Sitting of 4 April 1870

MINUTES.
NEW MEMBER SWORN—Samuel Boteler Bristowe, esquire, for Newark.
SELECT COMMITTEE—Pawnbrokers, appointed.
PUBLIC BILLS—Second Reading—Petty Customs (Scotland) Abolition * [72].
Select Committee—Felony * [9], nominated.
Committee—Irish Land [29]—R.P.
Committee—Report—Survey of Great Britain, &c. * [90]; County Courts (Buildings * [91].
Third Reading—Oyster and Mussel Fisheries Supplemental* [34], and passed.

NAVY—DOCKYARD SUPERANNUA- TIONS.—QUESTION.
MR.STONEsaid, he would beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty, Whether the following statement is true:
"A.B., a labourer in Deptford Dockyard, applied for superannuation on the reduction of that establishment, having the means of earning a livelihood in the town of Deptford. He was refused superannuation on the ground that he was too young and healthy, and was sent to Portsmouth, where he has been for only twelve months. He has now been ordered for discharge, though he has a wife and seven children; and, on asking the reason, he was told by the clerk in the cashier's office—' You are a Liberal, and voted for Gladstone; it serves you right?'"
MR.CHILDERS: Sir, my hon. Friend asks me whether it is true that A.B., a Liberal dockyardman, who had been removed from Deptford to Portsmouth, was, when discharged, told by a Conservative clerk in the cashier's office that it served him right for voting for my right hon. Friend at the head of the Government, who represents the borough of which Deptford forms a part. I suppose that Conservative clerks are not always well instructed in modern history; and it is, I dare say, true that this particular gentleman may have thought that Deptford Dockyard was closed by order of the present Government; whereas, the House knows that, in fact, the late Government decided its fate. But I suppose that the purpose of my hon. Friend's Question is to know whether, in our opinion, political considerations influence the discharge of workmen, and I am happy to be able to say that, although the present head of the dockyard at Portsmouth, who was appointed by myself last year, may possibly be a Conservative, I am confident that no one could act with more thorough impartiality in these matters, and I feel sure that there is no foundation for any suggestion to the contrary.
MR.STONEsaid, the right hon. Gentleman had not answered the question as to the truth of the statement contained in the Question.
MR.CHILDERS: I do not know who A.B. may be; but no one is entitled to superannuation under a certain number of years' service, and I can only suppose that this was the case with him. I have heard of no complaint that where due it has been refused.

JAMAICA—THE LATE G. W. GORDON.

  QUESTION.
  SIR CHARLES W. DILKEsaid, he would beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether, having regard to the circumstances attending the military Execution of the late Mr. G. W. Gordon, a Member of the Legislature of Jamaica, and to the injury done to the property of his widow, he is prepared to consider the justice of making some compensation to Mrs. Gordon for the grievous losses and sufferings she has sustained?
  MR.GLADSTONE: With respect, Sir, to the military execution of Mr. G. W. Gordon, it will be remembered by the House that that matter was left in a condition in which the legal rights were never brought to a distinct and final issue. With respect to "the grievous losses and sufferings" Mrs. Gordon has sustained, as far as regards the injury done to the property of the widow, no evidence tending to prove, or sufficient to prove, either the nature or the extent of any such losses has been ever placed before me. Upon the whole matter, having given it the utmost and best consideration in my power, I do not think either that it would fall within the ordinary purview of the Civil List Pension Fund, or that the case is one in which it would be consistent, with the duty of the Government, to make an application to Parliament.

TURKEY—THE SPORADES ISLANDS.

  QUESTION.
  SIR DAVID WEDDERBURNsaid, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether there has been any recent Correspondence between the Ottoman Government and that of Her Majesty relative to the alleged oppression exercised by the Turkish officials upon the Christian inhabitants of the Sporades Islands; and, whether there is any objection to laying such Correspondence upon the Table of the House?
  MR.OTWAYsaid, in reply, that there had been no recent Correspondence on this subject between the Government and the Ambassador at Constantinople; but a Consular officer some time since suggested to the Government certain measures which might be adopted
  1170
  for removing the real ground of complaint from the islanders, expressing, at the same time, his conviction that the commotion was due in a great measure to the influence of certain persons in London. Several communications had been addressed to the Foreign Office on the part of these persons; but they were not of sufficient importance to be laid on the Table of the House.

ARMY—UNATTACHED PROMOTIONS.

  QUESTION.
  VISCOUNT CRICHTONsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, Whether the unattached promotions about to be given in the Army are to be given only to the senior Officers of each grade, without reference to special qualifications or distinguished service in the field?
  MR. CARDWELL: Sir, in the ordinary course of unattached promotions His Royal Highness the Field Marshal Commanding-in-Chief considers the claims of the several officers, and recommends them to the Secretary of State accordingly; but in the present instance of absorption they had been offered, in the first instance, by seniority.

HYDE PARK-THE SERPENTINE.

  QUESTIONS.
  CAPTAIN DAWSON DAMERsaid, he wished to ask the First Commissioner of Works, If, while the works of the Serpentine are still in progress, it is not feasible and even expedient to take steps to render the borders of the lake more picturesque, and to do away with its tank-like and rigid outlines, which extend up to Kensington Garden Bridge, by throwing out promontories here and there, and if possible by creating an island, and as material being now at hand the expense cannot be very great?
  MR. W. O. STANLEYsaid, he wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman, If he will submit for the consideration of the Medical Officers of the Board of Health and some land surveyor of experience in drainage operations, or other competent authorities, the present mode of depositing the noxious mud and clay taken out from the Serpentine River, in the deep excavations from which the gravel has been removed, more particularly in Kensington Gardens, to the depth of five

  1171
  feet, without any adequate drainage; and to obtain their opinion, if the health of all those persons who may frequent the Park and Gardens may not be seriously endangered in wet seasons from the want of the natural drainage through the gravel subsoil, and in summer heat from the noxious exhalations of the fermenting deposit?
  MR.AYRTONsaid, in reply, that the contract for the works to which these Questions related were entered into before he took charge of the Office of Works, and when his attention was called to it, undoubtedly it appeared; that the margin of the ornamental waters; in the Serpentine would be of a somewhat formal character. He therefore requested the engineer to make it, as far as he could do so consistently with the contract, a little more ornamental. But people differed as to what was ornamental, some believing that a stone margin, and some that the natural margin, was the better. The contract had now gone so far that he feared it was impossible to make any serious changes without leading to a large increase in the expense and considerable delay. He had not, therefore, ventured to reopen the contract to the extent suggested in the Question of the hon. Gentleman opposite. With regard to the mud taken out and deposited in the place whence the gravel was excavated, the subject was carefully considered by Mr. Fowler before he recommended this mode of carrying on the works. It occurred to him, as a practical man, to be very desirable that the mud should be carted away and sold as manure; but, unfortunately, that could not be done. If the mud were carted away at the expense of the public, the expense of the work would have been at least doubled; but Mr. Fowler's experience suggested that if the mud were worthless as manure, it could not be of any supremely deleterious character. The drainage under the mud had, therefore, been carefully provided for; a good deal of lime had been mixed with the mud, and would be spread over it as far as was necessary to prevent it from being injurious to health; and the ground would then be covered with turf and planted. The same operation had been performed in the Regent's Park, under less favourable circumstances, because upon a clay soil, and no one had discovered that any injury had
  1172
  been caused to health. But the work would be carefully watched, and if there was any reason to apprehend injury to health, it must be prevented at any cost to the public.

  DOMINION OF CANADA—RED RIVER SETTLEMENT.—QUESTION.
  MR.SINCLAIR AYTOUNsaid, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether there is any truth in the report that Imperial Troops are to be sent to the Red River Settlement; and, if so, whether he has any objection to lay upon the Table Copies of any Correspondence on the subject between the Colonial Office and the Governor General of Canada?
  MR. MONSELLsaid, in reply, that as the Correspondence in reference to the Red River Settlement was not concluded, it would not be convenient at present to lay it on the Table; but he might inform the House that, in consequence of the disturbances at the Red River Settlement, the Government of Canada had asked that a small body of British troops should be employed in the first establishment of the settlement. The Red River Convention had also requested that British troops might be sent to preserve peace between the different sections of the community. Complaints had also been made by the Government of the United States of thefts committed by persons residing at the Red River Settlement upon their citizens. Under these circumstances, the expediency of despatching a small body of troops was under the consideration of Her Majesty's Government; but no definite arrangement had yet been made on the subject.

THE TELEGRAPHS DEPARTMENT.

  QUESTION.
  MR.CRAWFORDsaid, he would beg to ask the Postmaster General, in the absence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether the sum of £100,000, entered as a receipt on account of "Telegraphs" in the published statement of Revenue for the quarter ended 31st March, was in respect of messages only, or included money received from any other source; also that he will state the number of messages forwarded for the public by the Department down to the 31st March, and the

  1173
  amount of money received and receivable on account thereof?
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, in reply, that the sum of £100,000, entered as a receipt on account of "Telegraphs" in the published statement of Revenue for the quarter ended the 31st March, was made up of sums received in payment for messages, and for the proceeds of postage stamps sold on account of such messages, and did not include the sum due to the Revenue on account of the Press messages or the rents of private wires. The total number of messages forwarded by the Department up to the 31st March was 1,160,000, inclusive of messages received by the Department for transmission abroad; but exclusive of the messages received from abroad for distribution by the Post Office.

BIRMINGHAM—POOR LAW GUARDIANS.

  QUESTION.
  MR.DAVENPORTsaid, he wished to ask the President of the Poor Law Board, Whether he is aware that the opinion expressed by the Poor Law Board in their Letter to the Guardians of Birmingham last year, that the reduction of the numbers of medical officers from eight to five was injudicious, has not been acted upon, and that one medical officer has still to attend to the wants of a population 44,000 in number; and whether the Poor Law Board have taken or propose to take any steps to remedy this state of things; whether the population of the medical districts in Birmingham exceeds that prescribed by Article 159 of the General Consolidated Orders of the Poor Law Board; and, if so, to what extent, and what special reasons exist why the terms of that General Order have not been enforced; and, why the medical officers of Birmingham are elected annually, and not permanently, as recommended by the Select Committee of this House, appointed in 1854?
  MR. GOSCHENreplied, that the circumstances to which the hon. Member alluded would be set out fully in the correspondence for which he had moved. Last year the Board of Guardians of the Birmingham Union had reconsidered their medical arrangements and reduced the number of medical officers from eight to six, inclusive of a public vacci-
  1174
  nator, but they had materially raised the salaries of those officers and made the medical relief districts coincide with the ordinary relief districts. The Poor Law Board was doubtful as to the expediency of such an arrangement; but it had been pointed out to them by the guardians that an average of previous years showed that the medical officers would not have more than sixteen cases a day to visit at the homes of the patients; and the result of the first half-year's trial showed that the daily visits amounted to sixteen and a-half. He had not vet learned the result for the whole year, and when he had he should be in a position to consider whether the arrangement should be continued. With regard to the General Consolidated Order, he must point out to the hon. Gentleman that this Order was not in force in Birmingham, and there were many other populous parishes where it was not in force. As regarded the annual election of medical officers, the case was much the same; but it appeared to him that the argument was in favour of extending to Birmingham the provision with respect to the permanent appointment of medical officers.

COUNTY COURT JUDGE OF NORFOLK.

  QUESTION.
  MR.HAVILAND-BURKEsaid, he wished to ask Mr. Attorney General, What is the result of the communication which has been made to the Lord Chancellor respecting the committal of a juryman by Mr. W. H. Cook, County Court Judge of Norfolk; and, if it is with the sanction of the Lord Chancellor that Mr. W. H. Cook has been appointed a Magistrate for the county of Norfolk, and as such took his seat on the 22nd March, regardless of the Report made by the Commissioners appointed to inquire into Corrupt Practices at Beverley, and pending the decision of the Lord Chancellor as to the committal of the juryman?
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL,in reply, said, a communication was addressed by the Lord Chancellor to Mr. Cook on the subject, and Mr. Cook had sent to the Lord Chancellor a reply, in which he said the reports in the two Norwich papers were substantially incorrect, and, when the facts of the case were

  1175
  known, it would be seen he was not open to the censure which had been passed upon him. He proceeded to state that the action in question was brought to recover £20 upon an I O U, and the defence set up was that, instead of being borrowed, it had been paid for repairs done by the defendant as a house carpenter; but the defendant himself admitted that, fairing to obtain an advance upon the work, he accepted the money as a loan and gave an I O U, and his advocate, declining to accept that statement, went to the jury, who found for; the defendant in the face of his admission, the foreman stating that they considered the plaintiff ought to be nonsuited—a declaration which was received with laughter. Nothing further took place, except that Mr. Cook intimated that he would not allow such a verdict to stand, whereupon the counsel for the defendant insisted upon its being recorded, which the Judge said had been done. A settlement of this matter was then attempted between the counsel and the Judge; but the plaintiff not being satisfied, the interference was in vain. After some discussion the Judge remarked, in answer to a question as to a new trial, that when a jury returned a perverse verdict the trial ought to be removed to a district where local prejudice could not affect the result. Thereupon the foreman said—"I consider your remarks are most unjustifiable," and the Judge committed him for contempt of court. He afterwards accepted an apology and countermanded the order; but an explanation given in the local papers was not uttered by the foreman at the time, nor would it have been considered an apology if it had been. The Lord Chancellor, in a further communication, said it did not appear necessary that he should take any further steps in the matter. It was on the 16th of October, 1869, a date long prior to the Report of the Commission, that the Lord Chancellor, acting on the recommendation of the Lord Lieutenant, in accordance with the usual custom, appointed Mr. Cook and other magistrates; Mr. Cook did not appear to have taken his seat until the 22nd of March; but that was a matter with which the Lord Chancellor had nothing to do.

  IRISH LAND BILL— [BILL 29.]
  (Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Chichester Fortescue, Mr. John Bright.)
  COMMITTEE. [Progress 1st April.]
  Bill considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  Clause 3 (Compensation in absence of custom).
  MR.DISRAELI: Sir, the Amendment to which I am now going to call the attention of the Committee is the one I originally gave notice of, and which then bore reference only to a secondary portion of the clause—secondary in its position in the clause, and secondary, also, in its general character. In so doing I considered I was acting in the spirit of that engagement which I voluntarily made with the right hon. Gentleman the First Minister at the commencement of the Session; I said then, and I was empowered to say it by those Friends whom I had an opportunity of consulting, that his Land Bill would receive from this side of the House a fair and impartial consideration; and, for myself, I ventured to say something more, and to assure him that assuming, as I did with the utmost confidence, that it would be a just and equitable measure, and would aim only at accomplishing that which was necessary, and not that which was fanciful and theoretical, it would receive from me a cordial support. When the Bill was introduced, although on a subject of such great importance, and necessarily of so complicated a nature, and including so many provisions and proposing so many arrangements as the present Bill, it could hardly be supposed that I should be able to give to every line a complete adhesion, still, I took the opportunity of consulting those Friends who honour me with their confidence, and I found they agreed with me in opinion that in dealing with a measure of this character it became us to take a large and liberal view of the proposals of the Minister; and though it might be our duty to attempt modifications of those principles whenever we thought modifications necessary, and to object to the assertion of any principles which we thought dangerous, still, we believed that, on the whole, we should be able to offer a general and sincere support to the Minister in bringing this measure to a successful issue. Under these cir-

  1177
  cumstances I offered no opposition to the second reading; but I cannot conceal my vexation at the present moment that, after having made that engagement at the commencement of the Session, and after the Bill has been treated by both sides of the House with an absence of party feeling, I find myself unexpectedly leading an opposition to the measure of the right hon. Gentleman opposite on an essential question. And yet I am only going to propose what I believed to be an insignificant Amendment when I gave notice of it, and which only applied to a secondary and less important portion of the clause now under consideration. How has this happened? We may always be deceived in the judgment we form of our own conduct; but I believe I am not rash in thinking that the fault is not mine. The truth is, that since we have gone into Committee, there has, unfortunately, been pursued on the part of the Government, though we have only passed one section, a course which has given a new character to their proposal, and which calls on us most seriously to consider the position we now find ourselves in with respect to the general character of the measure.
  Let me recall the attention of the Committee to the precise change which has occurred, and which has led us into the new position in which we are placed. I am not going to enter into any discussion of the merits or demerits of the Ulster tenant-right. The Government thought fit to legalize the customs of Ulster, and I expressed my opinion, on the second reading of the Bill, that the proceeding was unnecessary, impolitic, and inexpedient. It seemed to me that the Ulster customs were strong enough to assert for themselves all that was good and beneficial in their character, and that they might be left to be administered by all the parties to them, and that there were general objections to legalizing customs of this kind. The Ministry, however, maintained their policy; and though I objected to it, I did not divide the House against it, for it appeared to me to involve no principle which should prevent me from supporting the measure, and from assisting the Ministry to carry their Bill. During the discussions the right hon. Gentleman and his Colleagues, in an able and eloquent manner, combated various other proposals that were made to them, and declared that it was im-
  1178
  possible to extend the Ulster customs, as some of their supporters desired, to other parts of Ireland; and that resolution was received with warm approbation on both sides. Well, what has happened with regard to the second clause? A new clause is to be brought in. What is that new clause? It is a clause which virtually extends the Ulster custom to the other parts of Ireland, exactly opposed to the whole policy which, for a week, we expended our energies in supporting; and, indeed, I fear it will lead to a great disturbance of arrangements and inconvenience to both landlords and tenants in other Provinces of Ireland. Now, Sir, when we are urged to lose no time in passing this measure, and when, in the absence of gentlemen of the long robe who are at the Assizes—in the absence of some of the most valuable Members on both sides who must be at quarter sessions—in the necessary absence in the morning of men of intelligence and experience who from their business engagements I cannot be present; when we are urged to fix Morning Sittings for the discussion of this measure, and Divisions are taken on that subject—Divisions which in my memory were never taken under similar circumstances before—I cannot but remember the week that was lost in resisting the proposal for the extension of the Ulster custom to the rest of Ireland. This is a great change which has been made in the measure since the second reading.
  Well, then, Sir, when this Bill was first brought forward, when its elaborate and complicated scheme was unfolded, when the House and country were made aware of the frequent invasions which it proposed upon the privileges of proprietors, and in some degree, no doubt, upon the strict rights of property itself, there was one proposition which was much descanted on, which was enforced with great ability, and on which many arguments which recommended the Bill to both Houses rested, and that was this—that it would be in the power of proprietors to defend and exempt themselves from all these new, certainly vexatious, and, in many cases, perilous invasions by conceding a lease to the tenant. And that proposition, I am bound to say, was most favourably received by this side of the House, and I have reason, from what I observed, to believe it was not unpopular with the majority on the

  1179
  side opposite. That proposition was received with great favour, and much opposition to the general details was obviated by its proposal. There was one considerable objection raised even to that compensatory proposal in the Bill. It was thought that a lease of thirty-one years expressed a term too long for the circumstances and the occasion; and hon. Gentlemen especially connected with Scotland said they did not understand why a lease of thirty-one years should be required, while in their country, with a lease of twenty-one years, or even of nineteen years, intelligent men possessing large capital did not hesitate with that security to expend that capital even lavishly on the cultivation of the soil and the improvement of property. There was a proposition about to be made to reduce that term to twenty-one years, but, in unison with the feeling we had of supporting the Government as much as we possibly could, and avoiding opposition on all points in which principles of primary importance were not involved, I requested my Friends not to insist on that point, but to accept the proposal of the Government. What happened on this proposal of the Government, which practically reconciled many to the principal provisions of the Bill? Without notice, silently, and availing himself merely of the mechanical regulations of the House, the Chief Secretary for Ireland withdrew that clause before it was even discussed, and, so we find again, on an essential point the measure, which was to be carried, if possible, unanimously, and which certainly the vast majority on both sides were anxious to support, was changed in this important respect.
  Now, Sir, I come to Clause 3, which is virtually the 2nd clause of the Bill; and let me remind the House in popular language, without troubling them to read the Bill, what is the object of the 3rd clause as it appears still in the unaltered Bill. The 3rd clause, in its primary and most important object, was to secure compensation to the tenant for his improvements—a subject on which, I will venture to say, both sides of the House were unanimous: the marrow of all Land Bills—the result on which investigation and discussion have enabled the country to arrive at a mature conclusion, and which, if secured, would, in my opinion, do all that in justice is
  1180
  required. That it should be done completely, that it should be done liberally, that it should be done in a manner by which the spirit of our legislation could not be evaded, but that the tenant should be secured in the full usufruct of all his improvements—that, I say, was the marrow of all Land Bills; and if only that were effected we should effect all that justice required. But, Sir, this clause, while it contained this primary subject, which might fairly and popularly be described as a clause which secured compensation to the tenant for his improvements, also went on to say that compensation should be given for the loss sustained by the tenant on quitting his holding. Now, Sir, these were ambiguous words. They were words evidently which did not refer to compensation for improvements, and it appeared to me necessary that these words should receive some definite meaning. Now, I am perfectly aware that in dealing with this question of the tenure of land in Ireland, after all the discussions I that there have been, after all the attempts at legislation that have been made, and looking at the circumstances of the country generally in reference to this question, it is impossible for us to deal with this in a pedantical spirit; and so far as provisions which refer to existing engagements are concerned my opinion is that the House cannot be too liberal. I agree, therefore, that Her Majesty's Government were justified in their views, if they entertained such views, that on this subject of compensation for improvements, scrutinizing the circumstances connected with the tenure of land in Ireland, it was wise and well that if we did err we should err on the right side; that if we took steps to compensate the tenant on quitting his holding, that compensation should be of a complete character; and I was therefore perfectly prepared, irrespective of securing compensation for improvements, to take the ambiguous words of the Government and give them this interpretation—that instead of compensation on quitting his holding it should be—
  "In respect of unexhausted improvements made by him or any predecessor in title, and of interruption in the completion of any course of husbandry suited to his holding."
  So that, besides having all improvements taken into account, besides receiving

  1181
  compensation for his improvements—the marrow of all Land Bills—the tenant should also, on quitting his holding, be secured the fair usufruct of any husbandry or skill in the tillage of the land which he had not yet received. Now, Sir, I consider that to have been a compensation beyond what mere justice required; but I think it was one which, under the circumstances of the case, a wise policy would suggest and sanction. Well, Sir, under these circumstances, I supposed I should have had to move that Amendment to-day, when, to my great surprise, Her Majesty's Government at the last moment proposed a change in this clause—a change which, so far as I can trace its consequences, after much consideration, gives altogether a new character to this measure; a novel character which, in my opinion, it will be wise for Gentlemen on both sides of the House well to deliberate upon before they sanction. The Committee will observe that this 3rd clause was chiefly and particularly a clause to secure compensation to the tenant for improvements; and it was followed by a sliding scale of the various amounts to which a tenant under such circumstances, quitting his holding and not having enjoyed the usufruct of his improvements, should be entitled. What is now the proposal of the Government? The Government have entirely discarded from this clause all parts of it which refer to compensation for tenant's improvements—the chief subject and marrow of all Land Bills; but they have not altered the sliding scale of compensation, or, rather, they have altered it, and made it more severe. They have extended and established it. This 3rd clause now figures in such a form that my Amendment, which was an Amendment to its secondary and least significant portion—namely, to that degree of compensation which should be given to a tenant for any loss incurred by quitting his holding—now becomes the principal portion of the clause; it becomes, in fact, the clause itself, and it takes this form, that compensation is to be given to any tenant at the termination of his lease, on the assumption that the termination of the occupancy is a grievance for which the tenant ought to be compensated. This clause, then, at present, is a clause which does not conceal that, in the opinion of the framers
  1182
  of this Bill, occupation involves a right of property. It is not brought in under any disguise of securing to the tenant compensation for improvements, or of establishing any liberal construction under which the tenant would not only obtain compensation for the improvements which he had made, but the usufruct of all his exertions would be secured to him; it positively states that the tenant who is disturbed in his holding is to be compensated for the loss which he may incur by that circumstance, according to a tariff of a much severer and much larger kind than the original tariff which was devised, no doubt, after the deliberation of many Cabinets, and with the advice of the wisest men in the most responsible positions, for the purpose of carrying out that which was the object of all Land Bills—namely, compensation to the tenant for improvements.
  I will briefly touch upon the consequences of such an assertion, opposed as it is to all the fundamental principles of our legislation for the country generally. A fashion has grown up lately, in these Irish Bills, of considering the effect of any provisions with reference merely to Ireland, taking what is called an exceptional view of legislation. But I would impress upon the Committee that we must also consider what may be the results of such legislation upon England and Scotland. But before I touch on this subject I would venture to ask the Committee to consider what maybe the practical effect even upon Ireland, of legislation such as this. The Committee are well aware, no doubt, of the character of this Bill, as amended by the proposition of the Government; they are in possession of the new sliding scale; and they are aware that we are considering a clauses limited to this simple assertion—that a tenant who is disturbed in his holding, and a tenant who quits his holding, is to be compensated for the loss which he may thereby incur; and in a possible instance, we know that that compensation may amount to as much as seven years' rental of the land which he holds. The Committee are also aware that land in Ireland is north probably twenty years' purchase, and consequently they are aware that upon the termination of his tenancy, and as a matter of right, under this Bill, any tenant, for the loss of a lease the term

  1183
  of which has expired, may come upon his landlord for the value of at least a third of his freehold. That is the state of affairs. Now, let us see how this will probably work as regards the Irish tenants—the very persons for whom we are asked to violate the fundamental principles of our legislation—the very persons for whom we are asked to take the step precipitately, and not after the deliberations of successive Cabinets—for the deliberations of successive Cabinets had laid quite a different proposition before us; let us, I say, examine how such a proposal will work for the advantage of this class of the Irish people themselves. When the House permitted me, on a former occasion, to make some observations on the principles of this Bill, I ventured to affirm that my principal objection to the 3rd clause—into the details of which it was not at the time convenient to enter—was that, among the many other serious questions which it involved, it destroyed all moral relations between the landlord and tenant. The more I have heard, and the more I have reflected on this clause, the more fully I am convinced that such will be its result. And if that be the result, how will the clause operate? The landlord will no longer acknowledge that this new-fangled tenant—who has what the lawyers would call a contingent remainder to the third of his estate—has any moral claim upon his consideration. He therefore says—"We will both of us stand upon our rights." I do not want to see them both standing upon their rights. I think the tenant and the landlord should mutually assist each other; but I am showing you what, in my opinion, will be the consequences of your legislation, though that legislation is proposed with an entirely different object. The landlord will say—"We must both stand upon our rights. This new-fangled law, which has given you a contingent remainder to the third of my freehold, has at least given me this security, that if you do not pay me your rent I may get rid of you." We have heard a great deal of evictions under different forms and circumstances; but this Bill provides what I should describe as a species of natural eviction. When a tenant does not pay his rent the landlord may get rid of him without his claiming a third of his freehold as compensation. Everyone must feel that, if only in self-defence, the landlord will avail himself of
  1184
  that position, the only position of strength left him. He will wait till the tenant does not pay his rent—and, as far as I have heard, the class of tenants for whom we are legislating in this exceptional way have the habit of falling into arrear with their rent—the landlord will avail himself of the power which is placed in his hands, and then what will occur? You will have farms consolidated, and the very farmers for whom you are taking this perilous step will be swept from the surface of the soil. Either the landlord will entirely assert his authority, or the tenant, finding himself in this position, will revert to those rural ethics with the consequences of which we are all familiar. There will be a new grievance—the payment of rent; and the non-payment of rent will become a principle, asserted by the same rural logic, the startling consequences of which have filled the mind of the country with apprehension and horror almost every day. The argument of the Irish tenant—belonging to the very class that you think you are now setting up by this violation of the fundamental law of the country—will be to this effect—"I have lost my holding because I did not pay my rent; can anything be more flagrantly unjust than that a man should be deprived of his contingent right to a third of the freehold because he does not pay his rent?" That is a natural view, which may lead to a much more successful agitation than any we have yet heard of. The question is unanswerable; we may think it is abstractedly unreasonable, but it is the necessary result of our legislation. And what will be the consequence? Why, that payment of rent will become a grievance, and you will find yourselves in exactly the same position in which you are now placed. There will be great complaints of the consolidation of farms, great complaints of vexatious and tyrannical evictions, and, on the other side, the most violent means by which the supposed rights of the occupiers to property in the soil may be vindicated will be resorted to. And so far from the improvement of the country, so far from terminating all these misunderstandings and heart burnings, which we seem now so anxious upon both sides of the House to bring to a close, you will have the same controversies still raging, only with increased acerbity, and under circumstances and conditions which

