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.