Sitting of 26 April 1875

MINUTES.
RESOLUTION IN COMMITTEE—National Debt Acts *.
PUBLIC BILLS—Second Reading—Sea. Fisheries* [128].
Committee—Peace Preservation (Ireland) [77]—R.P.
Committee—Report—Bishops Resignation Act (1869) Perpetuation* [124]; Seal Fishery (Greenland) * [117].
Committee—Report—Considered as amended—Explosive Substances* [115].
Third Reading—(£15,000,000) Consolidated Fund*; International Copyright* [56], and passed.

COURTS OF LAW (SCOTLAND)—JUDGES OF THE SUPREME COURTS—SALARIES.—QUESTION.
MR. LYON PLAYFAIRasked the Lord Advocate, Whether the Government intend to bring in a Bill, indicated in his answer to a question on the 16th of July last, to give effect to many of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Courts of Law in Scotland, including an increase in the salaries of the Judges of the Supreme Courts?
THE LORD ADVOCATE: Sir, I do not think my right hon. Friend quite accurately describes the Answer which I gave to him on the 16th of July last. On referring to the usual source of information, I see I stated that—
"It is intended to give effect to many of the recommendations of the Royal Commission next Session, and the matter of the increase in the salaries of the Judges of the Supreme Courts will be submitted for consideration."—[3 Hansard, ccxxi. 121.]
I did not then indicate, as I had no authority to do so, that the Government would during this Session bring in a Bill providing for an increase in the salaries of the Judges of the Supreme Courts in Scotland. At the same time, it is proper I should say that I have submitted for the consideration of the Government many of the recommendations of the Royal Commission, including those relating to the increase of the salaries of the Judges of the Supreme Courts; but I have not yet received authority to propose to Parliament any legislation, except upon the matters dealt with in the two Bills relating to the Sheriff and other inferior Courts in Scotland which were read a first time on Friday last.

THE NEW LAW COURTS.—QUESTION
MR. GOLDSMIDasked the First Commissioner of Works, What is the reason for the slow progress made with the building of the new Law Courts, and whether he cannot take any measures for expediting the work?
LORD HENEY LENNOX: Sir, I am sorry the progress has not been what I hoped and expected; but the delay has arisen in a great measure from the very severe weather which prevailed during the four winter months. The east block is up to the first floor. Considering the magnitude of the work, great indulgence is due to the contractors at the commencement of it. I am informed that since the fine weather has set in, the contractors are pushing on with greater vigour.

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION ACT, 1872—PUBLIC TEACHERS ON SCHOOL BOARDS.

  QUESTION.
  MR. STEVENSONasked the Vice President of the Council, If he can state how many Teachers of Elementary

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  Schools are at present Members of School Boards; and, if it is intended under the new Clause in the Education Code to withhold the annual Grant earned by a School if the Teacher continues to occupy his seat on a School Board, to which he has been duly elected?
  VISCOUNT SANDON: Sir, in reply to the first part of the Question, we have no information as to the number of teachers of public elementary schools who are members of school boards. We do not believe that there are many such cases in England, and in Scotland, as the hon. Member is probably aware, teachers are forbidden by the Act of 1872 to be members of school boards. I am glad, with respect to the second part of the Question to have the opportunity of stating that it was never our intention to require a teacher already a member of a school board to resign his seat before the end of the term for which the board was elected; but I must add that if, after the present Code has come into force, a teacher is elected upon and joins a school board, such an act would rank with any other infringement of the conditions of the Code, and would disqualify the school to which the teacher belonged from receiving a Government grant. The rule was laid down with no want of appreciation of the characters of the teachers, but solely to avoid the great inconvenience which would arise from teachers combining the two offices at the same time.

THE ROYAL COURT, JERSEY.

  QUESTION.
  SIR HENRY DRUMMOND WOLFEasked Sir HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSON, in the absence of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether it is true that when a soldier stationed at Jersey is charged with any offence before the Royal Court of that Island, the proceedings are conducted in French, and the soldier is not allowed the assistance of an interpreter?
  SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSON, in reply, said, he had received a telegram from the Governor of Jersey, to the effect that the language of the Royal Court of Jersey, in civil and criminal cases, was, and always had been, in French. A soldier, on being brought before that Court, was treated in the
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  same way as any other person. If he had not chosen an advocate, the Court assigned him one, and the duty of that advocate was to watch the proceedings and conduct the defence, and to give to the party all the assistance that he could. There was no sworn interpreter to the Royal Court, and as the person who was brought there would have an advocate, it was not usual to employ an interpreter. There was, however, no objection to one being employed, if application was made to the Court.

  INDIA—MASSACRE OF MR. MARGARY AT MANWTNE.—QUESTION.
  MR. HANBURYasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, If it is true, as stated in a telegram in "The Daily News" of 22nd April, that "the Chinese Government have appointed a person of inferior position as Commissioner to investigate" the circumstances connected with the murder of Mr. Margary; and, when the Despatches of Her Majesty's Minister at Pekin, in reference to this subject, are expected, and whether he will take an early opportunity of laying them upon the Table of the House?
  MR. BOURKE, in reply, said, as regarded the first part of the Question of the hon. Member, the Government had not received any information from Mr. Wade with respect to the statement in the telegram referred to. That gentleman's despatches were not expected to arrive in this country for some days to come; but they should be at once placed on the Table of the House, should the noble Lord the Secretary for Foreign Affairs be of opinion that that could be done without injury to the public interest.

  ARMY—FORTIFICATIONS AND LOCALIZATION OF FORCES.—QUESTION.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, If he would state to the House what is the estimate for expenditure on account of Fortifications and Localisation of the Military Forces in the current year?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Sir, I have not yet received any precise estimate of the estimated expenditure for this year; but, so far as the information at my command goes, I

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  apprehend that the sum which it will be necessary for the Treasury to borrow for this purpose this year will be somewhere between£750,000 and£ 1,000,000, but I cannot name the precise sum.

  THE ARCTIC EXPEDITION—THE CHAPLAINS.—QUESTION.
  SIR WTLFRID LAWSONasked the First Lord of the Admiralty, Whether the crews of the two ships about to sail on the Arctic Expedition are not likely to be composed largely of Presbyterians; and, if so, whether it would not be expedient, instead of appointing two Episcopalian Chaplains, to appoint one Episcopalian and one Presbyterian?
  MR. HUNT: Sir, I have no reason to suppose the crews will be composed largely of Presbyterians; I have not the slightest idea how the crews will be composed as regards religious opinions; but I have already appointed two Episcopalian Chaplains to the Expedition.

  PARLIAMENT—THE CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS.—QUESTION.
  MR. TREVELYAN (for Mr. DILLWYN)asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether, in view of the discrepancies now existing between the duties, as compared with the salaries, of the Chairman of Committees of the House of Lords and the Chairman of Ways and Means in the House of Commons, he will this Session take any steps to rectify the anomalous position of the latter officer?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, in reply, said, the subject had been under the consideration of the Commission of which the Speaker was Chairman, who were charged with the duty of looking into questions connected with the administration of both Houses, and a general conclusion had to be arrived at that the discrepancies were such as ought not to be continued. It was, therefore, the intention of the Government to make a proposal to raise the salary of the Chairman of Ways and Means to the same amount as that of the Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords.

THE QUEEN v. CASTRO—THE TRIAL AT BAR.

  PERSONAL EXPLANATION.
  SIR ROBERT PEEL: Sir, I wish to ask the kind indulgence of the House for a few minutes, while I refer to a statement made on Friday evening in the course of the speech of the hon. Member for Stoke. That statement directly affects me; but more than that, if there were any foundation in fact for it, which I can show there is not, it can only be intended to prejudice in the mind of the public the character and position of a high and honourable Judge. So long as that statement continued to be made in the pages of a print called The Englishman—so long as it was repeated in a number of Petitions, which as I understand from the Clerk at the Table were received, but not laid upon it—I was content to let it pass unheeded upon the advice of my solicitors, and treat it with the contempt and disgust that every man must feel at the continuance of libels which have been heaped without end upon men of far higher position than I can claim to be. But when I find that the statement of The Englishman newspaper has been transferred to the floor of the House of Commons by a Member of this honourable House, I have no alternative but to appeal to the House of Commons with every confidence and trust in this matter. I was unable accidentally, from circumstances over which I had no control, to be in the House of Commons on Friday evening, else I should then have taken the opportunity of repudiating the statement to which I now refer. It is true I received a letter from the hon. Member for Stoke. It was dated on Thursday evening; but I did not receive it until Saturday morning, and I was quite surprised to find that he was going to introduce my name in any way into the debate on Friday evening. At least I may say this, that as the hon. Member for Stoke intended to introduce my name, it would have been more courteous on his part if he had given me two or three days' notice, that I might have made arrangements to be present. Now, what is the charge, or rather I might say what is the statement, of the hon. Member for Stoke? I will read the words. He had been alluding to the Lord Chief Justice of England, and said they had been discussing whether it would be well

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  to have the Lord Chief Justice to try the case. He said he had an interview with the Claimant, and that it was decided they should not oppose the Lord Chief Justice trying the case. Then, the hon. Member for Stoke said, the 13th of April came, and he said he had an interview with the Claimant, who read to him an extract from his diary. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Peterborough is in his place at the present moment, but this is the extract—
  "Mr. Whalley has just been to me and has told me that Sir Robert Peel told him yesterday that I was to be convicted, and that the Judges had already made up their minds to give me 15 years' penal servitude. Mr. Hendricks was present."
  It does not so much concern me, but from my intimacy with, and from the very high respect I have for, the Lord Chief Justice, I consider it my duty to bring this matter before this honourable House. Well, there is not the slightest shadow of foundation for the hon. Member for Peterborough making such a statement as this. It is on the face of it literally impossible that the Lord Chief Justice should have told me during the hearing of a case before a jury, that he and the two other Judges had made up their minds to give the Claimant 15 years' penal servitude. It was stated by the hon. Member for Peterborough, to get a stronger hold upon me, that Mr. Hendricks was present. Now I have a letter from Mr. Hendricks this morning, who says it is absolutely false that in his presence I made any such statement as that which Mr. Whalley is said to allege, and which it was falsely stated, was made in Mr. Hendricks' presence. I wish now to say a word with regard to the hon. Member for Stoke. I do not know why the hon. Member for Stoke should so persistently have laid bold on me in this matter. I do not know that I ever spoke to him in my life. I do not know that I ever met him, yet for weeks and months my name has been dragged before the public in The Englishman. Yes; I did meet him once, at dinner—at the table of his kind friend and patron, Lord Chief Justice Cockburn. That was the only time I ever met the hon. Member for Stoke. Well, I do not know why he should so persistently have introduced my name into this matter, because he, as a lawyer, must know that it is absolutely impossible for a Chief Justice
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  sitting with two other Judges, before a cause had been tried, to have told me that the result would be what the hon. Member had stated. The hon. Member for Stoke said—"I express no opinion," but he has expressed an opinion over and over again. Announcements of this nature have appeared—"Read Dr. Kenealy's newspaper!" I presume that The Englishman is Dr. Kenealy's newspaper. The hon. Member for Stoke says he expressed no opinion, but he was curious to learn what would be said in defence of the Judges. There would be nothing more monstrously absurd than to suppose that the Lord Chief Justice should have held such language, or that I should have made such a statement. It all rests upon that one statement alleged to have been made by the hon. Member for Peterborough, and which is directly contradicted by Mr. Hendricks. Now I put it to the House, and I put it to you, Sir, whether you will not vouchsafe to me your belief that the statement I have made is true, rather than that which has for months past appeared in The Englishman newspaper, and which has now been transferred to the House of Commons? I give it the most direct and perfect contradiction. The entry in the diary alluded to by the hon. Member for Stoke and the assertion there made are manifestly untrue and monstrously—I was going to say—false.
  MR. SPEAKER: Does the right hon. Member apply the term "false" to a Member of this House?
  SIR ROBERT PEEL: No, Sir; I applied it to the diary. I say that the entry in the diary which was referred to by the hon. Member for Stoke is manifestly untrue, and I am confident that the House of Commons will not hesitate to endorse the opinion I have now expressed.

  PEACE PRESERVATION (IRELAND) BILL— [BILL 77.]
  (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Mr. Solicitor General for Ireland.)
  COMMITTEE. ADJOURNED DEBATE.
  Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment proposed to Question [22nd April], "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair;" and which Amendment was,
  To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words

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  "in the opinion of this House, it is inexpedient to proceed with the consideration of a Bill re-enacting and modifying detached portions of several statutes, until it is put into such a form as to show clearly and distinctly the provisions which are to form part of the continued and revised code,"—(Mr. Biggar,)
  —instead thereof.
  Question again proposed, "That the words proposed to he left out stand part of the Question."
  Debate resumed.
  MAJOR O'GORMANsaid, that the Chief Secretary for Ireland had informed the House that he was not at liberty to state the information which he had received from the magistrates and the police in Ireland; but he (Major O'Gorman) would like to know if the right hon. Baronet had consulted the parish priests and Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church there with respect to the state of the country, for, if he had, he would then be able to give the House some valuable information on the subject. If he had consulted the Rev. Dr. Nulty, Bishop of Meath, he would have received all the information he could give him on the subject. At present the right hon. Baronet prided himself on the secrecy of his information; but he should like to ask him whether he was perfectly certain that the information he had received came from a perfectly reliable source? If it did, it would, of course, to some extent guide the House. Was he, in the slightest degree, quizzed by any of his correspondents? Had he heard of the celebrated Westmeath Rib-bon story? He would relate it briefly. A gentleman living in the county of Westmeath, possessed of considerable property and very fond of field sports, had a daughter, who disliked living in the country; she found the country very stupid and dull, and repeatedly asked her father to remove to Dublin, where he had a house. He refused to do so, as he was so fond of his field sports, and was much beloved by his neighbours. Soon afterwards he received a threatening letter. A few days later he received another, but he thought little of either. Some days afterwards there came another threatening letter, and not only that, but one in which his coffin was delineated. He then became alarmed, and sent for the stipendiary magistrate, the county dry nurse. He attended at the gentleman's house, saw the letters, and placed himself in
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  communication with that sink of iniquity, Dublin Castle. Scores of detectives were sent down to the district, and domiciliary visits were paid to the houses of all the poor people, who were most roughly treated by the stipendiary and his myrmidons. But nothing could be detected as to the authorship of these threatening letters, though they still came pouring in. Nobody knew who wrote them, nobody knew anything about them, and the gentleman became seriously alarmed. He gave up his establishment in the country and removed into Dublin. His daughter was a very beautiful girl, just such a girl as could only be produced in his own Green Isle—blood, bone, and beauty, and plenty of it. She was universally admired, and had not been long in Dublin before proposals of marriage were made to her by a man who was fit for her. The wedding came off, and after the usual breakfast, when the young lady came down to take her departure, she threw her arms round her father's neck, and said to him—"Go down to the country, father; nobody will touch a hair of your head. You are beloved by everybody around you. Nobody wrote those letters but one person, and that person was myself. I wrote you every one of those threatening letters, and it was I who delineated that coffin. I found the country very dull; I asked you to leave it 20 times and come to Dublin. You refused, and, as it was very fashionable, I adopted the Ribbon scheme, and it completely succeeded." Did the right hon. Baronet ever hear that story? Most probably not; and why not? Because it was a story in favour of the people, and the right hon. Baronet did not go into the class of society that was favourable to the people, but only into that class that was hostile to them in every respect. He did not see him in his place; but he ventured to say that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the county of Dublin and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster—save the mark!—could have made the right hon. Baronet perfectly acquainted with that story, and several others. He (Major O'Gorman) would tell them another. The Protestant Archbishop of Dublin rushed one afternoon into the bedroom of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, at 4 o'clock. The Lord Lieutenant was a man of great talent,

