Lords Sitting of 9 May 1887

Preamble
MINUTES. 1—PUBLIC BILLS—Second Reading— Smoke Nuisance Abatement (Metropolis) (43).
Committee—Customs Consolidation Act (1876) Amendment * (71).
PROVISIONAL ORDER BILLS — First Reading — Local Government (Highways) * (87); Local Government (Poor Law)* (88); Local Government (Poor Law) (No, 2) * (89).
Committee—Report—Local Government* (70).

ENDOWED SCHOOLS ACT, 1869, AND AMENDING ACTS—THE DAUNTSEY TRUST.

  HER MAJESTY'S ANSWER TO THE ADDRESS.
  THE LORD STEWARD OF THE HOUSEHOLD (The Earl of MOUNT-EDGCUMBE)reported the Queen's Answer to the Address of Tuesday, the 29th day of March last, as follows:—
  "I have received your Address, praying that I will withhold my assent from the schemes of the Charity Commissioners relating to (1) the Foundation for a school and almshouses, and for other purposes, in the parish of West Lavington, otherwise Bishop Lavington, in the county of Wilts, founded under the will of Alderman William Dauntsey, dated 10th March 1542, and since further endowed; and (2) for dealing with the Endowment of the Wilts County School in the county of Wilts:
  "I will comply with your advice."

IRISH LAND LAW BILL.

  QUESTION. OBSERVATIONS.
  LORD FITZGERALDsaid, he wished to put a Question, of which he had given
  1244
  private Notice to the noble Earl opposite (Earl Cadogan), in reference to a very important Bill which stood for Committee on Thursday next—he alluded to the Irish Land Law Bill. The noble Earl would recollect that, in the course of the debate on the second reading, suggestions were made from various parts of the House for the amendment of the measure, and that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor of Ireland (Lord Ashbourne), as well as the noble Earl opposite himself, said that those suggestions would be considered by the Government, with a view to their being embodied in such Amendments as they might deem advisable. The Amendments to be proposed by the Government were not yet in the hands of their Lordships; but he understood they might expect to receive them some time to-morrow, and he thought that if the Committee were to be proceeded with on Thursday there would be but a very short interval allowed to their Lordships for considering the Amendments, which would require to be most carefully examined. He asked the noble Earl, therefore, Whether it would be inopportune to postpone, for some short time beyond Thursday next, the Committee stage of the Bill? He could assure the noble Earl that there was no desire in any part of the House to obstruct or delay that measure, but only an anxious wish to make it as perfect as possible. As the Bill was intended to amend the Act of 1881, by removing many of the inequalities and difficulties in applying that measure, he thought that a reasonable time should be given to consider these Amendments.
  THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (Earl CADOGAN), in reply, said, he had received Notice only a few minutes ago of the noble and learned Lord's Question, and he was afraid he was unable to give him an immediate answer, as he had not been able to consider the matter, or to consult with his Colleagues upon it. He might, however, state that he was about to lay on the Table that evening the Amendments which the Government would propose in the Bill, and he hoped that they would be in the hands of noble Lords to-morrow. In regard to the Question of the noble and learned Lord as to the postponement of the Committee on the Bill, the Government were exceedingly anxious to pro-

  1245
  ceed with the Bill without delay. They had already given an interval of three weeks between the second reading and the Committee stage, and he himself would be very unwilling to accede to any further delay. At the same time, as that appeal came from so influential a quarter, and was deserving of consideration, he would ask the noble and learned Lord to be kind enough to repeat his Question to-morrow.
  THE DUKE OF ARGYLL, in supporting the request for a further postponement, said, that if the Amendments of the Government were of an extensive character, it appeared to him that Thursday was rather a shorter interval than was usual in a matter of such great importance.
  EARL GRANVILLEsaid, that if the Amendments to be proposed by the noble Earl on behalf of the Government were of such a nature as to change the character of the measure, it would be necessary to consider it in its altered shape. If, however, the Government proposed to go on as arranged, there was scarcely time enough to consider them. He could not object to the answer to the Question being postponed under the circumstances; but he desired to impress on the noble Earl (Earl Cadogan) the great importance of the matter.
  EARL CADOGANsaid, that when the noble and learned Lord repeated his Question to-morrow he would answer those Questions.
  Subsequently,
  EARL CADOGANsaid, he had consulted the Prime Minister, and also the noble Earl opposite (Earl Granville), and he was in a position to state that the Irish Land Bill would be put down for Committee on Monday next.

