§ Order of the Day for the Second Beading read.
§ LORD CARLINGFORD (LORD PRIVY SEAL), in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said: My Lords, this is the second time within a few days that it has been my duty to ask your Lordships' indulgence while I explain to you the provisions of a measure of great importance relating to the condition of affairs in Ireland. That fact is not surprising. No one, I think, who rightly estimates the tremendous problem with which we have to deal in Ireland, and the gravity of the crisis through which that country is passing at the present time, can be surprised that Parliament should have been compelled to devote so large an amount of its time, its labour, and its thought to these matters, or at the variety of measures which the Government and Parliament have been compelled to adopt. There is a great contrast, in some respects, between the measure which your Lordships passed the other day and the present, while it resembles it in others. That was a measure for the severe repression of crime; this is a measure, the object of which is to remove or diminish the causes of crime. Its object is to improve as far as possible, in one important respect, at all events, the miserable, impecunious, discontented, and hopeless situation of a very large number of Irish tenants, and, at the same time, to relieve a large number of Irish landlords, not only from heavy pecuniary losses, but from the hard and painful necessity of resorting to the extreme measures of the law in enforcing their legal rights by means of the eviction of tenants. But, notwithstanding these great differences between the two Bills, there is, at all events, one striking likeness, and that is this—both Bills are measures which, under ordinary circumstances, in a healthy condition of the country to which they are applied, would be indefensible; but both are Bills which, in the present emergency, and in the diseased and dangerous condition of the country, become both a necessity and a duty for Parlia- 1911 ment to adopt. Who would think of interfering, under any ordinary circumstances, with the relation of debtor and creditor in this country? Who would think, under any ordinary circumstances, of interposing, by the power and funds of the State, for the purpose of effecting a settlement of debt between two great classes? Yes, my Lords; but who would think of giving to the Executive and to the police the enormous powers which we gave them the other day? and what would justify the House in suspending the practice of trial by jury, except some over-mastering necessity? This Bill may be described as a measure for the compulsory composition of the arrears of rent in Ireland upon the smaller holdings in the country under certain rigid conditions which I will describe. The holdings must be under £30 valuation, and the Bill may be put into operation by either landlord or tenant. The Bill lays down certain preliminary conditions, which will have to be proved to the satisfaction of the Land Commission in Ireland, assisted by a number of properly qualified persons whom they are enabled to employ. The preliminary conditions are these—the tenant must pay the year's rent of 1881; he must pay that rent as a first condition before the 30th of November next. It must then be shown that the tenant owes antecedent arrears and cannot pay them; and upon these conditions being ascertained and fulfilled, the State comes in to the amount of half these antecedent arrears not exceeding one year's rent. So that, as frequently will be the case, when the tenant owes three years, the State will supply him with one of these years' rent; and thus the landlord will obtain, in such a case, two years of his arrears of rent out of three. This House not being peculiarly the guardian of the Public Treasury, I presume that I need not dwell on the financial part of the case; but it is well known that it is provided in the Bill that the necessary funds shall, in the first instance, be supplied out of the Irish Church Fund, to be supplemented, in case of need, by the Consolidated Fund of this country. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, after making use of every possible means of inquiry and investigation, has come to the opinion that it is very unlikely that any heavy demand will be made on 1912 the Consolidated Fund, and it is very possible that no demand at all upon it will accrue; but, for the purposes of the Bill, it is absolutely necessary that there should be no doubt whatever of the offer made to the landlords and tenants of Ireland being carried into effect; and, therefore, it is absolutely necessary that the resources of the Church Fund should be supplemented by the Consolidated Fund. It will be evident to your Lordships, from what I have said, that the plan of the Bill rests on the principles of compulsion, of a gift of public money, and of the inability of the tenant to pay the full amount of his arrears. We do not hide from ourselves, and I certainly shall not hide from your Lordships, the objections which naturally attach to a scheme of this kind. That those objections are easily overrated, and that they have been overrated, I feel sure; but that they do exist, the Government has not only always admitted, but has asserted. But we say that the necessity of the case, the stringency of the circumstances under which we act, the prospect of success, which is everything, in attaining the object which this measure has in view, the necessary vigour and efficacy which, as we believe, will certainly be attained by the scheme of this Bill, far outweigh the disadvantages, drawbacks, and risks on the other side. It is said that this compulsory settlement is, in itself, unfair to the Irish landlords; that the method of gift is unfair to those Irish tenants who have paid their arrears; that it is both discouraging and demoralizing; and, also, that the inquiry into the tenant's inability to pay will prove a fictitious and illusory inquiry. ["Hear, hear!"] I am glad to hear those cheers, as I presume that by them noble Lords recognize the fairness of my statement of the objections taken to the measure. I do not deny the existence of those objections, though I think they are exaggerated; but I ask 3'our Lordships to fix your eyes, not merely on these attendant evils, but on the circumstances of the case with which we have to deal. We are, I think, apt to forget, or, at least, to underrate, the agricultural distress which prevailed in Ireland a short time ago. Many things have happened since then, and many persons appear almost to have forgotten its existence. But those bad seasons, coming on a 1913 very poor peasant tenantry, under what I must think was a very bad system of Land Law, did produce an amount of distress and misery which is the real and main cause—I do not say the sole and exclusive cause—of the arrears of rent with which we are now trying to deal. I shall not, I think, find the reality of that distress denied in this House, and certainly not on the Benches opposite; because it was recognized to the fullest extent by the late Government, who had recourse to the most exceptional measures—an advance of public money, so-called loans, at no interest or nominal interest, for the relief of that distress, and the provision of employment on a very large scale. And these measures were happily assisted by great efforts of private benevolence. If it had not been for those efforts, public and private, there can be no doubt that great disasters would have followed. You would have had, not only misery, but starvation in that country. But can it be supposed that the effects of such years as those on the poor, small peasant farmers of Ireland, and especially of the South and West, can now be extinguished? On the contrary, the small holders of Ireland have never, till this moment, recovered from the effects of that distress. It stopped to a great degree the payment of rent, and induced, mainly, the accumulation of the arrears with which we have now to deal. One result of that state of things has been that the landlords have been driven to the assertion of their rights, and, naturally, evictions have very greatly increased. They have steadily increased since 1877 or 1878; the increase has been going on in the present year at an alarming rate, and the fact is that the evictions to which the Irish landlords have had recourse during the first six months of the present year are more numerous than all the evictions which took place in the five years between 1873 and 1878. And these evictions are continuing, and undoubtedly will continue to increase in a most alarming ratio, unless some such effort as is attempted by this Bill is made. Unless we make some such effort to diminish, at all events, the causes of these evictions, to put the embarrassed small tenantry of Ireland in something like a solvent condition, there can be no settlement between landlord and tenant in numerous instances 1914 either in the Land Court or out of it. It is evident, as things stand at present, that a very large number of embarrassed tenants are now prevented from availing themselves of the advantages of the Land Act of last Session, and of the Laud Court that was then created. It cannot, I am sure, be the wish of any noble Lord, however much he may have opposed the Land Act of last year, that a large class of Irish tenants should find themselves, in a great majority of cases by their misfortune, excluded from the doors of that Court; and I leave your Lordships to imagine what contentment and peace and good relations between landlord and tenant can exist, as long as you have a large class of tenants in that situation. I believe it is necessary to make a strong effort to save both parties from this deadlock which will otherwise ensue, and to give the tenants a fair start again in the cultivation of their holdings and the payment of their rent. This may naturally be represented as a boon to the tenant; but it is absolutely impossible to separate the interest of the tenant from that of the landlord in this matter, or, indeed, from that of all classes in Ireland. We propose this measure in the interest not of the tenants only, but in the interest of the landlords also, and in the interests of the peace and tranquillity of Ireland generally. It may be supposed that certain Gentlemen in the other House who, some months ago, brought in a Bill that contained some of the principles of this measure, were not specially desirous to promote the interests of the landlord; but they could not promote the interests of the tenants in this respect without also benefiting the landlords. We have come to the conclusion that the plan of this Bill is the only one that will enable us to deal effectively and certainly with the great evil that we have to encounter; and that nothing but a compulsory settlement, under the sanction of the State, by the power of the State, and with the assistance of the money of the State, would enable us to feel any certainty that the remedy will really reach the object in view. If it were to depend on the chances of private agreement, it would be most uncertain, and would most probably fail in its effect. If then, the measure is to be one of compulsory settlement, we hold that it must be one of gift on the part 1915 of the State, under the limitations and conditions of the Bill. I need hardly remind your Lordships that Parliament, and, above all, the present Government, have been committed to the necessity of dealing with this question of Irish arrears by the Act of last year; he-cause we proposed, and Parliament adopted, a clause in that Act dealing with the subject, a clause most important in its principle, although it has proved inadequate in its machinery. No doubt, the difficulties of the case were underrated, and that section of the Act has proved inadequate; but from the time when the effect of that section lapsed, in the early part of the Session, the mind of the Government has been directed to this matter of Irish arrears; so has that of the Irish Government; and, above all, my right hon. Friend the late Chief Secretary (Mr. W. E. Forster) had his mind very full of the subject. The same may be said of other Members of the Government, among whom I may mention my lamented friend the late Mr. Burke, who, not long before his death, gave me the benefit of his views as to the necessity of dealing with the question of arrears effectually; and Mr. W. E. Forster also came to the conclusion that no other milder or weaker course than that proposed in the Bill—namely, that of compulsion and gift—could be relied upon for anything like a settlement of the matter in hand. Well, my Lords, this proposed settlement is compulsory, and open to all the obvious objections that may be brought against it when that word is mentioned. But that compulsion will impose very little sacrifice upon landlords in Ireland—certainly, in my opinion, no more than is well worth their bearing for their own interests, considering the great objects this measure has in view. I will now state what the compulsory provisions of this Bill are. In the first place, the tenant must pay one year's rent—the rent for the year 1881. It comes to this—that a landlord with an estate weighed down by arrears will be able to obtain, first of all, the rent of the present year from a tenant who had become entitled to the great relief given him by the operation of the Bill; and, in the next place, two years' arrears. From that it does not appear to me that very hard terms are imposed upon landlords in Ireland. I may point out that a landlord may, 1916 under the Bill, under certain circumstances, obtain a contribution from the State, even in cases where the tenant cannot pay one year's rent. I cannot tell how far that part of the Bill may operate; but I can conceive that in cases where, from various motives, a tenant cannot pay his rent for 1881, the landlord will be inclined, from the consideration of his own interests, and from good feeling towards the tenant, to give him a clear receipt, in which case he would then be entitled to apply to the Laud Commission and obtain the amount of the one year's rent which the State offers under the Bill. Now, my Lords, I come to the question of the tenant's ability or inability to pay, and the means of ascertaining that inability. I hear it very often said that to ascertain that fact will be impossible. I cannot understand those statements. First of all, I will remind your Lordships that the problem will be smaller and less difficult this year than it would have been last year, because a very large number of rents have been paid during the earlier part of this year; and, under legitimate compulsion by the landlords, rents to a large amount have been recovered, and recovered from that class of tenants who had been lawlessly refusing payment. I cannot understand what enormous difficulty there will be in making inquiry into the inability of the tenant to pay his arrears. On the contrary, my belief is, that a properly qualified person, such as a skilled land agent—and that class of persons