Lords Sitting of 27 July 1883

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 1) * (157); Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 4) * (158); Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 6) * (159); Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 7)* (160); Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 9)* (161); Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 10) * (162); Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 11)* (163).
Second Reading—Consolidated Fund (No. 4) *.
Committee—Report—Prison Service (Ireland) * (145).
Report—Companies Acts Amendment* (148).
Third Reading—Sea Fisheries (Ireland)* (146), and passed.

LONDON COMMISSIONERS OF SEWERS (VENTILATION OF RAILWAYS) BILL AND METROPOLITAN BOARD OF WORKS (DISTRICT RAILWAY) BILL.

  MOTION FOR INSTRUCTION TO THE COMMITTEE. [ADJOURNED DEBATE.]
  Order of the Day for resuming the Adjourned Debate on the Motion of the Lord Wemyss; viz.—
  "That in view of the fact that many millions of the working classes of London are compelled habitually to travel on the Metropolitan District Railway, and that their health and convenience is greatly dependent upon the improved means of ventilation recently provided by the railway company under powers granted by Parliament after full inquiry before Committees of both Houses, it be an instruction to
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  the Committee to whom the said Bills are referred to allow the attendance before them and take the evidence of the representatives of the London Trades Council, and such other associated bodies as the Committee may desire, in order that the case of the working men may be fully heard, provided a petition from such council or other associated bodies be presented to the House;"
  read.
  THE EARL OF WEMYSS, in moving to discharge the Order for the Adjourned Debate, said, he had received a letter from Mr. Shipton, the Secretary of the London Trades Council, announcing that an arrangement had been made to enable that body to be heard before the Committee, and thanking their Lordships for their grateful recognition and generous reception of the proposition made on their behalf in this matter.
  Moved, "That the said Order be discharged."—(The Earl of Wemyss.)
  On Question? Resolved in the affirmative.
  Order discharged.

PUBLIC HEALTH — PRECAUTIONS AGAINST CHOLERA.—QUESTION.
EARL DE LA WARRasked the Representative of the Local Government Board, Whether it was the intention of Her Majesty's Government to take any steps, by imposing quarantine or otherwise, to guard against the introduction of cholera into this country? The noble Lord could, perhaps, state whether the sanitary authorities of any port had the power of imposing quarantine; also, as regards restrictions upon the importation of rags from Eastern ports, by which the infection might be introduced; also, if there was any truth in the report that a fatal case of cholera had occurred in Wales, and one also at the London Docks?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, with regard to the first Question of the noble Earl, I think I had better read to the House the opinion of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, Mr. Simons. Mr. Simons, in 1879, pointed out that—
"A quarantine which is ineffective is a mere irrational derangement of commerce, and a quarantine of the kind which insures success is more easily imagined than realized … Quarantine purporting to be effectual cannot rest satisfied with excluding from entry such persons as are obviously sick, but indispensably for its purpose must also refuse to admit the healthy till they shall have passed in perfectly

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non-infectious circumstances at least as many days of probation as the disease can have days of incubation or latency …. In 1832–3, when some sort of quarantine against cholera was adopted here, the results gave no encouragement to a repetition …. The thought of quarantine in England became more and more obsolete, and the possibility of enforcing it, if ever so much desired, fell more and more towards nothingness. …. I dare say that quarantine in England was never otherwise than very lax. At all events, for many years past it has, in a medical sense, been abolished. … England, which long ago abandoned the system as of any avail against cholera, has now the consent of most European nations (as expressed by their Delegates to the Vienna Conference of 1874), in preferring for the defence of her ports another system which, under the name of ' medical inspection,' aims at obtaining the seclusion of actually infected persons, and the disinfection of ships and of articles that may have received infection from the sick."
Under these circumstances, I think I may say that the Government has no intention of returning to the quarantine system. With regard to the latter part of the noble Earl's Question, I may say that there is nothing in the record of deaths from aggravated cases of diarrhœa to cause any uneasiness. Three cases since the disease has appeared in Egypt have been specially reported. The first was that of a man employed to clean sewers at Shoeburyness on July 8; the second, a stableman, at Kensington, on July 17; the third, a fatal case in Wales, on the 25th of July. There is no reason whatever for supposing that the cholera of the nature that attacked Egypt is present in London.

EGYPT—CHOLERA AMONGST BRITISH TROOPS.—QUESTION.
LORD ELLENBOROUGHasked whether the Government had any further information to communicate to the House in reference to the number of British soldiers attacked with cholera in Egypt?
THE EARL OF MORLEY: My Lords, I am sorry to say that the information the noble Lord desires had not arrived when I left the War Office; but I will read to the House the latest telegram on the subject—
"From the General Officer commanding in Egypt, to the Secretary of State for War. Dated Cairo, July 27. (Received 27th of July.) Health of Cornwall Regiment improving. Total admissions for cholera — two officers and 34 men. Deaths—two officers and 23 men. Deaths since yesterday's telegram—Lieutenant Croft, R.A., and eight men, whose names and numbers will be given."

PARLIAMENT — PALACE OF WESTMINSTER — HOUSE OF LORDS — THE PEERS' ROBING ROOM.

  OBSERVATIONS.,
  LORD MOUNT-TEMPLEsaid, the Robing Room was the only part of the Westminster Palace in which the wall paintings were left in a fragmentary and lop-sided condition, urgently requiring completion. The subjects to be illustrated in this apartment were Law and Judgment; the Law given on Mount Sinai; the Beatitudes delivered on the Mount; the Judgment of Daniel and of Solomon; only half were on the walls. Although Mr. Herbert had no legal claim, he was the proper person to receive the commission, as long as his powers of execution continued. He had devoted many years of anxious and laborious study to the designs of the remaining pictures, and to the accumulation of appropriate materials. His "Moses" had impressed multitudes, and had commanded the admiration of the most competent authorities; and it would not be easy to fix upon anyone to whom the commission could so safely be intrusted.
  LORD LAMINGTONsaid, he thought that Mr. Herbert had been very badly treated in this matter. On the understanding that he was to execute the whole of the paintings for the Peers' Robing Room, Mr. Herbert had de, voted much time to the study of the subjects for those pictures. He had, moreover, refused some very good offers of commissions from the Colonies, and also from Berlin; and now it appeared that after all his studies and preparations the agreement entered into with Mr. Herbert was not to be carried out.
  LORD THURLOW, in reply, said, he feared he should be compelled to enter into some details in order that their Lordships might be able to form a correct judgment on the matter. The circumstances of the case, so far as they could be gathered from the Correspondence in the Office of Works, were as follows:—The Fine Arts Commissioners in 1850 entered into au agreement with Mr. Herbert, whereby he was to paint a series of nine pictures at a cost of £9,000. The time for completion was to be not less than 10 years. The estimated proportional cost of these pictures varied. The large one of "Moses com-

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  ing down from the Mount" was put at £2,000. The "Judgment of Daniel" at £1,800. The "Judgment of Solomon" at £1,800, and "Daniel in the Lions' Den" at £566. Mr. Herbert was to paint these pictures in the Peers' Robing Room; but it was not until 1858—that was to say, eight years after the agreement was signed—that the room was completed in its interior decoration and ready for his occupancy. In 1863 the Fine Arts Commission dissolved, and it then devolved upon the Office of Works to carry on the arrangements in this matter. In 1864 Mr. Herbert, who had completed the great picture of "Moses coming down from Mount Sinai," asked for a reconsideration of the remuneration he ought to receive by reason of his having to adopt instead of fresco painting, which had proved a failure, the newly-discovered process of water glass painting, which would lead to an indefinite prolongation of the time, labour, and necessary cost of completing the work. The matter was referred to the Treasury, which ordered an inquiry into the arrangements made between Mr. Herbert and the Fine Arts Commissioners. This inquiry resulted in a sum of £3,000 being given to Mr. Herbert, in addition to the £2,000 already paid to him for the Moses picture; and a further agreement was made in the early part of 1866 for the completion of the "Judgment of Daniel." By this agreement it was stipulated that £4,000 in all was to be paid for that picture, and it was to be completed within three and a-half years from that date. The original agreement for the series of nine paintings was then cancelled by a Treasury letter, and Mr. Herbert gave a distinct assurance that he would make no further claim unless the other pictures were proceeded with under a fresh contract. Although, under the agreement of 1866, the "Judgment of Daniel" was to be completed in 1869, it was not until 1880, and after considerable pressure had been brought to bear upon Mr. Herbert from various quarters, that the picture was finally completed and handed over to the First Commissioner of Works. Under these circumstances, and inasmuch as the water glass process, which had been adopted, not only proved very much more costly in execution than the previous fresco painting that had been contracted for, but also caused an in-
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  definite amount of delay, he regretted that it was not in his power to hold out to the noble Lord any assurance, or, indeed, any hope that the Office of Works would now call on Mr. Herbert to execute the original designs.
  LORD EMLYsaid, he deeply regretted the course taken by the Office of Works. The work that had been already executed by Mr. Herbert was a credit to him and also to the country; and it was a great pity that for the sake of some further small sum of money they should not take advantage of Mr. Herbert's great ability and of the studies which he had made. He thought it a disgrace to leave the Robing Room in its present unfinished state. No doubt, Mr. Herbert had no legal claim upon the Government for the completion of the work; but he thought he ought to be dealt with generously, considering he had refused other orders so that he might undertake this work, including an order from the Colony of Victoria worth £11,000. For the sake of Art, for the sake of the dignity of that House, and on account of the moral claim which Mr. Herbert had, he deeply regretted the answer given by the noble Lord.
  THE EARL OF CARNARVONsaid, he agreed with the observations of the noble Lord who had just sat down. He trusted the Government would reconsider this question, and not adopt a view which would be singularly ungenerous to Mr. Herbert, and inexpedient in a public point of view. On the noble Lord's own showing, the delays in the completion of the pictures were mainly due to the adoption of the new process in painting, which was urged upon Mr. Herbert by the late Prince Consort; which Mr. Herbert undertook at great expense, and which led him to repaint the Moses picture. When the question of Mr. Herbert's remuneration came before the House of Commons, the feeling was so strong in favour of the work that both Parties urged an increase of price; and he believed Mr. Bright himself pressed upon the Government the desirability of increasing the price of the work. Both on the grounds of fairness to Mr. Herbert, and of public expediency, he thought it would be a great misfortune if the pictures were not completed. He believed that the principle upon which the agreements with Mr. Herbert were entered into was

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  that he should be the person to complete the work; and he thought Mr. Herbert had a strong claim upon the ground of the time and labour employed, and of the devotion with which he had undertaken the work. Those who knew Mr. Herbert were aware that he had thrown himself heart and soul into that work, and had, indeed, sacrificed private interests to it. He himself knew of instances in which Mr. Herbert had declined lucrative commissions in order that he might be able to devote himself to this work. He desired to make the following suggestion. The walls of the Robing Room were divided into four large panels and three or four smaller ones. Two of the large panels had been filled in, one with "Moses on Mount Sinai," and the other with the "Judgment of Daniel." Two remained to be completed, and successive Governments had paid Mr. Herbert a slight instalment of his remuneration for the work. He would propose that one, if not two, of these great panels should be completed. Lately they had had different kinds of pictorial ornamentation, some good, some bad, and some indifferent; but the general consensus of opinion was that Mr. Herbert had a style essentially his own, which qualified him to rank with the greatest painters of the time of Henry VIII.; and no other hand than his ought to be allowed to interfere with the work which he had begun. His work was acknowledged to be very good, and it would be a thousand pities if it should be allowed to fall into ruin in order to save a little expenditure. The Chairman of Committees was accustomed to sit in their Lordships' Robing Room, and the work which he transacted there was a remarkable contrast in its dryness to the pictures on the walls. The same contrast existed in the great Council Chambers of Italy, where, in former times, politicians and merchants transacted their business. Mighty Governments had passed away, and the merchants had gone to dust; but on the walls the great pictures of Saints and Angels remained, to delight the present generation. In the same way the pictures in their Lordships' House wore designed to exist for a long time; and he, therefore, strongly urged that they should be completed and maintained in their harmonious integrity, unharmed and unspoiled by the inconsistencies of any other band.
  THE EARL OF REDESDALE (CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES)said, he thought it would be only fair to Mr. Herbert to allow him to execute, at least, one other picture on the wall opposite to the "Judgment of Daniel."

IRISH LAND COMMISSION.

  MOTION FOR RETURNS.
  THE MARQUESS OF WATERFORD, in rising to call attention to the evidence taken by the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the working of recent legislation in reference to land in Ireland; and to move—
  "That there be laid before this House, Returns, giving in each case decided by the Sub. Commission Courts, the old rent, the judicial rent, the poor law valuation, the landlord's valuation, the tenant's valuation, and, in cases heard on appeal, adding the appeal rent and the court valuer's valuation,"
  said, that the evidence on this question had been in the course of collection since the month of March in last year, and was of a most varied character, teeming throughout with extraordinary and interesting matter. He felt how impossible it was for him to deal with every point that had been brought before their Lordships' Committee in anything like a reasonable time; and he should, therefore, only attempt to draw attention to the main points of the evidence. The Land Act of 1881 had undoubtedly been a new departure, not only as regarded the tenure of land, but also as regarded the manner in which the so-called Courts of Law were to deal with a novel law in an entirely novel manner. From the evidence given before their Lordships' Committee, one would almost be led to suppose that the Act not only instituted a new law, but also introduced a new arrangement as to the manner in which legal tribunals were to deal with the subjects brought before them, which, up to the present, had been considered the giving of impartial justice to all litigants. The first point he had to call attention to in this connection was the evidence tendered about the Chief Commissioners themselves. Within the last day or so those gentlemen had published an answer to the fourth Report of their Lordships' Committee, in which they had attempted to explain some of the statements which had been made, and to give a denial to others. The Report had been framed on the evidence which their

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  Lordships' Committee had gathered from the Sub-Commissioners, who acted under the Chief Commissioners, and also, to a large extent, from the counsel who practised in the Courts. The Chief Commissioners had merely attempted, in their answer, to explain or deny the statements which were contained in the Report, without producing a tittle of evidence to contradict the testimony which had been placed before, the Committee. That being the case, he could hardly think that that answer would be deemed satisfactory to a series of charges which would not have been entertained by the Committee if there had not been proof positive obtained from the gentlemen who had given evidence, and who over and over again had cited different occurrences and named the occasions on which they had taken place. The answer of the Chief Commissioners had entirely glossed over that fact, and had not attempted to disprove any one of the statements. If their Lordships read the answer of the Commissioners, they would, perhaps, agree with him that they had adopted the wisest course in not asking to be examined, because had they done so it would have been necessary for them to explain the circumstances, which had been put in clear language before the Committee. In their answer the Commissioners had found fault with the Committee for not having called more officials; but it had only been on account of the repeated objections of the Chief Commissioners themselves that more officials had not been called. They had also said that the fourth Report had been framed on hostile evidence; but when he looked over the list of witnesses examined between the third and fourth Reports, he found that out of the nine gentlemen examined, four were directly connected with the administration of the Land Act, three of them being Sub-Commissioners, and one an ex-valuer. He thought their Lordships were originally under the impression that the Chief Commissioners were bound to lay down rules and certain principles for the guidance of the Sub-Commissioners' Courts. It appeared, however, from the evidence that no principles of any kind had been laid down. Mr. Litton, in his evidence, said that the Chief Commissioners bad had a conversation with the first Sub-Commissioners appointed, and that "if preposterous propositions
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  were made as to the fixing of a fair rent, I the Chief Commissioners rather smiled or laughed at them." That statement would be found in Answer 3,449. The Chief Commissioners had never attempted to correct the "preposterous propositions" which they had heard from Professor Baldwin were made, and had only sought to derive amusement from that which, to the landlords of Ireland at all events, was net a laughing matter. Mr. Litton had said that the Chief Commissioners had given no directions; but stated that if the Sub-Commissioners went wrong, they could be corrected on appeal. When, however, their Lordships came presently to hear how the appeals were heard, he scarcely thought they would believe that by that means there was much chance of correcting what took place. These Courts of Appeal proceeded in an entirely different manner from that adopted in the Sub-Commissioners' Courts. They did not visit the farms, but sent their valuer to do so, who arrived at a valuation without the slightest evidence before him, except what lie happened to gather from hearsay or from the tenants. They refused to have their valuer cross-examined, they refused to re-open the evidence, and they did not allow the Report of the valuer to be placed before the counsel engaged in the case; but if his estimate happened to agree with the judicial rent which was appealed against, then the Court actually tried to check appeals by reading out the evidence of the valuer without stating the Report to the counsel engaged, and asked in open Court whether, under those circumstances, they dared or were inclined to go on. Mr. Hill Smith showed, in his evidence, that by terrorizing—he could not apply to it any other word — the counsel engaged in this matter, 27 appeal cases which landlords had been put to great expense to bring up were heard in five minutes. And what did he call it? A very excellent name—a solemn judicial farce—and he ventured to say that it could not be called a re-hearing by anybody, and not even by his noble Friend opposite (Lord Carlingford). There were certain principles which ought certainly to have been laid down, in order that there should be some equality in the decisions given. But the Chief Commissioner refused to give Professor Baldwin the information he