SMOKE NUISANCE ABATEMENT (METROPOLIS) BILL.
(The Lord Stratheden and Campbell.)

(NO. 43.) SECOND READING.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a." —(The Lord Stratheden and Campbell.)
THE DUKE OF WESTMINSTER, in supporting the Motion, said, he would recall their Lordships' attention to their action in 1884 when the same Bill was carried on a Division. He would also point out that several Committees had
1246
dealt with this question from the beginning of the century, and that Acts were passed in 1833 and 1856 for abating the smoke of furnaces and steamers. The provisions of these Acts, however, were now insufficient, as, owing to the great extension of London, they did not cover the area. It was, therefore, proposed by the Bill to extend the provisions to the Metropolis as defined by the Metropolis Management Act of 1855 to the area of police, and to give further powers as to dwelling houses. In that district there were 700,000 houses, with a population of 5,000,000, which was more than double the population and 10 times the number of houses of the next largest capital. More than half the present area of London had been built within the last 30 years. The rate of building was strikingly illustrated by comparing decennial periods. From 1854 to 1364 there were 28 new houses built each working day; from 1864 to 1874 there were 45; and. from 1874 to 1884 there were 60. An extension of area having, therefore, been rendered necessary, the amount of smoke—as coal and no wood was burnt—might be imagined, but was hardly appreciated. The Smoke Abatement Committee of 1880, the Exhibition at South Kensington in 1881 of smoke-abatement apparatus, and the Smoke Abatement Institute of 1883 had evoked interest in the public mind, and the movement generally had excited very great attention. Experiments had been made and various apparatus had been tested, the result being that there was far greater knowledge of the principles of combustion than formerly. A series of experiments was recently made in a house in the Strand, to test the system of heating by one smokeless fire at the basement, as compared with the ordinary heating by open fires with the following results —the more equal distribution of heat throughout the building, with one smokeless fire, instead of 14 emitting smoke almost continuously. The cost of fuel was only one-seventh and the labour involved was only a hundredth part, calculating the attention to fires alone, and omitting the labour of carrying coals to, and ashes from, 14 fires instead of one. The question of properly housing the industrial classes was intimately connected with that of heating their dwellings. They would be enor