will, in all probability, be those most often employed—appointed to make such an inquiry, will very soon detect the parties who may falsely assert their inability, and whoso real position would probably be notorious among their neighbours; and it appears to me that an inquiry conducted by an experienced man will, in the majority of cases, be effectual in defeating any attempt to obtain the benefits of the Bill on the part of tenants who are able to pay; moreover, very stringent powers are given to the Commission for the prosecution of these inquiries, and for the infliction of punishment in cases not only of perjury, but of suppressing evidence bearing on the facts to be ascertained. My Lords, as to the original cause of the tenant's present inability to pay, I confess I cannot speak in so confident a tone. I do 1917 not believe it will be possible, as a rule, to ascertain the causes which have led to the present inability of the tenant to pay his rent. There may be causes of various kinds in addition to the ordinary cause of inevitable misfortune; there may be a moral or a political cause, such as sympathy with the doctrines of the Land League; but I confess I think inquiry into the matter would be a hopeless task to undertake. That is one of the drawbacks which we have to encounter; but I do not think it is one of much magnitude. I must again remind your Lordships of one of the conditions under which the tenant is to obtain the benefits of this Bill. Your Lordships will remember that every tenant who wishes to avail himself of it must qualify himself by the payment of the rent of the "no rent" year 1881. That is the first condition that is laid down. The Irish tenant must repudiate the "no rent" principle of the Land League, and pay in full the rent for the year 1881. In the next place, I wish to point out that, whatever may be the success of the inquiry as to the inability of the tenant to pay, at any rate, the Bill bears on its front the condition that the help of the State is only intended for that tenant who is unable to pay the full amount of his arrears. The portion of the Bill dealing with gift and compulsion is intended only for that tenant. I need not trouble your Lordships further with that part of the Bill. I will now refer very shortly to a provision which has been inserted in the Bill since it was first introduced—a provision for payment of arrears by means of a loan. It is provided that in the case of any holding not exceeding £50 valuation, the amount necessary to comply with the conditions of the Bill may be advanced by way of loan on the joint application of the landlord and the tenant. I have no doubt that a considerable number of landlords and tenants will avail themselves of this provision. As to those tenants who have holdings above a valuation of £30 a-year, a loan will be the only mode of relief; but as to a tenant who has a holding under £30, and whose inability is not proved, this provision comes into play as an alternative; and I feel satisfied that it will be the means of setting on his feet many a small, struggling, and embarrassed tenant who has been unable 1918 to satisfy the Commissioners that he cannot pay the full amount of his arrears. Then, my Lords, I come to that part of the Bill dealing with the subject of emigration. I think this part of the measure will be accepted by both sides of the House with a large concurrence of feeling; and I am happy, for my part, to be able to propose it to your Lordships. An Act of some years standing in Ireland—that of 1849—enabled Irish Boards of Guardians to provide for the expenses of emigration either out of the rates, or by way of loans. Those Boards have done a good deal by way of assistance out of the rates; but have done nothing by way of loan, in consequence of the terms being so excessively stringent. The terms are that the loan shall be paid off by seven yearly instalments, and that requirement has made the Act inoperative. The Bill before us, on the contrary, offers loans to any Board of Guardians in Ireland upon terms of a very different nature, terms ranging from 15 years at the lowest to 30 years at the highest, according to the discretion of the Treasury, and such terms as we may fairly hope will often be made use of by the Guardians. In addition to that, we also propose to make a free grant to be applied to a certain number of the most over-peopled and miserable Unions in Ireland for the purpose of emigration. The amount of the grant is limited to £100,000, and it is intended not to meet the whole cost, but a large part of the cost, of emigration from those Unions. I will trouble your Lordships with a few figures showing the extraordinary condition of the district to which this grant is intended to apply. In five Unions in the counties of Mayo and Galway it appears that there are 20,000 holdings, of which 14,000 are under £4 Poor Law valuation; while, of the whole number, only 890 exceed £9 Poor Law valuation. These are the Unions scheduled in the Bill; but any portion of the grant may be applied to other distressed Unions in the West of Ireland. Let us take another test of the condition of these Unions. I find that in these five Unions the valuation per head of the population amounts only to 15s.; while, upon the average for the rest of Ireland, the proportion is as much as £2 12s. 6d. In fact, every test we can apply shows the miserable condition of things which exists in the 1919 West of Ireland; and, if the remedy of emigration is to be applied, it ought to be applied in such districts, and at the present time. It may be said that the amount of the grant is a limited one; but we hold that a great deal can be done with such a grant, taking in the worst cases, and that a very good beginning may be made. We think, also, that it would be extremely unwise to force on emigration in any extravagant manner, which would excite the suspicions of a very suspicious people; and we believe that the worst thing that could happen would be the production of a feeling of that kind. There are many supplementary provisions of the present Bill of considerable importance, provisions by way of supplement, and by way of machinery; but I think it hardly necessary to trouble your Lordships with them at this stage, and I shall be happy to explain them when we go into Committee. I have only, in conclusion, to appeal to your Lordships, as I did when I began, not to fix your eyes exclusively upon the difficulties, the objections, and the risks which, in any bold attempt at a settlement of a most important and difficult matter such as is made by this Bill, are likely to engross your attention. I entreat you not to overrate or exaggerate those objections and those risks—a thing which it is so easy to do. I would ask you not to shut your eyes to the grave crisis and the formidable prospects in Ireland with which we have to deal; but, by adopting this measure, to join with the other House of Parliament in making a strenuous attempt to remove at least one of the great obstacles to the return of peace and tranquillity in that country, and the restoration of good relations between landlord and tenant. The noble Lord concluded by moving the second reading of the Bill.
§ Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a."—(The Lord Privy Seal.)
§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYMy Lords, it is pleasant to me to be able to welcome with hearty approval, at all events, the provisions which were the subject of the closing part of the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal's speech. That part of the Bill which relates to loans, I believe, proceeds upon a sound principle, one by which much good has already been done in Ireland, and which, 1920 if extended further, will confer still greater benefits on that country. Whether the terms of the loans are in every respect those which I should wish, I will not inquire; but I prefer rather to recognize in these provisions, introduced at a somewhat late period into this Bill, an acknowledgment on the part of the Government that the efficacy of the system of loans to distressed classes, and that at the sorest period of their distress, is one whose value has not been exhausted, and one to which the Imperial Parliament may with propriety and profit resort. Still less should I be inclined to cavil at the provisions, of which the noble Lord has spoken, with regard to emigration. He knows that on this side of the House the value of emigration has always been very highly estimated as one of the best palliatives or remedies for the distressed state of things which exists in Ireland. All the evidence that reaches us—and some of us have been in a condition to receive a good deal of evidence during the past Session—all the evidence that reaches us points out that, in many parts of Ireland, the problem caused by the poverty of the people is not one that can be solved by any legislation adverse to the landlords, however generous it may be in the view of the Liberal Party, and however prejudiced and unjust it may be in the view of the Conservatives. Even if you were to go so far—which I suppose is not yet contemplated—as to take all the property of the landlord, and give it to the tenant, it is evident from the evidence that reaches us on every side that, where the population is so vastly in excess of the resources of the country, you would scarcely produce any appreciable difference, any interval of mitigation in the misery of the people. No doubt, if emigration is to be carried on with anything like success, it must be—to use the language of the Government—on the principle of gift. It is of no use to ask the poor parishes to increase their poverty in the future, by pledging their resources for the purposes of getting rid of their surplus population. Nothing but assistance from without, nothing but assistance from the Exchequer of the community, can be efficient or effectual for the purpose. The evil to be met is two-fold. In the first place, the soil on which these people have gathered is not fertile enough to support the mouths that have grown up upon it. In the 1921 second place, owing to disturbances, owing to numberless historical causes, the increase of persons has exceeded in its pace, exceeded very far, the growth of capital by which those persons can be employed; and it is only by removing the congestion of population from those particular parts of the country that the equilibrium can be in some degree restored between capital and population. I, therefore, welcome this as an acknowledgment of a sound principle, however short the step may be on the part of Her Majesty's Government; and for that, if for no other reason, I should hesitate to move the rejection of the Bill on the second reading. Indeed, the principle appears so very valuable that, if the Bill can possibly be amended, I should earnestly wish to see it recorded in the Statute Book. But passing, my Lords, from these beneficent after-thoughts, which were introduced into the Bill at a late period, let us comeback to the original skeleton of the Bill, the true product of the Kilmainham Treaty. Now, my Lords, the proposal of the Bill is to make a very-large advance of money to the tenant. The noble Lord who has just sat down (Lord Carlingford) has told us that, in advancing money to the tenant, we must be equally doing so to the landlords, for it is impossible to separate the interests of the landlord and tenant. My Lords, I think it will be one of the greatest glories of this Administration in the eyes of posterity that they have contrived to make the interests of landlord and tenant absolutely antagonistic to each other. The sources from which it is proposed to make the advances to the tenants are three. In the first place, there is be a large draft upon the Irish Church revenues; in the second place, there is to be a draft of an uncertain amount upon the Consolidated Fund—that is to say, upon the English taxpayer; and, thirdly, there is also a draft of an uncertain amount upon the unhappy Irish landlord, who has been so frequently the subject of similar operations during the last few years. Now, as to the application of the Irish Church Fund. I will not say absolutely that I assent; but I recognize that in any mere dealing with that Fund, there would not be of itself matter to induce your Lordships to interfere very decidedly with the proposals of the Government. It is a purely exceptional Fund; it has arisen in a not 1922 very creditable manner. It was originally assigned by Parliament for the relief of undoubted cases of distress; and anything that is done with this Fund, whether it is given to this man or to that man, or whether it is applied to this purpose or to that purpose, it cannot create a precedent or establish a principle, for it is, for obvious reasons, perfectly impossible that any such Fund should ever again arise. In that respect, it differs very widely from the other two Funds—the Consolidated Fund, which furnishes a practically inexhaustible supply; and the other, the property of the landlords, of which, although it is not so entirely inexhaustible, yet there is still a good deal to be consumed. Now, the noble Lord rested very much upon the principle of the Bill, that its aid was only to be extended to tenants who were absolutely unable to pay the arrears of rent which they owed upon their holdings, and which weighed upon them. My Lords, if that boast—if that principle really were the principle of the Bill, if that claim could truly be substantiated, it would be very difficult for anyone on either side of the House to object, at least, to the principle upon which the noble Lord proceeds, for it is a very old principle of our law, and one to which we are giving expression every day—that where it is found that a person is absolutely unable to discharge his debts, those debts shall be discharged, and he shall be allowed to begin the world again free from those debts. If this Bill were nothing but a huge Insolvency or Bankruptcy Bill, there would be little more to be said; but, in the first place, how are you to prove insolvency? In other and ordinary cases you prove insolvency by the debtor giving up all his property. But there is no intention of proving the insolvency in that way now. I listened with very great interest when the noble Lord came to that part of his speech. He treated with scorn and astonishment the objection that there would be any difficulty in proving, on the part of the tenant, his inability to pay his rent. I then listened with some curiosity to the mode by which he established this confident conviction. He relied upon two tests. One was, he said, that the agent of the landlord would always be able to know whether the man would be able to pay his debts, and the other was that the neighbours would always know it
§ LORD CARLINGFORD (LORD PRIVY SEAL)I beg your pardon. I did not mean that. I did not mean the agent of the landlord. I meant the person employed by the Land Commission to inquire and report; he would probably be an experienced person—such as a land agent, and not the agent of the landlord.