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  demanded, and without which he did not think it was possible that the different Sub-Commissions could arrive at equal decisions; and Professor Baldwin went on to say — in Answer 1,015—that he thought it a frightful thing "to lot us loose on the property of landlords and tenants without instructions," and that he would have resigned if it had not been for the fact that he had already given up an appointment to become a Sub-Commissioner, so horrified had he been at the course pursued. Mr. Holmes and Mr. Hill Smith stated, in their evidence, that they found the Court most reluctant to state a ease for the High Court, and that it threw every obstacle in the way of doing so. They did not seem, by the evidence, to consider the time during which rent had been paid, the prices obtained for produce, the price at which the tenants' interest could be sold, or the facilities of railway communication; and by checking appeals and stopping them in the high-handed manner he had described, and which seemed to cause so much amusement to his noble Friend opposite (Lord Carlingford)—though he was afraid, if he had had to come before the Court, it would not have caused him much amusement—the landlords had been mulcted in heavy costs, and decisions were upheld which differed widely as to the reductions on exactly the same class of property. An extraordinary piece of evidence was put in by Mr. Hill Smith. He said that the first Sub-Commission came down to his estate and reduced the rents 4 per cent. The tenants appealed, and the reductions were confirmed, Mr. Justice O'Hagan having stated in open Court that if the landlord had applied to have his rents raised it would have been done. Here was a Court which they were told was instituted to settle fair rents, and yet the Chief of that Court would not do so unless the landlord applied. But the most curious part of this evidence was this. After that statement a second Commission came to this same estate—the farms lying exactly side by side of each other—and, with identically the same evidence before them, reduced the rents from 23 to 27 per cent. And what happened before the Court of Appeal? The landlord appealed; but this case was confirmed by Mr. Justice O'Hagan and the Court of Appeal, with costs against the landlord, although Mr.
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  Justice O'Hagan stated in the first case that there should be no further reduction. He could quite understand his noble Friend (Lord Carlingford) not believing it, because it seemed almost incredible—at the same time he was only stating facts. This was all the evidence he proposed to bring before them with regard to the Chief Commissioner, although there was plenty of the same class. He now came to the legal Sub-Commissioners. Very much stress had been laid upon the fact that upon each Sub-Commission a lawyer of high position was placed who would take care that the Land Act was administered according to the legal construction. Their Lordships would see from the evidence of Mr. Reeve how far that was done. Though he (the Marquess of Waterford) disapproved of the Act himself, yet he believed if it had been administered in a fair and impartial manner, as described by his noble Friend (Lord Carlingford), and the noble and learned Earl on the Woolsack, that not much of the hardship which had been experienced would have been caused by it to the large majority of landlords, for they had been acquitted by Mr. Gladstone, by the Bessborough Commission, and by the two noble Lords of whom he had spoken, who said that the Bill was to put clown rack-renters only. But had it done so? Were all the landlords of Ireland rack-renters? If the Act had been fairly administered the rack-renters would have been the only persons who would have suffered. Though Mr. Reeve believed that the Act ought to be administered in the way he had stated, it would be found that nothing of the kind was done, at any rate in the other Courts; and there was strong evidence that Mr. Reeve was unable to carry out those principles even in his own Court. It was a curious thing that it should have been proved by a Sub-Commissioner that the legal Sub-Commissioner was a cipher in his own Court. Did his noble Friend think that was satisfactory?
  LORD CARLINGFORD (LORD PRESIDENT of the COUNCIL): Who says so?
  THE MARQUESS OF WATERFORD: Both Mr. Foley and Mr. Reeve. They both declared that these Commissioners were perfect ciphers in determining the rents; and Mr. Reeve stated that they depended largely upon the lay Sub-

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  Commissioners for the valuation, which he was unable to alter. If that was so, what was the use of the legal Sub-Commissioner? Mr. Foley said, in his evidence, that he could not tell whether the principles laid down in "Adams v. Dunseath" were carried out or not. Therefore, he must be a cipher in his own Court if he could not tell. But there was another reason, perhaps, for this. Mr. Foley said that Mr. Forster, who appointed him, told him he had nothing whatever to do with the valuation of the land. But it was on the valuation of the land that these Sub-Commissioners had to decide; and yet, if the lay Sub-Commissioners agreed as to the value, the legal Sub-Commissioners could not interfere. Mr. Foley went on to say that it was only in case of disagreement and of the evidence being all one way that he was able to remonstrate. Was that being anything more than a cipher? The most extraordinary answer given by Mr. Foley was the following—
  "I disposed my tribunal," he said, "in this way—I endeavoured to have on either side of me a gentleman whose proclivities were in favour of property."
  Fancy a Court of Law constituted by gentlemen whose proclivities were not in favour of property! He further said—
  "I have one gentleman who is in favour of the tenant."
  This was a Court of Justice! Mr. Foley further said he had to write to the Chief Commissioners to say that there was no representative of property on his Commission. He was happy to observe that Mr. Foley could add his representations were at once attended to. He could go on reading Mr. Foley's answers for a week, so interesting were they; but he should quote only one more, and it was most extraordinary—
  "Whenever I got a case in which the whole of the trustworthy evidence was in one direction, as I frequently did at Armagh, I used to say over and over again—'Are you sure you are doing right in this case?' The reduction seems to me, as a lawyer, to be very large; and," added Mr. Foley, "I could do no more."
  This was a Court of Justice! The lay Colleagues of Mr. Foley constantly gave decisions against the whole weight of evidence—a thing most extraordinary in a Court of Law. These statements had been confirmed and intensified by
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  the weight of evidence before the Committee; and in such circumstances he would like to ask their Lordships, and especially the noble and learned Earl on the Woolsack, whether Courts conducted upon those principles were likely to add much to the respect in which the legal tribunals of this country had been held by all classes; and whether there was anything more calculated to destroy or imperil the opinion which prevailed as to the impartial administration of the law than the statements he had read? The reason why questions of law did not arise was that the Sub-Commissioners merely fixed the rent without stating to the counsel engaged, or to their own legal Colleagues, the mode by which they arrived at it. As no principles were laid down, the result was that the Sub-Commissioners dealt with improvements on a perfectly different plan and scale; and, therefore, the most unequal rents were fixed on exactly the same quality of land. Professor Baldwin and Mr. Hill Smith said that these variations had produced and were producing great demoralization and dissatisfaction among the tenantry, were preventing agreements out of Court, and would inevitably lead to a fresh agitation. The Chief Commissioners, whose answers were published yesterday, admitted that uniformity of decision could not be expected under the Act. That was a curious thing to admit about Courts of Law. Mr. Chambré, an experienced land agent, stated that four different Sub-Commissioners came down to value land on the same property. The land was all of one class, and the evidence was the same in all four cases; but one Commissioner fixed the rent at 17 s. 6d. per acre, another at 11 s. per acre, another at 13 s. per acre, and the fourth at 15 s. per acre; and the most curious point of Mr. Chambré's evidence was that the land the rent of which was fixed at 178. 6d. was the worst land in the lot. By Answer No. 1,828 it was proved that a tenant who had five holdings claimed a reduction in respect of drainage. As a matter of fact, there was no drainage on his farm; and although no evidence was given as to any other improvements, the man's rent was reduced. Very extraordinary and conflicting statements were made with regard to reclamation. It was stated in Answer No. 1,768 that the rent of bog

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  land worth 16 s. to 17 s. an acre was reduced to 5s. 6d. an acre, although it had been let 17 years ago at 10 s. an acre for the purposes of reclamation. Mr. Holmes and Mr. Hill Smith proved that reductions were made for tenant right as well as for improvements, although the tenant right was supposed to cover all improvements. Mr. Foley said his late Colleagues did not take tenant right into consideration. That was a satisfactory statement; but Mr. Foley went on to say—"But they never lose sight of the fact that they are the tenant-right holders." Among the numerous rights granted by the Act, perhaps the most curious was the occupation right.
  LORD CARLINGFORD (LORD PRESIDENT of the COUNCIL): No, no.
  THE MARQUESS OF WATERFORD: Well, he did not mean to say that there really was such a right; but a great deal of money had been taken out of the landlords' pockets in consequence of such a believed right. Mr. Gray, who had acted as a valuer, proved that he was obliged to knock off 15 per cent for the occupation value.
  LORD CARLINGFORD (LORD PRESIDENT of the COUNCIL): Did knock off—not "was obliged to" knock off.
  THE MARQUESS OF WATERFORD: Well, Mr. Gray certainly had found himself obliged to knock it off. The Chief Commissioners treated this matter by laughing at it, and by stating that there was no reference to it in Mr. Gray's Report; but it was easily seen that this was done not by that gentleman only, but by the Sub-Commissioners who acted with him. For, after having knocked off 15 per cent for the occupation value, Mr. Gray arrived at 5 per cent higher than the judicial rent fixed by the Sub-Commissioners; and if they did not follow the same process, how did they arrive at their figures at all? The explanation of this he would leave to his noble Friend. Mr. Foley had said that a tenant right was often created by these reductions; and he thought that the evidence of a large sum having been paid was often taken as against the landlord, instead of in his favour, as it ought to be. They had evidence also that deterioration of land' by the tenant was over and over again taken into consideration, and that the tenant reaped the advantage of his own deterioration. Evidence of this
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  was constantly found. Professor Baldwin himself said that he valued the farms as he found them, and that it would be impossible for him to do otherwise. Therefore, a tenant who had reaped the advantage of his own deterioration of land would get another 15 per cent reduction at the end of 15 years, and probably in time he would get his rent reduced to a minus quantity. The Land Act was passed to punish rack-renters; but they were placed on a pinnacle, and the men were punished whom it was not intended to punish. The rents of the rack-renter were fixed at what would be fair rents; while the fair rents of the landlord, who had treated his tenants fairly, were reduced far below what a solvent tenant would undertake to pay. Everyone who came before the Committee admitted that the tenant's evidence was perfectly unreliable. Yet it was accepted, while that of the landlord was almost entirely disregarded. But, of all the extraordinary statements he had made, none was so extraordinary as the one he was about to bring before their Lordships. He referred to the disclosures which had been made, to the effect that the fair rent was being fixed by arithmetical calculation. The Sub-Commissioners appeared to ignore the landlords' interest. They placed on one side all such considerations as the price of produce, the position of the holding, and the amount obtainable for tenants' interest; and the answers of Mr. Hill Smith and Mr. Gray showed clearly that these Sub-Commissioners arrived at the judicial rents sometimes by taking the landlords' and the tenants' valuation, adding them together, and dividing them by two; and sometimes by taking those two valuations, plus the Poor Law valuation, and dividing them by three. That might seem incredible, but he would prove it. The figures he should quote were taken from an analysis of all the cases proved in evidence which appeared in the Appendix of the Report. And he had no doubt, from what he had heard, that if the Returns which he was moving for were granted by the Government, they would find that this system of arriving at judicial rents by an average formula had been adopted by many of the Sub-Commissions in Ireland. The first cases he would refer to occurred on four estates — the Cope, Echlin, Lord Gosford's, and the Clarke estates—and

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  all the decisions were given in 1882 before two different Commissions — one composed of Messrs. Fitzgerald, Cullen, and Mahony; the other, Messrs. Wylie, Cunningham, and Ellis. There were 42 cases; the gross Poor Law valuation. £727 5s.; landlord's valuation, £749 14 s. 7d.; tenant's valuation, £503 7s. 4d. Adding these three together, and dividing by three, the result brought out £660 2s. 3½d., and the judicial rent fixed was £667 3s. 6d., making a difference between the average formula in 42 cases of £7 1s. 2½d., and 19 s. 8d. must be deducted from this result for three cases in which the old rent was not altered. Therefore, the real difference in these cases was £6 1s. 6½d. In the second lot of figures the formula was arrived at by taking only two factors—the landlord's and tenant's valuations respectively. There were five estates. Lord Gosford, Messrs. Jervis, Kennedy, Williamson, and Riddle were the landlords; and there were four different Sub-Commissions, as, although Mr. Foley acted upon three of them, in each of the three cases he was assisted by two different lay Sub-Commissioners — Messrs. Davidson and Meek on one, on another Messrs. Ellis and Byers, and on a third Messrs. Montgomery and Simpson. And the fourth Sub-Commission was composed of Messrs. Wylie, Smith, and Ferguson. There were 59 cases adjudicated on, in each of which the judicial rent differed but slightly from the arithmetical mean. The landlord's valuation was £1,214 11 s. 10 d.; the tenant's valuation £828 4s. 3d. Adding those two together, and dividing by two, brought out a total of £1,021 8s.; and the judicial rents in these 59 cases were fixed at £1,021 9s. 6d. Therefore, the difference between this and the mean of the two valuations was only 1s. 6d. Was it not astounding that the decisions of Courts of Justice should be arrived at in such a manner? And was there any other proof needed of the unfairness of these Courts, which had been nominated by the Government, and kept under their control by the terms of their appointment for political purposes alone? He did not propose to deal with the important question of the Purchase Clauses, as the subject had been already dealt with this Session by the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Lansdowne), who he was sorry not to see in his place. On this question they had the evidence
  704
  of The O'Conor Don, just at the end of the Committee's labours, in which he told of the difficulties he experienced in attempting to sell £3,000 worth of his property to his tenants, which showed the absolute necessity there was that something should he done to improve those Purchase Clauses, else it would be perfectly impossible to establish any peasant proprietors in the country. In what he had said he had dealt with the administration of the Land Act, and he did not attempt to deal with the Land Act itself. Their Lordships were well aware that, though he opposed the Act, he had, with the exception of the necessary amendment of the Purchase Clauses, accepted it as a final settlement of the Land Question in Ireland. But great changes for the better might be made in its administration; and he would now proceed shortly to point out how some of those changes could be effected, so as to insure that justice might be done to landlord and tenant alike, without interfering with, but rather carrying out, the principles laid down in that measure. In the first place, he believed it was absolutely necessary that a Code of Instructions should be carefully drawn up by the Chief Commissioners, and they should lay down the principles upon which judicial rents should be ascertained. That he thought necessary in order to produce uniformity amongst the decisions of the numerous Sub-Commissioners throughout all parts of Ireland. Secondly, he thought that the reasons for the alteration of the existing rent should be clearly stated in Court by the legal Sub-Commissioners in each case decided, so that the legal Sub-Commissioner might show that he was doing his duty, and was not the mere cipher that he (the Marquess of Waterford) had shown him to be; and that also the same thing should be done at the rehearing before the Chief Commissioners' Court. In the third place, the originating notice should have affixed to it a Schedule of the improvements claimed by the tenants; and the Ordnance map of the holding should be handed in at the same time, so that the boundaries might be known accurately. The Chief Commissioners said, in their answer, that the cost of compelling 40 tenants to give the landlord particulars of their improvements need not excel £2. He was, however, informed by solicitors in large

  705
  practice that this estimate was totally absurd, and that at present the costs of the landlord would be at least 10 times that amount. In the fourth place, he believed that the value attached to each improvement, and the amount of the reduction made in consequence, should be recorded with the decisions in order to prevent the same improvements being claimed for again in 15 years, which he believed would be the case under the present procedure of the Land Act. Fifthly, notice should be given to the head landlord or to the mortgagee before any rent was fixed, or any agreement was sanctioned, in order to prevent the possibility of their interests in either case being confiscated either by collusion between the tenants and the head landlord, or the tenants and the mortgagee. Then, sixthly, the Commissioners should have power, on the application of the landlord, to abolish the system in Ireland known as "Rundale," by which a tenant held a field here, there, and everywhere over a property, and to consolidate the divided holdings, if the landlord should apply to them to do so. In the seventh place, if the tenant neglected to keep the drains or outfalls on his farm open, or neglected to carry out an order of the Commissioners to build a labourer's cottage, his failure to do so should be treated as a breach of the statutory conditions. In the eighth place, the Purchase Clauses should be I made workable, and that should be done at once. To carry out these clauses the management of the sales should be transferred to the Encumbered Estates Court, which had now little to do owing to the fact that land in Ireland was unsaleable. That Court was far more competent to deal with the subject of purchase than the Chief Commissioners, who were already overcrowded with work, and who had a direct interest not in selling the properties, but in reducing the rents. He was satisfied that the Purchase Clauses, which the noble Lords opposite agreed ought to be developed—although he did not agree with them as to the manner in which it ought to be done—he was satisfied that the Purchase Clauses were the only possible solution of the Irish difficulty. The Land Act had placed the land of the country in such a condition that unless they got it out of it again by encouraging purchase, he did not know what would be
  706
  the result. The future looked so black, he really did not know what to say. There were, no doubt, other points in which the administration of the Land Act might be reformed; but if the eight suggestions he had made were adopted, it would produce uniformity in the decisions of the Sub-Commissioners, and uniformity was a most important thing if they wanted to prevent fresh agitation; and they would also make the decisions of the Sub-Commissioners respected by all classes, landlord and tenant alike, instead of having them, as at the present moment, giving satisfaction to actually no one. He had now placed the main points in the evidence before their Lordships. He had endeavoured to show how the administration of the Land Act might be improved, and he thought what he had stated was an ample proof that a Committee of Inquiry was absolutely necessary. None of the suggestions he had made would interfere in any way with the spirit of the Land Act. But he believed that the Act as worked—and he appealed to the noble and learned Earl on the Woolsack—was a contradiction of the anticipation of its framers, and to the pleadings given by noble Lords opposite in this House and by the Government in "another place," and that injustices were being perpetrated in the name of Justice which were sufficient to cast a shadow over the whole administration of the judicial tribunals of these realms. He begged now to move for the Returns which stood in his name, and which, if granted, would show whether his statements were correct or not, and whether the Sub-Commissioners did not arrive at their decisions by arithmetical principles.
  Moved, "That there be laid before this House, Returns giving in each case decided by the Sub-Commission Courts the old rent, the judicial rent, the poor law valuation, the landlord's valuation, the tenant's valuation, and, in cases heard on appeal, adding the appeal rent and the court valuer's valuation."—(The Marquess of Waterford.)
  LORD CARLINGFORD (LORD PRESIDENT of the COUNCIL)said, his noble Friend had raised so many points contained in the evidence taken before the Committee, that he was under some difficulty to know which to take and which to pass by. He, like his noble Friend, was anxious to call attention to the evidence taken by the Committee,

  707
  and especially as regarded the class and character of the witnesses examined. The witnesses examined in the first Report were three officials of the Land Commission and the Registrar of the Landed Estates Court; but their evidence was not referred to in the Report. Then there were the three Chief Commissioners, whose evidence was mainly directed to the subject of purchase and questions of procedure, and, with one single exception, their evidence was not referred to in the last Report. Neither was it once referred to by the noble Marquess. He did not once, in the course of his address, mention the evidence given by Mr. Fottrell and Mr. Godley. From his noble Friend's speech, therefore, and from this Report of the Committee, it would appear that the evidence to be obtained from the Land Commission had been treated as a matter of very slight importance indeed—their evidence and their existence appeared to be entirely forgotten. Then came the evidence of one small landlord, three land agents, and one landlord's solicitor—he meant a solicitor who invariably represented landlords before the Land Courts. In the second Report the witnesses consisted of 10 landlords, most of whom were small owners, four barristers or solicitors practising in the Land Courts, of whom one had acted for tenants, eight land agents, some of whom were landowners, one valuer, and Mr. Vere Foster and Mr. Take, whose evidence had nothing to do with the matter now before the House. The witnesses in the third and fourth Reports were three Sub - Commissioners, three barristers, who invariably acted for landlords, one landlord, one agent, and one so-called Court valuer. The result of this enumeration was, as their Lordships would see, that, with one single exception, no witness of any kind was examined on the tenants' side of the question. Such being the exclusive class and character of the witnesses, what was the Report? It was an impeachment of the Land Act itself, of its administration in almost every possible respect, and of all the public servants administering it. According to the Report, so far as his noble Friend went, everything the Land Judges did, or omitted to do, was wrong. They had been accused, not only of incompetence, but of an unanimous departure from
  708
  the spirit and intentions of the Act they administered. And, more than that, they were accused of deliberate, calculated, and artful violation of their judicial duty. Such were the accusations brought against the Land Commissioners, high and low, on such evidence he had described. No doubt, the witnesses were respectable gentlemen; but they were absolutely and ludicrously one-sided, entirely unchecked by any question put by any noble Lord on that Committee, or by any of the evidence which could so easily have been obtained to represent the other side of the case. Among the long list of charges made there were two or three which he would notice as having been prominently put forward. He would take, for instance, the charge that the Chief Commissioners had not instructed the Assistant Commissioners as to the rules and principles on which they should fix fair rents. That was supposed to be a heavy accusation against the Chief Commissioners. This absence of what was called the principles of valuation had been commented on a great many times before in their Lordships' House within the last two years, but, he must say, without any light being thrown upon the means of remedying the defect, if it was one, or upon the principles which could possibly have been laid down by the Chief Commissioners; and he was bound to say that the evidence brought before the Committee left them in exactly the same state of perplexity they were in before. The Commissioners denied—he thought with great justice—that they were entitled to give any instruction to the Assistant Commissioners beyond the terms of the Land Act, by which they were bound; and in making that denial they asked a very pertinent question. They said—"Should we have been entitled to instruct the Judges of the County Courts in Ireland as to the rules they should adopt?" This was a question of the intention of the Land Act, and that Act placed the County Courts and the Sub-Commissioners upon a perfect equality. The Commissioners, therefore, asked why they should instruct the Assistant Commissioners as to the principles on which they were to administer the Act, when it was obvious that they could not instruct the County Court Judges? That appeared to him a very difficult question to answer. But,

