SECOND READING. [ADJOURNED DEBATE.]

HL Deb 14 August 1894 vol 28 cc893-979

Order of the Day for resuming the Debate on the Amendment to the Motion for the Second Reading read. Debate resumed accordingly.

THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE

My Lords, I do not know that I can ever recollect a time when a measure of such great importance as the one now before the House has been brought forward by those responsible for it with so little attempt either to establish a case for the measure or to justify, or even to explain, the principles on which it is founded. My noble Friend the First Lord of the Admiralty, in moving the Second Reading yesterday, did little but explain the provisions of the Bill. He made some estimate of the extent and number of the cases to which, in the opinion of the Government, the proposals would apply. He also made some estimate of the sufficiency of the funds provided by the Bill. But the case which ho laid before this House for the introduction of this measure appeared to me simply to consist of this: My noble Friend said that the question of Irish land and the Irish land system was a very peculiar one; that it was necessary for us to remove from our minds all notions founded on English and Scotch practice; and that it had been found necessary on several occasions to deal with the question of land in Ireland in an exceptional manner by means of both permanent and temporary measures. My noble Friend said that another difficulty had arisen; and he appeared to think that it was the obvious, simple, and natural conclusion that that difficulty should again be met in the same manner by a temporary measure founded upon exceptional principles. He appeared to think that when there had been so many of them it did not make a great deal of difference whether there were one or two other exceptional measures more or less. But as to the magnitude of the evil to be dealt with, or as to the fitness and appropriate character of the remedy to be applied, my noble Friend said very little. He did inform the House that this Bill would apply to 4,000 tenants, and he said that in his opinion those tenants had a grievance. I fully admit—and I think every Member of this House admits—that those tenants are almost universally subjects of pity and compassion, and that some of them are subjects of sympathy. But I do not know exactly what is the actual grievance under which my noble Friend thinks that these tenants suffer. He said that some of them were evicted before the passing of the Act of 1881, and others before the passing of the Act of 1887. My noble Friend did not take the trouble to tell the House what is the relative number of those persons to whom this Bill would apply, whose tenancies were determined before the Act of 1881. And the Commission which the Government appointed do not appear to have investigated that question either. Neither did they enter into an investigation about the importance and the relative number of those persons whose cases might not be dealt with under the Arrears Act of 1882. When my noble Friend tells the House in a sweeping manner that in his opinion all those tenants have a grievance, we are entitled to ask him what view he takes of by far the largest number of cases which would be dealt with under this Bill. What is his view of the grievance under which the Plan of Campaign evicted tenants suffer? What is the exact nature of their grievance against their landlords who have had the courage to act upon the rights which exceptional legislation of this class may have conferred upon them, or is their grievance mainly and principally against those whose advice, in an evil hour, they decided to follow? If my noble Friend thinks that that is a matter for a grievance I would ask him whether, in his opinion, that is a just grievance? It seems to me it is necessary, in considering this Bill, that we should give more attention than we are invited to do by my noble Friend to the principles on which this Bill is founded. It is not a question merely of the amount of benefit which may be conferred on some persons, or, the amount of injustice which may be inflicted upon others. It is not only a question of healing sores and of making the government of Ireland more easy, or, on the other hand, raising fresh difficulties for the government of Ireland. It is a question of the use which hereafter, perhaps at no distant date, may be made of the principles contained in this Bill. We have recently had an example of the use which may be made of principles to which you may give your assent by reading this Bill a second time. Mr. Morley, on some occasion—I think in introducing the Bill—said that there was not a principle contained in this measure for which some precedent could not be found in the land legislation for Ireland, and that condition, broadly put forward by Mr. Morley, has been made use of by other advocates of the Bill. The free sale provisions of the Act of 1881 have been brought forward by my noble Friend (the Lord Privy Seal) as a precedent for imposing on the landlord the tenancy of persons to whom he objects. But the free sale provisions of the Act of 1881 simply enabled the transfer of an existing tenancy to take place, and in the case of that transfer no doubt it was provided that the Laud Commission could judge whether the land-lord acted in a reasonable spirit or not. But that precedent is now to be turned into giving power to force upon the landlord a tenant who has no present connection with the tenancy—who is not, indeed, an absolute stranger, but who is, in the point of view of the landlord, a tenant a great deal worse than an absolute stranger, for of him he knows that either through inability or ill-will he has been unable or has refused to comply with the statutory conditions of his tenancy. The Arrears Act of 1882 has been brought forward as a precedent, but the Act of 1882 contained no provision for the compulsory reinstatement of the tenant, except such tenants as might be conceived to have a legal interest in their holdings, who were still in occupation of the holding, or who had not forfeited their right to redemption. The Bent Redemption Act of 1879 and the Land Purchase Act Of 1891 have been, over and over again, cited as the germ of this Bill, but that provision was of a voluntary and a non-compulsory character. It was not a provision for the reinstatement of the tenant at all. It is a provision to enable the tenant to return to his holding on terms. The 13th clause of the Act, as has often been pointed out, was intended to get rid of a difficulty which lay in the way of a tenant and a landlord who were willing to come to an agreement—to get rid of the necessity of a physical reinstatement as a preliminary to purchase by a tenant who had left his holding. When precedents like these are quoted in support of a proposal to put back on the owner of the soil a tenant who has defied him, who has forfeited by his own act the protection conferred on him by a long series of Acts framed for his benefit; when it is proposed to make these precedents for putting back such a tenant in a better position than those who have not forfeited their tenancy, we must be careful how we accept this measure or assent to such principles. What are the principles in this Bill? I will refer to three or four principles which are found within the four corners of the Bill—principles which, as I have said, may be held to be precedents for future legislation. This Bill contains the principle that the payment of rent, even of a judicial rent, is not a necessary incident of an Irish tenancy. That, I think, is a proposition which cannot be denied. It is not denied that this Bill will apply to a tenant who has failed to comply with the conditions of his tenancy; and in a great many cases they have failed to comply with those conditions. Another principle which I find in the Bill is that it is to be decreed by a Court of Law that a tenancy which has ceased and determined by the failure of the tenant to comply with one or other of the statutory conditions of the tenancy is not binding. The tenant has a moral, which may be converted into a legal, right to reinstatement, whatever may be the cause which led to the determination of his tenancy. Another principle which is contained in this Bill is that by no lapse of time can a landlord acquire the right to the occupancy of his own land so long as there is in existence a tenant or the representative of a tenant who had been at one time in the occupation of the holding. Another principle is, that the landlord, no matter what amount of capital and labour which he may have expended on his holding—that his right is an inferior one to the right of the prior tenant, who may have no direct connection with the; tenancy at all. Another principle is that the former tenant who has failed to comply with the conditions of his tenancy has a better primâ facia right to the occupation of the tenancy than the present tenant who has complied with all the statutory conditions of his tenancy. These are a few of the principles contained in the Bill—principles which from experience we know will form the foundation for future demands, and before we pass this Bill we should require a very strong and urgent case for the necessity of such a, measure. There is something in this Bill which I must describe as characteristic. Attention has already been called to the extraordinary vagueness of the language and the extraordinary amount of discretion and responsibility which is conferred on the Arbitrators under this Bill in the exercise of the functions intrusted to them. That vagueness is not denied by the authors of the Bill. My noble Friend (Lord Spencer) last night referred to it, and he was positively enamoured with the vagueness and the wideness of its terms. He found in that vagueness and the undefined character of the instructions to the Arbitrators the chief beauty and merit of this measure. He quoted cases in which the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary had lately successfully dealt with disputes between employers and labourers; but I think my noble Friend somewhat overlooks the wide and essential distinctions between arbitration and conciliation. The Prime Minister had not and never assumed to have the power of compelling the colliery owners to pay a certain rate of wages, nor did he assume to tell the workmen what wages they should accept. All that my noble Friend set himself to do was to bring the two parties together, and to see whether a way might be found by which, with their mutual assent, they could settle their differences. I do not recollect whether the arbitration which was undertaken by the Home Secretary in the case of the cab-strike proceeded at all on different lines; but if the Home Secretary had power or undertook to settle absolutely the rates which should in future be paid for the hire of cabs, it could only be done by the voluntary submission of each of the parties. I believe you will find no precedent in the legislation of this Parliament, whether Irish or other, in which, as between non-assenting parties, such responsibility and wide discretion has been committed to any judicial persons, not even the highest Judges of the land. It might be said that there is such a thing as equitable jurisdiction, but even Judges in equity, administering questions affecting rights, act on a long series of precedents and Judgments, which form as complete a code, though possibly a more elastic one, than that contained in the Statute Book in express words. But where in this case are the precedents which are to guide the persons on whom you confer this enormous jurisdiction? What are the precedents which are to guide the Arbitrators in deciding whether the conduct of the tenants was reasonable or unreasonable in accepting the advice of Mr. Dillon or Mr. O'Brien in demanding a reduction of 20, 30, or 40 per cent, on their rents? What precedents are to guide them in saying whether the landlord was reasonable or unreasonable in refusing to make such reductions? Or if they find, as probably they would be likely to do in a great many cases, both that the tenants have boon unreasonable in demanding too much, and that the landlord may have been unreasonable in conceding too little, and that there was nothing but a balance of unreasonableness on both sides—in such a case as that what is the decision they are to arrive at; what are the scales in which they are to weigh the balance of reasonableness and unreasonableness on the side of one party or the other? I say there is no precedent for enabling any body of men to set aside, for the benefit of one party, the rights which another possesses under the law; to confer upon the other party rights which no law has ever conferred upon them. I say again, when we know, as we do know, that this precedent may, and probably will be used for still further legislation, we are bound to hesitate before we give our consent to a, measure which, in my opinion, shakes to its very foundation every right, not only of property, but of every other character which depends on submission to the law and upon the Statute Book. Where is the justification—where is the urgent necessity—for this measure? I believe the following figures, obtained from the Report of the Mathew Commission, are substantially accurate and are accepted by my noble Friend. The claims which came before the Mathew Commission were—from 17 estates into which they specially inquired, 1,403; from all other estates, 2,755. I am informed that it appears from one of the Appendices that the 2,755 claims represent less than 2 per cent, of claims from each of these estates—cases which always will appear in every country from improvident or thriftless tenants being unable to pay their rents and being obliged to abandon their holdings. The urgency of the case, therefore, depends almost entirely on the Plan of Campaign estates. The Mathew Commission found that on the 17 selected estates the 1,403 tenants represented 1,350 holdings, and of these 409 had been either re-let or purchased by the old tenants. Since the Commission reported a Parliamentary Paper had been issued, on July 26 of the present year, which shows that since the inquiry in 1892 there have been 25 new evictions on these 17 estates; and, on the other hand, there have been 128 additional reinstatements. Thus it appears that in two years 14 per cent of reinstatements by purchase or otherwise are going on even on the Plan of Campaign estates. My Lords, it is absolutely certain that this process would have been more rapid, and would now become more rapid, if the evicted tenants on these estates had not been buoyed up by the hope of some exceptional and unjust legislation such as this. It was admitted, I believe, in the discussions in the other House by some of the advocates of the Bill that a voluntary measure would admit nine-tenths of the cases which have to be dealt with. Under these circumstances, I ask what justification is there for bringing forward a compulsory measure founded on the principles to which I have referred? My noble Friend the First Lord of the Admiralty says that compulsion is only contained in the first clause. I will ask in a moment whether that is quite an accurate statement of the case; but, assuming its accuracy for the present, upon what principle is that compulsion to be applied to the landlords? You talk of the necessity of compelling the landlord—a necessity which may exist—to bring back a tenant whom he does not like. It is not merely the case of bringing back a tenant whom the landlord does not like; it is a case of bringing back a tenant who was unable or else refused to pay his rent, and who probably may be unable or may refuse again to pay his rent. This compulsory provision in the first clause fully justifies the assertion of the noble Duke opposite (the Duke of Argyll) that this measure absolutely destroys and abrogates the Act of 1881. Was it or was it not enacted by the Act of 1881 that certain conditions should be attached to the tenancy in return for the privileges conferred upon the tenant? Was it or was it not the case that the payment of certain rent agreed upon or judicially fixed was one of the conditions? When you are creating an irresponsible body, and empowering that body to decide that such breach of the statutory conditions of the Act of 1881 is not to have the consequences which were provided by the Act, I say you are breaking up and repealing that Act just as much as if you conferred upon the same person or some other person the power of depriving any body of tenants arbitrarily selected of the privileges conferred upon them by the Act, such as free sale, fixity of tenure, and the power of obtaining a fair rent. So far as the landlord is concerned, every privilege conferred upon him or left to him by the Act of 1881, and the subsequent Acts is swept away without compensation and without redress. In 1881 Parliament promised the Irish landlord that, in return for the concessions which he was called upon to make, in return for the reduction which he might be called upon to make in his rent, he should enjoy additional security for the rent which remained. Parliament, by the Act of 1881, referred the Irish landlord for that security to the recognised Courts of Law. This Bill is going to supersede the recognised Courts of Law by a tribunal which is not a Court of Law and does not assume to be a Court of Law, but from whose decision there is no appeal. The injustice which may be done to the landlord under this section is of a double character. It may inflict direct loss; it certainly will inflict indirect loss upon him. My noble Friend, Lord Lansdowne, who spoke last night, did not like to bring forward his own case. But I believe it is well-known that he is in occupation of an evicted farm on his estate, and has spent thousands of pounds in stocking and improving it. Under this Bill the former tenant may be forced back into occupa- tion, and whatever else that tenant may be, he will be absolutely incapable of taking over the stock or of compensating my noble Friend for his improvements. Grievous is the injury which may be inflicted on the landlord under this provision directly; but the indirect injury is still greater. What inducement in future will any tenant have to pay the rent which has been agreed upon or which has been judicially fixed? He knows that the failure to pay that rent is not a necessary condition or incident of his holding. He knows that the decree of the Court of Law to the effect that his tenancy is determined is not a final decree; and every inducement which existed before will be, if not absolutely destroyed, enormously weakened by the operation of this Bill. I should like to say a word or two with regard to the third clause. I admit that it is provided in that clause that the objection of the new tenant to make way for the old tenant is a bar to further proceedings. Therefore, perhaps it does not contain direct compulsion, but is there no indirect compulsion under the third clause. In the first place, you will enormously weaken the position of the new tenant. You will deprive him of the support of his landlord which he now possesses. The procedure under the clause is between the former tenant, the new tenant, and the Arbitrators; and the landlord is expressly excluded from all part in the proceedings. As matters stand now, the new tenant has the protection that if he can be coerced or induced to quit his holding that may not be followed by the reinstatement of the old tenant without the consent of the landlord, and the inducement to put pressure and coercion on the new tenant is therefore proportionately reduced. But under this Bill you will deprive the new tenant of that protection which his landlord is now able to give him. The new tenant has already in all probability had to withstand strong pressure—the pressure of public opinion, as it is called. He, perhaps, has undergone something more than pressure. He may have had to undergo persecution, and yet he has resisted and remains in possession. In addition to the pressure of an irresponsible body such as the National League, to which he has hitherto been subjected, you are going now to put upon him the pressure of an authorised legal tribunal. He will be served with notice that the former tenant has applied to be reinstated in his holding; and he will be told that, in the event of his consenting to give up possession, there will be some compensation for him. Will it not be far more difficult for a new tenant under these circumstances to resist the additional pressure which must be placed upon him than it has been in the past? It is very difficult to understand the effects of these provisions if you do not go a little beyond chaos of technical terms of the Bill. A person described in this Bill as a new tenant is known in Ireland as a land-grabber, and the way in which this Bill will be read will be to read in the word "land-grabber" wherever you find the words "new tenant." Thus— Where the holding referred to in the petition is, in the opinion of the Arbitrator, in the occupation, not of the landlord, but of the land-grabber, —and then the land-grabber is described— all the foregoing provisions of this Act shall apply. But if "land-grabber" objects, the Arbitrator shall not make an order for reinstatement. By what right do you call upon the laud-grabber to object? What is he called upon to object to? He is called upon to object to being ejected from a holding of which he is as rightfully and as legally in possession as my noble Friend who brought in this Bill is in possession of his estates. In forcing the new tenant to make objection you are placing upon him an obligation which you have no right to impose. If he does make the objection, he can only sustain it at the cost of renewed pressure and persecution. If this clause contains no element of direct compulsion, it contains all the elements of indirect compulsion, which may be far more difficult to meet than even the severest form of direct compulsion. Mr. Morley has taken credit for having, in spite of the pressure put upon him, refused to turn out the new tenant with-j out his own consent; but it seems to me that it is nothing but an invitation to put the pressure of public opinion, as it is called, or, if public opinion will not serve, the pressure of boycotting, and all the rest of the machinery upon this unhappy man. That is very well understood, and it is not denied by the Irish Members. Mr. O'Brien, in the last Debate on the measure, in the other House, said no one doubted that in one way or another the land-grabbers must be induced to give up the holdings they have taken, and unless this Bill contains, in their opinion, the means of inducing them to do this, it would not effect its purpose, and they would not give a "Thank you!" for it. Therefore, not even the removal of compulsion from the landlord would abolish the objections which we entertain to it so long as it contains the inducements to do by illegal pressure and other means that which the Government shrinks from doing by direct legal enactment. The Bill has been spoken of as one of amnesty. It cannot be a measure of amnesty when, by the confession of the Irish Members themselves, the war is not over. The land war in Ireland has always been, and still is, as much a war, perhaps more a war, between the old tenants and the new tenants as between the tenants and the landlords, and the very moment when you are talking of passing a measure of amnesty it is proclaimed by one of the leaders of the Irish tenantry that there will be no peace in Ireland until the land-grabber, by some means or another, is induced to quit his holding. This is not a measure of amnesty; it is a measure which is framed and intended to give victory to one side, and that the defeated side. It is not a measure of amnesty, because it will tend rather to revive the embers of a war which have boon dying out than to extinguish them. Then there is the point as to the unnecessary extension of this Bill to cases which are not connected with eviction at all. The term used in the Bill, "determination of the tenancy," is a term which will apply not only to cases of eviction, but to cases where the tenant has voluntarily left his holding, perhaps owing many years rent, or cases where the tenant has received compensation for giving up his holding, and is now dissatisfied with his bargain. I do not think that any explanation has been given why it should be necessary to deal with cases which are not in any sense connected with eviction. Then there is, in the second clause, the provision forcing on the landlord the acceptance of a tenant who would not have been admitted by the Land Commission. But I will not now deal further with the provisions of the Bill. No one has ever been of opinion that this measure could be accepted by this House in its present form. But suggestions have been made—and something like a suggestion was made last night by the First Lord of the Admiralty—that we might pass the Second Reading of the Bill and amend it in Committee. Your Lordships have not received much encouragement from the Government to amend measures in Committee. An instance of that was supplied in the case of the Employers' Liability Bill, where the Amendment was certainly not one which touched the principle of the measure. Nevertheless, it was considered sufficient to justify the Government in abandoning that Bill. My noble Friend asks for a pledge that if the measure be made a voluntary one it would be accepted by the landlords of Ireland. It is impossible for anyone to give a pledge which should bind the whole body of Irish landlords. Mr. Morley, in the other House, was asked to give a similar pledge on the part of the Irish tenants, and he said it was impossible. It is as impossible for any man in this House to give a pledge that will bind the whole of the landlords, as it is for any person in the other House to give a pledge that will bind the whole of the tenants. I did not hear, but I read, and I repeat the offer made by my noble Friend Lord Lansdowne—let the Government show us what Amendments they are prepared to propose themselves, or will accept from us, which would turn the Bill into a voluntary measure which we could accept. I do not believe it can be done. The principle of this Bill is compulsion, and nothing else. It is a Bill drawn throughout on lines leading to compulsion. Every stage of the procedure shows it—from the primã, facie case to the absolute Order itself. The nearest approach we have to a suggestion for a compromise is one contained in the last speech made by Mr. Morley, in the other House, when, in answer to Mr. Kenny, he said that the suggestion that before the Provisional Order of the Arbitrators was made absolute—that was, just before the blow fell—the consent of the landlord should be an indispensable condition, that that raised a point which was worthy of consideration. Look at the position of the landlord, according to Mr. Morley. After all the proceedings have been gone through, and just before the blow falls, the landlord may possibly be invested with power to put himself in evidence. Is that a position in which we have a right to place any man who is doing nothing but defending the just rights which your own law has given him? I ask, again, how is it possible to amend a Bill of this kind in this House? We are often reminded that we have not here any Representatives of the Irish tenantry, and I doubt very much whether the Irish Members would be willing to place their case absolutely in the hands of the Members of Her Majesty's Government who sit in this House. If any compromise is to be effected with regard to turning this Bill into a voluntary Bill, it must be done by agreement, and with full and frank acceptance on the part of the Representatives of both landlords and tenants. Her Majesty's Government destroyed all chance of compromise when, in the other House, without any provocation and after only two days' discussion in Committee, they imposed the gag on further consideration. They imposed the gag, not only upon their opponents, but also on their own supporters, and thus, in the only place where agreemeut—if agreement was possible—could be arrived at, they stifled discussion, and so destroyed the last chance of this measure being put in a shape in which it would have been possible for this House to accept it. There is no use in deceiving ourselves, and if we do we certainly shall not deceive anybody else. It is better to look this matter fairly and fully in the face, and see whether there really is any possible ground of agreement. All parties are agreed on this—that there is a strong desire that this difficulty should be settled. But what possible ground has been suggested by Her Majesty's Government upon which a settlement which would remove this sore could be arrived at? What provisions of their measure are they prepared to abandon or what Amendments can they suggest to remove those objections of gravity and importance to which I have referred? Is it possible that any Amendment that the Government could possibly accept, and which did not contain the principle of compulsion, could be moved on the Third Reading, after this Bill has passed through Committee? The principle of this Bill is compulsion exercised by miscalled Arbitrators. We say that there is nothing to arbitrate about. Arbitration is a process for deciding upon disputed rights; but there is no dispute as to the legal rights here. The rights are all on one side, and there are none on the other. Probably it would be wise and expedient that one of the parties should, in the interests of peace and order, waive and give up some portion of those undoubted rights; but that is a course not for arbitrators to decide upon, but for conciliators to suggest. As long as your Bill rests upon the principle of compulsion to be exercised by so-called arbitrators I do not see what possibility of agreement or amendment exists. If the Government had been content to follow the real precedent which received the sanction of Parliament and the support of both sides of the House of Commons, I do not think there would have been much difficulty to contend against. Over and over again it has been suggested to the Government that if they would be satisfied with a measure re-enacting the 13th clause of the Land Purchase Act of 1891, without imposing any limit of time—the limit having in the opinion of some prevented the successful operation of that clause—it would not meet with opposition, but with cordial assent. It has been said that the operation of the 13th clause of the Act of 1891 was altogether a failure; but that is not correct, for it had some effect. However, if it were tried again, it would be tried in very different circumstances. Both Parties have now the experience of two years long and bitter struggle, and by the confession of both Parties they are sick and weary of it. Because an enactment failed two years ago, it does not follow that a measure which would give the Parties another opportunity to meet together and to arrive at an amicable settlement would necessarily fail now. Reinstatement by purchase is, in the opinion of almost all who have considered the question, a solution far preferable to that of reinstatement in any other way. Reinstatement by purchase, when it can be effected, is a final and complete settlement, and leaves no ground for friction or dispute between the parties who have been so long opposed to each other. But if you could not be contented with that, you might have added to a Bill founded upon this principle some provision for the appointment of conciliators, men not armed with any com- pulsory powers, but having the right to invite all parties—landlords, old tenants, and new tenants—to meet together in order to see whether a settlement of their differences could be arrived at. You might have entrusted to these men the disposal of the funds provided by this Bill. If you were satisfied to try such an experiment as this, I believe that even now a measure embodying it might pass through both Houses of Parliament in a week. If there were any real desire to attempt a solution of this question upon purely voluntary and permissive lines, it would be far simpler and more rational to start with a clean sheet, and to introduce a new measure, than to endeavour to engraft upon the principle of this compulsory Bill provisions which are essentially at variance with it. We know the difficulties in which the Government are placed, partly in consequence of the conduct of some of their allies, and partly in consequence of the conduct of some of their own Members when they were in a position of greater freedom and less responsibility. Well, the Unionist Party would willingly have met the Government half-way if the latter had been willing to accept any basis upon which a real agreement could be arrived at. This measure, however, will do much more to disturb Ireland than to settle the difficulties there. Believing that it contains principles which are fatal to the foundations of law and order and to peace and prosperity in Ireland, and indirectly also to peace and prosperity in the rest of the United Kingdom, I say on my own behalf and on behalf of those with whom I am politically connected, that it is impossible for us to give our assent to the Second Reading of this Bill.