1247
mously benefited by an improved system of heating. This could be done at less than one-tenth of the present cost of fuel, with an absence of smoke, and with the advantage of giving facilities for cooking, drying clothes, &c. By an avoidance of dirt from smoking chimneys, by a saving of fuel for which they often paid 1s. to 2s. per week, and by a saving of labour, great advantage would be gained to the health, comfort, and general well-being of the people. Ventilation, too, did not, and need not, depend upon open grates. In consequence of the attention to the subject, there was a much greater use made of improved construction in grates, with a consequent greater economy in the use of fuel and with very much less smoke. But clubs and hotels were great offenders. In connection with this point he earnestly asked the First Commissioner of Works to consider the question of heating in the case of the new Government Offices. After all, legislation without the support and co-operation of the whole community was of not much avail. It seemed to him that the evil was not sufficiently appreciated; too much was taken for granted; but they hoped that people were more alive to the great and destructive agencies to health, vegetation, buildings, and other things, than they were formerly. The difficulty of enforcing the provisions of the Public Health Act of 1875 in the country consisted in the fact that the administration of the law was largely in the hands of producers of smoke. He thought power might be vested in stipendiaries where they existed. There had been considerable laxity on the part of the magistrates in enforcing the law, as the following Returns proved—In the administration of the Smoke Nuisance Acts in 1885, the total number of cases in which proceedings were taken was 124, total number of convictions 120, total amount of fines inflicted £275 10s., average fine £2 5s. 11 d. The number of cases in which fines below the minimum of 40s. provided by the Acts were inflicted was 66. Those figures showed—
"(1) That the number of cases in which proceedings are taken is very small and can include only a percentage of the cases in which a nuisance is created; (2) That when proceedings are taken, and convictions obtained, the penalties inflicted by the magistrates do not comply with the Acts of 1853 to 1856, and are in many
1248
cases practically inoperative as a deterrent, being in 55 per cent of the cases below the minimum of 40s. One fine of £40 was inflicted, and seven of £10 each; the remaining 112 were all of less amount. No proceedings whatever appear to have been taken to enforce the conditions of the Acts as regards steamers on the River Thames, and this is a point which is considered of special importance."
At a meeting of the Metropolitan magistrates last year, under the presidency of Sir James Ingham, it was, however, decided to increase the fine in all cases. The Bill gave power to Local Authorities to make bye-laws, prohibiting the emission of smoke from buildings, and to the Metropolitan Board of Works to make bye-laws as to fireplaces, &c, in new buildings. Their Lordships lived, as a general rule, in pure air, and he asked them to give a second reading to the Bill, on the ground that it would be conferring a been on those who were constrained to pass the bulk of their lives in an atmosphere greatly contaminated by smoke.
LORD MOUNT TEMPLEsaid, if there was one subject on which unanimity of opinion might be expected it was such a reform in the atmosphere of London as would prevent half of the burnt coal from polluting the air and entering the nostrils and throats of Londoners. One-half of the fuel was not producing heat at all, but only rising up into the atmosphere, and forming a dense and obscure canopy. We had, nevertheless, gone on for a number of years doing nothing effectual in the matter at all. London, in respect of amusements, conveniences, and so forth, compared favourably with the great cities of the Continent; but its atmosphere was its disgrace. Lord Palmerston's Act of 1853 went as far as public opinion and knowledge at the time justified; but science had now accomplished the avoidance of dense smoke. The difficulty was the punishment of individuals for their share of a collective injury. The Bill imposed on the smaller Local Authorities a duty which had been neglected by the more important Local Authorities, and they might effect a closer observance of the law within their narrow jurisdiction, supported as they would be by public opinion.
THE PRIME MINISTER AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (The Marquess of SALISBURY)said, that Her Majesty's Government

1249
were not able to resist the Motion for the second reading, but he hoped the noble Lord (Lord Stratheden and Campbell) would allow sufficient time to elapse before the stage of Committee to enable the metropolitan authorities to take cognizance of the Bill.
EARL GRANVILLEsaid, he would suggest whether it would not be better, on the whole, after the second reading, to refer the Bill to a Select Committee.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: We shall consider the suggestion.
LORD STRATHEDEN AND CAMPBELL: My Lords, I do not rise to detain the House at any length. Having discussed the Bill, together with its object, on three separate occasions, I may claim exemption from the task of urging much upon it, after has fallen from the noble Duke (the Duke of Westminster) and the noble Lord who have so ably defended it. The noble Duke is well qualified to guide us by his Metropolitan authority, and also by his special knowledge. The approbation of the noble Lord who followed him, is singularly valuable, since to some extent at least he represents Lord Palmerston, whose well-known enactments against smoke it is intended merely to develop and improve upon. The noble Marquess at the head of the Government (the Marquess of Salisbury) suggests delay, that the Bill may become better known to the local bodies. There is no objection to delay, if the noble Marquess urges it. But the Bill, during the three preceding Sessions, has been made sufficiently familiar to the local bodies who, in the event of its becoming law, will be required to ad-minister it. It may be convenient that I should now point out, in a few words, the mode in which its clauses ought to be divided. The essential clauses give the local bodies power to act against domestic smoke under the veto of the Homo Office, and also give the Metropolitan Board power to insist in new constructions on a better heating apparatus. Thus it is proposed to deal with actual smoke, and to anticipate incoming smoke. These principles are vital. The subsidiary clauses enable the authorities to proceed at once against smoke of unusual density, although not coming from a factory, and they enlarge the area in which the Acts of Lord Palmerston are valid. Those clauses might be given up
1250
without destruction to the objects of the measure. As to the suggestion of the noble Earl the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, to refer the Bill to a Select Committee, its framers would not shrink from that ordeal. It would, however, be unfavourable to despatch, and there is no clear reason for resorting to such cumbrous machinery. The point may be reserved, if the House will have the goodness to repeat its former judgments, and to read the Bill a second time this evening.
Motion agreed to; Bill read 2

ELECTION TO THE LOCAL BOARD OF HEALTH, CHATHAM — FORGERY OF VOTING PAPERS.