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  and of great sloth. The Archbishop called to him—"Oh! my Lord, we shall have our throats cut. The country's up! the country's up! the country's up!" "Oh!" said his Lordship, "what time of day is it?" "My Lord," said the Archbishop, "it is 4 o'clock P.M." "Well," said the Lord Lieutenant, "t' is time for everybody to be up now." His Lordship got up, and found that the country was not up; but that it was as quiet as it was now, and as it had been proved to be by the Irish Judges, many of whom had declared that it was so at the last Assizes and at the Assizes before. He thought there was no reason whatever why that Bill should pass. It was his firm belief that the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government had no heart in it. He thought the right hon. Gentleman would rather that the Bill should not pass, or at all events that he had satisfied himself that the people of Ireland were perfectly quiet, perfectly well conducted, and perfectly obedient to the law. Surely the right hon. Gentleman, the foremost man of all the world, could well afford not to take over a legacy of this description from those blockheaded Whigs. He was strong enough not to do so. There were dozens of hon. Gentlemen behind him who would gladly see that miserable scrap blotted out. He entreated the right hon. Gentleman to cut it short at once. They would soon be in the season of sacrificing innocent Bills. But this was a guilty Bill, and not an innocent one. He besought him to despatch it, and to believe that he would never be sorry for it. Let him destroy that guilty Bill. He entreated him once more to do so. The altar was before him, and he entreated him to commence the immolation at once.
  MR. PARNELL, in supporting the Motion of the hon. Member for Cavan, observed, that no arguments had been advanced against the Amendment of his hon. Friend. The hon. Member for Derry (Mr. R. Smyth), although he agreed with the principle of the Bill, said he should vote in favour of the Amendment as being a just and proper one. The Chief Secretary for Ireland, as an open foe, had, of course, opposed it, and so also had the noble Marquess who was supposed to lead the Opposition in that House. What reason had the hon. Member for Derry given for approving
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  the principle of the Bill? It was this, that some coercion was necessary in his district to prevent Catholics and Protestants flying at each other's throats. But was that any reason why 30 other Irish counties should be placed under Coercion Laws? It had been said that some half dozen Irish landlords had given it as their opinion that without coercion they could not exercise the rights of property. What did they mean by the rights of property? He always noticed that when a Coercion Bill was to be passed through the House, they heard a great deal about the rights of property, but very little about its duties. Their views as to the rights of property were sometimes a little curious. He had seen Irish landlords sitting in polling-booths as agents for the Conservative candidate, hearing illiterate voters record their votes, and their tenants trembling when they came to vote against that candidate. That was an exercise of the rights of property of which he did not think Englishmen would approve. There had not been threatening letter writing of late, or shooting, or agrarian crime, and was that, he asked, a time to bring in a Coercion Bill? Was that a proper time to stop all discussion on the measure, when Irish Members were telling the House what the wishes of their constituents with regard to it were? The hon. Member for Derry had told the House that the Irish tenant-farmers of the North were convinced that some remedial measures were necessary for the restoration of tranquillity in that part of their country, and had said that if a promise of a Land Bill was held out, whereby small holders would be secured in their holdings, Ireland, instead of being a source of weakness, would be a source of strength to England. He (Mr. Parnell) did not profess to speak on behalf of the Irish tenant-farmers, but he did not believe that Irish tenant-farmers, even those living in the Black North, were so locked up in self-interest as to be inclined to give up the interest of their country to serve that of their class. When the proper time came, perhaps it would be found that he was as true a friend to the tenant-farmer as even the hon. Member for Derry, and he said this, knowing well the importance of securing the tenant in his holding, but knowing also that in the neglect

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  of the principles of self-government lay the root of all Irish trouble. The Chief Secretary for Ireland had found fault with the language which had been used by the hon. Member for Derry; but he (Mr. Parnell) did not know who had appointed the right hon. Gentleman the censor of the language used in that House by hon. Members. He thought that the facts of the hon. Gentleman were well put, and he only wished he was with them on their (the Home Rule) benches of the House. Perhaps the Chief Secretary for Ireland detected a sort of terror arising in the hon. Member's mind, that the time-honoured and ancient Whig hack would no longer be able to carry matters with a high hand in Derry County, and was holding out to him a helping hand in the event of his thinking of changing his side of the House. For his own part, however, he did not think that the hon. Member was likely to turn his coat, and he was convinced that he would always be found where he believed that the interest of his country required him. He trusted that the time would arrive when the history of the past would be forgotten, so far as it reminded England that she was not entitled to Ireland's confidence, and when she would give to Irishmen the rights which they claimed—the right of self-government. Why should Ireland be treated as a geographical fragment of England, as he had heard an ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer call it some time ago. Ireland was not a geographical fragment, but a nation. He asked the House to regard Ireland as anxious to defend England when her hour of trial came; and he trusted the day might come when England might see that her strength lay in a truly independent, a truly free, and a truly self-supporting Irish nation.
  MR. R. POWERsaid, he could see no reason whatever for the passing of the Bill. The county of Waterford, with which he was intimately connected, was free from agrarian outrage, the best relations obtained between land lord and tenant, and he defied the Chief Secretary for Ireland to say that a portion of the Ribbon Association had ever extended to that county. At the last Assizes the Judge on circuit offered his congratulations on the marked freedom of the county from crime of all kinds, and beside that it was not three weeks since a learned
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  Judge had congratulated the Grand Jury of the City of Waterford upon the lightness of their work, and under such circumstances he protested against such a city and such a county being placed under these Coercion Laws. The Bill itself, in fact, was unjust and uncalled for, and was the result of the Government having been guided by private sources of information, instead of having obtained it openly and freely. Many remarks had been made on the length to which the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) had extended his speech; but he (Mr. Power) was bound to say, in justice to him, that he had begged him not to make a short speech; and his reason was the policy of silence by which they had been met on the Government side of the House. He knew there was in the House a majority that was beyond all argument; but he would for all that add his public voice to the representations made by those around him in reference to Irish sentiment and Irish liberty. Ireland was governed as a conquered country which was repugnant to the people of the country. It was a system that was unjust, uncalled for, and impolitic, because it was fraught with danger to the best interests of the Empire. Beyond that, no just cause had been given for suspending the Constitution of the Empire.
  LORD ROBERT MONTAGUsaid, he had been unable to discover from the speeches of the Chief Secretary and the Solicitor General for Ireland what were the real reasons for the introduction of this measure. Various grounds had been alleged by the hon. and learned Gentleman, such as the existence of Fenianism, agrarian and sectarian differences and jealousies. But it was admitted almost in the same breath by the right hon. Baronet that Fenianism had almost disappeared; that the country, as a whole, was never more free from crime; and as to Sectarian differences and jealousies, would a Bill of this kind have any effect whatever in allaying either? Would the Government or the House propose such a Bill for that purpose to apply to England, where there were also sectarian differences and jealousies? No. In England they must tolerate: in Ireland they coerced. It was said by the Chief Secretary that the Bill was necessary because the ordinary Courts of Law could not deal with crime and secure the attendance of witnesses and

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  convictions. That ground, however, could not be maintained against the fact that in Ireland 75 per cent of the crimes committed the offenders were brought to justice, while in England the percentage was 50. But in what respects would the Bill facilitate the getting of evidence? There was power given by a clause of the Act of 1870, now submitted for re-enactment, to hold a general inquiry in regard to a crime, in cases where no one was accused, and to summon witnesses as in an ordinary judicial investigation. The exercise of that power would either lead to men being forced to incriminate themselves, a thing which was quite opposed to the law of England—or to the crime of falsehood being added to the other crime. It had been proposed as one mode of securing the administration of justice that any locality in which more than the ordinary average of crime was found should pay the extra costs of prevention and repression; but the right hon. Baronet had himself admitted that it was not likely to have the effect of inducing persons to come forward to give evidence. None of the clauses seemed to him likely to effect their professed objects, or remove the discontent of the Irish people which was alleged to exist. So long as there was a just and a righteous cause for that discontent it would continue. The only justification of the Bill he had really heard was the suspicion of the existence of Ribbonism in Westmeath. He said suspicion, because although the Government said they had information which justified them in proposing the Bill they had not given any tangible grounds to go upon. Indeed, he might say that the speech of the Chief Secretary was an admission that Ribbonism in Westmeath was dormant, if not extinct. Yet in regard to that county it was to be remarked that the severity of the legislation of 1870 was not mitigated in one iota by the present Bill. If it was not extinct, why did the Government liberate Captain Duffy and take him into their employ as a spy? A fear had been expressed lest the Government should become despotic. For his part he had no such fear. He knew from the writings of the Prime Minister that the right hon. Gentleman disliked that Bill in his heart as much as he did, but the right hon. Gentleman was, no doubt, outvoted in his Cabinet. Therefore, when he blamed the Government
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  he excluded the Prime Minister altogether, for he had too much regard and reverence for him to believe that he would willingly assent to that measure; but the Government were making themselves odious by those violations of the Constitution. They had promised Ireland conciliation, and had given her coercion; they had promised them bread and had given them a stone. They were wearing out the patience of the country by the effete measures they had introduced, and by the flippant and flabby replies they had offered to the arguments brought against them.
  MR. D. TAYLORsaid, he could not agree with the noble Lord the Member for Westmeath in many of the views he had expressed. He (Mr. D. Taylor) shared the great dislike which existed on the part of Irish Members to a Bill of that kind; but he could not vote with the hon. Member for Cavan, if he pressed his Motion to a division, for he did not believe there was any disposition on the part of the House to deal otherwise than fairly and liberally with Ireland, and sufficient evidence of that fact was afforded by the legislation of the last Parliament in regard to that country. He had not the honour of a seat in that Parliament; but he highly approved of the Church and the Land Bills as measures which were proposed and carried in a sincere spirit of conciliation, and with a strong desire to remove discontent. But they must take into consideration the past history of Ireland, and the feeling of different sections of the population towards each other. With regard to that legislation there was still a strong feeling that it had not freed Ireland from agrarian crime to the extent which he believed it was calculated to do. But the fact was that Ireland had been too long neglected, especially with reference to its commerce and trade of every description, and too long represented by men who were of a different race from their constituents, and did not sympathize with the general body of the people. It would, therefore, take some time before such measures as those he had mentioned could produce their desired effect; still, he believed their good influence would, before a distant day, entirely remove agrarian crime from the country. It was only for agrarian crime, the perpetrators of which were seldom brought to justice—not from the sympathy of the people with such offences,

  1649
  but because they looked upon the part of an informer as odious—that he thought a measure like the present was needed. He was sure the Government brought that Bill forward with reluctance; but the question was, could the peace and safety of the country be maintained without its provisions? Looking at the decreasing crime and the growing prosperity of Ireland, he would suggest to the Chief Secretary, who dealt with Irish questions with a care and a zeal which did him the greatest credit, that he might limit the duration of the Bill to two years, at the end of which time he hoped and believed it would not be necessary to renew it. If the Chief Secretary for Ireland took that course he believed that many Irish Members would waive their objections to it.
  MR. DUNBARsaid, he differed from the hon. Member for Coleraine (Mr. D. Taylor), and would suggest that these Acts should continue only for a month longer, instead of two or five years. The Bill was one of the most complete specimens of everything that was objectionable, and its object seemed to be to conceal from the people the law under which they lived. They had heard a good deal about the faulty framing of Acts of Parliament, and at that moment a Committee was sitting up-stairs to consider the mode of drawing statutes and the improvements that might be effected in their language and style. Well, he thought the Bill now under discussion should be submitted to it, for it was about as complete a specimen of everything that was objectionable in form as any Act that had been brought before them for many years. He gave the Government credit for what they had done in relation to legislation in Ireland; but he would admit that if any measure of coercion was necessary, there were some very objectionable provisions in the Bill. If enforced, it would affect every man in Ireland, and the law would be so plain that every magistrate and every policeman who had to carry it out should clearly understand their duty in regard to it. The subject should be placed before the House fairly and in a complete form that they might know what they were doing, and if that course were pursued, he thought they would have no hesitation in rejecting it. He particularly objected to the 3rd section, which instead of stating directly what was proposed to be enacted, recited the Acts of
  1650
  1870 and 1871, which were to be continued; and it was impossible in Committee to make any Amendment on those Acts. This was not carrying out the engagement made by the Government last Session, and the Amendment of the hon. Member for Cavan ought to receive the sanction of the House.
  MR. CLIVEsaid, he knew nothing of the county of Westmeath; but as the owner of property in the counties of Mayo and Tipperary, of which he knew a great deal, he begged to thank the right hon. Baronet opposite for bringing in that Bill. His speech clearly proved that he had a practical knowledge of the subject. It was true that the drafting of the Bill might have been more successful; but, on the whole, that was not a matter of much material importance. He gave the noble Lord the Member for Westmeath every credit for his ingenuity and ability, but he was deficient in practical knowledge of the subject. It was said that no reason had been given for the introduction of the Bill. He would commend to the attention of hon. Members below the Gangway an extract from an Irish newspaper which belonged to a former Member of that House whom they all respected—the late Mr. Maguire. The Cork Examiner of August, 1874, said—
  "It is an unfortunate fact that among us for some time back it has been safer to commit murder than any other offence. We see constantly walking out of the dock free men and free women, persons whom no human being doubts had committed atrocious and cold-blooded murder. Crown prosecutors have now almost abandoned the idea of obtaining a conviction for murder. The clearest and most convincing evidence can at the best secure only a disagreement of the jury. Juries seem to have been inspired by a namby-pamby compassion which is reserved entirely for the person in the dock, for they seem to have none for the individual whoso throat was cut, or whose drink was poisoned, or whose brains were battered. There seems to be far more commiseration for the murderer than for his victim. Jurors forget that in setting a murderer free they in all probability help to cut the throat of some new victim; for if the escaped criminal himself does not commit murder, the ease and safety with which he has got off lends temptation to some one else."
  Baron Dowse mentioned that there had been nine or ten cases of murder in Tipperary. All knew how difficult it was in Ireland to detect the perpetrators of agrarian crimes, and there was, therefore, the greater necessity for exceptional legislation, which there could be no