* LORD ASHBOURNE

My Lords, very few even of the strongest supporters of this measure can have listened to the speech of the noble Duke without serious searchings of heart and without feeling great anxiety to reconsider the question as to whether they have not given their support to a Bill full of mischief and peril. This Bill has been presented to your Lordships as one of great urgency in regard to a social and administrative difficulty in Ireland. But that contention cannot be maintained in face of the facts and figures bearing on the matter. Surely, my Lords, the acts of the Government itself are entirely op- posed to any such notion. If the question was urgent, if it was one of acute emergency, what was the justification of the Government for waiting two years before they brought in the Bill, and for only having brought it in at the fag-end of the Session, and then not voluntarily at all, but because they were coerced by the pressure of their political supporters from Ireland? Why was it not introduced in the voluntary shape which the noble Duke has pointed out, which, in the opinion of all reasonable people, would have settled at least nine-tenths of the cases likely to arise under this Bill. It is unnecessary to go again through the figures given with so much clearness and significance by the noble Duke. Those figures demonstrate the hollowness of the claim to urgency. Since May, 1879, there have been about 35,000 evictions. Mr. Morley calculates that less than 4,000 would apply under this Bill—and this includes the Plan of Campaign tenants. The real fact that has caused the introduction of this Bill is the existence of 860 evicted tenants representing the Plan of Campaign, who are now supported by other people. That is a grave and significant fact. But what proportion does this figure of 860 bear to the total number of tenants in Ireland? A fraction less than 1 per cent. There are 2,700 tenants included in Mr. Morley's 4,000 over and above the Plan of Campaign tenants, and they are to be found not in plague spots of which Lord Spencer spoke, but scattered over 1,639 estates in Ireland. There have been less than two evictions in 15 years on each of these 1,639 estates. On 1,200 out of these 1,639 estates there has not been more than one on each during the 15 years. What, then, becomes of the administrative urgency and emergency which the noble Earl had to make out in order to prove the justification for this Bill? Why, England, Scotland, and Wales will show a much larger figure of evictions than those 1,200 estates that are to be made the prey of this Bill. It is said that we should send a message of peace to Ireland. Yes, but send it at your own expense, and not at the expense of others without proving that you have a right to regard them and to treat them as outlaws. It is all very well to speak about a message of peace, about amnesty, and letting bygones be bygones, but do not let these things be all on one side. You appeal to the landlords to be generous, considerate, and to send a message of peace; but where is the amnesty for the landlords? Take the case of the new tenants, and then consider your phrase about a message of peace, a truce, and the bringing of parties together. Where has there been a whisper on the part of those who are entitled to speak for the evicted tenants of a suggestion that if 99 per cent. are to be restored to farms now held by new tenants, that that will save the peace and quiet of the one man who may remain in possession? This is not a Bill of conciliation; it is really a Bill of coercion. It is a Bill to try to pay off political scores. The farmers of Ireland, not for the first time, have been made the cats-paw of agitators; and if this Bill, in payment of political scores, framed as it is, should pass into law, never again could any laud combination or agitation be resisted in Ireland by the landlords or anyone else. I am an Irishman myself, and I am not incapable of realising the wishes and the feelings of even those to whom I am opposed. I do not object to a feeling of sympathy, and I desire conciliation. I have never taken up au attitude of non possumus about any reasonable measure, and having it dealt with in any reasonable way; but this is not a reasonable measure. The main argument of the Government is that if they make any proposal to Parliament, and if they only call it "a message of peace," that we are to shut our eyes to all the injustices it may contain, and pass it without a murmur. My Lords, this Bill has been deliberately framed on impossible lines, and without any analogy to any Statute that has ever been passed in this House or in the Parliament of any other civilised country. No process of evolution can get from the germs that are to be found in any earlier Act of Parliament even a hint of the developments contained in this Bill. There has been talk about the Arrears Act and Section 13 of the Act of 1891. I will not discuss them; the analogies are not arguable. I venture to say absolutely that this Bill is without a precedent in the past, although it will make a precedent fraught with most deadly peril for the future. The Bill has been framed to embody the principle of compulsion, and the voluntary principle has been deliberately set aside. It is the Government who say throughout "Non possumus"; they repudiate the voluntary principle. As it has been framed the Bill is founded on force, on compulsion, and on coercion, which are against every principle of law, every dictate of equity, and to use the word "justice" in connection with it is absolutely absurd. We are asked to affirm these principles by giving the Bill a Second Reading. But, sorry though I am to have to do it—for I would have preferred a different Bill—I will oppose the Second Reading, because I believe the Bill to be unjust, perilous, and impossible. What is an evicted tenant? He is a man who owes at least one year's rent, and who far more often in Ireland owes two, three, four, or five years' rent, and is then evicted by his landlord. Like every man, the landlord has his family to maintain and his obligations to meet; and if he cannot get his rent, he has a right at all events to his land. It is not suggested that this social and administrative difficulty has been brought about by harsh or unjust landlords; it is not suggested that this Bill is to be confined to harsh and unjust evictions. I heard with regret a statement made by Lord Spencer yesterday when he said, "I am not one of those who condemn the whole body of Irish landlords." What did he mean? Nobody knows the landlords of Ireland better than the noble Earl, and yet, in effect, he says, with a most magnificent appearance of generosity— I will not condemn the whole body of them, because there are some that are not so bad. I denounce this as a statement which ought never to have been made in this House. Mr. Gladstone, when bringing in the Land Act of 1881, which followed the Bessborough Commission, on which it was founded, said that the landlords of Ireland had been tried, and in the main they had been acquitted; and in face of that statement it was monstrous for a Minister who had been twice Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to utter out of his generosity the statement that he would not condemn, forsooth! the whole body of landlords in Ireland. I suppose you do not wish to make the landlords of Ireland outlaws? I suppose you consider that this Bill is founded on justice, though you have had the modesty not to say it? At all events, if any noble Lords can satisfy their consciences that this is a Bill founded on justice, let them remember the noble words of Mr. Gladstone, who, in describing what justice was, said, "When I say justice, I mean justice to all." Those words should not be forgotten even in the case of the landlords of Ireland. What are the Land Laws of Ireland? Are they harsh and unjust? The landlords are not above the law; they have to live under it and to obey it; and they can only administer it. Is the law they administer harsh and unjust? I assert, not for the first time with reference to these questions, that the Land Laws of Ireland are the most generous, the most considerate, the most widely liberal to tenants that can be found in the whole habitable globe. Can anyone question that? If you do, yon cannot, know what the Land Laws are, because I assert that not in democratic America, not in Republican France, not in free England are laws so generous and considerate to tenants as are to be found in Ireland. For 25 years law after law has been passed in favour of the tenants and against the landlords. You have got the Statute of 1870, which provided compensation for improvements and disturbance; you have the Act of 1881, enabling tenants for the asking to get an independent authority to measure their rents; you have got the Act of 1887, which enables the tenant about to be evicted to ask for a stay of execution, and to be permitted to pay by instalments. I ask you who know English laws—Have you anything like these considerate measures in England, or have you heard of anything like them in any other country? When all their rights have been interfered with, there is one supreme right left to the landlords of Ireland which enables them to enjoy any fair play at all. In the supreme resort they have left the right of eviction, jealously guarded round, and enabling the tenant to be protected at every step of the process; and it is only after the landlord has satisfied every claim of the Court that he is entitled to evict. This guarded right of eviction, left by the Irish Code, is now to be done away with by summoning into existence a mushroom, a fungus tribunal, which will have the power of sweeping away the decrees of Courts in the highest matters. These are matters worthy of grave consideration before you coerce the Irish landlords to act as this Bill directs. Whenever a landlord has been driven to evict under the law, in order to enable himself and his family to live, is it not indefensible to coerce him, against his will, and without compensation, to undo what the law with all these safeguards has permitted him to do? It would be a farce, if it were not a tragedy, to reflect on the position in which you put the landlord. My Lords, the evicted tenants belong to two great classes: those who would pay and could not, and those who could pay and would not. I give my sympathy at once to all, and particularly to the first class. But does one of your Lordships think that it is commiseration for the men who would pay and could not which has caused this Bill to be brought in? I do not believe there is a man in this House who would suggest that this Bill would have been brought in if it had not been for the class of tenants who could pay and would not. There are many categories of evicted tenants to be spoken of without harshness and with great sympathy. To the honest but insolvent tenants, to the wretched dupes of the Plan of Campaign who yielded either to intimidation or through cowardice, he would be a hardhearted man who denied sympathy. But there is another class—the active supporters and ringleaders of the Plan of Campaign, the boycotters who have done everything to resist eviction, to prevent farms from being taken, and to make the landlord's life a burden. I do not say that human feeling may not be given even to them, or that now, in their wretchedness, they are not entitled to consideration. But we know that it is just this last class of ringleaders, agitators, and cordial supporters of the Plan of Campaign who are the moving spirits of this Bill, and not the poor and deserving classes of tenants. I do not say put them outside the pale of consideration. Let their landlord, if he pleases, no matter what their errors may have been, enter into negotiations with them. But do not coerce him. Leave him to do what he thinks fair. Is it not a strong measure to give exceptional rewards, not to the best, but to the worst tenants? And surely it is a cruel injustice to compel the landlord to receive back without any compensation those who for years made his life a burden and kept his farms vacant. What would be the relation of the parties under such a blessed message of peace? What would be the demeanour of the tenant who got back in spite of his landlord? What sort of a "time-of-day" would he give the landlord when he met him on the roadside? My Lords, the topic of the new tenants has been dealt with so fully and with such power by the noble Duke who preceded me that I do not feel justified in saying more about it. The new tenants are put in a painful and shabby position. They are in possession of property just as much theirs as any of your Lordships' property is yours, and it is unfair that they should be asked to give it up. This question, my Lords, is very serious—it may involve terrible consequences to life and limb. Then there is this strange, this curious, this startling tribunal. I decline to discuss those gentlemen who have consented to act under the Bill; but it is ludicrous to call them Arbitrators. Arbitrators are people of whom each side has had the power of exercising some choice, and in whom each side has confidence. But these men are selected by a Government which has shown itself to be throughout the political opponent of the landlords. It is idle to expect that when you baptise them Arbitrators you get over all the suspicion which must attach to their works. They might be called a triumvirate, except that one generally associates that name with proscription lists. I will call them undertakers or dispensers, or anything but Arbitrators. The most odious occurrences in English history have been the efforts of Sovereigns to arrogate to themselves the power of dispensing with our laws. No Minister would ever dare to do it. But what the Government have not dared to do directly they seek to do indirectly by the dispensers whom by this Bill they appoint for two years to dispense with every law. The noble Earl who introduced this Bill curiously omitted to mention a single one of the difficulties which have been discussed for many days past elsewhere. I have to state one not previously noted. Anyone would think, from reading the Bill and listening to the speech of the noble Earl, that this triumvirate were to have the power, acting together, of administering justice or injustice. It is curious, too, that the name of Mr. White is commonly put forward, being an eminent Queen's Counsel of the Irish Bar, as if he would be always present. But it has not yet been stated by any supporter of the Bill that it is not at all necessary that these three men should act together, and that each one of them has the power of doing everything in this Bill by himself and unaided. Is it not startling that it should be reserved for the second day of the Debate to state a fact which is of the greatest importance? Surely even a Member of the Government would shrink from trusting whichever they think the least capable of these men to make orders by himself against the landlords of Ireland, it may be, for their ruin and against the new tenants, it may be, to the danger of their lives. That is a very serious matter, and, I venture to think, is absolutely indefensible. As to the primâ, facie case, I would ask Lord Chancellor two plain questions. The triumvirate are to be satisfied that there is a primâ facie case for reinstatement, "having regard to the circumstances of the district." What is the meaning of that? I will not be put off with the statement that that is left to the Arbitrators. I have a right to know the opinion of the Government as to the meaning of their own words. What is the meaning of "having regard to the circumstances of the district?" Do they mean that if a neighbourhood is quiet and peaceful, with everbody obeying the law, that fact is to influence a decision in favour of a primâ facie case? There is another question equally plain. Does it mean that if the district has been disturbed and lawless, if the tenant has gone out with difficulty, if he has lived in a Campaign hut, if the place has been kept in disturbance by constant boycott and outrage, that those are circumstances intended to be in favour of the tenant? Or are they circumstances intended to be in favour of the landlord? Are the circumstances of a district that has been marked by crime and outrage to induce the Arbitrators to say that a primâ facie case has been made out? I have asked a very plain question; and I must not be put off by being told that it is for the Arbitrators to decide. The Arbitrators cannot be abler men than the Lord Chancellor sitting here. They have no right to claim clearer opinions on this question than the Government who have put those words into the Bill. My question, then, is plain. What view are they to take of a quiet district or a disturbed district? Then they are to have regard to "the circumstances under which the eviction took place." What is the meaning of that? If a tenant went out quietly, and if he gave no trouble, would that help to make out a prima facie case? If he went out with violence and caused great trouble in the district, would that make out a, prima facie case? These are important and even vital questions, and I think I am entitled to have a clear answer. My Lords, these three men are certainly put in a very curious position. They are to decide what is a primâ facie case on the petition of the evicted tenant without any communication with the landlord, and without any evidence. I have an infinite respect for my own countrymen. At all events, in Ireland there is a great power of imagination and a very nice literary skill; and if you are to tell the tenants that they have only to make a primâ facie case, a common form of statement will be prepared in which circumstances of the district and circumstances of the eviction will be stated which will bring tears to the eyes of the Arbitrators. Then the Arbitrators have to consider whether the conduct of the landlord and tenant has been reasonable or unreasonable. Take the tenant first. What is the meaning of unreasonable conduct on the part of the tenant? Suppose that the tenant has been evicted; that he has had a fair rent fixed at his own motion; that he owes several years' arrears; that he has resisted eviction; that he has helped to keep the neighbourhood in a state of crime and lawlessness, will the Arbitrators at once decide that this conduct was unreasonable and that the man must go about his business? You will remember that men guilty of this conduct were the men most active in keeping up the agitation. Is it expected that the Arbitrators will decide against him, and declare that he has been guilty of unreasonable conduct? If this were a voluntary Bill and the tenant was guilty of unreasonable conduct, I would say nothing against the landlord if he thought proper to condone the tenant's conduct and forgive his errors as a matter of conciliation; but under this Bill you compel the landlord, whether he likes it or not, without compensation, to put back the tenant guilty of such conduct. Then the Arbitrators are to take into account the unreasonable conduct of the landlord. What does that mean? The landlord must be credited with clear legal rights. Then if he has exercised his clear legal rights how can it be said that he has acted unreasonably? My Lords, the truth is that this Bill proceeds on the assumption that there is a justice higher than the justice of the law; and that there is an equity greater than has been recognised by any Court, by any Statute, or by any Parliament. My Lords, this Bill is a grave and serious lesson to the tenants of Ireland. It is a serious teaching for them. We are told to trust the Arbitrators. That is a terrible doctrine. I will not discuss the personnel of this body, but it is a terrible thing to ask men to give up the protection of the law and place themselves at the mercy of the untried discretion of these three men. Any system of law is better than the chance or accident by which a despot may do what is fair. Suppose that the landlord has been changed after the eviction—that a new landlord has come in by purchase; that he has given a higher price for the land because there are no tenants on the land. He has been no party to the evictions. He never knew the tenants. What a monstrous thing to force on him tenants of whom he knows nothing, and wants to know nothing! Then, again, take a case in which three men may have occupied the farm and have been evicted successively in the course of the 15 years? How are the Arbitrators to decide which of the three claimants is to get the farm? But what is to become of the farm and the rent in those cases? Bishop Healy, examined before the Mathew Commission, said there was little good in restoring men who had nothing; a large proportion of these men will be insolvent. I could understand your encouraging voluntary settlements, but how are the men to work the farm on this system? How is the rent to be paid? The rent would not be paid. Then the evictions would take place again, and the whole of the neighbourhood would be in a state of turmoil. Again, there would be "a social administrative difficulty," which is a euphemism for making a hell of the neighbourhood. Then another Mr. Morley would bring in another Bill, and he would be able to say truly this time that there is a precedent in the Act which Parliament had been mad enough to pass in 1894. Under this process rent will vanish; there will be no new tenants, and the landlords will all come to grief. My Lords, this is not a purely Irish question. Do not let Englishmen and Scotchmen think that they can do this grievous injustice to the landlords of Ireland without its coming home to them to disturb their own property and their own arrangements. My Lords, the more this Bill is examined the more will it be found to be based on injustice and coercion. A landlord may have been in possession of a farm for five or six years, and may have spent a large sum of money in improvements. The tenant may have surrendered the farm and been compensated, and yet that tenant is to be permitted to be restored against the will of the landlord and without compensation. These are powers absolutely unknown to the law. These Arbitrators will have power to overrule the Lord Chancellor, the High Court, and Mr. Justice Monroe (the Land Judge) in their decisions with regard to land in Ireland. The Arbitrators will want to be very clever indeed to carry out their duties. They will have to decide the most complicated matters that men have ever been asked to decide. But there is another most important point. I heard the noble Earl who introduced the Bill give utterance to a statement; but I have to confess with shame that I did not realise the full significance of that statement until I read it in The Times this morning. I could hardly grasp the meaning of the words when I heard them, because the noble Earl has an air of making a statement as if there was no particular monstrosity wrapped up in what he is saying. The noble Earl said that the restored tenants may apply to have a fair rent fixed. The noble Earl is not the first man who has been ruined by his reasons. He gave as his reason that the farm might be then out of condition, and that it would not be reasonable to compel a tenant in such circumstances to pay the same rent as before. What on earth do these words mean? You first compel the landlord, by reason of rent not being paid, to resume possession of the farm; the tenant then, by intimidation and boycotting, prevents the farm being taken, and makes it almost worthless; and then, when the farm is at its worst, you compel the landlord, against his will, to give back the land to the tenant who, by conspiracy with others, has made it worthless; and you give the tenant power to have a fair rent fixed upon the basis of its present worthless condition, and that rent is the rent which the landlord is to get for the next 15 years. The manner of the noble Earl did not disclose the hideous injustice of the proposition he was laying down. The noble Earl illustrated his statement that compulsion was necessary in a curious manner. He said that he was in Ireland when the Westmeath Act—one of the most powerful Coercion Acts ever passed—was in operation; and that he found, even in the most disturbed districts, that settlements were more brought about by the adjustments of the difficulties of landlords and tenants than by the Act. Yes, but did he forget that in those cases the voluntary action of the landlords did it all? My Lords, some reference was made by Lord Tweedmouth last night to the miners' strike, where the parties came together. Do you mean to suggest that this Bill is within 100 miles of that analogy? I would like to know what the mine-owners would say if they were treated to a Bill like this—a Bill placing compulsion on one side and leaving the other side free, and that other side which is free having the appointment of the arbitrators to carry out their behests. I would be pleased to see conciliation carried out by independent men assisted by public money, and I believe in my heart that if there were such an effort of conciliation, worked by an independent body, assisted even to the extent proposed in this Bill by public money, it would practically do everything that is needed to get over what is called the difficulty of the present position. I am happy to think that even without this Bill settlements are going on. No matter what happens to this Bill, settlements will go on; and I was glad to hear a statement yesterday that on the Olphert estate there have been 75 settlements since August last, and further settlements are going on every week. What are the teachings of this Bill? In the first place, it will teach that rent need not longer be paid in Ireland; the payment of rent will become a mere precarious benevolence. Good tenants who have paid their way in bad times will be discouraged; no evicted farm will again be taken, for no new tenant will appear again on the horizon. It will reward a criminal conspiracy who have encouraged resistance to the law. It teaches that tenants have only to break the law boldly enough and long enough to ensure that the law will be changed so as to bring it into harmony with their wishes. In common with many others, I have looked to the development of the purchase system as the true solution of the agrarian question in Ireland; but this Bill strikes a paralysing blow at that system. It makes serious alterations in its provisions; it makes exceptions where there should be uniformity. Once the owner tells the Arbitrators that he wishes to sell he is asked no further questions. He is not at liberty to name his price nor to reject their price; he hands the whole thing over to them to deal with at their absolute discretion. The tenant is the only person who has the right to say, if he does not like the price, the thing is off. Is that fair? Is that the way to encourage confidence in the Purchase Code? But worse than all this remains to be told. This is the first time you propose to fix prices by public officials in the purchase system. That is an appalling change. What a vista of dissatisfaction does it open up! Take the Ponsonby estate. On that estate there have been 100 sales at 17½ years' purchase between landlord and tenant, and, if this Bill passed, about the same number more might be possibly expected to buy. But now the price is to be fixed not by negotiations between landlord and tenant, not even by the Land Commission, but by three men appointed ad hoc. I will assume that they fix something under 17½ years' purchase—say 15 years' purchase. What is the position? The 100 tenants who by voluntary action consented to give the 17½ years' purchase will be savagely disappointed, and there will be an immediate agitation for revision of terms. Of the 17 Campaign estates there are seven on which sales under the Purchase Acts have taken place. If this strange new tribunal should now fix prices for the purchases by re-instated tenants on these same seven estates at lower rates, the previous purchasers will have a sense of wrong and grievance. The Government are becoming the largest landowners in Ireland; and supposing there should be any movement against payment of the instalments of the purchase-money, and the Government should be driven to exercise the supreme power of eviction, where under this Bill, if it passes, would they get purchasers—where would they get new tenants? If this Bill passes, the Treasury, who are supposed never to be asleep—I wonder how they let this Bill pass—the Treasury, who represent the interest of the creditor State in this matter, will have allowed a grave invasion of the State's security and have struck a serious blow at the whole land purchase system of Ireland. My Lords, this Bill is not final; it does not purport to provide for all the evicted tenants; the tribunal must refuse many applications, and the Bill does not touch future evictions. The Government have erred with their eyes open. The Bill cannot be defended. The noble Earl spoke in the language of warning about its rejection; but the Bill has not been argued, and it cannot be defended. It has been deliberately framed on impossible lines, and I decline to vote for its Second Reading because I regard it as dangerous in principle, unjust, and not final, mischievous in its details, and opposed to the best interests of the tenants of Ireland.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HEKSCHELL)