  1185
  inevitably must lead to increased bitterness and increased perils to society. I want to ask the Committee to consider what is the inducement for them to encourage the Government in this new line which they are taking. No one can pretend that the number of evictions in Ireland is a sufficient cause for our assenting to the passing of a law which violates, as I venture to say, the cardinal principles of our legislation, and strikes at the basis upon which society rests. If the evictions were as great in number and as aggravated in character as they were sometimes popularly believed to be—but, as it has turned out, most falsely believed to be—that even would not justify our taking such a step as is now proposed. Such a state of things might entail upon us the necessity of devising means which should terminate a general course pernicious and to be deprecated; but it would not, I repeat, justify Parliament in violating the cardinal principles on which, in the past, its legislative action has been based. But we know very well—for the Table of this House is covered with Returns conveying the information, that the number of evictions, so far from justifying such exceptional legislation as is proposed, really would not justify any legislation at all. It was a popular idea three or four years ago that the Irish exodus was occasioned by the evictions of tenants from their holdings; but we have now authentic evidence in our possession that the emigration—which I, for one, do not regard with the favour it meets at the hands of many persons—was not caused by the evictions at all, those reasons being altogether insufficient to produce such enormous and portentous results. But, Sir, I venture to hope I may induce the Committee to feel that, for the sake of the Irish tenants themselves, we ought not to take the course which we are now recommended to take. The clause now before the Committee acknowledges that an occupier has a permanent interest in the soil which he cultivates, and provides that a tenant, when his term of holding ceases, shall come upon society and the Legislature and say—"The termination of my lease is acknowledged by your legislation to be an injury for which I have a right to receive compensation." I think I have said enough to show the Committee that to legislate in that spirit would
  1186
  not be to benefit the Irish themselves. And, Sir, I think further, that the view I am expressing is held by a majority of the Irish farmers, who expect and require something very different from anything contained in the Bill proposed by Her Majesty's Government, either in the first or second instance. Judging by the tenour of the resolutions passed in their Farmers' Clubs, they want something very different from any proposition which Parliament has ever entertained, or from anything which I believe Parliament will ever grant; something which is so utterly unreasonable that it cannot be granted with any regard for the principles by which society is held together.
  But, Sir, if the extraordinary change proposed by the Government will bring no advantage to Ireland, I think we ought to consider what may be the injury and disadvantages which such a course may bring upon other parts of the United Kingdom. The clause, as it stands, applies an abstract principle to the particular case of Ireland; but if it be so applied, I cannot see on what grounds we may flatter ourselves we can limit its application to the landlords and the tenants of Ireland. There being no occasion now to go into details with regard to the matter, I will state, what all will admit, that the landlords and tenants of Ireland have allowed their relations to grow so complicated as to require some regulation and adjustment; but there is a great difference between attempting to legislate in a large and liberal spirit in order to such an end, and proposing a principle which is entirely counter to all the principles of legislation we have hitherto accepted and acted upon. Let those who are able to do so answer the simple question, why the Scotch or the English tenant should not, and might not, demand the application of the same principle to themselves that is proposed to be adopted in favour of the Irish tenant? I want to know, for my own protection, what the argument is in support of the proposition of Her Majesty's Government? so that when the application is attempted to be made to England and to Scotland I may be prepared with an answer. It is no answer at all to tell us that the circumstances of Ireland and England, or of Ireland and Scotland, are different. Why, Sir, we know they are; we have had that ad nauseam: but never until

  1187
  this occasion has the degree of difference reached such a point that we have been asked to violate the first and cardinal principles of our legislation and society, principles which have existed for centuries undisturbed and unchallenged in England. The circumstances of the English and Irish tenants differ, no doubt, and that justifies compensation being paid to the Irish tenant for his improvements—a privilege which neither the English nor the Scotch tenant possesses; but that is no reason for passing a provision which entirely changes the character of the measure as originally proposed, and absolutely concedes to the occupier of the soil a proprietary interest in that soil—a provision which, as the clause is drawn, and so far as I am able to form an opinion, would enable a tenant whose lease was for a less term than thirty-one years to go to the person whose property he had enjoyed at an immense advantage, and say—"For a quarter of a century at a light rent I have enjoyed the use of your soil; my lease is now up, and the Legislature has decided that I have thereby incurred a great injury, so now be prepared to give me the compensation which the generous Legislature of the United Kingdom has conferred upon me." And, Sir, I want to know, also, how, if we embark upon this new legislation, we can limit it even to land? I know that there is a party in this country, and I believe there are some hon. Gentlemen in the House, who disapprove altogether the territorial system of this country. I do not share those opinions, nor shall I, so long as I find, which is not denied, that our territorial settlement has secured to us the most skilful agriculture in Europe, or in the world, and has been—as I think impartial inquirers cannot deny—very favourable to the maintenance of public liberty. I have no fear of appeals to disturb that settlement on broad principles, such as are contained in the Notice of Motion placed on the Table of the House by the hon. Member for Dundalk (Mr. Callan), who says, in effect, to the English landlords—"You must be prepared to give up your estates; for this Land Bill is only preliminary to inquiry into the tenure of land in England." That was frank on the part of the hon. Member, and, so long as the existing territorial system is assailed on such broad grounds as these, it may, I
  1188
  think, be triumphantly vindicated; but the danger is that the system may be sapped by such legislation as is now proposed. If hon. Members assent to what the Government is now recommending, they may, perhaps, be furnishing precedents to be hereafter turned against themselves. In these days of progress nothing is more natural than that such precedents should be turned against the territorial classes; and it will only be when hon. Members find their legitimate privileges as landowners surreptitiously and subtly attacked, that they will discover their position to have been weakened by their own acts as Members of this House. I wish hon. Members would fairly consider this question, and I will make another attempt, before sitting down, to bring the Committee back to its original tone of feeling respecting the measure as first brought forward—a measure which was, as we know, the result of many Cabinet Councils, and of the most anxious deliberations of able men acting under the gravest responsibility. They gave us their matured plan, and we agreed, without party feeling, to assist them in carding it, waiving objections on many points, such as the Ulster custom, on which we differed from the Government. We, having regard to the responsibility of Ministers, concurred in giving a liberal interpretation to their conduct; and, such being the case, I ask why, at this moment, a vast majority on both sides of the House having so warmly and generously welcomed the Government Bill as the result of grave deliberation, we should suddenly be called upon to make a sweeping alteration, and to consider what is practically a new measure, framed on principles totally different from those which appeared in the original Bill? The Government, it may be said, do this to please some few supporters below the Gangway; but I can hardly conceive that to be possible. The right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government has more than two-thirds of the House of Commons ready to support his original scheme with no very important alteration, and it looks like levity to disregard the warm support he has received in order to gain the voices of some few, I will not say groundlings, but to please some half-dozen hon. Gentlemen who sit on the opposite side of the House. I cannot believe, then, that this is the

  1189
  cause of the change. Is it due to the desire to obtain popularity for the Bill in Ireland, where it is not popular, and to raise some enthusiasm there in its behalf? Now, it is impossible that the Bill can be popular in Ireland. No Land Bill which could be brought forward in the British House of Commons would be likely to be popular in that country. The Bill before the House may be a wise, necessary, and temperate measure; but the resolutions which have been passed with respect to it by the Irish tenant-farmers clearly show that no attempt of this kind has any chance; of ingratiating itself with them. I think I have given some reasons to the Committee why this pernicious proviso should not pass, even in the interest of the tenantry of Ireland themselves. To them it can only bring disaster and discontent; it will create those very differences and disorders which we have so long deprecated, and under which the country has so long suffered. The Committee is called upon to sanction principles which—I wish to use no terms of exaggeration—I most sincerely believe are calculated to be productive, even in our time, of the most serious consequences. All I ask the Government to do under these circumstances is to return to their original scheme. The Bill as it was introduced to our notice was accepted by the House of Commons, even though they were dissatisfied with many of its provisions. Ought not that success to content the Government? Would not a wise and prudent Minister be satisfied with this triumph in dealing with a subject so difficult? I make this final appeal to him, and I earnestly hope the Committee will not sanction the change? which has been made, and that they will accept the Amendment which I now, Sir, place in your hands.
  Amendment proposed,
  In page 3, line 4, after the word "compensation." to insert the words "in respect of unexhausted improvements made by him or any predecessor in title, and of interruption in the completion of any course of husbandry suited to his holding."—(Mr. Disraeli.)
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Sir, the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Disraeli) commenced his speech by what I am afraid I must call a declaration of war. He seems to have said to himself—
  1190
  "A way to Heaven, respective lenity,
  And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now!"
  The right hon. Gentleman evidently labours under the impression that he is one of the most ill-used men in the world. It is clear he believes that he has fully mastered the details of this Bill as it was-originally laid before the House; that he gave to its provisions a confiding and generous support; and that it is only owing to the gross misconduct of the Government in altering its clauses and thus remodelling it that he feels called upon, with much reluctance, and with a great measure of pain to himself, to change the position with respect to it which he at first took up. Such a spectacle is worthy of commiseration if it were only a little better founded on the real facts of the ease. But, as it is, I have striven to resist the tender emotion of the right hon. Gentleman, and I trust the Committee also will endeavour to do so, until I have laid before them a view of the question which may, perhaps, seem to them to disentitle the right hon. Gentleman to some of that sympathy to which he has advanced so large a claim. In the first place, it will be in the recollection of the Committee that the right hon. Gentleman declined to pledge himself to anything in this Bill. The confidence which we have so much abused, and the hopes which we have excited, were entirely limited to a few words written at the top of the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman expressed his readiness to allow us to take the second reading, being of opinion that it was expedient that in some respect or other the law with regard to occupation in Ireland should be altered; but he carefully guarded himself against any other admission. Whoever else, therefore, has a right to complain of our conduct, in introducing alterations into the Bill, the right hon. Gentleman has none. The right hon. Gentleman told us that he had great struggles with regard to Ulster tenant-right, but as that was in the Bill, he had got over those difficulties. He says his confidence in us is shaken in consequence of our conduct with reference to the 2nd clause. But the case with regard to that clause is simply this—The Committee were pretty well agreed that, in lieu of Clause 2 as it originally stood, a clause should be brought up at the end of the Bill applying the same principles as were applied to the Ulster customs to

  1191
  customs identical with them in other parts of Ireland. That together with some alteration in the 6th clause dealing with the case of an outgoing tenant, was considered by the Committee a sufficient substitution for the 2nd clause. Yet this is made a grievance of by the right hon. Gentleman, and is one of the causes of that wonderful change of mind which he appears to have undergone. But there is another equally dreadful, and that is, that, having undertaken to concede a lease to the tenant for thirty-one years, we have recalled the concession. But what is the fact of the matter? The original clause was not to concede a lease, but to enable the landlord to tender a lease to the tenant, and if the tenant did not accept the lease then he was to be excluded from the benefit of the provisions of the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman, in the excess of his virtuous indignation, contrived entirely to invert and transpose the facts of the case. The clause was withdrawn mainly for two reasons. One was, that it seemed to bear hardly on the tenant who might have a good right to compensation and did not wish to take a lease; and the other was that it was found impossible to put in the power of the court the preparation of such a lease as that without raising the question which they were most desirous to keep out of the cognizance of the court, as far as they could—the question of an arbitrary valuation of rent. Instead of this clause we have substituted one by which, if the landlord and the tenant can agree to a thirty-one years' lease, it shall be a bar to the claim for compensation; so that we have relieved the tenant from the compulsion to which he would have been subjected under the old clause, and saved the landlord from that from which we recoil—the notion of submitting to the courts what rent a holding should pay. This, then, is another dreadful injury which it appears the right hon. Gentleman has sustained. But there is yet another, and that is the one with which we are chiefly concerned this evening. He says that whereas, in the 3rd clause, as it stood originally, we gave compensation to the tenant in regard of the loss sustained by him in quitting his holding, and whereas that was mixed up with and placed under the same scale with improvements, we have now separated the two, using instead of the words "compensation re-
  1192
  gard being had to" the words "compensation for" loss sustained by him in quitting his holding. In striking out the words "regard being had to," and putting "for" instead of them, lies, therefore, it would seem, that dreadful mischief which now arouses the wrath of the right hon. Gentleman, and turns the milk of his nature into gall. It appears to have had a similar effect on the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Dr. Ball), who contended, the other night that some dreadful difference existed between those two clauses, which I confess I am unable to discover. The whole grievance amounts to this—that whereas we at first put two things under the scale of compensation, "improvements" and occupancy," we now only put one and remove the other from it. That is the whole grievance of the right hon. Gentleman, and that grievance is a little diminished, by the fact that my right hon. Friend at the head of the Government gave notice on the second reading that it was his intention to make this separation. I think it is hardly necessary for me to say any more on the grievances which have sent Achilles back to his tent. I would now observe that it has been stated—and, I believe, not contradicted—that the Amendments which the right hon. Gentleman has put on the Paper, shortly after those of which my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland gave notice, were agreed to at a meeting of the right hon. Gentleman's supporters prior to my right hon. Friend's Amendments being laid on the Table. [Mr. DISRAELI: That is my case.] But another grievance of the right hon. Gentleman's is that, as he alleges, these Amendments were placed on the Table surreptitiously and secretly. It seems to be made a ground of complaint against my right hon. Friend that he did not give notice of his Amendments, and that he did not give notice of his Notice. Now, the right hon. Gentleman's speech is one thing and his Motion is another; and, as far as I could gather from his speech, to which I listened most attentively, the one has nothing to do with the other. His speech consisted really in supporting these propositions; but, in addition to being hostile to the legalization of Ulster tenant-right, he is also hostile to any concession

  1193
  to the tenants beyond compensation for improvements. These are the two statements I gather from the right hon. Gentleman's speech. We are not now dealing with the Amendments to the clause, and therefore I shall not mention them further than to take notice of that declaration of the right hon. Gentleman, which throws rather a curious light upon the grievance that he says he has sustained in having been deceived into giving countenance to this Bill, which did nothing but legalize the Ulster custom of giving compensation to tenants who are disturbed in their holdings. I have my choice which I shall answer—the speech of the right hon. Gentleman or his Amendments, because the speech has nothing to do with the Amendments, and the Amendments have nothing to do with the speech; but as it is upon the Amendments, and not upon the speech that we shall have to vote, I will, with the permission of the House, offer a few remarks upon them, because they raise a question that, I think, is worthy of some consideration, for the right hon. Gentleman, who ought to know best the value of his own Amendments, has not said a single word or made a single comment about them. The propositions laid down by the right hon. Gentleman are two—the first is, that the improvements ought to be included under the scale which limits the value that is to be given; the second is, that compensation for loss on quitting a holding should be limited to compensation for improvements, and for being interrupted in the course of husbandry. Those were the two propositions of the right hon. Gentleman, and I was anxious to know what could be said in favour of them. Nothing has been said in their favour, and therefore I will take the liberty of making a few observations against them. As to his proposition with regard to his scale the right hon. Gentleman has in his favour the authority of the Government, for it was our original proposition; but when we came to work it out we found difficulties that we had not altogether anticipated. That is apparent on the face of the Bill. We found that we could not put all improvements under one class, and we were, therefore, compelled them to divide them into two classes, putting buildings and reclamation of land in one class, and all other improvements in the other. But
  1194
  that was a very awkward proceeding, and the further we went the more difficulty we found, because it would happen that a man who had made very great improvements, and suffered very great injury on quitting his holding, would be prevented by the scale from getting compensation for the injury he sustained in quitting that holding, for the very reason that he had made those great improvements, and vicê versâ, which it appeared to us might work an injustice. There is, however, another view of the case. Improvements are things which, it seems to mo, do not require a limit for these reasons—they are things gone and past; they are capable of valuation, they raise simple and obvious questions, such as "Who made them?" and "What are they worth?" and these questions can only be decided by the evidence offered to the court as to what these improvements are worth and the amount the tenant ought to have. There is no reason that I know of for limiting the quantum of compensation, in that case any more than there is for limiting the quantum in an ordinary case of damages. I will not go into the merits of the question of compensation for eviction, because that is of an entirely different nature altogether, being in the nature of an estimate. It is something future, and must be, to a certain extent, vague and conjectural; it is therefore, most desirable, in the interest of the landlord, that that compensation should be limited, and that it should not be left indefinite, vague, or to the discretion of a court of any kind, or to any person. Besides that, it is desirable that there should be a limit, if it was only to fix some sort of an approximate standard for the scale on which compensation in this matter should be given; because, when you have injuries of this nature you cannot deal with them alike, for various men will assess things very differently, and, therefore, landlords would have a right to complain if we left indefinite the jurisdiction on this matter. These were sufficient reasons to reconsider this subject—which, after all, is not of the first consequence—and it will be for the Committee to say whether we could reasonably have done anything different. But this, I will say, that anything more preposterous than to suppose that the bringing forward such a proposition—of which notice was given on the

  1195
  second reading—in such a manner should prevent the right hon. Gentleman, or any set of hon. Gentlemen, who had begun by having confidence in this measure, from approving it and having confidence in the conduct of the Government cannot be imagined. Then, as to the second part of the right hon. Gentleman's proposition—namely, that compensation should be given for interference with the course of husbandry, not only has he said nothing in favour of that proposition, but he has pronounced an opinion distinctly against it; because he has said that, in his opinion, the justice of the case will be entirely met by compensation being given for improvements. You cannot, however, call husbandry an improvement, because the right hon. Gentleman puts it in addition to the clause about improvements; and therefore, I have the right hon. Gentleman's authority against his own clause, that authority being strengthened by the fact that he has not said a single word in its favour. This gives me a right to say a little against it. There is one thing which I suppose hon. Gentlemen who sit behind him will listen to—namely, that in this clause the right hon. Gentleman has done what I should have found it very difficult to do. It appears to me that everything except the tare abstract law is entirely different in the case of England from that of Ireland with regard to the tenure of land; and, although the right hon. Gentleman fears that whatever we do in Ireland will be imported into England, his ingenuity has been such that he has actually contrived to propose for Ireland a clause that might be made a precedent in England on the only point, as far as I am aware, which his felicitous ingenuity could select for this Amendment. But, passing over that, the people, if any, who would be entitled to compensation for quitting their holdings are the small holders, because the large holders will naturally make improvements. What, Sir, is the farming of the man with a £5 holding? I am afraid it is a fearful monotony of potatoes. What compensation can he have for his course of husbandry being interrupted? Will four or five years' scientific culture, which has brought certain crops out of the ground, entitle him to be treated well? Has he a single thing which entitles him to be compensated, not only for what he has
  1196
  spent, but also for what he would have got out of the land had he been allowed to go on to completion? What consolation is that to the small people with whom we are dealing? Yet, those are the very people for whom this scale is intended. The large people can take care of themselves; it is the small ones who want to be benefited; and this being the ingenious way which the right hon. Gentleman has selected for doing it, I do not wonder that he had not a word to say for his proposition. He made a statement which showed that he entirely disapproved the Amendment he introduced, because anything more entirely subversive of his intention I cannot conceive. The truth is, there is no reason for selecting the course of husbandry or any single injury. This is a specimen, but the principle, if good for anything, is good not only with regard to the course of husbandry, but for all the injury a man might sustain by having to quit his occupation; and why he should pick out this particular thing, which would not apply to the farmers of Ireland, but would apply to the farmers of England, I cannot conceive. Sir, I think I have answered the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman. I say "answered" it, although the truth is he has not said anything relating to it. And now I wish to point out, because we are challenged on this subject, that although the right hon. Gentleman moved the Amendment he, at the same time told us that he disapproved it; and, in fact, it was his opinion that there ought to be no compensation at all for disturbance in a holding. That is a question well worthy the consideration of the House, and I think he has a perfect right to call upon the Government for an answer on that point. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dublin University (Dr. Ball) told us the other night that we treated eviction or a disturbance of holding as a wrong, and punished it accordingly, Now Sir, I deny that we treat it as a wrong. The disturbance of a tenant by eviction is a legal act, and a man is right in doing it. But though we admit so much, and although we treat it as a right, yet it is a right the exercise of which is peculiarly liable to abuse. The exercise of that right carries with it what jurists call "imperfect moral obligations," which a man cannot dis-

  1197
  charge simply and alone, and without considering many collateral circumstances, if he is a just, honourable, and benevolent man. It is a right the legality of which we have never denied or sought to set aside, but it is a right which ought to be exercised with great care, discretion, kindness, and moderation, because, if it be wrongly exercised, it is a calamity not only to the tenant, not only, as frequently happens in Ireland, to the parties who execute that right, but also to the neighbourhood, the county, the country, and the Empire at large. We have, therefore, a right to say that, for the sustenance of good order and the welfare of society, we must jealously watch the exercise of this right, guard carefully against its abuse, and show to every landlord that the law, as far as it can, would have him act as a good and an honourable man. I put it to any person whether he would himself evict a small tenant, and turn him out on the wide world without a shilling in his pocket to seek his fortune? There is nothing in the law as it stands, whether in England, Scotland, or Ireland, to compel him not to do it; but is the law what it ought to be? Is there not a duty attendant upon such an act? Look at where that duty is systematically violated—though I do not say that such a thing happens in Ireland now, because there are causes that prevent it; but it has happened, and it is to what has happened in Ireland in other days that we owe the sad necessity which at present exists of dealing with this question. You must remember that to turn a poor man out of his holding is not an act of an insignificant character. To the tenant it sometimes means the ruin of his expectations, and very frequently, indeed, his sinking out of the class of life in which he lived into another far below. You must remember, also, that the man who evicts, or has the power of evicting, is frequently both the judge and executioner in his own cause. He tries it himself, and inclines, as we all do, to his own opinion and interest, and for that, as things stand at present, there is no remedy. Remember that there is no possibility by which a man, however prudent he may be, can guard himself against the exercise of this right in Ireland, because, owing to the competition for land in Ireland, if a man was to ask for any sort of security hundreds would
  1198
  be ready to bid against him, and therefore no prudent man, be he ever so wise in his own interest, can guard himself from the exercise of this right. More might be said on the subject; but what I wish to point out is that even, although this right be not exercised, its existence in its present shape is a standing danger to the very foundation of society in Ireland. The fact is, that a man who has this power of eviction can so use that power as to enable him to extort terms from his tenant which from another point of view he would not be enabled to exact. It keeps up feelings of bitterness between the two classes, and will keep them up, unless we can make the poor man securer than at present and teach moderation to some of the rich. Look at the abominable system of the perpetual issue of notices to quit, so that, from the time a man enters upon his tenancy, even in the first year, notice may be given to him, and he is always kept under fear of immediate eviction—a case which constantly happens in Ireland. All this might be endured if it were not for the evil that has sprung from it and the terrible state in which Ireland now is. There is no doubt that hard conduct by the landlord and evictions in days long past have popularized murder in Ireland, and have made people look upon a murderer as a man not entirely in the wrong. When this feeling has once been created, observe the progress it makes. It has now passed from the landlord and tenant to the people themselves; outrages which used to be mainly directed against the landlord and persons in his employ are now directed against others. No injury is too slight—the discarding of a servant, the dismissal of a porter by a railway official, underselling by a tradesman—anything is a sufficient excuse for shedding blood. What is the fountain of bitterness from which these waters first flowed? Has not this demoralizing practice sprung up mainly because the law did not give the tenant relief, and the tenant grew to think he was entitled to take the law into his own hands? I was very much struck by a passage in Judge Longfield's essay on this subject. If, he says, you give fixity of tenure in Ireland, you will only alter a heading in the newspapers, and for "Agrarian Outrage" you will have to read "Domestic Tragedy;" because these practices, nursed by the evils

  1199
  of land tenure, have become fully domesticated among the people. This being the state of the case, the Government felt that it was no longer endurable, and the object of the present Bill is to remedy it, as far as legislation can do so. We have not, however, treated eviction as a wrong, nor have we given damages for eviction. We have given compensation—which is of course the same thing as damages, one being the Latin and the other the English form of the word—to any person for any loss he shall sustain in quitting his holding. But we have not imposed an arbitrary fine. In this country we have a tenure of leases renewable on payment of a fine by the tenant. That tenure has not worked sufficiently well to encourage the Government to propose any such system in Ireland. All we have done has been to say to the tenant—"Prove the loss you have sustained, and within a certain limit you shall receive compensation." We have not altered the tenure of land; we have studiously avoided doing so; but we have said where a wrong can be proved we will give within moderate and fair limits a summary remedy. That is the whole effect of what we have done, and I beg hon. Members to read the Bill and compare this statement with the statement about the invasion of the rights of property and the establishment of dangerous principles put forward by the right hon. Gentleman. No doubt, besides the relief given to the tenant, we have another view. We do wish to put, in a moderate and not an extreme manner, some sort of check upon the practice of eviction. In our view, eviction is a most weighty and momentous step, and we are anxious it should not be lightly taken. At the same time, the discretion rests with the landlord; he may take it or not as he pleases. Now, what are the objections raised to the course we propose? It is described as an invasion of the rights of property. But our object more than anything else was to avoid any invasion of the rights of property, and was, further, to strengthen the present possession of property in Ireland. We find property in Ireland at this day guarded by 14,000 police and 25,000 soldiers; and even this force cannot protect the lives of people who have committed no other offence than that of being the proprietors
  1200
  of the soil. We felt that there was no permanency about such a state of things; that if property was to remain property, you must not rely solely upon force for its protection, and that, not merely for the sake of the tenant, but for the sake of the landlord, something must be done in the way of conciliation. I can assure hon. Gentlemen that, in our opinion, foolish as some of them may think it, this Bill is the foundation of a better state of things in Ireland—a state of things in which each man shall respect the rights of his neighbour, the tenant the rights of the landlord, the landlord those of the tenant. Again it is said, and no one would be more disposed than I should be to yield to such an argument, that the Bill offends against the principles of political economy. In one sense there is no doubt it is so. Political economy belongs to no nation; it is of no country. It is the science of the rules for the protection, the accumulation, the distribution, and the consumption of wealth. It will assert itself whether you wish it or not. It is founded on the attributes of the human mind, and no power can change it. It teaches you the best way of accumulating the most wealth in the shortest time; and if our object was to accumulate for Ireland the most wealth in the shortest time, it would be perfectly right to try the Bill by the principles of political economy. But that is not the object of the Bill. Our object was a different one. It was to give security to life; to save society from rushing down towards destruction; to give to property the security it is fast losing; to give confidence to people who will not trust each other; to break down the mischiefs and the abuses of centuries; and give some sort of common ground upon which people might unite. These were the objects we had in view, and it is by its likelihood of attaining these objects, and not by its conformity or nonconformity to the principles of political economy, that the Bill must be be tried. The principles of political economy! Why, we violate them every day. What rule of political economy is better established than that every man shall be free to exercise any calling he likes? Yet we have a system of trade licences. Another equally well-established rule of political economy is that there shall be no monopoly of anything. Yet we have just raised £7,000,000