  QUESTION. OBSERVATIONS.
  LORD MONKSWELL, in rising to call attention to the wholesale forgery of signatures to voting papers alleged to have taken place at Chatham at the recent election to the Local Board of Health; and to ask, Whether the Local Government Board will inquire into the conduct of that election, said, that on this Board, previous to the recent election, all the members had been Conservatives, and he thought he would be able to show that the Party had been determined to maintain their monopoly. So fully, in fact, did the authorities at Chatham act on the American principle of "the spoils to the victor" that there was not in connection with the Chatham Board of Health a single officer, official, or clerk belonging to the Liberal Party. Suspicion being aroused, owing to hundreds of the voting papers being signed in the same handwriting, and to the fact that the votes taken from "the Chairman's bag" were, and had been at previous elections, mostly cast for the whole Conservative ticket, the names of 30 persons were, taken down during the counting of the votes who were alleged to have voted, but could not possibly have done so, some of them being dead, while others whoso names appeared on the paper were not able to write. On the voting papers being examined, 220 were found to be signed in the same handwriting, but purporting to be signed by different ratepayers, many of whom had left Chatham and could not be found, while the others declared that they had had no voting papers left at their houses. The Conservatives had obtained the sig-

  1251
  natures of two or three of those alleged to have signed to papers acknowledging their signatures, but the handwriting on the acknowledgment was quite different from that on the voting papers. These 220 papers must have been forged at the Office of the Local Board of Health, as papers which could not be left at houses, owing to there being no one to receive them, were taken back to the Office. Votes recorded at the Office were put into what was known as "the Chairman's bag," and it was found that the great majority of the votes in it had been cast for the Conservative Party. With regard to a remedy for this state of things, he thought that the Report of the Select Committee of 1878 had been right in suggesting that the present system of voting by voting papers was bad, and ought to be amended. In the second place, it was desirable that some sort of provision should be made for the representation of large minorities, such as some modification of the system of cumulative voting. What they wanted in this case, was not to prosecute some clerk who had been used as a catspaw, but to get hold of those who were pulling the strings. The matter was something more than of mere local importance, and he hoped that the noble Lord who represented the Local Government Board would see his way to granting the inquiry which was asked for. In doing so, he (Lord Monkswell) could assure him he would be acting in accordance with the wishes of a large body of the ratepayers of Chatham.
  LORD BALFOUR (A LORD in WAITING), in reply, said, that in putting that Question, the noble Lord had travelled over a wide field of subjects, from the election of Representative Peers in Scotland down through cumulative voting to the discharge of employés from Chatham Dockyard, and into those matters he would not attempt to follow him. With regard to the point as to whether the Local Government Board would institute an inquiry into this case, he had to say that the Board had no power or jurisdiction to make such an inquiry as the noble Lord had suggested. They were confined, under Section 293 of the Public Health Act, to making inquiries concerning the public health, and there was no statutory power whatever to make any other inquiry. He would remind the noble Lord, however,
  1252
  that any of the parties aggrieved had a remedy which he (Lord Balfour) thought even the Liberals of Chatham, in the present state of feeling there, would think highly satisfactory—a remedy which left no reason whatever for an appeal to the Local Government Board. Schedule 2 of the Act provided that anyone guilty of the offence of fabricating, in whole or in part, any voting paper, could be proceeded against by anyone who was aggrieved, when fines of not exceeding £20, or, in default, three months' imprisonment, could be inflicted upon the offenders.
  LORD MONKSWELLsaid, that it was charged that the signatures were forged.
  LORD BALFOURsaid, he understood that the noble Lord charged someone with fabricating the voting papers, and under another Act the penalty was oven more substantial, for the fine was £100, with a disability from taking part in any election for five years. He could not help thinking that, if the facts wore so well known to the Liberals of Chatham, as the noble Lord had appeared to indicate, no time ought to be lost by them in enforcing the statutory powers. If these practices had really occurred, the proper course was for those who alleged them to put the law in force, and not to appeal to the Local Government Board, who had no power in the matter. Such an inquiry as the noble Lord asked for could only take place with the witnesses on oath, whereas even if the Local Government Board were to institute the inquiry asked for they could not treat witnesses on oath. With regard to the stigma which the noble Lord had cast upon the clerks in the Office of the Local Board of Chatham, he thought the charge was one which ought not to have been put forward unless he had very clear and distinct evidence as to its truth. The statement of these alleged practices throw a certain amount of suspicion on some officials, and cast an unfair reflection upon them, unless they were afforded an opportunity of cross- examining those who brought forward these allegations. The noble Lord would not expect him to enter upon the subject of cumulative voting. There was no desire on the part of the Local Government Board to throw a screen over any persons guilty of the practices alleged, and the refusal of the Local Government Board