  709
  further, when they came to look for the principles which, in the opinion of the Committee, ought to have been laid down by the Commissioners, there was little or nothing to be gathered from the Report. The Report rested largely upon the evidence of Professor Baldwin, which was warmly adopted by the Committee, and was used, to a great extent, as a foundation for the Report. Professor Baldwin was a clever man, and he could not help remembering that, for a long time, he was the great bugbear of the opponents of the Land Act, who had accused him of cutting down rents in a ruthless way, and of uttering dangerous sentiments. But it had since been discovered that Professor Baldwin was, after all, a friend in disguise, and he was now used as a lever to upset the Land Commission, and an authority for the Report of their Lordships' Committee. When Professor Baldwin talked of this question to the Committee his memory must have been a very short one, for it was quite impossible that he should have been in the same state of mind at the time when he declared himself satisfied with the working of the law, when he had settled the principles of valuation in his own mind, and announced that he and his colleagues had never departed from them by a hair's breadth. And what did the Professor tell the Committee upon this subject? He said—
  "I have two principles—one is my long experience of the real value of land, and the other is my long experience in agricultural operations connected with the land."
  Those were the so - called principles which Professor Baldwin himself supplied when he was questioned by the Committee. But neither he nor the other witnesses made a single suggestion as to what special and particular rules for ascertaining a fair rent could have been adopted beyond the obvious and familiar mode that was understood by everyone in Ireland, and by which any experienced man and any competent arbitrator would settle a fair rent between landlord and tenant. One would have thought that the Committee would have desired to obtain the opinion on such a subject as this of so highly competent and eminent a gentleman as Mr. Charles Grey, the chief valuer of the Land Commission. He had before him a statement by Mr. Grey, which was worth read-
  710
  ing, as a specimen of the kind of evidence the Committee might have had if they had chosen, which they did not. This was written last January—
  "We take what we consider the fair letting value of the farm, on the assumption that the farm is now to let, as our valuation of what we think should be fixed as a fair rent. We take the value of the land as we find it, without regard as to whether the improvements belong to the landlord or to the tenant. We consider what would be the rent that we should be willing to pay if we wished to take such a farm and wanted to cultivate it under ordinary conditions, and then we consider whether it is such a rent as we would like if we were a landlord, or an agent desirous of letting the farm to a desirable tenant, but not of obtaining the highest possible rent that could be got. When we find a farm in high condition, we try not to be deceived by first appearances, and when we find a farm in a poor condition, we try to ascertain the reason for it. We also inquire what are the improvements the tenant has made, and we report to the Commissioners how much value remains to the tenant of such improvements."
  As to the perplexity and mystery which was supposed to surround the fair rent, and the value of the tenant's improvements, as ascertained by the Land Courts, he (Lord Carlingford) was entirely incredulous. The main reasons for a reduction of rent were generally well understood by all who knew anything about the particular holding and district in question. The witnesses before the Committee were landlords or landlords' agents, or landlords' solicitors, who, having been subject to adverse decisions of the Land Court, attacked the impartiality of the Commissioners. Hence had arisen this monstrous and ridiculous fiction of which his noble Friend had made so much — namely, that the Land Commissioners were in the habit of arriving at a fair rent by a mere arithmetical juggle. The credit of the discovery of the so-called "arithmetical formula" belonged to one single gentleman, Mr. Hill Smith, who had practised largely before the Land Courts on the part of the landlords, and who was very proud of the invention, which depended almost entirely upon him. Professor Baldwin did not give any support worth having to the notion, for he denied that he himself, or any Assistant Commissioner with whom he ever acted, had done anything of the kind, though he seemed to fancy that he had detected it in some other cases.
  THE MARQUESS OF WATERFORD: He says he has heard of such a thing.
  LORD CARLINGFORD (LORD PRESIDENT of the COUNCIL)said, he was sorry that Professor Baldwin appeared to make an insinuation in one of his answers, attributing this gross judicial crime, as, of course, it would be, to the Chief Commissioners themselves. However, he would not accuse Professor Baldwin of making such an insinuation. That gentleman was very hard pressed by his questioners through several folios of the evidence to give the desired answers; but the answers were not entirely satisfactory. Although Professor Baldwin was evidently anxious to be agreeable to those with whom he was conversing, and showed that amiable tendency throughout his evidence, yet he often corrected himself, and said many very true things which made no appearance in the Report. As to this particular matter, Professor Baldwin merely said that he supposed the Chief Commissioners must have some formula, because they did not go themselves upon the lands to inspect them, which he considered essential. But, in expressing that view, Professor Baldwin spoke in a sense quite contrary to all the opinions which they used to hear in that House, according to which the only way of fixing a fair rent was, not that the Commissioners should go themselves upon the land, which, indeed, was impossible in the case of the Court of Appeal, but that they should hear all the evidence, and employ competent valuers, and then decide upon their reports. When pressed upon the point, Professor Baldwin refused to join in the accusation that had been made, and said distinctly that it would be monstrous to suppose the Chief Commissioners capable of such conduct; but, in spite of his opinion, such conduct was attributed to them in the Report of the Committee by way of insinuation, and directly by the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Waterford), if he understood him right. Professor Baldwin said, further, that there was some approach to coincidence between the average of the reductions and the arithmetical result suggested; but, of course, all figures could be reduced to averages. Professor Baldwin admitted that very much the same result might be made out of his own figures, and the amusing part of the matter was that be himself was one of the parties ac-
  712
  cused. Mr. Hill Smith also accused Mr. Foley in his Sub-Commission of the same thing; but neither of these gentlemen was ever informed of the fact by the Committee, nor ever asked to answer the charges levelled against them by Mr. Hill Smith. He (Lord Carlingford) had letters with him from every one of the accused Assistant Commissioners, denying, with the natural indignation of honest men, that they had ever performed such a dishonest arithmetical juggle as had been imputed to them in the Report, and by the noble Marquess. One of those letters was from Mr. Foley. He (Lord Carlingford) would not read Mr. Foley's letter, because the language used in it was not altogether Parliamentary; but it was thoroughly well justified by the gross charge brought against his integrity and judicial honour. If it were possible, under these circumstances, that their Lordships should believe the accusation of Mr. Hill Smith, in the face of all the probabilities of the case, and in spite of the character of the gentlemen accused, who all denied the truth of the charges brought against them, it would be vain to try by other arguments to influence their Lordships. He felt certain, however, that the character of these judicial gentlemen would not be damaged by the accusations of Mr. Hill Smith, although those accusations bad been adopted by the Committee. He would now refer briefly to the position of the legal Assistant Commissioners. His noble Friend had been convinced, as usual, on utterly insufficient and partial evidence, that the legal Commissioner was a nonentity or cipher, as Professor Baldwin had said; but he did not suppose that Professor Baldwin really meant to use the expression in its ordinary sense. It must have been used rhetorically. The only evidence in support of this assertion was the evidence of Mr. Foley. He (Lord Carlingford) had carefully studied the evidence of Mr. Reid, who did not for a moment support that view of the case. Indeed, all that Mr. Reid said—and it was a mere matter of course—was, that the legal Commissioner did not possess, and could not be expected to possess, except by accident, any skill or experience in judging the value of the soil. That was all that he could suppose Professor Baldwin to have meant in terming the legal Commis-

  713
  sioner a cypher, though, of course, there was no reason for applying so disrespectful an epithet to him. Mr. Foley, no doubt, was a rather exceptional man, and he (Lord Carlingford) was convinced that some of the language which he used, in describing his own position, would not be accepted by any other legal Commissioner in Ireland. Indeed, the language was so vague and confused that, possibly, Mr. Foley did not mean what he said, or what the Committee got out of him. But there was ample room and duty for the legal Commissioner beyond the mere valuing of the land. The valuing of the land was not the business of the legal Commissioner. It was his business to look after the evidence, to weigh the evidence, to see that the evidence in all matters of law was properly applied, and to guide the whole progress of the case. Mr. Kane, one of the legal Commissioners, referring to this matter, in a letter to one of the Chief Commissioners, said—
  "This statement, in my opinion, accuses the legal Assistant Commissioners of a very gross dereliction of duty, and I wish to state to you, as my chief, that a more unfounded statement, at least, as regards the practice of this and of the two former Sub-Commissions, of which I have been chairman, was never made. I have uniformly considered it my duty to take as full a part as my lay colleagues in the settling of the judicial rents, to make myself acquainted with the principles on which the valuation of the land has been conducted by my colleagues, and of ascertaining how they apply the law to the facts of each case, and that they have applied it correctly. In matters of mere valuation, I, not having the technical knowledge, am guided by my colleagues, as in matters of pure law I expect them to be guided by me … Professor Baldwin may consider me a cipher; but I do not think that any other of my present colleagues do, or that any of my former col. leagues did, and I certainly try not to be one, but to do my best in each case by weighing the evidence, by availing myself of the special knowledge of my colleagues, by helping them with my special knowledge."
  That seemed to be a very satisfactory statement, and he (Lord Carlingford) had not the least doubt, whatever Professor Baldwin might say, that that was the way in which the legal Assistant Commissioners, who were extremely competent and able men, had acted. He wished now to say a few words upon a point which was one of the most prominent in the Report, but as to which he was surprised to find that his noble Friend did not say much. It was a general charge against the Land Com-
  714
  missioners of violation of the intentions of the Land Act. The charge was one that was somewhat difficult to understand; but it appeared to be this—that whereas the Act was intended only to apply to exceptional cases of excessive rack-renting, the Land Commissioners had applied it generally, unscrupulously, and arbitrarily, without regard to the character of the particular estate or holding, and with very little regard indeed to the excessive or the moderate character of the rent. A graver charge against such tribunals it was impossible to imagine. It was a charge of absolute judicial incompetence, or of want of judicial integrity. What did the charge mean? Was it supposed that the Land Courts could select the cases with which they should deal? That when they came to a large, well-managed estate, they were to make their bow, and pass it by? The Land Courts acted upon applications; and when a tenant on an estate, having a high reputation, came before the Commissioners to have his rent fixed, they could not say—"No; you belong to the estate of Sir Richard Wallace, or to the estate of the Duke of Devonshire, and yours is, therefore, a case with which we cannot deal." Such a proceeding would, of course, be a gross violation of the Commissioners' duty. That, therefore, could not be what was meant by this charge. Its meaning, then, must be that if any rents were reduced upon the large estates, such reductions must, of necessity, be improper and unjust. But that was not a conclusion which it was possible to adopt. The Government contended, and were thoroughly convinced, that the Land Commission did their duty in the cases which he had just described just as they did it in others. When they found here and there on large, well-managed, and generally low-rented estates a case of high rent, they rightly reduced it. There was some interesting evidence, which found no place in the Report, as to the question of over-renting. The Commissioners stated that they found a greater amount of rack-renting than they expected before they began to hear the land cases. Mr. Justice O'Hagan said—
  "I own before I began to adminster the Act I did not expect to find so many cases of high rent as have come before us."
  And Mr. Vernon gave similar testimony. The most serious charge brought against

  715
  the Commissioners was that they made no difference between rack rents and moderate rents. He begged to call their Lorships' special attention to this point, because it essentially affected the duty and the honour of those Judges. Lord Brabourne asked Mr. Vernon—
  "Is it true, as stated to us by several witnesses, that whether a man has been rack-renting his tenants, or whether he has been giving them a fair rent, the reductions in a great many instances have been very much the same?" &c.
  Mr. Vernon's answer was—
  "I cannot say that I think that. I do not think that we should be fit to sit as a Court of Appeal if we were open to such criticism as that."
  Professor Baldwin said—
  "I quite agree with the view of the Chief Commissioners that the number of rack-renting cases is larger than was expected. …. On two estates (Mr. Kavanagh's and Lord Courtown's) we made large reductions, and I believe they were all justified by the Act. I know they were on my uniform principle, but in those cases the land had been held by middlemen. …. In every county rents are very unequal. This has come out very strongly before us. The other day we found in County Louth three properties adjoining, and the difference between the rents of two of them was 60 per cent."
  Professor Baldwin added—
  "In justice to the Sub-Commissioners this much may be said—that I think the cases on the large estates that have come in are bad cases. I know the estates of several members of the Committee. I am in a position to tell your Lordships from actual experience that the cases from those estates which we disposed of by no means represent the average rental of the estates."
  The fact was, that in many cases upon large estates the rent paid to middlemen had been either unaltered or insufficiently reduced when the leases fell in; in other cases there had been reclamations by the tenants, upon which high rents had been charged; and in others there had been some industry, such as weaving, which formerly enabled the tenant to pay a large rent. Were they to be told that the enormous difference of 60 per cent mentioned by Professor Baldwin was to be ignored by the Land Commissioners? It was wonderful that the Committee should have been led away, as they had been, by the one-sided evidence which they took to adopt such a Report as they had produced. Their Lordships had only to look to the Irish newspapers, with their daily accounts of the proceedings of the Land Courts, and they would find information
  716
  as to the operation of those Courts far more useful and impartial than that which was to be derived from the Committee's Report. As to the question of deterioration, upon which his noble Friend laid so much stress, he believed that the Report either asserted or implied—because it dealt more in implication than assertion—that the tenant was allowed by the Land Courts to profit by his own abuse of his farm. He did not know upon what evidence that insinuation was founded. Three Assistant Commissioners were examined, one of whom was Mr. Foley, and the evidence of the other two was very strongly in the opposite direction. Mr. Reeve said that his wish in a bad case would be to dismiss the application of the tenant, and to deprive him of the advantage of the Act. Professor Baldwin said that to put rent on worn-out land according to its existing value would be a monstrous thing; that he and those who acted with him never did such a thing; that they fixed the rent assuming the land to be in a fair average condition; and that any other course would be robbing the landlord. The Chief Commissioners had, over and over again, laid down that as the proper course to be taken. He had himself seen it laid down by the Sub-Commissions in hundreds of cases; and yet the representatives of landlords, agents, and others said that this deterioration was made no account of, and the Committee said or implied that such was the constant practice of the Land Courts. Then, as to the charge that the Assistant Commissioners were removed from county to county, if they were found unpopular with the tenants, and did not reduce the rents sufficiently, the Chief Commissioners absolutely denied that such was the case; and if the Committee had chosen to ask them a single question on the subject, which they never did, they would have received a reply to that charge, as, indeed, they would to all the charges of their last Report, had they chosen to invite the Chief Commissioners to come before them again. But all these grave accusations were accepted and embodied in the Report without an attempt to hear what the accused Judges had to say. Mr. Greer, for instance, who bad several times been attacked in that House, was prepared to give the most absolute denial to the charges against him.

  717
  Again, how easy it would have been to hear what the official valuers of the Land Commission had to say as to the fixing of rent. Not one of those official valuers was asked to give evidence, and the only substitute for such evidence was that of a certain Mr. Gray, who was for a short time employed by the Sub-Commissioners, and was apparently chosen as a witness simply because he was hostile to his employers. Upon the whole question no issue had been raised by his noble Friend. As to the Returns moved for, he was anxious to give them as far as possible. They could be given to a great degree; but the Chief Commissioners informed him that to produce the landlords' and tenants' valuation throughout Ireland from the first sitting of the Land Courts would be practically impossible, and that to do so it would be necessary to stop the sitting of the Courts. With respect to the landlords' and tenants' valuations in the appeal cases the Chief Commissioners would endeavour to furnish them. As he had already said, his noble Friend raised no issue by this Motion for the decision of the House; but the Report of the Committee did raise a serious issue before public opinion. The noble Lord and those who voted with him placed themselves before the court of appeal of public opinion. So did he (Lord Carlingford). he submitted, as the Land Commissioners themselves had done in the document upon the Table of the House, that the partial evidence which he had described and attempted in some measure to analyze, and this still more partial Report, were not to be taken as of any worth for the condemnation of the Land Act, or of its administration.
  THE DUKE OF ARGYLLsaid, his noble Friend who had just sat down had delivered, as he always did, a speech most moderate and conciliatory, both in tone and argument, and he was not prepared to address the House in confutation of any statements the noble Lord had made. That was not his object in addressing their Lordships. Since the passing of the Irish Land Act, he had maintained a scrupulous silence on the subject. He took no part in the vote of the House by which a Committee of Inquiry was appointed, and he respectfully declined to be a Member of that Committee. He did so upon several
  718
  grounds. In the first place, he thought that his serving on that Committee in the position he then occupied might easily have been misunderstood. In the second place, he thought at the time, and he thought now, that the Government had some reason, or at least some cause, to be jealous and fearful, if he might use the expression, of one House of Parliament appointing an inquiry so soon after the Act had been passed; and he thought that they had some reason to fear that the popular impression which might be produced in Ireland would be that this House wished to retrace its steps with regard to the passing of that Act. For these reasons he declined to act upon the Committee; but, at the same time, he had watched very closely the proceedings of that Committee, and the evidence which had been adduced before it. He regretted very much that the noble and learned Earl (Earl Cairns), the Chairman of that Committee, was not present to-night to answer for himself and for the Committee the accusations and assertions which had been brought by the noble Lord who had just sat down. But he did not want to enter into that. He would only say that he thought that his noble Friend (Lord Carlingford) had been as much one-sided as the Committee were when he gave what he called a careful analysis of the witnesses examined by the Committee. When he (the Duke of Argyll) said that the Committee examined all the three Chief Commissioners and several of the most prominent Sub - Commissioners, he thought he had said enough to show, if it were one-sided, its Report afforded most important and valuable information for the public judgment in this matter. One point referred to by his noble Friend was of considerable importance, because it was referred to in the Report of the Committee. It was that the three Chief Commissioners were examined by their Lordships almost exclusively upon the questions of Emigration and the Purchase Clauses. He begged entirely to differ from his noble Friend. He had made a very careful analysis of their evidence, and he thought he should be able to show on a future occasion—not in this Session of Parliament—that they had given most valuable and important information upon the question of the principles by which they were guided in the valuation of