Whatever may be said with regard to the want of opportunity in the other House of stating the objections to this measure, I do not think it can be said that there has been any lack of opportunity in this House, or that full advantage has not been taken of the opportunity. My noble and learned Friend who has just spoken complained that this Bill had not been argued, and could not be defended. Of course, if it cannot be defended there is no use of my attempting to defend it. I am quite persuaded of this: that, however well I may establish that the Bill is founded on just and sound principles, it will not shake the confidence of my noble Friend in his statement that it has received no defence at all. Much hard language has been used about the Bill. "Hideous injustice" and other expressions have been used to describe its character. I confess that nowadays I am absolutely indifferent to the use of language of that description. It does not touch me in the slightest degree, and I will tell your Lordships why. I have heard proposals denounced as robbery and confiscation, and within a few months I have seen these proposals embodied in a measure and passed by this House at the instance of the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition. And of this I am confident: that if this Bill in substance were introduced, as, perchance, in the chances of life it is possible it may be, by the noble Marquess in this House, it would be accepted with as little objection as the other measures to which I have referred. We were told before this Bill had reached this House and whilst it was in another place, by a letter written at the instance of the noble Marquess, that its rejection was almost certain to be moved because of the manner in which it had been dealt with by the other House. We have heard some allusions to-night, though not to the same extent as might have been anticipated from that summons to noble Lords, as to the manner in which it was dealt with. Can anyone have listened to this Debate without being certain that if the measure had been discussed, instead of for a week or two, for a month or two in the other House, it would have been rejected with as much contempt as it is going to be to-night? What is the suggestion made? That the Representatives of the people were to be kept in the other House, at the instance of a Party in that House, debating and discussing and wasting time which to many of them is precious and valuable, and that at the last, when they had accomplished their labours, that was to be done which was resolved upon at the outset—namely, the Bill was to be rejected with contempt. We are told that the attempt to avoid this is what is bringing degradation upon the proceedings of the House of Commons. I can conceive no greater degradation than that the other House, the Representatives of the people, should be occupied day after day listening to speeches repeated over and over and over again, not with the intention of convincing anyone, not with the idea that they were to have any effect on the Bill, but in order that other legislation might be delayed or rendered impossible, it being announced and gloried in beforehand that this House, whatever might be the result in the other House, would cast the Bill to the winds. That seems to me as deep a depth of degradation as any to which the House of Commons could descend. I am second to none in my desire that the honour of the other House should be maintained. The constituencies will know and will judge what best maintains the honour of the other House—that discussion should be reasonable and fair, and directed to the measure in hand, or that it should have a secondary purpose, not with the view of improving the measure, not even with the view of expressing an opinion on the measure, but with the view of using one measure as a machine to prevent other measures which you dislike still more from being dealt with. I think it is noteworthy that in this Debate we have listened to two noble Lords—the noble Duke to-night, and the noble Marquess of Lansdowne last night—distinguished Members of the Party called the Liberal Unionist Party—neither of whom has made the slightest allusion to the fact, as being a matter which ought to weigh with this House for an instant, that this measure comes to us with the sanction of the Commons House of Parliament. It is treated as a matter of absolute indifference. Your Lordships have been invited to consider this Bill, discuss its provisions, and reject it to-night as though it had never been heard of elsewhere. It may be that the judgment of the other House is not to be treated as conclusive here, but it is something new to hear from those who call themselves Liberals such treatment of a measure coming sanctioned by the majority of the other House as this measure has received. The noble Duke, on a former occasion, said there were times when this House would stand firm, and, notwithstanding the passage of a measure by the other House, should, none the less, reject it. On that occasion he maintained that this House ought to weigh well before rejecting a measure which had been passed by the House of Commons, and at that time he dwelt upon the reasons peculiar to that Bill, which certainly do not apply to this, why regard should not be had to a measure which the other House had passed. It seems to me that this is a new attitude, and I doubt very much whether it will be found to be an attitude tending to the advantage and stability of this House. The noble Duke began his speech by saying that he had never heard a Bill introduced with so little attempt to establish a case for it, and yet, at the conclusion of his speech, he spoke of removing dangers and healing sores. He seemed then, at last, to recognise that there was indeed some case for it, even if he did not consider the case sufficient. What is the meaning of talking of removing danger unless danger there be, or of healing sores unless sores existed which may produce dangerous and mischievous consequences? And is there any ground in the interest of Ireland for introducing the Bill? I do not for a moment imagine that the opinion of the present Chief Secretary for Ireland will have any weight with your Lordships. Yet it has been admitted by a Conservative Irish Member that he has been distinguished in the administration of the country by firmness and consistency, and that the results are such as have been desired. On his responsibility, having charge of that country, he has expressed in the strongest terms the opinion that this measure is called for in the interests of peace and order in Ireland. But I pass by an authority of that description, which I know will not weigh a featherweight with the majority of your Lordships. I will come to an authority which I think you must pay respect to. What said the late Chief Secretary for Ireland— He did not think there was any justification for saying that the Unionist Party, as the result of their opposition to the Bill, had set their faces against any plan which would tend towards solving what he admitted to be a very great difficulty in Ireland. What said another authority? No one knows the disturbed parts of Ireland better than Mr. Carson. There was not a Magisterial Court in the disturbed parts of Ireland in which his presence was not perfectly familiar, and what are his words?— He knew enough of Ireland to say he believed and admitted that the question of the evicted tenants, whether they were rightly er wrongly evicted, whether they were evicted for the purpose of advancing a particular class of politics or not—that so long as it remained unsettled the question of the evicted tenants meant a great deal with reference to the peace of Ireland. Now we are told that this Bill is a wanton invention of Her Majesty's Government, without rhyme or reason, founded upon nothing connected with the peace of Ireland. "Meant a great deal with reference to the peace of Ireland" are weighty words coming from one who knows Ireland so well as the hon. and learned Gentleman. If the unsettlement of the question means much for the peace of Ireland, is it not in the interest of Ireland, is it not, above all things, in the interests of the landlords of Ireland, that the question should be settled? I do not dwell further upon the question of the justification for the introduction of such a Bill. I have made a sufficient case by the language I have read. But this I will say—that there are others in addition to the two gentlemen I have quoted who are not in the slightest degree in sympathy with the Government, who have exhibited the bitterest hostility to them, and would like to terminate their existence to-morrow, who have pointed out in language equally weighty that this is not a question of Party, that this is not a question which concerns Her Majesty's Government, but that it is a question which concerns the peace of Ireland and which will concern any Government that has to administer that country. If this question is settled by this Bill it is not necessarily Her Majesty's Government who will reap the fruits. You believe that very shortly you will take their place, and it is you who will then reap the fruit of a measure of this description. I am certain of this—that if such a change takes place your Lordships will then find that it is absolutely necessary, either by this measure or by some other, I am not now dealing with the nature of the measure, but with the question of the necessity for any measure at all—I say your Lordships will find that it is necessary, in some way or other, to deal with the question. Now I come to what is the principle of the Bill. The noble Duke has said that it involves various principles which may practically be summed up in one. I should like to say with regard to that question what was said by the Duke of Argyll when he was defending the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, with regard to which the same language was used and the same attack made upon the principles it was supposed to involve. He said that— Legislation is not one of the exact sciences. I think it most dangerous to say of any measure that, because you adopt a little bit of a certain principle which, if carried further, would be bad and unjust, therefore, when you carried it a small way it was equally bad and unjust. I adopt his words, which express my views— It is a temporary measure to meet exceptional circumstances in the interests of peace in Ireland. In endeavouring to meet some of the objections which have been urged against the Bill, my arguments will be directed not to matters of detail, but to questions of principle. I say at the outset that I do not for a moment deny the force of many of the arguments and objections that have been urged against the Bill. It has never been denied that the subject is a most thorny and difficult one, and that any measure purporting to deal with it must be open to criticism and objection. If it is an evil that has to be dealt with it is not satisfactory to say that we can point out this or that objection to it. The truth is, that there is scarcely any subject on which you can legislate at all which is not open to objection. There is no Royal road to legislation along which you can march without difficulty. If the measure which the Duke of Devonshire has spoken of to-night were to take shape and form, and to be crystallised into sections of a Bill, I should probably be able to pick in it as many holes as he has tried to pick in this Bill. It has been objected to the Bill that it is a measure under which those who have taken part In an illegal conspiracy might be restored to their holdings. What a lesson, it is said, this would teach! What disturbance it would be likely to lead to! But I observe a considerable difference of opinion with regard to these points. The Duke of Argyll said that, if it were a measure to restore only those who had been misled by the Plan of Campaign, any such measure, apart from compulsory principles, would have his hearty support. It does not seem to me that the question of principle I am discussing depends upon whether the Bill is a voluntary or a compulsory one. If you ought not to countenance the Plan of Campaigners—if you ought not to let them resume possession of their holdings because of the consequences to which it will induce, you ought not to do so by a voluntary scheme any more than by com- pulsion. You ought not to take the public money to assist a settlement of that description if it is to be regarded as condoning immorality. Lord Balfour spoke of another class—those who had been evicted owing to circumstances of misfortune, and the noble Marquess spoke last night of some other class; so that, if all these classes be taken together, I find that there would be a considerable consensus of opinion in favour of permitting the return of everybody that this Bill proposes to deal with. I have never hesitated to express in plain and unequivocal terms my opinion of the Plan of Campaign; but it seems to me that, however ready one may be to admit its evils and the wrongs that were done in connection with it, I think a greater injustice would be done, and has been done in representing those who took part in the Plan of Campaign as necessarily immoral and wicked men. I think it fair and just that we should look at the matter from the point of view of the tenants of Ireland. There were two principal circumstances under which the Plan of Campaign was initiated. On some estates it arose from the fact that there had been very bad times as regards agricultural produce. That was recognised in the Act of 1887. In consequence of that, there were undoubtedly tenants who were unable to pay their rents, and there were undoubtedly landlords who were not prepared to make concessions which would have prevented the tenants from losing their holdings. On some estates the tenants who were able to discharge their obligations to the full felt that, if they were not to stand by those tenants who were not in a position to do so, unless the demand for a reduction came from all, they would have no support and would lose their holdings. I am not justifying them; I am not saying they were right; but I say there were many cases where the action of these men was not dictated by ignoble motive or by personal greed, but where they made great and serious sacrifices in order to stand by those of their own class and to save them from misfortune. Again, there were those who resented the interference of landlords from a distance in the efforts between landlord and tenant to settle their disputes upon reasonable terms. They thought that if the landlords were thus banded together to pre- vent that settlement it was equally fair for the tenants to combine in their interests. I think that in some cases, so far from these men being ignoble, base, and unworthy of consideration, they acted with a rare unselfishness, and subjected themselves to immense loss, sacrifice, and inconvenience for the sake of their fellows. I think it would be a great wrong to attribute to all those connected with the Plan of Campaign the responsibility of the acts of violence that were committed. We have had strikes recently in this country in connection with which there have been acts of violence committed; but it would be a grievous wrong, a monstrous thing, to charge all those who took part in those strikes with the responsibility of those discreditable acts. I maintain, therefore, that if it be otherwise expedient and desirable to introduce a measure of this description, we ought not to refrain from doing it because same of those who may be within the scope of its terms have been guilty of acts of which we all disapprove. The noble Duke and my noble and learned Friend who has just sat down have put before us cases in which it would be a great hardship to the landlord to have the evicted tenant forced back upon him. But these cases are not typical. It does not follow that everything that comes within the powers of a tribunal, whatever that tribunal might be, would be taken advantage of by men—that all the results will follow which conceivably could follow; and you can never establish any system or arrangement of any kind in which there would not be possible cases of hardship and injustice. There is no system of law and judicature under which there are not hard cases, under which there is not, in the general and popular sense of the expression, some injustice suffered. The noble Duke intimated that under this Bill a tenant who did not fulfil the obligations which the law imposed upon him might be restored to his holding, and thus the landlord deprived of the full rights which the law conferred upon him. He said that one of the objects of the Act of 1881 was to secure to the landlord certain rights, and that to deprive him of any rights that were secured to him by the Act would amount virtually to a repeal of that measure. My Lords, the noble Duke, I observed, made no allusion to the Act of 1887. If to deprive the landlord of the rights secured to him by the Act of 1881 would be an injustice which this House ought not to tolerate, I may observe that this House has already sanctioned such injustice, for rights conferred under the Act of 1881 were undoubtedly interfered* with by the Act of 1887. I will now ask your Lordships to consider what will be the effect of this Bill upon tenants who have retained their holdings and upon new tenants. It is said that it is a dreadful thing to reward tenants who have not paid their rents and who had been evicted, and to put them into a better position than that of tenants who have stood by their landlords, and who did not join the combination against the payment of rents. But does this Bill really propose to reward the tenant whom it will restore? If he has sinned, surely he has suffered, and that suffering cannot be got rid of by Act of Parliament. He has been in many cases living very differently from the way in which he lived before; he has been out of his holding, and has not had an agreeable or happy time. You do not reward him by putting him back, for his position when he has returned is less favourable than that of the tenant who has remained in his holdings.