  1651
  doubt had prevented many crimes and outrages. He admitted that such legislation caused discontent in some parts of Ireland; but that was stirred up by speeches of hon. Members in Ireland and in the House of Commons, and speeches which, if not delivered in the House, were sent to Ireland and published as if they had been delivered. There was no doubt that there was a considerable credulity and ignorance in some portions of the Irish people; but if the prosperity of Ireland went on increasing, and if the people became more intelligent and less credulous and savage in their nature, the necessity for these measures might gradually disappear.
  MR. RONAYNEsaid, he took exception to the extract referred to by the hon. Gentleman who had just addressed the House, and maintained that it did not apply to the county with which he (Mr. Ronayne) was connected—the county of Cork; for on recent occasions the Cork juries had been thanked by the Judges for their verdicts, and that persons who had escaped elsewhere had been sent to Cork to be tried, and had been convicted. He wanted to know to what part of the country the extract read by the hon. Member applied. [Mr. CLIVE said, he read an extract from The Cork Examiner.] It probably applied to England, and perhaps to the county of the right hon. Baronet the Chief Secretary, where a grand jury recently found a man guilty, and insisted on his being sentenced without his going before a common jury. That was in the county of Devon. [Sir MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH: That is not my county.] At all events, he complained that, for the purpose of supporting this Bill, the charge alleged against that county was cast like a shadow over all other parts of Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland taunted the Irish Members with not bringing forward new arguments; but the answer must be that the Government adduced no new facts, and did not repeat the old ones. He (Mr. Ronayne) had been three Sessions in this House, and in that time three Coercion Bills had been brought in for Ireland. On each occasion the Government of the day considered it necessary to make a parade of certain facts—number of agrarian outrages, charges of juries, resolutions of grand juries, reports of magistrates; but on this occasion they did nothing of the
  1652
  kind. The right hon. Gentleman rested his case in support of this Bill upon secret letters addressed to Dublin Castle bearing upon the prevalence of agrarian crime, and which he refused to produce; but it was a fact that when this Bill was brought in in a former year, there was not any agrarian crime then in Ireland to justify the Government in introducing it. He would, in support of that assertion, refer to and quote the charges of the Judges of Assize in Ireland, showing that there was then no agrarian crime in the country. Mr. Justice O'Brien, in his Charge in the county of Cork in 1870 said, to the Grand Jury—
  "No cases of agrarian crime will be brought before you, and no crimes but those of an ordinary character."
  He was glad to say, looking through the calendar, that since the last Assizes no crime of an extraordinary character had been committed in their county. Mr. Justice Fitzgerald, in like manner, bore testimony in his Charge to the Grand Jury of the city of Cork to the light state of the calendar, and to the freedom of the city from Fenianism, and of the surrounding country from agrarian crimes. In the West Riding there was, he said, only one crime that called for notice; and in the midland district or East Riding, which was as large as some counties, the Act need not be applied. Yet, notwithstanding that, the Coercion Bill was applied in that district. [The hon. Member then read statements of the chairmen of quarter sessions in the city and county of Cork, indicating the peaceful state of the places and surrounding districts where the sessions were held. Mr. Ferguson, chairman of the quarter sessions at Bandon, received a pair of "white gloves," marking the freedom of the place from even a solitary case of crime on that occasion. "Last year, he said, "we had only one crime, and this year we have none." Mr. Keane, chairman of quarter sessions, also spoke of the great freedom of the city from crime. Tralee was also remarkably free from crime. Then, with regard to the cases of murder recently committed in the South of Ireland, they were committed for "money," and they were called by the people—he did not mean to speak offensively—"English murders." One man who murdered a woman for money was hanged, and another

  1653
  was banished for life, and condemned to penal servitude.] From those statements, it appeared dishonest to credit the Coercion Acts with having stopped or prevented crime where it never existed, and in continuing these enactments the Irish people felt naturally indignant that they should be treated as a nation of savages unfit to participate in the privileges of the British Constitution. The noble Lord the Member for the County of Waterford (Lord Charles Beresford) told the House last Session, on the second reading of the Bill for the Repeal of the 10 s. Licence on guns, that if that licence was done away with, he and others would not long be Members of that House. Yet there had not been an instance of agrarian murder in Waterford for 30 years, and the noble Lord's brother, the Marquess of Waterford, was so deservedly popular that if every man in the county had a gun he might walk through the county at midnight unharmed. Again, the Member for Kerry was a supporter of the Bill, but he would ask him if there had been a single instance of such crime there during the last 20 years? He blamed the Irish Executive for putting the Act upon the South and other parts of Ireland where there was no necessity for it. The noble Marquess who sat on the front Opposition Bench, on introducing the Motion for the Secret Committee on Westmeath, expressed the greatest horror at having to propose such a measure. He pleaded ignorance of Irish affairs, and he (Mr. Ronayne) was surprised that he could advocate the present Bill without a blush on his countenance. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Fortescue) who was then Chief Secretary for Ireland stated that if the Irish Executive put the law in force where there was no necessity for doing so, they should be arraigned before this House for so doing. Now, with respect to Waterford, Cork, and Kerry, he defied the right hon. Gentleman to bring forward any cases to justify the enforcement of that Act. It was, in truth, kept up by the magistrates as a game law, and nothing else. He had been asked why, as a sportsman himself, he could possibly oppose an Act that so admirably succeeded in putting down poaching. It should be called, in fact, a Game, and not a Peace Preservation Act. The Irish Executive had put the Westmeath
  1654
  Act into the middle of it, and thus the whole of Ireland obtained credit for the crimes alleged to be committed in Westmeath.
  MR. SULLIVANsaid, he was not sure that the Irish people had not accomplished a great deal when they saw the manner in which this Bill was received by the House. Hitherto Coercion Bills for Ireland had been brought in by eager speakers and carried by bristling majorities; but Irishmen had now won half the battle, for they had struck the conscience of their foes. The Prime Minister and even the Chief Secretary were ill at ease in carrying this Bill through the House, and dumbness and languor prevailed on the Treasury Bench. There were a dozen or more eloquent followers of the Prime Minister entertaining the doctrines which prevailed amongst hon. Gentlemen opposite, who refrained from speaking out in consequence of knowing the universal will of their countrymen. The hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Clive), who spoke in such de haut en has style, advised Irishmen from his lofty eminence to free themselves from Coercion Bills by ceasing to be savages. Now, Irish Members were told that Coercion Bills were called upon to repress exceptional crimes, meaning thereby crimes which were not common, because exceptional crimes existed in Ireland and not in England, and because in Ireland, criminals were objects of popular sympathy, so that they could not be brought to justice. Coercion laws were said therefore to he necessary for Ireland. Dr. Lankester, at a recent inquest, had called the attention of the jury to the frequency of cases of child-murder, but, as these were not exceptional crimes, no Coercion Bill was thought to be necessary for England. Referring to the frequency of child-murder in the metropolis, The Pall Mall Gazette said, it was a disgrace to the metropolis that not one per cent of the murderers were brought to justice. An hon. Member on one occasion, speaking on the same subject in that House, had stated that no fewer than 276 children were found dead in the streets and areas of London in one year, and that not one of the murderers had been discovered. Was that or was it not exceptional crime? But who had ever heard of a Coercion Bill for England? It had been asserted that time was wasted in the

  1655
  debate by the Irish Members. He denied that such was the case. He and those who were with him were determined, weak as they were as a minority, that while one word could be said by a man to give utterance to the feelings of the people, it should be said to protest against a bill like this passing through the House, because it was only by rendering it unpalatable to the Conservatives and distasteful to the Government that they, a small minority, could hope to do any good. Why was it that after centuries of connection with Ireland this country had to resort to the tactics of Bismarck in Alsace-Lorraine, and to the carpetbag legislation of the Southern States of America, in the present Bill, the name of which ought to be altered, for it would enact "That in the opinion of Parliament it is better that twenty innocent men should suffer than that one guilty should escape." Was there an Englishman here who did not know that it was one of the proudest boasts a countryman of his could make of his country's Constitution that it maintained it was better that ten guilty should escape rather than one innocent should suffer. It was one of an Englishman's boasts, also, that his house was his castle; but, in Ireland, a man's house was the policeman's, and a man was guilty until he was proved innocent, which was also opposed to the English rule. Another great fault he had to find with the Bill was that it would teach a lesson which was most fatal when taught to a half-educated people—namely, that the Lord Lieutenant, the Chief Secretary, or the Solicitor General for Ireland might break the law with impunity. While Pat Mooney must be sent to prison for belonging to a secret society, the hon. Member for Belfast (Mr. W. Johnston) might in perfect security remain a member of an Orange Lodge, and the hon. and learned Solicitor General for Ireland continue to be a Freemason. To show how harshly the Bill would operate he would refer to a letter he had received from Mr. Kyle Knox, a Protestant Conservative gentleman of the North of Ireland, who considered the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government the greatest statesman of the age. His correspondent pointed out that a sum of £500 was presented by the Grand Jury, owing to the murder of Stephen Church, to be levied in 10 instalments
  1656
  from the tenants of the townland on which the deceased had been shot, the total rental of which was £270. The writer added that he could not see Conservatism, common sense, or common justice in fining men ruinously for having bad neighbours. Even the laws of Cromwell with reference to Ireland were milder in many respects than the coercive measures of our English Parliament of the present day. In Cromwell's time a district in which an Englishman was murdered was not fined if the criminal were given up to justice; but now, if all the men, women, and children joined in hue and cry after a criminal, and handed him over to justice, that would not save the district. This Bill was about to be forced through Parliament, not at the dictation of a spirit of law, but at the dictation of a spirit of vengeance, the same spirit which had induced the Danes to trample on the Saxons and which had induced the Normans to trample on both. Its continuance was a declaration of hostility to the country, and it was not with any great hope that his feeble words would much affect their decision to-night that he appealed to the House to pause before they forced this Coercion Bill on the Irish people. But, whatever determination the House might now arrive at, he was satisfied from what he had seen and heard in the course of this discussion, that if Irishmen stated their case fairly and fought the battle of their country openly and manfully, a feeling was at work in the minds of hon. Members which must eventually bear fruit in favour of Irish liberty. Let it not be supposed that those who opposed the passing of this measure did not yearn for the day when all their Representatives and the mass of the people of Ireland could put themselves at the beck of the law of the land, because every right-minded man must suffer when he found himself placed in opposition to that law. He protested, however, against the people of his country being taught political lessons out of this bloody and brutal code. He admitted he felt indignant when the miscreants in the Westmeath crime stained their country. But there was no country in which there were not epidemics of crime—moral epidemics, perhaps, which lasted for a season, and then disappeared. Take England, for example; at one time there was an epidemic

  1657
  amongst people to commit suicide by throwing themselves from the Monument; at another time for drowning themselves in the Thames; at another time some other form of suicidal mania ran for a few years, and then disappeared. A few years since the crime of garotting was rampant in the country, but it had now disappeared. In Westmeath they had such a moral epidemic. He felt, and many of his friends felt, a great desire to go down to Westmeath and constitute a volunteer force in Ireland to stamp out the brutal enmities in Westmeath. And why did they not go? Because the Legislature had put them in a false position, and the Government trusted the police, who whispered away reputations and disregarded the protests of the men who had condemned, and still condemned, the passage of Coercion Bills. In conclusion, he felt confident that, although the Prime Minister would have to go through his bitter task that evening, and force the Bill through the House, yet, if Irish Members did their duty to their country, at no distant date the right hon. Gentleman would rise in his place, and put an end to that detestable régime of coercion.
  MR. O'SULLIVANsaid, that Irish Members were determined to oppose the measure at every stage, because they felt that there was no necessity for it; and that its only object was to preserve game and wild fowl in Ireland at the expense of the country. The grievance in regard to arms was in some degree sentimental; but the reality of it could not in any way be denied. For his own part, he was fond of carrying a gun for the purpose of sport; but he would rather debar himself from that pleasure for the rest of his life, than ask a magistrate to compliment him by granting him a licence. He held that every man was entitled to have a gun if he chose, for the protection of his person—it was a Divine right for a man to be able to protect himself, of which the Government had no just power to deprive him. He would tell the House a case which would show that the Bill was used for the protection of game more than for the protection of the peace of the country. A constituent of his had a gun since he was a boy, and got a licence for it when the country was proclaimed, but some great man in the neighbourhood found
  1658
  out that this Murnane was a good shot, and occasionally killed some rabbits and hares, so he determined that the gun should be taken from Murnane. Well, no charge could be brought against him; but it happened that a very distant relation of Murnane's was charged for firing at another party—though the charge was never proven—so the authorities concluded that it must have been out of Murnane's gun that the shot was fired, and for that imaginary offence he was deprived of his gun. That would show them that the Act was used more for the protection of game than any other case. He would therefore feel it his duty to oppose it in every stage through which it had to pass.
  MR. MELDONsaid, he would wish to re-call the attention of the House to the real question under discussion, and that was whether the Bill in its present shape was such as any Government could ask Parliament to pass. Admitting, for the purpose of the discussion of this question only, that coercion was necessary, such coercion should be rendered as little oppressive as possible; but in this case the Bill was so unintelligibly drawn that it would seem really intended not only to leave the people in ignorance of what the law was, but even to render its interpretation by the magistrates and persons who would be called on to administer its provisions next to impossible. He was a lawyer himself; but he was bound to confess that owing to the extraordinary confusion of the Coercion Code, as proposed to be enacted by this Bill, he had altogether failed in his attempts to frame Amendments on its provisions. Government had been guilty of a breach of faith in not fulfilling a promise given last Session—that on any future occasion the measure would be brought forward in a plain and intelligible form. If, indeed, there had been the same clearness in the Bill as in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman who introduced it, there would have been little ground for complaint in this respect. One of two causes must be looked to for an explanation of the introduction of the measure in its present shape—either an inefficient draftsman had been employed, or Government had desired to preclude, if possible, the discussion of the details of the measures which it was proposed to re-enact. The first could not be the case, for it would