§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYExactly; a person selected after the fashion in which the Sub-Commissioners have been selected, and selected, no doubt, for the same qualifications, and with the same absolute impartiality. It is quite certain that whoever may be appointed to do this work, whether by the Government or by the Sub-Commissioners, he will not be a harsh agent; he will not be a person who has any prepossession in favour of the landlord, and he will not be a person inclined to bear hardly in ascertaining the poverty of the Irish tenant. As to neighbours, I should like to know what neighbour would like to risk his life by telling what he knows of the poverty of his fellow neighbour. It is well known that there is nothing in the administration of justice more difficult than to ascertain the absolute poverty of a man who tries to conceal what he has. It is difficult even in our highly complex and artificial society, where money is easily traced. It is difficult where you require a man to prove his insolvency by giving up all he possesses. But when a man has every facility to conceal, when he can put all his money into notes, which he can hide in the ticking of a bed, or in a stocking, or under the thatch of his dwelling, or deposit it in a bank, in the name of some friend, and when he is not required to prove the sincerity of his insolvency by giving up all he possesses—the holding on which he dwells, or the means by which his industry is sustained—it will be absolutely impossible, even for the most impartial and severe tribunal, to ascertain whether he is destitute or not. My Lords, we have always been met, by those who know Ireland, with a statement which I always felt must be unjust. We have always been told that we cannot believe anything we hear in Ireland. I am sure that cannot be the case. Still, it must indicate to us a certain tendency to romance, a certain facility of imagination through which it is difficult to pene- 1924 trate, and which certainly will put off the scent the severest Sub-Commissioners Her Majesty's Government are likely to send there. But I will not argue the question of the inability of the tenant. Supposing, as has been said, that he stood in the position of an ordinary debtor in insolvency. You say that he is to show that he is unable to pay his rent, and then, in the same clause, you insert two special provisions. He is to be unable to pay his rent without the sale of his holding, and without the sacrifice of the means necessary for the proper cultivation thereof. Now, what are the means for cultivating land? Well, I believe £10 an acre is required in this country. I do not know whether an Irish tenant requires £ 10 an acre; but it is obviously a matter upon which a very wide difference of estimate may be held as to whether a man has or has not a sufficient amount of money to enable him to pay his rent and properly cultivate his land. He will come before the Sub-Commissioners, and say—"I have 30 acres of land, and the rent is £30, and I am two, three, or four years in arrear, I have got the money to pay"—supposing the tenant to be possessed of unusual candour—"but the cultivation of my land costs £6 per acre, and I must keep the money to cultivate my land." It will depend in this case whether the landlord or the State are or are not to be forced to assist the tenant, and whether the landlord's rent is to be thought of when the tenant is in this condition. I do not say that I should rely upon a provision of this kind for the entire protection of the landlord. I believe he requires much more complete protection. But for the protection of both the landlord and the taxpayer, and more especially the latter, who may possibly, though not certainly, be involved in the operations of this Bill, it appears to me to be an absolute necessity that, in some form or other, the true value of the holding, and of the other property the tenant may be possessed of, should be brought into account in determining whether he is or is not capable of paying his arrears. We well know that the value of a holding in many parts of Ireland rises to an enormous figure. I will not take fabulous cases of tenant right, or where it actually rises above the fee-simple of the land; but I have heard of cases where the value of the holding is 10, 11, 12, or 1925 13 years' purchase of the land. In those cases, of course, the landlord has trusted to the value of the tenant right as a security for the payment of the rent; and it is precisely in these cases that the Act will inflict the greatest injustice upon him, as well as on the English taxpayer, by allowing the tenant to take money from the landlord and from the State on the ground that the tenant is in a destitute condition. Of course, the noble Lord will tell me that the Sub-Commissioners will be able, under the Act, to bring the value of the holding into account, if they think it reasonable. I confess that whatever solution of this difficulty your Lordships may come to, I earnestly hope you will not make any more drafts upon the wisdom and impartiality of the Sub-Commissioners. Last year we thought these Sub-Commissioner ships were to be judicial appointments, made in a judicial spirit. We have, on more than one occasion, had an opportunity of considering what was to be said against them, and what was to be said in their favour. We have had a very striking and able speech from the noble Lord on the Cross Benches (Lord Brabourne), which, I think, commended itself very much to the approval of this House, showing the kind of men who have been appointed by the Government, and the qualifications and the antecedents of those men; and we heard what the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal was compelled to advance by way of answer. It was justly described by the noble Duke behind me (the Duke of Abercorn) as "a lame and impotent conclusion." I never heard a defence which more absolutely avoided the main topics which wore urged in the attack. But, at least, we know of the Sub-Commissioners that they have been appointed—not from men who took little part in politics, not from men who have abstained from expressions of contested opinions as to landlord and tenant, but they have been appointed from men who have fought in the front ranks of Party contests, waged upon the principal questions that are litigated between landlord and tenant; and we also know—or, at least, those who sat on the Select Committee of your Lordships do—that no one was able to give the slightest information as to the principles upon which their decisions were based. They entirely abstain from any attempt to do so. If their decisions were so 1926 righteous and so just as is pretended, it would be very easy to point out the principles upon which, and the philosophy by which they arrived at them; but no such attempt has been made by the Treasury Bench, no such attempt has been made by any advocate in the witness chair, and everything that has come out with respect to their decisions leads to this conclusion—that they have been rather seeking a political end, which very possibly they may think a laudable and desirable one, than acting in a judicial spirit, and deciding as to what is right between man and man. I do not say that the decisions of the Commissioners are necessarily immoral or unjust, or that this conduct on their part exposes them to censure. It is easy to see that it is possible that in the pre-sent state of Ireland they may have misconceived their duty; but the decisions to which they have come, and the entire want of principle which underlies them, and the peculiar antecedents which preceded their appointments, are very ill-fitted to increase the trust which ought to be reposed in judicial officers, and certainly ill-fitted to induce your Lordships to extend the amount of confidence to be reposed in them under this Bill. Now, my Lords, I have spoken of the insolvency test, and I have spoken of the protection which ought to be afforded to those from whom the subsidy to the tenants is to be drawn; but, in my opinion, a much more stringent and effective protection is required in this case for the interests of the landlords. The noble Lord spoke of this Bill as one of gift and compulsion, and I think in the other House it was said that gift and compulsion were the pillars of the measure. It does not seem to have occurred to the noble Lord that compulsion is not usually necessary in the case of gift—that is, if you give a man something, he does not require to be compelled to accept it; and what is the truth in this case is, that the compulsion is addressed to one set of men, and the gift is addressed to another. Some landlords, no doubt, have a great quantity of bad debts, and they have arrears which it is impossible for them to recover. To them the gift may, no doubt, come in very welcome guise. They may be very glad that Her Majesty's Government is willing to dispose of the funds at its command, for the purpose of wiping off 1927 those bad debts, of which they could themselves obtain nothing under any other condition. But, on the other hand, there are other landlords, and, I believe, in considerable numbers, who, by kindness, have allowed their tenants to fall into arrear; but knowing that their tenants were possessed of resources which would, in the end, enable them to pay, did not conceive their arrears to be bad debts at all; and it is to them that the compulsion is addressed, and the Government think they have done absolute justice, because they give a gift to one set of men, and force another set of men to abandon their rights. They meet two men on the roadside, one possessed of a great coat and the other of none. They give a coat to the man without one, but take away that which the other man has. And this is what they call a generous policy. But it is not only the landlords who possess arrears that are good who will suffer by this process of relieving their more desperate brethren at their expense. Remember that the right to much of this property in arrear is often vested in different persons. Let us take an instance which is very common—the instance of land settled on the eldest son, and personal property divided among the other children and legatees. The landlord dies in 1879. There are a good many arrears perfectly recoverable upon the property. These arrears belong to the younger children. The eldest son will receive, in respect of 1880, one year's rent; and, by way of compensation for that gift of the Government to the landlord—that is to say the heir—the younger children will go without the arrears upon which their fortunes depend. That is a specimen of the confusion into which you fall when you interfere with the ordinary law of debtor and creditor. The noble Lord opposite seems to be rather proud of the peculiar conduct of the Government. Ordinary Governments do not interfere with the law of debtor and creditor; but this is a great Government, a Government of especial excellence, and it despises all such petty considerations, and does not mind taking money away from the creditor in order to give it to the debtor. But the unfortunate thing is that such proceedings cannot be taken without inflicting injustice and confusion far beyond the view of those persons who have betaken themselves to such anomalous 1928 