  1201
  to buy up for the State a monopoly in telegraphing, and the State has long had a monopoly in the Post Office. The truth is you cannot settle all the complicated relations of mankind by the rules of political economy. Political economy is the science of wealth, and where wealth is the question you cannot do better than follow it. But then, says the right hon. Gentleman, the question is not only agrarian, but political. If he will only allow me to substitute police for political, I shall be inclined to agree with him. He says we ought to be prepared to do for Scotland and England what we are doing for Ireland. Now, observe that every single ground I have put forward on behalf of the Government and in support of the Bill has been exclusively on Irish ground. There is not one which rests on any point common to the two countries. Happily, most happily, none of the things I have mentioned as regards this Bill apply even in the smallest degree to Great Britain. It has not been on any abstract principles, it has not been with the idea of introducing any improvement into the law on political or jurisprudential principles that the Bill has been brought forward. It has been brought forward after careful investigation of the mischiefs now existing in Ireland, and with the sole view of remedying them. It does not alter property, and we believe if it passes it will leave Irish landlords possessed of a better hold upon their estates than they have at present. I rather think they are of that opinion, too. The right hon. Gentleman's zeal on this subject has been warm; but we have seen no proof that it is shared in this House by Irish landlords generally. Of course, we have had to steer between two extremes—between Scylla, impersonated by the right hon. Gentleman, who tells us we should do nothing more than give compensation for improvements, and Charybdis, represented by those who advocate fixity of tenure. We have gone to neither extreme. We have endeavoured without shaking the foundation of property to give adequate relief to the tenants; we have entirely repudiated the notion of fixity of tenure; and I think the Irish landlords are very wise in acquiescing. What would be the only result supposing the Bill failed? Why, they would be in this most miserable position: they would find
  1202
  themselves in the claws of the right hon. Gentleman, who would then be at the head of the Government with a fine working minority in this House. When that time came they might indeed tremble. I think I already hear the speech which the right hon. Gentleman would make to the House. he would say it was a mockery and a delusion to give compensation to the tenant in case of eviction; such a remedy would fail because it did not go deep enough; and the only panacea for Ireland was fixity of tenure, with a periodical re-valuation of rents. It may be that the right hon. Gentleman will fail; but if he succeeds I am sure he will leave the case of Ireland much worse than he finds it. It was bad enough before, for "hope deferred maketh the heart sick;" but hope baffled and destroyed rouses the most violent and revengeful passions. I can only trust we shall not have the disagreeable reflection that this Session, which opened, as some of us thought, with auspices so bright for Ireland, will leave no other monument behind than a Coercion Bill—a measure odious even to those whose misfortune it is to prepare it and carry it through the House. If that result comes to pass it will only remind us once more how much easier it is to stir up men to return evil for evil than to induce them to overcome evil with good.
  MR. GATHORNE HARDY: Sir, I think that most of us will feel that the speech which has just been addressed to us by the Chancellor of the Exchequer can hardly be considered an answer to the speeches which he has formerly delivered in this House. The conclusion at which the right hon. Gentleman has arrived he imputes partly to dread of future inconsistency in those hon. Gentlemen who sit on this side of the House; but his remarks, I think, might be much more properly applied to himself, who has been guilty of an inconsistency so gross and deliberate that it is perfectly unexampled in political history. Sir, two years ago—and only two years ago—subsequent to that great revolution which was to change all his opinions, the right hon. Gentleman got up in the House and said that, after sitting for two years upon Committees examining into the condition of Ireland, he had arrived at the conclusion that no grievance in the relations of landlord

  1203
  and tenant had been established; and he went on to say that things in Ireland ought to be conducted upon the principles of political economy. Sir, that political economy, which from the Bench opposite he has now thrown overboard, he then declared was the panacea for all the ills and wrongs of Ireland. I know not, Sir, what has changed the opinions of the right hon. Gentleman, except it be his change of place. The right hon. Gentleman has, again and again, imputed much inconsistency to us who sit upon this side; but he is the last man in this House who ought to warn against inconsistency. Let it never be forgotten, Sir, that the right hon. Gentleman remained a Member of a Government which was preparing and producing a Reform Bill that he admits he was opposed to. Although, Sir, he held views opposed to his Colleagues upon that matter, he did not leave that Government, nor did he openly denounce it. On the contrary, he remained a Member of that Government, and was a party to a Reform Bill of which he did not approve. It was only afterwards that he expressed opinions at variance with it. Nay, even when he was in Opposition, he voted for the Resolution on which the Earl of Derby's Government was turned out of Office in 1859, which Resolution was founded upon that very lowering of the franchise which the right hon. Gentleman afterwards repudiated. I think, therefore, the right hon. Gentleman has little cause for reflecting upon us for our inconsistency. He should rather look at home, and consider what he has done, and is still doing. Political enonomy, it seems, now is to be discarded. Political economy will no longer serve his purpose. It served very well in Opposition; but it will not serve upon the Bench upon which the right hon. Gentleman now sits. Formerly, we were told by the right hon. Gentleman that the relationship between landlord and tenant in Ireland ought not to be settled without due regard to the principles of political economy; but he now tells us that they may be settled without reference to any such consideration. He says that the relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland are so peculiar that they cannot be settled as they are in England or Scotland. But I would ask him, have there been no evictions in the Highlands? Have there been
  1204
  no clearances there? The right hon. Gentleman told us that he has said nothing but what is applicable to Ireland alone, and that he has argued this question as one solely affecting that country. Now, Sir, I say that he has done nothing of the kind. He put the argument upon the distinct foundation that there was a moral duty existing between the landlord and the tenant. Why, Sir, is there no such thing as a moral duty existing between landlords and tenants in England and Scotland? Is moral duty confined to Ireland? The right hon. Gentleman, I maintain, in putting the question upon that footing, treats it as a question affecting the whole united Empire. What we affirm is—and the right hon. Gentleman has said nothing to contradict our assertion—that the action which the Government are now taking will form a precedent both for England and Scotland. But I will go a little farther. We are told that these evictions are not, strictly speaking, wrong in point of law, but that they are liable to abuse. Let me ask the right hon. Gentleman, what relation is there between two persons which is not liable to abuse? Are not the relations between master and servant liable to abuse? The right hon. Gentleman may say the servant has no claim to property in his place. If you put this question upon the ground of moral duty, I do not see why a discharged servant should not be placed upon the same footing as a discharged tenant, and why he should not have so many months' or years' wages given him on discharge as compensation for the loss of his place. All relations are liable to abuse. [Mr. LOWE: I am, it seems, liable to abuse.] If so, the right hon. Gentleman has brought the liability on himself by the very strong language in which he has thought proper to address us on this side. We have been told that the murders which have been committed in Ireland have their root in the grievances of Ireland. But it seems to have been overlooked by the right hon. Gentleman that the vindictive murders to which he referred—of masters for having dismissed their servants, of persons who have entered into competition in trade, are not crimes having their origin in the occupation of land. This moral duty argument, therefore, should not be confined to evictions; and have there been no cases of vindictive mur-

  1205
  ders in England because servants have been dismissed—no trade outrages? If we look at the history of the matter, we shall find that it does not bear out what the right hon. Gentleman has said with respect to evictions. There has, for instance, been a very much larger proportion of evictions in Ulster than in any of the other Provinces, and yet Ulster has been free from the crime which disgraces the other Provinces, Moreover, if you look properly at this question you will find that the vast proportion of these evictions are evictions for non-payment of rent, which this Bill does not touch. I maintain that evictions have not been the cause of agrarian crime, and I say that that is proved by the condition of Ulster, where the evictions have been proportionately most numerous, the majority being for non-payment of rent. In Ulster there has been one eviction out of 1,260 holdings; in Munster, one out of 4,289 holdings; in Leinster, one out of 3,295 holdings; and in Connaught, one out of 2,684 holdings. Now, Sir, if this be the case—if we find more evictions in Ulster, where agrarian outrage is comparatively unknown—I maintain that the evictions themselves do not form alone such a ground-work as to justify the legislation which the Government proposes. The right hon. Gentleman speaks of the condition of particular districts of Ireland in which murder has been popularized, and says that the grievances of Ireland have been the cause of the wholesale murders; but surely, before the Committee is asked to legislate upon such a footing, they must first come to the conclusion that they are about to meet the evils which have so popularized murder. When the Committee is asked to pass a clause of this nature, surely they should have some sort of assurance that they are passing a clause which will effect the object in view. Now, have we any signs of that? On the contrary, in every Tenant-Farmers' Club in Ireland the Government scheme is repudiated. We find that the people, who have taken an active part in the agitation of the matter, have all repudiated it; and we find, further, that the Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church have sent home a distinct intimation on the subject. And here, Sir, I may say that it is a remarkable thing that the Roman Catholic Bishops should continually instruct the Irish Members
  1206
  respecting their duties in this House. In delicate phraseology no doubt, but still in terms distinct enough, the Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, as represented by Dr. Furlong, have condemned this Bill as being wholly inadequate for its purposes; and they ask for things which I trust this House will never grant, because they are subversive of every right of property which anyone can exercise. What, let me ask, will be the effect of this clause? Will it, or will it not, create something which does not at present exist? In the discussion upon the Ulster tenant-right clause the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government and the Chief Secretary for Ireland uniformly asserted that they were treating the subject as virtually one of covenant between the landlord and tenant. In the 1st clause, therefore, we were dealing only with the subject as between landlord and tenant, and we were not called upon to put upon the landlord anything to which he had not virtually given his assent; but when we come to the 3rd clause we find ourselves in a totally different position. It is because the landlord does not assent that we are subjecting him to this new piece of legislation, the effect of which will be that when he evicts a tenant except for non-payment of rent he will be liable to damages. In many cases, and almost uniformly in the case of small tenants, landlords in Ireland, when they have found it necessary to remove tenants, even for non-payment of rent, have acted in a kind spirit, and have forgiven them their arrears and even assisted them with money to emigrate. But I what right have you to turn a generous and charitable practice in respect of small tenancies, answering to that moral duty you have described, into a legal; obligation, and to extend it coereively to all tenancies and impose it upon all landlords? I say that by doing this you are creating a property which did not exist before. You are giving a man something which he never had before, and you cannot give it him without taking it from somebody else. The right hon. Gentleman said that to grant fixity of tenure would necessitate the compensation of landlords out of the Consolidated Fund; but if you take away part, is it not in principle the same as taking the whole? If it be wrong to take away twenty-one years' purchase without com-

  1207
  pensation, upon what principle are you to take away seven years' purchase without it? Is there anything in the circumstances of the tenant which can justify the House in so legislating, or even the landlords in so acting, except the dictates of compassionate feeling? My right hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire has been attacked for what he has said with respect to this clause and its alteration. What he said was this—that as originally drawn the clause was ambiguous in its language, and that some such Amendment as the one he proposed would be necessary. He recognized the improvements, and put down upon the Notice Paper an Amendment expanding what was originally in the Bill. In the clause, as it stood, regard was to be had to the improvements made by the tenant or his predecessors in title, and to the loss sustained by him in quitting his holding, but the former part has now been struck out. It has thus become clear that the scale of compensation originally laid down was to cover the improvements, and the damages for quitting the holding Now, however, although the improvements have been withdrawn, the scale, instead of being made lower, has been made practically higher. First of all, you were to pay for improvements upon a certain scale; then you cut out the improvements, and yet you put in damages quite equal to what you were prepared to give for improvements and loss of tenancy together. Surely, this is a most important alteration of the Bill. Then there was a clause by which the landlord was entitled to offer a thirty-one years' lease, and if the tenant refused to accept it the landlord was free from further claims. That clause is to be struck out of the Bill. What answer have we to the remarks made by my right hon. Friend on that subject? We are told that there will be something else in the Bill which will modify this; but as yet the new clause is not on the Paper. It is therefore rather hard to call upon us to approve of something which we have never seen, and which is to be substituted for a clause which has been, or will be, removed from the Bill. The question of compensation for disturbance comes before us for the first time in the Amendment of the Chief Secretary for Ireland in a bare and naked form. In Ireland, hitherto, the tenant who was obliged to
  1208
  give up possession because his lease had terminated has not received anything for the cessation of his lease; the tenant has been evicted without any right to claim compensation from his landlord for the mere fact of eviction. Now, if this Bill is carried he will get compensation for that which never belonged to him, and be able to demand it from a person who was never bound to give it to him. If the landlord, without harshly evicting him or forgetting in any way his moral duty, at the termination of a lease anything short of thirty-one years, says—"I do not wish you to continue my tenant any longer;" then the tenant is empowered to go to his landlord and say—"I am entitled to seven years' rental because you terminate my lease. ["No, no!"] I will explain what I mean. I know that the seven years' rental may be cut down in consequence of other circumstances; but so far from the tenant being expected, as my right hon. Friend (Mr. Lowe) has just said, to claim what he is to get, it was distinctly stated by the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government that the seven years was to be the starting point, and it was the landlord who was to cut down the amount. What is it you do by this Bill? At the close of a tenancy on a lease, or by notice to quit, the tenant is to bring in his bill—and he brings it in at the highest point, saying to the landlord—"If you object to the demand, it is for you to show the Judge why it should be cut down." Is it consistent, I do not say with the rights of property, but with common sense, to throw upon a man who is paying something for which your very legislation admits that he was never indebted the onus of proving that he never owed it, and of cutting down the claim as well as he can? It is as if when you had paid a bill to one of your tradesmen and he brought it in again you were not to be entitled to produce the receipt, but to be obliged to go through the account to prove that you never had some of the articles. It has been clearly understood, in regard to leases lapsing by virtue of time, that tenants would never have such a right as this Bill proposes to give them. Numbers of leases have been given in Ireland on that understanding. I know of one instance in which a gentlemen spent £5,000 or £6,000 upon property he bought, and let it on a nineteen years' lease. Being a Scotchman he considered

  1209
  that that would cover everything; but now he will be called upon to pay compensation to his tenant for loss of occupancy on the termination of his lease. ["No, no!"] Then I will put it in this way. His tenant will be able to come to him at the close of his tenancy, and, if he does not renew it, say—"You must pay me damages for my removal, or you must show me the reason why [The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER: The clause will only apply to the case of leases made after the passing of this Act.] Then I am wrong; because I am speaking of an existing lease. But suppose a man gives a lease in the same way after the passing of this Act, that will be the result, and you will prevent by this step the granting of improving leases, which are the best things you can have for the country, And there will be no means of getting rid of this provision in leases subsequent to the passing of the Act, because by this clause, for the first time within my knowledge of Acts of Parliament, contracts are absolutely forbidden. I will say one word as to why we should give a definition of this process. I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend (Mr. Disraeli) in thinking that compensation for unexhausted improvements made by the tenant and for interruption in the completion of any course of husbandry suited to his holding is in itself sufficient to do justice to him; but, at the same time, I am quite aware that there is a, feeling in Ireland, and that, to a certain extent, there has been a practice in Ireland, in accordance with which landlords actuated by generous motives have, with great liberality, helped tenants who left their holdings. But now the matter is to be referred to a court, and yet you are going to send it without any definition to guide the Judge, or anything on which he can found a decision. It is most important that you should in a question of this kind, which has never arisen between landlord and tenant before, give the Judge some basis upon which he may act. What sort of basis is that to be? We say there is no wrong in eviction in itself, and that has been admitted by the right hon. Gentleman opposite. we say, however, further, there may happen to be cases where a man has entered upon a course of husbandry and would be injured by a sudden eviction; and in such cases the Judge would have power to interfere.
  1210
  If no such course has been entered upon, and if there be no unexhausted improvements in the case, then I think there is no wrong and no loss in the event of eviction. In the arguments which have been addressed to the Committee throughout this investigation it has been so clearly shown that this must after all become a question, not for Ireland only, but for England and Scotland also, that f will not be a party to laying down a principle which, as my right hon. Friend has said, is so vague and general. I consider some kind of definition to be; necessary for the guidance of the Judge; and I shall give my hearty support to the Amendment of my right hon. Friend.
  SIR ROUNDELL PALMER: Sir, I can assure the Government that I do not intend on this occasion to criticize in any hostile spirit this clause or any other portion of the Bill; nor shall I retract anything I said on the second reading in favour of the spirit in which the measure as a whole has been proposed. But it may be in the recollection of those who heard me on the occasion to which I refer, that I said I felt there were serious difficulties in connection with that part of the 3rd clause relating to compensation to the tenant for quitting his farm. At the same time I said—what I do not want to recede from now, that I considered it, possible, for the reasons so fully and so eloquently stated by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to-night—reasons arising from the peculiar circumstances of Ireland—that it might be for the interest of the landlords as well as that of the I tenants to depart to some extent from the ordinary principles of legislation in such matters, by providing, in the shape of compensation, a penalty or fine on arbitrary evictions. I thought that much regard was due to the views of hon. Members from Ireland, who are well acquainted with the circumstances of property in that country, and I was struck with some of the speeches of those hon. Gentlemen, and especially with the remark of the hon. Member for the county of Carlow (Mr. Kavanagh) that so far as this compensation might be regarded as a check on arbitrary and unreasonable evictions, he looked upon it us a benefit to the proprietors of land. If is, therefore, unnecessary for me to say that I cannot interpret this compensation in the narrow way my right hon. and learned

  1211
  Friend the Member for the University of Dublin (Dr. Ball) seems to interpret it, or in the way the right hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment (Mr. Disraeli) understands it. I cannot but admit that something more is intended to be given than the mere value of unexhausted improvements, or than the value of the probable return from any course of husbandry suited to the holding, which has been interrupted in the process of completion. But having said this, I must express my opinion that in giving this compensation the most extreme caution is required; because, unless in its practical application you keep the principle within proper limits, and accompany it with all reasonable chocks, it will become an invasion of all the rights of property. Therefore, though unable to go the length of supporting the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Disraeli), which would eliminate that element from the Bill, I think the right hon. Gentleman's Amendment gives us the opportunity of examining with advantage the whole operation of the clause in connection with all other parts of the Bill which relate to this particular compensation. Whatever I say on these matters will be said not only in good faith, but in the hope that if my observations are reasonable they may be fairly considered by the Government; and I do trust that when applying myself to points of detail, I may not be met by the argument that such points involve the principle of the Bill, and, therefore, that criticisms upon them are not admissible. I cannot but admit, with hon. Gentlemen opposite, that very serious changes affecting this matter have been made in the Bill since its introduction; and I think those changes aggravate the difficulty and render it all the more necessary that the details of the measure should, undergo a very careful examination. In the first place, a great change has been made which I think has not been much noticed. I mean that which gives the tenant holding under the Ulster tenant-right custom, the option of claiming either under that custom or under the provisions applying to other tenants throughout Ireland. Again, in the 3rd clause, the scale of compensation is unaltered as regards its limits, although one of the factors, and that the most important one, has been removed from the calculation—a rather alarming
  1212
  circumstance, which will be likely very materially to alter the operation of the clause in connection with subsequent clauses which were intended as safeguards. Then there is to be left out what I always regarded as a great safety-valve—namely, the option allowed to the landlord of giving a thirty-one years' lease, instead of paying compensation. That appears to me a material change. And, lastly, I confess I had not understood, till the matter was explained the other evening, that the landlord who, when a lease had expired in the ordinary course, should say to the tenant—"Give me back my property," was to be treated as a disturber. I may point out, what has been hitherto lost sight of in the discussion this evening, that you have got to consider a double operation of the 3rd clause—an operation which depends upon different principles, and which in itself will practically be extremely different as to the different classes of cases. First, I will speak of its retrospective operation on existing tenancies; and, secondly, of its prospective operation on tenancies to be created hereafter. As to its retrospective operation, it alters existing contracts only as to tenancies from year to year, because that part of it is not applied to any leases whatever. But in altering existing contracts—an alteration which can be justified only by that high political necessity, and that plea of the general advantage of the community and the security of property for which such powerful reasons were assigned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer—at all events care must be taken not to extend it one iota beyond the legitimate limits to which those considerations would carry you. To that principle I apprehend we shall all agree, though, of course, we may differ to some extent as to the proper mode of acting upon it. You are there really and truly taking away something which is part of the existing right of property; but you may be doing it for considerations of benefit which may accrue to the public, and even to the class affected by it, and therefore justifying the act. But it is quite different with regard to what is prospective. The first part of the clause, which deals only with contracts to be hereafter made, does not violate essentially any of the principles of property. It merely introduces a compulsory term

  1213
  into all such future contracts, and inasmuch as you leave these contracts free in other respects, you will find that this power of contracting in other respects will greatly tend to modify, perhaps even to neutralize, the force of the compulsory term which you introduce into the contract. Whether it is wise or not to try so to arrange things is another; question; but it is not taking away property, it is merely dictating one of the terms on which the relations of landlord and tenant shall be constituted hereafter. But to interfere in that way prospectively with freedom of contract—to dictate new terms, and such extraordinary terms as at first sight these are, is, a thing which can only be justified by the necessity of the case, and this, again, should not be carried one single inch beyond that necessity. And here the principle is obvious on which you do both the one and the other. You believe that there is a certain class of small tenants in Ireland who cannot be trusted to contract freely for themselves. That justifies both the prospective limitation of the power of contracting, and also, in; some degree, the modification of existing contracts; but it is of essential importance to keep within the limits of the necessity. Let us see how the Bill deals with the matter. And I come now to points in which it seems to me the Bill, as it stands, is really open to fair; censure and criticism. Surely the necessity of interfering with existing contracts cannot possibly apply to holdings above a certain value, nor to bonâ fide leases of definite duration. As to those leases, it has been truly said that the; men who take them understand perfectly well that they take them for a definite term, and that they are to give; up their holdings at the end of that term; and they have no right afterwards to say they have made arrangements, or done anything whatever, except in view of that well-understood; part of their contract. I speak of bond fide leases, because I have not forgotten what was said the other night by my; right hon. Friend at the head of the Government, and which deserves our attention—namely, that if you except everything that looks like a lease, you might have a nominal lease made for a year or so merely to get out of the operation of the Bill. Now, I think you might, perhaps, take the limit of seven
  1214
  years, though I would not bind myself to that. Seven years would, at all events, be a bonâ fide and not a merely colourable lease; and I do not see why, if a farmer enters into a lease for seven years, or for any longer period, you are to alter his contract, and to say that after the expiration of the seven years it shall be continued as a lease from year to year, which is a totally different thing. Then, as to holdings over a certain value, I wish the Committee and the (government to see what the actual effect of this Bill is. The retrospective part of the 3rd clause extends absolutely to yearly tenancies of any value whatsoever. If there is a tenant from year to year of 500 acres, at £2 an acre, that tenant cannot receive notice to quit without being enabled to call upon his landlord to pay him a year's rent under this new scale. Well, Sir, that is perfectly extravagant. [An hon. MEMBER: He is to prove his loss.] We have had a comparison drawn between the language of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer tonight and the view submitted, I am sure bonâ fide, by some other Members of the Government on a former occasion. We certainly did hear before, that primâ facie the Judge would give every tenant the full amount of compensation, unless his landlord could show a good reason for reducing it. It may be said, that the Bill itself does not require that to be done; but I shall presently show, when I come to observe upon the effect of the change in the 3rd clause, that there will be the greatest possible difficulty—unless some words are introduced into the 14th or Equities Clause—in resisting the conclusion that the Bill means primâ facie that the value of the loss of the holding shall be assessed at the maximum, leaving the amount subject to be reduced. At all events, if that be not the intention, there ought to be much more care taken with the words of the 14th clause than has been taken at present, in order to make it plain that the landlord is not to be mulcted in that manner when he has good reason to show for giving notice to his tenant to quit. Without any reason for it, that I can imagine, you bring in large tenancies which ought to be excluded. You have words in the retrospective part of the clause which introduce every tenancy from year to year whatever its amount. That flagrantly interferes with the rights of pro-

  1215
  perty; which, can only be justified where there exists that kind of necessity for it which the Chancellor of the Exchequer pointed out. But, even in the prospective part of the clause, it appears to me that you go much farther than can be justified by any sufficient reason, because prospectively any tenancy, whatever may be its magnitude, is included, except under the limitations of the 10th clause. What are those limitations? One is, that, if the tenancy is over £100, it may be excluded by contract. But there is another class of tenancies—those over £50 and under £100, value. I am satisfied, from all I have heard of Ireland, that tenancies of land, valued at £50 a year and upwards, are not tenancies of the class which requires this extraordinary legislation. I am convinced that we may safely except them altogether from the Bill, and I am prepared, therefore, to agree with an Amendment of which an hon. Friend behind me (Mr. W. Fowler) has given notice which would have that effect. What do you do in the 10th clause as to these tenancies? Why, you propose to except them also; but only upon the condition that there must be a twenty-one years' lease, and very special provisions as to improvements, which are to be made by the landlord, or to be made substantially at his expense. I see no reason for that. These are cases in which the parties can be, and ought to be, left to make their own contract, and the moment you get into a region of value beyond that with which political necessity compels you to deal, you expose yourself to this remark, that you are doing something which, if just in Ireland, would be just in England and Scotland too. On the subject of leases, it seems to me that the latter part of the 3rd clause, which says that a lease of thirty-one years shall take a tenancy out of the clause, is very much like proscribing in Ireland, as far as you can, all leases for less than thirty-one years. For what conceivable reason? In England an ordinary agricultural lease does not exceed twenty-one years, and seven or fourteen years is a common term. In Scotland, I believe, nineteen years' leases are common. But no one has ever pointed out, so far as I know, that in the case of Irish leases, where you deal upon terms corresponding to those common in England and Scotland, you are dealing with a class
  1216
  of tenants who cannot be trusted to make and understand their own bargains. And I certainly, for my own part, see no reason why any bonâ fide lease—and seven years, at all events, I hold to be a bonâ fide term for a lease—is not to take effect according to any contract between the parties in the past or to be made in the future. I have a few words more to say, about the magnitude of this enormous scale—for enormous it does appear to me to be—now that it covers nothing except the disturbance of the tenancy. And it must, I really think, have been so originally in the view of the Government themselves, because as the Bill stood at first they made it the measure of two things, one of which, if it is now to be left out, so as to make it the measure of only one of those two things, shows, to say the least, a considerable alteration of opinion on their part in that respect. Is it not really an enormous thing to say that the loss by eviction is to be measured in any case whatever at so much as seven years' rental? And here I cannot help pointing out that under the 8th clause it is proposed to apply that principle retrospectively, even to some cases of eviction for non-payment of rent. I come now to the point to which I alluded before—namely, the way in which the change made in this 3rd clause will affect the usefulness of the 14th, which is called the Equities Clause, as modifying and mitigating the severity of the 3rd. When you couple together two such things as improvements and loss by quitting the tenancy, then it is very fitting to give one reading to this clause and the 14th, because there would be an enormous margin for the judgment of the court, for the improvements must be taken into account in every case, and it must necessarily be, that there would be a variety of cases. But when you have nothing whatever to deal with except the single fact of the loss by disturbance of the tenant, that is, primâ facie, much the same for one man as for another. The 14th clause, or any other that I can find, does not say that the landlord may raise his rent at all. It would look like an absolute fixing and assessment of the value by the Legislature. It will be for the Committee to make up its mind whether the claim ought not to be disallowed altogether if the conduct of the tenant has been such as to justify the

  1217
  landlord in giving notice to the tenant. The matter is left so vague that I am not certain how it would be dealt with, under the 14th clause. I venture, therefore, to submit that we ought to put words into that clause to the effect that no compensation for disturbance under this 3rd clause ought to be given if, in the opinion of the Court, the landlord is justified in giving notice to quit. Now, as to the effect of omitting the 16th clause, which says that a thirty-one years' lease shall take away the right of claiming compensation, that clause enables the landlord, instead of paying a sum of money down, by postponing the practical enjoyment of his property for thirty-one years, to got rid of the operation of this 3rd clause altogether—a very valuable and important thing to those landlords who might desire to fall back upon freedom of contract, or not to have those claims enforced. But that clause is now to be struck out, and for a reason which I, for one, am entirely unable to appreciate. It is said that it would be very undesirable to bring the question of rent under the consideration of the Court. But do you not, in the clauses which remain, inevitably bring the question of rent under the consideration of the Court? The 8th clause says that, under existing tenancies, a man evicted for non-payment of rent shall not be entitled to compensation unless the Court decide that he ought on special grounds. What is that but saying that the question of rent shall come under the consideration of the Court. The Equities Clause, too, though it does not say one word about rent, must be understood as authorizing the Court, in cases in which the landlord proposes to raise the rent, and the tenant says—"I wont have my rent raised," to enter into the question whether the proposal of the landlord to raise the rent is a fair one or not. If, then, the judgment of the Court must be formed in all these cases, why should you be so desperately afraid of its being formed as to the reasonableness of a lease under the 16th clause? Why not let the landlord settle the terms of the lease he may wish to offer, and the Court afterwards, if the tenant refuse to accept those terms, judge whether the lease was fair and reasonable? It appears to me that is what must be done if the two parties come into court, the landlord
  1218
  desiring to raise the rent and the tenant refusing to pay it. In behalf, therefore, both of the landlord and the tenant I think yon ought to retain the 16th clause, I do not say exactly in the terms in which it stands, but subject to such amendments and modifications as may be thought expedient. There is one other point which has made a considerable impression on my mind, and if that impression be unfounded I trust in the course of the discussion it will be shown to be so. There is one part of the 3rd clause—the prospective part—which appears to me likely to turn out a very great delusion; it relates to the new contracts after the passing of the Act. The tenant is to take the land from year to year, or for an indefinite term of years, with the obligation upon his landlord that if he evict the tenant or reclaim possession at the end of that period he must make the payments prescribed, or such as the Court may judge reasonable. In all other respects, you leave the power of contracting after the Act between landlord and tenant open and free. The land is supposed to be in the landlord's hands; he is not obliged to let it to any tenant, and what will be the consequences of your saddling the landlord with this contingent liability? The first consequence will be an increase of rents. The landlord will necessarily seek to indemnify himself for this contingent liability. Suppose he wants to give a seven years' lease, and that the fair rent would be £50 a year. You say that at the end of the seven years' lease, the contract being fulfilled and the landlord wishing to get possession of the land, he is to pay the tenant a sum not exceeding two years' rent. Well, what will be the result? The first step will be to make the land leased for seven years practically realize nine years' rent, in order that he may be able to pay upon your scale; and, therefore, instead of £50 the tenant will have to pay £64 on the land. The Legislature has fixed this burden on the landlord, and manifestly the landlord, in some way or other, will in the long run get his price for the land. There is no doubt about that. It will, again, have a tendency to increase the size of holdings. That may be a good thing; I believe it is; but we must take notice of it. It will have a tendency to increase the size of holdings, because if the