  1659
  have been much easier for any draftsman with a pair of scissors to have cut out of the existing Acts the provisions intended to be re-enacted and pasted them together, than to have drafted the present crude and unintelligible Bill. The other explanation must therefore be accepted; but he was glad to think the object would not be attained, as a glance at the proposed Amendments would show. It was exceptional legislation, it enacted a criminal code, and its terms should be simple and easily understood by the people, for it must be remembered that it was a measure which would have to be administered for the most part by magistrates who were not lawyers, and that it would be necessary for these magistrates to have 12 or 13 different Acts before them, in order to arrive at a decision under it. As matters stood, however, it was impossible to make out what the Government intended or what the people were expected to do. The Preamble itself presented a muddle such as was not to be found in any existing Act of Parliament, mixing up as it did a number of Acts together in such a way as to render it quite impossible for any one clearly to ascertain what was meant. The object of the Government—namely, to exclude discussion—having failed, he earnestly implored them, in the interest of the entire country, if there must be coercion, at least to put the law in such a state that its administration would be easy and its enactments intelligible. Let the existing Acts be repealed, and re-enact such portions as it was considered desirable to retain as law. That would have been a plain and simple course, and every one then would have been able to understand its provisions; but now it was impossible to ascertain, except with extreme difficulty, what was to be the law. There might be some reason why the House had heard no discussion on the other side; but he thought the real secret of it was, that hon. Members had no argument to offer against the proposition that the Act ought to be introduced in an intelligible form. Having said so much on the question immediately before the House, he could not sit down without protesting in the strongest manner against the proposed legislation. Ireland for many years had not been in so peaceful a condition or so free from crime. He most indignantly denied that
  1660
  such a condition was due to the tyrannical laws at present in existence, and ascribed the existing state of affairs to the exertions and advice of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Limerick (Mr. Butt), who had succeeded in convincing the people that a constitutional agitation for "Home Rule" was to be preferred to the violent agitations of former times. He considered that bringing forward the Bill at such a time was a grave political mistake on the part of the Ministers, who now had an opportunity of proving their goodwill to Ireland and of convincing the people of their wish to govern constitutionally never before offered to any Government. To this House the Irish people had returned a large majority of its Representatives pledged not to the disintegration of the Empire, but for the purpose of cementing the Union between the two countries upon a basis equally advantageous to England and to Ireland. The Constitution of Ireland was filched away from her by fraud and vices of the grossest kind. He believed that if the magistrates all over the country had been consulted on this subject, they would have told the Chief Secretary that the continuance of such legislation was totally uncalled-for, while at the same time it was demoralizing in its effect on the people. A large number of Members had been returned to assist the present or any other Government to secure peace in Ireland; they came to Parliament and assured the Government that Ireland was peaceful and desired to abandon all violent agitation, that her people wished for the goodwill and friendship of England, and asked for nothing that was not strictly constitutional and just, and what was the result? The Government would not have confidence in the Irish people. They would not say to hon. Members—"Use your influence to keep the country in the state of tranquillity which now prevails." If they would do so, these Acts would never be required. If a little more consideration was given to the views and the expressions of opinion on the part of the Irish Members in the House, they would not be called upon to enact measures which interfered with the rights of the Irish people. Never had there been a time in the history of the country when there had been such an absence of crime, and as there was

  1661
  not a tittle of evidence to show that that would not be a lasting condition of affairs, he contended that there was no valid ground for reinforcing these coercive measures. It was not too late to adopt a different policy towards Ireland. Let the Prime Minister say to us, "Gentlemen, you say Ireland is peaceful and free from crime and coercive measure are not necessary. I am willing to accept your assurance; but, remember, if my forbearance is abused, coercion must be again resorted to." If that was done the House would find that such confidence in the Irish people would not be abused, and there would not be any excuse again for renewing these unconstitutional measures. The Chief Secretary alluded to meetings of magistrates at which a renewal of the most stringent of these coercive enactments were advocated; but no person who was aware of the constitution of those meetings could attach any weight to their recommendations. If the opinion of magistrates was considered of importance, why did not the Government consult the magistrates throughout Ireland? The Chief Secretary dared not do so, for they would have told him that the continuance of such legislation was quite uncalled-for, while at the same time it was most demoralizing to the people. The Chief Secretary for Ireland had alluded to a case in which several men witnessed a murder, but would not pursue the murderer. He believed the explanation of their conduct was that, as the law did not allow them to possess arms, they were afraid to face an armed man. By depriving the people of arms they were cowing and demoralizing them to such an extent that it was no wonder crime was undiscovered. In conclusion, he would contend that the peaceful state of Ireland was due, not to the operation of the Peace Preservation Acts, but to the advice which the Irish people had received, and the example of moderation which had been set before them by the hon. and learned Member for Limerick and others who acted with him; and to the prospect that the country was about to enjoy again its liberty in the same way as the other parts of the Kingdom, and unless they did so, it could not be expected they would rest satisfied.
  SIR HENRY HAVELOCKsaid, that he had no sympathy with crime; but that
  1662
  nevertheless he intended to vote for the abstract proposition before him. It had been his lot to have lived in Ireland at a time when there was considerable disturbance and danger, and nobody who knew his antecedents would suspect that he had any sympathy with crime, agrarian or otherwise; but for the abstract proposition put before the House by the hon. Member for Cavan County, he could have no hesitation in recording his vote, as a protest against the shape in which the Bill had been introduced by the Government. At the same time he would suggest to the Government that it would have been far better that the Act should have been continued for two years instead of five years. This might remove objections which many Members might otherwise feel.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 155; Noes 69: Majority 86.
  Main Question, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair," put, and agreed to.
  Bill considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  Clause 1 (Short title), agreed to.
  Clause 2 (Repeal of certain parts of Peace Preservation (Ireland) Act, 1870.)
  MR. BUTT, in moving as an Amendment, in page 1, line 26, to leave out "the parts of" said, the evil had already been pointed out of introducing a number of Bills in one measure of this kind. The right hon. Baronet the Chief Secretary himself said that the objection would be a good one if that were a consolidating and amending Bill. He failed to see what it was if it did not come under that head, for it proposed to deal with provisions that were scattered through three or four separate Acts of Parliament. There was first the Act of 1848; that was slightly modified by the Act of 1856; that was materially altered by the Act of 1870; that was again altered by the Act of 1871; and now it was proposed to alter that again by this Bill. For the first time it was now proposed that that Coercion Code should be administered by petty session Courts, the magistrates of which would not have exactly the same facilities for deciphering its hieroglyphics as the Judges of a Superior Court. Four clauses of the Act of 1870 were repealed and only three retained. But the simple way

  1663
  would be to repeal the Act of 1870, and then the three clauses which it was proposed to retain could be put separately before the Committee, so that important Amendments could be made upon them. Indeed, it would be well to make the much more moderate Act of 1856 the basis of the present legislation. With regard to the licence for arms, in the first Act there were only two kinds of licences, one for having arms in the house, the other for carrying them abroad. But, subsequently, a special licence was required for revolvers, and there was another clause which related to the carrying of arms on one's own land. Persons would be compelled to go to two or three different Acts of Parliament in order to know the law on this subject, and that was a most objectionable mode of legislation. The effect of his Amendment would be to simplify the construction of the Bill when it came into operation.
  Amendment proposed, in page 1, line 26, to leave out the words "the parts of."—(Mr. Butt.)
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PLUNKET)said, the effect of the Amendment would be to place them as nearly as possible in the state in which they were in 1856. There would be this disadvantage from it, that very useful provisions would be repealed, such as those relating to search-warrants, the power to arrest absconding witnesses, and the power to grant compensation to injured persons. If the Amendments which the hon. and learned Member had placed on the Paper in reference to the clause were carried, nothing whatever would be left of the Bill, except the interpretation clause. He thought the best course of proceeding would be to wait until the clauses were respectively brought up for consideration. He could not accept the Amendment.
  MR. BUTTsaid, it was a matter of principle, and he must divide the Committee upon it. Here was a measure which would re-enact by implication, and in a way only to be understood by the careful examination of a lawyer, some of the most oppressive parts of the Act of 1870. His hon. and learned Friend was not capable of a trick; but, in previous legislation, there had been a trick. By the Act of 1856 the warrant
  1664
  for search for arms could be executed only in daylight; but in 1870, stealthly, and by surprise, it was enacted that it might be executed at any time of the night. The right hon. Baronet proposed to retain that power. If it were to be retained, let it be done openly and not by implication. If they chose to keep this Bill involved and confused he could not be a party to its passing. It was a disgrace to modern legislation. He did not want certain stringent and highly objectionable laws passed by a side wind, but wished to have each definitely and openly re-enacted. Let each clause be put plainly before the House, and be open to Amendment. He did not propose to repeal the clauses, but simply to make them new legislation. Why should they shrink from discussion on these questions?
  MR. M'CARTHY DOWNINGthought the Government could not do better than agree to the Amendments of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Limerick, and also to those of the other Irish Members. He (Mr. M'Carthy Downing) submitted that the Act of 1870 ought to be repealed in toto, because it was only brought in for a short time, to meet agrarian crime, which was entirely suppressed.
  SIR PATRICK O'BRIENsaid, he thought it was most unfair in the Government to press Irish Members to accept this measure upon grounds which were entirely untenable. He considered the Bill unnecessary, and that the Amendments of the Irish Members ought to be agreed to. The right hon. Baronet opposite must see that many English and Scotch Members did not take part in these discussions, and only attended to support the Government. Those Members when, on the division bell ringing, they came in to vote, would find an utterly unintelligible issue before them, and should it be allowed to go forth to Ireland that these English and Scotch Members—in all upwards of 200, he should think—simply voted upon the ipse dixit of the right hon. Baronet? If the Amendment were accepted, the subjects on which the votes would be taken would be known to these hon. Members. He urged the Government to give the proposal further consideration.
  SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACHsaid, that whatever might be the case with regard to English and Scotch Members,

  1665
  Irish Members had shown themselves perfectly capable of understanding the Bill. He would say this shortly with regard to the whole question—he did not see how they could possibly do anything more plain than state in the Bill, as they did state, the sections of the existing Acts which it was proposed to repeal, the sections which it was proposed to re-enact, and the modifications to be made in those sections. Hon. Members asked them to repeal all the existing law, and to begin ab initio. That was no new Bill; it was a Continuance Act, and it was dealt with in the same way as every other Act of the same kind that had ever gone before. He believed that if the course the Government had taken had not been pursued, night after night would have been taken up with speeches charging them with the intention of making the Peace Preservation Acts permanent, because they had departed from the ordinary custom. What was the point raised by the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Limerick? The hon. and learned Member proposed to adopt the Act of 1856 as the basis of legislation, and merely to re-enact the special clauses of 1870, which it was proposed still to retain. That might have been all very well if the existing law had been mainly contained in the Act of 1856; but the law had been so altered by repeal of sections and other modifications between 1856 and 1870, that the Act of 1870 had become the principal embodiment of the law. The Government were willing to meet some of the proposals of hon. Members opposite; but they could not accept this one, which was practically aimed at the very root of the Bill. Indeed, if the Amendment were passed, he did not see how they could continue the discussion, and therefore he should resist it. He hoped that they might shortly pass from the principle of the Bill, and the mode in which it had been presented to the House, and enter upon the discussion of its details: and then the hon. and learned Member would find that the Government were ready to treat the Amendments which he and the other Irish Members had placed on the Paper, in a spirit of fairness and with due consideration.
  THE O'CONOR DONsaid, he was prepared to support the Amendment of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Limerick. The Act of 1856
  1666
  was a temporary Act, but the Act of 1870 was far more stringent, and had been passed for only two years, and many of its provisions were now to be abandoned. Of those that remained some would require amendment, and in order to have the opportunity of amending them the clauses should be set forth in full. He objected, for instance, to Section 39, of the Act of 1870, in its entirety; but if the Committee were against him, he should be anxious to propose Amendments to it. But now no convenient facility was given to hon. Members to propose Amendments and that arose from the form in which the Bill was proposed. At the present time he defied any hon. Member, no matter what his knowledge might be, to understand a single Amendment on the Paper without having all the Acts of Parliament before him. A person would require to have several statutes, and a whole lot of books spread out before him in order to understand the Amendments that were proposed. He could not understand what objection there was to accept the proposal of the hon. and learned Member for Limerick.
  SIR EARDLEY WILMOTsaid, although he supported the second reading, he must confess that in the whole course of his professional experience, which had been greatly devoted to the study of Acts of Parliament, he had never come across a more complicated and embarrassed piece of legislation, and it would be almost impossible so to alter it in Committee as to render it intelligible to the particular class of people for whom it was intended. At the same time he could not support the Amendment of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Limerick, which would make matters worse than they were at present.
  MR. BUTTsaid, all the machinery was contained in the Act of 1856. The Act of 1870 was repealed, except as to three clauses which had nothing to do with the Amendment. He wished to point out that the 8th clause of the Act of 1870, already repealed by the Act of 1873, would be again repealed by the present Bill.
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PLUNKET)said, the clause was repealed by the Act of 1873. [Mr. BUTT said, it was repealed again in the present Bill.] That was

  1667
  so; the 8th clause of the Act of 1870 was repealed by the temporary Act of 1873. But lest it might be argued that the Act of 1873 was not so continued by this Bill as to prevent the revival of this clause, he had thought it better to put it into the Schedule of repealed clauses in order to make the matter perfectly clear.
  MR. M'LARENsaid, he had heard of Irish Coercion Bills, and he knew a little about them; but still he could not say that he had ever read one of them until now. Having done so, he could only say that it was almost impossible to understand what the Bill meant. He was not sure if he made an honest endeavour to understand it, that he should be able to succeed. About a dozen Acts were re-enacted in the Bill in whole or in part, and he was expected to give an honest vote, saying "Aye" or "No" whether those Acts, which he knew nothing about, ought to be re-enacted. He thought that was very unjust; and he was of opinion that English and Scotch Members could not possibly understand the Bill now under discussion, unless they made a special study of all the previous Irish Coercion Acts. He further thought that if they voted for the provisions of the Bill it would be more from faith than knowledge of what they meant. A Parliamentary Paper was delivered to him last Saturday which showed that recently the Lord Chancellor had asked the officials of the two Houses of Parliament to communicate to him their opinion with reference to the consolidation of the statutes. Mr. Rickards having been asked by the other officials to express their views on that subject, made a statement to the effect that it was not convenient, nor was it creditable to our statute law that there should exist on a given subject several Acts of different dates which successively interpreted or partly repealed one or two of their predecessors. The opinion of these officials was that the remedy lay in a consolidation of statutes. That was exactly what they should be asked to do in the present instance. The Committee pointed out the remedy. They said that, in all such cases, the Acts should be consolidated. He (Mr. M'Laren) wished therefore to know why the Chief Secretary for Ireland could not take a pair of scissors and cut out all the clauses of Acts which he desired to be
  1668
  re-enacted, paste them together, make such alterations as he thought necessary for their harmonious working, and then produce a Bill containing this Code of Coercion. In that way every Member of the House could read intelligibly what the law was proposed to be made; but, in the present case, it seemed to him to be impossible, except for those who were intimately acquainted with the matter, for any Member to give an intelligent opinion on the subject. If some alterations were intended to be made by the Government in the clauses of former Acts proposed to be partially re-enacted, why should not such alterations be inserted in distinctive type, as was done in similar cases in the House of Lords, in Bills returned with alterations by this House? There would, in that way, be no difficulty whatever in framing a proper Bill which should include everything which it was intended to include in the present Bill, and which every Member of the House should have an opportunity of intelligently assenting to or dissenting from. For those reasons he should give his most cordial support to the Amendment.
  SIR GEORGE BOWYERbelieved that they were drifting into a very bad style of legislation, for in all his experience of the House of Commons—and it was not a short one—the system of drafting Government Bills was never so bad as it was now. He had no hesitation in saying that a worse specimen than the Bill under notice could not be found. The more we legislated, the more our laws became entangled and more difficult to comprehend, through the system of references in Acts to other Acts of Parliament. What was the use of having a Commission for the consolidation of the statute law, when almost every Act the House passed was framed in a manner inconsistent with consolidation? If one Bill more than another ought to be perfectly plain it was this, because it affected the people of Ireland in their daily life. But he wanted to know how it could be possible for people of the humbler classes to understand a Bill framed in such a manner. The Bill ought to be withdrawn for the purpose of bringing in another Bill containing the whole of the law on this subject.
  MR. VANCEsaid, he could not see why that Bill, of all others, should be selected for opposition on the special