legislation. I can imagine a crisis of great public difficulty—a much severer crisis than any which we have seen lately—and can suppose that it justifies or extenuates this violent interference with the rights of property. But having imagined even such a crisis as that, such interference ought only to be undertaken after due consideration and after careful inquiry. You should know exactly what you are doing; you should not go and promise to certain prisoners in Kilmainham that you will strip one important class in order to clothe another, without knowing how many are the men whom you will have to strip, and how many those are whom you will have to clothe. I object to this proposal that we should confiscate the property of unknown men in unknown proportions, under conditions which are absolutely strange to us, without any preliminary inquiry; and that we should satisfy our consciences, after doing that, by presenting money belonging, some of it, to the taxpayers of this country, to other people, with whom those who have suffered have necessarily no connection. There is, it seems to me, a simple test whether the Government are sincere in their professions that they do not wish to invade the rights of landlords, or to injure their property by this proposal. Let them make the operation of the Bill optional to the landlord, as it is to the tenant. Men do not refuse gifts. Men do not decline to receive 10s. in the pound for debts that are certainly bad, for arrears that are absolutely irrecoverable. There are undoubtedly in Ireland such debts, and such landlords who would not make any such refusal; and if you go to them and say, "Cancel your arrears and we will pay you 10s. in the pound," do not tell me there are any men so absurd and Quixotic as to refuse the proffered gift. It was said in the other House1—the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal has not repeated it here, however—that there are some Irish landlords of so peculiar a kind, and so eccentric that they do not care for money—that what they care for is power—and that they will keep these debts hanging over their tenants, and refuse the offer of 10s. in the pound, merely to keep a hold over their tenants, and exercise power over them. I believe that class of landlords has been invented for the purposes of this Bill. They are as unreal and mythi- 1929 cal as a dragon or as a griffin. Let us have some kind of proof that they exist. Let us have an inquiry to show that there is such an unreasonable and insane class, before you commit a great public wrong—a great act of public plunder—merely on account of the danger which this class may cause you. I think anybody who has watched the recent course of affairs in Ireland has seen what the relation in actual and practical life of landlord and tenant really is, and has noticed how far the tenant defers to the wishes of his landlord in any position of life, will treat with ridicule this idea that any landlord conceives that by allowing a certain amount of arrears he can exercise powers over his tenantry. That is a theory, an imputation, which belongs to a long past time of Irish history, and which would be no justification whatever for interfering with the plain and ordinary rights of creditors, or disregarding the laws of common honesty when adjusting the pecuniary relations between landlord and tenant in that country. This injustice ought to be remedied before your Lordships consent to the passage of this Bill. I think that you ought to take care that the tenant's interest in his holding is, in some form or other, brought into account in determining whether he is destitute or not, whether he is incapable of paying his just debts or not; and I think that you ought to insist that the landlord shall be as free as the tenant is to enter into this arrangement for cancelling past arrears in exchange for a gift of public money. If you do not do so, you will be inflicting great injury upon the class with whom you are dealing; and it is very possible, if this measure takes a wider range than that contemplated by the Prime Minister, that you may be pledging the taxpayer of England, at a moment of great public pressure, to very much larger obligations than those which your representations now lead him to think he will have to bear. This is not a moment to increase his burdens, or to ask him to bear that increase of burden, for the sake of a class who have distinguished themselves in the history of their country in the manner in which large portions of the Irish tenantry have lately distinguished themselves. There are other evils connected with this legislation. You are warning every 1930 owner of property, not only in Ireland, but in England also, not to allow arrears to exist. Are you quite sure that that is a wise, or a just, or a generous policy? The Prime Minister spoke of the system of arrears as an irritating, a wretched, and a vicious system. He seems not to have taken into account the fact that the system is, to the poorer class of farmers, the inevitable concomitant of the circumstances of agriculture. Agriculture is eminently a pursuit which does not yield identical or uniform produce every year. It is an industry interrupted by great intervals of serious depression, and attended by serious losses; and those losses can only be met, in the case of the poorer farmers, by a willingness on the part of the landlord to give time, and to accommodate his demands to the circumstances of the hour. But if you declare that such kindness on his part shall be a penal offence to be used against him; that if he allows arrears to accumulate, he runs the danger of a Liberal Government coming in and declaring those arrears cancolled, you will be proclaiming widely that a landlord must not give this accommodation, or allow this time, and you will be causing serious hardship to deserving men, and placing difficulties in the way of the prosecution of the most important industry in the country. The recent legislation of the Government has too much tended to preach this maxim to owners of property—"Whatever you do, do not be good-natured." Irish landlords allowed tenants to remain upon their land, who were little calculated to improve their estates, and to educe the greatest value from them. They allowed those tenants to remain year after year out of kindness and good feeling, never dreaming that in consequence of that kindness their rights would speedily disappear. But suddenly came down the Liberal Government, and first by maintaining the principle of compensation for disturbance, and afterwards that of fixity of tenure, they have turned that act of good nature to the prejudice and loss of hundreds of landlords, and now they repeat that lesson. Landlords have allowed arrears to accumulate, when seasons were bad and poverty stalked through the land, in order that they might not drive their tenants to desperation, and because the enforcement 1931 of their rights might have produced great human misery; but now you come down upon them, and say that those who have been thus merciful shall suffer because of their good qualities, and that Parliament will take away from them for ever the right of receiving the money of which they have for a time allowed the tenantry to delay the payment. This, surely, is the worst lesson that the Government can possibly teach. The object of a Government should be to encourage all classes to show mutual forbearance and mutual regard for each others' rights, and a mutual desire not to push their special rights to extremes. But the lesson taught by the Government is exactly the reverse. According to their teaching, all men who would be safe must not allow a single one of their rights to fall into disuse or abeyance, and must not allow the delay of a single hour, or the temporary withholding of a single shilling. And that is not the only lesson that will be taught the Irish people by the policy adopted by the Government in relation to this question. In what way does the present crisis in Ireland differ from the many crises that have repeatedly occurred in that country? Is it altogether a new thing that there should be for two years in succession bad harvests in Ireland—in this country we have had six successive years of bad harvests—two years of bad harvests which have been followed by two years of singular prosperity? Such an event, in our changeable climate, must happen again and again; and do you think that when it does occur the Irish tenant will not remember what that event did for him in 1882? What is there in this juncture to separate it in any degree or any respect from occasions which will arise from time to time? In the history of the country, no doubt, the time will come when the seasons, now fair, will change again, and there will be bad harvests for two or more years in succession in Ireland, when the Irish tenant will again be unable for the moment to pay his rent; and then what lesson will be drawn from the present action of the Government? Instead of addressing himself by industry and thrift to repair his losses and to meet his just debts, in some future years, he will remember that a short time before the English Government was induced, partly out of his landlord's pocket and partly 1932 out of the pocket of the taxpayer of this country, to pay his debts for him—debts which had accumulated during bad seasons. And, moreover, he will remember how that complaisance on the part of the Government was brought about. He will remember that he has not obtained this indulgence by the exercise of all the virtues, but rather by the exorcise of all the vices. It has been by agitation, by disturbance, by cruelty to dumb animals, by acts of incendiarism, and by cruel and causeless murders, that the mind of the Government has been so impressed that they have departed from the policy which, last year, they openly and strenuously avowed their belief in, and have been induced at this moment to bring in this measure for the relief of the tenant at the expense of the landlords and of the taxpayers. These are the lessons which the tenants of Ireland will learn from the course which has been followed by Her Majesty's Government, a lesson which, your Lordships may depend, they will not learn in vain. Again and again we have had to protest against the policy of Her Majesty's Government, because by rewarding disturbance and crime they have made them more probable in the future. If you allow this measure to become law in its present form, I fear that, far from putting an end to dissension and healing the sores of Ireland, you will only be giving occasion for new and more extravagant expectations to be enforced by fresh and more atrocious means, and you will have to come and ask in a future year for new and more dangerous concessions, to be followed in due course by new and more dangerous disturbances. My Lords, I do not feel that this Bill, containing, as it does, some provisions that are useful, and which we may heartily approve of, can properly be made the subject of rejection on its second reading; but in assenting to its second reading I earnestly protest against the view that I assent to those dangerous principles which some parts of it include, or that I could undertake at any future stage to join in passing the Bill into law, unless those dangerous provisions are removed.