  719
  rents. He had not had time to examine very carefully the reply of the Commissioners to the Report of the Select Committee; but he observed that the Commissioners took this ground—"We are judicial persons; you have no right to inquire into our decisions in our judicial capacity." That was not an argument, which, in his opinion, ought to be employed. Let their Lordships recollect what Parliament had done. They had committed to three gentlemen absolute and uncontrolled power over the whole agricultural property of the Irish people. These gentlemen had not a single principle to guide them; but were vested with absolute discretion to re-distribute property in Ireland as they pleased. He said respectfully that the Land Court was not a Court of Law, but it was a legal Court. It was a Court which administered by the will of Parliament the absolute discretion of three individual men. Under these circumstances, their Lordships had a right, and the public had the right, to inquire into the principles upon which the Commissioners were acting. There must be some Members of the House now present who might recollect the great speech delivered to that House by one of the greatest speakers who ever shook its walls—he meant Lord Lyndhurst—on an occasion on which he condemned the conduct of a Government of which he (the Duke of Argyll) happened to be a Member, in taking what he thought an unconstitutional and illegal step against the received and acknowledged practice of the Constitution. Lord Lyndhurst said, in his most solemn manner, and in his most solemn tone—
  "My Lords,—Jealousy is the spirit of our Constitution; jealousy, not envy; not envy of every one and every thing that is above us, which is one of the meanest feelings of mankind, but jealousy in the highest sense in which it is used in the Old Testament, when Jehovah said, 'I am a jealous God.'"
  The glory of nations was law, the administration of law; law based on no unsettled principles and guarded by the Judges of the Law, surrounded by ermine and removed from all popular passions and prejudices; but when Parliament appointed three men, two of whom were laymen, and one of whom only had a judicial character, and when Parliament gave those men absolute power over the property of other men, not on any known
  720
  principle, either of Statute or Common Law— when Parliament gave them absolute and free discretion to do what they pleased, with no Court of Appeal, but with every Court of Appeal specifically excluded by Act of Parliament, he (the Duke of Argyll) maintained, Parliament had committed an act which, in principle, amounted to a barbarous piece of legislation, and they were bound to keep the public eye and their own eye jealously upon the operation of such a Court. That was what he wished to say in answer to the accusations of those gentlemen, that this House was acting unconstitutionally—for that was the expression they used—in venturing to inquire upon what principles they had proceeded. This doctrine had not been accepted by any one of the parties who were interested in the Irish Land Act. Look at the candidates who, in the interest of the Government, went to their supporters and said—"Look at the great boon in the shape of a reduction of rent we have got for you; we will get more." What did Mr. Parnell say? He said—"By my influence with the Government I have got the power to appoint these men; you have got a reduction of 25 per cent; go on, and you will get 75 per cent." Such was the language used, and until their Lordships knew the principle on which property was disposed of there was at least room for accusations against the Act. He maintained that Parliament was perfectly right in inquiring into the administration of this tremendous and barbarous power, which, he would venture to say, had never been given before by any civilized Government. The only excuse the Government offered was that the Act was necessary to meet the special circumstances of Ireland. What were the special circumstances? Well, they knew that Ireland was on the eve of insurrection. There was no doubt the symptoms of agrarian revolution were one of the most serious and formidable dangers with which any Government could deal. he could excuse the Government in going a long way in exceptional legislation for the purpose of meeting extraordinary circumstances; but all he said was this—having committed such powers to a few men, they were bound to watch its operation if they meant to retain their position among the civilized Governments of the

  721
  world. The Commissioners in their Report said, as a matter of reasoning, that there was no principle by which land could be valued. In one sense that was perfectly true; but he wanted to point out the egregious fallacy involved in the arguments of these Judges. He had often asked skilled valuers of land—"What is the principle upon which you proceed? What is the amount, for instance, of gross produce which you give to the landlord, and what to the tenant?" They had always said to him—"We cannot tell you that —that is not the way we proceed." "Well," he had often said, "will you give me any sort of abstract principle on which you proceed?" "No," they had said, "we have no other abstract principle than this—that we know what men will give for the land. That is the principle of our valuation, 'What is the market value? '—what will men in the public market give for this land?" Well, the Commissioners were perfectly right in saying that they stood upon that principle, and that they had no other; but, unfortunately for Ireland, that principle had been banished thence to Jupiter and Saturn; and what he wanted to know was—what principle had been substituted for the market value? Parliament shirked its duty—let him say so distinctly; he would never cease to say so—Parliament shirked its most solemn duty when it refused to give these men some indication of the principle on which it intended them to proceed. It was, no doubt, very convenient to the majority of the time, in the face of the temper of the Irish people; but it was an act of the gravest dereliction of duty. Nothing could have been more simple than to apply to each individual case such a process as this—to take first the market value, and then to deduct what was thought to be fair for the exclusive property of the tenant in his improvements. It was perfectly competent for the Commissioners to make out a rule for the instruction of their Sub-Commissioners; there was no difficulty in the matter. However, he would not go to-night into the details of this question. He could not do so for many reasons; but he hoped, if health and strength were spared to him for another Session of Parliament, he should be able to direct the attention of the House to the consequences of the Land Act when a few
  722
  more of those consequences had been developed. He was sure this was a matter deserving the serious attention, not only of this Parliament, but of all the civilized Legislatures in the world. They had made a tremendous experiment, and they were bound to watch it with the most careful and jealous vigilance. Let him say one word more as to the reason which induced him to remain silent so long on the question. So far as the Administration of the Executive Government was concerned, he was anxious to avoid saying one word which could possibly embarrass his noble Friend (Earl Spencer) who was in charge of the Executive Government in Ireland. The first duty of Government was an executive duty, and it appeared to him (the Duke of Argyll), and he thought it had appeared to most men, that so far as the executive duty of the Government was concerned, it was performed by the noble Earl with eminent wisdom, firmness, and skill. He remembered the great public service rendered to Ireland and to this country when his noble Friend consented to take upon himself a most onerous and, what was generally, a most unthankful duty. He believed that his noble Friend would, in the eminent success which had attended his labours, and in the generous recognition given to him by men of all Parties, receive an ample reward for his great and courageous act of public duty.
  LORD FITZGERALDsaid, he looked upon it as one of the most valuable provinces of the House that it should supervise, net only the administration of the Land Act, but also the administration of all law throughout the United Kingdom. He considered that supervision to be one of the greatest safeguards of the Constitution. He would refer to the Bill proposed by Mr. Sharman Crawford to give security to tenants for their improvements. On the discussion of that Bill so much interest had been excited that the Government of the day had found it necessary to issue a Commission of Inquiry. The result of that Commission had been to stir the conscience of England, and excite the surprise of the civilized world, when it was shown that, in many cases, all the improvements were made by the tenants as distinguished from the custom in England, where the improvements were made by the landlords. Let them

  723
  trace the efforts that were made after the Report of the Devon Commission to settle the Land Question in Ireland. Lord Stanley curiously enough proposed that the scheme set forth in his Bill should be administered by a Central Commission in Dublin and Sub-Commissions throughout the country. Though passed by the House of Commons, the Bill was denounced in this House as confiscation, and it was dropped. Seven years elapsed, during which Mr. Sharman Crawford put forth all his efforts on behalf of the tenantry. A further Bill was then introduced during the Ministry of Lord Derby; but it was also denounced as confiscation. Mr. Napier at that time described the state of Ireland as one emerging from the grave. This Bill was also dropped. After that 18 years passed, and though various attempts were made no steps were taken to give the occupiers of the soil any security until the Bill of 1870, followed by the Act of 1881. These matters of history taught the lesson that Irish reform, persistently denied, always led to extreme and violent discussion. He would, however, pass to the Question now before the House; and what were the facts? The Land Act had not been in operation four months before the Committee assembled in a spirit of hostility to it. He did not deny that there had been many cases of distress and ruin arising out of the Act; but a Committee of that kind should conduct its proceedings in accordance with judicial rules, and with impartiality and justice. He felt extreme surprise on one occasion, when the noble Lord on the Cross Benches (Lord Brabourne), who was a Member of the Committee, came down to the House, and, while the proceedings before the Committee were still pending, delivered a remarkable speech in which he assailed the Land Commission, its members and administrators, and the character of the Sub-Commissioners. Then the noble and learned Earl (Earl Cairns), whom he was sorry not to see in his place, also came down, and, under the guise of an artless Question, delivered a hostile speech suggesting political corruption, even in the change of the Sub-Commissioners from place to place; and he was ably supported by a speech by the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Salisbury). The proceedings of the Committee were characterized by hostility against the
  724
  Act, its administrators and administration, and culminated in a Report, which, he ventured to say, was one of the most extraordinary documents ever laid upon the Table of their Lordships' House. He did not dispute the right of their Lordships to inquire into the administration of the Act; but he did dispute their right to charge a number of gentlemen with political, personal, and judicial corruption, and that charge not withdrawn or substantiated. It was plain from the Report that the Committee intended to judge them by conveying an imputation, not alone upon the Sub-Commissioners, but upon the Commissioners themselves, which, if well-founded, in place of being made in an ambiguous paragraph in the Report, ought to form the subject of an Address to the Crown praying for the removal of Mr. Justice O'Hagan, and of a Motion for the dismissal of Lord Monck, Mr. Litton, and Mr. Vernon. Mr. Justice O'Hagan was in the position of a Judge of the Supreme Court, and could only be removed by an Addres to the Crown, voted by both Houses of Parliament. The Report accused the Sub-Commissioners of the same misconduct and the same degradation which the 17th paragraph cast upon the Chief Commissioners. He felt warmly upon this subject, because it involved considerations in which they were all interested—the probity and independence of those who exercised judicial functions. He asked the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Salisbury), when he came to speak in this debate, to say whether he believed the charges and imputations to be true. If he did not believe them to be true, he should never have put his hand to the Report. If he did believe them to be true, the course of action adopted by the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Waterford), which would lead to so tame and impotent a conclusion, was much to be deplored. What did the noble Marquis propose? He proposed to ask their Lordships to agree to certain Resolutions, one of which condemned and incriminated the Commissioners. But the noble Lord did not go on to propose that these Commissioners should be removed. They were to be damaged in character and in public estimation, and yet allowed to continue to administer the Act in the face of this Report. Against such a proposal and principle as

  725
  that he had the strongest possible objection. Now, reference had been made to the evidence of Mr. Hill Smith, in which he stated a certain Sub-Commission, dealing with the estate of Mr. Cope in Armagh, came to their decision by an arithmetical process—that was adding together the tenant's valuation and the landlord's valuation, and dividing the total by two. Now, he had the authority of the gentlemen who composed the Sub-Commission to give the statement a flat contradiction. In the 20 cases referred to by Mr. Smith, two valuers, Mr. Murphy and Mr. M'Bride, were examined for the landlord, and both gentlemen admitted that reductions should be made, though they varied in their opinions as to the amount of the reductions. What did Mr. Hill Smith do? Why, when Mr. Murphy's figures suited his calculation, he adopted Mr. Murphy, and threw over Mr. M'Bride, and when Mr. M'Bride's figures suited him, he threw over Mr. Murphy; and yet this was the gentleman on whose evidence the reputation of a Sub-Commission was to be tarnished. He would follow the history of this Sub-Commission. On the estate of the Duke of Abercorn 10 cases were brought before them, and only in four were reductions made, and in these the noble Duke's valuer admitted that reductions should be made. In six of the cases they decided that the farms were already held at a fair rent, and so left the rent untouched; and in only one instance had they to make a substantial reduction. Again, there were a few large estates in the county of Kilkenny—those of Lord Ormonde, Mr. Tighe, the Earl of Bessborough, and Sir John Power. On these estates they had not to make a single reduction. In one case in the same county the Commissioners reduced the rent to £200, which was £2 in excess of the fair rent fixed by the landlord's own valuator. He would only add, in conclusion, that, in his opinion, there was much difficulty in defining the words "fair rent" more closely than they were already defined; but it was upon security of tenure, as given to a certain extent by the Act of 1881, coupled with a firm administration of law, that he fixed his hopes for the future tranquillity and prosperity of the country. When the Report of this Committee should have been entirely forgotten, and when the squabbles about rents which
  726
  would be 15 years hence raised upon the improved condition of the country should have ceased, history would record the return of peace and prosperity to Ireland, and the establishment of a body of occupiers who would be the firmest supporters of our invaluable institutions.
  LORD INCHIQUINsaid, with respect to the Resolutions he had placed on the Paper, though he had withdrawn them, he had not in the slightest degree altered his opinion in their regard. After the important inquiry which had been held by their Lordships, it was disappointing that the result should be merely a Motion for certain Returns. And here he must observe that he felt great regret at the absence of the noble and learned Earl (Earl Cairns), the Chairman of the Committee, whose presence would be so useful on that occasion. The evils complained of in the Report were going on every day, and they must now continue for the next six months, probably for nine, and possibly for 12 months. The proper course would have been to take from the Report of the Committee certain suggestions and reduce them to such a form that they could properly be brought to the attention of the Commissioners. For instance, if the Report was examined, it would be found to contain these four suggestions—That the Chief Commissioners should lay down rules for the Sub-Commissioners to act upon; that the improvements in respect of which reductions of rent had been made should bestated on the register; that the official valuers should in all cases be examined as to the grounds on which they made their valuation; and that the Commissioners, in giving judgment, should state the reasons for their decision. If the Commissioners gave the reasons for their decision, it would be useful in enabling landlords to come to a settlement with their tenants out of Court. He was himself most anxious to settle with his tenants out of Court if he only knew the principles upon which the Court proceeded. In the case of one of his tenants, the rent had been reduced from £500 to £450, and the tenant right fixed at £1,000. Why, he would ask, was this tenant to have his tenant right fixed at £1,000, and to be put into possession of a farm as good as any in England, with a house as good as he himself would wish to live in, though the tenant could show no improvements that he had

  727
  made, the principal part of the farm being in grass, and though the Commissioners stated that it was very difficult to say whether the case should have been entertained at all? It was most important, and absolutely necessary, that the improvements relied upon by the tenant as entitling him to a reduction of rent should be specified and registered, since at present there was nothing whatever to prevent those improvements being claimed over and over again. He had protested against the Act at the time it was before the House, and he should continue to protest against it to the end of his life. He only regretted that the peculiar considerations of the moment had precluded him from moving its rejection at the stage of second reading.
  THE EARL OF KINTOREsaid, there could be no doubt that the Land Act was brought in as a sop to sedition in Ireland, and as a set-off against the strongest measure of coercion under which that country had ever laboured. It was not introduced, or even thought of, until it was forced on Her Majesty's Government by crimes and assassinations, the atrocity of which had seldom been equalled in the history of Ireland. He called it not a measure of agricultural reform, but a measure of agrarian revolution. The Government, at the time of its introduction, must have been conscious of what would be the revolutionary effect of the measure, for their apologies were continuous during its passage through Parliament. The only thing that had worked effectively in the Land Act had been the reduction of rent. Not rack rents only had been reduced, but there had been a universal reduction of 161/4 per cent throughout the country. The conclusions at which the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Waterford) had arrived were perfectly irresistible on this point to everybody who studied the evidence given before the Committee. The important provisions relating to the reclamation of waste lands and the purchase of holdings by the tenants were entirely unworkable; and the Act, as a whole, was a complete failure. Indeed, of all the failures which had been apparent in the policy of the Government at home and abroad, none had been so disastrous or conspicuous as that involved in the passing of the Land Act of 1881.
  THE EARL OF DUNRAVEN: My Lords, I do not propose to discuss this question at great length, or to enter into details concerning the evidence on which the Report of your Lordships' Committee is founded. That has been amply and ably done by the noble Marquess who introduced the subject; but I want to make a few remarks of a general character concerning an Act which, in regard to the way in which it is administered, and judged by the effect which it has produced, I look upon as one of the worst pieces of modern legislation. The Act has now been in operation some two years. It has embraced a considerable area of country, and a large number of people have, for good or evil, been affected by it. Many reliable witnesses have been examined by the Committee, among them the three Chief Commissioners, some of the Sub-Commissioners, the Superintendent of the Purchase Clauses, the Registrar of the Landed Estates Court; and a great mass of evidence—and, I venture to think, in spite of what the Lord President has said, a great mass of valuable evidence—has been collected. We are, therefore, in a position to form an opinion as to whether the results of the Act are in accordance with the intentions of the Legislature, and whether it is administered in a manner in accordance with the anticipations of Parliament. The objects of the Act were to relieve certain congested districts by emigration, to bring about a considerable though gradual transfer of property from owners to occupiers by means of purchase, to effect such a change of tenure as would guard against the bad effects of undue competition for land, to inquire into rents, and, by re-adjustment in a very few cases, to bring about harmony among all classes engaged in agriculture. Such were the objects aimed at. As for the reasons for the Act, and the way in which they were to be obtained, Her Majesty's Government told us that one of the main reasons for legislation was that, owing to the conduct of a few landlords acting strictly within their legal rights, but harshly, an agrarian agitation was set on foot in Ireland; that, under these circumstances, it was difficult for the Executive to enforce the law, as real injustice and hardship occasionally resulted, and that if rents were revised and altered in a