  1669
  grounds alleged by the hon. Members for Edinburgh (Mr. M'Laren) and Wexford (Sir George Bowyer), who had on hundreds of occasions voted in favour of measures similarly drawn. He could only account for the mode of criticism which had been adopted on the supposition that hon. Members opposite had made up their minds to oppose the Bill in any and every conceivable form that was open to them. He would admit that it had defects; but such defects were almost inseparable from a Consolidation Bill.
  SIR JOSEPH M'KENNAsaid, he could only regard the Bill in its present form as a kind of legislative pudding-stone, and, so regarding it, he should adopt every means open to him in order to pick it to pieces and ascertain the composition of the mass, He thought the right hon. Gentleman should introduce clauses showing distinctly what was repealed and what continued, so that the decisions of the Committee might be come to on intelligible propositions.
  MR. COLLINSsaid, he also was unable to understand the Bill, owing to the form in which it was drawn. He therefore hoped that the right hon. Baronet who had charge of the measure would withdraw it, and substitute for it a Bill in which the Acts and portions of Acts which it was proposed to re-enact and repeal should be fully and clearly set forth. It was impossible for the great majority of hon. Members to give an honest vote upon it.
  MR. FORSYTHagreed with the hon. Member who had just spoken in thinking that the provisions of a Bill like the present one ought to have been made more clear than was the case with the measure as it stood. Although he could not vote with the Home Rulers in the end, he thought that in a Bill of this kind such portions of previous Acts as were re-enacted by reference should be distinctly and fully incorporated in the Bill.
  MR. WHITWELLthought that as the Attorney General had appointed a Select Committee to inquire into the mode in which Bills were drawn, with a view to amendment, the Government ought to have been more careful in framing the present measure. He thought that time would be saved if the Government reframed it, for it was the worst model of a Bill he had ever
  1670
  seen laid before Parliament. It was a Bill which curtailed the liberties of the Irish people, perhaps, in the interests of order and public safety, and they were entitled to know what they were to be subject to.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERALsaid, that, although at the instance of the hon. and learned Member for Marylebone (Mr. Forsyth), he moved the appointment of a Select Committee on the question of drafting Bills, he expressly guarded himself against assenting to the objections which were urged against the present system by the hon. and learned Gentleman. It was always a question, when they were going to deal with an existing Act of Parliament with a view to continuing its enactments in a modified form, whether it was more expedient to repeal the whole of the existing Act and re-enact those portions of it they desired to retain, or simply to repeal and modify those portions which it was thought expedient to amend, and the solution of that question must depend on the circumstances of the case. In the present case the former course certainly appeared to him to be preferable. Suggestions had been made that certain paragraphs in the Bill were not readily intelligible; but it was to be assumed that the Acts referred to were well known to the Irish people, and if hon. Members who were unacquainted with those Acts only referred to them they would have no difficulty in understanding the present Bill. The 2nd clause of the Bill told them what sections were to be repealed, and the 3rd clause what sections it was proposed to modify.
  MR. SULLIVANurged that when they were legislating for the common people the simpler the Bill was made the better. In that view it would be more intelligible if the parts of previous Acts were shown, and not merely alluded to by figures. The question, he pointed out, had nothing to do with the policy pursued by the Government. Why should there be a long debate upon matters which any intelligent sub-editor with his scissors and paste-pot, could settle in half-an-hour. The Amendment did not alter in any way, but merely simplified the Bill.
  MR. BULWERsaid, that if the object of the Government in drafting the Bill in its present form was to prevent

  1671
  discussion on such parts of the Peace Preservation Acts as it was not intended to alter, although he did not agree with that mode of drafting Bills as a rule, yet he thought the Government were right in the present case. As to the objection that hon. Members opposite could not understand the Bill, he would only say that if the House refused to pass a Bill until every hon. Member understood it, legislation would be very slow indeed. Everybody interested in the present Bill understood it thoroughly; and he made bold to say that it was perfectly well understood by the hon. Member who had just spoken (Mr. Sullivan), and, indeed, by every other Irish Representative in the House. The only object of hon. Members opposite was to make the Irish people believe that the Government were imposing upon them new coercive laws, instead of mitigating those which already existed.
  MR. SULLIVANcould assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that he was in a state of blissful ignorance as to the bearing of the Acts amending other Acts, which again amended Acts in their turn. In trying to follow the relations of one to the other, he was "in wandering mazes lost."
  MR. BULWERsaid, he was certain the Government would only be too glad to draft the Bill in accordance with the views of the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Sullivan) and his Friends, if they, on their part, would pledge themselves to offer no opposition to those parts of it which the Government did not propose to alter. What hon. Members for Ireland really wanted was, that the Peace Preservation Act of 1870 should be re-opened to discussion, while the Government might possibly desire that Acts passed by a previous Parliament, and which they did not intend to disturb, should, as far as possible, remain undisturbed. If this was the view of the Government he entirely approved of it, and he would therefore vote against the Amendment.
  MR. MOOREwas astounded at what had fallen from the hon. and learned Gentleman who had just spoken. There was one of Her Majesty's Counsel learned in the law who had told the House that the Bill was drawn in its present form with the object of stifling discussion. This was an important admission, and one which he earnestly
  1672
  hoped would be contradicted. As for the Bill itself, in its present shape it was quite unintelligible. It would be utterly impossible for magistrates and grand jurors to go through the whole statute book when called on for a summary decision; yet that was what the Attorney General seemed to expect.
  LORD ROBERT MONTAGUinsisted that it would be most inconvenient for magistrates who had to construe the Act to refer to five different Acts. The right hon. Baronet said that if they were to bring forward this Bill, except in the usual way, it would be defeated night after night in Parliament and what did that mean, unless that this action was taken by the Government in order to hoodwink Parliament and to secure the passage of legislation which very few Members of the House could really understand.
  MR. O'SHAUGHNESSYhoped what had been said by Scotch and English as well as Irish Members would induce the Government to re-consider the matter. They had fallen into a mistake. Let them place before the Committee the clauses of the Act referred to, let them undergo what modification they intended, and then let there be a fair fight with respect to them; but if the clause were continued in its present form it would be impossible to know what they were fighting about. What had taken place with regard to Section 8 of the Act of 1870 completely proved the clumsy and confused state of the Bill. Schedule A contained the sections of the Act of 1870 which were to be repealed by this Bill, and Section 8 was there set forth. Then it was said by the senior Member for Limerick (Mr. Butt) that the 8th section of the Act of 1870 was repealed by the Act of 1873; but the Solicitor General for Ireland stated that the Bill of 1873 enacted only a temporary repeal of the 8th section, and it was therefore necessary that that section should be included in the Schedule. But the fact was, that the section was absolutely repealed by the Act of 1873, and if the Solicitor General for Ireland could make such a mistake on such a point, how could they expect the law to be understood by the common people, and even by the magistracy, in Ireland? He lamented the Bill, however, as one which would be certain to widen the gap which now divided the upper and lower classes in Ireland. By the almost

  1673
  unlimited power in which the Bill gave to the upper classes and to the majority, it was the very thing of all others that was calculated to check the growth of confidence and to make the general population believe that were siding with ascendancy and encouraging the very principles from which, in former times, the people so much suffered.
  MR. GIBSONsaid, he would not now discuss the policy of the measure; but he denied that the section under consideration was in any way ambiguous. On the contrary he maintained it was perfectly intelligible, and there was no difficulty in grasping it. The section was plain and clear as crystal, and the references to previous Acts were quite usual and had not the ghost of a shadow of ambiguity. The logical contention of the hon. and learned Member for Limerick was that the Bill should recite the parts of the Acts repealed. [Several hon. MEMBERS: NO; what is enacted.] The Bill did not purport to be a codification of the law, nor a permanent piece of legislation; on the contrary, it was a partial continuation of what he hoped would soon be wholly repealed. Its legal force would have a life of five years at the longest, while its worst parts would die out after two years, and that being so, he thought hon. Gentlemen opposite were somewhat unreasonable in contesting it so persistently. If the legislation were to be permanent, the Bill ought to be complete in itself; but, as an early alleviation of the law was expected, it was unreasonable to single out this Bill as a measure exceptionally confused. The very last Act of Parliament on this subject, that of 1870, was oven more abstruse in its references than this Bill was, and yet it was perfectly understood by Irish Members, and was even supported by the hon. Member for Edinburgh (Mr. M'Laren). He admitted that the Bill was a specimen of the kind of drafting which he hoped would soon be reformed, and which was now being investigated by the Committee obtained by the hon. and learned Member for Marylebone (Mr. Forsyth); but he denied that there was any reason for a special attack on the drafting of this Bill. It was justified in this case, at any rate, from the fact that Irish people had become familiar with these enactments.
  MR. M'LARENsaid, that as his name had been referred to, he would mention that he was so little in love with Bills of the kind that in 1866, when a Bill was introduced for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and 300 or 400 Members voted for it, the first vote he ever gave in Parliament was one against it, and his vote appeared in the minority of some eight or ten who opposed the Bill.
  MR. FORSYTHobjected to this particular Amendment because it and the one which followed would repeal the whole Act, of which it was intended by the Bill to repeal only a part. He was not prepared to support such a proposal as that.
  MR. P. MARTINagain urged that what the Irish Members desired to know was what laws were intended to remain in force, and the necessary incorporation of the provisions to be re-enacted could easily be made in Committee. As the hon. Member for Louth had said, it might easily be done with a pair of scissors and a paste-pot in half-an-hour. The refusal of the Government to insert them in the Bill looked like an attempt to stifle discussion. Why did not they accede to the demand made upon them and save the time of the Committee?
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PLTTNKET)denied that he had, as had been represented, fallen into any mistake whatever in interpreting the clauses of the Bill. It was impossible for the Government to accede to the proposal to re-cast the framework of their measure, which was intended to renew certain Acts which would otherwise expire on the 1st of June of the present year. There was, perhaps, a probability that a Select Committee on legislation now sitting upstairs might report against the manner in which the Bill had been formed. But the able draftsman of the Irish Office had only followed the invariable practice since 1847, and although some slight inconvenience might be felt, no injustice could possibly be suffered by grouping the provisions intended to be repealed in the Schedule, or by the references to previous Acts. Why such great objection should now be raised for the first time he could not see, for there was no criticism that had been made on the Bill, that was not equally applicable to every

  1675
  Act of this code since 1847. There were Notices of 67 Amendments to this Bill of five clauses. Every possible point would thus he raised. The Government would not shrink from demanding the measures necessary for the preservation of the peace; but they would carefully consider every proposal whereby this object could be secured with the least possible inconvenience to the law-abiding people of the country.
  MR. BUTTdid not ask the Government to recast the Bill, but he would undertake that the changes desired could be made in three minutes at the Table of the House. If that was not done it would go forth that a Member of the legal profession sitting on the Ministerial side of the House had declared that the object of the Government in framing the Bill in this manner was to prevent discussion; but he must say that he had a far better opinion of the Solicitor General and Chief Secretary for Ireland than to believe that the statement was well-founded.
  MR. BULWERsaid, that the hon. and learned Gentleman had misunderstood what he had said, or, at least, what he had intended to say. Not being a Member of the Government he had not stated and could not presume to state what their object had been. When the hon. Member for Louth asked why the Government did not use their scissors and paste-pot, and put in their Bill all the clauses of the Act of 1870, he merely asked the hon. Member whether if that were done he would pledge himself not to oppose those clauses.
  MR. BIGGARsaid, he had taken an unusual amount of trouble in informing his mind on the present Bill, but he had been obliged to give up the idea of reading the Acts dealt with in the measure. The Act which was here dealt with had reference to no less than four other Acts of the utmost importance and complexity.
  Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 222; Noes 84: Majority 138.
  Clause agreed to.
  Clause 3 (Continuance of Peace Preservation (Ireland) Act of 1870, subject to amendments and modification).
  THE O'CONOR DONmoved, as an Amendment, in page 2, line 4, to leave out the words "sections 12 and 13 of." His object was to omit all the clauses referred to by the Bill, which embodied the principle of charging the inhabitants of any locality with the payment of compensation to the relatives of persons murdered in connection with agrarian offences. He was obliged to raise the question in the form he had done, although he admitted it was an inconvenient form, and he wished to state clearly to the Committee his reasons for objecting to the principle. He thought it was unjust and unreasonable to tax the innocent inhabitants of a district for injuries to persons which they had no power to prevent. The hon. and learned Member for Dublin University (Mr. Gibson) had said that this tax, which it was proposed to put upon localities, was quite consistent with the British Constitution, and that when a riot occurred in England, the inhabitants of the district where the riot took place had to pay for the damage committed, and that there was such a law in existence in Ireland. But that was a statute, the object of which was to compensate a person for a malicious injury to property, and there was no analogy between exacting compensation for injury to property, as was done under the Riot Acts in England, and exacting it for injury done to the person. The fact that compensation would be given in the former case would probably deter malicious persons from destroying property, as there would be no object to be gained by it; but they would not be so deterred in the other case, and, indeed, such a thing as compensation for the destruction of human life was impossible. Moreover, it was not merely to certain districts in Ireland that the provisions he objected to applied, for they were put in force in every part of the country. If the principle was a good one, and so consistent with the principles of the British Constitution and British law, why was it confined to agrarianism, and why was it not extended to England? They had heard of such things as trade-union outrages in England, and the law, if a good one, should be extended to England. He thought, again, if the law was such a good one, it ought to be made a permanent instead of a temporary measure. There was, he