EARL CADOGAN

He gets his rent revised.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HERSCHELL)

It is true that he gets his rent fixed by the Land Court, but that is a right which every tenant will have by the time that this Bill comes into operation to any considerable extent. I maintain that the old tenant gets no reward, and I do not believe that the tenants who have remained in their holdings will resent the return of the tenant who has been evicted. I believe that the tenants who have remained will be glad to see the land that has been unoccupied re-occupied by the former tenant. Do your Lordships think that every man who does not go out when a strike takes place has necessarily a feeling of hostility towards those who do? No; he may not go out, but his sympathies are often with those who do. Taking into consideration that feeling, and also the feeling for their own class which animates the tenants of Ireland, I believe that you would create no ill-feeling among the tenants who have retained possession of their holdings if you were to pass this Bill. Now I turn to the effect of the Bill upon the new tenant. It is said that he will have an indirect but severe compulsion exerted upon him. Well, it seems to me that in the speeches which we have heard there has been the groundless assumption that there is a source of inconvenience and possibly danger in the future to the new tenants in the presence in the neighbourhood of the evicted tenants, looking at the land and longing for it. Happily, peace now reigns in Ireland; but we should be blind to the teaching of the past if we believed that it was certain that peace would always reign there. How often have we seen, when we have thought agrarian troubles ended, some small spark grow into a flame and a recrudescence of crime. What security have we—what security can any man who knows the history of Ireland have—that the condition of things which exists to-day will always continue? It has been said that the new tenant would be placed in a difficulty if he refused to accede to the suggestion that he should make way for the old tenant. But if the old tenants were filled with despair, if they lost all hope of being restored to their holdings, which to them means life and all that life holds dear, do you think that they might not give way to the counsels of despair? Do you think that the state of things in Ireland would be perfectly satisfactory? I trust that the persons concerned might not give way to despair, but I maintain that it would be in the highest degree unwise and unstatesmanlike to regard the condition of things which exists now as one upon which either landlord or new tenant can look with perfect satisfaction. This Bill is a hopeful method of settling the difficulty. Even if the new tenant is unwilling to make way for the old tenant, it does not abandon the latter to the counsels of despair. There is a hope for him even then of beginning a new life, for provision may be made for his migration elsewhere, so that on another holding, removed from the scene of his former life, he may begin again. If such a state of things as that can be brought about, do not you think that it would be far better for the landlord and the new tenant than that things should remain as they are now? I believe that this Bill, far from acting unjustly, would act beneficially in the interests both of the land-lord and the new tenant. It has been said that the tribunal proposed in this Bill is a tribunal of an arbitrary and secret character; that it has no rules for its guidance, and that it cannot be called judicial. It has been pointed out that one Arbitrator can act alone, but no reference has been made to the fact that there is a right of appeal by either party to have the three Arbitrators sitting together, if he wishes them to do so, under the fourth section of the 32 & 33 Vict., which is incorporated in this Bill.

LORD HALSBURY

My noble and learned Friend is in error. The provisions in the Schedule of the Bill will not give the right to which the noble and learned Lord referred. The provision to which he has referred has been repealed by the Statute Law Revision Committee; and in its place there is another and a totally different tribunal.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HERSCHELL)

I do not think my noble and learned Friend follows the point, because what is referred to is the fourth section of 32 & 33 Vict. It does not matter whether it has been repealed by another Act. That provision to which I have referred is included in this Bill, just as if it were set out in terms.

LORD HALSBURY

I only intervene again for my noble and learned Friend's own sake. I do not wish to take him by surprise, as I intend to deal with this point in my speech. That portion of the Act has been repealed, and another substituted for it.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HERSCHELL)

In any event, this is a matter of legal argument which will not prove of special interest to the House. I am not satisfied by what the noble Lord has said, that that provision is not to be taken as enacted in this Bill. If that is the result, it is a result not intended, and the matter might perfectly well be set right if the Bill went into Committee. It was not intended, and it is only by an elaborate legal argument it can be shown to exist. I come now to the tribunal. It has been said that it is an unheard-of thing to establish a tribunal without laying down fixed rules for its guidance, and especially a tribunal which has to deal with matters of property. Your Lordships are familiar with a tribunal which deals with very serious matters of property, a tribunal consisting in part of layman—I mean the Railway Commissioners—which has to determine without any guidance of principle laid down, questions affecting most seriously the rights of property of Railway Companies. Therefore, I deny that this Bill embodies a new principle. I remind your Lordships that in Ireland unfortunately we have seen Courts constituted such as we never should have endured in England. [Opposition cheers.] Yes, you cheer that; you have the greatest horror of any Court being established in Ireland and different from a Court in England when it deals with a question of property and with questions affecting landlords. But I was alluding to Courts constituted with a couple of men without legal training—half-pay officers and officers of constabulary—who had powers to deal with the liberties of their fellow-subjects in a manner which would not be tolerated in this country. You have no objection to these exceptional Courts when they are Courts of coercion by men untrained in the law and deciding questions of the utmost difficulty involving the liberty of their fellow-men.

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL

In a disturbed country.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HERSCHELL)

I venture to say that no Minister will get up, however much this country is disturbed, and dare to propose the enactment of any such provisions as those contained in the Coercion Act. He could not do it if he would; it would not be endured by the people of this country. I am dealing now with the nature of the Court. Of course, you may require exceptional legislation for a disturbed country; but at least you ought to choose Courts of a character fit to decide questions involving the liberty of the subject.

A noble LORD: May I be allowed to say that the Stipendiary Magistrates acted according to law, and could only act according to law?

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HERSCHELL)

The Resident Magistrates to whom the difficult duties of the Coercion Act were entrusted were men of no legal training—men who were wholly trained in the Army and Constabulary. I maintain that in the nature of the tribunal proposed to be set up by this Bill there is nothing of which any reasonable complaint can be made. My noble and learned Friend put a number of questions to me as to whether the tribunal could say whether a certain thing was reasonable or not, what were "the circumstances of the district," and a number of questions about the details of the Bill which might very well be considered if we are going into Committee. But it would be mere trifling to deal with them now when we are considering the great principles involved on the Second Reading. I will not waste my breath on them, because it seems to me that it would be idle to waste one's time or breath upon them when you are going to throw out the Bill. There is not one of those objections, whatever may be said on the matter of compromise, that could not be met by an Amendment in Committee. If it were shown that any words would be better than those chosen, or that mischief or harm would result from those we have selected, we are open to any suggestions and are ready to make any Amendments to make the Bill more workable, satisfactory, and just. But it is idle to discuss that question when we are told that no Amendment will satisfy noble Lords. It is said that this measure could not be accepted because it cannot settle the question. Those arguments are the same as were heard on the Second Reading of the Land Act and on the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. We have heard to-night the echoes of those discussions. It is also said that the Laud Act of 1881 did not settle the question. I do not say that it did; but when the noble Duke points to his prediction as to its failure and the consequences of carrying it, I should like to invite your Lordships to consider what would have been the effect if that Bill had not passed. We have heard of agitation and of disturbance in Ireland—of landlords suffering a reduction in their incomes, and therefore it is said that the Land Act of 1881 has failed. There was a very interesting series of letters published by a County Court Judge in Ireland not in sympathy with my politics at all with reference to the condition of Ireland in relation to the Purchase Act of the late Government. He said that there is no greater or more fatal mistake for Englishmen to make than to suppose that the disturbances which they hear of in Ireland, and which characterise certain districts of Ireland, are characteristics of the whole country. He says that through all the disturbed times on four-fifths of the estates in Ireland rents had been paid with as great punctuality as they have been in England; and when we hear of the sacrifices forced on Ireland by the Land Act of 1881, I have not seen it shown yet—and I have seen much evidence to the contrary—that the landlords have suffered one whit more in reduction of rent than the landlords of England have through economic causes. Is it a valid argument to say that because you cannot hope completely to settle this difficulty you ought not to attempt to settle it at all? The argument has been this: that there must be under any scheme some tenants left outside, and that, therefore, the difficulty still remains. But if that is to be a valid argument it applies equally against a voluntary scheme as against a compulsory one. A voluntary settlement is to be brought about by the use of public money, but what right have you to use public money for such a purpose if, according to you, it would not settle the question? But it is not wise or statesmanlike to say that because there may be danger you should not seek to diminish that danger and to restrict the area within narrow limits because you cannot hope to wipe it out altogether. The more you can diminish the centres and areas of danger, the greater your hope and chances of safety. I believe that there exist in Ireland many spots where you have what the noble Duke called "a powder magazine," which any spark may set on fire. You know not when that spark may be applied. You know not when the time of danger will come. You have no security that the time will not come. Is it not wise to make those spots as few as possible, and to restrict the sources of danger within the narrowest possible limits? I come now to what has been stated with regard to the compulsory character of this Bill. The noble Duke stated to-night that it had been alleged that if this Bill were made voluntary it would settle nine-tenths of the cases. Does not that show that if this Bill were carried the area of compulsion would be but small? There is nothing in this Act to prevent voluntary arrangement; indeed, there is a provision to encourage it, and if voluntary arangement settled nine-tenths of the cases, there would be very little left for compulsion. I maintain it is in the interests of the landlord and of the new tenant that this question should be settled. If the proposition that this measure will tend to that settlement be sound, then I assert that every landlord who unreasonably refuses a settlement is injuring the whole of his class as well as tending to disturb the peace of Ireland. It is in the public interest that the hundreds and thousands of acres which are derelict should be occupied. It is not unjustifiable to say, "You are the owner of the land, but a condition of things has arisen under which the land has been left derelict. The vast majority of your class have made arrangements to bring the land again into cultivation. Do you refuse to do so?" I say that no wrong is done to that man or to his class, but that it is for the welfare of his class as well as to the advantage of the country that such arrangements should be made, compulsorily if necessary. Everyone would rather have a voluntary than a compulsory Bill if it had been introduced. Can it be supposed that it is for any pleasure or satisfaction in itself that the compulsory principle has been introduced? If it has been introduced, it has been because there has been a great object in view, which could not be obtained without the compulsory principle. Are there no estates which will recur to the minds of your Lordships where landlords have acted unreasonably? We in this House hear the landlords' view largely. We have had a procession of Irish landlords, if I might use the term. One would have liked to have heard a few of the tenants' views on particular estates. Any landlord who acts unreasonably injures his class, injures the public, renders the government of Ireland burdensome, and increases the taxes that have to be levied for the administration of law and order in Ireland. Where such a state of things exists—as exist it does; known to all of us—to say that nothing could justify the introduction of a measure which would impose on any man any compulsion; to say that he may leave his land derelict, however unreasonably, however great the disadvantage to the public, however great the wrong done to others—I say that that is an unreasonable view. It is pressing rights to an unreasonable length; and I believe that there is nothing worse in the interests of property than that the rights of property should be pressed to au extreme and unreasonable length. The noble Duke has said that we have shown no disposition to agree to a compromise on this matter. What is the condition which he makes? He says, "We cannot re-frame this Bill. We cannot put it into any different shape. You yourselves bring down and put upon the Table the Amendments which you would propose or would consent to, and then we will tell you whether we are willing to assent to them." I will venture to say in the whole history of Parliamentary legislation no such suggestion was ever made before? The proposals for an Amendment or compromise must come from those who are not satisfied with the Bill in its original shape, and who desire Amendments to be made And for whom does the noble Marquess (Lord Lansdowne) speak when he makes the suggestion? We have heard of the editorial "we," which means the person who writes the article; but I am not sure how far beyond the noble Marquess himself his "we" extends. The noble Duke spoke in similar terms; but though I have listened to the subsequent Debate, till this time I have not heard that "we" reechoed from the Opposition side of the House. It would be little satisfaction to us to satisfy the noble Marquess and the noble Duke only, because that would not carry the Bill, unless we satisfied also another noble Marquess who is all-powerful in this House. I will tell you why we despair of any compromise or settlement. I have read the discussion in the other House when this Bill was introduced, and I have noticed its tone and temper. I recall how an Amendment was put down which would have pledged the House to adopt a fair and reasonable settlement. I know from the author of that proposal that he was made to take that Amendment off the Paper because he was told that it would not receive the support of the Conservative Party, whom the landlords of Ireland had forced to meet the Bill, not with an Amendment of that kind, but with a completely hostile Amendment, and with no sug- gestion of a fair and equitable settlement. After hearing the speech of the hon. Member who proposed that settlement, what hope or use would there be in holding out any suggestions on our part, however willing we may be to listen and welcome any reasonable suggestions? The attitude taken by that hon. Member is not insignificant in relation to some of the matters of which I have spoken. Why is he so keen for this settlement? Why is he so anxious that Parliament should at least seem willing to settle it? He does not love us or our politics, and he does not wish to make things easy and pleasant for us in Ireland. He knows the tenantry of Ireland, if he knows anything; and he knows the tenantry in the North of Ireland, who do not agree with us. I venture to say that I am not making a wrong deduction from his action when I say that he knows that those tenants, though Unionist in politics, are not without their keen sympathies for the evicted tenants in other parts of Ireland. In that little fact there is enough to indicate the sources of danger to those who are wise enough to read the signs of the times. I am quite aware that nothing can be said which is likely to induce your Lordships to change your attitude towards this Bill. I regret it. I believe, with all my heart, that it is a mistaken course. I believe that one day it will be seen to be a mistaken course. If it were possible, even at this late hour, to observe any change of the attitude of extreme hostility to this Bill, I should welcome it. For this I say, adopting the words which were used by the noble Earl who then led the Opposition in closing the Debate on the Compensation for Disturbance Bill—words which, I believe, may be applied with vastly more truth to this case than to that— If, after all, you were to accept this Bill, you would do an act for which your country would be grateful and for which posterity would commend you.