  1219
  holdings are small the landlord comes under a more burdensome part of the scale, while, if they are larger, the liability will be less burdensome. Then you offer the greatest inducement to the landlord not to let the land at all, but but to keep it on his own hands. Since nothing but a thirty-one years' lease can take the holding out of the operation of the clause, the tendency will be to drive all bargains between landlords and tenants to thirty-one years' leases. That, too, may be a good thing; but we must take notice that this is the way in which the clause will work. In some cases I believe it would do good, but in others it would do harm to the tenant. If you offer an inducement to the landlord, in order to make himself safe, to put on a greater rent than he would require in ordinary cases—because in the great proportion of those cases he will not seek unreasonably to evict the tenant—the consequence will be that the tenant will have to pay an increased rent. And the consequence of that may be that the tenant will be less able punctually to pay his rent, and, therefore, will be more liable to be evicted. Eviction for non-payment of rent will disentitle him to compensation under this 3rd clause; and so the necessity you put the landlord under of increasing his rent may lead to the tenant being unable to pay, in which case he will get no compensation. These considerations, to my mind, throw great doubt on the wisdom of this clause. But upon these points I am willing to defer to the judgment of those better acquainted with Ireland. If, notwithstanding all these objections, they should think the clause even as it stands for the benefit of the country, I should not be disposed to throw any difficulty in the way. All I will undertake to do is to support, as far as I can, any improvements or amendments that may be made in it in the way I have indicated; but for the particular Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli) I think I ought not now to vote.
  MR.CHICHESTER FORTESCUE: I have listened, Sir, with much attention to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford (Mr. Gathorne Hardy), preceding the one we have just heard, for the purpose of ascertaining whether he
  1220
  put that interpretation on the clause as originally proposed by the Government which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Dr. Ball) and the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli) on last Friday appear to have done. I was very anxious to learn whether they still maintain that the Government, in proposing the Amendment which has been put on the Paper in my name, have done what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire the other day called the introduction, not only of a new clause, but a new Bill. Although the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford was somewhat indefinite in his statement, the only way one could put any definite meaning upon that statement, or upon the eloquent phrases of the right hon. Member for the University of Dublin the other night, was by assuming that those right hon. Gentlemen have entirely and absolutely misunderstood the whole meaning of Clause 3, as proposed by the Government. That, in the case of Gentlemen of great sagacity and perspicacity, is not a little astonishing. If the argument of these right hon. Gentlemen means anything, it means this, that after long and careful deliberation, the Government intended nothing but this, that where the Court should find improvements upon the farm of an evicted tenant which deserved compensation, over and above the value of these improvements, something additional was to be given by way of compensation for disturbance. Nothing on the face of the Bill, and nothing which has been said by the Government, ought to countenance such an interpretation. The Government always intended that over and above the question of improvements and separate and distinct from them there should be, at the discretion of a competent Court, a certain award given in consideration of the loss by the tenant of continuance of occupation; and I believe we have succeeded in making that plain to all but the two right hon. Gentlemen opposite. Nevertheless, after all the discussion which this land question has gone through, we are now informed that the question of evictions in Ireland is so insignificant in itself that it is beneath our notice, that the only question to be dealt with is the question of im-

  1221
  provements, capable of being measured by the scale and the pound, under the rigid survey of the court. If that were the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, I am sorry we did not discover it sooner, because not only by the terms of the Bill, but by our whole language we made it manifest that we had come to the conclusion, forced on us by the circumstances of Ireland, that the land question is not to be settled by mere compensation for improvements. I beg to state that the right hon. Member for Oxford University, who says that evictions are very rare in Ireland, takes a most inadequate and delusive view of the matter. No doubt they are rare compared with their number in former years, because public opinion has become stronger, and the tenant class has ceased to be so helpless as it was, especially in the years immediately following the famine. And another reason, which all must deplore, now renders evictions comparatively rare. Eviction, indeed, is the ultima ratio to which the landlord resorts; but let the Committee consider the number of notices to quit. If the Committee would only read the Reports of the Poor Law Inspectors, whose knowledge and impartiality are beyond suspicion, it would see in what a state of continual insecurity Irish tenants often live—insecurity not depending on the mere number of evictions that can be recorded in a Return or in a Blue Book. The right hon. Member for Oxford University taunted the Government because the Bill was, as he said, rejected by certain authorities, lay and clerical, and he seemed to think that their disapproval was an argument in his favour; but that disapproval really meant that, instead of taking the moderate and efficient course of imposing conditions on the exercise of the landlord's power of eviction, the Government ought to annihilate and destroy the power altogether. Our belief is that by the efficient though moderate course we have taken in this Bill we shall save Irish landlords from an agitation which would be far more formidable than anything which has hitherto taken place. It is not for me to deny that this 3rd clause will impose a new condition on the exercise of certain rights of property. It will impose a new condition on the exercise of the right of eviction, and why should we deny it? But that is not the
  1222
  only new condition. The conditions with respect to improvements, which had the sanction of the right hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, are also new. They are retrospective, and the right hon. Gentleman agrees to them; and it would be strange if he did not, because he and his party have agreed to them before. The right hon. Member for Oxford University says that by this clause we are forcing on all landlords that which the benevolence of a good landlord prompts him to do. I take that mode of viewing the case, and I say that in choosing this method of restricting the use of what in. the circumstances of Ireland is a most formidable power—that of eviction—we have adopted a course most consonant with the usages of the best managed estates in that country, and creating the smallest interference between the landlord and the tenant, and we have not established anything which is unfamiliar to the Irish people. I deny the statement that we are taking so I much out of the landlord's pocket and putting it into the pocket of some one I else, and in confirmation of the correctness of my denial I need only point to the example of Ulster. By the security afforded under the clause we believe that such a stimulus will be given to the cultivation of land that the profits of agriculture will be augmented, and we also believe that the landlord will share in the augmentation by the increase of price in the selling value of the land, and by the increased rent given by the tenant. I now come to the speech of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond (Sir Roundell Palmer), whoso tone was very different from that of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford (Mr. G. Hardy). My hon. and learned Friend did not attack the principle of this clause, for he had not changed his mind since he supported the second reading of the Bill. He did not object to the imposition of a legislative check upon improper evictions; he only attacked some of the details. He did not for a moment contend, as has suddenly been contended by the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Disraeli), that this is a new principle—a new Bill which has been suddenly sprung upon them. The Amendments of the Government were placed on the Paper on the earliest possible day, and there was nothing sudden or unexpected

  1223
  in their proposal. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond did not attempt to say that any new principle has been introduced by what we nave done. Undoubtedly we have liberalized the clause in favour of the tenant—that is to say, we have secured two things—first, that no disturbed tenant shall lose any part of the value of his improvements by any arbitrary scale; and, secondly, by taking out of its provisions a certain class of improvements originally within it, we have left a larger discretion to the court as to the loss of possession than it had before. The second objection of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond (Sir Roundell Palmer) was that we had given up the proposal which would have enabled the landlord, by the mere tender of a lease, to withdraw himself from the provisions of the clause. Now, that was a question of no little difficulty; and, upon full consideration, we certainly came to the conclusion that the tender of a lease, which is very different from a lease actually accepted by the tenant, was not sufficient. We believe it would be beneficial that the landlord should be under the obligation of offering to his tenant so fair and reasonable a lease that the tenant would be induced to accept it; and we believe that in numerous cases, on large farms especially, if the landlord offers a tenant a thirty-one years' lease not hampered by any unreasonable covenants the tenant would be very happy to accept it, thus placing himself in absolute security for thirty-one years. On the other hand, it would have been very possible for a landlord, even with the consent of the court, to force a lease for a thirty-one years' term on his tenant which his tenant would be very unwilling to accept; for the phrase of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Disraeli) was a very inaccurate one when he talked of the landlord conceding a lease. Under the clause, as it originally stood, a landlord had the power of forcing a thirty-one years' lease on the tenant. That, on consideration, we thought was going too far in the matter. This power of tendering a lease would have been absolutely impossible—out of the question, except under the control and by the intervention of the court. But my hon. and learned Friend complains very much that leases for less than thirty-one years should not
  1224
  exempt a landlord from the operation of this clause. He thought it very hard that leases for seven years should not exempt the landlord from the operation of the clause. But does my hon. and learned Friend consider what a seven years' lease really is? I am constantly struck with the difficulty which even the most enlightened and benevolent Members from England and Scotland find in judging of the state of things in Ireland. They are familiar with a condition of things so entirely different that even with their best efforts they can hardly bring their minds to take in the view of what a seven years' lease would be in Ireland. It is totally different from what it would be in this country. My hon. and learned Friend knows it is different; but he cannot bring his mind into a position to see that an Irish tenant, for whom, in the great majority of cases, a landlord does nothing, might, with a seven years' lease, be not a whit better than with a tenancy from year to year. In Scotland a farmer takes possession of a farm like a gentleman. He has no occasion to lay out capital. He has only to go through a course of intelligent tillage, and if, at the end of his time, he carries away with him the value of his unexhausted oilcake and guano he does very well. In Ireland the case is totally different. But, then, my hon. and learned Friend makes another plea, not in behalf of the landlord, but in behalf of the tenant, and no doubt he makes it with the same sincerity which characterizes all that he says; but when he asks in the name of the tenant whether the protection given by Clause 3 will not do more harm than good, I should like him to ask the Irish tenants themselves such a question. No doubt they wished a more stringent and cast-iron rule to be applied to the relation of landlord and tenant; but if my hon. and learned Friend sees no advantage, but, on the contrary, some danger in the restriction placed on the power of eviction, I cannot conceive a more unfounded alarm than that which is passing through the mind of my hon. and learned Friend. He thinks that the landlord who finds himself subject to this condition for the possible use of his power of eviction will make up for it by increasing the rent. Well, but the higher he raises the rent the more he will have to pay if he uses the power of eviction improperly. But even

  1225
  on the supposition that the tenant will have to pay somewhat more in rent, even if he be subject to an extreme rent, I am quite assured he will be happy to pay it for the security he will enjoy that he will have a full return for any outlay he has made. The problematical danger on that head will not alarm one tenant in a thousand in Ireland. The same considerations apply to the supposed temptation to consolidate farms. Why are farms not consolidated now, when landlords have nothing to pay for it? In future they will find it a most expensive luxury. The proceeding does go on to a certain reasonable degree in the best parts of Ireland; but it causes no discontent. On that head, also, the alarms of my hon. Friend will not be justified by the experience of the tenants of Ireland. It is impossible to deal fairly with this clause, which is the most important clause of the Bill, without going back, I will not say to the first principles of political economy, but to the assumptions and facts upon which the Bill rests. If Ireland were in a' good, or even in a tolerable condition, there would be no need for this Bill at all; the foundation upon which this Bill rests would be cut from under it. But I contend that the means we have taken for putting an end to the state of things which exists, and establishing something better for the future, are the safest that can be found, involving the smallest amount of disturbance in the relations of all parties. In authorizing the interference of law the Government have refrained from doing so further than was absolutely necessary, and they have postponed the period of interference till a dispute shall have actually arisen between the parties; the interference will then occur without destroying any rights of property, or taking away any fair rights of the landlord over his land, or any interest in it which he possesses. What the Bill imposes is a sufficient and salutary check on the use of a dangerous power, which often is exerted rightly and properly, but too often is used wrongly and inequitably. The question all turns upon this—are we satisfied with the past history and the present condition of Ireland? Are we to forget the past and to start upon some theoretical scheme for the future? We start from a condition of things which we maintain not to be good or even tolerable
  1226
  —not to be sound or healthy, but to be unsound and diseased; and what we seek to do is to apply a cure, the most moderate that we can find, to relations that are unsound and diseased. In our opinion no gentler remedy, provided it be efficient, can be found than that which we have laid before the Committee. Other nostrums—I will not call them nostrums, I retract the word—other remedies have been proposed more violent in their nature, but I do not admit them to be more effectual; and these remedies, after the fullest consideration, we have felt it our duty to reject. Those remedies are not confined to the phrases we have heard so much of—fixity of tenure, perpetuity of tenure, valuation of rents, and so forth. Gentlemen of great weight and authority, and with great powers of mind and sincerity, as I know, have put forward other plans, which we also felt bound to decline. There are politicians who conceive themselves to be far more moderate than the advocates of fixity of tenure whose proposals we have felt ourselves unable to adopt. Take, for instance, a favourite remedy with some—the principle of compulsory leases for all Ireland, which has been warmly urged by some friends of mine who think it a moderate measure. In our opinion that would be a cast-iron rule applied to every landlord and tenant in Ireland without discrimination; and it would have carried with it the necessity for a revision of rents all over Ireland, because to impose the present rents, whether high or low, upon all landlords and tenants in Ireland, with a compulsory lease for thirty-one or sixty-one years, would have been a proceeding of the most violent and inequitable kind. On that, as on other matters, we made up our mind to avoid interference by the Legislature until it should become absolutely necessary—to give every inducement to the parties concerned to make up their differences between themselves, and to reserve the State interference—taking care that, when applied, this interference should be effectual for its purpose—for occasions when these differences seemed to be irreconcilable. Of the remedy which we propose this clause is the central and essential part; without it it would not be worth the while of Parliament to pass the Bill. Of all the remedies which have been publicly proposed, it is the most moderate, the

  1227
  gentlest, it interferes least with the relations between, landlord and tenant. Recognizing that fact, and the essential importance of this part of the great measure which is now before them, I trust the Committee will, without hesitation, sanction the clause in the form in which, after the fullest consideration, it has been submitted by the Government.
  MR.C. S. READwas one of those who had spoken in the second reading of the Bill, giving to it a most hearty and unhesitating support. The Amendments, however, which had since been made, and the observations by which these were accompanied, had very much diminished his appreciation of the merits of the measure. In its original state, the Bill showed that it had been drawn by a most skilful lawyer; but the Amendments recently introduced all tended in one direction, and all pointed to the same idea—that of pleasing the Irish tenantry, taking no thought at all of the point which he believed to be essential for the regeneration of Ireland, and that was the improvement of its agriculture. As the Government had refused to take any hint, or to receive any counsel whatever from agriculturists sitting on their own side of the House, it was not to be expected that they would heed his remarks. Still, he believed that the effect of the only clause which had as yet been passed, so far from improving Irish farming, would be to wrap up the Irish tenant in the swaddling clothes with which he was now encumbered, and to encircle him with an iron band of rude and unreasonable customs. When, upon a former occasion, he ventured to observe that in the Bill he saw no provision which allowed a lease of thirty-one years to extinguish the Ulster tenant-right, he was told by the Prime Minister that there was a clause to that effect in the Bill. He trusted the Solicitor General for Ireland would point it out. Again, one of the most valuable clauses in the Bill for the future welfare of the Irish farmer was Clause 16; but this had been struck out of the Bill. And in separating compensation for improvements from compensation for eviction, he did not hesitate to say that a principle novel, unnecessary, and revolutionary, had been introduced into the Bill. He had been told that there was one gentleman in the county of Galway who paid £10,000 a year rent,
  1228
  and he had not the least doubt that he was considerably richer than his landlords. He knew several gentlemen in the counties of Meath and Westmeath, all well-to-do graziers, who were paying from £1,000 to £2,000 a year rent. It was said that these men, if they received a notice to quit, could each claim a specified compensation, but that the damage must be proved. That was easy of proof; for a man who farmed land at 30 s. an acre which was worth 50 s., was obviously injured to a much greater extent by being turned out of his occupation, than a man who paid rack-rent. It had been said by the Prime Minister that there were no poor men in that House—a statement that, for his own part, he hoped his bankers would always be able to endorse—but till the year he entered the House, every sixpence which he possessed was invested in the occupation of land. He believed he might say that, in a singular and peculiar degree, he represented the tenant-farmers of a division of an agricultural county where there were hardly any leases, where the tenants were under a six months' notice to quit, and where, he was sorry to say, there was no compensation at all for unexhausted improvements. Yet the tenant-farmers of that county had come to the deliberate conclusion that the Government, by the introduction of this new principle, were confiscating the rights of the landlords without conferring any equivalent benefit upon the present tenant, and with the certainty of inflicting a very considerable fine upon all the tenants that came after. That was the present conviction of the tenant-farmers of the county which he represented; but he did not assert that they would always remain of the same opinion, when they saw leading statesmen like the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the course of two short years, rise at one side of the House, and assert that Irish tenants ought not to be paid for their improvements which they had made in the soil, and then, when he sat on the Benches opposite, declare that Irish tenants ought to have the power of inflicting a fine of seven years' rent upon their landlords. Now, why should this principle be confined to land, and why should it not extend to houses? A medical man might carry on business in a house, the retention of which was essential to his practice, yet, if he were

  1229
  ejected, notwithstanding the inconvenience which this involved, persons never thought of giving him sixpence. Take the case, again, of a man in a shop, to which by intelligence, industry, and fair dealing, he had attracted a large custom;, if that man were ejected, and could not find another shop at hand, he would he deprived without any compensation of a certain amount of property which he himself had created, because a large; amount of goodwill always clings to an establishment. Then why should they not apply this principle to the cases of mortgagor and mortgagee, of borrower and lender, of employer of labour and employed? Let the Committee take an instance from his own experience. Suppose he had upon his farm a labourer; who had been in his employ 20 years, and during that time had lived in a cheap cottage, and suppose further that for some reason he were to get rid of the labourer, why that would be to the man a greater injury than could possibly be inflicted upon one of the miserable farmers in Ireland to whom reference was being constantly made. Then take the case of the Irish cottiers, a class which would, it was supposed, be created by this Bill. A farmer in his mercy allowed such a man to reclaim a corner of some barren field, and to build a little cabin upon it; but there was no clause in the Bill to protect the cottier, though it was proposed, to protect the farmer, his master. Going further, he would ask why the principle they were discussing should not extend to England as well as to Ireland. They were told it could not, because the competition for the possession of land was so very great in Ireland. But was the competition not great in England also? Let the Committee take an instance. A few years ago an uncle of his own, a farmer, died early one morning, and on his proceeding at once with the intelligence to the agent of the landlord, who lived some fifteen miles away, that gentleman said he knew all about it, as he had already had seventeen applications for the farm. This was a single instance, and if he were a grievance-monger he could add to it a hundred others, including several cases of arbitrary eviction from farms. He admitted that there was a difference between England and Ireland; but was there no State on the Continent of Europe with which the latter country could be
  1230
  compared? In a very large Blue Book issued to hon. Members last week on the land tenures existing in different countries, he found a description of the Belgian system. In Belgium, between the years 1836 and 1844, agrarian outrages of the most violent character were common. Almost identically the same incidents had occurred there as they had seen in Ireland. The only difference was that in Ireland an epidemic seemed to break out every three or four years, whereas in Belgium they had been contented to have one great dose at once. They had had during that time, however, blowing up of mills, incendiarism, outrages, murders, and assassinations. But, since 1850, they had entirely ceased, and now Belgium was farmed by so peaceful and happy a race, that his hon. Friends the Members for Hereford and Banbury thought this country might well follow the example of Belgium. But how had this been brought about? Not by bringing in a Bill to subvert the rights of property, but by adopting towards disturbers of the peace measures so energetic and severe that in the year 1850 they hanged the last man who hired himself out as an agrarian assassin, this man's fee being the small sum of 90 f. The Belgian Government did not, as he thought they ought to have done, introduce a proposition to pay the tenant for unexhausted improvements, but we read in the Report that the Government had hitherto abstained, and would in the future abstain—
  "From legislating upon the relations of landlords with their tenants, as to the granting of leases, raising rents, &c., considering that such action would be interfering with the individual rights of property."
  Her Majesty's Government having issued this Blue Book, he would ask why they could not have emulated Belgium, instead of introducing a measure which would interfere with the rights of property. On his reputation as a practical farmer he would make the statement that to inflict upon the landlord the fine proposed in the compensation clauses of the Bill might for a time infuse a sort of sleepy confidence into the minds of existing tenants; but the effect on the future tenantry of Ireland would be most disastrous, because it would be impossible to injure the landlords without in the end injuring the tenants also. They might mulct a landlord in damages;

  1231
  but they could not restrain him from raising his rents in order to recoup himself for the compensation he had to pay to his outgoing tenants. It would be a sad thing for Irish tenants if the landowners were to be transformed into huckstering traffickers in the soil, and he was sure the tenants would rather continue to rely upon the liberal, just, and Christian principles for which Irish gentlemen had been so justly celebrated. He hoped he should not be misunderstood. He fully agreed with the compensation clauses, and would even go further than the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire, by awarding compensation to a farmer for the loss he might sustain by forced sales of stock or implements consequent upon hasty or arbitrary eviction; but for goodness' sake let them not compensate him for something he never lost, or compel his landlord to buy from him that which he had no right to sell. Let hon. Members depend upon it that if they did this they would place upon the Irish tenant of the future a burden so heavy and a yoke so intolerable, that he would curse the day on which the Imperial Parliament in its wisdom created for his special benefit this new property in occupation.
  MR.BUXTONsaid, he was of opinion that the hon. and learned Member for Richmond (Sir Roundell Palmer) had made out an incontestable case against that portion of the Bill which referred to tenants who were in secure possession of their holdings, for the Bill was not intended to protect persons so situated. The Bill was intended to satisfy the great mass of tenants, those who had small holdings and were almost always under six months' notice to quit. The right, hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford (Mr. Gathorne Hardy) had asked whether this measure was consistent with the rights of property? He (Mr. Buxton) was sure that if it was not it would be denounced by every party in the House. Nothing could be more disastrous to this country in the long run than to admit, as one of the maxims by which the policy of the House might be guided, that the rights of property might be invaded whenever it might seem convenient or expedient to ignore them. If this Bill really tended in that direction he should not have supported the second reading; but he could not believe either that the
  1232
  Government would have brought in a Bill embodying such an intention, or that, if they had done so, the House would have supported its second reading by an enormous majority. The Amendment moved by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli) indicated clearly that he wholly misunderstood the true grounds by which this measure could be justified, as one that, so far from interfering with the rights of property, really tended to their stricter maintenance. Having studied this subject, he (Mr. Buxton) affirmed that this Bill was, in reality, not an invasion, but a vindication of the rights of property. He did not agree with those who had been arguing in favour of this Bill upon the ground that the House was obliged to step in between the landlord and the tenant in Ireland, and set aside the contracts freely entered into between them, because one of the contracting parties was not well able to look after his own interests. That principle would be fraught with extreme danger. No doubt two or three instances had been mentioned, in which the law had apparently acted on that principle; but if it were deliberately adopted on so vast a scale, as the basis of a great national policy, it might go a long way towards the disintegration of society. It would, at any rate, be a retrogression from the policy by which the Liberal party especially had been actuated during the last thirty years. The only true ground on which the Bill could be justified was, that it was not an interference with freedom of contract, inasmuch as the position of the Irish tenantry—at any rate, of the great mass of them—was not that of men who have entered into any contract at all. He denied that the tenure of land in Ireland, as a general rule, was the tenure of contract; and upon that ground, and that alone, he was persuaded that a measure so stringent and bold as this could possibly be supported. Perhaps those who had not been in the habit of studying these questions might be astonished at the notion that the relation between the landlord and the tenant under him could in any case not be that of two men of business who had entered into a contract—the one bargaining to cultivate the soil and pay a rent to the landlord, the other to allow him to enter upon it in order to do so. The fact, however, was

  1233
  that the tenure of land by contract was a novelty in the world. It was a thing unknown anywhere until the most recent times. Even at the present moment it was utterly unknown in Asia, in most parts of Italy, in Russia, and in many other parts of Europe. Probably in at least two-thirds of the surface of Europe it was unknown. It was unknown wherever aboriginal tribes still occupied the soil. It was, in fact, the invention of an active commercial people, who had imported into their dealings with the soil those methods of business with which they had been made familiar by commerce. And, perhaps, many hon. Members might not be aware, and might hear it with some astonishment, that it was only within the last nine years that the tenure of land in Ireland had been regarded in the eye of the law as being a tenure by contract at all. It was not until 1861 that a law passed through Parliament which abrogated the then existing tenure of land in Ireland, and declared that, henceforth the relation of landlord and tenant should be deemed to be founded on contract, instead of, as formerly, upon tenure or service. Until nine years ago the tenure of land by contract in Ireland was unknown to the law, and the plain truth was that the tenure of land in that country, at least among the smaller holders, had to this day the characteristics of the system which prevailed in all but the most highly civilized and commercial nations of the world. This fact was brought out with extreme force and vividness in a work published at the end of last year by Mr. George Campbell. Having been intimately familiar with the tenure of land in India, that gentleman paid two visits to Ireland, and thoroughly studied the land question there, and he showed, beyond all possibility of question, that there existed to this day in Ireland abundant traces of the same ancient system of tenure, and that, in fact, to this day the Irish tenantry hold their land upon a tenure into which contract between landlord and tenant does not really enter. Mr. Campbell said—
  "The present state of Ireland, her poverty, her agrarian crimes, her chronic discontent, have been in no small degree owing to that idea which lies so deep in the mind of the Irish peasantry, the idea that the tenant is, in truth, joint owner with the landlord; that the two are, in fact, co-partners, and so long as the tenant pays a fair share of the rent to the lord, he has a right to remain
  1234
  on the land. With this idea one of a perfectly distinct character has often been confounded—namely, the idea that the tenant is the true owner of any additions and improvements he may have made at his own cost on the land, and is entitled to be compensated for them when his lease expires."
  Sir John Davies found exactly the same system existing in Ireland as Lord Corn-wallis long afterwards found in India. It might, perhaps, be replied that whatever the ancient tenure of land might have been among the native Irish, yet, at any rate, since the time of James I. that ancient system had been abrogated, and its place taken by the mercantile tenure of mere contract. This, however, was not the fact. Though the ancient relation of the chief and his people was destroyed, it was not "tenure by contract" that took its place. At that period tenure by contract had made little way oven in England, and the system which James I., or rather his adviser, Lord Bacon, adopted, and which was well worthy of his wisdom, would have put the Irish tenant into a position of I still greater security than that which he I had before enjoyed had it been carried out in its entirety. By degrees the tenant had become a victim to immense; and uncertain exactions from his chieftain. Lord Bacon took precisely that step afterwards taken by Stein and Hardenberg in Prussia, and commuted those exactions on the tenant for an annual quit rent, the tenant holding his land by a free tenure. Most unhappily, this wise policy was soon cast aside, and the precautions for giving the tenant security of tenure dropped out of sight. Mr. V. Seeholm had demonstrated this in a very important article in the Fort-nightly Review. He had shown that while under the feudal system at home and elsewhere the tenant became a copy-holder, liable, indeed, to exactions from the lord, often of a pernicious character, still he was not a tenant-at-will, and in time his copyhold became convertible into freehold. The Irish tenant, on the contrary, was neglected by the law, and though he was under precisely the same manorial system, with every one of its quaint and picturesque features, there was withheld, from him that feudal security of holding which every other feudal peasantry in the world had had conferred upon them by universal usage. Still, the important point to note was that his position had no relation to tenure by