  1677
  contended, no more ground for adopting that sort of legislation as a means of repressing outrages arising from land disputes in an agricultural country, than there was for adopting it with regard to outrages in a manufacturing district arising from trade disputes, and it was unreasonable to expect that the one class of offences any more than the other would over wholly disappear. He believed that if English Gentlemen could only be brought to look at the proposal fairly and with due consideration, they would be ashamed to support it. The Bill proposed that 23 gentlemen composing the Grand Jury should estimate in money the value of a human life, which was not to be measured by the loss sustained by the murdered man's family, but by having regard to the rank, the situation in life, and the circumstances of the person who was murdered or injured. By that means a man in high station would be awarded more, or his surviving relations receive more, than those of an honest, industrious hard-working man, who might have been the support of his family. That was a principle which they would not dare to apply to England; and Ireland was about the last country in the world to which such an invidious distinction ought to applied, for there it was most desirable, as far as possible, to blot out distinctions of class and of race—those distinctions which had been one of the greatest misfortunes to Ireland, the line of demarcation between those of the upper classes and those of the lower being so unusually broad. It was a degrading task to impose on the Grand Jury—an unsuitable tribunal, moreover, for the discharge of such a duty, inasmuch as it consisted of the upper class, and of men who would not have to pay anything towards the compensation they awarded. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Dublin University had, on the second reading of the Bill, said that there was one advantage in the provision, because it would tax the locality in which the perpetrators of the crime resided. But that was not necessarily the case, for the compensation had to be voted if the crime committed was ever proved to be agrarian, and how did that work? There was a well-known instance of a lady who lived at Rathgar, in the county of Dublin, on the very best terms with her neighbours. She had some landed property in quite a different
  1678
  part of Ireland, and, having had some disputes with her tenants, was murdered, as it was supposed, by some of them or by some persons on their behalf. Her husband applied for compensation to be levied on the county of Dublin, where the crime was committed, and the inhabitants of that county had to pay a very heavy fine for a murder committed by persons living in a totally different county. Again, he knew a case where a man who was fired at applied for compensation, and, although he knew the person who fired at him, and refused to give information, yet the Grand Jury gave him £200 compensation, so that in a case where a man declined to bring an offender to justice he was absolutely rewarded by this Act. He had heard that in the county of Clare at the last assizes an application was made to the Grand Jury for an award of compensation by a man who stated he was fired at, who had received no injury beyond a scratch which might not have arisen at all from a shot, and yet the Grand Jury awarded compensation, which was levied on the peaceable inhabitants. That principle seemed to him to be opposed to all the principles of modern legislation. At one time, indeed, men's lives were valued by British law according to their rank and position, the scale graduating from the humblest serf up to that of the man of the highest rank, but he thought these days had passed, and certainly they had passed so far as England was concerned. Looking at the system as it at present stood, and its operation, he should oppose the clause in its entirety, but if it were carried in spite of his opposition, he hoped the right hon. Baronet would so amend it, that its operation would be confined to cases in which Ribbon or agrarian conspiracies were clearly proved to exist. In that way it might be rendered more acceptable.
  Amendment proposed,
  In page 2, lines 2 and 3, to leave out the words "as amended by sections 12 and 13 of 'The Protection of the Life and Property in certain Parts of Ireland Act, 1871.'"—(The O'Conor Don.)
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."
  SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACHsaid, he could not accept the Amendment; but he would undertake to consider

  1679
  on a future occasion whether the law could be further modified. He wished to point out that the clause as it stood necessitated that the crime for which compensation was to be awarded should be of an agrarian character, or arise out of illegal combination or conspiracy, and he therefore thought the Committee could scarcely fail to accept the principle of the clause. The decision whether compensation was to be given or not, rested entirely with the Grand Jury, who were, with the going Judge of Assize, the body administering the law in cases coming within the meaning of the clause. The hon. Gentleman admitted that compensation was given under another Act in cases of malicious injury to property or to person, and for loss of life. He (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) did not think that money compensation for personal injury or loss of life was unknown to the spirit of British law, for they continually heard of large payments being made on this account by railway companies after an accident had occurred. It was true that the law compelling these payments was not on all-fours with the proposal now before the House, either in its nature, or in the reasons for its existence; and this proposal was made temporary instead of permanent, because they did not believe that agrarian conspiracy and combination in Ireland would be of permanent duration. The provision might not secure evidence, but it would produce a wholesome dread of allowing crime to occur if it could be prevented, and unwillingness to harbour an intending criminal. The compensation awarded by the Grand Jury under the clause—which would be examined by the Judge of Assize and fiated or altered by him—would, in fact, be a tax upon the cowardice or indolence of those resident in the district in which agrarian crime was committed. In order to meet the objection that too great a compensation might be awarded, the Bill contained a clause to modify the provisions of the existing law so as to enable a Judge to check the action of the Grand Jury more than he could do now. This Amendment, he believed, would prevent abuse, if it were now possible; but he questioned if, even as it stood, the law had been in any way abused, for the total sum levied throughout Ireland last year was very small. The principle of the provision had been discussed upon many
  1680
  occasions in the House, and had been approved by large majorities and included in successive measures. He believed it exercised a very useful repressive influence upon crime and criminals, and as such the Government asked the House again to include it in this measure, in the hope that when the term of five years had elapsed, this, with the other portions of the measure, might be suffered to expire.
  MR. M'CARTHY DOWNINGsaid, he considered the tax a very harsh and unnecessary one, and one which had utterly failed to produce the effects it had been intended for. He would refer to a case in which £800 had been awarded to a widow who probably never possessed a £5 note; and the fine was imposed, not upon the district in which the murder was committed, but upon a portion of the county 16 or 17 miles distant from the scene of the murder, whereas the cost of the police sent down in consequence of the murder was put on a small area, excluding properties near the scene of the murder, on representations, he supposed, of owners of those properties. The evidence given on the part of the Government before the Westmeath Committee showed that the law totally failed in its object, for according to the evidence of Captain Talbot, a resident magistrate, these fines did not to any extent touch the guilty, who were too poor to pay much, and the consequence was they were imposed almost wholly on the innocent. Mr. Reed, another resident magistrate, said these fines did a great deal of harm. They alienated the people and prevented the giving of information. Captain Barry, another resident magistrate, gave similar evidence. "Why did not the Government propose that these fines should be paid like the poor rate, one-half by the landlord and one-half by the tenant? The right hon. Gentleman would find it very difficult to govern Ireland if no alteration were made on this subject of fines.
  MR. BUTLER-JOHNSTONEwould suggest that no fine should be imposed on a district in which a murderer was given up.
  MR. HERBERTasked, whether the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Sullivan) wished the House to understand that a great number of the members of a Grand Jury who had property in a district in which a murder occurred declined to

  1681
  impose a fine on that district in order to order to save their own pockets?
  MR. SULLIVANsaid, his belief was that the Grand Jury had been influenced, and he did not believe that there was a Grand Jury in Ireland that had not been similarly influenced.
  SIR JOSEPH M'KENNAsupported the Amendment.
  MR. SULLIVANsaid, there was nothing more oppressive or more maddening ever attempted against a people, not even by the Saracens in Spain, than was attempted by that Bill against the people of Ireland. If they passed the clause in its present shape, they would proclaim the Irish people aliens, and not subjects of the Grown. No precedent could be found for the clause, and the rejection of the Amendment moved to it by the hon. Member for Roscommon must have a disastrous effect in Ireland, for nothing in his opinion could be more tyrannical than that a fine should be imposed upon a district, even though the criminal were given up—that fine to amount, perhaps, to the whole rental of the district, and to be imposed by those who would pay no portion of it themselves.
  MR. BIGGARmoved to report Progress.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—(Mr. Biggar.)
  MR. DISRAELIsaid, that before they reported Progress he thought it would be much better if the Committee could come to an understanding on the point. He was much disposed to accede to the proposition made on the other side—that where the criminal was given up, the fine should not be levied. That showed the advantage of discussion, and he must protest that at 12 o'clock, when the discussion was still proceeding, and with advantageous results on both sides, a Motion for reporting Progress should now be made.
  MR. BUTTsaid, that he could not support the Motion; and he understood that the hon. Member for Cavan did not rise to make it with any intention that the discussion should then cease, but because he had been interrupted in addressing the Committee. The imposing of this old blood money was a most important provision in itself, and ought to form the subject of a separate Bill.
  MR. BIGGARsaid, he made the Motion because the question could hardly be said to be receiving discussion. No arguments had been adduced in favour of the clause, and there was not the slightest probability of arguing it out that night. It would be his duty when the Committee met again to speak at some length on the point. The House was in no mood to listen now, and he should therefore persevere with his Motion.
  SIR JOSEPH M'KENNAobserved that no doubt the proposition just made by the Prime Minister had been made in good faith; but it was a proposition which could have no useful effect. In most cases the people of a district would be unable to arrest and deliver up a criminal; and, if they could not, why should they be fined for not doing so?
  MR. RONAYNEprotested against the clause as being most injurious in its effects on the social position of many districts in Ireland. He thought it hard that poor people should be taxed for the payment of compensation when they might be perfectly innocent, and know nothing whatever of the offence. [Cries of "Order!"]
  THE CHAIRMANhoped the hon. Member would confine himself to the Motion that the Committee report Progress.
  MR. BIGGARsaid, he would withdraw his Motion for reporting Progress, in order to give the hon. Member for Cork an opportunity of addressing the Committee.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  MR. RONAYNEthen continued: He opposed the clause as a piece of class legislation, which was not so apparent at first sight, because it was difficult for Englishmen to realize the relations of grand jurors to occupying tenants in Ireland. He knew many cases in which the proposed clause would inflict the greatest hardship, and should cordially support the Amendment of the hon. Member for Roscommon. That was the perpetuation of a system which had been the cause of keeping the two countries asunder, and which might eventually terminate in their severance.
  CAPTAIN NOLANargued that the amount paid for compensation ought to be levied upon the poor rates rather than upon the county cess.
  MR. BUTThoped the right hon. Gentleman would modify the clause, for as

  1683
  it now stood its provisions were most objectionable. Compensation could be claimed not only for agrarian murders but for every other class of illegal combination. That was opposed to the principles of the old law of England, and should not, under present circumstances, be applied to Ireland.
  MR. BIGGARalso asked the right hon. Gentleman if he would modify the clause, so as to take the charge proposed by the Bill in cases of agrarian outrages off the county cess, which fell on the occupiers, and place it on the landowners.
  SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACHsaid, he was not prepared to adopt any such course. The charge had been placed on the county cess, and upon the occupiers who paid that cess, for good and sufficient reasons. The owner might not be resident and might not be acquainted with the facts, but the occupiers must have a guilty knowledge if anyone had. Beyond that, there was a precedent for the course proposed in certain sections of the Irish Land Act which had been unanimously agreed to.
  CAPTAIN NOLANsaid, the theory of the House was that the compensation should be paid, half by the landlord and half by the occupier. In practice the whole fell upon the occupier.
  Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 240; Noes 79: Majority 161.
  CAPTAIN NOLANsaid, the next Amendment stood in his name; but at that late hour (10 minutes to 1) he hoped the Government would not proceed farther with the Bill. He would, therefore, move to report Progress.
  SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACHassented.
  Motion agreed to.
  Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Thursday.

NATIONAL DEBT ACTS.

  COMMITTEE.
  Acts considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, in moving—
  "That it is expedient to amend the Acts relating to the National Debt, and to make further
  1684
  provision for the Reduction of the said Debt,"
  said, the Bill he proposed to introduce was mainly for the purpose which he described in his Financial Statement—namely, to appropriate a fixed sum yearly towards the reduction of the Debt. There would, however, be another provision which he had not yet mentioned. It was in conformity with a recommendation of the Public Accounts Committee, which sat some years ago and had reference to the existing Sinking Fund. The payments in connection with this fund were at present made quarterly, and were of a very irregular character, and what he proposed was that the ascertained surplus upon any one year should be paid over in one sum in the course of the year following. The right hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the Resolution.
  Motion agreed to.
  Resolved, That it is expedient to amend the Acts relating to the National Debt, and to make further provision for the Reduction of the said Debt.
  Resolution to be reported To-morrow.
  House adjourned at a quarter after One o'clock.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Common Law Procedure Act, 1862, Extension* (68); Teinds (Scotland) * (67); Tramways Orders Confirmation * (69); Gas and Water Orders Confirmation * (70).
Second Reading—Musical Entertainments (49), discharged; Railway Trains Regulation (50); Public Entertainments (Hour of Opening) (51).
Report—Agricultural Holdings (England)* (63).

THE QUEEN v. CASTRO—THE TRIAL AT BAR—DR. KENEALY'S MOTION.

  THE DEBATE IN THE COMMONS. PERSONAL EXPLANATION.
  LORD COLERIDGE: My Lords, I have most unwillingly to ask your Lordships' attention for two or three minutes to a matter personal to myself; and, being a personal matter, I have had great hesitation in determining whether or not I should trouble your Lordships with it at all. But I believe that a matter which concerns the honour and character of any Member of your Lordships' House, however insignificant, ought to be, and I have no doubt is, a matter of interest to the House at largo. Other noble Lords, on other occasions, have felt it their duty at once and publicly in your Lordships' House to repel attacks made upon them, and when, perhaps, the consequences of remaining silent under them would be far less mischievous than they might be in my case. My Lords, last Friday night, in another place, the Member for Stoke-upon-Trent, in the course of some observations which he was making in moving for a Royal Commission, to consist of Members of both Houses of Parliament—
  "To inquire into the matters complained of with respect to the Government Prosecution of The Queen ". Castro, and to the conduct of the Trial at Bar and incidents connected therewith, and certain incidents of the said trial which have occurred subsequent thereto,"
  took occasion to make a long and elaborate attack on conduct of mine. My Lords, the substance of that attack was this: That when I was Attorney General, and when I had the conduct of the case of young Sir Henry Tichborne, in the civil action which was tried in the Court of Common Pleas, when his estates were sought to be recovered from him by the person who is now undergoing penal servitude in Dartmoor Prison for perjury committed by him on that trial, I put forward documents—false and forged documents—which when I put them forward I knew to be false and forged; that I asked the jury to act upon documents which I knew, when I so asked them to act, were false and forged documents; and that I had under my own hand written a confession that I did know them to be false and forged when I so dealt with them. That, my