  729
  few isolated cases, the Government could, with a clearer conscience and a stronger arm, insist upon legal obligations being carried out. We were told that reductions of rent might occur in a few cases; but that in no case would there be any real money loss whatever, because property would increase in value. But, instead of inquiring into rent in a few cases, we find that a revaluation of the whole of Ireland is going on, a valuation based on no principle, and conducted with the minimum of intelligence and the maximum of expense. We see, besides, that a general reduction of incomes has taken place, and that loss of property is universal, the property of landowners having become almost unsaleable. We find, moreover, that, owing to the fact that the re-valuation is conducted on no known principle, on no understood method, the attitude of the tenant farmers is one of great dissatisfaction with the settlement. We know, as a matter of certainty, that by reason of the manner in which they were overlooked in the Act, the whole of the labouring classes are discontented. We are further aware that, instead of having a good effect in checking undue competition for land, the effect of the Act has been rather to increase it, for, although the landlord's interest in land is almost unsaleable, the tenant's interest fetches preposterously high prices. These results are exactly the opposite of what Parliament anticipated; but we cannot wonder at the results arising if we consider the way in which the Act has been carried out. Your Lordships will remember the discussion that took place on the point of defining a fair rent. As the noble Duke (the Duke of Argyll) pointed out, Parliament, with a moral cowardice of which it ought to be ashamed, left that difficult question unsettled, and handed it over to the Chief Commissioners to decide. Parliament supposed that men of that position and experience would have little difficulty in laying down the principle upon which a fair rent was to be arrived at. Did the Chief Commissioners accept the responsibility? Not at all. They, in their turn, hand it over to the Sub-Commissioners, now numbering 85. Let us consider what these persons have to do. They are supposed to settle the most difficult and intricate questions which it is possible to ask any man,
  730
  or any body of men to, settle. Nothing can be more difficult than to decide arbitrarily, and, at the same time, justly as to what is fair rent in a large number of cases. If any fixed principle is laid down, such, for instance, as that the competition value of the land is to be taken into consideration, and then certain allowances based on fixed rules are to be made for the value of the tenant's improvements, it may, perhaps, be done; but without any fixed principle it is impossible. The value of any commodity, land included, to any person, the value of any particular piece of land to any particular person, the whole business transactions of man with man in the matter of letting, hiring, or buying, or selling any article are of so intricate a nature, that if we attempt to settle them arbitrarily, then the whole experience of all civilzed communities goes to prove that less injustice and hardship occur if such matters are left to be settled privately by the individuals interested. The State in its legislative capacity can frame rules to form a basis upon which property rests, and in its executive capacity the State can enforce the carrying out of contracts legally entered into. There its functions ought to cease. It cannot usefully interfere in the everyday business affairs of life. Suddenly, however, these most difficult and intricate questions are handed over to those 85 gentlemen to decide. I have not a word to say against the character of the Sub-Commissioners. I daresay they do their duty according to the best of their ability, and as far as the circumstances in which they are placed will permit them. But I do say that they are not in a sufficiently independent position, that they have not sufficient knowledge and technical training and experience, and, in some cases, have not sufficient natural capacity to enable them competently to decide the very delicate questions handed over to them. These Sub-Commissioners appear to have been shaken out over Ireland without any particular method or rhyme or reason. We see men accustomed to Ulster sent to the South of Ireland, and men acquainted with the South sent to the North, and we know that Ulster is as different from the rest of Ireland as are countries inhabited by different races and separated by thousands of miles of sea. The Sub-Commissioners do not

  731
  appear to have been selected on account of local knowledge, and are not allowed to remain long enough in a district to obtain the necessary local knowledge. Their position is not sufficiently independent. No instance exists, in modern times at any rate, in which matters of so intricate a nature, cases affecting not only the property but the character of thousands of men, have been intrusted to persons who are merely ten ants-at-will of a Government whose reputation depends entirely on the effect on the body of the people produced by the Act which these tenants-at-will have to administer. I do not say that the Sub-Commissioners are knowingly affected by these considerations, but it is not possible that men so placed should not be unwittingly influenced. Certain facts must have intruded themselves with overwhelming force upon the minds of the Sub-Commissioners. They must have known perfectly well, as soon as they saw that the greater part of Ireland was coming before them, that to prevent the Land Act from resulting in a ridiculous breakdown it was necessary for them to run through the cases with great rapidity. They knew very well that the reputation of their employers, the Government, depended upon the people of Ireland being pacified by the administration of the Land Act, and, not being idiots themselves, it is probable that they saw no reason to suppose that Irishmen in general would be pacified by being put to great expense in order to be told that their rents were perfectly fair. It is not strange that, under these circumstances, large and inconsistent reductions of rent have taken place. But these reductions, seeing that they have been made without any particular reason, and have not followed from the application of any known principle, are unsatisfactory to the persons for whose benefit they were made. Consider for a moment how the Sub-Commissioners act. A Sub-Commission consists now of five members, one legal and four lay members. The lay members are divided into two parties of two each, who alternately sit in Court with the legal Commissioner and go out and examine the holdings. It might happen, and according to the evidence given before the Committee it does happen, that one section of a Sub-Commission visits a farm and makes a
  732
  reduction of from 20 to 30 per cent, and that the other section of the Sub-Commission examines the farm next to it—a farm consisting of precisely similar soil, held under like circumstances, and subject to a similar state of things—and they make a reduction of only, perhaps, 10 or 15 per cent. This is not likely to lead to satisfaction. The man who receives the smallest reduction is dissatisfied because he had the bad luck to come under the wrong pair of Sub-Commissioners, and the man who gets the largest reduction is discontented, because he thinks that if he had come under some other Sub-Commission his reduction would have been still larger. It is the fact that reductions are made apparently at the sweet will of the different Sub-Commissioners, and are not made according to any recognized rule or method. That has destroyed whatever good effect the Land Act might otherwise have had. It is the utter want of principle that causes such universal dissatisfaction with the Act. It may be said that, after all, there is an appeal from the Sub-Commissioners. That is so; but what a Court of Appeal it is! It was pointed out in evidence that, practically, the Court of Appeal is of no value whatever. Whoever heard of a Court of Appeal proceeding on a method entirely different from that pursued in the Courts of First Instance? And yet that is the case as regards those Land Courts. The Sub-Commission Courts hear evidence on oath and examine the land. Their method is to check evidence by personal inspection. The Court of Appeal, it is true, sends occasionally a valuer to report upon the land, subject to appeal; but he hears no evidence of any kind, on oath or otherwise. The Chief Commissioners made some remarks, in their observations on the Report of your Lordships' Committee, upon the difference in the method pursued in the Upper and Lower Courts; and what they say practically amounts to this—that, owing to the immense number of cases, it is physically impossible for the Court of Appeal to pursue the same method as that used in the Courts of First Instance. That is exactly my contention. I have nothing to say against the Courts, or against the character of the persons composing the Courts; but what I do say is that, owing to the fact that the

  733
  business coming before the Courts is infinitely greater than was expected in Parliament, and that the Courts have to deal with a state of things which was not anticipated, it is physically impossible for justice to be done. The machinery invented by Parliament is not fitted for the work which it is expected to do. I cannot but think that there is a considerable amount of truth in the words of one witness, who said that the Court of Appeal was "a solemn farce.' The Chief Commissioners made several observations as to the conclusions drawn by your Lordships' Committee. These observations are very peculiar, and, in some cases, most unfair to the Committee. They consist, to a great extent, of sheer denial of facts, as to the truth of which a great amount of evidence was produced, and they show an intense desire to make out that your Lordships' Committee were actuated by hostile feeling against members composing the Courts. They talk about the Committee in its Report making an attack on the honour and integrity of the members of the Courts. I venture to assert that your Lordships' Committee were actuated by no hostile motives, and made no attack on the honour and integrity of anybody. They did what they were told by this House to do. They examined into the working of the Act, received evidence, digested it, and embodied it in a Report, according to the best of their ability. The Commissioners complain that the Committee did not receive rebutting evidence, and that they gave no opportunity for such evidence to be sent in. About a month elapsed between the time when the evidence was in the hands of the Chief Commissioners and all other parties interested, and the laying of the Report upon the Table of the House. There was ample time, therefore, for rebutting evidence to be sent in; but the Commissioners did not avail themselves of the opportunity. The Commissioners endeavoured to show that a great Constitutional principle has been violated by the Committee by inquiring into judicial decisions; but I would remind your Lordships that the Committee have given no opinion as to particular individual cases. They merely inquired into the whole working of the Act; and to say that an Act such as this, which is entirely novel in this
  734
  country, and which is without precedent or parallel in any country in the world, should not be diligently and carefully inquired into, seems to me a most preposterous proposition to advance. The Chief Commissioners seem to think that your Committee in commenting upon the Act are thereby attributing evil motives to them. For instance, the Report says that it would be advisable for the Sub-Commission Courts to sit in a greater number of places; upon which the Commissioners remark, that they could not possibly have any motive in their regulations other than a desire to administer the Act truly and properly. Nobody ever attributed any bad motive to them whatever in the matter. The Committee merely suggested that the Sub-Commissioners should sit in a greater number of localities. There is a French proverb, "That he who excuses accuses himself," which I might apply, only I have not the slightest idea that the Commissioners are actuated by any but the best motives. The Commissioners make some observations as to the absence of principle. In Paragraph 6, they state that it had been their intention to adjudicate themselves upon the first batch of cases that came up, as they expected that they would be test cases; and they thought that their decisions in those cases would govern many others. But they added that the test cases did not come forward because Mr. Forster shut up Mr. Parnell, and put an end to the Land League. It seems as if the Commissioners thought that the suppression of the Land League was indirectly the cause of there being no principle for the settlement of rent in the Land Act. I do not think, however, that even if the Chief Commissioners had decided the first lot of test cases, that the good results they anticipated would have followed. How could a line be given for the decision of future cases, if the Commissioners pursued the course that has been followed since, and gave no reasons for their decisions? All that the public and the Sub-Commissioners would have known was that the rents were reduced to a certain extent in a certain number of cases; but, unless the reasons for the decisions were given, and people understood why the rents were so reduced, it is difficult to see how any principle to guide them could have been arrived at. In Paragraph 22, they state that—

  735
  "When any question of principle is involved, it is the practice of both tribunals that a judgment should be delivered stating the reasons for the decision. But upon the mere question of determining, in ordinary cases, the amount of the judicial rent, it is not … required … that the reasons for the decisions should be set forth."
  They speak of the mere question of settling of rent as if that was not the one important matter in the whole Act. The settling of a fair rent is the pivot upon which the whole Act turns. That is the one question on which it was of paramount importance that a definite principle should be laid down. This entire absence of principle has been productive of the greatest evil, in that it has caused almost universal dissatisfaction with the Act. It has produced minor evils also. One result, undoubtedly, is that, the worst landlords and the worst tenants have come off best under the Act. Landlords who had rack-rented their properties have not suffered so much as those whose properties have been let low. The occupiers who, through bad husbandry, have let their lands run out have been leniently treated in consequence. This is met in Paragraph 17 by a simple denial on the part of the Chief Commissioners. It is all very well to deny the fact, but it is supported by a great deal of evidence; and I must say that, as far as my experience of the South of Ireland goes, I entirely agree with the evidence that was produced before the Committee. I am perfectly certain that it is true that those tenants who have farmed negligently have received the greatest benefit. It is a matter of universal regret on the part of tenants that their land was examined when it was looking well. We know that they have used all kinds of endeavours to make their farms look in as bad a condition as possible. Anyone who examines the reductions that have been made on different properties can see for themselves that the reductions are very much the same on high-rented and on low-rented properties. If so much dissatisfaction and confusion exists now, how much greater will it be in the future when these cases come to be heard over again? No maps exist. Specifications of improvements are imperfectly kept. No data are kept whereby the present condition of a holding can be ascertained. People do not know what to be at now. They do
  736
  not know what evidence to bring forward, or what effect their evidence produces. They will be in a still worse condition in the future. Nobody will know what was allowed for improvements, or what was added for deterioration, or whether the improvements claimed were made before or after the present inquisition. It will not even be possible for a Judge to be certain whether he is re-valuing the right lands, or whether the lands are the lands they claim to be. This is a pretty mess to get a country into. You have invented, with the utmost ingenuity I must allow, a scheme for keeping the country in a state of constant discontent and litigation. You have got the country into a most extraordinary mess, and the mess has not even the merit of being a cheap one. The Act costs something like £500,000 a-year. It will take an enormous sum to put the country through this extraordinary mill you have invented, and by the time one end of it is through the other end will be coming in again to be re-ground by your machinery, so that the expense is continuous. The last Poor Law valuation for the whole of Ireland cost between £300,000 and £400,000. For less than £400,000 a valuation of the whole country, carefully conducted and supervised, based en known sound scientific and commercial principles, was made. For less than the yearly cost of the Land Act, you might have made a complete valuation of the whole country, which, if made for rent instead of for the purposes of taxation, would undoubtedly have afforded a very excellent basis on which landlords and tenants could have mutually and fairly agreed as to rent. The administration of the Act has, I believe, done great harm to the country at large, and has had effects in the country which Parliament did not foresee. The effect on one class—that of the landowners—is certainly different from what was anticipated by Parliament. Your Lordships must recollect that the Sub-Commissioners, in settling rents, have not only dealt with the property of landowners, but they have had, consequentially, to deal with their characters also. They have had, practically, to give an opinion as to the way in which the whole body of landowners have dealt with their tenants. The effect on the land-owning class is quite different from what Par-

  737
  liament was led to expect on the assurances of Her Majesty's Government. On introducing the Act of 1881 Her Majesty's Government had to devour nearly all the words they used, and disavow all the rules they laid down for the regulation of property 10 years before; and, in the same manner, within the last two years they have had to swallow and digest, as best they could, all the anticipatory statements which they made when the Act was being discussed in Parliament. Your Lordships well remember the general tone of the speeches which ushered in the Bill. The Government gave certain assurances, or, if they were not assurances, they were, at any rate, opinions, advanced with a degree of authority that made them practically of the nature of assurances, and they were so considered by Parliament. In substituting the extraordinary tenure involved in the Act of 1881 for the system imposed upon Ireland by Parliament in the Act of 1860, which stated that land was to be held under the expressed or implied contract of the parties, and not by tenure or service, there was this danger to be feared. There was a risk that either loss would be occasioned, in which case compensation would be due, or Parliament would be committing a theft. This difficulty was met by assurances that there would be no loss. Ministers declared that the Bill would cause landlords no money loss whatever, and that, therefore, there could be no claim for compensation. Rents would remain as they were in nine cases out of ten, according to Mr. Bright, when he was a Member of the Cabinet; and any slight reductions would be counterbalanced by the enhanced value of landed property. The noble and learned Earl upon the Woolsack, upon the second reading of the Bill, announced his intention of endeavouring to imagine himself in the position of an Irish landlord, and declared that, having done so, he would be able conscientiously to state that he would not feel himself aggrieved by the Bill. I do not know whether the noble and learned Earl succeeded in performing his mentally acrobatic feat; but, if he did, I cannot help thinking that he must have seen reason to modify his opinions as to the effect of the measure, because he went on, in the same speech, to say that the Bill would not—
  738
  "Diminish in any degree whatever the rights of the landlord or the value of the interest which he possesses."—(3 Hansard, [264] 532.)
  But the noble and learned Earl knows very well that the interest of the landlord has been diminished to such an extent that the Judges of the Landed Estates Court will not allow sales to take place, the prices offered being ridiculously insufficient. Then the noble Lord the Lord President of the Council said that the—
  "Provisions of this Bill will cause the landlords no money loss whatever. I believe that it will inflict upon them no loss of income, except in those cases in which a certain number of landlords may have imposed upon their tenants excessive and inequitable rents."—(Ibid., 252.)
  What has happened? Rents have been reduced universally everywhere. What I want to know is, have all the landlords in all these cases that have been tried been imposing excessive and inequitable rents; or have the decisions of the Sub-Commissioners been inequitable, and their reductions excessive; or has the Act been intrepreted and administered in a way that Parliament did not intend or anticipate? I should like much to know what is the opinion of Her Majesty's Government on these points? Mr. Litton, one of the Commissioners, also said—
  "A just and fair landlord had nothing to fear [from the Bill]; and, in that case, things would go on just as if the Bill had never passed."
  But we see that all landlords had cause to fear—that in all cases they have been interfered with. Does that show the Act to have been administered differently to what was intended, or are we to adopt the horrible alternative of believing there is no such thing as a just and fair landlord in all Ireland? I could multiply instances; but I do not wish to weary the House with extracts. The noble Earl the Secretary of State for India spoke in a similar tone.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: What was maintained by me?
  THE EARL OF DUNRAVEN: The general harmlessness of the Bill.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: What did I say?
  THE EARL OF DUNRAVEN: If the noble Earl wishes to know exactly what he said, he said this—
  "He was in a position of never having given any assurance whatever; but that as regarded

  739
  the assurance of his noble Friend, he should be inclined to take the same view, and express his belief that upon the whole the landlords in Ireland had not over-rented their estates, and that those who had treated their tenants fairly would not suffer any money loss, because their properties would be made more secure."
  Well, but we have seen that money loss has been almost universally sustained. Are we to suppose that the Act is administered in a different spirit from what was intended, or are we to suppose that no Irish landlords have treated their tenants fairly? I will not multiply instances. The same idea that the majority of landlords were just in their dealings, that rents were not excessive, and that, consequently, the Bill would be harmless, the same assertions that property would not be deteriorated or interfered with, was set forth in Her Majesty's Gracious Speech from the Throne, were embodied by the noble Earl the Secretary of State for the Colonies in an article in The Nineteenth Century, were put forward by many other authorities, and especially by the Prime Minister, who, among other utterances, stated that he did not wish in the least to convey an impression that, as a rule, land was too highly let in Ireland. I think I have advanced sufficient to prove that the general contention of Her Majesty's Government was that there would be no deterioration in property, and that there would be no loss of income to landowners, except in a few isolated cases, and that, even in these cases, there would be no real loss, because the value of property would be greatly enhanced by the additional security given to it. How completely have results falsified these anticipations! What has happened? Incomes are reduced on all properties, large and small, rack-rented and low-rented. A great number of landowners are reduced to the extreme of necessity, and a very much larger number are seriously embarrassed. They cannot maintain themselves and their families, or maintain and develop their properties, and they can do nothing to help themselves. They cannot realize their properties, for the landlord's interest is practically unsaleable. And that is the outcome of an Act under which it was said that in nine cases out of ten rents would remain as they were, and that there could not possibly be any money loss whatever to anyone. The characters and equity of
  740
  the whole body of landlords are involved in this matter. I want to know the opinion of Her Majesty's Government on this point. Was the Prime Minister right when he said of Irish landlords—
  "As a rule, they have stood their trial, and they have, as a rule, been acquitted."
  And, again—
  "The greatest credit is due to Irish landlords for not exacting all that they are entitled by law to exact."
  And—
  "There are, no doubt, a number—and not an insignificant number—of landlords who are content to take a less rent than the law would give them."
  Is the general attitude of landowners as a class towards their tenants best described by those words, or by the words of another Cabinet Minister, when he said that the landlords had been extorting unjust rents? The latter appears to be the opinion of Her Majesty's Government. It has been put forward by more than one Member of the Government; and, as far as I know, has not been disavowed by anyone. Mr. Chamberlain, speaking at a large public meeting at Birmingham, and commenting on a speech of the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition, said—
  "He (the Marquess of Salisbury) can express sympathy … for Irish landlords who had to submit to a reduction of 25 per cent in their rents; but I can find nowhere any expression of sympathy for the poor tenants, who for years, under the threat of eviction and the pressure of starvation, have paid the unjust rents levied on their own improvements, and extorted from their desperate toil and hopeless poverty."
  To anyone who knows anything at all about the real state of the case in Ireland, and knows that evictions were unknown on the majority of estates, such a statement would be merely ridiculous in its utter ignorance, if it were not also mischievous. But the worst of it is that it appears to be borne out by the action of the Sub-Commissioners. The noble Earl (the Earl of Rosebery) put the case with his usual clearness and conciseness. Speaking on the same occasion, and also commenting on a speech of the noble Marquess, he said that the noble Marquess had placed himself in this dilemma—
  "Either the Sub-Commissioners are dishonest and fraudulent men—but that is a subject I will not discuss, because I do not think it will be fair to men of high character to discuss such a