§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEsaid, that he did not, in any way, underrate the considerable primâ facie objections to the Bill which the noble Mar- 1933 quess opposite (the Marquess of Salisbury) had pointed out. As a matter of fact, the noble Lord in charge of the measure (the Lord Privy Seal) had candidly admitted that they existed; but the question was whether those objections were not far outweighed by the considerations which had been put forward by the noble Lord. He (the Marquess of Lansdowne) could not shut his eyes to the political nature of the remedial provisions of this Bill, nor to the fact that their operation was not likely to be in all respects complete, and that they would, perhaps, have the effect of demoralizing the minds of a large portion of the tenantry of Ireland; and, regarding the measure from a financial aspect, he did not think it was very much more satisfactory. He had not come across a single individual, who was conversant with the internal affairs of Ireland, who had not been bound to confess that it would be almost impossible to restrict the advantages which this measure offered to persons properly deserving of them. It was also true that the Bill involved the appropriation of a Fund which might have been used for more advantageous, and certainly for more elevated purposes; and it was equally true that it involved in indefinite liabilities the taxpayers of the country, who were called upon to back the Bill. Neither was it possible altogether to disregard the view that had been put forward in the public Press and elsewhere—that the supposed surplus of the Irish Church Temporalities Fund, which was to bear this charge, might, in fact, prove to have no existence, and that, at all events, the accuracy of some of the assumptions upon which the calculations of the Government were founded was open to considerable doubt. But to all that mass of argument there was one answer, and one only, that the supporters of the Bill could put forward, and that was that some settlement of the Irish Arrears Question was indispensable, and that, upon the whole, the settlement suggested by Her Majesty's Government was the most favourable, and the only one likely to be effectual. Moreover, this Bill did not come before them entirely on its own merits, or as a completely fresh proposition. He did not wish to misrepresent or to exaggerate what had taken place last year, when the Land Act was passing through 1934 that House; but when they passed that measure, containing clauses dealing with the question of arrears, they did commit themselves to the view that a fair trial should be made of the principle embodied in those clauses. Her Majesty's Ministers now came to them and stated that the Arrears Clauses had proved to be an absolute failure; and they proposed that further steps should be taken in the direction of the principle contained in those clauses. In those circumstances, he did not see how they could refuse the request of the Government, or recede from the position which they had taken up last year. The noble Marquess opposite, however, had pointed out that the present proposal differed from that of 1881 in two important points—that the measure of last year proposed to proceed upon the lines of "option" and loan, while that of this year proposed to proceed upon the lines of "compulsion" and gift. With regard to the question of compulsion, he (the Marquess of Lansdowne) thought that he should not be wrong in imputing to most of their Lordships the desire that, if this question of arrears were to be dealt with at all, it should be dealt with under conditions which should be as likely as possible to insure the success of the attempt; and what prospect of success would there be for it, if the settlement were left to the option of the parties? If it were, the Bill would certainly not succeed. Did any noble Lord believe that, in the present position of agriculture in Ireland, any measure which depended upon the cordial co-operation of the landlord and the tenant would be effectual or successful? If the Optional Clauses of the Bill of last year had proved a failure, he saw no reason why similar clauses in the Bill of 1882 should prove successful. If their Lordships turned the Bill into an optional one, they would be told six months hence that, just as they thwarted and outwitted the operations of the Act of 1870 and the Act of last year, so had they thwarted the Act of 1882; and not the least important or the least advantageous of its proposals was the fact that the Bill deprived the agitators of Ireland of the grounds upon which they based their operations, and an excuse for exaggerating and misrepresenting the conduct of Irish landlords; and, in his opinion, therefore, public policy, as well as the interest of the landlords, required 1935 that the clauses of this Bill, if the settlement was to be effectual, should be compulsory. Next, as to the question of gift. Looking at the question whether this advance should partake of the nature of a gift or a loan, he put aside all those suggestions which thinly disguised a gift under the name of a loan, a disguise through which everybody saw, and which was open to the double objection that a loan would be disadvantageous to the tenant; while a gift would involve a loss to the public. The Government proposed to say to the creditor—"You shall, whether you like it or not, accept a composition of 10s. in the pound." That might be a violent proposal, but it was not so violent to his thinking as to say to the creditor—"You shall accept only 10s. in the pound, and you may recover it, principal and interest, as best you may." No doubt, it might be possible for the Government to recover from the tenant; but their doing so would involve the admission that the security was so bad that it could not in common decency be foisted upon the landlord. That appeared to him to be an untenable position. The great difficulty of recovering small loans seemed to him to condemn the loan principle; and he should vote for the second reading of the Bill, therefore, on the understanding that it proceeded strictly upon the lines of compulsion and gift. The Government, it appeared to him, had very much weakened the Bill by appending to it the Loans Clauses, especially as the arbitrary limits laid down for loans would probably aggrieve many deserving tenants. Arbitrary elements were always open to objections; and he thought, in that case, it would have been bettor not to have limited the Act to holdings under £30, and that any kind of tenant who proved his inability to pay should have been allowed to share in the advantages of the Bill. Those who were excluded by it would be subjected to hardships, and the limit might be dispensed with, as there were few above the £30 who would be able to prove their inability to pay their arrears; but if there were any, as he had said, they might be allowed to come in. He hoped their Lordships, when they had accepted the Bill, which was nothing if it was not a violation of the principles by which they had hitherto been guided in legislation, would not endeavour to 1936 make peace with their conscience by in-sorting Amendments designed, no doubt, to satisfy honest scruples, but likely to sacrifice or impair the efficiency of the Bill, and, in that way, to divide between the Government and the House the responsibility, which must rest on someone, if the measure stopped short of success. In so saying, the Amendment which he had before his mind was that clearly indicated by the noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Salisbury), which he intended to bring forward in Committee—namely, an Amendment to compel the Court to deal with the tenant's interests as an available asset in considering his inability to pay. He (the Marquess of Lansdowne) hoped the Government would oppose to the utmost such an Amendment, or any other in the same direction, and that they would not allow the test of the tenant's inability to pay to be that of giving up his holding. The main object of the measure was to place these persons in a position which would enable them to take advantage of the privileges of the Act of last year; and he could not see why those privileges should be restricted by making available the saleable interest in the farms. It would be inconsistent to take away with one hand what they gave with the other. It was perfectly true that this attempt to secure immunity to the tenant was a strong justification to those who, last year, were a little incredulous as to the advantages to be derived by the landlord from the general introduction of tenant right. They had been told by advocates of the Land Bill that tenant right would furnish the landlord with unfailing security for rent and arrears of rent; but if, at that time, they had known of this Bill, and that tenant right would be left for other persons, while to the landlords it was said, "Hands off," that argument would have lost some of its weight, and they would probably have reconsidered the matter. The question they had now to consider was, did this Bill bring them any nearer, and, if so, how much nearer, to that ever-receding goal which they had been pursuing with "wandering steps and slow" during the past few years? He frankly admitted that it would give real and much-needed relief to a considerable number of tenants who, from no fault of their own, were in a condition of dire distress; but, nevertheless, he was in- 1937 clined to agree with the noble Marquess opposite that the great mass of the Irish tenantry were beyond the reach of these legislative doles. It should be remembered that of the 600,000 people who occupied the soil of Ireland, 300,000 possessed holdings of less than £4 Poor Law valuation. Now, what was the position of those people? He maintained that for every shilling due in rent to the landlord, the tenant owed a great deal more to his other creditors. Their Lordships had probably read a very valuable Paper by Mr. Tuke, in which he gave two instances—in the one case, the tenant owed his landlord £332 and his other creditors £372; and, in the other case, £230 to the landlord and £178 to other creditors. Professor Baldwin, in his discoveries, went considerably further, for he went so far as to state that many small tenants owed their general creditors four, five, six, and even 10 years' purchase of their rent; while they paid exorbitant rates of interest, ranging from 10 to 43½ per cent. It was unfortunately the case, moreover, that those people depended almost entirely upon the potato, a most precarious root, though some improvement had been made in the sorts planted. As to the Act of last year, let them 'assume that, on a rent of £5, it was reduced 25 per cent. That would be a reduction of about 6d. a week during the whole year. He mentioned these things because of the extreme importance of looking these matters in the face, and he did this because of the clauses inserted in the Bill at the last moment dealing with emigration. Those clauses were an important step in the right direction; but they would be administered under enormous difficulties, not the least of which was the, to Irish ears, hateful sound of the very word "emigration." He regretted the way in which those clauses had been pared down in the other House; and he was also much afraid that the Poor Law Guardians, upon whose cooperation the Government relied for the purpose of carrying out the clauses, would, in many cases, be either actively hostile or indifferent to the working of the emigration scheme. He should have preferred to see the duty intrusted to some other body of persons—perhaps the Commissioners mentioned in the Bill. He had said enough of what was in the Bill, and now he would turn to what was 1938 not. There was a question which he thought they had a right to ask the Government before the debate closed, and that was, how did they stand with regard to Irish land legislation? Was the present proposal merely an instalment, or was it the conclusion? There were three questions of great interest in connection with that question—the Purchase Clauses, the question of dealing with existing Leases, and the Prairie Pent theory. With regard to the first, he believed it was the intention of the Government to propose further legislation; but they had heard nothing of the attitude of the Government towards the Prairie Pent theory, except the most vague and shadowy announcements. They had been told that the Land Commission had made recommendations. If so, he wished to press upon the Government that nothing could be more unfortunate than to leave these matters in suspense for an indefinite period. Let them make a clean breast of it; and if the Land Commissioners had made recommendations, let them say what they were, and whether the Government meant to adopt them or not. With the prospect of the coming winter, nothing could be more mischievous than to keep these promises hanging over the heads of the tenants. They would never put an end to the chronic restlessness of the country in this matter until they were able, in plain and unmistakable language, to say—"Thus far we mean to go, and no further." They ought to make up their minds to say that and adhere to their resolution; and he urged them, at any rate before the Session closed, to make a definite statement upon the subject.