  1235
  mercantile contract; and it was only nine years ago that the law expressly abrogated that manorial system of tenure of land in Ireland, and declared that henceforth the relation of landlord and I tenant should be deemed to be founded on contract, instead of, as formerly, on tenure or service. This change in the law, so revolutionary in its nature, probably attracted little attention at the time, owing to the general ignorance of the subject; but the Lords' Committee of 1868 expressly referred to it in their Report as having "entirely changed the state of the law as to the relation of landlord and tenant." It might, perhaps, seem strange to an English politician to have a practical question of policy mixed up with such antiquarian lore; but the fact was that the Irish question could not be understood unless we mastered the feeling with regard to it of the Irish tenants, and that would be altogether inexplicable but for the light thrown upon it by history. History showed that in former times the occupiers of the soil among the native Irish I were in the position of joint owners with the landlord, and that the change made by their English conquerors was not the immediate substitution of tenure by contract for that ancient joint ownership, but that it was the feudal system which they introduced, under which the tenants would naturally have stood in the secure position of English copyholders; and that only within the last ten years had the law avowedly and in terms introduced tenure by contract. Finding that, could hon. Members be surprised at the passionate vehemence with which the Irish tenantry had unceasingly resisted, as an invasion of their right of property, the claim of the landlord to drive them off the soil they cultivated? All this might seem fanciful to those who had not had occasion to investigate the subject, and yet it could no longer be denied that that was the true interpretation of the great movement that had now attained such formidable proportions in Ireland. Nothing was more difficult than to change the ancient traditional ideas of a nation. Until lately the spirit of the Irish had been so crushed by oppression that the idea of obtaining their rights from those who tyrannized over them had almost vanished out of their minds. In the last forty years, however, commencing with Catholic Emancipation,
  1236
  they had been taught that justice was attainable. It was not wonderful, therefore, that the profound sense of wrong with respect to the position of the occupiers of the soil, which even in the most hopeless periods never ceased to make itself heard, should now find utterance in a manner with which no statesman could venture to trifle. It ought, however, to be clearly understood that hon. Members yielded to this powerful feeling not because they dared not maintain the rights of property against it, but because they admitted that, among the great mass, especially of the poorer Irish tenants, their position on the soil was one derived from ancient times. It was not a relation of contract between them and the landlord; but they possessed certain rights in the soil, which had been transmitted to them from ancient times, and which had never been yet subverted, in spite of the lengthened struggle against them on the part of English settlers supported by English law. The English people were at last discerning and acknowledging this peculiar position, and were determined to accord to the Irish tenants those rights of property which had hitherto been ignored by the law, and which did not exist at the present moment in England, but to which the Irish tenants really had, in justice, an absolute claim.
  MR.BRODRICKsaid, his hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Buxton) had delivered an oration which would have been more appropriate on the second reading of the Bill. His hon. Friend had fallen into the common error of generalizing from a particular instance, and had drawn from his own experiences over a limited area conclusions which were hardly applicable to a country like Ireland, where so many diversities of opinion and of circumstances existed, and where there were great differences between the usages of different estates, and even between different farms on one property. He was aware of the liberal manner in which his hon. Friend treated his Irish tenants; but the course he adopted was not of a kind likely to meet with much favour among the Irish tenantry, for it resulted in the clearance of a considerable extent of land, the safe deportation of the occupiers to America, and the subsequent letting of the property to an intelligent Scotch agriculturist. This mode of dealing with

  1237
  the soil of Ireland was creditable to the kindliness and liberality of his hon. Friend; but he erred if he thought by that means to alleviate the pressure of the Irish difficulty. He agreed with the right hon. Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli) that the Government had changed its front in deference to the opposition from below the Gangway. He had heartily supported the second reading of the Bill, because he felt the Irish tenant was placed at a disadvantage as compared with the English and Scotch tenants, and deserved, on all possible grounds of justice and policy, to be placed on an equality with them. He therefore desired to secure to him compensation for unexhausted improvements, which had always been accorded to an outgoing tenant by everyone deserving the name of a good landlord. He was prepared to go further, and secure to the tenant compensation for any actual loss he might have sustained, and especially for all loss from insufficiency of notice prior to his removal; but there he was compelled to stop. He was aware the Government might might say their Bill, as originally introduced, meant something more; but that something more was so wrapped up in a clause which it was not very easy at once to dissect, that he was prepared to accept it without scrutinizing very nar-nowly what its precise contents might be. All that was now changed. Eight of occupancy had been distinctly avowed, and that avowal had changed a mere Irish provincial question into one of Imperial policy. What differences existed between the Irish and the English tenant which were not met by the concession of claims for unexhausted improvements? He believed the alleged excessive competition for land in Ireland was a mistake. His hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. C. S. Read), whose competency as a judge of such matters no one would doubt, had dealt with that point; and his ownlimited experience confirmed the view he took. In some parts of Somersetshire the competition for dairy land among small farmers was quite as keen as in any part of Ireland. He also believed it to be quite a mistaken notion that the Irish tenant was always, or even usually, the injured innocent he was represented to be. In his dealings with him—happily of a most amicable kind—he had found him by no means prone to take an unfair advantage, but still sharp
  1238
  and keen-witted, and as good a hand at driving a close bargain as the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself. Beyond all question, too, the Irish farmer thoroughly understood the nature and value of land; he was often a bettor judge than the landlord or agent in this respect, and would get a living off land on which an English or Scotch farmer would starve. It was very dubious, under those circumstances—the tenant having taken the land fully knowing its value, and accurately appreciating what he could make out of it—whether he should be placed on a different footing as regards contracts from that occupied I by the Scotch and English tenant. It had been argued that the Irish tenant had something to dispose of which the English tenant had not. That had been alluded to by the right hon. Member for Oxford University (Mr. Gathorne Hardy), and the hon. Member for South Norfolk. No doubt, in a large number of instances, through the poverty of the smaller class of tenants, and, he hoped, from a real appreciation on the part of the landlords of their duties, sums of money had been given to tenants who had been removed from their holdings. But there was another modification of the value of property in which good feeling and good nature had had no part, but in which fear had been the main element. The sums which in these cases had been levied by the tenant for giving another possession of his holding had been nothing more or less than blackmail. The amount of that blackmail had been regulated by the nerve or necessities of the landlord, by the courage with which he was likely to resist any unjust demands made upon him, or by his ability to encounter the costs of a lawsuit. It was remarkable that in hardly any instance where the tenant was a man of substance and a fair mark for costs, had that sum been either asked for or paid. He left it to the Committee to say whether it was desirable such a demand as that should be clothed with all the dignity and force of law, and whether the Irish tenant for these reasons should be placed in a better position than the farmers of England or Scotland. He warned them that though they might begin here they would not end here. There were districts in England where these debates wee road by the tenant-farmers with the greatest possible interest, and where

  1239
  the rights of occupancy were as keenly discussed, and as warmly asserted, as in any Farmers' Club in Ireland. Who could wonder at it? There was no ground upon which this new right could be withheld from the English tenant if it were given to the Irish. In many instances the English and Scotch farmer had done far more to the land than any Irish tenant had it in his power to do; and for this reason they could with full justice claim the right of occupancy if such a right were given to the Irish. There was another objection, which being of a practical nature, commended itself to the special attention of the Government. In the immediate neighbourhood of small towns, of which so many as twenty might be found in one county alone, there were accommodation or town parks of not more than three to four acres. They were let to traders in those towns, and the tenants were supposed thoroughly to understand their own interests. As the town rose in importance, and its population increased, the land in its immediate neighbourhood became more valuable; and he asked the Committee to consider whether it would be reasonable for a tenant on these small farms, when the landlord proposed to increase the rent, to say to the landlord—"You shall not raise my rent, and I will not go unless you are prepared to pay to me seven years' valuation of the land?" The application of such a principle would stop the progress of those small towns altogether. Other difficulties would suggest themselves to the Committee; but the greatest of all was that alluded to by his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond (Sir Roundell Palmer)—namely, the sort of relations which would spring up between landlord and tenant, if they were to be incessantly dealing with each other at arm's length. He believed it might be laid down that there was no legislative enactment intended to interfere with the ordinary dealings of a people among themselves which was not, by some ingenuity of the lawyers, made of none effect. It was so with the severity of the old feudal laws, which were mitigated by the doctrine of trusts; it was so with the worst provisions of the Penal Laws, which the good sense and good feeling of the community found a way to evade; and he believed it would be so with this Bill if
  1240
  it passed in the form in which it was now presented to the Committee. He entirely agreed in the remarks of the hon. and learned Member for Richmond how that it would be possible under this Bill for a landlord to exact the highest possible rent from his tenant, and to deprive him of every benefit it was supposed he would obtain under it. If this clause were amended in the way now proposed by the Government, it would operate so as to embitter the relations that now existed between landlord and tenant in Ireland, and would drive down to one dull level of the least-cared-for and worst-managed estates those properties that had had the good fortune hitherto to be held under kind and indulgent landlords.
  SIR PATRICK O'BRIENsaid, he felt certain that the Government had, in introducing the measure now before the Committee, intended that it should be a just and conciliatory one; yet he always had been, and still was, of opinion that no satisfactory result could accrue from the passing of this measure; and had he had the good fortune to catch Mr. Speaker's eye in the course of the debate upon its second reading, he should have explained his reasons for entertaining such a belief. The reasons, however, which he should then have ventured to offer were not those which at present he would offer to the House. Since the second reading a Blue Book had been presented to the House, furnished in obedience to the requisition of the noble Lord the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in which he had invited our Diplomatic Agents at every Court and Government to not alone furnish all particulars connected with the agriculture, with the land tenure, and social condition of the people amongst whom they might happen to be resident, but also asked to be furnished with not only the opinion of the leading foreigners in their district, but also with their own personal opinions upon all matters which might, in the course of their researches, come under their own observation, so far as related to the proposed legislation on Ireland. The result of these inquiries were embodied in the Blue Book which he had beside him, a work characterized by the greatest ability, evidencing much painful research, and, from the circumstance of the writers being gentlemen generally of aristocratic connections,

  1241
  could not be regarded by Gentlemen opposite as other than strictly impartial. The hon. Gentleman the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. C S. Read) was the only Member who referred to it in the course of the debate; but that hon. Gentleman had confined his observations to the Report upon Belgium, and in doing so, whilst stating that the outrages in that country had been confined to a short period—in which he was in error, for they had existed from the time of the Emperor Charles V.—had omitted to mention that they were confined to one district—if he recollected aright, the Pays de Waes—and arose out of the nonpayment of money by the incoming to the outgoing tenant; but he had likewise omitted to say how different were the relations of landlord and tenant in Belgium from those in Ireland. In the former country there were existing a large number of peasant proprietors, who likewise had manufactures to fall back upon. It was idle for the hon. Gentleman to put himself forward as a tenant-farmer, and to contrast his condition with that of the impoverished Irish tenant—he, who was a Member of that House, who was quite independent of agriculture, and who, by education and social position, could, if he chose, turn to many other industries. Again, he asked, what was the difference between the tenure of a house or a shop and land? He had not read the able and exhaustive Report of Mr. Gastrell in the Blue Book, who answered his question, when he said—"Man might build a house, but could not create land." Again, the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Brodrick) had asked, was there not competition for land in England? He (Sir Patrick O'Brien) was not prepared to dispute that position; but he would ask the hon. Member, was not the competition in the one case for a convenience, in the other for an absolute necessity? He was not going to discuss the question from what are called Irish ideas, nor from a review of the conditions, social and otherwise, in England or Ireland. He would venture to appeal to European opinion, as furnished by the Reports in the Blue Book, and he feared, that the opinion in Ireland, already adverse to the Bill, would be increased when those Reports would be—as they would be—road in Ireland. He would first shortly
  1242
  refer to France, a country pre-eminent in European civilization. No doubt it might be said that that was not a fair reference, as the state of affairs there had been brought about by a bloody revolution. Well, he was prepared to admit the force of that objection, and he would content himself by reading one passage of Mr. West's Report, in which, without referring to causes, he epitomized results. Mr. West said—
  "The small proprietor has reconstituted the economy of the nation, and more than doubled the produce of the soil."
  In Wurtemberg, in Baden, and in most European countries, the Reports affirmed that the system of small proprietors had increased immensely the productiveness of the soil, had produced contentment; and the reply to the query as to the relations between landlord and tenant socially were nearly unanimously that they were on the best terms one with the other. In Portugal a system of tenure, known also elsewhere, was stated by Mr. Doria to most extensively prevail, designated by the Greek term emphyteusis, which conferred perpetuity of tenure at fixed rents. This system pervaded nearly all Northern Portugal and the Province of Alemtejo, and its provisions were supplemented by the energy of a man well known to all acquainted with foreign polities—the Marquis Pombal. The contrast of emphyteusis was said to arise whenever the owner of any real property transfers the dominium utile of such property to another person who binds himself to pay the owner a certain fixed rent, called "foro" or "canon," and in that case the rent is fixed and the tenant irremovable. He mentioned those matters to show that abroad what were called the rights of property were already more overridden than was ever attempted by Irish agitators. In this hurried and cursory review which he had taken of the contents of the Reports, he now came to Prussia—a country which all would admit was feudal of the feudal, and where the tenant was regarded as little more than a serf. What was effected in France by a revolution a disastrous battle did for Prussia, Jena emancipated the Prussian peasant. After that battle, in 1807, Stein promulgated an edict, supplemented in 1811 by Hardenberg, which changed the whole framework of Prussian land tenure. The landlord was

  1243
  given a third of the land where the possession was hereditary—one-half where it was not; but it was subsequently enacted that the tenant could acquire either the third or the half, as the case might be, by either paying a capital sum or by paying a yearly rent-charge, and the Government, to enable the occupier to carry out this provision, even instituted rent-charge banks to enable him to do so. Who will talk now of interference with the rights of property, when this thing has been done in absolute and feudal Prussia? But what has been the result? There reigns contentment throughout that kingdom, and that the peasant feels equal interest in its greatness with the king was well evidenced by the soldiery who conquered at Sadowa. Hon. Members had asked whether, in the event of this Bill being carried with reference to Ireland, a similar measure would not be proposed for England; but the fact was that the two countries stood upon a totally different footing with reference to this question, owing to the many commercial avocations open to the inhabitants of this country—none of which existed in Ireland. He had been informed that many of the manufactures that were at one time specialities of this country were being exercised on the Continent; and the time, therefore, might come when this country might find herself reduced to the same position in which Ireland now was, and then it might, indeed, be necessary to pass a law for England similar to that they now had under consideration for Ireland. He was free to confess that the measure they were then considering would have been esteemed as a boon some ten years ago; but he regretted to say it was not so then, and he warned hon. Gentlemen opposite, and noble Lords in "another place," of the danger of mutilating what in Ireland were considered its inadequate provisions. When the Bill was first introduced, he had written over to say that there was much good in the Bill; but the majority of his constituents were not prepared to accept it. For his own part, everything he had in the world was derived from land; but he desired that the tenant should obtain full security. He felt that hon. Members from Ireland who sat on the opposite Benches were equally interested with himself in having peace and contentment in Ireland. He appealed to them to be contented
  1244
  with receiving fair rents, punctually paid, and to waive mere fanciful considerations of territorial dominion in the interest of peace and tranquillity in Ireland.
  MR.KAVANAGHsaid, he could not support the Amendment of the right hon. Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli), for he considered that having not only voted for the second reading of this Bill, but having openly accepted the principle that a deterrent penalty should be imposed upon capricious evictions, by giving a tenant a right with certain provisoes to claim compensation for disturbance, he could not now stultify himself by supporting an Amendment which directly negatived that principle. But he was bound to say that Her Majesty's Government had sorely tested his consistency. As the clause now stood un-amended it was unjustly harsh, the scale of compensation unwarrantably high; but when he looked at the Amendments placed upon the Table by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, he found that he proposed to make it harsher still. The simple plea of protection to the tenant would seem to be abandoned, and that of hostility and injustice to the landlord openly avowed. If this was the sort of spirit in which the Government were going to deal with this Land Bill in Committee, he would, he thought, not only be warranted in supporting the Amendment now before them, but of using every means in his power directly, and indirectly, to defeat the measure. However, dim as it might seem, he would still cling to the hope that the Government wished to do justice between man and man; that they, and the great party opposite by whom they were supported, would still apply to the details of this measure the tests of equity and reason. He hoped the Prime Minister would acknowledge the justice of not extending the principle of compensation to tenants paying £100 a year rent. Tenants of holdings of that value were quite as capable of making their own bargains as English or Scotch tenants. The injustice was much increased by including the tenants of large grazing farms like those of Meath, where some men paid £5,000 a year rent. Although the pending division on this question involved his desertion of those ranks to which he was proud to belong, he could not go with them in supporting an

  1245
  Amendment negativing a principle which he had already adopted.
  MR.MATTHEWSsaid, that the hon. and learned Member for Richmond (Sir Roundell Palmer) had described the clause under discussion as being illusory because it would enable a landlord to levy increased rents from his tenants. With that assertion he was unable to agree. Such might be the ultimate result; but for the present he believed that the clause would prevent the landlord from increasing his rent, because every tenancy from year to year was a bargain which, wild not be varied by one party alone, and no landlord would be able to raise his rent, however moderate, without putting an end to the tenancy, running the gauntlet of the 3rd clause, and paying such compensation as the Court might think tit to award. Under these circumstances, therefore, he could not regard the clause as being illusory in this respect. But he thought the clause delusive in another and a larger sense. He regarded the clause not as aimed at improvements at all—that was mere garniture to cloak its real object, which was to give security to the 526,000 and odd tenants-at-will out of 682,000 agricultural tenants holding less than thirty acres in Ireland. The great evil connected with the tenure of land in Ireland was the insecurity of that large number of holdings, and if the clause did not secure those tenants it was delusive. He could not persuade himself that the clause would be an effective protection to that large number of poor tenants-at-will who had made no improvements. It involved a contradiction in terms. The Bill did not do away with the right to evict, neither did it create any right of occupation; but, nevertheless, it said the tenant should be entitled to such compensation from his landlord for the loss he sustained by quitting his holding as the Court deemed just. If the clause were administered, he would not say by a lawyer, but by a logical person, when the tenant came before him he would ask him what loss he had sustained by quitting his holding, and would say to him—"You have no right of occupation given you by the Bill; how am I to award you any money because you are unable to keep that which you have no right to keep?" Compensation or damages implied the loss of the money value of some right of
  1246
  which a man had been deprived; and, in common sense and logic, there could be no compensation when a man had no right taken from him. The only compensation that could and ought to be given to the tenant would be some such compensation as that indicated by the Amendment of the right hon. Member for Buckinghamshire for the only loss that could be legitimately proved—namely, loss of the profits of a course of husbandry in which he had engaged with his landlord's knowledge, and to which he had an equitable, if not a legal right; or the expenses of removing from his holding. But while if the clause were properly administered, the tenant would get nothing more than this, there was, on the other hand, the chance of its being loosely administered, and of the tribunal entering into some such considerations as those laid down by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to which he had listened with great alarm. In that event the clause would undoubtedly be unjust in its application. The Chancellor of the Exchequer told them there were moral obligations attached to the exercise of the legal right of eviction and of giving notice to quit. Unquestionably that was true. A landlord might exercise his right so harshly and inequitably, so repugnantly to the common feeling of the country in which he lived, that most men disapproved his conduct, and by that clause they were going to punish him for that disregard of a moral obligation. It was to be hoped that Judges of extraordinary wisdom and acuteness would be appointed to estimate such vague and indefinite considerations as those, otherwise their decisions must inevitably be attended with the greatest injustice, uncertainty, and caprice. The tenant would never know what amount of compensation he might reckon upon recovering. It used to be said that the conscience of the Chancellor varied like the length of the Chancellor's foot. In like manner the sums given to tenants for compensation, would vary upon no intelligible principle, according to the temper of the Judge. But the right hon. Gentleman at the head, of the Government, in his speech on the second reading of the Bill, suggested another kind of loss for which the tenant might claim on quitting his holding, that he might say that his rent had been low;

  1247
  to which the landlord would be entitled to answer that, under the circumstances, it was reasonable that the tenant should pay a fair and not a low rent. How was that to be reconciled with the proposition of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that a fair rent was a matter to be shut out from the consideration of the Court? The moment they departed from the safe rule that a man was to get compensation or damages only for the deprivation of a right, there was no limit at which they could stop; there was no reason why the tenant should not make a claim for the maintenance of himself and family, or for interest upon his capital till he got a fresh holding, however long that might happen to be. If they once gave to his loss any meaning beyond the money value of some right of which the tenant was deprived, they would be thrown upon a sea of uncertainty in which the tenant might claim to be paid for what was not his, and the landlord might be called on to pay for that which was his own. Another objection to the clause was that it was not what the Irish tenants had ever asked for. The attempt to give the tenant security by the machinery of a compensation clause was a compromise which had never been heartily accepted by the Irish people or their advocates. It was invented in 1851 to ensure the alliance of Mr. Sharman Crawford and the Irish Tenant League. From the first that compromise was repudiated by those who spoke the wishes of the Irish tenants, and from the moment they adopted the notion of compensation they ceased to get farmers to attend tenant-right meetings. The tenants did not want to be dispossessed first and then allowed to sue for damages of an uncertain amount. They did not want a capricious and illogical penalty for capricious evictions. They wanted to have it simply declared that they should not be evicted except for non-payment of rent, waste, subdivision, and matters of that kind, and the organs of the tenant party repudiated the proposals contained in that Bill. He believed Irish landlords were willing to go great lengths in giving security to the tenant—to make large concessions in order to meet demands satisfactory to the tenants themselves, and consistent with justice and propriety; but this clause was not what the tenants wanted, and he believed it would not be satisfactory to either party.
  MR.W. FOWLERsaid, he agreed with those who thought the Committee had now got to the most important part of the whole Bill; but he did not concur with the hon. and learned Member for Dungarvan (Mr. Matthews) in thinking that this 3rd clause was an illusory provision. He held that hon. Members would be doing the most serious injury to Ireland if they voted against it. He believed that exceptional legislation was required in respect of the holding of land in Ireland. In former times, the trade of that country had been destroyed by our Legislature, and the consequence had been that a very much larger number of the people of that country were thrown upon the land for their support than would otherwise have been obliged to get their subsistence in that way. At the present time there were 500,000 holdings of an annual value under £15. He was, therefore, in favour of the clause as the Government proposed to frame it, for the purpose of giving security of tenure; but he thought its application ought to be limited to small holdings under £50 a year. The Government must either have adopted the plan laid down in this clause, or the alternative of transferring the property in the soil from the landlords to the tenants. They had acted rightly in giving the tenant compensation if he was wrongly and capriciously evicted. He therefore thought the measure was a statesmanlike one; and, considering the clause in all its bearings, he should give his support to the Government.
  MR.BRUENsaid, the Committee had to choose whether they would accept the clause without any amendment, or adopt the Amendment of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, or the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli). He said, unhesitatingly, that he preferred the last of those three courses in preference to either of the two other alternatives. He believed every Irish Member would agree with him that it was desirable to give the Irish tenants security of tenure. That security he was most anxious to obtain for them. It was his pride, and it ever had been his object, to have his land occupied by successive generations of tenants—that the son should succeed his father in the occupation of the same farm—the same home. He wanted to see throughout Ireland

  1249
  the same custom in that respect as existed in this country; but he did not think that security for the Irish tenant could be secured by such a penal enactment as was proposed by this clause. He believed it could be accomplished only by mutual confidence and good-will and good offices mutually performed between landlord and tenant. Of course, it might be proposed to give the tenants absolute possession of the soil by Act of Parliament; but to such a measure as that the House of Commons never would give its assent, and short of that, no legislative measure of tenant-right would be effective in giving security of tenure to the tenants. It was, therefore, he said, that to mutual confidence and good-will between landlord and tenant must they look for the establishment of that security which he hoped all landlords would be glad to see the Irish tenants enjoy.
  MR. MAGUIREsaid, he regarded this as the most important question they would have to discuss during the progress of this Bill through Committee, and therefore, as an Irish representative, anxious to have this measure carried, he was most desirous that nothing should be done to curtail the provisions which had been submitted to the Parliament and the country. Let the Committee consider its position at this moment. On the last night they had done everything in their power to satisfy the North of Ireland, and unhappily an idea prevailed in the other parts of the country that the Government desired to do something for the North which they would not do for the South of Ireland. If, therefore, the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli) were carried, the belief in the minds of the people of the other three Provinces that Parliament was about to legislate unfavourably for them and favourably for Ulster, would receive a thorough confirmation. For the farmers of the North they had not only legalized tenant-right, but had also given them an option either of claiming that right or of coming under the protective provisions of the Bill. He was one of the first who had expressed his intention of giving a cordial support to the hon. Member for Belfast (Mr. W. Johnston)—than whom no one was more competent to speak with authority on behalf of the tenant-farmers of the North. But what was
  1250
  the position of the great mass of the farmers of the South? He would not exaggerate, but it was one he would not say of serfdom but of simple dependence on the will, the power, the caprice of the proprietors of the soil. The great object to be kept in view was, to give these men a sense of security. The hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. C. S. Read) had said that if the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman did not supersede the provision proposed by the Government, the tenants in question would have a lazy sense of security. No; but they would have an active sense of security, which would develop their faculties and change the whole face of the country. It was because he; believed that would be the result that he supported the clause of the Government; but if the right hon. Gentleman; the Leader of the Opposition, acting on I the prejudices—he did not mean it in an offensive sense—of his followers, and also upon the narrow feeling of some hon. Gentlemen representing Scotland I should succeed in cutting out this provision the effect would be most disastrous. He wished to say a word on this subject to hon. Members from Scotland, with whom he was proud on all questions of general policy to act. Some of these hon. Gentlemen, judging from the cheers they indulged in several times while the right hon. Gentleman was speaking, were likely to support him because the Government proposed a remedy for a state of things existing in Ireland a parallel to which, did not exist in Scotland or England. But he wished to warn his hon. Friends against the impolicy of confounding two states of things diametrically opposed, and of attempting to legislate upon a narrow view—he said it respectfully—derived from their Scotch notions. But the great body of the Irish Members and the Government, acting under a great responsibility, told them that these ideas could not fairly be applied to Ireland. Let the Committee consider that this Bill was not so popular in Ireland as he verily believed it ought to be. He did not himself approve every clause of the Bill; but the great body of it was good, and many of its provisions were admirable. On very many large properties in Ireland, and on some small ones, the system carried out was one of protection which gave perfect security to the te-

  1251
  nant; and it was because the same system was not adopted by all Irish, proprietors, and a large number of tenants were placed in a precarious position, that the Government had introduced this measure. What would be the consequences if this Amendment was carried? The Bill would be virtually destroyed, and the responsibility would rest with the House of Commons. A belief would be created in every man's heart in Ireland that the House of Commons would not or could not legislate fairly for Ireland, and a more dangerous conviction could not enter into the minds of the people. There was a hope dawning in Ireland. Let them not shake that hope for any party purpose. If they were not prepared to legislate in a broad and generous spirit let them stop the Bill at once, let them wait for another winter and for the commencement of another Session, and see what would be the result of long delay and bitter disappointment. To compare the poor people paying their £30 or £40 a year rent, whom this Bill was intended to protect, with great Norfolk farmers or with shopkeepers carrying on a great trade was an outrage upon common sense. The shopkeeper would not embark his capital unless he had a lease. ["No, no!"] A Cork or Dublin shopkeeper would not, and if a Londoner would he was a greater fool than he believed him to be. He held this to be the best portion of the Bill; it was protective of the landlord and protective of the tenant, because the tribunal would be bound to take everything into consideration, and to do justice between man and man. If the Bill should be carried uncurtailed, his solemn belief was that it would do great good to Ireland; but if cut down and crippled, in God's name let the Government at once abandon it, for if sent to Ireland it would prove a curse, not a blessing.
  MR.GOLDNEYsaid, that as the hon. Gentleman who had preceded him had said that the Committee ought to accept the Bill unaltered, he (Mr. Goldney) must observe that what hon. Members on that (the Opposition) side of the House complained of was that it had been materially altered since it had been introduced, and that it now proposed to initiate, for the first time, in this country the doctrine that simple occupation was to be regarded as property.
  1252
  The granting of leases would, he believed, be a great benefit to the Irish tenant; but if the Bill were to pass in its present shape it would operate as a perpetual bar to the granting of leases.
  MR.GLADSTONE: Sir, I will endeavour to go through as succinctly as I can the various points of importance which have been raised in the course of this discussion. I would, in the first place, however, clear the ground, and let it be plainly understood, at least, so far as depends upon me, what is the question upon which we are about to-night to vote; because a very considerable portion of the debate, and, above all a very large portion of the important speech of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond (Sir Roundell Palmer) turned upon matters wholly extraneous to the point now at issue, although, in saying so, I admit that there is such an interlacing of provisions on this subject as to render it no matter of surprise that other questions besides that directly at issue should be brought under our view. We are discussing on this occasion the basis of computation of the compensation which is to be made to the tenant in the event of causeless or arbitrary eviction by the landlord. That I believe to be the strict and absolute definition of the whole matter at issue to-night. We are not now discussing the scale of the compensation to be given. We may raise it to ten years' rental, as has been suggested by an hon. Friend of mine on this side of the House (Mr. Synan), or, following the advice of a right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Disraeli) reduce it to five or any other figure, in perfect consistency with the view which the Government will press upon the Committee to-night. I will only say, with respect to the scale, that the extreme complication of the subjects with which I had to deal in introducing the Bill caused me to dwell much more briefly than perhaps I ought to have done on many points in the statement which I then made. And it is undoubtedly my fault that a certain amount of misapprehension has prevailed with regard to the ground on which the claim to compensation would in our view be dealt with by the Judges who are to be constituted by this Bill. I never intended to say that upon the landlord alone would be imposed the burden of proof. I did mean to state this, that,