  741
  question, or else, for many years past, the landlords of Ireland have been extracting 25 per cent over a fair rent from their tenants."
  The noble Earl objected even to discuss the possibility of the Sub-Commissioners being unjust and fraudulent, and had no hesitation in allowing it to go forth that the whole body of Irish landlords were unjust and fraudulent. That is a heavy charge to make against a great body of one's countrymen. It is the first time in the history of this or any other country that an assize or inquiry into alleged damage, on account of private property being taken up for the public benefit by the State, the moral character of the claimants is to be taken into consideration. If this is carried out in the future, it will produce some curious results, and will necessitate a new board of arbitrators in ethics and official court valuers in morals. I would suggest, however, to the noble Earl that his dilemma, though clearly, was not quite accurately expressed. It is quite conceivable that the Sub - Commissioners, though not fraudulent and dishonest men, are yet, by the insecurity of their position, through lack of technical knowledge, and for many other reasons, unable to arrive at just and fair conclusions as to rent. It is said that the landlords of Ireland have been extracting unjust rents, rents which I would remind the House were punctually and cheerfully paid until, for purely political purposes, an agitation was set on foot against them, and was forced upon the people by every argument that could appeal to their cupidity, by every argument that could appeal to their national sentiment, and by every horror and atrocity that could fill their minds with terror. Irish landlords have been charged with extracting unjust rents because those rents have been reduced by your Sub-Commissioners. I deny that those Sub-Commissioners are capable or competent to decide those cases. I utterly deny that they are competent, in any way, to adjudicate upon matters affecting the character and honour of a great body of their countrymen. And what has been the sin of these men? According to your indictment, a few—a very few—of the landlords insisted on their legal rights with harshness. That was the indictment. But their real crime—and they know it—was that they stuck, at all hazards, to
  742
  the connection between the two countries as it now exists, and, with a degree of folly which is not likely to possess them again, trusted to the justness of Parliament and of their countrymen to see that they suffered no loss thereby. Such has been the effect of the Act upon this class. It has ruined many, impoverished more, and blackened the characters of all; and these sacrifices have been made absolutely for nothing. The Act has done no good. It has not checked the effect of undue competition for land. It has done nothing to promote emigration. The Purchase Clauses are inoperative. The scandalous way in which the labourers have been left out in the cold has created discontent in that class; and the fact that no principle has been laid down for the fixing of rents, and that no method whatever is observed, has created almost universal dissatisfaction among the class of tenant farmers. They see no justice in the Act. They see no signs of finality in it. The attitude of the country is one of expectation of further agrarian legislation in the immediate future. You might have made a complete change in the whole system of tenure and ownership, giving compensation when it was due; you might have laid down a fair principle for the adjustment of rents; you might have made a complete and reliable valuation of the whole country. You did none of these things. You attempted a compromise, and the compromise has broken down. You have imposed a system upon the country under which neither Ireland nor any other country can thrive. You have got the country into a difficulty, out of which, owing to the unfortunate failure of the Purchase Clauses, we can see no visible way of escape.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEYsaid, he was not surprised that many men who were, no doubt, smarting under a sense of what they deemed injustice should feel strongly and denounce unsparingly the Act under which they suffered. But he could not help saying now, what he had said before, that nothing filled him with so much despair for the future of Ireland as this universal habit on the part of Irishmen, whether on the one side or the other, of violent and indiscriminate denunciation. They had Mr. Parnell and his followers in the other House; they had his noble

  743
  Friend in that House. He knew his noble Friend to be as loyal a man as could be, and he did not confound his opinions with those of the men to whom he had referred; but there was in him no calm deliberation, no power of appreciating both sides of a question. The violence which was exemplified, as much in the debates in that House as well as in the debates elsewhere, must make them see how immense was the difficulty of dealing with a country like Ireland, and that difficulty would be as great if the Party opposite was in Office as it was now. His noble Friend spoke with astonishment of the universal reduction of rent in Ireland. There were a vast number of cases yet to be tried; and, therefore, he did not think it could be said with truth that there had been a universal reduction of rents. What, however, their Lordships were asked to consider was what, in point of fact, had been the operation of the Act, and what had been the proceedings of the Commissioners? He considered the Committee were quite as much on their trial as the Commissioners; and the verdict, though, perhaps, not in this House, was quite as likely to go against the Committee as against the Commissioners. The indictment against the Committee was that from first to last they proceeded in a partizan spirit. They carefully called witnesses to prove the case which they determined beforehand to prove, and they had drawn up a Report which formed a violent attack upon the Commissioners and the Act. What it appeared to him the Committee ought to have done, when they received evidence incriminating the Commissioners, was not to wait until the Commissioners presented themselves; but to have sent them the evidence upon which they intended to found the accusations against them, and to have asked them whether they desired to come before the Committee for the purpose of giving rebutting evidence if they could. He did not doubt the right of the House to appoint a Committee of Inquiry into the operation of an Act of this remarkable character; but the head and front of the mistake was the action of the House in insisting upon an inquiry before the Act had fairly got to work. Had a longer time been allowed to elapse, some valuable results might have been attained by the inquiry; as it was, the investi-
  744
  gations had resulted in nothing more than a violent indictment against the Commissioners, founded upon evidence of a one-sided character. Several noble Lords had reflected very severely upon the conduct of the Government and of Parliament in not having in the Act inserted a definition of fair rent, so as to guide the Commissioners in their action. That, no doubt, was deliberately done by Parliament. It was not an act of cowardice, as his noble Friend (the Earl of Dunraven) seemed to imagine; it was the act of men who were not able to frame a satisfactory definition. The most analogous case he could remember was the case of the Act under which very important operations took place in the country—the Act under which all the assessments for local rates were fixed throughout the country. What was the definition which Parliament inserted in that Act? Why, that the property was to be assessed at the rent which it might reasonably be expected to fetch from year to year. That was neither more nor less than a fair rent, and that was exactly rent which the Commissioners in Ireland were instructed to fix. If Parliament had failed in its duty by not inserting a definition in the Act, was that a ground of complaint against the Commissioners? The Commissioners would have gone beyond their duty if they had attempted such a definition; and they would have been enacting, without any legislative power, an addition to the Act of Parliament. A great deal had been said about the Sub-Commissioners, and his noble Friend on the Cross Benches (the Earl of Dunraven) had expressed surprise that no persons possessing local authority had been appointed to conduct the measure. It was well known that when men were called upon to perform public duties in their own locality they were always open to the charge of partiality. His noble Friend (the Earl of Dunraven) brought a general accusation against the whole Act; he had said it had already failed. Nothing was better than the relations of landlord and tenant before the Act, and there was no necessity for the Act. He (the Earl of Kimberley) supposed that his noble Friend was of opinion that landlords and tenants could have settled their grievances without such an Act, that landlords would have received their rents, and that the tenants would have

  745
  settled down into that quiet and tranquillity for which people had so long wished.
  THE EARL OF DUNRAVENsaid, he did net say there was no necessity for legislation; but that there was no necessity for the Act.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEYasked whether his noble Friend did not know that agitators could not do anything unless there was stuff on which they could work? It was because there was a widespread distrust between landlords and tenants, because there was an absence of that good feeling which they all wished to see prevailing, because there was in Ireland a distrust of the Government itself — he did not mean the Government of Mr. Gladstone, but, unfortunately, the Government of this country—it was because of the state of things that he had described, that the Government were compelled to have recourse to an Act which had not been unfairly described as a domestic revolution. The state of things required a violent remedy. His noble Friend knew that landlords were not getting their rents except with the help of English bayonets. Were the Government to supply that force, and not supply the remedy? Whoever it was who was at fault, there was an agrarian agitation in Ireland for which there was no alternative but to have recourse to a strong and drastic measure, such as the Land Act. It was impossible that a measure of this kind could be carried into effect without some cases of individual hardship, and even of injustice. The Commissioners were accused of meeting the statements made against them with a simple denial. He could not see how, under the circumstances, they could have done otherwise. These Commissioners were fallible, like other men; and he should not be at all surprised to learn that in some cases they had acted in a manner which the House would not approve. Very probably they had done a good many things open to criticism; but he believed, at the same time, they had endeavoured to carry out the Act to the best of their ability. When men were intrusted with grave duties, nothing was more discouraging than to find they were not supported by the opinion of the respectable classes in the country. Why, the very hostility they excited in Ireland would make them doubly careful
  746
  not to exceed the bounds of fairness and moderation. They had incurred much odium, it was true; but that was because they endeavoured to give the Act fair play, and did not proceed in a spirit of hostility to it. The Act, he believed, had had a largely beneficial effect, though, perhaps, some believed that the improved condition of the country was due to the measures of severe coercion they had adopted. That, however, was not his opinion. Severe measures might cope effectually with conspiracy, or even with secret societies; but they were powerless in the face of an agrarian movement, a general refusal to pay rent, and, in such cases, nothing but a change of system would avail. That change of system, combined with the severe measures, he believed, would have a good effect; but such a change required a generation to show its full influence on the social system; and, although he believed the Government had laid the foundations of a better land tenure in Ireland, still he should not be surprised even if many further changes intervened before the new system showed its full results, and Ireland became a peaceful and contented country.
  LORD BRABOURNE: My Lords, as a Member of the Committee which has been referred to by the noble Earl (the Earl of Kimberley) as being upon its trial, and as having been myself pointedly alluded to during this debate, I humbly crave your Lordships' indulgence for a short time. No man can have lived a long Parliamentary life without having experienced from time to time great surprises; but I confess that I never experienced a greater surprise than at the tone and the manner of the Lord President of the Council (Lord Carlingford) in his reply to the noble Marquess who introduced this subject to-night. The noble Lord taunted your Lordships' Committee with not having called witnesses on both sides of the question; and he justified those observations of the Commissioners to which I shall presently have to refer. But to enable your Lordships adequately to appreciate the extraordinary reply of the noble Lord, I must ask you to recall, for a few moments, what passed at and since the appointment of this Committee. I was always at a loss to comprehend why Her Majesty's Government should have so vehemently opposed its appointment. It is quite

  747
  true that in ordinary cases there is some inconvenience in inquiring into the working of a law which has only been for a few months in operation. But, in the first place, this was no ordinary case; and, in the next place, it was one far above and beyond any mere question of convenience. Courts had been established in Ireland of a nature and character unknown in the previous history of this country; the law was being administered in a manner which I say distinctly had never been contemplated by the Parliament which passed it; grave complaints of its administration were brought daily before us; and we owed it to ourselves and to the public, alike of Great Britain and of Ireland, that to those complaints we should not turn an indifferent ear. My Lords, if Her Majesty's Government had been able to recognize the position; if they had encouraged, instead of opposing, the inquiry, and had placed upon the Committee some of those who had supported the measure in its passage through this House, and were favourable to what I will call its principles, they would have done much to lift this question, as it ought to have been lifted, out of the region of Party controversy, and would have added immensely to the probability of the early and satisfactory solution of some of the difficulties which beset it. Unhappily, the Government took an entirely different course. From first to last they did their utmost to discredit your Lordships' Committee; in the other House of Parliament they wasted valuable time in an unseemly criticism of your Lordships' proceedings, which was as utterly unconstitutional as it was entirely futile. Your Lordships' Committee meanwhile went on, quietly doing its duty, endeavouring to discover where and wherefore the Act was defective, and investigating the complaints which were made against it. And now, forsooth, the Government having, in a fit of temper at their defeat upon the question of its appointment, refused to aid the inquiry, and discouraged their friends from giving evidence before the Committee, turn round and accuse us of having neglected the duty which it was their own part to have discharged, and find fault with us for not having discovered and summoned before us the evidence which they could themselves have produced if they had wished to aid
  748
  in an impartial inquiry. My Lords, what were the complaints which we had to investigate? They were such as must be admitted by every impartial mind to have been only natural. They came from men who found themselves suddenly and unexpectedly made the victims of a system for which simple truth and common honesty can have no other term than legal confiscation. They were the complaints of landowners who found among those who were appointed to be the arbiters of the rents of the future, men fresh from the platforms on which they had denounced the rents of the past and of the present, and had accompanied those denunciations with speeches in which respect for the rights of property had formed no conspicuous element. And those who complained had a right to expect that their complaints would receive attention, not only from your Lordships' House, but from Her Majesty's Government, for Her Majesty's Government had obtained the passing of this Act by assurances, again and again repeated, which I do not doubt for a moment that they implicitly believed in when they made them, but which, in the result, have turned out to be utterly valueless. Your Lordships' House—aye, and the other House of Parliament—were assured that rack rents alone were to be dealt with under this Act, and that rack-renting was the exception, and not the rule, in Ireland. If you had believed that rents which had been paid duly and without a murmur for 10, 20, 50, nay, 100 years, and which had formed the basis of family settlements and family arrangements for generations, were to be rudely interfered with and materially reduced under this Act, I venture to say that you would never have given your sanction to the measure. Yet such has been the case. The Courts which were to have been Courts of amicable arbitration between landlord and tenant, have been converted into Courts for the re-valuation of the land of Ireland by men who can only make a cursory and imperfect survey of the lands they value, who are guided by no principle, and left to value how they please; and, in fact, the measure has been practically converted into a penal enactment against that particular class of Irishmen who have committed the heinous offence of loyalty to the British Crown and attachment to the

  749
  British connection. My Lords, in so far as our Report deals with Emigration and the Purchase Clauses, I do not propose to say more than a word or two. Of Emigration your Lordships will hear plenty in the future; and of the Purchase Clauses I have but one thing to remark. The Purchase Clauses have failed, because the Act has placed the Irish tenant in a position in which he practically enjoys all the rights of ownership without its responsibilities, so long as he remains where he is; whilst, if he desires to quit his holding, he has that free competition which enables him to obtain a high price for his interest, often, indeed, higher than the unfortunate landlord can obtain for the fee simple of his land. True, the incoming tenant has to pay that high price; and as, in all probability, he will have to borrow the money at a rate of interest which will represent a larger annual payment than the rent, he will be in a worse position than his predecessor. But then it must be remembered, as a peculiarity of this marvellous Act, that its authors have only attempted to secure and satisfy the present tenant farmers of Ireland, and do not appear to have ever thought of another generation. My Lords, upon the subject of judicial rents I must ask your Lordships' indulgence. It is just a year ago that I brought this matter forward, to which allusion has been made tonight by my noble and learned Friend (Lord Fitzgerald). I did so at the request of those who were deeply interested in Irish land, and I spoke under a grave sense of responsibility. Your Lordships may, perhaps, recollect the severe attack which I brought upon myself from the noble and learned Earl upon the Woolsack. The noble and learned Earl, indeed, restrained his impetuous ardour during the evening upon which I introduced the subject; but, upon an early occasion afterwards, he felt it his duty to descend—I may almost say to leap—into the arena, and, with a vehemence of gesture and violence of language greatly at variance with the usual courteous and gentle demeanour which your Lordships admire in the noble and learned Earl, he declared that I had made imputations which were "odious," "unworthy," and "indefensible," that I had "impeached the integrity of the Sub-Commissioners," and he wound up the
  750
  climax of his fervid oratory by denouncing me as a Member of the Tory Party. Well, my Lords, perhaps the noble and learned Earl is a better judge than I am of what constitutes a Member of the Tory Party, having been one himself, off and on, during part of his political life, and being even now, I observe, described in books of reference as a "Liberal-Conservative," whilst at the same time a Member of a Government one of whose Members boasts that it is more Radical than even the Radical House of Commons. But I do not presume to detain your Lordships upon such a topic. What I wish to notice is the graver charge brought against me by the noble and learned Earl. My Lords, I impeached no man's integrity. The noble and learned Earl said that I had raked up the political antecedents of the Sub-Commissioners. That is not the case. I have had a justification of what I said furnished in the speech just delivered by the noble Earl the Secretary of State for India (the Earl of Kimberley). What did he say? He declared that the noble Earl near me (the Earl of Dunraven) could not have administered the Irish Land Act fairly, because his mind was entirely biassed on the side of the landlords. That is precisely what I said with regard to some of the Sub-Commissioners, who had expressed violent tenant-right sentiments before their appointment. I said that when you were about to establish Courts for the trial of cases between two classes of litigants, you ought not to appoint as Judges in such Courts men who had expressed themselves strongly and decidedly in favour of the particular views of one of those two classes, and that if you did so you could not expect that your Courts would give satisfaction or command public confidence. My answer to the strictures of the noble and learned Earl, and of others who have blamed me for bringing the subject forward last year, is a plain and simple answer. The evils complained of were not only great and serious, but they wore daily going on, fresh evidence and fresh complaints came constantly before me, and I felt bound to bring the matter before your Lordships. My Lords, I pressed five points upon your consideration. First, that rents were being largely and unjustly reduced; secondly, that these

  751
  reductions were being made upon old rents, and not only upon estates of which the rents had been lately raised; thirdly, that there was an inequality and want of uniformity in the decisions of the Sub-Commissioners which was likely to be mischievous; fourthly, that they were apparently guided by no such principle as, being made known to the litigating parties, would promote inexpensive settlements out-of-doors; and, fifthly, that the examinations of holdings were hasty and imperfect, the evidence of tenants unreliable, and no information given as to the value of improvements which were allowed. My Lords, I appeal fearlessly to your Lordships whether every word of my allegations has not been proved up to the hilt; and I refer you to the evidence, which fully sustains them, and to the Report in which they have been endorsed. My Lords, the hardest part of the task of speaking upon these matters is caused by the extraordinary attitude of the Government. They are so determined that their measure must have succeeded that they meet every proof to the contrary with a stolid indifference which would be amusing if the matter were not so serious. My noble Friend the Lord President of the Council is entirely hardened against proof, and cannot endure that anyone should disbelieve in the success of his Act. At the beginning of the present Session the noble Duke upon the Front Opposition Bench (the Duke of Abercorn), and the noble Marquess who introduced this subject to-night, made speeches in entire corroboration of all that I had stated last year, and condemnatory of the working of this Act. What was the Lord President's reply? He simply declared that the speeches of those two noble Lords were so full of passion and prejudice as to have no practical result! But he treated the noble Earl near me (the Earl of Dunraven) even worse. My noble Friend, in the course of a speech upon Irish affairs, incidentally declared that the rate of reductions of rent was as great or greater now than it had been at the first sittings of the Sub-Commissioners' Courts. The Lord President politely informed him that he had stated that of which the truth was notoriously the reverse, and that the rate of reduction had been considerably
  752
  lower during the last few months. My Lords, I have referred carefully to the Official Reports for the months of September to February inclusive; and I find that at the moment at which the Lord President was speaking—on the 6th March—there had been an uniform average reduction of about 20 per cent during all these six months, or, to be more exact, the average had been about 18 per cent in the Province of Leinster, something under 20 per cent in Connaught and Munster, and 211/4 per cent in Ulster. And yet, with the knowledge of these Returns which the noble Lord ought to have possessed, he informed us that the rate of reduction during these months had been "considerably lower." My Lords, not being a Lord Chancellor, I cannot use bad language; but I must say of the Lord President's statement that it was not characterized by that accuracy which we had a right to expect from so high an official. My Lords, I had intended to refer more in detail to the evidence which has been the foundation of our Report; but this has been rendered unnecessary by the references already made by previous speakers. I will, therefore, come at once to those observations upon the Report which have emanated from the Irish Land Commissioners. The noble Earl (the Earl of Kimberley) told us just now that our Report was an extraordinary document; but, to my mind, the Paper which contains these observations is one of a far more extraordinary character. The Commissioners tell us that they have been censured in their absence without any notice or opportunity of defending themselves. Let us get at the real facts of the case. My Lords, this Committee was appointed early in March last year. The bulk of the Evidence upon which the Report was founded was reported and printed at the end of the last Session of Parliament. The Commissioners, therefore, had all the winter months in which to digest the Evidence and consider whether it should be rebutted. Furthermore, in the debate of last July, to which I have already referred, the charges—if charges they are to be called—were specified and stereotyped in the statement which I made in this House, so that the attention of the Commissioners and of the public was emphatically directed to them. Then the Committee was re-appointed in March of the present year.