§ THE MARQUESS OF WATERFORDsaid, that he also should be glad to hear from the Government how far they were going. He never remembered to have heard such a lukewarm support given to any Bill in the whole course of his experience as that which the noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Lansdowne) had just given to the Bill before the House. In his (the Marquess of Waterford's) belief, the Bill was, as the noble Marquess had said, demoralizing; it was the most dangerous and demoralizing measure which had ever been introduced, and it was a fact that that would be its only effect. It was useless talking to Her Majesty's Government 1939 about principles of political economy, because they had, ever since they came into Office, thrown all theories of that description to the winds. The only arguments that had been used in support of the measure were, that it had been rendered necessary by the exceptional condition of Ireland; but he would ask the Government who it was that had created this exceptional condition, and whether they did not think that in adding wrong to wrong, and demoralizing measure to demoralizing measure, they were not more likely to increase than to diminish the dreadful difficulties with which they were menaced at the present time? The noble Marquess the Loader of the Opposition (the Marquess of Salisbury) the other night pointed out, in the clearest way, how agitation and murder had been fed by concession and weakness; and he (the Marquess of Waterford) did not think that, as long as wrong-doing and dishonesty were successful, there was much likelihood of law and honesty being restored. Over and over again the Government had deplored the dishonest advice tendered to the Irish tenants by the agitators of the Land League. They suppressed the Land League, in consequence of the "no rent" manifesto; and now they had issued a much more effective "no rent" manifesto themselves. The Land League told the tenants of Ireland to pay no rent, and to show their patriotism by submitting to lose their holdings; and, in many cases, their unfortunate dupes had submitted to ruin and disaster for what they wrongly believed to be the public good. But the Government had brought in a "no rent" manifesto, with no ruin or disaster attached to it. On the contrary, instead of telling the tenants to pay no rent, and submit to being evicted, they told the tenants, under £30 valuation, to pay no rent until this Bill was settled, and until their own particular cases came to be adjudicated upon—which might take a long while—and that the Government would prevent their being evicted and have their arrears paid for them, partly at the expense of the State and largely at the expense of their landlords. The honest tenants who had paid their rent, who had been "Boycotted," mutilated, and shot in the legs for having done so, were to gain nothing under this Bill; but the men who had, in some instances, 1940 carried out with impunity these "Boycottings" and mutilations were to have their debts cleared off at the expense of their landlords and of the State. What must be the feelings of a man who, but lately in the pride of health and strength and conscious honesty, now lay a helpless cripple upon the bed of sickness and suffering—and there were many such in Ireland—in consequence of that honesty, when he knew that the very men who had been concerned in his mutilation were to be rewarded by the State for their conduct? Was that not enough to prevent the possibility of rent being paid in the future? Was it not a premium upon dishonesty and assassination? And how could they expect Ireland to return to a state of quietude when they placed a premium on agitation like that? It was said by the Prime Minister that that was a Bill for the purposes of stopping eviction, of relieving distress, and of enabling the poorer class of tenants to enjoy the advantages of the Land Act and have their rents fixed. But in cases where the arrears had been caused by real inability to pay there was no protection for the tenant under this Bill; because he was bound to pay a year's rent now, or to have paid it between November, 1880, and November, 1881. It would have been impossible to have made any other proposition; but, at the same time, he (the Marquess of Waterford) could not help seeing that they were not dealing with the real cases of distress at all, nor preventing eviction in such cases, nor enabling the poorer class of tenants to come into Court; because it would be impossible for the very men who were being evicted, or who were, as they said, prevented from coming into Court to meet that particular obligation. From his own experience, he could say that, at the present time in Ireland, there was hardly such a thing as a landlord who would evict a tenant when that tenant, no matter what his arrears might be, was prepared to pay him a year's rent within a year. And, therefore, at the present moment, there were only two classes of tenants being evicted—either those who could pay and would not pay, or those who could not and did not pay a year's rent, and the latter class could hope to gain no advantage from the Bill whatever. Noble Lords opposite might say that they had no wish 1941 to keep such men upon the land; but that did not prevent Her Majesty's Government from holding up to condemnation landlords who evicted in cases of that description. An eviction was the same in their eyes, and, in the words of the Prime Minister, was a sentence of death, whether the tenant was able to pay any rent at all or not. The landlords had been appealed to by the Government not to press their tenants during the bad years; and those who had acted as the Government implored, and as humanity dictated, were to be punished by the compulsory loss of a great amount of the money which was due to them—which money was allowed to remain out, without interest, upon the security of the tenant right of their holding, and which would inevitably be repaid upon the first sale of tenant right which took place. But now that was to be swept away, and the tenant was to be cleared of all his debts due, if he had paid a year's rent since November, or would pay one up to December, 18S2, and could, if he so wished, step into the market the very next day and sell his tenant right for five, seven, or possibly 15 years' purchase, putting the whole of the money into his pocket, without any deduction whatever for the arrears which his landlord had been obliged to forgive him, or any deduction for the money advanced him by the State. More than that, if his landlord should wish to be the purchaser of his holding, he would have to pay him the full market price, notwithstanding that he might have lately had to forgive him two or three years of the rent that was due. Then, if proceedings had been taken, and costs were due by the tenant to the landlord, were those costs to be wiped out?—because he could not make out that there was any clear provision made for the payment of those costs under this Bill. As an Irish landlord, he was in a most difficult position with regard to this measure. He knew it was the most monstrous proposition which had ever been made; he knew that it was most vicious in principle, and that if their Lordships gave it a second reading they would be charged with accepting the principle. He knew that its initiation was utter destruction to the country, and would go far to prevent the payment of all rent in future. And on the very face of it, whatever the 1942 Government might say to the contrary, it was no settlement of any question, and would absolutely increase agitation, because there were two classes of tenants, who had both been, in different ways, the life and soul of the agitation from its outset, who were entirely left out in the cold. The first of these were the larger tenants, who were almost as much in arrear as the smaller ones; and the second class were the broken men, unable to pay any rent at all, and thus bring themselves under the operation of the Bill, and who, the Land League leaders had stated, had terrorized the other tenants, and got up most of the "Moonlight" and other outrages. There was an idea abroad that the landlords of Ireland were receiving a great boon under this Bill, and that two years' rent would be paid to them, which, under other circumstances, they could not recover. But he thought that was a great fallacy, because, in many instances, where proceedings had been taken, or even without proceedings, the landlords had received a year's rent between November, 1880, and the present time; and, therefore, instead of receiving two years' rent as was supposed, they would merely receive half of the arrears due, which in no case would exceed a year's rent, and have wiped out what in some instances might be perfectly good money, and which would be recoverable. It was not, therefore, in the interests of the landlords of Ireland that this Bill should pass—at any rate, in its present form. He looked upon the introduction of the Bill as utter destruction to them, because it was a premium on dishonesty, and would prevent the payment of rent in future, giving very little in the present, and that upon such terms that it would make that little dangerous to accept. But, at the same time, it would be unfortunate if the Bill were thrown out upon the second reading, as its initiation had excited such hopes among the tenantry of Ireland, and would throw the whole responsibility of anything which might take place in that country—and he feared much would take place, whether the Bill passed or not—upon their Lordships' House; and, in addition, in the present unfortunate condition of affairs, both at home and abroad, he was sure their Lordships would have no wish to force a Dissolution upon the Government. But he thought they were 1943 bound, in justice to all concerned, to amend that measure in Committee in such a manner as to preserve, so far as they could, the interests of the British taxpayer, and to prevent the confiscation of the landlords' recoverable property which would take place under it; and if Her Majesty's Government were not prepared to accept reasonable Amendments, on their heads—and their heads alone—-would remain the responsibility if that Bill should be lost and a Dissolution take place. He said this the more as the Bill was drawn in such a manner as to lead him to believe that its real effects were little understood by the Government. It inflicted great and, he believed, unintentional injustice upon the landlords, and forced the British taxpayer to find in some cases large sums of money which were totally unnecessary, and which would go to tenants who did not require their assistance at all. As he read the Bill, there was one section that would inflict the greatest injustice upon a deserving class of tenants who were intended to come under the operation of the Bill, but who, to do so, must pay a year's rent more than some of those who deserved nothing at all at anybody's hands. There were two ways in which the Bill might be amended—one was by adopting the lines of the Act of 1881, and a clause in this Act itself, dealing with tenants between £30 and £50 valuation, in so far as to render it optional; and, by so doing, to protect the interests of the British taxpayer by obliging the landlord to protect those interests in protecting himself, by not allowing tenants who were perfectly able to pay their arrears to come under the action of the Bill; and, in addition, by clearing up a few of the ambiguities contained in it, so as to make clear the utmost both parties had to expect, and which no one could hope to arrive at at present; also to see that any tenant who had assets sufficient to meet his liabilities should not become a charge upon the British taxpayer, at the option of the Commission; or, on the other hand, to amend several of the clauses in the Bill, for the purpose of rendering a measure which was compulsory, not one of compulsory confiscation—confiscation which he believed, to a great extent, was unintentional; but the Bill, as it was at present worded, would inevitably have the effect of taking away a large part of 1944 the landlord's property, and, at the same time, of absolutely robbing the British taxpayer. If it was rendered optional, they must suppose that the landlords, who were likely to know whether their tenants were solvent or not, better than any Court which could possibly have to decide upon this question, would not agree with any tenant who they knew was well able to pay, and, therefore, would save the taxpayer from finding money for those for whom the Bill was never intended, but who would certainly come under its operation if it was not amended in the way suggested; and their Lordships must remember that the Bill was now optional to the tenant, because he had only to refuse to pay a year's rent to prevent coming under its operation. He should like to point out a few of the effects of its clauses, both upon the interest of the landlord, of the taxpayer, and of the tenant, if it was passed in its present form. In the first place, in Clause 1, in the case of a tenant owing a year's rent to November, 1881, but having paid a year's rent since November, 1880, the year's rent paid would be taken as representing the year's rent due November, 1881; and that would throw the year 1880, for which the rent was paid, into antecedent arrear. In many parts of Ireland, a tenant was accustomed to pay a year's rent after harvest; and if there was a hanging gale on the estate, the tenant in October, 1882, by paying a year's rent, as usual, would be clear up to his hanging gale, and, therefore, there would really be no arrear upon his holding. But if the Bill became law, that tenant would be taken as owing a year's rent at the present time, half of which would be wiped out, and half of which would be paid by the State, inflicting a grievous injury upon both the landlords and the State, because the money he referred to was good money, and need be lost by neither; and he doubted whether the Government, in making their estimate, had taken that class of antecedent arrear into account at all. Then, again, there was a point which acted directly against the more honest tenants; but the whole Bill seemed to be drawn in favour of the dishonest tenant, and to the prejudice of the honest tenant. In Clause 1, Subsection 3 said—
