Master of	Hyde, Clarendon G.
Barlow, Percy (Bedford)	Essex, R. W.	Idris, T. H. W.
Barnard, E. B.	Evans, Sir S. T.	Illingworth, Percy H.
Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)	Everett, R. Lacey	Isaacs, Rufus Daniel
Berridge, T. H. D.	Falconer, J.	Jardine, Sir J.
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)	Furness, Sir Christopher	Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Gibb, James (Harrow)	Kekewich, Sir George
Boulton, A. C. F.	Glen-Coats, Sir T. (Renfrew, W.)	King, Alfred John (Knutsford)
Bowerman, C. W.	Glendinning, R. G.	Laidlaw, Robert
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	Lamont, Norman
Brunner, J. F L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Grant, Corrie	Layland-Barrett, Sir Francis
Bryce, J. Annan	Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward	Lewis, John Herbert
Burns, Rt. Hon. John	Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)	Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David
Byles, William Pollard	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	Lyell, Charles Henry
Cameron, Robert	Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)	Lynch, H. B.
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worcester)	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)
Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.	Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-sh.)	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)
Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.	Hart-Davies, T.	Mackarness, Frederic C.
Cleland, J. W.	Harwood, George	Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.
Clough, William	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald
Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Haworth, Arthur A.	M'Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester)
Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.)	Hazel, Dr. A. E. W.	Mallet, Charles E.
Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)	Rees, J. D.	Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)
Massie, J.	Richards, T. F. (Wolverhampton, W.)	Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)
Masterman, C. F G.	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)	Thomasson, Franklin
Menzies, Sir Waiter	Robson, Sir William Snowdon	Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.)
Micklem, Nathaniel	Rogers, F. E. Newman	Tomkinson, James
Molteno, Percy Alport	Russell, Rt. Hon. T. W.	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)	Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)	Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander
Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)	Scarisbrick, Sir T. T. L.	Verney, F. W.
Worrell, Philip	Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)	Walters, John Tudor
Morse, L. L.	Scott, A. H. (Ashton-under-Lyne)	Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)
Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	Sears, J. E.	Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.
Murray, Capt. Hon. A. C. (Kincard.)	Seaverns, J. H.	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Napier, T. B.	Seddon, J.	Waterlow, D. S.
Norman, Sir Henry	Seely, Colonel	Watt, Henry A.
Nuttall, Harry	Simon, John Allsebrook	Wedgwood, Josiah C.
O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie	White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)
Pearson, Sir W. D. (Colchester)	Snowden, P.	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)
Pearson-. W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)	Soares, Ernest J.	Wiles, Thomas
Philipps, Col. Ivor (Southampton)	Spicer, Sir Albert	Wills, Arthur Walters
Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)	Stanger, H. Y.	Wilson, Henry J. (York, W.R.)
Pointer, J.	Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire)	Wood, T. M'Kinnon
Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	Steadman, W. C	Yoxall, Sir James Henry
Pullar, Sir Robert	Stewart, Halley (Greenock)
Radford, G. H.	Strachey, Sir Edward
Raphael, Herbert H.	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Captain Norton.
Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (Gloucester)	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)
Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)	Sutherland, J. E.
NOES.
Abraham, W. (Cork, N.E.)	Ginnell, L.	Murphy, N. J. (Kilkenny, S.)
Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. F.	Gordon, J.	Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)
Ambrose, Robert	Gretton, John	Nolan, Joseph
Anson, Sir William Reynell	Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)	O'Brien, K. (Tipperary, Mid)
Anstruther-Gray, Major	Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B'y St. Edm'ds)	O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.)
Ashley, W. W.	Gwynn, Stephen Lucius	O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)
Balcarres, Lord	Halpin, J.	O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)
Baldwin, Stanley	Hamilton, Marquess of	Oddy, John James
Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (City, Lond.)	Hay, Hon. Claude George	O'Doherty, Philip
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Hayden, John Patrick	O'Donnell, T. (Kerry, W.)
Banner, John S. Harmood-	Hazleton, Richard	O'Dowd, John
Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.)	Healy, Maurice (Cork)	O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)
Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks	Healy, Timothy Michael	O'Grady, J.
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Helmsley, Viscount	O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.)
Bignold, Sir Arthur	Hill, sir Clement	O'Malley, William
Boland, John	Hogan, Michael	O'Shaughnessy, P. J.
Butcher, Samuel Henry	Joyce, Michael	O'Shee, James John
Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M.	Kavanagh, Walter M.	Parkes, Ebenezer
Carlile, E. Hildred	Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.	Percy, Earl
Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward H.	Kennedy, Vincent Paul	Philips, John (Longford, S.)
Castlereagh, viscount	Kerry, Earl of	Power, Patrick Joseph
Cave, George	Kettle, Thomas Michael	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Kimber, Sir Henry	Reddy, M.
Clancy, John Joseph	King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)	Redmond, John E. (Waterford)
Clive, Percy Archer	Lambton, Hon. Frederick William	Redmond, William (Clare)
Cochrane, Hon. Thomas, H. A. E.	Lane-Fox, G. P.	Renton, Leslie
Condon, Thomas Joseph	Lardner, James Carrige Rushe	Roche, Augustine (Cork)
Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)	Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.)	Sheehan, Daniel Daniel
Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)	Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)	Sheehy, David
Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)	Long, Rt. Hon. Walter (Dublin, S.)	Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.
Craik, Sir Henry	Lonsdale, John Brownlee	Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)
Crean, Eugene	Lowe, Sir Francis William	Stanier, Beville
Dalrymple, Viscount	Lundon, T.	Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)
Delany, William	MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh	Talbot, Rt. Hon. J. G. (Oxford Univ.)
Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott-	MacNeill, John Gordon Swift	Thorne, William (West Ham)
Dillon, John	MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.)	Thornton, Percy M.
Doughty, Sir George	MacVeigh, Charles (Donegal, E.)	Valentia, Viscount
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	M'Kean, John	Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)
Du Cros, Arthur	Meagher, Michael	White, Patrick (Meath, North)
Esmonde, Sir Thomas	Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)	Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.)
Faber, George Denison (York)	Meehan, Patrick A. (Queen's Co.)	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.)
Fell, Arthur	Meysey-Thompson, E. C.	Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm
Field, William	Mildmay, Francis Bingham	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Flavin, Michael Joseph	Mooney, J. J.	Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George
Flynn, James Christopher	Morpeth, Viscount
Forster, Henry William	Morrison-Bell, Captain	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Patrick O'Brien and Mr. Haviland-Burke.
Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)	Murnaghan, George
Gilhooly, James	Murphy, John (Kerry, East)

Question put forthwith, in pursuance of the Order of the House of the 15th June, and agreed to.

Whereupon the Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again on Monday next.