  753
  Upon the 8th of May—that is, two months before the Report was issued—the Evidence taken up to that time was printed and published; and let it be observed that of the evidence of the only two witnesses who were called after that date, the Commissioners themselves say in this document that it would have made no change in their observations. They had, therefore, two full months in which to consider whether they should bring any evidence to rebut any of the allegations of the witnesses who had been examined, and they deliberately forebore to do so. Be it observed that these allegations did not spring up suddenly, at a late period of the Sittings of the Committee; but they run from first to last all through the Evidence. If the Commissioners had been pleased to bring counter-evidence, the Committee would have been most ready to receive it. But they were not so pleased, and for a very good reason. Had they brought such evidence, it would have been exposed to the keen cross-examination of the noble and learned Earl who presided over the Committee, and of the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition. It was better policy to wait until the opportunity of cross-examination had passed by, and then to pose before the public in the character of injured men, who been condemned unheard in their absence. And then these Gentlemen, who could not find time in two months to furnish rebutting evidence which could be sifted by cross-examination, found themselves perfectly able, within four days—that is, between the receipt of the Report upon the 14th of July and the 19th—to draw up the elaborate observations which bear the date of the latter day, and which go carefully though every paragraph of the Report. It must be borne in mind, moreover, that from first to last the Commissioners had shown the greatest disinclination to allow the Sub-Commissioners to be examined; and your Lordships' Committee had actually to come to this House to obtain an order for one of them to appear. The Commissioners say in this precious document that—
  "The question assumed a new phase when accusations such as those to which the Committee have given their sanction were made against them."
  But they do not tell your Lordships when this new phase commenced; the
  754
  accusations, if so they are to be called, were made throughout the inquiry from beginning to end; and in the present Session the Commissioners showed the same disinclination to allow the Sub-Commissioners to come over and give evidence, and they never afforded to the Committee the slightest indication that this new phase had in any degree caused them to alter their views upon the question. The conduct of the Government in discrediting the inquiry had caused great reluctance to be examined among witnesses who might have been favourable to the measure, and for this reluctance the Government and the Commissioners now wish to make the Committee responsible, although they did actually examine a number of officials and counsel, of whom I am informed that one had acted solely for tenants in the Courts, and that most of the others had acted for tenants as well as landlords. If the Commissioners felt aggrieved at the evidence they had only to ask in order to be re-examined, and it is preposterous to charge their neglect to do so upon the Committee as a fault committed by them. My Lords, I take this paper of observations in my hand, and neither as a literary document or an argumentative treatise can I call it creditable to the Commissioners. The greater part of it consists in a simple denial of facts proved in evidence, a denial which loses three-fourths of its value because it might have been, but was not, made when that value could have been tested by questions before the Committee. Then the Commissioners complain that a mass of Evidence hostile to the Act has been collected. Well, I suppose that those who had fault to find with the Act came to say so; and your Lordships' Committee can hardly be blamed if those who held different views chose to stay away. But the Commissioners declare that "charges of the grossest character have been recklessly made against them" in the Report. One of these alleged charges is with respect to the arithmetical calculation. I say at once that I throw aside this idea as far as I am personally concerned, because this is a kind of' thing which cannot be proved one way or the other. All, however, that the Committee say in their Report upon this head, so far as the Chief Commissioners are concerned, is simply that if they had given any explanation of the

  755
  principle upon which judicial rents were to be settled they would have avoided the suggestion of this arithmetical process which had been made. The suggestion certainly was made, but the Committee do not endorse it in this paragraph, and certainly I had no notion, nor do I suppose had others any notion, of impeaching the honour and integrity of the Commissioners. The second charge of which they complain is that with respect to the Court valuer. It is said that when his valuation approximates to the judicial rent, the Commissioners invariably confirm that rent; but when his valuation is much higher than the judicial rent they give a very small increase of rent. In this statement—which was given in evidence on the 25th and 26th of April, so that there was ample time to contradict it—your Lordships' Committee simply speak of facts and figures proved before them, which the Commissioners might have disproved if they were able to so. There are the figures; and the only reason we have heard for a non-raising of the judicial rent, when the Court valuers' valuation is above it, is the allegation that in this valuation the tenant's improvements have not been deducted. This however, can hardly be correct, because, if it were so, it would follow that in the other case the rent would be fixed below the judicial rent, instead of the latter being merely confirmed. Then the Commissioners make a most extraordinary confession as to test cases. They allow that it would have been a useful thing to have tried test cases by way of guidance to the Sub-Commissioners, because they say that they were actually prepared to do so when Mr. Parnell and the Land League had decided to submit such cases for trial. But as soon as the Land League was declared illegal, and Mr. Parnell thrown into prison, they abandoned the idea. Well, if it was desirable that test cases should be tried, I cannot see why it should have been less so because they were not furnished by Mr. Parnell. Was the matter to depend upon the Land League, or had not the Commissioners the good sense and ability to select cases as test cases, by the trying of which they might have rendered valuable service to the administration of the Act? Then, my Lords, comes the strange declaration of the Commissioners, that
  756
  it was impossible for them to have laid down any principle for the guidance of their Sub-Commissioners. The noble Earl the Secretary of State for India (the Earl of Kimberley) appeared entirely to endorse that opinion to-night; and he pointed to the English Assessment Act, and said that the only principle of valuation therein laid down was that a farm should be valued at what it might be "reasonably expected to let for from year to year." My Lords, it so happens that at the time of the last English Assessment Act I was living in the country, and I went on an Assessment Committee, and, in company with practical farmers, valued a great number of farms. The noble Earl is quite correct as to the principle; but he entirely forgets that we had to guide us in our English valuations the market price of land ascertainable by free and fair competition, and our knowledge of the rents paid for land under that competition. But this fair competition has been destroyed in Ireland by this Land Act. It is the very essence of Liberal principles; but Liberal principles have been declared inapplicable to Ireland. Then, having done away with this, the best, if not the only test by which value can be ascertained, it was mere than ever necessary that some principles of action should be laid down for the guidance of those who were about to settle the Irish rents of the future. And it was all the more necessary, because of the opinions of those who had to be guided. We know that at the celebrated meeting between the Chief Commissioners and their subordinates, two of the latter expressed views upon this subject so strange as to elicit laughter from their superior officers. We know, moreover, that at least one Sub-Commissioner—Mr. William Gray—entertained views of a somewhat extravagant character. His views, as published in the newspapers, and uncontradicted so far as I know, were that you should take Griffith's valuation, deduct the taxes, halve the remainder, and give one-half as rent to the landlord. This, he said, would be plenty for the landlord to live on, and it might have to be still further reduced if American competition increased. These were the kind of men with whom the Commissioners had to deal — men ignorant of law, and imperfectly acquainted with their duties. Surely it was the duty of the

  757
  Commissioners to have explained to them the Act, and given them, at least, suggestions as to their course of procedure. Instead of this, they preferred, in Professor Baldwin's words, to turn them loose upon the property of landlords and tenants without any instructions whatever, sooner than run the risk of themselves making any possible mistake in their directions, which might afterwards have been reversed by a Superior Court. Such simple instructions might certainly have been given; and as to the impossibility of stating any principle, unless my ears deceived me, there was some statement very much of the character of the principle of valuation in the Paper which the Lord President read to-night, as coming from Mr. Grey, of Dilston, which I asked him to lay upon the Table of the House, considering the inconvenience of quoting from a Paper which has not been so laid. The Commissioners, however, gave no directions or instructions, and the consequence has been that want of uniformity and that confusion in the administration of the law of which such deep complaint is made. My Lords, I have been asked by one or two friends—"Well, after all, what is the use of your Committee and of your Report?" I answer, my Lords, that I think we have been of some use, if only in that we have been able to point out some of the defects in the working of this Act, which have actually been remedied at our suggestion. We have done something more, if, by exposing the inherent viciousness of the system which has been established in Ireland, we may have prevented still further legislative mischief upon the same lines. For your Lordships will probably be of opinion that, after the experiences of the years 1870 and 1881, and the enactment in the latter year of provisions specially denounced and condemned as impracticable by the Prime Minister in the former year, there is no conceivable extravagance in land legislation which may not at any moment be brought within the range of practical politics by those who obtained the present Land Act as a concession to their agitation. I know well enough that the Government deny that this measure can be fairly so described. I do not forget that, at the commencement of the present Session, the Lord President declared, in somewhat grandiloquent language,
  758
  that this was not a concession, but a reform. But such language deceives nobody. Let any noble Lord gauge its value by asking himself—if there had been no agitation, would there have been any such Land Acts? Least of all, does it deceive the people of Ireland? The noble Earl (the Earl of Kimberley) told us just now that agitators could do nothing unless there was stuff on which they could work. That is true, indeed; and it is because they know the squeezable stuff of which the Government is made that the agitators continue their trade, and encourage the tenant farmers to expect still further benefits from land legislation. I imagine that when the Government introduced this Land Act they had two main objects in view—one, which I make no doubt was their first and greatest object, to pacify Ireland and content her people. But their second object I take to have been to build up and consolidate a Party of grateful supporters for the Minister who had given to the Irish tenant farmers so great a boon at the expense of their landlords. It is to be hoped that the Government have not so egregiously failed in the first object as they undoubtedly seem to have done in the second. At the last General Election a compact body of Liberals were returned from the North of Ireland to support Mr. Gladstone's Government. Where are your Ulster Liberals now? If you go among Irish Representatives now and see one with a countenance more than usually melancholy, the chances are that he is an Ulster Liberal. Their doom is fixed; their sentence is passed. They were made use of by the Party—falsely called the Nationalist Party in Ireland, since they do their best to destroy her as a nation—to turn out the Tory Government; and they are beginning to find that they have only escaped the Scylla of Beaconsfield to be overwhelmed in the Charybdis of Parnell. Has the Monaghan Election taught us no lesson? Have you any evidence to show that your Land Act has been accepted as anything but as an instalment of demands to which, at present, you have no idea of making any concession? Do you really imagine that you have pacified Ireland by this remedial measure? You point, indeed, to a more tranquil Ireland than you could have done last year, and you refer with pride

  759
  to the vigour and energy which has been shown by the noble Earl who holds the Office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (Earl Spencer). I, for one, never doubted that the noble Earl would show vigour and energy in any public position which he might hold. But how have you enabled him to employ these qualities with effect? By throwing to the winds all those maxims which you preached during your first year of Office, and falling back upon those measures of coercion and repression which you professed to have finally abandoned. Have you really gained strength, either for yourselves or your country, by this legislation? What is the language now held by the Leaders of the Nationalist Party? There is no question with them of Whig or Tory. After the Monaghan Election I see that Mr. Parnell declared that "no English Party" could henceforward hold up its head in Ireland; and, again, after the Wexford Election, another of these Leaders declared that "Wexford had struck a blow at the vile Foreign Ruler." And yet these are the men through whom you recently sought to govern Ireland. These are the men who beast that from Kilmainham Gaol they dictated every word and every line of your Arrears Bill; and, although this may not be true, there is little doubt that a great many people in Ireland will believe it. To please such men you have turned loose valuers to value the land of Ireland without a principle, and to reduce the rents far and wide. You have committed an error, the worst part of which is that it is stereotyped in legislation, and cannot be undone. You cannot drop it, as if it were a Suez Canal negotiation, as soon as your blunder has been condemned by public opinion—the Act must continue to work, and I fear that its work can hardly be satisfactory. I wish I could think otherwise; but it is because I fear that the evils of this Act will increase rather than diminish, and because I have no unkindly feeling either towards Ireland or towards Her Majesty's Government, that at this moment I regard both the one and the other with profound commiseration.
  THE EARL OF HOWTHsaid, that his experience of the Land Commission was not very extensive; but he felt bound to say that that experience led him to believe that the Commissioners were
  760
  largely guided by the circumstances of the tenantry, and, though they had not laid down any rigid principles, were performing their duties conscientiously. He had even known instances in which they had raised the rents. Having some knowledge of the condition of agriculture in Warwickshire and other English counties, and of the reduction of rent which they felt it necessary to make, he would much sooner, as a landlord, be under the Irish Land Act, as administered by the Land Commissioners.
  LORD WAVENEYsaid, he believed that the tenants of Ulster would remain loyal to their tenant right, and set their faces resolutely against the inroads of agitation in that portion of Ireland, despite the results of the Monaghan Election. Farmers had told him they would sooner vote for a Conservative than hand over their county to anarchy.
  LORD EMLYsaid, that it struck him as astonishing that a Committee, presided over by a noble and learned Earl who had occupied the highest legal position in this country, should have made such a charge as was disclosed in the Report against men of high character, one of whom was a Member of their Lordships' House, and another of whom was one of Her Majesty's Judges. In his opinion, the fact that such a charge had been made must result in discredit attaching to some among those who had published it. The matter, however, could not be left as it now stood. The mistake made by noble Lords opposite was that they did not take into consideration the position in which the Commissioners were placed. They were not responsible for the Act. It was their Lordships who were responsible. The time was one of unexampled depression. Everyone knew how landlords in Great Britain suffered in respect of rent. A noble Friend of his told him that 2,000 acres of arable land, for which he had been receiving 30 s. an acre, were thrown on his hands, and that he would be most willing to let them for 10 s. an acre. And Sir George Jessel, who, from his position, had great knowledge on the subject, described to him the unexampled fall in all manner of rents. Besides, that was the time of the American competition, which acted so injuriously on the farmer. It was under these circumstances that the Commissioners had to fix the rent of land, not for two or three

  761
  years, but for 15. He was in a measure behind the scenes, for there were many friends of his Sub-Commissioners, and they were as honourable men as any of their Lordships. They assured him that the system they adopted was wise, and calculated to ascertain the true value of the land. One of the charges against the Commissioners was that they had not laid down any rules for the guidance of the Sub-Commissioners. He could state, from the highest legal authority, that they could not have done so. Parliament deliberately framed the clauses upon which they were to proceed; and it would have been entirely illegal for the Commissioners to substitute any other rules. It should also be recollected that the Commissioners had to proceed on an entirely new system. The ordinary rules by which the value of land was determined—contract and competition—were, it might be said, abolished in Ireland. It was, as the noble Duke (the Duke of Argyll) had said, "a tremendous remedy for a tremendous disease." Their Lordships had heard of injustice to the landlords. In an island off the coast of Ireland the rent, when the property was bought by the present owner, was £800 a-year. By the labours of the tenants, without any assistance from the landlords, the land was improved, and the rent was raised to £3,000 a-year. Could their Lordships wonder that in such a case the rents had been reduced 58 and 75 per cent? Was that not a case in which some remedy was required for so cruel an injustice? Why, the principle of the Land Act was recommended by the Duke of Richmond's Commission. ["No!"] They recommended that there should be some tribunal for revising rents; and Mr. Arthur Kavanagh, one of the leading men among the landlords of Ireland, in the strongest way advocated such a tribunal. He trusted that the Government would persevere with the scheme of emigration, which last year worked so well. Some time ago their Lordships were told that an offer had been made by responsible persons in Canada, in pursuance of which emigration could be carried out on a great scale; and the House had reason to believe that the proposal would be accepted by the Government. He hoped whoever spoke on behalf of the Government would assure him that the admirable scheme of emigration started last year
  762
  would not be allowed to fall through. He agreed with some of the noble Lords who preceded him, that an amendment of the law was necessary with regard to the sale of land to the tenants. He was satisfied that until the number of persons interested in the preservation of property in Ireland was increased there never would be peace and prosperity in that country.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, we have had a very interesting debate, and many striking speeches. I should not have risen to add to the case of our side, which has been presented with such remarkable force, except to repel one or two misapprehensions which have occurred in the debate, and which, I think, it is undesirable should remain on record uncontradicted. The noble Lord who has just sat down stated that the Duke of Richmond and Gordon's Commission had recommended a measure such as the Irish Land Act.
  LORD EMLY: I think my expression was that the Duke of Richmond and Gordon's Commission had recommended that there should be some measure introduced giving those tenants who considered their rents excessive some means of redress.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: If I heard the noble Lord rightly he used the word "tribunal."
  LORD EMLY: Tribunal—yes.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Such a statement has been frequently made. It has been made by the Prime Minister himself, and I know none of the commonplaces of politics that are more utterly untrustworthy. I have the exact words of the Duke of Richmond and Gordon's Commission before me, and I think the noble Lord will see that there is nothing which refers to the establishment of any tribunal of the kind, or authorizes any interference with existing rents. They say that the demand for
  "Legislative interference to protect the tenant from an arbitrary increase of rent does not seem unnatural; and we are inclined to think that, by the majority of landowners, legislation framed to accomplish this object will not be objected to."
  There is not a word about reducing existing rents. There is not a word about the gross barbarism of tearing up existing contracts. The noble and learned Lord (Lord Fitzgerald) stated