  1253
  in my opinion, Parliament, by the figures which it may insert in the scale, will convey to the Judges its own general idea of the sort of loss which, under the present circumstances of Ireland, a causeless eviction may inflict. But certainly it ought to be incumbent on the tenant—and if the Bill is obscure on this point it ought to be made clear—to show that his case comes within the class of cases contemplated by Parliament, and that his eviction was causeless. To discuss the scale of compensation would, however, only tend to complicate the issue with which we now have to deal. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond said much of the leasing powers which were originally in the Bill—which, in fact, are now in the Bill—but which we propose to dispense with for reasons which I shall state fully when we come to that particular clause. I think I shall be able to show my hon. and learned Friend that he has very greatly overrated the importance of the 16th clause, but I shall not dwell on that point now. In dealing with this Bill, and in inquiring what Amendments ought to be introduced into it, we have not asked ourselves in the first instance whether this or that Amendment might chance to tell in favour of the landlord or of the tenant, but whether it was on the whole calculated to improve the fabric of the measure. When my hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland, for example, gave notice that we proposed to strike out that provision which imposes the county cess in the case of holdings under £4 value on the landlord, he did so not because the tendency of the change was directly in the interest of the landlord. In the same way it was thought by us that the operation of this leasing power would operate offensively in a far higher degree than it would confer a benefit, in the case of those for whose advantage it was especially intended; and we have, in consequence, been induced to make a different proposal to the House. That proposal, as has been stated to the Committee by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is one which appears to us entirely unexceptionable. It says, that if it be desired to get rid of damages for eviction, the landlord may give his tenant the power of disposing of his interest; and, if the Court is satisfied that that offer meets the
  1254
  circumstances of the case, it shall stand in lieu of damages for eviction. This, however, is not the moment at which such a matter ought to be considered. Another point which is not strictly relevant to the present discussion, but which has been referred to by more than one speaker, is the question of existing leases, which have been carefully excluded so far as relates to the claim for damages for eviction. Lastly, with respect to free contracts, let it not be supposed by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond, or any other hon. Gentleman, that we have not felt the difficulty of that question as much as anyone else. There is nothing in our opinions or general action which should tend to make us dead to the advantages of free contract wherever it can be had. But it is a hard, invincible conviction, which has been forced upon us, that the simple admission of free contract would be the destruction of this portion of the Bill, that has led us to insert this provision. We are, of course, desirous of limiting it within the narrowest bounds. The precise figure at which free contract should come in to exempt a party from the compulsory provisions of the clause cannot be treated as a question of principle in the same way as the main provision of the clause itself. I do not say that you can make a fundamental alteration as to the line to be drawn; but the precise figure which should be fixed upon is a matter on which we are quite open to whatever conviction an enlarged and impartial discussion may bring home to our minds. There is, I may add, another provison—a very simple one—which we intend to lay before the Committee, which I will now read to them, and which, I think, is at once more important—though not immediately operative—and more innocent, than any other mode in which we can approach the subject of free contract so as to show our preference for it. In dealing with this Bill, we consider very much that which arises from our conception of it, and in our view it is a measure which is wholly and absolutely exceptional. One of our grounds for objecting to the Motion is, that it destroys this exceptional character of the Bill, and prepares the ground straight ahead for its introduction into England and Scotland. Now, we look upon it as an exceptional Irish measure. Nay, more, we hope the time may come when

  1255
  the provisions of this Bill may no longer be necessary in Ireland. Then, perhaps, you will say—"Why not make the Bill a temporary one?" ["Hear!"] Well, we have endeavoured to give to that subject an impartial consideration. There is a very great difficulty in making the Bill a temporary Bill, upon a ground which every Member conversant with its provisions will at once appreciate—namely, the longevity (if I may use the word) of many of the interests which will be created under it. What we believe is, that if the time ever comes—and I trust it may come—when it will be possible and desirable for Ireland to work its way out of many of the peculiarities which we are compelled to ask Parliament to enact in its present circumstances, the best way of doing that will be by the re-introduction of the principle of free contract; because, whatever complications may arise from a system which we look upon as artificial, freedom of contract between the parties will be the simplest, the best, and even the quickest way of disposing of them, when once you have restored those parties to a position in which they can meet upon equal terms. What we should propose is this—undoubtedly not that this provision as to free contract shall last for a certain number of years and then terminate, because that would be a very hasty and precipitate mode of proceeding. We cannot venture to say that twenty, or thirty, or any given number of years, will be sufficient; but there is a method which has been adopted by Parliament, I believe, in several instances, and certainly in one great instance, that of the Bank Charter Act. There the mode adopted by Parliament to mark that the engagement is terminable and rests upon conventional grounds is this—It is appointed to endure for a certain number of years, and thereafter until Parliament shall otherwise determine. By words of that kind Parliament marks its opinion that the principle of the provision made is not of an immutable and permanent character, and yet, at the same time, it does not prematurely venture to anticipate a given moment which experience does not warrant our endeavouring at this time to fix, and at which we can now say it will be possible for Parliament to dispense with such legislation. The words we propose to adopt are these—"This provision—namely, a
  1256
  provision which restrains freedom of contract—
  "Shall remain in force for twenty years, from the first day of January, one thousand eight hundred and seventy-one, and thereafter until Parliament shall otherwise determine."
  I now come to the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, and my first observation respecting it is that one-half of his speech was retrospective, and was devoted to setting out the limitations which the Government had made in the Bill. It was given to be understood, if, indeed, it was not expressly stated, that these limitations had induced the right hon. Gentleman to depart reluctantly from the friendly attitude he had originally assumed, and appear at length as an opponent of important provisions in the Bill. Now, it has been shown how little the right hon. Gentleman deserves the reproach he has bestowed upon himself of having been too credulous as to the assurances of the Government; because, when he delivered his speech tonight, he entirely forgot the definition he gave of his support on the second reading, when he carefully limited it to the title of the Bill, and the assertion of the proposition that it was expedient to deal with the law relating to landlord and tenant in Ireland. Be that as it may, his Motion is not directed to any alteration made in the Bill by the Government, but is aimed at the Bill as it stood. If the right hon. Gentleman means to speak again, he will not contradict me when I say that his Motion is aimed at the Bill which he said he was prepared to support. That is an important fact to be remembered. ["No!"] Why then that half-hour upon the transformation of the Bill by the Government? Surely the right hon. Gentleman might have waited for the transformation before addressing such an argument to the Committee. The Motion is, I repeat, really aimed at the Bill as it stood, and at one of the main pillars of the Bill. About that let there be no mistake. One of the grand provisions of the Bill was the confirmation of Irish customs. Another grand provision was the assertion of the principle that improvements made by the tenant were the property of the tenant. And a third principle of the Bill, which was by far the most prominent in the lengthened statement it was my duty to inflict upon the House, was that damages for evic-

  1257
  tions were to be paid to the tenant. It is against that principle outright that the right hon. Gentleman has moved his Amendment. He has not asked the question where we give too much or too little damages; it is against the whole principle of damages for eviction that the right hon. Gentleman has directed his Amendment. What is a Bill for the settlement of the Irish land question divested of provisions for the payment of damages on eviction? We have heard the right hon. Gentleman's idea of the Bill; and I must say that those who, sitting on this side of the House, have listened to some of the speeches made opposite—in which I do not include the speech of the hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Kavanagh), who, though he severely censured the Government, yet has manfully stood to the spirit of the declaration he made originally—and whoever compares these speeches, directed against all recognition of any special or peculiar claim on the part of the Irish tenant, with some of the speeches we have heard from below the Gangway, which are a faint, and only a faint, reflex of deep and widespread popular conviction in Ireland, will have some sympathy for the position of the Government, and some sense of the sort of task they have undertaken in the endeavour to bring together views so discordant as the impressions produced on the one side in the Irish mind by our own bad legislation and our own neglect of duty; and, on the other side, the pure ideas of property as they are conceived in the minds of men of property, who make not the least endeavour to learn and appreciate the point of view from which these subjects are regarded by the rest of the kingdom? What is the principle the right hon. Gentleman sets up against us? It is the principle that we are to give compensation for improvements. That, he says, is all that justice in the present circumstances of Ireland can require. Bad as the principle of the right hon. Gentleman is, he does not even give full effect to it. It is true he makes a nominal addition as to the damage accruing from the interruption of a due course of husbandry. What is the value of that? The Chancellor of the Exchequer has shown that, with respect to the great bulk of the smaller tenants, there is nothing that can be called a due course of husbandry; the nature of their
  1258
  holdings does not admit of it. What is the nature of the claim—for the right hon. Gentleman did not in the least explain it—arising to the tenant out of the interruption of a due course of husbandry? In the small holdings there is nothing that can be called so. In the larger holdings what does it mean? The right hon. Gentleman argued as though the rotation of crops was uniform over a large farm, that one year it would be all in grass, another year all in oats, and another year all in turnips. ["Oh!"] Really hon. Gentlemen only show how needful it is that their attention should be directed to the subject. Unless this is so, what is the claim for compensation on the ground of interruption? But the fact is, that the farm is commonly divided in a due course of husbandry, and there can be, therefore, no special claim on the ground of interruption. And what is the value of this compensation? Take a farm of £50 rental. The right hon. Gentleman proposes that two years' rent shall be all the compensation required, including the due course of husbandry. Then I come to this further fallacy in his speech and his proposal. Having cut down the principle of compensation to simple compensation for improvements, he then goes on to abandon his own principle, which, he says, justice requires us to adopt, and he subjects the application of it to the law of a maximum. Now, if the Irish tenant is to be compensated for his improvement, why is his compensation put under the limit of a scale, and why is a man paying £150 rent, who has made judicious improvements at a cost of £500, to receive as compensation only one year's rent? In my opinion his proposition is inconsistent with itself, and is inconsistent with his own speech. But if it were consistent, do not let us disguise the fact that our contention is entirely opposed to it; and I do hope that every Gentleman who sits in this House will embrace clearly in his mind the nature of the opposition. The right hon. Gentleman, favourable as were his first declarations upon the introduction of the Bill, and even to some extent upon the second reading, as long as he dwelt on generalities, now undoubtedly seeks to break down one of the three great pillars of the Bill, without which it must be a miserable ruin. We contend that the Irish occupier, when

  1259
  causelessly evicted by his landlord, is entitled to requital for his loss. Gentlemen opposite cannot understand what the loss of the occupier is. The loss of the Irish tenant is the loss of livelihood. If you want an explanation of the evil inflicted on the Irish tenant—if you want to know the hardship of the Irish tenant's case when evicted causelessly, I refer you to the explanation I heard from the lips of the hon. Gentleman the junior Member for Carlow County (Mr. Kavanagh), given in his first speech upon this Bill, when he said—"The choice of the evicted tenant is America or the poorhouse." These are the circumstances, dreadfully and emphatically described, under which we contend that the causeless eviction of the Irish tenant usually means ruin, and that in respect of that ruin he ought to receive damages. The proposition which we assert, and the proposition the right hon. Gentleman denies, is that of damages I entirely apart from the claim we propose to recognize of a property in the improvements which the tenant has made. The hon. and learned Member for Richmond admitted that there might be a State necessity, arising out of the peculiar circumstances of Ireland for such an enactment as this. That necessity arises out of the fact, which may not be true as a universal proposition, but which is generally and too fatally true, that to the man so ejected there is no alternative except one of the two named by the hon. Member for Carlow. Therefore, a State necessity arises out of that consideration—a State necessity which now exhibits itself before you. In fact, within the last few weeks you have been obliged to confess that Ireland, after all the centuries of our legislation, is at this moment, to the scandal of the civilized world and to the dishonour of the fair name and fame of England, go where you will, ungovernable by the ordinary law. [An hon. MEMBER: Whose fault is it?] Does the hon. Gentleman who asks that question think that the mischief has arisen within the last twelve months. My revenge upon him is simply to recommend to him a prolonged course of study of Irish history, of which he evidently stands in need. But it is not alone a case of legislation founded upon State necessity. Our conviction is that causeless eviction ought to be laden with a
  1260
  charge which will operate as a bar and as a powerful deterrent against a landlord before he resorts to it, and before he uses the threat of it, for it is by the threat and by the anticipation of eviction that the greater part of the mischief is done. In order to ascertain the justice of that it is absolutely necessary to go back; and the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Buxton) who spoke so ably to-night, unduly depreciated his own speech when he said he was producing matter of antiquarian interest. You must understand what kind of tenure the Irish tenant inherited in order to know what ideas he received from his fathers. Do you think that those ideas he has received from his ancestors can be uprooted in a moment? Is that a Conservative view? On the contrary, you would praise him for cherishing, even in weakness, the traditions of his country. What was the Irish tenure? It was a tenure of perpetuity; the occupier of the land was irremovable from the land by ancient Irish custom. What came in lieu of this Irish custom? Nominally, there came the feudal system. How does Judge Longfield speak of it? He says—
  "According to the old feudal law the lordship could not be transferred without the consent of the tenant, lest an enemy might be made his feudal superior; but in a great part of Ireland a sudden and violent transfer of the lordship was made to persons whom the tenants knew only as their victorious enemies."
  Is it not idle to compare the position and ideas of that country with those of England and Scotland, where, after a long course of good government for many peaceful generations, reposing thankfully under the shadow of the laws and institutions of the country, men are satisfied that the laws that govern them are adapted to all their recollections, all their ideas and wants? But the case of Ireland does not rest upon what lies in remote antiquity. On a former occasion I mentioned what was said by Mr. O'Connell, and the passage is a remarkable one. He says those who reason that to legislate against the landlord would be to deprive him of his property
  "Forget the Acts of Parliament passed in favour of the landlord and against the tenant. Let there be an Act of Parliament on the other side."
  Mr. O'Connell speaks of Acts which

  1261
  had passed within sixty or eighty years on the other side, and he says—
  "The condition of the tenants will be greatly benefited by depriving the landlord of much of the legal machinery by which he is able to extort an exorbitant rent from the occupier. All that would be necessary would be to repeal a few Acts of Parliament, and to restore the ancient law with respect to the relations of landlord and tenant."
  Perhaps you will say that this is Mr. O'Connell, and he was a patriot and a demagogue; you may mistrust his authority; but you will pay more attention to that of Judge Longfield, who in a brief space sets out the successive Acts by which Parliament has legislated against the occupiers of land, and has created that instability of tenure which you are now asked to remove. It is not the result simply of the natural circumstances of Ireland; it is the result in the main of statutory enactments which, as it were, behind the back of the Irish occupier Parliament has adopted, and by means of which it has fundamentally altered his condition. Judge Longfield says that the laws, unduly favourable to the landlord, were rigidly maintained as if they had been unalterable laws of nature, and were at once altered if they appeared to afford a temporary protection to the tenant. In the case of a disputed action between a landlord and a tenant, the former did not wait for the decision of a court of justice, but sent the bailiff and seized the goods of the tenant. The landlord had to give no security in case his claim should be false; but the tenant, although he saw his goods distrained by simple process, could not act without a troublesome replevin, and only then by giving security for the sum demanded; but to discourage him in testing the landlord's rights he was compelled to pay double costs if he failed. Judge Longfield goes on to detail the rest of the Acts by which Parliament has not only modified but has essentially changed, with respect to evictions, the position of the Irish tenant. The ancient grievance of Ireland was not eviction. If you go back 100 or 150 years you do not find it was eviction which was the great grievance of Ireland. Oppression existed in another form. According to the best authorities, the Whiteboy disturbances grew out of the suppression of the commonages, which the people had enjoyed. The commons were enclosed for the benefit
  1262
  of the landlords, in consequence of the great demand for stock. On a former occasion I ventured to point out that an Act relating to ejectment in 1815 or 1816 made a fundamental change in the law. That Act contained in the Preamble a recital to the effect that the law was costly and impracticable, and that the process by which the landlord could put out a tenant was practically of little or no vise, and, consequently, Parliament altered the system. Therefore, you have radically altered the condition of the Irish occupier, and have created that instability of tenure which is now proved to be an evil worse than any that have previously disfigured the condition of Ireland; and what we are now proposing to do is the redressing of an inequality—I would say the partial redressing of an inequality, but the best the circumstances permit of. That is a true description of the process to which we invite the favour of Parliament. It is said—"Here is an interference with the principle of property;" but that is an assertion of very wide scope. When we framed the Bill we endeavoured to avoid as far as possible giving any ground for an appeal to those principles which tend to rouse the feelings of classes. I hope it will be admitted on all sides that we have not been indistinct in the declaration of our intention to offer a firm resistance to all attempts to introduce principles into the Bill which would go to make the power of the landlord over his property, or the receipts he derived from it, subject to the indefinite claims of a separate and rival interest. Now, with respect to interference with property, there are two kinds of such interference. You may interfere so as to weaken the foundations of property, and you may interfere so as to strengthen them. One of our complaints in reference to the present state of Ireland is that the foundations of property are miserably weakened—that is to say, that as far as social order is maintained in a great part of Ireland it is maintained by force and fear, and not by love and affection. So long as that state of things prevails, there can be no satisfaction for the possessors of property, and even if they were called to make a sacrifice, it would be worth while to make it for the purpose of redressing that paramount and monster evil. No one who recollects the condition of Ireland with respect to

  1263
  the military and police force, will hesitate to admit that statement. Is our interference with property more marked than that effected by the Irish Poor Law? When that law was enacted, did we not impose for the first time on a particular description of property a certain burden, to which from time immemorial it had never been subject? And yet that was considered a perfectly fair and just measure, because it was deemed to be to the interest of property that the burden should be imposed in order that the social and political condition of the country might be improved. We might be content to shelter ourselves behind that great and authoritative example. But the difference here is this—that the years' purchase—which you are so fond of calling seven, though that is the highest point which in any case it can attain—need not he a deduction from the interest of the landlord. If you say that twenty-one years' purchase represents the value of landed property in Ireland, I ask why, instead of twenty-one years' purchase, it is not thirty or thirty-three years' purchase? The reason is to be found in the insecurity arising from the state of the country. Why should not Ireland be as well conditioned as Scotland? It is more populous. Why should not its agriculture be as good, though conducted in a method of its own; and why should not capital be applied with the same confidence to the cultivation of the land? We, who think that a reasonable Bill on the subject of the Irish land laws may attain its object, are justified in hoping and expecting, if we meet the reasonable demands of the Irish people, that their aspirations will fall down to the level and standard of justice, and that the establishment of good laws will produce that sense of security on the part of tenants and that disposition to invest capital in land which will make the land in Ireland not merely worth twenty or twenty-five years' purchase, but will raise it altogether to, or very nearly to, the value of land in England or Scotland. I need not say much more; but this I will say, and it is my last charge against the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman. No one can have observed these debates in Committee without being struck with the immense proportion in which the House has been addressed by English or Scotch Members. It is remark-
  1264
  able that though we have on the opposite Benches many hon. Gentlemen connected with Ireland—several with Ulster and some with other parts of Ireland—from very few of them has proceeded opposition to this Bill. I think, when I consider the observations of the hon. Member for Belfast (Mr. W. Johnston), and in particular of the hon. Member for Carlow (Mr. Kavanagh), we have had, perhaps, more of support than opposition from the Irish Members sitting opposite. It is owing to two causes that we observe this phenomenon. The hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Maguire) was right in saying that there is too great a disposition to apply the ideas of our own circle to other circles beyond it; and English and Scotch Members, knowing the principles which prevail healthily and happily in Great Britain, too rapidly assume that they ought to receive equal and immediate application in Ireland. But, besides this, there is the apprehension that the provisions of this Bill may come to be applied in England and Scotland. Now, we have studiously drawn the Bill with a view to the opposite effect. We have endeavoured, to leave ample scope for the introduction of Scotch and English usages in Ireland; but whenever we could strike on Irish peculiarities we have made them prominent, so as to make it not easy but difficult to introduce the Bill into England and Scotland, the circumstances of which do not require it. When we dealt with Ireland, we selected first that which was Irish, and which we knew not to be English. We began by legislating as largely as we could upon the Irish customs. We legalized the Ulster customs, and when we had to deal with the rest of Ireland, we sanctioned, as the basis of our legislation, a state of relations between occupiers and landlords wholly foreign to their condition in this country. We have founded ourselves on conditions specifically Irish in those parts of the Bill. And so, when we came to deal with improvements, we have proceeded on principles which are different, but not wholly different, from those prevalent in England. In this country the improvements on an estate, in the absence of contract, become the property of the landlord, though the opposite principle would seem in the abstract to be right. However, when we examine the circumstances of England and Scot-

  1265
  land, and find that these works of improvements are generally provided by the owner, and not by the occupier, the theoretical paradox wholly disappears, or becomes entirely insignificant. Therefore, as regards our Improvements Clause, we find that in principle it is substantially just, and that if introduced into this country, it could do no great mischief. If anyone had taxed his brain to conceive a proposition intended to prepare the way for the introduction of this legislation into England and Scotland, I can conceive no plan more fitted for the purpose than the proposition of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. Take the case of the "interruption of the due course of husbandry." Such a provision has but a limited application hi Ireland, on account of the smallness of the holdings; but in England and Scotland it would have a large application. I hold that to be an unfortunate incident in the form of the right hon. Gentleman's Amendment. I will not, however, stand on that; but I say I have tried to separate from the consideration of the point now before the Committee all the circumstances connected with the scale, with the freedom of contract, and the leasing powers. I have intimated to the Committee how anxious we shall be to adjust the provisions of the Bill, and to adapt them to the peculiar circumstances they are intended to meet; but setting these matters now aside, and regarding the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman, I maintain that it is an undisguised attempt to overthrow one of the main principles of the Bill as originally introduced. Nothing could be more shadowy than the ideas of the right hon. Gentleman with respect to land legislation, when he said on a former occasion that all we had to do was to give power to the courts, and to establish freedom of contract, but would not say, in answer to my question, what was to be done if freedom of contract was used to disclaim the courts. Still, I think, the right hon. Gentleman will perceive that, according to our point of view, and in conformity with every declaration we have made, it is impossible for us to treat as other than a blow aimed at the heart and life of the Bill his proposal, which, without discussing the quantity, the mode, or degree, calls on the House to put an absolute negative on the principle that the Irish
  1266
  tenant, when causelessly evicted, ought to receive compensation for his loss.
  MR.DISRAELI: Mr. Dodson—If the Committee will allow me to trespass on their attention for a few minutes, I should like, before we divide, to call the attention of the Committee to the real question before them. For this purpose I shall have to throw aside some ingenious arguments and some charming declamation to which we have listened. The right hon. Gentleman has accused me of some Parliamentary dissimulation on this occasion, and has intimated that I, after holding out fair promises of giving a candid consideration and a general cordial support to this measure, have taken the earliest opportunity of striking at the very principle of the Bill. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in complete inconsistency with that view, said that my Amendments were not Amendments to the Amendment of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, but that they had been on the Paper for a long time. Why, that is my case. Among other Amendments, I put on the Paper one to this clause. It was one only to an inferior part of the clause as it was then drawn. And although it has turned out in the odd chapter of Parliamentary accidents that we have a very full discussion upon what has become now an important issue, my vindication as to my general intention in regard to the Bill rests on the fact of the Amendment I am going to move to-night coming, according to the arrangement of the Paper, as an Amendment to a secondary part of the clause in the Bill of the Government. At the beginning of the evening I alluded, and I will now again refer in one instance, to the system of changes made by the Government, and which have brought us to the peculiar position in which we now find ourselves—changes in regard to the mode in which the Government dealt with Ulster usages—changes in regard to the most important provisions, the importance of which has been acknowledged by the high authority of the hon. and learned Member for Richmond (Sir Roundell Palmer) tonight, with regard to the power of a landlord granting a lease to a tenant which should arrest his claim for any of these invasions of the proprietary rights which have hitherto been unchallenged. And then I called the attention of the House to what every Member must be

  1267
  aware of—the complete re-construction of this 3rd clause; so that the second portion of the proviso to which I had offered my humble Amendment had become the prime and sole contents of the clause, and all the arrangements, all the computations which had been of course calculated from the aggregate of considerations to induce the Committee to arrive at the result recommended were all to apply to what now appears as the secondary consideration of the proviso. I thought then there was a very strong case to put before the Committee to show that when they had been really in Committee for some time, and had passed only one clause, such vast changes had occurred in this important matter; but if I required any vindication for the opinion I gave at the commencement of the evening—if I required any vindication for the argument I offered and the inference I wished the Committee to draw from it—the debate of to-night and the admissions of the First Minister and one of his chief Colleagues afford that complete and triumphant vindication. What does the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer say about this lease, the power of offering which was indeed accepted by the majority of the House as a compensation for the deprivation and diminution of the landlord's rights? What did he say about the lease, the relinquishment of which filled the hon. and learned Member for Richmond with apprehension? He says—"Upon that subject we have an important provision to make." But where is it? Not on the Paper; not on the Table. No notice has been given of it by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and yet the business is so exigent that we are to have Morning Sittings to pass a measure when some of the most important propositions are not even in form before the House. But, Sir, astonished as I was by the confession of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer—which I attributed to, I will not say the imprudence, but to the awkwardness which prevails sometimes at the commencement of a debate; imprudence is rather the characteristic of a later period in the evening—what is the admission of the right hon. Gentleman with regard to leases compared with the portentous confession just made by the Prime Minister? A new Bill! I think this
  1268
  is a new Bill, indeed, when I am told that it is to be framed on the model of the Bank Charter Bill. I do not know whether that will be any recommendation to hon. Gentlemen from Scotland. I cannot conceive that an Irish Land Bill framed on the model of the Bank Charter Bill will be one which the Northern part of Great Britain will receive with great complacency. The right hon. Gentleman now tells us that he is prepared to make this virtually a temporary Bill, and he asks the House only to pass it for a period of twenty years.
  MR.GLADSTONE: I stated that we had carefully considered whether we could apply a provision of that kind to the whole Bill or the general bulk of the Bill; but on account of the nature of the interests involved we did not see how that could be done, but that to the particular provisions that restricted free contract in the 3rd clause it appeared to us it might be applied.
  MR.DISRAELI: That, Sir, is a very handsome admission. Most of those on this side of the House thought it had even a wider application; but the admission is very important, because the right hon. Gentleman admits that restriction on free contract, certainly the most objectionable part of the Bill, is to be mitigated by its being made virtually of a temporary character. But, I say, when such an important admission is made at this hour of the night, it is an argument that the Committee should have some time given them to digest these alterations, and should not have to meet again in a few hours to hurry on a Bill in which, for aught I know, still more important alterations may be made. The right hon. Gentleman says that we have interfered as violently or more violently with property in Ireland in the case of the Poor Law. Sir, that is a fallacy on the part of the right hon. Gentleman. When we interfered by the Poor Law in Ireland, we did not interfere with the freedom of contract. He might as well say that we interfered with property in Ireland when we introduced the income tax. The right hon. Gentleman has challenged me on a subject on which he did not appear to me to be so well informed as in most others, and that is on the cultivation of the soil. Certainly, I admit that the great body of small tenants in Ireland, some of whom only pay £5 a year, are

