QUESTION. MOTION FOR A PAPER. (Hansard, 26 June 1882)

§ LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY
, in rising to ask the Lord Privy Seal, Whether Her Majesty's Government will cause the Church Temporalities Commission to postpone their claims on estates on which the rents have not been paid; and to move for a Return of the amount of arrears of rents and interest due to the Church Temporalities Commission, said: My Lords, when your Lordships passed the Land Act of 1881, it was on the understanding that it would produce little alteration in the bulk of the rents in Ireland; but now that a uniform reduction, frequently much in excess of 25 per cent, has taken place on the large estates, as well as on the smaller ones, purchased from the Encumbered Estates Court, a corresponding reduction should have been made in the amounts payable to the Church Temporalities Commission, by estates of which the power to pay these charges had been diminished by a fourth. Indeed, before your Lordships passed the Land Act, the Prime Minister had said that there would be no ground for asking for compensation for the landlords, owing to any general reduction; but that, should the contrary prove to be the case, the question of compensation would arise. It is, therefore, a matter of surprise that Mr. Gladstone should since have taken a different view, notwithstanding that he and his family had received £68,000 compensation for their slaves in the West Indies. Now, however, the Government has failed to secure the ordinary course of law in 359 Ireland, and Members of the Government, not content with encouraging, by their speeches and attempts at legislation, those who have brought about the failure of legal processes, have alternately accused those who are suffering by the interruption of law and order, of remissness and harshness; and it would have been only natural to expect that the Government should have itself set the example of avoiding undue harshness, by remitting the payment of taxes upon a non-existent income, and those rent-charges due to the Church Temporalities Commission, which has now become a branch office of the Inland Revenue, since no spiritual services are rendered to those who have to pay what formerly were tithes. Instead of such moderation and forbearance, we find that the Government have been exacting Income Tax and all the charges due to the Church Temporalities Commission. Many Irish landlords have paid Income Tax on income that they have not received, and the Government have not been ashamed to allege their payments of Income Tax as proofs that rents are being paid in Ireland. Not only are the Government exacting taxes imposed when the country was in a normal condition and still possessed a Government, but they are contemplating fresh exactions from the impoverished Irish landlords. This would be incredible, were it not established by the evidence of Mr. Godley on the first day that the Committee on the Land Act sat. In answer to Questions 326–332, it came out that the Government intended to require stamps of an unknown value to be affixed to the agreements made under the Land Act. What the Government are doing by allowing the Church Temporalities Commission to insist upon their claims is well and clearly stated in a letter of Mr. Caledon Dolling, in The Irish Times, of June 17— An estate which I know in King's County, rental £1,500, is charged to the Church Temporalities Commissioners with a yearly head rent of £400 and an interest of £100 a-year. The tenants refused to pay on this property, and there is more than two years' rent due on it. The head rent to the Church Commissioners is in arrear two years. The interest had to be paid, or they would have charged penal interest. The estate is 20 per cent under Griffith's valuation. The landlord, being continually pressed by the Church Temporalities Commissioners, took proceedings. He issued 40 writs, and proceeded to sell out 10. The costs up to this 360 date are £500. The total amount sued for is £620. If he proceeds to evict the 10, it will be close upon another £100 between caretakers' and other expenses. What is he to do? Who is to blame for these evictions? Is it not by reason of the Church Temporalities Commissioners pressing that these evictions have taken place; and, is not Mr. Trevelyan responsible for the Church Temporalities Commissioners, now the Land Commission? If he brands the landlords with eviction, is he not guilty of it himself? Should not the Government, on their side, give an order to the Land Commission to stay all proceedings for head rents, tithe rent-charges, and interests for the present, and why do they not do so? Because they fear to show the rental of the Church Temporalities Commissioners, which has such enormous arrears on it. So that, whilst the interests of the United Kingdom require that forbearance should be exercised on all hands in the matter of claiming the payment of debts, the Government, like the wicked servant in the Gospel, turn round upon their fellow-servants, the landlords of Ireland, who have been patiently waiting for what their tenants may please to pay them, and exact from them payment of taxes and of penal interest to the Church Commission. But the conduct of the Government is even worse in morality than that of the wicked servant—for he only claimed his own, and was wicked, because he refused to others the merciful consideration which had been granted to himself. The Government, however, are claiming taxes which have not been earned, since the Government has ceased to fulfil the duties and functions of a Government and to secure the lives and properties of its subjects. After the recent murders in the Phœnix Park, the Spanish Press asked how it was that loyal and orderly subjects continued to pay taxes to a Government which had forfeited its claim to them? But it is unnecessary to quote foreign contemporary opinion. It is one of the earliest of sound Whig principles that taxes should be refused to an unjust Government; and what Pym and Hampden and Sydney thought right must be right now. With regard to the Return of Arrears due to the Church Temporalities Commission, for which I have given Notice of Motion, there can be no difficulty in making it out, if the books of that Commission are kept regularly; and any objection to give such a Return can only be caused by its showing, either the harshness with which that Commission exacts its dues, or else, because it would show that 361 the Church Fund is not so large as has been anticipated. In view of the pressure put upon Irish landlords by the Government through the Church Temporalities Commission, at the same time that it has put every discouragement in the way of their obtaining the payment of their debts, and has lately described such efforts as unpatriotic, it becomes a duty to remonstrate against the careless language used by some of Her Majesty's Ministers. Idle words would seem to be a better term than careless language or reckless utterances, because it appears to be almost impossible to bring those who utter this language to any account here, and that these words must be left to be accounted for by them hereafter. The evictions that have been most notable of late are those on Lord Cloncurry's estate; in those cases the tenants could pay, but did not, at the bidding of the Land League. It is evident that, since the announcement of the Arrears Bill, the payment of rent has ceased nearly every where in Ireland, not only by those small tenants who might be affected by the Bill, but also by the larger tenants. Yet the Chief Secretary for Ireland speaks of the number of evictions as appalling. A short time ago the Attorney General for Ireland, in answer to a Question as to whether Mr. M'Gloin had shot his would-be murderer, replied—"I am sorry to say that the statement is substantially true." As he went on to mention evidence that the man who was shot had intended to commit murder, he ought to have said that he rejoiced to say. The Lord Lieutenant has, however, rebuked this language, as it deserved, by his recent action in a similar case, when he sent £10 and a double-barrelled gun, with a letter of commendation, to a man who had courageously repelled some midnight assailants. It is useless now to recapitulate the Prime Minister's rash speeches, or the encouragement to outrage and murder contained in Mr. Bright's exultation over the fact that landlords were running away for their lives; but it may be well to remind noble Lords on the Front Bench that they are accountable for such speeches, and for their results, so long as they sit in the same Cabinet with their authors. The noble Lord concluded by asking the Question and making the Motion of which he had given Notice.

LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNE
said, he would call their Lordships' attention to a case of hardship, that of a tenant under the Church Temporalities Commission, who was compelled to pay to that Body the whole of his stipulated rent without reduction, while his own tenants were applying successfully to the Land Court for a reduction.

THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH
said, he also wished to mention a case of hardship. It was the case of some near relations of his own, possessors of valuable property in Tipperary, which they held under very heavy head-rent from the Church Temporalities Commissioners. The land, to the best of his belief, was not rented above Griffith's valuation, and the rents had not been raised during the last 50 years. During the last two years they had scarcely got a penny of rent. Last year they had got none, and still they were compelled to pay this head-rent to the Church Temporalities Commissioners, who, if he were not mistaken, were simply Government officials. It seemed to him an extremely hard case that while the Church Temporalities Commissioners were pressing these unfortunate landlords, and thereby forcing them to bring pressure upon their tenants—a proceeding which gave rise to violent feeling in the locality—there should be an outcry amongst Liberals, as lately shown in a speech of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, against the heartless and unpatriotic cruelty of starved landlords who were compelled, in order to pay the Government, to take steps against their tenants. It did seem to him that the position of the Irish landlords, between tenants who would not pay, and the Government who made them pay, was like that of a person who was being ground, and that not very slowly, between the upper and the nether millstones.

§ LORD CARLINGFORD (LORD PRIVY SEAL)
I need hardly remind my right rev. Friend that the words of the Chief Secretary for Ireland had no relation whatever to the case of tenants who can pay and will not pay; but I will not go into that matter. I am not quite sure 363 that I have to-day sufficient information to answer the points raised or not by the right rev. Prelate and the noble Lord who has preceded him (Lord Oranmore and Browne); but I have information from the Commissioners which, I think, will be satisfactory to the noble Lord who asks the Question (Lord Stanley of Alderley). The Land Commissioners inform me that they do not press for payment of money due to them out of estates where they are satisfied that the rents have not been received. That is the information which I have received from the Land Commissioners, and, owing to its satisfactory nature, there appears to be no ground for the interference of the Government. With respect to the Return asked for by my noble Friend, there will be no difficulty in producing it.