  1615
  Lords, was the charge which was made in another place on Friday night. Nothing had been previously said or done by the Member for Stoke-upon-Trent which had suggested that any attack was about to be made upon me, and I need hardly say that I had no personal notice of it whatever. Indeed, I was addressing your Lordships on the subject of the Judicature Bill when the charge was made. It was made at great length and with considerable detail. It is true that I had heard from time to time that attacks of a like nature, and upon the same subject, had been made in a paper called The Englishman, purporting in its first page to be edited by Dr. Kenealy, one of Her Majesty's Counsel. But, my Lords, I do not see or read The Englishman. I have never seen above three or four numbers of The Englishman. I have treated, and shall continue to treat, anonymous slander with the silence of disdain. But, my Lords, it is another matter when an attack is made by a Member of Parliament, no matter who he be, and when it is addressed to the audience to which that Member made it. Now, my Lords, my hon. and learned friend Sir Henry James did all that was possible to do under the circumstances. He let me know the circumstances of the attack; he got from me as well as he could a statement of the facts; he made a powerful and eloquent use of those facts; and I am able to say with profound thankfulness, that I understand he stated them to the absolute satisfaction of the Assembly which was at the time his audience. But, my Lords, I state—and state with perfect truth—that if the slander had been true I should have been perfectly unfit for the station which I have the honour to hold, and that my right hon. Friend Mr. Gladstone would have been extremely to blame in advising Her Majesty to appoint me to any such station. Now, my Lords, the facts of the case are simply these—A certain Mrs. Pittendreigh was the wife of a copying clerk in the office of Messrs. Lobinson and Geare, who were the attorneys for young Sir Henry Tichborne in the civil action, and who were my clients. Mrs. Pittendreigh got into communication with the person who was then called "the Claimant," and the Claimant's wife—how I do not know, nor is it in the least material to inquire.
  1616
  She brought to Messrs. Dobinson and Geare what purported to be a correspondence between herself and the Claimant, consisting of four apparently genuine letters from the Claimant himself, and a number of copies of letters which she said she had addressed to him, the originals of those letters of course being in the Claimant's possession. They represented a simple, natural, and harmonious whole, and they showed most unmistakably a knowledge of and an interest on the part of the Claimant in the fortunes and persons of the Orton family. Certainly the letters of the Claimant were most important evidence, if genuine. These letters—the Claimant's part of them—were submitted by Mr. Dobinson to the examination of Mr. Chabot, and Mr. Chabot, I believe, reported on them in writing. That report I never saw; but Mr. Dobinson told me what he understood to be its purport. Mr. Dobinson was a man of great honour and great intelligence, and I have no doubt that what he told me he told me truly. The substance of it was this—that as to two of those letters, Mr. Chabot was satisfied they were in the handwriting of the Claimant; that as to a third he had considerable doubt; and that as to a fourth it had been written over pencil marks, the pencil marks remaining in many places, and who had written the pencil writing it was impossible for him or for any one else to say. At that time there was no suspicion of Mrs. Pittendreigh's part of the correspondence. Her copies of her letters and the supposed originals of the Claimant's presented a harmonious and intelligible whole. There was a great similarity between the handwriting of the letters which Mr. Chabot believed to be written by the Claimant and those as to which he had doubts; and in the Claimant we had to do with a person who had before admitted that on other occasions he had written letters in a feigned name and in a feigned hand. Under these circumstances, my Lords, I formed the opinion that it was at least likely that the whole of this correspond-once might be genuine. We had the tendered oath of Mrs. Pittendreigh, against whom there was at that time, though she had done an unhandsome thing, no serious suspicion. I had the resemblance of handwriting; I had a consistent, harmonious, and intelligent correspondence,

  1617
  and against that there was nothing but the doubt of an expert—that expert being Mr. Chabot—as to the handwriting of two of the letters. Now my Lords, such being the case, I thought then and I think still that it was my duty to test the truth of the whole of that correspondence by doing what I did; and I think I should have ill discharged my duty by my young client if I had done less. What I did was this—I put the letters one after the other—one by one—into the Claimant's hands, and I asked him, one by one, if he had written each of those letters; and at first he admitted that he had written the whole of them. I then cross-examined him as to the contents of the letters; and after some time he recalled his first admissions, and while admitting that he had written two of them, denied that he had written the other two; and he also said, as well as I remember, as to one of the two which he admitted to be written by him, that it had been altered and an important word inserted in it. That is the impression made upon my mind, and was the impression upon my mind then, of the result of a number of inconsistent and contradictory answers. I then cross-examined him and pressed him with the contents of Mrs. Pittendreigh's part of the correspondence, putting to him that his letters appeared to be answers to those letters of hers, with copies of which she had furnished us, as being her side of the correspondence. He denied that he had ever received the originals of which these purported to be copies; and on my asking him whether he had received letters other than the originals of these letters, and whether he could produce them, he said he had, and would produce them. Later in the same day, or next day, he did produce letters from Mrs. Pittendreigh, and then it appeared that the copies Mrs. Pittendreigh had furnished to Mr. Dobinson as copies of her original letters were no sort of copies at all, and that her original letters did not fit in, as her professed copies did, with the supposed letters of the Claimant, to which they purported to be answers, and to form part of the same correspondence. It was plain that Mrs. Pittendreigh had deceived us—that she was a person upon whom no reliance could be placed; and when I came to address the jury on the case I withdrew
  1618
  every one of the letters I had put in, about which there could be the slightest suspicion, because they had come to us from a tainted source. I thought then, as I think now, that very likely the whole correspondence was genuine, but it was not worth while to enter into the question, because the only person I could have called to prove the letters was a person upon whose evidence nobody could be expected to act. Now, my Lords, all of that was stated to the jury by me. My speech was taken down in shorthand, and was published, and it was before the Member for Stoke-upon-Trent on Friday night when he made that statement in the House of Commons. My Lords, I can only say that if this thing were to be done over again, I should do it over again. I think no man in my position would have discharged his duty to his client if he had not done as I did upon that occasion. The letters never were put to the jury; they were never insisted upon by me to the jury; and they were withdrawn as soon as I myself was satisfied that they were evidence upon which the jury could not be expected to act. My Lords, I was leading counsel in that case, and I hold it to be unmanly to attempt to share my responsibility with any of my colleagues. The responsibility was mine, and I accept it. But, my Lords, I had colleagues. I had colleagues who knew what I did then, and who know it now. Those colleagues were Mr. Hawkins, Sir George Honyman, Mr. Chapman Barber, and Mr. Charles Bowen. They were my friends then—they are my friends now—some of them my intimate and affectionate friends. My Lords, one other word and I have done. When subsequently, during the criminal trial in the Court of Queen's Bench, Dr. Kenealy attacked Mr. Dobinson in no measured language for his conduct in respect to those letters, I wrote to Mr. Hawkins a letter, which has been published in the public prints, taking upon myself the whole responsibility of what I had done. Mr. Dobinson was dead; Mr. Dobinson had been my friend; he was a man of high honour and absolute integrity, and I did not wish, if I could help it, that he being dead should be blamed for a matter as to which—if there was any blame in connection with it—I thought myself at least as blamable as he was. And, my

  1619
  Lords, I am thankful that Mr. Dobinson's family, and those who value Mr. Dobinson's honour, do not blame me in any degree for the course which I thought it my duty to take on that occasion. Now, this, my Lords, is the whole of my connection with these so-called forged letters. This is the answer that I make to the slander of Friday night. I forbear from comment; I will not stoop to retort. I leave it to your Lordships and to my profession—among whom I have practised long and largely, and, I hope, with unstained honour—to say whether I have done anything which ought to cause my friends to blush for me, or my foes, if I have them, to rejoice. My Lords, I thank you very much for being kind enough to listen to what I had to say. I am perfectly aware—no man knows it better—that so far as claim of ancient descent or lofty rank is concerned, I, one of the people and sprung from them, have no claim to stand among your Lordships as an English nobleman; but I do claim, in point of honour and integrity, to be the perfect equal of the proudest Peer in your Lordships' House. My Lords, I have made these observations because I felt that when thus attacked it was my duty to meet the charge once and for all, and to satisfy your Lordships—as I hope I have—that at least on this score your Lordships have no reason to be ashamed of the last man whom the profession of the Law has sent by the grace of the Queen into this great Assembly.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am not surprised that my noble and learned Friend has desired to make to your Lordships the statement he has now done; but not because the charge made against him could have for one moment been entertained by anyone whom he has addressed in this House. My Lords, all who know the personal character of my noble and learned Friend, and those who know his public and his professional character, could not have hesitated—would have been perfectly certain—that the charge made against him was not only without foundation, but that it had not a tatter or a shred of foundation. My Lords, I go further—I venture to say that any person who dispassionately considered what that charge was could not have failed to arrive at the conclusion that the charge
  1620
  on the face of it was ridiculous and absurd. But, my Lords, the charge was made, and made in a place where charges of that kind are not accustomed to be made without reflection; and the charge having been made against one who occupies one of the highest judicial positions in the country, I am not surprised that my noble and learned Friend should take the opportunity of referring to it, and of giving to it the most indignant denial in your Lordships' House. My Lords, I wish I could think that this charge, having now been made—not privately, not anonymously, not in the columns of a newspaper—but publicly and in the face of day, and having now been contradicted with publicity equal to that which accompanied it when it was made, and that not only it but the other charges by which it has been accompanied have been met and have been repudiated, and have been shown in public discussion to be incapable of being sustained—I wish I could think that we had now heard the last of them. But I can only say that if charges of this kind continue to be repeated they can only recoil upon the heads of those who make them.

  CHURCH OF ENGLAND—CHURCH BUILDING AND RESTORATION—THE RETURNS.—QUESTION.
  LORD HAMPTONasked the Lord Steward, Whether the Return ordered by this House last Session of the number of churches built or restored at a cost exceeding £500 since 1840 is likely soon to be presented; and asked, further, whether there is in the Home Office or other Government offices any system by which reasonable assistance may be afforded to those persons whose duty it may be to furnish such Returns as are from time to time ordered by either House of Parliament; if not, whether it is not desirable that arrangements should be made for affording such facilities?
  EARL BEAUCHAMP, in reply, said, it must be borne in mind that the Re-turns to which the noble Lord referred were voluntary Returns, and that therefore the Government could not exercise much pressure in obtaining them. When moving for them the noble Lord had not asked that the Government should make any special arrangements for procuring them. The course taken

  1621
  was this—the Home Office had communicated with the Archbishops, and he believed that in such cases the usual course was for the two most rev. Prelates to communicate with their Suffragans. The Bishops communicated with the Archdeacons, these with the Rural Deans, and the latter with the clergy. Returns had been received from 13 dioceses in the Province of Canterbury, and he believed that progress was being made in the Province of York. As to the latter part of his noble Friend's Question, as he did not understand the meaning his noble Friend attached to the word "facilities" he was unable to give an answer.
  THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORKsaid, that in the case of many churches consecrated by him, those by whom they were built had frequently desired that the full extent of their munificence should not be known, and it might turn out that the information desired by his noble Friend could not be furnished. He and his clergy would endeavour to make the Returns as complete as possible; but it was a matter for consideration whether, looking at the value of the Returns and the great expense incurred, the House should not make such an Order as should guide the clergy in making better Returns, if the present Order was not precise enough.

  RAILWAY TRAINS REGULATION BILL.
  (The Lord Redesdale.)
  (NO. 50.) SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
  LORD REDESDALE, in moving that the Bill be now read the second time said, that he had introduced it in consequence of the action of the Midland Company in doing away with second-class carriages; but Parliament having given the Railway Companies a monopoly of the passenger traffic, he considered it to be also the duty of Parliament to see that the conditions on which that monopoly was given were fully and fairly carried out. The Midland Railway Company had recently, as he had said, come to the determination to abolish second-class carriages. If they were justified in doing that, they would be equally justified in abolishing first-class carriages also, or third-class, and saying they would run one class only. There
  1622
  was no actual law compelling a railway company to have three classes of carriages; but clearly it was the intention of Parliament that there should be three classes on all lines—otherwise why should there be a maximum of three several scales of fares in railway Bills? If it was not intended that there should be three classes of carriages one maximum for one scale would be sufficient. It might be said that the maximum of three several fares was in the Bills when promoters came to Parliament. That was true, but Parliament accepted that arrangement as one of the conditions on which it gave those Bills its sanction; and that arrangement was in strict accordance with the expectation and habits of the people, and had been in use many years to the great public convenience. He believed that first-class passengers had more to complain of than either of the two other classes in respect to the change on the Midland. The third-class had no complaint at all; and the second-class had perhaps not much; but he believed that first-class passengers were not as well satisfied with the existing arrangement for their comfort as they had been with those which had prevailed before the change. It might be argued that Parliament ought not to interfere in details of this kind, and that if they would let things alone they would right themselves. But he thought that when Bills came before their Lordships, and were passed on the distinct pledge that there should be three classes of accommodation, and maximum fares, it was not right to leave the performance of these conditions to the operation of chance. As to Parliamentary interference, there was no novelty in it. Parliament had already interfered to insist on what were called "Parliamentary trains," and quite recently "Workmen's trains" were insisted on as a condition in many Railway Bills. Why, even in the old coaching days, Parliament had interfered to regulate the number of passengers that might be carried inside and out. As to the loss of accommodation to first-class passengers, it might be said that Pullman's cars might be attached to every train. But everyone did not like Pullman's cars; and as to those who did, there was nothing in this Bill that would prevent them from using them. And as to the argument that "the matter will right itself"—if it

  1623
  righted itself by the Midland Company going back to the old plan of three classes, then the Bill would do neither that Company or any other any harm whatever. If it righted itself by the other Companies following the example the Midland had set in abolishing second-class carriages, legislation such as that which he now proposed, would come rather late. He did not see what possible objection could be raised to the Bill in point of principle; but he felt that if aggressions of this kind were not met promptly they would be carried to an extent which would make Parliament interference far more difficult when it no longer be avoided. Therefore he thought it the duty of Parliament to interpose in time and to secure that the travelling public should have in future what they had before the change made by the Midland Company—first, second, and third-class carriages on every line. The object of the Bill was simply to provide that there should be three classes of passenger carriages; but power was granted to the Railway Commissioners to grant licences for the omission of classes in cases where for five years there had been no class of the particular description in use.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a."—(The Lord Redesdale.)
  LORD HOUGHTONsaid, he could not agree with his noble Friend the Chairman of Committees in the inference that when three classes of maximum fares had been settled by Parliament it was intended that the regulations in the particular form to which he referred should be lasting. In fact several railways had been in operation for more than five years in which there never had been any second-class carriages at all, yet no complaint had been made by the public. He would ask their Lordships not to be influenced by any feelings of comfort or discomfort which they might have experienced, but to reject the Bill on totally different grounds. This Bill would interfere unnecessarily with the free action of Railway Companies, and in a manner entirely contrary to the spirit of legislation during the last 20 years. It was obvious that the division of trains and all other matters affecting their arrangement must depend very much upon local and particular circumstances, and if a measure of this description were
  1624
  passed it would be easy to evade its provisions by certain regulations—such as giving particular names to certain trains or portions of trains—the result of which would be that the Bill would work only very partially. The noble Lord did not allege that the action of the railway companies had been averse to the public good; and there was now instituted a Railway Commission which was empowered to determine any complaint in which it was alleged that a company was adopting a course detrimental to public utility. He submitted that by passing such a Bill as this, Parliament would be interfering unnecessarily with the liberty of management by the railway companies which had been productive of so much public advantage. He begged to move that the Bill be read a second time that day six months.
  Amendment moved to leave out ("now") and add at the end of the Motion ("this day six months.")—(The Lord Houghton.)
  THE EARL OF DUNMOREsaid, the objections he took to the Bill of his noble Friend the Chairman of Committees were many, as regarded both the principle of the Bill and as regarded its details. First of all, Parliament had not yet thought it expedient—when by the private Act of a Railway Company the maximum and minimum charges which it was authorized to make had been fixed, and when a railway had once been opened for public traffic, after due inspection by a Government officer—to interfere in any way with the amount to be charged or with the facilities which were to be given by the Railway Company in exchange. This Bill of his noble Friend was a Bill of compulsion, for the noble Lord, by the provisions of his Bill, proposed to compel every Railway Company in the United Kingdom to attach carriages marked "First Class," "Second Class," and "Third Class" to every train, unless they got the sanction of the Railway Commissioners to run trains omitting some one class of carriages. The first question which appeared to him to arise was this—what were first, second, and third class, and how were they to be defined? This measure—which was practically directed against the Midland Railway Company—as none of the other Companies had adopted the same scheme—proposed that there should be carriages