LORD HALSBURY

My Lords, although my noble and learned Friend has occupied his fair share of this Debate, I am compelled to say that the one thing he has not done is to explain or defend this Bill. We have had what I confess to my mind looks like an attack, and an intimation to all your Lordships who take a different view to my noble and learned Friend. It does not appear to be respectful. He commenced and closed with the remark that, however conclusively he established his proposition, however clear the necessity for this Bill might be, he was perfectly aware that it would not have the slightest effect upon the majority of you.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HERSCHELL)

That was in reference to what my noble Friend had said.

LORD HALSBURY

I am extremely glad to hear that explanation, because I heard with some pain the observation repeated only within the last few words of the argument, and, therefore, I am glad to accept his explanation. We had to appeal to the authority of the other House. I am not aware that the authority of the other House was in question at all. Of course, I can understand, if the rejection of this Bill is to be made the subject of attack at meetings in the country and elsewhere, such an expression as that of my noble and learned Friend is of great use. I regret that that topic should be introduced here. My noble and learned Friend's advocacy was extremely skilful; he has managed to direct the discussion to a subject that is not what we are engaged upon. The subject we are engaged upon here is the Second Reading of this Bill, and I confess I should like to know, and I hope to hear from the Prime Minister, if we are to read the Bill a second time, what is the principle they affirm. Because I suppose it is a part of the Parliamentary procedure that we affirm the principles of this Bill by the Second Reading. I will discuss in a moment of what it consists, but before I pass away from my noble and learned Friend's initial observation, I must refer for a moment to another observation of his about the passage of this Bill in the other House. One noble Lord had had the temerity to say that the gag was never applied to this Bill. That is astonishing when we remember the Resolution of the 1st of August; but I suppose he meant it did not become necessary, because with a due sense of their own dignity those who were discussing the Bill declined to have a sham discussion, and withdrew from the discussion. One further observation was made by my noble and learned Friend on a very dangerous topic. He said this Bill had been based and had come to us by the voice and the will of the Representatives of the people. He told us he never approved of the Plan of Campaign as a thing which could be upheld. Did it ever occur to him to ask himself how many of the Representatives of the people combined in that conspiracy? When one considers the history of this measure and the mode by which this Bill has been introduced, and the way in which the Government had used a majority far exceeding their proper number to force this Bill through the Commons, the matter which I should think would be most important to consider would be the provisions of the Bill itself. It is idle of my noble and learned Friend to dismiss the tribunal as of little importance. Why, the very essence of the Bill is the tribunal, or so-called tribunal, which is constituted under it.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HERSCHELL)

I beg to say I did not say anything of the kind.

LORD HALSBURY

I will accept any explanation that my noble and learned Friend likes to offer. From the beginning to the end of his speech he has not once replied to the observation that the tribunal he has constituted is a tribunal that can do anything it pleases. The constitution of this tribunal constitutes the whole point of this Bill. I can quite understand Parliament in its supreme authority laying down certain laws, perhaps different from ours. I can imagine Parliament in its authority laying down a code for Ireland, but it should be for the people then to know what are their rights. But this creates three Dictators, who are to make their own laws, and who are to have no guidance by Statute what to do, but to determine each by the circumstances of the district. What is the moaning of "the circumstances of the district"? What were the circumstances of the district which made it desirable that a certain tenant should be restored. It is perfectly novel in the whole history of British legislation and my noble Friend has been challenged for a precedent for such a system and he has failed, and where he has failed none are likely to succeed. In the Mathew Commission evidence was given that in a great number of cases the evicted tenants were restored, but in two or three of them it was said that difficulties had arisen with the landlord, and on further inquiry it was found that the landlord, in more than one case, had restored the great body of the tenants, but would refuse to restore those who had been the leaders of the agitation against the authority of the law. Is such a thing to justify the restoration of the leaders of the Plan of Campaign in a particular district? It is not for us to conjecture; we have a right to know from the Government what is the meaning of those words. Over and over again the Lord Chancellor had declined to give any explanation. We are not told what the Government mean by "circumstances of the district or some other cause appearing to them sufficient." What does that mean? It means anything in the world. The legal principle that you can refer them to some common jury does not apply here. I can imagine no common jury to which they could be brought so that they could limit the authority of this tribunal. When you deal with the landlord's rights you have another question. I am not concerned at present to discuss his rights more than any others, but because the man owns the land instead of the money with which the land can be bought, you surely are not going to say that he is to be treated on a different principle. My noble and learned Friend would not for a moment induce such experimental legislation. Would you dare to make such a tribunal as this determine the position of capital and labour? If you would your tenure of Office would expire to-morrow. Why is the landlord to be treated differently? Why not treat all in the same way? I noticed one very significant fact that was brought out in the House of Commons the other night. One Member was asked, "Give me a single instance where a landlord has been harsh," and for his sins he was tempted to give the name of the tenant. The matter was very soon explained, and he was compelled to admit that that was a totally different case. The challenge was not responded to. What does this question amount to? An attempt to take away a man's property without compensation. You say you do not take the property from the landlords, but only prevent them exercising their will. It seems to me that you take my life if you take the property which would sustain my life; but the tribunal which is to deal with the question is, as I say, left without guidance entirely. The question in dispute here is that the landlord has got the land and the tenant wants to get it. That is not a dispute; One man wants the property of another. It is sometimes distinguished in our Courts by another and a harsher name. Go to the country and say, "Here is an existing sore; here is a thing which makes the government of Ireland difficult, and we propose a remedy." Well, the Lords throw it out. That is their fault. Why do you not demand the Bill if you believe that 80 per cent, of the cases will be settled voluntarily? If that could be done, why did not the Government do it in this Bill? Is it the fact that they would not be permitted to do so in the other House? It has been so suggested. I cannot tell. They know their own secrets better than I do. If you really think that 80 per cent, of the cases would be settled by voluntary arrangements it is obvious that the objection of this Bill would be a very small one—only 20 per cent. It was a gross fallacy. Many a landlord who was in a position of influence in his county would assist and aid any voluntary principle by which he and his tenants might be made friends for the future, but when he is confronted with a measure which at every turn annihilated his rights he would hardly be disposed to do so. My noble and learned Friend says it actually increases the facility for voluntary settlement. If it does, it is the oddest voluntary settlement I have ever heard of in my life. That being the condition of the Bill, my noble and learned Friend, I think with great skill and his accustomed caution, does not say one word about it. I have not heard a single word except such as lead me to believe that the authors of the Bill did not exactly know what they were dealing with. My noble and learned Friend said, I suppose after the conviction was forced upon him, that I was right and he was wrong, that it was a matter of no importance. If this Bill passed into law, I take it my noble and learned Friend would deal with it as it is, and the effect will be this: that Her Majesty's Government will not know to what tribunal these things are to be referred. It almost seems as if the Government had made up its mind that such a Bill could not pass. It is all very well for my noble and learned Friend to say that posterity will discharge the debts which are incurred in its behalf. I heard all that 20 years ago in the House of Commons, but we are now doing the same thing all over again. Was it for this object that this Bill was brought forward? I read an instructing paragraph in The Freeman's Journal, which I will trouble the House with. It says:— Mr. Dillon, if need be, will show how little tired he is of the fight to plant a flag in Ireland. That is one of their leaders. It is in The Freeman's Journal, and I suppose the authority of that will be recognised. The sacred right of a man to be tried for his life by his fellows was abolished in Ireland by a Government of which my noble and learned Friend was a Member, and I think—I forget the exact number—that something like 1,000 people were imprisoned in Kilmainham. It may be it was necessary, and I am not commenting upon it as anything that ought to be complained of against the Government of the day, but we never did anything to abolish the rights of people in Ireland as the Government, of which my noble and learned Friend is a Member, has done. This is a Bill which, it cannot be denied, has set at defiance all the rights of the people, and the only thing we hear is the old cuckoo cry—"Here is a great social evil in Ireland, and we must do something for it." I did expect from my noble and learned Friend when he got up to hear something in defence of this measure, but here, on the last night of the Debate, from the beginning to the end not one word has he said in defence of it. Is that a respectable attitude? He also used the old formula, "If you throw it out it will not add to the stability of your Lordships' House." I think it ought to be understood in future, and that formula ought to be adopted. The broad fact remains stamped on the measure that the Irish people who disobeyed the law are to be put in the places of the planter tenants who stepped in to restore the land, and the planter tenants are to be removed. I believe if this Bill had been one which affected the evicted tenants alone it would have been bad enough, but this will open up contracts or arrangements which have existed between parties for 15 years. Did you ever hear of such a system of legislation? It seems to me it only wanted that to show how to render it impossible. It is a Bill calculated to injure the Irish people, and this is described as a message of peace.

LORD HOWTH

said, he remembered as far back as 1870 having the privilege of sitting in the other House, and he felt it his duty then to say a few words on the Land Bill then passing through, and he remembered remarking that that Bill did not go far enough in favour of the tenant on the score of expediency and on the score of avoiding future trouble and of lessening future crime and ill-feeling. He was in accord with the principles of the present Bill; but when he considered its authorship and the circumstances under which it had been brought forward, he felt it incumbent upon him to vote against it. The Government, like men in monetary difficulties, had waited till the last moment to pay their debt. They had declined to deal with the measure till the last moment, and had then refused to allow it to be discussed. He did not think that even Mr. Gladstone in his great anxiety for the welfare and prosperity of the Irish tenants ever advocated or thought of bringing forward a measure of this character. Under the Home Rule Bill it was provided that a certain number of years should elapse before any legislation should be undertaken with regard to the land, and these tenants would have been kept out in the cold. With regard to this Bill, he regretted to see that it was so very one sided. He did not know whether Her Majesty's Ministers framed the Bill; he hardly thought that they could have done, for it bore so strong an imitation of another Bill framed in opposition to the landlords' interests. He held that they as landlords had a right to rebel against such a measure. The vital question raised in connection with it was to be found in the compulsory clauses, and without going over the already well-trodden ground he would simply observe that he could not possibly support such a proposal. Unless some compromise could be made, and the voluntary principle inserted, the Bill could not be allowed to pass. He could not understand the unwillingness of the Government to make this change, for he was certain that if they went round to the evicted tenants themselves and got an expression of their opinions, irrespective of their leaders and the priests, they would find them willing to accept a voluntary Bill. The Lord Chancellor had told them that the voluntary principle could not be accepted because under it it would not be possible to allow the expenditure of public money; but he believed that if the Government were willing they could overcome that difficulty. One point had been altogether lost sight of in the course of the Debates on the Bill, and it was the resisting power of the landlords. It appeared to him they would be able to develop a great resisting power, and it was almost impossible to describe what might occur in the way of trouble and annoyance if an evicted tenant were forced upon them. He thought it would be well if some of the more sincere friends of the Irish tenants would make it clear to them that unless the compulsory system was modified very greatly, and indeed got rid of altogether, there was no prospect whatever of these unfortunate people being restored to their homes. As to the landlords, who were on their defence that day, he ventured to assert that they were in no way to blame for the present condition of affairs. He had only one other point to touch upon, and that was a danger ahead of them should the Bill ever become law. He believed one of the objects of the promoters of the measure was to make the valuation to be placed upon derelict farms and broken-down fences and cabins a precedent for future valuations. One of these valuations would probably have to be made next year, and it would be very hard if the valuations made under the Bill were to constitute a basis for valuations all over the country. He did not wish to censure Her Majesty's Government for this; probably they had not foreseen this possible result, which, however, was certainly contemplated by the tenants' advisers and by the clergy. Although he spoke with every respect for Mr. Fottrell, one of the persons most skilled in settling differences between Irish landlords and tenants, he ought to be aware of this great danger—a danger all the more emphasised by the very reason of his admitted eminence in making valuations. He thought that valuations made under the Bill should be treated as exceptional, and in no way affect the general principle of valuation now obtaining in Ireland. If the Bill were modified and made voluntary, it might be accepted as a measure of mercy and charity, but as at present framed it certainly did not offer the best way of giving relief to the unfortunate evicted tenants.

THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOB WAR (Lord SANDHURST)

said, that although he was not an Irish landlord, and had not the honour of following the profession of the law, he wished to say a few words on this Bill. He had hoped that the noble Lord who had just spoken would have given the Government his vote, for he had expressed himself in favour of a Voluntary Bill, and if this measure were allowed to pass a Second Reading their Lordships in Committee could amend it in any way they desired. He had also hoped that the Government might claim and receive the vote of the Duke of Argyll to the Second Reading of this Bill, because every word of the speech of the noble Duke on the Compensation for Disturbance Bill 13 or 14 years ago applied to the Bill now before their Lordships. He well remembered the Debate on that Bill, and he was on that occasion immensely struck with the speech of the noble Duke, for it made him realise for the first time—lie was then young in politics—the grave importance of the Irish Land Question. The policy of the Government in relation to Ireland was frequently subjected to attack from many quarters, but he ventured to claim on its behalf that, at any rate, it had so far been successful, for never had there been a time when Ireland was more tranquil under the ordinary law than it was now. He had been told by many people high in authority in the country as statesmen that the question really before the Irish people was not the Home Rule but the Land question, and that being so he ventured to think this Bill would go far in giving satisfaction to the Irish tenants. Lord Lonsdale had reminded their Lordships that this was a political question. But then almost every question that came before them for discussion was political. Personally, he would be inclined to describe this as a social Bill rather than as a political one—its principal purpose being well described by the words, "to live and let live." He wished to refer for a few minutes to what was known as Mr. Russell's clause. The noble Lord who was lately Lord Chancellor of England had asserted that the Government when the Bill came to the House knew that it would not pass, and indeed did not expect it to. He ventured to assure the noble Lord that until the Second Reading in the other House the Government were extremely sanguine that it would become law. In very many quarters a desire had been expressed that a settlement should be come to, and it was only in the course of the Second Reading Debate that the attitude of non possumus was taken up. As to Mr. Russell's clause, which had now become famous, how was it drafted in the first instance? When it was laid before the House of Commons in 1891, Mr. Russell proposed that it should be ante-dated five years, which would just bring in the Plan of Campaign tenants, and he explained it would bring to an end about three-fourths of the disputes, and would apply to the Coolgreany, Ponsonby, and Olphert estates. Mr. Balfour at that time also expressed an opinion that anything which could be done to settle these disputes ought to be supported. But later, on the suggestion of Mr. Sexton, a proposal was made to ante-date the clause from the 1st of May, 1879, and it was the date adopted in the Bill. Unhappily, as Mr. Russell had said, the clause was not successful, and the Government were now laying before their Lordships something which it was hoped would meet the difficulties of the case. As would be remembered, Mr. Russell's clause dealt only with the tenantless lands, and Mr. Russell in his speech on it said— So far as the tenanted holdings are concerned, there are great difficulties in bringing them under the operation of the clause. But what were his reasons for that? The lateness of the Session and the possibility that the clause might not be carried in another place if such holdings were included. But it evidently occurred to this gentleman, who was an influential Member of the Unionist Party, that it would be right to use the public credit for the purpose of reinstating these tenants. As he had said, the clause failed, and it had been alleged in some quarters that it failed by reason of the provision for a six months' notice; and further it was suggested that the failure was brought about by certain combinations that, however, did not appear to be known to the Mathew Commission, because that body expressly reported that they did not think there had been any wish or any combination to frustrate the proper working of the clause. He did not wish to pose before their Lordships as being in any way more sympathetic in regard to the horrors of evictions than any other noble Lord then present; but at the same time he could not help saying as a private Englishman who obtained his information from the daily Press that the story of those evictions to a certain extent lowered the pride he felt in being an Englishman. This was not the language of cant; it was a most sincere feeling on his part. As had been stated by many conversant with the question it was only those who lived among the Irish peasantry who could accurately gauge the peasant's affection for the land on which he had been brought up. He would call to his assistance on this point a passage from a speech delivered by the Duke of Argyll, who said— The tenants of Ireland have such a love for their homes that they would submit to anything rather than be detached from the soil on which they live, The Bill before their Lordships was directed to the gratification of the passionate devotion which the noble Duke had described in such eloquent language. Their Lordships would, of course, remember the Bessborough Commission, which reported that— The Land Act of 1870 failed to give adequate security, particularly against an increase of rents. Large estates are considerately managed, but on some estates, am I some recently acquired, rents have been raised not only beyond the value of the land, but even so as to absorb the tenants' improvements.

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL

Is the noble Lord quoting from my speech?

LORD SANDHURST

No; from the Report of the Bessborough Commission. The passage I quoted from the noble Duke's speech simply had reference to the love of the Irish for their homes.

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL

What was the date of my speech?