  763
  that if there were any defects in the Irish Land Act, if there was a want of definition with respect to fair rent, and if the Sub-Commissioners had been led into error in consequence, this House ought to take its share of the blame, because it did not attempt to guide them. I think the noble and learned Lord forgets the circumstances under which this House accepted the Land Act. I remember them very well. Personally, I was anxious to make an effort to introduce a definition of fair rent into the Act; but I was always strongly discouraged by the unanimous voice of those Irish landowners whom I consulted. They said—"The Government have promised us, they have assured us, that this Bill will make no change in the great mass of rents in Ireland; that it will only interfere with those rack-renters whom we do not desire to protect; and, therefore, we think that it would be very unfortunate if any words were introduced which would have the effect of distorting a measure which they assure us will leave us harmless." The noble Lord the President of the Council told us to-night that there had always been a great deal of rack-renting. There were several Members of the Cabinet who believed that at the time; but they all kept silence. Mr. Forster, speaking after the Bill had passed, candidly told us so. The only Members of the Government who were allowed to speak were those who believed that there would be no extensive reductions of rent. The Lord President, the Lord Chancellor, and Mr. Bright told us in various tones substantially the same thing—that in nine cases out of ten rents would remain very much as they were. But the strangest of all the silent Members at the time the Act was passing through Parliament was Lord Hartington. Speaking in Lancashire this year, Lord Hartington said—
  "We caused inquiry to be made"—that was before the passing of the Act—"and we found that, not in the opinion of one Party alone, not in the opinion alone of one section of Irish society, but in the opinion of an overwhelming majority of the Irish nation, that the rents which were being demanded from Irish tenants were in a great number of cases such as it was impossible for them to pay and live."
  That is what the Cabinet thought when they introduced the Bill. This is what the Cabinet, speaking through Mr. Bright's mouth, said—
  764
  "My view of the operation of that particular clause is that the rents of Ireland will, in nine cases out of ten, be fixed as they are now."
  Is it possible to reconcile these two statements? What I wish to point out is that you cannot affix to the House of Lords any moral responsibility for having accepted this disastrous clause of the Irish Land Act, when they were led into a false and deluded idea as to the effects of that Act by the assurances of the Government itself. With respect to the matter of this Report, the noble Lord has declared it to be a violent and extravagant document. I do not think the noble and learned Earl (Earl Cairns) is likely to have put his hand to a document of that kind. In the next plnce, I do not admit that the Commissioners have any grounds of complaint whatever because they were not heard in answer to the allegations of the witnesses we summoned. It must be remembered that on the 6th May all the Evidence of which complaint is made was laid upon the Table. On the 31st May it was printed and circulated, and it must have been perfectly within the knowledge of the Commissioners. The Report was not agreed to until the 5th July. A single letter addressed to the Chairman of the Committee would have secured their being heard in rebuttal of the evidence I if they so desired. But they maintained an absolute silence for the space of five weeks, and immediately the Report is out the Commissioners find their tongues, and complain that they have not been heard. My Lords, I do not believe that public opinion will attach the slightest importance to that complaint. I maintain, further, that there is no charge in the portion of the Report in which it is alleged that there is a charge against the Commissioners. There is no expression of an opinion with respect to their being exposed to the suggestions to which reference has been made, but rather against the fatal system of secrecy which they thought fit to adopt. The noble and learned Lord (Lord Fitzgerald) told us that the cases which had been alluded to were mere coincidences, and were due to the law of average. I-hope nobody will take that statement for granted without carefully reading the Report and examining the figures. They are the most remarkable figures I ever saw. We have hero the decisions of

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  the Sub-Commissioners in November, 1882, on one single estate. There were only 40 cases, and of these, as regards 16, this rule is good that if you add together the valuation given to the tenant and that given to the landlord it will in each case, within odd shillings, produce the judicial rent. Do not tell me that this is a mere coincidence, or to be put aside by an appeal to the doctrine of averages. We have had nothing in defence of this case but two arguments — one that it is all coincidence, and the other an appeal to the character of the Commissioners. These are two favourite modes of defence. We have simply to appeal to our countrymen to judge whether these mysterious figures can be fairly disposed of by such arguments as these. In this, as in other cases, you will find strange coincidences; but the vital question is, can you get the jury to believe it? I cannot say that the whole of the Sub-Commissioners are subject to this charge, because we have no figures to prove it; but I think we should be wanting in our duty if we did not call their attention to the inferences to which these figures inevitably lead. We do not venture to state that the inference is correct. We only point to their grave character, and invite attention to them. As to the matter of principle, that has been sufficiently discussed, and I shall not enter into it; but in answer to those who say that we have not sufficiently examined witnesses, I would say that the burden of the Evidence is the complaint that there is no principle underlying the decisions of the Sub-Commissioners. If there is to be any system which shall not create a lasting jealousy between one estate and another we must have a principle which can be used by all Courts uniformly. I do not wish at this hour to continue this discussion. I think it will cause our countrymen to reflect very deeply on the value of this Irish Land Act, of which so much has been said. The noble and learned Lord, who has spoken opposite, has had recourse to prophecy to get rid of the inconvenience of existing facts; and he has told us he foresees some distant period at which the security of tenure will cause the Irish people to forget the present disaster. I myself indulge in no such beautiful dream. There is something more precious than security of tenure, and that is security of property; and
  766
  security of property has been very greatly shaken by this Act. The Government found in existence rights which had lasted unquestioned four centuries; they have taken away those rights; they have reduced the rents that were being paid; and they have insured the tenants enjoyment of what they possessed, even though they broke the terms on which they held it. Various names may be attached to acts of this nature. The word "confiscation" is objected to; but we will not quarrel about words. You may apply any term or euphemism that you please; but whether you call the process confiscating or conveying, the practical result is the same. Men do not believe in exceptional legislation, and they see that the effect has been to deprive them of their property—that legislation has been adopted in answer to agitation, and they look with dread upon a future which may produce new agitation with similar results. The noble Earl the Secretary of State for India has told us, with an engaging frankness, which, no doubt, Irish landlords will greatly appreciate, that we cannot deal by force with a general resistance to rent; but that, when such a thing happens, we have nothing to do but to find some legislation which shall conciliate the people. This is an important statement. It reveals the real motives which, in spite of all protestations, have guided the policy of Her Majesty's Government. But it is important more with reference to the future than with reference to the past. It is an indication of what the principles are which, in view of new difficulties and dangers, will guide Her Majesty's Government. It is an indication of what any classes possessing property in Ireland have to fear when the next agitation arises, when the next Liberal Government is in power, and when the question is again placed before them, whether they shall sustain the laws of property or keep together their Parliamentary majority. I do not anticipate that this measure will be looked back upon in the future as a great effort in the pacification of Ireland. I trust its failure will prevent any repetition; but it will be looked back to in distant times as a proof of the evil to which an exaggeration of our Parliamentary system and the degradation of our Party Government will lead yielding and unscrupulous politicians.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I do not shrink from repeating the substance of the opinions which I expressed at the time the Act was passed. The noble Marquess and those who sit behind him did not resist the second reading; and, therefore, they shared the responsibility of the Government, and the course they adopted was highly honourable to them, for they looked upon it as an unavoidable political necessity; and the only point upon which they may be open to reproach is that their present conduct has not been consistent with that course. I would repeat what I said before, that the landlords of Ireland are, at the present moment, in a far better position than they would have been if the Act had not been passed. It is very true that some Members of the Government expressed the expectation that on the greater part of the estates in Ireland no reduction, or no material reduction, of rent would take place. But that they could give assurances, or that anybody acted on the faith of those assurances, I totally deny. The opinion, honestly entertained by those who expressed it, was based upon information which was public to the whole world. I admit that to a greater extent than I, for one, expected rents have been reduced, even upon some of the more considerable and better - managed estates. That they have been universally reduced is not a fact. There are not inconsiderable estates in the South of Ireland on which there have been either no reductions, or reductions very far less in magnitude than the average reduction. If you compare the experience of England during these years of depression, and the rate of reductions of rent to which landlords have had to submit, and the distress of those who have been unable to get any rent at all because their farms have been thrown on their hands—if you compare these things with the present condition of landlords in Ireland, even after the reductions which have been made, it appears to me that the condition of landlords in Ireland, as regards both the amount and the receipt of their rents, is better at this moment than that of landlords in some very large districts in England. Although we might have hoped that the reductions would be less, we ought not to be astonished, considering all
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  the circumstances, that those reductions should be as great as they are. The position of Irish landlords, who are now almost universally receiving their rents, is very different indeed from their position when the Land Bill was introduced, and very different from the position in which they would be now if that Bill had not become law. If the Lord Lieutenant—who has been congratulated on all sides upon the ability, firmness, and great patriotism which he has displayed in the administration of Irish affairs—were asked whether he believes that the present state of comparative peace, and order, and tranquillity would have been seen without such a remedial measure as the Land Act, I feel confident that my noble Friend would say that he does not believe it. Therefore, though some expectations may not have been fulfilled, others have not been disappointed. One expectation which I had has, certainly, not been fulfilled. When this House passed the Bill, and conducted it through Committee without any serious manifestations of hostility, I did expect that the subsequent conduct of noble Lords would be such as to make it impossible for anyone to say that such drawbacks as there might be on the success of the measure were clue in any manner to a want of co-operation on their part. I did think that the course taken by noble Lords from Ireland, and. by others, interested like them in the ownership of Irish land, would be in harmony, after the passing of the measure, with the course which they took when the Bill was passing through the House. What happened? The Commissioners had scarcely done a stroke of work, when large and important meetings were held in Dublin and elsewhere, at which speeches were made by influential persons denouncing the Bill almost before it had come into operation, calling it by many hard names, almost as hard. as those suggested by the noble Marquess—I am not sure whether "plunder" was not one, whether "spoliation" was not another. With what hopes of success was the measure launched into life and action, when one of the two classes bound up with it, and whose interest it was to make it work for the best, declared itself in a spirit of hostility against it, and of distrust towards those who were to administer it? And now I come to this unhappy Committee. On

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  the 17th of February, 1882, your Lordships passed that vote, deprecated with all the force that we were able on the part of the Government. We felt that if any step could be taken more likely than another to prevent the measure from becoming a final settlement, more likely to keep open wounds not yet closed, and to inflame them still more, it was the appointment of that Committee. We felt that so strongly that, as a Government, we declined to take any responsibility for the labours of that Committee. We left the whole responsibility to others. We thought it not conducive to the peace of Ireland, or to the contentment of the class either of landlords or tenants. I felt at the time very strongly what was coming, and thought it my duty to warn the House of what would take place. All that I then said has come true. After that, a letter was written by my noble and learned Friend the Chairman of the Committee, whose absence this evening we all regret. He wrote a very civil letter, inviting Mr. Forster to attend before the Committee, and in that letter he said that the Committee did not consider it within the scope of the Reference made to them by the House to inquire into the correctness of any decision which the Land Commissioners or the Sub-Commissioners, in the exercise of their judicial functions, might arrive at. It was not thought right that Mr. Forster should attend. I do not know whether his declining to do so may have cancelled the statement contained in that letter; but this I do know—that from the beginning to the end of the inquiries of the Committee there have been constant references to the decisions as to this estate and that. The books are full of them; and although the Committee may not have sat technically as a Court of Appeal, or under any of the conditions or safeguards indispensable for that purpose, they have, nevertheless, sat in judgment by wholesale upon the decisions of the Commissioners and Sub-Commissioners, and in detail upon the decisions in a great many cases. I must do justice to the noble Lords by admitting at once that they were placed in a position of much difficulty by the course which the Government, not out of temper, but from their sense of public duty, had taken. No doubt, the noble Lords who supported the appointment
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  of that Committee had not the assistance which, in ordinary circumstances, they might have had from those who differed from them. The responsibility was left upon them to determine, under those circumstances, whether they would proceed or not, and to determine, if they did proceed, how they would constitute and how they would conduct their Committee. My Lords, the Committee was constituted of a number of noble Lords, as honourable men as any in this House. I do not, however, know whether it was necessary—if it was, it was an unfortunate necessity—that six Irish proprietors of land—some of them either actually or probably in the future interested in what the Commissioners might do, and who bad taken, as they justly might, an active part, and who were likely afterwards to take an active part, in all the debates on the subject in this House—should be among the Members of that Committee. As has been already stated, the witnesses examined by that Committee may be divided into three classes—official persons, including the Commissioners and three of the Sub-Commissioners; one gentleman, who had acted frequently as counsel for tenants; and 32 gentlemen, who were either landlords, agents for landlords, or solicitors or counsel who had acted, on the whole, for landlords. The one gentleman who had acted for tenants said nothing tending in any way whatever to impeach any part of the conduct of the Commissioners. Well, I cannot but say that I think that was a very unfortunate necessity which the Committee were under, if it was necessary to have such one-sided evidence. If it was not a necessity, then it was a very unfortunate error of judgment. It is still more to be regretted that, without taking any notice whatever of the statements and explanations of the Commissioners, they have adopted in their Report all the adverse suggestions made by that class of witnesses which represented the interest of the landlords. They examined, and, in their first Report, reported the evidence of all the three Commissioners and the Secretary to the Commission. In their third Report they reported the evidence of three Sub-Commissioners—Mr. Reeve, Mr. Foley, and Mr. Baldwin. I have read with care the evidence of the three Commissioners; and I venture to think that evidence more creditable to them,

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  more straightforward and open, more satisfactory, more worthy of credit from the Committee could not be imagined; but in the Report no credit appears to be given to any part of it. On the contrary, one would think from reading the Report, as far as its findings are concerned, that no such evidence had been given. The Commissioners fully explained the reason why they took the course which has been throughout mainly objected to as wrong, the course of not laying down rules or entering into explanations of the principles on which fair rents were to be ascertained. I hope presently to give your Lordships a statement of the effect of their reasons, which, to my mind, are not only satisfactory, but absolutely conclusive. Mr. Foley's evidence in substance confirmed the Commissioners', and so did Mr. Reeve's. Mr. Baldwin, it is true, was more critical of other persons, if not of the Commissioners themselves. I do not believe that Mr. Baldwin intended to throw discredit upon the Commissioners, or upon his own Colleagues. But he seems to have placed little confidence in any man's knowledge or judgment except his own; and, in the impartiality of his criticism, he did not spare the landlords, of whom he said—
  "In dealing with the administration of the Act, I have not seen much wisdom on the part of those who represent the landlords."
  The noble Marquess (the Marquess of Salisbury) has insisted that if there is anything criminatory in this Report of the proceedings of the Commissioners, it is the Commissioners' own fault, because they did not come forward when they were invited to do so to rebut the charges against them. But the Committee were well aware that the Government did not think it convenient that the work of the Commissioners and Sub-Commissioners should be interrupted by their attendance at this inquiry, nor did they think it would conduce to a successful discharge of their duties that they should come up and be examined more than was necessary. Under those circumstances, was it reasonable to suppose they would volunteer to do so? The Committee had reported in two thick Blue Books a mass of Evidence, in which there was nothing that has been, or that could be, made the foundation of any charges affecting the honour and integrity of the Commis-
  772
  sioners or Sub-Commissioners in the discharge of their duties. Any fair man who reads the third and the final Report will, I think, say that the Committee ought to have adopted one of two modes of proceeding; they might either have placed in their third Report some words which would have amounted to an invitation to the Commissioners to come in and contradict the evidence then reported if they chose; or they might have given notice to them that there was matter there which, in their view, required a reply, and to which, therefore, the Commissioners and Sub - Commissioners should have had ample opportunity of replying. It was usual to take some such course as this, whenever, in the course of a public inquiry, high public functionaries were thought to be prejudicially affected by any statements made; but, in this case, nothing of the kind was done. It was no excuse to say, as was said in the final Report, that the Evidence contained in the third Report was issued a month or two beforehand, in order that those concerned might have their attention directed to it, and answer it if they could. Why was it not so stated in the third Report itself? Why was the explanation of that motive or purpose reserved for the final Report, when, before the Committee at all events, no answer could be given? The noble Marquess has now adopted and reiterated the imputations against the Sub-Commissioners, although he does not, in express words, apply them to the Commissioners-in-Chief. There are different ways of doing things, and the more indirect is not always the better way. It seems to me that the insinuation in the final Report of the Committee conveys a charge quite as offensive against the Commissioners as if it were put more directly. As to the charge itself, I was sorry to hear the noble Marquess re-affirm it. The Lord President has told us that every one of the Commissioners has denied it in fact; and although Mr. Foley and Mr. Baldwin, the persons directly charged by the evidence of Mr. Smith, were afterwards examined by the Committee, no question was put to them in regard to those arithmetical coincidences on which so much stress has been laid. Mr. Baldwin, though not told that such a charge lead been made against him, spontaneously denied it, as relating to himself. Mr. Foley knew nothing

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  about it, and the course of his examination did not suggest anything of the kind. It seems to me that there is a very obvious explanation in the fact that, when impartial persons have to judge between different valuations, all of which may, from different points of view, be honestly made, the results arrived at by a fair and independent judgment are often such as nearly to coincide with those which might be obtained by splitting the difference. It has been said that the Commissioners should have laid down rules. The Act of Parliament laid down rules, and the Commissioners would have been acting improperly and against the law had they laid down other rules, at variance with, or in addition to, those rules. If an attempt had been made to frame definitions they would have knocked their heads against a wall on one side or the other. Their definitions would certainly have been accused of being too beneficial either to the landlords or to the tenants. Professor Baldwin, who is quoted as complaining that the Commissioners ought to have given some directions for which he asked, and which it would really have been most improper for them to give, professed himself to have acted on definite principles; but, when asked what they were, they turned out to be only his own knowledge, and skill, and experience, and such information as might be obtained from any ordinary books on land valuation. Witnesses who attended-before the Committee said that any attempt to lay down definitions would have led to interminable litigation. It is said that it is the common Practice of Courts of Justice to give reasons for their judgments. So it is upon matters of law, and upon matters of law it has been the practice of these Courts. But it has never been the practice in this country to give reasons for verdicts or awards, in trials turning upon matters of fact, which are the subject of reference to arbitrators, juries, or Judges discharging the duties of jurors. In conclusion, I have to say that I am myself entirely satisfied with the answers now given by the Commissioners to the charges brought against them.
  THE MARQUESS OF WATERFORDsaid, he must protest against the attempt which had been made to discredit the evidence taken by the Commissioners, by the assertion that the witnesses exa-
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  mined were all on one side. The Committee had done their utmost to procure the best available evidence.
  Motion (by leave of the House) withdrawn.

SCOTLAND—THE ORKNEY ISLANDS—THE "HEN AND CHICKENS" ROCK.

  QUESTION.
  LORD WAVENEYasked the First Lord of the Admiralty, Whether the Lords Commissioners, in order to obtain prompt and effectual security for shipping in the neighbourhood of the "Hen and Chickens" Rock, coast of Orkney, will order the erection of a perch on the reef by the district surveying officer, as was done in the Easdaile Channel, August 1848?
  THE EARL OF NORTHBROOK, in reply, said, that it was a matter rather for the Commissioners of Northern Lights or the Board of Trade than for the Admiralty.
  House adjourned at One o'clock, A.M. to Monday next, a quarter before Eleven o'clock.