  1253
  to hold the inquiry suggested was based on the fact that the Statute provided the proper remedy, and it was beyond their power to enter upon it.

LAW AND JUSTICE (IRELAND)—EQUITABLE POWERS OF COUNTY COURT JUDGES.—OBSERVATIONS.
THE DUKE OF ARGYLL,in rising to call the attention of the House to certain recent rulings of a County Court Judge in Ireland, at Killarney Quarter Sessions, and to the nature of the equitable jurisdiction apparently involved therein, said, the main difficulty before them, upon which many very different opinions bad been expressed, was as to how far it would be expedient or necessary to give more arbitrary powers to the Magistracy and County Court Judges in Ireland, as it was proposed to do by the Bill they had read a second time, and upon which they were going into Committee next week. The question depended a good deal upon two questions —first, as to the state of existing society in Ireland in regard to which they were to apply these increased powers; and, secondly, what were the existing powers, and how far they would be allowed to work? Upon these questions the transactions that had recently taken place at the Killarney Quarter Sessions threw an important light. First, he wished to call attention to the evidence they had of the state of society in the South-West of Ireland. In the evidence which was given before Lord Cowper's Commission, at page 37, Mr. Warburton, the Resident Magistrate of Bantry, said he thought there were some tenants who really had not got the money; but the majority of them, he thought, could pay. In reply to a further question which was asked by Lord Cowper to this effect— "And as to those who have not got the money, does it arise from their improvidence?" the same witness said he was of opinion that the tenants, not having had to pay for so long a time, when they had the money, spent it on drink, and the women on dress, and, consequently, when they came to be pressed, they had no money at all. He (the Duke of Argyll) was much struck by that passage when he read it; but he did not quote it in the course of the debate on the second reading of the Land Law Bill, for he knew that it was now the fashion in some quarters to
1254
pooh-pooh the evidence of Judges and Resident Magistrates in Ireland if it happened to be opposed to certain views; but here they had a Resident Magistrate examined before a Royal Commission, who gave it as his distinct opinion that, as regards the South-West of Ireland, the tenantry had, to a large extent, had money, and had been spending it on drink. Judge O'Brien had made a speech on the same subject at the Clare Assizes in March last, in which he stated that he was greatly concerned to observe that, in addition to the crime that found its way into the Court of Assizes, there was a very large increase in the offences of intoxication, which tended to show a progressive and continual demoralization among the people. In entire conformity with that was the testimony of Mr. Edward Guinness, who was largely connected with the Munster Bank for many years, who, therefore, might be assumed to have considerable knowledge of the financial condition of the Irish tenantry, and whose evidence was to be found in the Appendix to the Report of the Commission. According to this witness there was a far greater difference and distance between the thrifty and the unthrifty tenant than there was between the fair and unfair rent. It would, he said, be absurd to deny that a very large percentage of those who were unable to meet their obligations had nobody to blame for it but their own unthrifty, wasteful, and idle habits. That was the state of society which they must consider when weighing the difficulties with which Judges had to deal in the exorcise of an equitable jurisdiction. With respect to the transactions at Killarney, to which he wished to call the attention of their Lordships, a report of them had been sent to him by a friend of his who was now in Ireland. The Judge in question was Mr. John Curran, Q.C., a man of great eminence in Ireland, intimately known to his (the Duke of Argyll's) noble Friend the late Lord Lieutenant (Earl Spencer), and who had been employed by that noble Lord in many arduous duties. He was a man who was not only on intimate relations with the tenantry, but had a very warm affection for them. From a report which appeared in The Kerry Post of March 26th last, he found that applications were made for some new public-house