All payments on account of rent made by the tenant to the landlord in or subsequent to 1945 the year expiring as aforesaid, but before the 30th day of November, 1882, shall be deemed to have been made on account of the rent payable in respect of that year, to the extent to which the rent for that year had at the time of such payment accrued due.And perhaps their Lordships were not aware that rent did not accrue due until the gale day; and supposing the gale days were May and November in 1881, and a tenant had paid a year's rent before the 1st of May, 1881, that could not be, according to this section, counted in this year's rent at all, as none had then accrued due—therefore, that tenant would have to pay another year's rent to bring him under the operation of the Bill; and what he had paid would go merely to the credit of the antecedent arrears. But if the tenant had paid a year's rent after May, 1881, and before November, 1881, he would only have a half-year counted to his credit, because the other half-year would not have accrued due, and therefore that half-year would go to cover the most antecedent arrear; and a deserving tenant of that description, who had paid his rent, would not be in half as good a position as a man who had held his rent and simply refused to pay it. He did not know whether that was the intention of Her Majesty's Government; but, at the same time, as far as he could understand it, it was the clear reading of the Bill. In the same sub-section, the paragraph intended to save the hanging gale, to his mind, had the contrary effect; and when they remembered the extraordinary decisions given in the case of "Adams v. Dunseath," upon a clause in the Act of 1881—which was clear as daylight compared to that sub-section— in which the different learned Judges in the High Court of Appeal in Ireland almost all arrived at different decisions by different lines of argument, one might have some fear that in so complicated a sub-section as this the Sub-Commissioner, possibly without any knowledge of law, and strongly biassed in favour of the tenant, might arrive at a decision entirely opposed to the intention of the framers of this Bill. He believed the end of this sub-section might be read in three opposite ways, and he thought it absolutely necessary that its real meaning should be clearly defined. The Government stated it was for the purpose of saving the hanging gale. Let, then, words be put in to make it clear that it 1946 did save the hanging gale, in the interest of the tenant as well as of the landlord; because, if this Bill was made optional, he believed that the landlords would be prepared to take advantage of it in every case which it was intended to cover, and the only cases that would be left would be either those not intended to come under the action of the measure, or those which, by the effect of a section like this, the landlords would be prevented from compounding with, because of the great loss—unintentional, he believed, on the part of the Government—which compounding with the tenants who came under this sub-section might inflict upon them. The end of this subsection said—If the rent of such holdings has usually been paid on some day after the day on which it became legally due, the usual day of payment shall be deemed, for the purposes of this subsection, to be the time at which it accrued due;there being generally a hanging gale of half-a-year, and in some cases eight or ten months, one reading of this paragraph would be that, instead of the gale being saved, the legal date of payment would be shifted to the date at which the rent was usually paid, and all antecedent arrears compounded for or wiped out, thereby clearing the tenant, not only up to the date the rent was due, but up to the date, after that, at which the rent was usually paid. It might be said that this was not the meaning of the section; but he believed that the tribunals with which the landlords had to deal—strongly biassed as many of them were in favour of the tenants—would place that meaning upon it; and in the future, when a landlord served an ejectment—which he could only do when a full year's rent was due—he would be told that, as the rent due in November, 1881, was usually paid in May, 1882, or possibly July or August, 1882, the tenant was cleared up to that date. Their Lordships would see that if this took place no rent would be collectible in Ireland until either May, or possibly August, 1883. But if Clause 10 was read in conjunction with Subsection 3 the matter was made even worse, because it was there stated that the tenant could make application up to December, 1882, or, in certain cases, up to the end of April, 1883. Therefore, if he paid a year's rent at any time be- 1947 tween November, 1880, and November 30, 1882, he might have his arrears compounded and wiped out, as he had shown, up to May or August, 1882, and he was given three harvests—the harvests of 1880, 1881. and 1882—to pay one year's rent. Then there was another point in respect of which the Bill, if it was not made optional, required careful amendment. A man who died generally left his arrears, which were part of his personalty, to pay his debts, and the residue to his legatees, and his successor in title generally made this money good and collected it from the tenants; and he would like to know from noble Lords opposite, if this Bill passed without being made optional, who was to be the loser? Would the executors have to compound for so much in the pound of these arrears, having a very much larger sum of money duo to them as a charge upon the estate; or would the successor have to pay them out of arrears which by this Bill would be wiped out? He saw that in Clause 16 the advances for arrears were to be divided between those who were entitled to them; but that did not clear up the other point. The Prime Minister gave as one of the justifications for this measure that it was very usual in Ireland for arrears to be sold, especially under the Encumbered Estates Court. He (the Marquess of Waterford), unfortunately, had had a good deal of knowledge of what took place under that Court, as his father bought a great deal of property through it; and was he satisfied from his personal knowledge that the Prime Minister was misinformed, and that the sale of arrears was one of the most rare occurrences which ever took place, either in that Court or anywhere else in Ireland. If noble Lords opposite doubted whether he was correct in what he stated, he was satisfied to abide by a Return of the arrears which had been sold under the Encumbered Estates Court since it was established, if the Government would produce such a Return. There were many other questions with which he could deal. For instance, there was the question of appeals. The Sub-Commissioners, with an appeal to the Chief Commission alone, had to decide upon points of law of the utmost importance, the very points which rendered it necessary that there should be an ap- 1948 peal to the Court of Appeal in Ireland under the Land Act, such as whether holdings came under the Act of 1881 or not. And, again, there was the fact of the unfortunate tenants who were to be saved from their cruel and rapacious landlords, and who were in consequence to be left entirely at the mercy of other creditors, such as the gombeen men—men who were really cruel and rapacious, and from whom this actual debt to the landlord had often saved them. But he would pass from these questions and merely say, in conclusion, that if the Church Surplus was large—as the Government said it was—or small—as he believed it to be—he was satisfied that the expense that would be incurred would be largely in excess of the estimate of the Government, and would come, with the other increased taxation which they had lately heard of, as an oppressive drain upon the English taxpayer. He had attempted to show some of the faults and effects of this most extraordinary Bill; and he thought their Lordships would agree, if he was right in what he had pointed out—and he had arrived at these conclusions by dint of personal experience in the management of Irish property, and with the advice and assistance of some of the most able and experienced lawyers and land agents in Ireland—that it was an absolute necessity that this Bill should be amended in Committee; and, upon the understanding that it would be so amended, he should vote for the second reading.
§ EARL COWPERsaid, that having, in view of the position he lately held in Ireland, carefully considered this Bill, he could assure their Lordships that he was of opinion that it was, upon the whole, a wise and beneficent measure, though it was unnecessary for him to say that he did not like the circumstances which led to its introduction, for it was most unfortunate that it should be regarded at the time as a sort of sop and concession to induce agitators, who might not otherwise have supported the Government, to do so. Having, however, on a former occasion fully expressed his opinion on the matter, he thought that all that ought now to be put on one side. In his opinion, it was impossible to feel that the measure before the House was not closely connected with the Land Act of last year. That Act, of course, was passed when he (Earl 1949 Spencer) was in Office, and of its provisions he heartily approved. No doubt it violated general principles, and it was supposed at the time to be a concession to agitation. He would, however, remind their Lordships of the general principle that governed the Land Act, which was that the Irish tenant should not be considered in an independent position and able to take care of himself, but that his rent should be ascertained for him by a tribunal appointed for that purpose. Not only was the Government responsible for the Act of last year, but the House of Commons had approved it by a large majority, and their Lordships, after having proposed a large number of Amendments, gave way, and passed the measure. Having, then, accepted that Act and adopted the principle it advocated, those whom it was intended to benefit should not be prevented from taking advantage of it; and it would not be wise or expedient to turn round now and say they must be governed entirely by political economy, and that they would not in this instance go out of the beaten path. That was an impossible and untenable ground on which to oppose the measure, and he was glad to see that such a course was not to be adopted. If they had abandoned the principles of political economy, they had better not return to them until the objects were all gained for which they had been abandoned. A good deal had been said, and forcibly said, in regard to the objections to the Bill; but, perhaps, they were not altogether as strong when they came to look at them as they at first sight appeared. As had been said, it was a difficult matter, no doubt, to make out whether these tenants were or were not able to pay their rents; but it struck him that when men were two or three years in arrears, the landlords allowing them to be in arrears during that time was bonâ fide evidence they were not able to pay. It should be borne in mind that most of these men were men of small property, men who were only able to live from hand to mouth at the best times; and, therefore, in most cases they might safely assume that they were not able to pay, and that those cases in which they could pay and would not were exceptional. He was not aware whether any Amendments would be proposed in Committee with reference to the decision of the tenant's 1950 ability to pay. A great deal had been heard against the Land Commissioners. He was not going to defend them; but, perhaps, even angels from Heaven would not have given entire satisfaction. It should be remembered that the Commissioners were already intrusted with a far more important function than that of deciding a tenant's solvency—namely, that of fixing rents for 15 years. Another point to which he would refer was the alleged injustice to the tenants who had paid their rents, by giving their arrears to their neighbours who had not. A great deal had been made of this objection to the Bill; but he did not think that, practically, it would be found to be a great injustice. When they had numbers of tenants hopelessly in arrear who were utterly unable to pay, what was to be done with them? One of two courses would have to be adopted, whether the Bill passed or not; either they must be allowed to go on with the rope of the arrears hanging round their necks—and this would be a harsh and cruel way to leave them—or the uttermost farthing must be exacted from them and they must be evicted. He was sure that very few landlords in Ireland would adopt the latter course, and that the great majority would rather follow the example of English landlords, and deal generously with their tenants by forgiving them their arrears and allowing them to go on. He did not think that those who had paid their rents would feel it an injustice that those in arrear should receive the benefits of the Bill, because whenever evictions occurred, whether just or unjust, the evicted tenants had the sympathy, not only of those in arrear, but of those who had paid their rents. In reply to the objections of the noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Waterford), he would point out that the Bill would only affect those tenants who had paid the last year's rent. It had been argued that the introduction of this Bill had led to the stoppage of the payment of rent; but he thought they must look for another reason for that. People had found that deductions in their rent had been offered to them, and they thought that, having got so much by being obstinate, they should get more by refusing to pay altogether. The new departure in the release of the Irish "suspects" must also be considered as having more to do with 1951 the stoppage of rent than this Bill. The injustice was also dwelt on of asking the British farmer, and the British public in general, to pay the debts of the Irish tenant. As one of the British public, he was willing to pay his share, and he did not think it was so great an injustice as it was usually made to appear. Was it not advantageous to this country that Ireland should be united to us, and be peaceful and prosperous? These things were so necessary to us that we should be willing to pay anything that would tend to the peace, well-being, and tranquillity of Ireland. Moreover, their Lordships were not the guardians of the public purse; and the interests of the taxpayer, being their especial care, might safely be loft with the other House of Parliament. He was very glad—and he felt sure also that their Lordships generally were equally pleased—that the question of emigration had been introduced into the Bill. Almost everybody who knew anything of the district felt that in the West of Ireland it was absolutely necessary; and people who formerly were most opposed to it—even the priests—were now altering their views and seeing the necessity of emigration. One of their objections had always been the deterioration in the condition of their flocks when no longer under their eyes. He believed that that objection would be met by the care with which emigration was to be conducted. The noble Marquess behind him (the Marquess of Lansdowne) had objected to emigration being carried out by the Boards of Guardians. He (EarlCowper), however, hoped that Boards of Guardians were now becoming alive to the necessity of emigration; their objections should be overcome when they found that for £50, which it cost to keep a family for a year, they could get rid of that family altogether. With respect to the compulsory nature of the Bill, he might say that when the Land Act of last year was passed, a clause was inserted enabling the landlord and tenant to obtain a loan charged on the tenant's holding; but making the landlord's consent necessary before the arrears should be so dealt with. A good deal was expected of that provision; but nothing came of it, in consequence of that consent being necessary, the jealousy existing between landlord and tenant being an insuperable bar to the clause being taken advantage 1952 of; and if they now required the consent of the landlord the Bill would remain as dead a letter as the clause of the Act of last year. He was glad that the question of tenant right was to be taken into consideration; but he would not go into those questions now, as they would be better dealt with on the next stage. He was also glad their Lordships were going to give the Bill a second reading, because he thought it would be a most unfortunate circumstance if that Assembly of landowners were not particularly tender to the interests of those to whom their own were supposed to be antagonistie; it would be most unfortunate that they should think it their duty to interfere and put a stop to the further progress of the Bill. He also thought that, in the present condition of Ireland, it would have a very bad effect upon, and have been a tremendous shock to, the large class of men who had their expectations aroused, to suddenly reject the Bill; and he should himself have been prepared to vote for the second reading, oven without those considerations, as he considered it a measure that was absolutely necessary under existing circumstances.