  1269
  not likely to have a cultivation of the soil so artificial as to involve the rotation of crops; but the Bill is not limited to these small proprietors; it ascends, particularly in the new scale, to occupiers of considerable dimensions, quite sufficient to permit cultivation by rotation of crops. But if the right hon. Gentleman ever finds himself in the position of being a tenant-at-will, and he embarks in a rotation of crops and is dismissed at the end of the year, I think he will find that for unexhausted manures he has a claim for compensation. And when the right hon. Gentleman says that my Amendment may recommend the introduction into Ireland of a principle which may be most injurious and might be fatal if introduced in England, I beg to tell him that compensation for unexhausted improvements is enjoyed in England by the custom of the country. The right hon. Gentleman has to-night, as on previous occasions, endeavoured to overweigh our opinion by the great and "estimable authority of Judge Long-field." We have had two opinions from him to-night. I also will read two passages from Judge Longfield, and they are passages that have been written within a few days. Judge Longfield says, with reference to this measure—
  "The landlord, under the Bill, may be called upon to pay seven years' purchase for taking back from the tenant a possession which he had delivered to the same tenant without receiving anything."
  Then the favourite authority of the right hon. Gentleman goes on—
  "He is liable to be called on to pay £70, the whole rent that he had received, and the tenant, who need not have laid out a penny on the land, will have had the enjoyment of it for seven years rent free."
  Now, Sir, I do not say Judge Longfield is right or wrong. I do not insist on his authority; but I think that as he is quoted on the other side it is salutary that we should endeavour to get his last opinion. That remark is not only appropriate to the present moment; but I think it ought to make Gentlemen pause before they agree to the clause which is now before us. The real state of the case is, that the Government are in a difficulty through attempting to gain an object which they ought never to have sought to accomplish. And, in accordance with the habit of a Ministry embarrassed for the moment, they are
  1270
  endeavouring to misrepresent the feeling of the Committee; they want to make out that there is a great party struggle when there is no party struggle whatever. The Amendment which I put upon the Table was not aimed at all at these new arrangements, though it happily applies to them; and it is much better that we should decide upon an Amendment of that kind than upon a broad and hostile issue, for if my Amendment were carried there is no reason whatever why the Bill should not proceed. As far as party is concerned, there is no Gentleman sitting on the same side of the House as myself, whether he is connected with me by personal ties or political considerations, that I do not exempt from any necessity of supporting me upon this occasion. I gave notice of this Amendment and of some half-dozen others in the same spirit in which I spoke on the first night, when pledging myself, if possible, to assist the Government in carrying their measure. That measure I wish to see carried; but not by means which in themselves are objectionable, and which are totally opposed to the first representations that were made to this House, under which an unanimous support of the Bill was obtained. In the Bill, as it was drawn, and as it is yet unaltered, you are called on to give compensation to the tenant for his improvements, and as the second object of that clause you are to give him compensation for the loss which he sustains in quitting his holding. The right hon. Gentleman says this is the cardinal point of the measure, to secure damages for eviction. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer commenced the debate this evening by saying that he would not even listen to the phrase of damages for eviction, he so entirely disapproved it. In order to secure to the tenant fair and adequate compensation for improvements and for the loss which he might sustain in quitting his holding, a sliding scale of compensation was included in the original Bill, and must have been calculated from an aggregate of considerations. And compensation for improvements, the great point on which all parties are agreed, on which the opinion of the country has decided, and which was the main result of that celebrated investigation, the Devon Commission, must have been included in that computed sliding

  1271
  scale, and must have formed one of the principal elements or factors of that calculation. What position do we now find ourselves in? In the proposal which the Government make to-night they expunge all considerations of compensation for improvement, and they absolutely increase—enlarge and extend in amount and in character—the computed scale of compensation for eviction. I ask the Committee, is that a satisfactory mode of conducting affairs? Under any circumstances we should be justified in deliberating well before we came to a decision; but it is still more important that we should not too readily acquiesce in proposals marked by obvious haste and precipitation, remembering that in this change is involved the adoption of a principle not previously accepted by the Legislature of this country, or sanctioned by society. No one denies that in the clause now before us occupation, for the first time, is treated as property. For the first time it is provided by legislation that a lessee, when his term has expired, and when he has ceased to enjoy all the advantages of the term, may go to his lesser and demand compensation from him because his lease has expired. I will use no strong terms; I will not say these are monstrous innovations; I will not say they are provisions that might make the wisest man grave, and create alarm in the bosom of the boldest; but I will say that they are provisions novel in the history of this old and experienced country, that they require the utmost deliberation, that the measure includes proposals such as ought not to be hurried by a Minister through Parliament, and that a House of Commons will not do its duty to its constituents, be they English, Scotch, or Irish, which suffers a measure of this kind to be so hurried. The right hon. Gentleman has given us a striking picture of the state of Ireland, and he says it is to the shame of England that such a state of affairs should be allowed to exist. I sympathize with the sufferings of the Irish people as much, probably, as many in this House who talk more about them. There is much in the history of that race that is interesting, that charms the imagination, and that touches the heart. But when I hear of Ireland being the infamy of this country, I cannot but recollect that there is
  1272
  a portion of Ireland second to no part of England or Scotland in its energy and prosperity, and in the high national spirit that pervades its population. And I want to know how much of that prosperity, success, and high spirit are not due to British blood and British enter-prize. The right hon. Gentleman tells us the state of Ireland is disgraceful, and he fixes on the value of land there, which he seems to have heard of for the first time, as an evidence of this. Estates worth only twenty or twenty-one years' purchase—what a disgrace to England that such a state of things should exist in a country so closely connected with us, and which ought to share our civilization! The reason, he tells us, is that property in Ireland is not secure; and these are the schemes by which it is to be made secure. Estates are only selling there for twenty years' purchase; says the right hon. Gentleman—"I will secure to the occupier a third of that value"—and that is the way he increases the value of estates in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman compares the value of an estate in Ireland with that of an estate in England. I think it deserves the consideration both of Her Majesty's Government and of Members of this House, without distinction of party, whether, in attempting to heighten the value of property in Ireland, you may not succeed in lowering the value of property in England. It is because I see in this clause elements which will lead to that result, elements which will deteriorate the value of landed property in England and Scotland, without raising the value of landed property in Ireland, that I give my opposition to the clause, and that I move the Amendment which stands in my name.
  Question put, "That those words be there inserted."
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 220; Noes 296: Majority 76.

  AYES.

  Adderley,rt.hn. Sir C.B.

  Ball, J. T.

  Allen, Major

  Barnett, H.

  Annesley, hon. Col. H.

  Barrington, Viscount

  Archdall, Captain M.

  Barttelot, Colonel

  Arkwright, A. P.

  Bateson, Sir T.

  Arkwright, R.

  Bathurst, A. A.

  Assheton, R.

  Beach, W. W. B.

  Aytoun, R. S.

  Bective, Earl of

  Bagge, Sir W.

  Bentinck, G. C.

  Bailey, Sir J. R.

  Beresford, Lt.-Col. M.

  1273

  Bingham, Lord

  Gregory, G. B.

  Birley, H.

  Gurney, right hon. R.

  Bourne, Colonel

  Hambro, C.

  Bright, R.

  Hamilton, I. T.

  Brise, Colonel R.

  Hamilton, Lord C.

  Broadley, W. H. H.

  Hamilton, Lord C. J.

  Brodrick, hon. W.

  Hamilton, Lord G.

  Brooks, W. C.

  Hamilton, Marquess of

  Bruce, Sir H. H.

  Hardy, right hon. G.

  Bruen, H.

  Hardy, J.

  Burke, Viscount

  Hardy, J. S.

  Burrell, Sir P.

  Hay, Sir J. C. D.

  Cameron, D.

  Henley, rt. hon. J. W.

  Cartwright, F.

  Henniker-Major, hon. J. M.

  Cave, right hon. S.

  Cawley, C. E.

  Henry, J. S.

  Cecil, Lord E. H. B. G.

  Herbert, rt. hon. Gen. Sir P.

  Chaplin, H.

  Charley, W. T.

  Hermon, E.

  Child, Sir S.

  Hervey, Lord A. H. C.

  Clive, Colonel E.

  Heygate, Sir F. W.

  Clowes, S. W.

  Hick, J.

  Cole, Col. hon. H. A.

  Hildyard, T. B. T.

  Collins, T.

  Hill, A. S.

  Corbett, Colonel

  Hoare, P. M.

  Corrance, F. S.

  Hodgson, W. N.

  Corry, rt. hon. H. T. L.

  Holford, R. S.

  Crichton, Viscount

  Holmesdale, Viscount

  Croft, Sir H. G. D.

  Holt, J. M.

  Cross, R. A.

  Hood,Cap.hn.A.W.A.N.

  Cubitt, G.

  Hope, A. J. B. B.

  Curzon, Viscount

  Howes, E.

  Dalrymple, C.

  Hunt, right hon. G. W.

  Damer, Capt. Dawson-

  Hutton, J.

  Davenport, W. B.

  Ingram, H. F. M.

  Dawson, R. P.

  Jackson, R. W.

  De Grey, hon. T.

  Jenkinson, Sir G. S.

  Denison, C. B.

  Jervis, Colonel

  Dimsdale, R.

  Jones, J.

  Disraeli, right hon. B.

  Kekewich, S. T.

  Dowdeswell, W. E.

  Keown, W.

  Du Pre, C. G.

  Knight, F. W.

  Dyott, Colonel R.

  Knox, hon. Colonel S.

  Eastwick, E. B.

  Lacon, Sir E. H. K.

  Eaton, H. W.

  Laird, J.

  Egerton, hon. A. F.

  Langton, W. G.

  Egerton, hon. W.

  Legh, W. J.

  Elcho, Lord

  Lennox, Lord G. G.

  Elliot, G.

  Leslie, C. P.

  Elphinstone, Sir J.D.H.

  Liddell, hon. H. G.

  Ewing, A. O.

  Lindsay, hon. Colonel C.

  Feilden, H. M.

  Lindsay, Colonel R. L.

  Fellowes, E.

  Lowther, Colonel

  Fielden, J.

  Lowther, J.

  Figgins, J.

  Lowther, W.

  Finch, G. H.

  Maitland,Sir A. C. R. G.

  Fitzwilliam, hn.C.W.W.

  Malcolm, J. W.

  Fitzwilliam, hon. H. W.

  Manners, Lord G. J.

  Forde, Colonel

  Manners, rt. hn. Lord J.

  Forester, rt. hon. Gen.

  March, Earl of

  Fowler, R. N.

  Maxwell, W. H.

  Galway, Viscount

  Mellor, T. W.

  Garlies, Lord

  Meyrick, T.

  Gilpin, Colonel

  Milles, hon. G. W.

  Goldney, G.

  Mills, C. H.

  Gooch, Sir D.

  Montagu, rt.hn.Lord R.

  Gordon, E. S.

  Morgan, C. O.

  Gore, J. R. O.

  Morgan, hon. Major

  Gore, W. R. O.

  Mowbray, rt. Hon. J. R.

  Graves, S. R.

  Neville-Grenville, R.

  Gray, Lieut.-Colonel

  Newdegate, C. N.

  Greene, E.

  North, Colonel

  1274

  Northcote, rt. hon. Sir S. H.

  Smith, W. H.

  Somerset, Colonel

  O'Neill, hon. E.

  Stopford, S. G.

  Paget, R. H.

  Stronge, Sir J. M.

  Pakington, rt. hn. Sir J.

  Sturt, H. G.

  Palk, Sir L.

  Sturt, Lieut.-Col. N.

  Parker, Lieut-Col. W.

  Sykes, C.

  Patten, rt. hon. Col. W.

  Talbot, hon. R. A. J.

  Peek, H. W.

  Talbot, J. G.

  Pell, A.

  Taylor, rt. hon. Colonel

  Pemberton, E. L.

  Tipping, W.

  Phipps, C. P.

  Tollemache, J.

  Plunket, hon. D. R.

  Trevor, Lord A. E. Hill-

  Raikes, H. C.

  Turner, C.

  Read, C. S.

  Turnor, E.

  Ridley, M. W.

  Verner, E. W.

  Round, J.

  Verner, W.

  Royston, Viscount

  Vickers, S.

  Salt, T.

  Walker, Major G. G.

  Sandon, Viscount

  Walpole, hon. F.

  Selater-Booth, G.

  Walpole, rt. hon. S. H.

  Selwin-Ibbetson, Sir H. J.

  Walsh, hon. A.

  Welby, W. E.

  Seymour, H. de G.

  Wethered, T. O.

  Shirley, S. E.

  Whalley, G. H.

  Sidebottom, J.

  Wilmot, H.

  Simonds, W. B.

  Winn, R.

  Sinclair, Sir J. G. T.

  Wyndham, hon. P.

  Smith, A.

  Smith, F. C.

  TELLERS.

  Smith, R.

  Dyke, W. H.

  Smith, S. G.

  Noel, hon. G. J.

  NOES.

  Acland, T. D.

  Brogden, A.

  Agar-Ellis,hon. L. G. F.

  Brown, A. H.

  Akroyd, E.

  Bruce, Lord C.

  Allen, W. S.

  Bruce, right hon. H. A.

  Amcotts, Colonel W. C.

  Buller, Sir E. M.

  Amory, J. H.

  Bury, Viscount

  Anderson, G.

  Butler-Johnstone, H. A.

  Anson, hon. A, H. A.

  Buxton, C.

  Antrobus, E.

  Cadogan, hon. F. W.

  Armitstead, G.

  Callan, P.

  Ayrton, rt. hon. A. S.

  Campbell, H.

  Backhouse, E.

  Candlish, J.

  Baines, E.

  Cardwell, right hon. E.

  Baker, R. B. W.

  Carnegie, hon. C.

  Barclay, A. C.

  Carter, Mr. Alderman

  Barry, A. H. S.

  Castlerosse, Viscount

  Bass, A.

  Cavendish, Lord F. C.

  Bass, M. T.

  Cavendish, Lord G.

  Baxter, W. E.

  Chadwick, D.

  Bazley, Sir T.

  Chambers, M.

  Beaumont, Capt. F.

  Chambers, T.

  Beaumont, S. A.

  Childers, rt. hn. H. C. E.

  Bentall, E. H.

  Cholmeley, Captain

  Blennerhassett, Sir R.

  Clay, J.

  Bolckow, H. W. F.

  Cogan, rt. hon. W.H.F.

  Bonham-Carter, J.

  Colebrooke, Sir T. E.

  Bouverie, rt. hon. E.P.

  Coleridge, Sir J. D.

  Bowmont, Marquess of

  Collier, Sir R. P.

  Bowring. E. A.

  Corbally, M. E.

  Brady, J.

  Cowen, J.

  Brand, right hon. H.

  Cowper, hon. H. F.

  Brand, H. R.

  Cowper-Temple,rt.hn W

  Brassey, H. A.

  Craufurd, E. H. J.

  Brewer, Dr.

  Crawford, R. W.

  Bright, J. (Manchester)

  Dalrymple, D.

  Brinckman, Captain

  Dalway, M. R.

  Bristowe, S. B.

  D'Arcy, M. P.

  1275

  Davies, R.

  Hurst, R. H.

  Dease, E.

  Hutt, right hon. Sir W.

  Delahunty, J.

  Hyde, Lord

  De La Poer, E.

  Illingworth, A.

  Denman, hon. G.

  Jardine, R.

  Dent, J. D.

  Jessel, G.

  Devereux, R. J.

  Johnston, A.

  Dickinson, S. S.

  Johnston, W.

  Digby, K. T.

  Johnstone, Sir H.

  Dilke, Sir C. W.

  Kay-Shuttleworth, U.J.

  Dillwyn, L. L.

  King, hon. P. J. L.

  Dixon, G.

  Kinnaird, hon. A. F.

  Dodds, J.

  Kirk, W.

  Downing, M'C.

  Lambert, N. G.

  Dowse, R.

  Lancaster, J.

  Duff, M. E. G.

  Lawrence, Sir J. C.

  Edwardes, hon. Col. W.

  Lawrence, W.

  Edwards, H.

  Lawson, Sir W.

  Egerton, Capt. hon. F.

  Lea, T.

  Enfield, Viscount

  Leatham, E. A.

  Ennis, J. J.

  Lefevre, G. J. S.

  Erskine, Admiral J. E.

  Lewis, J. D.

  Esmonde, Sir J.

  Lewis, J. H.

  Eykyn, R.

  Loch, G.

  Fagan, Captain

  Locke, J.

  Fawcett, H.

  Lorne, Marquess of

  Finnie, W.

  Lowe, right hon. R.

  FitzGerald, right hon. Lord O.A.

  Lubbock, Sir J.

  Lusk, A.

  Fitzmaurice, Lord E.

  Lyttelton, hon. C. G.

  Fletcher, I.

  M'Arthur, W.

  Foljambe, F. J. S.

  M'Clean, J. R.

  Forster, C.

  M'Clure, T.

  Forster, rt. hon. W. E.

  Macfie, R. A.

  Fortescue, rt. hon. C. P.

  Mackintosh, E. W.

  Fortescue, hon. D. F.

  M'Lagan, P.

  Fothergill, R.

  M'Mahon, P.

  Fowler, W.

  Magniac, C.

  Gavin, Major

  Maguire, J. F.

  Gladstone, rt. hn. W. E.

  Marling, S. S.

  Gladstone, W. H.

  Martin, P. W.

  Goldsmid, Sir F. H.

  Matthews, H.

  Goschen, rt. hon. G. J.

  Melly, G.

  Gourley, E. T.

  Merry, J.

  Gower, Lord R.

  Miall, E.

  Graham, W.

  Milbank, F. A.

  Gray, Sir J.

  Miller, J.

  Gregory, W. H.

  Mitchell, T. A.

  Greville, hon. Captain

  Monk, C. J.

  Grey, rt. hon. Sir G.

  Monsell, right hon. W.

  Grieve, J. J.

  Moore, G. H.

  Grosvenor, hon. N.

  Morgan, G. O.

  Grosvenor, Capt. R. W.

  Morley, S,

  Guest, M. J.

  Morrison, W.

  Hamilton, J. G. C.

  Mundella, A. J.

  Hanmer, Sir J.

  Munster, H.

  Hardcastle, J. A.

  Muntz, P. H.

  Harris, J. D.

  Murphy, N. D.

  Hartington, Marquess of

  Nicol, J. D.

  Haviland-Burke, E.

  O'Brien, Sir P.

  Hay, Lord J.

  O'Conor, D. M.

  Headlam, rt. hon. T. E.

  O'Donoghue, The

  Henley, Lord

  Ogilvy, Sir J.

  Herbert, hon. A. E. W.

  O'Loghlen, rt. hon. Sir C. M.

  Herbert, H. A.

  Hibbert, J. T.

  Onslow, G.

  Hodgkinson, G.

  O'Reilly, M. W.

  Holms, J.

  O'Reilly-Dease, M.

  Hoskyns, C. Wren-

  Osborne, R.

  Howard, hon. C. W. G.

  Otway, A. J.

  Howard, J.

  Palmer, J. H.

  Hughes, T.

  Palmer, Sir R.

  1276

  Parker, C. S.

  Smith, E.

  Parry, L. Jones-

  Smith, J. B.

  Pease, J. W.

  Stacpoole, W.

  Peel, A. W.

  Stanley, hon. W. O.

  Pelham, Lord

  Stansfeld, right hon. J.

  Philips, R. N.

  Stapleton, J.

  Pim, J.

  Stepney, Colonel

  Platt, J.

  Stevenson, J. C.

  Playfair, L.

  Stone, W. H.

  Plimsoll, S.

  Strutt, hon. H.

  Pollard-Urquhart, W.

  Stuart, Colonel

  Potter, E.

  Sykes, Colonel W. H.

  Potter, T. B.

  Synan, E. J.

  Power, J. T.

  Taylor, P. A.

  Price, W. P.

  Tollemache, hon. F. J.

  Rathbone, W.

  Torrens, R. R.

  Rebow, J. G.

  Tracy, hon. C. R. D. Hanbury-

  Reed, C.

  Richard, H.

  Trevelyan, G. O.

  Richards, E. M.

  Villiers, right hon. C. P.

  Robertson, D.

  Vivian, A. P.

  Robinson, E. S.

  Vivian, H. H.

  Roden, W. S.

  Vivian,Capt. hn. J.C.W.

  Rothsehild.Brn.M.A. de

  Walter, J.

  Rothschild, N. M. de

  Wedderburn, Sir D.

  Russell, A.

  Weguelin, T. M.

  Russell, H.

  West, H. W.

  Rylands, P.

  Whatman, J.

  St. Aubyn, J.

  Whitbread, S.

  St. Lawrence, Viscount

  White, J.

  Samuda, J. D'A.

  Whitwell, J.

  Samuelson, B.

  Whitworth, T.

  Samuelson, H. B.

  Williams, W.

  Sartoris, E. J.

  Williamson, Sir H.

  Saunderson, E.

  Willyams, E. W. B.

  Seely, C. (Nottingham)

  Wingfield, Sir C.

  Seymour, A.

  Young, A. W.

  Shaw, R.

  Young, G.

  Shaw, W.

  Sherlock, D.

  TELLERS.

  Sherriff, A. C.

  Adam, W. P.

  Simeon, Sir J.

  Glyn, hon. G. G.

  Simon, Mr. Serjeant

  House resumed.
  Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow, at Two of the clock.
  VISCOUNT BARRINGTONsaid, he wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government whether it would be absolutely necessary to have Morning Sittings during this week?
  MR.GLADSTONEsaid, he had stated that it would be a great convenience for hon. Members to be released from the further prosecution of this Bill at the close of this week; but it would be necessary to go on with the Bill until that time.

  PAWNBROKERS.
  Select Committee appointed, "to inquire into the state of the Law affecting the Pawnbroking Trades, with a view to its consolidation and amendment."—(Mr. Plimsoll.)
  And, on May 9, Committee nominated as follows:—Mr. AYRTON, Mr. RICHARD ARKWRIGHT, Mr. Alderman CARTER, Mr. HAMBRO, Mr. THOMAS HUGHES, Mr. CHARLES HENRY

  1277
  MILLS, Mr. WHITWELL, Mr. RIDLEY, Mr. Serjeant SIMON, Colonel BERESFORD, Mr. MORLEY, Mr. SIDEBOTTOM, Mr. MONTAGUE GUEST, Mr. CHARLEY, and Mr. PLIMSOLL:—Power to send for persons, papers, and records; Five to be the quorum.
  House adjourned at a quarter before One o'clock.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—Second Reading—Dublin Collector-General of Rates Franchise* (44).
Royal Assent—Peace Preservation (Ireland) [33 Vict. c. 9]; Coinage [33 Vict. c. 10]; Mutiny [33 Vict. c. 7]; Marine Mutiny [33 Vict. c. 8].

OWENS COLLEGE EXTENSION BILL.

  THIRD READING.
  LORD REDESDALEsaid, he desired to remind their Lordships that this Bill, which now stood for third reading, was the one to which he objected on a former occasion, and to which, indeed, as a private Bill, he still entertained objection. He then promised, if necessary, to bring it before a Committee of the Whole House; but the promoters had since been before him, and had entirely agreed to the form which it seemed to him most desirable that the Bill, if their Lordships wished it to proceed, should assume. The jurisdiction of Parliament over any scheme which might be devised had thus been secured, and he had not thought it necessary, therefore, that the Bill should come before a Committee of the Whole House.
  EARL DE GREY AND RIPON,having compared the amended with the original Bill, thanked the noble Lord for the great attention he had devoted to it, and for the considerable improvements which had been made in it.
  Bill read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

CRIMINAL SENTENCES.

  ADDRESS FOR A RETURN.
  LORD PENZANCE,in rising to move an Address for a Return relating to the revision and commutation of criminal sentences, said—My Lords, I make no apology for bringing this subject before the attention of the House, inasmuch as it is one which has attracted much public attention, and has done so in an increasing degree for the last few years. I may say, at the outset, that I do not desire to criticize, far less to impugn, the conduct, in this matter, of the present Home Secretary or of his predecessors; for I believe that under the system, such as it is, the authority of the Crown has been as wisely and properly administered as it could be; and as regards the right hon. Gentleman who now fills the office, no one can have acted with more discretion and judgment in the onerous and delicate task which he has to perform. What I desire to bring before the attention of your Lordships is the system itself under which our criminal law is applied; and, after tracing what it practically does, to ask whether it is one which ought to be satisfactory to the public. Now, the criminal law is administered in the first place by Her Majesty's Judges in the various assize towns, accompanied by all the solemnity which the majesty of the law demands, and with as much of outward pomp and show as people in these days would tolerate. The trial—say for murder—is had in open court before a Judge and a jury; and if it results in a conviction the learned Judge proceeds to pass sentence of death with extreme solemnity. No sooner, however, is this done than the scene is shifted from the open court to a private room in London, from the Judge on the Bench to the Secretary of State for the Home Department. To the right hon. Gentleman thus sitting in private the appeal lies, and to him applications are made, more or less urgent according to the nature of the case, by those who are interested in the fate of the convict. If he happens to be one of the upper class the effort is backed by numerous supporters; and if, as is sometimes the case, he belongs to any particular religious sect the exertions made are still more cogent. Statements are made to the Secretary of State, some on oath, but many not; and memorials are

  1149
  sent round for signature in the town where the convict has lived or where he is known, people of all sorts being asked to join in praying for a remission of the sentence. It is not in human nature that they should refuse; and accordingly a great mass of materials, some in the nature of a prayer, some of explanation, and some of excuse, find their way to the Home Secretary, upon whom is cast the duty of coming to a conclusion on the case, without any regular means of publicly investigating the statements made in these memorials. Well, the Home Secretary does as much as any man can do under the circumstances. He makes his inquiry. It very often happens that the crime is one which depends on scientific evidence, as in cases of poisoning, and there he has often a very delicate task. In other cases new or additional facts are alleged; but there are no authorized sources of information. I believe, indeed, that he sometimes sends down persons to make inquiries on the spot. Your Lordships will remark that the investigation is after the passing of the sentence, almost entirely one-sided. All the persons who memorialize, and all the statements made, are on the side of the convict, and everything is said on his behalf that can be said. Now, it is a curious feature, connected with the feelings of human nature, that before the prisoner is convicted the sympathy is entirely with the victim; but as soon as he is convicted that sympathy passes over to the prisoner—at least it is so in a great number of cases. Consequently, everything that can be said in his favour is brought before the Home Secretary. The inquiry, moreover, is private, and the public have no means of knowing what is going on; so that facts which might be brought forward to contradict the allegations of the prisoner's friends are not offered, because those who could do so do not know the importance or necessity of them. In the end, perhaps, the Secretary of State advises a reprieve. No sooner has the Home Secretary arrived at this decision, than the matter is brought forward in the House of Commons, where Questions are put to the right hon. Gentleman, asking for the reasons on which he had arrived at that decision. Now, it seems to me that the bare statement of this system of administering criminal law in
  1150
  the highest and most important cases is sufficient to condemn it. I have called it a system; but it is more properly a growth, for no one ever deliberately devised it. It is like the growth of the power of courts of equity in consequence of the binding rules of law, and arose from the impossibility according to law of having any further public inquiry into the ease, no matter how strong the facts are which may be adduced after the jury have pronounced their verdict. This total absence of any reasonable method of inquiry has forced mankind into the extravagant and absurd system of correcting justice through the prerogative of mercy. But, bad as this system is in practice, it is equally vicious in theory. If justice has not been done it is obvious that it should be done; but it should be done in the name of justice, not in the name of mercy. Mercy begins where justice ends; and this is a system of eking out imperfect justice by irregular mercy. It sins against all the regulations which ought to control us. The first great vice is its want of publicity. As a second inquiry it must be worse than the first, for it is private and one sided; whereas the first inquiry was in the face of day, and both sides were heard. Even, however, if it be more successful than the first in eliciting the truth, it has this incurable vice—that it does not appear so to the world. Now, it is almost as necessary in the handling of matters connected with justice, that people should feel that justice is done as that justice should be done; and in this method of correcting the results of a public trial, everything being done in private, there will always, however just the conclusion may be, be those who are not contented with it. They will be discontented, because what they have read or heard in court cannot fail to have impressed their minds strongly in one direction or the other; whereas what is done by the Secretary of State is under the sole guarantee of his high and impartial character and the respect accorded to his judgment, The effect of the system whenever a sentence is remitted, is to weaken the impressiveness of sentences passed in open court on those who are present at the delivery. The object of punishment is to deter from crime and the sentence passed upon criminals should be deterrent. But if