1255
licences. The Chief Constable objected very much to any increase in the number of licences, and pleaded with Mr. Curran that these applications should not be granted. Mr. Curran said the magistrates would not take it as a. reflection upon them; but he must say that he found more public-houses in every town in Kerry than in any other county in Ireland. How this came about he did not know; but the number of public-houses in the villages and towns in Kerry was very large; and it was no wonder to him that the people of Kerry were impoverished and unable to pay their rents, without speaking of their ordinary debts. It was next to impossible for a countryman of Kerry to carry home the produce of the sale of a calf or a pig; it was next to impossible for him to go home sober. The dicta of Judges, when they were speaking in charges, had been represented "elsewhere" as speeches to which they need pay no particular attention; but it had not yet been alleged that the dicta of Judges, in dealing with particular cases, could be so lightly treated; and he had no doubt that a man of Mr. Curran's eminence would not have expressed himself so strongly if he had not agreed with the evidence of other witnesses, to which he (the Duke of Argyll) had just referred, as to the existing state of society in the South-West of Ireland. The case he wished to bring under their Lordships' notice was one in which Mr. Curran, after expressing the above decided opinions, stayed the proceedings in an ejectment where the rent was two and a-half years in arrear, on condition that the tenant should pay a gale's rent up to the 17th April. The landlord, not wishing to be hard on the tenant, said he did not object to this arrangement, provided that the tenant would pay that and the costs, he would not execute the decree before the 17th April. Mr. Curran then said there should be a stay put to further proceedings until August or September. The landlord said he had no objection to that, and Mr. Curran remarked—"Whether you have any objection to it or not, I will make the rule." In this case the Judge assumed that he had power to stay such proceedings absolutely according to his own discretion, and he did so in this action of ejectment for 2½ years' rent, upon condition that the tenant should pay one
1256
half-year's rent. He did not question the discretion of the Judge, but it was a pure act of discretion. It was the exercise of the very power which the noble Lord opposite proposed to give to all County Court Judges by the Government Land Bill. It was impossible, however, not to express some surprise at this particular ruling. Mr. Curran had just expressed his belief that, for the most part, the tenants would be able to pay their rents if they did not drink the money they ought to have paid to their landlords; but the difficulty was that he did not know it in regard to this particular tenant. That was just the difficulty the magistrates would always have, and he did not see how they were to deal with it. They, in common with Mr. Curran, knew the general fact that the whole or a part of the population were thus thoroughly demoralized; but they did not know it as regards A. B., the tenant before the Court. That was a difficulty with which all the magistrates in Ireland would be confronted if the Legislature extended their powers to any considerable extent with regard to the non-payment of rent. All the County Court Judges might know perfectly well that the rents were withheld either from improvidence or from the pressure put upon them by the Land League; but they might be unable to prove it in a particular case, and the discretion was, therefore, one which it would be most difficult for them to exercise. In another case, Mr. Curran expressed himself on the general state of the country in equally strong terms, and he dealt with the case in a similar way. It was impossible to read the speeches of Judges and the evidence of witnesses before Lord Cowper's Commission without seeing that they had to deal in Ireland with a society which was thoroughly demoralized. The great proportion of the people seemed to have no idea of the principles upon which private or public virtue depends. How, then, were they to be dealt with? Let his noble Friend (Earl Spencer) not imagine that the alternative which the Government had taken of seeking to give a discretionary power to the magistrate and the County Court Judge was the only one open to objection. After leading those speeches and that evidence, it was impossible for him not to feel that to enlarge very widely the discretion of