§ VISCOUNT BURYsaid, he wished their Lordships would look at the question in an English point of view, for it affected England as well as Ireland. No doubt, Irish landlords were mainly concerned in it; but he thought it should be looked at more than it had been from an English point of view. The noble Earl who spoke last (Earl Cowper) hit the nail on the head when he said this legislation was a mere continuation of the legislation of last year. The noble Earl also made use of a very singular argument, for he said because they had gone astray long ago they were to resist all attempts to go back into the right path—that having abandoned political economy it would be the height of folly to attempt to go back again.
§ EARL COWPERI said we had better not go back to political economy until we had accomplished the object for which we had left it.
§ VISCOUNT BURYsaid, his objection to the Bill was this—that it was a continuation in an evil way that we entered upon years ago. No one contended that the Bill was otherwise than grossly unjust. It was not only unjust, it would fail in its immediate objects. He agreed 1953 with his noble Friend behind him (the Marquess of Waterford), that the Bill would not touch the very people whom it was primarily intended to relieve. It was unjust to the British taxpayer. Many of their Lordships were land-owners, not only in England, but in Ireland; and what would they be able to say to their tenants in England, who, in consequence of bad seasons and bad times, were in arrears, when these tenants said to them—"Didyou not, in this last Session of Parliament, pass a Bill which was to put one year's rent into your pocket as an Irish landlord at the expense of us, the taxpayers of Great Britain? Why did you do this? Why did you receive it? Why did you take it out of our pockets?" The noble Earl who spoke last said it was important to retain the Union between England and Ireland, and that we ought to be willing to pay the price proposed by this Bill for retaining the Union. But those of their Lordships who were English landlords and who owned land in Ireland could not rely upon that argument. It would be no argument to the English tenant in arrear to say they were so interested in maintaining the Union between England and Ireland that they agreed to vote out of moneys of the taxpayers of Great Britain part of their rents, because that was what it really amounted to. The noble Marquess who spoke second in the debate (the Marquess of Salisbury) said the Bill was saved from absolute badness by the Emigration Clause. He (Viscount Bury) could not altogether agree with that. For some years he lived in Canada, and saw a good deal of emigration, and he found the wind taken out of his sails with regard to emigration when he remembered the magnificent men that used to come over in emigrant ships. They were, no doubt, capital people for emigrating to America or Canada, or for breaking up a new country: but they were the bone and sinew of the manhood of Ireland that the Government were going to get rid of, instead of the old and infirm who, if any, ought to be out of the country. The legislation on which they had now embarked in Ireland would touch England to-morrow; and, so far as he was concerned, he was sorry the Bill was not to be divided upon. He, however, washed his hands of it, and protested against it altogether.
THE DUKE OF ABERCORNsaid, with reference to a remark of the noble Earl opposite (Earl Cowper), he (the Duke of Abercorn) wished to state his belief that the failure of the Land Act of 1881, as regarded the small number of cases of arrangement between landlords and tenants, was caused not by distrust between landlord and tenant, but in consequence of distrust in the action of the Commissioners and Sub-Commissioners in the valuation of farms that were burdened with loans.
THE EARL OF DUNRAVENsaid, he entirely disagreed with the noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Salisbury). The procedure, by compelling a man to accept a gift, was somewhat novel; but he (the Earl of Dunraven) thought the case justified that. Likewise, he considered that if the Bill practically compelled the tenant to pay a year's rent, under penalty to pay up the whole of his arrears, the same principle of compulsion ought to be applied to the landlord, for a voluntary principle would be of no value. As the Bill was framed, it would confer great benefit on Irish landlords generally, both great and small, for the small landlords could not get on without the money due to them. It would also be useful to the small tenants, who could not possibly get rid of their arrears, or wipe them out, without its aid. If the taking of the tenant's interest in his holding into account meant that he should be obliged to realize that interest before he could come within the Act, the measure would, he believed, be useless; and it would be better to reject the Bill at this stage, on the ground that its principles were wrong, than to accept it, and then introduce a provision compelling a tenant to sell his interest in his holding. If such a provision were introduced, the Bill would practically be inoperative. He did not agree in the prediction of the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition (the Marquess of Salisbury) as to the demoralization of the tenants; and he was certain that solvent and honest tenants who had paid their rents were sick of agitation, and wished the country to settle down, and did not for a moment regret their honesty. Those men understand their position sufficiently well to know that unless by some means or other they could get rid of the large number of small and broken 1955 men whose interest it was to keep up agitation, the country never could obtain that peace which was so desirable. If the farmers who had paid their rents could be polled, it would be found that they were unanimously in favour of the Bill. It had been said that the measure was nothing more than a further concession to violence and agitation. He could not take that view, holding, as he did, that the Bill was but the necessary complement of the Land Act of 1881. In fact, the measure might be considered part and parcel of that Act, inasmuch as it made that Act operative, and extended to a larger number of men for whose benefit it was originally intended. When passing it in 1881, the Legislature made a sacrifice of principle; but as their Lordships had swallowed the camel before, he did not see why they need now strain at the gnat, seeing that the swallowing of the gnat now might possibly relieve them from the violent fit of indigestion which followed the swallowing of the camel. He did not wish to defend the Land Act or its administrators; but if the Act worked badly, it was the duty of Parliament to try to neutralize its bad effects, and unless it were supplemented by the present measure they would be hampered in their endeavours to amend it. The present state of things in Ireland, he maintained, was altogether exceptional. If it were not, he should not vote for the present Bill, which could only be defended on the ground that it was an exceptional measure, called forth by exceptional circumstances. He would conclude by urging upon their Lordships to consider whether it would not be better to throw the Bill out at once upon the second reading than to agree to it, with the intention of afterwards altering it in Committee in such a way as to make it useless and utterly unacceptable to the people of Ireland, for whose benefit it was intended.
THE EARL OF DONOUGHMOREsaid, the answer to the noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Dunraven), who had asked why their Lordships, having swallowed the camel in 1881, should not now swallow the gnat, was very simple. It was this—that when their Lordships swallowed the camel, they did not know what they were swallowing. It had been said that the Bill was one which treated the Irish landlords with libe- 1956 rality; but he did not think that any Bill which had been drafted in Kilmainham would be one which was likely to be characterized by liberality to the Irish landlords. He wished to point out that by one part of the Bill it was proposed to root an insolvent tenant to the soil, while by another it was proposed to give him facilities for emigration. The two principles involved were antagonistic. With regard to emigration, he approved of it, for he thought that it was a mistaken policy to fix a pauper in his holding. He did not, however, think the Poor Law Guardians were very likely to be of any assistance in promoting the success of that operation; and it was the more to be regretted that that was the case, for, in his opinion, it was the proper remedy for the evils which existed in Ireland. He did not agree that the small shopkeeper was the best friend of the Irish tenant, because he had a strong interest in keeping him in the country. He considered that the application to the Court ought to be made jointly by landlord and tenant; because the landlord was much more likely to know the real circumstances of his tenants, than a number of Sub-Commissioners sent from various parts of the country, and having no local knowledge. He took exception to the Bill as another step in the direction of confiscation. Under the Act of 1881 there had been great confiscation of the landlords' property, and under this Bill there would be further confiscation, as, in many cases, tenants owed some four or five years' arrears.
LORD VENTRYsaid, it was easy to see that Her Majesty's Government had not evolved this measure out of their own minds, but had adopted the proposal of the Home Rule Party. He believed that its introduction was due to the action of their Lordships' House, in throwing out the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, the rejection of which had never been forgotten; and he thought the present measure should be passed in some shape or other, if only to cut the ground from under the feet of those who were constantly saying that this and the other would not have happened if that particular Bill had been passed. At the same time, he believed the present Bill would operate in many cases with great injustice, for it treated the landlords harshly as regarded the hanging gale.
LORD DENMANthought that it would have been better to throw out the Bill on the third reading than to endeavour to amend it in Committee. In 1836 he had been from Cork to Dungarvan and back in 22 hours, and he would not fear to go over again soon. It had been then said that small tenants whose farms were thrown into larger ones at first regretted the loss of the old roof tree, but had afterwards been convinced that it had been for their good. He had given to the Library of their Lordships' House The Irish in America, by Mr. Maguire. He found in that book that, before 1875, an Anti-Rent League had gained their ends in Prince Edward's Island, and that an act of their Legislature had passed an Agrarian Law, of which the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War had been a Commissioner. His late father, in 1832, in a letter to his friend, Mr. Merivale, stated that—
Such is the nature of property that you can lay your hands on no accumulation, however exorbitant, without introducing an agrarian law at the end of every year, month, and day—in a word, without endangering the rights of property altogether. These distinctions may be just and reasonable in the abstract, yet they would be no barrier against the inroads of excited passions, in the form of political unions, public meeting's, unanimous resolves, &c.At present, a Land League had obtained too much sway, and it was the duty of the Government to use their power, now so enormous, to break up secret associations by day and by night. He was surprised that the son of one of the most distinguished statesmen who had ever sat in that House should have sold that property in Tipperary which was made so valuable by the forbearance and generosity of his noble Predecessor. He (Lord Denman) reserved to himself the right, when the Bill came before their Lordships with Amendments (which had already been condemned as fatal to the Bill), to move its rejection on the third reading.
§ Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Monday next.
§ House adjourned at half past Eight o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter past Four o'clock.