LORD SANDHURST

August 3, 1889, and the occasion was the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. Their Lordships would remember that 1877 was a bad year, 1878 was worse, and 1879 was declared by the Cowper Commission to be the worst year of the century—1846 alone excepted. Evictions, the average of which had been 500 for five years previous to 1877, increased in number until in the first six months of 1880 they numbered over 1,000. The figures were: For the five years ending 1877, 503; 1878, 743; 1879, 1,908; and to June 20, 1880, 1,073. Now he thought a case had been made out for the adoption of some extraordinary measures on behalf of the evicted tenants against whom everything appeared to have combined. He was almost ashamed to mention these matters before Irish landlords who were perhaps better acquainted than himself with the real state of affairs. [Viscount POWERSCOURT: Hear, hear!] He presumed the noble Lord did not contradict the statement he had made.

* VISCOUNT POWERSCOUKT

No; I meant that we were better acquainted with the affairs of Ireland than you are.

LORD SANDHURST

said, he was dealing with facts. In the years he had named the potato crop and the turf failed, the tenants lost a great deal of credit with their tradesmen, and at the same time the earnings of those peasants who were in the habit of crossing to England to assist in the ingathering of the harvest there had been materially decreased because of alterations in the system of agriculture. Their Lordships quickly passed a Coercion Bill, sent up from the other House, through which it had been forced by means of the Closure, and the Government now claimed that the present Bill was quite as important in the interests of peace and order as any Coercion Bill, and ought therefore to be allowed to go through. The Duke of Argyll, when speaking on the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, remarked that it was introduced at a time when Ireland had been the victim of the most unprincipled agitation which had ever vexed the melancholy ocean of Irish politics. But the situation to-day had vastly changed. Ireland was perfectly tranquil, and if ever there was an occasion when the hand of conciliation should be held out in the interests of peace it was the present. He did, therefore, suggest to their Lordships—although he feared it was fruitless to do so—that it would be a pity to lose this golden opportunity of settling a difficult question.

THE EARL OF KILMOREY

said, that, as an owner of Irish estates, and as one intimately connected with and interested in Irish politics, he asked leave to utter a few words in support of the Motion of the noble Lord who moved the rejection of the Bill. He listened on the previous night with great interest and not a little surprise to the speech delivered by the noble Lord on the Government Bench, who speaking, he presumed, for his friends as well as himself, attempted to blame the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists because no compromise had been arrived at. The point in dispute between the Opposition and the Government was one not of detail, but of principle. What had happened during the last few weeks? It was reported—and the report had not been contradicted—that many attempts had been made to create a modus vivendi, and if they had failed, the fault rested with the Government and not with the Opposition. He could not admit that the speeches of the Opposition breathed hostility root and branch to the principle as well as the details of the Bill. What the Opposition were opposed to was the proposed glorification of well-known evil-doers, to the reinstatement of men who could pay, but would not pay their rents, and to the insistence on a compulsory instead of a voluntary power. Those who alleged that the Unionist Party were actuated by motives such as had been suggested were grievously mistaken, for they were as anxious as the Government to bring these troubles to a happy conclusion. They were just as full of the milk of human kindness as the Government, but the Unionist Party were just before being generous, and they very properly insisted that the scheme should be made a voluntary and not a compulsory one. An important fact to keep before the country was that all attempts at compromise had been refused by the Government and by the Leaders of the Nationalist Party in another place. Rather than be baulked of the theatrical display which they had in view—marching their ragged ruffians home with flags flying, and brass bands playing Nationalist or rebel airs, they were determined to accept no compromise whatever, and therefore it was the fault of the leaders of the tenants that these unfortunate outcasts would again be left on the bill-side. Of course their Lordships would be blamed for that; it would be said all along the country side that it was their fault that these men were left to starve; but, as they knew, it was not true, and those whose opinions they most valued would never for a moment listen to such a base unfounded accusation. The noble Earl who introduced the Bill on the previous night said that a voluntary arrangement might do a great deal towards settling this question, but at the same time said they must be assured that both parties to the contract would loyally carry it out. On that point he agreed with his noble Friend, but be ventured to add that if either party showed disloyalty to any such contract it would not be the landlord party. A noble Lord opposite (Lord Tweedmouth) read their Lordships a severe lecture, which culminated in something approaching threatening language, such as they were accustomed to hear from the noble Lord's Nationalist and Radical friends. He spoke of this as a landlords' House, or a House of landlords, and added that they did not constitute a fit and proper tribunal to adjudicate upon this question. But if they were not able to adjudicate, who on earth was? Was being the owner of a racehorse a bar to being a member of the Jockey Club? Was the ownership of a yacht a bar to serving on the committee of the Royal Yacht Squadron? How was the Council of the Royal Agricultural Society constituted? Was it not made up of men intimately connected with farming pursuits, both practically and theoretically? Were there not in that House a certain number of men who for many years past had paid the closest attention to all matters connected with Irish land and politics, and if they were not qualified now to give au opinion, who on earth, he again asked, was? He left it to others to inform the noble Lord what was the sense of the House in regard to his speech. The sneer he levelled at them was not worthy of him, for he knew there were scores and hundreds of men in the House who, quite as much as Members of the House of Commons, had been in the habit of associating with different classes and different men, and had obtained thereby a personal knowledge of their wants. What were they asked to do by the Government? In the first place, they were asked to pass a measure such as had never before been seen, a measure which put a premium on the successful evasion of acknowledged liabilities. This measure levelled an undeserved insult at those men who had preferred loyalty and honesty to rebellion and fraud. At the same time, their Lordships were invited to set aside and overrule judicial decisions by giving unlimited power into the hands of an amateur triumvirate, who would confiscate property without confiscation, and distribute an enormous amount of money to undeserving persons, entirely forgetful of the claims of those who were much more entitled to it. What would the noble Lord or his friends opposite say if his or their tenantry were to rise suddenly, and because of some disagreement on a political point call upon them to surrender their ownerships, and with cynical insolence state that they would pay their rents into the war chest until their claims had been conceded? The Lord Chamberlain was well qualified to give an opinion on matters connected with landed estate management; he was well-known, too, for his great generosity and his great ability in the direction of affairs; he bore a high character both for justice and common-sense. What would he say if a Plan of Campaign were brought home to him with such practical ferocity? Surely he and his friends would do exactly as the Irish landlords did. They looked on the situation at first with astonishment; then they sought to temporise and to induce the men to listen to reason, and when the limits of patience and forbearance were reached, they declared that they would have no more nonsense, and the tenants must either pay or go. That was exactly what had happened on estates in Ireland. He would ask the noble Lord one more question as to what he would do under similar circumstances? Would he, at the expiration of two years, reinstate those who had deserted him, and turn out the honest men who at his invitation had taken the farm, much to his emolument? Surely he would not be human if he submitted his cheek to be smitten in such a way. Only an angel dressed in Peer's robes could do that. And yet the House was asked to grant £250,000 in order to subsidise the men who deliberately broke the law and gloried in doing it at the time. Surely there were Irishmen much more deserving of this money. If any class deserved sympathy they were the brave fellows who had paid rent in troublous times, not those who had slunk away like curs and had repudiated their liabilities. The men deliberately broke the law, and he was in a position to say that the honest class of tenants in Ireland were not in sympathy with those who were called the evicted tenants. It was their duty to make that fact known to the country. It was false to say that the agricultural population of Ireland had any great feeling of sympathy for these tenants, and it was equally false to assert that if their Lordships rejected this Bill there would be a recurrence of crime and disorder in that country. But even if it did break out, he presumed that they might look to Ministers to repress anything of the kind and to preserve order. This was not the first time that their Lordships had been told to accept a bare majority in another place as an infallible indication of public opinion. This Bill, which reflected so little credit on the Government proposing it, was no doubt passed in the House of Commons by a majority of 32; but if they eliminated from that majority the votes of the Nationalist Members, on which side then was the expression of public opinion? It was, moreover, admitted that on this, as on a former occasion, a certain number of the Members of the Liberal and Radical Party supported the Government contrary to their private feeling and convictions, but confident that their Lordships would throw it out. That had been stated, and it had never, so far as he knew, been contradicted. They were like Mr. Bernal Osborne, who once, after almost annihilating a Bill before the House of Commons, turned round to his revered chief, and promised his vote in support of the measure because he said he did not mind "helping a lame dog over a stile." This Bill had been brought forward on the score of urgency—urgency, he presumed, for the preservation of peace; but he would tell their Lordships that, as far as the agricultural population of Ireland was concerned, there was no urgency at all. The urgency was felt in another place by Her Majesty's Ministers, who held Office by the sufferance of men who for years had made it their boast that they had made the government of Ireland impossible. These were the men who did their best to destroy the innumurable benefits of the Union, which, it was their hope, would be perpetuated instead of being broken. The Prime Minister, on his assumption of Office, elected to submit the Home Rule Bill, the legacy of his eminent predecessor, to the country's decision. He hoped the same course would be taken with regard to this Bill, for there was no doubt what the decision of the country would be. In rejecting the Bill without hesitation their Lordships would not only be doing what they thought to be right, but they would be expressing the sentiments of the country at large by refusing to place on the Statute Book of the realm an Act which they considered to be bad from beginning to end.

* VISCOUNT POWERSCOURT

said, he was sure no man in the House could be more willing than he as an Irish landlord to reinstate the evicted tenants if it could be done on fair terms. But the terms offered by the Bill were not fair, because although no doubt the tenants' rights were strong, the policy of the Bill seemed such that the landlords' rights were ignored altogether. He for one could not see how, under a compulsory Bill, justice could be done. He was sorry if the door to compromise was closed, but the want of desire for compromise belonged to Her Majesty's Government. What had been going on quite lately? The Committee to inquire into the working of the Irish Land Acts had been sitting, and while the evidence of the tenants had in every case been heard that of the landlords had been refused. The noble Earl who moved the Second Reading had spoken of the Irish landlords in terms which he could not allow to pass without challenge. The noble Lord said that they had never spent money on their estates. He knew one noble Lord in the House who had spent nearly £40,000 in building houses and improving farms within the last 20 years, and he himself, although he had no desire to speak about himself personally, had spent quite as much on his own property. Every landlord of common sense would seek to improve his own estate by raising the status of his tenants. He was informed by those who knew, by solicitors and land agents in Dublin, that if this Bill passed the only remedy which the landlord would have for the non-payment of rent would be distraint. The process meant selling the stock at a ruinous price, and ruining the tenant as well as the landlord. The landlord would, further, be subject to all sorts of actions for illegal distraint. Surely the only corollary of this Bill would be one to prevent eviction altogether. In England, in towns as well as in country, evictions for the recovery of rent were of daily occurrence. Why should the Irish landlord alone be pro hibited from recovering rent by eviction? The noble Earl in saying that the Irish landlords had spent no money on their estates——

EARL SPENCER

I never said that at all.

* VISCOUNT POWERSCOURT

You said something very like it.

EARL SPENCER

I deny that I said anything of the sort. Once or twice something I said has been referred to as an attack on Irish landlords. If I did attack them—as I am sure I did not—it was not my intention in any way to be unjust to them. I have always said that a very large body of Irish landlords have been perfectly fair and equitable in their treatment of their tenants; but that there was a residue who unfortunately have not acted in that way.

* VISCOUNT POWERSCOURT

said, the Irish landlords had borrowed enormous sums from the Board of Works entirely for the benefit of their tenants, and he only wished to add that they had acted in quite as generous and liberal a way as the landlords of England and Scotland.

THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDE

said, that he had endeavoured to ascertain what were the claims of the evicted tenants to the enormous advantages which were accorded to them and which no other class in the world possessed, and he had found great difficulty in discovering them. He turned to the statistics which he had of one of the Campaign estates—an estate of which he knew something—and he found directly abundant evidence that the claims were distinctly in most cases very, very doubtful. These statistics, which happened to be of his own estate, were not furnished to him as a weapon against this Bill. They were dated 1891 and 1892. They were sent to him to enable him as the landowner to see how many of the evicted Campaigners it would be possible safely to put back. He found some rather peculiar and notable results. Of these evicted Campaigners 59 not only wished and asked to be evicted, but insisted on being evicted. They would go. They, many of them, confessed that they were able to pay, and many admitted that they wished to be turned out so that they might live on the Plan of Campaign. Fifty-four asked to be put back, and were put back, and that was evidence—though he did not say absolute proof—that the owner was not a non-possumist, if he might use the term. Among the lists—there were two estates kept separately—he found an accidental sequence of eight tenants who all insisted on going. They owed from 6½ to 10 years' rent, which was more than 20 per cent, below the Government valuation, the valuation being £39 15s. and the rent £30 15s. The lists showed, Mr. Sexton notwithstanding, that the 92 Campaigners owed 471 years' rent, fully five years per head. Further, Mr. William O'Brien notwithstanding, three-fourths of the whole lot were not evicted until the latter half of 1889, long after the date that he said they had all been evicted, much more than two years after the baptism of the Plan of Campaign. A further supplement showed that 41 new tenants, or planters, all consented to pay slightly more than the full total which the ex-tenants would not pay. Among these was one case cited by Mr. Dillon, who contended that the so-called planters were in fact bogus tenants, and that one of them who had taken five farms of his (Lord Clanricarde's) had been unable to settle with the landlord, and consequently had disposed of the tenancy to an ex-Campaigner. Mr. Dillon added that he (Lord Clanricarde) was quite capable of keeping on the planters in order to force the combination maliciously. Mr. Dillon, this obliging personality, was not worth notice, but he (Lord Clanricarde) followed the facts to confute his distortion of them. That planter had been shown not to have been a bogus tenant and not to have been in difficulties by the simple fact that he did settle with his landlord until he (the planter) died, and then his legatee paid the balance. It was not the planter, but the evicted Campaigner who began the barter for the tenancy by the offer of £100, and who ultimately offered £300, which showed that the holding was so low let as to be worth a good sum of money. Ultimately the matter collapsed over some details, so that he need not discuss whether he would or would not give the tenancy to the ex-Campaigner. But he would point out how under this Bill this Dillon hypothesis would work. The Campaigner owed the landlord £75 on eviction. That he was willing now to pay; he admitted that it was justly due, and in his own words it was a "debt of conscience." By this Bill, on Mr. Dillon's hypothesis, the owner would be compelled to put back the Campaigner, who would have to pay not the owner the £75, but £125 to somebody else, an outsider to whom nothing was due, and who was not the owner. That was absurd—almost as good as a play. Lastly, the statistics showed that the whole rent of the farms still on hand on his Campaign estates was 15 per cent, below the Government valuation. That was evidence—he would not say proof—that the farms were low-let, and there was no excessive demand on the part of the owner of the land. One other cognate point—as to the antecedents of these Campaigners. Were they such as to preclude the assumption that they would not make unsuitable tenants? He would refer to the cases of two of these evicted tenants. P. McDermott was one of them. He had heard him quoted as "the infernal machine man," because when evicted, owing 4½ years' rent, an infernal machine of the worst kind was found attached to his door which only missed blowing everyone to bits by the mere chance of the lock being picked and not forced. That man's rent was 27 per cent, below the Government valuation. The rent was £47, and the valuation £65 for the land alone. He was evicted for £89 after four years' hard campaigning, and refusing any payment on account on an abatement of 20 and 25 per cent. Before the Court of Investigation he would give no information, and before the Mathew Commission he illustrated that systematic concealment of important facts which marked that unlimited Liability Company. He was asked—Question 6827, he thought—why he had been summoned before the Court, and his answer was that it was in consequence of some infernal machine alleged to have been found on the farm of an evicted tenant. No one would guess from that that he himself was the evicted tenant. That was an important point. Obviously the law-abiding landowner preferred that this man should take himself and his infernal machine, in constitutional language, to "another place." His only other case was an eviction on another farm on which occurred one of the worst attempts at murder known in the country by a gang of men. A manager was wounded and the horse of the police guard was killed by a bullet from a volley fired in broad daylight on the Queen's highway. One of the gang was afterwards sheltered in the house of the tenant to whom he was referring. This man also would give no information. Were the landlords to take such men as these back again? There must be a limit. Some of these men who were Campaigners and were evicted were known to the police as suspects of the worst kind. A number of them did their worst to force on civil war, such was the combined violence of their opposition to the execution of the law. It was done to hamper the Government, but for the Campaigners the worst tactical blunder was that which disqualified them from any future tenancy. They themselves shut the door in their own faces. On the other hand, a number of those who quietly gave up possession were, in consequence, put back.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords, the time has come when it is my duty, on behalf of my friends behind me, to sum up what has passed in this Debate, but I own it is a duty which I look forward to with apprehension, and difficult to perform on account of the extreme meagreness of the arguments in favour of the Bill with which I shall have to deal. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack was principally occupied in variations of different kinds upon the old tune of tu quoque. Something that somebody had said or done at a previous period appeared to him to be a sufficient justification in the eyes of Parliament and of the public of principles and provisions which might be objected to in this Bill. Does the noble and learned Lord seriously believe that the English people will take a bad Bill more willingly from the present Government because it is proved—if it can be proved, which I deny—that some previous Government produced something equally bad? Such arguments appear to be entirely irrelevant, and I shall not follow the noble and learned Lord in that line. But I will notice one reference which he made to our conduct, to our present and recent conduct, because he did me the honour to appeal to myself immediately. The noble and learned Lord dwelt with extreme eloquence upon the sufferings of the tenants who have been evicted in Ireland, and many other noble Lords have done the same. The idea that appeared to fill their minds was that we were all destitute of any compassion or sympathy for misfortune, and only animated by a vindictive feeling against those who had broken the law. I defy him to find in the speeches of any representative men on our side in either House of Parliament any justification for that view. We have always desired that compassion and mercy should be exercised as far as possible. We have wished that this Bill should assume a compassionate form in which it was possible for us to concur with the Government in relieving those who had, perhaps unjustly, suffered, in mitigating the sufferings and punishment of others, perhaps the large majority, whose real offence was that they had been duped by men more practised and less scrupulous than themselves. And even if such a measure had in its effect relieved the punishment due to men for whom little extenuation could have been said, we would willingly have accepted a provision of that merciful kind in view of the general duties of rulers to exercise mercy, and the special duty of doing it where bitter feelings have to be healed, and the remembrance of past contests have to be effaced. But we must do it without sacrificing the rights of others or injuring innocent persons. We cannot consent to do what is called healing a sore and conjuring danger by flinging to these evicted tenants another slice of the attenuated rights of Irish landlords. The noble and learned Lord seemed to me to flinch from discussing that which is the central point of the Bill—namely, the power and position of these Arbitrators. The peculiarity of the Bill is the enormous power, the unprecedented power, which is given to three men over the property and rights of a large body of Irish landlords. To refuse to discuss the constitution and character of the arbitration is to flinch from dealing with the most essential part of the Bill. Arbitration is a sort of despotism. It is a little bit of despotism. Like many other great poisons, despotism, if taken in very small doses, and with very great precautions, is a wholesome medicine, and that is the case with arbitration; but then it does not follow, because you take it in certain cases, with careful precautions against its abuse, that therefore you are entitled without restraint and without guidance to fling down before the feet of any arbitrators who may be chosen the rights of men to be dealt with in an undefined manner according to no standard and under the guidance and protection of no law. The arbitration of these gentlemen is wanting in the most essential characteristics of arbitration. The noble Lord the Privy Seal appeared to imagine that all that was wanting to secure the success of the experiment was to give the Arbitrators a free hand. But arbitration, to be satisfactory and effectual, must satisfy two conditions: The Arbitrators must be acceptable to the persons over whom they are to arbitrate, and they must be impartial men. Neither of these conditions is satisfied in the case of the present Arbitrators. They are notoriously imposed by force upon the landlords of Ireland. They would be utterly unsatisfactory to them, and they are not impartial men. I do not wish to say a word that can hurt the feelings of these three gentlemen or can cast a slur upon them. I am ready to attribute to them all capacities and all virtues. But when I say that they—or rather the two of them who form the majority—are not impartial; that in the conflict which divides every home and almost every family in Ireland, they have a distinct bias, I am only asserting of them that what I am afraid is true of all Irishmen, or very nearly every Irishman, and it certainly casts no slur whatever upon their honour or their character. The noble Lord the First Lord of the Admiralty spoke highly of the character and capacity of these Arbitrators. I think he must have forgotten the time when we were discussing in this House the strange proceedings of Mr. Fottrell, who was the old solicitor to the Land League, and who, after he was solicitor to the Land League, was made solicitor to some Government Department, and in that character published and circulated, through the machinery of the Government Department, a pamphlet praising the language and character and maintaining the doctrines of Michael Davitt. Well, Mr. Fottrell is a tenants' man. He is not a worse man for that. We must all have our opinions, and he has his. But he is not impartial. He may have every virtue, but he is not impartial. With respect to Mr. Greer, I believe him to be a very learned and a very able man, and I again disclaim most earnestly any wish to say anything that can be wounding to his feelings; but it is a matter of fact that he has been giving evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons during this summer, and that he has given evidence in the strongest way upon all the burning questions that are at issue between landlord and tenant; he has given evidence in favour of the tenant. Again it is no disgrace to him. We must all take our sides. But he is not an impartial man. And to give these enormous powers over the landlords of Ireland to two men who are not impartial is entirely to misconceive the nature and the character of the functions of arbitration, and to convert it into the worst of despotisms. It is no use to tell me that these Arbitrators will often perform justice, and that they are very excellent men. The men who sat in the Star Chamber were very excellent men, and they very often performed justice. They did not cut everybody's ears off. But still we have all had since that time a very righteous horror of abandoning without restraint, without law, without guidances—abandoning to Judges, however eminent, unrestricted power over the rights and liberties of their fellow-men. I daresay many of the men of the Revolutionary Tribunal were very excellent, and they certainly possessed that one characteristic which the noble Lord the Privy Seal desires, they had a free hand. The Sultan of Morocco, the Sultan of Turkey, and the Shah of Persia all have a free hand. I do not wish to say a word that would injure the feelings of these potentates. I desire to attribute to them, as I do to the Arbitrators, all capacities and all virtues, but I say they would not be impartial Arbitrators; and nothing is more astonishing or painful to me than the way in which numbers of politicians, many of them belonging to schools that affect a special guardianship over the liberty of mankind, are willing, for the slightest Parliamentary or political object, to band over the property and the rights of their fellowmen to the unrestricted and unguided power of persons who certainly have no special attribute of impartiality to commend them to such a tremendous office. Another very interesting thing—a matter that has appeared to me to reveal itself in this Debate—is the development, if I may use a slang word, the evolution, which is taking place in the landlord, or rather the landlord of popular apprehension. In my youth the landlord was rather a respectable person; he was admired, and people were willing to think well of him rather than ill, As I grew older the balance seemed to me to incline until at last there was a little doubt about a landlord, but still he was recognised as a human being who had the same claims to justice as any other man, and to whom, however, unwillingly the rights of British citizenship should be freely accorded. But we are advancing beyond that. The landlord is assuming the position of the Jew of the Middle Ages or the pariah of India. He is an outcast. He is a man for whom we may have compassion and sympathy, but who has no rights. Look at this Bill. If an old tenant wants to be reinstated, and there is a new tenant or planter in his place, that planter's consent must be obtained before the process can be completed. I admit that in saying so I am speaking merely technically. We all know how that planter's consent will be obtained. It will be obtained by the operation of rural public opinion, and the manner by which rural public opinion operates is to drag man out of his bed and shoot at his legs. But still, technically, and setting aside that material qualification, the planter is in the position of having the veto upon the operation. And what is the condition of the landlord? He has no veto at all. If it is proved that he is in possession, the operation must go on, whatever his feelings may be; and I do not know that it has occurred to your Lordships to notice that the 15 years which may have elapsed since the tenant to be reinstated was evicted is larger than the period of prescription which is now by the English law sufficient to ensure another man's land to any man who occupies it. So that if a landlord went for another man's land, and occupied it for 12 years, he would be absolutely safe against anything anybody could say, but if he is impertinent enough to remain on his own land he is turned out. And so keen is the jealously of this new law lest the landlord should enjoy his own, that if there is any suspicion that the planter is not what they call a bonâ fide tenant—I do not know what a bonâ fide tenant is; it may be that he is like a bonâ fide traveller, subject to considerable doubt—the law will hunt the tenant and landlord out alike. The landlord must not attempt by these clandestine subterfuges to go in and enjoy his own. If it can be proved by any process, however indirect, that the result of leaving the planter on the land is that the landlord will still enjoy it, the new law is equally merciless to the landlord and to the planter both. It goes so far that, if there is a bit of laud of which a planter has half and the landlord has half, special machinery is put into the Bill to prevent the landlord, as it were, skulking behind the planter to enjoy his half of the land on the strength of the planter's title. Now you see the real position which the landlord occupies in the eyes of the Liberal Government. This is the evolution of the landlord's position, and so much has this legislation affected noble Lords that the tone which has pervaded the speeches of the Lord Privy Seal and of the Lord Chancellor is that eviction is a positive crime. If they can say that a man has secured the payment of the rents that are due to him by the process offered by the law, that is a crime so heinous as to justify the enactment of special provisions to his disadvantage. Of course, Her Majesty's Government and those who follow them have considered the effects of this policy, and, no doubt, would not object to any obvious results that it might effect. They will follow the last landlord, or landlords right, to the grave with a dry eye. But I want them to consider that—by that mysterious inter-connection which brings together all human actions and all human procedure, and forces the human mind that has once given way to a particular set of motives to give way to them again on any analogous occasion—other contracts besides those of land will be subjected to the same idea. The feeling will very soon spread that anybody who has a right to anything, and who uses any process of the law to recover it, is liable to the thunders that are pronounced against the evictor and the laud-grabber. "Base is the slave that pays!" That is the philosophy of the future. I know that the Lord Chancellor and many others take refuge behind the belief that this is only an exceptional act of legislation and an exceptional outburst of sympathy and pity; that it will not count in the future; that nobody will think of it when this time is past. We have heard a great deal of exceptional legislation in our time, and by this time we know what it means. When the Irish Church was abolished we were told that it was purely an exceptional Act, and could not affect any other Church. But already the Church of England in Wales and the Scottish Church are formally threatened, and not obscure preparations are going on against the English Church. Later on we had the Irish Land Bill, and again we were told that it was a thoroughly exceptional measure; that there was something so thoroughly exceptional in Irish affairs, and Irish proclivities, and in the Irish people, that it need not be feared that the special indulgence given to them would ever spread to the advantage of any other class in any other part of the country. Already that law has found its way to the crofters of Scotland, and is demanded by the farmers of Wales, while I have heard suggestions of applying it to the farmers of England. So matters go on. You cannot make exceptions. It is not within human ingenuity to make exceptions on a great subject where human passions are concerned and great prizes are offered to the greed of large bodies of men. You cannot make exception in favour of any particular act of legislation in departures from the principles on which your law reposes and say, "For the future this will not count." You may be perfectly sincere in desiring that exception; but human nature would overrule any precautions and any protests that they might make, and the sin against principle which you commit will come up against you whether you like it or not on some other subject more or less germain to that with which you have been dealing. Nothing has struck me more than the refusal of the Government to look to the future. Over and over again they have been asked what the effect of this legislation will be, and how they intend that I the social machinery of Ireland shall go on in future, and they always shrink from the challenge and refuse to tell us how they are to prevent the example from spreading to other cases and affecting other bodies of men. The tenants who have not refused to pay will see that they took the wrong side, and that they would be in a better position had they refused to pay. But they will not make the same mistake a second time. There are purchases of land which are making Great Britain—as, I think, Mr. Chamberlain said—the largest landowner in Ireland. What motive will the tenants have for paying their instalments? Up to this time they have had before them the fear of the law and the penalty of eviction. They will now know that, however definite the provisions of the law may be, however clear the rights of the landlord may be, if a proper crisis in political events is taken, if the proper machinery of agitation and pressure is applied to the House of Commons, the penalties which the law threatens for non-payment will not be inflicted, and that they can safely dare all the threats and all the danger which a refusal to pay their just debts has up to this time subjected them to. Where is your security for the payment of their instalments by the men who have purchased with loans from the State? What chance is there of purchase going on if this Bill passes and all security is broken and contracts made worthless and the legal remedy for the breach of contract is covered with disrepute? And if purchase is discouraged or prevented, what hope is there of any real or permanent or friendly settlement of the agrarian dispute which for so many centuries has exercised the soul of Ireland? Now there is another class of people whose case I have not heard mentioned. This Bill begins— If, in the opinion of the Arbitrators, the Petition shows that the landlord is or was on April 19, 1894, in occupation of the holding. How about evictions that took place on April 20, 1894, and subsequently? Curiously enough, a Paper was circulated this morning showing how many evictions there have been during the last three months in Ireland, about the time that has elapsed since the date mentioned here. There have, in that time, been 1,770 evictions, but the men evicted will get no relief whatever from this Bill. There have been 1,770 evictions, nearly half the number of men whose sufferings and sorrows you say require the passing of this Bill. These 1,770 men will see themselves evicted without any relief whatever from this Bill. The man evicted on April 17th will be restored, but the man evicted on April 20th will be in a hopeless condition. Do you imagine that such a peculiar way of exercising justice is likely to secure peace and quietness in Ireland? We are told that one tenant cannot bear that another tenant should sit at a lighter rent than his, and that if it is done there must be disturbance; but if a tenant sees that a difference of three days in the date of his eviction means all the difference between reinstatement and ruin, you may be certain that there will still be a sore and a danger. You may be certain that in these circumstances you will be told again in another year that the condition of the evicted tenants still presents a serious difficulty in Ireland. What are the Government going to do? Are they going to bring in an annual measure? Will there be a provision in the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill every year for the reinstatement of the tenants who have been evicted during the year? How are you going to deal with this case and the case of the new tenants? Believe me you cannot make distinction where no distinction naturally exists; your want of logic will always be found out by the keen eyes of human greed and interest, and you will be forced to go further and further down on the dangerous path upon which, in order to meet a temporary political emergency, you have entered. The noble Lord the Privy Seal (Lord Tweedmouth) addressed a good deal of wholesome advice to the House last night. I observe that this propensity is often found in new Members who come to us from the House of Commons. The noble and learned Lord has been a long time on the Woolsack and has nearly worn the propensity out, hut he nevertheless talked to us a little about the stability of this House being involved in its treatment of his advice. The noble Lord the Privy Seal was much more frank, and addressed us in the fresh and keen lan- guage to which he has been accustomed in another place, speaking constitutionally. The noble and learned Lord—I beg his pardon, he is not learned—said— He regretted greatly the attitude which their Lordships had taken up with regard to this Bill. They did not form the best tribunal to deal with a question of this kind. Of course, that only meant that he was in a minority. He wont on to say— They were, in the first place, a House of landlords. I am entitled to differ from the noble Lord as to the matter of fact. I know a great many Members of this House who in no sense can be called Members of a House of landlords. They may possess a certain amount of land, but I submit that every kind of eminence and every kind of property has a large representation in this House. In the second place, the noble Lord said— It was a dangerous thing in these days for a special body of men to decide a great question when they were not in constant and daily contact with the general mass of the electorate. I confess to a slight feeling of pity for any person who is in general contact with the general mass of the electors, because it would involve an amount of personal exertion which not anyone could get through. The noble Lord's words mean that it is a dangerous thing for us to decide anything, and the noble Lord's view is that we should decide no great questions. I do not suppose he willingly came across the interval that divides the two Houses, but it is very kind of him on crossing the Central Hall to bring with him for our improvement and enlightment the result of his meditations elsewhere upon our fate. The advice of the noble Lord who has conveyed to us that the atmosphere of this House, the genus loci, oppresses him, will in future have greater effect on our minds if he does not accompany it with bluster which nobody regards and with menaces which everybody knows to be hollow. He deliberately told your Lordships that, in his judgment, in rejecting this Bill we were making a great mistake which we would live to rue. Our living to rue it is, of course, a question of prophecy upon which one man's opinion is as good as another's. If I look to the past I quite admit that second Chambers are not immortal. I see that in France six or, I think, seven second Chambers have disappeared in the course of this century; but I observe also that in every case the popular assembly that sat with the second Chamber disappeared at the same time. If the noble Lord will carry his historical recollection back he will, I think, find that what happened 250 years ago does not differ very much in its indications from the examples that I have cited. Your Lordships will remember in Quentin Durward, when Louis XL, intending evil to Martius Caleotti, his astronomer, asks him to prophesy when he, the astronomer, would die, the reply of the astronomer was— I cannot tell that with respect directly to myself; I can only tell with reference to another; but I shall die three days before Your Majesty. If the noble Lord insists on my easting the horoscope of this House, I say it will perish a few months before the House of Commons. But I have noticed these observations of the noble Lord not for the purpose of bandying prophecies with him as to the probable duration of this House, which is an exceedingly unprofitable occupation, but for the purpose of entreating him to abandon a style of argument which I am sure must lie most repulsive to his own nature, and which he can only have adopted from somewhat underrating ours. Surely it does not make any difference in our duty whether we are likely to lengthen or to abbreviate the existence of this House. The institutions of this country and the traditions of centuries have left a great power in our hands. Whether it is abstractedly the best or not is no matter or question for us in the exercise of our duty to judge. It is our business to perform a duty that has been placed in our hands according to our conscience. It is our business to resist dangerous measures which we think have, under a delusion and with insufficient motives, been accepted by the other House of Parliament, and that duty does not become less when we observe that if Great Britain had voted alone this measure would not have crossed this Hall. But the duty is one that we shall not exercise with the less earnestness or the less consciousness of right when we consider the peculiar Parliamentary condition to which it owes its origin. You tell us it was urgent; you tell us that the sufferings of these men on the hillside have moved your hearts, so that you could not stop; and you are bound even now at this time of the year, suppressing the privileges of the House of Commons, to try to force this measure through Parliament. What have you been doing for two years? During the two years you have been in power the sufferings of these men have been as keen as they are now. Their claim on your compassion and on your sympathy has been as great, and they had not less right than now, if they had any rights at all. You might even have pushed aside the Home Rule Bill for the purpose without any great extravagance if your sympathies were so greatly moved. But even treating that as an impossible sacrifice, was the Employers' Liability Bill or the Parish Councils Bill a matter of such supreme importance that the agonising sufferings of these heroic men could not induce you to give a few of those weeks that were abandoned on very unsatisfactory measures to the salvation and the rescue of these men? There was no urgency at all; the urgency was Parliamentary. The Budget had to be got through, a dangerous and difficult Budget. It wanted votes; those votes were for a price; they were given on the condition that a particular Bill should be offered to the Representatives of the constituencies of the South and East of Ireland. It is a process of log-rolling which has eaten so far into the purity of our Constitution, which is hastening every year the time when Parliament will be no longer looked up to in any part of the country as an impartial arbiter of the destinies of the nation. I hope that is an evil peculiar to a passing crisis, and when we have surmounted that crisis it will pass away. But be that as it may, there can be no contingency that calls more loudly for the exercise of the ancient powers of this House than an occasion when the House of Commons, yielding to these inferior, secondary motives, has passed a Bill which digs at the root of all society, makes contracts hopeless, and prosperity impossible.

THE EARL OF ROSEBERY

It will not be my duty to intrude long on your attention to-night. ["Hear, hear!"] I am glad to hear that cheer from the noble Lord on the Cross Benches. Indeed, so far as my knowledge of Irish questions is specially concerned, I, for one, should not care to intervene in this Debate at all were it not that I hold a high and responsible position unworthily—possibly, as the noble Duke has so kindly stated, very inadequately and temporarily. But, still, I hold it; and it is my duty, as it would be the duty of the noble Marquess to take, as I take, a most serious and responsible view of this matter, and not as he has thought fit to take and view this matter, as a subject for gibes at the cruel sufferings of those who have been moonlighted in Ireland,, and in other respects. I am in the recollection of the House. The noble Marquess, amid the laughter of his own side, called attention to what was the effect of rural opinion, saying that it meant a man being dragged out of his bed and having his legs shot. It is, therefore, I say incumbent on someone on these Benches to come forward and take a more responsible and serious view of the subject than the noble Marquess has thought fit to take. One point which has struck me more than another in the course of this long Debate is this—the hothouse atmosphere in which) we live. I do not desire to associate myself too much with the breezy language of my noble Friend the Lord Privy Seal, who spoke with a raciness with which I cannot compete, and which I freely admit belongs rather more nearly to the other House of Parliament than to this. But I do associate myself entirely with the sentiment of his, that it is impossible for a Legislative Assembly in these days, to conduct discussions of matters of high Imperial importance, vital to the peasantry and to the landlords in any part; of this island, without some more immediate contact with the constituencies than your Lordships have. I will not follow my noble Friend in the language which has been described as the language of menace. Neither will I follow the noble Marquess in the language which I may characterise as the language of contempt which he has addressed to the other House of Parliament. The noble Marquess lamented any necessity for contact with the constituencies at all. [Cries of "No!"]