  1151
  the idea should grow up in people's minds that a sentence is not to be carried out, the effect of that sentence, with all its attendant solemnity, is indefinitely diminished. For a sentence to be effective, nothing is so necessary as that it should be certain; and there can be no greater evil than the feeling that whatever sentence may be passed is liable to be revised by the Home Secretary. Now, these evils are not incurable. What difficulty is there in constructing a tribunal which should do all that the Home Secretary now does? Such tribunal must of course contain a large share of the judicial element. It might contain the ordinary Judges of the land and members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, or those who have held high judicial posts; and the Home Secretary might also be a member of it. There would be several conditions indispensible to its success, and the first of these is publicity. It should have the power of investigating in public, and all evidence should be on oath. A second condition would be that it should not be tied down to the strict rules of legal evidence; for in an inquiry whether the verdict in the first inquiry ought to stand no rational means of information should be excluded. It should, therefore, be at liberty to receive evidence not strictly legal. It should have power either to order a fresh trial, to annul the sentence, or to vary it, subject to such rules as might be laid, down for their guidance. It may, perhaps, be objected that there would be a strong disposition to resort to such a tribunal in every criminal case, especially where the punishment of death is impending; but it is common in in civil cases, where a large sum of money is at stake, to move for a new trial, yet the courts very rarely allow this, and the defeat of attempts not founded on satisfactory grounds would prevent any undue number of appeals. If, however, there is any difficulty on that head, I see no reason why the matter should not first be brought before the Home Secretary, who might pass on to this tribunal only such cases as he thought worthy of investigation. If the Government should think that what I have brought before your Lordships is worthy of consideration, but are not themselves inclined to take action on the subject, they may probably be willing to refer it to a Royal Commission, who
  1152
  would be able in a very short time to draw up a plan which would be satisfactory to the public. The second branch of my Motion refers to the ground of interference with sentences, distinguishing the cases in which the supposed innocence of the prisoner or the severity of the sentence has been the ground of such interference. Now, independently of the cases in which the punishment of death has been commuted, it has, I believe, been the practice for many years of the Home Office to mitigate severe sentences. Now, no doubt there is nothing so unsatisfactory in the working of our criminal law as the apparent disparity in the sentences that are pronounced. There is often an impression among the public that sentences are in some cases far too heavy, and in others far too light; but their opinions are in many cases founded on imperfect information. The reports published in the newspapers, although extremely able and faithful, are mere skeletons of what has passed in the courts, and readers of the public prints may very well come to the conclusion that there has been undue severity, whereas if they had heard the whole of the evidence they would have been perfectly satisfied. Still, no doubt, there is some amount of dissatisfaction with sentences, and particularly with their inequality. That disparity will always appear to exist so long as unlimited discretion is committed to the Judge who presides at the trial. It is obvious that such a discretion must exist, and I would not desire to limit it; for it is obvious there may be circumstances of aggravation or extenuation, many of which may call for a light or heavy sentence, and it is only the tribunals before which these cases are tried that can form a just opinion upon them. In every criminal case, however, two things have to be considered—first, the heinousness or enormity of the crime itself, and secondly, the particular circumstances under which the prisoner has committed it. Now, the first—the heinousness or enormity of the crime as deciding the punishment, one would think, should be determined by the law. Take the case of forgery, burglary, or rape. One person would hold forgery to be the worst crime that could be committed in a highly civilized and commercial community; another would hold that burglary was a much greater crime;

  1153
  and a third might hold that rape was the worst offence of all. Now he ventured to say that if you were to assemble fifteen men in a room, and take their opinions on these separate classes of crime, you would not find them agree; yet this is the question which the fifteen Judges have to determine. In passing every sentence a Judge has to settle what is the enormity of burglary, forgery, or rape, before he investigates how far the standard of punishment should be exceeded or diminished in that particular case. If a Judge regards forgery as a crime of the deepest dye, he will invariably visit it with a very heavy sentence; but a Judge on the neighbouring circuit may see in it only a form of robbery or cheating, and every case of the kind will be leniently dealt with. This inequality of sentences is due to the absence of any standard; for if there were a standard laid down, still leaving the Judges the utmost liberty of increasing or diminishing it, it would be felt that in nine cases out of ten the Judges would not disturb it; for the circumstances of cases really differ very little. I venture to say that such a standard would be gladly adopted by the Judges in the large majority of cases, and we should thus obtain something like uniformity of sentences; whereas, under the present system, we may be said to secure want of uniformity, every Judge being left to form his own opinion on the heinousness of the crime. When I first had the honour of a seat on the Common Law Bench I was struck with the desirability of such a standard:—which might be obtained either by Act of Parliament, by an Order in Council, or even by agreement among the Judges themselves. There would be no reason why it should not be altered from time to time, as the prevalence of a particular crime or other circumstances might render advisable. I shall be glad to modify my Motion if there is any difficulty as to the Return. I hope the Government will consider the propriety of appointing a Commission, by which a scheme may be worked out, which would save us from the jealousy that now subsists, and from the unsatisfactory state of our system as regards the confidence of the public. I use the word jealousy, because, if the Home Secretary should have occasion to interfere in the case of a sentence passed on some man of more
  1154
  note than usual, motives of a disingenuous and improper kind would in all probability be imputed to him.
  Moved that an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty for, Return of the criminal sentences which have been wholly remitted or reduced or varied by the Crown under the advice of the Secretary of State for the Home Department during the last three years, distinguishing the cases in which the ground of interference was the supposed innocence of the parties, the severity of the sentence, or other causes.—(The Lord Penzance.)
  THE EARL OF MORLEY: The noble and learned Lord (Lord Penzance) has entered upon a very large subject. When I saw the noble and learned Lord's Notice on the Paper, I had no idea that he would travel beyond the Return for which he has moved, and, therefore, I am not prepared to follow the noble and learned Lord through his statement, and I must confine my observations to that Return. I am afraid it will be impossible to grant that Return; and when I have stated the reasons for not granting it, I trust the noble and learned Lord will withdraw his Motion. In the first place, it is contrary to all practice that the Home Secretary should be called upon to give a general Return setting forth his reasons for the exercise of the Royal Prerogative of mercy. The Home Secretary does not constitute a court of appeal for the revision of sentences; he simply exercises the Royal Prerogative in cases where he thinks it fitting for him to do so. It would be establishing a precedent of a very dangerous and undesirable character if he were publicly to give the reasons for exercising the Royal Prerogative in all cases. In some individual cases which have been brought before the House of Commons, the Home Secretary has given his reasons; but to grant a general Return would be contrary to practice, and establish a dangerous precedent. The Return for which the noble and learned Lord has asked, extends over three years. In the early part of those three years the noble Lords opposite were in Office, and I venture to think it would be extremely difficult for the present Home Secretary to state the reasons which influenced his predecessors in exercising the Royal Prerogative. At the same time, I would point out to the noble and learned Lord, that the production of this Return would occasion much labour and expense, and interfere

  1155
  considerably with, the ordinary business of the office, without communicating to the House any really valuable information. As to the larger subject on which the noble and learned Lord has entered, I am at this moment unwilling to deal with it. There can, I think, be no question that the present system is not wholly free from objection; but I doubt much whether it would be improved by transferring the pardoning power from the Secretary of State to such a Committee as the noble and learned Lord proposes. There may be some points on which the exercise of the prerogative of mercy is not altogether satisfactory; but, on the whole, I do not believe that the public are dissatisfied with the manner in which it is administered. As to issuing a Commission to consider the propriety of constituting a tribunal, to be composed partly of legal elements and partly of lay elements, to which the exercise of the Royal Prerogative of mercy should be delegated, I am afraid I cannot hold out much hope that such a Commission will be issued at present. The question is one of very great importance, but it is not of great urgency, and I think public opinion should be a little more formed upon the subject before we should be prepared to investigate these questions. One of the most important elements of the prerogative of mercy is the facility and rapidity with which it may be exercised; but I think there would be considerable difficulty in assembling the numerously composed tribunal of appeal suggested by the noble and learned Lord, and of the numerous cases which now come before the Secretary of State to them. For the reasons I have adduced I must, in conclusion, appeal to the noble and learned Lord to withdraw his Motion.
  LORD PENZANCEsaid, the noble Earl had misunderstood him. He had not proposed to transfer to any tribunal the prerogative of mercy now exercised by the Home Secretary; but had suggested that, instead of eking out justice by a resort to mercy, a criminal court of appeal should be formed, to which persons who felt aggrieved by a maladministration of the law should have a right of appeal; and which should investigate the case as a question of justice, altogether independent of the prerogative of mercy. Such a tribunal need not consist of more than two or three members; and it would no doubt be
  1156
  necessary that its proceedings should be prompt. It was right that a sentence should be reviewed; but this would be best done by a tribunal constituted for the purpose. He was sure the Government would willingly have acceded to the Return if there had been no difficulties in the way, and he could understand that it might be more voluminous than the occasion might warrant. He would not, therefore, press his Motion. But he ventured to think public opinion was more matured than the noble Earl supposed, and the dissatisfaction with the present system greater than he seemed to imagine. He could only, however, await the time when the present or any subsequent Government might think it right to take steps in the matter.
  THE DUKE OF RICHMOND: I should not have taken part in this matter if I had not had an opportunity, while presiding for two years over the Royal Commission, to consider the advisability of abolishing capital punishment, of investigating the manner in which the prerogative of mercy is exercised, which subject naturally arose out of the evidence given by various witnesses who came before us. That Commission was composed of a great number of eminent persons, and we had the advantage of the evidence of several Judges of the land. I must confess that I cannot concur in the suggestion of the noble and learned Lord, that the power of the Home Secretary to exercise the prerogative of mercy should be altogether abolished, and vested in a court in lieu of the Home Secretary. [Lord PENZANCE: I did not say that.] The noble and learned Lord suggests that in lieu of the Home Secretary a court should be constituted, composed of several members, legal and others, who, in investigating cases, should be at liberty to put aside the rules of evidence. I am astonished to hear the noble and learned Lord, who has been himself a criminal Judge, propose that such a tribunal should set aside rules of evidence which had been most strictly abided by in the court below, where the case was tried and the person found guilty. The noble and learned Lord, I think, has lost sight of the difficulty that the tribunal he suggests would be a one-sided tribunal, because it would be for the benefit of the prisoner alone. A person who

  1157
  had failed to obtain a conviction might I fairly say that his case ought to be tried over again; and if that were allowed, it would lead to a great many difficulties. I think that, on the whole, the present system works well, and that it is satisfactory to the country. The gentlemen who hold the office of Home Secretary are gentlemen of the highest repute and of the highest character. They are public men; they can be called to account for their conduct in the other House of Parliament; and the great, force of public opinion would be against them if they did anything derogatory to their character. The documents for which the noble and learned Lord has moved would cast a slur on the way in which justice is administered in the country he was, therefore, glad to hear that the noble and learned Lord would not press his Motion.
  LORD LYVEDENthought the noble and learned Lord had performed a useful task in calling attention to the revision, and particularly to the want of uniformity, of sentences. The latter was a very wide question, for it affected recorders, quarter sessions, and petty sessions, as well as the Judges, and it rendered punishment uncertain; for there was notoriously among the poorer classes a belief that particular Judges or tribunals were less severe than others, and that poaching offences were punished with more severity in some districts than in others. Some remedy ought to be applied to this, and he thought it would be very desirable if the Home Secretary would introduce an Act limiting in some mode the discretion at present exercised in the administration of criminal justice throughout the country.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The subject which my noble and learned Friend (Lord Penzance) has brought before your Lordships' attention is one which has undoubtedly occasioned much anxiety and consideration on the part of all those who have had anything to do with the administration of the law; but, at the same time, I listened in vain, though I looked anxiously, for any distinct remedy; nor do I think that he has made out at present a state of things at all encouraging for the issue of a Commission of Inquiry. My noble and learned Friend spoke of the large discretion which is vested in the Secretary of State with reference to the preroga-
  1158
  tive of mercy, and he proposed to take, in the first instance, that which undoubtedly exercises the public mind greatly—the case of punishment of death. It is true, as my noble and learned Friend says, that an extraordinary amount of sympathy is felt for a criminal the moment he is condemned to death—though that feeling, I am happy to say, does not prevail among all classes. Numbers of people, who take a very decided view on the subject, are quite sure to urge upon the Secretary of State all that can occur to their minds towards a commutation of the sentence; and the Home Secretary has a very short time to decide whether the capital penalty shall or shall not be inflicted. But would the scheme my noble and learned Friend has suggested diminish that pressure? Those persons would resort to a tribunal which, I am inclined to think, would have a considerable amount of business come before it, and there would be much delay between the delivery and the execution of sentence. Now, all who have gone into the subject of punishment are agreed that to be effectual it should be speedy as well as certain, and nothing produces a greater effect on a criminal's mind than to find that, as sometimes happens, only a few days intervene between the commission of the crime and the trial, and only about a week between the latter and the execution. The terror caused by this speedy determination is one of the most effective means of impressing the criminal class. Now, this would be fatally interfered with if those desirous of interfering with a sentence had to apply to a tribunal for the purpose of re-hearing the case. My noble and learned Friend objects to the ex parts applications made to the Home Secretary; but it would be exactly the same with the tribunal he proposes—for probably persons would not go before it to aggravate the case of the prisoner by producing evidence which they might possess more serious than, that given at the original trial. If, however, they did so, it would not, I apprehend, give any great satisfaction if it were proved that the punishment ought to be greater than that which was originally imposed. My noble and learned Friend disclaims any intention of confusing the re-hearing of a case with the prerogative of mercy; but he has not pointed out any mode by which those two functions can be recon-

  1159
  ciled in the inquiry he suggests; and his proposal that the Commission should not consist entirely of lawyers, and should not be bound by the strict rules of evidence, gave me the impression that mercy was to intervene. Such a tribunal would diminish the speed of punishment; it would not increase its certainty, and I am sure it would not give satisfaction to the public. My noble and learned Friend referred—and there I am more disposed to concur with him—to the different temperament of those who are called upon to pronounce sentence on criminals. There are seventeen Judges, the chairmen of quarter sessions, recorders, and others. It would be preposterous, however, to award a strict sentence in every case, without the least regard to the particular circumstances; and if this tribunal is to revise sentences, of how many persons is it to consist, and how are you to secure unanimity? How are you to guage the feelings of those who are called upon to act? The legal portion of the tribunal might possibly lean in one direction, and the lay element in another, and it would be difficult to secure a unanimous opinion. The mode of proceeding before the Secretary of State is by no means perfect, and I should be thankful to see our way clearly to the probability of substituting something better, so as to justify the appointment of a Commission; but I see no such probability. It is true that the Home Secretary is changed from time to time, and that might be an objection; but there is always a permanent Under Secretary; and although the present Under Secretary is comparatively new to his office, he is, I have no doubt, a gentleman well qualified to exercise the duties entrusted to him. The late Under Secretary, Mr. Waddington, was a gentleman remarkable for his care and accuracy, who conducted all these inquiries with scrupulous ability and accuracy, and I have no doubt his successor will be equally conscientious. Moreover, when these cases come before the Home Secretary, that eminent functionary always, in the first instance, refers to the Judge who tried them to ascertain whether he is satisfied with the verdict. In particular cases other matters are inquired into, but those cases are extremely few. In some of them the delicate and difficult question of the state of the cri-
  1160
  minal's mind is raised, in which experience proves there is obviously a large margin for difference of opinion; but this would not be improved by requiring all evidence to be on oath, for on matters of opinion there will always be great variety of opinion; and the oath is no security, because a man giving his opinion may honestly swear that he believes so and so. Certificates, therefore, are just as valuable, whether they are on oath or not; and the only other evidence is that occasionally given by friends and relatives as to the convict's state of mind at former periods—matters which are not of such difficult solution as may at first sight appear. It is, therefore, a question whether the present system, under which we have the one mind of one responsible officer to bear on such questions, is not, after all, a more satisfactory system than the one proposed, under which there would be many minds and, probably, a great variety of opinion to be encountered. At present the functionary, to whom this duty is confided, having ample assistance, is able to consider this subject without delay. He is, moreover, a responsible Minister of the Crown, and is therefore accountable to Parliament for the manner in which he discharges his duties; whereas the tribunal suggested by my noble and learned Friend would consist of men of different minds, who would, probably, come to different conclusions, who would not be accountable to Parliament, and whose responsibility, being divided, would not be so strong. Seeing, therefore, that my noble and learned Friend, whose experience in criminal law is much larger than mine, has not been successful in suggesting a satisfactory expedient, and that the time has not yet arrived when the evils are so great as to demand an immediate inquiry, I am not disposed to think that the appointment of a Commission would lead to a satisfactory solution of what is, doubtless, a difficult and intricate question.
  LORD PENZANCEsaid, he had been under the impression that, in exercising the prerogative of mercy, the Secretary of State was not granting a favour; but was dispensing in that form more perfect justice, by taking into consideration circumstances unknown or insufficiently weighed at the trial. With regard to the tribunal, he did not tie himself down to any particular constitution; but he

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  desired that it should act in the name not of mercy but of justice. If extenuating circumstances existed, they should be considered as justice. In his opinion, an inquiry before an open court and in the light of day was a far better tribunal for a re-investigation of the facts connected with a particular case than a purely private inquiry by a Minister of the Crown, of the nature and details of which the public were kept in utter ignorance. The evidence adduced before the court he had suggested need not be strictly legal evidence, but the court would have power to ascertain the truth from all sources of information. The legal rules of evidence were laid down for the purpose of excluding improper prejudice from juries, but in the courts of chancery, and sometimes even in courts of law, those rules were not strictly observed. He would not, how-over, press his Motion.
  Motion (by Leave of the House) withdrawn.

KILDARE CHAPEL.

  MOTION FOR A PAPER.
  THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDEmoved for, Copy of the Reports furnished to the Irish Government of Notices posted at and about the chapel of Kildare, calling for a meeting to discuss the conduct of the Duke of Leinster and his agent towards certain of his tenants, and of the meeting and the speeches made thereat after mass on the 25th March in the chapel yard. He was quite aware that the matter to which he referred might be deemed one of a private character, and not such as Parliament usually took cognizance of, and he would not have troubled the House with it if it had reference only to private affairs and the management of private property; but it related, in point of fact, to a subject which had been discussed in a meeting of the lowest class of the population, and in nearly every newspaper published in Ireland. And considering the present condition of Ireland, and the nature of the legislation before Parliament as a consequence thereof, he hold it to be a matter of the highest importance that their Lordships should be made acquainted of the real facts of this case, as connected with the state and condition of the relations existing between
  1162
  the landlords and tenants in that country, in order that their Lordships might I be better able to consider the nature and bearings of the measures about to be submitted to their judgment for the solution of some of the many difficulties that affected Ireland. Before he proceeded to detail the facts of the case which he desired to bring under their Lordships' notice, he wished to say that he was not there to presume to attempt any vindication of the character of the Duke of Leinster. The character of that distinguished Nobleman was acknowledged by all parties of all creeds and classes to be remarkable for great benevolence and patriotism, and for a high sense of justice and wisdom in the conduct of his private affairs. The same qualities of mind adorned his speeches when he took part in public affairs, which, unfortunately for the general interests of the kingdom, was very seldom. The case to which he would now refer was one of public notoriety in Ireland; and the particulars of it were published in all the Irish newspapers, and commented upon by several of their writers in such a way as to excite the worst passions and feelings of the Irish people. In and around Kildare there were certain lands belonging to the Duke of Leinster. About the middle or close of the last century leases of these lands were granted to a number of persons; and some of the undertenants, the present occupants, were persons of the lowest class of tenants. One of these leases expired on the 25th March last. A few days before that notices were posted upon the doors of the chapel of Kildare, by the authority of the parish priest, calling a meeting of the inhabitants, especially of labourers, on the 25th of March—Lady-day—or the Feast of the Annunciation, that day being one generally observed by the Roman Catholics with great solemnity. Now he was not about to assail the character of the Roman Catholic clergy. He had the happiness of knowing many of the Roman Catholic priests of Ireland; and, as a body, he could bear personal testimony to the many good services they had rendered to the public and in the interests of peace and order. He, for one, felt much obliged to them for their interference—not in private affairs—but in matters involving the general well-being of the population by which he was surrounded.

  1163
  There were, however, unfortunately, some exceptions to this general rule of conduct on the part of the Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland—exceptions which became especially prominent during the last few years. The notice posted on the chapel of Kildare, and circulated in the neighbourhood of the town, was in these terms—
  "The inhabitants of Kildare and its surrounding neighbourhood—particularly the lower classes—will hold a meeting on the 25th inst. in the chapel yard of Kildare, for the purpose of peaceably and legally taking such measures as are likely to give protection to the poor families who are to be dispossessed from their little homes on Saturday next, father Nolan will address the meeting."
  Now, this notice contained three statements—the first that the inhabitants were to hold a meeting in the chapel yard on Lady-day; the next was that some poor families were to be turned out and dispossessed of their holdings on that day; and the third was that the labouring classes were to attend the meeting, and to take such measures as were likely to afford protection to the poor families alluded to. But what were the real facts of the case? Every man in Kildare must or might have known that the leases would terminate on the 25th of March, and that no notices whatever to dispossess or remove any persons or family from their holdings had been, or needed to be, served by the Duke of Leinster, or any person acting on his behalf. For some time every effort made by the Duke of Leinster and his agent to improve the homes and conditions of those poor tenants had been rejected. Nevertheless, his Grace instructed his agent not to serve a notice to quit upon any one of the tenants, nor to say or do anything to them that could be construed into a menace, whilst pursuing his inquiries into the circumstances of every tenant—inquiries which were set on foot with the view solely of bettering their condition. Emigration was suggested in the case of the very poorest, upon the understanding that means would be furnished them to do so, and to better their condition in another country; but this offer was by some rejected. Now, so determined was the Duke of Leinster not to disturb any one of them without their own free will, that he even exposed himself to much unjust censure for allowing some of
  1164
  those people to remain in the wretched condition in which they were found. It was also to be observed that, according to the provisions of the Poor Law of Ireland, a landlord who contemplated the eviction of any of his tenants was obliged to send a copy of his notice to quit to the Poor Law authorities; and unless that was done, no notice to quit served upon his tenants would be legal. Now, nothing of the kind had been done in this case. Though he (the Marquess of Clanricarde) did not happen to know all the facts, yet he could venture to say that nothing of the kind complained of had taken place on the part of the Duke of Leinster. It should also be borne in mind that the neighbourhood where this meeting was called was by no means a quiet one; that it adjoined the county of Meath, and that in this county the agent lived. These circumstances should be considered when it was asked what was the object of assembling a meeting of labourers, and making these attacks upon the landlord and his agent. Now, it happened that this very gentleman who made an inflammatory speech at the meeting against the Duke and his agent was residing in a house which was given by the Duke rent free for the parish priest. His predecessor applied to the Duke for a house and grounds for the priest, and his Grace gave all he could give—the reversionary interest, subject to a merely nominal rent. This was not all; for fields were let to the priest at a rent far below what other people would have been willing to pay for them; but for the two-and-a-half years that Mr. Nolan had been in the parish he had not paid 1s. rent, and said that he would not pay any. Now, it did not look well for a defaulting tenant to assemble the people together and lay the case before them, at the same time misstating and falsifying the facts in every way likely to excite them. The matter had been treated upon in all the newspapers in Ireland, and he understood that it had also been reported upon to the Government. He wanted this Report to be produced, so that their Lordships might have before them official information upon the facts that he had stated; and, further, the whole thing was illustrative of the state of society in Ireland, and of the present condition of the relations between landlord and tenant, and of the

  1165
  position of persons having local authority, and the matter would be well worthy of their Lordships' study when they should be called upon to adopt permanent legislation for Ireland.
  Moved that there be laid before this House' Copy of the Reports furnished to the Irish Government of notices posted at and about the chapel of Kildare, calling for a meeting to discuss the conduct of the Duke of Leinster and his agent towards certain of his tenants, and of the meeting and the speeches made thereat after mass on the 25th instant in the chapel yard.—(The Marquess of Clanricarde.)
  LORD DUNSANYsaid, he quite agreed that it would be altogether superfluous to say one word in vindication of the character of the Duke of Leinster; but he might be allowed to say that the Duke's agent, Mr. Charles Hamilton, occupied a very responsible and a very; dangerous position in Ireland. His life had been placed in danger by the licence that Roman Catholic clergymen gave themselves in denouncing persons in his position. He (Lord Dunsany) was well acquainted with Mr. Charles Hamilton, the agent of the Duke, and also agent for other large properties. In all he was agent over not less than 100,000 Irish acres, and there was no man who less deserved the ill-treatment which he had received from the Roman Catholic clergy. He hoped that their Lordships would not think that it would be beside the question if he said something on the subject of those altogether indefensible altar denunciations. It had been stated from the Treasury Bench that in no civilized country would such outrages as those perpetrated in Ireland be permitted; but it should be said also that in no civilized country were such incentives to outrage permitted. The practice of priestly denunciations was by no means new. He had recently read in the evidence taken by the Committee on the Rockite Outrages, so long ago as 1821, the examination of a priest, who was asked whether he had not denounced a man from the altar who was afterwards murdered. He said he had; he denounced him on the Sunday and he was murdered on the Monday. If the reporter had been a Frenchman he would no doubt have added "great sensation." Since the introduction of the Peace Preservation Act a priest had been alluded to who had denounced a man from the altar, and who had since been mur-
  1166
  dered; and the murder of a station-master on an Irish railway had also followed closely upon a denunciation. The fact that a priest encouraged landlord murdering was really serious, and now that measures were under consideration for the pacification of Ireland it was time to consider also whether this barbarous practice should be tolerated any longer. The increasing endeavours of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland to exercise unauthorized powers over land, an instance of which may be found in the recent letter by Dr. Nulty, Bishop of Meath, ought to be checked. It was no slight thing that Mr. Hamilton, who was just, liberal, and business-like, should be forced to reside in Dublin in order to preserve his life. He hoped Her Majesty's Government would take into consideration how far altar denunciations could be interfered with, and what steps they ought to take to put a stop to them.
  LORD DUFFERINsaid, he did not rise for the purpose of prolonging this discussion. The character of the Duke of Leinster had been amply vindicated; but as the noble Marquess concluded his remarks by moving for Papers, it was necessary for him (Lord Dufferin) to state that no official information has reached the Government of the matter to which he referred, and if a police report of it had been presented, it would be impossible for him to comply with his request, because, as he had already explained on a previous occasion, it was not the custom to lay confidential police reports before Parliament.
  LORD DENMANsaid, that on the Crime and Outrage Bill the late Lord Brougham, in 1847, had given it as his opinion that where an altar denunciation had been followed by the murder of the person denounced, the priest who had made the denunciation would be guilty of being an accessory before the fact. He thought that in disturbed districts under the Peace Preservation Act a provost marshal, as recommended by the poet Spenser, might have been authorized to execute summary justice on assassins; and allusion having been made by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, on the noble and learned Judge of the Probate Court's (Lord Penzance's) Motion that evening, to the necessity for execution soon following a sentence,

  1167
  he might also refer their Lordships to the late Lord Brougham's opinions, in the same year, on confession and absolution, and the necessity of preventing all access by priests to criminals after sentences. This might seem very severe; but it must be recollected that assassins had sent their victims into the presence of their Creator without any time for thoughts of eternity; and it must be fresh in the recollection of their Lordships that some of the priests themselves had threatened to deprive those who voted in the last election, against their wishes, of both confession and absolution, and so they could not complain—especially as Lord Brougham declared that assassination had been put a stop to by Napoleon I., by Sir T. Maitland, and the Marquess of Wellesley by this step. He hoped that it would be long before the county of Kildare followed the example of the county of Meath.
  THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDEthought the noble Lord (Lord Dufferin) was wrong in stating that it was not the practice to lay Irish constabulary reports upon the Table. He had known instances of reports of this description of the most private nature laid upon the Table. It had formerly been the practice to refuse Foreign Office Papers on the same ground; but now that Department frequently printed even documents which were marked "secret" and "confidential." After what had been said by the noble Lord, however, he begged to withdraw his Motion.
  Motion (by Leave of the House) withdrawn.
  House adjourned at Seven o'clock, 'till To-morrow, half past Ten o'clock.