  1625
  of three distinct classes; but the noble Lord did not tell them in his Bill how those carriages were to be fitted up to carry out the distinction. Practically, therefore, any Railway Company would fulfil the requirements under the Bill by simply painting "First Class," "Second Class," and "Third Class" on the carriages, and by making the maximum charges authorized by Parliament. It would doubtless be in the recollection of many of their Lordships that a Bill was introduced by Mr. Plimsoll in the other House of Parliament some years ago, the provisions of which were to supply foot-warmers in the carriages for the benefit of the third-class passengers. Mr. Plimsoll was at once met by an objection to the principle of his Bill—philanthropic though it might have been—for the same reason which applied in his (the Earl of Dunmore's) estimation in very much greater force to the Bill of the noble Lord—namely, that the Railway Companies had obtained their Acts of Parliament subject to certain conditions which had been well weighed and well considered both with regard to public as well as to private interests. The bargain had been concluded, Parliament had already sealed its conditions, and the shareholders had already invested their capital under those conditions, and it would not be right to impose additional responsibilities upon them. Well, that Bill of Mr. Plimsoll's was defeated in the other House of Parliament by a large majority; and since that time no measure had been brought before either House of Parliament interfering in any way with the details of the working of Railway Companies until this measure of the noble Lord which was before their Lordships' House that night. The objections raised in the other House of Parliament to such a small measure as that of Mr. Plimsoll's naturally applied with much greater force to the Bill then before their Lordships. The real question at issue was this—At what point should Parliamentary interference with the details of the working of railways commence? Should Parliament think it desirable to alter the course hitherto adopted and to impose conditions upon Railway Companies, would it not be well that the contest between the public and the Railway Companies should not be taken on a question so insignificant as that of convenience to
  1626
  a few, but rather upon the far more important and significant question of the safety of all who travel on the many lines of railway which intersect the United Kingdom? The Bill of the noble Lord was directed avowedly to secure the convenience of the comparatively few persons who were in the habit of travelling first-class. But it must not be forgotten that a very few years ago the greater number of trains which ran consisted only of first and second class carriages, and he thought the Railway Companies might say, and with some fairness—"As long as we ran trains which provided for the convenience of the minority, Parliament was not asked to interfere in any way; but now that the arrangements we have made are supposed in some way to be unsuitable to the comfort of that small class of railway travellers who wish to pay high rates, Parliament is at once requested to depart from the practice it has always adopted since the commencement of the railway system, and to interfere directly with the detailed management of Railway Companies." The noble Lord asserted that if a stand were not made now, Railway Companies would gradually provide less and less accommodation for the convenience of the travelling public. But he (the Earl of Dunmore) did not think that the experience of the last few years would bear out that argument. He thought noble Lords would agree with him when he said that every succeeding year gave the travelling public a better and more comfortable railway carriage. There was another reason—and he thought a good one—why Railway Companies should not be compelled by Parliamentary legislation to make up a train in any particular manner. In addition to the increased expenditure which must necessarily be occasioned to the rolling-stock and permanent way of Companies by trains of unnecessary length and weight being constantly used, he thought there was a more important point yet to be considered—namely, whether by having fewer classes of carriages and fewer carriages of each class in each train, we were not enabled to have short trains, which are much more easily handled, by which greater punctuality was secured, and which, therefore, would tend very much to the increased safety of that large portion of the British public who travel by rail. He hoped their Lordships

  1627
  would oppose the second reading of this Bill and vote for the Amendment of the noble Lord opposite.
  LORD BELPERsaid, the question was whether a case for interference had been made out by his noble Friend who had introduced the Bill. He was at a loss to understand what was the particular grievance of which his noble Friend complained. It could be no grievance to first-class passengers to have their fares greatly reduced whilst they continued to enjoy the same accommodation as before. Nor was it a grievance to second-class passengers to have the advantage of very superior accommodation without any increase of charge. Did the noble Lord propose to compel the Company, in the one case, to charge higher fares than they were willing to take, or, in the other, to refuse accommodation which they were willing to give? There could be no doubt that, under the new system, the number of carriages in each train, and consequently the weight of the trains, would be diminished, which would contribute both to punctuality and to safety. He thought the changes which had recently been made were for the benefit of the public, and certainly he considered that no case had been made out for interference.
  LORD CARLINGFORDsaid, he was glad that the Government had not only refused to support the second reading of the Bill, but had refused to support it on the ground taken up by the noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Dunmore)—namely, that they should lay down no principle which should debar them from interfering on sufficient grounds with the proceedings of Railway Companies. He quite agreed that there was no sufficient case for interference in the present instance. The noble Lord the Chairman of Committees talked as if Railway Companies from the beginning of railways had been constantly running first, second, and third-class carriages; but that was far from being the case. Until very lately, third-class carriages were not run except with a limited number of trains. That was a grievance which did not concern their Lordships very much, but it concerned other classes of the public. But did Parliament step in and say to the Railway Companies they must run third-class carriages with all their trains? On the contrary, Parliament interfered in the most tender and cautious manner. It
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  required the Railway Companies to make some provision for third-class passengers—but, certainly, the provision was very limited; and when Parliament went a step further, they did not proceed by way of compulsion, but by offering advantages by way of bribe—it promised that on the fulfilment of certain conditions in connection with the running of third-class carriages with a greater number of trains, a portion of the tax on railways would be abated. As to the Midland Company, he did not believe the second-class had been abolished; it was really the first-class that had been discontinued. What the Midland Company had done reminded him of an American newspaper, which put forth an advertisement that on a certain morning they would issue a second edition, but there would be no first edition. But Parliament had always been cautious in interfering with the detailed arrangements of railways. When it was proposed that Railway Companies should be compelled to provide foot-warmers for the comfort of all classes of passengers, it was replied that it would be more for the comfort of all classes of passengers if they were provided with travelling rugs and brandy-and-water. The Midland Company had announced the abolition of the second class, but they really abolished the third-class. He hoped the power of Parliament to be exercised on sufficient grounds would not, as it were, be frittered away by their Lordships sanctioning this Bill.
  EARL DE LA WARRsaid, he did not think there was a demand, of sufficient strength, from the travelling public to warrant their Lordships in passing this Bill, and, therefore, he should vote against it.
  LORD REDESDALE, in reply, said, they ought to insist upon the Railway Companies supplying the different classes of carriages according to the provisions of the Act of Parliament. He certainly thought there was a case made out for the interference of Parliament, and he should, therefore, divide the House.
  On Question, that ("now") stand part of the Motion? their Lordships divided:—Contents 24; Not-Contents 56: Majority 32.
  Resolved in the Negative; and Bill to be read 2a this day six months.

  MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENTS BILL.
  (The Duke of St. Albans.)
  (NO. 49.) SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
  THE DUKE OF ST. ALBANSsaid, that those of their Lordships who were in the habit of attending Exeter Hall and St. James's Hall might be somewhat surprised to hear that they had been frequenting places which came under the operation of an Act to deal with disorderly houses. Such was, however, the case; and in 1866 the Middlesex Magistrates issued notices that the Licensing Act of George II. would be strictly construed. Under its third section, no place kept for public dancing, music, or public entertainment of the like kind in the Cities of London and Westminster could be open for such purpose before five o'clock in the afternoon, and an action had been actually brought against the proprietor of St. James's Hall on this account by a common informer early in the present year. He believed the Lord Chamberlain was advised that his licence could only avail to cover this within the City of Westminster, while two eminent counsel—Sir Henry James and Mr. Poland—doubted his power even to this limited extent. Therefore he asked Her Majesty's Government before Easter whether they would include in their promised course of legislation this year the Amendment of the Act 25 Geo. II. c. 36. He was told they would do nothing of the kind. In consequence the present Bill was prepared, and he had the honour to introduce it; but while it was on the Paper for the second reading he was agreeably surprised to see that the noble Earl who represented the Home Office (Earl Beauchamp) had brought in a measure to deal with the matter. His (the Duke of St. Albans') Bill would give to the magistrates who now had the power of granting music licences, the further power of saying at what hour any licensed place might open. The Bill of the noble Earl, on the contrary, laid down a hard-and-fast line with regard to the hour of opening—namely, that it should not be before the hour of noon. It was desirable that there should be immediate legislation on the subject, and, acknowledging the advantages of the Government in this respect,
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  he would not now enter into the merits of his own Bill or of its rival. The noble Earl, he believed, was prepared in Committee to introduce a condonation clause to cover those places which in the uncertain state of the law might have erred, and to make it clear that the words "shall not open before noon" did not mean that while St. James's Hall escaped from the Scylla of being unable to give a concert before 5 P.M., Willis's Rooms were landed in the Charyb dis that a ball must close at midnight. If the Government would give this assurance he should not persevere with his Bill, but would postpone the second reading till he was assured of the success of the Government measure.
  Order for the Second Reading discharged.

  PUBLIC ENTERTAINMENTS (HOUR OF OPENING) BILL—(No. 51.)
  (The Earl Beauchamp.)
  SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
  EARL BEAUCHAMP, in moving that the Bill be now read the second time, said, that its purpose was in some degree similar to that which had just been postponed by the noble Duke (the Duke of St. Albans). The discussion in their Lordships' House early this Session brought out the anomalous position in which music-halls were placed under the existing law in not being able to open before 5 o'clock in the afternoon. In buildings like Exeter Hall or St. James's Hall the performance of Handel's oratorios before that hour would not merely be illegal, but would subject the proprietor to forfeit his licence. Whatever might have been the state of society when the Act of George II. was passed, there could be no objection at the present day to music in the afternoon, and therefore the present Bill proposed to alter the limit of time from 5 o'clock P.M. to noon. But in this case as in others where you dealt with one part of an existing system, you affected some other part; and therefore if the Bill was read a second time he would in Committee propose the insertion of a clause with regard to the hour of closing—he thought that question might very well be left to the discretion of the

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  licensing magistrates. He would also propose a clause by which the Bill should take effect from Michaelmas, 1874. The result of that would be that in cases where the provisions of the Act of George II. had been transgressed no forfeiture would be entailed in that respect. The Bill would relieve music-halls in Westminster from the necessity of taking out a licence from the Lord Chamberlain.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a."—(The Earl Beauchamp.)
  THE EARL OF ROSEBERYsaid, he had listened with great attention to the noble Earl who introduced the measure, and was much disappointed to find that the scope of the Bill was so limited. He had hoped that the noble Earl would introduce some comprehensive measure which would put an end to the present anomalous condition of the law; but what was his disappointment to find a measure introduced of the most infinitesimal proportions, dealing only with the very smallest portion of the subject, and affecting only a small part of the metropolis. The noble Earl had told them that if once they touched a stone in a crazy old edifice, they found themselves obliged to meddle with other parts, and he had far better do so than try to patch up the present system. What he wanted to see was the introduction of a general measure, dealing with the whole subject of the licensing of theatres and places of public amusement.
  THE MARQUESS OF HERTFORDsaid, the anomalies connected with this subject arose from the licensing jurisdiction being in the hands of so many Benches of magistrates besides the Lord Chamberlain. There was at present no special machinery for regulating such places; but if the subject were taken up in the large and comprehensive manner desired by the noble Earl, they would have to appoint a Minister of Public Entertainments, with a large staff, and at a great expense.
  After a few words from The Earl of MORLEY,
  Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Thursday next.

RAILWAY COMPANIES (ROLLING STOCK).

  MOTION FOR RETURNS.
  Moved that there be laid before this House, Return of the Rolling Stock of the Railway Companies in the United Kingdom; showing the number of vehicles that run with passenger trains or otherwise which have the tyres fastened on to the rims of the wheels by bolts, set screws, or rivets, or by any other species of tyre fastening, specifying the same. [Then a tabular form of Return is set out.]—(The Earl De La Warr.)
  LORD COLVTLLEsaid, if the noble Earl had been as assiduous in his attendance at the meetings of the Railway Commission as the Duke of Buckingham its Chairman had been, he might have known that the very information for which he now asked had been in many instances obtained by the Commission. The Return would be valueless unless it was extended to the waggons belonging to the colliery owners and other traders of this country.
  THE EARL OF DUNMOREwas willing, on behalf of the Board of Trade, to undertake, on condition of the noble Earl withdrawing his Motion, to move for a Return more full than that which was asked for in the Motion before the House, but not so full as was desired by the noble Lord who had just addressed the House.
  EARL DE LA WARRsaid, that after what had fallen from the noble Earl he should not persist in the Motion he had brought forward.
  Motion (by leave of the House) withdrawn.

BOSTON ELECTION.
  JOINT ADDRESS.
  Moved to agree with the Commons in the Address to Her Majesty, and to fill up the blank with ("Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and"); agreed to (The Lord Chancellor); and a message sent to the House of Commons to acquaint them that the Lords have agreed to the said Address, and have filled up the blank: The Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Steward to attend Her Majesty with the Address on the part of this House: The Lord Chamberlain to wait upon Her Majesty humbly to know what time Her Majesty will please to appoint to be attended with the said Address.
  COMMON LAW PROCEDURE ACT, 1852, EXTENSION BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill to extend to foreign corporations the operation of the Common Law Procedure Act, 1852—Was presented by The Lord COLERIDGE; read 1a, (No. 68.)
  TEINDS (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill for the conversion into money of Teinds in Scotland, and of claims exigible there from or connected therewith—Was presented by The Earl of MINTO; read 1a. (No. 67.)
  TRAMWAYS ORDERS CONFIRMATION BILL
  [H.L.] (NO. 69.) A Bill for confirming certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under the "Tramways Act, 1870," relating to the Bristol and Eastern District Tramways and the Manchester Corporation Tramways: And also

  BILL GAS AND WATER ORDERS CONFIRMATION
  [H.L.] (NO. 70.) A Bill for confirming certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under the Gas and Waterworks Facilities Act, 1870, relating to Blackburn Gas, Brighton and Hove Gas, Littlehampton Gas, North Bierley Gas, Weymouth Consumers Gas, Wolverhampton Gas, Bognor Water, Newington Water, Newport (Isle of Wight) Water, Bridgend (Glamorganshire) Gas and Water: Were presented by The Lord DUNMORE; read 1a and referred to the Examiners.
  House adjourned at a quarter past Seven o'clock, till To-morrow, half past Ten o'clock.