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

I said it would be a very disagreeable thing to have a constant general contact with the whole of the electorate, because of the labour which would be constantly imposed.

THE EARL OF ROSEBERY

That labour exists already. It is long since the noble Marquess left the House of Commons, and times have changed.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

Nobody in the House of Commons has contact with the whole of the electorate.

THE EARL OF ROSEBERY

The 670 Members jointly have a constant and immediate contact with the whole of the electorate. Anyone travelling 365 days in the year and visiting two constituencies a day, would only just be able to visit the whole of the constituencies in the country, and therefore I put myself in the hands of the House. I cannot presume that the noble Marquess would attribute such an idiotic performance to any Member either of this House or of the other, and therefore he was in reality pouring deliberate contempt upon the idea of your Lordships having any more immediate and constant contact with the constituencies than you have at present. There was one speech which, it seemed, amused the noble Marquess. But I am not sure that his supporters will be so amused when they read it to-morrow morning. There was one speech preceded that of the noble Marquess, and which showed me, and I confess with surprise to me, more acutely even than his own, in what a hothouse atmosphere we live in this House. It was with surprise that I heard the noble Marquess, who sits as a supporter of the noble Duke, excite the merriment of your Lordships by a recital of the proceedings on his estate. He said it was as good as a play. If so, then that play is a tragedy. We have been frequently asked by the occupants of the opposite Bench, what is the meaning of the Arbitrators of this tribunal having a special reference to the circumstances in any particular district? I should not have mentioned the noble Marquess had he not chosen to mention himself. But he is one of the cases that we had in our eye in framing that clause. And though the speech may have moved the merriment of your Lordships to hear what the circumstances of that estate are, it might not altogether so move the ratepayer or the taxpayer in connection with that district, when they remember that his evictions have already cost the ratepayer and tax payer some £23,000, and that between 20 and 30 of his tenants are under police protection at this moment. When he comes down to this House to make a joke and a jest of circumstances of this kind he mistakes, as I believe, the character of your Lordships' House; and at any rate, if he does not mistake your Lordships' character, he mistakes the character of the question before us. The noble Marquess opposite, in his remarks to-night, has shown no consciousness whatever that there is any question at all to be dealt with. He has passed his quips and cranks, and no one could have enjoyed them more than I should have done had they been on a subject of less immediate urgency and importance. He has passed his quips and his cranks round and round the Bill. He has touched on various details connected with the Bill. But I ask your Lord ships whether anyone listening to his speech to-night could have believed that, in the opinion of himself or his supporters, there is a question to be dealt with of most vital and urgent importance and necessity. It has been acknowledged by Mr. Balfour, and by other authorities who have been cited over and over again. And when the Leader of the House of Commons has acknowledged in the fullest and freest manner that there is a great question for treatment at hand I should hope that the Leader of the House of Lords—for such the noble Marquess is in reality—would not have disdained to admit there was such a thing. We have had the same acknowledgment, strongly put before us by my noble Friend on the Woolsack, from one who is no friend of our Party, Mr. T. W. Russell, whose acquaintance I have not the honour to possess, but who, I understand, was roaming the Lobbies in a state of rebellion for a considerable time when the Amendment against this Bill was to be moved. But, above all, we have had testimony of a kind the most remarkable, in my opinion, from a man whose speech, whatever else may remain of this Debate, will long endure in the annals of Parliament. I allude to the speech of Mr. Courtney. He spoke as an ardent and devoted follower of the noble Duke. He had every pressure of association and circumstance to hold his peace on this subject if he did not agree with his associates. But he made an appeal to Parliament and the House of Commons, and, what I think is more important, he made an appeal to his own Party. He said in effect, "Remember that this is a question which must be dealt with. It is not one which you can quibble with or refine. One Party or the other must deal with it, and deal with it promptly." And yet, in spite of all these witnesses to the truth, the noble Marquess makes a speech in which, I will not say he does not indicate a possibility of compromise, but in which he does not indicate even any necessity for compromise or for legislation at all. I say that that is a somewhat melancholy revelation. He seems to think that we have delayed in this matter. He argues that we might have brought in a Bill last year having a bearing on this matter. We did recommend a Commission, and the Commission sat. But from all that the noble Marquess has said no one could have any idea that that Commission, which is the root, the inception, and the foundation of the legislation which we are recommending to your notice, ever sat at all. In the course of last year we endeavoured to induce your Lordships, and we did induce the House of Commons, to pass an Irish measure which, in our opinion, would have settled this question, and many other questions besides. You chose to reject it in the exercise of a wisdom which I will not question. But I will question your right, after yon have rejected that Bill, and after you have rendered useless the efforts of an entire Session of Parliament, to say that we were indifferent to the evils which eat at the root of the prosperity of Ireland, and that we did not attempt to deal with them in the course of last year. The noble Marquess says we had an autumn Session, and might have dealt with that matter instead of with the Employers' Liability Bill and the Parish Councils Bill. The noble Marquess pays a great deal of attention to Great Britain. I myself have announced—and I do not shrink from a repetition of the statement, for it is not one of the speeches which the Duke of Argyll says I try to wriggle out of—I have announced that I regard England as the predominant partner in the Union, the most important, the most wealthy, and the most populous, and therefore the partner to be specially consulted in matters relating to the partnership. As to laying our Irish policy before an Autumn Session, the only effect of that would be in our opinion to render two Sessions barren instead of one. The Autumn Session was only to give proper time to English and, I am sorry to say, Scotch legislation. We were asked last night—we were not asked, we were told—and when I say that I need hardly add that I refer to the admirable speech of the noble Duke (the Duke of Argyll). I will not refer to that admirable speech, because I have heard it often before, because, after all, the speech of the noble Duke only comes to the same strain he always sings, which is "Thank God, I am not as other men are!" He recited that speech with all the melody and all the rhetoric that he has at his command. Nor will I follow him in the discussion of our relative ages. It is not a matter of enormous importance to the world at large or the constituencies of Great Britain in particular, or even the evicted tenants of Ireland, to know that at the time I was born the noble Duke had already addressed his eloquent strains to, I trust, a not unappreciative audience—to the world and myself that is a matter of very little import. All I can hope is that if I live to reach the years of the noble Duke I shall have some share of the vigour and the eloquence with which he still addresses us, and even a greater share of Christian charity towards my neighbour. I say he did not ask; he told us that this Bill came up to this House on no authority at all. I will tell him on what authority it comes up. It comes up on the authority of the Commission appointed last year, and presided over by Mr. Justice Mathew. [Laughter.] I did not expect, I confess—though one hears strange things in this House—I did not expect to hear Judges openly laughed at by noble Lords in this House.

LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNE

The learned Judge said that he did not act as a Judge on the occasion.

THE EARL OF ROSEBERY

No Judge can so completely divest himself of his judicial capacity that it is wise or seemly on the part of any body of men to laugh at him when his name is mentioned; but I give my thanks to the noble Lord. I recollect that when the Parnell Commission was appointed the slightest censure on any of the Judges who formed that tribunal, the slightest suspicion as to any judgment, was met with indignant philippics from the other side of the House. This Bill, therefore, comes on the authority of a tribunal which noble Lords may laugh at, but which was, in fact, a tribunal which not even the House of Lords can affect to disregard. What are the principles which the Report lays down? It says that the policy of reinstatement appeared to be clearly sanctioned by the 13th section of the Land Purchase Act of 1891; and it further stated that the condition of affairs by which large tracts of the country were allowed to be idle was most injurious. It then refers to the heavy charges incurred for protecting life and property. It went further—and I recommend this to the attention of the noble Marquess—and it said that these charges might have to be increased. The Report recommended that the Laud Commission, or a Special Commission, should be empowered to settle the disputes between the landowners and the evicted tenants. Now, that is the basis of the Bill. I venture to ask any noble Lord here whether he could gather from the speech of the noble Marquess that he took cognisance of these recommendations? The remarkable part of it is that, so far as this remedy, as it is a remedy at all, being ours or that of Mr. Justice Mathew's Commission, the remedy is in apostolic succession to the act of the noble Marquess himself. It is true that the 13th section of the Act of 1891 was a voluntary clause, but the noble Lord is not willing in a voluntary or compulsory form to continue it.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

That is what I thought I indicated very clearly in the opening of my speech—that I was in favour of any measure which was not compulsory.

THE EARL OF ROSEBERY

What we want is acts, not words. We heard the sympathy of the noble Marquess, as we heard that of the Earl of Kilmorey, who said, I think, the same thing; but we looked for something more than vague expressions of sympathy from the responsible guide and controller of this House. I say, on the basis of the Report of the Commission, and on the authority of the persons I have stated, there is a very grave question to be dealt with, and we have dealt with it on the lines laid down by the Mathew Commission. We cannot, therefore, be said to have acted unadvisedly, and I think we have the right when we find our Bill is to be rejected—not in favour of a voluntary plan, not by a Resolution which holds out any hope of a measure being produced by the noble Marquess, who in his leisure moments amuses his fancy with alien Bills or other subjects that occupy his attention—when our Bill, introduced on the responsibility of the Government, is to be rejected without the slightest alternative, I say we are entitled to consider what is the position of this House and those who form it. I recollect the views of those who have spoken as to a possible remedy, as to what they were disposed to propose. The noble Duke (of Devonshire), who, if he will allow mo to say so, made the most powerful speech I have ever heard him make, a speech which I envied him for making as regards its ability, only I wished I could have seen a little more consciousness that there was any interest but the landlord's to be consulted—and what is his remedy? He went off into a line which I could not precisely follow, but there was one distinct recommendation he did make, which was that the 13th section of the Laud Purchase Act of 1891 should be continued, and that was the one specific recommendation which the Commissioners, headed by Mr. Justice Mathew, emphatically stated it would be futile to carry out. They say— We see no prospect of useful results from the re-enactment of this section, even without any such limitation of time as it contains. My noble Friend Lord Lansdowne—the ability of whose speech I also desire to acknowledge—was extremely happy in criticism, but when it came to any suggestion for anything to be done I do not think he was much more hopeful than the noble Duke. What did the noble Marquess say? He said that he was not altogether averse to a Bill of this kind which excluded the principle of compulsion. But what did he go on to say? He said he would be very willing to consider any precise and definite Amendments that we were willing to make with the object of removing compulsion from our Bill if we were pre- pared to lay them on the Table of the House before the Second Reading was asked for. I have not been long in the position I have the honour to hold, but I do venture to say that no such proposition was ever asked of a responsible Government that they, on their authority and with a full sense of the responsibility which attaches to them, should make a proposition declaring that in their opinion, as we do declare, compulsion is necessary for the more flagrant cases to be dealt with under this Bill, and that then, on the mere ipse dixit of one or two Peers, we should, while asking for a Second Reading, be called upon to produce, on the other hand, an alternative Bill, which we should ask the House to pass also. The noble Duke (of Argyll) made a very good point, I thought, about the possibility of a Court sitting in one part of Ireland to fix rents and of another Court sitting in another part of Ireland in order to release persons from the payment of those rents; but I do not think that even that idea would reach the absurdity of a Government coming to Parliament with a Bill to authorise compulsion in one hand, and at the same time another Bill in its hand asking that the element of compulsion should be removed. I do not deny for one moment that there may be flaws in the Bill before the House. I never knew a Bill, and I do not think I ever knew an Irish Bill, in which there were no flaws to be found; and I say an Irish Bill because, after all, we know very well that the circumstances of Ireland are wholly exceptional. I heard with surprise to-night the noble and learned Lord the late Lord Chancellor and other debaters speak as if, and seemed to consider, that the circumstances of England and Ireland were completely analogous, and to ask in every case whether we should like the application of the particular law in question to the landed estates of England. It is too late to ask that question. After all, this Bill is meant to meet, as we believe, a great and vital emergency. It is only a step in the long course of evolution which has transformed the relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland. It began with the Bill of 1870; it went on with the Bill of 1881; it went on with the Bill of 1887, and it went on with the Bill of 1891; and there are other Bills which I do not wish to recall; but is it possible, in view of that long course of exceptional legislation, to maintain that every phrase of our Bill is to be scrutinised as if it applied to Kent or to Yorkshire? After all, my Lords, you know as well as I do that the course of Irish land legislation has been one apparently to tide over the difficulty of the moment, but in reality to prevent what many of you believe is the sole source of the evils of Ireland—the tendency to agrarian revolution. And if in the course of that long legislation we have arrived at a state of things where, according to the testimony of all, the Land Purchase Acts are working with singular peace, singular good faith, and singular absence of arrears of payment, it is not much if we at this time of day endeavour to meet a crying and acknowledged evil with legislation which is also in its nature exceptional. I have only one thing more to say, and that is with special reference to the condition of things before your Lordships' House. I am expressly debarred from using the spirited language of the Lord Privy Seal. I have not his dash—it is because I have never been in any House but this, and that has impoverished my speech—but I do feel very acutely that there is a great deal more at stake to-night than the Bill before your Lordships. I am not for one moment going to say that your existence is at stake. I do not say it is any more at stake now than it was last year, or than it will be next year. I do not either wish to make myself the participator of the predictions of the noble Marquess opposite, who thinks that this House, if it falls, will necessarily drag down the other. But I do feel this, and I think that, without any undue contact with the constituencies, everybody must feel that there is in the air much respecting this House which should make this House walk warily. I, for one, have never disguised my conviction that since the passing of the Franchise Act of 1884 it is not possible for this House as at present constituted to claim co-ordinate jurisdiction with the freely elected Representatives of the people in the House of Commons. I do not go beyond that at this juncture. It is, perhaps, a considerable thing for me to say in the position that I occupy, but so much I do feel from the very bottom of my heart, and I venture to say that if every one of your Lord- ships was to be free to speak absolutely what was in his mind at this moment you probably would not greatly differ from me in that opinion. What is it that is attacked, and attacked with considerable strength, at this moment? It is that right you propose to exercise to-night—your right to veto the result of the deliberations of the House of Commons. What is your position? The Government comes and puts before you an administrative measure which it says in its opinion is necessary to the security of peace and order in Ireland. That measure comes up with the approbation of the other House of Parliament, and with the -support of four-fifths of the elected Representatives of the island which it will a/Sect and the fairly-given vote of the House of Commons. You say for the most part that you are in favour of a voluntary Bill which, according to the acknowledgment of many, would deal with eight or nine-tenths of the cases that are at issue. In preference to offering any attempt at compromise in this direction, to give effect to your expressed views and policy, you utter a dead and sullen negative. With the Bill that is offered to you under this high and solemn responsibility you prefer the right of veto, which is perhaps one of the most dangerous functions of a Second Chamber, to the right of revision, which is, after all, one of its most useful functions. I was much censured last year for saying that you might well have chosen that wiser part and have revised the Home Rule Bill and sent it down, not necessarily for the acceptance of the House of Commons, but, at any rate, as a clear, honest, and outspoken definition of your policy in that matter. In this case I believe that that course would have been more expedient. At any rate, you would have been able to say that by the Act which we—I am now speaking in your name— are willing to pass, and which would probably have dealt with the great mass of claimant cases in Ireland, we are divesting ourselves of any responsibility for anything that may occur from the failure of this Bill. You take upon yourselves a very grave responsibility. It is too late, I suppose, now to ask your Lordships to pause for one moment and think how different the case might be if you in your responsibility were willing to offer your alternative policy to ours, and at any rate to prevent this from being a barren Session as regards the hopes of: these evicted tenants. I suppose it is too late to hope for any such contingency, and therefore I will only conclude this inadequate appeal with a sentence from an often-quoted orator—the Duke of Argyll—and will ask you not to forget that on the great question of land in Ireland "we are playing with edged tools and with fire at the door of a powder magazine."

THE DUKE OF ARG-YLL

May I ask the date of that quotation?

THE EARL OF ROSEBERY

Why, surely the noble Duke's ideas do not vary with time ! The date is 1880.

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL

Exactly, And since then the Act of 1881 has been passed. And I must say no quotation from my speeches before the Act of 1881 can fairly be made in this House with regard to my opinions upon the laud question after that Act was passed.

THE EARL OF ROSEBERY

Then we may take 1881 as being a sort of "Hegira," a chronological period in the noble Duke's life, before which we are not allowed to make any reference to his speeches, but after which we have full licence and liberty to do so. The sentence I quoted has no reference to any particular condition. It is a question of Irish land. Does he suppose that dealing with questions connected with Irish laud is not playing with fire in a powder magazine now because the Act of 1881 was passed—that we are not in the same danger as regards the Irish Question? Does he suppose, in the circumstances disclosed by Mr. Courtney in his speech and by Mr. Justice Mathew in his Report, we are not in the same position as regards the danger of trifling with the Irish Land Question?

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL

No, certainly not.

THE EARL OF ROSEBERY

I do not care to labour the point. The point is merely a quotation, and I may say on the noble Duke's own authority an insignificant quotation under the present circumstances, but he is in the habit of quoting from other people, and he must not complain at being quoted in return. I will only say, in the words of the noble Duke, that even since 1881 the position of Irish land is one which does not allow of trifling, which does not allow of dead negatives to the proposals of a responsible Government, and still less does it allow for the absolute ignoring of the wishes of the Irish Party in the House of Commons and of the House of Commons itself.

On question whether the word ("now") shall stand part of the Motion?

Their Lordships divided: —Contents 30; Not-Contents 249.

Resolved in the negative; and Bill to be read 2a this day three months.