1257
Judges in Ireland in the present condition of society, was to put them into a position in which it would be almost impossible for them to fulfil their duty to the country. At the same time, he hoped they would remember that the quack medicine of Homo Rule would only operate in the direction of making matters still worse. In Judge Curran they had a gentleman of high character; and though they might doubt his discretion, at least, he spoke out bravely against the evils he observed in the existing condition of society. But if they had a local Executive in Ireland, appointed under the advice of those who constitute the Land League, they would have far worse rulings than this of Mr. Curran, and they would have none of his honest denunciations. The evidence given before the Royal Commission showed that on Lord Kenmare's estate there was an organized society ordering the tenants not to pay their rents under any conditions; and so great was the violence employed that tenants were dragged out of their beds and shot in the legs for having paid their rents. Everything had gone to the dogs altogether, and was as bad as it ever had been; so bad, indeed, was the condition of affairs that, at one time, tenants had gone and paid their rents in secret, and had asked that notices of ejectment might be issued against them, because that would be a protection to them, being the only means of concealing from the Land League that they had paid their rents. This showed how desperate was the state of society from the corruption of the people and the intimidation of the League. It was all very well for his noble Friend (Lord Spencer) to go about the country and say that none of these things touched him now, because he had changed his mind about Home Rule. He (the Duke of Argyll) had absolute confidence in his noble Friend's integrity; but he wanted to know, and he thought they were entitled to know, why he thought that that powerful Land League, which was now exercising so demoralizing and so criminal an influence upon the people, should cease to do so when Home Rule was set up? That raised the whole question and put it in a nutshell. He quite understood the line that had been taken by noble Lords opposite. They had brought forward their Land Bill, by which they
1258
proposed to extend so greatly the discretion of County Court Judges, because they felt that the people of this country, too indolent to investigate the facts, would not tolerate evictions unless it could be proved in each separate case that eviction was just and necessary. He feared that no law which could be devised could carry such views into practical operation. It was, he hold, of the highest importance that the people of this country ought to understand that, since the passing of the Act of 1881, the tenantry of Ireland had a largo amount of protection, such as no other tenantry in the world had; and, what with voluntary abatements given by the landlords and occasional suspensions in the Courts, as in the case decided by Mr. Curran, the difficulties which had arisen from the excessive fall in prices might be easily got over. He hoped both Parties in the House would consider the state of things with which they had to deal. They had to do in Ireland, as he had said, with a society which was thoroughly demoralized; and it would be all the more demoralized if it were found that both Parties in England were abusing each other and thinking very little about how they could introduce a better system into a land which was so unhappy. He hoped, therefore, that the interests of that unfortunate country would not be sacrificed to Party spirit.
LORD FITZGERALDsaid, he most decidedly deprecated anticipating, in discussions of this nature, topics which most shortly come before their Lordships when the Irish Land Law Bill reached Committee. He would point out that there was no ground of complaint against his learned Friend, Judge Curran, for having stayed proceedings against a tenant in a ease where the landlord objected. But as to the question whether a Judge had the right to do so, quite irrespective of the will of the landlord, if Mr. Curran had said he had this power, then he (Lord Fitzgerald) thought his friend had, to some extent, erred. He thought that Mr. Curran, who was a man of great benevolence, and, at the same time, of strict impartiality, must have stayed proceedings in the cases referred to, on condition of the payment by a certain date of part of the rent, by the consent of the landlord; otherwise, he doubted whe-

1259
ther the Judge would have had jurisdiction to do so. There was an equitable jurisdiction given by the Act of 1881 for the payment of a reduced sum until a judicial rent was fixed, and for the stay of eviction proceedings in the meantime. But that was confined to cases of applications for fair rent to the Commissioners. There was also a power under one of the Rules published under the County Court Act of 1876, which authorized the Judge to stay proceedings, under certain conditions, in an action of ejectment. But it was commonly believed by the Profession in Ireland that that Rule was ultra vires. He hoped the Government would give some discretionary power of the sort to the County Court Judges in the Bill which was to come before the House next week, in lieu of the Bankruptcy Clauses, to which such strong exception had been taken.
House adjourned at Six o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter past Ten o'clock.